ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, you're about to get a bunch of snow? You know, we're due for like 30 inches.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Consider that this entire area shuts down over about six. As we record this Wednesday evening,

00:00:09 ◼   ► the snow isn't supposed to start until Friday. And on Facebook, I saw four or five different

00:00:14 ◼   ► people show images of the grocery store bread aisle, which is eviscerated. The bacon aisle,

00:00:21 ◼   ► because #thesouth, is gutted. It's just apparently a disaster out there. And there's not been a flake

00:00:28 ◼   ► on the ground as far as I'm aware.

00:00:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we're supposed to get like the tail end

00:00:32 ◼   ► of what's hitting you, so we're supposed to get

00:00:35 ◼   ► about a foot maybe, like about a day later.

00:00:37 ◼   ► - Which for you guys is like a dusting.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that's heavy snowfall,

00:00:41 ◼   ► but it's not unusual.

00:00:42 ◼   ► That happens at least once or twice every winter,

00:00:45 ◼   ► and it's fine.

00:00:46 ◼   ► However, I tried to buy rock salt today.

00:00:49 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:50 ◼   ► And there was one kind left.

00:00:53 ◼   ► It was like the most expensive kind, of course,

00:00:55 ◼   ► and it was like the heavy commercial pro blend

00:00:58 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:00:59 ◼   ► >> What is it, like sea salt?

00:01:00 ◼   ► Like, a special artisanal?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Well, if you don't use it all, you can sprinkle it all over your, you know, seared salmon

00:01:06 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:01:08 ◼   ► >> Yeah, the entire region up here is panicking for snow that we get every year, so I can't

00:01:15 ◼   ► even imagine what you guys are going through.

00:01:17 ◼   ► >> People underestimate the amount of food in their house.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Like the idea is that, you know, the roads will be impassable, which, you know, does

00:01:23 ◼   ► that really ever happen?

00:01:24 ◼   ► And maybe by case it will.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And then we will starve to death in our home because we will not have enough food.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Never mind that it would take a really long time for most people to starve to death without

00:01:32 ◼   ► any food.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And you don't have to worry about water because you can always melt snow.

00:01:35 ◼   ► We learned so many things we learned from the long dark.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And so like they run to the store and we got to buy all the food because what if we can't

00:01:42 ◼   ► get to the grocery store for like two days?

00:01:46 ◼   ► People don't realize how long can you live just off the food in your house?

00:01:49 ◼   ► Well, see, but that's you guys.

00:01:50 ◼   ► You guys are prepared for snow.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Whereas for us, I guarantee if we get...

00:01:54 ◼   ► could live off the food in your house for like six months.

00:01:58 ◼   ► No way. Yes. I mean, if you planned well, probably.

00:02:02 ◼   ► If I planned well. You don't realize how many calories are in

00:02:05 ◼   ► things. Like just a box of granola bars added up, like 100 calories per bar. Like how many

00:02:10 ◼   ► calories do you think you need per day? I'm not saying it would be pleasant. I'm just

00:02:13 ◼   ► saying people are not in imminent danger. Never mind that the house next to you has

00:02:17 ◼   ► people with food and the house next to them has people with food. We're in civilization

00:02:20 ◼   ► here people. You're not going to starve to death in your home. You'll be fine. But yeah,

00:02:24 ◼   ► does go to the stores. I mean a lot of it is just not so much that you're gonna

00:02:28 ◼   ► starve to death but let me just get in that one last grocery run before it is

00:02:33 ◼   ► annoying to drive to the grocery store not that the roads will be impassable

00:02:36 ◼   ► but it will be more annoying and you know there will be problems getting in

00:02:40 ◼   ► another driveway and maybe it'll take a while to shovel you know and so it's

00:02:43 ◼   ► like oh let me just do my grocery right now and everybody it's like a what do

00:02:46 ◼   ► you call it a barrier fence you're gonna help me out here Marco why it's a fence

00:02:52 ◼   ► is a kind of barrier, that is true.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Mutex thing where everyone stacks up on the--

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - Yeah, anyway.

00:02:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, memory barrier, yeah.

00:02:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just causes everyone to end up

00:03:00 ◼   ► going at the same time.

00:03:01 ◼   ► It looks like people are panicking, really,

00:03:03 ◼   ► it is just taking the normally more random distribution

00:03:06 ◼   ► of their supermarket trips

00:03:07 ◼   ► and putting them all on the same day.

00:03:09 ◼   ► So that makes me feel better about humanity

00:03:11 ◼   ► if I think about it that way.

00:03:12 ◼   ► - The reason I was preparing for this today

00:03:15 ◼   ► and not like three days from now

00:03:16 ◼   ► when this stuff is actually about to hit us

00:03:18 ◼   ► is because I feel like I'm about to get really sick

00:03:21 ◼   ► because everything's going around, my whole family's sick,

00:03:23 ◼   ► I'm starting to feel it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► So I'm thinking, I need to stock up on food

00:03:28 ◼   ► to get me through being sick.

00:03:29 ◼   ► At the same time, everyone else is thinking

00:03:32 ◼   ► to stock up on food to get them through the apocalypse.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - Just stay at home and eat saltine crackers,

00:03:36 ◼   ► you can live for weeks on that.

00:03:37 ◼   ► - But everybody's saltines are always stale.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Doesn't matter, they still are life-giving.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - But nobody ever needs saltines enough

00:03:47 ◼   ► for their saltines to be fresh.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Everybody needs saltines like twice a year.

00:03:50 ◼   ► So everyone's saltines at any given time are stale.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I used to be quite a saltine fiend, but I'm now convinced that when you buy them from

00:03:59 ◼   ► the store, I'm now convinced that they're stale like in the store.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Because a few times I bought like a brand new package of them, intending to use them

00:04:06 ◼   ► for soup like as you do, and open them up and I'm like, "These are already stale.

00:04:10 ◼   ► How is that even possible?"

00:04:11 ◼   ► I feel like just being one of those old people and returning to the supermarket and saying,

00:04:14 ◼   ► "I picked these saltines off your shelf and they're already stale."

00:04:18 ◼   ► I would love to just go shopping with you sometime.

00:04:21 ◼   ► - Amen.

00:04:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:23 ◼   ► It would be amazing.

00:04:24 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, there are so many better crackers.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Wheat Thins are way better.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - No.

00:04:29 ◼   ► - Saltines were the only cracker in my house

00:04:31 ◼   ► when I was a kid, so that's what I had,

00:04:33 ◼   ► but I could, you know, I don't eat them anymore,

00:04:35 ◼   ► but I did back in the day.

00:04:36 ◼   ► - Slim, salty pickings.

00:04:38 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:04:40 ◼   ► - Rob wrote in to tell us,

00:04:42 ◼   ► and I feel like I've seen some

00:04:45 ◼   ► conflicting information about this,

00:04:47 ◼   ► But the general theme seems to be true, that at the very least, the iMac trapezoidal boxes

00:04:54 ◼   ► are, in fact, shipped—oh, I'm sorry—are stored upside down and then right side up,

00:05:01 ◼   ► upside down, right side up.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And so Rob wrote in and said, "As a former Apple Store employee, I can tell you that

00:05:05 ◼   ► iMacs are stacked on the shelves in the right side up, upside down fashion.

00:05:10 ◼   ► They are not, however, shipped this way.

00:05:11 ◼   ► When the computers are shipped, each one is in a standard cardboard box, like every other

00:05:14 ◼   ► product for secrecy."

00:05:16 ◼   ► I gotta tell you, mine was shipped to me, which may be different than the stores.

00:05:20 ◼   ► It was a standard cardboard box in that it was unmarked on the outside, but it was the

00:05:24 ◼   ► same basic shape.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Anyway, Rob continues, "They don't care how many computers can fit in the truck.

00:05:29 ◼   ► However, they do care about how many computers can be stacked on the shelves in the back

00:05:32 ◼   ► where there's already not a lot of room."

00:05:34 ◼   ► Yeah, some people sent pictures as well, like a palette of IMAX showing them alternating.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Even the palette was weird, like the one photo we had.

00:05:41 ◼   ► It did show them saving space by alternating.

00:05:43 ◼   ► They weren't upside-down, right-side-up.

00:05:44 ◼   ► they were like laying flat, you know, pointing left and right. But then sometimes on some

00:05:48 ◼   ► layers of the palette there would be like these filler blocks, because I guess it didn't

00:05:54 ◼   ► work out to be completely flat. So there were these triangular filler regions. It was very

00:06:00 ◼   ► strange. Anyway. That's like where you put all the UK keyboards.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, like you said, throwing the Mighty Mice in there.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Well they come with the mice, so you don't need that. But it's like where you need

00:06:10 ◼   ► the things that not everyone needs.

00:06:12 ◼   ► So you put like the UK keyboard, maybe the trackpad.

00:06:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, you put, stop it with iPod socks.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Anyway, it seems clear that at the very least

00:06:20 ◼   ► in the back of the Apple stores

00:06:21 ◼   ► where there's not a lot of room

00:06:22 ◼   ► because they have tons of stuff back there,

00:06:23 ◼   ► I'm sure they definitely pack them in like that.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And I imagine a lot of them are shipped like that,

00:06:27 ◼   ► but apparently not all.

00:06:29 ◼   ► - Fair enough, all right, moving on.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Joe Mazzolotti, I hope I pronounced that right,

00:06:34 ◼   ► wrote in and he said, "Casey discussed how mocks and Swift

00:06:37 ◼   ► "can only be created if the language allows them.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I disagree that mocks can only be created by subclassing.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Actually, I think that is an anti-pattern.

00:06:44 ◼   ► He continued, mocks may be created by having the class

00:06:46 ◼   ► conform to a protocol, or if you're a C# guy like me,

00:06:49 ◼   ► an interface.

00:06:50 ◼   ► This can be done inside your own framework

00:06:52 ◼   ► and for Apple's as well.

00:06:53 ◼   ► For example, you can mock NSURL session

00:06:55 ◼   ► by adding a new protocol URL session.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Then via protocol extensions, you can have NSURL session

00:07:00 ◼   ► conform to your framework.

00:07:02 ◼   ► As long as you keep the method signatures the same,

00:07:04 ◼   ► Swift will compile without issue.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I wrote about this extensively on my blog,

00:07:07 ◼   ► and we will put a link in the show notes.

00:07:09 ◼   ► I believe, I don't think that's entirely accurate,

00:07:11 ◼   ► what I said.

00:07:12 ◼   ► What I had said was that it's really a lot easier

00:07:15 ◼   ► if you do interface or protocol,

00:07:17 ◼   ► or if you program to interfaces or protocols,

00:07:19 ◼   ► because then mocking becomes a lot easier.

00:07:21 ◼   ► And I said that to Joe privately in an email,

00:07:23 ◼   ► and he actually just wrote back and said,

00:07:25 ◼   ► in so many words, yeah, we're on the same page.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Actually, let me read from his email.

00:07:30 ◼   ► "Design to an interface is great

00:07:31 ◼   ► "until you end up with interfaces or protocols

00:07:33 ◼   ► "with a single implementation of your production code.

00:07:36 ◼   ► "The Swift solution I proposed almost forces this.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I'm not sure if this is tangential to the initial argument, but it's something I'm struggling

00:07:42 ◼   ► with, which is a very fair point.

00:07:43 ◼   ► There's a lot of times that I've written to interfaces specifically to enable really easy

00:07:47 ◼   ► mocking for my unit tests, but in my actual code, there's only one implementation of that

00:07:53 ◼   ► interface and that's the one I use.

00:07:54 ◼   ► So it's a little bit weird and dodgy, but you can check out his blog post and kind of

00:07:59 ◼   ► see for yourself.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I always forget about protocol extensions.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Like it's just clear that I'm not actually using Swift, but I'm just reading about it

00:08:05 ◼   ► on mailing lists.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Like, "Oh yeah, protocol extensions.

00:08:07 ◼   ► They're neat.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Even though there's whole sessions at WWDC about them, they're already like, if you're

00:08:11 ◼   ► not used to working that way or thinking in that way, it just didn't occur to me.

00:08:16 ◼   ► But yep, that's totally possible.

00:08:17 ◼   ► That's the way to do it.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And it wouldn't bother me if I had a thing with only one implementation.

00:08:22 ◼   ► It wouldn't bother me at all.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, in my extensive experience with both Swift and mocks and general testing,

00:08:33 ◼   ► I agree.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Thanks, Marco.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Go team.

00:08:36 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:37 ◼   ► All right, we have a lot of follow-up about blue light. A lot of people have written in

00:08:43 ◼   ► about this. I don't think I am the best of the three of us to summarize this, so I don't

00:08:48 ◼   ► know if one of you wants to handle this for us.

00:08:51 ◼   ► I'll take it, because it was what I said that was partially, if not entirely, wrong. So

00:08:57 ◼   ► basically, last week talking about the flux/night shift claims of blue light at night being

00:09:06 ◼   ► bad for your sleep quality. I had said that I was not able to find in my research before

00:09:11 ◼   ► the show, I was not able to find connections that said blue light specifically was bad.

00:09:17 ◼   ► What I was finding was saying that just like bright light was bad and that could negatively

00:09:22 ◼   ► affect sleep quality, but the blue light didn't seem to be anything special. Turns out that's

00:09:26 ◼   ► totally wrong, that there's actually quite a bit of evidence to suggest that all brightness

00:09:32 ◼   ► of light does negatively affect your sleep quality by basically tricking your body into

00:09:38 ◼   ► not producing melatonin, I believe.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I think that's right.

00:09:41 ◼   ► It's just part of the sleep cycle and everything.

00:09:43 ◼   ► It doesn't produce enough of it or it doesn't produce it correctly or it tricks the circadian

00:09:46 ◼   ► rhythms or some stuff that's way above our pay grade here.

00:09:50 ◼   ► But looking at any kind of bright light before bed will cause this problem, but there's

00:09:56 ◼   ► a point in the blue spectrum.

00:09:57 ◼   ► In fact, we got an email from Dr. Todd Stincic, who very specifically identified it, because

00:10:05 ◼   ► there are three different kinds of things. We think of the rods and cones and the eye.

00:10:08 ◼   ► There's also a third kind of light-sensitive cell thing back there that is specifically

00:10:15 ◼   ► not for vision, but it's to regulate this melatonin-type thing for the sleep cycle and

00:10:21 ◼   ► for the circadian rhythms and all this stuff. Please forgive me for butchering this. But

00:10:25 ◼   ► But anyway, this third kind of light receptor back in our eyes, it has a peak sensitivity

00:10:32 ◼   ► at 479 nanometers, which is, so it's basically the shade of blue, and that is like the peak

00:10:38 ◼   ► sensitivity so that if you get a lot of light on that, it activates these cells the most,

00:10:44 ◼   ► and that inhibits the melatonin and everything else into like telling your body, "Hey, it's

00:10:48 ◼   ► time for sleep."

00:10:50 ◼   ► But it isn't this like narrow window where if you just don't see that shade, you're fine.

00:10:55 ◼   ► shade is just the peak of sensitivity and as you get further away from that wavelength

00:10:59 ◼   ► in either direction, sensitivity drops but it still works. So if you reduce the blue

00:11:09 ◼   ► range of the spectrum, you can see more brightness without it being a problem. Whereas if you

00:11:16 ◼   ► see, so if you see like if brightness is fixed, seeing blue is worse than seeing other colors,

00:11:22 ◼   ► know, they're far away from that. But you still ideally should be lowering the entire

00:11:26 ◼   ► light level. That's basically the gist of it. So that overall, brightness is a problem,

00:11:32 ◼   ► but you're extra sensitive to the blue region at night.

