00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 490. Upgrade is brought to you this time by Wildgrain
00:00:15 ◼ ► and ExpressVPN, and I am your host, Jason Snell. Mike Hurley is on assignment. He actually kind of
00:00:21 ◼ ► is. He kind of is on assignment this week, doing, expanding his mind and learning things and doing
00:00:25 ◼ ► awesome stuff. And so joining me this time for the Upgrade program is returning after about a year
00:00:32 ◼ ► since I think he was here the last time in December. As a guest, it is John Siracusa. Hi, John.
00:00:38 ◼ ► You're like a substitute teacher. A little bit. Not your normal, Mike Hurley. I'm a substitute
00:00:43 ◼ ► today, so we'll probably just watch a movie. Class. Yeah, that's right. Take your seats. We
00:00:48 ◼ ► gotta take attendance, and then we can do whatever we want. That's right. John, you know, Mike
00:00:53 ◼ ► actually listens to these. He said last week he really loves listening to episodes of podcasts
00:00:58 ◼ ► that he's not on that he hosts, because they're his favorite podcasts, obviously, and yet there's
00:01:03 ◼ ► one that he's not participating in. And it is, I remember flying home from New Zealand, listening
00:01:08 ◼ ► to the two episodes. Well, I listened to one on the ferry between the two islands in New Zealand,
00:01:13 ◼ ► and then I listened to the other one on the flight home of the two that I didn't do. And it was kind
00:01:17 ◼ ► of like an out-of-body experience a little bit. Other than the, uh, the switcheroo that you guys
00:01:24 ◼ ► did with Rocket, um, or whatever it was called, have all three of you guys been on every episode
00:01:31 ◼ ► of ATP? Yep, that was just the one, the one time we, uh, weren't all there. And I was the one who
00:01:36 ◼ ► wasn't there. And you've never, you've never had that thing where, like, oh well, this week, I mean,
00:01:43 ◼ ► I've listened since the beginning, uh, where it's like, oh well, Casey's not here this week, Marco's
00:01:47 ◼ ► not here this week. Nope, nope. That's remarkable because we, we did the math about, at the podcast
00:01:52 ◼ ► athon, about how many times the three different connected hosts have missed. And, and it's a lot,
00:01:58 ◼ ► like, it's actually surprising. They definitely are living up to the idea that if you have a show
00:02:03 ◼ ► with three hosts, um, oh, you know, only two hosts need to appear at any given time. It's more of a,
00:02:10 ◼ ► two of them are over there in Europe or Europe adjacent areas, you know, they have the whole
00:02:15 ◼ ► thing where they get like, you know, three weeks vacation in August and just, there's more of a
00:02:20 ◼ ► relaxed atmosphere, you know, Federico does actually, I think, take, you know, he, he takes
00:02:26 ◼ ► any stereotypes, but you know, but, but he also writes a, an iOS review during that time. So is
00:02:32 ◼ ► he really taking the summer off at the beach? He's sort of taking the summer off at the beach to
00:02:36 ◼ ► write a voluminous review, but, um, it's, it still counts. I think it's very impressive that you guys
00:02:42 ◼ ► do that show. Um, I know sometimes you bank an episode here and there in order to get it done,
00:02:47 ◼ ► but I, I, we're usually only offset by about a week. Like that's the way we do it. If one of us
00:02:51 ◼ ► can't make it there, we shifted forward or back. And it's usually not a whole week because that
00:02:55 ◼ ► week we have a regularly scheduled show. So we have to have the second one after the regular
00:02:58 ◼ ► scheduled show. I think the worst we've ever had it as like a, maybe a two day gap between episodes.
00:03:07 ◼ ► No, I'm very, I'm very impressed. I tell people that, that consistency is an important part of
00:03:10 ◼ ► podcasting because you're creating a subscription relationship. And you know, if you're,
00:03:15 ◼ ► if your thing that comes every week doesn't come, people are unhappy about that. They really kind of
00:03:19 ◼ ► bank on the consistency. And with, with you guys, here I am on this weird episode where one of the
00:03:24 ◼ ► two people who's usually here is not here, but until I went to New Zealand, I think I had never
00:03:29 ◼ ► missed an episode of upgrade. I had even like recorded prerecorded segments for episodes. I
00:03:34 ◼ ► missed it on vacation in order to just be there. And Mike finally talked me into it. He just said,
00:03:40 ◼ ► look, you don't have to be on every episode. And I'm on this episode, which as people already have
00:03:46 ◼ ► known while I drink lots of tea, I completely lost my voice on Saturday. Well, not completely half
00:03:52 ◼ ► the words came out. The other half did not, uh, but it's coming back and I'm here drinking tea.
00:03:59 ◼ ► Taking names, talking to Jon. So he doesn't have to monologue on someone else's podcast.
00:04:04 ◼ ► We usually start with a Snell Talk question. I got two questions in that are sort of, I'm,
00:04:09 ◼ ► I'm going to point the spotlight at me, but then maybe point it back at you because you have
00:04:12 ◼ ► opinions about things we do. In fact, a new Robot or Not episode over the Incomparable came out today.
00:04:18 ◼ ► So if you enjoy me talking to Jon and Jon talking to me, we do a silly podcast about stuff on every
00:04:27 ◼ ► other Monday. Basically it comes out on the incomparable. Um, so maybe you can tell me what
00:04:32 ◼ ► you think about this. Brian wrote in to say, Jason, when pouring milk into a bowl of cereal,
00:04:36 ◼ ► do you pour all in one spot or move around? And if you do move around, which do you move the milk or
00:04:42 ◼ ► the bowl? Well, Brian bless you. I've never thought of this at all, but I will, I will say
00:04:49 ◼ ► that when I put milk into a bowl of cereal, I pour it all into one spot. It's generally the center.
00:04:54 ◼ ► And, uh, I'm surprised that you're asking about moving the bowl around because I think the big
00:05:00 ◼ ► question with cereal is how much milk you put in. Cause I think, um, my goal, my goal, okay, we'll
00:05:06 ◼ ► get, we'll get to it. But my, my goal with the bowl of cereal is to get enough milk in that first off
00:05:13 ◼ ► it's not dry. And second at the end, there's very little milk left, maybe even no milk left, but the
00:05:21 ◼ ► stuff that's still there is still, um, still milky. So that's, that's sort of my take on it is if I,
00:05:28 ◼ ► if I really nail it, I used to have a cat who, who, um, who, who drank the, the cereal milk at
00:05:34 ◼ ► the end. And then I put a little more milk in cause he, he actually liked that. Um, but, uh,
00:05:39 ◼ ► bad for cats. Some cats, maybe not. I mean, he, he liked it. Some cats like it. Some cats don't
00:05:46 ◼ ► like it. I think they like it. I'm just not sure it's good for them. I don't know. He was,
00:05:49 ◼ ► he was our retiree adoptee. As it turns out, we didn't realize how old he was. So really he was
00:05:55 ◼ ► at the point in his life where we should just give him whatever he wants. And, and he would,
00:05:58 ◼ ► sometimes he would come up to the milk. When am I going to get to that? And he'd be like, sniff,
00:06:01 ◼ ► sniff. And he'd be like, Oh no. And he'd walk away. And other times he'd be like, yes, please.
00:06:05 ◼ ► I want that milk right now. I don't know what his opinion was. So what am I missing here about
00:06:09 ◼ ► cereal and milk, John? Oh, so the big question was cereal. And this is going to sound ridiculous
00:06:13 ◼ ► to you, but it's a, in the category of secret weird things is a milk first or cereal first.
00:06:17 ◼ ► You just assumed cereal first. People, people just assume whatever they do is a hundred percent
00:06:23 ◼ ► normal. And they didn't even even think of it. Do you realize there are people who are putting milk
00:06:26 ◼ ► in their cereal first, milk in the bowl first, not cereal on top of it. So this is like the tea
00:06:32 ◼ ► debate, right? Which is, do you put the milk into the tea first and then the tea, or do you put the
00:06:36 ◼ ► tea in and then the milk? And in England, I'm told there's actually some classism involved in that,
00:06:41 ◼ ► like upper crust people think that the, which is funny. It's hard to find something in the UK where
00:06:47 ◼ ► classism is not. Well, no, this is absolutely true, but I think it's funny because we think
00:06:52 ◼ ► of tea as English and Americans think of tea as being like fancy and English as fancy people.
00:06:58 ◼ ► But the truth is there's like builders tea that the builders do, and then there's fancy tea. And
00:07:02 ◼ ► so it's all, it's all fine. It spans, it spans is what I'm saying. But apparently one of those
00:07:09 ◼ ► things is like, oh, you're not doing it right. You're putting milk in first. You're a real milk
00:07:12 ◼ ► in first kind of person and it's all, but a cereal floats, right? Like that's like, that's like putting
00:07:19 ◼ ► Well, that's the question about this. You know, like it seems, it seems so strange that you were
00:07:23 ◼ ► done the other way, but the question is, hey, where do you put the liquid in? So first I'm
00:07:27 ◼ ► going to say that Brian may not have been paying enough attention in chemistry class when you went
00:07:32 ◼ ► over the properties of liquids and solids, usually what they teach you in high school. Do you remember
00:07:35 ◼ ► what they say about liquids to tell you like what a liquid is? No, what do they say? Takes the shape
00:07:41 ◼ ► of its container. It's on the test. You got to write that off. Okay. The option that says it's a
00:07:45 ◼ ► liquid because it takes the shape of its container. Okay. So no matter where you put the milk in,
00:07:49 ◼ ► assuming there is cereal already in there, but even if there isn't cereal already in there,
00:07:52 ◼ ► the liquid is going to shake, take the shape of the container and the shape of the container.
00:07:56 ◼ ► Obviously if it's empty, it's the shape of the bowl that it's in. But if there's cereal in there
00:07:59 ◼ ► is going to go in between all the nooks and crannies of the cereal, no matter where you
00:08:03 ◼ ► put it in. But the second question you were getting to is, okay, but what if the cereal floats?
00:08:06 ◼ ► Because now as you're putting liquid in there, the cereal is moving because it starts to float.
00:08:10 ◼ ► That's why you have to have different amounts, different rules sort of for filling things
00:08:15 ◼ ► based on how much you know the cereal floats. Density of the cereal, right. Yeah. And that
00:08:19 ◼ ► happens when you put the cereal in. When you put it in the bowl, if it's a floaty cereal,
00:08:23 ◼ ► you can't put as much in because as you put the milk in, it's going to rise and then the
00:08:27 ◼ ► cereal is going to spill over the edge before the liquid gets to the edge. You know what I mean?
00:08:29 ◼ ► It's true. Yeah. I have precise amounts for all different kinds of cereal brands and I know how
00:08:34 ◼ ► high I have to put the milk in my bowl. And unlike you, my goal is not to be done with everything at
00:08:39 ◼ ► the same time. My goal is to have a little bit of milk left because I like to have the second
00:08:44 ◼ ► little helping of cereal to get rid of the milk that's left because one bowl of cereal is just
00:08:48 ◼ ► not quite enough with the size of my bowls. Oh, interesting. And no, I don't move the bowl or the
00:08:53 ◼ ► pour around. I pour on the edge so I can see better and I don't move the bowl or the pour.
00:08:58 ◼ ► And then the thing that my daughter does with cereal, which drives me just up a wall, is the
00:09:03 ◼ ► final question you didn't ask, which is, hey, when you're doing this with the milk and the cereal,
00:09:08 ◼ ► where are you doing it? She does it on the kitchen counter. She puts the milk and the cereal in the
00:09:12 ◼ ► bowl on the kitchen counter and then carries a bowl full of milk and cereal sloshing as she goes
00:09:17 ◼ ► into the room where she's going to eat it. Yeah. That's not right. Do it at your place setting,
00:09:22 ◼ ► where you're going to eat it. You do not want to be carrying a bowl of cereal and milk around.
00:09:25 ◼ ► All right. So I've got some notes here that you're going to really love. One is the cereal
00:09:29 ◼ ► that we have in the house, which I don't, Lauren eats it every day. I don't eat it every day,
00:09:33 ◼ ► but I do eat it. I have it occasionally. I like, I like some cereal with milk. It's floaty.
00:09:38 ◼ ► Sometimes we'll have Raisin Bran, but usually it's this Kashi stuff and it's good. And I have it and
00:09:44 ◼ ► it's a treat. It's not that floaty. It's flakes, right? No, no. These are little, these are little
00:09:55 ◼ ► floaty cereal, what you want to do is put the cereal in and then use the milk because what
00:10:01 ◼ ► you want, the cereal is going to float on the milk, right? So you want the milk stream to kind
00:10:07 ◼ ► of pass through the cereal. Cause then what I want ideally is cereal that has been touched by milk
00:10:14 ◼ ► and has absorbed maybe a little bit of the milk, but is not going to get super soggy super fast
00:10:19 ◼ ► so that I can kind of mix the milk and the cereal together while it's all still a little crunchy and
00:10:25 ◼ ► a little milky, which is I think ideal because once it gets soggy, it's, I think no good. So
00:10:30 ◼ ► that's part of the reason I think that I put it in there. Although I think there's some spoon
00:10:33 ◼ ► technique too, where you've got some milk and you've got some cereal and you have them together.
00:10:36 ◼ ► Anyway, but John, here's the thing that's going to blow your mind, which is it leads into our,
00:10:40 ◼ ► our, our second half of the Snell Talk question, which is from Anthony who says, Jason,
00:10:44 ◼ ► you drink your morning tea in bed. The answer is yes, I do. And I eat my breakfast in bed,
00:10:53 ◼ ► sloshing around with milk in it, John, all the way back to bed and sit in the bed and eat the cereal
00:10:59 ◼ ► in bed. Do you have a little like a tray thingy that goes in your, or are you just holding it in
00:11:04 ◼ ► your hand all the time? We have those trays. I do not use it. I am holding it in my hand. You must
00:11:08 ◼ ► have deep bowls. I can't imagine. They're not super deep, but I will say I'm not filling them
00:11:17 ◼ ► to the top. Right? Like that would be a bad idea. Yeah. And I do drink my tea as well in bed. I am,
00:11:23 ◼ ► my stomach is sensitive enough now in my old age that I have to eat something before I drink tea,
00:11:28 ◼ ► which makes me sad, but I have to, I have to eat something before I drink tea in the morning.
