ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Was it John that fixed my bullet issue? Yes, and I said

00:00:04 ◼   ► What magic did you use to do that?

00:00:07 ◼   ► Don't you know haven't you learned by now that when dealing with rich text editing applications?

00:00:12 ◼   ► Where you have a kind of a what you see is what you get?

00:00:15 ◼   ► Output that even though this is not probably technically the case although it used to be in some things you can conceptualize it as there being

00:00:23 ◼   ► individual

00:00:25 ◼   ► individual invisible formatting

00:00:27 ◼   ► characters zero with invisible formatting characters attached to text that you can't delete and

00:00:34 ◼   ► That when things touch them they infect the thing that they touch

00:00:38 ◼   ► All formatting and rich text editors like word or any of these types of things

00:00:43 ◼   ► involves manipulating

00:00:46 ◼   ► What you can conceptualize as invisible zero with formatting characters

00:00:50 ◼   ► What was the one that actually had them was a word star one of the old text editors that one of the old word processes?

00:00:55 ◼   ► really old one actually had invisible formatting characters and you could make them visible.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Those were the days.

00:01:01 ◼   ► You could do that in Word, I believe.

00:01:02 ◼   ► And I thought Clarisworks would do that.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I don't know if any of them still have it.

00:01:08 ◼   ► The old days of the word process actually were done that way.

00:01:09 ◼   ► These days, behind the scenes, I have no idea how it works.

00:01:12 ◼   ► I'm sure it's much more complicated than simple invisible formatting characters.

00:01:15 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, you just have to learn how to bump the conceptual invisible formatting

00:01:21 ◼   ► characters up against each other to infect their neighbors, get their infection, and

00:01:24 ◼   ► move it down. It just... Well, that was the problem is I was trying to indent just

00:01:28 ◼   ► the Reddit related follow-up and I was unfortunately indenting all of the rest

00:01:34 ◼   ► of the topics and I couldn't figure out how to uninfect them. I am not as good a

00:01:38 ◼   ► doctor as you are. I know, I saw that you know and you just gotta like you just

00:01:42 ◼   ► gotta find a part that looks the way you want and use it to spread its correct

00:01:46 ◼   ► lookingness to its neighbors and it's... So this is like an outbreak I need to

00:01:52 ◼   ► find the monkey and then that'll solve all my problems.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - Word sometimes would defeat me.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Word, sometimes in Word I could not figure out

00:01:58 ◼   ► how to manipulate the invisible forces

00:02:01 ◼   ► that control the formatting and it's just like,

00:02:03 ◼   ► delete everything, start a new document.

00:02:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:06 ◼   ► - Right.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - 'Cause like even if you delete all the content

00:02:08 ◼   ► and you try to like paste it back in or type it in again,

00:02:11 ◼   ► it would like, it would still obey the--

00:02:13 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - It's like homeopathy where like the document

00:02:17 ◼   ► still has the, what is it?

00:02:18 ◼   ► - The essence.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - Sense memory or whatever of the content

00:02:22 ◼   ► was there before.

00:02:23 ◼   ► >> Deleted a million times.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It still has the essence of the old formatting.

00:02:27 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:02:28 ◼   ► You delete all the text, but when you put the text back, the document remembers the

00:02:31 ◼   ► text that used to be there.

00:02:34 ◼   ► >> Do you want timestamps to make your chapter markers easier?

00:02:39 ◼   ► >> No.

00:02:40 ◼   ► The timestamps move when I edit, so it doesn't matter.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Adding the chapter markers is only taking like five minutes.

00:02:46 ◼   ► >> Can I just point out that I think if we've received, let's say, 20 pieces of feedback

00:02:51 ◼   ► with regard to the chapter markers, easily 18 of which have somehow traced back to Germany.

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Oh, at least. I bet the other two that weren't from Germany were people who were actually Germans,

00:03:01 ◼   ► just were living somewhere else temporarily, you know? Maybe a German heritage, I don't know.

00:03:06 ◼   ► - It's so funny. I don't know what it is with the Germans and their chapter markers,

00:03:10 ◼   ► but God, do they ever love them. - They really do. It's funny,

00:03:13 ◼   ► because no one else really seems to care or even notice.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Nope. - But the Germans love them.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - Well, they're all using a popular podcast client

00:03:21 ◼   ► that doesn't support chapter markers.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - Eh.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - I wonder, so what clients do support chapter markers?

00:03:28 ◼   ► You would know.

00:03:29 ◼   ► - I think I'm the only one who doesn't, actually.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I don't know. - Oh, really?

00:03:33 ◼   ► - I know the Apple one does to a limited degree.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's easy because there's actually an API

00:03:38 ◼   ► in AAV Player to just fetch chapters

00:03:41 ◼   ► and it supports almost every format that's out there

00:03:44 ◼   ► in at least a basic way.

00:03:46 ◼   ► and I actually tried it briefly,

00:03:49 ◼   ► and it had an issue where it would just,

00:03:53 ◼   ► it would just write all over random memory garbage

00:03:55 ◼   ► with certain files that had embedded artwork

00:03:57 ◼   ► in their chapters.

00:03:58 ◼   ► - Ooh, cool.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - So it would just destroy the memory

00:04:01 ◼   ► and corrupt everything, and eventually the app would crash

00:04:03 ◼   ► when you loaded like this one particular file,

00:04:05 ◼   ► and it's, obviously it's not well-written enough to,

00:04:08 ◼   ► for me to wanna use, so I don't know.

00:04:10 ◼   ► - You know what you should do is,

00:04:12 ◼   ► whenever you're up for a new lease,

00:04:15 ◼   ► you should spend, you know, the time leading up to then building chapter support.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So when you return to Munich to do European delivery, you will be welcomed there like a god.

00:04:31 ◼   ► You think that would work?

00:04:32 ◼   ► I think so, because if there's anything that Germans love in the entire world other than order,

00:04:36 ◼   ► it is chapters.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I really do like the Germans, though.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Actually, I do too. As much as I'm poking fun, I really do as well.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I feel like these are my people.

00:04:45 ◼   ► They're nerds who drive well and are on time to things.

00:04:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:50 ◼   ► It's just amazing.

00:04:52 ◼   ► - Again, as much as I'm poking fun,

00:04:53 ◼   ► I couldn't possibly agree with you more.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And as Eschatologist says in the chat,

00:04:57 ◼   ► chapters are a form of order.

00:04:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:00 ◼   ► That's a fair point.

00:05:01 ◼   ► - Well, I've never used chapters myself

00:05:03 ◼   ► as a podcast listener.

00:05:05 ◼   ► And maybe that's 'cause I spent the last

00:05:07 ◼   ► two to two and a half years or whatever it's been

00:05:09 ◼   ► using my own app, which doesn't support them.

00:05:11 ◼   ► but I've just never been compelled to,

00:05:14 ◼   ► and there's also a major supply issue

00:05:16 ◼   ► where very few podcasts use chapter marks.

00:05:20 ◼   ► What are people using to put them in?

00:05:24 ◼   ► I know there's a web service called Auphonic

00:05:26 ◼   ► that does a lot of podcast post-processing stuff,

00:05:28 ◼   ► and they offer it,

00:05:29 ◼   ► but that's like a paid monthly kind of service,

00:05:31 ◼   ► and I know Jason Snell uses that for Clockwise,

00:05:35 ◼   ► but beyond that, there used to be an Apple tool,

00:05:38 ◼   ► I think, in GarageBand or something,

00:05:39 ◼   ► but they discontinued years ago.

00:05:42 ◼   ► So I don't know what, I don't know,

00:05:44 ◼   ► like I think there's two problems here.

00:05:45 ◼   ► There's a tools problem and a client problem

00:05:50 ◼   ► and that combines to form at least part

00:05:52 ◼   ► of the demand problem.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So I don't know, we'll see.

00:05:56 ◼   ► - So what magic are you using?

00:05:58 ◼   ► - I'm solving the tools problem first

00:06:01 ◼   ► and we're gonna move on.

00:06:03 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, all right, so we should probably do some follow up.

00:06:06 ◼   ► John, why don't you tell us about what Satya Nadella

00:06:08 ◼   ► said about your hatred of Apple. That's not what he's talking about. Anyway, this is a

00:06:13 ◼   ► review from a while, interview from a while ago where Satya Nadella is talking to Mary

00:06:18 ◼   ► Jo Foley at ZDNet in a long interview and one, I think we pulled a snippet from this

00:06:22 ◼   ► interview before which is why I had read it, but I pulled out this other snippet that I

00:06:26 ◼   ► thought was interesting. This is Satya Nadella talking. He says, "You've got to remember

00:06:30 ◼   ► even the Apple regeneration started with colorful iMacs, so let us first get the colorful iMacs.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I think with what we're doing with Lumia,

00:06:38 ◼   ► we're at that stage.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I wanna do good devices that people like,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and then we will go on to doing the next thing

00:06:42 ◼   ► and the next thing.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I thought this was really interesting

00:06:44 ◼   ► to see the CEO of Microsoft basically

00:06:47 ◼   ► like intentionally pull Microsoft down to Apple's level

00:06:52 ◼   ► to say, we are where Apple was before their resurgence.

00:06:59 ◼   ► We are at such an incredible low point

00:07:04 ◼   ► that we're at the stage where we're gonna make

00:07:07 ◼   ► some colorful IMAX.

00:07:08 ◼   ► We're not at the stage where we're making the iPod,

00:07:10 ◼   ► we're not at the stage where we're making the iPhone

00:07:11 ◼   ► or the iPad, we're at the stage where we're making

00:07:14 ◼   ► the colorful IMAX.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Which I think is sandbagging in the highest degree

00:07:19 ◼   ► because Microsoft is nowhere near the low point

00:07:21 ◼   ► that Apple was when Steve Jobs came back

00:07:23 ◼   ► or when they were introducing the IMAX.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Nowhere near that low, like financially,

00:07:27 ◼   ► like the quality and number of products they have

00:07:31 ◼   ► and that they sell and just like in every other respect.

00:07:34 ◼   ► But this is how the CEO of Microsoft

00:07:37 ◼   ► is positioning his company to say,

00:07:39 ◼   ► we want you to lower your expectations of us, I guess.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Like, think of us like where Apple was.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, give us a chance where, you know,

00:07:48 ◼   ► maybe we're not blowing you away,

00:07:49 ◼   ► but we just want to make something cool

00:07:50 ◼   ► that kind of catches the imagination as kind of popular.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And that's what we think we're doing

00:07:53 ◼   ► with these new Lomiya phones.

00:07:54 ◼   ► I know they're not the next iPhone, but you know,

00:07:57 ◼   ► come on, give us a break.

00:07:58 ◼   ► It took Apple a while too.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Really interesting strategy.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Something that I think also

00:08:03 ◼   ► that someone from the old Microsoft like Gates or Ballmer

00:08:06 ◼   ► could not pull off just because

00:08:08 ◼   ► since they were the people in charge

00:08:10 ◼   ► when Microsoft was king of the world,

00:08:11 ◼   ► it would sound weird for them to say,

00:08:15 ◼   ► Microsoft is basically where Apple was in 1998.

00:08:17 ◼   ► 'Cause it would just,

00:08:20 ◼   ► I don't know if those words could even come out

00:08:22 ◼   ► of their mouth or if they could put themselves

00:08:23 ◼   ► in that position, but a new CEO can say that

00:08:25 ◼   ► and I thought it was an interesting strategy

00:08:28 ◼   ► for how they're trying to position their company

00:08:31 ◼   ► to the outside world.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's an odd analogy, but I mean,

00:08:36 ◼   ► it sort of makes sense.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Why don't you tell us about the Trim saga

00:08:39 ◼   ► that will never end?

00:08:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think we talked about the Samsung,

00:08:44 ◼   ► popular Samsung SSDs,

00:08:45 ◼   ► and people were filing bugs against them,

00:08:47 ◼   ► and then Samsung was like, "That's not our problem

00:08:50 ◼   ► "because you're using it in Linux,

00:08:51 ◼   ► "and Linux is in a supported platform,"

00:08:53 ◼   ► and people got angry, and then we didn't know

00:08:55 ◼   ► whether there were problems with these popular SSDs or not.

00:08:58 ◼   ► The latest development in that saga is that Samsung says,

00:09:01 ◼   ► it's not a problem with our firmware or our drives,

00:09:04 ◼   ► it's a problem with the Linux kernel,

00:09:05 ◼   ► and here's a patch to help fix it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I don't know what the actual problem is.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Maybe their patch to the kernel works around a problem

00:09:12 ◼   ► in Samsung's SSDs.

00:09:14 ◼   ► There's another link that's eternally being put off

00:09:16 ◼   ► in the show notes where some Mac and an article

00:09:18 ◼   ► is trying to test these popular SSDs in OS 10

00:09:22 ◼   ► and see if they can create a corruption.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And I don't know how rigorous their testing is,

00:09:28 ◼   ► but I would say this whole thing

00:09:30 ◼   ► is still a question mark to me,

00:09:31 ◼   ► because just because Samsung says it's a bug in a Linux kernel and provides a patch to

00:09:35 ◼   ► work around it, was it a Linux kernel bug? Like I said, is there a patch just working

00:09:40 ◼   ► around a bug in the firmware? And is any of this relevant at all to people running OS

00:09:44 ◼   ► 10? I don't know. So still, I'm just hanging back and not bothering with the trim stuff

00:09:48 ◼   ► and keeping my fingers crossed.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It's a bold strategy, Cotton. We'll see if it pays off for him. That's a reference, by

00:09:54 ◼   ► the way. Marco, tell us about your cellular option dilemma.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah, so in last week's episode, I talked about how I was having an issue with deciding

00:10:06 ◼   ► Overcast cellular download preferences because I'm adding streaming for the next big version

00:10:12 ◼   ► and there was a question of should streaming have its own preference and I already had

00:10:16 ◼   ► these two other preferences and how do I combine these possibly three preferences in any way

00:10:21 ◼   ► that makes sense and is understandable by users and doesn't have too much clutter in

00:10:26 ◼   ► the options and complexity and everything. And I explained that part of the reason why,

00:10:32 ◼   ► so right now I have in the current version there's two options. One of them is download

00:10:35 ◼   ► over cellular which makes sense. The other one is basically like try to do anything over

00:10:39 ◼   ► cellular. And the reason why I couldn't just rely on the system toggle for that was because

00:10:43 ◼   ► of what I considered a bug in the system reachability framework which is that if a user had disabled

00:10:50 ◼   ► cell access completely for the app in iOS settings which you can do per app, the system

00:10:56 ◼   ► would still tell the app that it was connected to the internet via cellular. And so the app

00:11:00 ◼   ► would then have--the app would have no way to tell that it wasn't--that it wasn't allowed

00:11:03 ◼   ► to use this connection. So if it tried to use the connection, it would show their annoying

00:11:08 ◼   ► box to the user saying, "Cellular data is disabled for this app. You can change that

00:11:12 ◼   ► in settings." And my feeling was it should be the way it used to be which is that if

00:11:16 ◼   ► somebody disabled cell access for you in iOS 7, it would--the system would report to your

00:11:21 ◼   ► app that it was just offline when it was on cellular. So then you could just avoid doing

00:11:25 ◼   ► things and not show that stupid alert to people. Turns out in iOS 8.4 that bug is still there,

00:11:32 ◼   ► but in iOS 9 it's fixed. So in iOS 9, I did some testing over the last couple of days,

00:11:37 ◼   ► in iOS 9 if you as the app use the reachability framework to test the connection, if the user

00:11:44 ◼   ► is on cellular and you aren't allowed to use it, it properly reports it as offline, which

00:11:49 ◼   ► is the way it used to be and the way it should have always been. So this lets me remove that

00:11:55 ◼   ► second setting I have now, which is the, it's called sync over cellular, it lets me remove

00:12:01 ◼   ► that setting completely, which is great. So now I only will have the download over cellular

00:12:06 ◼   ► option in the, in the downloader area. And I don't need, I don't need a streaming option

00:12:13 ◼   ► at all, because streaming can just rely on the system setting. If you don't want Overcast

00:12:16 ◼   ► to use Solidata, just disable it in system settings. And that's it. So I've gone from

00:12:21 ◼   ► two settings in the current version to potentially needing three in the next version, but instead

00:12:26 ◼   ► going down to one, which is fantastic.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Why don't you need the settings anymore? Are you saying the next version is not going to

00:12:32 ◼   ► run on iOS 8?

