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00:00:00   So my day started out interesting. I got an email from my neighbor who was forwarding me the New York

00:00:06   announcement that you could now get COVID vaccines age 50 and up. And he was like, I'm not sure if you

00:00:12   make it, but here, this might be useful to you. Oh no! Rough. I am 38. Brutal. Well let me really twist the

00:00:21   knife because I'm that kind of jerk friend. So I had an occasion to be standing in line today, for

00:00:27   reasons we're not going to talk about. And somebody asked me, oh are you from one of the local colleges?

00:00:33   And I looked at that person and I was like, thank you. Thank you so much. And not even close. I turned

00:00:39   39 last week, but thank you. Well did they think you were a student or a professor? Wow, you know,

00:00:45   you've ruined it for me. It's all about context, Marco. The assumption of your neighbor that you

00:00:53   would have to be approaching 50 to have a house on Fire Island is a safe bet, demographically speaking.

00:00:59   And if you're hanging around with a bunch of college students, someone who mistakes you for a

00:01:03   college student, it's all about context, right? You know, that's the least exciting, interesting, and

00:01:09   funny, but also probably most accurate explanation. And also the hair color. Those piano. Hey, I'm getting

00:01:15   a lot of salt in my pepper, if you know what I'm saying. So I shouldn't really be throwing

00:01:20   stones on that issue. Marco, what would get you to actually leave your house, like in COVID

00:01:27   notwithstanding, and go see a concert? Like we've established that you're not a fan of fish concerts.

00:01:32   Is there a concert or perhaps a musical or some other sort of theater-like thing that you would

00:01:38   be willing to attend? Or are you, again, COVID notwithstanding, are you totally hands-off on

00:01:44   anything that even vaguely smells like a concert? My thinking on that has kind of changed recently.

00:01:50   Oh, tell me more. Obviously, as everyone knows, I'm a huge Fish fan, and Fish is very much a band

00:01:56   about their live shows. That's very much, you know, the focus of the fandom, and most of the

00:02:02   music that comes out of them is from live shows. Since COVID, there have been no live shows. And

00:02:07   so I've been accustomed for the last decade or so to getting like 15 new Fish shows a year,

00:02:16   or whatever, you know, whatever the number is. And I buy them all through their website,

00:02:20   so I get all the downloads all legally and everything. And it's like my favorite band

00:02:24   produces basically 15 new albums a year in the form of these live shows. As much as I love to

00:02:29   give you crap about Fish, that is really incredible. And you can do similar things with a lot of other

00:02:33   artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, but they are not soundboard recordings like you're

00:02:36   getting. They're, you know, at this point, reasonably sophisticated, but nevertheless,

00:02:41   still audience recordings where somebody put two microphones on a stand and just recorded

00:02:47   the loudspeakers, which is nowhere near the quality you're talking about. So how much,

00:02:51   just ballpark, how much is it for like a year or season pass to whatever service it is that does

00:02:56   this? It's from Live Fish, and I think it, they don't do like year passes, they do like tour

00:03:02   passes. So if there's like a summer tour, it ends up being like 10 bucks a show, whatever that is.

00:03:06   So like, you know, a tour might be like 150 bucks or something, but it's not, you know, it's not

00:03:10   like a huge, you know, massive thing considering that's like, you know, so it's so much music.

00:03:14   And as you said, like, it's not, it isn't just like a microphone in the audience. They,

00:03:18   the Fish community has that as well. You can listen to the same show through like tapers versus

00:03:23   the actual official releases. And it's, I mean, it's no contest. It's, the official releases are

00:03:28   way better. And so I'm accustomed to, you know, my favorite band releasing a pretty large amount

00:03:34   of new music every year. And then to go from that to nothing for, you know, probably a year and a

00:03:39   half or, you know, whatever it will end up being once this all opens up again for concerts. When

00:03:44   the time comes, when they start doing concerts again, I've thought about going to like one of

00:03:48   the first ones if I can, I'm sure it's going to be insane to try to get a ticket, but I've thought

00:03:51   about going to one of the early ones that I would be able to go to geographically because I can only

00:03:57   imagine like the jubilation that will be like the energy that would be in that crowd at like coming

00:04:02   out of this, going into that, I think would be really something to see. I think that could be,

00:04:08   you know, like, like my, my parents went to Woodstock, like the original one in 1969.

00:04:13   - Oh, I didn't know that.

00:04:14   - Yeah. My mom was only like 19, but yeah, it's like my parents went to Woodstock. That was like a,

00:04:19   you know, generation defining thing. And I don't think, you know, a Fish concert in 2021 or 2022

00:04:26   is a generation defining thing for most people. But I think the idea of having all this time off

00:04:32   where we were forced not to have live music, once it opens up again, whenever that is,

00:04:38   I think there's going to be just a massive celebration from people. I think it's going

00:04:44   to feel incredible. And if I was ever tempted to go to another concert, that's the time to go,

00:04:50   I think like to feel that even though when Fish hasn't played in concert for awhile,

00:04:55   they tend to be worse. They tend to kind of suck, like they make more mistakes and, you know,

00:04:59   it's not as tight and everything because they haven't had as much time to practice and everything.

00:05:02   But like, I think this moment in live music is going to be really felt by everybody. I think

00:05:08   it's going to be a really big deal. And I can't think of a cooler way to celebrate like the world

00:05:15   reopening again, whenever that happens, then go into a Fish concert. Even though normally I'm,

00:05:22   as you mentioned, normally I'm not super into going to concerts. I love listening to them,

00:05:27   but I'm not super into going to them. There are no other bands at this point that I really consider

00:05:31   going to see in concert just because concerts I find most of the time I find that my attention

00:05:37   drifts and I get tired and I kind of just want to like, leave after a while. It's they're not

00:05:44   usually, you know, very appealing to me. But again, I think in this particular instance,

00:05:48   whenever that event happens, I would be interested in going to that.

00:05:52   I hear you. Now, I feel like your destiny, if all the stars align, is to go to one of the New Year's

00:06:00   Eve shows. What is it? Madison Square Garden? Is that right? And be there for that, which I'm sure

00:06:05   in so many ways would be a disaster, but a beautiful, beautiful disaster. And I think

00:06:10   that would, especially if it happened in 2021, which I'm super skeptical, but just hypothetically,

00:06:15   like, you know, Fish finally was able to do their New Year's Eve show again. And you were able to

00:06:20   get to it. I think I could see you really enjoying that and then saying I'll never do that again.

00:06:24   Yeah, I mean, like, well, ideally, I mean, Madison Square Garden, that is actually the one place I

00:06:30   saw fish. The one time I went was it wasn't a New Year's Eve show, but it was at Madison Square

00:06:34   Garden. And, you know, it's fine, but it's giant indoor arena. Like one thing I really don't like

00:06:40   about concerts is all the cigarette smoke. And that's better in recent years, like since it's

00:06:45   mostly illegal in most places now. But like being at a concert where you just constantly breathing

00:06:49   at everyone's smoke really sucks. At fish, the entirety of Madison Square Garden will be one big

00:06:54   hotbox. Exactly. So ideally, it would be an outdoor venue. And what's really close to Fire Island?

00:07:01   Jones Beach. Yeah, I've actually seen a concert there. Fish has played there. So that I think

00:07:07   would be ideal. Like if they go there, I'll pay whatever it takes to get that ticket. Everything's

00:07:11   better at the beach. Of course. Do you have any interest Marco in any other concert adjacent

00:07:16   things like musicals or live theater or anything like that? Like if the original cast of Hamilton

00:07:21   was back on Broadway for 10 nights and you scored a ticket, would that be interesting to you? Or is

00:07:25   there is there nothing there for you? If I'm with other people who are into it, I'll go and I'll

00:07:30   have a good time, but I'm never really like initiating that kind of thing. Fair enough.

00:07:35   And John, I know you do enjoy musical theater, but similar question like, is there anything that

00:07:41   would get you to go to, I don't know, a U2 concert or perhaps some other concert for someone that

00:07:44   you're interested in? I don't think there's anything special about the end of COVID times.

00:07:48   I'm always game to go to a concert. Last one I think I went to was Amy Mann when she came to

00:07:52   Boston. I loved it. One of those concerts I've ever been to. I'm not a big music concert goer.

00:07:57   And there's, it would have to be a band that I really liked, but if it is a band that I like

00:08:01   and it's, and I don't have to travel that far, I go to it. Good deal. What was the, was it Rectifs

00:08:07   or was it Dubai Friday where Merlin was talking about what it's going to be like coming out of

00:08:10   the end of times? Probably both. We definitely talked about it in Rectifs. That was a really,

00:08:15   really good conversation and worth listening to. So both shows are excellent. In fact,

00:08:21   it really makes me grumble how great both those shows are. All part of the MPU. Yeah.

00:08:27   All right. We should probably start with some follow-up and we have some reports from the field

00:08:33   coming in live from the field. We have reports of the wheel of shame. I love, I love that we

00:08:39   could put out the request saying, Hey, if any, if any Tesla owners have gotten flat tires and

00:08:43   have gotten service wheels, let us know how they were spray painted and people, and we actually had

00:08:48   listeners respond. It is ridiculous that this is my life, that I can talk about some stupid flat

00:08:54   tire on some expensive car and have people from all over the world send me pictures of

00:08:58   these things, but I love it and I'm thankful for it. So we got several reports. Apparently in

00:09:04   Hong Kong, the wheel of shame is a solid red and we'll put a link in the show notes. Well,

00:09:09   well I wouldn't go that far. So this is this, this is a several who wrote from Hong Kong and sent us

00:09:14   a picture of a Tesla with a wheel of shame and it is indeed spray painted red. And it's not like the

00:09:20   ones that Marco has showed us where it's a silver wheel and just kind of haphazardly spray painted

00:09:24   in a zigzag pattern red, but it is also not carefully sprayed entirely red. If you zoom in

00:09:31   on the wheel, you will see that they're maintaining that this shouldn't look like a red wheel. It

00:09:36   should look like a silver wheel that's that a small child's tried to spray paint red, but got

00:09:42   bored and left before actually covering the entire wheel. So it is a slightly better paint job, but

00:09:49   no one would mistake this for a red wheel. They'll say someone tried to spray paint their wheel

00:09:53   really badly, but there's splotches of gray showing through. So this is, this is Hong Kong.

00:09:57   This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just, you know, the Metro New York area, right? Worldwide,

00:10:03   the memo went out to all Tesla dealerships, Hey, take your wheels, get a can of spray paint from

00:10:09   the hardware store and go to town on them because we don't want people not bringing their car back

00:10:14   to get the quote unquote real wheel. I guess it looks like the really big version of, you know

00:10:20   how when you're in school and you tried to color something with a Sharpie, you try to like, you

00:10:24   know, change the color of like your shoe or something like it looks like that, but just really

00:10:28   you don't get good coverage and you kind of get tired of it because you do one area and it gets

00:10:32   darker red, but then it doesn't match the other areas. And you're just like, ah, forget it.

00:10:35   And then a TG, Sid writes that apparently just a couple hours north of being DC,

00:10:41   the red haphazard spray paint has not made it to the DC area down here. It's blue.

00:10:47   Now this blows my mind. It's red in Hong Kong. It's red in New York, but in DC it's blue. What's

00:10:53   going on? Is there, I mean, is DC just a, you know, a rebel, a rogue. They're just not, they

00:10:58   didn't follow the manual correctly. They ran out of red spray paint. Well down there. Red means

00:11:02   something else politically. Anyway, this is, this is the world's dumbest corporate policy and I

00:11:08   can't wait until they change it. Are red wheels ruined now too? Red pretty much everything is

00:11:13   ruined at this point. And then finally, uh, Aaron Farnham writes that the Tesla spare wheel graffiti

00:11:17   is different in Houston. My two experiences have resulted in a wheel with a Tesla logo

00:11:22   neatly stenciled on the rim. Unfortunately, no pictures. Well, there you go. That's exactly what

00:11:26   I was talking about, but neatly stenciled makes me think, do you mean someone held up a piece of

00:11:30   cardboard with a Tesla logo cut out of it and then took that same can of spray paint and sprayed

00:11:34   through it? Or do you mean actually neatly stenciled because there's like the drip mark

00:11:38   coming down, right? If there's neatly stenciled and there's neatly stenciled. So I think we need

00:11:44   more photos of this, but that is an interesting variation. Someone just couldn't bear. They

00:11:48   probably got the instructions, randomly spray painted, please. And I said, I randomly spray

00:11:52   paint. I'm at least going to take these scissors and some construction paper and cut out a stencil

00:11:56   of a big T and then spray it on there. And do you think that would be less effective at key at

00:12:01   making people return it? Cause it like, it might, it might look intentional. Well, that's what I'm

00:12:05   saying. I'm expecting it doesn't quite look as good as the phrase neatly stenciled. It's making it

00:12:10   sound, cause it's not an even surface and it's not easy to do. And it's not like a fact, a pre-made

00:12:18   factory decal that you apply. So someone had to sort of, someone had to do an arts and crafts

00:12:22   project to make this. So here's the thing, Aaron Farnham, if you really want to be an excellent

00:12:29   listener and an above and beyond feedbacker, I need you to pop one of your tires and get a spare

00:12:34   wheel and then take a picture for us. Drive over a spike strip. Yes, please. All right, John, do you

00:12:41   want to tell us about App Store pricing policing, please? We talked about this a couple of shows ago,

00:12:46   how Apple was telling certain people, essentially your app is not worth the price you are charging

00:12:51   for. It says us, so stop it. And this was in the context of scam apps, which are, you know, charging,

00:12:56   you know, trying to get people to sign up for, you know, a $5 a week fee for some app that does

00:13:02   nothing or whatever, and Apple is trying to get them out of the store. And the way they do it is

00:13:05   they send you an Instagram that says, nah, you can't charge that much because your app is bad.