00:11:32 ◼ ► And if you're wondering, milk in first or not, the answer is I don't put anything in my tea anymore.
00:11:37 ◼ ► I used to put honey in my tea, but I stopped even doing that. So I just have it straight up.
00:11:43 ◼ ► Although there's honey in it now because I'm trying to have my voice not disappear during
00:11:49 ◼ ► a podcast. So thank you, Brian and Anthony, for your Snell Talk questions. Just a reminder,
00:11:57 ◼ ► if you love upgrade and you would like more of it, don't forget, you can subscribe to upgrade plus
00:12:02 ◼ ► and get the no ad version with bonus content every single week, as well as access to the real AFM
00:12:07 ◼ ► members discord and a whole lot more special deal finishing this week. If you're an ATP listener,
00:12:13 ◼ ► you'll know Casey especially will beseech you. Don't put it off a final, final underscore final
00:12:20 ◼ ► version of this. This plea is happening right now. This only lasts until December 15th. By the time
00:12:27 ◼ ► the next upgrade comes out, this deal will be over. But if you've not been an upgrade plus subscriber,
00:12:32 ◼ ► you can get 20% off the annual plan. Just use the code holidays 2024 at checkout. Go to get upgrade
00:12:38 ◼ ► plus.com. So you'll get your first year of upgrade plus for $40. Find out more at give relay.com.
00:12:46 ◼ ► We have a little bit of follow up, which I know you enjoy, John, although you weren't on
00:12:56 ◼ ► Basically, Lister Taylor wrote in chuckling, I think the whole time saying, so beeper mini upgrades Monday schedule means you guys got to see the entire lifetime of this product play out between recordings. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Yes.
00:13:11 ◼ ► Beeper mini, the iMessage for Android that came and went between episodes. Might come again. It's possible.
00:13:28 ◼ ► kind of like in the inner circle of Apple commentators or whatever, but trust me, he is.
00:13:37 ◼ ► He's very good at his job. Snazzy Labs YouTube channel. He did a whole video where they actually
00:13:42 ◼ ► got him access and they explained to him how it worked. It's great. The whole time that he's
00:13:46 ◼ ► describing how it works and how it uses Apple's existing technology in order to do this and why
00:13:53 ◼ ► that was going to mean that Apple couldn't break it because it would not only look bad, but it would
00:13:59 ◼ ► break things that Apple already has in place. I thought the whole time, I thought, you know,
00:14:04 ◼ ► this sounds like a great story, but I'm sure they're really confident in it. They told it
00:14:11 ◼ ► all to Quinn very confidently, but it doesn't mean that the high school kid who figured this all out
00:14:16 ◼ ► didn't miss one little thing that allows Apple to pull a pin somewhere and help the whole thing fall
00:14:23 ◼ ► apart because they're very common. It's like, no, no, no, it's all using standard stuff. I think
00:14:28 ◼ ► maybe they believed that, but the danger there is that what they see on the surface is not everything
00:14:35 ◼ ► that's there. I also had in the back of my head the idea that just because Apple currently uses
00:14:42 ◼ ► this system, it's entirely possible that Apple has alternate methods that they could slide in.
00:14:47 ◼ ► You know how when they replace a bridge, they build the bridge to the side and then one day
00:14:51 ◼ ► they shut down the traffic and they slide the old bridge out and slide the new bridge in? They have
00:14:56 ◼ ► the ability to do stuff like that too, where they actually have some stuff ready to go and they can
00:15:00 ◼ ► flip a switch and go to an alternate method. Well, but that was part of their confidence. They were
00:15:04 ◼ ► like, well, but if they change this, they'll break older devices because if they have that parallel
00:15:09 ◼ ► bridge, it would presumably only be in newer versions of the OS. You know what I mean? And so
00:15:12 ◼ ► they're like, well, Apple can't break us because then they'd be breaking all their old devices and
00:15:16 ◼ ► they're not going to do that. But the fact that they listed it all, Apple wouldn't do this because
00:15:21 ◼ ► it would look bad shows either they're not being honest or they don't understand Apple. It's like,
00:15:26 ◼ ► is Apple really, you think it would look bad, but let me tell you the history of Apple doing things
00:15:32 ◼ ► that other people were angry about, but that they did anyway. And then the second thing is,
00:15:36 ◼ ► I don't understand what their technical foundation for thinking that they couldn't break this without
00:15:41 ◼ ► breaking old devices was because they said an ATP. The root problem here is how does Apple figure out
00:15:50 ◼ ► whether something that is connecting to one of their services is allowed to. And the allowed
00:15:56 ◼ ► to rules are pretty clear. If you asked Apple, they would say Apple devices are allowed to use
00:16:01 ◼ ► iMessage and they sell lots of devices and those things connect. But the root problem is, okay,
00:16:06 ◼ ► but how do you tell that this is an Apple device? And beeper was like, we found a way to make Apple
00:16:10 ◼ ► think we're an Apple device. That's great and all, but you're not an Apple device. And so
00:16:15 ◼ ► you're not really using the service the way Apple intended it to. And the way they're getting it to
00:16:22 ◼ ► work is that, well, we have some credentials that were from a legitimate Apple device. So we're just
00:16:27 ◼ ► going to send them. And even though we are not that device, we're going to pretend to be. That's
00:16:31 ◼ ► trivially easy for Apple to stop because they'll just find out whatever credentials you're using
00:16:36 ◼ ► and stop you from using it unless you're the device that was using it for the 10 years prior
00:16:40 ◼ ► or whatever, however old the device is or whatever. And that just starts a game of cat and mouse. It's
00:16:44 ◼ ► like, okay, well, we'll find different value credentials. Okay, we'll do this. And that cat
00:16:48 ◼ ► and mouse game, I don't think Apple wants to play for a long time, but they can play it forever.
00:16:53 ◼ ► Apple has more money than beeper. You know, don't get in an effort war with Apple, right?
00:16:57 ◼ ► This just in, John, the cat and the mouse are continuing to play the game because in our chat
00:17:04 ◼ ► room just sent a link saying that beeper mini now works again, but only if you've got a, an email
00:17:09 ◼ ► based existing Apple ID, not the phone number registration. So they've taken that part out of
00:17:15 ◼ ► the equation and they're like, no, just use your real Apple ID. And so, okay. A cat, I guess it's
00:17:21 ◼ ► back in your corner. The mouse has responded. The cat has another thing. The cat has a team
00:17:26 ◼ ► of lawyers and like, Oh, I guess that an ATP, Apple can play the tech cat and mouse game forever and
00:17:30 ◼ ► they will win it. But they also have another game that is much easier and faster to win, which is,
00:17:34 ◼ ► Hey, you're not legally allowed to connect to our servers and use our service if you're not an Apple
00:17:39 ◼ ► device. Uh, so especially since beeper is trying to make money off of this, it's probably pretty
00:17:44 ◼ ► easy to send a bunch of lawyers and say, yeah, uh, you know, cause there's gotta be something in the
00:17:48 ◼ ► terms of service that you agree to when you get an Apple ID that says you're only allowed to use
00:17:52 ◼ ► Apple services with Apple devices. Like that's in the legal ease somewhere, I'm sure. So they can
00:17:56 ◼ ► just lawyer the way out of this as well. So there are many avenues to shutting down this business.
00:18:00 ◼ ► The idea that the company thinks that they're going to be charging their customers $2 a month and
00:18:04 ◼ ► build a burgeoning business and Apple is just going to look the other way. It just seems
00:18:12 ◼ ► look bad in that Apple is under pressure in a lot of quarters, especially in Europe about
00:18:17 ◼ ► iMessage, but you're right. The Apple's track record is first off, they make a lot of things
00:18:23 ◼ ► that they do low key and they just say, it's a security issue we fixed because security is
00:18:28 ◼ ► a priority for our users and they just do it like super basic. And also their strategy with a lot of
00:18:36 ◼ ► these, um, regulators has been to push it to the limit and say, you know, uh, not, not compromised,
00:18:42 ◼ ► but instead be like, no, of course we had to do this. This is not opening up iMessage on Android.
00:18:47 ◼ ► This is some company hacking our systems. And that, that is, you know, look, somebody in the
00:18:53 ◼ ► EU is going to use this as an example of Apple being, you know, they're diligent in closing
00:18:59 ◼ ► their system. It'll be in a document somewhere, a politician will mention and all of that, but
00:19:03 ◼ ► it is consistent with Apple's behavior to basically be like, well, no, this isn't an example of
00:19:09 ◼ ► anything except some other company trying to hack into our system. And it's not even hacking. It is
00:19:18 ◼ ► It's not, it's not like hacking, it's not like they're exploiting a security flaw or a buffer
00:19:22 ◼ ► overflow or whatever. They're pretending to be an authorized thing, but they are not an authorized
00:19:27 ◼ ► thing. And that I feel like is just so much, much more illegal policy thing. It's like, look,
00:19:32 ◼ ► you're not asking anybody else who runs like WhatsApp or any of the other things to say,
00:19:36 ◼ ► oh, and by the way, you should allow completely unauthorized applications to use your network.
00:19:44 ◼ ► regardless of the antitrust things or whatever, you can't make it a requirement that we allow
00:19:50 ◼ ► anyone who can figure out how to communicate with our service to use it, because that's not how
00:19:54 ◼ ► anything else works. Like there's not a burgeoning market for third-party WeChat and line clients
00:19:58 ◼ ► that are a hundred percent supported by those companies. At least as far as I know, but either
00:20:02 ◼ ► way, like it's a policy decision based on the network. Do you have a network that's used for
00:20:06 ◼ ► instant messaging? Would you like to allow third-party clients or are you going to look
00:20:10 ◼ ► the other way at third-party clients? Or are you going to be like, we know Apple's going to be as,
00:20:14 ◼ ► no, if we're not supporting third-party clients for iMessage, you don't get to use third-party
00:20:18 ◼ ► client with iMessage. I know you can get it to work, but that's not the terms of service that
00:20:22 ◼ ► you agreed to when you sign up for an Apple ID or whatever. Anyway, the adventure continues, I guess,
00:20:29 ◼ ► Taylor, and maybe the entire lifetime of the product is not yet over, but I don't know. It's
00:20:35 ◼ ► entertaining to watch it, but that's it. The fact that they charged for this product, I don't know,
00:20:44 ◼ ► I appreciate this happening. I feel sorry for everybody who spent money or is working at
00:20:52 ◼ ► Beeper about, I mean, this feels like a doomed thing. I don't quite know why they're doing it.
00:20:58 ◼ ► Yeah, unless they're hoping like Apple would say, oh, we finally decided we're going to make
00:21:01 ◼ ► iMessage for Android, but we don't want to bother making the app. So we'll do a deal with you where
00:21:05 ◼ ► you charge two oils a month and you give us $1.80 of that. You could make legal deals and say, okay,
00:21:12 ◼ ► we're allowing this particular third-party client to use iMessage on Android and it's a financial
00:21:17 ◼ ► deal we worked out because we don't want to develop it ourselves. But that's not an Apple-y
00:21:20 ◼ ► thing to do and they haven't decided to do that. So trying to sort of just wing it and be like,
00:21:25 ◼ ► we're going to get away with it, you know, what is it like, you know, better to ask forgiveness
00:21:30 ◼ ► than permission. Well, Apple is not forgiving in this scenario and they definitely didn't ask for
00:21:33 ◼ ► permission. No, well, the challenge with better to ask forgiveness than permission is when you're
00:21:38 ◼ ► dealing with somebody who won't ever forgive and will never give permission. That's the challenge
00:21:44 ◼ ► and that is absolutely Apple here. One other item, Mike and I do this B-tails thing about betas.
00:21:56 ◼ ► Oh boy, wow, that was bad. Okay, I did the hoo-hoo. Anyway, final versions of iOS and iPadOS
00:22:04 ◼ ► 17.2 and MacOS Sonoma 14.2, I believe, shipping, expected to ship anyway, this week. I just wanted
00:22:12 ◼ ► to close the book on that a little bit. That journal app for the iPhone is going to be out.
00:22:16 ◼ ► The spatial video recording that we've already, you know, talked about and written about on the
00:22:22 ◼ ► iPhone so you can record 1080p 30 videos in stereo based on two sensors and then watch them later
00:22:30 ◼ ► on the Vision Pro with a big asterisk and footnotes and things like that, but that will be
00:22:36 ◼ ► there. The thing that I've complained about for a while now, these sticker reply and messages, my
00:22:42 ◼ ► feedback ticket got closed, John, as being fixed in the latest beta. And so I'll just point out,
00:22:54 ◼ ► and a couple betas ago they fixed that. You still can't tap back to get to emoji stickers,
00:23:01 ◼ ► you have to tap and hold. Heard from a lot of people who didn't even know that you can double
00:23:05 ◼ ► tap on a message to do a tap back, which is why it's called that, but surprise, you can, but you
00:23:09 ◼ ► can't do this other part of it through there. You have to tap and hold and then choose, and the
00:23:13 ◼ ► sticker picker isn't very good, and I don't know, like I don't like the implementation of it, but I
00:23:18 ◼ ► got to give it to them. The sticker doesn't cover the text now, it goes just below, and the second
00:23:25 ◼ ► sticker, if there's a second sticker added, it also it goes on the other side and doesn't cover
00:23:30 ◼ ► the text. If some, you know, rascal in your instant messages decides to add a third sticker
00:23:36 ◼ ► and a fourth sticker, well then everything's getting covered up and that's just how it is.