00:12:33 ◼   ► I'm saying I will no longer care about a minor annoyance detail that will affect very, very

00:12:38 ◼   ► few people. It's not worth keeping it. So, for instance, the current version of the app

00:12:43 ◼   ► also has a setting in nitpicky details called "Seek Acceleration." This is a setting I've

00:12:49 ◼   ► I've actually had since 1.0.

00:12:51 ◼   ► When you seek an overcast, if you hit seek back or forward

00:12:55 ◼   ► by like the 30 seconds or whatever,

00:12:57 ◼   ► if you hit that a bunch of times in a row,

00:13:00 ◼   ► like so that you're doing like more than one per second,

00:13:03 ◼   ► basically, I forget exactly what my threshold is,

00:13:05 ◼   ► but if you do more than one of those per second,

00:13:07 ◼   ► after a few, I start increasing the interval

00:13:10 ◼   ► that they're seeking by.

00:13:11 ◼   ► So it lets you, if you're in a situation

00:13:13 ◼   ► where you only have access to seek back and forward features

00:13:17 ◼   ► like if you're in a car and it has the button integration,

00:13:19 ◼   ► or if you have headphones with those buttons on them,

00:13:21 ◼   ► or a remote with those buttons on it,

00:13:23 ◼   ► if you wanna seek a long distance in a track,

00:13:27 ◼   ► it lets you get there a lot faster.

00:13:29 ◼   ► So if you seek a whole bunch of times in a row,

00:13:31 ◼   ► it'll go like, you know, 30, 30, 30, 45, 50, 60, 90,

00:13:35 ◼   ► like it'll accelerate up to a certain ceiling.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And I've always had an option to disable that since 1.0.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And that option syncs to the server,

00:13:45 ◼   ► because that syncs to your account. So I can actually tell how many people use it. And

00:13:51 ◼   ► I've been watching and I brought up on Twitter a few months back, "Hey, can I just remove

00:13:55 ◼   ► this option?" And I learned that most of the respondents didn't really understand what

00:14:00 ◼   ► it did. Whether they said, "Yes, remove it," or "No, keep it," most of them seemed like

00:14:05 ◼   ► they were misunderstanding what it did. And so I decided that doesn't need to be an option

00:14:10 ◼   ► anymore. And I looked at the server and usage of it was under 1% of people who changed the

00:14:15 ◼   ► default, which is on. So in 2.0, that option is just gone. I'm not going to keep setting

00:14:20 ◼   ► around in what is a very small setting screen that's used by fewer than 1% of the users.

00:14:24 ◼   ► That's not worth the complexity. So, back to the cellular thing, this, you know, people

00:14:32 ◼   ► who are going to disable cellular in the system preferences completely for the app. I can't

00:14:37 ◼   ► measure that right now. I'm guessing it's probably not below 1%, but I bet it's pretty

00:14:41 ◼   ► low. So people who are going to disable that and also who are going to be running iOS 8

00:14:46 ◼   ► for longer than the next couple of months, it's not worth it. It's not worth keeping

00:14:50 ◼   ► that setting around just to have them be able to avoid seeing the cell data disabled dialog

00:14:58 ◼   ► box as often as they could. It's such a small gain for so few people for such a short time

00:15:06 ◼   ► that it's just not worth it. Also, I'm not taking the move to iOS 9 as something that

00:15:11 ◼   ► needs to be very carefully and slowly done. As soon as iOS 9 is out, I'm probably going

00:15:15 ◼   ► to release an update that requires it, or at least soon afterwards, depending on what

00:15:19 ◼   ► compelling reasons I have. Because the fact is iOS 9 runs on every device that iOS 8 runs

00:15:25 ◼   ► on. Jailbreakers haven't jailbroken it yet, I don't think, but I don't care. I honestly

00:15:30 ◼   ► do not care at all what jailbreakers can run. I don't follow that. I don't need to follow

00:15:34 ◼   ► that. I think if you jailbreak, that's up to you to follow, and I can't waste my time

00:15:38 ◼   ► on that because jailbreaking is just a nightmare of support complexity and it's just not worth

00:15:44 ◼   ► it. So regardless, I don't care about jailbreakability and people who hold on to old versions forever

00:15:52 ◼   ► because they just don't like the new version, I don't really cater to them either. I feel

00:15:55 ◼   ► like if your device can run iOS whatever, I don't feel bad requiring iOS whatever. Even

00:16:03 ◼   ► if you choose not to install iOS whatever, if you choose to keep the old version around,

00:16:07 ◼   ► I consider that like, okay, well,

00:16:09 ◼   ► part of your cost of doing that is you're gonna lose

00:16:11 ◼   ► future updates to apps that require all this stuff.

00:16:14 ◼   ► So, anyway, that's how I feel about that.

00:16:16 ◼   ► What was the question?

00:16:17 ◼   ► I forgot.

00:16:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:19 ◼   ► - I was basically asking you if you were gonna make

00:16:22 ◼   ► overcast iOS 9 only, and you eventually worked up to it.

00:16:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, right now, I'm building 2.0 against iOS 8

00:16:29 ◼   ► because I would like to release it

00:16:32 ◼   ► before iOS 9 is released.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I don't know if I will.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if I'll be able to.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I mean, I'm trying.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I would like to release it as soon as I can.

00:16:39 ◼   ► - Just to be clear, the last time you said

00:16:41 ◼   ► you want to release soon, you ended up a year late,

00:16:43 ◼   ► is that correct?

00:16:44 ◼   ► - (laughs) Something like that, yes.

00:16:46 ◼   ► - Okay, just want to make sure we're all

00:16:46 ◼   ► on the same page here.

00:16:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, actually what is motivating me

00:16:51 ◼   ► to want to release this soon is actually

00:16:53 ◼   ► the playlist reordering bug.

00:16:54 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:16:55 ◼   ► Like, 'cause it's gonna be, it's too complicated

00:16:57 ◼   ► to backport the fix to that into the 1.0 branch,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and so I would like to, I'm actually planning on now

00:17:04 ◼   ► cutting a few features from 2.0's initial launch just so I can get it out faster and

00:17:09 ◼   ► then adding back those features later in like 2.1 or whatever.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Need. Need is a curated retailer and publication for

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00:17:38 ◼   ► shirt parody promo. So, I want to thank him first of all for coming in last minute with

00:17:43 ◼   ► this because we had somebody drop out and he was awesome and picked it up. So, thank

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00:17:52 ◼   ► And they sell mostly, they sell men's clothing. They also sell literature, furniture, coffee

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00:19:48 ◼   ► Yes. J.Crew quality at H&M pricing? Yes. That's a good thing? It's a good thing.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Alright. Check out Need and Foremost for men and women by visiting neededition.com and

00:19:58 ◼   ► foremostedition.com. You can even say hello and harass them in the live chat widget on

00:20:02 ◼   ► the site, which is always powered by one of Need's employees or Matt himself. Never

00:20:06 ◼   ► outsourced anybody crazy or bots. So anyway, thank you very much to Matt Alexander and

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00:20:18 ◼   ► anything in the store, the biggest discount

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00:20:52 ◼   ► a lot to Need and Foremost for sponsoring our show.

00:20:55 ◼   ► All right. So we had a discussion about Reddit last episode. And we got some feedback about

00:21:05 ◼   ► that. We got nothing wrong. We got nothing wrong. Not a thing. We got some feedback about

00:21:09 ◼   ► that we got less than I expected, which I was kind of happy about, and it was less vile

00:21:15 ◼   ► than I expected, which I was super happy about, but we've got some new thoughts, or some things

00:21:20 ◼   ► to address perhaps.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Jon, would you like to tell us about some of the things that you've learned, discovered,

00:21:26 ◼   ► or thought about since then?

00:21:28 ◼   ► Back when this was in the follow-up section, seems so long ago, this topic, I mean, I thought

00:21:33 ◼   ► of removing a lot of it because I just listened to a last week episode, and I was like, "Yeah,

00:21:39 ◼   ► I pretty much I think I pretty much said everything I wanted to say on the topic and the reason I you know

00:21:43 ◼   ► Because I had all this fall of them, you know when feedback comes in I add corrections to the follow-up go through it

00:21:47 ◼   ► You know the normal pattern of stuff, but then I listen to the episode

00:21:50 ◼   ► I'm like but in that episode I had so many disclaimers like at the end of the thing

00:21:53 ◼   ► I was like, I know I got most of the details wrong, but it's not the details that I'm talking about

00:21:58 ◼   ► I'm trying to address the big picture blah blah blah people don't care. They still want to correct you any details, but just fine

00:22:03 ◼   ► so I in the end I left it in especially once Casey moved it down to be a topic but

00:22:08 ◼   ► But there are a couple just straight up factual things that I didn't later say that I knew

00:22:13 ◼   ► I got wrong.

00:22:15 ◼   ► One of them was that Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, and that is no longer the case.

00:22:19 ◼   ► We'll link to a little fact about it there where they were owned by Condé Nast, and

00:22:24 ◼   ► then they were owned by Condé Nast's parent company, but then they were spun out and reincorporated

00:22:28 ◼   ► independently.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And so, according to this thing, the best characterization might be to say that Reddit

00:22:33 ◼   ► is a part-sibling once removed of Condé Nast.

00:22:36 ◼   ► So that totally clears things up.

00:22:38 ◼   ► That was something I did not know I got wrong because most of the other details

00:22:41 ◼   ► I was just like winging it and giving examples and every time I gave an example

00:22:44 ◼   ► I was like, I know that's probably not accurate or true

00:22:46 ◼   ► whatever I mean

00:22:47 ◼   ► It makes it seem like I didn't read a lot about this when I did I just didn't write down or memorize the the individual

00:22:52 ◼   ► Facts, which is why I was trying to go big picture and that brings me to the next topic which is

00:22:56 ◼   ► the few

00:22:58 ◼   ► mildly mildly negative uh bits of feedback we got

00:23:02 ◼   ► Seemed to me to be treating all three of us as if we had never heard of reddit

00:23:07 ◼   ► Like what is this crazy reddit thing? Have you heard about this?

00:23:09 ◼   ► And I don't know about you two guys who are younger than I am

00:23:12 ◼   ► But like if I gave the impression that you know, like we all said we don't we're not reddit regulars

00:23:17 ◼   ► We don't go to the site. We are not part of the community

00:23:19 ◼   ► We don't consider ourselves redditors or whatever but

00:23:22 ◼   ► It's not as if reddit is this new thing that we just learned about when this controversy came so I went and looked up my info

00:23:26 ◼   ► at least

00:23:28 ◼   ► Uh reddit was founded on june 23rd 2005 according to wikipedia, which is never wrong

00:23:33 ◼   ► My account at Reddit was created on August 8th, 2005, which is 46 days after it was founded.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So I'm sorry that I did not get in on the ground floor of Reddit. The site was around

00:23:42 ◼   ► the whole 46 days before I joined and was a member for the next 10 years. Like, again, I'm not a

00:23:48 ◼   ► regular member of Reddit, right? I do not go there frequently. But I think the most angry

00:23:56 ◼   ► characterization is us being entirely out of touch with Reddit or just having discovered Reddit due

00:24:02 ◼   ► to the Ellen Powell controversy is wildly inaccurate.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think part of what we were trying to describe is expressly what an outsider

00:24:10 ◼   ► thinks of the situation. And I agree with you, john, I don't think any of us painted

00:24:15 ◼   ► us as experts on what the intricacies of how Reddit works internally, either for users

00:24:22 ◼   ► or moderators or employees. But I know that we were all speaking more of, hey, from from

00:24:29 ◼   ► From an outsider, kind of third party that's not really invested in this looking in, it

00:24:33 ◼   ► looks kind of gross. And I stand by that.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Yeah, like that's the perspective we were giving as casuals. Like, not as people who

00:24:40 ◼   ► are confused by what this whole crazy Reddit thing is, but it's just like, there's a community,

00:24:44 ◼   ► it exists, and we're not really that involved in it. We know about it, we dip in and out

00:24:48 ◼   ► of it, we see it, right? But we're, you know, and we're not, and I think, I think that's

00:24:53 ◼   ► most people, like most people are not hardcore Reddit users. Reddit has tremendous traffic.

00:24:58 ◼   ► a small portion of that tremendous traffic are the sort of very dedicated people who

00:25:03 ◼   ► are very invested in Reddit as a community. That's the nature of any high-traffic site.

00:25:07 ◼   ► You know, you don't have millions and millions of people, all of whom are super invested

00:25:11 ◼   ► in you. That's just numbers, right? So our perspective as sort of outsiders—outsiders

00:25:17 ◼   ► who I think understand the phenomenon of Reddit and sites like Reddit and the dynamics of

00:25:23 ◼   ► online communities, but are not so invested in it that sort of any discussion of any negative

00:25:29 ◼   ► aspect of Reddit is seen as a condemnation of all members of Reddit. Like, that's not

00:25:34 ◼   ► where we were coming from at all. I bet we were. We were giving an outside perspective.

00:25:37 ◼   ► And I think I certainly was not particularly interested in the specific details of whatever

00:25:44 ◼   ► the controversy of the day is about "he said and she said this," and "these people are

00:25:49 ◼   ► harassing this person, and these are the internal politics there," just trying to say, like,

00:25:53 ◼   ► Is Reddit a place that we feel like we would like to hang out?

00:25:58 ◼   ► And if not, why not?

00:25:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with you.

00:26:02 ◼   ► The only somewhat decent feedback—well, that's not fair.

00:26:05 ◼   ► The feedback that struck me most that we got was someone who said, in so many words—you

00:26:13 ◼   ► were complaining and moaning about Reddit and how gross Reddit is, but a lot of gross

00:26:17 ◼   ► stuff happens on Twitter and none of the three of us really complained and moaned about Twitter

00:26:21 ◼   ► last episode. And that really made me think for a minute, and I don't have any good answers.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Maybe because I'm pretty invested in Twitter, and I'm invested in what I like to think of

00:26:34 ◼   ► as the good corner of Twitter, I don't see a lot of the just absolutely vile, terrible,

00:26:40 ◼   ► disgusting things that happen on Twitter. Because they happen. They definitely happen.

00:26:44 ◼   ► But I don't get exposed to it yet. I feel like I hear a lot more often about the terrible,

00:26:51 ◼   ► violent, disgusting things that happen on Reddit.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And I was curious, John or Marco,

00:26:57 ◼   ► if you guys had any thoughts about why Twitter is okay,

00:27:00 ◼   ► but Reddit isn't.

00:27:02 ◼   ► - Oh, they're both disasters.

