0:00:00- So Casey, I feel like I should buy you a drink or something
0:00:03because I saw on Twitter earlier today
0:00:06that you are using watch connectivity
0:00:09in your new secret app that you haven't told us about yet.
0:00:12- Yeah, WC stands for water closet.
0:00:15- Yeah, that's right, you know, it does.
0:00:17- It should, it's that good.
0:00:19So watch connectivity is the framework
0:00:21with which you need to use to communicate
0:00:23between a iPhone app and an Apple Watch app.
0:00:27And I saw you and James Thompson going back and forth
0:00:30on Twitter earlier today.
0:00:31By the way, this is a good time to throw in,
0:00:34I've actually found a wonderful life hack.
0:00:36The latest version of Tweetbot requires a subscription
0:00:43to fully unlock all of its features.
0:00:44They finally moved from paid up front.
0:00:46- I already know where this is going.
0:00:48- They finally moved from paid up front
0:00:49to like paid once to subscription, which makes total sense.
0:00:52Like it's, I love Tweetbot, it's a great Twitter app
0:00:55and it makes total sense that they now do have ongoing costs
0:00:58even more than they did with just development,
0:01:00which is its own big thing before.
0:01:02So it makes total sense to have subscription pricing,
0:01:05I mean for almost any app these days
0:01:06that doesn't have any other kind of constant income.
0:01:08But anyway, so when I installed the new version
0:01:11and it became read only mode until you subscribe.
0:01:16And not that I think you shouldn't subscribe,
0:01:18I think you should, however,
0:01:20this became an accidental feature for me.
0:01:23- Yep.
0:01:24- And now I have by inaction a read only Twitter client
0:01:28on my phone and I still use it in read write mode,
0:01:31paid all the way on my desktop.
0:01:34But on my phone I have a read only Twitter client
0:01:38and it's kind of amazing.
0:01:40- Yeah.
0:01:41- I'll think like, oh I should reply to that
0:01:42and oh well, they don't have to subscribe.
0:01:44And I'm like, wait a minute,
0:01:45I've been loving read only Twitter.
0:01:48And so I just haven't subscribed only because
0:01:51I actually love being forced not to engage.
0:01:54And I'm like, oh this is actually better for me
0:01:55that I post less and react less to things.
0:01:59- It's so funny you say that
0:02:00because I love the Tweetbot guys, I love Tweetbot.
0:02:03It is one of my favorite and most used apps.
0:02:07And when they went subscription and when they,
0:02:11I don't know if they like turned off subscribing
0:02:13on the beta or something like that.
0:02:14But basically when I needed to have the real live app.
0:02:16- Oh, that's how I discovered it.
0:02:18That's right, 'cause they had the beta
0:02:21and it was like with TestFlight betas,
0:02:23you can make like test purchases
0:02:26but they're not actually real
0:02:27and they expire in a really short time and everything.
0:02:29But I've had such bad luck in the past
0:02:31with TestFlight sandbox purchases
0:02:34resulting in some kind of bug where like
0:02:36I get random pop-up dialogues all the time on my phone
0:02:39saying hey, resubscribe sandbox environment
0:02:41and having to reenter your store password and everything.
0:02:43Store kit's a buggy mess.
0:02:44And so I'm like, all right,
0:02:45I'm not gonna subscribe to this during the TestFlight
0:02:47because I don't want to mess up
0:02:49my sandbox purchase environment with test purchases.
0:02:52And so I just never subscribed.
0:02:54And that's how I discovered like,
0:02:56oh, this is actually really nice.
0:02:59- Yeah, so what had happened for me was
0:03:02I had subscribed for free during the TestFlight
0:03:05and then the TestFlight ended and I,
0:03:08I don't remember if I went to the release version
0:03:10or if the TestFlight, like maybe their own servers
0:03:13like wouldn't bless a subscription or something.
0:03:15One way or another, I wasn't subscribed then.
0:03:17And at this point I had not paid them any money.
0:03:20And so that's fair that I hadn't been subscribed.
0:03:23But I noticed, wait a second,
0:03:25I kind of miss being able to fave things
0:03:27'cause I like to use a hard to fave whatever
0:03:30as like a very simple like, yep, thanks.
0:03:33Or I see you or ha ha, I get it,
0:03:35rather than having to reply to a tweet.
0:03:37And I really missed that.
0:03:39And that was it.
0:03:40(both laughing)
0:03:42But I did end up subscribing just like a week or two ago.
0:03:45And I don't know how long the new Tweetbot has been out.
0:03:47I feel like it's been at least a month,
0:03:49probably closer to two months.
0:03:50- Yeah, something like that.
0:03:51- And I only subscribed like a week ago.
0:03:53And I echo everything you said, Marco.
0:03:54I'm not trying to say you shouldn't subscribe.
0:03:56It's a wonderful, wonderful app.
0:03:58And what got me to subscribe was that
0:04:01I kept the official Twitter app on my phone,
0:04:03which is hot garbage.
0:04:05It is not meant for me.
0:04:07Like I shouldn't say it's hot garbage.
0:04:08It is not meant for me is a better way of phrasing it.
0:04:10- Oh no, it's also garbage, don't worry.
0:04:13You don't need to candy coat this one.
0:04:15- Yeah, porque no los dos, right?
0:04:17But I would use the official Twitter app
0:04:21when I really, really, really wanted to reply to something.
0:04:23But it was more the like hearts and things like that
0:04:28that I miss, or like DMs for example,
0:04:30that I really wanted Tweetbot for than it was replying.
0:04:34And now that you say that, I almost wonder
0:04:37if the Tweetbot folks could engage some sort of like
0:04:41almost read only mode where maybe you could like
0:04:44throw somebody a fav, but that was it.
0:04:46You couldn't do anything else, you know?
0:04:48- I kind of like that it prevents me from,
0:04:50'cause I've also had the same habit.
0:04:52Like I'll throw a fav on things as kind of like
0:04:55a acknowledgement or thank you.
0:04:56But most people who I interact with or who follow me,
0:05:00I think there's a higher than average chance
0:05:02of using a third party Twitter client.
0:05:04And if you use a third party Twitter client,
0:05:06depending on how you have it set up,
0:05:07but generally speaking, you don't usually get notified
0:05:10on favs, because the third party APIs until very recently
0:05:14didn't have a good way to like stream those in
0:05:16and be notified all the time.
0:05:17And so I have a feeling like my favs don't really mean
0:05:21what I think they mean, and almost no one sees them
0:05:24in practice, and so it's almost like well,
0:05:27if you're gonna actually want to give somebody feedback,
0:05:30you should give them real feedback,
0:05:32like with a reply or something.
0:05:33And so I think in practice favs are fairly useless,
0:05:38and so you might as well not have the ability to leave them
0:05:41because then you feel like you're leaving feedback
0:05:43when in many cases the people will never see it.
0:05:45- And that's completely fair, but it's so funny hearing
0:05:48you describe this because I went through the exact same
0:05:50adventure myself, and it was my utter disgust
0:05:54with the official Twitter app that got me to pay for it.
0:05:57That sounds bad.
0:05:58I really, really love Tweetbot, this is not an ad,
0:06:00I don't think they've ever, ever, ever paid us
0:06:02to do anything on this show.
0:06:03I really, really do love it, I'm not trying to imply
0:06:07anything else, but I do agree that this was a feature,
0:06:10not a bug in a lot of ways.
0:06:12(laughing)
0:06:13So yeah, I totally hear you, but to come back
0:06:16to the actual point you were trying to make, yes.
0:06:18I am working on something very slowly,
0:06:20and I feel like I have like an analog and a half
0:06:23worth of content about how slowly I've been working
0:06:26on this app, and I'm actually, we don't need to poll
0:06:29on this thread right now, but I'm really, really frustrated
0:06:31and kind of disgusted with myself at how long
0:06:33it's been taking me because it's really not
0:06:35a very complicated app, and it really has been taking me
0:06:39entirely too long to get it out the door.
0:06:41But nevertheless, one of the things I am realizing
0:06:44is that even a very, very, very simple app,
0:06:48if you want to include a widget, if you want to include
0:06:52a watch app, if you want to include a watch complication,
0:06:55and I know this is not something novel or new,
0:06:58but it is stunning the amount of stuff you have to manage
0:07:03and the amount of code you have to write
0:07:05in order to make all of those things happen.
0:07:08And Marco, you more than probably anyone
0:07:10know exactly what all this is about,
0:07:13but even for an app like this, which I don't particularly
0:07:18want to talk about what it is right now,
0:07:19but suffice to say it's very, very, very, very simple,
0:07:22the simplest app I've worked on yet.
0:07:24But nonetheless, I'd like to have a widget,
0:07:27I would like to have a very basic watch app,
0:07:30I would like to have a watch complication,
0:07:32and even using all the modern stuff, it's all Swift UI,
0:07:35it's all combined where appropriate,
0:07:38even using all the modern stuff, it is still
0:07:40an just astronomical amount of work
0:07:43to get all of these moving parts put together.
0:07:45And I'm really gonna try hard not to go on a rant
0:07:48because I've done this too often lately,
0:07:49but it is very frustrating to go digging through
0:07:53Apple's documentation, which for watch connectivity
0:07:57is at least passable, which for Apple is a big compliment.
0:08:01It's passable documentation, but in the case
0:08:04of watch connectivity, which is what they call
0:08:06sending data back and forth between the watch
0:08:08and the iOS app, there are several different mechanisms
0:08:11by which you can do it, which in and of itself, it's fine,
0:08:13I don't have a problem with that.
0:08:14And there's different trade-offs between each of these
0:08:18different mechanisms, which here again, okay, that's fine,
0:08:20but what they don't do a particularly great job of
0:08:23is telling you, well, if you're doing this sort of thing,
0:08:27this is what you wanna use.
0:08:28If you're doing that sort of thing, use the other thing.
0:08:31If you're doing this third thing,
0:08:33you should look over there.
0:08:34And they kinda like get a little vaguely in that direction,
0:08:37but in the documentation that I saw,
0:08:39I never really found a good clear document,
0:08:44a more high level document as to when you're doing this,
0:08:48choose that, and this feels like the sort of thing
0:08:51that has probably been covered in a WWDC session
0:08:53at some point, but--
0:08:54- It hasn't.
0:08:55- Okay, nevermind.
0:08:56- I can tell you the answer there right now.
0:08:57- Do you wanna know the answer right now?
0:08:58- I would love to.
0:08:59- Okay, never use application context, it's unreliable.
0:09:03- Oh, that's what I was gonna use!
0:09:04Sorry, well, this is good news, okay.
0:09:06- You can use the message passing interface
0:09:11where it's like send message with a dictionary
0:09:12and you can put arbitrary info in the dictionary.
0:09:14That works great.
0:09:16- Now, but slow down though,
0:09:17because there's two different mechanisms for this.
0:09:19There's user info, which is not real time,
0:09:23and then there's what they actually call messages,
0:09:26which is the watch app is actively running as we speak
0:09:29and you are actively sending a message back and forth
0:09:32while both the watch and iPhone apps are running.
0:09:34So are you talking about that?
0:09:35- Yes.
0:09:36- Or are you talking about this user info thing
0:09:37where it's, ah, it'll get there eventually?
0:09:39- No, that.
0:09:40And the other method is file transfers, which never work.
0:09:42So basically you can't use file transfers
0:09:44because they don't work reliably.
0:09:46You can't use application context, it doesn't work reliably.
0:09:49The only one that works reliably
0:09:50is when both apps are running,
0:09:52the one where they communicate with dictionaries
0:09:54back and forth, the user info dictionaries.
0:09:56That being said, there's size limits
0:09:59to what you can put in there.
0:10:00I underscore found that I think it's something like 65,
0:10:0364K, something like that.
0:10:04- Yeah, that I'm not worried about.
0:10:05- In that ballpark.
0:10:06And then the watch app,
0:10:09when it sends a message to the phone app,
0:10:11the watch app is able to wake up the phone app
0:10:13with one of those messages, but not vice versa.
0:10:16The phone app can't wake up the watch app.
0:10:18- Yep, yep, yep.
0:10:19- So this is why the entire watch connectivity framework
0:10:23and its real world performance and pitfalls
0:10:27and unreliability is one of the biggest reasons
0:10:30why I've had so many problems developing watch apps
0:10:33for Overcast over the years.
0:10:35And it's one of the biggest reasons
0:10:37why the current watch app,
0:10:39which was recently rewritten as we discussed,
0:10:41is mostly avoiding watch connectivity
0:10:45and trying to communicate mostly over the internet,
0:10:48over my sync servers instead.
0:10:50Because anything you can do to avoid watch connectivity
0:10:53will be better for your mental health.
0:10:56- Sorry, so you're saying,
0:10:57have you played with transfer user info?
0:10:59Because there's application context,
0:11:01which you've already spoken about,
0:11:02then there's user info, which seems to be
0:11:04to be maybe intended to be slightly closer
0:11:07to real time question, oh no, I'm sorry,
0:11:09no, I have that wrong.
0:11:10I think application context is supposed to be closer to real
0:11:12to see this is what I'm talking about,
0:11:13it's so hard to tell.
0:11:14- And if you read the documentation,
0:11:15it says like, oh, use application context
0:11:17as basically like a persistent version
0:11:20of those back and forth really reliable dictionaries
0:11:23so that if one of the apps isn't running,
0:11:25it'll pick up the latest application context,
0:11:28which by the way is only one way,
0:11:29it only goes from phone to watch, not vice versa.
0:11:32There's so many little exceptions and gotchas.
0:11:36So yeah, try to minimize how much you rely on this framework
0:11:42and the functionality of the phone app
0:11:43talking to the watch app.
0:11:44Because any amount of this that you do,
0:11:47you're gonna regret.
0:11:48- Super.
0:11:50- You know, I knew this was my future,
0:11:52but it's so frustrating.
0:11:53So actually, if you the listener have had experience
0:11:57with this and have anic data that you would like
0:12:00to share with me, I would be happy to accept it via Twitter.
0:12:03Please don't clog my email.
0:12:04Via Twitter @CaseyLiss, don't bother Marco,
0:12:07don't bother John, they didn't ask for this,
0:12:09I'm asking for this.
0:12:10I would love to hear your experience because yeah,
0:12:12I was going to, as after having spoken to James Thompson,
0:12:16friend of the show, I was going to go down
0:12:18the application context route,
0:12:19but if you're telling me that's unreliable and buggy,
0:12:21then ugh.
0:12:22And to be fair, the only thing I'm really trying
0:12:24to transfer is something itty-itty-bitty,
0:12:28which is basically like, how can I describe this
0:12:31while still being general?
0:12:33You can make one of like 15 or 20 choices within the app,
0:12:37and I basically need to know which choice did you make
0:12:40and what numeral is associated with that choice.
0:12:42And gentlemen, I can tell you about it after the show.
0:12:44But suffice it to say, it's like basically a class name
0:12:48and an integer, and that's all I need to send.
0:12:50So in that sense, I'm not worried about like data,
0:12:52their size limits or anything like that,
0:12:53but that doesn't necessarily negate your point
0:12:55that it's just straight up unreliable to go back and forth.
0:12:58And that's unsurprising but frustrating.
0:13:01So yeah, documentation.
0:13:03Some sort of higher level documentation
0:13:06would be really, really nice.
0:13:07Like some sort of flow chart or like table.
0:13:10If you're trying to do this at such and such a speed,
0:13:13use this.
0:13:14If you're trying to transfer a file, get screwed,
0:13:16because you're not gonna end up anywhere happy.
0:13:20I don't know, it's frustrating.
0:13:22I just want, all I want at WWDC,
0:13:24which we'll talk about later,
0:13:25all I want, please, please,
0:13:26can we have better documentation?
0:13:28Please, please.
0:13:30And yes, in the chat room, from everything I've gathered,
0:13:33Mark was exactly right, that going through the internet,
0:13:36through the internet is faster than using watch connectivity
0:13:41and certainly more reliable if not faster.
0:13:42- Yes, maybe not.
0:13:43So well, it can be faster sometimes.
0:13:45The Apple Watch by default tries to transfer
0:13:48as much as possible over Bluetooth instead of WiFi,
0:13:51because Bluetooth is much lower power consuming.
0:13:54Bluetooth though, it is lower power,
0:13:55but it's also way slower.
0:13:56And that's why for file transfers,
0:13:59downloading a file directly from the internet,
0:14:01which will usually prefer a WiFi connection,
0:14:04is faster than transferring the file from the phone
0:14:08to the watch over the same network.
0:14:10It's a whole thing.
0:14:13But the main reason thing, the big reason is the reliability.
0:14:17Because if the watch tries to talk to the phone,
0:14:20it's hard to really know whether that communication channel
0:14:23is open and reliable and fast and not clogged with junk,
0:14:27as opposed to the internet,
0:14:28you can just make the connection directly
0:14:29with the same APIs that you make any other connection with
0:14:31from iOS and it just works.
0:14:33- Neat.
0:14:34- Although background transfers don't,
0:14:35background downloads rather,
0:14:37have significantly more restrictions on the watch
0:14:39and are even less reliable.
0:14:40That's a lot of fun too.
0:14:42Well, to see that I'm not too worried about,
0:14:43for me anyway, but for you, oh, that does not sound fine.