00:23:41 ◼ ► But yes, they did fix the sticker reply in the beta so that if you do a sticker reply with
00:23:47 ◼ ► any sticker, especially an emoji sticker, it doesn't actually cover the message that you're
00:23:52 ◼ ► responding to, which was really dumb. So thank you. I said somebody on Mastodon asked me about
00:23:59 ◼ ► this and they're like, "Well, how do you feel now?" And I'm like, I mean, they took something
00:24:04 ◼ ► that was an F and they made it like a C or a C minus. Like it is usable now. I'm still really
00:24:12 ◼ ► disappointed in how they built it, but I am glad that they at least made it usable and not covering
00:24:16 ◼ ► the content of the messages before they shipped it. So that's in there. Hooray. It's so weird,
00:24:22 ◼ ► like you've said this many times, everyone has, like it's so weird that they didn't do the obvious
00:24:26 ◼ ► thing so long ago, which just allow you to use any emoji as a tap back. Like setting aside the
00:24:30 ◼ ► sticker thing, so that, but that, but like when they're embarking on doing the sticker thing,
00:24:33 ◼ ► didn't somebody raise their hand and say, you know what, before we start talking about stickers,
00:24:37 ◼ ► can we, why don't we just make it so you can use any emoji as a tap back? Yeah. Yeah. But like
00:24:41 ◼ ► everybody else, like I kind of like, there's, there's reasons you can come up with like,
00:24:46 ◼ ► why didn't we do this to begin with? Well, you know, it's a network thing and I only have to
00:24:49 ◼ ► send a small amount of information, tell you which tap back was, but if it's an emoji, I have to send
00:24:53 ◼ ► the emoji character and not every receiving device might have the update on all the emojis,
00:24:57 ◼ ► it might show up as a weird thing on devices that aren't on the OS and like, like, yeah, I know,
00:25:00 ◼ ► that's why you don't do it in version one, but by version, whatever the heck we're on now, it's time
00:25:05 ◼ ► to do emoji tap backs. And then once you have them, are sticker tap backs or sticker thingies really
00:25:11 ◼ ► that important? Like maybe that can wait until later, but instead of the other way, they did
00:25:15 ◼ ► tap backs, then they didn't change them forever. Then they added stickers and did them badly and
00:25:19 ◼ ► still don't know emoji tap backs. My feeling, and this is, I've heard second hand that there's some
00:25:25 ◼ ► truth in this, but I don't actually know directly, is that there was a big argument about this inside
00:25:31 ◼ ► Apple. And you know, my impression is that tap backs are very specifically, were built a very
00:25:36 ◼ ► specific way. They've got animations attached to them and all this stuff. And I think the argument
00:25:41 ◼ ► was probably something like, but if we're going to make every emoji a tap back, we either have to
00:25:46 ◼ ► degrade the quality of our tap back animations and all of that, or we have to build a bunch of
00:25:53 ◼ ► animations for everything else. And there was this whole argument of like, no, you don't, you can just
00:26:05 ◼ ► not people understand the emoji difference. The top backs are monochrome. Like it's not even a
00:26:08 ◼ ► visual confusion thing. It's like, you've got your standard tap backs and do what they always did.
00:26:12 ◼ ► And you can pick from any emoji and no one's going to be like, oh, I can't believe the emoji thumb
00:26:15 ◼ ► doesn't animate like the monochrome one. It'll be fine. I swear. Like people will not be confused
00:26:20 ◼ ► by it. It is a consistency that does not matter. No. And I think ultimately, and this again,
00:26:26 ◼ ► I don't know this for sure, but I have heard some suggestion that it may have some truth at least,
00:26:30 ◼ ► is it sure seems like there was a tap back crew that didn't want their tap backs kind of like
00:26:36 ◼ ► messed up by emoji. And then, and then what got implemented instead was, well, we're not going
00:26:41 ◼ ► to let you mess up our tap backs, but we'll give you this sticker thing almost out of spite, or at
00:26:45 ◼ ► least out of like, we don't want to build, we don't want to break our beautiful thing. And we've got
00:26:50 ◼ ► the sticker thing lying over here that nobody really uses. So we'll just, we'll just do that.
00:26:54 ◼ ► We'll make emoji stickers and call it a day. And, and they're already animated stickers in 17. So
00:26:59 ◼ ► there's like a whole, like it fits with other stuff, but it's the wrong decision, which is
00:27:03 ◼ ► why it's like a C minus because it doesn't cover the content, but like it's a width in terms of
00:27:08 ◼ ► what they should have done, which is literally just let you tap and choose any emoji. And I know
00:27:14 ◼ ► that the space is very limited, but like add a second line, do most recent have a tap that brings
00:27:20 ◼ ► up the emoji picker outside of the basic. I mean, there are lots of ways that this could have been
00:27:24 ◼ ► built to do what literally every other messaging system does, which let you reply with whatever
00:27:29 ◼ ► emoji you want. And they didn't do that, but at least it doesn't cover the content rather than
00:27:34 ◼ ► bare minimum. It before it was like, it was punishing you for using the stickers, right? Like,
00:27:39 ◼ ► ah, see how you like it. You want to put that shrugging guy in there. Well, fine. Everybody
00:27:44 ◼ ► else will be shrugging because they won't be able to read what you're shrugging at. Ha ha
00:27:48 ◼ ► take that you and they fixed that part. So great, but like do better. It's still not very good.
00:27:59 ◼ ► And I don't think the, these, the tap backs team made the stickers team cover the text. Like that
00:28:04 ◼ ► was their own thing. Like, you know, there's no, there's no reason for that in this whole
00:28:09 ◼ ► drama over should we do emoji tab back in, but there is no, there was never any pressure or
00:28:14 ◼ ► impetus to cover the text with a sticker. Someone just decided to do that and it was a bad idea and
00:28:19 ◼ ► they fixed it. So yeah. Yeah. Also, I think James and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago,
00:28:25 ◼ ► collaborative playlist and Apple music was removed from the last betas. So the idea that you can
00:28:37 ◼ ► Everybody's going to be getting updates probably this week. You can do some journaling. I've had
00:28:42 ◼ ► the journal app since the very beginning. I like how it's built, but it took a while for things to
00:28:48 ◼ ► even show up sort of in the journaling app. I mean, it's beta. I get it. It's not, it's not
00:28:57 ◼ ► other apps can take advantage of the sort of like, what have you been listening to and what have you
00:29:01 ◼ ► been doing? And like, I like that, that it isn't completely walled off, but they're just sort of
00:29:06 ◼ ► like building an API and then building an app that uses the API. That part's good, but it's just,
00:29:15 ◼ ► Yeah. It's good to see Apple still doing that. I talk about that all the time in ATP. I don't
00:29:19 ◼ ► have a good phrase for it, but the apps that are built on libraries and APIs, it's, it's,
00:29:26 ◼ ► it always amazes me that Apple has ever done that and continues to do it, but they do. I mean,
00:29:30 ◼ ► they can do it badly. We'll see how the journal app goes, but think about things like contacts,
00:29:34 ◼ ► calendars, photos. It's hard to believe today. If you think about today's Apple, that those things
00:29:40 ◼ ► are actually databases with APIs that allow us to have third-party clients and Apple ships first
00:29:45 ◼ ► party clients for all of those things. And it has not destroyed the market for third-party clients.
00:29:50 ◼ ► And it has not made Apple make its first party clients work. It has just been a win-win-win-win,
00:29:54 ◼ ► but it seems like anytime you talk to Apple about this type of stuff, they're like, that's not their
00:29:58 ◼ ► first instinct. It's like, don't you see how great it's been to have APIs and public databases for
00:30:04 ◼ ► things like contacts and photos and now journal, like it's, it's so good for everybody. You don't
00:30:11 ◼ ► have to make every app in the world. Third parties can make it. You can have a healthy third-party
00:30:16 ◼ ► ecosystem, even though you make a default good bundled app with the phone, right? This can all
00:30:21 ◼ ► work. You should do this all. And I know it's harder to do this than to make a private app,
00:30:24 ◼ ► but they should do this all the time for anything remotely important. So I'm excited to see the
00:30:28 ◼ ► do it with the journaling app. Obviously it depends on the quality of the API. If the API
00:30:32 ◼ ► and everything is such that you really can't make a good third-party app, or if the first party app
00:30:37 ◼ ► is not good for whatever reason, and it's hard to make a third-party good one as well, like it can
00:30:41 ◼ ► go badly, but this should be their first instinct, especially on the phone where it's so hard to do
00:30:46 ◼ ► anything else because it's just, it's too, it's too useful to have public access to, to those
00:30:53 ◼ ► databases through APIs. Yeah. And I don't know if it's all there, right? Like, I don't know if
00:30:59 ◼ ► Spotify uses whatever API is required for like, here's the music you were listening to, or if that
00:31:04 ◼ ► only works with Apple music, but. Oh no, I'm sure Spotify just ignores the Apple music library,
00:31:08 ◼ ► but there are third-party music clients for that. Right. That's true. And I don't know what API it's
00:31:13 ◼ ► sniffing in terms of what you've played and if it's the Apple music API or something else. But
00:31:16 ◼ ► the idea is at least there that they're trying to build this stuff and, and, and have it be
00:31:20 ◼ ► accessible to third parties so that, you know, another journaling app also gets to have access
00:31:25 ◼ ► to this. And that's, that is not, I mean, I sort of assumed that wouldn't be the case, but I do
00:31:29 ◼ ► really like it because what they're doing then is they're saying, here's the thing we think should
00:31:33 ◼ ► be on our platform. And we see the people like these apps, but we have the ability as a platform
00:31:42 ◼ ► would be cool. And you know, the day one people can't do that because they're not the platform
00:31:47 ◼ ► owner. And then there's that moment where it's like that we, so we've seen a need on our platform
00:31:51 ◼ ► and we're going to write an app. That's going to be a typical Apple, like appeals to 80%,
00:31:55 ◼ ► but not a hundred percent that uses that API, but that anybody else can use that API too. That's how
00:32:00 ◼ ► it's supposed to work. Right. I think ideally it becomes this thing that is an example,
00:32:05 ◼ ► helps them build out the API and understand how it's supposed to work and will be very useful for
00:32:11 ◼ ► the people who are not going to seek out a journaling app, a third party app necessarily,
00:32:18 ◼ ► just like notes or calendar, anything else. Right. Like it's good enough. And that the people who
00:32:22 ◼ ► want more will seek out an app that does more. And I, yeah, I think this is a pretty good example of
00:32:32 ◼ ► You forgot the most important 14.2 feature. Oh yes. They fixed my window dragon bug. Oh yes.
00:32:38 ◼ ► Well, of course. Well, a little fallout from ATP. They fixed, well fixed little tiny asterisk.
00:32:44 ◼ ► They fixed the bug as reported. Okay. Because I, I reported that if you log into users on my system
00:32:49 ◼ ► with my set of hardware and software and you open 25 text out of windows and you try to drag one of
00:32:54 ◼ ► them around, it's super laggy. And it's not super laggy anymore. But as I said, an ATP now that I
00:33:00 ◼ ► know, I know that I plumbed the depths of window dragging performance on macOS, I do know that
00:33:06 ◼ ► as you add more windows, things get worse. So fixed for 25, but then I went farther. Is it
00:33:11 ◼ ► fixed for a hundred? Is it fixed for 200? And that's really a separate issue. And the bottom
00:33:15 ◼ ► line is it's so much better than it was that I doubt I will encounter this problem in real world
00:33:20 ◼ ► use. I was definitely encountering the problem of real world use when it happened to me at 25.
00:33:24 ◼ ► So now it's been pushed way out to the edge. Yeah. And I think actually it doesn't get worse
00:33:30 ◼ ► with multiple users logged in anymore either. So whatever that thing was, it's doesn't matter if
00:33:35 ◼ ► you have more than one user logged in anymore. And it was also related to the, the polling rate of the
00:33:40 ◼ ► peripheral. And if you're using a USB wired mouse versus a Bluetooth one, it was a very complicated
00:33:45 ◼ ► situation, but I gave them so much information. I'm glad they got around to fixing it. And hopefully
00:33:50 ◼ ► I will never have to see this again. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Wild Grain,
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00:34:43 ◼ ► maker or bread, not a bread machine, pasta maker, pasta machine kind of thing. It's that soft,
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00:35:46 ◼ ► and Relay FM. John, it's rumor roundup time. Yeehaw. Uh, uh, Mark Gurman in his newsletter. See,
00:35:59 ◼ ► we have this advantage by being on Monday of getting to talk about Mark Gurman's Sunday
00:36:12 ◼ ► the, uh, the year of the iPad because this year was no iPad. So next year is all iPads, apparently.
00:36:19 ◼ ► And some of this he's reported before, but he's kind of rounding it all up. There are new iPads
00:36:24 ◼ ► coming around March, he said. I don't know what that means. February, April, I guess, or around
00:36:30 ◼ ► March, but probably March-ish. Uh, a new iPad Pro that will be slightly larger in 11 and 13 inch
00:36:38 ◼ ► configurations. They'll have OLED, they'll have the M3 processor, and they'll have a new accessory,
00:36:46 ◼ ► a new Magic Keyboard, which Gurman has reported about in the past. Presumably will be sized to
00:36:52 ◼ ► fit just these iPad Pros. That's going to be one that's got like aluminum, more of a laptop feel,
00:36:57 ◼ ► sort of like even more differentiation for the Pro line. And then separately, the iPad Air will be
00:37:04 ◼ ► updated to the existing sizes. So presumably using the existing Magic Keyboard and things like that,
00:37:10 ◼ ► if you want, and the M2 processor. And then later in the year, we'll get the new base iPad and
00:37:16 ◼ ► that home button iPad will die and probably the original pencil will die at that point. And,
00:37:22 ◼ ► and then later there will be a Mac Mini or an iPad Mini bump as well. Um, any thoughts about
00:37:30 ◼ ► future iPads? I am very excited about the OLED iPad Pro because my main use of my iPad is to watch
00:37:38 ◼ ► TV shows and movies and the black levels on the current crop, as I don't have one of the mini
00:37:44 ◼ ► LED 12.9 inch ones, the black levels in the current crop of, uh, you know, where the backlight is
00:37:49 ◼ ► always on behind every single pixel are not great. Especially since I watch them in the dark at night
00:37:53 ◼ ► in bed a lot, so you really see that lack of black levels. I am super excited about that. I hope that
00:37:59 ◼ ► it is a good OLED and not one that I'm going to cause massive burn-in on by using it. But we'll
00:38:06 ◼ ► see that, you know, the phones have had OLEDs forever and they've been pretty good in this regard.