00:27:03 ◼   ► We just know how to, I mean, I think it's,

00:27:06 ◼   ► you can look at both of those and say,

00:27:09 ◼   ► wow, both of these are absolutely horrible

00:27:10 ◼   ► at dealing with abusive people.

00:27:13 ◼   ► That's just the way it is.

00:27:14 ◼   ► In fact, Twitter might even be worse, I don't know.

00:27:16 ◼   ► I don't know enough about Reddit to say.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Twitter's really bad about it, I know that.

00:27:21 ◼   ► We did talk about it at the last show, and I mentioned this was the objection that I said like I was feeling some trepidation about going to Reddit because I felt like I was kind of tacitly supporting an organization that provides a home for communities that make me uncomfortable that I don't like.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And I didn't feel that with Twitter.

00:27:42 ◼   ► And I think for me, the difference is, and I'd mentioned like, well, because, you know,

00:27:47 ◼   ► I don't see any ads on Twitter, so what am I really doing that's supporting them?

00:27:50 ◼   ► But you know, this feedback from Don is right, that like, by my participation in Twitter,

00:27:54 ◼   ► I'm still supporting them, whether I see ads or not, right.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And I think the reason I feel differently about is not so much with my investment in

00:28:00 ◼   ► Twitter, but that for as bad as Twitter is about dealing with harassment, they have policies

00:28:09 ◼   ► in place that if you were to look at the policies you would say these are good

00:28:12 ◼   ► and they show that Twitter doesn't want this thing to happen. They're really bad

00:28:16 ◼   ► at implementing those policies. Many times their implementation again like

00:28:20 ◼   ► oh we have a way for you to report people for harassment we'll do something

00:28:23 ◼   ► about and like the form of require revealing your personal information to

00:28:26 ◼   ► the person you're harassing and they would their decision-making process

00:28:29 ◼   ► would not be great on it but like the fact that the Twitter CEO comes out and

00:28:33 ◼   ► said we are really bad at this and we need to get better and that they have

00:28:36 ◼   ► taken positive steps to make them to make their company better dealing with

00:28:41 ◼   ► this shows that they this is the direction they want to go in it's not as

00:28:44 ◼   ► if the CEO of Twitter is saying we're really bad at it and that's by design

00:28:48 ◼   ► because we don't want to clamp down too much we want to make sure people feel

00:28:52 ◼   ► free to say whatever they want to say that's not the message coming out of

00:28:54 ◼   ► Twitter at all execution wise still bad but everything they have done and

00:28:59 ◼   ► everything they have said and done is saying there it's aspirational they're

00:29:02 ◼   ► saying we want to be over there we want people to feel more welcome on Twitter

00:29:06 ◼   ► We want to deal with the harassment problem. We want to stop this from happening

00:29:09 ◼   ► And here are the things that we're going to do and then you know

00:29:12 ◼   ► They try to do something people complain or whatever and the thing that's most upsetting to me about reddit is

00:29:16 ◼   ► The aspirational thing does I don't agree with their aspirations it reddit says we want our community to be like this

00:29:21 ◼   ► I'm like, okay. Well, that's I don't like that. I don't like that goal state

00:29:25 ◼   ► I think Twitter's goal state if you were to talk to the CEO of what do you want Twitter to be like?

00:29:30 ◼   ► What are you trying to reach? I would agree more with what they're going for in terms of a

00:29:35 ◼   ► place where people feel like they're free from

00:29:37 ◼   ► Abusive behavior or have it not free from but have the tools to deal with abusive behavior, right?

00:29:42 ◼   ► The Twitter wants to provide that whereas reddit seems to want to provide a safe haven for people to trade

00:29:50 ◼   ► Ideas and behave in ways that I that I don't like right and again this like I'm glad no one has brought this up

00:29:57 ◼   ► To the credit of all the people of all the various reddit people who have listened to this thing and sent feedback

00:30:03 ◼   ► nobody has brought out the old, you know, the old saw about like

00:30:07 ◼   ► You're trying to say that reddit doesn't have a right to exist

00:30:11 ◼   ► like I'm so glad that that I mean either that speaks to the the small number of reddit people listen to our show or the

00:30:17 ◼   ► the general intelligence people who are reddit not to bring out that ridiculous argument of like I

00:30:22 ◼   ► Tried very hard in the last show to frame it as does this feel something?

00:30:26 ◼   ► Does this community feel like something that I want to participate participate in why and why not?

00:30:32 ◼   ► Everyone's free to make the community they want to make all I'm talking about is does this feel like something that I want to join

00:30:37 ◼   ► them and my secondary point which I think we'll get to in a little bit was like

00:30:41 ◼   ► Does the community that they say they want to make is it the type of thing that I think would be broadly appealing

00:30:48 ◼   ► Right, and I think that's that's where you get into you know, like Marco not allowing KKK podcasts on his hypothetical podcast network

00:30:55 ◼   ► That's the type of decision where you can say if you did that

00:31:00 ◼   ► Most people wouldn't care like that

00:31:02 ◼   ► That is something that excludes that that would be broadly appealing because it's not a system of government

00:31:07 ◼   ► it's just a private website and if a private website ban that type of

00:31:10 ◼   ► Content everyone be like, all right. Yeah, I'm fine with that

00:31:14 ◼   ► Like that is a broadly appealing decision less broadly appealing banning vegetarians, right then all of a sudden well

00:31:19 ◼   ► Now you are really narrowing your audience because if you decide that's what you want your site, that's fine

00:31:25 ◼   ► But a lot of people are going to rightly say

00:31:27 ◼   ► Now that's getting to be you know

00:31:29 ◼   ► Like that the whole idea that there are that there are standards sort of community standards like human community standards

00:31:35 ◼   ► whether they're local or state or country or international community standards that

00:31:40 ◼   ► Mean if you want something to appeal to the broadest number of people

00:31:44 ◼   ► Everyone's okay with you excluding these ideas and this behavior

00:31:47 ◼   ► But once you start getting what you know

00:31:49 ◼   ► Once you start crossing over into like well that just seems like arbitrary and weird like not allowing left-handed people

00:31:55 ◼   ► Hmm that's you know that that seems that doesn't seem weird but not allowing the KKK

00:32:01 ◼   ► Yeah, sure. Go ahead get banned them. I don't like I think that's okay. They were bothersome. Anyway, I don't like those ideas, right?

00:32:07 ◼   ► And that maybe that bothers a lot of people especially have a sort of logical mindset

00:32:12 ◼   ► I was like, no you can't you have to allow all ideas or allow no ideas if you can't

00:32:15 ◼   ► How do you describe that what's different about the KKK and left-handed people like they there are just it's equivalently arbitrary, right?

00:32:21 ◼   ► They're just ideas man

00:32:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that that brings down to the reddit Q&A that someone linked to with the current

00:32:28 ◼   ► Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spes on on reddit. It's it's a it's a nice thing with the Q&A the best thing about it

00:32:35 ◼   ► Of course is speaking of Marcos complaints about the giant intent indented conversations a nice person emailed this to us

00:32:40 ◼   ► I'm for I lost the name because it's somewhere in the in our email, but

00:32:45 ◼   ► The Q&A is like a bunch of questions and that with numbers and then the answers follow them

00:32:50 ◼   ► So it's like questions one through seven questions one two three, you know

00:32:55 ◼   ► and then down below there are the answers and the nice person who emailed us did the same thing and

00:33:00 ◼   ► put the question then answer the question then answer instead of a giant list of questions and then a giant list of numbered answers and

00:33:06 ◼   ► You have to keep like mapping back and forth in your mind or keep scrolling back up or it's this is section two

00:33:10 ◼   ► Question number two the question was blah and I'll scroll down for the answer

00:33:15 ◼   ► Reddit just really is not yeah, this is totally aside from the policy issues

00:33:21 ◼   ► it's not a really welcoming site for people who don't like navigating giant walls of

00:33:26 ◼   ► indented text anyway a

00:33:29 ◼   ► few items from this Q&A which I think is

00:33:32 ◼   ► Doesn't pin anything down like they're still trying to work out what they're trying to do

00:33:36 ◼   ► But I picked out a few examples that spoke to the thing that I find

00:33:39 ◼   ► Unappealing about reddit so again, this is the CEO

00:33:45 ◼   ► answering some questions. "Mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment."

00:33:49 ◼   ► Right, that was an answer to which question? I gotta scroll up and find it.

00:33:54 ◼   ► "In regards to subreddits for mocking another group, what is the policy on them?"

00:33:58 ◼   ► Blah blah blah. So mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment. I assume

00:34:01 ◼   ► that it's defined as not harassment because either implicitly or earlier

00:34:06 ◼   ► they're saying, "Well harassment is something we don't want," and mocking and

00:34:09 ◼   ► calling people stupid is not harassment. Turning this position around, what it

00:34:14 ◼   ► basically means is if you come to participate on reddit it very well may

00:34:19 ◼   ► happen that you get mocked and called stupid which fine like that yeah again

00:34:23 ◼   ► you know you you define the rules of the community whatever you want right but I

00:34:27 ◼   ► would compare this to the ARK's technical policy that I talked about in the last

00:34:30 ◼   ► show where ARK's technical thing is no ad hominem attacks have a discussion on

00:34:34 ◼   ► the topic at hand disagree as violently as you want about you know whether the

00:34:40 ◼   ► whether Altavec or MMX is better, but no mocking people are calling them stupid.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Don't attack the person, attack the ideas. That's the Ars Technica comment

00:34:48 ◼   ► policy, right? And I don't think Ars Technica is a super high-minded site

00:34:51 ◼   ► where everyone has good behavior. It is a pretty rough and tumble crowd there, right?

00:34:54 ◼   ► It's also probably male-dominated, it's got all sort of similar pathologies of

00:34:59 ◼   ► the Reddit stuff, and yet Ars Technica has this rule that says don't attack the

00:35:02 ◼   ► person, attack the ideas. Reddit, they're saying mocking and calling people stupid

00:35:06 ◼   ► is not harassment. That's something we think is acceptable behavior in all of

00:35:09 ◼   ► communities it's going to happen it's going to happen to you you can't ban

00:35:12 ◼   ► someone for doing it just because they call you stupid or mock you that I find

00:35:17 ◼   ► that distasteful I don't think that's beyond the pale where it's like oh now

00:35:21 ◼   ► your site is not broadly appealing but I think it does I mean like Twitter if you

00:35:25 ◼   ► come on to Twitter and people are going to mock you and call you stupid you're

00:35:28 ◼   ► going to want something you're not gonna like that you're gonna want to not see

00:35:31 ◼   ► their tweets here when I'm able to block them and if they keep doing it then it

00:35:34 ◼   ► might become harassment but anyway they're categorizing it's not

00:35:37 ◼   ► harassment if people do that. What if you come onto a Reddit and everybody says

00:35:41 ◼   ► that you're stupid but everyone only says it once and every time you appear

00:35:45 ◼   ► and post anything on Reddit each individual person on that entire forum

00:35:50 ◼   ► mocks you or calls you stupid but only does it once. That's I guess still not

00:35:54 ◼   ► harassment. Your experience of Reddit is that anytime you appear no one addresses

00:35:58 ◼   ► anything that you say but they merely download you, download you, call you

00:36:01 ◼   ► stupid and mock you. That's not a particularly healthy or welcoming

00:36:04 ◼   ► community where you where that I would want to participate and yet that's the

00:36:08 ◼   ► one there type of thing they're defining another item filling someone's inbox

00:36:12 ◼   ► with PMs private messages saying kill yourself is harassment calling someone

00:36:16 ◼   ► stupid on a public forum is not again now it's like if you fill their inbox

00:36:20 ◼   ► with private messages that only they can see saying kill yourself that's

00:36:22 ◼   ► harassment but if you just call them stupid in public that's not it doesn't

00:36:26 ◼   ► make any sense to me these are outlining behaviors what they're basically saying

00:36:29 ◼   ► is if you're just if you're just sending people private messages and saying mean

00:36:32 ◼   ► things to them. That's harassment. But if you're just saying it in public and you say

00:36:36 ◼   ► it once, it's okay. And again, they can figure out what they want the rules to be. This is

00:36:41 ◼   ► the things that I read that make me feel like this is not some place that I would like to

00:36:45 ◼   ► hang out. Because I'm not interested in watching people call each other names, even if I'm

00:36:49 ◼   ► not involved. I'm not interested in seeing people mock each other and call each other

00:36:53 ◼   ► stupid. I'm interested in an exchange of ideas. I don't think any of this makes Reddit broadly

00:37:01 ◼   ► unappealing but the type of communities that can fit within the rules that they're laying

00:37:07 ◼   ► down a lot of those communities are broadly unappealing.

00:37:11 ◼   ► And I think like if you follow the letter of the law as Reddit appears to be defining

00:37:15 ◼   ► things you can have a community that is just terrible that all it is is a bunch of people

00:37:18 ◼   ► reinforcing their own really bad ideas.

00:37:20 ◼   ► There was another really good one here is the number one thing was harboring unpopular

00:37:24 ◼   ► ideologies is not a reason for banning which sounds great it's like exactly like you know

00:37:29 ◼   ► "Well, just because my ideology is unpopular,

00:37:32 ◼   ► I shouldn't be banned."

00:37:33 ◼   ► I think when people read that on Reddit,

00:37:35 ◼   ► what they have in their mind is,

00:37:37 ◼   ► "If I think Enterprise is the best Star Trek series,

00:37:40 ◼   ► I shouldn't be banned."

00:37:41 ◼   ► That is definitely an unpopular idea,

00:37:45 ◼   ► that Enterprise is the best Star Trek series.

00:37:47 ◼   ► And so that's kind of what's in their mind.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Yeah, why should I be banned?

00:37:49 ◼   ► Because I have just, you know,

00:37:50 ◼   ► this is tyranny of the majority.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Why should I have to agree with everybody else?

00:37:53 ◼   ► It's supposed to be a free and open exchange of ideas.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Harboring unpopular ideology

00:37:57 ◼   ► is not a reason for banning, right?

00:37:59 ◼   ► But ideologies are different than just ideas

00:38:01 ◼   ► or statements or opinions.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Harboring unpopular, there's lots of unpopular ideologies

00:38:07 ◼   ► that you would say are not reasons for banning.

00:38:09 ◼   ► But if your unpopular ideology

00:38:11 ◼   ► is that all black people should be slaves,

00:38:13 ◼   ► that is a different unpopular ideology

00:38:15 ◼   ► than you think there should be a flat tax

00:38:17 ◼   ► of 90% on all Americans, right?

00:38:20 ◼   ► And from sort of logical perspective,

00:38:23 ◼   ► those are just both unpopular ideologies.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Why should one be banned and another not be banned?

00:38:27 ◼   ► it's all up to what kind of community you want to make.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Especially if you had rules against attacking the idea,

00:38:34 ◼   ► not the person.

00:38:34 ◼   ► I think you could have a community in which that person

00:38:36 ◼   ► who's really in favor of the 90% flat tax on all Americans

00:38:39 ◼   ► could have a reasonable discussion or debate

00:38:44 ◼   ► about his or her position.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And the person who thinks all black people should be slaves

00:38:49 ◼   ► is never going to have a reasonable debate about it.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Like they are different by their nature.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And I think anyone can tell that they're different,

00:38:55 ◼   ► But the rules, according to the letter of the rules,

00:38:58 ◼   ► they're both unpopular ideologies

00:39:00 ◼   ► and neither one is a reason for banning.

00:39:01 ◼   ► And that's the type of community

00:39:02 ◼   ► that Reddit seems to be trying to create.