0:14:46- Yeah, there's basically no way
0:14:49to make an Apple Watch podcast app
0:14:52that downloads episodes locally
0:14:55that works well for everyone.
0:14:57- Cool.
0:14:58- I've tried every way to do it,
0:14:59I've seen other apps that do it various different ways.
0:15:02Every single app has a large number of five star reviews
0:15:06saying this new method works great
0:15:07and a large number of one star reviews saying
0:15:09they changed it and now it doesn't work for me.
0:15:11And there's all sorts of conditions and problems
0:15:15and it's just a nightmare.
0:15:17So try to avoid making an iOS podcast app
0:15:19for many reasons like competing with me
0:15:21but also try to avoid needing a watch app
0:15:25with local downloads 'cause it's no fun.
0:15:27(electronic beeping)
0:15:29- All right, let's cheer each other up a little bit
0:15:31and let's talk about the Tesla Wheel of Shame
0:15:33Stencil Edition and in fact other editions as well.
0:15:36So we have had listeners from around the world
0:15:40tell us and send us photographic evidence
0:15:43of all the different kinds of Tesla demarcations
0:15:46and graffiti that they found.
0:15:47John, since you've been so quiet recently,
0:15:49would you like to take us on a tour?
0:15:51Would you prefer me to do that?
0:15:52- Actually I had some things to say
0:15:53about your Twitter client stuff but you went on so long
0:15:56we probably shouldn't belabor it but I'll just add this.
0:15:58It's a good thing we have this podcast
0:16:00because Marco would have loved to have told you
0:16:01these things on Twitter but he couldn't reply.
0:16:04(laughing)
0:16:06You had to get advice from James Thompson instead.
0:16:08- Yeah and someone in the chat room,
0:16:11I missed this when it went by before,
0:16:13had a good suggestion for your app
0:16:15or a guess at what your app might be.
0:16:17Tweet of you or read only Twitter clients
0:16:18so people like Marco can't mess things up.
0:16:20- There you go, fear gold.
0:16:22- All right, those are my two Twitter things
0:16:24but yeah, back to the Wheels of Shame, the important stuff.
0:16:26I promise this will be the last time.
0:16:27I know we've had Wheels of Shame
0:16:28on like three shows in a row or whatever.
0:16:29They're just funny and they come with pictures
0:16:31so I find them appealing and I understand this is a podcast
0:16:34and you don't get to see the pictures
0:16:36except the ones that Marco makes his show art
0:16:38but we will describe them for you.
0:16:40So the first one is the aforementioned stencil one.
0:16:43We mentioned on the last show,
0:16:45it looked like a neat stencil.
0:16:46This particular one we're seeing the stencils on,
0:16:48it looks like someone cut a hole in a piece of cardboard
0:16:51and used a can of spray paint through it
0:16:52and they're very, very tiny stencils.
0:16:54Just a little Tesla T on the spokes.
0:16:57I guess that's a deterrent.
0:16:59It doesn't look as bad as the other sloppy.
0:17:01It looks like someone, like a kid,
0:17:03like if you're trying to like decorate your BMX bike
0:17:05or something and you like spray painted some stencils on it.
0:17:08It's clear that you were trying to do something neat
0:17:10but your skills aren't really up to it.
0:17:13The next one is from San Francisco.
0:17:14I like the style of this one.
0:17:16It is haphazard red spray paint but only on half the wheel
0:17:19and no one would do that on purpose.
0:17:21So that's definitely a look people wouldn't want on their car.
0:17:26- Something about San Francisco is haphazard?
0:17:28- No. - Yeah.
0:17:29Then there's one from Belvedere, California
0:17:31where the people who run-- - This one is great.
0:17:32- People who run this service obviously could not deal
0:17:35with the idea of making the wheel ugly.
0:17:37So they tried to do as neat a job as possible
0:17:39and they took like, what is it,
0:17:40like a 30 degree slight pie wedge out of it?
0:17:42Basically one spoke.
0:17:44- Well it's making the Tesla logo basically.
0:17:46- Yeah, it's really, I actually like this one a lot.
0:17:47It's very clever.
0:17:48- Me too.
0:17:49Yeah, but most people, the style in cars these days
0:17:52is not to have asymmetrical coloring on your wheels.
0:17:55But this has one spoke and the surrounding area
0:17:58is making a little T in red.
0:17:59And it looks pretty neatly done.
0:18:01I don't know of any car maker that makes wheels like this
0:18:04on purpose so I think it would still encourage you
0:18:06to swap it for the real one.
0:18:09But kudos to the person who just
0:18:11couldn't stand to look sloppy.
0:18:12- No, I love this one so much.
0:18:14And this was sent in by Alistair Logee.
0:18:16And it was, the caption was pizza slice
0:18:20in Belvedere, California.
0:18:21Which this is kind of what that looks like.
0:18:23Not only does it look like a pizza slice,
0:18:25but it looks like the Tesla logo.
0:18:26I love this one.
0:18:27I really think this one's great.
0:18:28- Yeah, it's very clever.
0:18:29- And then finally we have one from the Bay Area from 2016.
0:18:32This may, does this predate the spray paint?
0:18:35When was your first spray paint job, Marco?
0:18:37- 2019.
0:18:38- All right, so maybe they hadn't come on
0:18:40this spray paint technique.
0:18:42This one does have a tiny little Tesla logo.
0:18:45It looks like it could even be a sticker
0:18:47on like the inside rim of the wheel.
0:18:49And I think that one probably wouldn't encourage people
0:18:51to return it 'cause it's just too small and too subtle.
0:18:54But those were the before times,
0:18:56before they had the technology
0:18:58of haphazardly spray painting something.
0:18:59So thank you everybody from across the world
0:19:02for sending us your ugly Tesla wheels.
0:19:04We will treasure these photos forever.
0:19:06- Something like that.
0:19:07- Well, we'll laugh at them for a few minutes.
0:19:09- Yeah, that's more accurate.
0:19:10But Marco won't be sending you any hearts,
0:19:12I can tell you that right now.
0:19:13- Oh, that was my other comment on the Twitter client thing.
0:19:16- Oh, okay, go ahead.
0:19:17- Not to belabor or something that I'm sure you all know,
0:19:20but if you want to not reply to tweets,
0:19:24you can do that for free in any Twitter client.
0:19:27You don't have to have a client
0:19:29that literally stops you from doing it.
0:19:31I understand that having the software help you is good,
0:19:35but at the point where you're wishing for a mode
0:19:37in an application that will let you fave and not reply,
0:19:39that's the point when I say it's time for you
0:19:40to invoke some tiny degree of self control.
0:19:43- Never. - What is that?
0:19:45I don't understand what those words mean.
0:19:47Oh goodness, all right, so Harrison Krebs wrote us
0:19:50this missive with regard to a genuinely frustrating story
0:19:54about AirPods, Macs, warranty repairs.
0:19:57Generally speaking, I don't like to give too much attention
0:20:00to these sorts of things 'cause we are not here
0:20:01to be everyone's crusaders, I'm sorry.
0:20:03However, this is a good public service announcement.
0:20:06So in summary, Harrison went and did a warranty repair
0:20:10on bricked AirPods Macs, but when he got them back,
0:20:13they didn't include his ear cushions,
0:20:15which is not desirable at all.
0:20:18So apparently it's Apple's policy to remove the ear cushions
0:20:21and not send them back after a repair,
0:20:24which Harrison didn't know,
0:20:25and apparently the Apple Store employee
0:20:27was supposed to tell Harrison that
0:20:29and just kind of didn't.
0:20:31So this is a public service announcement for everyone.
0:20:33If you're sending in your AirPods Macs
0:20:35for warranty repairs, hey, guess what?
0:20:37You're gonna wanna take those ear cups off.
0:20:39- Or at least ask the person at the store about it
0:20:41because who knows if this is a universal policy or whatever,
0:20:44but just FYI, it's a good thing to know
0:20:46because Apple Store employees are people too.
0:20:48Maybe they forgot to tell you,
0:20:50maybe that person didn't even know
0:20:51they weren't gonna come back.
0:20:52I actually kind of understand the policy
0:20:55of not sending you back your ear things.
0:20:57I think they should come back with brand new ones
0:21:00rather than just taking your old ones and giving them back.
0:21:03But either way, since they come off so easily,
0:21:05if the Apple Store employee had just said,
0:21:07oh, by the way, you'll wanna take these home
0:21:09because our policy is not to send them back,
0:21:12that would have solved the problem.
0:21:13And I assume that Harrison contacted the Apple Store again
0:21:16and said, hey, WTF, and got new ear pads to replace it
0:21:21because it was the store's fault.
0:21:21They didn't tell them they would be gone.
0:21:23- Yeah, and this is actually fairly consistent
0:21:26with Apple's other repair methods.
0:21:29Whenever you send anything to Apple for repair,
0:21:31they don't want any accessories that go with it.
0:21:34And we don't think of ear pads as accessories to headphones.
0:21:37You kind of can't use it without them.
0:21:38But for Apple repair parlance,
0:21:41if you send a watch in for repair,
0:21:42you remove the strap first or they do it for you
0:21:45and they hand it back to you.
0:21:46If you send in a laptop, you don't send the power cord.
0:21:48It is consistent with that.
0:21:49So I don't consider this outrageous thing,
0:21:52how dare they not send your ear cups back.
0:21:54It's simply like, oh, the store person messed up.
0:21:56And that happens, human error.
0:21:58And yeah, as John said, I'm sure they,
0:21:59I'm sure talking to the store people,
0:22:01I'm sure they resolved it.
0:22:02But the policy is something that you might not expect
0:22:05because you don't think of headphone ear pads
0:22:08as an accessory that you just pop off whenever you want to.
0:22:12But here we are.
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0:23:56- All right, so I have good news and bad news for everyone,
0:24:02especially the two of you.
0:24:04There's going to be WWDC this year, which is great,
0:24:07but not in person, which at least for Marco and me,
0:24:11I think is bad news.
0:24:12John, I know you're just devastated
0:24:14that you don't have to travel to California this year
0:24:16for the second consecutive year.
0:24:18Gosh, when was the last time we all saw each other?
0:24:20Was it WWDC in 2019?
0:24:23- Yeah, maybe.
0:24:23- Anyway, there was no question about it.
0:24:25The WWDC wasn't gonna be in person.
0:24:27I think we all knew it was gonna be remote,
0:24:28but it's been announced.
0:24:29They announced the dates.
0:24:30Interestingly, I guess it doesn't really matter
0:24:32'cause whatever, it's remote.
0:24:34And by the way, it's also free like it was last year, right?
0:24:36So it's all online.
0:24:37Anybody can do it, right?
0:24:39And they announced the dates,
0:24:40but they didn't do anything else really.
0:24:42I mean, maybe there's nothing else to do.
0:24:43Did they have us register last year?
0:24:45I don't even remember.
0:24:46- No. - I don't remember.
0:24:47- No, there was no user input basically.
0:24:50- Yeah, so it's just free to everybody.
0:24:51Here it is.
0:24:52It's here again.
0:24:53The only thing we collectively had to look at
0:24:55was the little invitation graphics,
0:24:57which people got a little bit obsessed with as we do.
0:25:00I mean, it's not an invitation.
0:25:01It's just a, I don't know, a PR image.
0:25:05And this year, it's a bunch of, how does Apple say it?
0:25:07Did they say Memoji or Memoji?
0:25:09They say Memoji, right?
0:25:10- I believe it varies by presenter, right?
0:25:12- Yes, and I think it was officially Memoji,
0:25:15and I used to jokingly call it Memoji.
0:25:17And then I think Tim at some point said Memoji,
0:25:20and I felt like I could claim victory at that point.
0:25:23- Yeah, anyway, it's got a bunch of those faces
0:25:26looking into a laptop that's slowly opening
0:25:28in the same way that Craig Federighi did in the M1 video,
0:25:31like with all those memes of cracking open the M1 laptop
0:25:34and having the light shine in his face.
0:25:37And what people got obsessed with in this thing
0:25:39is the fact that all of the people
0:25:42who are opening the laptop,
0:25:43but it's kind of from the same angle as the Craig thing,
0:25:45they're all wearing glasses,
0:25:46and everyone's like, oh, glasses,
0:25:48how can they all be wearing glasses?
0:25:50What are the odds of that?
0:25:50Apple glasses, AR glasses, so on and so forth.
0:25:52And then reflected in the glasses
0:25:54are the images of various iOS-style application icons,
0:25:59which doesn't make a lot of sense,
0:26:00but I guess the Xcode's in there too.
0:26:01Anyway, a bunch of application icons
0:26:04reflected in the glasses, right?
0:26:06Which handily explains why everybody has glasses,
0:26:09because you can't have things reflected
0:26:10in people's glasses without glasses.
0:26:11You could reflect them in their gigantic eyeballs,
0:26:14'cause Memoji have giant eyes,
0:26:16because they're very cartoony.
0:26:18I feel like what no one was talking about,
0:26:21except for maybe one person I saw on Twitter
0:26:23had some part of this,
0:26:24the glasses don't have any,
0:26:27oh, what are they called?
0:26:27Temples, right?
0:26:29Temples. - The sticks?
0:26:30- The sticks. - Oh, no sticks.
0:26:31That's true. - At least some of the glasses
0:26:33do not have temples.
0:26:34They virtually float,
0:26:35not touching any part of the person's face,
0:26:37because it's a stylized representation,
0:26:40and it's not literal.
0:26:41So anyway, that's all we've got to go on.
0:26:43I don't think this says anything one way or the other
0:26:46about Apple Glasses.
0:26:46We all know they're working on AR stuff.
0:26:48Is this the year they announce it?
0:26:50If it is, I don't think this image has anything to do with it
0:26:52because all of the rumors,
0:26:53especially since all of the rumors about AR stuff
0:26:55have not been about the imminent release
0:26:58of things that look like glasses people would wear.
0:27:00They've been more like the semi-imminent
0:27:03in the next year or two release of a giant VR headset
0:27:05that looks like an Oculus,
0:27:07but weighs a lot less, or whatever.
0:27:08Anyway, so I read nothing into this
0:27:10other than the fact that you need glasses
0:27:11to have reflections, and that's about it.
0:27:15- Every time there's an Apple event,
0:27:17people always try to read into the art,
0:27:19and usually if there's some kind of obvious pun
0:27:24with the name of a special event,
0:27:27that usually is relevant to the products,
0:27:29but the artwork chosen is almost never relevant.
0:27:33And for something like WVDC, where--
0:27:34- No, it's relevant in an obvious way.
0:27:38It's not relevant in a sneaky way.
0:27:40When the art is relevant, it's relevant in,
0:27:42one of them was the little rotating silver Apple
0:27:45that had a Mac OS behind it or something,
0:27:48and it was because they were gonna talk about Mac OS.
0:27:51Like whatever the most obvious,
0:27:52and this one, the most obvious interpretation is,
0:27:55hey, they're playing on the Craig peeking into the laptop
0:27:58from the M1 meme, right?
0:27:59- I would assume so, yeah.
0:28:00- And that's true, that's absolutely true.
0:28:02That's what they're doing, right?
0:28:04But you don't need to go hunting then,
0:28:06okay, well that seems too obvious,
0:28:07what else could it be, right?
0:28:09So, I don't know.
0:28:12And that's not to say they're not gonna do the AR thing,
0:28:14because that AR like goggle thing,
0:28:16seems like it's actually getting close to being a product.
0:28:19If they decide to release it at all,
0:28:20it seems like the tech might be ready
0:28:22not to release the product,
0:28:23but to, at your developer conference,
0:28:25tell everybody, hey, in eight months,
0:28:27we're gonna potentially release this thing,
0:28:29so start developing now, here are all the new APIs.
0:28:32Like that could happen, but if that happens,
0:28:34this advertising campaign has probably nothing to do with it
0:28:38and if it has anything to do with it,
0:28:39it is the most tangential sly nod.
0:28:43There's even the possibility that if the AR thing
0:28:45is not coming out until three years from now,
0:28:46they would still put glasses on everybody,
0:28:48because they've been working on this glasses stuff
0:28:50internally for ages, so it's kind of cheeky to say,
0:28:53I know that you know that we've been working on glasses,
0:28:55so here, everyone has glasses.
0:28:56But anyway, here are our announcements for this year.
0:28:59- Yeah, and the only thing that they've kind of announced,
0:29:03at least obliquely, is they said,
0:29:05this year's conference will include announcements
0:29:07from the keynote and State of the Union stages,
0:29:08online sessions, one-to-one labs
0:29:10offering technical guidance, and new ways for developers
0:29:12to interact with Apple engineers and designers
0:29:14to learn about the latest frameworks and technologies.
0:29:17That is all we know, it could be something
0:29:19totally silly and lame, but maybe it isn't,
0:29:22and I'm curious to see what that means.
0:29:23- Yeah, I forgot about that, that was the,
0:29:26I think it was what I was getting at with the announcement
0:29:28is no one was forcing them to announce this now,
0:29:31since no one's gonna be traveling,
0:29:32it's not like you need to make plans
0:29:33and you don't need to register
0:29:34and you don't need to do anything else.
0:29:36But then why have an announcement
0:29:38without concrete information about certain things?