00:13:09   And I, we talked about it in the context of getting scam apps off the store. And I talked

00:13:14   about it in the context of Apple having the ultimate control over pricing and now flexing

00:13:18   that control. And because App Store policies, even the ones that we agree with are haphazardly applied,

00:13:23   you might think, well, I'm not a scammer, so I have nothing to worry about. But that's never a

00:13:28   safe bet with the App Store. And so here's one story from Tim who says, one of my B2B

00:13:33   app updates just got metadata rejected with quote, specifically, can you confirm that X is the

00:13:39   intended price of your in-app purchase product? Right. So he didn't give the price, but it's

00:13:43   basically they asked them that they read metadata rejected him and said, did you mean to charge

00:13:49   what you're charging? And he says, my plan hasn't changed price in years. And the price is $49 a

00:13:55   month, which might sound like a lot, but it's competitors are 50 to $150. These are not supposed

00:14:00   to be consumer apps. I replied that the price is intentional and they approved the app hours later.

00:14:05   It felt icky though. My app has been on the App Store since 2015 and the price hasn't changed

00:14:09   often. So this is kind of like, he didn't get rejected. They didn't tell him his app wasn't

00:14:14   worth that price, but they did say, are you sure you want to charge $50 a month? Kind of implying

00:14:21   that seems like a lot for your cruddy app. And especially for an app that's been on the store

00:14:24   for years and hasn't changed price a lot. That's I mean, you know, you counted as a win if it was

00:14:32   only a one or two day delay, but you start to get a little afraid that the next time you try to send

00:14:36   a bug fit upstate, they're going to be like, yeah, I'm sorry. It's just doesn't look like a $50 app

00:14:41   to me. I mean, on the one side, I'm glad that they're at least looking at this, but it seems

00:14:45   like they should be taking more than just a cursory look, like look at the history of the

00:14:50   app and look at what does the app do? Because it should in most cases, if the price hasn't changed

00:14:55   in years, then come on. Well, but I mean, even if it's a scam app that hasn't changed in years,

00:15:00   it seems to me like in most, but not all cases, it should be pretty obvious what's a scam and what's

00:15:05   not again. I mean, it's never a hundred percent, but it strikes me as though this app smells very

00:15:11   strongly of not scam. And most of the scam apps I've seen smell very strongly of scams. So a

00:15:18   slightly more discerning eye would probably do some service here. It was a related story. I didn't put

00:15:23   in the notes, but just reminded me that some people were getting their apps rejected simply because

00:15:28   they hadn't issued an update in a long time. One of them was like a sort of breakout style game

00:15:32   that had been in the store for three years without an update. And Apple is just like, look,

00:15:36   we're going to pull your app because it's obvious that you've abandoned it. Right. And the developer

00:15:40   was like, look, this app runs perfectly. It works on all the new iPhones and all the new shapes.

00:15:45   Like you wouldn't have no idea that this app wasn't released yesterday. There's nothing like

00:15:49   broken about it at 64 bit. It scales to the iPhone 10. It goes into the corners. It handles the notch

00:15:54   like it does all the things. It's a perfectly fine game. And the reason it hasn't had an update in

00:16:00   three years is yes, because the developer is not working on it anymore, but also because it hasn't

00:16:03   needed one. It's fine. It made me afraid that someday I'm not going to get to the point with

00:16:07   my apps where they work and I don't have any features that I want to add. And Apple is going

00:16:12   to say, I'm sorry, we're pulling your apps from the store because you haven't updated them in a

00:16:15   few years. Yeah. That's, you know, if you're going to pull things off the store, by all means,

00:16:19   pull abandoned apps that are crappy, but apps that three years is not abandoned, first of all. And

00:16:23   second of all, if it's like a game and it works fine, like, ugh, just again, inconsistent, you

00:16:31   know, application of rules that make sense. And, you know, if you heard them explains to you,

00:16:36   it's like, oh yeah, certainly we don't want zombie games in the store, but it's all about the

00:16:40   execution and execution at the scale Apple works. It's impossible to have any execution that is so

00:16:45   perfect that it does not produce stories like this. And of course, all we talk about are the

00:16:49   stories, not like this and not the 10,000 other actual scam games that were pulled, right? So

00:16:52   that's just the nature of dealing with the app stories. You're going to hear about the stories

00:16:56   that seem quote unquote unfair, and you won't hear about the thousands and thousands of ones that

00:17:00   work correctly, but that is the challenge before Apple when running something like this.

00:17:03   (upbeat music)

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00:18:54   Moving right along, Brett Johnson writes, "I've seen a lot of game devs giving up on Mac ports

00:19:02   over the last couple of years. Deprecating OpenGL is often an issue cited along with Metal just

00:19:07   being difficult, especially for those running custom or smaller game engines. The drop of

00:19:12   32-bit support was a huge hit to a lot of devs too, but I've also seen a lot that give up because

00:19:17   the notarization process is unexpected and confusing. All these choices make sense for

00:19:22   Apple, but they could be doing more to help devs over these hurdles." So can you tell me,

00:19:26   Jon, in brief, what is App Store or what is App Notification? I almost said App Store

00:19:30   Notification. What is App Notarization? So these complaints, you know, OpenGL being dropped and,

00:19:37   you know, the 32-bit and Metal versus the other APIs, right, and notarization are all kind of in

00:19:45   the bucket of, like, hurdles, hoops that you have to jump through if you want to have a game on an

00:19:48   Apple platform. Notarization in particular is the thing where you send your app to Apple and they

00:19:52   sign it for you and then you can distribute your game outside the App Store, you know,

00:19:58   so it's been signed by Apple but it's not being distributed by Apple, right? But all those things

00:20:03   are nothing compared to the hoops you have to jump through to ship a game on any game console,

00:20:10   right? If you want to ship a game on a Nintendo game console, you will be begging for notarization.

00:20:15   The things you have to do, the things that they care about in your app that you are forced to

00:20:20   change and the things you have to support, it just, it is so much harder to ship for any game

00:20:25   console than for the Mac, right? So when I see things like this, all this is true, it does

00:20:30   discourage Mac ports and people decide not to port to Mac because of these things, but what it shows

00:20:36   is how small of a hurdle it takes for people to bail on the Mac when it comes to gaming because

00:20:42   there's not much money to be made, Apple's not particularly friendly to it, so all it takes is

00:20:45   a little bit of inconvenience like say notarizing your app which is a thing that iOS developers or

00:20:51   Mac developers are accustomed to and more going through app review and everything,

00:20:55   but it's like, "Eh, now it's not worth it anymore. Oh, I had a 32-bit game and I don't feel like

00:21:00   porting it and because it's the Mac, it's not worth it anymore." Whereas when Sony comes out

00:21:04   with a new game console, no matter how Byzantine it is, people say, "Oh God, this is so terrible,

00:21:08   but it's worth it. It's worth it because Sony wants my game on it, because Sony is courting

00:21:12   me, because I know Sony's going to sell a lot of these consoles and I know the people who buy them

00:21:16   are the kind of people who want to play the kind of game I'm making, so yes, we are going to jump

00:21:20   through all the hoops to get our game on these game consoles, but we are not going to jump through

00:21:24   the hoops to get the games on the Mac." So situations like this are just more proof that the Mac,

00:21:29   Apple has not made the Mac a platform that is attractive to game developers and that's Apple's

00:21:35   job to do. And most of the things they do either are neutral with respect to that goal or make it

00:21:41   worse, like adding a few more little requirements that game developers weren't used to. When Apple

00:21:47   added app signing to the Mac App Store and app signing in iOS, all those things they did were

00:21:54   also hurdles for people making applications for the iPhone and making applications for the Mac.

00:21:58   But Mac developers and iOS developers may have grumbled, but they continue because they say,

00:22:05   "Well, this is our business. If we're going to put apps on the phone, we've got to do what Apple says."

00:22:08   And even the Mac App Store, many companies went through heroic efforts because they thought that

00:22:13   the upside of being in the Mac App Store was worth making the effort. In some cases, they've changed

00:22:19   their mind on that, sometimes they change their mind and then change their mind back, but the

00:22:22   point is those platforms, the phone, the iPad, the Mac, are attractive enough for developers to be

00:22:28   willing to deal with these hurdles and games on Apple's platform or not. Yeah, and I think a

00:22:34   lot of this comes down to, I mean, some of it is definitely, you know, Apple's attitude towards

00:22:40   developers, which I think can mostly, most of the time be described as tense. Apple doesn't seem to

00:22:47   have it in them or have any interest in attracting developers to their platforms. Apple seems to

00:22:54   dictate certain things to developers. Certain things are nice, like I love a lot of the APIs

00:23:00   and everything, a lot of the tooling's pretty good. So a lot of it's good, but for the most part,

00:23:06   the overall attitude for Apple towards developers, Apple's sitting back waiting for people to come to

00:23:12   them and putting up hurdles and saying, "Hey, you all, here's a new hurdle, you have to deal with it,

00:23:17   period. What are you going to do?" You know, like John was saying, when there is a large potential

00:23:23   upside to a platform, we go through those hurdles. I'm willing to jump through all their stupid hoops

00:23:29   and go through their stupid code signing that still is completely broken if you use CarPlay,

00:23:34   you have to do it all manually still. And you know, you go through all this stuff, the notarization,

00:23:39   like you know, you go through all that stuff because you know what, I want to make a podcast

00:23:43   app on the iPhone and I want to make it badly enough that all those hassles and costs and the

00:23:50   App Store tax and app reviews BS, all of that, I'm willing to go through all that because there's a

00:23:57   big market for making a podcast app on the iPhone and also I use an iPhone and I want to have my own

00:24:02   podcast app and so therefore I'm motivated even myself, let alone the business side.

00:24:06   - And let me just pause you there, and that is a key point. Apple sells a ton of iPhones, right?

00:24:13   Apple makes a platform that is attractive to use as a developer by selling tons of iPhones to people

00:24:18   who have money and are willing to spend it on software. That's why, it's not like, "Oh, I just

00:24:22   like the iPhone so I'm just going to make overcast for it." The overcast is where the customers you

00:24:27   want are and Apple really helped to make that happen. It's not true of games. Apple sells a

00:24:32   lot of devices but the people who buy them aren't waiting to sell out 60 bucks for games. People who

00:24:37   buy game consoles are. So it's like, it's where the customers are and that is the job of the

00:24:42   platform owner. If they want games on their platform, they need to sell enough devices

00:24:47   to people who buy them and then want to play games to make it worthwhile for games developers.

00:24:50   - Right, and that's where the iPhone is a pretty decent casual gaming device. Pretty good casual

00:24:58   gaming device. The iPad is also a pretty good casual gaming device. The Mac isn't for lots of

00:25:04   reasons but you think about how many gamers buy Macs? It is to some degree a chicken and egg

00:25:11   problem. Not a lot of gamers buy Macs because in part, because there's not a lot of good games on

00:25:17   Macs but also because Apple's hardware choices in especially things like GPU options, certainly

00:25:27   the ability to make customizable towers at reasonable prices, like things that gamers

00:25:31   are really into, Apple has just given a huge middle finger to so often in their hardware

00:25:37   offerings and their pricing and things like that. And so most gamers don't buy Macs and therefore

00:25:42   there's not much reason for most game developers to go through Apple's hurdles and hassles to bring

00:25:48   their games to the Mac. Now, I was hoping that the era of the Apple ARM Macs coming in and the

00:25:57   availability of iOS apps on Macs, I was hoping that would improve things. So far it seems like

00:26:04   it hasn't but it is still early days and we'll see what happens. I think unfortunately what I've seen

00:26:10   mostly is Apple gave all developers the ability to opt out of their iOS apps being available on

00:26:19   M1 Macs and many large developers have taken that option. Many of them for not particularly good

00:26:26   reason, just like, "We don't want to go through the hassle of testing that so we'll just disable it

00:26:31   because who will care?" So I feel like that's kind of a non-starter. Catalyst has been mostly

00:26:36   a non-starter for most people. So the efforts to try to take that iOS effort that's being invested

00:26:43   on the iOS side and bring it to the Mac without much effort on the developer side mostly hasn't

00:26:49   panned out or hasn't panned out the way that we expected or wanted. So I don't see this...

00:26:53   I think the only thing that might save this is if Apple's laptop hardware for a while ends up having

00:27:02   really good GPUs and we're seeing the beginnings of that. The M1 GPU is pretty good for an integrated

00:27:09   GPU. It's very good for an integrated GPU. It's not very good for a gaming GPU. It's okay but it

00:27:15   could be a lot better and maybe the higher end ones will get better options there. We'll see what

00:27:19   happens but ultimately until and unless a lot of gamers buy Macs we're not going to see a lot of

00:27:28   games being developed for the Mac. I just don't see what gamers want in hardware and in customizability

00:27:36   and pricing and everything. I don't see Apple ever doing that. I think it's good to have a reminder.