00:11:35 ◼   ► It was another doctor, a professor of neurology, he was more kind to you. He said that you

00:11:41 ◼   ► basically got it exactly right, but the same thing, you know, that light can adjust to

00:11:44 ◼   ► circadian rhythms, but there's a particular sensitivity to the blue light. Lots of people

00:11:48 ◼   ► sent us the study showing the particular sensitivity to the blue light, but that all light counts

00:11:53 ◼   ► for that. This had one extra little nugget saying that another benefit of reducing the

00:11:57 ◼   ► amount of blue light at nighttime is it helps the rods in your eyes stay adapted to the

00:12:01 ◼   ► dark. That way when you look up from the screen you won't trip over something in your dark

00:12:05 ◼   ► house.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and he likened it to like why the military stuff is all like red light allegedly. Is

00:12:13 ◼   ► that true or is that a myth? I always thought that might have been a myth.

00:12:15 ◼   ► We have a professor of neurology says it's true, so.

00:12:19 ◼   ► - It's probably true, then.

00:12:20 ◼   ► - No, I can tell you I have been on a military vessel

00:12:23 ◼   ► when it was out at night, and I can absolutely tell you

00:12:25 ◼   ► for a fact that that is true.

00:12:28 ◼   ► - So was everyone just falling asleep all the time, or what?

00:12:30 ◼   ► - No, what I mean is that there's red everywhere.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - It is keeping your eyes, it's the same,

00:12:34 ◼   ► it's the pirate eye patch all over again, you know?

00:12:37 ◼   ► - The what?

00:12:38 ◼   ► - Pirate eye patch?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Come on, people.

00:12:40 ◼   ► - Is that like when you close one eye

00:12:41 ◼   ► when you get up to go to the bathroom at night

00:12:43 ◼   ► so then you can open it when you turn the light off

00:12:44 ◼   ► and see your way back?

00:12:45 ◼   ► Yes, that's why the pirates are the eyepatch, so when they go below decks where there's

00:12:48 ◼   ► no lights because they didn't have electricity on their pirate ships, they could flip up

00:12:52 ◼   ► the eyepatch and that eye is adjusted to the dark and they can see better.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I didn't know that.

00:12:56 ◼   ► That's crazy.

00:12:57 ◼   ► You thought they all had one eye?

00:12:58 ◼   ► Well, I didn't.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I had no idea.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I never thought about a pirate needing an eyepatch before.

00:13:02 ◼   ► The pirates are there to eat the saltines.

00:13:03 ◼   ► There's a lot of pirate lore you guys don't know about.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

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00:14:36 ◼   ► So we should probably do a little bit of follow-up about my iMac.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So where we last left our hero, he had a completely dead iMac that he could not resuscitate in

00:14:48 ◼   ► a Genius Bar appointment for, I think, the following day.

00:14:51 ◼   ► On that bombshell.

00:14:52 ◼   ► On that bombshell, right.

00:14:53 ◼   ► In talking with another friend of mine, he had pointed out to me, "You know, you could

00:14:58 ◼   ► just return this."

00:15:00 ◼   ► And I thought, "You know what?"

00:15:01 ◼   ► I think we talked about it on the show, actually.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And I thought, you know what?

00:15:04 ◼   ► I am going to return it, because this thing is going to be forever tainted in my mind

00:15:08 ◼   ► if I try to get it repaired and they have to crack it open.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So the following day I cancelled my Genius Bar appointment.

00:15:13 ◼   ► I went in and returned it.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And I had boxed it up all nicely in the retail box, the trapezoidal retail box.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I'd done what I could to get it all back together as cleanly as I possibly could.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I brought it into the store and the gentleman on the store floor, who I happened to walk

00:15:28 ◼   ► up to, said, "Okay, I can handle that return for you while you're returning it.

00:15:32 ◼   ► it's basically DOA. Oh, that sucks. Okay, no worries. All right, I just got to open it up and confirm the serial number to make sure,

00:15:39 ◼   ► you know, now I'm kind of filling in the lengths, but to make sure that you're not doing a bait-and-switch or anything like that.

00:15:43 ◼   ► So he says, "Oh, I'm gonna open it up. I'm gonna take it out. I'm gonna turn it on." Oh.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Because he wanted to go into, like, About My Mac and see the serial number and realized, "Hmm,

00:15:55 ◼   ► that's not going to work. Now is it?" He starts looking, and I start looking on the back of the Mac,

00:16:01 ◼   ► trying to find a printed serial number. And me, having never owned an iMac before,

00:16:05 ◼   ► I had assumed that's where it would be. It's not. He goes and takes this thing to

00:16:11 ◼   ► the back to where, like, I guess the off-duty geniuses are, or maybe some of

00:16:14 ◼   ► the on-duty geniuses, to try to get them to help him figure out where the crap

00:16:18 ◼   ► the serial number is. Do either of you guys know where the serial number on the

00:16:21 ◼   ► iMacs are? It's on a little metal plate on the dashboard. We know where to find the tire pressure,

00:16:28 ◼   ► and we know where to find the VIN number. The VIN number is in all sorts of weird places.

00:16:31 ◼   ► - There are.

00:16:31 ◼   ► - No, I would imagine my, I mean,

00:16:34 ◼   ► like where could it possibly be, right?

00:16:36 ◼   ► The only place it could possibly be

00:16:37 ◼   ► is what opens up on the iMac?

00:16:39 ◼   ► It's the memory door opens up, right?

00:16:42 ◼   ► That's the only thing that opens,

00:16:43 ◼   ► and other than that, I'm sure it's printed somewhere

00:16:44 ◼   ► like on the motherboard or whatever,

00:16:45 ◼   ► but you gotta take the whole thing apart to see that.

00:16:47 ◼   ► - And I wouldn't think it'd be on the memory door

00:16:49 ◼   ► because that's something that you can take off,

00:16:51 ◼   ► so that's no good.

00:16:52 ◼   ► I would guess it's printed somewhere on the metal,

00:16:55 ◼   ► but God knows where, I mean.

00:16:56 ◼   ► - Well, that's the thing.

00:16:57 ◼   ► So I didn't know any better, having never had an iMac.

00:17:00 ◼   ► It turns out it's on the bottom of the foot.

00:17:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:02 ◼   ► - Oh, sneaky.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Was it a sticker on the bottom of the foot,

00:17:05 ◼   ► or was it etched into the metal?

00:17:06 ◼   ► - I believe it was printed on the metal,

00:17:07 ◼   ► although I don't recall off the top of my head.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And what just occurred to me just this moment,

00:17:12 ◼   ► how does that work for Snell's iMac that had the Visa mount?

00:17:15 ◼   ► - Good question.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Maybe it's on the mount itself,

00:17:18 ◼   ► 'cause there is a little thing back there

00:17:20 ◼   ► that it would have to mount to.

00:17:21 ◼   ► - It's gotta be in more than one place.

00:17:23 ◼   ► - But either way, so that took a few minutes to get through,

00:17:26 ◼   ► which was not a big deal.

00:17:27 ◼   ► I mean, I was just as confused as the dude was,

00:17:29 ◼   ► And, you know, perhaps the guy should have known it, but I mean, I didn't, so I can't really blame him.

00:17:34 ◼   ► So anyway, so it ended up that they returned it, no questions asked, and, you know, once they had somehow, some way, confirmed the serial number.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And then I had already, at that point,

00:17:47 ◼   ► ordered a new one. And the other thing that I wanted to tell you guys about, which was a new discovery for me,

00:17:53 ◼   ► did you know about expedited shipping on the Apple Store?

00:17:57 ◼   ► - Is this when we were yelling at you last week?

00:18:01 ◼   ► - To pick the expensive shipping?

00:18:03 ◼   ► - Whenever, if I'm buying something that costs

00:18:05 ◼   ► like multiple thousands of dollars

00:18:07 ◼   ► and I can get it like next day for like an extra 40 bucks,

00:18:11 ◼   ► I will, even though it makes no sense,

00:18:12 ◼   ► I don't do that in normal stuff.

00:18:14 ◼   ► If it was 40 bucks to get like a shirt the next day,

00:18:17 ◼   ► I wouldn't do it.

00:18:18 ◼   ► But for some reason, the psychology

00:18:20 ◼   ► of like the relative pricing works out.

00:18:21 ◼   ► - Pricing psychology, that's how they charge you $150

00:18:24 ◼   ► for floor mats or your car and you're like whatever.

00:18:26 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It's like, if it's like 40 bucks

00:18:28 ◼   ► to get my awesome new computer a day earlier,

00:18:30 ◼   ► I'll usually do it, 'cause it's like,

00:18:31 ◼   ► that's like the cherry on top, you know?

00:18:33 ◼   ► - So I didn't know that this,

00:18:35 ◼   ► I knew that I could do faster shipping,

00:18:37 ◼   ► but I didn't look into how much it was.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Well now, I'm seriously impatient,

00:18:41 ◼   ► 'cause I've just returned the beautiful 5K iMac

00:18:43 ◼   ► that I was waiting for for a week

00:18:45 ◼   ► as I watched it march across the country on FedEx ground.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And this time, I was like, you know what,

00:18:50 ◼   ► I'm going to do expedited shipping, darn it,

00:18:52 ◼   ► expecting that this like 20 pound box

00:18:54 ◼   ► would be 50 or 100 bucks.

00:18:56 ◼   ► It was $42, to your point, Marco.

00:19:00 ◼   ► $42!

00:19:01 ◼   ► And the best part was,

00:19:03 ◼   ► it arrived at 8.30 in the morning at my doorstep.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Pro tip, if you're going to buy a Mac from Apple

00:19:09 ◼   ► and you're not going to get it retail,

00:19:10 ◼   ► like a bill to order, for example,

00:19:12 ◼   ► definitely, definitely, definitely

00:19:14 ◼   ► do the expedited shipping.

00:19:15 ◼   ► - Is that really a pro tip?

00:19:16 ◼   ► Because I think what Marco just outlined

00:19:18 ◼   ► is the illogical pricing psychology

00:19:22 ◼   ► that makes you think that's a good deal

00:19:24 ◼   ► And in reality, you could take those 42 bucks and spend it on lots of other things.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Like it's 42, it's the same size as if you paid $42 to ship a pen to your house, which

00:19:32 ◼   ► you would never do because the pen costs two bucks.

00:19:34 ◼   ► But when you're shipping the expensive computer, somehow that $42 for shipping is totally worth

00:19:38 ◼   ► it.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So I would say, get some books on Zen Buddhism from the library or something and learn some

00:19:42 ◼   ► patience and then pay for the cheap shipping because $42 is the same size no matter what

00:19:48 ◼   ► it's attached to.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Who in their right mind would pay $42 of shipping

00:19:52 ◼   ► to get a package of saltines delivered from Amazon?

00:19:54 ◼   ► Nobody would.

00:19:55 ◼   ► But, and I'm accurate, sure, $42.

00:19:57 ◼   ► And you waited four days for it anyway

00:19:59 ◼   ► because you had to spend the weekend.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Terrible.

00:20:01 ◼   ► - Nobody likes saltines enough to ever do that.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And also, if you ever want saltines,

00:20:06 ◼   ► you're probably within 50 feet of a store

00:20:08 ◼   ► that has some 12-month-old saltines on the shelf.

00:20:11 ◼   ► - I'm just saying, $42 does not change size

00:20:13 ◼   ► when you put it next to the price of an expensive computer.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - All I'm saying is, for me, and I think for Marco too,

00:20:18 ◼   ► Damn if it wasn't worth it, 'cause, oh my god,

00:20:21 ◼   ► I was so glad I did that.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - It's like a little touch of luxury, you know?

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:20:26 ◼   ► - It's like getting the extra leg room seat on the plane.

00:20:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, the 27 inches of luxury don't count,

00:20:31 ◼   ► but that $42 quick shipping.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - You need to spend a lot of time convincing yourself

00:20:35 ◼   ► to do nice things for yourself

00:20:36 ◼   ► by buying yourself fancy things.

00:20:37 ◼   ► It seems like a skill we all have, we're all really good at.

00:20:40 ◼   ► I can teach you the skill.

00:20:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:20:42 ◼   ► - You have seminars.

00:20:44 ◼   ► - Marco, as I've said to you in the past,

00:20:45 ◼   ► you are the best worst influence.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - My seminars would totally have extra legroom seats

00:20:49 ◼   ► at the front for an extra 20 bucks.

00:20:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:53 ◼   ► - So I am talking to you right now from a 5K Retina iMac.

00:20:59 ◼   ► This thing is magnificent.

00:21:01 ◼   ► To recap, I had bought the mid-range one

00:21:04 ◼   ► because it was the crummiest one

00:21:07 ◼   ► that could support the one terabyte SSD,

00:21:10 ◼   ► which is what I got.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I got it with eight gigs of RAM

00:21:13 ◼   ► and then immediately for this one

00:21:15 ◼   ► had put in 32 gigs of other world computing,

00:21:18 ◼   ► Mac sales, whatever they call themselves, RAM.

00:21:20 ◼   ► So it's a one terabyte drive, 32 gigs RAM,

00:21:24 ◼   ► the four gigahertz processor, and I am in love.

00:21:27 ◼   ► Couple of quick immediate thoughts

00:21:29 ◼   ► for those who may be like me and leaving a laptop behind,

00:21:32 ◼   ► or considering leaving a laptop behind.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Oh my God, 27 inches is magnificent.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And I have never looked at my 15 inch MacBook Pro

00:21:40 ◼   ► and thought, oh my God, the screen is so tiny until now.

00:21:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:43 ◼   ► It is insane.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And one of the things that I've noticed is I've gotten really, really into using spaces

00:21:51 ◼   ► on my MacBook Pro, and I don't use them nearly as heavily here because I have so much friggin'

00:21:58 ◼   ► real estate.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I can put a million windows on the screen, and by a million I mean like five, Jon.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But I can put a million windows on the same screen and have them tiled and not feel overwhelmed.

00:22:08 ◼   ► It's magnificent.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Welcome, Casey.

00:22:10 ◼   ► I know.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Welcome.

00:22:12 ◼   ► I've been trying to get you to walk through this door for so long.

00:22:15 ◼   ► You can only bring the horse to water, as they say.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Believe me, you don't need help with that.

00:22:20 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:22:22 ◼   ► So anyway, so the only complaints I have so far...

00:22:26 ◼   ► First of all, I have no good solution for this, really,

00:22:29 ◼   ► but having the ports on the back of a curved surface, I'm not really into that.

00:22:35 ◼   ► It's kind of wonky to plug in, like, a USB key or USB devices.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I mean, not a big deal, but it's a little wonkier than I'm used to on my laptop.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Yes, I know, first of all, problems.

00:22:46 ◼   ► However, the SD card slot does not trip my SD card's write-protect switch like both of

00:22:53 ◼   ► my MacBook Pros did every single time.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So that's a big win.

00:22:59 ◼   ► The new Magic Keyboard, or whatever they're calling this thing, very thin, I like it a

00:23:03 ◼   ► lot.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Charges via Lightning, I like that a lot.

00:23:06 ◼   ► That being said, this arrow key situation that I thought Jon was completely overblowing,

00:23:11 ◼   ► oh God, it's the worst.

00:23:14 ◼   ► It's the worst.

00:23:15 ◼   ► Having the full height left and right just totally throws off my arrow key game.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And I just, I know I'm going to get used to it over time, but right now it's driving me

00:23:25 ◼   ► up a wall.

00:23:26 ◼   ► You don't have to get used to it.