0:29:40Like they still wanna have a tease aspect of it,
0:29:43so it's like we've come up with a new way
0:29:44for you to do stuff with us somehow,
0:29:48but we're not gonna tell you yet.
0:29:49Maybe they haven't figured it out yet,
0:29:50but plenty of time to figure it out.
0:29:52But I think it is important,
0:29:55if Apple continues to do these this way,
0:29:57to try to recapture some of the things
0:29:59that are good about being there in person.
0:30:02Maybe they'll have a clubhouse.
0:30:04- Oh my. - Or everyone will just join.
0:30:06As if we'll still care about clubhouse by June.
0:30:08- Didn't they do last, wasn't last WSC, didn't they do WebEx?
0:30:12- I thought so for labs, yeah.
0:30:14- And that is so reflective of Apple's non-hipness
0:30:19when it comes to internet stuff that they would use.
0:30:24Is it the bottom of the barrel
0:30:25corporate teleconferencing software?
0:30:28Probably close, I think I've used them all.
0:30:30Maybe Link, L-Y-N-C is the bottom of the barrel.
0:30:33I don't know if that's still made, that Microsoft product.
0:30:35- Isn't that just sucked into Skype now or no?
0:30:37- Yeah, I don't know.
0:30:38But anyway, WebEx is not--
0:30:39- It certainly is sucked.
0:30:41- WebEx is not cool. (laughing)
0:30:42WebEx isn't cool, WebEx isn't hip.
0:30:44WebEx is a bad app.
0:30:46WebEx destroys your laptop's battery.
0:30:48Presumably the only reason Apple's using it
0:30:51is because Apple has no replacement themselves
0:30:54'cause they have, remember when it was like iChat
0:30:57where you do iChat with multiple people
0:30:58and share a document, they don't have that anymore.
0:31:00And because presumably it's what they use internally
0:31:04for Apple corporate stuff, but boy, what a shame.
0:31:07That is a terrible application and it's in general
0:31:09a terrible experience to do labs through WebEx.
0:31:13If Apple had its own cool application
0:31:17that does the type of thing that WebEx does
0:31:20and Skype does and Slack does and Teams does
0:31:24and I don't know, name every other app
0:31:26that lets you do multi-person teleconferences.
0:31:28I'm sure they would use it instead, but they don't.
0:31:31So it's WebEx.
0:31:32So that makes me wonder what like,
0:31:34oh, we have a cool new way for you
0:31:35to interact with engineers.
0:31:37Is it still WebEx?
0:31:38Now we're using Microsoft Teams.
0:31:41That's a cool new way.
0:31:42Anyway, I look forward to see what it is.
0:31:44- Yeah, and before everyone writes us,
0:31:45yes, we are aware that FaceTime video exists,
0:31:48but to the best of my knowledge,
0:31:49you can't do like screen sharing
0:31:50or anything like that on FaceTime.
0:31:52So that doesn't really work for this particular context.
0:31:55- Count yourself lucky if you don't know
0:31:57what problem these apps are solving
0:31:59because they solve a problem
0:32:00that most individual people don't have,
0:32:02but if you work for a business
0:32:03and have been working from home,
0:32:05especially in a company that normally doesn't work from home,
0:32:06you know the problem they solve,
0:32:08which is essentially how do I have meetings
0:32:10when not in person?
0:32:12And meetings don't just involve people talking to each other
0:32:16and seeing each other.
0:32:17Meetings always involve presenting things
0:32:19and sharing documents and all that good stuff.
0:32:23- Yeah, I'm excited to see what's announced.
0:32:26I'm excited to see what a second cut
0:32:29at an online conference is.
0:32:31I'm really sad, okay, so COVID notwithstanding,
0:32:34there's no fricking chance if it was in person
0:32:36that I would be going this year,
0:32:37but leaving that aside, I'm sad not to be seeing you guys.
0:32:41I'm sad not to be seeing other friends that typically went.
0:32:44I'm sad not to be doing a live show.
0:32:45I know that John, really, COVID-19 is John's fault
0:32:49because this is the length that John is willing to go to
0:32:51to avoid doing a live WWDC.
0:32:53It was all down to him.
0:32:54It wasn't anything from overseas.
0:32:57It wasn't a bat.
0:32:58It wasn't a lab.
0:32:58It was John, Syracuse.
0:33:00It was his fault.
0:33:01I can't blame him.
0:33:02All because he doesn't like ATP live shows.
0:33:05But nevertheless, I am sad to be missing out on that.
0:33:07I really hope that next year, if it's safe,
0:33:12that they bring everyone back in.
0:33:15I am super skeptical.
0:33:17I think, honestly, if they were to do
0:33:20an in-person anything for WWDC,
0:33:22I think they would bring press in for the keynote,
0:33:26and then maybe that would be it.
0:33:28I would love for them to do an old-school style WWDC,
0:33:31and certainly, I just noticed as we were talking
0:33:33that at the tail end of their announcement,
0:33:35they said, "To support the local economy,
0:33:37"even while WWDC '21 is hosted online,
0:33:40"and as part of its $100 million racial equity
0:33:42"and justice initiative, Apple's also committing
0:33:44"one million dollars to SJ Aspires,
0:33:46"an education equity initiative
0:33:47"launched by the city of San Jose."
0:33:49So they're still pouring some amount of money
0:33:52into San Jose, which implies to me
0:33:55that they hope one day it'll come back,
0:33:57but I don't know, we'll see.
0:33:59- Marco, 2022, what do you think is gonna happen?
0:34:02You think it'll be in person, somewhat in person,
0:34:04not all in person, what's your guess?
0:34:06- That's a good question.
0:34:07This year, yeah, I had no doubt
0:34:10this year would be remote as well,
0:34:11because even though the US is doing a pretty impressive job
0:34:15at the speed of our vaccinations being deployed out,
0:34:19it is, after all, a worldwide conference,
0:34:21not a US-only conference.
0:34:22Many people come from other countries,
0:34:24and the rate of vaccinations worldwide
0:34:28is not as fast as it's happening in the US, unfortunately,
0:34:31for lots of reasons.
0:34:32- Or there are other countries that don't have
0:34:34the problem that we have at all,
0:34:35and wouldn't wanna come to the US,
0:34:36because they have zero cases.
0:34:38- Yeah, very true.
0:34:39So anyway, it makes total sense this year.
0:34:41I have a feeling that next year,
0:34:44live events like this will be happening on a regular basis,
0:34:47and it won't, there's some question,
0:34:50when we will get "back to normal" in most ways,
0:34:55and I think we're gonna see a lot of that
0:34:56this summer and fall,
0:34:58but I think by next summer,
0:35:00it's gonna be, we're gonna be pretty back to normal.
0:35:02I don't think that's an unreasonable bet
0:35:04to make at this point.
0:35:06- An interesting thing about what they've done
0:35:07with the live thing last year is that they,
0:35:10in the lead up to that, and all of the,
0:35:11you know, the quote-unquote normal years before COVID,
0:35:14they slowly essentially made the free, real-time,
0:35:18online-for-everybody version of WWDC
0:35:21by simply broadcasting the sessions as they air,
0:35:24live to everybody for free, without needing to register.
0:35:26Right? That, you know, obviously, when they,
0:35:29you know, last year, they recorded them ahead of time,
0:35:32and there's a very different vibe
0:35:33from a recorded ahead-of-time produced video
0:35:35than a live one, but practically speaking,
0:35:37if you just want the information,
0:35:39and you don't wanna pay anything,
0:35:40and you don't wanna travel, Apple was already there.
0:35:43So if they go back to in-person, which again,
0:35:45you know, I buy the deal that giving money to San Jose,
0:35:48like, what, is Apple just gonna perpetually give money
0:35:51to San Jose every year just out of, you know, good memories?
0:35:53It seems like they still want to have a relationship
0:35:55with the city, which probably means
0:35:57they're gonna go back to in-person,
0:35:58and they'll go back to, you know, it's like,
0:36:01well, why not keep the online thing for everybody?
0:36:03Well, they were already doing that, essentially.
0:36:04The only difference is there's no way for online people
0:36:07to get on a Webex with an Apple engineer,
0:36:11and in that respect, like, whatever the capacity is
0:36:15for Apple to, for Apple engineers to interact with people,
0:36:19if that capacity is saturated by the in-person people
0:36:23who pay money and go to San Jose,
0:36:26maybe there's none left for Webex meetings.
0:36:29Like, I wouldn't say that you should take time away
0:36:32from the people who paid to be there,
0:36:33because they pay all that money and traveled,
0:36:35and so they should get something for that,
0:36:37but it does seem more equitable to essentially
0:36:41a raffle-off lottery worldwide for anybody
0:36:44who attends for free, like they were doing,
0:36:47like they did last year,
0:36:48'cause it wasn't some kind of, like, slots are open,
0:36:50and it's just a lottery, and you just,
0:36:51if you want help, you file in.
0:36:52There was no preferential system, right?
0:36:55- For admission? - For labs?
0:36:57- For labs, yeah. - Oh, for labs.
0:36:58- I don't know, I didn't do any.
0:37:00- Yeah, I, no, did I do, I don't think I did any last year.
0:37:03I'm not sure, to be honest with you.
0:37:04- Yeah, but anyway, like, that's the tension
0:37:07that Apple has here.
0:37:08There's a limited capacity,
0:37:09there's only so many Apple engineers, right,
0:37:11and so there's a limited capacity of help they can give.
0:37:13Who should they give that help to?
0:37:14Should it be a random distribution of all developers
0:37:17with no barriers to entry
0:37:18other than having an internet connection
0:37:19like it was last year, or should it be for the people
0:37:22who could afford to pay the high entrance fee
0:37:24and travel to WWDC to get that help, right?
0:37:29I don't know, it's not a clear-cut answer there.
0:37:30Like, maybe you could say the people who are there in person,
0:37:33you know, some portion of the help
0:37:35will go to the people who are there in person,
0:37:37and when you do get one in person,
0:37:38you get the benefit of, you know,
0:37:40person-to-person interaction
0:37:41instead of doing it through Webex,
0:37:43but some portion should be given
0:37:44to people who couldn't attend,
0:37:45because otherwise it's not a particularly
0:37:47equitable distribution of Apple's limited amount of help.
0:37:51- You know, I thought I'd heard rumblings last year,
0:37:53the first virtual year,
0:37:54that they actually had way more labs,
0:37:57bandwidth, poor choice of words,
0:37:59way more labs availability than they did takers
0:38:02on people who wanted to go to the labs.
0:38:03- I saw that, I remember, at the end of last year,
0:38:05they're like, "Hey, we've got labs open
0:38:07"if anybody wants them."
0:38:08I mean, maybe it's like that in person, too,
0:38:09towards the tail end of the week.
0:38:10I don't partake of the labs,
0:38:12so I don't know what the experience is like,
0:38:14but if there is excess capacity,
0:38:16that argues even more strongly for, like,
0:38:18give all the excess capacity to people online, right?
0:38:21So have people there in person,
0:38:23and if there's no person takers, certainly, you know,
0:38:25it's like, everything is like COVID vaccines.
0:38:27If you've got leftover vaccines,
0:38:28just give them to whoever wants them, right?
0:38:31Hal, just call Casey up so we can yell at you
0:38:33about documentation for an hour.
0:38:34- Yeah, that sounds perfect.
0:38:36Sign me up.
0:38:36I will yell at anyone at Apple about documentation.
0:38:39- You're yelling at the wrong people.
0:38:40Don't yell at the developers.
0:38:41- That's true.
0:38:42- Yeah, well, sometimes you yell at the developers,
0:38:44not for documentation,
0:38:45but there is a lot of value in going to the labs
0:38:49and finding the one engineer who's there
0:38:51for your kind of obscure API,
0:38:53and if you have some kind of question or request,
0:38:56you can actually just tell them,
0:38:57and it actually can get you somewhere.
0:38:59- I would actually love to do that.
0:39:01I would love to find the,
0:39:02this is the problem.
0:39:04This is the problem in my real company, in my real job,
0:39:07and I imagine in many jobs,
0:39:09and also in the case of the one thing
0:39:11that I would wanna talk to Apple engineers about,
0:39:14ownership, who owns this part of the thingy?
0:39:17Who owns this API?
0:39:18Who owns this framework?
0:39:19Who owns this application?
0:39:20And very often, the depressing answer
0:39:22in large corporations is, I don't know.
0:39:24- Oh, no, that's not true at Apple, though.
0:39:25- That's a bad situation.
0:39:27- That's not true at Apple.
0:39:29- Apple has different failure modes, like nobody right now.
0:39:32- That's what I'm saying.
0:39:34That's what I mean by I don't know,
0:39:36not like, oh, just this person doesn't have the knowledge,
0:39:38that the company collectively does not know,
0:39:41because if the application or framework is not broken,
0:39:46and it's an older thing,
0:39:47and it's in between the purview of two possible groups,
0:39:50you would think, of course they have to know.
0:39:52What about when someone files a bug?
0:39:54Whose queue does that go into?
0:39:55Obviously, every company knows who owns everything.
0:39:57I can tell you from experience, that is not true.
0:40:00What happens is, there may be a queue for those things,
0:40:03but then different parts of the organization fight over
0:40:05who really owns it,
0:40:06because nobody wants that crap in their queue for real,
0:40:08so it just ends up being a shoving contest of like,
0:40:11I'm not taking this book.
0:40:12I'm not taking this, it's not my thing.
0:40:13Well, it's not your thing, but let's not look at this.
0:40:15This is my charter of my scrum team.
0:40:17I don't know, it's just, it is never ending, right?
0:40:19So for parts of the OS,
0:40:21like the one or two APIs that I need to work
0:40:24for Switch Glass in front and center,
0:40:25that apparently nobody owns and nobody cares about,
0:40:27because they don't work reliably, who owns that?
0:40:30That probably hasn't changed in literally a decade.
0:40:33Try to find the group,
0:40:34oh, it's probably Core OS, the catch-all group,
0:40:36and then Core OS is like, uh-uh,
0:40:38don't try to hoist that on us.
0:40:39We don't do anything with that.
0:40:39We haven't touched that in years, it's fine.
0:40:41There's no showstopper bugs, there's no sub ones,
0:40:42get that out of my face.
0:40:44Anyway, I just want like two APIs to work reliably,
0:40:49'cause they're like the only two APIs
0:40:50my simple little apps use, and they don't, and I'm sad.
0:40:53- I'm so sorry, Jon.
0:40:55So my understanding of how Apple works internally,
0:40:59which granted is hearsay upon hearsay,
0:41:02but for things that matter,
0:41:04and I think this is maybe where the difference is
0:41:05between you and me, for things that matter,
0:41:08there is, and it's so funny talking to people at Apple,
0:41:11because just like in governmental contracting,
0:41:13everything is just acronym soup.
0:41:15There's the ABC and the QRS and the TUV and the WIZ,
0:41:19and half the time, if I'm talking to somebody-
0:41:20- The DRI, you're looking for the DRI.
0:41:22- Exactly right.
0:41:23So that's exactly what I was driving toward,
0:41:24is there's the DRI, the directly responsible individual.
0:41:27And my understanding, again, hearsay,
0:41:30is that there is one person that may be an engineer,
0:41:34maybe a product or a project manager or project owner,
0:41:37I forget what the term is they use internally,
0:41:39but basically one person that the buck stops there.
0:41:42And for anything that matters,
0:41:44my understanding is there really is
0:41:45a directly responsible individual
0:41:46for anything that they care about.
0:41:49But Jon, to your point a moment ago,
0:41:51perhaps the things that you care about
0:41:53are not the things that they care about,
0:41:55and maybe there isn't a DRI for that sort of thing.
0:41:57Or alternatively, there's a DRI,
0:41:58but they really just could not care less
0:42:00about your particular problem.
0:42:02- That's probably what it is.
0:42:03And speaking of that, I should just clear this out
0:42:05'cause it's been in our potential after show topics in ages,
0:42:08so I'll just finish clearing this out.
0:42:09So one of the APIs that I'm talking about,
0:42:12maybe I'll leave some more on field,
0:42:13but one of them is the API for NS running applications,
0:42:18which is a very old API that probably is from the next days
0:42:20that in theory tells you information
0:42:22about all the applications that are running.
0:42:23And you can imagine I would need that information
0:42:25for Switch Glass and potentially also for front and center.
0:42:28And this application was described by a very well-known
0:42:32and experienced Apple Mac platform developer
0:42:35as the worst API on the Mac.
0:42:37And I was told this before I began my work,
0:42:39and after I started working on his apps,
0:42:41I think that person may be right.
0:42:42And this is the person who has been working on the Mac
0:42:44for literal decades.
0:42:45So when they say the worst API on the Mac,
0:42:47they're not just like a new developer who tried something.
0:42:49I don't wanna name names because this person didn't tell me.
0:42:51But anyway, this is a very experienced Mac developer
0:42:54calling this the worst API on the Mac.
0:42:56And I will put in the show notes the radar numbers,
0:42:59the one, two, three, four, five, six radar numbers
0:43:02I got thrown at me from this person
0:43:03when this person was telling me about the API.
0:43:05They said, this is the worst API I've been filing.
0:43:07These are radars, not feedbacks,
0:43:09'cause it was before the feedback error.
0:43:11These bugs have been there for who knows how many years.