00:39:04 ◼   ► And, you know, go for it.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Like that's the one I make, that's the one I make.

00:39:08 ◼   ► That's why, that's what I'm getting at when I say,

00:39:10 ◼   ► when I read their sort of goal state,

00:39:13 ◼   ► what are we trying to make Reddit become?

00:39:15 ◼   ► Like they're still working on the details.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I'm not saying they gotta have it all figured out now.

00:39:17 ◼   ► The site's only 10 years old, you know, take your time.

00:39:20 ◼   ► But it's this, that's what's repelling me.

00:39:25 ◼   ► And I think, like I said, I think the rules sort of,

00:39:28 ◼   ► as they're evolving them now,

00:39:30 ◼   ► allow for a lot of things that would definitely be

00:39:33 ◼   ► beyond what regular people wanna get involved in.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And I guess the final other item I had on this

00:39:40 ◼   ► is a couple of people saying the bad stuff on Reddit

00:39:42 ◼   ► doesn't affect me.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Some people saying the bad stuff on Reddit does affect them

00:39:45 ◼   ► and they're thinking of pulling back.

00:39:47 ◼   ► There is something to be said about subreddits

00:39:51 ◼   ► that you don't go to not affecting your life

00:39:53 ◼   ► on the Reddit with the cat pictures, right?

00:39:56 ◼   ► And I think this gets back to like, is all of Reddit,

00:40:00 ◼   ► you know, are all the people on Reddit bad?

00:40:02 ◼   ► No, obviously not.

00:40:02 ◼   ► The vast, vast majority of people who are heavily,

00:40:04 ◼   ► even like the super heavy users,

00:40:06 ◼   ► they just wanna look at cat pictures, man.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's all good.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Like, and there's great forums there

00:40:10 ◼   ► and where they discuss interesting things,

00:40:12 ◼   ► like tons of great stuff on Reddit.

00:40:14 ◼   ► This is a case of the rules that allow all that great stuff

00:40:18 ◼   ► to bloom on forum, on forum, on Reddit,

00:40:21 ◼   ► also allows some bad stuff.

00:40:23 ◼   ► and you don't wanna think about the bad stuff

00:40:24 ◼   ► and you don't wanna see it,

00:40:26 ◼   ► but sometimes those people wander over to your end.

00:40:28 ◼   ► And even if they don't wander over,

00:40:30 ◼   ► you know you're participating in a system

00:40:32 ◼   ► that provides a little incubator

00:40:34 ◼   ► for these people to reinforce their own ideas

00:40:37 ◼   ► and recruit new people.

00:40:38 ◼   ► And even if they stay within the letter of the law

00:40:42 ◼   ► on the subreddit stuff,

00:40:44 ◼   ► it's basically an organization tool

00:40:47 ◼   ► for things that you don't want to happen.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Like, so fine, maybe they email each other privately

00:40:51 ◼   ► about inciting violence.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Maybe they they email each other privately about doxxing people about harassing them about doing all the things

00:40:56 ◼   ► It's always long. You don't do it on reddit. It's fine

00:40:58 ◼   ► Like what do you think these communities are about like they're just hateful, right?

00:41:02 ◼   ► And if you are on reddit some some people isn't bothered like I stick to the cat picture reddit subreddit

00:41:08 ◼   ► And I'm fine and I don't associate with them at all

00:41:10 ◼   ► I don't think the cat picture reddit people are tainted by the other people

00:41:14 ◼   ► But they are participating in a system that allows for that

00:41:18 ◼   ► Whereas if you're on Twitter you are participating as a system that would like not to allow for that

00:41:22 ◼   ► but does because they're incompetent about enforcing it. So I think that is a fine line.

00:41:26 ◼   ► They're like, it's not clear cut. It is definitely not clear cut. But I like where Twitter says

00:41:32 ◼   ► it's trying to go. And so far, where Reddit says it's trying to go doesn't match up with

00:41:39 ◼   ► what I prefer.

00:41:40 ◼   ► David Tompa It just seems like they pride themselves in

00:41:44 ◼   ► these decisions that, like you, I find kind of distasteful. And it doesn't take a very

00:41:51 ◼   ► big logical leap to realize that, just like you said, saying "enterprise is the best

00:41:57 ◼   ► Star Trek" is a very, very, very different thing than saying that, you know, all black

00:42:01 ◼   ► people should be slaves.

00:42:02 ◼   ► It's just—

00:42:03 ◼   ► Eric Lander One is not an ideology.

00:42:04 ◼   ► That's why I said the flat tax.

00:42:05 ◼   ► The, like, the 90% flat tax, it's more of an ideology, or like Marxism or communism,

00:42:09 ◼   ► some really unpopular, but it's an ideology, right?

00:42:13 ◼   ► I think that type of ideology, like, there are certain ideologies that we collectively

00:42:18 ◼   ► all agree as society are so distasteful that you don't want them to be part of your community.

00:42:30 ◼   ► People talking about that, groups discussing it, again, because your community is a private

00:42:34 ◼   ► website. Obviously, we're not the United States government. People should be allowed to protest,

00:42:38 ◼   ► say what they want, print what they want, do whatever you want. We're talking about

00:42:41 ◼   ► what kind of community does Reddit want to create on their private website? And the kind

00:42:45 ◼   ► they want to create allows for things that I don't like. And the Enterprise example,

00:42:49 ◼   ► so that's why I'm trying to come up with something that is like non-controversial but is also

00:42:53 ◼   ► an ideology that is super unpopular but I think perfectly okay to discuss in a constructive

00:43:00 ◼   ► way, you know what I mean?

00:43:02 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. All right, anything else on Reddit? Marco, you've been quiet for a

00:43:05 ◼   ► while. Any thoughts?

00:43:07 ◼   ► I just don't care, honestly. There's a limited number of things I can care about, and the

00:43:12 ◼   ► the drama of what seems like a really fragmented and sometimes good but sometimes extremely

00:43:19 ◼   ► problematic community that I'm not in. I can't make myself care. I just can't.

00:43:27 ◼   ► It's not really the specifics of Reddit that I care about so much because again I'm

00:43:30 ◼   ► not that regular of a user and I don't think it's like a linchpin of the internet that

00:43:34 ◼   ► if something bad happens to it, it diminishes, that that will be the end of the world.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Oh, that's not what Redditers think though.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Well, you know, I think it'll be fine.

00:43:44 ◼   ► But anyway, it is, I think it's just a good example of how,

00:43:48 ◼   ► if you read like these guidelines,

00:43:51 ◼   ► they all seem to make sense.

00:43:53 ◼   ► You know, like you read them and you feel

00:43:54 ◼   ► they're egalitarian, they're high-minded or whatever.

00:43:58 ◼   ► But I, you know, as a incredibly insightful podcast

00:44:03 ◼   ► once said, it's ramifications.

00:44:05 ◼   ► Harboring on popular ideologies is not a reason for banning.

00:44:07 ◼   ► That sounds awesome, right?

00:44:09 ◼   ► What are the ramifications of that?

00:44:10 ◼   ► What does that lead to?

00:44:12 ◼   ► What do these series of guidelines lead to?

00:44:14 ◼   ► Mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment.

00:44:16 ◼   ► What kind of community do you build

00:44:18 ◼   ► with this set of guidelines?

00:44:19 ◼   ► The shape of that community is not appealing to me.

00:44:23 ◼   ► And I'm making, you know, I'm gonna get called on this

00:44:26 ◼   ► and I think it's true.

00:44:27 ◼   ► I'm making the extrapolation that

00:44:29 ◼   ► because this is not appealing to me

00:44:31 ◼   ► and because I think I kind of understand

00:44:33 ◼   ► what is generally accepted to be sort of like

00:44:37 ◼   ► okay within polite society,

00:44:39 ◼   ► Certain things that fit within the letter of these guidelines

00:44:42 ◼   ► are things that most people will find distasteful

00:44:45 ◼   ► and would not want to be associated with.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Our coontown, people do not want to be associated with that

00:44:51 ◼   ► in general.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Advertisers certainly don't.

00:44:53 ◼   ► And just general people, if it gets too close to them

00:44:56 ◼   ► or they realize what's going on back there,

00:44:58 ◼   ► definitely is not something they want to deal with.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And I think there is a standard for that.

00:45:03 ◼   ► It's hard to define.

00:45:04 ◼   ► That's why it's hard to write down rules.

00:45:05 ◼   ► And if you write down the rules for it, it's like, oh,

00:45:07 ◼   ► slippery slope.

00:45:07 ◼   ► You're gonna ban everything right, but it's something that every

00:45:11 ◼   ► community of real people virtual communities everything I

00:45:15 ◼   ► think deals with much more naturally and and calmly like I

00:45:20 ◼   ► Can't think of another group of people that you know

00:45:23 ◼   ► Like if you had a bowling league and people came in the bowling lead and were mocking people and calling them stupid

00:45:30 ◼   ► And you're like well, that's not against the you know that's fine like people say you're jerks

00:45:34 ◼   ► I don't want to bowl with you anymore."

00:45:35 ◼   ► Right?

00:45:36 ◼   ► That's the way, and somehow online it's like, well, they must be allowed to do that because

00:45:40 ◼   ► we need to allow them to put their hateful words into our database, otherwise we're monsters.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Free speech doesn't mean what you think it means.

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00:48:21 ◼   ► - So one of the things that's been announced

00:48:24 ◼   ► for El Capitan, is this rootless mode thing.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And I have not had a chance to look into this at all, but I'm very fascinated by what it

00:48:32 ◼   ► means to me.

00:48:34 ◼   ► And I say that because my day-to-day life is—I live in VMware Fusion.

00:48:41 ◼   ► And I am running Windows and VMware Fusion in order to do my day job.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And it may be—and we'll find out shortly—that this will not affect VMware Fusion at all.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Or it may be that VMware will have to go to extraordinary lengths in order to get themselves

00:49:01 ◼   ► back to where they are today.

00:49:03 ◼   ► So Jon, tell me about rootless mode and what does that mean?

00:49:07 ◼   ► The framing for this is I just want a brief review of the basic Unix security that OS

00:49:15 ◼   ► 10 has.

00:49:16 ◼   ► Unlike classic Mac OS, which these days no one listening to this show probably remembers,

00:49:22 ◼   ► There are user accounts on OS X. You log into one, maybe get logged into one by default.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Your user account, when you create files from a user account, you're the user that owns

00:49:32 ◼   ► them.

00:49:33 ◼   ► You can only mess with, for the most part, the files that you own or that have permissions

00:49:37 ◼   ► for anyone in your group or anyone at all to modify.

00:49:41 ◼   ► And in practice what that means is the operating system itself and other users' crap does not

00:49:46 ◼   ► have permissions set on it that allow you to do anything to it.

00:49:49 ◼   ► So the files that make up the operating system are owned by a different user, they're in

00:49:53 ◼   ► a different group, and you as your regular user can't mess with them.

00:49:57 ◼   ► You can have an administrative user which is in some elevated privilege groups including

00:50:02 ◼   ► something that lets them become the super user.

00:50:06 ◼   ► Like when something asks you to enter an admin user password, that's elevating your privileges

00:50:10 ◼   ► to okay, now even though you logged into whatever your account is, now you have super user privileges,

00:50:17 ◼   ► you can modify anything on the system.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And usually you're doing that on behalf

00:50:21 ◼   ► of a program that wants to mess with files

00:50:23 ◼   ► that otherwise you as a user wouldn't be able to mess with.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And this was seen by Mac users as a little bit

00:50:28 ◼   ► of an annoyance, but also as a big win of like, oh, finally,

00:50:33 ◼   ► I'll only be able to mess with my files by default.

00:50:35 ◼   ► So you can also make non-admin accounts that can't

00:50:37 ◼   ► elevate their privileges.

00:50:39 ◼   ► You'd have to enter some other administrative account password

00:50:42 ◼   ► to elevate privileges.

00:50:43 ◼   ► So those people maybe couldn't install applications

00:50:45 ◼   ► are best with the operating system or whatever.

00:50:48 ◼   ► The downside of this, as people have always discussed,

00:50:51 ◼   ► and which rootless does not really address that much,

00:50:54 ◼   ► but it's worth keeping in mind, is that--

00:50:56 ◼   ► all right, so say you have a non-admin account, which

00:50:58 ◼   ► a lot of people recommend.

00:50:59 ◼   ► You should have a non-admin account,

00:51:00 ◼   ► because that way you can't elevate your privileges

00:51:02 ◼   ► to the level where you can modify anything.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And all you'll ever be able to modify is your own files.

00:51:06 ◼   ► You can't delete the operating system.

00:51:07 ◼   ► You can't mess with anything like that.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So if somehow malware got onto your system

00:51:14 ◼   ► or hijacked your web browser or whatever,

00:51:16 ◼   ► and it was running as you, the lowly user,

00:51:19 ◼   ► it would only be able to modify files owned by you.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Well, guess what?

00:51:21 ◼   ► If they delete everything in your home directory

00:51:23 ◼   ► owned by you, you're gonna be super sad

00:51:25 ◼   ► because that's all your crap.

00:51:27 ◼   ► That's all the stuff that you care about.

00:51:29 ◼   ► In the end, you don't really care about the operating system

00:51:31 ◼   ► or so this counter to the Unix security model goes.

00:51:35 ◼   ► You can reinstall the operating system,

00:51:38 ◼   ► but you own all of the pictures

00:51:39 ◼   ► that are in your iPhoto library,

00:51:41 ◼   ► all the music that's in your iTunes thing,

00:51:42 ◼   ► all the documents, all your reports,

00:51:44 ◼   ► all your homework things, all your work files,

00:51:46 ◼   ► all your source code, that's all owned by you.

00:51:47 ◼   ► All the files you care about are owned by you

00:51:49 ◼   ► for the most part.

00:51:50 ◼   ► So what is this little model where I have a regular user

00:51:53 ◼   ► and then the root user is elevated privileges,

00:51:56 ◼   ► it doesn't really help me.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Like if some piece of code runs loose on my system,

00:52:00 ◼   ► it can delete all my stuff anyway.

00:52:01 ◼   ► That is the sort of counter to,

00:52:04 ◼   ► oh, the Unix security model sounds so great

00:52:05 ◼   ► but really it doesn't help me

00:52:06 ◼   ► because it still can delete all my stuff.

00:52:09 ◼   ► That is all true,

00:52:11 ◼   ► But that's not what malware wants to do most of the time.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Malware, kind of like viruses

00:52:15 ◼   ► that kill their host really fast,

00:52:17 ◼   ► like literal, you know, biological viruses,

00:52:20 ◼   ► malware that wants to either be useful or to spread

00:52:23 ◼   ► can't kill its host immediately.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Malware that immediately deletes someone's hard drive

00:52:26 ◼   ► is not gonna get very far

00:52:27 ◼   ► because it's not gonna have a chance to propagate

00:52:29 ◼   ► because it's gonna immediately nuke the person's computer

00:52:31 ◼   ► and, you know, not delete their hard drive,

00:52:32 ◼   ► delete all their files.

00:52:33 ◼   ► Like that'll be really obvious that all their crap is gone.

00:52:36 ◼   ► They're gonna be super mad and it won't spread.

00:52:38 ◼   ► What malware wants to do,

00:52:39 ◼   ► both for the spreading purposes

00:52:40 ◼   ► and like, why does it wanna spread?

00:52:43 ◼   ► It wants to spread because it wants

00:52:44 ◼   ► to become a powerful thing.