00:23:27 ◼   ► You can buy an Apple keyboard with an inverted T that you can feel with your fingers and

00:23:29 ◼   ► you never miss and every single key is full size.

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's great.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:34 ◼   ► You can also get the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard that I recommend so much for like

00:23:39 ◼   ► 60 bucks and solve this problem really quickly.

00:23:41 ◼   ► But I blew that on the shipping.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I couldn't even get that out of the straight face.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I tried so hard to sell that, I lost it.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So anyway, so I have just this very moment, I am tweeting a picture of my setup that I

00:23:55 ◼   ► had queued up because I didn't want to spoil the fun for those who listen live, and I am

00:23:59 ◼   ► really digging this.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I think I had mentioned last episode that I have cleaned up my office quite a bit. My

00:24:04 ◼   ► desk used to be a total disaster, and now it actually looks nice and clean. The floor

00:24:10 ◼   ► you can actually see now, which is really exciting. So I'm feeling good. I'm feeling

00:24:15 ◼   ► like this is a fresh start.

00:24:16 ◼   ► - I just, I'm so happy. I'm just so happy that you finally are on something real.

00:24:22 ◼   ► - What? Well, come on.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - No, I mean, like, look, I did the, you know, 15-inch laptop with the second monitor on

00:24:27 ◼   ► on a desk thing for years.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And it's fine, but if you can do this instead,

00:24:32 ◼   ► this is better.

00:24:33 ◼   ► And it's not a little bit better, it's a lot better.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:24:36 ◼   ► It's so far so good, I really like it.

00:24:38 ◼   ► And I haven't yet missed having a laptop.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Give me time, I might, but I mean,

00:24:42 ◼   ► we have enough other laptops that aren't quite as new,

00:24:45 ◼   ► but we have enough other laptops floating around

00:24:47 ◼   ► between my work laptop, which actually is fairly new,

00:24:49 ◼   ► my personal laptop, which I'm thinking about

00:24:52 ◼   ► putting a really tiny SSD in, even though it's from 2011.

00:24:55 ◼   ► - You know, you could probably get an SSD for 40 bucks.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I'm thinking like a 64 or 128 gig SSD would be more than enough for an occasional computer.

00:25:03 ◼   ► But yeah, so far I'm really enjoying it, so far I'm really, really, really happy.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And we'll see what happens.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And I know for some people this is like completely old and boring news, but there's a lot of

00:25:12 ◼   ► people, in fact most people that I know are full-time laptop users.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And so if you're one of those people like I was until just this past Monday, you know,

00:25:21 ◼   ► it doesn't have to be that way.

00:25:23 ◼   ► There are, I wouldn't say there are greener pastures, but there are—

00:25:27 ◼   ► - There are larger, less portable pastures.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - Yes, there are larger and less portable pastures around.

00:25:32 ◼   ► So yeah, that's my follow up about that.

00:25:35 ◼   ► - Well and also, I mean like, if anybody is thinking like,

00:25:37 ◼   ► oh, why are they talking about one person's computer choice,

00:25:41 ◼   ► you would be amazed how much email we get

00:25:44 ◼   ► and how many tweets we get from people asking

00:25:45 ◼   ► what computers we use or what they should buy,

00:25:48 ◼   ► or asking us to talk more about this kind of stuff.

00:25:50 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing that a lot of people

00:25:53 ◼   ► care about this, and I do too, I'm one of those people,

00:25:55 ◼   ► That's why I love talking about this stuff.

00:25:57 ◼   ► - Yep, completely agree.

00:25:58 ◼   ► We got one of those emails earlier today, in fact.

00:26:00 ◼   ► So that's the deal.

00:26:01 ◼   ► But so far, so good.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So far, two thumbs up on the iMac.

00:26:04 ◼   ► John, any thoughts?

00:26:06 ◼   ► - I think your keyboard's too high.

00:26:07 ◼   ► I'm concerned about you.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Besides, this is one of the things

00:26:10 ◼   ► when you're switching from laptop to,

00:26:12 ◼   ► I mean, it depends on what you do with your laptop.

00:26:14 ◼   ► If you literally put your laptop on your lap,

00:26:16 ◼   ► then you can pretty easily have your arms

00:26:20 ◼   ► at a right angle while you're typing.

00:26:22 ◼   ► But if you're sitting at a desk

00:26:24 ◼   ► the way most people sit at a desk, like with a chair and desk height, like a typical chair

00:26:27 ◼   ► and desk height, the keyboard is way too high.

00:26:30 ◼   ► So you either need to raise your chair, in which case the monitor is probably too low,

00:26:35 ◼   ► and then you need to raise your monitor, or you need to lower your keyboard by using a

00:26:39 ◼   ► keyboard tray or something like that.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So I'm concerned that if you're going to use the computer for a long time, you may be in

00:26:44 ◼   ► a different position than you were with your laptop.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Now if you're using your laptop on top of the same desk in the same position, then you

00:26:48 ◼   ► already have that problem.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I'm just saying I think your keyboard's too high.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I'm also concerned about you hanging your headphones on the boom arm for the mic.

00:26:57 ◼   ► It seems like putting undue stress on the arm.

00:26:59 ◼   ► And you are revealing yourself as a left-side dock user, which is...

00:27:02 ◼   ► Hey, I'm a left-side dock user.

00:27:04 ◼   ► No, please, no.

00:27:06 ◼   ► That looks like the Rode boom arm.

00:27:07 ◼   ► It is.

00:27:08 ◼   ► And the Rode Podcaster is way heavier than the combination of those headphones and that

00:27:12 ◼   ► microphone.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Now, what's wrong with all...

00:27:14 ◼   ► Are you a dock-on-the-bottom kind of guy, or are you a right-side dock kind of guy?

00:27:17 ◼   ► I wish the dock didn't exist kind of guy.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Well, right.

00:27:20 ◼   ► That's old school.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Given that's the case, where do you keep your dock, Jon?

00:27:24 ◼   ► Like, on laptops I keep it on the right, because the screen's too damn small and you can't do it.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And on desktops with big screens, I keep it on the bottom and I grumble about it.

00:27:31 ◼   ► But the left, the left is madness.

00:27:33 ◼   ► Okay, so the reason I have it on the left is a holdover for my laptop days,

00:27:37 ◼   ► but generally speaking I would have, in any of my working environments, be it work or home or what

00:27:42 ◼   ► have you, I always had the laptop directly in front of me, and then I would have an external

00:27:48 ◼   ► monitor to the right of the laptop, and thus the dock was on the leftmost edge of my two-screen

00:27:54 ◼   ► setup. I guess alternatively I could have done the exact same thing and had it on the far right side

00:27:58 ◼   ► of the external monitor, but I've just always liked it on the left. And it seems insane to me,

00:28:03 ◼   ► to your point, more so on laptops than desktops. But on these widescreen displays, why in God's

00:28:09 ◼   ► green earth would you keep the dock on the bottom? And I should also note that mine auto-hides,

00:28:13 ◼   ► which will probably drive you crazy as well. Yeah, I'm not a fan of auto-hide. Now, you keep it on

00:28:17 ◼   ► on the bottom because once the screen is humongous,

00:28:19 ◼   ► it's not like it's really eating into your screen.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, it is wider than it is tall,

00:28:22 ◼   ► but this thing is so freaking big.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Like, it's not like you're eating up the space.

00:28:26 ◼   ► So it's fine.

00:28:27 ◼   ► And the bottom is wider because if you have lots of stuff

00:28:30 ◼   ► in your dock, whether it's lots of docked items

00:28:32 ◼   ► or lots of applications, it's more room for them to line up

00:28:35 ◼   ► before they start shrinking, right?

00:28:36 ◼   ► So.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess so.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I'm a left dock kind of guy.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - I'm with you on that, Casey.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Solidarity in the left dock.

00:28:42 ◼   ► - I so wish we didn't have to run the dock.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Like this is the one, like one of the few handful

00:28:46 ◼   ► remaining persistent OS X things that annoy me.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Like because I run drag thing and I would only run drag thing if I could but notifications

00:28:54 ◼   ► still can only be received by the dock and notifications are important enough to see

00:28:58 ◼   ► a little badge and an icon or see a little bounce and drag thing can't get them and only

00:29:03 ◼   ► the dock can so I'm forced to run the dock and I could hide the dock but I don't like

00:29:08 ◼   ► the having to go down there when the little thing pops up and you can't if you hide the

00:29:11 ◼   ► dock you can't see badges like slack just badges it doesn't bounce and I don't like

00:29:14 ◼   ► bouncing. It's just an uncomfortable situation with the dock where I wish I didn't have

00:29:18 ◼   ► to run it, but I do, and it seems like that's never going to change. Anyway, the dock I

00:29:23 ◼   ► think is the right – as I've written many times – I think the dock is at this point

00:29:26 ◼   ► the right choice for most people, but for me specifically, I really wish there was some

00:29:30 ◼   ► way I didn't have to run it.

00:29:31 ◼   ► Oh, I should also note just to really drive you up a wall that I also use magnification

00:29:35 ◼   ► and I like it.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Nice.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Whatever, whatever.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I don't go that far, but I respect you for being that guy.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - That's me, I am that guy.

00:29:45 ◼   ► - A left side auto-hide magnifying dog.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It's like you're, I was gonna say,

00:29:49 ◼   ► it's like you're a new Mac user, but you are.

00:29:50 ◼   ► You actually are.

00:29:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:53 ◼   ► - Oh man, there's an infinite time scale joke here somewhere.

00:29:56 ◼   ► All right, what else is awesome these days, Marco?

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00:31:30 ◼   ► - All right, so there's been some news from iAd,

00:31:34 ◼   ► which is something I didn't think I'd ever really care

00:31:36 ◼   ► enough to say on this show.

00:31:38 ◼   ► But there's been some things going on, and there was an announcement this week.

00:31:42 ◼   ► So tell me about that, one of you.

00:31:44 ◼   ► It was confusing, because I originally had this in the notes.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I read their—again, I don't care about iAd.

00:31:48 ◼   ► It doesn't really affect my life at all.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I don't really have apps that use it.

00:31:51 ◼   ► I'm not a developer.

00:31:52 ◼   ► But like, oh yeah, iAd is still a thing.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And there's this little tiny announcement, and I guess everyone just read it quickly

00:31:59 ◼   ► and was confused.

00:32:00 ◼   ► It's like a paragraph long.

00:32:01 ◼   ► "iAd App Network will be discontinued," is the headline.

00:32:04 ◼   ► An iAd app network will be discontinued as of June 30th, 2016, blah blah blah blah blah.

00:32:08 ◼   ► And it's like a paragraph of text saying, "Oh, I guess they're, are they not doing iAd

00:32:11 ◼   ► anymore?

00:32:12 ◼   ► Well, whatever, they were never good at it, didn't seem like ads, didn't seem like Apple's

00:32:15 ◼   ► heart was in ads or whatever."

00:32:17 ◼   ► But I and many other people miss that second word in there.

00:32:21 ◼   ► iAd App Network.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Not iAd itself as a concept, but the iAd App Network, which is a way that you can advertise

00:32:29 ◼   ► apps in the App Store through iAds.

00:32:32 ◼   ► So they're not doing that anymore.

00:32:34 ◼   ► But iAd is still going to be a thing, and I guess we can continue to go back, you know,

00:32:38 ◼   ► we can go back to ignoring it like we always did.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I was actually kind of hoping, I was kind of disappointed when I learned that they're

00:32:44 ◼   ► only talking about the thing that lets you advertise apps that are in the App Store through

00:32:48 ◼   ► iAd.

00:32:49 ◼   ► I wish the whole thing would go away, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not like a value

00:32:54 ◼   ► ad.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Like to me as a user, I don't care that Apple has an advertising thing that they would let

00:33:01 ◼   ► people sell ads on.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Like you may say, "Oh, it enables people to have free apps in the App Store."

00:33:05 ◼   ► But I really don't think people need more ways to have free apps in the App Store.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I don't think that iAds are particularly better than other kinds of ads.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Maybe they are.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Maybe I don't buy enough apps with ads.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Maybe Apple's ads really are as fancy as they say and, you know, so much better than the

00:33:19 ◼   ► other.

00:33:20 ◼   ► But just, it just doesn't appeal to me.

00:33:21 ◼   ► It doesn't make me feel better about Apple as a company.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And I would be glad if they said, "You know what?

00:33:25 ◼   ► That iAd thing we were doing, forget it.

00:33:27 ◼   ► We're just not doing it all anymore.

00:33:28 ◼   ► We're going to phase it up."

00:33:29 ◼   ► Instead, they're just phasing out this small component of it.

00:33:31 ◼   ► So I'm actually kind of disappointed that my misreading of this announcement is not

00:33:36 ◼   ► what's actually going on.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, iAd is a weird beast, and obviously it has not gone the way Apple hoped it would.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I mean, keep in mind, when they first made this, they were showing off this fancy, like,

00:33:47 ◼   ► Nissan, was it the Nissan Leaf, one of the first ads for it, that was like all interactive,

00:33:51 ◼   ► and you tap it, and you spin the car around, all this crap.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And like, they were envisioning this very, very expensive and kind of like, you know,

00:34:00 ◼   ► clean ad format that almost immediately flopped.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think they got past,

00:34:06 ◼   ► I honestly don't think they got past

00:34:07 ◼   ► their launch partners on it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Like, I don't think they ever had any other ads

00:34:11 ◼   ► that were that fancy, like, super interactive kind

00:34:13 ◼   ► after the launch partners.

00:34:14 ◼   ► - It's like the pipe dream of advertisers

00:34:16 ◼   ► thinking that you're gonna be spending time, like,

00:34:19 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:34:19 ◼   ► - Like, using their, like, you will sit there

00:34:22 ◼   ► and willingly interact with an ad, like,

00:34:25 ◼   ► "Oh, I can spend any," like, that is a fantasy.

00:34:28 ◼   ► isn't this fun? I'm engaging all over your brand.

00:34:30 ◼   ► - Right, right, like, I mean, there are ways

00:34:32 ◼   ► to get people to do things, but it has to be like,

00:34:35 ◼   ► you have to have like a, you know, a funny viral video

00:34:38 ◼   ► or a game or whatever, but the idea that someone's

00:34:40 ◼   ► gonna be so interested in the Nissan Leaf,

00:34:42 ◼   ► that an ad that pops up in an iOS app,

00:34:45 ◼   ► an ad in an iOS app, you went to the app to do something,

00:34:47 ◼   ► and the Nissan Leaf pops up on your screen,

00:34:49 ◼   ► you'll be like, you know what, I was gonna do something,

00:34:50 ◼   ► but let me spend 10 minutes tapping around

00:34:52 ◼   ► inside this interactive ad.

00:34:54 ◼   ► That is a fantasy of an advertising person

00:34:57 ◼   ► just has convinced themselves that people are gonna,

00:35:01 ◼   ► I mean, unless you're giving them free money

00:35:03 ◼   ► or you're, you know, like there's a limited number of ways

00:35:07 ◼   ► to actually get the interaction

00:35:09 ◼   ► and all of them are pretty terrible.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And so trying to make a classy, nice one,

00:35:14 ◼   ► like if someone's really interested in the Nissan lift,

00:35:16 ◼   ► they're gonna like go to the Nissan website

00:35:18 ◼   ► or maybe they'll download the Nissan app or something,

00:35:20 ◼   ► but they're sure as hell not going to take a break

00:35:22 ◼   ► from going to play a game they were gonna play

00:35:25 ◼   ► or whatever application they were using

00:35:27 ◼   ► and derail themselves and interact with your ad.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So that just seemed doomed from the start.