00:27:44   When we talk about this I think most people are on the same page with us in terms of the context

00:27:48   of the conversation but the mobile gaming market is bigger than the non-mobile gaming market.

00:27:54   Mobile gaming of which Apple has a huge piece is the bigger piece of the pie. There's more money

00:27:59   flowing through mobile gaming than there is for quote-unquote "real gaming" right? The triple-a

00:28:04   games or whatever. The reason we always talk about it in this context of like well why is Apple so

00:28:10   bad at games? We're talking about the triple-a games kind of for the same reason that we talk

00:28:14   about blockbuster movies. I mean it's a little bit different but like it's because the people who are

00:28:20   the most into games like those big triple-a games. It doesn't mean that's where all the money is.

00:28:25   There's a lot of money in triple-a games but there's more money in quote-unquote "casual"

00:28:29   mobile games. So it's actually kind of hard to pitch Apple and say oh here's how you can get

00:28:35   better at gaming. They'd be like we're already making you know a ton of money because mobile

00:28:39   gaming is the biggest kind of gaming and we may have a big chunk of that. Why would we go after

00:28:44   this smaller piece of the pie that you tell us maybe we could get some piece of if we fight

00:28:47   against Microsoft and Windows PCs and game consoles? That doesn't sound like a fun time

00:28:51   to us. We'll just keep being dominant in mobile gaming because that's where the money is and

00:28:56   that's where the future is and everybody has a phone and everyone plays games on those things

00:28:59   and only a few people have gaming PCs. But it's still when we you know when they sell machines

00:29:04   that are ostensibly capable of these type of games. It's got a keyboard, a mouse, a big screen,

00:29:09   a fast GPU, a fast CPU. People buy them for you know a lot of money and say it's a shame that I

00:29:16   can't play these popular games on this because the hardware is capable. That's where you get

00:29:22   letters like this that say developers aren't doing Mac ports of these games. I mean they're

00:29:26   not doing Mac ports of mobile games either but the mobile games are already on the iPhone.

00:29:30   And to your point Marco those mobile games could be on the Mac if the developers,

00:29:34   I think the reason developers bail because if they're like if we ever decide to address the Mac

00:29:38   we'll sell them a separate SKU. We don't want to just let them have our existing game and we don't

00:29:42   want them to buy it and play it on the Mac. We'll have a Mac specific game but we're never going to

00:29:45   do that because nobody games on the Mac anyways so who cares right. But like the mind it's kind of

00:29:50   like the alpha geeks when that our whole article from back in the day O'Reilly wrote about the

00:29:54   alpha geeks moving to the Mac in like 2003 and 4 right. When this subset this smaller subset of

00:30:01   the gaming population the people who are super into games who are willing to get play games for

00:30:05   hundreds of hours that are very complicated and intricate and difficult and aren't quote

00:30:10   unquote casual that that minority of the gaming world has disproportionate influence because they

00:30:17   are sort of on the bleeding edge of gaming technology on the the bleeding edge of gaming

00:30:21   complexity and of the advancement of the art form you know using the best technology available and

00:30:27   that's why we always talk about in this context. Obviously that's my bias too of the type of games

00:30:30   I like and play but it is important to recognize that from Apple's perspective there's nothing

00:30:35   broken here mobile gaming is where it's at and Apple is doing really well there.

00:30:40   Well the good news is that Apple's documentation is so flawless that if you ever have anything

00:30:44   you're confused about you can look at their perfect documentation and find the answer every

00:30:48   time. I don't think people are refusing to port games to the Mac because of bad documentation.

00:30:54   Uh you say that but if notarization was easily explained then perhaps that wouldn't be such a

00:30:58   hurdle. I think those people are looking looking for any excuse to not do the port oh what I got

00:31:03   to notarize to that's it I'm not making a game. I'm just saying I'm just gonna throw that out there

00:31:08   not that I ever burrow up my butt or anything. Anyway Marco uh tell me about what's going on

00:31:12   with your home pods. Yeah so I wanted to just do a little bit of quick expansion on the the home pod

00:31:17   discontinuation discussion from last week because there were a couple things that I learned in the

00:31:21   meantime or that I forgot about. So one of them a bunch of people wrote in to point out that

00:31:26   the Google Home Max was also apparently discontinued. This was basically like Google's

00:31:31   $300 big smart speaker. It apparently was again $300 so similar price you know big speaker but

00:31:38   that also had a home system built in and it also had an aux in jack apparently which what we were

00:31:44   imagine that didn't didn't Google also have a sphere that they canned before they even shipped

00:31:48   it they had that tv box that was like the q something what was that that that never shipped

00:31:54   I don't think but there was yeah there was some Google I thought it was a smart speaker that was

00:31:57   spherically shaped that got canned before but anyway continue. So a lot of people were saying

00:32:01   like okay well look the the Google Home Max which was similar you know marketing wise was also

00:32:06   discontinued so there must just there must just not be a market for a premium smart speaker and

00:32:12   I don't think that follows. No because Google cancels everything. Yeah Google discontinued

00:32:17   stuff all the time and they suck at hardware and they've discontinued lots of hardware of all sizes

00:32:22   big and small different prices and everything so yeah I wouldn't necessarily say that says anything

00:32:26   about it. There is an echo studio that is $200 and looks kind of like a knockoff home pod. I've never

00:32:33   seen one in person but Amazon's been selling it for a while so you know that that product seems to

00:32:38   be similar and just exists there and you look at the entire product line by Sonos almost all of

00:32:45   which cost significantly more than the home pod or at least in the ballpark of the home pod and

00:32:50   they've been selling that stuff for years and they seem to not be out of business yet so clearly the

00:32:57   market is there. I mean look at like any of the speakers Apple has sold in the Apple stores in

00:33:03   throughout history you know not just like the Apple high-fi which we'll get to in a second but like

00:33:07   you know you look at like all of the you know Bose and B&W and B&O and all these things like all

00:33:14   these like big speakers and speaker docks and things like that over the years and they're all

00:33:18   like $300 so I don't think we can say there's no market for this. I think there's clearly a market

00:33:24   for this if they're good and if they're compelling and the home pod was not good and compelling

00:33:30   enough for its price I think that's the real problem here. We also heard from a few people

00:33:35   who pointed out something I should have thought of but didn't that with both the iPad or sorry

00:33:40   both the iMac Pro being discontinued and the home pod being discontinued one factor that I don't

00:33:46   think we mentioned or at least didn't mention a lot is possible component shortages due to COVID.

00:33:51   There's apparently been a massive like chip and component shortage in the industry so it's

00:33:57   possible that Apple intended to have these things these products in the lineup for longer before

00:34:02   like maybe until their replacements were ready but they had to start making tough decisions because

00:34:07   of some kind of component shortages that they literally just can't get you know even if it

00:34:10   isn't Intel with the Xeon maybe they literally can't get like you know the speaker rim holder

00:34:16   or like you know some you know the Bluetooth chip or something anymore for the iMac or you know for

00:34:21   the home pod it could have been anything because when you look at what goes into a full-size home

00:34:27   pod this is kind of where I wanted to go with this you look at what goes into a full-size home pod

00:34:31   compared to the home pod mini and you see very very different engineering and cost priorities

00:34:39   in these things you know you look at the home pod the full-size one and one of the headlining

00:34:45   features of it was this automatic sensing of the room where it would like it would detect where the

00:34:51   walls and stuff were and it would bounce the sound off the walls and reflect it all around the room

00:34:58   to basically try to simulate it being more than just one speaker to say like oh you know you

00:35:03   can make great sound room filling sound with just one speaker and you look at all the product

00:35:08   marketing like depictions of the home pod that Apple had at that time and it was always like

00:35:13   the home pod magically with no power cord sitting in the middle of a table in the middle of a room

00:35:18   and you know somehow filling the whole room with sound and I think that's that's how they design

00:35:24   them this you know and they probably they're like let's let's make the the maximum you know

00:35:28   maximum engineered thing we can here and if you look at all the hardware it's in the home pod

00:35:34   it has to quote their page an array of seven horn-loaded tweeters each with its own custom

00:35:42   amplifier so there's seven amps and this is for the tweeters not to mention I assume that the

00:35:48   woofer has its own amp as well it must so there's you know eight amps inside a home pod seven

00:35:54   tweeters they have this internal low frequency calibration microphone for automatic bass correction

00:36:02   direct and ambient audio beam forming all this all this like you know processing intensive stuff

00:36:08   all the tweeters to be able to fire 360 degrees in all the directions and you know be able to sense

00:36:14   the room and adjust things and everything meanwhile if you have one home pod playing by itself without

00:36:20   a second one paired to it it sounds pretty good but you know it sounds a hell of a lot better

00:36:27   getting a second one and making an actual stereo pair that actually has a physical space between

00:36:32   the two speakers and when you do that almost all of that custom processing is disabled

00:36:39   oh my and so the way that I've heard home pods for most of the time that I've been using them

00:36:45   I'm almost always listening to a stereo pair and the stereo pair really does sound way better than

00:36:50   a single one way better and it's not even then using all that stuff or it's using very little

00:36:56   of it at least if you want room filling sound you can do it you can try it with like one thing in one

00:37:03   place that's doing all these tricks you know sound bars which I hate as a category often advertise

00:37:08   similar kind of things oh they bounce the sound off the walls you don't need rear speakers you don't

00:37:11   need like and and you know what doesn't really work that well I've never been fooled by these

00:37:17   things I've never once thought wow it sounds like their speaker is actually on the left and right

00:37:22   of me or it sounds like I actually have rear speakers from this sound bar no you know why

00:37:26   because of physics it's not that easy to bounce stuff off walls in ways you can actually tell

00:37:31   with reasonable volumes that doesn't that don't sound really overwhelmingly weird from certain

00:37:35   angles it's just physics you need multiple points of sound to actually fill a room with sound that

00:37:42   sounds good the entire idea of cramming all this stuff into one speaker I think was bad engineering

00:37:50   and cost management I don't think this product should ever have been released in the way it was

00:37:54   that added so much cost to it meanwhile you look at the HomePod mini a device that was almost

00:38:02   certainly prioritizing cost over almost all else it's 100 bucks compared to the 350 they were

00:38:09   selling this thing for the HomePod mini is actually kind of expensive for what it is

00:38:14   because it only has one driver it doesn't even have like a dedicated like tweeter and woofer it's

00:38:21   one single speaker driver that does both jobs which is one of the reasons it doesn't sound very

00:38:25   good because that's that's fairly hard to make work physics wise to make it sound good but just

00:38:30   one thing doing everything they really cut down so much like if you look at the teardowns on iFixit

00:38:36   versus the HomePod full size one and you can see there's just all this massive complexity and

00:38:42   engineering and components in this thing and then you look at a teardown of the HomePod mini and

00:38:48   there's almost nothing in it and it's it's significantly stripped down way cheaper way

00:38:53   simpler and it starts to seem obvious like the HomePod the first HomePod just it seems like Apple

00:39:01   totally ignored cost when designing it like it seems like they totally over engineered it thinking

00:39:07   that they could just kind of walk into the market and just start taking money and a lot of people

00:39:12   have made the same uh have made an analogy to the iPod Hi-Fi the old speaker dock it's actually a

00:39:20   very good analogy because that was another area where Apple didn't have a passion for speaker docks

00:39:25   they were not the first ones to the speaker dock market I think Steve Jobs was jealous of all the

00:39:31   money that Bose was making selling 300 speaker docks for their iPods and they're like we can get

00:39:36   that 300 ourselves and they made one that was a little bit more expensive and a little bit nicer

00:39:41   in certain ways not nicer in other ways sound familiar and and it flopped in the market because

00:39:45   it turned out most people don't need one of those at all and the ones that did want speaker docks

00:39:50   would much rather buy one of the like hundred dollar JBL ones that sound pretty decent than

00:39:56   buy the like almost 400 dollar you know Apple or Bose or whatever ones and I think the HomePod

00:40:02   it was a similar flaw and a similar flop in that they just over engineered it so much in ways that

00:40:11   they didn't need to like it it's not like they made it sound too good it doesn't sound that good

00:40:16   when you only have one of them they just over engineered it you know and and the HomePod mini

00:40:21   sounds significantly worse not because it only had not because it lacks seven tweeters and a special

00:40:29   microphone to tune itself to the room like you know how you can tune your woofer to the room for

00:40:35   automatic bass correction remove one word automatic and offer an eq or at least a bass knob in the

00:40:45   adjustment panel for the HomePod in software which by the way as a HomePod owner and as someone who

00:40:51   has heard from a lot of other HomePod owners we all want that if there was adjustable base on the

00:40:58   HomePod that would solve the vast majority of issues people have with its audio like and you

00:41:04   know because it works pretty well for me but yeah there are times where I would want to adjust it

00:41:09   and I've heard from so many people who are like I tried it but it's too much bass so many people

00:41:14   would love a software adjustment of just a bass knob in the control panel in the software and they

00:41:21   can get rid of that microphone and they can also you know design a product that's made to either be

00:41:27   firing in one direction or paired with the second one and get rid of most of those seven tweeters

00:41:33   and seven custom amplifiers that are on each one they can get rid of the direct and ambient audio

00:41:39   beam forming because again like you're not trying like if you don't try to fill a room with one

00:41:46   single point and just say all right here's one point it'll be inexpensive if you want to fill

00:41:49   a room get two of them and pair them that is such a different engineering goal and and that makes

00:41:55   such a different product and then you can make that product cheaper and maybe you could make

00:41:59   a really good sounding one for 200 bucks and then a pair would be 400 bucks instead of 700 bucks

00:42:05   and that's a really big difference like that that would be that that alone even ignoring the input

00:42:11   issue and the siri issues that alone could have been a huge deal and then finally they put all

00:42:17   this engineering and all this cost into the HomePod and then the CPU they put into it was the A8

00:42:24   from the iPhone 6 and when you ask it a question of Siri it's slow to respond.