00:52:46 ◼   ► What you want malware to do is

00:52:47 ◼   ► to silently infect someone's computer,

00:52:49 ◼   ► to make it a slave of your botnet,

00:52:51 ◼   ► to let it mine for bitcoins,

00:52:53 ◼   ► to launch distributed denial of service attacks,

00:52:55 ◼   ► to do keystroke logging, to steal pictures,

00:52:58 ◼   ► to turn on the webcam and record people.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Like, what most malware wants to do is be hidden.

00:53:04 ◼   ► It doesn't wanna delete all your files

00:53:05 ◼   ► 'cause that would be really obvious.

00:53:07 ◼   ► And you would notice,

00:53:08 ◼   ► and you would immediately know something is messed up.

00:53:11 ◼   ► It wants to get its hooks into your system

00:53:13 ◼   ► in an invisible way.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And that's where the standard Unix protection comes from.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Where if it wants to really get its hooks into your system,

00:53:22 ◼   ► what it really wants to do is modify files

00:53:23 ◼   ► that are part of the operating system.

00:53:25 ◼   ► So it can like log all the keystrokes

00:53:26 ◼   ► of every user logged in or control the hardware

00:53:29 ◼   ► in ways that an individual user couldn't.

00:53:31 ◼   ► It wants to sort of infect the binaries that you run,

00:53:34 ◼   ► a lot of which are applications installed

00:53:36 ◼   ► in the application folder that maybe you don't own

00:53:37 ◼   ► as they were installed by a different user or domain user

00:53:39 ◼   ► or infect the operating system itself

00:53:41 ◼   ► or get into the IO level, you know,

00:53:42 ◼   ► that's what malware wants to do.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And so having a separate set of permissions

00:53:46 ◼   ► where your plain old user account

00:53:49 ◼   ► can't modify system files,

00:53:51 ◼   ► can't install kernel extensions

00:53:53 ◼   ► that intercept all your keystrokes or whatever,

00:53:56 ◼   ► that's a good thing, right?

00:53:58 ◼   ► So that's the content, that's the current situation.

00:54:00 ◼   ► We haven't discussed anything about El Capitan yet, right?

00:54:03 ◼   ► What El Capitan's system integrity protection

00:54:05 ◼   ► or rootless mode or whatever is trying to do is add another layer of protection, which

00:54:09 ◼   ► is instead of just having your regular user that can elevate the privileges up to the

00:54:15 ◼   ► root user that can do anything and having the root user account that can do anything,

00:54:19 ◼   ► they want to say, "Okay, I've got a regular user account.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Some of those regular user accounts are admin users who can elevate their privileges to

00:54:25 ◼   ► root level, but even root can't do everything."

00:54:29 ◼   ► So even if you elevate your permissions by entering an admin password or you become the

00:54:32 ◼   ► root user or whatever, even that user still can't do some stuff. And the some stuff that they can't do

00:54:38 ◼   ► is modify system files, inject their code into other running processes, and all sorts of other

00:54:46 ◼   ► things that you would take for granted on a regular UNIX system. Once you elevate your

00:54:49 ◼   ► privilege to super user level, you can do anything. That's the whole point of the super user. They are,

00:54:53 ◼   ► you know, id zero. They can do anything they want. It doesn't matter who owns it, doesn't matter,

00:54:57 ◼   ► they can do everything. This is limiting the power of the root user. And it's doing that because

00:55:03 ◼   ► history has shown that it's not too difficult to take an admin user account and either trick them

00:55:09 ◼   ► into entering their admin password or find an exploit that elevates their privileges up to

00:55:13 ◼   ► admin level and that's where the malware can really get its hooks deep into your system.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And this is saying even if the malware gets that far, even if the malware tricks a user into

00:55:21 ◼   ► entering their admin password and they are an admin user or finds a bug that elevates their

00:55:25 ◼   ► privileges, we still don't want them to be able to mess with the operating system.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Not because the operating system is super important, like that's where their stuff is,

00:55:32 ◼   ► but because that's what Mailware wants to do to really take over the computer, to really

00:55:36 ◼   ► like install that key logger that gets every single keystroke that every user ever types

00:55:40 ◼   ► in this computer and emails it to everybody and takes pictures of them and records their

00:55:44 ◼   ► credit card number and does all sorts of nasty things.

00:55:48 ◼   ► That's what these things want to do.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So yeah, this is the feature as described.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And the details, if you want to see the details of this, this is in WWDC session 706, innocuously

00:56:01 ◼   ► named Security and Your Apps, which is probably the reason I didn't even favorite it when

00:56:05 ◼   ► I was at WWDC.

00:56:06 ◼   ► You know, because it's like, what are they going to talk about there?

00:56:08 ◼   ► That's boring.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But by the time I heard what it was in, it was too late.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But anyway, videos are freely available.

00:56:12 ◼   ► We'll put the link in the show notes.

00:56:13 ◼   ► You can take a look at it.

00:56:14 ◼   ► It goes through all the different things it's going to do.

00:56:16 ◼   ► I'm heartened to learn that like the directories they're limiting to the system only is like

00:56:22 ◼   ► slash system slash bin slash user slash s bin all the things you would expect them to forbid

00:56:26 ◼   ► messing with. Where are you supposed to put your stuff your unixi stuff? User local like like

00:56:33 ◼   ► they've been saying for years and years put your stuff in user local user local belongs to the user

00:56:38 ◼   ► apple will not blow it away on system installs i've been using it for a long long time now i've

00:56:43 ◼   ► I've never had it go wrong.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Usually local is your friend.

00:56:46 ◼   ► That's where you should put your Unix stuff.

00:56:49 ◼   ► And of course in your home directory

00:56:50 ◼   ► and all sorts of stuff like that.

00:56:52 ◼   ► The limitations that they're adding here,

00:56:55 ◼   ► you know, all sound good for the purposes

00:56:58 ◼   ► of increasing security,

00:57:00 ◼   ► but there are once again,

00:57:02 ◼   ► ramifications of them that are worth considering.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Like, you know, can't modify system binaries.

00:57:07 ◼   ► That's fine. You shouldn't be able to do that anyway.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Can't install things in the system locations.

00:57:10 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Kernel extensions have to be signed.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Well, they had to be signed already.

00:57:12 ◼   ► That's not a new thing.

00:57:14 ◼   ► There may be some badly behaved software out there

00:57:17 ◼   ► that does currently try to shove stuff into bin,

00:57:19 ◼   ► user, Sbin, or something like that.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Maybe VMware does, but it's pretty easy for them to fix that

00:57:24 ◼   ► by just putting their stuff in user local.

00:57:25 ◼   ► So that's why I think VMware will probably be okay.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Kernel extensions, VMware, I think has kernel extensions.

00:57:29 ◼   ► I don't know, Casey, maybe you.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - I've never paid close enough attention,

00:57:32 ◼   ► but I would presume so.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - But if they do, you can still have kernel extensions.

00:57:35 ◼   ► Kernel extensions are still a thing.

00:57:36 ◼   ► They just have to be signed.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And I think there's probably some approval process

00:57:41 ◼   ► or something of that.

00:57:42 ◼   ► Like you know, official ATVtipster and VMware doesn't have kernel extensions.

00:57:45 ◼   ► But anyway, you can still have kernel extensions, they just have to be signed.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Oh, now he says it does and they're assigned.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I think they're behind.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Anyway, that's not a big deal either.

00:57:56 ◼   ► It's just probably like installers that put stuff in slash bin just because they're shirts

00:58:00 ◼   ► in everybody's path and they realize you put it in user local bin and then, you know, modify

00:58:05 ◼   ► people's path or do whatever they have to do.

00:58:09 ◼   ► attached to running processes and inject code, you know, can't use dtrace probes on these

00:58:14 ◼   ► projected processes, all sorts of stuff like that.

00:58:17 ◼   ► This is a thing that you can disable, obviously.

00:58:20 ◼   ► You can't disable it by becoming root, so you're not going to do sudo some command and

00:58:24 ◼   ► then turn this off, because the whole point is root's power is limited.

00:58:27 ◼   ► If you want to disable it, you have to boot into the recovery OS and disable it from there,

00:58:31 ◼   ► the little recovery partition they put in there.

00:58:35 ◼   ► The configuration changes are stored in nvram, and if you turn off this mode, if you say

00:58:43 ◼   ► I don't want this rootless prediction anymore, that setting will persist across OS install,

00:58:47 ◼   ► so if you install a new OS it won't suddenly turn back on or whatever, so they're trying

00:58:50 ◼   ► to be friendly about this, although the slides say this system of how do I actually enable

00:58:54 ◼   ► this if I don't want it is subject to change.

00:58:59 ◼   ► This is again, I doubt most people will bother messing with this.

00:59:02 ◼   ► It's kind of like when trim support was only available if you turned off the kernel extension

00:59:06 ◼   ► signing verification.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Nobody wanted to do that and it was scary.

00:59:09 ◼   ► I don't think anyone would want to turn this off.

00:59:13 ◼   ► But there are ramifications for this type of decision and the one that came to my mind

00:59:17 ◼   ► immediately after hearing all sorts of Mac developers talk about this and developers

00:59:22 ◼   ► complaining for years about the things that the Mac App Store doesn't allow to exist,

00:59:26 ◼   ► like the kinds of apps that aren't allowed in the Mac App Store are very often the most

00:59:30 ◼   ► interesting apps to me.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And the one I thought of immediately is Dropbox, a fairly popular application that got its

00:59:37 ◼   ► start, the Mac version of it, got its start by making that magical folder that syncs.

00:59:43 ◼   ► But one of the key features I think of Dropbox when it was introduced and to this day is

00:59:48 ◼   ► that when you install Dropbox on OS X and you have your little Dropbox folder and you

00:59:53 ◼   ► drag things into it, it badges your little icon with like a little blue spinny thing,

00:59:58 ◼   ► and when it's completely synced you get a little green checkmark badge.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And those little badges, like it's like, oh, it's just a magical folder, but also there's

01:00:04 ◼   ► this little extra bit of UI that tells me when something has finished syncing.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Right?

01:00:09 ◼   ► That is, there weren't many features for Dropbox.

01:00:10 ◼   ► I made a folder with an icon, it did a bunch of magic stuff behind the scenes, and those

01:00:15 ◼   ► little icons were basically the whole UI, and also adding a context menu that pops up.

01:00:19 ◼   ► But those little icon badges, how the hell did they add little icon badges to the Finder?

01:00:23 ◼   ► Like, they didn't install an alternate version of the Finder.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Well, they did in-memory patching of the Finder process.

01:00:29 ◼   ► They, the finder was a running process

01:00:31 ◼   ► as part of the operating system,

01:00:32 ◼   ► and they would inject their own code

01:00:35 ◼   ► into the running image of the finder

01:00:37 ◼   ► to make it do those little badges.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You could not have Dropbox in a world

01:00:42 ◼   ► where rootless mode exists, in the old days.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Obviously now you can't because Apple made an official API

01:00:46 ◼   ► for it because there are no dummies

01:00:48 ◼   ► and they know Dropbox is really popular.

01:00:49 ◼   ► But what I'm thinking of is the next innovative app,

01:00:52 ◼   ► like Dropbox, like, you know, if Dropbox didn't exist,

01:00:56 ◼   ► El Capitan came out, became the dominant OS

01:00:58 ◼   ► install and someone had the idea for Dropbox, it could not exist on OS X

01:01:02 ◼   ► because there's no way to do what it did. The path that it followed was do

01:01:07 ◼   ► something super nasty that Apple doesn't like, keep fighting Apple for years to be

01:01:11 ◼   ► able to in memory patch their running process, eventually become so popular that

01:01:16 ◼   ► Apple is forced to give you an official API and then have Apple

01:01:20 ◼   ► close the door behind you and say now no one else can do what Dropbox did. And

01:01:25 ◼   ► And this is the type of thing that I worry about

01:01:29 ◼   ► from all of Apple's policies.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Not so much that they're going to stop me as a user from doing

01:01:35 ◼   ► what I want, because Apple's pretty good, at least on OS X,

01:01:37 ◼   ► for giving you a way to turn all this crap off

01:01:39 ◼   ► if you don't want it.

01:01:40 ◼   ► But that is necessarily limiting the types

01:01:44 ◼   ► of things creative third-party developers can do.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Where is the next Dropbox-- is the next Dropbox going

01:01:51 ◼   ► to even be on the Mac?

01:01:52 ◼   ► Is it even going to be able to get off the ground?

01:01:54 ◼   ► going to be able to get to the point where it can get to the level of popularity where

01:01:58 ◼   ► Apple is forced to put official support for the APIs that it wants into its operating system.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Or is Apple just slowly closing the door on interesting application ideas, which have never

01:02:11 ◼   ► been available on iOS because you've always been limited to what you do there, but the Mac has been

01:02:15 ◼   ► the remaining area where people can try crazy sorts of things, and even if Apple doesn't have

01:02:20 ◼   ► have an official API for them.

01:02:22 ◼   ► If something works and it becomes popular

01:02:24 ◼   ► and people want it, that's sort of the signal to Apple,

01:02:26 ◼   ► "Hey, people really like using their Macs to do this,

01:02:28 ◼   ► "and this company has been doing it

01:02:30 ◼   ► "in a super dangerous ways for years,

01:02:31 ◼   ► "maybe you can give them a nice API for that."

01:02:33 ◼   ► This rootless thing is like,

01:02:35 ◼   ► "Nope, you're never even gonna be able

01:02:36 ◼   ► "to do it a dangerous way,"

01:02:37 ◼   ► because no one's gonna be able to tell everybody.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Like Dropbox could not have gotten off the ground

01:02:40 ◼   ► if they had to tell everybody,

01:02:41 ◼   ► "Hey, by the way, reboot into recovery partition

01:02:43 ◼   ► "and turn off the security thing you don't understand

01:02:45 ◼   ► "and then install Dropbox, it's great."

01:02:46 ◼   ► Nobody would do it, it would not become popular.

01:02:48 ◼   ► So that is the promise and the worries

01:02:53 ◼   ► surrounding rootless mode or system integrity

01:02:57 ◼   ► or whatever you wanna call it in El Capitan.

01:02:59 ◼   ► - Do you think some degree of that might be solved

01:03:02 ◼   ► by market forces if necessary?

01:03:04 ◼   ► So for instance, suppose one of the ways

01:03:07 ◼   ► that a lot of these, one of the most common categories

01:03:10 ◼   ► of this kind of thing that I know of

01:03:12 ◼   ► are kind of hacks and plugins to mail .app.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Aren't most of those using some kind of thing like this

01:03:18 ◼   ► that won't be possible anymore?

01:03:20 ◼   ► - They were back in the day.

01:03:21 ◼   ► I don't know if they are, if that's the thing that goes on.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Does Apple have an official API

01:03:26 ◼   ► for mail plugins at this point?

01:03:28 ◼   ► I don't remember.

01:03:29 ◼   ► - I'm not sure.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Anyway, you can look at situations like that

01:03:33 ◼   ► where there's some system app and it has some shortcomings

01:03:37 ◼   ► or there's some compelling features

01:03:38 ◼   ► that can only be added by these kind of things, right?

01:03:42 ◼   ► And so you're saying like,

01:03:43 ◼   ► you know, we're not gonna see those at all.

01:03:45 ◼   ► I'm saying we will probably still see that.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Like if it's compelling enough,

01:03:50 ◼   ► we will still see those things,

01:03:52 ◼   ► but we will see them just in other places.

01:03:55 ◼   ► So in the example of Dropbox,

01:03:57 ◼   ► like we just won't see it on Mac.

