00:00:00 ◼ ► We have some news for those of you who are members, our beloved members. If you're not a member, you can go to ATP.fm/join.
00:00:07 ◼ ► We have released another member special. I would call this monthly, but we're not terribly good about being consistent about that.
00:00:13 ◼ ► But our roughly monthly member special are sometimes member specials, that we do accidentally. Ding!
00:00:20 ◼ ► Anyway, so we did a tier list and we discussed this on the episode. But John, would you give us a brief overview of what a tier list is and what it is that we were ranking?
00:00:30 ◼ ► We were supposed to have links in the show notes to explain what that is, and now we do. So good news. Of course, you only see the show notes if you're a member.
00:00:35 ◼ ► But anyway, it's a tier list in the style of from a video game culture that is spread elsewhere. You put things into different ranks, usually with like letter grades, where A, B, C, D, E, or A, B, C, D, F.
00:00:49 ◼ ► Yeah, that's where. Oh, God, let me tell you, by the way, for whatever, it's just a little side note here. You know, so my kids in school and we get the, you know, the elementary school report cards and
00:00:59 ◼ ► have you seen a recent elementary school report card and do the grades make any sense to you?
00:01:04 ◼ ► Well, I think Declan's on letters now, but I believe in kindergarten and first grade it was like one through four or something like that. It was very unusual.
00:01:12 ◼ ► So our report card, first of all, it's in trimesters, not semesters or quarters, because why be, you know, normal. So we have these three columns and within this, not only like on the same side, but even like within the same section of it,
00:01:26 ◼ ► they alternate, they seemingly switch between like a letter system that is not A, B, C, D, F.
00:02:00 ◼ ► Anyway, so yes, tier lists make more they make more sense than school report cards these days.
00:02:08 ◼ ► You'll see that when you get to high school and start approaching college stuff, you'll also find out that high schools across this great country of ours also have no consistency and are wildly wild.
00:02:18 ◼ ► So pity the poor college admissions people who have to somehow make sense of what these things mean on their transcripts.
00:02:46 ◼ ► Anyway, we did a very traditional one with S at the top and then A through D and then F for failing.
00:03:05 ◼ ► And that actually did come up in some I'm not going to spoil it for people, but one of the phones, one of the complaints people had who listened to the episode about the phones is like, yeah, I kind of agree with your rating of the phone, except if you consider that Apple sold it with way too little storage for too long, which we didn't consider.
00:03:20 ◼ ► Anyway, we ranked the iPhones and there's actually a video version if you want to see the tier list as we drag things up into it.
00:03:33 ◼ ► And you drag it in there and then you start laying the things until it's entirely filled and you can watch that beautiful process happen with a link that is in the show notes.
00:03:52 ◼ ► You'll be shocked to know that it took us a really long time because we argued about a lot of phones.
00:04:03 ◼ ► And then as you get into more recent years, like, oh, they released four phones every year for like the last, you know, four or five years.
00:04:24 ◼ ► I would say, like, if you think we occasionally argue about something in the regular show, like the rate of argument per minute was way higher in in this special than it is in a regular show.
00:04:43 ◼ ► And chances are, whatever you think about the iPhones, chances are you will agree that we didn't get it right.
00:05:00 ◼ ► We had to come to a often grudging consensus, which is different than us doing it individually.
00:05:21 ◼ ► And anonymous writes in a past episode, Marco speculated about the R1 chip running a real time OS.
00:05:32 ◼ ► The R1 contains a SEP or secure on enclave processor, some very small, simple in order CPU cores to handle DMAing the sensor data directly into the M2.
00:05:43 ◼ ► Camera ISPs or image signal processors, MIPI or mobile industry processor interface, a standardized interface for connecting peripherals and sensors, a display image warping engine and a couple of leap audio DSP engines like the AirPods have.
00:05:57 ◼ ► The real time stuff mentioned in the WWDC keynote is in addition to the how do you pronounce this?
00:06:10 ◼ ► What we've heard about here and there and what they, I believe, went into even in the state of the union about Vision OS and how it's broken up is that modern Apple like ARM chips have the ability to run multiple OS's in parallel.
00:06:25 ◼ ► And I don't know whether it's technically virtualization or some other technique, but it's something like that at least.
00:06:30 ◼ ► And so one of the things that it is running is a real time OS alongside the Vision OS main core or.
00:06:41 ◼ ► The feedback is saying is they just modified the new whatever schedule that the Darwin kernel schedule.
00:06:47 ◼ ► That's that XNU kernel is in all of our devices, in every Mac and every iPad and every iPhone and every Apple TV and every HomePod that the Darwin kernel is in there.
00:06:58 ◼ ► They just made a change to Darwin scheduling to have, I'm assuming, a new kind of scheduling, which is so you schedule all the stuff with your preemptive multitasking according to priorities and whatever, like the way the operating system.
00:07:10 ◼ ► But there are some extensions apparently for the kernel that runs on the M2 and Vision OS.
00:07:15 ◼ ► I said there's another kind of scheduling, which is I don't care what the hell else is going on.
00:07:18 ◼ ► This is going to get this amount of CPU time, you know, on schedule no matter what else is happening.
00:07:24 ◼ ► And so that's what I think that I don't think it's running two different OS's or anything or slicing them, even if the ARM processor is capable of that, at least from what this feedback says, is simply a modification of the scheduler to give it a.
00:07:35 ◼ ► This has been true of many Unix operating systems in the past, that is one of the scheduling priorities, like hard real time, like, oh, you can schedule this stuff according to your normal scheduling algorithm, but always leave X number of scheduling spots for these things if they happen to be available.
00:07:52 ◼ ► And there's a limited number of them and they have to finish in a certain amount of time and so on and so forth.
00:08:00 ◼ ► And and that would kind of make sense, but I think the, you know, the technical detail of it is, I guess, different.
00:08:06 ◼ ► But I think the result is the same, which is kind of exactly what we were talking about with the requirement for CarPlay controlling gauge clusters of like you need some kind of real time component, whether it's a full OS or whether it's a part of your OS.
00:08:25 ◼ ► And so based on how they describe the Vision OS architecture in one of the videos, it seems like that is how Vision OS is built.
00:08:33 ◼ ► Is that there is this real time component that runs probably all like the room displaying stuff that uses the R1 for various things, but that the actual the actual execution of the OS code is not happening on the R1.
00:08:47 ◼ ► It seems that the R1 is is not like a one to one computational peer to the M2, but rather an accelerator chip that, you know, similar to other, you know, specialty accelerator chips we've seen in various hardware in the past, which is interesting to know.
00:09:02 ◼ ► And that kind of suggests that the R1 is maybe not as as large or sophisticated of a deal as we might have originally assumed, and that probably won't be upgraded super frequently, maybe, and might be easily broken up from the M2 or whatever else.
00:09:19 ◼ ► So it's this is probably a good news in the sense that the R1 is is not as probably like big and expensive and hot as we would have guessed.
00:09:29 ◼ ► I mean, it does more than that because obviously it processes stuff, but its job is to get everything from the sensor to, as I say, DMA it into the M2, which is direct memory access, where it just shoves the data somewhere where the M2 can get it really easily.
00:09:53 ◼ ► Right. Or if they have it come up with a better algorithm for doing the de-warping or whatever.
00:09:56 ◼ ► But in the absence of that kind of upgrade, you can just keep the R1 just keeps doing its job.
00:10:05 ◼ ► And the whole DMA thing is like, OK, well, then how does M2 get access to that information?
00:10:14 ◼ ► The fact that it's not actually running a separate operating system, at least according to this feedback, as far as we could tell, does mean that, you know, if you if you panic the kernel, everything stops.
00:10:25 ◼ ► Like the real time stuff doesn't get nothing gets scheduled like this is the one and only kernel.
00:10:28 ◼ ► Right. And so it's not like you have the kind of isolation that you need to get in a car or something where the systems really are separate and you can crash the infotainment.
00:10:41 ◼ ► Again, as far as we can tell from this, you know, not particularly detailed feedback when we get these things, we'll find out because they'll crash.
00:10:47 ◼ ► And when they crash, we'll be like, oh, did it crash in such a way that everything goes away?
00:10:50 ◼ ► I mean, even on your Mac, sometimes things can crash and like, oh, well, you know, this app is beach balled, but these other ones still work.
00:11:03 ◼ ► Like the various subsystems of the operating system can get hosed because they're often run by these separate processes or whatever.
00:11:09 ◼ ► So, you know, once people get dev kits, because those will probably be crashy or the real thing, they will kind of find out how much work Apple has done to sort of make this bulletproof.
00:11:18 ◼ ► But as we discussed in past shows, if this entire thing crashes, it's not the end of the world.
00:11:27 ◼ ► I don't think they would have done it would have bent over backwards too far to make sure, like under all circumstances, that you can still see the outside world through the air thing.
00:11:38 ◼ ► But I think they'll just do that the way they normally do it, which is, hey, when's the last time your phone kernel panics?
00:11:44 ◼ ► They're able to make this operating system stable enough that normally what's going to happen is your app's going to crash or maybe, you know, even like the quote unquote entire user space would crash, which happens on a phone occasionally, especially with beta OS's.
00:12:00 ◼ ► So if the kernel and the real time stuff are running the camera things, maybe that will stay up.
00:12:09 ◼ ► Let's talk about foveated rendering, computational blur and VAC and all sorts of fun stuff.
00:12:17 ◼ ► Before we go to that, before we start James's thread, because that one top line item was a reminder to me to talk about these things.
00:12:24 ◼ ► The the was it a vergence accommodation conflict thing where you have the expectation that you're the squishy process of focusing.
00:12:34 ◼ ► It corresponds to a particular vergence angle of your eyes and if there's a mismatch between them, it feels weird.
00:12:47 ◼ ► Like, you know, if this headset, like as it appears to be the case, has a single focal distance for the entire headset, even if you look at something that's real close to you in the headset, something as far away in the headset, the accommodation distance is always the same.
00:13:03 ◼ ► And yes, there are lenses in front of it, but if the lenses don't move, the lenses inside the thing, if the lenses don't move, the virtual, you know, the screen that you're focusing your eyes on is always going to be the same.
00:13:21 ◼ ► Foveated rendering is where you're rendering something on the screen, but you only render in detail the part where you know the people are looking.
00:13:30 ◼ ► And that is mostly a feature that is used for like 3D games where it's really expensive to render like the whole 3D scene.
00:13:43 ◼ ► But, you know, if you don't have a really good GPU, it only maybe gets 30 frames per second.
00:13:48 ◼ ► Right now, imagine you have to run two 4K screens, each showing slightly different views.
00:13:57 ◼ ► I have to run two separate 4K screens on M2 with just a plain old M2, not an M2 Pro or M2 Max.
00:14:03 ◼ ► Well, one way to deal with that is in a headset, you have the advantage of knowing where the person is looking.
00:14:28 ◼ ► It's a really great way to get better frame rates for something where it's computationally expensive to render the whole scene.
00:14:36 ◼ ► Does not help with VAC because first of all, it doesn't change the focal distance at all.
00:14:41 ◼ ► Even though you may be, you know, the other parts that where you're not looking may be quote unquote blurry.
00:14:45 ◼ ► They're blurry in the sense that like, if you render a game with like a lower poly count or with lower quality textures or lower resolution, they're blurry in that way.
00:14:54 ◼ ► But they're not blurry in terms of, oh, they're a different eye squish distance from you.
00:14:57 ◼ ► Like you, you looking at your finger and inch in front of your face and you looking at, you know, the horizon.
00:15:04 ◼ ► What about portrait mode where they do computational blur where if you look at the coffee table inside the headset, they could computationally blur the distant wall that's behind you.
00:15:21 ◼ ► The eye squish distance as you look at a portrait mode picture on your phone screen never changes.
00:15:36 ◼ ► That when you see something blurry in a photo, it's either simulating or legitimately showing what a lens saw at that time.
00:15:47 ◼ ► But when you're looking at the picture in terms of, you know, focusing on like the pixels on the screen, the whole plane of the screen is the same focal distance from you, more or less.