00:42:32   Now this has been the one of the only things that I miss about the Alexa ecosystem when I when I

00:42:40   switched over to this Alexa is faster faster to respond like way faster and always has been even

00:42:46   on their very first generation hardware and I have to wonder you know obviously most of that is

00:42:50   probably the service side but I have to wonder how much of that could Apple have solved with a higher

00:42:57   end or faster processor or some kind of different processor choice like they spent all this

00:43:02   engineering and all this cost in all these fancy audio features that nobody was asking for for

00:43:08   a goal that they couldn't actually achieve of filling a room with sound with one point

00:43:11   and yet the actual like main interaction method to this thing is slow. Now the HomePod mini

00:43:20   moves from the A8 from the phone chip to the S5 CPU from the Apple Watch Series 5.

00:43:26   So the HomePod mini actually has an Apple Watch CPU in it. I couldn't find many good direct

00:43:32   comparisons of how the performance between the A8 and S5 is like the one benchmark I found which

00:43:38   was not very reliable suggested the S5 is way faster at certain things than the A8 was so that

00:43:43   the HomePod mini should in theory be way faster than the original HomePod at certain things.

00:43:47   I don't know if that's actually if that actually plays out. Anecdotally it does seem like the HomePod

00:43:52   mini responds faster based on my limited experience here but it certainly does seem like

00:43:58   they gave the original HomePod a way too slow processor and spent way too much money on all

00:44:06   the other stuff inside of it that mostly wasn't necessary or was over engineered and the HomePod

00:44:11   mini was able to be so much cheaper because they designed it that way from the start and so I think

00:44:16   they're totally able to make a really good larger HomePod for 200 bucks if they actually go and go

00:44:26   into it with that goal in mind with some kind of degree of like humbleness like the first HomePod

00:44:32   was like we're gonna waltz into this market we see what everyone else is charging we're gonna

00:44:36   charge two and a half times as much or whatever it is and people will buy it because we're because

00:44:40   it's good and I think hopefully they can re-enter this market when they're ready with a little bit

00:44:47   more you know humbleness and reality check and engineer a higher end product that sounds way

00:44:55   better than the HomePod mini which again is not super difficult and can actually be sold at a

00:45:01   compelling price of I'd say around 200 bucks and I think that could be a really good product.

00:45:05   People like me who want bigger sound can buy two of them significantly more affordably than when

00:45:11   it was 350 dollars and ideally integrate it better into the ecosystem and give it a little bit faster

00:45:17   processors so we can respond faster and that could be a really good product so I'm looking forward to

00:45:21   where this is going although at least I was until I saw the rumor from Germin this week about

00:45:29   apparently they're working on future HomePods with screens. What do you that? I think that's a good

00:45:37   idea because a lot of the possible utility I mean especially if they make it kind of a home hub

00:45:41   thing like yes the using it as a speaker as you described they could definitely make that product

00:45:45   fewer drivers less smarts lower price and now you can get two of them more easily and you're all set

00:45:53   but it's still just a speaker and all the things that the HomePod can do like you can all the

00:45:58   questions you can ask Siri you know a lot of them would benefit from having a screen. Show me the

00:46:06   weather don't just tell me when I wake up in the morning have a little display ready for me have a

00:46:10   rotating you know thing of picture is if I ask to see a picture of somebody put it on the screen for

00:46:15   me if I'm looking at a recipe show me your recipe like this the Amazon products and the Google

00:46:21   products that have screens I think enjoy popularity because a screen is a really useful thing to have

00:46:27   for a voice assistant in your house if you stop thinking of it as a speaker which is mostly what

00:46:32   you were talking about and start thinking of it as a voice assistant that happens to have a non-terrible

00:46:37   speaker a screen is very attractive and I think plays much more to Apple's strengths because

00:46:42   there are lots of things that I just described that are already possible on watches and phones

00:46:49   and iPads so Apple has already done some of the work for it and if Apple half butts it as

00:46:55   Marco says they could do a poor job of it but you can imagine a really good implementation of oh I

00:47:00   roll out of bed and in the kitchen there's my home pod with a screen showing me today's schedule and

00:47:06   a weather forecast and I can ask it to do things and I can intercom to wake the kids up and like

00:47:11   the ad rights itself like Apple I think once Apple has a screen they are more comfortable

00:47:15   whatever that thing is on top of the the home pod is not a screen and the product is lesser for it

00:47:21   because without a screen Apple doesn't know what to do and it has to lean entirely on its sluggish

00:47:27   and not so smart voice assistant yeah by the way thank you for for uh hoofed in the chat for giving

00:47:35   me the word that I was looking for with humbleness apparently there's already a word for that called

00:47:38   humility I couldn't get it like as I was saying I'm like I know there's a word for this I can't

00:47:43   think of what the word is humblebility they call it that's it yeah humbleocity oh and one more

00:47:48   thing on the on the chip shortage thing of like all the different you know the COVID has caused

00:47:52   a shortage of parts or whatever and that could explain why uh stuff's uh getting cancelled

00:47:57   early or whatever uh some of this is just I don't know if this is a real thing but I saw it

00:48:03   three or four times on Twitter and on websites so who knows but it was people buying home pods

00:48:08   like they said hey get them all supplies last so people are like okay well fine I guess I'll get

00:48:12   one now so they would order a home pod to get one of the last ones and you know before they're all

00:48:16   out of stock right and they would receive them and reportedly the manufactured date was the launch

00:48:21   date of the home pod oh yeah I saw them meaning they made they made a bunch of home pods in like

00:48:26   2017 or whenever it was and they never made any more and they just have been trying to sell those

00:48:31   like like us with the ATP pins which we made many years ago and we're still trying to sell them

00:48:36   because apparently everybody who wants an ATP pin has one right and we just have a you know a handful

00:48:41   of the left but you know if you buy an ATP pin today you're getting a pin that was made three

00:48:45   years ago luckily there are no electronics in it and it's still supported by all our software

00:48:49   but buy an ATP pin but yeah so shortages could have contributed to the early as we discussed

00:48:56   the Xeon being discontinued stuff the early demise of the iMac but it seems like from people buying

00:49:00   them that home pods are not suffering from a lack of parts because Apple isn't making home pods

00:49:05   anymore yeah Apple hasn't made home pods in years apparently right they're just they're just trying

00:49:10   to sell through the warehouse filled with home pods someone's built like a fort out of home pods

00:49:14   in the back room it's like that remember that i don't remember what like magazine or company

00:49:19   it was or whatever but that did these the wheel oh iMac boxes you know what i'm talking about yeah

00:49:25   the same same basic idea yeah and and like i'm i'm kind of surprised like as of now when we record

00:49:30   they still aren't sold out i assumed that when they announced that they were discontinued

00:49:36   that they would sell out within a day right and and the the space gray ones did they sold out

00:49:41   pretty quickly but the white ones which is actually my preferred color of them are still

00:49:45   for sale now like two weeks later or whatever it's been did they did they introduce the space gray

00:49:50   one later or was that at launch day it was always at the same time yeah i don't know maybe that was

00:49:54   just the more popular color or maybe they misguessed when they manufactured them all

00:49:58   originally whatever year it was yeah yeah but i i really and i've been tempted to buy one you know

00:50:05   now because i really do enjoy them because you have so many and they need friends yeah right like

00:50:10   but i just like i don't really have anywhere else i could put a full-size home pod you could make a

00:50:14   fort yeah but like but if any of mine die and if they haven't released a new one by that point

00:50:21   i will actually really regret not having one you need to have spare home pods this is this is how

00:50:26   you end up with a closet full of cheese graters except for you it'll be a closet full of my thing

00:50:33   my thing that i'm collecting costs like uh nine dollars each though it's a little bit uh easier

00:50:38   to get them yeah it won't be too long until those are nine dollars each as well so they'll they'll

00:50:43   cheese graters only appreciate in value the price of cheese graters has never gone down kasey

00:50:48   sure like honestly like as you know ever since the home pods death was announced and and as i've kind

00:50:54   of waffled on getting any spares i've i've started to realize like i really like the way it works

00:50:59   most for the most part first of all if anyone out there does not yet have airplay 2 in your household

00:51:08   i would strongly recommend giving it a shot in some form whether it's playing stuff to an apple tv

00:51:12   or to a home pod mini or a regular home pod or whatever or any of the other ecosystem stuff that

00:51:18   supports it like obviously all of sonos's stuff or all sonos's recent stuff supports it a lot of

00:51:23   other manufacturers starting to add it as well airplay 2 is awesome it is by far my favorite

00:51:29   household multi-room whatever audio management thing because as i mentioned a few weeks ago

00:51:35   you can you can control it not only from the voice assistant that's built into the speaker

00:51:39   but you can also control it from your phone and from your ipad and everyone else can in the house

00:51:44   too so if you have like an apple household where everyone has iphones or ipads whatever

00:51:47   everyone can control it and it's it just shows up in control center and you can you can hand off

00:51:52   from your music app to it or from it to your music app and it's really nice it's a it's a wonderful

00:51:58   interaction method if you are in apple's ecosystem and especially if you use apple music now here's

00:52:04   the thing like i understand that everyone who uses spotify everyone a hundred percent of you

00:52:11   hi think that everyone uses spotify and that's not that far off spotify is very popular but

00:52:19   not everyone uses spotify and like the spotify people look many of you are my friends but hi

00:52:29   spotify is not everyone it's not everything it's not all music it's not the way everyone wants to

00:52:34   listen to music their app honestly is garbage apple music is also garbage in their apps but you

00:52:40   know it's like there's a lot of problems spotify that i have but if you're not a spotify user there

00:52:46   are dozens of us dozens the home pod is actually amazingly good because if you're not a spotify

00:52:51   user you're probably either an apple music person or if you are especially old like my neighbor

00:52:58   thinks i am you might be an itunes slash like music on the mac person and if you are still

00:53:05   keeping a music library again spotify people you think quote nobody does that anymore i assure you

00:53:12   there are people out there who do it i recognize it isn't the majority anymore but we're out there

00:53:18   and nothing integrates better with an itunes music collection than a home pod nothing like no none of

00:53:25   the other speaker things come close and so i have you know i have between me and tiff we both use

00:53:32   apple music we both used itunes before that i have playlists in there i have a music collection in

00:53:39   there i have all my fish stuff that i've downloaded legally from their site then like that's not listed

00:53:44   in spotify or an apple music's online directory but i have my own collection merged in with that

00:53:49   tiff has her own stuff the home pod recognizes each of us by voice and if tiff wants to play

00:53:54   one of her playlists she asks for it and it just knows it's her and knows which collection it's in

00:53:59   if i ask for something it knows it's me and it plays stuff tailored to me based on my collection

00:54:03   that i built up over years my ratings my my play frequency and stuff like that and it has all my

00:54:08   fish stuff so if i want to say hey play my you know best of fish playlist that i maintain on my

00:54:12   own devices and with my own collection it has access to that and it can do it that's one thing

00:54:17   that whenever we had alexa stuff in the house it can't do that doesn't have access to it and amazon

00:54:21   has ways to upload stuff to it so does spotify they suck and they don't work like believe me

00:54:27   i've tried them over the years they don't work and so the home pod is really good for this set of

00:54:35   needs and if you don't care about audio quality or can't you know afford the really high price tags

00:54:43   of some of this gear or if you are super into spotify and you and all you listen to is stuff

00:54:51   that's available on streaming well that's a pretty big percentage of the population

00:54:57   and for all those people this might not be the best choice or might not be a choice at all but

00:55:03   that's not everyone and for those of us who still do things kind of the old way or more into the

00:55:09   apple music ecosystem for various reasons the home pod is great and the other solutions out there are

00:55:15   not and so i really really hope that apple is just again taking a step back to regroup and will come

00:55:23   out with better offerings here as opposed to abandoning this market forever it's funny i uh

00:55:28   i am a devout spotify person when it comes to music obviously i have many problems with what

00:55:32   they're doing in the podcast space uh but i just in the last 48 hours paid for another year of

00:55:37   itunes match because i still do use it from time to time and there's still plenty of music that

00:55:42   i have in my library that with time i listen to less and less often but nevertheless i do want it

00:55:49   available and i want it available without having to carry my entire library on my phone or my ipad

00:55:54   or what have you and just today when i was in the car for a few hours i was listening to some of my

00:55:59   library that was in itunes match and so i i have i think i have a foot in both of these worlds i

00:56:05   have never used a home pod ever ever ever i've never heard one playing to my recollection