00:35:33 ◼   ► - Well, and not only was it the advertiser pipe dream,

00:35:36 ◼   ► I think moreover it was Apple's pipe dream

00:35:38 ◼   ► that this is the kind of thing advertisers

00:35:40 ◼   ► would actually do and would want

00:35:42 ◼   ► in a way that would be compatible with what Apple wanted.

00:35:45 ◼   ► What Apple wanted, from what we all heard

00:35:48 ◼   ► from the stories at the time,

00:35:49 ◼   ► basically Apple wanted tons of control,

00:35:51 ◼   ► way huge buy-ins up front from big brand companies,

00:35:55 ◼   ► brand advertising like Coke and Nissan,

00:35:58 ◼   ► not like small stuff that would advertise on podcasts,

00:36:01 ◼   ► big stuff that would advertise on TV, that kind of stuff.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Imagine working with Apple as an advertiser,

00:36:09 ◼   ► that's just not compatible.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Apple wants a certain degree of control and everything.

00:36:14 ◼   ► The fact is, ads, in order for ads to work,

00:36:19 ◼   ► they have to do things that conflict

00:36:22 ◼   ► with what Apple does most of the time.

00:36:25 ◼   ► So it only takes, if an advertiser's looking at a bunch of

00:36:28 ◼   ► possible platforms they can advertise on,

00:36:30 ◼   ► and they're like, "Well, we can work with Apple

00:36:33 ◼   ► "and spend a ton of money for an ad that gets

00:36:35 ◼   ► "x click-through rate, or we can make our own

00:36:38 ◼   ► "and put it on these many other mobile ad networks

00:36:41 ◼   ► "that is maybe a little bit more annoying,

00:36:44 ◼   ► "or a little bit more flashy,

00:36:45 ◼   ► "or a little bit less user-polite."

00:36:48 ◼   ► But that'll get twice the click-through rate

00:36:50 ◼   ► and twice the conversion rate,

00:36:51 ◼   ► because it turns out being annoying works.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And not just a little bit, but a lot.

00:36:56 ◼   ► The race to the bottom advertising,

00:36:58 ◼   ► like, there's a reason the one weird trick things

00:37:01 ◼   ► are everywhere.

00:37:02 ◼   ► You just go right to the bottom.

00:37:03 ◼   ► What are the base brain stem reaction things?

00:37:07 ◼   ► Just you put up a picture of a pretty lady,

00:37:09 ◼   ► you put up a gross thing, you put out a tease

00:37:11 ◼   ► about celebrities.

00:37:12 ◼   ► You put those stupid boxes that are

00:37:14 ◼   ► at the bottom of every website.

00:37:15 ◼   ► I'm so depressed when I see them now.

00:37:16 ◼   ► I punch the monkey better than this.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Like, when you go to the bottom of every website,

00:37:20 ◼   ► all of a sudden there's these nine squares attempting

00:37:23 ◼   ► to tap into the nine most primal instincts of human beings

00:37:28 ◼   ► to get you to click on something.

00:37:30 ◼   ► And like I scroll down, like I'll be reading a website

00:37:32 ◼   ► that I think is a good website,

00:37:33 ◼   ► and be like, oh, not you too, really, everybody?

00:37:36 ◼   ► Like it's just, you know, it's just terrible.

00:37:38 ◼   ► And those, and they do that for a reason,

00:37:41 ◼   ► because they're effective, right?

00:37:43 ◼   ► And so that's totally, like you said, Marco,

00:37:44 ◼   ► that's totally against what Apple wants.

00:37:45 ◼   ► Apple wishes people were different than they are,

00:37:47 ◼   ► but they are not.

00:37:48 ◼   ► What people actually click on are one weird trick ads.

00:37:50 ◼   ► And Apple does not want one weird trick,

00:37:52 ◼   ► or didn't originally, so this utopian vision of iAd,

00:37:55 ◼   ► I still think iAd is better, probably about keeping out

00:37:58 ◼   ► the worst of the worst scammy ads,

00:38:00 ◼   ► but it's across purposes.

00:38:04 ◼   ► The advertisers want effectiveness,

00:38:06 ◼   ► and Apple wants to not annoy people,

00:38:09 ◼   ► and those don't really go together.

00:38:11 ◼   ► - Right, and Apple also has strict privacy controls,

00:38:15 ◼   ► and advertisers, for advertisers,

00:38:17 ◼   ► invading your privacy is very profitable.

00:38:19 ◼   ► It helps them better target their ads,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and they even tell themselves it's better for you,

00:38:23 ◼   ► whether you agree is up to you.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But the whole idea of don't annoy our customers

00:38:30 ◼   ► and respect their privacy and we're only gonna give you

00:38:32 ◼   ► access to this little sandbox of information

00:38:35 ◼   ► and you're only allowed to do these things,

00:38:36 ◼   ► that goes against what every advertiser wants

00:38:38 ◼   ► and what many other ad networks would demand.

00:38:41 ◼   ► So the only ways to make this work would really be

00:38:45 ◼   ► if they banned any other kind of ad network

00:38:49 ◼   ► from running on iOS, which they could do.

00:38:51 ◼   ► - I'm surprised they didn't do that.

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Honestly, I am too, but they could do that, no question.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And maybe they will in the future, I doubt it,

00:39:01 ◼   ► but they could.

00:39:02 ◼   ► It would be a little hard to enforce,

00:39:04 ◼   ► 'cause you start getting into questions of like,

00:39:06 ◼   ► maybe like, what is an ad?

00:39:07 ◼   ► But App Review has never shied away from vagaries

00:39:09 ◼   ► and difficult distinctions.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - All that would mean is all the advertisements

00:39:13 ◼   ► would be coming as push notifications,

00:39:15 ◼   ► instead of only 15% of them.

00:39:17 ◼   ► So iAd, you know, it started out this way with this like fancy Nissan LEAF stuff. It

00:39:21 ◼   ► very, very quickly did not fill up with those things and instead started filling up with

00:39:25 ◼   ► crappier ads. Your earlier point is, I think, fair of like why they even run this at all.

00:39:32 ◼   ► And it does, I've also heard from developers complaints that the fill rate was never very

00:39:36 ◼   ► good on iAd. And so the fill rate for people who aren't in this business is literally

00:39:41 ◼   ► just like, you know, if you have an app and you have an iAd banner in the app, what percentage

00:39:46 ◼   ► of the time does the IAD actually have an ad to serve in there? And if they don't have

00:39:52 ◼   ► an ad to serve in there, it's just like blank. So what percentage of the time do they actually

00:39:56 ◼   ► have something in? You as the app publisher want that to be 100%, or at least as close

00:39:59 ◼   ► as you can get to 100%. The IAD people basically have never had that kind of fill rate as far

00:40:05 ◼   ► as what I've understood. And so what usually happens if you're implementing an IAD, usually

00:40:10 ◼   ► you have like a fallback network where you can supply to the IAD thing, you can say if

00:40:15 ◼   ► don't have an ad, show this." And then there you put in another ad network that

00:40:21 ◼   ► will presumably have something to show there for you.

00:40:24 ◼   ► So on one hand, I can see, you can say like, if you can think about why Apple might want

00:40:29 ◼   ► to keep iAd, to me the biggest argument is they think it's like the lesser of the two

00:40:34 ◼   ► evils. We're like, "Well, if you're going to have ad-supported apps, which seem to be

00:40:39 ◼   ► a common enough thing now, that's a given now. There are going to be ad-supported apps."

00:40:45 ◼   ► So if there's gonna be ad-supported apps,

00:40:46 ◼   ► might as well be our nice, respectful of your privacy

00:40:50 ◼   ► ad network rather than someone else's.

00:40:53 ◼   ► That is the best argument for iAds still existing.

00:40:56 ◼   ► But in practice, because everyone's using

00:40:58 ◼   ► these back-filled networks in addition to iAd,

00:41:01 ◼   ► we're not even achieving that goal.

00:41:03 ◼   ► We're not getting the nice privacy and everything else.

00:41:06 ◼   ► We're not getting that because if you're running

00:41:08 ◼   ► ad-supported apps, you're running arbitrary code

00:41:11 ◼   ► from God knows who from these other ad networks

00:41:13 ◼   ► that's doing God knows what on your phone.

00:41:16 ◼   ► And at least iOS has things nicely sandboxed

00:41:18 ◼   ► and everything to make it a little bit harder to be creepy,

00:41:20 ◼   ► but there is still creepiness to be had.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And so I think the theoretical goal of iAd being like,

00:41:27 ◼   ► well, better us than them, I don't think works in practice,

00:41:31 ◼   ► so I think I'm with you, Jon.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Like, I don't really see why they keep running it.

00:41:36 ◼   ► - Also seems like a previous generation ad network,

00:41:39 ◼   ► because these days, the thing to do is not,

00:41:42 ◼   ► I mean, we all know about native advertising, but like the in-between where it's not completely

00:41:46 ◼   ► native advertising, but it's like in the flow of what you're normally doing.

00:41:50 ◼   ► It's not a banner on the top or bottom of the page while the rest of your app can use

00:41:53 ◼   ► its business.

00:41:55 ◼   ► If your app has any kind of timeline, for example, the ads would be put in the timeline,

00:41:59 ◼   ► like Instagram ads.

00:42:00 ◼   ► They just appear to be another picture, but oh, wow, my friend suddenly became better

00:42:03 ◼   ► photographers.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Oh, it's an ad.

00:42:06 ◼   ► It's not a banner that appears coming down from the top of the Instagram app while you're

00:42:10 ◼   ► using it.

00:42:11 ◼   ► That's the old model.

00:42:12 ◼   ► integrated so not everyone has an app that's like that obviously they can't work for games

00:42:15 ◼   ► and stuff like that although actually it can because you put billboards inside the games

00:42:19 ◼   ► and do all this stuff like that but Flappy Bird made all of its money via ads.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Yeah that one did have just a little banner but like advertising that's better integrated

00:42:27 ◼   ► into the application is certainly the trend and iAd doesn't give you any help there.

00:42:32 ◼   ► I agree that it's mostly it seems like it's mostly there just because like hey we want

00:42:35 ◼   ► to make it easy as possible for developers to write apps for iOS and since some developers

00:42:39 ◼   ► want to be free with ads, we provide a way to make ads.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And if you don't like it, do your own way, but when you're just starting out as a developer

00:42:47 ◼   ► in the same way that you may not have credit card processing set up and be able to deal

00:42:51 ◼   ► with customers and be able to do all this other things, hey, the App Store will do that

00:42:55 ◼   ► for you and you want to put ads, don't worry about negotiating a deal with an ad networker

00:42:58 ◼   ► file, we'll do all that for you.

00:43:00 ◼   ► It seems like a sort of starter kit training wheels type thing that also happens to give

00:43:04 ◼   ► Apple a little bit of control, but the fact that it's not super popular means that I don't

00:43:09 ◼   ► see it evolving into a more sophisticated framework for, you know, like, so you have

00:43:13 ◼   ► a timeline app, here's a new WWDC session, how you use the iAd network to have native

00:43:19 ◼   ► advertising filling in your application instead of just having banners above and below and

00:43:24 ◼   ► stuff and I don't know, it just seems like one of those products that Apple doesn't really

00:43:29 ◼   ► seem to care about that's not important to the company that's probably not going to get

00:43:32 ◼   ► a lot of attention.

00:43:33 ◼   ► The only announcement out of it is a paragraph little thing saying you can't advertise your

00:43:36 ◼   ► you're absent in it anymore, it just doesn't seem like a winner.

00:43:41 ◼   ► If they're going to keep doing iAd, they should go all the way. They should ban other ad networks

00:43:47 ◼   ► and make iAd so good that that actually works. But now they have this weird, half-butted

00:43:53 ◼   ► way of doing it with, it's just kind of like, "Well, we have this thing, it mostly sucks,

00:43:58 ◼   ► you can also do these other things, and everyone who ever tries both will end up doing this

00:44:03 ◼   ► other thing because it's going to be way better than us."

00:44:05 ◼   ► I think that they can't go back and close the door on third-party ads now because I

00:44:10 ◼   ► think they would put them at an even bigger competitive disadvantage against Android.

00:44:15 ◼   ► You're probably right.

00:44:16 ◼   ► You know, like, it's maybe when Android was really weak and they were the big game in

00:44:20 ◼   ► town they could have set a precedent like they did with so many of their strong-arm

00:44:23 ◼   ► app store things, right?

00:44:25 ◼   ► But at this point, like, it's too late, the horse is out, can't close the barn door, whatever,

00:44:31 ◼   ► you know.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Half-butted is right.

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00:46:15 ◼   ► - iTunes Radio.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Apparently that's going away-ish.

00:46:20 ◼   ► The free stuff is going away.

00:46:21 ◼   ► As a listener of Ad-supported Radio and Apple Music,

00:46:23 ◼   ► we want you to know that it is being discontinued

00:46:25 ◼   ► starting January 28th, which is probably about a week

00:46:29 ◼   ► after this episode is released.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Additionally, with an Apple Music membership,

00:46:33 ◼   ► you can access dozens of radio stations

00:46:35 ◼   ► handcrafted by our team of music experts,

00:46:37 ◼   ► commercial free with unlimited skips.

00:46:40 ◼   ► So they're kind of pulling in the reins on iTunes Radio too.

00:46:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, you still have Beats One.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Beats One is still free,

00:46:48 ◼   ► but I guess the other ad supported,

00:46:50 ◼   ► I mean, maybe people aren't listening to them,

00:46:52 ◼   ► maybe it's just a reacting to the market or whatever,

00:46:54 ◼   ► but it's an excuse to, you know,

00:46:56 ◼   ► another opportunity to say, you know,

00:46:57 ◼   ► if you pay for Apple Music you get lots of cool stuff,

00:47:00 ◼   ► but you're not getting these ad-supported

00:47:01 ◼   ► radio stations anymore, you just get Beats One.

00:47:04 ◼   ► - Beats One is free even if you're not

00:47:05 ◼   ► an Apple Music subscriber?

00:47:06 ◼   ► - I totally forgot that iTunes Radio was a thing.

00:47:11 ◼   ► This news made no sense to me until just now,

00:47:14 ◼   ► when I finally remembered, oh yeah.

00:47:16 ◼   ► - It's like, I had an end user also,

00:47:18 ◼   ► like services that you forgot existed,

00:47:21 ◼   ► that are now being changed or canceled,

00:47:23 ◼   ► and you're like, well, all right, I guess.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I mean a lot of people were upset about this part of it.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I saw a lot of people talking about it,

00:47:30 ◼   ► but I thought there was some kind of Apple Music

00:47:33 ◼   ► like indefinite trial mode,

00:47:36 ◼   ► but I guess that was just iTunes Radio,

00:47:38 ◼   ► which they, we stayed long as like,

00:47:39 ◼   ► what, a year or two earlier,

00:47:41 ◼   ► and that was basically their Pandora clone.

00:47:43 ◼   ► So that one had like a free ad mode and a paid mode.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Right, was there a paid mode?

00:47:49 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:47:50 ◼   ► It was such a weird kind of half-baked service

00:47:53 ◼   ► for all that time.

00:47:54 ◼   ► But Beats 1, so Apple Music has always been paid only,

00:47:57 ◼   ► but was Beats 1 allowed to be available for free?

00:48:00 ◼   ► - The chat room says Beats 1 has always been free.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - Well, I did not realize.

00:48:04 ◼   ► - Never knew that.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, me neither.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Well, we should use homework once everyone now and again.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - All right, your homework is to listen to Beats 1

00:48:12 ◼   ► for a week, good luck.