00:16:08 ◼ ► Thread on Mastodon that pointed us to a couple of examples of things that actually would solve this problem, unlike foveated rendering or computational blur.
00:16:37 ◼ ► Magically, one had two focal planes on its displays and used eye tracking to switch between the two.
00:16:42 ◼ ► Oh, and yes, VAC can cause eye strain if dense visual elements are placed too close to a person.
00:16:48 ◼ ► The UI, for example, or reading a book after a few minutes, not sure how long it'll take for various people, will cause eye strain.
00:16:54 ◼ ► MetaQuest Pro is the closest thing to a dev kit available now for the Apple Vision Pro.
00:17:02 ◼ ► But you need to obviously recognize the constraints of the MetaQuest Pro and Apple Vision Pro and work within them.
00:17:09 ◼ ► Obviously, this requires Unreal Unity dev experience to prototype for it to make sense.
00:17:21 ◼ ► They're little lenses inside the headset that move so that you can actually change the focal distance, presumably depending on where you're looking.
00:17:29 ◼ ► So when you look at the coffee table, the little lenses move so that your eye squish has to change so you can focus on the coffee table because it's closer to you.
00:17:43 ◼ ► So it's kind of old. It's Michael Abrash, whose name you might recognize from id Software fame, working on Doom and Quake and all that stuff.
00:17:49 ◼ ► He I guess he came over to Oculus when, you know, Facebook bought them and, you know, John Carmack was there.
00:18:00 ◼ ► Facebook's reality lab chief scientist discussed two newer versions of the Half Dome prototype.
00:18:28 ◼ ► Compared to the original Half Dome, the parts are quieter and have less friction and are more durable.
00:18:33 ◼ ► It's the second version. It's like we found a way to move the little lenses back and forth faster and quieter with less power.
00:18:37 ◼ ► Similar to the advancement that you've seen in big lenses that go on cameras where they have to move your lens elements back and forth quickly and quietly.
00:18:44 ◼ ► In Half Dome 3, the varifocal system ditches moving mechanical parts for an electronic version,
00:18:49 ◼ ► which is a big contributing factor in making Half Dome 3 even smaller than the other prototypes while eliminating noise and vibrations.
00:18:54 ◼ ► It packs a new type of liquid crystal lens made from thin alternating stacks of two flat optical elements,
00:19:05 ◼ ► I don't know what these things are, but what they're trying to say is there's a solid state component that lets you change focus without having to actually move lens elements.
00:19:14 ◼ ► I'm you know, again, I'm not sure how it does that, but like with crystal displays and all those little things, you know, bend light in various ways so it can make some sense.
00:19:20 ◼ ► Continuing by stacking the series of PDLs and switchable half dome, half wave plates on top of each other, we're able to achieve smooth, smooth varifocal that lets you comfortably and seamlessly adjust your focus in the headset.
00:19:39 ◼ ► Right. So this whole thing, and you mentioned before the 64 different focal planes, that's better than one focal plane.
00:19:44 ◼ ► But the granularity, I don't know what the granularity of the human eye is, how many different focal planes can you focus on?
00:19:52 ◼ ► Like if you put a paper like where you can just see it and then move it an inch and then move another inch and then move another inch, you can get a lot of different focal distances with your eye squish.
00:20:02 ◼ ► So that is a super interesting example of what people are trying to do to solve this problem, albeit in the prototype thing, starting with, hey, let's just have a bunch of lenses and move them and let's move them, make them move faster and quieter.
00:20:18 ◼ ► It's also an open question of how many different positions that you have when you were moving the lens.
00:20:26 ◼ ► And the other thing that was mentioned is this company whose name by all accounts should be pronounced C real because the name of the company is capital C capital R lowercase E A L.
00:21:06 ◼ ► I'm never going to say Creel has this thing on our technology page that will link says our unique light field display technology reconstructs light as it exists in the real world by removing the fixed focal plane and projecting true 3D images with actual focal depth.
00:21:20 ◼ ► Virtual objects can be blended with reality at any distance without individual conflict.
00:21:26 ◼ ► They have like a pair of glasses that you put in your face to clear glasses, and they project light through those glasses into your eyeball while you're also looking at the room through those glasses.
00:21:42 ◼ ► But the number 64 may come up again because it looked like they had like an eight by eight grid of things.
00:21:47 ◼ ► And they like they project a whole bunch of different images that enter your eye at different angles.
00:21:59 ◼ ► And then they have like they had an example like, oh, you're looking at a hummingbird that's going to land on your finger.
00:22:14 ◼ ► If you want to look at the screen across the room, focus your eyes on the screen across room, just like if it was there in real life.
00:22:27 ◼ ► And I've seen a lot of things about these light fields where they where they put all just like when you're looking in the real world, when you're looking in your room in the real world, the room doesn't know where you're looking.
00:22:36 ◼ ► All the light from the room is just coming into your eyes at a million different angles.
00:22:40 ◼ ► And you by focusing your eye, by squishing the little lens element to your eye, you're able to choose which part of the room is in focus.
00:22:47 ◼ ► And yes, your virgins also, you know, virgins to deal with the binocular vision, so you're not seeing double or seeing like overlapping images.
00:22:54 ◼ ► And the combination of squishing lenses focuses whatever light that you want to be in sharp focus on the back of your retina.
00:23:02 ◼ ► And that's what they say their light field display does, although it did show like an 8 by 8 grid of things.
00:23:08 ◼ ► But so there is a preview of potential future technologies for Apple Vision Pro version two after the CEO, after Tim Cook has a 20 year reign and decides he wants to take another run at AR goggles because the first one failed.
00:23:26 ◼ ► We don't know how it's going to turn out, but anybody like if this is a successful product, eventually technologies like the ones we're seeing here are inevitable because it's the next step in making it more natural.
00:23:36 ◼ ► Whether it's actually AR where you're looking through a pair of glasses, which we always talk about, and they just can't really do that well at this point, or simply a headset with a variable focus distance, because that feels more real and it feels a lot less like you're looking at a screen inside a headset, which is what we're doing right now.
00:24:02 ◼ ► Apple says when you start a fully immersive experience, Vision OS defines a system boundary that extends one and a half meters from the initial position of the person's head.
00:24:09 ◼ ► If the head moves outside of that zone, the system automatically stops the immersive experience and turns on the external video again.
00:24:19 ◼ ► So if you thought you're going to be like, oh, on top of Mount Hood, I'm going to walk around.
00:24:24 ◼ ► I mean, they showed them in the demo of like, oh, that's the breakthrough type of thing.
00:24:32 ◼ ► You would, you know, so you'd walk two feet forward and you'd be two feet forward in the in the Mount Hood space, but it would still keep projecting Mount Hood around you.
00:24:38 ◼ ► And for safety reasons, apparently the first version of Vision OS when you were in a VR experience, which means you can't see any of the outside world, you're allowed to sit there and be in any expansive environment you want.
00:24:49 ◼ ► But you've only got basically five feet in any direction before your head pops out of that virtual square.
00:24:56 ◼ ► And, you know, that makes sense because, you know, again, we talked about it in the keynote.
00:25:03 ◼ ► The only thing they ever showed anyone mobile at all was the guy, you know, taking video of his daughter's birthday.
00:25:13 ◼ ► Additionally, Apple Vision Pro is a speed limit and travel mode is required for use on flights.
00:25:21 ◼ ► I forgot to mention the prior link, which we will have in the show notes to 9 to 5 Mac talking about the Vision Pro safe area.
00:25:30 ◼ ► There is an embed in that of 12 minutes of VR fails, which is probably not the fun, the nicest thing for me to laugh at.
00:25:57 ◼ ► Internal Vision OS code seen by 9 to 5 Mac suggests that the Apple Vision Pro will limit its functionality or even stop working entirely when the user is moving too fast.
00:26:05 ◼ ► The system has alerts that tell the person wearing the headset that they're "moving at unsafe speeds."
00:26:13 ◼ ► Another alert message found in the Vision OS code warns the user "virtual content has been temporarily hidden until you return to a safe speed."
00:26:23 ◼ ► The system may act as a protection so that users don't try to interact with Vision Pro while driving a car, for example.
00:26:27 ◼ ► Vision OS also has a travel mode designed to let users interact with the device even on a plane.
00:26:32 ◼ ► Quote, "If you're on an airplane, you'll need to keep travel mode on to continue using your Apple Vision Pro," a message reads.
00:26:37 ◼ ► However, based on the Vision OS code, the inputs when using travel mode will be limited and the user must remain stationary for it to work.
00:26:47 ◼ ► And this is, you know, these both of these, you know, the safe area and the, you know, speed limit and airplane mode.
00:26:53 ◼ ► You got to figure like when Apple releases a new product, the level of scrutiny on them is massive.
00:27:00 ◼ ► And the level of like, you know, the number of people out there who are going to try to generate a bad PR story or who will amplify a bad PR story if one exists is also massive.
00:27:12 ◼ ► So they have to be really careful that whatever they release, there's not going to be some story a week later that some idiot like got themselves killed doing something really stupid with it or worse, you know.
00:27:31 ◼ ► That's because if they didn't do that and somebody walked into their TV instead of being in Casey's video, they would just sue Apple.
00:27:38 ◼ ► You know, and like, and if somebody stupidly put one of these on while driving a car and they crashed and killed somebody, they would also sue Apple.
00:27:52 ◼ ► But I feel like the people making these decisions weren't first and foremost thinking like lawyers.
00:27:57 ◼ ► But yes, additionally, of course, if you know, there is there is an increased scrutiny in anything Apple does.
00:28:03 ◼ ► Like, you know, if you look at like all the all the hoops they jump through with air tags to make sure that they can't be used very effectively as stocking devices.
00:28:14 ◼ ► And like and you look at look around like the rest of the industry, you can buy a GPS tracker for like 20 bucks that doesn't do any of those safety things that, you know, like it's there.
00:28:44 ◼ ► As soon as you scrutinize them and disappear, a new company pops up with a different set of consonants.
00:28:49 ◼ ► But anyway, so so yeah, you know, Apple is going to be more conservative because they you know, a they do think it's the right thing to do.
00:28:56 ◼ ► But also be they have to be because they have so much scrutiny on it on everything they do.
00:29:00 ◼ ► So they're going to do everything they can to make to make absolutely sure that the Vision Pro is very difficult to impossible to use in really stupid, harmful ways.
00:29:12 ◼ ► And like I said before, I suspect, although I don't know because I haven't tried it and I don't think anybody has, there are pretty severe limitations on the sensor distances that are useful with this thing.
00:29:41 ◼ ► They this this device does not have any awareness of its surroundings beyond some reasonable limit based on the sensors that are in it because it's not designed to.
00:29:49 ◼ ► It's not designed for you to get on the back of a horse and go riding off into the you know, it's not I don't think it's designed for you to be out on the city street walking around.
00:29:57 ◼ ► It's designed to be used the way Apple showed it being used, which does not involve a lot of motion and involves a lot of fairly simple controlled environments.
00:30:05 ◼ ► And so everything about this product is trying to tell you this is how you should and must use it because it's just you know, it can't make sense of the world outside of a bubble that that it sensor range extends to.
00:30:17 ◼ ► And unlike something like a driver assistance in a car, it's sensor range is probably not that big and doesn't have to be for the job it's being sold to do.
00:30:27 ◼ ► We got some feedback, semi conflicting feedback about my well, really, Aaron's Volvo windshield.
00:30:33 ◼ ► Alan D. writes before becoming an iOS developer, I was very heavily involved in the automotive windscreen trade.
00:30:55 ◼ ► So like one is like files into the show and I know a lot about windscreens on a write in.
00:31:00 ◼ ► But like but you know, before becoming an iOS developer, I just now everything's going to be like I work at Apple now.
00:31:08 ◼ ► And let me tell you, we have not only do we have listener in every industry on every topic that we're ever going to talk about, but also a bunch of them are also now currently like Apple employees or iOS developers.
00:31:26 ◼ ► So Alan, before becoming iOS developer, I was heavily involved in the automotive windscreen trade working for Belron.
00:31:33 ◼ ► Casey mentioned that he didn't get an OEM windscreen made by Volvo as the main problem with his windscreen.