00:56:09   um but i don't debate anything that you've said i'm not trying to say you're wrong i will say that

00:56:14   my experience uh with the echo and spotify is actually pretty good i i'm not asking it to do

00:56:20   a lot of the things that you're doing like i'm not a heavy playlist person and and i basically

00:56:24   our entire family just uses my spotify account as the canonical spotify account um and it works

00:56:30   pretty well for our needs so it depends on what your needs are i don't think it would work well

00:56:34   for your needs marco but it does work pretty pretty well for our simplified needs but i

00:56:40   ultimately i agree with you that i think it would be too bad if apple just pulled an airport

00:56:44   extreme express or whatever and just walked away from this market because i think for a company

00:56:49   that seems to claim to really care about music and and once bought a company that was entirely around

00:56:55   making you know speakers and particularly headphones for music it seems like this is

00:56:59   something apple should do well even if they haven't yet and god gosh knows my airpods are some of my

00:57:06   favorite devices in the entire world those things are freaking magic so i i would hope that they take

00:57:11   a second crack at this i don't really or maybe a third crack i don't really consider the the home

00:57:16   pod mini to be but a refinement of what they've already done but a perhaps complete rethinking of

00:57:22   what they've already done would be pretty good we are sponsored this week by squarespace start

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00:58:31   support team so you can just like you know make a website for somebody or direct them to squarespace

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00:59:17   squarespace. All right moving right along we have to do a little bit of housekeeping but it's a happy

00:59:26   kind of housekeeping this is for ATP membership Marco has been doing a lot of work and I say that

00:59:33   with not an ounce of sarcasm Marco's been doing a lot of work to add a couple of options that

00:59:37   I've been doing work take credit take credit Marco's been doing a lot of work for me it's a lot

00:59:44   for that people have been asking for for a fair bit of time now and we're approaching one year

00:59:50   of ATP membership we're getting there and we wanted to try to add a few options for for those

00:59:56   of you particularly those who are not American so we have new options for annual billing both in

01:00:03   US dollars of course but also in euros and in pounds Marco can you talk through kind of what

01:00:10   what the situation is there and perhaps how you would switch from monthly billing to annual

01:00:15   billing? Sure yeah although first a little bit of housekeeping if you see a bunch of refunds on your

01:00:21   bill this month that is because we had a bug where under certain like billing failure and renewal

01:00:27   scenarios it was possible to have two subscriptions active at once for the same member I detected

01:00:33   those I ran a script to cancel all the duplicate subscriptions and issue back refunds for anybody

01:00:38   who would had like you know four months of double payments whatever I'd go refund half of them and

01:00:43   so some people out there I think there's like 40 of you total not a large number some number of

01:00:48   people out there will have some refunds this month so if you see that that's why and that should be

01:00:52   not possible in the future yeah so now back to the good news yeah so we now have euro and great

01:01:01   British pound options for currency and we also have an annual billing option instead of monthly

01:01:07   that was another very hotly requested item because a lot of people for whatever reason either don't

01:01:12   want you know a certain number of small charges to happen every month as opposed to one big one

01:01:17   every year or people you know who you know maybe it was easier to account for that or whatever else

01:01:22   so annual billing is now a thing as well as euro and pound support we tried to make the prices

01:01:29   pretty pretty reasonable on those so that they they all equate to about eight dollars so you know

01:01:35   the it's seven euro or six pounds the one thing that a lot of people have asked is how do you

01:01:41   switch their existing account like people who are already in one of these countries

01:01:44   to switch your account from us dollars where you already created it to euro or pound and

01:01:52   there is a way to do it it kind of sucks and I'm sorry but there's reasons so we always heard from

01:01:58   people who are like who tell us the why it's so hard to move an apple id between like if you move

01:02:05   to a different country and you need to move your apple id apparently you have to like cancel all

01:02:09   your subscriptions and wait for them to all lapse so it might be like a year out and then they can

01:02:15   like move your apple id or some there's some like something like that well that's kind of how this

01:02:18   works too probably for the same reasons for various reasons dealing with like you know how

01:02:24   stripe deals with customers and and credits and refunds and currencies and international currencies

01:02:30   things like that you can switch your account to a different currency but you have to cancel the

01:02:36   existing subscription which doesn't actually cancel it instantly because people don't expect it to

01:02:40   work that way so I had to change that last summer when you cancel your subscription it just turns

01:02:45   off auto renewing but you still get the rest of whatever you know the month or whatever you paid

01:02:50   for so you have to wait for that month to be over and then your membership will still exist but it

01:02:56   will go into like the expired state and it'll tell you and say hey you should renew at that point

01:03:02   then you can sign up with any currency you want to so yeah short version is to switch currencies

01:03:06   with an existing account you have to cancel your existing membership wait for that month to expire

01:03:11   and then re-enable it with the new currency. Additionally coming soon and we don't know exactly

01:03:17   when but coming soon there will be WWDC merchandise coming up we are definitely going to have an all

01:03:26   new shirt design we are not going to talk about what it is it's good but nevertheless it's it's

01:03:31   going to be something pretty cool and John has spent a lot of time working on this basically on

01:03:36   the slacker the three of us this month John has spent a lot of time working on this and I'm really

01:03:40   excited for it although I guess I'm not entirely slacking I've also come up with an entire new

01:03:45   product well kind of that's over selling it a bit but nevertheless here we are I've come up with an

01:03:51   entirely new product to the ATP world which I'm very excited about and the spiritual return of

01:03:57   something from several years ago so I'm really excited about that too and we don't have an exact

01:04:03   date for this but we bring this up in part to say that members ATP members get 15% off on all ATP

01:04:11   merchandise so if you wanted a reason to join but we're holding out for annual billing or we're

01:04:17   holding out for billing in weight I mean pounds then now is the time and the merchandise is just

01:04:24   the icing on the cake so ATP.fm/join. John today is a big day for you and and particularly you

01:04:33   Mac OS X 10.0 is 20 years old today I was still a teenager 20 years ago today lots of people are

01:04:42   tweeting about it and posting articles and stuff and it you know we just it's just a coincidence

01:04:46   that today literally the day of the recording this March 24th is the exact day that is the 20th

01:04:51   anniversary or the release of Mac OS X 10.0 I didn't do anything for it sorry Mac OS X I didn't

01:04:58   get you anything this year part of it is because you know I wrote all those reviews of it way back

01:05:05   when right and then I did a five-year retrospective when Mac OS X was five years old and then I did a

01:05:11   10-year retrospective when Mac OS X was 10 years old I just feel like not only am I done reviewing

01:05:16   Mac OS X I'm also done writing retrospectives on it like it's like well you did a five year into

01:05:21   10-year you got to do a 20-year apparently I don't but it's worth marking the occasion if you want to

01:05:29   look back at some of my old reviews we'll put a link in the show notes to I collected all the

01:05:35   links on my website when I stopped writing them so there's the reviews of the releases 10.0 10.1 you

01:05:40   know so on and so forth up to when I stopped there's also links to all the pre-releases so

01:05:45   developer preview 3 developer preview 4 the public beta and then there's the links to my

01:05:52   retrospectives that I just talked about I think the retrospectives maybe are the most interesting

01:05:55   because like 20-year is it's a retrospective moment let's look back especially because what

01:06:01   we're looking back on is Mac OS X I know it's not such a big deal if they change the name they

01:06:05   change it to OS X and then they change it to Mac OS but I do feel like Mac OS X sort of ended

01:06:13   and and now we're just in the age of like modern Mac OS because a lot of the defining characteristics

01:06:19   of Mac OS X slowly faded not that I'm saying this is a new operating system it's obviously Mac OS X

01:06:25   you know it's the same thing that it always was it's the you know the next drive operating system's

01:06:28   got a dock it's got a menu bar like it's the same OS right but I do feel like there's sort of been a

01:06:33   you know a slow changeover in the OS so I feel like the the era that we are celebrating 20 years

01:06:41   ago today Mac OS X 10.0 was released that era has a beginning middle and an end and now we're in this

01:06:47   new era of sort of the modern Mac maybe maybe this era will come to be defined as like the arm

01:06:51   transition be the turning point or whatever but anyway it's always fun to look back on those

01:06:55   things unfortunately some of my old reviews are slowly deteriorating through bit rot on the

01:07:00   internet not literal bit rot but just like if you write something on the web and it stays there for

01:07:05   15 or 20 years and the site that it was written on has gone through like five different CMS's on

01:07:11   the back end things inevitably get a little bit creaky I also always push the limits of the

01:07:16   Ars Technica CMS by writing like custom HTML and JavaScript and doing my own thing all over the

01:07:20   place and that stuff has particularly rotted kind of like doing custom UI and like a Mac or iOS app

01:07:27   you come to regret it as the OS's keep changing and your custom stuff starts breaking I did that

01:07:31   with all my articles right someday I will probably put up like because you know I used to have a

01:07:39   a quote-unquote blog over at Ars Technica called fatbits and I have reproduced every single one of

01:07:45   those fat pits posts with permission on my own personal website hypercritical.co

01:07:49   someday I will eventually ask Ars and say hey it looks like my reviews are getting creaky you

01:07:54   probably don't get any traffic on them because they're super old can I just put up you know

01:07:59   versions of them on my website where I'll make sure all the links work and all the screenshots

01:08:04   are there and all that other stuff unfortunately one of the big factors here and I was going

01:08:08   through this this weekend is that a lot of the you know the thing you can't avoid is actual link rot

01:08:14   as in you know if anyone if you ever read any one of my magwest interviews like every 15th word is

01:08:18   a link that's just my style of writing on the web I make lots of links and those links all went

01:08:24   somewhere when the review was published but 15-20 years later a lot of those links don't go anywhere

01:08:30   anymore right you click on them and they 404 you click on them or they go to a page that doesn't

01:08:35   look anything like it did before some of those you can pull from archive.org that's what I was doing

01:08:40   this weekend was fixing a bunch of broken links on from from fat bits posts actually linking a lot of

01:08:45   them to the archive.org page just to say hey if you were reading this at the time and you clicked

01:08:50   on this and it took you to this section of apple's website this is what it looked like back in you

01:08:54   know 2002 or whatever and that's fun to do but archive.org doesn't have everything either and

01:08:59   then there are things that are just obscure or just don't exist in any fashion or were never

01:09:03   spidered because of robot.txt I feel so weird saying spidered kids don't kids don't say that

01:09:08   these days do they they say crawled I guess back in the day we called them spiders because they were

01:09:12   cool um yeah so I but I would like to have sort of a modern local incarnation of my stuff just so

01:09:21   I can point somebody to it and they can essentially just enjoy the screenshots or whatever and then I

01:09:25   could fix some of the typos and remove the smileys yes in some of my earlier reviews I put literal

01:09:29   ascii smileys it was a long time ago okay it was it was literally the 90s please have mercy on me

01:09:36   I love that you say that as I was spending a few moments just a few moments ago choosing exactly

01:09:42   the right emoji for the some membership housekeeping section of the show notes

01:09:47   I don't did emoji exist when I wrote the first ones I don't think so or no maybe in Japan it

01:09:51   existed I feel like we've had this debate before but that's okay yeah but anyway whether or not it

01:09:56   existed it certainly wasn't a viable thing that I could type into a web page in 1999 so that's true

01:10:01   speaking of curious apple decisions and and that same decision made better by somebody else google

01:10:09   play has dropped commissions to 15 from 30 following apple's move last year this is from

01:10:15   tech crunch google is reducing the service fee for google play to 15 down from 30 for the first

01:10:20   1 million of revenue 1 million dollars of revenue developers earn using play billing system each year

01:10:26   the company will levy a 30 cut on every dollar developers generate through google play beyond

01:10:30   the first million in a year it said this is the way it should have worked for apple but no because

01:10:37   they're either cheap or annoying or a combination of both you have to join the small business

01:10:43   program then you have to get approved and then you have to make sure you make less than a million but

01:10:48   uh but yeah but you have to make less than a million in order to get the 15 and then if you

01:10:53   make even a dollar more than a million you get 30 on everything not 30 on the news it's just

01:10:57   preposterous 30 on everything the next year yeah yeah I'm sorry that's true yeah but you get

01:11:02   punished the whole next year it's not like it's not like a marginal tax rate where you know the

01:11:06   your millions and first dollar is charged at 30 I think you get 15 for that whole year but because

01:11:11   you went over a million that year your whole next year is blown from day one of the next year you're

01:11:15   at 30 percent no you don't you don't get it for the whole year you you get it until like the next

01:11:20   payment so it's like every month it it you get paid out is a monthly cycle yeah no no it's I think

01:11:25   it's monthly but um and you know for the rest of the year but no it's like people have run the

01:11:29   numbers or you know estimated how many apps for developers are affected by apple's new new uh you

01:11:36   know the program and everything and people try to figure out like what would it cost apple to

01:11:42   run their program the way google's is running which is like similar kind of deal but way simpler

01:11:48   and removes some of these weird like anti-incentives and removes the need to apply and try to get

01:11:53   approved and everything just applies automatically and it's not a small amount of money it's a

01:12:00   significant amount of money that apple like by apple doing it their weird way they're doing it

01:12:06   they actually are saving a lot of money but it's not like it's not make or break the company kind

01:12:12   of money so it's something like i think you might notice it on the quarterly earnings report for like