00:48:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, none of us were into that part of Apple Music.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - So speaking about things that we know nothing about,

00:48:19 ◼   ► let's talk about the new Apple Music apps.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little bit about them.

00:48:22 ◼   ► I downloaded it, I tried to do things with it.

00:48:26 ◼   ► So they announced a new version of GarageBand for iOS,

00:48:28 ◼   ► which is great, you know, it looks cool,

00:48:30 ◼   ► it looks interesting for people who use GarageBand on iOS.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And they have a new app called,

00:48:36 ◼   ► what the heck is it called, Music Memos?

00:48:38 ◼   ► - I believe that's right.

00:48:39 ◼   ► - And this app probably makes a lot of sense

00:48:42 ◼   ► if you are the type of person who had previously

00:48:46 ◼   ► been using the bundled voice memos app

00:48:48 ◼   ► to record little snippets when you get ideas for songs.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Like if you're a musician and you're on the go

00:48:53 ◼   ► and you're like, "Oh, a little tune is stuck in my head."

00:48:54 ◼   ► And you want to like make a note of it for later,

00:48:56 ◼   ► rather than calling yourself

00:48:57 ◼   ► and leaving it on your voicemail,

00:48:58 ◼   ► which is also a thing that I've heard musicians do.

00:49:01 ◼   ► You can use the voicemails app

00:49:02 ◼   ► to just hum a little tune into it or whatever.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Music Memos is an app that says, as far as I can tell,

00:49:08 ◼   ► stop doing that, use this app instead,

00:49:10 ◼   ► because that's what it's made for.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And you do something into it

00:49:14 ◼   ► with either your voice, guitar, piano,

00:49:16 ◼   ► and then it will like put auto accompaniments with it,

00:49:20 ◼   ► with their little AI tempo matching thing

00:49:24 ◼   ► with different kind of music lines.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And then you can export it into GarageBand and go on with it.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Now, I really have no idea how I would ever use this app.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I probably wouldn't at all,

00:49:31 ◼   ► but Serenity Caldwell wrote about it on iMore.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So you should read this article.

00:49:36 ◼   ► The headline is very straight and to the point.

00:49:37 ◼   ► "I wrote and published a song in 30 minutes

00:49:39 ◼   ► with Apple's music memos."

00:49:41 ◼   ► So this is clearly an app with a definite audience

00:49:43 ◼   ► that is not me, but it seems neat.

00:49:46 ◼   ► In the same way, GarageBand seems neat.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And it got me thinking about iOS,

00:49:51 ◼   ► I mean, this starts to get into our area

00:49:53 ◼   ► and Marco's area specifically.

00:49:54 ◼   ► iOS devices as platforms are doing audio stuff.

00:49:59 ◼   ► They seem so perfect because they're small, battery powered.

00:50:04 ◼   ► They have more than enough CPU power

00:50:06 ◼   ► to do most of the things you'd want to do with audio

00:50:08 ◼   ► because audio is wimpier.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Like, I mean, these days you can do

00:50:11 ◼   ► amazing video things with them,

00:50:12 ◼   ► but audio is wimpy enough that the CPUs

00:50:15 ◼   ► in the modern iOS devices absolutely crush it.

00:50:18 ◼   ► They're like, "Yeah, we can do all sorts of amazing things.

00:50:20 ◼   ► "It's just a question of screen size

00:50:22 ◼   ► "and inputs and outputs."

00:50:24 ◼   ► So every time I see Apple trying to make iOS devices

00:50:29 ◼   ► more viable hardware accompaniments to audio things,

00:50:33 ◼   ► whether it be music or podcasting or whatever,

00:50:36 ◼   ► I think that's a great move

00:50:37 ◼   ► because it just seems like such a natural fit.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And Marco can probably speak to this better than anyone,

00:50:42 ◼   ► but the frustrations with knowing that the power is in there

00:50:46 ◼   ► that you could do really awesome audio things with iOS,

00:50:49 ◼   ► except for, and I would imagine it's usually input output,

00:50:52 ◼   ► but maybe, you know, and software,

00:50:54 ◼   ► and the market for that software or whatever, so.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically, I mean, this is,

00:50:59 ◼   ► I had the same opinion as you of this app of like,

00:51:02 ◼   ► I'm really happy to see Apple's doing stuff like this.

00:51:04 ◼   ► It looks like a great app that I will never use

00:51:06 ◼   ► because I don't have that kind of creative talent,

00:51:08 ◼   ► and I wish I did, but I don't.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, in general, like, you know,

00:51:11 ◼   ► I think it was on Connected,

00:51:15 ◼   ► where our friend Mike Hurley mentioned that iOS is the happening place to be in software

00:51:22 ◼   ► right now. All the exciting software is happening on iOS. All the innovation, for the most part,

00:51:28 ◼   ► is happening on iOS. If you want an app to do something cool on iOS, you probably have

00:51:35 ◼   ► at least five or ten different choices for what that app might be, whereas if you're

00:51:39 ◼   ► looking for a similar kind of Mac app, you might have one or two. iOS is just like, for

00:51:45 ◼   ► where the action is right now. And it is unfortunate that there is so much about iOS that limits

00:51:51 ◼   ► or makes it difficult to do certain kinds of work or certain kinds of multitasking or

00:51:57 ◼   ► activities. And over time they keep trying to lift those with varying degrees of success.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But iOS is where this kind of stuff happens

00:52:07 ◼   ► these days.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I was thinking about what is the new Rogue Amoeba app?

00:52:11 ◼   ► Loopback.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Loopback, yeah.

00:52:13 ◼   ► So imagine, I mean, again, it's not a hardware issue.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Imagine if you could have an iPad

00:52:18 ◼   ► that had the power of audio hijack and loopback,

00:52:22 ◼   ► like we're always thinking of,

00:52:24 ◼   ► going to get into something

00:52:25 ◼   ► that we know something about, podcasting.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Can we have like a little portable podcasting studio

00:52:29 ◼   ► where you can record multiple people,

00:52:31 ◼   ► some of them local, some of them remote, right?

00:52:36 ◼   ► do like the equivalent of Skype calls or FaceTime

00:52:39 ◼   ► or whatever and record them in their locations

00:52:41 ◼   ► and record locally with people

00:52:43 ◼   ► and then do all the editing for it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Like, can you produce a podcast with just an iOS device?

00:52:47 ◼   ► And hardware wise, you totally can.

00:52:48 ◼   ► There's plenty of storage space for a podcast.

00:52:51 ◼   ► The screens are big enough to do editing.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Jason Snell recently edited one of the incomparable episodes

00:52:57 ◼   ► on audio editor on the podcast.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Like this is all possible.

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's just a question of IO,

00:53:03 ◼   ► getting the software out there that can do this.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And then having some hopefully nice OS supported facility

00:53:11 ◼   ► for doing all the sort of system level things

00:53:13 ◼   ► that we just described that the Rogomib apps do on the Mac.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Where you do have access like a loopback

00:53:18 ◼   ► lets you make artificial virtual audio devices essentially.

00:53:21 ◼   ► So you say, I want the audio from these three microphones

00:53:23 ◼   ► to be presented to Skype as a single input

00:53:26 ◼   ► because Skype is dumb and just wants a single input.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Really have three people talking here.

00:53:29 ◼   ► And AudioHijack lets you set up audio pipelines

00:53:33 ◼   ► from this app to that app to this app.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Like say you wanna have like a soundboard app

00:53:36 ◼   ► where you can insert sounds into the podcast in real time

00:53:39 ◼   ► and have the other people who are on the call hear it.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Like these are all things we all do today on a Mac,

00:53:43 ◼   ► which they're, you know, it's why Macs are powerful

00:53:45 ◼   ► and we love them, but hardware-wise,

00:53:46 ◼   ► there's no reason an iPad can't do all of that.

00:53:49 ◼   ► It's just software barriers.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And then I guess hardware barriers for connectivity,

00:53:54 ◼   ► like how the hell are you gonna hook up all these mics

00:53:55 ◼   ► to your thing?

00:53:56 ◼   ► Do they all have lightning connectors hanging out at the end?

00:53:57 ◼   ► Is there some kind of hub or whatever?

00:53:59 ◼   ► So we seem so close to, I mean,

00:54:01 ◼   ► I know there's tons of things like, you know, for music,

00:54:04 ◼   ► I think it's much better.

00:54:05 ◼   ► musical instrument apps for sequencing things and for performing music on them

00:54:11 ◼   ► and for composing songs and GarageBand on it. Like the music industry seems

00:54:15 ◼   ► better served by it than like the podcasting industry but it frustrates me

00:54:20 ◼   ► because I still see reasons why video you might need a beefier rig to do like

00:54:24 ◼   ► video, the storage requirements are much bigger, the I/O requirements are

00:54:28 ◼   ► bigger, you probably want more space to do stuff so we're still not quite there

00:54:31 ◼   ► But audio, we just seem like eternally on the cusp.

00:54:34 ◼   ► So I'm really happy that Apple also sees this.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Because if someone had said,

00:54:38 ◼   ► "Hey, what do you think the first new app for iOS

00:54:41 ◼   ► that Apple is gonna announce in 2016?"

00:54:43 ◼   ► I doubt many people would have thought of something

00:54:44 ◼   ► like Music Memos, but I'm glad that Apple did,

00:54:46 ◼   ► because it shows that they understand

00:54:48 ◼   ► like the strengths of the platform they have.

00:54:50 ◼   ► And we just, this has got to keep going.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And it's gotta get down to the OS level

00:54:54 ◼   ► and the multitasking level and the access to audio

00:54:57 ◼   ► on the device, and then eventually the IO.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And I think we will, maybe five years from now,

00:55:01 ◼   ► be able to do full podcast recording and production

00:55:06 ◼   ► on the go with an iPad, but we'll see.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - Is that what Fraser Spears is doing with Canvas,

00:55:10 ◼   ► with Federico Vittucci?

00:55:12 ◼   ► Is he recording on the iPad as well?

00:55:14 ◼   ► I know-- - I believe he does.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - See, I thought so too.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It says in this blog post, which we'll link,

00:55:18 ◼   ► that we are walking the walk to,

00:55:21 ◼   ► the show itself is edited and published entirely on iOS

00:55:24 ◼   ► using Ferrite, which is what Jason Snell

00:55:26 ◼   ► has been talking about.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I thought that they had said

00:55:28 ◼   ► that they were also recording it on iOS,

00:55:30 ◼   ► but I'm not 100% sure.

00:55:32 ◼   ► - I know Fraser does, I'm not sure if Federico does, but--

00:55:35 ◼   ► - Maybe that's what it is, is that only Fraser does,

00:55:37 ◼   ► and that's why I didn't say it in his blog post.

00:55:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think Apple has this view

00:55:43 ◼   ► of how the world should be, how modern computing should be,

00:55:46 ◼   ► and what they mean by that is iOS,

00:55:47 ◼   ► and how things should be isolated from each other,

00:55:51 ◼   ► how things should be safe and should be secure

00:55:54 ◼   ► and locked down, and if you look at,

00:55:58 ◼   ► what kind of innovation happens on the Mac

00:56:01 ◼   ► and historically on desktop computing,

00:56:04 ◼   ► it tends to very frequently involve some kind of hack

00:56:08 ◼   ► that is just not possible on iOS devices.

00:56:11 ◼   ► For instance, what you're talking about,

00:56:12 ◼   ► so like if you want to record something for podcasting,

00:56:16 ◼   ► there are special tools that basically try to do

00:56:19 ◼   ► like voiceover IP and also record it

00:56:22 ◼   ► so that you can use it for podcasting.

00:56:24 ◼   ► They tend to not be as good as just using Skype.

00:56:26 ◼   ► So what everyone does is we just use Skype.

00:56:29 ◼   ► And then we use apps on the Mac to record our Skype calls

00:56:33 ◼   ► that mostly are hacks.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Sometimes they, like,

00:56:37 ◼   ► Piezo is a pretty straightforward recorder

00:56:39 ◼   ► 'cause it can share the input,

00:56:40 ◼   ► but what a lot of people do to record Skype

00:56:43 ◼   ► is just use Skype Call Recorder from Ecamm,

00:56:45 ◼   ► which is a complete hack that is impossible on iOS

00:56:49 ◼   ► because it basically injects itself into Skype

00:56:51 ◼   ► and records that way.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And on iOS, there is a Skype app for iOS,

00:56:58 ◼   ► but you can't record out of it in software.

00:57:00 ◼   ► The only way to do that would be to have two devices

00:57:02 ◼   ► and like to run the audio out from one

00:57:05 ◼   ► into some kind of lightning connected USB audio interface,

00:57:09 ◼   ► which believe me, that's a whole world of pain.

00:57:11 ◼   ► I've done that, it's not great, you know,

00:57:14 ◼   ► to have like these weird like cheaply made,

00:57:17 ◼   ► unreliable $70 audio interfaces for iOS devices

00:57:22 ◼   ► that some of which might be able to keep it charged,

00:57:24 ◼   ► of which you won't. They all have these big plastic garbage knobs on them. It's like trying

00:57:28 ◼   ► to buy a high quality USB hub. It's very, very difficult.

00:57:32 ◼   ► >> What you're doing there is you're doing the hardware version. You're doing like a

00:57:36 ◼   ► reverse skeuomorphic hardware version of Audio Hijack. Like you're literally connecting boxes

00:57:41 ◼   ► with actual wires in the real world instead of dragging and dropping the little boxes.

00:57:45 ◼   ► I mean, even things like Audio Hijack, I think Loopback must be using supported facilities for

00:57:51 ◼   ► you know, creating virtual devices or something.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Like even on OS X, like you said,

00:57:55 ◼   ► a lot of these things that we're using right now,

00:57:57 ◼   ► I'm using call regard right now, are kind of hacks.

00:58:00 ◼   ► But every time I see hacks on any system,

00:58:02 ◼   ► whether it's OS X or iOS,

00:58:04 ◼   ► where we can't really have them or whatever,

00:58:05 ◼   ► it's like the fact that so many people,

00:58:07 ◼   ► like the fact that people are building businesses

00:58:10 ◼   ► selling these hacks, which is very difficult to do

00:58:12 ◼   ► because you have to be really careful

00:58:13 ◼   ► and you can't screw up stuff.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And like, it shows there's such an incredible market need

00:58:17 ◼   ► that software developers are willing to fill that need,

00:58:19 ◼   ► that it is lucrative for them to fill that need,

00:58:21 ◼   ► even though it is super hard work and the stuff breaks

00:58:23 ◼   ► when Apple changes things out from underneath them.

00:58:26 ◼   ► It shows that they're crying out for your OS

00:58:29 ◼   ► to have supported facilities for this functionality.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And so tons of things on iOS that aren't even possible.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I always wonder if we can have the hacks,

00:58:36 ◼   ► is that removing a signal from Apple?

00:58:37 ◼   ► But then I look at the Mac and I'm like,

00:58:39 ◼   ► they're not getting that signal either.

00:58:40 ◼   ► It's so clear that we wanna do more sophisticated things

00:58:42 ◼   ► with audio that we just named Ecamm and Rogue Amoeba,

00:58:46 ◼   ► two businesses basically built,

00:58:48 ◼   ► I don't know, Ecamm sells a lot of things, but Rogomiva built around selling audio stuff

00:58:52 ◼   ► to do things with your Mac that people clearly want to do, that they're willing to pay good

00:58:56 ◼   ► money for, that they have to do as hacks because Apple doesn't have a good supported way to

00:59:00 ◼   ► do it.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And it's just, the signal's just not getting through.