0:43:13They're never getting fixed.
0:43:15And all the bugs that I was finding with it,
0:43:17I doubt they were gonna fix too.
0:43:18So if you are inside Apple and you think you know
0:43:21who owns NS running application,
0:43:23an API that no one cares about,
0:43:24and that it works well enough
0:43:25that no one needs to care about,
0:43:27here's six radar numbers, none of which are for me.
0:43:29Six radar numbers that you can look at
0:43:31and then you can decide once again
0:43:33that they're not important enough to fix.
0:43:35(laughing)
0:43:36- I'm so sorry, Jon, I really honestly am.
0:43:39I really, really honestly am.
0:43:40I don't know what's worse actually,
0:43:42and I go back and forth.
0:43:45Is it worse to have something that a lot of people rely on,
0:43:50like, hmm, watch connectivity,
0:43:52that they just really don't care to fix?
0:43:54Or is it worse to have something
0:43:57that nobody else cares about,
0:43:59so you care that much more,
0:44:02but they still don't care to fix?
0:44:04- And actually, let me throw in my thing here too,
0:44:07because I think that is an interesting example
0:44:09of what you just described.
0:44:10The one API that I want to work,
0:44:12well, there's a bunch of APIs that do this,
0:44:14but the thing I want to accomplish on the Mac
0:44:16that is currently impossible to accomplish
0:44:18in a reliable way is to tell an application
0:44:21to bring all of its windows forward.
0:44:23It seems like an important feature
0:44:25of the two applications that I make,
0:44:26and there are multiple APIs to do that.
0:44:29I haven't tried the accessibility APIs,
0:44:31because you have to ask for accessibility permission
0:44:33to do that, and maybe I could do it manually that way,
0:44:36but this is another thing about sandboxing
0:44:38in the Mac App Store.
0:44:39I haven't been willing to go over the hurdle
0:44:41to say I'm going to request accessibility access,
0:44:44'cause it's like, you want to let this app
0:44:46read all your keystrokes and record your screen,
0:44:48and people flip out, and rightly so, right?
0:44:50I don't want that access.
0:44:51I just want to say one thing.
0:44:52Hey, app, bring all your windows to the front.
0:44:55And again, there are multiple APIs to do that,
0:44:58and zero of them work reliably.
0:45:00They work about 98, 99% of the time,
0:45:03but then they just stop working,
0:45:04and there's no error condition,
0:45:05and there's no log messages,
0:45:07and the only recourse is to quit the app
0:45:09or sometimes restart your computer.
0:45:11And what do my dinky little apps do?
0:45:13One really important thing they do
0:45:15is ask applications to bring all their windows to the front,
0:45:17and when that stops working, it's sad.
0:45:20I even hacked in a little thing
0:45:21where you can switch which API my app is using to do that.
0:45:26Like, you can, like, cycle through them,
0:45:28say, "Did that API work? Try this one.
0:45:29Try that one. Try that one." None of them work.
0:45:31When it stops working, it stops working for good.
0:45:33And I feel like, even though that's a bug
0:45:34that no one cares about,
0:45:36if you're going to have any APIs on the Mac that say,
0:45:39"Hey, app, bring all your windows to the front,"
0:45:41I don't understand how that can ever stop working
0:45:44or be unreliable, because I feel like the Windows server
0:45:48should own the window layering policy to some degree.
0:45:50It should be able to say,
0:45:52"Look, app, I don't care what you're doing.
0:45:54I don't need any interaction with you whatsoever.
0:45:57I, the Windows server, own your windows,
0:45:58and I put them on the screen,
0:45:59and I composite them and everything,
0:46:01so I'm simply going to bring, as the Windows server,
0:46:03all your windows to the front.
0:46:05You don't even need to be running.
0:46:06You could be hung in an infinite loop,
0:46:08'cause this is Mac OS X and not classic Mac OS.
0:46:11I don't care if you're hung, app.
0:46:12I'm bringing all your windows to the front."
0:46:14But no, no API does that reliably, and it makes me very sad.
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0:48:02So we heard some breaking news earlier today, I believe,
0:48:10that Apple has added two brand new Siri voices
0:48:13that will no longer default to a female voice
0:48:15in the latest version of iOS, which is now in beta.
0:48:19This is, I think, from TechCrunch.
0:48:20I'm not really sure what the source is here,
0:48:22but Apple is adding two new voices
0:48:23to Siri's English offerings and eliminating
0:48:25the default "female voice" selection
0:48:27in the latest beta version of iOS.
0:48:29This means that every person setting up Siri
0:48:30will choose a voice for themselves
0:48:31and it will no longer default
0:48:32to the voice assistant being female.
0:48:35Seems good.
0:48:36I haven't heard it yet.
0:48:37I think there's a sample out there,
0:48:38but I just haven't had a chance to hear it.
0:48:40But sounds good to me.
0:48:42- Yeah, what's nice about this is,
0:48:45throughout our history as a society
0:48:49of trying to give people more rights, equal treatment,
0:48:52trying to clamp down on stereotypes
0:48:56and misogyny and stuff like that,
0:48:59the more weird old assumptions that we can break,
0:49:04generally the better things are.
0:49:06Culturally in America, most robot voice assistant things,
0:49:11whether you're hearing it on a phone menu
0:49:13or something like that, have been female.
0:49:15And that assumption isn't true everywhere.
0:49:16Like in the UK, they're usually male.
0:49:19Like it's just different in different places.
0:49:21But it's this assumption that we've had
0:49:24for forever in our society.
0:49:26Like oh, the assistant voice should be female.
0:49:30And that's based on some pretty terrible assumptions
0:49:32of general reversals and everything over time.
0:49:35And so what Apple's doing here is
0:49:37effectively breaking that assumption
0:49:38and making you choose which style of voice
0:49:41you want to hear as your Siri assistant,
0:49:44not just assuming and making a default
0:49:46to saying okay, in America it's always gonna be
0:49:48a female voice, in the UK it's always gonna be a male voice.
0:49:50Like breaking that assumption now.
0:49:52And that's generally a good thing, I think.
0:49:54- Yeah, and there's a, I don't know if this was Siri related
0:49:56but there was a couple of links going around
0:49:58a few weeks ago about like why do computer voice assistants
0:50:01have to be gendered at all?
0:50:03Or binary gendered at all?
0:50:05Like a computer doesn't have,
0:50:06like all this is just to make people feel more comfortable.
0:50:08Oh, it's a little person, it's not a computer.
0:50:10Well of course we know it's not actually a person
0:50:11but it makes us feel comfortable and interact
0:50:13with something that sounds like a person.
0:50:16But there's no reason that you need to just pick
0:50:18oh it's male-ish sounding, meaning a deeper voice
0:50:20or a female-ish sounding.
0:50:21And so there was a bunch of voice assistant's demos,
0:50:24maybe it was from Microsoft, I don't know,
0:50:25someone will probably find the link.
0:50:27If not this week then by next week.
0:50:29Showing essentially non-binary gendered voices.
0:50:33And I thought they were pretty amazing.
0:50:35Like why shouldn't your computer sound like that?
0:50:38And the idea of giving you a choice
0:50:42and making you select now,
0:50:44people may just end up selecting according to the stew,
0:50:47the cultural stew that they've brought up in.
0:50:49And maybe most Americans will pick female
0:50:51for exactly the same reason,
0:50:52the default was unthinkingly female.
0:50:54Or you know what I mean?
0:50:55It's just like again, the culture of traditional gender roles
0:50:58in your particular country.
0:50:59And what Apple's trying to do is not perpetuate that
0:51:02by just saying oh yeah, no, we're just gonna,
0:51:04we're gonna pick the thing
0:51:05that we think you're comfortable with already, right?
0:51:07They're not stopping you
0:51:08from picking whatever you're comfortable with.
0:51:09And maybe the ratio of people picking
0:51:11one or the other will be exactly the same.
0:51:13And you could even get down to the point of like okay,
0:51:15well what order are the options going to be in?
0:51:17Because the sort of cultural hegemony
0:51:21of the assistant is female
0:51:23and the assistant is subservient to,
0:51:26is the service worker or whatever,
0:51:28is so big in this country and probably in the world
0:51:32that if they put the female option first,
0:51:35that will cause it to be selected even more
0:51:37because that's what people expect.
0:51:38So it seems to me that they should actually
0:51:40have to randomize the options
0:51:42to give all of us a fighting chance
0:51:44to not succumb to our default programming.
0:51:47This is like the version of the tyranny
0:51:48of the defaults we talk about,
0:51:50where like in your application,
0:51:51whatever you set as the default for some preference,
0:51:54almost everyone's going to go with that
0:51:56because most people don't care enough about that option
0:51:58or aren't even aware that it could be in an option
0:52:01to dig into your preferences and find the setting for it.
0:52:04In fact, they might complain
0:52:05that your program doesn't do this thing that it does.
0:52:07That's the tyranny of the defaults.
0:52:08And tyranny of the defaults has an analog in real life,
0:52:11which is just like society and culture.
0:52:13And when you grow up in it,
0:52:15you don't think that there,
0:52:15you might not even think that there is a child.
0:52:17Well, that's just the way things are.
0:52:18Secretaries are women.
0:52:20How do I know that?
0:52:20Everybody knows that.
0:52:21Haven't you seen TV and movies and the entire culture
0:52:24of the entire world that I've spent my entire life in?
0:52:26Of course secretaries are women and nurses are women
0:52:29and doctors are men and like,
0:52:30unthinkingly adhering to these stereotypes.
0:52:34And so when some people see this,
0:52:36changing the voice on Siri, congratulations,
0:52:39I'm sure that will help women everywhere.
0:52:41Every little bit, every little one of these things
0:52:43is one tiny, you know, one tiny pebble taken off a pile.
0:52:48It doesn't fix the world, but if you don't do this,
0:52:51then everyone will just continue to assume,
0:52:53oh, well, my assistant has to be female
0:52:55because assistants are females
0:52:56just like secretaries and nurses, right?
0:52:58So I applaud this move.
0:53:00I don't quite know why it took so long.
0:53:02I also don't understand why the default was male
0:53:06in the UK and female in the US for so long,
0:53:07'cause it seems like there was some understanding
0:53:10within Apple that these cultural differences mean things,
0:53:14but like why not take the next step and say,
0:53:16but yeah, should it be our position at Apple
0:53:19to unthinkingly perpetuate them or to serve them
0:53:22or should we instead do what we can
0:53:25to try to make things again more equitable
0:53:28by just letting the user pick
0:53:31from a randomly ordered selection of choices.
0:53:34And I'll be excited if they throw in a few non-binary choices
0:53:37there too, because I think they sound cool.
0:53:39- Yep, agreed.
0:53:39And I found a couple of examples,
0:53:41mostly thanks to the chat room,
0:53:42of recordings of these that you can listen to
0:53:46after the fact.
0:53:47All right, last week we had an Ask ATP
0:53:49with regard to how we would set up networking
0:53:52in a fantasy, you know, new house or something like that.
0:53:55And Marco, as you want to do,
0:53:58recommended something that you really like.
0:54:00And you had some caveats and some gotchas about it,
0:54:02but you had said in the past, up until about a year ago,
0:54:06Ubiquiti, which is a manufacturer of UniFi stuff,
0:54:10you have had really good experiences with them
0:54:13up until semi-recently.
0:54:15And then you had kind of self-backpedaled, if you will,
0:54:19a little bit last week to say,
0:54:20well, it used to be much better than it is now,
0:54:22I'm not so sure.
0:54:23Is that fair so far?
0:54:24- Yeah, basically.
0:54:25You know, I've been using Ubiquiti stuff
0:54:27for many, many years for my home networking
0:54:30and it's been rock solid for the most part for,
0:54:33I mean, geez, maybe six, seven years.
0:54:35I've been using it for a long time.
0:54:37But the latest hardware from them,
0:54:41the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Router series,
0:54:45it seems like the Wi-Fi access points are all still fine,
0:54:48but the Dream Machine Router and the software
0:54:50that goes with it, it seems unreliable
0:54:52and they keep moving the software forward
0:54:54in very aggressive ways in ways that they seem
0:54:58to have adopted a move fast and break things attitude,
0:55:02which is not generally what you want from your router.
0:55:04(laughs)
0:55:05You kind of want your router to be old and boring
0:55:07and just work well and not break anything for reasons.
0:55:12So that culture might have come back to bite them slightly.
0:55:16- Yeah, so there was a breach that happened,
0:55:20I guess, late last year.
0:55:21And Ubiquiti seems to have admitted to it to a degree.
0:55:26I think they said some third party cloud provider
0:55:29had had a breach that's associated with them.
0:55:31And I believe that's pretty much all they said.
0:55:33Well, there was an article that we'll put in the show notes
0:55:36from Krebs on Security, wherein a whistleblower
0:55:38reached out to them and they called the whistleblower Adam.
0:55:42And the whistleblower said it was considerably bigger
0:55:45than Ubiquiti's leading on.
0:55:46So I'm gonna try to grab just a few quotes from here.
0:55:49In reality, this is from the article.
0:55:51In reality, Adam said the attackers had gained
0:55:52administrative access to Ubiquiti servers
0:55:54at Amazon's cloud service,
0:55:56which secures the underlying server hardware and software
0:55:58that requires the cloud tenant or client
0:56:00to secure access to any data stored there.
0:56:02Adam says that the attackers had gained access
0:56:04to privileged credentials that were previously stored
0:56:06in the LastPass account of a Ubiquiti IT employee
0:56:09and gained root administrator access
0:56:11to all Ubiquiti AWS accounts,
0:56:13including all S3 data buckets, all application logs,
0:56:15all databases, all user database credentials
0:56:18and secrets required to forge single sign-on cookies.
0:56:21I could go on and on actually about this.
0:56:24Supposedly they were threatened.
0:56:26The attackers wanted $2.8 million in order to keep quiet.
0:56:32And so they actually wanted it, of course, in Bitcoin.
0:56:36And I had assumed, oh, that must be like 1,000 Bitcoin.
0:56:38Oh no, $2.8 million apparently at the time of writing
0:56:42was 50 Bitcoin, which is just pretty fosters to me.
0:56:45Oh, please don't email me, I don't care about Bitcoin.
0:56:47But anyway, I just thought that was funny.
0:56:49- Yeah, can we pause on that for one moment?
0:56:51- Yeah. - People occasionally request
0:56:53that we talk about the world of cryptocurrency.
0:56:55I could not possibly care less
0:56:58about the world of cryptocurrency.
0:56:59I have very little knowledge of it,
0:57:01but it's mainly I just have no interest.
0:57:03And there seems to be, like there's a lot of people
0:57:05out there who absolutely are super into it,
0:57:08super involved, super interested.
0:57:11I almost feel like it's a different world of tech
0:57:14than the world that we live in.
0:57:15And while there might be a very small amount of overlap,
0:57:19I don't think it's much more than that.
0:57:21And it's like people who are super into stock trading
0:57:25and stuff, it's a different form of financial gambling
0:57:28and instruments and everything.
0:57:29And I just couldn't care less about that stuff.
0:57:32I have no interest in it.
0:57:35And it seems like there's so much there to know
0:57:39that if you're gonna be into it,
0:57:40you gotta be really into it.
0:57:41Or you have to not be into all the stuff I'm into
0:57:44in order to even have time to keep up with it
0:57:47and to do it correctly and well and everything.
0:57:50And so all of you out there,
0:57:51if whatever portion of our audience is interested in that,
0:57:55I'm sorry, I'm really not.
0:57:57And so I'm never gonna wanna talk about it.
0:57:59(laughs)
0:58:00And that's just, there's a lot that we don't cover
0:58:02on the show because tech is a very big world.
0:58:05And for me, it's gotta be,
0:58:07the whole world of cryptocurrency is part of that.
0:58:09I just have no knowledge and no interest about it.
0:58:13- Well, kind of like the financial instruments
0:58:15that you mentioned before,
0:58:17despite the fact that you have no interest in it,
0:58:19unfortunately, like the stock market
0:58:21and various financial instruments,
0:58:22it does potentially have effect on your life,
0:58:25if you remember 2008, for example.
0:58:27So lots of times, things that we don't have any interest in
0:58:29that just seem like there are a bunch of people
0:58:31playing in a world that doesn't affect us,
0:58:33when it starts to get into the financial system,
0:58:36when they mess up real bad, it can affect us.
0:58:39So it's one of those things where even if you don't
0:58:42actually know anything about it,
0:58:43it would behoove you to know enough about it
0:58:46to know what side you're on and what you wanna lobby for
0:58:49and who you might want to vote for in elections
0:58:51and so on and so forth, respect to cryptocurrency,
0:58:54just like the financial system,
0:58:55which I have no interest in whatsoever,
0:58:57but has in my very short lifetime
0:58:59affected me in very profound ways already
0:59:01and all of us, right?
0:59:02So we can't just let the people over there
0:59:04play with their stocks and collateralize debt obligations
0:59:08and everything like, the whole reason I even know
0:59:10what a collateralized debt obligation is
0:59:12is because of the 2008 financial crash, right?
0:59:15I didn't know about what any of those things are,
0:59:16but boy, eventually we all had to know,
0:59:18kind of like we all had to know about like viruses and stuff
0:59:21and with the COVID thing.