00:31:37 ◼ ► This is a common mistake made by a lot of customers who assume that Volvo, BMW, and Audi, et cetera, all make the windscreens that go into their car, where in fact the manufacturer simply outsourced to the cheapest manufacturer and then get them to apply the relevant logo during the process.
00:31:48 ◼ ► If you look at the many different brands of cars, depending on the year of manufacture, you'll see the glass is made by lots of different companies with the car logo next to it.
00:31:54 ◼ ► It is better to look for a windscreen made by a competent manufacturer than simply look for the car logo.
00:31:59 ◼ ► We've talked about this on the show before in our various neutral segments with a little car door noise.
00:32:03 ◼ ► And I know from the car rebuilding channels, the categories of things that you can buy for your car are OE, which is original equipment, which is if you have a Honda car, you can go to the Honda parts dealer and they will sell you a genuine Honda, whatever it is.
00:32:24 ◼ ► Maybe Bosch makes some sensor for them or, you know, makes the windscreens or like this.
00:32:28 ◼ ► There's every company tires are made by the tires actually branded by the companies that made it.
00:32:33 ◼ ► But every single part of your car, chances are good unless it's like an integral part of the engine.
00:32:37 ◼ ► But even then are made by some other manufacturer, but they're made for Honda, for BMW.
00:32:55 ◼ ► Often the company will make the part, as I said on a past show, like, so make a part for BMW.
00:32:59 ◼ ► Here's a BMW, quote unquote, BMW water pump, but it's made by some company that makes these things right.
00:33:03 ◼ ► When you buy it OEM one, it's cheaper and two, it's often the exact same part, but they file off the BMW that stamped into the metal.
00:33:17 ◼ ► They file off the BMW and say, oh, now this is, this is OEM because it's from the original equipment manufacturer, but it's not the original BMW equipment could be filed off the BMW.
00:33:27 ◼ ► And then finally there's third party, which is this will fit in your BMW and theory will do the job of the water pump, but it is not made by the company that made the water pumps for BMW.
00:33:37 ◼ ► And by the way, often BMW will source water pumps from two or three different companies for the same car generation.
00:33:47 ◼ ► So I think that's what, uh, that Alan is trying to say here that when you get a windshield, yes, of course these companies don't make their own windshields.
00:33:52 ◼ ► They buy them from somebody, but you can get an OE one, which is going to have a Volvo logo on it, whatever you can get an OEM one, which is made by the exact same company that made the OE one, but it doesn't have a Volvo logo on it.
00:34:03 ◼ ► And then you can get one that's third party that will fit on your Volvo, but is not made by the company that makes windscreens for this car for Volvo.
00:34:11 ◼ ► And I think the first of the two windshields we had put in the car is a third party, or was a third party one.
00:34:16 ◼ ► And I can tell you for a fact, my lived experience, as they say, is that the heads up display was blurry when, when projected onto that windshield.
00:34:25 ◼ ► I don't recall who manufactured what the deal was, but it was not a windshield stamped with the Volvo logo.
00:34:43 ◼ ► Well, did you see, I know you have more feedback on this, but you see the other feedback was saying that a lot of it could also be calibration issues regardless of who manufactured the wind screen.
00:34:52 ◼ ► But again, I find that pretty skeptical or I'm pretty skeptical about that because it also, when the safe flight, the first time they tried to replace the windshield, somebody came out and was like, Oh, this isn't the right windshield.
00:35:05 ◼ ► So, I mean, I obviously don't really know what I'm talking about, but all I do know is that a third party windshield went in, it didn't work with the HUD and then a first party or either OEM windshield went in and I guess it was OE because it's Volvo stamped on it.
00:35:22 ◼ ► Uh, then Alan continues, Casey recommended that the listeners take their car to the dealership windscreen replacement.
00:35:32 ◼ ► Anyway, in all my years of experience, the dealers do not have specialist tools and chemicals needed to change windscreen.
00:35:37 ◼ ► The dealer nearly always calls a third party to come in and change windscreen and you have no say in who is doing the work.
00:35:45 ◼ ► I get that, but I can tell you that when I was speaking to my local Volvo dealer, they said, Oh, we have a specific guy.
00:35:52 ◼ ► I guess technically speaking, it could have been someone they brought in, but the implication from the way they were saying it was, it's absolutely somebody they brought in.
00:36:04 ◼ ► No, no, that's my point is that they had, it was the way they spoke of it is that they had a specific employee that did this sort of work because they said like he was out a certain day or something like that, but it's typically in, I don't know, it doesn't matter.
00:36:17 ◼ ► I mean, maybe, but, and again, like the sales, the, the, the particular Volvo dealer that we work with, like the sales department, I probably made this speech before, but sales department was a bunch of sleazeballs at the time we bought.
00:36:29 ◼ ► I mean, when we bought a car dealer, well, no, but it was real bad in so far as like we were talking to a guy that's the sales person and I, and I would, Aaron would ask a question and he would look at her, listen to her question and then look at me to answer the question.
00:36:50 ◼ ► Anyway, we also had anonymous feedback, uh, from a former safe flight tech 32 years worth who says, I am saddened to hear it took three trips to finish.
00:37:01 ◼ ► If you get a tech that cares about the quality of their work and then you have nothing to worry about, it's just that those folks are few and far between safe flight gives their texts raises or cuts their pay.
00:37:10 ◼ ► According to four metrics, they keep on you, your speed and efficiency damage control and wiper sales.
00:37:21 ◼ ► The one that didn't make it into the notes here was someone talking about calibration specifically with Volvo and saying that like some of these cars have like a.
00:37:33 ◼ ► But, but the, uh, but they don't have the ability to write that calibration because like the, the, the stored calibration is right protected.
00:37:39 ◼ ► So the next time you power off and power on the car, it goes back to the stored calibration and it's off again until you drive a little bit.
00:37:44 ◼ ► And if you go to the Volvo dealer, the Volvo dealer has the computer to override the right protect to calibrate it either live or stationary, get the new calibration values written to the stored value.
00:37:55 ◼ ► And then you don't have to worry about it losing calibration when you disconnect the battery or whatever.
00:37:58 ◼ ► So I feel like most of the magic with the dealer here is in the tools used to make your car happy with the windshield setting aside that potentially.
00:38:06 ◼ ► If you just bought one that doesn't work with that as a display period, because it's just totally the wrong one.
00:38:11 ◼ ► It doesn't have the reflective properties that are required, but if it was just blurry, it could just be that this one ended up a slight, you know, three millimeters different distance and they just needed to calibrate it, but they didn't have the tools to count.
00:38:21 ◼ ► Because if you think about it, if you're if you're Safe Flight or whatever, you're not going to have the tools to talk to the computer of every single car to do the calibration.
00:38:33 ◼ ► So that's I feel like the value you're getting the dealer is if there are tools to configure and calibrate and override the right protection and, you know, put a little test pattern or whatever, whatever they have to do to do to do the calibration.
00:38:45 ◼ ► They'll have it at the Volvo dealer because they service Volvos, but Safe Flight is not going to have one for every car make and model in year for the past, you know, 50 years to be able to have the windshields for it because they can just order it.
00:39:19 ◼ ► Pretty soon, every new car will have some crap that needs to see through or reflect on the windshield and Safe Flight's got to figure out how they're going to deal with that.
00:39:28 ◼ ► I'm sorry. But the other funny thing about this was when I was filling out like the the oh, I need a new windshield and they asked, OK, what's your car?
00:39:40 ◼ ► And they asked, does it have heated seats, which I think was their indication whether or not it had a particular package.
00:39:47 ◼ ► But yeah, I wish that they had been a little more specific because I think that they they did not know these Volvo or the option packages well enough to ask the appropriate questions to discern the fact that I had a heads up display.
00:40:03 ◼ ► It's funny to me that this is conflicting feedback from somebody who worked for the parent company of Safe Flight and someone who allegedly worked for Safe Flight themselves.
00:40:11 ◼ ► We were talking several weeks ago now before WWDC about fixing a bug for only one developer.
00:40:32 ◼ ► Yes. And my explanation was that even if it's a bug found by a dinky developer, that same bug could affect the important developers or Apple itself.
00:40:39 ◼ ► So thank you. So, uh, Guy Rambo, friend of the show, wrote when Apple released Mac OS Monterey, it broke something very specific in core Bluetooth that I'm pretty sure only affected my app.
00:40:51 ◼ ► This is a counterpoint to the idea that they'd never prioritize a report from a small developer.
00:40:55 ◼ ► And that's the other part of it is like when you're on Apple or thing like this giant monolithic thing.
00:40:59 ◼ ► But the individuals who work on the team that does Bluetooth probably really want to know if there's a bug affecting Bluetooth.
00:41:13 ◼ ► So if you go to a lab with the people who are on the Bluetooth team and you show them a blog in the Bluetooth stack, they're going to fix it because that's what programmers do.
00:41:20 ◼ ► And they're not their mind is not clouded by giant strategic visions of how resources have to be allocated across the entire organization.
00:41:34 ◼ ► The Bluetooth team isn't overburdened by having to make a bunch of widgets for the new version of Mac OS.
00:41:43 ◼ ► Swift UI does suck on the Mac if you're writing an iOS app and expecting it to work on the Mac.
00:41:47 ◼ ► If you're making a Mac app, it's fantastic, especially if you know enough app kit to be dangerous.
00:42:00 ◼ ► Then we also got some feedback from Clarko via Mastodon, we'll put a link in the show notes.
00:42:24 ◼ ► And if you set those appropriately, you can get the difference between what you would expect to see, which is the kind of Mac idioms, if you will, and the god awful system setting stuff, which is more iOS style.
00:42:54 ◼ ► You know, witness my continuing weeks of trying to debug one of the most basic things for Swift UI on the Mac with app kit, which is the ability to show Swift UI view literally anywhere in an app kit app.
00:43:08 ◼ ► And that's, you know, a bug with that basic functionality is what I'm currently fighting with.
00:43:26 ◼ ► They are choosing to use the ugly, worse, crappier like, you know, interface style and not the app kit controls.
00:43:37 ◼ ► So regardless of if it can show the app kit controls in that style, Apple seems to be saying, no, no, no, this is the way you write Mac apps now.
00:43:58 ◼ ► Yes, it still supports the old way, but that's only because we hadn't finished this new way.
00:44:01 ◼ ► Now that the new way is done, please do it like this so none of your pop up buttons have any borders and all the labels are really far away for the controls and the checkboxes become toggle switches for some stupid reason.
00:44:27 ◼ ► All right. Alex writes, you talked about the AirJet solid state cooling system on a past episode.
00:44:38 ◼ ► This is the thing that looks kind of like a PCMCIA card, but it's actually not literally, but effectively a fan.
00:44:45 ◼ ► You know, it will suck in warm air and blow it out the other end using like a vibrating membrane or something like that.
00:45:02 ◼ ► It was like, it was like a microchip and had a bunch of little reflective surfaces on it.
00:45:05 ◼ ► They can move based on like applying electricity to the things behind it, but they're really, really, really tiny.
00:45:11 ◼ ► It's a bunch of like little tiny Silicon things that move and sort of swoosh the air along through this tiny narrow channel.
00:45:20 ◼ ► It's like air comes out of this box and there's quote unquote, no moving parts in the box.
00:45:38 ◼ ► And what I like about this, this is one of my favorite sites on the internet and I'll tell you why.
00:45:51 ◼ ► And it's usually some like deeply discounted kind of close out price on, on actually pretty good stuff.
00:46:02 ◼ ► Uh, oftentimes it's like, you know, like kind of an outgoing model or like accessories or things like that.
00:46:07 ◼ ► Uh, they had great deals on watch bands recently, like Apple watch bands that were amazing deals.
00:46:12 ◼ ► Um, so there's really great deals on meh, but they actually cater not only to people who want what they're selling,
00:46:21 ◼ ► And they're just kind of there to read the site or to join the community or comment on stuff because what they do,
00:46:44 ◼ ► And this has earned them a community full of geeks, you know, people like us, friendly people.
