00:00:12 ◼ ► Well, you still have school-- well, Adam still has school tomorrow because today was the kids' last day.
00:00:20 ◼ ► So this is the moment where I say, "I'd love another short episode," and you'll look at the timestamp and see that we go for three and a half hours.
00:00:33 ◼ ► Oh, God, that's cruel. Because in reality, many people will pull their kids out of school the day or two before Christmas break.
00:00:45 ◼ ► Like, teachers usually know, "Okay, if you're going to have a quarter of the class absent, why bother scheduling a big thing?"
00:00:52 ◼ ► For Adam's school, he's like, "Well, that's it for the week. We're just going to watch movies the next two days.
00:01:18 ◼ ► But I think that's part of school is the learning experience of "teachers need days off too."
00:01:43 ◼ ► And again, if a quarter of their class is going to be pulled out anyway, you can't really do much of academic importance.
00:01:49 ◼ ► The quarter class isn't going to be pulled out though because they're very strict about making sure you have butts in seats.
00:01:55 ◼ ► And so the absence policy for parents pulling their kids out for vacations is getting stricter and stricter
00:01:59 ◼ ► because school funding depends, at least in Massachusetts anyway, on those kids being in school.
00:02:05 ◼ ► I'll tell you what. So I mentioned a second ago that I volunteered at the school all day.
00:02:09 ◼ ► The school, the kids' school, has a program where father figures can come in and volunteer.
00:02:28 ◼ ► The school-wide holiday assembly/not recital, but I can't think of a better way to describe it, was today.
00:02:36 ◼ ► And let me tell you, when you have several hundred kids from grade pre-kindergarten through fifth grade,
00:02:44 ◼ ► and they're at their annual sing and ring, emphasis on ring, where they're all carrying a bell,
00:02:55 ◼ ► and they are all singing, to some degree of singing, at decibel levels that I cannot describe,
00:03:00 ◼ ► I almost pulled a Marco and put in my AirPods because, my goodness, it's so loud in there.
00:03:08 ◼ ► And their music teacher is a dear personal friend of the family. She does an amazing job with it.
00:03:19 ◼ ► To be clear, pulling a Marco means using AirPods as a hearing protection at a concert, like a rock concert.
00:03:48 ◼ ► Again, I'm 90% full of garbage. I did think about it and desire for it, but like you said, I would never do it.
00:03:56 ◼ ► Although I do want to talk to you, Marco, another time about your soundboard for when you're doing things remotely with microphones and stuff,
00:04:05 ◼ ► because the poor music teacher is using an old soundboard that I think is on its last legs.
00:04:11 ◼ ► And so what I want to know, not right now, is what is the Marco solution to this problem?
00:04:17 ◼ ► And then I would love the one-third of the cost, maybe quarter of the cost, public education solution to this problem.
00:04:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I was going to say, the me solution is not going to be on the educational budget.
00:04:56 ◼ ► some kind of auto-mixing is an incredible difference in how loud you can push things without feedback,
00:05:08 ◼ ► It's a massive difference to have an auto-mixer, because you have a whole bunch of mics near each other.
00:05:12 ◼ ► If someone talks into one, they're going to be picked up at quieter volumes at the other nearby mics as well.
00:05:18 ◼ ► So you figure, if you have eight mics across a big table, or in a school play situation,
00:05:27 ◼ ► then what's going to happen is all of that cross-feedback where your voice goes into everyone else's mics,
00:05:35 ◼ ► And any time the noise floor gets raised, that means that you can't have the PA volume up too high
00:05:44 ◼ ► So what auto-mixing does, when someone talks into one mic, whatever mic gets the strongest version of their voice,
00:06:50 ◼ ► there's a whole bunch of basically giant what looks like mixing panels or mixing boards.
00:07:09 ◼ ► And actually, Zoom, my first attempt at running this sound experience was a Zoom version of that.
00:08:15 ◼ ► And then I figured you might know enough to be able to give me a more realistic solution to the problem.
00:08:22 ◼ ► she needs to get some sort of RCA or equivalent audio in from a computer or something along those lines.
00:08:49 ◼ ► I'm sure you could definitely make her day if we can orchestrate that, so we'll figure that out after the show.
00:09:14 ◼ ► Well, you know, that would be a tremendous gift and I'm not going to hold you to it, but it would be a tremendous gift.
00:09:20 ◼ ► And another thing that would be a tremendous gift is if you would like to get the gift of ATP membership, which is the best,
00:09:28 ◼ ► you should go to, or have a really loved one, go to ATP.fm/gift and you can have them buy you or you can buy for someone else the gift of ATP membership.