0:59:23So yeah, I mean, not that having some foundational
0:59:27baseline knowledge of cryptocurrency
0:59:28is probably going to save us,
0:59:29but it's probably better to know something a little sooner
0:59:32rather than to just read about it after the world
0:59:36is totally destroyed by people mining for Bitcoin
0:59:40or whatever.
0:59:41- Well, and like the small amount of opinion I do have
0:59:44about it is not positive because I am familiar
0:59:49with the general idea of how it works.
0:59:51I am also familiar with the immense amount of energy
0:59:54consumption it's causing around the world.
0:59:56- That's all free energy that no one was using, Marco.
0:59:59- Yeah, so there's--
1:00:00- It was going to waste.
1:00:01If it wasn't for Bitcoin, that energy would just be
1:00:03falling on the floor and rotting.
1:00:04Do you not want people to use that energy?
1:00:06- Mm-hmm, oh God.
1:00:08Anyway, before we get, I mean, believe me,
1:00:10you think Tesla people are bad with the email?
1:00:13- No, Cryptocurrency people don't listen to the show.
1:00:14(laughing)
1:00:16- Anyway, no, it's--
1:00:16- I'm not so sure.
1:00:17- So yeah, so to me, that whole world,
1:00:20it's like, I love computers for what we used to use
1:00:25computers for, what used to be the only thing
1:00:27we used computers for is messing around,
1:00:29making documents and images and audio and video
1:00:32and sending things back and forth,
1:00:34communicating back and forth with each other.
1:00:36And this seems like, hey, what if we used computers
1:00:39to generate this entire financial world
1:00:41of complex financial instruments?
1:00:42And I was like, okay, you've lost me.
1:00:44Now, what you're really talking about is finance.
1:00:48And it doesn't have that much to do
1:00:50with the computers anymore.
1:00:52And that goes well beyond my interest or knowledge.
1:00:56And again, the little bit I do know about it
1:01:00really rubs me the wrong way, for lots of reasons.
1:01:03From the attitude of a lot of the people in that world,
1:01:06which it does seem like a lot of them
1:01:07come from the world of finance and stuff like that,
1:01:10which is not my scene at all,
1:01:12as well as the environmental issues it causes.
1:01:17And it seems, and just the attitude of the presumption
1:01:22that this is going to take over everything
1:01:24and that all of us simpletons using fiat currency
1:01:28are somehow wrong or old dinosaurs.
1:01:30- You know enough of the vocabulary to know the terms
1:01:35that you wouldn't otherwise have any reason to know,
1:01:36so it's getting to you.
1:01:37- Yeah, I mean literally everything about it
1:01:39that I know rubs me the wrong way,
1:01:40with the sole exception that I think
1:01:43the technological concept of how it works
1:01:46is interesting technologically,
1:01:48but that's where the positive feelings I have about it end.
1:01:53- I predict we will talk about it, yes,
1:01:56even more than we are now, in a future episode
1:01:59at some point related to the NFT stuff, but not this week.
1:02:03- Are we still talking about those?
1:02:04- And I wish, not this week, and I wish I could find,
1:02:07we should end by saying, me trying to find the originator
1:02:11of this amazing tweet that I still,
1:02:13that's the problem with the internet,
1:02:14I can't tell who originated this tweet
1:02:16'cause people could just be copying and pasting it
1:02:17or whatever, but anyway, it was the explanation of Bitcoin
1:02:20from 2018, potentially by the person who we'll link
1:02:23in the show as it says.
1:02:24You all know what Bitcoin is?
1:02:26Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced
1:02:28solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin.
1:02:31(laughing)
1:02:31I know, I've seen that before, it's pretty good.
1:02:33- You have to know a lot of Bitcoin to understand
1:02:35how every part of that sentence makes sense,
1:02:38but it's also depressingly accurate.
1:02:42- Yeah, and you know, so I haven't had a chance to weigh in,
1:02:44I'll be very brief.
1:02:45I agree with almost everything Marco said.
1:02:48If it wasn't for the fact that this is accelerating
1:02:50the heat death of the universe,
1:02:51I would probably be far more interested in it.
1:02:54Just a month or so ago, I went, I didn't do a deep dive,
1:02:58but I started looking into, 'cause I did not understand
1:03:01how it worked at all, and there was a really good video
1:03:03on YouTube that's almost half an hour,
1:03:05but it's excellent, and it's by 3blue1brown,
1:03:08and I'd never heard of this channel before.
1:03:11But link it in the show notes.
1:03:12If you wanna know from a nerd's perspective,
1:03:14but yet approachable from a non-nerd's perspective,
1:03:17how does this actually work, I really, really recommend it,
1:03:19'cause it helped me understand,
1:03:21even after having read many, many things about it,
1:03:23it wasn't until I watched this video that I was like,
1:03:24oh, okay, I got it.
1:03:26And yeah, I agree with you, Marco.
1:03:27Like, not only is the scene not for me,
1:03:29and not only does everyone seem to think,
1:03:32much in the same way of Tesla people,
1:03:34that they are the one true people that really understand,
1:03:38and all you sheeple just don't get it, blah, blah, blah.
1:03:41- Exactly.
1:03:42- It's just like Tesla people.
1:03:44Oh, you idiots with your internal combustion engines
1:03:47blowing up dinosaurs.
1:03:49- Let's say, more charitably,
1:03:51when people are tech enthusiasts, as we are,
1:03:53it's easy to get excited about a new technology.
1:03:56We are often excited about new technologies.
1:03:58I certainly am, right?
1:03:59It just so happens that sometimes
1:04:01some of those new technologies that people get excited about
1:04:03and form communities around have, let's say,
1:04:05externalities that turn other people off.
1:04:09Even Tesla, which is doing a good thing.
1:04:10Electric cars, yay, right?
1:04:12That's good, right?
1:04:13And yeah, it is.
1:04:14But maybe when the fans get a little bit too enthusiastic
1:04:17and too excited about defending their,
1:04:20the thing that they are a fan of,
1:04:21that gets a little bit toxic.
1:04:23But in the case of things like Bitcoin or other,
1:04:25you know, where there's,
1:04:27anything where there is exciting technology,
1:04:30and like you said, Casey,
1:04:31some of the ideas behind Bitcoin are very clever
1:04:33and interesting and worth pursuing,
1:04:34kind of get overshadowed by the reality of,
1:04:39okay, but then what changes is this actually causing
1:04:42to happen in the world,
1:04:43and how do I feel about those changes
1:04:45as someone who isn't enthusiastic about this technology?
1:04:47And that's where people end up getting conflict.
1:04:50- Yeah, so anyway, it is worth checking out.
1:04:52If you listen to the show, if you enjoy the show,
1:04:56it is likely that you have enough of a nerd's brain,
1:04:59and I mean that in a complimentary way,
1:05:00that you would enjoy reading up on this
1:05:02and learning about it.
1:05:03And like I said, this 26 minute and 20 second video
1:05:05really helped me anyway understand how it works.
1:05:08All right, leaving all that behind us, at least for now.
1:05:10So yeah, apparently Ubiquiti really kind of screwed up.
1:05:13- Back to Ubiquiti.
1:05:15- Yeah, back to Ubiquiti.
1:05:16Speaking of screw ups, hey-o.
1:05:17- Are they using all of our routers to mine for Bitcoin?
1:05:20What's going on?
1:05:20- Maybe that's it.
1:05:21It all comes full circle, guys.
1:05:23It all comes full circle.
1:05:24- You don't need to start that rumor on the show.
1:05:26That is not true.
1:05:27- God, please no.
1:05:28But no, all kidding and snark aside, this is some stuff.
1:05:32Like this seems to me, and gosh, it's been a long time
1:05:36since I've really run anything server side.
1:05:38So Marco, jump in on,
1:05:40or actually both of you jump in and correct me,
1:05:41but it seems to me like a lot of this stuff
1:05:43was kind of amateur hour
1:05:45and that they really should have known better
1:05:47than to make a lot of these mistakes.
1:05:49And golly, if you're already in a position
1:05:52where some of your most diehard supporters like Marco,
1:05:55and again, and I mean that in a complimentary way,
1:05:58you had said for years Marco, oh, this stuff is the best.
1:06:00Yeah, it's expensive, but it's the best.
1:06:01It's so good, blah, blah, blah.
1:06:03And you had already been backpedaling some
1:06:05as of literally a week ago.
1:06:06And now, oh, yikes,
1:06:09I don't know if I wanna go anywhere near this.
1:06:10- I mean, here's the thing.
1:06:11Like, I mean, we don't know that much about this yet.
1:06:14And honestly, I don't follow this world
1:06:16very closely normally.
1:06:18So it's hard to expect any company
1:06:22to be perfect all the time.
1:06:23- Sure.
1:06:24- Something like, you know, Ubiquiti,
1:06:25they mostly sell like networking gear to companies.
1:06:30So they have to be expected to have pretty good security
1:06:33because their devices are kind of assumed
1:06:37to have good security themselves
1:06:38'cause they're being brought into serious businesses
1:06:40and places where there's high stakes
1:06:42if their devices are compromised.
1:06:44So it is important, you know, it's like a server vendor.
1:06:47It is important that they are trustworthy
1:06:50and that they are viewed as following
1:06:52pretty good security practices.
1:06:54It is also important that they communicate clearly
1:06:58when there is a problem or when there is a breach.
1:07:01And in this case, you know,
1:07:03you can argue whether they should've had this breach at all.
1:07:07And I don't know enough about it to know
1:07:08like what was involved, how,
1:07:11if they were practicing reasonably secure
1:07:14and responsible practices beforehand, I don't know.
1:07:16What I do know is that if this accusation is true,
1:07:22again, that's a big if
1:07:24because there's, you know, you have to wonder like
1:07:28could this be some kind of stock manipulation scheme?
1:07:30They're a public company, I think, right?
1:07:31Oh yeah, they are, right?
1:07:32Yeah, so like it could be some kind of weird thing like that.
1:07:34We don't actually know if this accusation is true or not.
1:07:38But if it is true, what it points to is
1:07:42I don't think anything like super damning
1:07:44about their security practices,
1:07:46but it does point to a pretty big problem
1:07:48that they might've like underrepresented
1:07:51or lied about a pretty substantial breach.
1:07:53That is worrisome if that is true.
1:07:56But that being said, what this means for me
1:08:00and for people out there who have Ubiquiti gear,
1:08:03it's one of those moments that gives you pause
1:08:05about some of the features that we have enabled
1:08:08on these routers and stuff
1:08:08and some of the abilities they have
1:08:11and whether we should enable them or not.
1:08:12So for instance, on my Ubiquiti stuff,
1:08:16I have auto updates turned on.
1:08:17I have it, whenever there's a software update,
1:08:19I have it installed at a certain time
1:08:20and automatically reboot if it has to
1:08:22at a certain time that won't disrupt things.
1:08:24When something like this happens,
1:08:25you realize, oh, maybe I shouldn't have auto update on
1:08:28because if somebody compromises their update channel
1:08:31and has the ability to arbitrarily sign any updates
1:08:36they want as valid and push them out to all customers,
1:08:39well, that could be pretty bad for me.
1:08:42On the other hand, maybe I do want automatic updates
1:08:45because that lets them patch security holes faster
1:08:47as they're found, right?
1:08:48So there's stuff to consider there.
1:08:50There's also the entire model of Ubiquiti's routers
1:08:54and stuff, I don't know if people who don't have them,
1:08:57they probably don't know about this kind of stuff,
1:08:58there's a whole bunch of remote management
1:09:02and cloud-based features of Ubiquiti stuff.
1:09:04So you don't just have a router running in your house
1:09:08that you log into at like 192.168.1.1 anymore.
1:09:12That is there still, but you can sign into it from anywhere
1:09:16if you have that enabled and you can manage things centrally
1:09:19with your central Ubiquiti account where you're actually
1:09:22not just signing into your router, you're signing into
1:09:23Ubiquiti as their single sign-on thing for their service
1:09:27and then you can access your stuff through their service
1:09:29from anywhere, you can have all this cloud-based everything
1:09:31about your local network and its management.
1:09:33So maybe we don't need to enable those features
1:09:36as home users.
1:09:36I've been using that because it's convenient sometimes,
1:09:41but something like this makes me question,
1:09:43do I really need that?
1:09:44Maybe I should be just setting it up once
1:09:47and then just turning off auto updates
1:09:49and turning off remote stuff and only updating it manually
1:09:52like once a year when I think about it
1:09:54and when I feel like it and then going to check.
1:09:56Maybe I should go back to a system like that,
1:09:58which used to be the way I would always do things on routers
1:10:00because it didn't really matter most of the time.
1:10:03I don't usually enable remote management of anything
1:10:05on my home network because I don't usually need it.
1:10:08So maybe I should go back to something like that
1:10:09and I think this kind of breach should make
1:10:11all Ubiquiti customers ask these questions to themselves.
1:10:14And then finally, if you're able to,
1:10:17this probably also should remind you to maybe not assume
1:10:22that your internal network is secure by default.
1:10:26And that might change what kind of services you offer
1:10:29locally inside your network, whether you have passwords
1:10:33on things like file shares or not.
1:10:35I've always just had passwords on stuff
1:10:37because I've always kind of assumed,
1:10:39well, if some kid comes over with their weird
1:10:43switch or iPad or whatever and I give them our wifi password,
1:10:48I don't have a VLAN setup or anything like that.
1:10:50I don't get that complicated.
1:10:51What if their device gets hacked or they share the password
1:10:54and then other people can get on my wifi network?
1:10:57I don't need to know that every single device on my network
1:11:00is always gonna be trusted and secured
1:11:02because all the things I run inside my network
1:11:05I assume to be requiring some base level of security,
1:11:08requiring passwords and user accounts and stuff like that.
1:11:11So it would be a good idea to also revisit
1:11:14those kind of assumptions for people who are looking
1:11:16at this and getting worried.
1:11:18If somebody has access to something running on your network,
1:11:21what do they have access to?
1:11:23And if you can minimize that, that's probably a good idea
1:11:26because even if you run some other router
1:11:29and this problem doesn't apply to you,
1:11:31we live in a world full of internet of things,
1:11:34crap devices and everything and it's only a matter of time
1:11:38before something on your network gets hacked by somebody
1:11:42and has some kind of vulnerability
1:11:44that doesn't get patched or whatever.
1:11:45So something hostile will be on your wifi network eventually
1:11:49so this is a good way to think about what the risks there
1:11:53are and think about how you wanna manage those.
1:11:55And then again going back to Ubiquiti,
1:11:57thinking about with Ubiquiti stuff,
1:11:59do you want to enable auto updating
1:12:01and do you want remote access?
1:12:03And I think the answer here is gonna,
1:12:05for a lot of people it's now gonna be maybe not.
1:12:07- Well I think this gets to the heart
1:12:08of what you were saying before about communication
1:12:11from the company because like I said,
1:12:13people get hacked all the time, it's a thing that happens.
1:12:18It's essentially unavoidable.
1:12:21If someone wants to target you and wants to get in,
1:12:24they probably will get in.
1:12:25I think history has shown that there is no such thing
1:12:27as an invulnerable, completely secure anything
1:12:30that is on any kind of network,
1:12:33which is why real security requests, as they say, air gap,
1:12:37although there's all sorts of crazy academic papers
1:12:39that will show you that even an air gap
1:12:41isn't sufficient to protect you, but anyway.
1:12:43The whole point is stuff happens, as they say.
1:12:47But in that kind of environment,
1:12:50of course you wanna have auto updates on
1:12:51because that is your best defense against exploits
1:12:55because exploits are discovered and then they are patched
1:12:57and then new ones are discovered and then those are patched
1:12:58and then other new ones are discovered and they're patched.
1:13:00And if you opt out of that patching cycle
1:13:03or do it at a much less frequent time interval,
1:13:06like a month or a year instead of as soon as the patch
1:13:09is available, you are vulnerable for longer.
1:13:12But then we run into the ubiquity problem,
1:13:14which is not so much that, oh,
1:13:15maybe the signing certificates got stolen
1:13:18and someone can put an update as them,
1:13:20it's that we don't know because ubiquity,
1:13:22according to the story, has not been upfront about it.
1:13:25What you want is truthful communication
1:13:28from the company to tell you,
1:13:30if they had told you, hey, our stuff was stolen
1:13:33and people can sign things as us,
1:13:35everybody turn off your auto updates now
1:13:37and then the company would later tell you,
1:13:39okay, we've issued new certificates and redone everything,
1:13:42now apply this patch manually and re-enable.
1:13:45That's what you're looking for.
1:13:47Like the trust in the company is the thing
1:13:50that is damaged here.
1:13:51Not so much, again, assuming it's true,
1:13:53not so much the breach itself
1:13:55because if you have trust in the company,
1:13:57you would know which actions to take
1:13:58because you would just ask the company,
1:13:59hey, what should I do?
1:14:00Should I have auto updates on or not?
1:14:02But now Marco's in a situation of like,
1:14:03well, I don't know whether I should have them on or not
1:14:06because I don't even know if this is a thing
1:14:07that happened or not because if the story is true,
1:14:10then ubiquity is withholding information
1:14:11that's making me not trust them,
1:14:13but if I don't trust them, should I turn on auto updates
1:14:15or should I not turn them on and I don't know what to do?