00:46:50 ◼ ► Um, and so for everything they sell, they have this funny writeup, the community, they might have a ridiculous song or a goofy poll,
00:46:57 ◼ ► all for people not only who are buying the thing, but even people who just show up who don't want to buy the thing because men knows that you're not going to buy everything they're selling.
00:47:41 ◼ ► There's a little bit of development with regard to Apollo and it's unfortunate shutdown.
00:47:47 ◼ ► Uh, quick chief summarizer and chief summary, uh, Reddit looked at Twitter and said, Oh, that thing that you did with the third party devs that was super evil and really, really not cool.
00:48:02 ◼ ► So they, they said to, uh, pretty much all their third party devs, Hey, we're going to charge you.
00:48:17 ◼ ► And apparently Apollo is following in the footsteps of our other beloved apps, tweet bot and Twitterrific and is doing the, you know, Hey, you can choose to get your refund, but would you like to not get your refund?
00:48:33 ◼ ► Um, which is what I, I actually went and updated Apollo earlier with the expectation that I would see that prompt and would immediately say, no, I do not need my money back, but it didn't prompt me.
00:48:58 ◼ ► A few things to know here, you know, so first of all, you know, we didn't talk about the Reddit thing.
00:49:09 ◼ ► Oh, that's, that's why I kind of object to Casey summary, which is not particularly accurate.
00:49:20 ◼ ► So, you know, looking at the red situation, I, because again, huge disclaimer that none of us are heavy Reddit users.
00:49:42 ◼ ► I, you know, cause again, I, this is not part of my world really, so I didn't really know him.
00:49:50 ◼ ► Because the way he has conducted it, so what they, what they've chosen to do in broad strokes is Reddit has decided, you know,
00:49:59 ◼ ► fairly recently, like in the last few months, they decided we're going to, we're going to start charging money for API access.
00:50:15 ◼ ► So it is their prerogative, just like it is Twitter's prerogative, to, to set pricing or limitations on their API, or to say, you know what,
00:50:28 ◼ ► I run an app with a web service, and I choose specifically not to have a public API for lots of reasons.
00:50:33 ◼ ► So, you know, that is their prerogative to, to choose that and to operate it as they see fit for their business and whatever.
00:50:46 ◼ ► You know, number one, as, as Casey said, like the pricing that they chose to set was pretty high and basically makes their party apps impossible.
00:50:59 ◼ ► But there's like with many things with Twitter's horrible new owner, there's a good way to do things.
00:51:07 ◼ ► And you can, you can make these exact same decisions and do them in a better way with more notice, better transitional opportunities or terms, or, you know, just warning or something like there are better ways to do it.
00:51:21 ◼ ► And at every step of the way, Reddit CEO has chosen seemingly the most hostile and worst option for both the company and for him personally.
00:51:31 ◼ ► Like when you look at the dynamic here, you have a large company, Reddit, you know, this billion dollar company that's trying to IPO apparently, that's been around forever.
00:51:49 ◼ ► Going to battle with this one independent app developer, this individual guy, Christian Selig, who's like,
00:52:05 ◼ ► Like he has lobbed personal attacks in public against this, against Christian Selig as a person.
00:52:18 ◼ ► As soon as the other developers popped their heads, whoever does the riff app, he said a bunch of stuff about him that also wasn't true.
00:52:26 ◼ ► But the best part of this though, is that it turns out that Christian in, and you've, you should watch or listen to, I think, did he do it on video?
00:52:47 ◼ ► They're both were worth watching, despite the fact that they cover similar territory or listening or whatever.
00:52:51 ◼ ► But the best part is in Canada, my limited understanding is, which is where Christian is based, it is single party consent to record, to record a phone call.
00:53:02 ◼ ► And he recorded all these phone calls with Reddit, where they claimed that he did a bunch of really sleazy, Christian did a bunch of really sleazy, gross stuff.
00:53:13 ◼ ► And so he posted little snippets where it clearly debunks these just utter bullshit claims that Reddit is making.
00:53:33 ◼ ► Like I am of the three of us, I am the heaviest user of Reddit and I am at best a light Reddit user.
00:53:52 ◼ ► So we've seen over time, there have been many stories in the press about some dispute between Apple and an app developer, often, you know, over maybe some kind of app rejection or something or some kind of terms thing or some kind of alleged problem.
00:54:22 ◼ ► Now I have heard through various back channels occasionally that a version of the story that's in the public is not the full story.
00:54:37 ◼ ► And yet even in that case, even in the case where a developer is trashing them all over the press and Apple could kind of exonerate themselves in some way by saying something publicly, even then they don't.
00:54:52 ◼ ► Because they are run by adults who, and they're a big company and they know like that would be like punching down and that would not be good for multiple reasons.
00:55:09 ◼ ► And so their consistent wall of not saying anything as much as it frustrates us doesn't allow you to interpret their saying nothing as an admission of guilt or not.
00:55:17 ◼ ► And so again, if you have a third party developer who's lying about Apple saying Apple did this to me and they did that to me and Apple knows for a fact that that's not true, Apple will continue to say nothing because they have nothing to gain by refuting.
00:55:34 ◼ ► Maybe if you're super big and important, like you're epic and you're in a big lawsuit about them, then people get on the witness stand and get deposed for legal proceedings and maybe even Tim Cook would come into public.
00:55:48 ◼ ► But for an individual dinky developer who wants to lie through their teeth that Apple did this, that and the other thing and Apple knows it's not true, they're never going to say anything because that's called discipline PR.
00:55:56 ◼ ► But the human inclination, of course, is, oh, but I know that's not true and I'm going to go back out.
00:56:08 ◼ ► I don't know anything about Steve Huffman, but the way he has handled this in the PR sense, again, setting aside the business question of whether they should charge for their API and how much they should charge.
00:56:18 ◼ ► And there's a whole other thing with like how they treat moderators, which is horrendous.
00:56:21 ◼ ► Like there's so much there's such a mess on their plate right now entirely of their own doing.
00:56:26 ◼ ► But just seeing how Steve Huffman has handled public comments about situation and about actually lobbying accusations against these individual developers, he is not fit to run a company of that size.
00:56:49 ◼ ► Like it's it's hard to candy coat that like when you when you see like he's literally just blatantly lying.
00:56:55 ◼ ► But just his handling of the PR just shows he is totally unqualified and incapable, inappropriate to run a company of that size.
00:57:06 ◼ ► And the funny thing is, so a lot of I think some of this was just, ooh, let's get angry about something.
00:57:13 ◼ ► And a lot of sub-Redits, you know, basically, you know, communities within Reddit decided, oh, we're going to protest all these charges.
00:57:19 ◼ ► And I think that was in no small part because the unpaid labor of Reddit, the moderators of all these communities use these third party apps to continue to moderate these communities.
00:57:32 ◼ ► And and they're the moderators are losing these tools as part of the collateral damage of these decisions.
00:57:38 ◼ ► So they did a lot of Reddit or sub-Redits decided to shut down effectively for a few days.
00:57:55 ◼ ► I think the F1 subreddit decided to mark themselves as not safe for work, which isn't really true.
00:58:01 ◼ ► And they came up with a somewhat cockamamie, but also believable excuse that, oh, racing is dangerous, blah, blah, blah.
00:58:07 ◼ ► But the reason they did that was because Reddit doesn't put advertising on not safe for work sub-Redits.
00:58:26 ◼ ► The cache, Google still has the cache versions of them, but just shows you how many times you don't realize that, you know, one of the results you click on is Reddit.
00:58:42 ◼ ► So Reddit has come in and basically said, which we did know already, said to some some of these communities, look, if your moderators are going to keep this community dark, we will put in new moderators.
00:58:54 ◼ ► We will ask for volunteers to be new moderators, which I get why they're doing it, but that's super sleazy, super gross.
00:59:01 ◼ ► Also, again, just unwise, like I don't I think one thing that has that has been become very clear with this whole drama is that Reddit thinks they are much more important than their community is.
00:59:19 ◼ ► Like the amount of the strength of the Reddit community and the Reddit moderators that they've shown during all this is impressive.
00:59:28 ◼ ► Like it is really quite something. And Reddit, the company, I think, was caught totally off guard.
00:59:33 ◼ ► And again, like if they had a capable leader in place, this never would have even gotten to this point.
00:59:38 ◼ ► Again, even if they decided we should charge for our API and this is what we should charge for our API, like they could achieve the same result on not that different of a timeline with the same terms, the same pricing, even with having apps probably shut down.
00:59:57 ◼ ► They could have achieved the same result in such a better way if they just handled it better.
01:00:01 ◼ ► And if they just weren't flaming, you know, flaming the fire at every step they could rather than taking the easy, you know, nicer approach or the better PR approach or just the more mature adult approach.
01:00:12 ◼ ► Yeah, on that topic, in terms of the actual terms of the deal, this is actually something that we've talked about a lot on the show over the years, mostly in the context of Apple. Often I end up comparing it to the gaming industry. But like when we talk about the App Store, right?
01:00:28 ◼ ► And the deposition and what the various people who are on the stand for Apple would say about the App Store and how they view the value proposition. This is a little bit of an epidemic, even among the best companies where there'll be some company that we usually talk about in terms of a platform, like gaming companies have platforms.
01:00:45 ◼ ► So the game console Apple has platforms, right? But also in Reddit, you know, they have a community, a relationship with a bunch of other people or entities that are not the company that forms the whole. So Apple makes a platform, third party developers make apps for it. That forms the whole of the product. You get a phone, Apple puts a bunch of stuff on the phone, you can get third party apps, game consoles, somebody makes them. There are first party games, but they're also third party games. Reddit, they put up a website, they run the servers.
01:01:12 ◼ ► But then it's a system where other people can come in and make communities and run their communities. They're using Reddit software, they're using Reddit server. They're both getting benefits from that thing, right? And the the problem a lot of these big companies have been having lately is the people who are in charge of them have started to miscalculate the what that relationship is really like, always in the same way.
01:01:35 ◼ ► The way they always do it is they think that they are more important than they really are. So if you're Apple, what you think is basically you should just even be lucky that we're letting you put apps on our thing. You know, you your app wouldn't even exist if we didn't make this platform. Therefore, we are clearly entitled to all of money, not all the money, but like a big part of it. And what we're entitled to what we think we're entitled. And if you're going to come here and say that we shouldn't get that much money, you're wrong, because you don't understand the value we're bringing, right?
01:02:05 ◼ ► Not only that, how dare you question our our value? How How dare you think that our customers are your customers? How dare you think that we that you bring anything to this table at all?
01:02:15 ◼ ► Practically speaking, Apple does have all the power, they can just kick you out of the App Store, right? And because they have that power, it starts to convince them that they have more that they are responsible for more of the value than they actually are, whether you think it's they actually are basically what it ends up was the companies that run these things, end up in a situation where their picture of their participation in the value thing stops matching the other people's picture of their participation device. And so Apple thinks it's worth x. And the app developers
01:02:44 ◼ ► thinks Apple is worth x minus two, and they have a disagreement. And as they start to spread from each other, different different conceptions of what the value deal is here, they get farther and farther apart. And that causes tension and unhappiness on both sides, right?
01:02:58 ◼ ► Reddit, Twitter, same type of deal, like you can go through it all, people will list off all the things like well, you know, you wouldn't have a subreddit if Reddit didn't exist, but Reddit wouldn't exist if people didn't add content, and all those moderators are working free and Reddit, that website that nobody uses has nothing no value whatsoever.
01:03:14 ◼ ► And every piece of value that Reddit have is because people went there, but people wouldn't have gone there, Reddit didn't make it and you go back and forth and back and forth. Here's the deal. All all that matters is, is there agreement? Is there some kind of even if it's just like, you know, an agreement where everybody's a little bit dissatisfied between how the value is divided. And this gets to things like, okay, we want to start charging for an API, right? Alright, so you have to come to you have to make sure that when you enter into that thing, that your idea of how much value
01:03:44 ◼ ► that you're providing, and how much value the third parties are providing match each other. And they have to match in all the ways they have to match in sort of like what we feel, but they also have to match in like what we can afford. Like we talked about this with Apple, like the ebook store, right, the the ebook industry publishers, authors, that whole cluster over there that existed before the internet doesn't have room to give 30% of a book sale to Apple. The the percentages of sales for books are like where they go to the author, the publisher, but that's already all divided up, there is not another 30% hanging around.