00:38:09 ◼ ► So, uh, but yeah, I'm, I'm getting one of these. I don't care about the M3. I don't need any of
00:38:14 ◼ ► that stuff. I would just want that sweet, sweet OLED screen. And again, I skipped the, the mini
00:38:18 ◼ ► LED on the 12.9 because that size is a little bit too big for me to have on my lap as a TV screen
00:38:24 ◼ ► with the distance I keep it from my face. So I'm excited about that. And then as for the,
00:38:28 ◼ ► setting aside me personally, yeah, the whole iPad line needs to be, uh, rationalized. They're not
00:38:34 ◼ ► really rationalizing it. All they're doing is taking a step forward along all of the lines.
00:38:39 ◼ ► Like for, I think they're getting, what is it? They have the ninth and the 10th generation iPad
00:38:42 ◼ ► that are out now and they're going to stop selling the ninth and they're going to have the 10th and
00:38:45 ◼ ► the 11th. It's like, you're just, it's just more of the same. It just, yes, they are finally pushing
00:38:49 ◼ ► the home button one off the end of the lineup, but there, it's not a change in strategy. They continue,
00:38:55 ◼ ► they're going to continue to sell these weird assortment of things with the weird assortment
00:38:58 ◼ ► of devices. They're just progressing all of them forward, which will be good because hopefully the
00:39:02 ◼ ► pro will have the camera on the landscape edge and everything that the other one got. So there'll be
00:39:06 ◼ ► some rationalization there, but really they're just take all the lines and move them all one
00:39:10 ◼ ► step forward as opposed to 2033, which was not really moving a lot of the lines forward at all.
00:39:15 ◼ ► But I wouldn't call it like a rethinking and it's not like, oh, now the iPad line makes sense. No,
00:39:20 ◼ ► they've just taken the existing lines and moved them forward, which is good. They should do it.
00:39:23 ◼ ► But I really wish like the iPad line suffers the most from the, I call that ATP, the real Tim Cook
00:39:28 ◼ ► doctrine, which is if you make a product, just keep selling it until people stop buying it, which
00:39:32 ◼ ► is probably good for business, but it's not good for making sure that all of your product lines
00:39:38 ◼ ► make sense. Right. Not really inspirational. The iPad pro, I keep thinking since it's OLED and M3,
00:39:44 ◼ ► they'll probably get more expensive. Although that doesn't always happen. Having a little more price
00:39:49 ◼ ► differentiation between the pro and the air is probably okay. I think saying, no, no, these are
00:39:54 ◼ ► really pro and adding OLED is going to be quite a differentiation that the device is basically just
00:40:00 ◼ ► a screen. So I, that, that alone setting aside the M3, which I don't think matters that much for iPad
00:40:05 ◼ ► people, the OLED versus non OLED is going to, in my opinion, widely separate the air from the pro.
00:40:10 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I have the 12.9 inch micro LED. It's good. Like it's way better looking. It
00:40:21 ◼ ► is people complain about blooming. It's like, yeah, if you've got a very small point source,
00:40:24 ◼ ► you're going to see the fact that the, that the micro LED doesn't have, it's not a one-to-one,
00:40:30 ◼ ► you're going to get a little blooming around it, but it does look really good. Like it is a major
00:40:34 ◼ ► upgrade, but it's not, it's not going to be OLED. Like, yeah, the test they always use for things
00:40:39 ◼ ► like that with blooming, it's like, oh, I get a little blooming around a little, a black island,
00:40:42 ◼ ► but it really hurts you when you have like a star field, because then basically every single backlight
00:40:47 ◼ ► is on because there's always at least one star behind it. There's supposed to be bright. And when
00:40:51 ◼ ► every single backlight region is on, then you've just reverted to the non dynamic backlight again.
00:40:56 ◼ ► Yeah. Oh, and the irony is of course, that the show that I watched the most in bed in the dark
00:41:09 ◼ ► generally drop around then. And if I'm awake, then I will just watch it right then. I don't do a lot
00:41:14 ◼ ► of TV watching on an iPad in bed, but I do with that one. That's how I end my day, I guess. And
00:41:19 ◼ ► then I started with cereal and tea. I guess the M3 MacBook air is now around March as well,
00:41:34 ◼ ► but like the M3 chip is out there and if it's going to come to the iPad pro putting in the
00:41:40 ◼ ► MacBook air is, um, it's probably a good idea. The weird order that did things is you're kind of
00:41:46 ◼ ► took some of the wind out of the sail because one of the benefits of the other rollout, uh, order,
00:41:53 ◼ ► which is you put your chips into the lowest end products first, you put, you get the low end chips
00:41:57 ◼ ► first and you put in the low end products is that it gives these products their time in the sun.
00:42:01 ◼ ► So if they had rolled out the plain old M3 first and it was in the air, it's like, okay, well,
00:42:06 ◼ ► we're not that excited about the air, but it's the first one to get an M3 generation chip. Right. And
00:42:10 ◼ ► then the pros and the max would come later this year. They didn't do that. They did M3, M3,
00:42:14 ◼ ► pro, M3, max all at once and not in the air. And so it's kind of overshadowed by its, uh,
00:42:19 ◼ ► more expensive siblings. It's like, okay. And now the air gets it too. It gets it late. It gets a
00:42:24 ◼ ► chip that's already in other stuff, you know, then it's just kind of like, okay, it's good.
00:42:29 ◼ ► It's a better MacBook air, but it never gets that moment in the sun of being the first, uh, you know,
00:42:33 ◼ ► product on the M3 generation. Right. At least, I mean, this is a speed bump, right? Presumably the,
00:42:39 ◼ ► the specs aren't really going to change beyond the chip. Uh, at least not very much. They did
00:42:43 ◼ ► the redesign with the M2. So it's a less exciting update anyway. Um, and it is Apple's best-selling
00:42:49 ◼ ► laptop. So, I mean, it's a, it's great that they're going to be doing this. Um, we had a,
00:42:54 ◼ ► uh, uh, email, um, well, it wasn't an email, a feedback from upgrade feedback.com from Tyler,
00:43:01 ◼ ► who asked when the M3 chip is released and pushed across the MacBook air and MacBook pro product
00:43:07 ◼ ► line, what happens to the M1 MacBook air? Would they put an M2 into it and drop the air from the
00:43:13 ◼ ► name? I don't know, but I, I'm really curious about what happens to the MacBook air if they do
00:43:21 ◼ ► an M3 MacBook air, because I feel like that I'm not sure the M2 MacBook air is going to be
00:43:28 ◼ ► discounted at Amazon to 7 99. Right. I feel like the M1 MacBook air, although it is old and cheap,
00:43:34 ◼ ► it's also still really good. And I, I'm a little curious about, are they going to have three of
00:43:42 ◼ ► them? Are they going to not sell the M2 anymore, but continue to sell the M1? What do they do with
00:43:47 ◼ ► the iPads? We have how many low end iPads do you have all the ones that we can get in you to sell?
00:43:53 ◼ ► I guess the limit is two people have the ninth and 10th generation. Once we pull out the 11th. Okay.
00:43:57 ◼ ► The ninth will get pushed off. But like, honestly, this is the third generation. Would you get rid of
00:44:01 ◼ ► the M1 air at that point? I think they should get rid of the M2 and sell this one M3. Yeah. Right.
00:44:07 ◼ ► Cause the M3, like it's not that big of a change over the M2 that eclipses it or anything. But once
00:44:12 ◼ ► you have the M3, like I don't think like, I think you're right. They're not going to discount the M2.
00:44:16 ◼ ► So like the cost of materials in that computer, uh, the SOC is not like the thing that's driving
00:44:22 ◼ ► the cost of that computer. Right. Especially since Apple is his own chips and they don't have
00:44:26 ◼ ► to pay margins to Intel or something like that. So changing from two to M3, it's like, well,
00:44:29 ◼ ► now we can discount the M2 because why it's cheaper to build. No, it is not really that
00:44:34 ◼ ► much cheaper to build. The M3 is surely more expensive than the M2, but by how many dollars
00:44:38 ◼ ► by not enough, that's going to, you're going to care. So I would say drop the M2 and keep selling
00:44:42 ◼ ► the M1 and you can keep selling that M1 until, until like it is a bad computer. It is not
00:44:48 ◼ ► currently a bad computer. The only thing that, that, um, I would say about the M2 air is the M2
00:44:53 ◼ ► air is going to be cheaper because they've been making it for a year. But what, but what, but what
00:44:59 ◼ ► parts are cheaper? Like the case we assume is going to be the same. The screen is the same,
00:45:03 ◼ ► you know what I mean? It's just the S just the SOC. But generally they're all going to be a
00:45:06 ◼ ► little bit cheaper because that's what happens to Apple. Apple's products over time is that when you,
00:45:10 ◼ ► when you get them on the production line, they cost more than they do after they've been on the
00:45:14 ◼ ► line for a year, year and a half there. They, that's how they kind of claw back. They talk
00:45:18 ◼ ► about it in their quarterly calls sometimes like a brand new system doesn't have the margins,
00:45:22 ◼ ► but they're not looking at the margins of the system on day one. They're margin looking at
00:45:26 ◼ ► the margins over years. Uh, and, and the margins get better every day is my impression. But the
00:45:36 ◼ ► have to pay more, especially when you're first assembling it like, okay, well we have to get the
00:45:40 ◼ ► the kinks out of the line and make sure everyone knows how to put the components in and the
00:45:43 ◼ ► components in the M3 MacBook era are a little bit different than they are in the M2, but
00:45:47 ◼ ► things like machining out the case and assembling the display and like if that stuff doesn't change,
00:46:03 ◼ ► streamline that manufacturing also applied to the MacBook era. So what happens is that you get higher
00:46:08 ◼ ► margins on new products. Very little is going to be different. I mean, maybe it'll be different
00:46:11 ◼ ► colors. I don't know, but like, yeah, very little is going to be different, which means the M2 and
00:46:14 ◼ ► the M3 aren't going to be that differentiated anyway. So why do you keep the M2 around?
00:46:17 ◼ ► You can't discount it to down, down to where the M1 is. Yeah. I think, yes, if I had to choose one
00:46:25 ◼ ► option, I would say the M2 is replaced by the M3 and the M1 remains in the lineup, which seems
00:46:30 ◼ ► bizarre. This is also my pet theory about all those rumors about a low cost MacBook is that
00:46:38 ◼ ► that is going to be the MacBook, maybe even SE. And it's going to be basically something like the
00:46:44 ◼ ► M1 Air's replacement because they can't sell the M1 Air forever. There has to be a moment. And if
00:46:51 ◼ ► the M2 Air design is just not going to, it's going to take years for it to be something that they can
00:46:57 ◼ ► sell for that price, then they might want to have something else that they tweak, that they put down
00:47:02 ◼ ► there. And it might be essentially the M1 Air with a little bit of a processor upgrade and some other
00:47:08 ◼ ► changes to make it more affordable to make. I don't know about that, but yeah, I do. If I had
00:47:13 ◼ ► to guess, I would say the M2 is just going to disappear and be replaced by the M3. I mean,
00:47:17 ◼ ► they'll still have refurbs and you'll still be able to get it, but it's not like things ever drop
00:47:21 ◼ ► off in the face of the earth, but it doesn't seem like it's worthwhile for Apple to continue selling
00:47:26 ◼ ► that for a hundred bucks less than the M3. It's like, who cares? That's just, sell through the
00:47:30 ◼ ► rest of your inventory, sell the M3. And I really, I don't, I do wonder the M1 versus the M3, right?
00:47:38 ◼ ► Those are both unibody aluminum cases with screens inside them and keyboards and batteries. And like,
00:47:44 ◼ ► like in terms of manufacturability, it's not like they did something new with the squarish case
00:47:50 ◼ ► that is, it seems to me, radically more difficult or expensive to, to manufacture than the old one.
00:47:56 ◼ ► They're different looking, but if anything, you might say the M1 case had it actually been new,
00:48:00 ◼ ► which of course it wasn't, is more fancy and expensive because of the taper and just how
00:48:04 ◼ ► much that makes the packaging more difficult. The new one, once it has, you know, hit its stride in
00:48:10 ◼ ► manufacturing is boxy and straightforward. And like, what's less expensive about the M1 other
00:48:17 ◼ ► than the fact that that case is ancient and has been around forever and then using the M1 SoC,
00:48:21 ◼ ► maybe the screen is less expensive than the M2 one. But I do wonder if you made a low cost one,
00:48:27 ◼ ► like, wouldn't you want to put it in the boxy case and not in the, in the, in the weird tapered one.
00:48:35 ◼ ► the way the Apple way to make a low cost MacBook pro is to make the M4 or the MacBook Air rather
00:48:41 ◼ ► is to make the M4 MacBook Air have a much better screen. And now anything without a much better
00:48:46 ◼ ► screen is the low cost one. Whether or not it is less expensive or it just, or they just raise the
00:48:51 ◼ ► price of the MacBook Air. I don't know. But yeah, what I'm saying is how do you get the cost out of
00:48:56 ◼ ► these laptops? It's a unibody aluminum laptop with a battery and an SoC and a tiny motherboard. Like,
00:49:00 ◼ ► how do you remove costs from that? Right? What is, where is there a cost that is wasted? Oh,
00:49:10 ◼ ► 15, like for Apple's cost, you know what I mean? Like that's not saving you a lot of money. So
00:49:16 ◼ ► it is, it is a bit of mystery. Of course you could lower the, you could make a low cost one by
00:49:20 ◼ ► lowering margins, but Apple's not super into that. That's not going to happen. No, absolutely not.