01:12:17   some tiny percentage of one one department would be smaller by a noticeable amount but it's not like

01:12:24   it's a kind of thing like the reason apple is doing it the way they're doing it is because

01:12:28   they're being cheap like that's that's the real that's the real answer and i would say though like

01:12:32   i wonder if that estimate accounted for the extra cost of apple doing the bookkeeping for its

01:12:37   byzantine program like this simple program you know because as you noted pretty much nobody

01:12:44   makes more than a million dollars in terms of percentage on the app store like there's just

01:12:48   so many developers only a tiny tiny part is making that million so who is a potential member of the

01:12:54   small business program essentially everybody in the app store that's a lot of stupid applications

01:12:59   to deal with and doing the bookkeeping to make sure that you apply the rules and make sure you

01:13:03   count their revenue when they go over then they have in the other bracket but they want to get

01:13:07   back into the other one like it's complicated to run a complicated program one of the beauties of

01:13:12   google's plan is nobody signs up these are just the new rules and the rules are so simple can

01:13:16   explain them in a paragraph that's it right it's easier to run that program because it is a uniform

01:13:21   set of rules for everybody you don't have to like sign up all these people and you don't have to

01:13:25   carefully watch and do the you know the monthly billing cycle roll over now you're in the 30

01:13:30   bracket or however it works in the apple one it's easier to run a simple program and i don't think

01:13:36   that any cost estimate is factoring in now i agree that even when you factor that in it's still

01:13:40   to apple's advantage to use their ridiculous program because it saves them more money

01:13:44   i heard uh i think ben thompson and dithering was was chalking it up to just simply if you're

01:13:50   incentivized to run your business in a way that you make the most money possible from the app

01:13:54   store if you're in charge of the app store financials or whatever of course you're going

01:13:58   to pick the complicated program because you want the goodwill but you also don't want to give up

01:14:02   too much money i feel like that flies in the face a little bit of apple's supposed philosophy for

01:14:07   many years ago where there's just one profit and loss for the whole company and we don't think

01:14:12   about it as okay well you in charge of the app store you're going to be judged on the profit and

01:14:17   loss from the app store itself and so you are incentivized as king of your little kingdom here

01:14:22   to make sure that you make the most money possible from those developers rather than thinking about

01:14:29   big picture what's good for apple what's good for apple is to make developers happy even if it is

01:14:34   slightly worse for this specific aspect of app store revenue right do you think apple thinks

01:14:41   that i mean that was the whole pitch with the whole we're a functional organization we have one

01:14:45   profit and loss like even in the tim cook era and you know did jobs before jobs but also in the

01:14:50   temple care the idea that we don't have each individual department worrying about their

01:14:55   individual profit and loss because and you know like the end of the year when they do the bigger

01:14:58   part they don't say okay well the mac team did great but the iphone team did not so well it'd

01:15:04   probably be the reverse but anyway it's like how do we do as a company because if you don't do that

01:15:08   you create perverse incentives for someone to make their little corner of the business very profitable

01:15:15   at the cost of the big picture at the cost of apple as a whole at the cost of the brand

01:15:19   the cost of something that doesn't show up on their individual profit and loss that has always

01:15:23   been the pitch in the modern in the post steve jobs 2 era was that's why apple is great because

01:15:30   they do this thing that other companies don't do there are no little tiny subsets that are fighting

01:15:36   for themselves inside apple it's all one big apple and we all work together and that way people

01:15:42   aren't punished in their careers for for example forgoing a bunch of revenue in the app store if

01:15:48   overall apple does better because of it because developers are happier and more developers come

01:15:53   to the platform or whatever um all that said that sounds like a pretty ideal and there's a reason

01:15:58   lots of other companies don't do it that way and i can imagine no matter how much apple says that's

01:16:03   the case there's still a little bit of that going on inside it's still though it it baffles me why

01:16:09   apple came up with this plan because i don't think it you know it it's like if you had a company that

01:16:16   was really ruthlessly every individual subset has its own profit and loss numbers and has to live

01:16:23   and die on its own this is the type of pricing system i can imagine it would come up with but

01:16:27   apple that's the other extreme i refuse to believe apple is at the other extreme i can believe they

01:16:31   don't necessarily achieve their ideals but i think that are that is their ideals and i think a lot of

01:16:36   other things they do look that way but here is google showing apple how it's done this in and

01:16:42   like we were to say this is the apple plan oh apple doesn't do things complicated they just

01:16:45   want it simple just like 70 30 was simple we may not have liked it but they said well it has that

01:16:50   apple feeling to it because it's like look it's just 70 30 never mind about netflix and everybody

01:16:54   not getting 70 30 to ignore that everyone is treated the same in the app store right but to

01:16:59   a first approximation everybody except for literally companies you can count on your hand

01:17:03   got 70 30 and it was not a complicated graduated scale where you sell this much and you get

01:17:08   different it was just 70 30 very apple like simply in its simplicity and then when they did the small

01:17:14   business program is totally on apple like both in its conception as let's pinch as many pennies as

01:17:20   we possibly can uh you know and try to get goodwill at the same time it's clear that we don't want that

01:17:24   much goodwill because we don't lose that money right and then google does the apple style which

01:17:29   is like google there's nothing for you to do there's nothing to install you just get more money now

01:17:33   and it's easy for everyone to understand done and done so i like apple really embarrassed google

01:17:38   or google really embarrassed apple here and i don't i hope apple responds this i hope apple feels

01:17:44   suitably chastened by google doing the apple thing and i hope they realize you know like a part of it

01:17:50   they're saying well yeah google has to do that because their store sucks and we're our store is

01:17:53   awesome so we're we have more to lose so of course our plan is more complicated google's desperate

01:17:58   right but google is doing the thing that actually produces more goodwill like why squander any of

01:18:04   your goodwill if you're going to forego this money and have any kind of you know go from 30 to 15

01:18:08   percent why squander an ounce of that by making the small business plan and making people apply

01:18:14   and having this rule that incentivizes people to stop selling their application at a certain point

01:18:19   so they don't go into the higher quote unquote tax bracket or whatever but just dumb because

01:18:23   tax brackets don't work like that tax brackets are marginal like the google thing yeah it's the

01:18:26   opposite yeah like i i think the um the idea first of all that that apple is kind of more holistic in

01:18:36   its incentives and everything and and doesn't have these divisional you know dysfunctional goals and

01:18:41   everything i think that's a wonderful idea and i think many people at apple think it's that way

01:18:46   but the reality that we hear over and over again from people inside is that it's very different

01:18:50   than that it sounds when when they say that though apple saying like in a formal literal sense like

01:18:56   when they tally up the numbers at the end of the year and how they report things they don't do

01:19:00   individual profit losses like that is a provably true statement right but what you're saying is

01:19:06   okay that's fine that's the financial reality but everybody kind of knows that you know you have an

01:19:11   interdepartmental rivalries and people you know wanting not wanting wanting to get glory for the

01:19:15   good stuff and not wanting to get blamed for the bad stuff and wanting quote unquote their numbers

01:19:20   to look good even though we all know that's not how apple reports things right but there it's this

01:19:24   is not just totally bs like this is how apple reportedly internally physically runs its company

01:19:31   in terms of the you know financials and year-end reports and all the type of things they do inside

01:19:36   the company to keep track of things yeah i think the reality is that they're a big company and

01:19:42   whenever you have a company big enough you're gonna have like inter-manager disputes and weird

01:19:50   incentives that that are bad for the company as a whole but happen because they benefit certain

01:19:55   people at certain ranks and everything and you're gonna have all that so set that aside i i also

01:20:00   think that apple does not like when apple doesn't have their heart in something you can usually tell

01:20:08   they're not good you know from from steve on forward they're not good at hiding when they

01:20:16   are contemptuous or half-assed about something and the developer small business program is clearly in

01:20:24   this category they clearly don't think they need to be doing this they clearly hate that they need

01:20:30   to be doing this and they want to put in the least amount of effort possible and the only reason

01:20:35   they're doing this is because of regulatory pressure because if they don't do this they're

01:20:40   going to lose a lot more or they stand to lose a lot more they want they want to lose the least

01:20:43   amount of money possible but they're doing that by putting in more effort to make this complicated

01:20:48   program that they have to administer well i wonder if they had they probably had to hire people

01:20:52   perhaps temporarily just to deal with the influx of applications to the small business program

01:20:56   they're making their lives more miserable because they want they want to pinch every one of those

01:20:59   pennies yeah well if anything they could uh you know this this probably shows that there actually

01:21:06   is a decent amount of money in like the app store middle class basically like you know the the the

01:21:12   numbers in the app store the people who are affected by this there actually is like money

01:21:17   there that apple is making for real i mean it's all the money i've made for them it's not the

01:21:22   middle class it's it's it's everybody but like the top fraction of a one percent like isn't it

01:21:27   like 99 of the store qualifies for the small business program like it is essentially the

01:21:32   entire store you know because there's so many developers yeah but i think it also like it shows

01:21:37   like how much money the app store makes as a whole even though even though most of it is from

01:21:43   that top one percent that is that is not going to qualify for this it just makes so much money for

01:21:48   apple because they are doing so little it yeah apple has i'm sure a lot of people on staff for

01:21:55   things like app review and i'm sure maintaining the store has some costs and they are spending

01:22:00   some money on you know servers and bams and everything but it's such a massively high margin

01:22:05   business for them they are making a killing on the app store even at 15 let alone the one percent

01:22:11   that's paying the 30 that's getting probably most of their money in like they're making billions and

01:22:16   billions and billions of dollars from just being a rent seeker being in this gatekeeper position like

01:22:22   they're they're putting in very little relative to what they're making so there is enough money in

01:22:27   there that they can afford to hire an army of probably you know relatively low to middle wage

01:22:32   workers to actually go through these applications and and do all that and that's still worth it

01:22:37   because they're still even at 15 making a killing from you know those of us who were in this you

01:22:43   know app store middle class thing it it just shows like quite how egregious this whole scheme has

01:22:48   been and how how incredibly profitable it still is for them i don't know if this falls under the

01:22:53   category of rent seeking but it's the other common analogy here for how to make money um is that so

01:22:58   yes apple certainly is gatekeeping and rent seeking from if you want to get your thing on on our

01:23:03   platforms you got to go through us and give us our cut right but they're also doing the cliche thing

01:23:07   of oh if there's a gold rush you should be selling shovels because all the people who want to come

01:23:12   and make their fortune fame and fortune on apple's platforms make an iphone app every one of those

01:23:17   people has to buy apple shovels first right like it's not it's not about rent they haven't done

01:23:22   anything yet they haven't made any apps yet it's like well come over here and pay us our 99 dollars

01:23:26   a year which if you add up times the number of developers is not a small chunk of change

01:23:30   just to get there to get your shovel and then you get to start digging and then you get to try your

01:23:34   luck try your luck in our market right so field an app uh and if you do well we'll get our cut

01:23:40   but if you don't you already did give us 99 dollars and it costs us almost nothing for you to try

01:23:44   launching your app on our platforms right so the this is this is what we've gotten too many times

01:23:49   about the incentives for a services company are very different from the incentives of a product

01:23:53   company product company wants to sell products that people like and a service company wants to

01:23:56   find a way to sell you a service or insert itself between you and the thing that you want and for

01:24:02   customers you know they're inserting itself between them and the apps that they're going to buy and

01:24:06   taking money from that purchase but for developers they're inserting themselves as the shovel

01:24:11   salesman and saying okay well if you want to come and try your luck and panning for gold and

01:24:15   and then our hills uh start by giving us 99 dollars not to mention you know the 1200 bucks

01:24:21   you had to spend on our computer to to build yeah also buy all the equipment from us to develop for

01:24:25   it obviously but you're gonna buy that anyway and your thousand dollar iphone and but i still feel

01:24:29   like you know like again selling the products the incentives are aligned do you want an awesome

01:24:33   computer that you're happy with that helps you do your job we will sell you that and we are

01:24:36   incentivized to make that computer more and more awesome for your particular job and the incentives

01:24:40   for running the store are very different yeah oh don't forget about search ads still make a killing

01:24:45   on that i almost feel good that apple is so bad at like doing things based on ads because they

01:24:52   would say oh google does stuff based on ads but apple doesn't apple does they're just terrible

01:24:55   they're just not good at making money from it can you imagine if google had the same platform

01:25:00   for me if google had the same platform that apple has like it you know switched the management and

01:25:06   now you told those google people can you figure out how to make money from ads given this platform

01:25:10   google would be like are you kidding me yes yeah we can make a ton of money from ads look at all

01:25:14   your customers look how much money they have we can sell ads and every but apple's like well

01:25:19   we'll sell search ads just enough to make our search even crappier but not enough to really

01:25:22   make us a lot of money and or they didn't have ads in your apps they still have that

01:25:27   no they discontinued the ads in your app that was called i ad which yeah yeah because it because they

01:25:32   they did a bad job of it they're bad at and i'm glad i'm glad they're bad at that it's just too

01:25:36   bad they're not bad at services too not not in the sense we used to say apple needs to get good at

01:25:40   services we meant like reliably running iPhoto in the cloud right we didn't mean finding a way to

01:25:46   insert itself in every transaction in your life so they can take a cut but they're really good at that