01:04:00 ◼   ► You know, if that kind of thing is not possible,

01:04:01 ◼   ► it'll come to Windows first.

01:04:04 ◼   ► In reality, these days, mobile really matters so much,

01:04:07 ◼   ► I'm not sure, something like that could launch today

01:04:09 ◼   ► and end up mattering.

01:04:11 ◼   ► But regardless, you know, it would go on to platforms first.

01:04:14 ◼   ► In the case of application plugins, like mail plugins, if those become not possible through

01:04:20 ◼   ► any kind of rootless protection or anything like that, then we'll just see things like

01:04:25 ◼   ► alternative mail clients coming up with compelling features instead.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Do you think that's an equivalent thing, though?

01:04:31 ◼   ► Like the people who would make the mail plugin, making a full-fledged mail application that

01:04:36 ◼   ► includes the feature that you're on is a way higher bar than figuring out how to hack some

01:04:40 ◼   ► plugin into mail.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Well, look at where the innovation's happening now.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's not in mail, it's in Gmail.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Anyway, maybe that was a bad example,

01:04:49 ◼   ► but there are things like that where there are other ways

01:04:52 ◼   ► for great compelling ideas to gain traction and get out.

01:04:56 ◼   ► And maybe it's harder,

01:04:56 ◼   ► and maybe some of them are closed off.

01:04:58 ◼   ► But overall, I see this as really just

01:05:02 ◼   ► another technological progression.

01:05:04 ◼   ► First, in the early days, you could just scribble

01:05:07 ◼   ► all over memory, now we have projected memory,

01:05:09 ◼   ► and you can't just do that quite as easily.

01:05:12 ◼   ► and a lot of these things are kind of

01:05:14 ◼   ► memory invasion hacks like that,

01:05:16 ◼   ► but some of them are not quite as bad as that,

01:05:19 ◼   ► but as technology progresses,

01:05:21 ◼   ► we're getting more and more protections and safeties

01:05:26 ◼   ► around things like system processes

01:05:29 ◼   ► and user security and everything,

01:05:30 ◼   ► and most of these protections cut off

01:05:34 ◼   ► categories of apps and hacks and add-ons

01:05:37 ◼   ► that were previously possible.

01:05:39 ◼   ► And so far, you can look back at these progressions

01:05:42 ◼   ► and I don't think anybody's arguing that we should undo

01:05:45 ◼   ► any of them or make holes in any of them.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Overall, I think we really have made substantial

01:05:52 ◼   ► improvements by adding more protection over time.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And there are certain things like, you know,

01:05:56 ◼   ► like the political downside of these protections

01:05:59 ◼   ► are things like they're not being able to side load apps

01:06:02 ◼   ► on iOS for users, you know, stuff like that.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And that's bad.

01:06:05 ◼   ► - Well, they improved that too on iOS 9.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Like now a regular person can build and sign

01:06:11 ◼   ► their own applications in Xcode and put it on their device

01:06:13 ◼   ► without doing any weird stuff, right?

01:06:15 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I mean, yes, that's true.

01:06:17 ◼   ► It's, you know, that's of limited usefulness maybe

01:06:20 ◼   ► 'cause most people are not gonna be able to do that,

01:06:22 ◼   ► but just skill-wise and time-wise, regardless,

01:06:26 ◼   ► these protections over time

01:06:28 ◼   ► generally improve computing for people.

01:06:30 ◼   ► They generally improve stability and improve security,

01:06:33 ◼   ► and usually we look at them all and say,

01:06:35 ◼   ► "You know what, we're better off now."

01:06:37 ◼   ► So most of these rootless protections are common sense.

01:06:40 ◼   ► There's only, you know, some of them might be restrictive

01:06:44 ◼   ► to applications and innovation and everything,

01:06:46 ◼   ► but I think the percentage of those

01:06:50 ◼   ► is gonna be extremely low,

01:06:51 ◼   ► relative to everything that matters in computing today,

01:06:54 ◼   ► where the innovation is happening in computing today.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I think it's moving away from places where it's important

01:06:59 ◼   ► to be able to inject code in random places

01:07:02 ◼   ► or modify system files.

01:07:03 ◼   ► I don't think we're seeing a lot

01:07:04 ◼   ► of that kind of innovation anymore,

01:07:06 ◼   ► I don't think we will, 'cause it's just the way

01:07:07 ◼   ► the world is moving.

01:07:08 ◼   ► So even if Apple didn't do this,

01:07:10 ◼   ► how likely is it that the next disruptive startup

01:07:12 ◼   ► was gonna be a finder hack?

01:07:14 ◼   ► Honestly, not that likely.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - How likely was it to begin with?

01:07:16 ◼   ► But it was, it totally was.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Dropbox was essentially a finder hack

01:07:20 ◼   ► and a bunch of Python scripts.

01:07:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, but how many years ago was that?

01:07:24 ◼   ► - I know, but I don't think it's outside

01:07:26 ◼   ► the realm of possibility.

01:07:27 ◼   ► As doors close, obviously it's like,

01:07:28 ◼   ► "Oh, we've seen less of these hacks."

01:07:30 ◼   ► Well, no doubt you're seeing less of these hacks,

01:07:31 ◼   ► 'cause they're making them less possible.

01:07:33 ◼   ► But I agree with you.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I think I wouldn't, I'm not arguing against these protections, but I think if you're going

01:07:38 ◼   ► to add these protections, which I think you should do, you have to modify your other policies

01:07:45 ◼   ► to match the reality that you are now disallowing.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Because previously, intentionally or not, what Apple was relying on is sneaky, clever

01:07:54 ◼   ► people will find ways to bypass things and do things that we don't want them to do.

01:07:58 ◼   ► We will be angry about it and try to stop them.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But despite our best efforts, some of them are going to become wildly popular, and then

01:08:05 ◼   ► we will grudgingly add official API support.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And whether that is a conscious strategy or just how things turn out, that is sort of

01:08:14 ◼   ► the life cycle of the innovative software application on the Apple platform.

01:08:20 ◼   ► And if you change that life cycle by saying, "You know what?

01:08:24 ◼   ► We want to cut out the early part where they do the nasty thing in the gross way that we

01:08:27 ◼   ► don't think they should, because it's dumb.

01:08:29 ◼   ► We don't want people hacking.

01:08:30 ◼   ► I don't want people, you know, I didn't like the fact

01:08:32 ◼   ► that Dropbox did in-memory hacking.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I remember finding ways to disable it

01:08:34 ◼   ► by removing the little context menu,

01:08:36 ◼   ► like injecting things and stuff like that.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Like that's all bad.

01:08:39 ◼   ► But if you take that away,

01:08:41 ◼   ► you have to come up with a new life cycle.

01:08:43 ◼   ► And the new life cycle could be a developer, you know,

01:08:47 ◼   ► a bunch of developers have a reasonable request

01:08:49 ◼   ► for system API support for badging icons in the Finder.

01:08:53 ◼   ► The current Apple would,

01:08:55 ◼   ► there's no mechanism for you to get that API.

01:08:57 ◼   ► Like it's chicken and egg.

01:08:58 ◼   ► You can't say no matter how many developers say,

01:09:01 ◼   ► boy, we really wish there was a way

01:09:02 ◼   ► we could intercept audio system wide

01:09:03 ◼   ► 'cause we have some great ideas

01:09:04 ◼   ► for like audio hijack three or whatever.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Like even if it's 15 different companies

01:09:09 ◼   ► or even if like Adobe and Microsoft said Apple,

01:09:11 ◼   ► it's just like, that doesn't seem important to us.

01:09:14 ◼   ► You shouldn't do that anyway.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Like there is no alternate life cycle for these innovations.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's, they're cutting off one way

01:09:21 ◼   ► for these things to come out.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And I don't see them opening up to the point where like,

01:09:24 ◼   ► we're willing to entertain your suggestions for new APIs,

01:09:27 ◼   ► even if it's a lot of work for us to implement,

01:09:29 ◼   ► and it will only benefit you as a third party,

01:09:31 ◼   ► simply because we want those kind of innovative ideas

01:09:34 ◼   ► on our platform, right?

01:09:36 ◼   ► Like they need to, they need to make an alternate path.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Like I just put a link in the show notes

01:09:41 ◼   ► for the umpteenth time to my really old paths

01:09:43 ◼   ► in the grass thing with the,

01:09:45 ◼   ► which is a thing about hacksies with the Larry Wall quote,

01:09:47 ◼   ► which is not really his quote,

01:09:49 ◼   ► but he's quoting somebody else about university campus

01:09:53 ◼   ► where they don't pave anything

01:09:54 ◼   ► and they just let people walk around

01:09:55 ◼   ► and wherever they wore down the grass,

01:09:56 ◼   ► That's where you put the path

01:09:58 ◼   ► System hacks like that are telling you

01:10:00 ◼   ► What is it that people want to do and it's really like you need to come up with a good way to find out

01:10:04 ◼   ► All right

01:10:04 ◼   ► Do people really want stupid badges in their icons or this is just something some random kid at MIT thinks would be cool for people

01:10:10 ◼   ► To have it's not even a product. It's just a feature like it doesn't sound like

01:10:14 ◼   ► could

01:10:16 ◼   ► What's his name drew whatever could he somehow have convinced Apple to add an official API for badging icons in the finder?

01:10:23 ◼   ► I don't see how there's any way he could possibly do it like there needs but there needs to be some way

01:10:27 ◼   ► For if you can't do it the hacky way. What is the official way of doing? What is the official way of making?

01:10:34 ◼   ► OS X or iOS or any platform that Apple controls a

01:10:39 ◼   ► Viable place for you to do this new innovative thing that currently there's no well supported way to do and I use that Marcos like

01:10:46 ◼   ► Well, they can't do it here. They'll do it first on Windows or whatever like I think all computing platforms are moving in this direction

01:10:53 ◼   ► And secondarily, I don't think Apple would be happy

01:10:56 ◼   ► with the answer, oh, we'll just let the innovation happen

01:10:57 ◼   ► on another platform and we'll copy it, right?

01:10:59 ◼   ► Apple wants the innovation to happen on its platform,

01:11:02 ◼   ► but innovation is weird in that you can't predict

01:11:03 ◼   ► what it's gonna want, so you have to have some way

01:11:05 ◼   ► for the people with good ideas to be able to do

01:11:10 ◼   ► what they wanna do on your system.

01:11:12 ◼   ► And that's a harder problem, I think,

01:11:13 ◼   ► because back when you just let them hack stuff up,

01:11:16 ◼   ► you didn't have to decide.

01:11:18 ◼   ► You'd be like, well, that person did a crazy hack

01:11:19 ◼   ► and no one cares.

01:11:20 ◼   ► That person did a crazy hack and no one cares.

01:11:21 ◼   ► That one did a crazy hack and no one cares.

01:11:23 ◼   ► oh, this person did a crazy hack

01:11:24 ◼   ► and the entire world loves Dropbox.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Apple can't make that call.

01:11:27 ◼   ► How does Apple know?

01:11:28 ◼   ► Is it gonna listen to all those guys

01:11:30 ◼   ► and say, I want an API for this, I want an API for that?

01:11:32 ◼   ► Like in some respects, the old one

01:11:33 ◼   ► where you let the people hack your system

01:11:35 ◼   ► was easier for Apple,

01:11:36 ◼   ► but now they're kind of putting themselves on the hook

01:11:38 ◼   ► to either box out these creative ideas

01:11:41 ◼   ► or find some new way to sort of vet

01:11:44 ◼   ► which crazy ideas are worth implementing and which aren't.

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01:13:54 ◼   ► - Before we leave this topic,

01:13:55 ◼   ► real time follow up from the ATP Tips there.

01:13:57 ◼   ► VMware doesn't shove stuff in the system directories.

01:14:00 ◼   ► VMware does use kernel extensions

01:14:02 ◼   ► and VMware currently works in El Capitán's

01:14:05 ◼   ► seeds one through four.

01:14:06 ◼   ► - So life is good for me.

01:14:08 ◼   ► - Right, and he mentioned also too,

01:14:10 ◼   ► like Roga Miba's various audio hijacked products

01:14:13 ◼   ► and stuff like that, those all have signed kexts,

01:14:16 ◼   ► so those will all still work as well.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So I mean, I think--

01:14:18 ◼   ► - But they're not available in the Mac App Store, right?

01:14:20 ◼   ► - No, definitely.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Well, that doesn't mean anything these days.

01:14:22 ◼   ► - Right, but couldn't be available.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Not just basically their choice to put it there,

01:14:25 ◼   ► but they could not put the,

01:14:27 ◼   ► my understanding is that you could not put AudioHijacked

01:14:29 ◼   ► on the Mac App Store.

01:14:30 ◼   ► It violates the guidelines of the Mac App Store.

01:14:32 ◼   ► - As far as I know, that's true.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I mean, there are certain loopholes.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Some apps will, they'll have a basic version

01:14:38 ◼   ► on the App Store that can do some functionality,

01:14:39 ◼   ► but then to do anything fun,

01:14:40 ◼   ► you have to go to their website

01:14:41 ◼   ► and download this optional extra component

01:14:43 ◼   ► and all sorts of stuff like that.

01:14:44 ◼   ► there are there are different hacks, but for the most part, I think

01:14:48 ◼   ► whether something is allowed in the Mac App Store is almost completely irrelevant

01:14:54 ◼   ► to the possible innovation that can happen on the Mac because the fact is

01:14:58 ◼   ► the Mac App Store is just a disaster. If in so many ways, I mean the the actual

01:15:03 ◼   ► app itself from user perspective is awful. The policies are draconian and

01:15:09 ◼   ► restrictive and oppressive and way worse than iOS relative to what's normal on

01:15:14 ◼   ► the platform. It's buggy, it's just awful. There's so many things about it that are terrible

01:15:21 ◼   ► that we can't say that, well, if that won't fly in the Mac App Store, then it won't happen

01:15:27 ◼   ► on the Mac, because the fact is it's getting to the point now where the App Store is really

01:15:30 ◼   ► a ghost town and almost everything good on the Mac is outside of it.

01:15:34 ◼   ► But the Mac App Store, as bad as it is and people might be leaving it, I think it does

01:15:39 ◼   ► express what Apple wishes Mac apps would be like, like the fact that sandboxing was there

01:15:44 ◼   ► first and was a requirement and, you know, they don't want you to do any sort of hacks

01:15:49 ◼   ► and they don't want you to install stuff. Like, Apple wishes all apps, whereas nice

01:15:53 ◼   ► and neat and self-contained as the Mac App Store guidelines dictate.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah, but the Mac App Store, it's like, it's like XHTML.

01:16:02 ◼   ► You really hate XHTML, don't you? You keep pulling that one out.

01:16:06 ◼   ► "Really, why not start?"

01:16:07 ◼   ► Well, no, it was a great example of like,

01:16:09 ◼   ► the cat was already out of the bag,

01:16:10 ◼   ► everyone was already doing things this whole other way,

01:16:13 ◼   ► and the standards groups would say,

01:16:14 ◼   ► "All right, we're gonna lock everything down

01:16:15 ◼   ► "and be very restrictive and formal.

01:16:17 ◼   ► "Here's the new way to do it."

01:16:18 ◼   ► And everyone basically just said, "No."

01:16:21 ◼   ► - XHTML had a transitional DTD.

01:16:23 ◼   ► It wasn't that hard and fast.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But I think the Mac App Store is more like,

01:16:28 ◼   ► it's all gonna be S expressions.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Forget about all those attributes and tags.