00:49:24 ◼ ► Germin also reports that the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro probably won't get update, upgraded until
00:49:30 ◼ ► the end of 2024 at the earliest, if not 2025, which I think is a little bit of a bummer.
00:49:36 ◼ ► I suppose that says something about how many Macs they can change at a time and also maybe about
00:49:44 ◼ ► the status of the ultra variant of the M3, assuming that that exists. Yeah. Yeah. I don't
00:49:50 ◼ ► think, cause again, I don't think there's much they have to do to change either of the, well,
00:49:55 ◼ ► for setting aside the Mac Pro. For the Studio, it's not like that case is too old and needs to
00:49:58 ◼ ► be revised or isn't fitting needs. The Studio case is fine. Everything in that, the computer is fine.
00:50:03 ◼ ► The only question is what do I put in it? Where's the ultra? I mean, they could do a Mac Studio now
00:50:07 ◼ ► if they just put a max in it, but they're not going to do that. Right. So, and the ultra,
00:50:16 ◼ ► M3B process that they're making everything with or do they want to wait for the next more economical
00:50:23 ◼ ► process from TSMC? And that seems like it would have to be the long pole. We're not going to make
00:50:28 ◼ ► an ultra until we can make it on an M3P or M3E or whatever. And that's not going to happen in time
00:50:34 ◼ ► for, you know, the end of 2024 at the latest. Therefore that's when the Mac Studio comes out,
00:50:43 ◼ ► like laptops can outperform the, uh, like the M1 Ultra in some things, but the M3 Ultra is still
00:50:48 ◼ ► kind of hanging in there. So yeah, that's, that's, that's fine. And I think this is another sort of
00:50:53 ◼ ► weird side effect of going three nanometer in that it has sort of changed how things are rolling out.
00:50:59 ◼ ► Once three nanometer is more mature for the M4 generation, hopefully there won't be these
00:51:04 ◼ ► weird cadences and big gaps, but, um, you know, they talked about this in ADB before the,
00:51:13 ◼ ► uh, there's not a great, there's not a great precedent. Every year has been a little bit
00:51:17 ◼ ► different for explicable reasons like, oh, this is the first year and this year must be the way
00:51:21 ◼ ► they're going to do it. Oh, but actually the M3 generation, we have three nanometers. So every
00:51:25 ◼ ► year there's been something to explain why things are not expected or normal or like the previous
00:51:32 ◼ ► year. And, uh, that may continue maybe M the M4 generation will be the first generation where
00:51:38 ◼ ► Apple gets to have the cadence that it wants. And then maybe the M5 generation will be the same as
00:51:43 ◼ ► the M4, but M3 is not the same as M2, which was not the same as M1. You can play with cutting edge chip,
00:51:49 ◼ ► uh, fabricating techniques and you, everything gets a little messy. That's fine. I mean, it's
00:51:55 ◼ ► fine. Honestly, I feel like Apple just is in such a good position with the Mac right now that you
00:52:02 ◼ ► can just shrug this stuff off. Right. I think there was an era where things were tough and
00:52:05 ◼ ► you're like, oh, why, why is there not a new Mac that Intel did this thing? And it's like, you know
00:52:10 ◼ ► what, like you just said, which is, yeah, the laptops are faster than the M1 ultra and some
00:52:17 ◼ ► things, but the M2 ultra is still great. And like, that's how I feel about the whole line is like,
00:52:22 ◼ ► sure. I I'm a Mac studio user. I'd love to see the Mac studio updated sooner rather than later.
00:52:28 ◼ ► Although I don't think I'm going to buy one, but, um, but it's fine. Like in the end, it's just,
00:52:39 ◼ ► it's all pretty good. I just don't, I don't feel that way. I mean, the Mac pro is the one source
00:52:43 ◼ ► spot because they, that computer still is, they feel like not separating itself enough from the
00:52:47 ◼ ► studio. Uh, and that's certainly not going to happen. Like it's in this, in this generation,
00:52:51 ◼ ► when we do get the M3 ultra, it seems like it's just going to be like the M2 ultra and, you know,
00:52:55 ◼ ► status quo, the, the M the M3 Mac pro will be just like the M2 Mac pro, which will be a Mac studio in
00:53:00 ◼ ► a massively larger case for people who need those card slots. Uh, which is not great as far as I'm
00:53:04 ◼ ► concerned, but I haven't seen anything in any of the rumors that makes me think that is not going
00:53:08 ◼ ► to be the case. So pin your hopes on M4, M5, M6, M7, pick an M. Yeah, more future Ms. Uh,
00:53:16 ◼ ► one other little tidbit, um, from Mark that I've heard from a bunch of other sources too,
00:53:22 ◼ ► is that Apple is gearing up for training its retail employees on how to sell vision pro and
00:53:29 ◼ ► the way that they're doing it is they're having basically it's like, um, it's like model unit, UN,
00:53:41 ◼ ► one of the employees from the store to Cupertino, where they're going to do a two day training in
00:53:45 ◼ ► January, where they're going to learn how the mothership wants all of retail to sell vision
00:53:53 ◼ ► pros, how they're going to demo it, how they're going to explain it to users, how they're going to
00:53:57 ◼ ► presumably like measure your head, get you the right seal, all of those things. It's a two day
00:54:04 ◼ ► long, according to Mark, training in January, and then they will all return back to their stores
00:54:11 ◼ ► with the details for everybody else, but they want somebody from every store present at Cupertino to
00:54:19 ◼ ► learn about this. And, uh, on top of that, Gurman says, they're still hoping to sell it before March,
00:54:24 ◼ ► which is interesting, uh, that they were hoping for by the end of January, but, but it may slip,
00:54:30 ◼ ► but before March, so maybe February that comes before March. But, um, but it's still probably
00:54:36 ◼ ► a moving target. So the two days of training, I think, I mean, obviously they have said,
00:54:44 ◼ ► and there have been reports before they don't really want the, uh, store experience to be the
00:54:49 ◼ ► primary way that people buy vision pro, not just like pressing some buttons. Cause there is,
00:54:52 ◼ ► there are fit issues and stuff like that. So it sounds like they're investing in employees here.
00:54:57 ◼ ► Yeah. If you let people buy this site unseen, it's going to be bad experience for everyone involved,
00:55:02 ◼ ► including Apple, who's going to have to deal with all the returns and modifications and even
00:55:05 ◼ ► in-store speaking of this training, I'm just thinking of maybe because I'm old now, but
00:55:09 ◼ ► I'm thinking of how difficult it's going to be even in store to give customers a good experience
00:55:15 ◼ ► of picking out and configuring their vision pro because so many people, so many of their
00:55:19 ◼ ► potential customers do not have perfect vision, which means you're now entering the realm of,
00:55:24 ◼ ► tell me what your glasses prescription is. Oh, I don't have that on me. We'll try these lenses.
00:55:30 ◼ ► Oh, do you have an astigmatism? Which eye is different than the other? Like, you know what
00:55:34 ◼ ► it's like to get, to get glasses. It is a pro it's not a complicated process, but it is a process and
00:55:38 ◼ ► getting that part of it right. It has such a profound effect on the customer's satisfaction
00:55:45 ◼ ► with their purchase. Cause if you get it wrong, they're going to have eye strain. Things are going
00:55:48 ◼ ► to be blurry. Uh, and it's not so straightforward to get right. Uh, and so I imagine a lot of the
00:55:54 ◼ ► training has to mean, yes, there's the fittings to your face and adjusting the straps with that.
00:55:58 ◼ ► I feel like it's tractable. It's like fitting in any kind of retail environment. Let's get this
00:56:01 ◼ ► garment or this piece of equipment to fit you. But the lenses, the glasses thing, that is something
00:56:07 ◼ ► usually when you're selling a product, you don't have to deal with. Please give me some of your
00:56:11 ◼ ► medical information that you probably don't have on you, but that is crucial to your enjoyment.
00:56:15 ◼ ► Yeah. And I wonder like Apple wants, I would assume Apple wants the retail experience to be,
00:56:24 ◼ ► maybe they don't, but like the idea of, of, uh, you walk out with the thing and you're happy and
00:56:30 ◼ ► you can try it out and you can't wait to begin. I do wonder if this is going to be, is this going
00:56:34 ◼ ► to be more of a star Wars action figures coupon in the box kind of thing where you're going to come
00:56:39 ◼ ► in and you're going to see a demo and you're going to get measured and you're going to have a,
00:56:43 ◼ ► a website to send your prescription to or whatever. And then you get to wait for it to show up.
00:56:47 ◼ ► There were rumors that like how many different prescriptions are they going to have like
00:56:53 ◼ ► available, right? You know what I mean? Like, Oh, you can leave today. Kind of like how many
00:56:56 ◼ ► configurations of MacBook do they have, right? You can leave today if you want the stock one or the
00:57:04 ◼ ► contact lenses. If you've worn contact lenses, you'll know that contact lenses do not come in
00:57:08 ◼ ► all the different prescription strengths that you can get glasses in because it's a manufacturing
00:57:12 ◼ ► problem. It's just too many variations, right? So my glasses prescription, if I look at my contacts
00:57:17 ◼ ► for certain, it's not the same. Why? Because they don't make it that granular. They make them,
00:57:21 ◼ ► you know, half steps or whatever, whatever they don't, they don't make every single little step
00:57:25 ◼ ► or so when you get glasses, you know, lenses ground for glasses, you can get any prescription
00:57:29 ◼ ► they want because they're going to grind it for you. Right. And so whatever it sizes that they,
00:57:32 ◼ ► whatever lens prescriptions they have, if they have any in stock in the store that they can give
00:57:38 ◼ ► you, it is not going to be as granular as it could be. Will Apple offer precise prescriptions for the
00:57:45 ◼ ► things, if you're willing to wait as a sort of bite BTO type of bill to order option, or will
00:57:50 ◼ ► they not and say like contact lenses, you're negative three, you're negative three and a
00:57:55 ◼ ► quarter, you're negative three and a half. Like you can only go by 0.25 increments. And if you're
00:58:00 ◼ ► somewhere in between there, just pick the one that's closest, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there was
00:58:04 ◼ ► one report, I think maybe for Mark Herman about how one of their challenges was going to be to
00:58:10 ◼ ► stock the lenses, right? Cause you could do that, right? You could literally have here are the
00:58:14 ◼ ► lenses that we cover in store and we keep them in the back and we, you know, you wait over here and
00:58:20 ◼ ► like you said, you build it out and, and, uh, and then get them out of there with it. It's going to
00:58:25 ◼ ► be, it's going to be a challenge. I have full faith that they're going to be able to succeed
00:58:29 ◼ ► in this challenge because every time I feel like Apple has tried something ambitious with the store,
00:58:37 ◼ ► they have, if not succeeded, they have figured out how to make it work because they're highly
00:58:43 ◼ ► motivated and they're very good at doing their retail stuff. And the places where like the Apple
00:58:48 ◼ ► watch, like they, they had to adjust that over time and be like, well, this is not actually how
00:58:53 ◼ ► it's, how it's going to work. So I think, I think they're motivated to do it, but it's very clear
00:58:57 ◼ ► that retail is going to be a centerpiece of this. Um, and, and I think for good reason, I, I, you
00:59:02 ◼ ► know, uh, James Thompson and our discord pointed out, you know, meta quest, just you ordered
00:59:07 ◼ ► online. I ordered mine online, but then I also had to go to Zinni optical and put in my prescription
00:59:14 ◼ ► and order those, uh, inserts separately and have them show up. And it feels like the vision pro
00:59:21 ◼ ► they've, they don't want you to use glasses with it. Uh, whereas you can use glasses with the meta
00:59:26 ◼ ► quests. Um, you you're, I think they really don't want you to use glasses with vision pro that they
00:59:32 ◼ ► want them, that it's, it's not really designed to work that way. Yeah. I don't know if they'll even
00:59:37 ◼ ► fit in there and like ordering online, by the way, like it's easier for people to get their
00:59:41 ◼ ► prescription then, because there's no like, Hey, I've arrived at the store, but I forgot my
00:59:44 ◼ ► prescription. When you're in your house, maybe you have access to, you can go into your filing cabinet
00:59:48 ◼ ► and find the prescription, or you can call your doctor. Like that is actually easier if you had
00:59:52 ◼ ► to find it, but of course you order it sight unseen, all that fitting stuff can happen. And
00:59:57 ◼ ► yes, you know, I don't think there's going to be, as far as I'm aware now that there's going to be
01:00:01 ◼ ► any kind of difference in the product that you receive, but the act of someone who knows what
01:00:05 ◼ ► they're doing and has some experience, presumably the retail people will eventually fitting it to
01:00:09 ◼ ► you, showing you how it should fit is the thing that can only happen in person. And the great
01:00:14 ◼ ► thing about the vision pro when it launches is it's $3,500. Not a lot of people are going to buy
01:00:18 ◼ ► these. It's too damn expensive. So it is going to be necessarily a boutique experience for
01:00:22 ◼ ► a small number of early adopters with a lot of disposable income. Hopefully that will give them
01:00:26 ◼ ► time to get the kinks worked out before the affordable one arrives like next year sometime.
01:00:30 ◼ ► Yeah. The, um, I did see a demo. This is actually how they did it at Apple park for WWDC,
01:00:37 ◼ ► which is, uh, they scan your face using the, basically the face ID dot scanner thing. There's
01:00:43 ◼ ► an app and they try to use that to size your, the light shield for it. Now mine was uncomfortable.