01:04:14 ◼ ► to give the Apple, Apple doesn't have to pay itself 30% for its iBook store. But if Amazon wanted to sell Kindle books through, you know, according to Apple's rules through the App Store in their app, they would have to give Apple 30%. That's 30% just doesn't exist. So that's why you can't buy Kindle books inside the Kindle app on the thing, Apple refuses to change the rules. But like that, those things aren't compatible, right? So with Reddit, they're saying, okay, we can charge this much for the API. And they're probably thinking,
01:04:45 ◼ ► well, all the app developer has to do is increase the price of its app by the amount that we say. And this is an economic situation. Like they're like, but we don't have that flexibility. If we raise our prices like that the number of people who pay for app will drop to 1% of what it was. And it doesn't really matter what would actually happen. All that matters is what people think would happen. So Apollo is shutting down rather than raising its prices 10 times, right? Because he is calculating whether correctly or incorrectly, that he can't sustain that price. If you charge me this much, and I pass that on to my customers,
01:05:15 ◼ ► my customers are going to flee, and I'm not going to have a business. So I'm preemptively saying that I don't have a viable business. And that shows that Reddit and making this decision of how like the value is going to be apportioned in their community miscalculated, it has produced it has offered something here is our API pricing. And that is not palatable or acceptable or reasonable to the people who make the apps. And if if Reddit wants third party applications, they should have rethought that if they don't want 30 out of third party applications, good job, you did.
01:05:46 ◼ ► Well, not even that it's like, like bad jobs. Like, I think clearly they don't want their already applications.
01:05:51 ◼ ► Well, you can do it in a way you're saving face. You're like, we didn't say you're banned, we just set the prices. And if you didn't like the prices, so what?
01:06:01 ◼ ► But they think they think their API is worth that much. Their calculation was we this is how valuable we think we are previously, we're giving away for free moves, we were so magnanimous. But now when we look at the overall picture of the ecosystem, here's what we think our value is as the API provider, therefore, that's how much we're charging. And you can say whether they're right or wrong about that. They're right or wrongness depends entirely on Well, what does the other side of this thing like, did the third parties agree with you that you're worth that much? If they agreed, they would pay it. But if they disagree, they're not going to pay it.
01:06:31 ◼ ► And you've failed to come to an agreement. And we talked about this with Apple and app developers and game developers, because the game console makers are incredibly evil and cutthroat and draconian and just have like a reputation that would make Apple blush, right? They're not nice to people. They want control of everything. Nintendo used to make you pay them to manufacture your cartridges. You couldn't manufacture themselves, you had to pay Nintendo to do it. And they would charge an arm and a leg. They're just insane deals.
01:06:55 ◼ ► But through all of this, the game consoles always knew that for us to be continuing to be in this industry, we have to make nice with the game helpers. Somehow we can be bitter enemies, but we have to find a way to come to an agreement, whatever that deal is, you'll be a launch thing, we'll make a special version of the Xbox with your game branded on it. You'll be a bundle tie in. If you make this game for us, we'll give you this many millions of extra dollars. Like it's a business, right? And they figure out business deals.
01:07:25 ◼ ► And they and more importantly, they try not to miscalculate what their value is. Can we go to this game company and say, hey, if you want to be in the next PlayStation, not only are we not going to pay you anything, but you have to pay us $100 million. And then we're going to let you put your game there. And they go up, sup, see you later. And suddenly be like, well, we miscalculated, right? What's happening is the people who run these companies, Apple to a lesser degree, because it is sort of a more of a slow motion disaster. But like Twitter and Reddit in particular, Twitter and Reddit in particular, are run by people who massively miscalculate
01:07:55 ◼ ► their value portion of the of the whole, and then act based on that miscalculation with disastrous results, right? Again, it doesn't even matter if they're right or wrong. All that matters is what the other side of this equation thinks if you're right or wrong, because you need to get agreement with them. And this is what frustrates me so much. It's like business 101, right? It doesn't actually matter if your product is worth or not worth this. It only matters if people are willing to buy it. And you could say, oh, it's dumb that they're not willing to buy it. But if they're not willing to buy it, you have to do something different.
01:08:24 ◼ ► And just the Reddit thing, I mean, Elon Musk is just a jerk, who cares, whatever. But the Reddit thing, it seems like they truly believe that if we just hold strong and do strike breaking, we're going to be like Reagan and I'm going to fire all the air traffic controllers. And it's like you're taking the wrong lessons from history, people like, and they're just doubling down on it because they're like, this is how we want it to be. It's like, if you want to have a business with no third party clients, and all the people who traditionally use Reddit scared away, like what I don't know what you're gonna have left after that. But if you wanted to like not totally destroy
01:08:54 ◼ ► the value that you had established in Reddit, you're doing a lousy job of it. And I find it incredibly frustrating. This is slightly different than the, you're gonna have to believe this, the certification thing, which I'll try to find a link for. I think that's subtly different. This is much more of just the simple case of, of thinking you are of misreading the room, as we would say, of thinking that you are your relationship with your third parties in your communities is different than it is. And maybe you don't realize over the years, your opinions have drifted apart.
01:09:22 ◼ ► And maybe this guy became CEO because his pitch to everyone else in the company was like, we've been giving this API way for free. Do you realize how much value we're giving away? We just got to turn on this money spigot and we'll all be rich boys. And they miscalculated. And it's just, and also they're jerking on top of that and everything, right? But like, I still feel like even if they did it in a nice way, one year sun setting period, you know, easy, ease people out, give people some like, people established clients like Apollo would have two years to do
01:09:52 ◼ ► it. And you know, even if they did it the nicest way possible, the bottom line is at the end of that kind of Twitter style, when they, you know, before they killed the API, Twitter before Elon basically stopped allowing third party clients, but allowed existing ones to continue to sell a fixed number of things. Still, they changed the shape of their business, they changed it in a way that was worse for a lot of people and a lot of people didn't like. And that is either an intentional plan that they didn't want a service for people with third party clients, or they didn't realize what they were doing. They thought, oh,
01:10:22 ◼ ► it'll just be like it is now except for we won't have this problem. You know, there'll be no downsides, the upsides will be we don't have to worry about that. And we can show ads to everybody. And there's no downsides. And there absolutely are downsides. And like reds doing the same thing where they feel like we can start changing the API, everything else will be the same. Everybody will love us all reds will have lots of activity, we'll just make more money. And that's not they shouldn't have thought how it's gonna work. That's not how it has worked. And I really just wish all these people with the exception of Elon because no helping him could just sit down and like learn to share like kindergarten style and
01:10:52 ◼ ► learn how like in any kind of relationship or negotiation, you have to come to some kind of consensus or agreement to find a mutually beneficial solution. You can't win by stamping your foot and saying, this is what I want. I'm never changing it. I'm doubling tripling quadrupling down even those aren't things. And if you defy me, I will kick you out replace you with I guess people who want to be moderators in a situation where the company's going to tubes like this very frustrating. And I'm not I'm not ready. You
01:11:22 ◼ ► have you read it user either. But it frustrates me to see people making such obviously bad decisions. And it reminds me a lot of Apple where they miscalculate their value proposition with their third parties. And it has led to like years at this point, we up to a decade of just unfortunate unnecessary tension between Apple and developers where there should be, you know, a more mutually beneficial arrangement where people aren't quite as unhappy as they are right now.
01:11:51 ◼ ► It's just too bad in my limited understanding, or in I might have this wrong. But if if Christian and the other third party developers had time to work with, they might have been able to make this a tenable situation. But the problem is, is that Reddit is going to crank up the fees from, I think, either literally or effectively zero to literally millions of dollars in the span of just a couple weeks.
01:12:18 ◼ ► And, you know, three, four weeks ago, Christian was still accepting, you know, reasonably priced subscriptions for a price point of free. And so now he can't float this literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, I guess, millions of dollars until he can start ratcheting up the prices on his existing customers.
01:12:40 ◼ ► It's not the customer's fault. They didn't do anything wrong. It's just that Reddit has spontaneously decided to charge, you know, a 10x or whatever, effectively infinite more if it was free, more money. And they didn't give Christian and the other app developers the time to work with that.
01:12:55 ◼ ► And Christian has been pretty clear in any of the communications that I've read or listened to or what have you, that if this was if he was given the time, and if the fees were reasonable, he thinks he could have made this work. But because he was given no time and the fees are astronomical, that's just he has no chance or excuse me, no choice but to basically sunset the app. And so that's actually why we were brought here.
01:13:20 ◼ ► We still he was about the plan for sunsetting the app, because there's multiple problems with how that like, so the main problem is that Reddit gave like a month notice for this massive change. But Apollo, like many apps, sells annual subscriptions. And the way Apple the same problem hit tweetbot and Twitter.
01:13:40 ◼ ► And that's terrific when Twitter cut them off with very little notice, but no notice actually, they just cut them off. So you know, so same problem here, almost as bad as that. At least Christian had a few weeks notice. But anyway, so the problem is, when you buy a subscription from the App Store, you buy a year subscription, Apple will pay that out to the developer in full at their next payment, which is usually about a month, a month and a half away.
01:14:06 ◼ ► So you basically are being paid the in advance for the whole subscription, or at least for all but like one month. If the value of the subscription disappears, Apple has to refund those customers money, they don't have it, it isn't necessarily always a policy choice. There are certain like legal requirements where like in many countries and states, they have to do that.
01:14:26 ◼ ► So in this case, Apple basically has to refund the money and then will, you know, debit the developers account by whatever the value is of any unclaimed refunds. Now, if you explicitly opt out as the customer, then Apple does not need to refund your money. But by default, they will refund your money for that subscription or whatever time is left on it. And that's going to put Christian in the red by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:14:54 ◼ ► Yeah, his back of the envelope math says it's a quarter million dollars that he's going to basically owe Apple.
01:15:00 ◼ ► Yeah, and Apple will have to collect it from him like it's they just they kind of have to do this. And so, again, this is why a better way to do this by Reddit would have been give him six months or a year notice. And then then he could like, you know, stop selling those subs immediately, and then figure out do I want to sell a more expensive plan? Or do I want to shut down the app?
01:15:23 ◼ ► Either way, that gives a lot more time to not be on the hook for so many refunds all of a sudden. So anyway, and again, exact same problem happened to tap bots and and and Twitter.
01:15:35 ◼ ► That's why Apple has a plan for this because they basically got to figure out how this is going to be handled with the Twitter clients. And now they're just rerunning that same playbook to the point where I think the like Apollo devs and other are talking to like the developers of the Twitter apps to say, Hey, how did you handle this? And how did it go for you and everything?
01:15:50 ◼ ► Yeah. So two things. Number one, if you have Apollo, and if you have ever paid for for a subscription in Apollo, there's an update that Christian issued today in the App Store right now. Go check and see if you have this latest update. And it will offer you if you have one of these subscriptions active that will be automatically refunded, it will offer you an opt out screen. We suggest you opt out. That's the nice thing to do. And it's it'll help out a developer.
01:16:17 ◼ ► Secondly, as a final farewell, Christian has added this this like wallpaper pack that you know, he's had all these relationships with great designers that have made icons for Apollo over the years. So he you know, these awesome design resources you can buy as like a fun little thing in the app. So I suggest it might help him out. He didn't you know, he didn't ask us to say this, but you know, you know, in this community, I like to think we help each other out. And certainly, you know, we did we did whatever we could for icon factory and tap bots. And I want to do the same thing here, please.
01:16:46 ◼ ► Decline your refund if you have one. And please consider buying the wallpaper pack or the tip jar is still in the app, you can leave you can just it's a simple in app purchase tip jar, those don't have to be refunded. So if you go buy something in the tip jar, whatever amount you feel comfortable with, you know, that could really help a really good developer get out of a really crappy situation. And finally, I would urge Apple to consider either an option or requirement that annual subscriptions are not going to be able to be refunded.