1:14:17And that like, you know,
1:14:19it's probably some business 101 lesson or whatever.
1:14:20Like again, stuff is going to happen in your business
1:14:24that's bad, it's how you handle it that, you know,
1:14:27within reason, obviously if you're running a store
1:14:30and it burns to the ground, you have no insurance,
1:14:31how you handle it isn't that important.
1:14:33But in situations like this,
1:14:35how you handle it is a big factor
1:14:37in how your company comes out of this.
1:14:39So I really hope either parts of this story are true
1:14:43or ubiquity at least comes clean at this point.
1:14:45So its customers know what they should do going forward,
1:14:48including knowing whether they should just
1:14:50buy new networking equipment.
1:14:52- Oh, and to answer everyone's questions about like,
1:14:54what do I recommend now that ubiquity has a problem?
1:14:58The answer is I don't know.
1:15:00I haven't, you know, we have things like, you know,
1:15:03the previous sponsor Eero, I've used those before,
1:15:05like in vacation situations and stuff like that
1:15:07and they've been fine.
1:15:09But this kind of world, like,
1:15:11almost everything has downsides somewhere in the chain
1:15:16or like parties that you have to trust
1:15:19if you're gonna use it.
1:15:20You can go the kind of home brewed route
1:15:22and set up like, you know, like one of those like,
1:15:25like PF sense things, but those sometimes have problems too.
1:15:28Like I think they just had a problem recently.
1:15:29So like there's all sorts of gotchas
1:15:32with a lot of this stuff.
1:15:33And I think, again, like a reasonable way to approach it
1:15:38is probably to keep things pretty simple.
1:15:41And if you wanna be conservative about, you know,
1:15:45the security and stuff on your network,
1:15:47don't do things that have remote access, you know,
1:15:50don't do things that are based on web services.
1:15:54Have things that are more local and local only,
1:15:58where like you are taking a more active role
1:16:00in their management or there isn't much to manage
1:16:04because they're so simple and local.
1:16:06I think that's the general way to go.
1:16:07And that's probably where I'm gonna be heading
1:16:08with my stuff as well.
1:16:10- So interestingly and totally unrelated
1:16:12to this ubiquity thing,
1:16:13I have been doing some thinking and purchasing
1:16:18related to my home network because in this year,
1:16:22I'm not gonna say this year of working from home
1:16:23'cause honestly I was working from home a lot
1:16:25even before the COVID stuff.
1:16:28But in this last year, I've had much more occasion
1:16:31to be on, you know, Teams, basically Microsoft Teams,
1:16:35teleconference meetings all day long, right?
1:16:37And every once in a while, it always seemed to be
1:16:43during like an important Teams meeting, right,
1:16:45with like where I'm either I'm giving
1:16:48an important presentation or I'm talking with my bosses
1:16:50or whatever, I would lose internet briefly
1:16:53and then it would come back.
1:16:55And it happened like, it happened one particularly
1:16:59memorable time and I was like, if this happens again,
1:17:02I'm fixing everything.
1:17:02And then of course, it didn't happen again for months.
1:17:04I'm like, oh, well, whatever that was,
1:17:06you don't have to worry about it.
1:17:07But then it happened again and I'm like, okay,
1:17:09this might, maybe this happens all the time
1:17:11and I just only notice when I'm in the middle
1:17:13of an important meeting, like 'cause it, you know,
1:17:15it just goes out briefly but then comes back, right?
1:17:18And what it looks like from my networking perspective
1:17:21is it looked the same as back in the bad old days
1:17:23when my ISP would like, you know, go down for a second
1:17:26or lose an IP address but it also might look similar
1:17:29to a router rebooting itself because it crashed.
1:17:32I have no way to tell because one of the routers I'm using,
1:17:34I can't figure out how to get the logs from it
1:17:36unless I do like SNMP or whatever
1:17:37and I don't wanna deal with that.
1:17:38But the whole point is, it's one of these problems
1:17:40that's, it's like testing my resolve by saying,
1:17:44I'm only gonna happen, I'm gonna happen in an infuriating
1:17:47time but then it won't happen again for months.
1:17:48But then it'll happen again but then it won't happen
1:17:50again for months.
1:17:51But now it happened again today and I'm like,
1:17:53you know what, this is not just whatever it's called,
1:17:56like a selection effect, not selection effect,
1:17:58was it when someone mentioned something
1:18:00and now you start seeing it everywhere?
1:18:01- Oh yes, yes, yes, I can't think of it there.
1:18:03- Merlin is yelling it right now.
1:18:05- Yep, yep. - Yeah, exactly.
1:18:06Whatever that phenomenon is, I'm like, it's not just that
1:18:08'cause yes, there was a one particularly very--
1:18:09- It's a Dunning-Fruchner. - Bader mine off.
1:18:12- Oh, there it is, there it is, yep.
1:18:13- Anyway, it was one particular really bad time it happened
1:18:16but then like nothing for a while but now,
1:18:17now like I didn't, normally what I should do
1:18:19is like start logging it, like let me just write down
1:18:21what it happens to prove to myself
1:18:22that it's not just my, but I'm past that.
1:18:24It happened today, I'm like all right,
1:18:25you're over your limit for the year
1:18:26which is like three or four, right?
1:18:29And so I want to redo some things in particular,
1:18:32I think I'm going to finally retire
1:18:33the Apple Airport Express that Marco gave me
1:18:36that I've been using for ages and just,
1:18:39or start, basically what I'm gonna start doing
1:18:41is eliminating components to narrow it down, right?
1:18:43'Cause if it's that Apple thing
1:18:44which is the oldest component in my thing
1:18:46and honestly the thing I have the least faith in,
1:18:48let me just remove that from the network
1:18:50'cause I don't need it technically,
1:18:51it's redundant with the rest of my network.
1:18:53And then I'll just start going component by component
1:18:56and taking things out of the loop and you know,
1:18:59now the problem is I have to take one of these variables out
1:19:01and I have to wait a few months.
1:19:03And then you know, if it happens again,
1:19:05they got to take another one out and wait a few months.
1:19:06Like the iteration cycle is gonna be low
1:19:08but anyway, all this to say is I'm taking that thing out
1:19:11and when I take that out, it turns out
1:19:13that I will actually need a few more ethernet ports
1:19:16because the Apple Airport Express
1:19:17doesn't just have like a WAN port and a LAN port,
1:19:20it has like four ports on the back of it
1:19:23and I'm using every single one of them
1:19:24for a device that I care about.
1:19:26So I can't just remove that from the network
1:19:28'cause then I get a bunch of those.
1:19:29- Oh, slow down, slow down.
1:19:29Before we get a bunch of email,
1:19:30you're talking about an airport extreme,
1:19:31not an airport express, right?
1:19:33- Yes, sorry, not an airport express.
1:19:35I forgot the airport extreme, it's the one that's vertical
1:19:37that some of them have a hard drive in
1:19:38but this one doesn't, yes, airport extreme, sorry.
1:19:40I forgot how extreme it was.
1:19:42(laughing)
1:19:44Yeah, airport express was the thing
1:19:46that did like a AirPlay music transmission.
1:19:49All right, if I take that out of the network,
1:19:51I just have a bunch of loose ethernet cables
1:19:53that have no place to plug.
1:19:55So everyone knows what you need here.
1:19:57You just need an unmanaged,
1:19:59as in not exploitable through Ubiquiti X,
1:20:02an unmanaged switch.
1:20:05That's the simplest device you could possibly imagine.
1:20:07There's nothing to configure, there's no software,
1:20:09it is an unmanaged switch, ethernet switch,
1:20:12a gigabit ethernet switch,
1:20:13it has a bunch of ports in the back
1:20:14and a place where you give it power
1:20:16and you just plug in your ethernet cable
1:20:18and it doesn't matter where you plug them in
1:20:19for the most part
1:20:20because they're all auto switching and auto magical
1:20:22and it just essentially is like a USB hub
1:20:24that used to be back in the day when we had those.
1:20:26Where you have one ethernet port
1:20:29and you need more than one ethernet port
1:20:31and it is the simplest and most straightforward
1:20:36and least complicated way you can get more ethernet ports
1:20:38and yes, there are caveats compared to a managed port
1:20:40and you can get fancier and fastener
1:20:42but I literally just need one or two
1:20:43or three extra new ports here, right?
1:20:45So I simply needed to get an unmanaged gigabit ethernet switch
1:20:50I've purchased many, many unmanaged gigabit ethernet switches
1:20:53in my life, I've purchased many 10, 100
1:20:56unmanaged ethernet switches in my life, right?
1:20:58Hell, I've purchased ethernet hubs, I've done it all, right?
1:21:02That seems like such an easy thing to buy
1:21:04but kind of like toasters,
1:21:05not that I wanna go on that rant again,
1:21:07like toaster ovens, it's becoming re,
1:21:10and I guess USB hubs for that matter,
1:21:11it's becoming really, really hard to find
1:21:16an unmanaged ethernet switch
1:21:19that doesn't have thousands of angry people
1:21:22on the internet telling you how it's a complete piece
1:21:24of garbage and doesn't work.
1:21:25- I'm looking at one right now and it's fine.
1:21:28- Every, I know, I have a bunch of my house,
1:21:30I have like, there's like four in my house, right?
1:21:32They're all different, right?
1:21:33What I wish is that I could take one of the four
1:21:35that I have in my house and buy another one just like it
1:21:39but of course all the ones in my house
1:21:40were purchased years and years ago
1:21:41'cause ethernet doesn't change that much
1:21:42and they're all totally discontinued, right?
1:21:44And so name the brand, D-Link, Linksys, TP-Link, Netgear,
1:21:49like Cisco, like just whatever brand you think,
1:21:54go find a consumer priced unmanaged ethernet switch
1:21:59from them and then find how many hateful reviews
1:22:03of people saying this doesn't work,
1:22:05nothing worked on my network until I took it off,
1:22:07it worked for six months and then died,
1:22:10I hate company X, you should try company Y
1:22:12and then you go to company Y and it's just a giant circle
1:22:15and you just go around and around and around in circles
1:22:17'cause and in the end, probably the actual contents
1:22:21of all of these devices are made like by one or two companies
1:22:24and they're all just packaging
1:22:25in a different plastic container.
1:22:27And then you say, okay, well,
1:22:28why don't you just go for the business ones?
1:22:31The problem with the business, you know,
1:22:33unmanaged ethernet switches is they are made
1:22:36for a business context and in one particular way
1:22:38that's just gonna sound stupid but you know,
1:22:40this is, I just want it the way I want it as they say.
1:22:44The thing in a business context seemed to be
1:22:48to have the power on the opposite side
1:22:50of all the ethernet cables.
1:22:52And the way I have everything arranged
1:22:54in the way this thing is gonna be, that's no good for me.
1:22:57I want all the ethernet ports and the power
1:23:00all on the same side so all those cables can run off
1:23:03the side or the back of my desk.
1:23:04That used to be how almost every consumer ethernet switch
1:23:08was made, somehow in the past 10 years someone decided,
1:23:12you know what, I understand the business one.
1:23:14The business one there in like a rack
1:23:15and you can see the ports in the back as a power.
1:23:17Like I understand that for the business ones
1:23:18but that's not my context and honestly business ones
1:23:21usually have more ports than eight or four
1:23:23or whatever I need for my thing.
1:23:25But then for the consumer ones, someone decided
1:23:27that the power should come in the side for a lot of brands.
1:23:30- The side?
1:23:31- The side, I don't understand.
1:23:33I mean, they're just cheap plastic consumer things
1:23:35but someone decided and not only does it come in the side
1:23:38but it doesn't come in with like a right angle,
1:23:40you know, like a little DC right angle connector.
1:23:42No, it comes straight out of the side.
1:23:44You got your ethernet cables coming out one side.
1:23:47I'm just surprised there aren't brands
1:23:48that don't have ethernet ports in like a circle around them
1:23:50like a big spider.
1:23:51'Cause that's about how much--
1:23:55- An ethernet squid.
1:23:56- Exactly, that's like how much--
1:23:57- No, a squid would be better.
1:23:58- How much acknowledgement these companies have
1:24:00of how people actually use it.
1:24:01Like you're making a consumer thing,
1:24:03you're making it pretty.
1:24:04Don't you think people have desks?
1:24:05Don't you think they want the cables running off their desk
1:24:07and not like one cable running towards them
1:24:09and the rest running away?
1:24:11So, you know, of the ones that have all the ports
1:24:14and the power in the back
1:24:15and there are a bunch of models you can find,
1:24:16every one of the reviews says they're all pieces of garbage.
1:24:19Like every brand just, no, obviously, again,
1:24:22reviews like 99.9% they're great, right?
1:24:26But these things have like thousands of reviews
1:24:27on many different sites.
1:24:28And so there's hundreds of people saying,
1:24:30you should never buy Netgear, you should only buy Linksys.
1:24:33And then you go to Linksys and you should never buy Linksys.
1:24:36You could always, you should always buy TP-Link.
1:24:37Oh, don't buy TP-Link, they're the cheapest ones
1:24:39and they're garbage, you should buy Netgear.
1:24:41And oh my God, it goes around and around.
1:24:43All I'm looking for is just a straightforward,
1:24:48like I'm willing to pay more
1:24:50because these things cost like 20 bucks, right?
1:24:52I'll pay 40 bucks, I'll pay $50.
1:24:54- Big spender, big spender.
1:24:55- Find me the one that's like everyone agrees
1:24:58is 100% reliable and has ethernet ports and the power.
1:25:01And that just doesn't exist.
1:25:02Even in the chat room, people are saying,
1:25:03everyone knows TP-Link is good.
1:25:05They're well regarded by almost everyone.
1:25:07Almost, but not quite, not quite everybody.
1:25:10In fact, they have the exact same number of people
1:25:12telling you their pieces of garbage as every other brand.
1:25:14So I made a random choice.
1:25:16I picked one, I ordered it, it's on its way.
1:25:19And then I went to Monoprice
1:25:21and bought some ethernet cables for two bucks
1:25:22and felt better about myself.
1:25:24Using my new found knowledge of ethernet cables
1:25:26from our vast research on this topic across the place.
1:25:29Weeks and weeks of shows, learned more about,
1:25:31I didn't have to say like,
1:25:32what's the difference between Cat6 and Cat6a again?
1:25:35I already knew that was nice and they were cheap.
1:25:37So I'm going to excise the airport extreme for my network.
1:25:43But the reason I put this in here,
1:25:45I'm thinking about Marco with his setup was,
1:25:47there's never a good time, especially in these COVID times
1:25:53for me to knock everyone in the house off the internet.
1:25:57Which is what I would have to do
1:25:58to remove this essential component
1:26:00because the Apple airport extreme is in fact,
1:26:02the thing that pulls an IP address from my FiOS.
1:26:05My FiOS thing has an ethernet cable coming out of it.
1:26:08It goes into the Apple thing.
1:26:09The Apple thing gets my like public IP address
1:26:11that I get through FiOS
1:26:12and distributes IP addresses to everything else.
1:26:14Then I have a Euro for all my wifi, but that is the Lynchman.
1:26:17So when I unplugged that,
1:26:18everything in this house goes offline.
1:26:20And I was thinking about telling my family,
1:26:22hey, I need to do an upgrade or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
1:26:24But you know how these things go.
1:26:25Sometimes it doesn't go as quick as you want.
1:26:27I can't do that in the middle of the day.
1:26:29The kids have remote school
1:26:30and people are watching streaming video at night.
1:26:33So I feel like I'm back at work again.
1:26:35I have to wait till like off hours,
1:26:37like 2 a.m. when everyone's asleep,
1:26:38I got to sneak down and redo the network in the house
1:26:40so that when everyone wakes up,
1:26:41allowing for the hour and a half
1:26:43of when something's gonna be screwed up
1:26:44or the FiOS thing is gonna refuse to give a new IP
1:26:47to my router or whatever.
1:26:49I have to allow for that and have it built in.
1:26:51Plus the possibility that I'm gonna be up all night.
1:26:53And by the time they wake up, I need to go to school.
1:26:55I haven't fixed the network
1:26:56and now it's just permanently broken.
1:26:57So there's always that possibility.
1:26:58So it's fairly more and more fraught
1:27:01of how to essentially change or update your home network
1:27:06in a way that doesn't cause the disruptions.
1:27:08And I thought this would be a good opportunity to ask Marco
1:27:10how he has handled this in his household,
1:27:12which granted in pre-COVID times
1:27:14when you did your various network redesigns
1:27:16probably wasn't as fraught.
1:27:18But what are your plans now?
1:27:19Like say, oh, I'm gonna get rid of my ubiquity
1:27:21and replace it with something else.
1:27:22How do you plan to do that?
1:27:24Or is it just like you just wait for Adam to go to school
1:27:27and then just tell Tiff tough luck
1:27:29and then take everything offline?
1:27:31- Yeah, I basically wait until no one's using it.
1:27:33And I actually do have a few chances a week
1:27:37where that happens in the middle of the day.
1:27:39And so I can do that.
1:27:40But getting back a minute to your Switch issue.
1:27:43(laughs)
1:27:44I found it amusing.
1:27:46I looked up the Switch that runs most of my house here
1:27:50is, well, was until very recently
1:27:52when I upgraded, quote, upgraded to ubiquity stuff,
1:27:56an HP 18 or 24 port HP rack mount Switch.