01:00:51 ◼ ► So I actually don't know if they did it right or not. And they said that they didn't have all the
01:00:54 ◼ ► sizes that they were going to have, but this is, this is a great example where I'm sure that if you
01:01:00 ◼ ► need to do it sight unseen, that there's a way you can do it, but it you're buying this expensive
01:01:07 ◼ ► thing, right? Like having somebody who has been trained in Cupertino or has been trained by
01:01:15 ◼ ► somebody who was trained in Cupertino, who has seen a lot of people come into the store,
01:01:19 ◼ ► look at your face and look at the thing and say, Oh, you know, you actually want this one. And like
01:01:36 ◼ ► that you don't have to turn around the next day and come back and say, I get a giant headache
01:01:40 ◼ ► using this. I think it's the wrong one. Right? Like that is, that is part of it. And as you said,
01:01:48 ◼ ► at least upfront. And, and, you know, I always, whenever I talk about vision pro, um, especially
01:01:52 ◼ ► when I'm talking to people who don't know a lot about it, like not in our direct sphere,
01:01:56 ◼ ► I keep trying to explain part of what Apple's doing here is trying to learn. Like they don't
01:02:01 ◼ ► know. This is the first time they've only been doing this inside. They've learned a lot on the
01:02:04 ◼ ► inside. I'm sure. But like that classic line of battle plans, not, you know, they work until they
01:02:10 ◼ ► meet the enemy at which part they fall apart. Right? Like this is the meet the enemy moment
01:02:14 ◼ ► for the vision pro is how does it work in the world with people with stuff we haven't anticipated
01:02:20 ◼ ► and that can go for like software developers and it goes for users and it goes for users,
01:02:24 ◼ ► how they use it. And it goes for users, like their faces and their heads and the shape of it. And
01:02:31 ◼ ► have you, you know, did you make this work or not? And like, it's all going to be a learning process
01:02:35 ◼ ► in retail. How does that work? They're going to take their best shot, but like, they're going to
01:02:38 ◼ ► have to learn on the fly too. Uh, I, I, every time I talk about vision pro, I get excited
01:02:43 ◼ ► because I mean, it's a cool product. It's a very cutting edge product. I enjoyed my 30 minutes with
01:02:49 ◼ ► it. I don't know if it's going to succeed or not, but I'm excited that Apple's built something this
01:02:53 ◼ ► cutting edge and I'm excited that it's going to be out in the world. And I, I think whatever happens
01:02:58 ◼ ► is going to be really interesting. I don't know if it's going to be again, a success, a failure,
01:03:02 ◼ ► something that muddles along for a little while, but like, it's sure. I mean, next year is just
01:03:08 ◼ ► going to be really interesting. That, that, that part I am sure of is, is it's going to be
01:03:12 ◼ ► fascinating to see what happens there. Unfortunately for the early adopters, a part of the learning
01:03:18 ◼ ► experience you described involves people getting a thing, getting it fit as best to their ability
01:03:23 ◼ ► going home with it and realizing they don't like it and bringing it back. And that iteration cycle
01:03:28 ◼ ► of which customers that I sent to someone had the face shield and it didn't fit right. And I gave
01:03:32 ◼ ► them the smaller size and all the people I give a smaller size came back and told me they have
01:03:36 ◼ ► headaches. So I should give people that like that learning process. Like the customers are part of
01:03:40 ◼ ► the learning process, unfortunately. So, well, they'll all learn together, uh, and hopefully
01:03:45 ◼ ► converge on something. So maybe by the time, again, the plus expensive one comes out, the
01:03:49 ◼ ► learning process that happened involves a lot of people with returns and dissatisfaction and, you
01:03:54 ◼ ► know, picking the wrong size. And I remember when they first did the watch band thing, it was like,
01:03:57 ◼ ► oh, well, if you want an Apple watch, you have to make an appointment. So one of our people can fit
01:04:00 ◼ ► it to you. And that was on your wrist for crying out, just going around your wrist. But it's
01:04:04 ◼ ► interesting to look at where they are today, where it's like, they don't have that process anymore.
01:04:07 ◼ ► You can just go into the store and buy a watch and yeah, you can still try them on, but it's not like
01:04:10 ◼ ► you have to make a fitting appointment. And the other thing that's important and Apple will hope
01:04:14 ◼ ► this will happen. We'll see if it really will is people know their Apple watch sizes. Now I get
01:04:18 ◼ ► this size band in this style. I put the thing in this hole. I get this size watch. People who have
01:04:24 ◼ ► bought lots of Apple watches, they know this about themselves, the way they know, like their gene
01:04:27 ◼ ► size. If this product is successful, the face shield consternation and the prescription stuff
01:04:33 ◼ ► will sort itself out. So when people are buying their fourth one of these in seven years from now
01:04:37 ◼ ► or whatever, maybe they'll already know, I know I want the G size face shield and I need this strap.
01:04:44 ◼ ► And when I get the prescription, I should get them like this. That's if the product is a success,
01:04:48 ◼ ► that's the ideal case, but that really has happened with the watch. I know because my wife has had an
01:04:52 ◼ ► Apple watch since the beginning and she gets a new one very often and she knows all her specs. And
01:04:57 ◼ ► when she goes to buy one, there is no complicated fitting process. It is very straightforward because
01:05:02 ◼ ► she knows what she wants. So fingers crossed for that actually happening with this, but those early
01:05:07 ◼ ► adopters, they're going to figure it all out. It's tough out there on the cutting edge.
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01:07:20 ◼ ► Jon, last week, I wrote an article about default apps and it was prompted by a listener, I guess, or
01:07:33 ◼ ► a reader, somebody who's posted on Mastodon. And they said, what do you recommend? I'm going to get
01:07:38 ◼ ► probably going to get a new MacBook Pro. What do you recommend for apps? And I hadn't really thought
01:07:42 ◼ ► of it in that way because I kind of assumed that so many people, especially who listen to us or read
01:07:46 ◼ ► my stuff, are going to be migrating from an existing Mac and they've been using the Mac a long
01:07:50 ◼ ► time. But this person seemed to be very much like, I'm starting from scratch. What should I do? And I
01:07:55 ◼ ► thought that was an interesting exercise into the sort of end of year, here are my favorite Mac
01:08:01 ◼ ► utilities or my apps of the year and all those things that I tend to write. Dan and I tend to write
01:08:06 ◼ ► those on six colors every year, thereabouts. And then I stopped myself because I went on this little
01:08:13 ◼ ► journey where I started to think, okay, somebody who's coming to the Mac who doesn't have a whole
01:08:18 ◼ ► history and a bunch of utilities that they rely on and wants to know how to get started. And I was
01:08:24 ◼ ► kind of taken aback because as I walked through this approach, I kept thinking Apple's default is
01:08:31 ◼ ► pretty good and that maybe you should start with Apple's default. And it used to be back in the,
01:08:37 ◼ ► and you remember this, back in the early days of OS X, right? Like I would immediately install some
01:08:43 ◼ ► stuff every time I went to a Mac that was brand new or like we had a Mac world expo, we had like a
01:08:49 ◼ ► game show where you competed at various computing tasks against another team, which was, it was
01:08:56 ◼ ► really fun. But like the first thing that I did when the clock started was install launch bar,
01:09:01 ◼ ► right? Like I, like I need my things. And I realized that over 20 years, 20 plus years,
01:09:07 ◼ ► Apple has actually done a pretty effective systematic job of having like the basics covered.
01:09:16 ◼ ► Like I used to have to install launch bar, but spotlight is way more functional than it was back
01:09:24 ◼ ► in the early days. And it's a good place to start. And then if you want more, you could get launch
01:09:28 ◼ ► bar or any of the other launches that are out there, Alfred, Raycast, Quicksilver. And I just
01:09:35 ◼ ► was thinking about like, yes, eventually you are going to want to have a different backup solution
01:09:39 ◼ ► that includes offsite backup, but Time Machine is there, start with that. You could, you can get,
01:09:44 ◼ ► if you, or if your company requires you to have something like Dropbox or Box or whatever, sure,
01:09:49 ◼ ► but you could also use iCloud in the meantime. And I ended up actually kind of struggling to think
01:10:04 ◼ ► clipboard manager, which I feel like Apple has left clipboard untouched other than the iCloud
01:10:16 ◼ ► clipboard is untouched since 1984. Um, I don't know if you have any thoughts about like, where
01:10:21 ◼ ► are the, where are the places where, um, again, not saying that the utilities aren't great, but
01:10:26 ◼ ► like, if somebody is just starting out, like the idea of exploring, like you use Calendar, you may,
01:10:32 ◼ ► I use Fantastical, but like you could start with Calendar, Calendar is fine. And then you can
01:10:36 ◼ ► decide if you want more than that. And then there's an, there, there are other apps you can use.
01:10:40 ◼ ► This journaling app on the iPhone is like, that's not on the, on the Mac yet, but it will be
01:10:44 ◼ ► eventually. Um, so what do you think about, obviously utilities are great. We have them,
01:10:49 ◼ ► you write them, but like the, the clipboard manager and actually window management, which
01:10:54 ◼ ► does fit into something that you build utilities for those seem to be the two places where Apple's
01:10:59 ◼ ► sort of like, eh, eh, I don't know. What do you think? Well, there's two strains of this. When I
01:11:06 ◼ ► first saw this article and first saw that title, I thought that it might be about, uh, the, this
01:11:11 ◼ ► first one that I'm going to describe, which is, uh, within the community of people who are, you
01:11:15 ◼ ► know, tech enthusiasts and especially have been using Macs for a long period of time. There is a
01:11:19 ◼ ► cycle, a boom and bust cycle where, uh, some of them will sort of fill their computer with, uh,
01:11:25 ◼ ► customizations and system level customizations and things in their menu bar and, uh, apps that
01:11:31 ◼ ► they use instead of the default apps. And they'll do that because that's what you do when you're a
01:11:35 ◼ ► tech enthusiast and they'll reach a point where they're like, you know what? I've gone too far.
01:11:39 ◼ ► I have too many icons in my menu bar. Too many of my things are customized. Uh, using a Mac without
01:11:45 ◼ ► them feels too alien and they get into a minimalist phase. Marco's done this a few times. He'd be like,
01:11:50 ◼ ► you know what? I'm just going to use the default Mac the way it is because that way there's like,
01:11:54 ◼ ► I've eliminated the setup process. Cause I get a new computer every eight months and I hate having
01:11:58 ◼ ► to set it up. And so now I'll just get used to the defaults and it saves a lot of time, but someone
01:12:02 ◼ ► who's new to the platform, that's not going to be their experience. They haven't gone through a boom
01:12:06 ◼ ► and bust cycle of adding crap to their Mac. They're a clean sheet, right? So that's not what your
01:12:11 ◼ ► article was about. It was not like, Hey, I've added a bunch of stuff, but I realized I've gone
01:12:14 ◼ ► too far and prepared it back. This person saying I'm starting from zero. What should I do?
01:12:19 ◼ ► And I think the, the, uh, that what you wrote is definitely true. And the part of it, uh, you know,
01:12:25 ◼ ► the thing that comes with the suggestion to start with the defaults is the idea. The thing that we
01:12:31 ◼ ► experience as tech enthusiasts is that either we don't want to, or shouldn't be responsible for
01:12:38 ◼ ► supporting someone using a new third party thing. So say someone is like, I'm new to the Mac. What
01:12:43 ◼ ► should I use? And you say, Oh, you should use this, this, this, this, this. You're kind of on
01:12:48 ◼ ► the hook now to help them figure out how to use those things. How do I install them? How do I deal
01:12:54 ◼ ► with updates? How do I pay for this? How do I, uh, deal with the fact that I'm using a non-default
01:13:00 ◼ ► thing, but sometimes the default thing will appear and how do they interact with each other?
01:13:03 ◼ ► And that's not really a support burden you want to take on. So I think tech enthusiasts learn,
01:13:10 ◼ ► don't suggest all your favorite weird programs to someone who's new on the Mac, because it'll be
01:13:15 ◼ ► confusing to them. And do you want to be answering their questions about that? Like, and you know,
01:13:19 ◼ ► how does, how does one password interact with key chain? And how do I, you know, why, why does the
01:13:23 ◼ ► key chain not work in Chrome previously, or even just getting the new Apple extension to work in
01:13:28 ◼ ► Chrome? And how do I deal with that? It's like, it's like, you get to the point where like,
01:13:31 ◼ ► I don't want to deal with that, but really setting aside your support burden. People should add
01:13:36 ◼ ► things to their Mac as their needs dictate. Maybe they don't care about the same things that you
01:13:43 ◼ ► care about. And when their needs dictate, like, you know what, I've been using the calendar app,
01:13:47 ◼ ► but it doesn't do this thing that I want to do. And if you know for a fact that Fantastical does
01:13:50 ◼ ► it, at that point, so just Fantastical, they will adopt Fantastical and they will figure out how to
01:14:04 ◼ ► I was dissatisfied with the default calendar. I asked a friend for advice on which calendar
01:14:23 ◼ ► but now they're using Fantastical. When they overcome that hurdle, they feel like they have
01:14:27 ◼ ► a sense of ownership about Fantastical. They solved the problem they had for their Mac.
01:14:31 ◼ ► And they need to repeat that process over the course of many, many years before they get to
01:14:36 ◼ ► the point where we're all at, where we have 17 different apps that we know that we like.
01:14:44 ◼ ► Get Fantastical, get LaunchBar, get that. Like you're not, you're not skipping them to the end.
01:14:52 ◼ ► And they do not have all the knowledge necessary to wrangle all that. So much better for them to
01:14:57 ◼ ► sort of demand a page, uh, to use a computer analogy, the things that they need as they
01:15:03 ◼ ► need them. And it doesn't mean you, you serve no role. You're there to say, Hey, if you're looking
01:15:07 ◼ ► for an alternative web browser or alternative calendar app, or a different way to deal with
01:15:10 ◼ ► your photos, I have options. I have advice. I have things to suggest to you, but let them come to you
01:15:14 ◼ ► with that suggestion. And the one thing you picked as like clipboard manager, like, Oh, that's an
01:15:18 ◼ ► essential one. Like I know why you feel that way. I feel that way too. I a hundred percent agree.
01:15:23 ◼ ► It's ridiculous that they haven't incorporated yet, but I'm not entirely sure that someone new
01:15:27 ◼ ► to the Mac realizes that's a gap. And that is the final thing that I'll say on this topic is
01:15:32 ◼ ► sometimes they will never come to you and say, boy, I wish I could have clipboard history because
01:15:37 ◼ ► it just doesn't occur. But it may be that once you show that to them, they're like, Oh, I can never
01:15:42 ◼ ► go back. Just like we all are. So there is a place for you to suggest things that people will never
01:15:46 ◼ ► ask for, but in moderation and you know, and selectively right. And maybe pick just one.