01:16:32 ◼   ► It's so limited, but the limitations of the Mac App Store,

01:16:35 ◼   ► I really feel like they express what Apple wishes Mac software development was like.

01:16:42 ◼   ► They don't match the reality of what Mac software development actually is like, and I don't

01:16:47 ◼   ► think they also are enough of an overlap with what users actually want.

01:16:52 ◼   ► I think applications like Audio Hijack fill a need for people who want that type of application.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Like this is great.

01:16:58 ◼   ► It makes me happy that I have my Mac, because this Mac can do this amazing thing with this

01:17:02 ◼   ► application that like lets me use my Mac to do interesting things but that can't

01:17:07 ◼   ► fit within the guidelines of the Mac App Store so I you know history has shown so

01:17:11 ◼   ► far that Apple has been really good about like well we'll have this Mac App

01:17:15 ◼   ► Store where we show you what we want to be but we're not gonna stop you from

01:17:18 ◼   ► loading crap like we'll do everything they can with like developer IDs and the

01:17:22 ◼   ► the what is it called gatekeeper thing and they even have like the gatekeeper

01:17:25 ◼   ► setting toggle back from the insecure one to the secure one if you like turn

01:17:29 ◼   ► on the insecure mode for a second you forget about it and you don't launch an

01:17:31 ◼   ► that wouldn't be allowed, like it toggles back, like they're trying to do everything they can

01:17:35 ◼   ► while allowing power users to do what they want, but still they just want everything to be kind of

01:17:39 ◼   ► herded over there. And eventually they're just going to come up against these hard things like

01:17:43 ◼   ► what if, you know, they should go through the exercise and say what if you really did want

01:17:47 ◼   ► everything to be in the Mac App Store but now you couldn't have Photoshop anymore? How would you

01:17:52 ◼   ► square that circle? What would you do to deal with it? You'd obviously have to do something because

01:17:55 ◼   ► you're not gonna say like, "Well tough luck, Adobe's got to rewrite their application so it fits in the

01:17:58 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Like they would figure out, hey, Adobe, what do you need to get like, and they just don't

01:18:03 ◼   ► seem to extend that sort of effort to these smaller applications.

01:18:09 ◼   ► And so we're left in the situation where most Mac software that people really like and care

01:18:12 ◼   ► about is either not in the Mac App Store or not in the Mac App Store only, and more and

01:18:17 ◼   ► more software that people do care about is leaving the Mac App Store because it's too

01:18:19 ◼   ► much of a hassle to be there.

01:18:21 ◼   ► And I don't think this is bad software, like Panix applications, you know, talk about the

01:18:24 ◼   ► poster child for like doing things the Apple way.

01:18:26 ◼   ► they're practically a miniature Apple,

01:18:28 ◼   ► even they can't stick it out in some cases

01:18:30 ◼   ► for the Mac App Store for their applications

01:18:31 ◼   ► 'cause it's just too darn much of a hassle.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Did they leave the App Store

01:18:34 ◼   ► or did they just get rid of the iCloud thing?

01:18:36 ◼   ► I forget, I think they just did their own sync service

01:18:38 ◼   ► 'cause they couldn't handle the iCloud thing.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Maybe they did leave for one of them, I don't remember.

01:18:43 ◼   ► - Anyway, the fact is the Mac App Store

01:18:46 ◼   ► has been, I think, a colossal failure.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I mean, not a level of ping, but not,

01:18:52 ◼   ► but honestly not that far off in just like,

01:18:56 ◼   ► how much people are using it these days, how relevant it is, how much it is

01:19:01 ◼   ► really not at all the future of of deployment and sales on the Mac. I mean

01:19:06 ◼   ► it again it's not as bad as ping but I don't like it's that far off. It really

01:19:10 ◼   ► is terrible. It really has been a huge failure and it seems like it seems like

01:19:15 ◼   ► there are lots of forces within Apple and and you know some of it just like

01:19:20 ◼   ► inertia. Some of it might be politics. I don't know. I don't know the internals,

01:19:23 ◼   ► but it just seems like whatever forces got it to that state

01:19:27 ◼   ► where it's in now where Apple just tried to rule

01:19:31 ◼   ► with such an iron fist, especially with sandboxing

01:19:34 ◼   ► coming in after the fact, which really hurt things.

01:19:37 ◼   ► Just ruling with such an iron fist there

01:19:39 ◼   ► that everyone really just left.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And now as a consumer, we've tipped the point where like,

01:19:45 ◼   ► I used to, when it first came out,

01:19:47 ◼   ► I used to buy as many things there as I could

01:19:49 ◼   ► because then I wouldn't have to deal

01:19:51 ◼   ► with serial numbers or anything.

01:19:52 ◼   ► and I knew I could install it on my laptop and my desktop

01:19:55 ◼   ► and it wouldn't give me crap.

01:19:58 ◼   ► But what has happened since then is enough big apps

01:20:01 ◼   ► have left it that now I'm afraid to buy anything there.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Now if something's available in or out of the App Store,

01:20:09 ◼   ► I'll buy it out of the App Store by default now.

01:20:11 ◼   ► So, and I feel like that's happened with a lot of people.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Like as soon as that happens to you once,

01:20:16 ◼   ► where like an app you bought in the App Store

01:20:18 ◼   ► then leaves the App Store,

01:20:18 ◼   ► I think as soon as that happens to you once,

01:20:20 ◼   ► you're very likely to switch in that way, the way I did.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's still a barrier though

01:20:25 ◼   ► to buying outside the App Store for normals, right?

01:20:27 ◼   ► For regular people, like, there's a reason

01:20:29 ◼   ► everyone loves the iOS App Store.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Like, you just click, click, oh, you got a thing.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Like, especially because so many people

01:20:34 ◼   ► have iTunes accounts and their credit card is already there.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Like, the benefits are there for regular people.

01:20:38 ◼   ► It's a luxury that we have to be like,

01:20:40 ◼   ► oh, I know what to do when I get burned in this way.

01:20:43 ◼   ► 'Cause I think regular people do get burned.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And by the way, CMF in the chat room pointed out

01:20:46 ◼   ► that Coda 2 is the one I was thinking of,

01:20:48 ◼   ► is out of the Mac App Store.

01:20:49 ◼   ► What about all those people who bought Coda on the Mac App Store and now it's out of it?

01:20:53 ◼   ► They have the frustration, they're in the situation, but are all of them ready to know

01:20:57 ◼   ► which website to go to and know how to buy it online and deal with the serial numbers

01:21:03 ◼   ► and do it like, "We're okay with that," because that's the way it was for the longest time,

01:21:07 ◼   ► but for people who came into computers in the iOS App Store age, they're used to just

01:21:12 ◼   ► going someplace and clicking a thing and getting the application and just having it there.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Those benefits are still there.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And you mentioned like them ruling with an iron fist

01:21:21 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store.

01:21:21 ◼   ► I think the problem is that they,

01:21:26 ◼   ► it wasn't that they're ruling with iron fist.

01:21:27 ◼   ► They have the carrot and the stick, right?

01:21:29 ◼   ► And the stick was sort of floppy and non-existent

01:21:33 ◼   ► because bottom line,

01:21:34 ◼   ► you didn't have to buy through the Mac App Store.

01:21:36 ◼   ► You can get your stuff.

01:21:37 ◼   ► So the stick is barely there.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Like they don't really have much of a stick

01:21:40 ◼   ► to make people be in the Mac App Store

01:21:42 ◼   ► as evidenced by all the people leaving it, right?

01:21:44 ◼   ► And the carrot was kind of a rotten, crappy carrot too.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So there was no real stick to force people to be there

01:21:50 ◼   ► and no real carrot for you.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like, this is why you should be in it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► In the beginning, it seemed like there was a carrot.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Hey, people are excited by the Mac App Store.

01:21:55 ◼   ► I gotta be there to get the sales.

01:21:57 ◼   ► But as it kind of fizzled,

01:21:58 ◼   ► the carrot is looking less appealing.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And like there basically is no stick.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Like even for regular people,

01:22:04 ◼   ► if anyone has a Mac and knows how to buy software

01:22:07 ◼   ► for it at all, like you can Google and find something

01:22:11 ◼   ► and something like it's difficult,

01:22:12 ◼   ► but it's no more difficult than it was before the App Store.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It's exactly as difficult.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And before the Mac App Store existed,

01:22:17 ◼   ► people made money selling software for the Mac somehow.

01:22:20 ◼   ► It wasn't a mass market like iOS.

01:22:22 ◼   ► It wasn't something that everybody did.

01:22:24 ◼   ► The number of people who owned Macs

01:22:25 ◼   ► and who bought software for it was much smaller

01:22:27 ◼   ► than the number of people who had iOS devices

01:22:29 ◼   ► and install apps.

01:22:30 ◼   ► Everyone who's got an iOS device

01:22:31 ◼   ► is just tapping around that app store

01:22:32 ◼   ► and installing something, right?

01:22:34 ◼   ► Even if it's just a Facebook app, right?

01:22:36 ◼   ► But it was still a viable business.

01:22:37 ◼   ► So it seems like we're slowly reverting to that

01:22:39 ◼   ► where the Mac App Store is filled with the few apps

01:22:42 ◼   ► that can still fit within its guidelines

01:22:45 ◼   ► And again, like Coda and Panic,

01:22:48 ◼   ► when Panic can't get their app on your thing,

01:22:49 ◼   ► like they're like the most conscientious,

01:22:52 ◼   ► like made in Apple's image,

01:22:54 ◼   ► all the similar like quality

01:22:57 ◼   ► and wanting to do the right thing.

01:22:59 ◼   ► And they struggled with a really long time

01:23:00 ◼   ► with sandboxing with their application,

01:23:02 ◼   ► trying to make a go of it,

01:23:03 ◼   ► working with Apple for like a year, two years.

01:23:06 ◼   ► Like if they can't make them go with like,

01:23:08 ◼   ► what hope is there for anybody else?

01:23:10 ◼   ► Because Coda is not like, you know,

01:23:14 ◼   ► an application that's injecting code into the finder

01:23:16 ◼   ► to put badges on icons.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Like, it's an IDE for web development,

01:23:19 ◼   ► for crying out loud, and you can't have that,

01:23:21 ◼   ► is that outside the realm of things

01:23:22 ◼   ► you can have on the Mac now?

01:23:24 ◼   ► - Well, Xcode's in the Mac App Store,

01:23:25 ◼   ► not that that counts 'cause it's Apple's.

01:23:27 ◼   ► - That's the best thing, like, you know,

01:23:28 ◼   ► Apple can put stuff in the Mac App Store,

01:23:29 ◼   ► it does whatever the hell it wants,

01:23:31 ◼   ► 'cause the rules don't apply to Apple.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - Which is part of the problem, I mean,

01:23:34 ◼   ► that's part of the problem with both App Stores,

01:23:35 ◼   ► but especially the Mac one is that they don't dog food

01:23:37 ◼   ► most of these things, so it's really, it's a disaster.

01:23:40 ◼   ► Well, and even as users, so not only am I now

01:23:43 ◼   ► disincentivized from buying things there

01:23:46 ◼   ► that are available elsewhere, but in recent times,

01:23:49 ◼   ► I don't even look there anymore,

01:23:51 ◼   ► because so many great apps are not available there,

01:23:54 ◼   ► and it only takes a couple of times you're looking for an app

01:23:57 ◼   ► before you kind of develop that pattern of,

01:23:59 ◼   ► you know, now I have to look in the App Store

01:24:01 ◼   ► and out of the App Store.

01:24:02 ◼   ► Like in iOS, it's great, you can just look in one place

01:24:04 ◼   ► and you can see this is everything

01:24:05 ◼   ► available for this platform.

01:24:06 ◼   ► For the Mac, it was never that way,

01:24:08 ◼   ► but at least when it started, you could tell

01:24:10 ◼   ► it's going this way, and there was more stuff there

01:24:13 ◼   ► it seemed like. Now it's like if I want an app to do X, I have to search in the Mac App

01:24:17 ◼   ► Store and then I also have to do a web search and I also have to find, it's like...

01:24:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like the bad old days when you just like, you didn't have one place to look.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Again, this is something that should be an advantage for the Mac App Store and it's just

01:24:28 ◼   ► not enough, it's just not enough of a carrot. That's why people weren't in the beginning.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Well, I'll be findable. People don't even know that a website exists. People don't know

01:24:35 ◼   ► where to even start to get Mac App Store, to get Mac software. But hey, here's a place

01:24:39 ◼   ► to start. It's right at the top of the Apple menu. Let me just go there. And I think, I

01:24:43 ◼   ► fear what's happening now is people go to that item at the top of the Apple menu

01:24:48 ◼   ► and they think that's all there is for the platform. Like that's a natural thing

01:24:52 ◼   ► to think if you are someone who like came to the Mac from iOS or whatever, "Oh

01:24:55 ◼   ► I guess these are all the things I can get for the Mac." Maybe someone might have

01:24:59 ◼   ► heard of Photoshop and go, "Where's Photoshop? Isn't that it? I've heard of that. Isn't

01:25:02 ◼   ► that not that I guess the casual people wouldn't buy Photoshop because it's an

01:25:05 ◼   ► expensive application but or I guess Microsoft Office too. Is that in the

01:25:09 ◼   ► Mac App Store? I forget. I think it might be actually. Yeah. Anyway like some things

01:25:12 ◼   ► are still outside of it.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And there are applications, like Apple applications,

01:25:16 ◼   ► that don't have to abide by the rules.

01:25:18 ◼   ► But that would be the worst thing.

01:25:20 ◼   ► If you get a Mac and think that the stuff on the Mac App

01:25:23 ◼   ► Store is the extent of what you can do with a Mac,

01:25:27 ◼   ► you're just missing out on too much stuff.

01:25:31 ◼   ► Is Dropbox in the Mac App Store?

01:25:33 ◼   ► Maybe it is now that they have the icon badging thing.

01:25:35 ◼   ► But certainly in the old days, that Dropbox

01:25:37 ◼   ► couldn't be in the Mac App Store because it injected code

01:25:39 ◼   ► into the Finder.

01:25:40 ◼   ► Not going to be on the Mac App Store.

01:25:41 ◼   ► if you thought that you got a Mac and you couldn't get Dropbox? Like, I went to the

01:25:45 ◼   ► Mac App Store and I couldn't find Dropbox. Is that not a thing on the Mac? Like, because

01:25:48 ◼   ► I've heard my friends talk about it and they said I should get it, but I don't see it anywhere.

01:25:51 ◼   ► - Right, and like, first of all, little aside here, Dropbox for me has never worked worse

01:25:57 ◼   ► than it does on Yosemite. It has, because when they added that integration, the Finder

01:26:03 ◼   ► integration with the extension point so they don't have to inject code, it's buggy as hell.

01:26:07 ◼   ► It's so buggy. I can't, and I tweeted about this and a bunch of people said they see the

01:26:11 ◼   ► the same thing. I constantly have issues where a file will be updated, you know, remotely

01:26:17 ◼   ► from somewhere else. Often it's like our shared folder when you guys upload your audio. A

01:26:21 ◼   ► file will be updated and in Finder, in Finder windows, it will lose its badge and it will

01:26:28 ◼   ► be the old file name, not the new one. So basically a ghost file name will appear to

01:26:34 ◼   ► be there. And if you go into terminal and you LS it, it shows the correct contents.

01:26:37 ◼   ► But in the Finder window, it's showing stale contents.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And it'll still show an old file,

01:26:41 ◼   ► and a new file won't show up until you relaunch Finder,

01:26:44 ◼   ► in which case it'll be fixed for 20 minutes, maybe.