00:59:03 ◼   ► Like they'll pass in the grass hacksies thing.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Like this is where people are walking, Apple.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Like pave their paths.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Like it's such a clear signal and it's frustrating to not see them take advantage of.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Anyway, sorry, I derailed your connecting of boxes

00:59:17 ◼   ► with crappy plastic things.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - No, but it's, what you're saying,

00:59:21 ◼   ► it's exactly, it ties in earlier

00:59:23 ◼   ► with what you were saying with iAd,

00:59:24 ◼   ► where with iAd, it's like Apple had this view

00:59:27 ◼   ► of how they thought the world was,

00:59:29 ◼   ► or maybe it was wishful thinking,

00:59:30 ◼   ► how they thought the world would become

00:59:32 ◼   ► if they would build these beautiful, clean,

00:59:36 ◼   ► concrete rooms for people to fill

00:59:38 ◼   ► with all this respect for your privacy

00:59:40 ◼   ► in an industry that just doesn't do that.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Apple thought that the world would adapt to their vision for iAd, and it just didn't,

00:59:47 ◼   ► and that was kind of a foolish thing to even think would be possible. And I think you can

00:59:53 ◼   ► look at the bigger picture of how they lock down iOS and to an increasing degree the Mac,

00:59:59 ◼   ► but the Mac is still nowhere near the level of lockdown that iOS is. You can look at that

01:00:04 ◼   ► versus the pressures of us needing some of these hacks to get our work done or to innovate.

01:00:12 ◼   ► So much innovation has happened through hacks like this.

01:00:16 ◼   ► A few months ago we mentioned things like DropBox,

01:00:19 ◼   ► it was fun integration, all this crazy stuff

01:00:21 ◼   ► that now is either not possible anymore

01:00:24 ◼   ► or harder or more limited as the OS keeps getting

01:00:27 ◼   ► more and more locked down.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Enabling these hacks to some degree is very productive

01:00:33 ◼   ► and to some degree necessary for us to get our work done

01:00:36 ◼   ► and to push things forward.

01:00:38 ◼   ► And earlier today, maybe I'll do the after show

01:00:40 ◼   ► on how I jail broke two iPhones today for the first time

01:00:43 ◼   ► in like six years or something.

01:00:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:46 ◼   ► But you know, and it's for the same reason.

01:00:48 ◼   ► If like, Apple has this vision of how things should be

01:00:51 ◼   ► and everything is locked down and isolated

01:00:52 ◼   ► and it will allegedly work perfectly

01:00:54 ◼   ► and it's the future of computing

01:00:55 ◼   ► because they're the ones saying it's the future of computing

01:00:57 ◼   ► 'cause certainly if you're the one talking

01:00:59 ◼   ► and you're making computing devices,

01:01:00 ◼   ► you wanna say yours is the future of computing.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Doesn't mean, you can say it as much as you want,

01:01:04 ◼   ► doesn't make it true.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It might become true but there's no guarantee of that.

01:01:08 ◼   ► But you know, they're saying this is the future of computing

01:01:10 ◼   ► but they have this very highly opinionated view of them being in extreme control of quite

01:01:17 ◼   ► a bit more than what their users can do and what of course developers can do as well.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And the reality of that is you have people saying, "I can't get worked on on iOS devices

01:01:27 ◼   ► because of reasons X, Y, or Z," and Apple's trying to knock those reasons down. They're

01:01:30 ◼   ► trying to solve it. They want people to be able to get their work done on iOS devices,

01:01:34 ◼   ► there are these major barriers that Apple won't budge on that are just fatal barriers

01:01:40 ◼   ► to a lot of these uses. Podcast recording with Skype is, yes, it's a narrow thing that

01:01:45 ◼   ► only podcasters care about, but it is a very good representative of the problem as a whole

01:01:49 ◼   ► of so much of what we do today is like these big, private, centralized power holders that

01:01:57 ◼   ► we have to deal with. So in this case, Skype. Turns out, Skype is the best VoIP thing for

01:02:01 ◼   ► for podcasters to use to communicate with each other

01:02:03 ◼   ► while they're recording.

01:02:04 ◼   ► And if you want to record a Skype call,

01:02:07 ◼   ► you can't sit around and wait for Skype

01:02:09 ◼   ► to release an iOS app update

01:02:11 ◼   ► that will enable recording in their iOS app,

01:02:13 ◼   ► 'cause they probably will never do it.

01:02:15 ◼   ► You have no input on that.

01:02:16 ◼   ► That's out of your control as a user or developer.

01:02:19 ◼   ► What you can do on the Mac is you can kinda hack around

01:02:21 ◼   ► and you can make this work.

01:02:22 ◼   ► On iOS, you can't do that.

01:02:24 ◼   ► That's a big problem, right?

01:02:25 ◼   ► And so you can extend this to so many problems

01:02:29 ◼   ► that chances are, like if you look around at, you know, like what any given person does

01:02:35 ◼   ► on their Mac, I bet almost everyone who uses a Mac depends on at least one weird hack that

01:02:44 ◼   ► is not possible on iOS. They depend on that on the Mac to do what they need to do. And

01:02:48 ◼   ► sometimes these are Apple doing these hacks because they can do it. They can hack as much

01:02:52 ◼   ► as they want. Sometimes it's other companies. And on the Mac we can still do that. And on

01:02:56 ◼   ► on iOS, we've never been able to, and that does limit things. In the same way that Apple's

01:03:02 ◼   ► insistence on the app being the strictly walled container for your data has been so limiting

01:03:08 ◼   ► so far with iOS. They're starting to break down some of those walls with iCloud Drive

01:03:12 ◼   ► and stuff, but with mixed degrees of success and mixed degrees of confusion.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the big paradigm switch, the difficulty of the monolithic app. Because

01:03:21 ◼   ► like you were saying, you're waiting for Skype to add that feature. Are those people, the

01:03:24 ◼   ► that you have to say, oh, this app will let you record multiple people and it'll do voiceover IP.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Like you have to have one app to do it all because it's not, even on the Mac, it's still somewhat

01:03:32 ◼   ► difficult, but at least on the Mac, historically, we've had the ability to mix and match. Here's the

01:03:36 ◼   ► best app for talking to someone over the internet. Here's the best app for recording. Here's the best

01:03:41 ◼   ► app for editing my podcast. Here's the, you know, like that we could, that we had job specific apps

01:03:46 ◼   ► that you could use to work together to perform a single job or an iOS. It's like, well, it's kind

01:03:51 ◼   ► kind of easy if you just have one app that's like called podcast recording studio, whatever,

01:03:56 ◼   ► you know, that does everything that it, you know, it has to have its own voice over IP

01:04:01 ◼   ► client to talk to people remotely has to have its own microphone interfacing thing. It has

01:04:04 ◼   ► to have its own editor, has to have its own denoising filter. It's like, because if you

01:04:07 ◼   ► didn't, it's like, Oh, someone have to export this audio to this other app. Talking to Jason

01:04:12 ◼   ► Snell about podcast production, he's using some super fancy audio processing program

01:04:17 ◼   ► on his Mac that he's really impressed with. It does an amazing job of like intelligently

01:04:21 ◼   ► removing noise even better than the ones he was using before, he can mix that into his

01:04:25 ◼   ► workflow to say, "Oh, I was using this."

01:04:27 ◼   ► I think he's used three different apps for it.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Every time he finds a better one, he just swaps it out.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And maybe it would be better if there was one big integrated app that did everything,

01:04:35 ◼   ► but then he couldn't upgrade it piecemeal to say, "This part of my workflow I have just

01:04:39 ◼   ► made a lot better."

01:04:41 ◼   ► And it is kind of frustrating to have to incorporate all those apps together and deal with it,

01:04:44 ◼   ► but there's advantages and disadvantages, and iOS is totally on the, "You launch one

01:04:49 ◼   ► your device becomes that app and that app does everything for you and if it doesn't

01:04:52 ◼   ► like no one's leaving GarageBand to go out to some other thing constantly back and forth,

01:04:56 ◼   ► right? It's more of like a more of the waterfall model, right? But if you're doing the for

01:05:01 ◼   ► podcast production, it's a great example where you'd want to at the very least separate the

01:05:04 ◼   ► thing that like remotely talks to people whether it's FaceTime audio or Skype or whatever,

01:05:09 ◼   ► like whatever is best for that. That is a complicated application in its own right.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And you're like, let that app do what it wants to do. I just need to, in audio hijack parlance,

01:05:18 ◼   ► the little tube that has the audio coming out of it from whatever app I'm using, fat,

01:05:22 ◼   ► into this app that's also recording from my local microphones and then I can see the waveforms

01:05:26 ◼   ► or whatever. Anyway, we're not there yet.

01:05:29 ◼   ► And the kind of power that enables is that like, Loopback, the new argument we're talking

01:05:34 ◼   ► about, and before that Audio Hijack, these are apps that like, this can not only make

01:05:38 ◼   ► things possible that weren't possible before, but this can like eliminate the need for hardware.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like that's very powerful, especially for things like affordability or just like speed

01:05:48 ◼   ► of deployment and experimentation of things.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Like I mean there are so many, I've hacked with audio so much and I have a closet full

01:05:55 ◼   ► of dumb wires and dumb little boxes that do one stupid thing because there's no software

01:06:00 ◼   ► thing to do it.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Like everyone who's ever had to do anything with audio has probably had this experience

01:06:04 ◼   ► where oh well I could do this because I need this one weird cable to go between these two

01:06:09 ◼   ► ports to loop this thing into this thing first and then I can do this. Like, it's, it's a,

01:06:14 ◼   ► it's a, audio is a huge pile of hacks, most of which are, have been in the past hardware

01:06:19 ◼   ► things that you needed to buy and manage and, and have on hand and, and connect up in certain

01:06:24 ◼   ► weird ways and hope nothing breaks and once you get it working, never touch anything.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And then when you get the software side of this, you can like, you can like move this

01:06:31 ◼   ► stuff around, you can play with it, you can, you can do things for free with no hardware

01:06:36 ◼   ► in seconds that you could never do before, like, that's very powerful. That's the kind

01:06:41 ◼   ► of innovation that computers are all about. This is what computers have always been about,

01:06:45 ◼   ► is breaking down barriers of what can you not do, you know, in the physical world or

01:06:51 ◼   ► in the previous world before your computer came around, what were you either not able

01:06:55 ◼   ► to do because it was too complicated or out of reach or what was too expensive for you

01:07:01 ◼   ► to do, you know, before dedicated hardware or special needs or anything. And the computer

01:07:05 ◼   ► knocks down those walls and says, "Now you can do it." It is very kind of democratized.

01:07:10 ◼   ► If you move towards this world of the monolithic app, like you're saying, John, the monolithic

01:07:14 ◼   ► app is not only more restrictive than that, and it eliminates a lot of those gains or

01:07:19 ◼   ► significantly reduces them, but also it is kind of less democratic in a way because the

01:07:26 ◼   ► number of people who can make a really great noise removal tool for audio is way bigger

01:07:32 ◼   ► the number of people who can make a complete audio production studio app and backend service.

01:07:39 ◼   ► The monolithic app requires that each app be way more advanced than the kind of Unix

01:07:45 ◼   ► philosophy of a tool does one thing and does that one thing well and you have multiple

01:07:49 ◼   ► tools involved in a workflow.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And we're not even close to that. Like if you think about Photoshop, that is a massive

01:07:54 ◼   ► application that does tons and tons of things, but there's still Illustrator. Like there's

01:07:59 ◼   ► still room for it. Like it doesn't matter how big you make the pieces.

01:08:01 ◼   ► are still MS Paint.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Well, you know, I'm just saying like that Photoshop, despite all the vector tools that

01:08:07 ◼   ► they keep adding to Photoshop, Illustrator still has a role.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Those are two massive applications.

01:08:12 ◼   ► We're not saying like every tool is like, "Oh, this is a tool for making circles.

01:08:14 ◼   ► This is a tool for making squares."

01:08:16 ◼   ► Like, it can be ridiculous because whenever you say Unix pipeline, they're like, "Oh,

01:08:19 ◼   ► one tool does one thing well."

01:08:20 ◼   ► Like no matter how big you make it, there's always a certain point where you're making

01:08:24 ◼   ► Photoshop and it's like, "Well, if we're doing page layout, should we add that to Photoshop?"

01:08:29 ◼   ► No.

01:08:30 ◼   ► in InDesign or whatever, there's always something else.

01:08:33 ◼   ► So like you were saying, for a podcast production,

01:08:34 ◼   ► there are so many aspects of it,

01:08:36 ◼   ► no matter how big you make any aspect of that,

01:08:38 ◼   ► you can imagine an amazing Skype equivalent for iOS

01:08:42 ◼   ► that is really reliable.

01:08:43 ◼   ► It's an incredibly hard app to make.

01:08:45 ◼   ► That's it, just do that.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Even that alone is basically,

01:08:47 ◼   ► maybe not as big as Photoshop, but it's a big problem.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Fine, take that and move it off.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And then if you wanna go down to,

01:08:53 ◼   ► all I do is reduce noise, that can be a very small app.

01:08:56 ◼   ► But there's so many things in between,

01:08:58 ◼   ► trying to do podcast studio editor production suite.

01:09:02 ◼   ► That's too much for anybody to bite off,

01:09:04 ◼   ► especially since you can only charge 99 cents for it

01:09:07 ◼   ► or have iAds in the bottom.

01:09:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:10 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - You know, I wanted to come back to something

01:09:13 ◼   ► Jon was saying earlier about paving over

01:09:15 ◼   ► where people were making the paths in the grass.

01:09:19 ◼   ► - That's a reference.

01:09:19 ◼   ► - It is, among other things, to this very program.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Anyway, whatever, I think we should be,

01:09:28 ◼   ► considering that Apple has done that in many occasions,

01:09:31 ◼   ► but also with Audio Bus, because Audio Bus,

01:09:33 ◼   ► if memory serves, was an iOS app that would let you

01:09:37 ◼   ► kind of route audio between apps,

01:09:39 ◼   ► and didn't Apple start supporting that in GarageBand

01:09:42 ◼   ► like a year or two ago?

01:09:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was basically a third-party protocol

01:09:47 ◼   ► that people had just kind of made

01:09:49 ◼   ► to kind of hack local networking

01:09:52 ◼   ► into sending audio between apps

01:09:53 ◼   ► so that you could actually have an audio effects app

01:09:57 ◼   ► that was just like a certain effect that would be in a chain that would be supported by other

01:10:01 ◼   ► apps that supported AudioBus. And so the big deal there was that not only did Apple not

01:10:06 ◼   ► ban that from the App Store, but they built in support to GarageBand on iOS to work with

01:10:13 ◼   ► AudioBus apps. So that was very powerful. So audio is a slight exception to this rule on

01:10:20 ◼   ► iOS in that they did support AudioBus. However, only apps that work with AudioBus work in this

01:10:26 ◼   ► the system and Skype doesn't.

01:10:27 ◼   ► I was thinking of like audio buses like using the local network attack around like it's

01:10:31 ◼   ► good that they that they didn't like for example rejected and say you can't do that but using

01:10:37 ◼   ► loopback network interfaces as your IPC mechanism like surely there is a better way to get like

01:10:44 ◼   ► it's iOS John this is all we have.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I just like I seem to recall have vague memories of us seeing a demo showing drag and drop

01:10:52 ◼   ► between two side-by-side iPad applications that also use loopback, like you can do a

01:10:56 ◼   ► lot of stuff with loopback network interfaces, doesn't mean it's the right solution.