01:15:52 ◼ ► Well, there's that lack of imagination where I've, I've absolutely had this where I've,
01:15:55 ◼ ► I said to people, you know, you could, you were there like, Oh no, like this happens a lot in my
01:16:00 ◼ ► house where Lauren will be like, Oh, I'll say what? Cause she, she, she yells a lot at those
01:16:05 ◼ ► things like stupid computer or knitting or whatever. She she's vocal about her frustrations.
01:16:11 ◼ ► I'll be like, what happened? Cause she's using the computer. I'm like, okay, maybe I can help.
01:16:14 ◼ ► And, and I end up with, uh, Oh, I copied this thing and then I copied something else tonight.
01:16:20 ◼ ► And I, and that's that moment where you say we should put a clipboard manager or actually in
01:16:25 ◼ ► that case, I was like, I already installed launch bar on your computer, uh, many, many years ago.
01:16:29 ◼ ► And she uses launch bar and I'm like, Oh, did you know launch bar is actually saving your old
01:16:37 ◼ ► there are utilities that let you keep your clipboard history around. So you can, and like,
01:16:41 ◼ ► yes. And they're very useful. And I, I feel like that is also a, uh, a way to think about this,
01:16:47 ◼ ► that the thing that unlocked for me in thinking about this issue and writing about it is this
01:16:51 ◼ ► idea of like, if you're at Apple, cause over 20 years, this has happened while I wasn't kind of
01:16:56 ◼ ► paying attention to it as much because I had replaced a lot of the things that were missing
01:17:00 ◼ ► in early versions of OS X and they filled in the gaps a lot more, which was an interesting
01:17:05 ◼ ► realization. But I also am fascinated by the idea that if you're Apple, you're thinking
01:17:09 ◼ ► what's a way for us to improve the fundamental Mac experience in a way that is not too complicated
01:17:20 ◼ ► for regular users, but that regular users may not know that they want, but that they'd find
01:17:27 ◼ ► valuable. And when I use that approach, that's when clipboard history bubbles to the top for me.
01:17:33 ◼ ► Cause I feel like that's a pretty great win to say, Oh, did you lose that thing that was on your
01:17:38 ◼ ► clipboard? Well, you can do this, whatever that is and see the last 20 things that were on your
01:17:46 ◼ ► clipboard and get them out of there. Clipboard history is the menu bar clock of 2023. Like it's
01:17:51 ◼ ► just so obvious. Everybody has it's so lightweight and there's such an easy way to add it to the
01:17:56 ◼ ► operating system without messing with anybody. You can even have it off by default, like multitasking
01:17:59 ◼ ► off by default, I forget on the iPad, but anyway, you can have it off by default because it is
01:18:04 ◼ ► technically maybe a security concern. You know what I mean? But just it's there. Everyone wants
01:18:09 ◼ ► it. Everyone uses it. Like, and at some point it'll save your bacon. You'll be like, Oh no,
01:18:14 ◼ ► like aha. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then I started to think about like, could you use iCloud for it?
01:18:20 ◼ ► And would that be interesting to you have it? And it certainly could you, I would love it on
01:18:24 ◼ ► the Mac as a default, but I'm also thinking also iOS could have that feature please. Cause
01:18:29 ◼ ► I miss it so much on iOS. People can't add it to iOS. Like, yeah, that's right. Only Apple can do
01:18:34 ◼ ► it. Yeah. Well that's, I mean, only Apple can currently do it. It's criminal that only Apple
01:18:38 ◼ ► can do it. Well, that's true. Although there are, they believe there are clipboard history things
01:18:42 ◼ ► for iOS that, uh, use some strange technique to get around to like the user share sheet or
01:18:47 ◼ ► something. I don't know. I believe they do exist, but it's just so cumbersome. This should be,
01:18:50 ◼ ► it should be a lesson. This is why iOS and iPadOS have been held behind because one of the important
01:18:56 ◼ ► vectors for evolution of MacOS has been third parties extending the system. And then Apple
01:19:00 ◼ ► realizing that extension is essential and adopting it. I use the menu bar clock as an example. It's a
01:19:03 ◼ ► real one. They used to not be a clock in the menu bar that was a third party app for classic MacOS
01:19:07 ◼ ► and Apple said, you know what? That's a good idea. We should make that part of the operating system.
01:19:11 ◼ ► And the rest is 40 years of history. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, window management is the
01:19:16 ◼ ► other thing that I thought of, which is I know that Apple keeps, I mean, you know, this having
01:19:20 ◼ ► spent so much time, you and I have logged a lot of time in the MacOS 10 development trenches over
01:19:24 ◼ ► the last 23 years and every version. And I wrote the Mac world features and you wrote those RS
01:19:29 ◼ ► reviews and all of that. Uh, Apple keeps throwing window management systems in there. You're like,
01:19:34 ◼ ► Oh sure, here's a new one. Uh, maybe this one will work. And they've done little bits of cleanup
01:19:39 ◼ ► behind the scenes, like snap little, like real subtle, like snapping against edges and things
01:19:45 ◼ ► like that, that they've done over time as well. But when I think about like all the window management
01:19:56 ◼ ► or tile these or whatever. And, and, and Microsoft has tried a lot of this stuff too. That's another
01:20:01 ◼ ► thing that it strikes me. It's like, yes, there are window management things that Apple hasn't
01:20:06 ◼ ► tried yet on the Mac. And I wonder if they could do something there, but honestly, that's about
01:20:10 ◼ ► all I could come up with where I felt like there's total green space. I don't know if there are other
01:20:13 ◼ ► things that you think where Apple's like could really improve the default life of Mac users,
01:20:23 ◼ ► On the window management though, I feel like maybe that's, I would take a different approach to that
01:20:28 ◼ ► because as you mentioned, Apple has added so many things to Mac OS since the dawn of Mac OS 10
01:20:34 ◼ ► related to window management. They've only ever essentially removed one of them, which was, uh,
01:20:39 ◼ ► spaces in two dimensions. Do you remember when spaces used to be up down instead of just left?
01:20:43 ◼ ► Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. It was like a grid. That is the only one that they have backtrack that
01:20:48 ◼ ► are all still there. All right. But they just keep adding them. Right. And for the most part,
01:20:52 ◼ ► they're complimentary, uh, like they added stage manager. Did they get rid of mission control? No.
01:20:57 ◼ ► Did they get rid of spaces? No. Did they get rid of window snapping? No. Like did they get rid of
01:21:00 ◼ ► the zoom box? No. There's just everything they've ever thought of. And I guess single window mode
01:21:04 ◼ ► with the purple dot, but that was the only in beta. Right. Right. Right. So given that,
01:21:08 ◼ ► and given that I think all the things they've tried, there's somebody out there that probably
01:21:12 ◼ ► likes them and they're mostly useful. I think people who like two dimensional spaces probably
01:21:17 ◼ ► miss it, but I'm going to say the same thing I said when I was on MPU, which is we are at the
01:21:22 ◼ ► point with window management on the Mac or Apple. The best thing Apple can do is make public APIs
01:21:30 ◼ ► sufficient such that a third party could have implemented stage manager. You know what I mean?
01:21:35 ◼ ► Right. Stage managers, Apple's attempt is to do a window thing, but we're at the point now where
01:21:39 ◼ ► they've added so many different things and still some people are like, well, I would like to be
01:21:42 ◼ ► like this. I would like to be like that. It's time to make an API, make an API public API that apps
01:21:48 ◼ ► in the Mac app store, sandboxed apps, and you know, like, like real officially supported safe
01:21:53 ◼ ► apps using public APIs can do window management things. And that doesn't exist on the Mac.
01:22:00 ◼ ► There are third-party apps that are outside the Mac app store that try really hard using private
01:22:04 ◼ ► APIs to do cool stuff like that, but that's not a great solution. Those apps tend to break and Apple
01:22:08 ◼ ► frowns upon them and they, you know, they're not great. Right. If you made a third-party API to
01:22:13 ◼ ► influence window management at the fundamental level, at the level of moment to moment,
01:22:18 ◼ ► as a thing is being dragged, have awareness of where all the other windows are, what's in them.
01:22:22 ◼ ► And, you know, I understand it's a privacy concern and like they can see the contents of your windows
01:22:25 ◼ ► and blah, blah, blah. Like it's not easy to do, but they've done so much with window management.
01:22:30 ◼ ► This is the only viable next step to really solve this problem once and for all because,
01:22:35 ◼ ► because of all the things that they've made, everybody is like, eh, it's good. Maybe I use it.
01:22:39 ◼ ► Maybe I won't like third parties, third party opportunity, let a million window management
01:22:44 ◼ ► apps bloom right now. It's amazing that people have gotten by with all these window management
01:22:52 ◼ ► most of them don't work through it with sandbox apps. Anyway, it is such a grim scenario on the
01:22:57 ◼ ► Mac. I mean, it's worse on obviously on the iPad and iPhone when there's nothing, but on the Mac,
01:23:02 ◼ ► the things that you have to do, the private API is that you have to discover from decompiling things.
01:23:07 ◼ ► You're looking at header files to figure out how you can figure out which windows are on which
01:23:12 ◼ ► screen and what spaces they belong to and what apps own them, let alone be able to manipulate
01:23:16 ◼ ► them. Let alone to be able to get the contents. Like it's just such a nightmare to do that stuff,
01:23:21 ◼ ► which totally precludes anybody, any third party implementing something like stage manager.
01:23:26 ◼ ► But if the API has existed from planning stage manager, a Apple use them to implement stage
01:23:30 ◼ ► manager and everyone who has a better idea than stage manager can make their own idea and try it
01:23:35 ◼ ► out in the market. And then we might converge on something that is better than Apple could then
01:23:39 ◼ ► fold back into the operating system and the life cycle continues. Yeah. They could do a, a real
01:23:44 ◼ ► journaling app thing there, right? And say, Oh, we're, we built these APIs that are open now and
01:23:49 ◼ ► we use them and you can use them too. I don't think that's ever going to happen. Um, are there,
01:23:55 ◼ ► do you see any other empty spaces where you think like, Oh, that would be a place on the Mac that
01:24:00 ◼ ► Apple could add some functionality. And if you want, you could pitch it across all the platforms.
01:24:04 ◼ ► Cause that was one of the reasons that I modified my shared clipboard, uh, history to include iOS
01:24:10 ◼ ► was because I feel like that's how you get a, that's how you sell it inside. Apple was probably
01:24:14 ◼ ► like, Oh, every device will share the clipboard. Well, you have a clipboard history, not just the
01:24:18 ◼ ► Mac. Cause it's, I think a lot harder these days to say I have a Mac only feature. I would like it
01:24:23 ◼ ► not impossible. It's just harder. Yeah. Well, I mean, window management, you could make the
01:24:27 ◼ ► pitch for that because all Apple has similar difficulties in the iPad, but they keep trying
01:24:31 ◼ ► different things and the iPad customer base seems less satisfied with them. So if they made an API
01:24:37 ◼ ► and you could say this, this, these hooks, this API for understanding where all the windows are,
01:24:45 ◼ ► you know, get tiny thumbnail images of them, be able to control them and switch among them.
01:24:50 ◼ ► All those APIs will be on the Mac and the iPad. Um, Hey, that would be revolutionary for the iPad
01:24:56 ◼ ► because only Apple has been allowed to play in that sandbox and be, it is a way to pitch it,
01:24:59 ◼ ► but thinking outside of window management and like other types of features, I think you're right
01:25:03 ◼ ► that they've incorporated most of the low hanging fruit here. I mean, honestly, I, what I would say
01:25:08 ◼ ► is there's lots of stuff that ostensibly exists, but doesn't work very well that I would prefer
01:25:12 ◼ ► that they just on the Mac and some particular, I prefer they just make all that stuff work better.
01:25:20 ◼ ► being able to mount network shares. Why is it so bad? Why it's mean it just, please do not try to
01:25:25 ◼ ► come up with something that we shouldn't be scratching our heads. Here's this thing you
01:25:27 ◼ ► should add, do clipboard history, make a window management API, like do make network shares better,
01:25:33 ◼ ► like make things that are slow, faster, make things that have bugs, not have bugs. Like just
01:25:37 ◼ ► that's fair. That's, that's the level I am for most features in Mac OS these days. And it becomes
01:25:41 ◼ ► increasingly annoying when you encounter things like that. Like the, you know, the fact that
01:25:45 ◼ ► to get to, you know, to mount on my desktop, the, the, the folder for my wife's Mac over there,
01:25:52 ◼ ► take so many steps and it's so cumbersome and has so many weird obscure bugs and so much legacy
01:25:56 ◼ ► stuff. I, when they add stage manager, I'm like, okay, so you added stage manager, your next take
01:26:02 ◼ ► entirely new way to deal with windows, but still doing network stuff in the finder sucks. That's,
01:26:10 ◼ ► The other question I had for you was, are there any apps that Apple apps that are like default
01:26:17 ◼ ► experience apps that you choose over available third-party apps? And I'll say that the, I looked
01:26:23 ◼ ► at mine and I think music, I guess I would say, and Safari, but like I'm not using calendar. I'm
01:26:32 ◼ ► not using mail. I'm not, I'm not using those apps. I'm not using spotlight. What about you? Are there,
01:26:44 ◼ ► but I do run Chrome pretty much a hundred percent of the time, despite the air network change. Yes.
01:26:55 ◼ ► I think I have like I term two installed and stuff like that, but whatever advantages the
01:26:59 ◼ ► third-party terminal apps have, have not been sufficient to dislodge me from it's good.