01:17:15 ◼ ► annual subscriptions don't get paid out all at once in advance. Now, you could say that, you know, all of us who are getting paid these annual subs, like, you know, all of our individual businesses and developers out there who are getting paid this, you could argue that we should properly account for that and, you know, account for it, you know, over over the time and say, All right, well, we're going to kind of keep this money in a reserve, and just like, take it out of this reserve and pay ourselves, you know, one month portion at a time for the duration of the subscription or whatever. Yes, you could,
01:17:45 ◼ ► we should be doing that. And I think that's kind of a wake up call for all of us who have annual subs in our apps that Oh, crap, we need to start getting for this. But that's, that's a lot to expect a lot of people to even think of, let alone to do. So ideally, Apple would not pay us anything that has to be refunded. See, what normally happens with App Store payments is the delay between when somebody, you know, buys something in your app or buys your app. And when Apple pays you out, it's like a month and a half, which I believe is long enough.
01:18:15 ◼ ► that they can be reasonably sure they're not going to have to refund it by that point. So they know that whatever money they pay out to developers on that month and a half timescale, if it's not for something longer than that time, like if it's just, you know, for a quick in app purchase, or like a one month or month to month subscription, they know they're not going to have to issue mass refunds for any of that stuff. So that's why I think I think the Twitter thing caught them by surprise that I don't think they even had a mechanism in place to get money back from developers.
01:18:40 ◼ ► Well, I don't know about that. My, my app figures reports are often negative numbers. I mean, obviously, my daily total will be a negative number, because obviously I'm not selling copies of my dinky applications. And sometimes the only thing that happens on a day is someone asks for a refund and then after the negative number, which is not a great feeling, but still, Apple apparently does have a mechanism for that.
01:18:59 ◼ ► Well, but you probably have never had a negative payout. Well, we'll see, you know, give me time. Well, anyway, so the point is, I think I think this caught Apple off guard as well. I think they didn't expect to have to all of a sudden have a way for developers to pay them back a large sum of money. And also, you know, I think I hope that this has kind of woken them up to this being a problem, as they allow purchases that have durations beyond their payout window by a large by a large margin.
01:19:26 ◼ ► And you think about how long the app store has been around, like it's been around since 2008. It's not a new phenomenon. And here in fairly short order, we have multiple instances of this because it's not the type of thing that would normally happen. You normally competently run sort of platforms and communities are run by people who understand, you know, the delicate balance and work to maintain it.
01:19:48 ◼ ► And recently, a bunch of people have not been working to maintain it. And I feel like Apple was caught by surprise because it doesn't seem like it like in any kind of sort of, you know, expected business scenario stuff. This wouldn't happen except for like maybe extenuating circumstances or like a family run business where somebody important dies and people are fighting over it succession style or whatever.
01:20:10 ◼ ► But in general, like the fact that we made it from 2008 until now, without this being a big issue, and then all of a sudden, it I feel like this is an industry's trend. And I want to reiterate the same point I made 50 times people in the chat room were saying, Well, like, oh, you know, he doesn't have to worry, he doesn't have to worry about the Apollo because he could just start charging the new rate and that big refund, he would make that up and new customers anyway. So it's not a big deal. Again, it doesn't actually matter if the API pricing actually is tenable or untenable with no notice.
01:20:39 ◼ ► All that matters is what Christian thinks it is. That's what business deals are like. You can argue all you want with somebody, but if he thinks this is not going to work for his business, and he thinks his only option is to shut down, he's going to shut down and Reddit that is your problem if you thought it was a good idea to have Apollo. If you didn't, then fine, good.
01:20:59 ◼ ► But if you did think it was no amount of arguing to saying Christian could support this, like that's the reality of business only matters what other people think and what you can convince them of. It doesn't matter what the reality is. Maybe this pricing would work perfectly.
01:21:13 ◼ ► And so anyone arguing that he's doing this and he's silly, he should just start charging and he would be fine. You could be totally right, but it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
01:21:21 ◼ ► Also, I would venture to say, chances are Christian knows more about his business than you random commenter do.
01:21:29 ◼ ► Again, I'm not arguing one way or the other. It's just that people always want to argue the point of they think they know and they think that Christian is wrong to do this. And it's like it doesn't actually matter who's right or wrong.
01:21:37 ◼ ► In a business relationship, you have to come to an agreement that you think is mutually beneficial. You may be totally wrong. One or both parties may be totally wrong and it ends up not being mutually beneficial and somebody ends up getting screwed, but they have to think it's okay to agree to it.
01:21:50 ◼ ► My favorite one is Spyglass who licensed the browser engine to Microsoft or Internet Explorer and their deal was they get a percentage of all the sales and then Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer for free.
01:22:03 ◼ ► So whatever their percentage was of zero, they got zero. Microsoft was pretty good at making deals. But the thing is, when they made that deal, they thought it was good. They were wrong, but they made the deal and then it's a signed contract.
01:22:14 ◼ ► Anyway, that's the reality of the world. I do think this trend is worrying, the fact that it's happening a lot more recently.
01:22:21 ◼ ► And I think the reason why this exploded in this way, there's obviously many factors here. A) obviously Reddit is run by jerks and they're apparently trying to IPO or whatever. B) we're in an area of the economy has gotten tougher for tech companies. Money is no longer free to borrow. Everyone is starting to look for returns and look for profitability and everything.
01:22:44 ◼ ► And so in that kind of environment, people start tightening their belts and people start looking for different, you know, hey, where can we, where can we, you know, scrounge up some more money out of our out of whatever our resources are?
01:22:54 ◼ ► Because, you know, maybe we're having trouble hitting our quarterly numbers or whatever, because it's hard economically right now. So you see companies like, hey, whatever we were giving away for free. Yeah, we're gonna stop doing that.
01:23:04 ◼ ► Or, hey, this thing that you pay money for, we're gonna increase the price on that now. You know, because that's just part of what goes on when you have economic conditions like we have right now. And so that, the combination of that along with, you know, Reddit apparently wanted to IPO or whatever, I don't follow that too closely.
01:23:20 ◼ ► And also the trend of increasing use of subscriptions to pay for apps. And I think that all has come together. That's why the App Store hasn't seen this like this, you know, that's why this hasn't come up in all this time. Because 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, we didn't have a lot of apps monetizing by paying, you know, 10 bucks a year or whatever, like that wasn't as common of a thing back then, and has become much more common in recent years.
01:23:45 ◼ ► And now you have these, and also, you know, these apps were built on services that at the time that they were built and first used, the services were generally friendly towards the concept of third party apps. That's why many of them have API's.
01:23:59 ◼ ► And then that whole culture has shifted over time and that, you know, very few companies are offering API's anymore. Those that are are very restricted and tend to be like, you can't just make a third party client, you can like, you can add value to our platform, but you can't take any or whatever, you know, so it's much more like that.
01:24:14 ◼ ► Anyway, so all this is to say, please everyone, if you have Apollo, go get it, you know, open it up, get the update, decline your refund if you at all can, and I hope you can, and consider putting some money in the tip jar.
01:24:26 ◼ ► And secondly, I really urge Apple to consider a change to how subscriptions that are longer than a month are paid out.
01:24:34 ◼ ► I would love if Apple would take that accounting burden on themselves at their level and say any subscription that's priced longer than a month, we will dole out your payments in monthly increments.
01:24:45 ◼ ► And whether you have to have an opt out for that for like big companies, if they want to do their own thing, fine, but that should be the default.
01:24:52 ◼ ► The default should be you are paid only one month worth of each subscription every month until it expires, and the bar for that not happening to you should be somewhat burdensome, some kind of paperwork or accounting requirement, or maybe they're required to be a corporation rather than an LLC or individual or something, like some other kind of, you know, paperwork barrier so that developers like me and Christian and Icon Factory and soon possibly Casey
01:25:20 ◼ ► aren't all of a sudden thrust into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to Apple if something we depend on all of a sudden goes away.
01:25:28 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Apple, we pay you between 15 and 30 percent. Earn it. This is why we pay you 15 to 30 percent.
01:25:38 ◼ ► So this attitude is exactly the type of thing that I was describing where Apple has to take this new account because you may be listening to this and disagree with Casey saying that they are earning it or they aren't or whatever, and you may hear Marco saying, well, why don't you just do the counter? Like you said, Marco, you should just do it or whatever. Here's the deal.
01:25:51 ◼ ► If you're Apple and you run the platform, what you have to do the math on is, OK, we know there are people who are individuals selling apps like Christian selling Apollo, like Marco selling Overcast. They're just one person. They're not big companies.
01:26:01 ◼ ► We could ask them to do the accounting on their end. They really should. They really should account for it this way.
01:26:11 ◼ ► We could say, hey, you should really do that. But will they do it? And if we think that we can scold them and tell them and have WWDC sessions that teach you how to do basic accounting to spread the money out or whatever, will that actually work? And if it doesn't work and those developers end up shuttering their app, if that's a result Apple doesn't want, what Apple has to say is, look, we know developers could avoid this by acting in a different way.
01:26:35 ◼ ► But if they're not going to act in a different way and we can't convince them to act in a different way and we don't want Overcast to be shuttered or Casey's app to get canned because all of a sudden they start changing for his API, is there something we as Apple could do to help our platform be successful as a whole, like, say, giving out the money a month at a time, which is more annoying for us, although we do get to keep the money on the float like Marco said or whatever, but it has upsides for us.
01:26:58 ◼ ► It is a change on our end that someone looking at this might say, why does Apple have to do that? Why don't you just learn how to count for your stuff? It doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong.
01:27:07 ◼ ► It only matters what thing can you do as a platform owner that will lead to more future success and fewer things you don't want to happen.
01:27:13 ◼ ► And if you don't want developers apps to get snuffed out of existence because the platform they were running on did something jerky, if you can do something to make that less likely and you're Apple, you should do it.
01:27:22 ◼ ► And instead of spending all your time saying, we shouldn't have to do that, Marco should just learn how to do basic accounting.
01:27:28 ◼ ► If you want to have that attitude, you better hope that Marco learns to do basic accounting.
01:27:32 ◼ ► But if he doesn't and Marco's app goes away and that's not what you wanted, it's so frustrating.
01:27:38 ◼ ► It's the same thing in politics, same things in relationships. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
01:27:43 ◼ ► All the arguments I see around the Reddit things are people who just absolutely want to be right and don't care anything about people being happy.
01:27:50 ◼ ► As a final note before we move on, if you are interested in supporting Christian, you can do all the things that Marco was talking about.
01:27:57 ◼ ► But also Christian makes Pixel Pals, which is sort of kind of like a Tamagotchi-ish sort of thing.
01:28:06 ◼ ► It started as like a little thing in the blank area above, well not blank, you know what I mean.
01:28:11 ◼ ► The kind of no man's land in the area above the Dynamic Island and now it's its own app and it's very cute.
01:28:29 ◼ ► Actually, probably not you, listener, who's hearing this right now because members don't hear the ads in the show and this is going to be marked as an ad.
01:28:45 ◼ ► If you want to support us by membership, that's another great way to support us. Maybe even greater.
01:28:56 ◼ ► And you get occasional fun bonus content and maybe occasional discounts here and there, merchandise discounting here and there.
01:29:23 ◼ ► So if you want to listen to this instead or as well, this is the unedited raw version of the show.
01:29:39 ◼ ► Anything that we screw up that I would have edited out of the main show stays in the bootleg.
01:29:58 ◼ ► So if you want to choose to listen to our show that way and support our show that way, we'd love to have you as a member.
01:30:03 ◼ ► It's a wonderful way to support the show and we hope you get some cool perks out of it as well.
01:30:10 ◼ ► If not, you want to keep listening this way, that's cool too. We'd love you either way.
01:30:39 ◼ ► Is this something that we one day might see Apple do or maybe forced to do by regulators?"
01:30:55 ◼ ► And you can change the motherboard reasonably easily, certainly a lot more easily than most laptops.
01:31:01 ◼ ► It has a series of ports on the side that whatever port is being exposed to the outside world,
01:31:15 ◼ ► So there's like a USB-C socket on the motherboard that you would plug maybe HDMI, maybe USB-C, maybe one or two USB-As.