1:28:01And this is something I bought in 2012 for $274
1:28:06and has been bulletproof.
1:28:08Totally rock solid until I took it offline
1:28:12and upgraded to the ubiquity stuff last year sometime.
1:28:16So it worked for probably nine years or eight years at least
1:28:20and was totally rock solid, never had a problem.
1:28:24And at some point I needed an eight port Switch
1:28:27in one of my TV stations.
1:28:30And I just got the HP Pro Curve,
1:28:33it's the HP Pro Curve 1810G line.
1:28:36And I just got the eight port version of that,
1:28:38which is smaller and got that.
1:28:40And that was also totally reliable,
1:28:43bulletproof the entire time.
1:28:45So I can suggest if you're willing to go with things
1:28:48that are a little bit larger and might have the power port
1:28:50on the opposite side as the network ports.
1:28:52- And a fan potentially?
1:28:53- I don't think these have fans, I'll double check.
1:28:55- Well, I can stop you.
1:28:56Don't suggest any rack mounts.
1:28:58Obviously I know if I wanted to just buy
1:29:00like business equipment, yeah, it would be fine.
1:29:03But these are for better or for worse,
1:29:05this networking stuff is happening like on a desk
1:29:08up where people are.
1:29:10So rack mount stuff is--
1:29:11- Well, the eight port version,
1:29:13yeah, the eight port version is not a rack mount
1:29:14or at least it's one of those like half wide things.
1:29:17- Yeah, I mean, but that's why I start to get into fashion.
1:29:19Like for example--
1:29:21- The fashion of network Switches?
1:29:22- Yeah, so the one I have on my Synology--
1:29:25- John, you're gonna have like five network cables
1:29:28coming out of it, where's the fashion?
1:29:29There isn't like--
1:29:30- I don't want an ugly box,
1:29:31I don't want an ugly box sitting on my desk,
1:29:33that's what it comes down to.
1:29:34- It shouldn't be on your desk.
1:29:36It's covered in wires.
1:29:38If you're concerned about the appearance of something
1:29:39that's inherently going to be covered in wires--
1:29:42- You can't even see the wires,
1:29:43they all disappear behind the desk.
1:29:45- Oh my God.
1:29:46- So anyway, the one I have attached to my Synology
1:29:48is sort of the spiritual successor of the good one
1:29:52that I like.
1:29:53The good one that I like is the one
1:29:54that my Mac Pro is connected to.
1:29:56It's an eight port Switch, I think I bought it,
1:29:58I think I bought it in like 2002 or something,
1:30:00I don't even know how old it is, right?
1:30:02But it looks nice, it looks like a rectangle, it's black.
1:30:05It has lights on the front with colors
1:30:07that mean something, right?
1:30:10And it has power that comes out the back, right?
1:30:12Can't buy that anymore, right?
1:30:14The company that makes it makes a new model that's ugly.
1:30:17I bought one of those ugly ones
1:30:18and that's what my Synologies are on.
1:30:20There's, I don't care, it's in the basement,
1:30:21I don't see it, but I need something up here
1:30:23that is tasteful and discreet and not ugly
1:30:27and reasonable quality and has the ports on the back
1:30:31and the plug on the back.
1:30:32If you think about the AirPort Extreme, that qualifies.
1:30:36It is tasteful, yes, it has cables all plugged
1:30:38into the back of it, but they're all in the back,
1:30:40you can't see them because you can't walk around
1:30:41the back of his desk, it's against the wall.
1:30:43It fulfills the goal.
1:30:45It is a reasonable looking nice thing
1:30:48that has been reliable as far as we know,
1:30:51but that I'm deciding to take out of the networking equation
1:30:54just because it's the oldest thing.
1:30:55And again, I'm not necessarily blaming
1:30:58this particular device, but it's the first variable
1:31:01that I'm going to eliminate and I'm going to replace it
1:31:03with something else.
1:31:04So the one I got is a black rectangular box
1:31:06with all the ports in the back of it.
1:31:07It's from a brand I have not tried before,
1:31:10so wish me luck, but it's a $20 purchase,
1:31:12so if it's garbage, I'll just try another brand.
1:31:15It's not the end of the world.
1:31:16And in fact, I think I have a spare one
1:31:17of the ugly ones up in the attic
1:31:19'cause I got a lot of, I always have,
1:31:20this is a good thing to go.
1:31:22When you're buying something like this,
1:31:23like networking switches or whatever,
1:31:25especially if your house is set up like mine
1:31:28where you essentially use all the ports,
1:31:30like there's no networking switch in my house
1:31:32that has an abundance of free ports.
1:31:34I'm tempted to say that there are zero free ports,
1:31:37but I think I have one in this room
1:31:39as my sort of go-to spare port, right?
1:31:42But anyway, if something goes wrong
1:31:44and you're wired networking and you'd like a box dies
1:31:47because you've been using it for 15 years
1:31:50and you don't have a replacement,
1:31:51it can be frustrating when things go offline
1:31:54and kids can't get wifi anymore
1:31:55because you had some, you know,
1:31:57the wire that goes to the satellite thing doesn't work
1:31:59and you're like, well, sorry, I'm all out of ports, right?
1:32:01It's a good idea to have spares.
1:32:02And so I do have a couple of spare switches,
1:32:04but they're ugly, so I'm hoping the one I bought
1:32:07that is less ugly works well, but if it doesn't
1:32:10and it's an emergency, I can swap in one of the other boxes.
1:32:14Do you wanna be really frustrated?
1:32:16I actually have this problem very well solved in my house
1:32:19because, you know, who makes a really nice little switch?
1:32:22- Ubiquiti? - Ubiquiti!
1:32:24- But they're managed! - Exactly.
1:32:26And you need to be running their management software
1:32:30to activate the switch.
1:32:32But they make this one called the USW Flex Mini.
1:32:35It's a managed five-port switch that's very, very small.
1:32:39They sell it in, I think I bought a four-pack for 100 bucks.
1:32:42- Yeah, they do sell them in multi-packs.
1:32:44I noticed that too, I'm like, why is this so expensive?
1:32:46It comes with four of them.
1:32:47- Yeah, and it can be powered either via USB-C,
1:32:52which is on the wrong side of it,
1:32:54or it can be powered by a power over ethernet feed-in.
1:32:58That's also the uplink.
1:33:00And one of the coolest things I ever did for my network
1:33:03was I upgraded my main switch to be a power
1:33:06over ethernet switch on all of its ports.
1:33:08And that way I can plug any PoE thing
1:33:10into any ethernet port around my house, and it gets powered.
1:33:14And what's great about this is that
1:33:16if I need a switch somewhere,
1:33:18I can plug this in to the wall jack, it gets powered,
1:33:22and then I don't have to separately run a power cable to it,
1:33:25and I can plug whatever I want into its other ports.
1:33:27And so it is a very, very nice system.
1:33:30Unfortunately, it requires you to have
1:33:32a PoE infrastructure, or USB-C power, but on the wrong side.
1:33:35Or either way, it still requires you
1:33:37to have a Ubiquiti management system set up.
1:33:41But it is a really nice looking, very small switch.
1:33:43- No, it is.
1:33:44I looked at it, in my tour of every networking vendor
1:33:47on the planet, I looked at it.
1:33:48Hell, I was looking at vendors that sell, essentially,
1:33:51this product, an ethernet lowering switch,
1:33:53for use in factories, like to build things.
1:33:56- Oh my gosh. - Right?
1:33:58'Cause there are vendors that specialize in,
1:34:00so on the factory floor of your metal machining shop
1:34:04or whatever, you might need ethernet
1:34:05for your CNC machines or whatever.
1:34:07And the things they sell, they're hilarious.
1:34:09They have their own fashion.
1:34:10They look like Milwaukee Power Tools or whatever.
1:34:13They have that kind of macho, I belong in a factory vibe,
1:34:16which is not the look I'm looking for.
1:34:18And they're also seven times more expensive
1:34:20than even this Ubiquiti thing.
1:34:21So you want a four-port factory router?
1:34:23That's $300, please.
1:34:25I don't know what's factory about them,
1:34:26other than the fact that they seem to have metal cases
1:34:28and ridiculous flanges and stuff.
1:34:30But yeah, no, I did look at Ubiquiti.
1:34:32I looked at a lot of the other managed stuff.
1:34:34I don't want and can't support any managed stuff.
1:34:36Some of the more expensive consumer ones are all about like,
1:34:38"Hey, this one has all power ethernet ports."
1:34:41But that doesn't help me because I'm pretty sure,
1:34:44I don't know if the CAT6 cable that's going
1:34:48from my Fios thing supports power ethernet.
1:34:50Do all cables support it?
1:34:52This is another thing in my research.
1:34:53Like I don't have any power ethernet infrastructure
1:34:55as you were saying.
1:34:56Like there's zero power ethernet things in my house
1:34:59and applying it after the fact.
1:35:02And this is what people are gonna tell me
1:35:03and they're probably kind of right.
1:35:05You should just get a server rack and put it in your basement
1:35:07next to all your Synology stuff.
1:35:08- Yes.
1:35:09- That probably will happen someday eventually.
1:35:11Unfortunately, the other part of my home networking,
1:35:14as we talked about before,
1:35:15like the part where you have to get wires
1:35:17to go from point A to point B in your house,
1:35:20that is the most sneaky, janky, ridiculous,
1:35:24so you didn't really wanna do this
1:35:25the right way situation, right?
1:35:27I ran all these wires myself.
1:35:29I am not an electrician and I did it
1:35:32by essentially being sneaky.
1:35:33Like I didn't do anything the right way.
1:35:36Nothing hits, it's all about like,
1:35:38where can I hide a wire where no one will notice it?
1:35:41And I go from the far corner of my house
1:35:43to the other far corner and it's just ridiculous.
1:35:46If you saw the network topology, it's like,
1:35:48oh God, I wish I could find this.
1:35:50It's probably on YouTube somewhere.
1:35:51You ever seen the thing explaining why a particular nerve
1:35:55in the human body, like, I forget where it starts.
1:35:58Like starts in one place then goes down half your body
1:36:01then makes a U-turn and comes back up half your body
1:36:04and connects to something that's like an inch
1:36:05from where it started.
1:36:07And it's like the most, it's like why would,
1:36:09if you need, if this part of your, if this brain,
1:36:11you know, you go from brain to this nerve to the thing,
1:36:14it's like two inches away.
1:36:15Why are you going down to my stomach and back up again?
1:36:17And there's a really good explanation of like,
1:36:19well, this is you with your stupid nerve, right?
1:36:23Rewind evolutionarily speaking and look,
1:36:25here is a fish and here's how the fish biology is set up
1:36:29and here how the transitional, you know,
1:36:31the various species that are between fish and us
1:36:34and you watch as that nerve gets longer and longer
1:36:36and slowly bends into a crazy U-shape
1:36:38until we get to like primates and now you say,
1:36:40oh, I see, it just kind of ended up that way.
1:36:43That's my home network.
1:36:45My home network has cable runs that go from the source,
1:36:48they go all the other side of the house
1:36:50then all the way back, then back again in this direction.
1:36:52Like you would never make a network this way.
1:36:56- But it's entirely designed,
1:36:57like where and how I can hide the wires
1:37:01without actually running them through any of my walls,
1:37:03which are all made of like horsehair plaster
1:37:05and lath and everything.
1:37:06(laughing)
1:37:07Right, so I'm slightly constrained on the networking.
1:37:11In general though, I have everything that I need.
1:37:13It's just that, you know,
1:37:15if I want to replace a thing
1:37:17that has four ethernet ports on it,
1:37:18I need something else that has at least
1:37:19four ethernet ports on it.
1:37:21If I want to replace everything,
1:37:22I have to rerun all new wires and sort of home run them down
1:37:25to my big non-existent networking rack in the basement.
1:37:28That maybe is a project for another decade,
1:37:31but for now I just want to find the culprit.
1:37:33Oh, and by the way,
1:37:34I'm the culprit of what the networking thing is.
1:37:36I really do think anecdotally speaking,
1:37:39as far as my work can tell,
1:37:41it mostly happens when I'm in meetings with the Teams app.
1:37:44I'm like, how could that be?
1:37:46What is it about using Teams?
1:37:47It's not particularly network constrained.
1:37:50It's not like we're sharing video.
1:37:52Half the time everyone has their video turned off
1:37:53and we're all staring at one document.
1:37:55And I do huge downloads and uploads all the time,
1:37:58putting gigs of photos and everything else,
1:38:01all my back play stuff going up from multiple computers.
1:38:03Like what is it about and being in the Teams meeting
1:38:06that causes this problem to happen?
1:38:08I don't have an answer.
1:38:10I don't know why I'm blaming the Apple thing
1:38:11just because it's old,
1:38:12but it's the first thing I'm trying.
1:38:14So we'll check back in in three months.
1:38:16Or maybe I'll check back in the next episode
1:38:18and I'll tell you how nice my black box looks on the desk.
1:38:21And then after that three months,
1:38:22I'll tell you if I've actually solved my problem.
1:38:25- I just love that you've been stressing
1:38:27about how many nines you've implicitly provided your family.
1:38:31I don't think you knew it,
1:38:33but you're apparently in four to five, nine territory.
1:38:36- No, actually the thing is they're not around
1:38:39or at least they don't,
1:38:40no one has ever come to me and say,
1:38:42hey, is the network out?
1:38:43'Cause it goes down for a second.
1:38:44But if you're in the middle of giving a presentation,
1:38:46it's a problem, right?
1:38:48So as far as they're concerned, it's 100% uptime.
1:38:51And I figure I wanna maintain it,
1:38:53mostly because if I was to just right now
1:38:55kill the network connection,
1:38:56every person in my house would come be knocking at this door
1:38:58and saying what's going on.
1:38:59'Cause I guarantee you they're all on the internet right now
1:39:02in some form, right?
1:39:04Oh, John, I'm sorry.
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1:40:59- All right, Michael writes,
1:41:04"A long time ago I read that it was best
1:41:05"to have an admin account and your user account.
1:41:07"And your user account shouldn't be an admin
1:41:08"for security purposes.
1:41:09"Is that still best practice?
1:41:11"Some commands/installs require sudo,
1:41:13"which my user doesn't have.
1:41:15"This is a great question.
1:41:16"I think I might have done this once in the Windows era,
1:41:18"like 49 years ago.
1:41:21"I'd never have really done this regularly.
1:41:24"So, John, what's the right practice here?"
1:41:26- This is another question we get occasionally,
1:41:28and I think we're up to like the two or three year rotation
1:41:31where we need to answer it again.
1:41:33It's, the trade-off is exactly how people think.
1:41:36There is no secret thing
1:41:38you're probably not thinking of, right?
1:41:40It is safer not to have an admin account
1:41:42because then you can't actually do something
1:41:44to hose yourself, but it's also annoying
1:41:46because sometimes you want to do something as admin,
1:41:48and if your account doesn't have it,
1:41:49then you have to switch one that does,
1:41:50which you can do, but it's a hassle.
1:41:52So it's that old security versus convenience trade-off.
1:41:55What I would say is if you're listening to this podcast
1:41:58and more or less trust yourself
1:42:00to not do something phenomenally stupid with your computer,
1:42:03having an admin account is so much more convenient
1:42:06that I think it is worth the slightly higher chance
1:42:09that you will hose yourself and/or be exploited
1:42:11by some program that takes advantage of the fact
1:42:13that you can elevate privileges.
1:42:15That said, if you want to make the opposite choice,
1:42:17that's fine too.
1:42:17It's not that fraud.
1:42:18Like just decide what your risk, you know,
1:42:21your risk tolerance is.
1:42:22I personally make my accounts admin accounts.
1:42:25I made all my children's accounts non-admin accounts,
1:42:27and I even went back on that
1:42:28'cause it was too annoying when I was on their account
1:42:30trying to fix something that I couldn't
1:42:32essentially do admin stuff, right?
1:42:34Sometimes when you're prompted for admin stuff,
1:42:35you can enter an admin username and password.
1:42:38So if I was on their account
1:42:39and I needed to give some app access
1:42:41to the microphone or whatever,
1:42:42I could enter my username and password,
1:42:45but then I couldn't use touch ID
1:42:46because their thing, you know,
1:42:47their laptops had touch ID with their finger in it.
1:42:49Anyway, I have now gone to,
1:42:52the entire family has admin accounts
1:42:53just because I am annoyed by the hassle
1:42:56of not being able to elevate to admin privileges
1:42:58with the current user's password in every situation.
1:43:01Your mileage may vary.
1:43:02It is in fact safer not to do that,
1:43:04but not to a degree that I would have a problem
1:43:07with recommending that people just make admin accounts.
1:43:09Just be careful out there.
1:43:11- Yeah, I disagree a little bit.
1:43:13I err on the side of just make everybody admin
1:43:15because first of all, it depends on like
1:43:19where the risk is coming from
1:43:20as to whether this makes any difference at all.
1:43:22Sandboxed apps, for instance, on the Mac,
1:43:25you don't need to separate these privileges out
1:43:27because they are already restricted
1:43:28in what they can access and things like that.
1:43:30And so sandbox apps are already kind of implicitly
1:43:33locked down for the most part.