01:27:03 ◼ ► It's good. I use the screen-sharing app now in Sonoma as well because the screen-sharing
01:27:11 ◼ ► I mean messages that are kind of doesn't count because it's kind of, yeah, it doesn't have an
01:27:16 ◼ ► alternative. It's not really like I'm using fantastic calendar and I'm using Mime stream,
01:27:20 ◼ ► right? I'm not using calendar and mail. Yeah. I'm not, I don't use Apple mail. I don't use
01:27:24 ◼ ► Apple calendar. I do use Apple contacts. I know they're third-party clients. I said, oh, I guess
01:27:27 ◼ ► I said the one I should use is photos, right? Because I do have third-party apps. I do have
01:27:32 ◼ ► several commercial third-party apps installed that read my photo library, but my default photos app,
01:27:36 ◼ ► like not just like the fall, which one launches, but I mean like the one that I'm going to use to
01:27:40 ◼ ► go through my photos is still Apple photos. Absolutely. Despite all of its annoyances and
01:27:44 ◼ ► interface annoyances that I have, the, the basic editing controls when I edit photos and
01:27:49 ◼ ► I hate how they work, right? I hate how cropping works. I hate how much stuff out that you are, but
01:27:59 ◼ ► those particular knobs. You can get way more knobs in other apps and you can get way fewer
01:28:04 ◼ ► knobs in other apps as well. And I have all those app installed, but I am most comfortable taking
01:28:08 ◼ ► a first pass at photos and adjusting them in the Apple photos app, despite the fact that I want to
01:28:14 ◼ ► throttle the people who have designed the UI for that simply because like, which knobs do I have?
01:28:21 ◼ ► well, the only knob that I really think is it's not the wrong set of knobs that it works so poorly
01:28:25 ◼ ► is at this point, Apple's little bandaid heel thing is embarrassingly bad compared to all the
01:28:31 ◼ ► ML powered ones that are in all the other apps I use. If they had like a Pixelmator Pro.
01:28:38 ◼ ► - If they had at least at that level, it would make things better. But you know, again, I'm,
01:28:41 ◼ ► I'm glad to have the third party options. - Photos on iOS doesn't even have that feature.
01:28:48 ◼ ► - It's, it's, it's offensive. As somebody who gets to live with all of the photo features
01:28:56 ◼ ► I realized, um, reminders and notes. I don't have a third party to do anything. I throw up a lot of
01:29:03 ◼ ► stuff in reminders. And although I don't use pages, I do use numbers for some stuff. And I
01:29:09 ◼ ► used to use keynote when I gave presentations, but like, and BB edit is where most of my stuff goes.
01:29:14 ◼ ► I do use notes for lots of stuff, especially stuff that syncs whenever I'm like watching a movie for
01:29:19 ◼ ► a podcast, I just take the notes and notes it's it. And I know it'll be there on all my other
01:29:23 ◼ ► devices and they're both very good reminders and notes. They've done a lot of that. Those keep
01:29:27 ◼ ► getting advanced every, every year or two, um, as time goes on and they're very, they're very good
01:29:36 ◼ ► despite the fact that they both have little things that annoy me. So notes on the Mac annoys me when
01:29:41 ◼ ► I, when I updated on my phone and the Mac app has been open the entire time and it's not updated.
01:29:45 ◼ ► And the way I fix that is by quitting notes and relaunching it. That should never happen,
01:29:47 ◼ ► but it does sometimes. Um, and the second thing is reminders. Uh, you know, it's, I think of the
01:29:54 ◼ ► reason I didn't mention these, I think of them as mostly as phone apps, because I'm getting the
01:29:56 ◼ ► reminders on my phone most of the time as I'm going through my day. But there is a Mac, you
01:30:01 ◼ ► know, copy of that app. And I do look at those same reminders on my Mac from time to time. But
01:30:06 ◼ ► when I will like log into, uh, you know, switch to my account on my wife's Mac, I'll see reminder
01:30:11 ◼ ► notifications for things that I did yesterday. They'll pop up and it's like, I mark that off on
01:30:16 ◼ ► my phone yesterday. Why now Mac, are you showing this notification now? The Mac doesn't yet know
01:30:21 ◼ ► that I marked it off either way. It's like, it's not a big deal. You know, I can either mark it
01:30:26 ◼ ► again or disclose it and it will go away. But that type of thing, I feel like shouldn't happen. And
01:30:31 ◼ ► yet I continue to use it, the default reminders app, because despite those minor annoyances,
01:30:36 ◼ ► it's built in it's everywhere and it, it, you know, I don't need anything more than what it
01:30:41 ◼ ► offers. I just wish it worked a little bit better. Yeah. I had an interesting UI hole that I fell in
01:30:49 ◼ ► that I haven't written about, but, um, so it all starts with Google disappointing me. So, well,
01:30:55 ◼ ► no, I guess technically it starts with Amazon disappointing me. Amazon's Echo, uh, got so bad
01:31:02 ◼ ► in interrupting me to try to advertise things that I replaced it with a Google Nest home mini,
01:31:09 ◼ ► I don't know, a little Google screen in my kitchen. Is it the little hockey puck thing?
01:31:12 ◼ ► No, no, it's got the one with the screen. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, cause I like you had the Amazon
01:31:18 ◼ ► show. Yeah. The Amazon show heads Echo show. Oh, and plus it would say, by the way, here's a thing
01:31:24 ◼ ► that you don't care about and I hate it. So I got the reorder T the Google one is better. I know
01:31:30 ◼ ► the Google one is better. Um, but it, uh, okay. So I switched to it in part because I'm using any
01:31:42 ◼ ► list as my shopping shared shopping list for my family, using that for a long time. And again,
01:31:48 ◼ ► it's that thing about like, I know there are other solutions, but at the time it was the best choice
01:31:51 ◼ ► and now we're in inertia mode there. So when I was looking number one thing we did in the kitchen,
01:32:02 ◼ ► Google thing. I'm thinking, can I replace the, the Echo? And the answer was yes, there is any
01:32:07 ◼ ► list support in Google. It was great. So I, I get the Google home, we have it for a few months. And
01:32:12 ◼ ► then I get an email from any list saying Google has decided to just stop supporting sinking with
01:32:18 ◼ ► its to-do lists and third parties. Google just continues a product? I know impossible. Right.
01:32:24 ◼ ► So, uh, very frustrating. Uh, we start using our iPhones and our Apple watches to put things on the
01:32:30 ◼ ► shopping list because there's a sync with reminders for any list. And then I had that moment where I
01:32:36 ◼ ► thought, you know, you can just share lists in reminders and they now are shopping lists too.
01:32:44 ◼ ► You can mark them as shopping lists and they organize them just like any list did. And I
01:32:48 ◼ ► thought, Oh, okay. Yeah. Like why, why am I doing this? I should just, okay. So that's great. So I
01:32:53 ◼ ► made it. We now have a shared shopping list that doesn't sync with any list. Any list is gone. I
01:32:59 ◼ ► canceled my subscription and now here we are. And then I fell into the hole, which is Apple by
01:33:08 ◼ ► default seems to think that every device you own should get a notification whenever somebody who
01:33:16 ◼ ► isn't you adds an item to a shared list by default. So, you know, I'm writing a story and it says,
01:33:29 ◼ ► Lauren put tomatoes on the shopping list. I'm like, okay. Hey, at least, at least it doesn't
01:33:34 ◼ ► just say like notes does, you know, has made changes and doesn't tell you what they are. Oh,
01:33:38 ◼ ► yes. Oh, the mysterious changes. So then I'm like, okay, notification center. No, it's not there. And
01:33:44 ◼ ► the thing is about reminders. You can turn off notifications for reminders. I don't advise it
01:33:49 ◼ ► because it's reminders. Turns out what you have to do is you have to go to the list and choose manage
01:34:01 ◼ ► shared list, the place where you invite people to the list. And in there is notify when adding items,
01:34:11 ◼ ► completing items and you have to uncheck it. So you have to go into reminders. You have to go into
01:34:17 ◼ ► that list there. And you know what? That's okay. But what it's missing is a thing that says on all
01:34:26 ◼ ► my devices, I'd love the option of saying, because I've been playing whack-a-mole with every device
01:34:37 ◼ ► Lauren added spaghetti to the shopping list. I'm like, God, I got to do it again. And I just keep
01:34:41 ◼ ► doing it over and over again until eventually all the notifications stop. And then Lauren says,
01:34:53 ◼ ► I always play the whack-a-mole game on all of her devices too. I just, you know, that, that anyway,
01:34:58 ◼ ► that's just a little hole. I fell in where I'm like, this is great Apple, but it's on by default
01:35:09 ◼ ► I'm not going to turn off notifications for all of reminders because it might need to remind me
01:35:13 ◼ ► of something. But anyway, but I love reminders. That remind kind of reminds me of what I was
01:35:21 ◼ ► so puzzled when Apple announced this feature. I'm like, so they added shopping lists, but they added
01:35:25 ◼ ► it to reminders. Right. And the reason, I mean, because you can understand why reminders might
01:35:32 ◼ ► act this way because it thinks of the items as things that you're supposed to do that you're
01:35:36 ◼ ► reminded, you know what I mean? And it makes sense if they were individual items like pick the kids
01:35:40 ◼ ► up. Oh, now I know my wife picked the kids up because I got the notification that reminder was
01:35:43 ◼ ► checked off or whatever, but for a shopping list, I don't need to know itemized every single thing.
01:35:47 ◼ ► So the thing we use for shopping lists, we did use any list for a while. Whatever we use a notes
01:35:52 ◼ ► document with the little check boxes in it. And you still get notifications and it says, you know,
01:35:57 ◼ ► the note has been updated or whatever, but like, but reminders just seems like, I just think of
01:36:02 ◼ ► reminders as individual items rather than lists of things. Whereas if they had integrated, you know,
01:36:07 ◼ ► if you're going to take any list I functioned out and add it to an Apple app, I would have added it
01:36:10 ◼ ► to notes first instead of reminders, but Hey, you know, and I tried the reminders thing, but we went
01:36:15 ◼ ► back to our notes thing, which is not great either. The reminders one is a great example of a 1.0
01:36:19 ◼ ► product that third parties do better, uh, organizing it by type like produce, meat, whatever.
01:36:24 ◼ ► That's great, but that's not the way we shop. We organize it by store because we buy these things
01:36:32 ◼ ► Sure. Joe's yeah. Right. And then within those stores, maybe they're broken down by type or
01:36:36 ◼ ► maybe not, or maybe you want them organized by aisle or in the order that you're going to,
01:36:39 ◼ ► you know, you're going to traverse through the store. So a 1.0 it first passes. Yeah. Separate
01:36:44 ◼ ► the dairy from the meat, from the vegetables or whatever. Uh, but you know, the fancier third
01:36:49 ◼ ► party apps that do this type of thing will let you organize by store and will, you know,
01:36:53 ◼ ► how do you want it sorted when you check them off? Uh, no notes will just shuffle the checked off
01:36:57 ◼ ► ones below the unchecked ones, but my wife wants to sort the checked off ones alphabetically and
01:37:02 ◼ ► notes won't do that for you and makes it difficult to do manually. So as an example of where Apple
01:37:07 ◼ ► has a good product, that's a good 1.0 and there are tons of third party products that can do this
01:37:13 ◼ ► better. Um, I, but again, with the notes one, like any list, any list doesn't use the notes database.
01:37:18 ◼ ► They have their own database that syncs between things making shopping lists out of reminders.
01:37:24 ◼ ► I think there are third party clients that can access the reminders database. Am I getting that
01:37:27 ◼ ► wrong? Um, yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. But anyway, if they did that, it's like, if there was, if there
01:37:32 ◼ ► was like lists functionality built in, you could get a third party client that would have the
01:37:36 ◼ ► defaults that you were battling against, like have better defaults that were more suited to you or
01:37:40 ◼ ► have more features. But yeah, I mean, I don't know how you do that in, in reminders today,
01:37:45 ◼ ► you'd probably need to create like a whole foods list. And, uh, like I have a, I have a hardware
01:37:51 ◼ ► store shopping list that is separate from my shopping list. Right. I mean, you do like an
01:37:57 ◼ ► OmniFocus thing or whatever, or when you enter the store geolocation, it pops up the list and stuff
01:38:00 ◼ ► like that, you know? Oh, that's nice. It's clever. Anyway, that's my story. That I think brings us to
01:38:07 ◼ ► the end of this episode of upgrade. Remember you can send us your feedback, follow up and questions
01:38:12 ◼ ► at upgrade feedback.com. Check my stuff out at six colors.com the incomparable.com and here on
01:38:17 ◼ ► relay, I have to do some podcasts when my voice is around. Uh, you can, uh, uh, check out John
01:38:25 ◼ ► Syracuse. Uh, let's see, re reconcilable differences here. Relay FM. I don't want to forget it.
01:38:39 ◼ ► Where can people find you social media wise these days? I'm, uh, well, I'm at Syracuse at
01:38:46 ◼ ► mastodon.social. Uh, that's where I'm doing all my social networking. I am on threads and, uh,
01:38:52 ◼ ► what's the other one blue sky, blue sky. I try to spend all my time and energy on mastodon. I
01:38:58 ◼ ► do occasionally pop up those other ones looking for mentions, but if you're looking for me,
01:39:01 ◼ ► I'm on mastodon. All right. Then I am, uh, Jay Snell at zeppelin.flights on mastodon. I'm also
01:39:07 ◼ ► on threads and blue sky, but not, not that, not that much. Um, and, and, uh, members, thank you
01:39:15 ◼ ► for supporting us with upgrade plus thank you to our sponsors, wild grain and express VPN.
01:39:20 ◼ ► Thank you to Mike for, uh, expanding his own horizons this week. We, uh, we support this
01:39:26 ◼ ► good job on assignment, doing the work, putting in the work. I thank you all for listening. And most
01:39:33 ◼ ► of all, thank you, John Syracuse for being my guest on a Monday morning. A pleasure as always
01:39:39 ◼ ► to spend some time talking about stuff with you anytime you need a substitute teacher. I'm here.
01:39:44 ◼ ► All right. Now we're just going to put on home alone. I think that's what happens for the rest of
01:39:48 ◼ ► the, for the rest of the class. Uh, except for the, I guess honor students will get a little,