01:31:32 ◼ ► because it's one of those things where part of what makes a laptop, any laptop, not just an Apple laptop,
01:31:38 ◼ ► but part of what makes a laptop so great and allows them to be thin and light and whatnot
01:31:51 ◼ ► I think it's a very clever idea and it seems, having never handled one, to be implemented well.
01:32:16 ◼ ► And so at the same time, there are costs to Apple's current approach of being almost entirely non-modular.
01:32:29 ◼ ► You have no options. You can't even do basic service to replace a dead SSD or RAM stick or whatever.
01:32:42 ◼ ► But first of all, I think the market has spoken that largely the market prefers things to be nicer,
01:32:57 ◼ ► If that means they can get something thinner and lighter and nicer looking and everything like that.
01:33:02 ◼ ► But also, if you were to actually add all the physical complexity to make these things more modular,
01:33:26 ◼ ► But if I was more in the PC world and not the Mac world, I would consider something like this maybe if I had these kind of needs.
01:33:34 ◼ ► But again, it seems like companies like this give you lots of different options to put together a laptop you don't want.
01:33:53 ◼ ► I hear you. However, they have an expansion card that's an Ethernet jack or Ethernet port. How nice is that?
01:34:00 ◼ ► And leave aside the fact that it's a bulbous thing like it used to be in our college days that sticks out the side of the laptop.
01:34:08 ◼ ► No, I wish it did. I know we've talked about that so many times on the show, but I wish it did.
01:34:16 ◼ ► And I tell you what, if there's one thing I wish my laptop had, and I'm not kidding, I really do wish it had Ethernet.
01:34:21 ◼ ► I understand why it doesn't. I get it. I'm not here to litigate it. I'm just saying I wish I had it.
01:34:26 ◼ ► But you can get a microSD expansion card. You can get DisplayPort. You can get an audio expansion card, which basically looks like a headphone jack.
01:34:33 ◼ ► You can get USB-C, USB-A. There's all sorts of stuff you can plug in here, which again, I love the idea of this.
01:34:47 ◼ ► Yeah, the economics of these things are pretty tricky because the reason why it is appealing for customers,
01:34:54 ◼ ► whether they're old folks who remember the way things used to be, or whether they're young people who can just understand the concepts,
01:35:01 ◼ ► is like, "Okay, well I spend a lot of money for the laptop, but if I decide I want to, you know, it doesn't have enough memory, wouldn't it be great if I could add more memory to my existing laptop?"
01:35:10 ◼ ► Instead of buying an entirely new laptop, because adding memory costs less than buying a new laptop.
01:35:15 ◼ ► So that is giving me, by buying your product, I'm getting more value out of it because I'm not forced to buy an entirely new laptop when something about this laptop doesn't satisfy my needs.
01:35:26 ◼ ► Whether it's a lateral move, like swapping these set of ports for that set of ports, or an upgrade, faster CPU, more RAM, whatever, you know, better screen, whatever thing you want to replace.
01:35:36 ◼ ► Me as a customer says, "I like that, I like not having to buy a new laptop." So the product is more valuable to you, right?
01:35:41 ◼ ► To the person selling you the product, though, that's worse for them, because when you buy a new laptop, you give them much more money than if you just upgrade the RAM.
01:35:49 ◼ ► That is assuming you even buy the RAM from them, which is a whole other issue of like, "Hey, can I buy third-party things from this, or can I only buy the proprietary modules from this company?"
01:35:56 ◼ ► But either way, the company says, "Well, okay, but if we can't sell you a new laptop in three years, we're just going to sell you like a, you know, a hundred dollar RAM stick or something?"
01:36:03 ◼ ► That's not good for us, because we have to pay our employees and design the next one of these laptops or whatever.
01:36:08 ◼ ► So the way companies like this square this, and there are lots of companies like this in the world, is if you're going to buy something that basically lasts longer.
01:36:16 ◼ ► In this case, we're saying it lasts longer because you can upgrade it with technology you march us on, but anything.
01:36:20 ◼ ► A blender, a bicycle, you know, whatever. You can buy one that will last you longer, because it's more durable, because it's more modular, both.
01:36:29 ◼ ► It will cost you more money. And the reason it costs you more money is because you're not going to buy another blender from this company, because this one's not going to break in two years.
01:36:38 ◼ ► So they have to get the money from you now, and they're selling you what you agree is a more valuable blender or a more valuable bicycle, because it will last you longer, and you won't have to buy a new bicycle.
01:36:47 ◼ ► And in exchange for the value, you give them more money. And that chases you up the price scale until all of a sudden you're like, "I wanted to get this so I didn't have to buy a new laptop, but now this one costs twice as much as a new MacBook Pro."
01:36:58 ◼ ► I know that isn't true of this framework thing, but I'm just saying, in general, when you make something modular and longer lasting, you're either going to go out of business or you need to charge people more money for it, and you run up against these barriers pretty quickly.
01:37:09 ◼ ► Now, when technology fits with modularity, like when we're using RAMs on sticks, marketers said RAM sticks, there are no RAM sticks at Macs, of course, we all know this, right?
01:37:21 ◼ ► When that was already part of the product, because that was the best and only way we had to make the product, it's already modular, and so why not take advantage of that?
01:37:29 ◼ ► Apple used to sell RAM upgrades for their laptops, and used to be able to upgrade the storage or whatever, but as technology marches on, and that is not an inherent part of the product, but you'd have to edit it yourself, companies have to run the experiment.
01:37:41 ◼ ► Hey, if we seal the battery into the bottom of the 17-inch laptop, will people still buy it, or will they be like, hell no, I need to be able to replace the battery, or if I'm on a flight and my battery runs out, I want to swap in a second battery?
01:37:59 ◼ ► You know, it's more annoying, and they wish they could change the battery, but did they stop buying laptops? No, they did not.
01:38:05 ◼ ► And then soon, that happened to everything else. Same thing with phones, you used to be able to swap the phones in the back of your cell phones, and people love to do, I ran out of battery, I can put a new one in, or whatever.
01:38:11 ◼ ► Cell phones stopped doing that. First, they made it harder to do it, then they just stopped doing it entirely, just like Apple.
01:38:16 ◼ ► Did people stop buying cell phones? Did some company that made a cell phone with a changeable battery, did they come and sweep through the market and dominate? No, they did not.
01:38:25 ◼ ► So people are voting with their wallets and with their feet, and they're saying, "We like the advantages of simplicity, no grit that gets in there, no snapping little shell that keeps coming off, no connector that gets wonky or whatever, to seal the battery in, no I can't replace it, yes it'll eventually go bad, and then I'll buy a new phone."
01:38:45 ◼ ► Customers are choosing that. So the only people who won't choose that are the people who value the longevity and flexibility,
01:38:53 ◼ ► and the only way to make money from those people is to charge a lot, and then you get into a smaller and smaller market.
01:38:58 ◼ ► The only thing that will change this is change in the incentives. One example would be a dystopian sci-fi scenario where we don't have the resources for you to buy a new laptop every three years.
01:39:09 ◼ ► So the only way that we can economically make laptops is to sell you one, and you have to use it for 15 years with every component being modular.
01:39:15 ◼ ► And then all of a sudden the math works out differently, because you can't buy a new laptop every three years because it's not enough beryllium or whatever the hell element ends up running out of in this dystopian sci-fi scenario.
01:39:24 ◼ ► Or we've polluted the planet to the point where there are laws in place. That's what the person says, like regulators make this? No, regulators would never make them do this. We can't even stop global warming.
01:39:32 ◼ ► But anyway, in a hypothetical scenario where the external incentives change, suddenly the value proposition of this product changes entirely because the other thing isn't an option anymore.
01:39:42 ◼ ► But I think what we've learned is when the other thing isn't an option, that's what people prefer. And the only way to stop it is for you and several billion of your friends to stop buying cell phones with sealed-in batteries.
01:39:52 ◼ ► Then they'll get changeable batteries. But if you don't think you can convince people to do that, that's why cell phones don't have changeable batteries.
01:39:58 ◼ ► Zach Brachett writes, "I've started to limit what apps I grant full photo library access to, but it comes at a cost. It's quite annoying to have to manually select new photos to include every time I want to, say, share a recent picture in Slack.
01:40:10 ◼ ► When an app requests permission to access my photo library, what does it actually mean? Does it mean an employee at that company could browse my photos at will? Does it mean the app could scan my library for any information that's in there?
01:40:22 ◼ ► So it's been a year-ish since I've looked at this closely, but I ran into this for both Peekaview and for Masquerade.
01:40:31 ◼ ► My recollection, which check my work on this because it's fuzzy, is that full photo access basically means that you have mostly unfettered access to the user's photo library.
01:40:43 ◼ ► Now, presumably you would know one way or another if your entire photo library was being uploaded because your internet usage would go up, your phone would probably get hot, etc.
01:40:53 ◼ ► But strictly speaking, that app can look at whatever photo it wants, whenever it wants.
01:40:59 ◼ ► The advantage, though, and it's in most apps best interest not to go that approach, because you have to do a whole bunch of things and ask for permission in very, very scary ways to get full photo access.
01:41:11 ◼ ► Where if you just do the, you know, this app can see these seven photos dance, an app can actually use that technique, and this is what I do in Masquerade, you can ask the system, "I would like one photo, one photo only, please."
01:41:28 ◼ ► And then you don't have to do any of the scary permissions dialogues because you are doing a, what is it, XPC call, a cross process, whatever, call, that basically says to Apple's system, "Look, I don't care what you do or how you do it, just give me a photo back, please."
01:41:43 ◼ ► And then Apple is the one in charge of, like, browsing through your photo library, presenting the whole user interface, and letting you pick which one you want.
01:41:50 ◼ ► And you have, as an app developer, you have no sight into that whatsoever. All you know is you get an image coming out the other end.
01:41:57 ◼ ► And for most apps, that's actually preferred, and I hear what Stephen's saying, that that's kind of a pain in the butt.
01:42:02 ◼ ► I know what Instagram does is the middle of the road thing where, which is what I was describing, where it says, "Okay, you can have access to just these, you know, 12 photos."
01:42:11 ◼ ► But the most convenient thing as an app developer and as a user, in my opinion, is to do that one shot, and again, this is what Masquerade does if you want to check it out, just, "Hey, the user would like a photo, go get me a photo, please."
01:42:23 ◼ ► So that's, honestly, if you have an app that loads users' photos, I would really look into that API because it's pretty good.
01:42:30 ◼ ► But yeah, if you could do full access, that app developer could be super shady and you'd be none the wiser.
01:42:38 ◼ ► No, I don't really work with photos. I do, so, in the regular photo access, do you get the location info, or does your app have to request location permission?
01:42:46 ◼ ► Because that's, I think the most sensitive data in your photo library that would be the easiest to exploit in creepy ways would be the embedded location history.
01:42:55 ◼ ► Like, because not only would you have a good idea of where their current location probably is, but you would have their entire location history, which is obviously extremely sensitive data that you know would be exploited by ad companies as much as possible.
01:43:09 ◼ ► Yeah, I understand what you're asking, and I don't know, and part of the reason I don't know is because it's never even crossed my mind to look because I'm not a sleazeball.
01:43:16 ◼ ► I would guess that with full access, you almost certainly get that data. Again, just a guess.
01:43:24 ◼ ► I don't know, I'm not really sure what would happen if I were to wager a guess for the other modes.
01:43:31 ◼ ► I would think maybe you do get that location data, but I cannot stress enough that I really don't know.
01:43:37 ◼ ► This reminds me more old man stuff of how far the computer industry has come from the early days of, not naivete, but just like it was so much smaller, so many fewer people even had computers, even before the internet.
01:43:51 ◼ ► Computer security, the things we're just talking about, just didn't exist. Like even in the early Unix systems that were networked across the entire country with universities, you know, Telnet sent your passwords in plain text, TTYs were world-writeable.
01:44:05 ◼ ► Sometimes you could have accounts without passwords and people would do it routinely because it was just the honor system and everyone would just be careful, right? And you just had to trust everybody because everyone was-
01:44:13 ◼ ► That's literally like the first version of Instapaper, you could just set no password, you could just have it be blank and I didn't care and nothing bad happened.