1:43:36Un-sandboxed apps, if you're not an admin,
1:43:39still have access to all of your files.
1:43:42And that's pretty important.
1:43:44They have so much access to things that matter to you
1:43:48that whether or not they can modify like system files
1:43:51or the files of other users on the system
1:43:53might not matter if they still have access
1:43:56to all of your documents, all of your files.
1:43:58So from that point of view,
1:44:01I think you're thinking there's more security
1:44:03in making that a restricted account
1:44:05than what there actually might be.
1:44:07- I mean, the context of my household
1:44:09is that every person has an account
1:44:10on every single computer.
1:44:11So even though it seems silly,
1:44:13like well, it's got all access to your stuff,
1:44:14well, it doesn't have access, for example,
1:44:16to my wife's stuff if it's not an admin account, right?
1:44:18So I can hose mine, like it's more relevant for kids.
1:44:21If a kid didn't have an admin account,
1:44:23they could erase all their crap,
1:44:25but they couldn't erase my crap
1:44:26or my wife's crap or whatever, right?
1:44:28But in the end, you know, like it's,
1:44:31like how much are you trusting your kids
1:44:35to operate the computer in a safe way?
1:44:38Like it's a trade-off.
1:44:39- Yeah, but also, if you run non-admin accounts,
1:44:43lots of weird stuff breaks.
1:44:45That being said, I mean, I've had many problems
1:44:49with multi-user support in Big Sur and recent releases.
1:44:54Every time we have to log out of my user account
1:44:58and like TIFF logs in to record a podcast or something,
1:45:02after that, the computer is basically broken
1:45:04until I reboot it.
1:45:05Like mail search doesn't work,
1:45:07touch ID doesn't work, watch unlock doesn't work,
1:45:09any kind of spotlight,
1:45:10anything based on the spotlight index doesn't work.
1:45:13It's frankly baffling to me that Big Sur
1:45:15has gotten as far as it has in the release cycle
1:45:18and multi-user support is still completely broken
1:45:21in this way.
1:45:22- I don't think it's broken for everyone though,
1:45:25because I'm running Big Sur on all our computers
1:45:27and we perpetually have multiple people logged into them,
1:45:29switching accounts all day long
1:45:30and don't experience any of this.
1:45:31Now, to be fair, we don't use Apple Mail at all, period,
1:45:34across the entire family.
1:45:35- There you go.
1:45:36- We do use things like spotlight
1:45:38and like nothing else seems broken,
1:45:40'cause if it did, nothing in our house would function,
1:45:42I would have downgraded everybody, right?
1:45:43So mail may absolutely be broken,
1:45:45but I mean, I'm not saying it's not happening to you,
1:45:47but whatever it is causing it must be something
1:45:50that either we don't have or that we aren't doing.
1:45:53- Yeah, mail search breaks, watch unlock breaks,
1:45:55and lots of things based on spotlight break.
1:45:57It seems, and if you are on Big Sur and you switch users,
1:46:01switch back, it will be broken until you reboot
1:46:05and that's been persistent.
1:46:07- Through every software update.
1:46:08- But not spotlight, 'cause spotlight still does work for us.
1:46:10We don't use watch unlock and we don't use Apple Mail,
1:46:13so I do wonder what is the deal.
1:46:14- Well, you can't.
1:46:16You couldn't use them if you wanted to
1:46:17because they would break in your setup.
1:46:18- Although actually, wait a second,
1:46:19I do use Apple Mail to download my Gmail,
1:46:22it's just periodically, but I never do searches for it.
1:46:24- Right, anyway, so multi-user mode is buggy
1:46:28and there's lots of weird stuff that breaks.
1:46:30So anyway, going back to the question,
1:46:32like if you wanna have like separate accounts
1:46:34for admin versus non-admin,
1:46:35you have to give up a lot of convenience
1:46:38and a lot of things working correctly all the time.
1:46:41And what you get from that is this
1:46:43theoretical security benefit that I think in practice,
1:46:47you're not really benefiting from in most cases.
1:46:49If it's a single user computer,
1:46:51you're not really benefiting much at all.
1:46:52And then secondly, you think about the practice
1:46:55of what happens when you have one of these
1:46:58non-admin accounts, you get asked a lot
1:47:01to authorize with admin privileges
1:47:03or you have to run a lot of things as pseudo
1:47:04or enter the root password or whatever.
1:47:06If you're doing this on a regular basis anyway,
1:47:09you are regularly poking holes in that shield
1:47:11out of necessity or convenience,
1:47:13it kind of reduces the security
1:47:15that you're actually getting in practice.
1:47:17Because if you're constantly authorizing things
1:47:19to run with root privileges here and there as needed,
1:47:22are you really being that secure by having this account
1:47:25be in this mode in the first place?
1:47:27Like I feel like the real world security benefit of that
1:47:32in most setups is not high,
1:47:34whereas the inconvenience and potential bug exposure
1:47:39and annoyance is high.
1:47:42So I don't think it's worth it for most people to do that.
1:47:45- Yeah, I tend to agree.
1:47:46Duncan Wilcock writes, "I have about 400 video clips
1:47:49"with my son and I want to join them
1:47:51"into one three hour movie.
1:47:52"I want 4K and 60 frames per second, original codec.
1:47:55"Recommend a good tool please."
1:47:57Hi, have you never heard of FFmpeg?
1:48:00How long have you been listening to the show
1:48:02that you've never heard of FFmpeg?
1:48:03I mean, come on, man.
1:48:04That's probably not the best solution to this problem,
1:48:07but it is a solution.
1:48:09Also, it gets a little dodgy if,
1:48:12I'm not entirely sure what Duncan is saying.
1:48:14I want 4K and 60 frames per second original codec.
1:48:17I'm assuming that these are 400 video clips
1:48:21coming from various different pieces of hardware
1:48:24across presumably years where not everything started in 4K.
1:48:29And this is all stuff that can be handled by FFmpeg,
1:48:31but it does get dodgy kind of quickly.
1:48:34Duncan writes that, "Apparently a Photos app slideshow
1:48:36"is 1080p max and iMovie doesn't preserve date order
1:48:39"if exported with edits."
1:48:42I mean, this is not gonna be easy
1:48:45with anything I know how to do.
1:48:46You can do it with FFmpeg, but it would be semi-manual.
1:48:51Do one of you have a better answer
1:48:52or do we have to tell Duncan to ask me to help them out?
1:48:57- This question was totally for you
1:48:59just so you can say FFmpeg again.
1:49:00Because yeah, this is one of those situations
1:49:03where once you get into this type of question
1:49:05where you're like, look, I've got a video.
1:49:06I don't wanna do a thing to it,
1:49:08but I wanna do exactly this thing and exactly this way.
1:49:10You're basically singing a FFmpeg song.
1:49:12And yeah, it's a painful song.
1:49:15- It is.
1:49:16- There may be other better tools.
1:49:17I don't know.
1:49:17- The lyrics make no sense.
1:49:19- I'm just familiar with FFmpeg
1:49:21because it's a very common tool
1:49:22and Casey talks about it all the time.
1:49:24But I'm sure professional video editors
1:49:28or people who are familiar with different kinds of tools
1:49:29have better ways to do this.
1:49:31But if you don't wanna spend any money,
1:49:33but just wanna get this job done
1:49:35and you're willing to Google for a while,
1:49:37FFmpeg will probably eventually do what you want
1:49:40once you figure out how to make it work.
1:49:42- And by Google for a while, he means a while.
1:49:46- Yeah, I mean, you'll try a bunch of things
1:49:47that don't work first.
1:49:48Here's what I would recommend.
1:49:49I mean, I don't know if Casey does a similar thing,
1:49:51but every time I tried to mess with FFmpeg,
1:49:53I have like test files that are very small
1:49:56and I do all my testing on them.
1:49:58They're representative.
1:49:59They're the same as the files that I wanna deal with,
1:50:01but maybe the file I wanna deal with
1:50:03is like some like eight gig movie or something.
1:50:05Don't do all your testing on that.
1:50:06It'll take a long time.
1:50:08Test with small files first.
1:50:10And then when you finally get a working file
1:50:11that has the characteristics that you want
1:50:13and it figured out the mile long command line incantation,
1:50:17then do it on your real files.
1:50:19- Yeah, that's smart.
1:50:21- Yeah, that's true.
1:50:22Another thing I do is oftentimes
1:50:23I just wanna test something.
1:50:24I'll trim it to be, it's dash T, I believe,
1:50:28or you can say only output like 10 seconds
1:50:31or something like that.
1:50:32So you can still use your eight gigabyte input,
1:50:34but it's only gonna input,
1:50:35it's only gonna output 10 seconds and it's gonna quit.
1:50:38But yeah, I mean, you can do this with FFmpeg for sure.
1:50:41It's actually not that complicated incantation.
1:50:43The complicated thing would be that
1:50:45the way I know how to do this
1:50:47is that you would need a plain text file
1:50:49that lists the names of all 400 videos
1:50:54that you're looking to input.
1:50:55And if you can get that, even if you do it by hand,
1:50:57it's actually a very straightforward incantation
1:50:59that I'll put in the show notes.
1:51:01But that would require, again,
1:51:03a file that reads it's plain text and it reads file space
1:51:07and then a file name, new line,
1:51:08file space, next file name, new line.
1:51:10And then you can have FFmpeg concatenate all of those videos.
1:51:15You would probably need to specify by hand
1:51:18like output resolution and stuff like that.
1:51:20So it's not, I guess it's not quite as easy as I thought,
1:51:22but the idea of mashing 400 video clips together
1:51:26is actually very straightforward
1:51:29if you're willing to generate a file that has 400,
1:51:32a plain text file that has 400 lines in it
1:51:34that is the names of all the files you're trying to input.
1:51:37So this is doable for sure.
1:51:40And FFmpeg will do it.
1:51:41I don't know if Handbrake will do this sort of thing.
1:51:43Of course, anytime I say FFmpeg,
1:51:45everyone else starts saying Handbrake
1:51:47because Handbrake is in many respects
1:51:49just a user interface, a GUI front end to FFmpeg.
1:51:54Again, it's been a long time since we've played with Handbrake
1:51:56and it might do this sort of thing.
1:51:58And there is a Handbrake CLI for doing it on the command line
1:52:01which maybe would do this sort of thing.
1:52:03But yeah, it's certainly FFmpeg will do it.
1:52:07And it's not that inherently difficult.
1:52:10It is workable.
1:52:11And building on what Jon was saying about
1:52:13how do you get to be decent at FFmpeg?
1:52:15I think I mentioned this before, but in Apple Notes,
1:52:17which is now my repository of random information,
1:52:21just like Evernote once was,
1:52:22have you heard about WorkChat?
1:52:24Well, in Apple Notes, I have a folder that is FFmpeg.
1:52:28And it's just examples of different incantations
1:52:30that I have used and I thought I would come back to
1:52:34at some point.
1:52:35And this one of them is concatenating files.
1:52:37And I can remember how to do it off the top of my head now,
1:52:40but for the first 10, 15 times I did it,
1:52:42I was like, wait, what do I need to do?
1:52:43And what does that plain text thing look like?
1:52:46And how does that work?
1:52:47And so having that sort of thing handy is very, very useful.
1:52:52And also, if you're not really familiar with FFmpeg,
1:52:55I'll put my primer that I wrote, I don't know,
1:52:58how was it, three, four years ago now it looks like,
1:53:00I'll put that in the show notes for you to look at.
1:53:03Moving right along, Brandon Weese writes,
1:53:07how does Overcast scrape iTunes?
1:53:09Does it use the iTunes search API
1:53:10or does it scrape it from web pages?
1:53:12- It uses the iTunes search API.
1:53:14It's a very simple answer.
1:53:15It's not that interesting, but yeah, that's it.
1:53:18I use the iTunes search API.
1:53:19It's been around forever.
1:53:21Apple seems to be okay with people using it in this way,
1:53:25and they have been for some time.
1:53:27It has basically never changed.
1:53:29I would not wanna build something
1:53:33based around scraping web pages
1:53:34that I was actually making into a product
1:53:36for other people to use.
1:53:37'Cause just scraping web pages is both hard to maintain
1:53:41and unreliable and can possibly get you into legal issues
1:53:45with the people you are scraping them from,
1:53:47and that's just, it's not worth doing anything
1:53:49that requires that if you're intending to make it
1:53:52a serious effort that you're giving people.
1:53:55I use the API the way I'm allowed to, and that's it.
1:53:57- The API is so old, is it like a SOAP API?
1:54:00What is it that returns?
1:54:01- It returns JSON, actually.
1:54:03- Wow, it's pretty modern, fancy.
1:54:05- Yeah, it's super easy to use.
1:54:07It's one of those things, it's kinda like Usenet.
1:54:10Just don't talk about it,
1:54:12because it seems too good to be true,
1:54:13and we don't want somebody to realize this exists
1:54:16and shut it down.
1:54:17So we don't talk about it.
1:54:20Anyway, thank you to our sponsors this week,
1:54:22Squarespace, HelloFresh, and Linode,
1:54:25and thank you to our members who support us directly.
1:54:27You can join atp.fm/join.
1:54:30You can use our new annual or monthly options
1:54:33in your currency of choice,
1:54:34if your choice happens to be US dollars,
1:54:36Euro, or Great British pounds.
1:54:38Thank you, everybody, and we will talk to you next week.
1:54:42(upbeat music)
1:54:44♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:54:46♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:54:49♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:54:51♪ Accidental ♪
1:54:52♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪
1:54:54♪ Accidental ♪
1:54:55♪ John didn't do any research ♪
1:54:57♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪
1:55:00♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:55:01♪ Accidental ♪
1:55:02♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪
1:55:04♪ Accidental ♪
1:55:05♪ And you can find the show notes at atp.fm ♪
1:55:10♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪
1:55:13♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪
1:55:18♪ So that's Casey Liss ♪
1:55:21♪ M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪
1:55:24♪ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N ♪
1:55:26♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:55:29♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A ♪
1:55:31♪ It's accidental ♪
1:55:33♪ It's accidental ♪
1:55:35♪ They didn't mean to accidental ♪
1:55:38♪ Accidental ♪
1:55:39♪ Tech podcast so long ♪
1:55:43- I have some bell follow-up.
1:55:47- Some bell follow-up, I did not see that coming.
1:55:49All right, tell me more.
1:55:50- Did you break another bell?
1:55:51- No, I fixed the original bell.
1:55:53- Whoa. - Oh, excellent.
1:55:55- So I pulled out of the closet the other day
1:55:57'cause I had a theory.
1:55:59I had heard on one of the recent Merlin podcasts,
1:56:02I forget which one, I probably do by Friday,
1:56:05he was playing with a magnet with his bell.
1:56:09Now these are metal bells and I thought,
1:56:12oh, wait a minute, maybe the reason mine
1:56:14was getting all rattly was that the metal
1:56:16got magnetized in transit.
1:56:19'Cause if it gets magnetized, maybe the little hammer thing
1:56:22in there that hits it doesn't pull back correctly
1:56:24and sticks to it a little too long
1:56:26or makes it rattle weirdly.
1:56:28So I thought, I, from the war of watches,
1:56:31I have a deep magnetizer.
1:56:33So I thought maybe I can fix my original bell,
1:56:35maybe it got magnetized by being transported
1:56:38next to an iPad smart cover or something.
1:56:40And great, I can just run my deep magnetizer around.
1:56:43So I took it out and I waved over my compass
1:56:47to test whether it was magnetized or not.
1:56:49And it wasn't.
1:56:50And I thought, okay, well, there goes that theory.
1:56:52But then I took out the working bell
1:56:55and I held them side by side and compared them.
1:56:58And I realized that the old broken bell,
1:57:01the dome of the main bell-shaped part of the bell,
1:57:06it was not resting level on the broken one.
1:57:09It was tilted and it was touching the bottom base part.
1:57:14Whereas the functioning bell had a perfectly even air gap
1:57:18between those two parts.
1:57:19- Your broken one was muting itself,
1:57:21like you mute strings in a guitar.
1:57:22- A little bit, yeah, except rattling itself instead.
1:57:24I thought, well, let me see if I can fix that.
1:57:28This is just metal, maybe I can bend it back into place.
1:57:32And sure enough, a $10 bell is not made
1:57:36of very high quality or thick metal.
1:57:38So I could just bend it back with my hands.
1:57:41And now I have the original bell back to its former glory.
1:57:46It works fine.
1:57:48I could just, at some point in its various trips
1:57:51to WBC or the beach or whatever,
1:57:53it probably just got compressed in a bag
1:57:56and it bent down slightly and bent the metal.
1:57:59Now I have repaired my bell.
1:58:01I believe in repairability and reuse
1:58:05before I recycle things,
1:58:06I have my original bell back in service.
1:58:09- Before you order 50 other bells
1:58:10in an attempt to get a new one of the original bell.
1:58:13- Which I'll never be able to get again.
1:58:15- Well, it's a good thing, like my broken cheese graters.
1:58:17I keep them around too for parts.
1:58:19It's a good thing you kept the original bell around.
1:58:21- Yup, yup, so here we are.
1:58:23I'm back on the original bell.
1:58:25- Yeah, I can tell it has a warmer sound.
1:58:27(beeping)