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01:27:03   show uh

01:27:07   can we do some ask atp let's do it let's start with matt fence allow who writes listening to

01:27:13   your 10th anniversary discussion about photo libraries i return to a question i've always

01:27:17   had why aren't photos just treated as files which can be selectively shared using any file sharing

01:27:22   approach icloud dropouts etc when when was the fundamental decision made to treat photos as

01:27:26   anything other than files john i think we covered that last time we were talking about what is the

01:27:30   difference between like an album and a library right the photos themselves are files although

01:27:36   they do have embedded metadata right in the form of the exit and everything but what makes something

01:27:41   a photo library is the photos are just the starting point those files that's just the

01:27:45   starting point then there's everything you apply on top of them all of your edits all of your crops

01:27:51   all of your adjustments all that stuff metadata that you add to them adjustments that you make

01:27:55   maybe you make adjustments to the date but you don't want to actually change the xf data that's

01:27:59   embedded inside the file you want that adjustment to be outside right you want to sort of manage

01:28:03   your collection of things tag them favorite them file them away adjust the ones you want rotate

01:28:09   crop duplicate do all sorts of things to it that's what makes a photo library that's what makes a

01:28:13   collection you know you curate the collection you sort things into bins you put them into subsets

01:28:19   you you modify them right all of that is metadata that is attached to the data that is your photos

01:28:26   even the adjustments is metadata because a good photo library will not destructively make those

01:28:31   changes your original is always there as the file but the value you're adding to it is the metadata

01:28:37   and so you can't just have it be files you got to keep all that metadata somewhere uh the metadata

01:28:41   could also be in files but it's probably in some kind of a database as well and that's what makes

01:28:46   something a photo library so it's not a decision of them not being treated as files it's the if

01:28:52   you want to curate a collection of thousands and thousands of files you need some form of

01:28:57   metadata and photos in particular is a bunch of obvious kinds of metadata that go along with

01:29:00   photos that's why you've got photo libraries and not just folders full of files i think it's also

01:29:06   you know you have the the technical realities of doing this uh you know for many people their

01:29:13   entire photo library doesn't fit on their local drive and so you have to have some kind of like

01:29:18   dynamic functionality to be able to offer the photo library but not have it all stored there

01:29:24   additionally you have the issue of fast browsing through thumbnails of photos and if all the photos

01:29:31   are just like you know one-to-one files on your hard drive then it's going to be really hard for

01:29:36   the display mechanism however you're viewing these whether it's just you know finder windows or

01:29:42   whatever to be able to render a whole bunch of thumbnails all very very quickly for you to scroll

01:29:46   through and scan for that one picture you're looking for even if it pre-renders them and puts

01:29:50   them off to the side like essentially to try to solve this problem like say you take photos in raw

01:29:54   which is the thing that people actually do you like you can't if you do the math i'm like i'm

01:29:59   going to scroll through this collection of thousands of photos but i don't have thumbnails

01:30:02   but they're all on disk it's just just plain files i'll just read all the raws figure out like the

01:30:07   io in terms of gigabytes per second that you would need to read and decode you know because

01:30:11   if they're if they're compressed raw or like a jpeg or something to be able to scroll smoothly and

01:30:16   say okay well i'll just do that ahead of time and i'll cache the thumbnails and you're well on your

01:30:19   way to making a photo library right it doesn't take long it's like once you start trying to

01:30:23   solve this problem yeah you're making a photo library that's why photo libraries exist once

01:30:27   you try to accomplish the tasks that you think should be able to do them with just files like

01:30:31   oh just files in the finder i just have thumbnails like that works up to a point and then beyond that

01:30:36   point the finder starts doing things like making thumbnails and hiding them from you in either an

01:30:41   in-memory or a file cache or something and the scrolling is still a little bit clunky and then

01:30:45   you're just like i wish this was better and you just you're slowly inventing iPhoto right and then

01:30:49   also you know you have the issue of different ways to browse photos like sometimes most of the time

01:30:54   i'm browsing photos just in a big chronological list just by time and i can scan back well but

01:31:01   sometimes i want to browse by location so somewhere there has to be an index of all the locations from

01:31:08   all my photos and i want to i want some interface to be able to browse them by that sometimes i make

01:31:14   albums and want to share them oh you want to share this photo oh well you're going to need now

01:31:19   a few versions of this photo to be sure you're going to need like the heek original and then

01:31:24   you're going to want a jpeg that was rendered for sharing maybe a smaller sized one to be shared in

01:31:29   certain ways where you're going to put all those right next to it oh oh what if it's a live photo

01:31:34   that's actually two different files uh you know do you do you store like the little h265 video

01:31:39   clip next to the jpeg or do you store them both in some kind of weird complex heek format that

01:31:44   nothing reads and so again like you get into all this complexity of how you want to actually use

01:31:49   this data most of the time or across different devices or across different technical needs

01:31:55   and it becomes very hard to just have them be you know a set of files and folders and also offer the

01:32:03   kind of functionality that most people want these days all right dan young writes what's your take

01:32:09   on apple's awful user experience with modern mac os updates as someone who knows the value of os

01:32:13   updates i already procrastinated on installing them this seems like it will teach people that

01:32:18   os updates are bad and should be avoided i'm not really sure what dan's going for here can

01:32:23   one of you translate it's because you didn't read the links um so this is uh this is on the eclectic

01:32:29   light company um there's a good website diving into details of this and uh the person who writes

01:32:35   it has been very annoyed that uh the os updates that have come recently there's been a bunch of

01:32:39   security type packages have been like two gigs like no matter how small the change is oh we're just

01:32:44   patching one or two files and it's just a minor security update you still have to end up downloading

01:32:50   like two to three gigabytes uh and he's been blaming this on the uh what is it called sealed

01:32:58   system uh disk or whatever you know the catalina i think introduced the read-only uh system volume

01:33:03   and now it's like cryptographically sealed and apparently it is easier or more straightforward

01:33:09   to just ship a huge wad of the entire os and install that as the new sealed system snapshot

01:33:17   rather than trying to uh you know mount read only one of you know mount the system volume read only

01:33:23   put in the delta changes and reapply the cryptographic signatures and stuff like that

01:33:27   right that's my guess as to why these updates are big now that doesn't make a lot of technical

01:33:33   sense to me because part of the beauty of apfs and the snapshotting system is and and the ability

01:33:39   to do diffs between snapshots all that should make it much easier to send smaller updates because we

01:33:46   can it doesn't they don't have to make their own system like oh how do i send the deltas and i we

01:33:50   have to write our own code to figure out which files we have to patch and make sure that the

01:33:54   checksums are exactly the same after the patching snapshot diffing already does that with the

01:33:58   snapshot diffing since apple knows that you have a sealed system volume we and we know every single

01:34:03   bit that's on your your mac os 11.1 system volume like down to the bit because it's read only and

01:34:09   it's cryptographically signed so we don't have to speculate about what you have it seems to me that

01:34:14   they could make mac os 11.2 do a snapshot diff locally in apple's you know headquarters between

01:34:21   11.1 and 11.2 and then they would know the they would you know ship that snapshot diff and have

01:34:27   it applied because they know what they they they're applying it to a known target there's no mystery

01:34:32   about what's on people's disks out here in the world but apparently that's not what they're

01:34:36   doing apparently they're shipping the entire new image no matter what change so i hope this is a

01:34:41   technical limitation where they're just being cautious with how they do this and i can understand

01:34:45   why people are annoyed and i know it is a you know it is uh nice for me to sit here with my gigabit

01:34:50   fiber connection and go oh i don't care how big the os updates are but it does matter and one of

01:34:55   the supposed promises of the new the quote-unquote new update system that apple touts which is i

01:35:01   think i mentioned the past show is really mobile update from ios and ipad os and tv os and probably

01:35:06   watch os anyway mobile update one of these supposed advantages faster more secure updates

01:35:11   the more secure part i buy the faster not when you're making us download 2.6 gig so

01:35:16   uh i think it is it seems like it's it's something that should be better but it also seems like it's

01:35:23   the type of thing where especially how slow they've been moving on this where this seems

01:35:28   like the sort of first most cautious most naive implementation that is wasteful and i hope the

01:35:34   underpinnings are all there to make this better over time finally matt ewins writes you're given

01:35:39   the green light to buy your spouses to take down all the walls and rewire your home networks how

01:35:43   do you plan your new networks what is installed for now and what is installed for later what

01:35:46   ethernet or networking gear would you use this is actually extremely pertinent and it might as well

01:35:51   have been written by me because sometime in the next couple of weeks we're going to get to the

01:35:54   point on our house edition to do electrical and also a couple of ethernet drops so tell me marco

01:36:01   what what do i need to glean from your terrible terrible mistakes and do differently for this

01:36:05   um i've gotten various bits of advice over the years some of which i followed some of which i

01:36:12   wish i'd followed um some of which i regret following uh one of the things that i that i

01:36:17   heard from people was to have them run conduit like little tubes in the wall as opposed to just

01:36:26   running the wire straight in the wall the idea being that obviously no matter what wiring you

01:36:31   pick sometime down the road and you know it takes a while for these things to change but sometime

01:36:36   down the road the wiring you have will be obsolete and you will want to change it and ideally you'd

01:36:41   want to change it without tearing open the walls again and having to run all new wires in like you

01:36:46   know a very invasive way so the idea is if you run conduit through the wall and put those little like

01:36:53   pull strings in along with the wires the idea is that you could just pull out the old wires and

01:36:58   run some new wires in through these little tubes in the wall and then you can have modern wiring

01:37:05   down the road without tearing open all your walls in practice i've been told by many people who

01:37:12   install these things that's not really going to ever work and i actually did install it in part

01:37:18   of my house and uh and that it's the installer was like yeah we probably can't ever actually

01:37:24   pull the wires through like the bends and everything so like i think in practice if you

01:37:30   have a very if you have very simple like wall geometry and in a reasonably like straightforward

01:37:35   construction maybe that might work in the real world i think you're gonna have like a bender

01:37:40   two here or there that has to go around something and it's going to be very hard to get anything

01:37:44   through there in practice although the real the real barrier to conduit though is usually that

01:37:48   walls and houses are not large enough to accommodate conduit without like entirely you

01:37:56   know separating your two by four framing or whatever conduit is much more commonly used in

01:38:00   offices where it's actually used like that like you you can't open up the walls every time you

01:38:04   want to rerun wires so they have to be conduits especially during it's like roads like the major

01:38:09   highways are conduit and maybe some of the branches are not so much but because office

01:38:12   offices office buildings get reconfigured a lot there's room and the gigantic office walls and

01:38:17   floors and ceilings to run big conduits of networking cable everywhere in houses your

01:38:23   walls just aren't thick enough for you to put a giant pvc pipe in that run your wires through it

01:38:27   so normally the conduit has to be smaller and that's where you get into okay well the conduit

01:38:31   is barely the size of the wire all that said if you don't have conduit and someone just takes a

01:38:35   drill and drills a hole that's the size of an ethernet cable through one of your two by fours

01:38:39   there's no way you're ever getting anything back through that so as difficult as conduit may be to

01:38:44   navigate some corners at least you have a fighting chance whereas if you don't run conduit and just

01:38:48   someone literally drills holes it's good structurally and that you're not compromising

01:38:52   the structural integrity of your wall framing but you can't even get the rj45 back through that hole

01:38:58   because it's literally the thickness of the wire and it's also by the way embedded in your wall

01:39:01   that you don't want to open up so it really depends on uh you know how how much do you plan on ever

01:39:09   yanking out the wire and putting in new wire if you do it is a good idea to see if you can use

01:39:14   conduit at least for the major runs but don't compromise the structural integrity of your

01:39:19   house by putting a giant three inch conduit through a load-bearing wall because that's not

01:39:22   a good trade that's not a good trade-off right um and and yeah and i mean heck the first time i did

01:39:28   this i did it in a wall that was then later being spray foamed and then you just spray foamed right

01:39:33   over the bare wires and so those are those are in there forever yeah those are not coming out

01:39:37   and that's that's the beauty of conduit if you have spray foam insulation with the conduit

01:39:41   just spray over the conduit that's fine that's the whole point of it right exactly so anyway yeah so

01:39:44   that's all right um i would say you know the the easiest way to do this is to have as little wiring

01:39:53   running through the walls as possible and to have it instead all go like straight up to an attic or

01:39:58   straight down to a basement where then it can run in a more accessible place so like you have all

01:40:04   the runs that just are like you know straight you know which is similar to how usually you're

01:40:07   run ducting for air conditioning and stuff is that you know you you have like the main like most of

01:40:12   like the the main trunks and the the runs of it are mostly in accessible areas and then you like

01:40:18   shoot straight up a wall to get to a room but like you're not running side to side within the within

01:40:22   like the deep parts of the wall um otherwise kind of just accept the fact that okay whatever i'm

01:40:28   going to put in there now in x number of years it's probably going to be at least partially

01:40:35   obsolete uh and it'll and i'll just i'll have to live with it or we'll have to move by then

01:40:42   or whatever or terrible and shoot through by rats yeah right because that's the other problem with

01:40:48   things in the wall that's true um but that being said like the first the first out of this wiring

01:40:53   i did that got spray foamed in that was at this point almost 10 years ago and that was at the time

01:40:58   i said put in the best and at the time that was cat six and cat six today is still fine like it