01:44:21 ◼ ► You could do that on Mac OS, I think you could still do it on Mac OS. But the default, everything was open, right? And over the years as the internet has become a thing and as the world has gone on to the internet, everything, the computing platforms added things like this photo permissions that we're talking about.
01:44:34 ◼ ► But it all gets back to the same thing. This question is about what an app could do. If you give it full photo access, that app could upload every single one of your photos to its database, have an AI crawl through it to look for naked pictures of you and do whatever with them.
01:44:48 ◼ ► And obviously, what could you do to stop that? Well, if the country you're in says it's illegal, you could try to prove in a court of law that they did a thing that broke the law and then sue them or get them arrested or whatever.
01:44:58 ◼ ► But you also have to first know that they're doing it because maybe they're doing it behind your back and you have no idea and it all gets down to the same thing back in the olden days, which is you have to trust the person who develops your application.
01:45:07 ◼ ► Because every application, if it does something useful, could also do something nefarious. That is the nature of power. It is easier for it to have access to all your photos, but then you have to trust that the person who makes this app isn't uploading all your photos looking for naked pictures of you or stealing your location data or whatever, right?
01:45:22 ◼ ► And yes, it's good that the OS has these barriers of saying you have to give it permission, maybe give it location permission, allow it to use the camera, allow it to record your screen, allow it to use the microphone.
01:45:32 ◼ ► But you have to say yes to that for lots of apps to do their job. And at that point, you're in exactly the same situation you were in the 60s where people are logging into Unix things and everything's running over the Internet in plain text.
01:45:43 ◼ ► You have to trust the person or company that made this application that it is not doing something nefarious. And that will never go away because in the end, you want it to do useful work for you with your data, so you must give it access to your data.
01:45:57 ◼ ► And we don't want to give it more access than it needs, but sometimes the amount of access that it needs could be used in a terrible manner. And that's why people and companies' reputations matter.
01:46:07 ◼ ► That's why Apple's reputation matters. That's why if a company does something bad, it hurts its reputation and people will trust it less. If Apple was stealing all your photos and doing something, you know, selling your location data to some ad company or whatever, that would make us like and trust Apple less.
01:46:21 ◼ ► And if some, you know, we've had apps in the iOS app store that were like stealing all your contacts, like Path was doing that or something, before it was forbidden by the US, before you had to ask for permission, and people found out about it and they thought less of that application and stopped using it.
01:46:36 ◼ ► And that is, you know, that in the end, that is the system. So yes, lots of people get scared when they realize what this application, quote unquote, could do. But you have to think then, but is the application doing that? And if you think the application is stealing your photos, don't use that app.
01:46:52 ◼ ► Yeah, this is why I used to be pretty cavalier about it for Facebook properties, including Instagram. I immediately went to limited access because I have zero faith that they're not doing something gross. But generally speaking, ever since this became, the whole limited library thing became a thing, I basically have chosen that whenever I can.
01:47:12 ◼ ► Stephen Collins writes, "With all the discussions about cameras the past few weeks, this was written several weeks ago, I was wondering how you carry these cameras around. I realize that most normal people don't need a bag for three cameras, six lenses and other assorted bits like cards and cables.
01:47:25 ◼ ► But I was curious as to how you guys handle all this. I know Jon is taking a bunch of stuff to the beach. Are you all just using the standard one camera bags that I see everywhere and also two of or is it something different?"
01:47:37 ◼ ► For me, this is going to infuriate my co-hosts. I just chuck the camera and the lens in a lens bag.
01:47:50 ◼ ► I just chuck it into whatever bag I'm taking to the beach and call it good. And I haven't yet had an issue, knock on wood. What is the correct answer, Jon?
01:47:58 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't have a lot of experience with these things. I've tried to get a bunch of bags that are better than doing what you're doing, which is not hard.
01:48:07 ◼ ► I think I talked about this when I got it on some episode that I'll never be able to find again.
01:48:11 ◼ ► Essentially, it's a backpack for holding camera junk and it comes with a bunch of these little velcro dividers.
01:48:17 ◼ ► If you're looking top down on it, you can make a little maze that exactly fits your cameras and your lenses in some scenario.
01:48:24 ◼ ► It's kind of like, I was going to say like paying Tetris, which people are more familiar with, but it's actually more like the inventory system in Resident Evil 4 or something.
01:48:30 ◼ ► Anyway, finding a way where these things fit in with a little velcro. You think it wouldn't work. You think velcro wouldn't work. You think it's kind of janky.
01:48:36 ◼ ► It works surprisingly well. It's kind of like a cheap version of making a custom bag where you have foam inserts or whatever.
01:48:46 ◼ ► I endorse it. It could be better, but it's pretty good for the price I paid for it. I put a link to my backpack in the show notes. I think it's called the Hex Ranger or something or other.
01:48:55 ◼ ► I also have this holster thing for a single camera. It's like a single kind of holster style bag where camera and its long lens go into it.
01:49:02 ◼ ► It's kind of like a gun and a holster and it goes like a shoulder strap. That's good for a single camera.
01:49:06 ◼ ► You can put a single camera in there with varying sized lenses because the lens part is like an accordion that gets longer and shorter depending on how big you want it to be.
01:49:21 ◼ ► You know how many camera bags? Camera bags are like backpacks, like non-camera bags. There's a million of them out there.
01:49:30 ◼ ► I would say try to find one that you think you'll like. You're probably going to have to make more than one try, unfortunately, because you may think you like something until you get it and you find out you're wrong.
01:49:38 ◼ ► But I would say get something. Something is better than nothing. I would say that the amount of protection that you need is probably less than you think.
01:49:46 ◼ ► When I first got this backpack I was like, "Oh, those little divider things, they don't seem too thick."
01:49:55 ◼ ► First, don't take your backpack and throw it across the room onto the hard floor. Don't drop it from three feet in the air. But if you just treat your thing gently, anything better than the thin single layer of canvas of a Jansport backpack, any amount of padding goes a long way.
01:50:12 ◼ ► Especially if things are packed in there. Again, Tetris or Resident Evil style where there's not a lot of room for them to move and they're all up against something squishy.
01:50:19 ◼ ► That's pretty much all you need. Just be careful with your stuff. But I don't have any specific recommendations for things that I think are amazing. I think these things that I have are better than what I was using before.
01:50:28 ◼ ► And I'm also not looking to replace them. But I'm also not a professional photographer who's constantly running around with my equipment. So if you just want to go on vacation once a year, something like these things will do fine for you.
01:50:38 ◼ ► That's the thing. I've had both "camera" backpacks, similar to what Jon was describing, where you had little inserts that you'd velcro around to wrap around exactly the stuff you used and be exactly the size you wanted.
01:50:51 ◼ ► I've had both that and regular backpacks. I'm currently kind of in the middle of those. My current main backpack is the Peak Design Everyday, which has been around for a few years now.
01:51:01 ◼ ► I have the first version, the large size of it. And I love it. Because one of the reasons why I'm always frustrated with backpacks is that most backpacks you have some number of side pockets, inside pockets, outside pockets.
01:51:15 ◼ ► But there's the main compartment in most backpacks that is just one tall compartment. And what happens is you lay it all out. I'm going to solve this problem.
01:51:25 ◼ ► I'm going to have these different arranged things in here. Maybe I'll have a sub-bag inside my bag. Then you put it on. And as soon as you put it on, all the stuff in the main compartment sinks to the bottom of the main compartment.
01:51:37 ◼ ► Everything is disorganized and then you have all this wasted space up top in this gap and then everything's down below.
01:51:43 ◼ ► What I like about the Peak Design Everyday, I think it's key innovation, is that the main inside compartment of the bag is three of those velcro things that form little shelves that you can move up and down anywhere you want in the bag.
01:51:59 ◼ ► And they have little foldy ends that you can fold up one end of one to make a long vertical compartment if you want to.
01:52:05 ◼ ► But then it has these little velcro shelves at different heights in it. So it actually divides the main compartment height-wise into different levels.
01:52:14 ◼ ► And you can move those around and make them bigger or smaller. So I usually operate with one big top level and then a couple of small ones at the bottom where I can stash stuff.
01:52:22 ◼ ► And I think it was actually designed to be a camera bag and I guess use it as a regular backpack that occasionally holds cameras.
01:52:29 ◼ ► But because it was made to be a camera bag, it is a little thicker and a little more padded and a little more structured than most thin backpacks are.
01:52:38 ◼ ► So I would actually say not only is a camera bag a good option for carrying cameras, I think camera bags are the superior backpacks in general.
01:52:48 ◼ ► Camera backpacks tend to be the best backpacks in my opinion for my preferences and my needs. Maybe it isn't always carrying a camera per se, but it's usually carrying electronics of other kinds.
01:53:02 ◼ ► It's at least carrying a laptop or an iPad or both. It's probably carrying other electronic gear. Maybe it's carrying a little portable game system or something.
01:53:11 ◼ ► Or whatever I'm bringing on whatever trip or carrying for the family or whatever it is. So chances are if you have any kind of electronics that you're carrying in a bag, a camera bag is a good choice because they are made, they are designed to be padded and protective of electronics.
01:53:26 ◼ ► And as John said, you don't need a ton of protection, but it does help to have some. I'm a big fan of using camera bags in general even when they often don't contain a camera.
01:53:37 ◼ ► And again, I can't say enough good things about the Peak Design every day and its system of these movable and removable horizontal, when you're holding up the bag, horizontal shelf pieces that you can divide up the main compartment into.
01:53:52 ◼ ► No other bag that I've ever seen, and I've bought a lot of backpacks over the years, no other bag I've ever seen has kept me happy for as long as this one has and through as many different varied conditions as this one has.
01:54:05 ◼ ► And it's almost entirely down to those wonderful divider shelf things that you can move up and down. That way I don't just have one giant main compartment where everything sinks to the bottom.
01:54:15 ◼ ► So anyway, that being said, when I do carry my camera, to answer Steven's question here, when I do carry my camera, it is in this bag like everything else that I carry everywhere else.
01:54:25 ◼ ► And if you have a big bag or something, you can do it. I think you only need to graduate to the thing that I have with all the little dividers and everything, if you're in my situation where I have two cameras and multiple lenses.
01:54:35 ◼ ► So I have two cameras, both of which have lenses on them, but then there are also multiple other lenses. That's just too much stuff to be rattling around even with multiple compartments. Even with three compartments, there's more than three things, and you don't want to put things next to each other where they can bump into each other.
01:54:47 ◼ ► So that's when you know you've graduated to that. But before I was in that situation where I had two cameras and multiple lenses, I had a single camera bag where my camera would fit in there and the one or two lenses would fit in there.
01:54:56 ◼ ► And I would put that bag inside my boring regular laptop because the single camera bag had padding in it, and the items were packed in there Tetris-style, like with padding between all of them.
01:55:06 ◼ ► And I would close that bag, and I would put that bag inside my backpack. And same thing with the holster thing. The holster thing can fit inside another bag because the holster is somewhat padded or whatever.
01:55:16 ◼ ► So don't run out and buy this backpack that's going to fit all this gear because you put your one lonely camera in there, especially if you don't even have any lenses for it or it's not even an interchangeable lens camera. It's a waste, right?
01:55:25 ◼ ► Even if you have a single big camera like Marco does with a big lens, if you have two or three of them and you have two or three compartments in your Peak Design Everyday Backpack, you're fine.
01:55:35 ◼ ► But once you're like, "Okay, well, alright, whatever, I put this lens and this lens and this lens," then you're into Tetris land, and that's when you have to get that other thing.
01:55:41 ◼ ► So don't run out and buy something that fits way more equipment than you need. You'll know when you can't do it anymore.
01:55:46 ◼ ► But in the meantime, especially if your camera comes with a bag, because a bunch of mine did, if your camera comes with a bag and your camera fits in there with its charger, with its lens, seal that bag up and stick it inside another bag. Bag in a bag. Bag in a bag.
01:55:59 ◼ ► Thank you so much to our sponsor this week, Meh.com, and thank you to our members especially who support us directly. You can join us at ATP.FM/JOIN.
01:56:11 ◼ ► We have a wonderful new member special out where we tier-ranked all the iPhones to date, and it is so much fun. You should really check it out.