01:11:00 ◼   ► So again, the signal that should have been to Apple is like, I guess it's good that they

01:11:04 ◼   ► had a positive reaction to it, but what they should have done is like, man, there is a

01:11:08 ◼   ► clear market need for audio applications to be able to work together and generally to

01:11:13 ◼   ► have better audio routing within the system that is a real supported API for shuttling

01:11:19 ◼   ► audio buffers around, you know. And maybe it's difficult because it's kernel-level stuff

01:11:24 ◼   ► or whatever. Whatever they have to do. Like, I guess supporting using local network interfaces

01:11:29 ◼   ► for it is better than nothing, but that's not the answer. That's the final answer. They

01:11:33 ◼   ► can go, "Well, we solved that problem. Now let's move on to the next one. You haven't

01:11:36 ◼   ► solved it." And there is a need for it. And letting a third party dictate the protocol

01:11:43 ◼   ► is just so un-Apple-like. So I would just love for them to keep advancing in this realm

01:11:48 ◼   ► and to address the clear market needs.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to kind of break some rules here and there.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Audio bus was, first of all, as you said,

01:11:57 ◼   ► I think that was an exception.

01:11:59 ◼   ► That was a fluke.

01:12:00 ◼   ► That was not the common pattern that Apple's doing here.

01:12:05 ◼   ► But you look at something like,

01:12:06 ◼   ► well, only apps that opt into it

01:12:09 ◼   ► are compatible with this system,

01:12:11 ◼   ► and Skype doesn't support it.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Well, in the world of desktop computing,

01:12:16 ◼   ► which is still wonderful, by the way,

01:12:18 ◼   ► still, hey, by the way, hey guys, still here,

01:12:20 ◼   ► still wonderful, in the world of desktop computing,

01:12:23 ◼   ► we can break those rules.

01:12:25 ◼   ► We can say, you know what, Skype doesn't support this,

01:12:27 ◼   ► well, we're gonna be clever as Ecamm

01:12:30 ◼   ► or users of Ecamm software or other people like this,

01:12:32 ◼   ► we can be clever, we're gonna give you stuff,

01:12:34 ◼   ► we can say, you know what,

01:12:35 ◼   ► even if your app doesn't support this,

01:12:37 ◼   ► we can work around that in this technical, semi-hacky way,

01:12:41 ◼   ► and we're gonna say, we're gonna enable this.

01:12:42 ◼   ► And that is so powerful for just enabling people

01:12:46 ◼   ► to do things. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. On iOS, that category of value

01:12:53 ◼   ► and that category of innovation is almost impossible. There are some areas for it, but

01:12:58 ◼   ► it's very, very limited compared to what you can do on Mac OS X or on Windows or anything

01:13:03 ◼   ► like that. And so I feel like we're missing out. We're making computing almost like

01:13:10 ◼   ► the same way that the hardware that Apple's selling

01:13:13 ◼   ► is so not hackable anymore.

01:13:16 ◼   ► You can buy what Apple offers,

01:13:18 ◼   ► and everything's soldered to the motherboard now,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and you can't replace anything.

01:13:23 ◼   ► There was a time back in the day,

01:13:25 ◼   ► I made my big post about the MB whatever 101

01:13:29 ◼   ► non-random MacBook Pro, where at a time when Apple

01:13:32 ◼   ► didn't sell 120 gig hard drives,

01:13:35 ◼   ► you could buy one off Newegg for 200 bucks and put it in,

01:13:39 ◼   ► you could have a configuration that Apple didn't sell.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Whoa!

01:13:44 ◼   ► And it was super powerful.

01:13:46 ◼   ► You could replace the DVD drive with another hard drive if you wanted a laptop with two

01:13:51 ◼   ► hard drives or tons of capacity or one small SSD and one big hard drive.

01:13:56 ◼   ► You could do stuff like that and now you can't.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Everything's locked down.

01:13:59 ◼   ► You can only buy what Apple sells in support configurations for most of their hardware

01:14:03 ◼   ► and that's that.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And in iOS it's the same kind of thing.

01:14:06 ◼   ► in the software, it's becoming the same kind of thing, where it's like you can only do

01:14:10 ◼   ► what is prescribed to you by Apple and each app in its own monolithic silo and that is

01:14:15 ◼   ► it. And that is very limiting and I really am concerned long term for this kind of dumbing

01:14:22 ◼   ► down of computing. There is value in making things more approachable, but I don't think

01:14:28 ◼   ► you have to eliminate ways people can innovate in order to do that necessarily. I think there's

01:14:35 ◼   ► other solutions to that problem and that these things are being conflated when that isn't

01:14:40 ◼   ► necessarily valid.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Well, I tend to agree with what you just said, but I think it's worth noting that we're really

01:14:49 ◼   ► tainted as desktop users, as people who really love desktops. I mean, I love desktops so

01:14:56 ◼   ► much that I went to a—

01:14:57 ◼   ► You just got one!

01:14:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I literally went from a laptop to a desktop just recently. But what you perceive

01:15:02 ◼   ► as handcuffs, I think other people perceive as wings, in that it's less complex in a good

01:15:09 ◼   ► way, it's less intimidating, it's less daunting.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Complexity is scary for a lot of users, and I'd say even for each of us.

01:15:19 ◼   ► There are things that we don't know how to do with our computers where that sort of complexity

01:15:25 ◼   ► is scary and frustrating and prohibitive.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And I feel like there's the right tool for the job, and I think that a lot of jobs, in

01:15:36 ◼   ► my opinion, recording podcasts being one of them, as we've used as an example, I think

01:15:40 ◼   ► the full bore computer, be it a laptop or desktop, is the right tool for that job.

01:15:44 ◼   ► But you can make a really good argument that there are a lot of other jobs where an iOS

01:15:51 ◼   ► device is, if not the rightest tool, it is a perfectly acceptable tool.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And I don't think any one thing needs to be all things to all people.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And it's kind of unfortunate that none of us is a really, really devout iOS user for

01:16:06 ◼   ► productivity-related things, because I really think that Federico, for example, would have

01:16:10 ◼   ► some strong counterpoints here.

01:16:11 ◼   ► And because I'm cut from the same mold that you guys are, I'm having a hard time arguing,

01:16:17 ◼   ► playing devil's advocate in their favor.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Well, again, I really do think it's worth clarifying here that you can have complexity

01:16:26 ◼   ► And you can have the ability to do complex things

01:16:30 ◼   ► without making something harder to use necessarily.

01:16:33 ◼   ► You don't need to lock it down to make it easier to use.

01:16:37 ◼   ► - Well, I think it's like, there's an accident

01:16:39 ◼   ► of history here.

01:16:40 ◼   ► A lot of the locking down things they're doing

01:16:41 ◼   ► is because a lot of the things we just described

01:16:43 ◼   ► on the Mac are unsafe, and we know what happens

01:16:46 ◼   ► if you allow them to run RAMP and you get it.

01:16:48 ◼   ► It's not a stable system.

01:16:49 ◼   ► What we really want is, and I hope what we're all

01:16:52 ◼   ► working towards is the ability for people to have new ideas

01:16:57 ◼   ► and do interesting things without compromising stability,

01:17:01 ◼   ► safety, predictability, like essentially wandering

01:17:04 ◼   ► into another app's memory space and screwing with it

01:17:06 ◼   ► is like the worst possible thing you can do.

01:17:07 ◼   ► It's terrible, right?

01:17:08 ◼   ► And, but on the other hand, if you have to wait for Apple

01:17:11 ◼   ► to provide you supported APIs,

01:17:12 ◼   ► like maybe that's not a great solution.

01:17:13 ◼   ► What we're looking for is, I mean, you know,

01:17:16 ◼   ► this is still, you know, distant future stuff or whatever.

01:17:18 ◼   ► Like we would like to be able to do interesting,

01:17:23 ◼   ► innovative things in safe ways.

01:17:26 ◼   ► And because we can't do them in safe ways,

01:17:28 ◼   ► because like the alternatives are basically,

01:17:30 ◼   ► if that app developer didn't think of it,

01:17:33 ◼   ► you can either parachute into their memory space

01:17:35 ◼   ► and cross your fingers and be really smart,

01:17:38 ◼   ► which is terrible, or you can't do a damn thing about it.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And what we're looking for is,

01:17:42 ◼   ► they may not have thought of it and hey,

01:17:43 ◼   ► here's a way you can do something and you can't screw it up.

01:17:45 ◼   ► Like that I think we want both.

01:17:48 ◼   ► We want, and we're getting it, you know,

01:17:50 ◼   ► in bits and pieces here.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Like it's like, that's why the solution isn't,

01:17:54 ◼   ► hey, Apple, you should allow memory injection on iOS.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Like that's not the solution, right?

01:17:58 ◼   ► That doesn't help anybody.

01:17:59 ◼   ► But because of the state of our languages

01:18:02 ◼   ► and the way we do, you know,

01:18:03 ◼   ► everything having to do with computers,

01:18:05 ◼   ► we're trying to move away from the bad old days

01:18:07 ◼   ► where it was the wild West,

01:18:08 ◼   ► but we haven't quite gotten to the new golden age,

01:18:10 ◼   ► which is now finally we have the freedom to do what we want

01:18:14 ◼   ► without the things that we know are downsides

01:18:16 ◼   ► from past technology.

01:18:17 ◼   ► So it's an uncomfortable transitional phase

01:18:21 ◼   ► where we don't have the safety we want

01:18:22 ◼   ► and we're trying to like, I guess the transition is

01:18:25 ◼   ► step one, make everything safe.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Step two, find the ways to do all the things

01:18:29 ◼   ► we used to do in unsafe ways.

01:18:30 ◼   ► And I just want to hurry up with the step two.

01:18:32 ◼   ► And like, that's why I think, like Marco said,

01:18:35 ◼   ► it doesn't have to increase complexity or be scary

01:18:37 ◼   ► or whatever, we just don't have the new ways to do it yet.

01:18:39 ◼   ► So Apple is more or less doing the right things of like,

01:18:42 ◼   ► look, we know these things are bad,

01:18:43 ◼   ► just stop them and you say, "Yeah, but I can't do X, I can't do Y." And then it's like, "All right,

01:18:48 ◼   ► well, you know, we're all on board with you, Apple. We agree it's not good, you know, whether

01:18:52 ◼   ► it's final default or sandboxing or any other things, but it's like, but at some point, you got

01:18:57 ◼   ► to give us the new, safer, supported, better, like, you have to give us the better way to do

01:19:02 ◼   ► these things because we want to do these things. And if you don't give us away, we're going to do

01:19:06 ◼   ► them the old bad way." Or, you know, like, it's not, you can't just pretend, this is getting to

01:19:11 ◼   ► to the core of what Marco's point is very often is,

01:19:13 ◼   ► you can't just pretend that those things

01:19:16 ◼   ► were unsafe and bad and will never need to do them again.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So just throw them in the dustbin.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Like the task that people were trying to accomplish

01:19:24 ◼   ► is still a task they want to accomplish.

01:19:26 ◼   ► If you give them a different, better way to do it,

01:19:28 ◼   ► they will take it.

01:19:29 ◼   ► If you give them no way to do it,

01:19:30 ◼   ► then they will just find some other way

01:19:32 ◼   ► to accomplish that task,

01:19:33 ◼   ► probably going back to the old bad way.

01:19:35 ◼   ► So I definitely feel like we're in a transitional period

01:19:38 ◼   ► with all this iOS stuff,

01:19:39 ◼   ► with the iPad Pro and everything like that.

01:19:40 ◼   ► and it's just like, it's an exercise in figuring out

01:19:43 ◼   ► how we can evolve this new, clearly safer,

01:19:47 ◼   ► clearly easier to use, you know,

01:19:49 ◼   ► less stuff that you shouldn't have to be concerned about.

01:19:52 ◼   ► That's what it boils down to.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Things on iOS that you, you know, that are on the Mac,

01:19:56 ◼   ► you have to be worried about X, Y, and Z,

01:19:57 ◼   ► and on iOS you don't worry about them at all.

01:19:59 ◼   ► That's good, thumbs up.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Now let me also use those iOS devices or whatever

01:20:03 ◼   ► to do the things I could do with my Mac

01:20:05 ◼   ► but in this new, safer way.

01:20:08 ◼   ► All right, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Fracture, Squarespace, and MailRoute, and we will see you next week.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:20:21 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:20:24 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:20:27 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:20:32 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:20:34 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:20:37 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:20:43 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:20:51 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:20:56 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C

01:21:01 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse, it's accidental

01:21:07 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental

01:21:12 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:21:15 ◼   ► - What on God's green earth possessed you

01:21:19 ◼   ► to jailbreak a device?

01:21:20 ◼   ► - Two devices.

01:21:21 ◼   ► - Two devices in 2016.

01:21:23 ◼   ► - He didn't wanna pay for a game.

01:21:25 ◼   ► He didn't wanna pay 99 cents for a game.

01:21:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was it, yeah.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Oh my God, all right, so here's the deal here,

01:21:31 ◼   ► which fits in perfectly with what we were just talking about.

01:21:33 ◼   ► In developing the next version of Overcast,

01:21:36 ◼   ► I'm trying, you know, people have been complaining

01:21:37 ◼   ► about battery usage, so I'm trying to reduce

01:21:40 ◼   ► its power consumption, and that's one of the reasons

01:21:42 ◼   ► why I've actually replaced the visualizer,

01:21:44 ◼   ► the little animated bars.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I replaced that with a different one for the next version

01:21:48 ◼   ► that is way, way lower power.

01:21:50 ◼   ► 'Cause that was a big power suck.

01:21:53 ◼   ► But I also, you know, I wanted to test

01:21:54 ◼   ► the core audio engine, and I made some improvements there.

01:21:58 ◼   ► But I wanted to be able to test this.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Like, I can do things that reduce the percentage

01:22:01 ◼   ► of CPU usage while I'm running it from Xcode.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Like, I can do that, but that doesn't tell me

01:22:06 ◼   ► how much power it's using.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And Xcode has, and there is an instrument,

01:22:09 ◼   ► power instrument, but it really just tells you,

01:22:12 ◼   ► you're using the radio right now,

01:22:14 ◼   ► oh, you used the CPU at this much at this point.

01:22:16 ◼   ► It doesn't tell you, the change you just made

01:22:19 ◼   ► just reduced battery life when running on an iPhone 5S

01:22:22 ◼   ► from two hours to one hour.

01:22:24 ◼   ► It doesn't tell you that.

01:22:26 ◼   ► It doesn't tell you how it'll actually behave on devices.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So it's very hard to know if you're actually making

01:22:33 ◼   ► progress with making things more battery efficient

01:22:36 ◼   ► in the real world on real devices

01:22:39 ◼   ► you're dealing with relatively small changes.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Like if you're using 100% CPU and you go to 20,

01:22:45 ◼   ► that's probably gonna be a pretty clear win.

01:22:49 ◼   ► You don't really need to test on a device

01:22:51 ◼   ► to know that that's a better idea,

01:22:53 ◼   ► or to do a full battery test.

01:22:55 ◼   ► So if you're trying to test whether something

01:22:58 ◼   ► is better on the battery, one way to do it

01:23:01 ◼   ► is to run it on a phone, like fully charge up the phone,

01:23:05 ◼   ► try to control everything as much as you can,

01:23:07 ◼   ► run it when the phone is 100% charged,

01:23:10 ◼   ► and see how long it takes for the phone's battery

01:23:12 ◼   ► to die completely.