01:41:04   can still do a lot i've never had a problem with those wires on those walls they just work 100% of

01:41:10   the time as good network wiring tends to mostly do uh and it's been great so the amount of time you

01:41:17   have is potentially long and so even despite all this like it's probably still worth doing so uh

01:41:24   and and the time you might have longer than you think before you actually are having problems with

01:41:29   that and and you know even though right now 10 gig ethernet stuff exists and i think those old cat

01:41:36   six wires uh i don't know exactly the tolerances that makes it so i can't do all these things but

01:41:42   like i'm pretty sure i can't do 10 gig i might be able to do like 2.5 or something like that

01:41:46   no i think you can do 10 gig over cat six just over shorter runs yeah but who knows like if they

01:41:51   accidentally like bent it too too close to a power line somewhere or something who knows but anyway

01:41:55   it does gigabit just fine and still like now 10 years later that's still fine and when i put it

01:42:03   in 10 years ago gigabit wasn't new like it was it was like well into its lifespan but gigabit

01:42:10   networking is still really fast and for what you like it's still the fastest internet connection

01:42:16   you can get in the house so the wire at least you know in the us in most places and even that like

01:42:21   you're lucky if you can get that and so you know i'm not being held back for internet connectivity

01:42:27   by that the only thing that's really holding back for me is like computer to computer file transfers

01:42:32   and that's not something i do so often that i need that to be super fast as long as my internet

01:42:39   connection is fast which it is over over cat six just fine then that's i don't have any problems

01:42:45   with that and so if i'm if i'm going to continue to use cat six for another 10 years it would

01:42:51   probably still be fine and i probably would still not really be feeling a lot of like i'm being held

01:42:58   back by the wiring on my walls that's that would at that point be almost 20 years old i would plan

01:43:03   for 10 gig though because i feel like 10 gig is going to come around and not just because i have

01:43:06   a computer with two 10 gig ethernet ports on it just because i feel like it's in in shouting

01:43:10   distance and it's kind of sad now as i was pointed out recently that uh the crappy usb connections

01:43:15   on our computers are now significantly faster than our ethernet connections uh you know whatever

01:43:20   whatever the current pick your pick your ethernet pick your usb standard you can do 10 gig 20 gig 40

01:43:26   gig right over and forget about thunderbolt this is just a thunderbolt i guess is the 40 gig one like

01:43:31   usb is surprisingly fast and we think of that as a thing we use to connect you know a mouse and

01:43:35   a keyboard right so 10 gig ethernet you know in the data centers there are much faster variants

01:43:39   of ethernet that are in common use all the time but those are obviously super expensive but i feel

01:43:43   like 10 gig we're in shouting distance right but that said uh you know the chat room just looked

01:43:48   up the distance apparently uh cat6 can do 10 gig up to like 50 meters or something 55 meters

01:43:52   most houses are not that big right so just look at the length of your runs uh i think it is worth

01:43:58   future proofing for 10 gig but to do that you might not have to do anything more than do cat6

01:44:04   in reasonable runs like marco said like i have them from a central point everyone just drops down

01:44:08   into in between two studs and comes out of port and you're done right so if you don't have a

01:44:13   gigantic house and each individual run is not longer than 55 meters not 55 meters total wiring

01:44:18   in your walls but like from the switch to wherever you're going then you're all set for 10 gig and i

01:44:23   think that is reasonable future proofing uh given marco's experience with the weird cat7 connectors

01:44:29   and the videos i saw the cat8 ones i think it is not worth messing with that just because of the

01:44:35   the weird grounding sheath that you have to do and the the size of the tiny connectors but

01:44:39   i wouldn't go below cat6 no i think there's a cat6a now or something that i don't think that

01:44:44   existed when i did my first set but um anyway yeah from what i've heard cat6a is is totally fine for

01:44:51   almost any modern use so that's probably what i would do if i was doing it again now now that

01:44:55   being said the second half of this question was about um networking gear and stuff like that

01:45:00   and i have been a fan and user of ubiquity for quite some time now um i would never recommend

01:45:09   it to like a typical home user but if you're listening to this podcast there's a greater than

01:45:15   average chance that you're a nerd and for those of you out there who like to have you know networking

01:45:19   nerdy stuff ubiquity is pretty cool but it is very nerdy that being said their latest generation of

01:45:27   stuff um the the dream machine uh router and and dream machine pro have had problems uh i i'm using

01:45:36   one now and the other day i had to reboot it to let new devices join the wi-fi network and part

01:45:45   of the reason why and this is not the first time this has happened and part of the reason why i've

01:45:49   loved ubiquity for so long is that the previous gear i had the old like edge router and then the

01:45:56   old security gateway that i had after that um the previous ubiquity gear i would set it up and it

01:46:02   would just run for years and i had never there was never a problem that i had that was solved by

01:46:10   rebooting my ubiquity router like i never had to do that for any reason except like occasionally

01:46:15   a firmer update or something or like it would lose power and that would reboot but like the uptime my

01:46:20   routers had was ridiculous and i i always knew that the ubiquity gear was so rock solid that

01:46:28   that was never the problem whatever problem i was seeing wasn't it wasn't the ubiquity gear's fault

01:46:32   and that was a great place to be i can't say that right now and that's very disappointing to me i

01:46:39   i'm and a lot of ubiquity people are are kind of you know having a bad time right now because

01:46:45   their recent gear they're moving very fast on the on the software front the software is like you

01:46:50   know move fast and break things kind of philosophy it seems like now which is not what you want out

01:46:54   of your router like that's not you want something a little more slow and non-breaking conservative

01:47:00   and you know and and that's what ubiquity used to offer and all and their newer stuff it seems

01:47:05   like they're not there yet with the stability and it might be getting worse and they're going

01:47:10   through a lot of changing and everything keeps like oh now this new control panel is this new

01:47:14   version it looks totally different and a third of the features are missing in the new version

01:47:18   but just wait or go back to the old version to access them like there seemed to be a lot of flux

01:47:22   going on with ubiquity right now that's not good and i hope they work this out and get back to

01:47:28   the level of reliability that they've had for years that they built their reputation on

01:47:32   the whole reason i buy this stuff is because it was in the past rock solid and low maintenance

01:47:39   and right now it's not so i really hope this is a temporary thing right now with what is offered

01:47:47   i can't recommend it i'm using it and i'm tolerating it and it works well much of the time

01:47:52   but it doesn't have the appeal that their old stuff had when it just was super reliable it

01:47:58   doesn't do that right now so hopefully they move past this and get better right now i don't know

01:48:04   what i would recommend thanks to our sponsors this week squarespace backblaze and flat file

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01:48:24   all next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:48:34   oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him

01:48:43   because it was accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm

01:48:54   and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o

01:49:06   a r m anti-marco armen s i r a c u s a syracusa it's accidental

01:49:18   they didn't mean to accidental tech so long

01:49:26   so my birthday was last week and my parents got me a new dongle for my car they got me the carlink

01:49:38   kit wireless carplay adapter so this is something that i think i'd obliquely mentioned many many

01:49:44   many many episodes ago as a an adapter that you plug into the usb port in your car that is designed

01:49:51   to accept a lightning cable and for carplay purposes well you plug this adapter in and then

01:49:56   your phone talks to the adapter the adapter talks to your car that means you can leave your phone in

01:50:01   your pocket and have carplay even if it's not physically connected to the car does it come with

01:50:07   a lowered uh what is this an r8 a lowered r8 with a giant wing holding a canoe on top of it what i'm

01:50:14   confused by the marketing of this website there are several different manufacturers that do the

01:50:18   same thing they're probably just you know different labels on the same guts but uh this particular

01:50:23   yeah i actually have one of these but for for like my dev kit i i bought one of these not this brand

01:50:30   but i bought like one of the other brand ones that said it might work and it didn't yeah well so if

01:50:34   based on this website i i would not have bought this particular one because it is it is rough some

01:50:40   of the product photography but here we are um and so i had the occasion to be in the car for about

01:50:45   five hours today and i used the carling kit adapter for uh four of the five hours that i was driving

01:50:52   and uh it worked actually quite well it i i feel like i can tell and maybe it's all in my head i

01:51:00   feel like i can tell that it's not hardwired carplay anymore uh in the sense that like there's

01:51:05   a little bit of lag a teeny bit um when i would play like audio after siri was talking i feel like

01:51:14   the the bit rate was like really low for a second or two and then it would it would figure itself

01:51:19   out and it would be you know regular quality but that being said it seemed to work just fine this

01:51:26   thing is about 130 and it's the perfect kind of gift right it's the sort of thing that you don't

01:51:32   necessarily want to spend 130 on but you don't mind if somebody else spends 130 on you and gets

01:51:36   you this thing that may or may not work well and and actually it's worked fine um what's nice about

01:51:43   this particular one i presume the others are the same is that it also has a usb power pass through

01:51:48   so it has usb c to usb what is it a or b i always get it wrong a thank you um if it's a printer it's

01:51:55   b okay there you go so it's usb c to usb a it's a little you know stubby cable and the usb-a goes

01:52:00   in your car usb-c goes in the little dongle and then it also has a usb-a receptacle on the other

01:52:06   side of it so you can plug in your lightning cable and charge your phone while you're using carplay

01:52:10   now i don't think it will use carplay it's not like a pass-through for wired carplay when that

01:52:16   happens i think what it's doing is it's just charging with the powers there the data is not

01:52:22   but it worked well and for the last hour i was in the car i took it off the charger just to see how

01:52:29   it did and my battery plummeted by 15 but also consider i was listening to overcast at the time

01:52:35   and more importantly hey don't blame me just hold on hold on hold on and more importantly as i was

01:52:41   starting to say i was also using the gps and oh yeah so that i think overcast gps ways they're

01:52:50   equal battery hog totally yeah you know so thankfully apple has this little thing where you

01:52:56   can see what's what your battery usage is and it has so happened that it was 11 to 12 this morning

01:53:02   that i was on battery and using carplay and so on and so forth and it was uh ways at 23 and overcast

01:53:10   at 21 so says apple i i concur with you i i think that seems a bit ridiculous i would expect ways

01:53:18   would be the overwhelming majority of it but nevertheless uh i don't actually have that much

01:53:23   else to say about it to be honest it is definitely a hack and it wouldn't surprise me if this hack is

01:53:27   somehow closed up in the future but for now it works and i'm pretty satisfied with it and it's

01:53:34   nice to be able to use carplay always so the way i treated carplay in the past was if i was going in

01:53:41   the car for like more than just a few minutes i would probably plug in or if like i'm in the

01:53:45   middle of a text conversation where i want to be able to easily dictate and so on and so forth

01:53:49   i would plug it in but otherwise i just would use bluetooth to the car like no carplay involved at

01:53:55   all i would just use bluetooth to the car in in in stream you know overcast or music or what have you

01:54:01   and now now every time i get in the car i have the full carplay experience just like bmw drivers have

01:54:06   had for years and i think outie is now starting to do wireless carplay there's a few other makes that

01:54:10   are doing it too um but yeah i it actually works and i'm really surprised and you know the super

01:54:16   discerning among you will definitely be able to see the difference but for me i'm willing to trade

01:54:20   a little bit of latency and lag for a lot of convenience and that works for me the website says

01:54:26   suitable for 98 car models not for 90 98 of car models it says suitable for 98 car models

01:54:35   so assuming that they're not talking about 98 cars things that are two percent non-car

01:54:40   i guess that would be every suv maybe i was probably higher than two percent

01:54:43   i would really want to know is my car one of the two percent that i can't use what is it

01:54:48   if it's like carplay adapter why would it care what the car is isn't it just tricking all the

01:54:53   cars into i don't know have you well no first of all the way it works it doesn't work with

01:54:57   everything second of all the website has other gems as well have you have you um scrolled down

01:55:02   a little bit to the row of documents that includes things such as their us trademark document

01:55:09   oh my gosh i i've scrolled onto a heading that says if the product worked normally no need update

01:55:13   i did see that uh yeah it's uh it's something but it worked for me that's all i care about

01:55:21   actually it's down to 110 right now i'm sorry these are a lot of these i seem to recall a

01:55:27   a long succession of kind of not particularly nice looking car related accessories that i've

01:55:36   purchased for things like ipods and iphones in the past especially back when cars were not as savvy

01:55:42   about collecting connecting to any kind of electronics and they all look similar to this

01:55:45   they're all like a you know nondescript plastic box with maybe a light on it and some wires that

01:55:50   you connect to it i mean they serve me well like i'm not putting down these type of products like

01:55:54   when you need a thing that does the thing and you just need it want it in your car you just stick it

01:56:00   in there and forget about it and either you know shove it up inside your glove box or inside a

01:56:04   little console or in the case of like adding aux audio input to like my original honda civics and

01:56:09   accords just like you know it's all entirely hidden underneath the plastic of the center

01:56:14   tunnel yeah so it's money well spent it improves the uh the functionality of your car and you never

01:56:20   need to think about it again and then when you get rid of that car the thing leaves with it and your

01:56:23   next car has this built in and so i think that's a uh that's the reason this market exists right

01:56:28   uh modify a car to get a new capability and don't worry about it this thing doesn't last too long

01:56:33   because you're probably gonna get rid of that car eventually anyway and your new car won't have this

01:56:36   problem and there you go