01:26:47 ◼   ► So many people have reported that they have the same problem.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Old Dropbox never had that problem.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Like, this is, you get another thing,

01:26:53 ◼   ► it's like they, ugh, high ground.

01:26:55 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:26:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:57 ◼   ► - Haxes, man, hacksies, like,

01:26:59 ◼   ► that's the thing about the whole, like,

01:27:00 ◼   ► injecting memory into another process.

01:27:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, right?

01:27:03 ◼   ► - The applications that become popular that do that

01:27:06 ◼   ► necessarily have to be the ones written by people who really know the ins and outs.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Not that again I'm recommending this, it's a crazy practice or whatever, but how are

01:27:14 ◼   ► hacksies a thing for so long?

01:27:16 ◼   ► Unsanity this company, making these products that just like did terrible things to your

01:27:20 ◼   ► system, how did that work at all?

01:27:22 ◼   ► How did they ever become popular?

01:27:23 ◼   ► It's because the people who made them were able to find ways to do them that would actually

01:27:28 ◼   ► work for a large number of people, which is incredibly hard, it's not a scalable way to

01:27:31 ◼   ► do development, but it kind of weeds out all the people who wanted to find hacky ways to

01:27:35 ◼   ► who didn't know every little intricate detail,

01:27:37 ◼   ► 'cause they would just crash your system

01:27:38 ◼   ► and you would never use them.

01:27:40 ◼   ► And so the people who did Dropbox,

01:27:41 ◼   ► I think there was a presentation on this,

01:27:43 ◼   ► went to heroic efforts to figure out

01:27:44 ◼   ► how to safely patch the Finder,

01:27:46 ◼   ► which is a terrible way to do this

01:27:47 ◼   ► and an official API is better,

01:27:48 ◼   ► but it was entirely in their hands

01:27:50 ◼   ► to figure out how to do this.

01:27:51 ◼   ► Whereas now you're cooperating with Apple

01:27:53 ◼   ► and Apple's Finder team on,

01:27:56 ◼   ► we'll make this API and you can use it

01:27:57 ◼   ► and you know what it's like with Apple APIs.

01:27:58 ◼   ► The first release that it's out in,

01:28:01 ◼   ► there are bugs, it doesn't work right or whatever.

01:28:03 ◼   ► You're hoping the next year it will fix the bugs

01:28:06 ◼   ► and like, you know, and El Capitan,

01:28:08 ◼   ► this new API will work better or whatever,

01:28:09 ◼   ► but maybe not, maybe it's not a big priority for them.

01:28:12 ◼   ► So I don't know what kind of hope there is

01:28:14 ◼   ► for this getting less buggy for you.

01:28:15 ◼   ► I haven't had as many problems as you described for it,

01:28:18 ◼   ► but I have seen situations where like,

01:28:20 ◼   ► what I get usually is like the badges don't appear.

01:28:22 ◼   ► I'm like, doesn't this have integration?

01:28:24 ◼   ► Is this supposed to be officially API?

01:28:25 ◼   ► Why do I, where do I see no badges?

01:28:28 ◼   ► Like, is it even working?

01:28:29 ◼   ► And then like the context menus, the same thing.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Like I think it was officially before.

01:28:34 ◼   ► Anyway, real time follow from the chat room,

01:28:36 ◼   ► Dropbox is not in the Mac App Store.

01:28:37 ◼   ► I did a search for Dropbox in the Mac App Store.

01:28:39 ◼   ► I get a screen full of results that say things like

01:28:41 ◼   ► app drive for Dropbox, app for Dropbox, app for Dropbox menu,

01:28:46 ◼   ► drop for Dropbox, drag share for Dropbox, app for Dropbox,

01:28:49 ◼   ► instant app for Dropbox, instant app for Dropbox,

01:28:51 ◼   ► plus Swift drop for Dropbox.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Anyway, search in the App Store and Apple's decision

01:28:58 ◼   ► to let everything in, but draw no distinction.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Like, I don't even know what these things are,

01:29:02 ◼   ► but I fear for someone saying they want Dropbox.

01:29:04 ◼   ► And these have prices, 299, 299, 499.

01:29:08 ◼   ► I don't think there's any free,

01:29:09 ◼   ► oh, there's a couple of free ones here and there.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Droplight for Dropbox, DVR Webcam Dropbox,

01:29:14 ◼   ► revisions for Dropbox.

01:29:15 ◼   ► I fear for someone thinking the Mac App Store

01:29:18 ◼   ► is where you get applications.

01:29:19 ◼   ► I've heard of this thing called Dropbox.

01:29:21 ◼   ► Let me go find it.

01:29:22 ◼   ► Faced with this screen, I don't know what they would do.

01:29:25 ◼   ► But they certainly wouldn't get Dropbox,

01:29:26 ◼   ► I can tell you that, 'cause it's not here.

01:29:28 ◼   ► - Right, well, and that's exactly the thing.

01:29:29 ◼   ► it only takes a couple of times of searching for something

01:29:32 ◼   ► that you know is out there and not finding it

01:29:35 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store before you just stop looking

01:29:37 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store.

01:29:38 ◼   ► - Or you download half of these,

01:29:39 ◼   ► 'cause they all have, obviously they all have Dropbox icon.

01:29:41 ◼   ► Like they all have a little box that is either

01:29:43 ◼   ► an exact copy of the Dropbox icon

01:29:45 ◼   ► or someone trying to redraw the Dropbox.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Like, oh, it's so bad.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, App Store searches all other can of worms.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So things are going really well in the Mac App Store then.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:29:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and we should mention Craig Hockenberry's

01:29:57 ◼   ► recent post too on this.

01:29:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say, just so we can put it in the show.

01:30:01 ◼   ► Someone mentioned it.

01:30:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, definitely read this,

01:30:04 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, you know,

01:30:05 ◼   ► 'cause one of the problems with the Mac App Store

01:30:07 ◼   ► and Mac development in general

01:30:08 ◼   ► is not only that there's all these policy issues

01:30:12 ◼   ► and ruling with the iron fist

01:30:14 ◼   ► and their floppy care and lack of stick,

01:30:16 ◼   ► but also it's like they're ruling

01:30:18 ◼   ► with a neglectful iron fist.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Like, they don't even care,

01:30:22 ◼   ► and so many luxuries that iOS developers get

01:30:25 ◼   ► or new features that iOS developers get

01:30:27 ◼   ► from things like iTunes connect iCloud API's. So many of them

01:30:32 ◼   ► don't come to the Mac at all or come very late to the Mac and

01:30:36 ◼   ► like Craig's, that's examples of like test flight builds and

01:30:39 ◼   ► something that where it's just like this stuff is like and

01:30:41 ◼   ► usually it's promised for Mac. It's like oh Mac will have it

01:30:43 ◼   ► soon and just hardly ever gets there gets there very late or

01:30:47 ◼   ► whatever and yeah, it just obviously the Mac API wise

01:30:52 ◼   ► development wise and Mac services for developers.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Obviously, these things are not incredibly high priorities

01:30:59 ◼   ► at Apple because if they were,

01:31:02 ◼   ► regardless of what Apple says

01:31:03 ◼   ► and regardless of what we hear from hardworking people

01:31:06 ◼   ► inside the company who are in the middle

01:31:08 ◼   ► of the hierarchy somewhere,

01:31:10 ◼   ► regardless of that, we can just tell by their actions,

01:31:12 ◼   ► you can tell by their results that this is not the priority.

01:31:16 ◼   ► iOS is the priority.

01:31:17 ◼   ► iOS has way more users, brings in way more money,

01:31:19 ◼   ► is way more high profile.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Obviously, that's the higher priority

01:31:22 ◼   ► and I can't really fault them for that

01:31:24 ◼   ► but it's unfortunate as Mac users,

01:31:25 ◼   ► and it's even more unfortunate if you're a Mac developer

01:31:28 ◼   ► that you're really on what used to be

01:31:31 ◼   ► the thing Apple cared so much about,

01:31:32 ◼   ► and now is clearly third or fourth priority these days.

01:31:37 ◼   ► - The one that hurts the most is where they did the thing

01:31:39 ◼   ► where they disabled app reviews from beta versions of iOS,

01:31:43 ◼   ► and they didn't do it on the Mac.

01:31:45 ◼   ► That's not a hard, I don't know how to say,

01:31:47 ◼   ► oh, that's so easy to do, but look,

01:31:49 ◼   ► they dedicated the resources to do it on iOS.

01:31:51 ◼   ► That feels like the type of thing,

01:31:52 ◼   ► just to save face, you would like,

01:31:54 ◼   ► can we do that for the Mac users too?

01:31:56 ◼   ► Is it that big a deal?

01:31:58 ◼   ► Maybe they will do it eventually.

01:31:59 ◼   ► Maybe it takes longer to patch the Mac App Store application.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Maybe there's no one working on the Mac App Store

01:32:03 ◼   ► application.

01:32:04 ◼   ► I don't know what the details are,

01:32:05 ◼   ► but that one really hurts.

01:32:06 ◼   ► 'Cause like everyone's so excited.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Hey, people can't review.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Nevermind that it's kind of like a little too little,

01:32:11 ◼   ► little too late because already betas are in people's hands

01:32:13 ◼   ► and they were writing reviews, but they fixed it, right?

01:32:15 ◼   ► Not for Mac users.

01:32:16 ◼   ► Sorry, you don't even get that.

01:32:18 ◼   ► You don't even get what you think is probably like the

01:32:19 ◼   ► lowest effort type of, nope.

01:32:22 ◼   ► just not a priority at all.

01:32:24 ◼   ► And in some respects, like the Craig Hagenberry thing

01:32:26 ◼   ► is coming at it from the perspective of a Mac developer.

01:32:29 ◼   ► And as people have always said, Apple cares about--

01:32:31 ◼   ► Apple first, users second, developers third or later.

01:32:35 ◼   ► It's a reasonable prioritization.

01:32:37 ◼   ► So it's like a lot of times developers want things from

01:32:39 ◼   ► Apple that Apple doesn't give them because they think it's

01:32:42 ◼   ► more important for users to have something or for Apple to

01:32:44 ◼   ► have something.

01:32:45 ◼   ► But this is a case of developer versus developer.

01:32:47 ◼   ► It's comparing what is it like if you're developing for

01:32:49 ◼   ► Apple's most popular platform or developing for Apple's

01:32:52 ◼   ► second most popular platform and it's a hell of a drop-off going to the second

01:32:57 ◼   ► most popular and we'll see what happens if suddenly the watch becomes the second

01:32:59 ◼   ► most popular one then you're then you're developing for the third most popular

01:33:02 ◼   ► not good yeah I honestly yeah I'm not sure that'll happen but that's another

01:33:08 ◼   ► show and either way remember just a couple years ago years ago we came back

01:33:11 ◼   ► to the Mac so things are fine don't worry about it I mean I think they did

01:33:16 ◼   ► do are doing better with API parity because so many guys reappear in both

01:33:21 ◼   ► like extensions API that did come out at the same time in both.

01:33:24 ◼   ► But just kind of when that happens it's like it's like a boost to the Mac because like

01:33:28 ◼   ► oh I wouldn't expect that I would expect it to be iOS first and Mac second when it comes

01:33:32 ◼   ► out simultaneous you're like wow the Mac really got a boost there but that's a user

01:33:35 ◼   ► facing feature it's not a developer facing feature and so yeah the there is a priority

01:33:40 ◼   ► cascade and it does still affect things but yeah.

01:33:42 ◼   ► And I would not hold out any hope for improvements to the Mac App Store I mean like the beta

01:33:46 ◼   ► thing you said like you know like not allowing people to review from betas.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Just look at the state of the Mac App Store application itself.

01:33:56 ◼   ► Just try to use it for anything.

01:33:57 ◼   ► Try to do anything in it.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Try to browse anything.

01:34:00 ◼   ► Obviously doing anything to this app is, it must be extraordinarily difficult and impossible

01:34:06 ◼   ► inside Apple to get anything done inside this app because it doesn't happen.

01:34:09 ◼   ► - I just don't think there's a lot of people working on it though.

01:34:11 ◼   ► I think the underlying frameworks probably have people working on them.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Like the things that, again, was telling you you can run updates from the application and

01:34:18 ◼   ► and close the application entirely,

01:34:19 ◼   ► but the updates still run because there are like

01:34:22 ◼   ► processes and demons behind the scene

01:34:24 ◼   ► that manage software updates.

01:34:25 ◼   ► Those I think are being worked on because they, you know,

01:34:28 ◼   ► they do the OS updates and they do app updates.

01:34:31 ◼   ► I think there's people working on those,

01:34:33 ◼   ► but sort of the gooey skin that provides like the view

01:34:35 ◼   ► into the store and does all that, that seems like,

01:34:39 ◼   ► I don't think, I can't remember the last time

01:34:40 ◼   ► a new feature appeared in that.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Maybe they have someone fixing the most egregious bugs.

01:34:44 ◼   ► It just seems like no one's working on it.

01:34:45 ◼   ► I can honestly say it's worse than iTunes.

01:34:49 ◼   ► It has many of the same problems and challenges of iTunes

01:34:52 ◼   ► of having this giant web service rendering

01:34:56 ◼   ► what's basically a big web view in the app.

01:34:58 ◼   ► - Is it a web view or is it like XML

01:35:00 ◼   ► like the iTunes store used to be?

01:35:02 ◼   ► Remember when the iTunes store was like custom XML?

01:35:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good question.

01:35:05 ◼   ► It might be that.

01:35:06 ◼   ► It feels like a big web view.

01:35:07 ◼   ► It behaves like a big web view.

01:35:08 ◼   ► - It could be like, what is that thing

01:35:10 ◼   ► that they bought for iOS, like Chomp or whatever,

01:35:12 ◼   ► like the thing when they redid the regular app store?

01:35:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah, when they made the search suck even more by having those big cards they don't

01:35:18 ◼   ► let you see one app at a time on screen, that was great.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway we shouldn't be trying to guess what the underlying technologies are. Who

01:35:23 ◼   ► cares, we just know the end result is an application that does weird things and sometimes the only

01:35:26 ◼   ► solution is to close it and relaunch it or to restart your Mac and that's not good.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Igloo, Squarespace, and Need, and we will

01:35:35 ◼   ► see you next week.

01:35:37 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:35:44 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:35:49 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:35:55 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:36:00 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:36:06 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:36:10 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:36:15 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:36:19 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C

01:36:24 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse

01:36:26 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:36:30 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:36:32 ◼   ► Accidental

01:36:35 ◼   ► Tech Nitecast, so long

01:36:40 ◼   ► I joined a gym.

01:36:42 ◼   ► You joined a gym?

01:36:44 ◼   ► I joined a gym.

01:36:45 ◼   ► What are you going to do with the gym?

01:36:47 ◼   ► It's gonna lift heavy things.

01:36:49 ◼   ► I haven't done that yet.

01:36:50 ◼   ► I probably won't.

01:36:51 ◼   ► It's gonna run in place like a hamster in a wheel.

01:36:54 ◼   ► I haven't done that yet.

01:36:55 ◼   ► I have walked really fast in place though.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Does that count?

01:36:58 ◼   ► Like a hamster that's not in a hurry.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Like a hamster who's reading his iPhone.

01:37:03 ◼   ► How does that work with the official Marco wardrobe?

01:37:06 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:37:07 ◼   ► I wear shirts there and then I wear them home.

01:37:09 ◼   ► t-shirt and he's got I'm sorry do you have shorts as part of the wardrobe in