01:23:13 ◼   ► That is probably the best way to do it.

01:23:16 ◼   ► That is also very hard to control in all ways,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and is extremely time consuming.

01:23:21 ◼   ► 'Cause I found out, I took my closest spare device

01:23:26 ◼   ► to something that was relevant.

01:23:28 ◼   ► So I got my six plus and I'm like, you know what,

01:23:30 ◼   ► this'll be good because it turns out the battery

01:23:32 ◼   ► in the six plus is quite large.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I ran this test last night where I'm like,

01:23:36 ◼   ► I was playing it into, and trying to measure like,

01:23:39 ◼   ► when does the device turn off?

01:23:41 ◼   ► Like, that's hard to measure accurately

01:23:43 ◼   ► if you're not staring at it constantly.

01:23:45 ◼   ► So I had this big setup where I'm like,

01:23:46 ◼   ► all right, I had the 6 Plus playing

01:23:51 ◼   ► through the headphone jack into a USB sound card

01:23:54 ◼   ► that was recording onto my laptop.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And the laptop was just kinda like in the corner,

01:23:58 ◼   ► like just recording, just like record as long as possible.

01:24:01 ◼   ► And then in the morning I'll get up

01:24:02 ◼   ► and I'll see like where it stopped.

01:24:04 ◼   ► and I'll see how long of playback did I have

01:24:06 ◼   ► playing files continuously off this thing.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And then I can compare it to the built-in podcast app

01:24:11 ◼   ► to see what's my target, what should I be trying for,

01:24:13 ◼   ► what can a podcast app do if it's totally integrated

01:24:17 ◼   ► using all the official APIs versus what can mine do,

01:24:20 ◼   ► and I'll try to make those comparable.

01:24:22 ◼   ► So I wake up in the morning and the phone has gone

01:24:24 ◼   ► from 100% to 92%.

01:24:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:30 ◼   ► And I realize, oh no, this is not good.

01:24:33 ◼   ► So you just need another week of testing

01:24:34 ◼   ► and you'll get down to zero.

01:24:36 ◼   ► - I was expecting, 'cause it has Wi-Fi on,

01:24:40 ◼   ► so I want any kind of sync activity,

01:24:42 ◼   ► I want that to be counted.

01:24:43 ◼   ► So Wi-Fi's on, it's logged into iCloud,

01:24:45 ◼   ► to an iCloud account, but there's no other ads,

01:24:48 ◼   ► it's a restored phone, everything else is off,

01:24:50 ◼   ► and airplane mode is on, but Wi-Fi's on.

01:24:52 ◼   ► So it's not using the cell radio,

01:24:54 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have an extra SIM anyway, it doesn't matter.

01:24:56 ◼   ► That would kind of be unfair,

01:24:57 ◼   ► 'cause conditions can change and everything,

01:24:58 ◼   ► so I'm like, all right, let's use Wi-Fi.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Turns out a 6+ with an airplane mode, just using Wi-Fi with the screen off, only playing

01:25:08 ◼   ► audio out of its headphone jack is insanely power efficient.

01:25:12 ◼   ► And if you actually want to use Overcast to do that, you can expect something like 100

01:25:17 ◼   ► hours of playback time.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But that makes it difficult to actually develop and notice any big changes because if it takes

01:25:25 ◼   ► you a hundred hours to run a full test to see, did what I just do make a difference?

01:25:31 ◼   ► You know, did the change I made today, did that meaningfully change battery life? You

01:25:35 ◼   ► know, that's kind of a crappy cycle to be on. And I can use like a 5S, which has way

01:25:41 ◼   ► less battery life, or a regular 6S, but like, those mostly have the same problem. The 5S

01:25:48 ◼   ► would be the smallest battery in the group, but my 5S is also from when 5S's were new,

01:25:54 ◼   ► So it's a very old battery, and the 5S hardware

01:25:57 ◼   ► is very different from the 6 and 6S hardware.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Like the CPUs have gotten better,

01:26:00 ◼   ► the hardware is different, the screens are different.

01:26:02 ◼   ► So like the power profile might not be the same.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Something that is way more efficient on a 5S,

01:26:07 ◼   ► some change I make that's way more efficient,

01:26:08 ◼   ► might be less efficient on a 6 or a 6S.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Most of my users are on 6s and 6Ss,

01:26:13 ◼   ► so like that's what I should be testing on.

01:26:15 ◼   ► But still, like how do you do this

01:26:16 ◼   ► without it taking 100 hours or 80 hours

01:26:18 ◼   ► or 60, you know, these massive time spans?

01:26:21 ◼   ► So the other way to do it would be,

01:26:23 ◼   ► run it for a while, run it overnight,

01:26:26 ◼   ► look at the battery percentage when you start,

01:26:28 ◼   ► and then in the morning, look at the battery percentage

01:26:30 ◼   ► when it's ending, and then just extrapolate,

01:26:32 ◼   ► you can be like, well, if it took eight hours

01:26:34 ◼   ► to go from 80% to 60%, then battery life would be X

01:26:38 ◼   ► if it had a whole charge.

01:26:40 ◼   ► That's an okay way to do it.

01:26:41 ◼   ► It isn't the best, 'cause the percentage meter

01:26:43 ◼   ► isn't always exactly accurate.

01:26:44 ◼   ► - Battery life is not linear.

01:26:46 ◼   ► - Exactly, so it isn't the best way to do it,

01:26:48 ◼   ► but it can at least give you a reasonable approximation

01:26:51 ◼   ► in a short amount of time.

01:26:53 ◼   ► One of the problems with that is that it's just imprecise.

01:26:56 ◼   ► You're using this two-digit percentage.

01:26:58 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do with that that's that precise.

01:27:01 ◼   ► It took the six plus, it took it an hour

01:27:05 ◼   ► to move one percentage point

01:27:07 ◼   ► when I was watching it earlier today.

01:27:09 ◼   ► And by the way, if you want to actually look at the screen,

01:27:12 ◼   ► you're turning the screen on to check the battery level.

01:27:15 ◼   ► So that's kind of messing with the data.

01:27:17 ◼   ► You're tarnishing the data

01:27:18 ◼   ► 'cause you're turning the screen on.

01:27:19 ◼   ► And then all the things that iOS does

01:27:21 ◼   ► when the screen turns on, running background refreshes,

01:27:23 ◼   ► doing system checks, whatever, that's all happening

01:27:25 ◼   ► every time you have to even check the level.

01:27:27 ◼   ► So you don't wanna be checking it very often,

01:27:29 ◼   ► but if it takes like an hour to move one percentage point,

01:27:33 ◼   ► then that's very imprecise.

01:27:35 ◼   ► So my idea was, let me dive into the APIs

01:27:39 ◼   ► and try to get a more precise,

01:27:41 ◼   ► try to get like the milliamp hour rating for the battery,

01:27:43 ◼   ► like what is a more precise charge level?

01:27:46 ◼   ► There is an API on UI device called battery level

01:27:49 ◼   ► or something like that, but it only updates

01:27:52 ◼   ► in 5% increments, so that's even less precise

01:27:55 ◼   ► than looking at the screen and just checking that.

01:27:58 ◼   ► So I'm like, let me just find something,

01:27:59 ◼   ► is there anything else that can read this?

01:28:01 ◼   ► Even, I'll use a private API, because I don't,

01:28:04 ◼   ► I'll just make a little quick test app

01:28:06 ◼   ► to show me the charge level on the phone.

01:28:08 ◼   ► I don't need to submit it to the store,

01:28:09 ◼   ► I can use a private API, fine.

01:28:11 ◼   ► Well, it turns out the private API requires you

01:28:13 ◼   ► to have the IO kit dilib file,

01:28:16 ◼   ► the framework dynamic library file, you need to have the binary from a device. How do I

01:28:23 ◼   ► get an IO kit dilib from a modern device? And there are a few online that are all 32-bit.

01:28:31 ◼   ► You can't build 32-bit apps with any recent version of Xcode. And I'm like, "Well,

01:28:34 ◼   ► I'm not going to install Snow Leopard or whatever." That's right, try to do the

01:28:38 ◼   ► old version route there. That's too much work. I'm not going to do that. All right.

01:28:41 ◼   ► So what else can I do? What's faster? And it turns out you can browse the file system

01:28:45 ◼   ► on an iOS device if you have a jailbroken phone. You can browse the file system and

01:28:50 ◼   ► pull arbitrary stuff off of it. Phone View works for a lot of stuff without jailbreaking,

01:28:54 ◼   ► but it couldn't get to the system directory that would have these frameworks in it. So

01:28:58 ◼   ► I'm like, "Okay, I guess I need to jailbreak something. I'll take one of these, I'll take

01:29:01 ◼   ► one of my iPhone 6s from last year that's been sitting in a door discharged, charge

01:29:05 ◼   ► it up, jailbreak it, and get this file off of it so I can make an app that would do this

01:29:09 ◼   ► that would actually run in 64-bit mode." The process of jailbreaking today, so I should

01:29:14 ◼   ► point out the only time I've ever jailbroken before was the iPhone 1. Shortly after it

01:29:19 ◼   ► came out there was a site called I think it was jailbreakme.com or something like that

01:29:23 ◼   ► where it was like literally like a safari exploit that would just you'd visit a website

01:29:27 ◼   ► and tap a button and it would jailbreak your phone for you. Total security hole like that's

01:29:32 ◼   ► it's terrible that was possible and it's terrible whenever that is possible again if it ever

01:29:36 ◼   ► happens again like that is a terrible thing that Apple should definitely always close

01:29:39 ◼   ► up because that's a horrible hole. But I did it for like you know I ran it for like a day

01:29:44 ◼   ► and I loaded my phone with garbage and I'm like,

01:29:45 ◼   ► you know what, this is stupid.

01:29:47 ◼   ► My phone works worse now, everything's garbagey,

01:29:50 ◼   ► like there's nothing in here that I actually need.

01:29:51 ◼   ► So I restored my phone like two days later.

01:29:54 ◼   ► It was so quick, I'm like, you know, this is stupid.

01:29:56 ◼   ► And I've never jailbreak since then.

01:29:57 ◼   ► But the fact is it's very, very popular.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Tons of, like literally like probably tens of millions

01:30:03 ◼   ► of people jailbreak it.

01:30:04 ◼   ► It is a significant slice of the iOS user base

01:30:08 ◼   ► that is jailbroken.

01:30:09 ◼   ► It is not a small percentage, it is not a fringe thing,

01:30:11 ◼   ► it is a very, very common thing.

01:30:13 ◼   ► I figure the tools must be,

01:30:14 ◼   ► let me see what it's like today.

01:30:15 ◼   ► So the procedure of jailbreaking today

01:30:18 ◼   ► is you have to find a device

01:30:19 ◼   ► that doesn't have anything newer than iOS 902 on it.

01:30:24 ◼   ► So I had to like, oh, this one in my drawer

01:30:26 ◼   ► happened to be 901, okay, I'll use that one.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Boot that up and try to search for how to jailbreak a phone.

01:30:33 ◼   ► It's like, this is basically like saying

01:30:35 ◼   ► how do I download Photoshop?

01:30:36 ◼   ► It's like, you know everything you get's gonna be a scam

01:30:39 ◼   ► of some kind.

01:30:41 ◼   ► It's gonna be malware, it's gonna be ads,

01:30:42 ◼   ► it's gonna be garbage, you're gonna find all this

01:30:44 ◼   ► garbage stuff.

01:30:45 ◼   ► And so, Searching for How to Jailbreak actually was

01:30:47 ◼   ► very easy, there's this thing called the Pangoo,

01:30:49 ◼   ► Pango Jailbreak, one of those.

01:30:51 ◼   ► My impression of this, as somebody who doesn't know

01:30:53 ◼   ► anything about this, is that the way you jailbreak

01:30:56 ◼   ► is that you basically download a closed source

01:30:59 ◼   ► application from a Chinese hacking group that's

01:31:01 ◼   ► unsigned binary and you tell, and you force your

01:31:04 ◼   ► Mac to run it.

01:31:05 ◼   ► That's how you jailbreak.

01:31:08 ◼   ► You plug your phone in, you run this arbitrary code

01:31:11 ◼   ► from a Chinese hacking group on your Mac.

01:31:13 ◼   ► - That sounds safe.

01:31:14 ◼   ► - I did this on my laptop I don't care about.

01:31:16 ◼   ► 'Cause there's no way I'm running it on my real computer.

01:31:18 ◼   ► - Now it's infected your entire network.

01:31:20 ◼   ► But on the bright side, your Apple TV won't have a number

01:31:22 ◼   ► after its name anymore.

01:31:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:31:25 ◼   ► 'Cause while this malware wanders through your network,

01:31:28 ◼   ► it'll fix that just on a drive-by.

01:31:30 ◼   ► - That's a common courtesy, yes.

01:31:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:31:33 ◼   ► So anyway, so here I am, I'm like gritting my teeth,

01:31:37 ◼   ► like shit, I really need to be doing this,

01:31:39 ◼   ► but like, okay, I'll run it.

01:31:41 ◼   ► On the same laptop, if I buy any hardware that requires some kind of Java installer,

01:31:46 ◼   ► I run that on this laptop as well.

01:31:49 ◼   ► It's like my garbage.

01:31:51 ◼   ► Anything that requires software that I don't want anywhere near my real computer, I run

01:31:53 ◼   ► on this thing.

01:31:54 ◼   ► So the homepage for your web browser on that computer is now Yahoo, right?

01:31:58 ◼   ► Because you installed Java.

01:31:59 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's a toolbar.

01:32:02 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, I ran it, and it turns out it's stupid easy.

01:32:07 ◼   ► So anyway, to make a long story short,

01:32:09 ◼   ► I jailbreak this phone, it boots up,

01:32:11 ◼   ► I go to Cydia, which is, whoo, the UI for Cydia,

01:32:16 ◼   ► it's like when the App Store first launched.

01:32:21 ◼   ► People just put random parameters into UI kit widgets

01:32:24 ◼   ► and just spewed them all over the screen.

01:32:26 ◼   ► That's Cydia, still, today.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Like, it was, I posted a screenshot in the relay Slack,

01:32:33 ◼   ► I'm like, I can't believe this is even real.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Like this is how this app actually looks today.

01:32:38 ◼   ► But anyway, sorry Jailbreakers, wow.

01:32:43 ◼   ► You have some improvement opportunities in corporate speak,

01:32:47 ◼   ► maybe a coaching opportunity.

01:32:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:32:49 ◼   ► - We'll put it in the parking lot for now.

01:32:50 ◼   ► But long story short, the file's not there.

01:32:53 ◼   ► And I install these stupid apps to tell me,

01:32:55 ◼   ► and like the dial-up is just not there.

01:32:57 ◼   ► And so I'm like, well maybe,

01:32:59 ◼   ► people say oh things change in iOS 9,

01:33:01 ◼   ► maybe things will be better on an older version,

01:33:03 ◼   ► but I still need 64 bits.

01:33:04 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right, let me pull out TIFF's old 5S,

01:33:06 ◼   ► which has been powered off in the closet for two years.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Pull that out, it's still running iOS 7."

01:33:12 ◼   ► Great, I jailbreak that with another app

01:33:15 ◼   ► from the Pangu hackers that runs

01:33:17 ◼   ► the Cyphen App running two of their apps on this laptop.

01:33:21 ◼   ► 'Cause it's a different app to jailbreak iOS 7.

01:33:24 ◼   ► Run that, turns out not there either.

01:33:26 ◼   ► And it turns out that apparently,

01:33:28 ◼   ► dial-ups have not existed on iOS for quite some time