00:09:40 ◼ ► If the person you're giving the gift to is already a member, John was smart enough to figure that out.
00:09:45 ◼ ► What we'll do is we'll push off your renewal date and so on and so forth such that it will be after the gift is done.
00:09:52 ◼ ► So far, this has gone very well. I am extremely saddened to report that we have no bugs as far as I'm aware of, which means I've now cursed it.
00:10:01 ◼ ► And I shouldn't have put that energy in the world, but here we are. So yes, ATP.fm/gift. John, anything you would like to add?
00:10:07 ◼ ► You've got it all. Remember, you can buy these things instantly, so you've got right up until the whatever holiday you're celebrating begins.
00:10:23 ◼ ► And I say that as though I'm angry, but honestly, I probably would have done the same thing if I were the internet.
00:10:27 ◼ ► The entire internet has told us, "Hey, here's what happens when you log into iCloud.com, even with two-factor, because your phone is lost," or something like that.
00:10:36 ◼ ► We kind of opined about this during the show, and then I had some real-time follow-up that was surely way too late for most of the people who emailed, just trying to help.
00:10:46 ◼ ► Yeah, because we were saying, based on the soul and device protection stuff, we were saying, "How do you log into iCloud from someone else's computer or whatever if you have 2FA enabled? How do you receive the 2FA code if your phone was just stolen?"
00:11:14 ◼ ► So Morgan S. writes, "When you log into iCloud.com from a web browser, you can access the Find My section without the need for your 2FA code.
00:11:23 ◼ ► I used this quite regularly when I worked at the Apple Store, and we needed to disable Find My iPhone on customer devices for some services.
00:11:34 ◼ ► Ian Williamson writes, "Logging into Find My on the web with only a password drops you into a very limited interface that lets you find, set to lost, and erase devices.
00:11:42 ◼ ► Attempting to break out of this interface to access iCloud functionality does then prompt you for multi-factor authentication."
00:11:52 ◼ ► And then back to Morgan again. Morgan continues, "You can also use the Find My app on another person's iPhone.
00:11:57 ◼ ► You go to Find My, and then you go to Me, and then you scroll down, and there's Help a Friend, which then takes you to iCloud.com/Find on the web."
00:12:06 ◼ ► And then a lot of people wrote in to remind us, I genuinely forgot about this, so this is a useful reminder.
00:12:12 ◼ ► So if you recall the way this is going to work in the new version of iOS that's in beta now, so Marco and I are out at a bar, and my phone gets stolen.
00:12:22 ◼ ► So the person who grabbed my phone can enter my password, and then they have to wait an hour in order to actually commit the change.
00:12:32 ◼ ► But the key that we missed on the show last week is that when stolen device protection is enabled, even when you're at a trusted location, you still need to do biometric authentication.
00:12:44 ◼ ► And I certainly dropped the ball on that last episode. I don't think any of us remembered.
00:12:48 ◼ ► So that's true, I believe, not only at the time you try to change, so at the beginning of the hour, say my password 12345 gets changed by the thief.
00:13:07 ◼ ► They can't commit that change until an hour later, and at that point they need my face or my fingerprint in order to actually commit it.
00:13:15 ◼ ► So that's one way that this is hopefully going to eliminate this whole thing as a problem.
00:13:25 ◼ ► All this stuff, not needing 2FA to reset or to wipe a remote device if it's lost, having the help a friend link in the Find My app, having all this stuff account for the real world here.
00:13:47 ◼ ► They're actually taking time to think about all the different avenues here, vectors of attack, how you need to make things accessible in the real world, how you can maximize regular people being able to find this stuff and being able to do this stuff in real world situations.
00:14:05 ◼ ► And having the biometric authentication being required still after one hour thing, again, what a clever solution that is.
00:14:14 ◼ ► I'm very happy with this feature. I still would like a little bit more control over something.
00:14:20 ◼ ► For instance, I think the home and work exceptions or exemptions, I think that should be optional and controllable to some degree.
00:14:28 ◼ ► One hour still feels a little less than what I would like the delay period to be, but I do admit that with the biometric re-authorization, that does change things quite a bit in its favor.
00:14:40 ◼ ► So overall, this is a great feature. I really am very impressed with some of the cleverness of some of these details.
00:14:48 ◼ ► And the only thing I would really nitpick now that I think is a bigger deal than all these little wish list items that I just said, is I think this should be on by default.
00:15:05 ◼ ► I'm sure it's going to be one of those steps in the walkthrough screen when you first boot up the new version.
00:15:24 ◼ ► And for something like that that has such large security implications to people who might not necessarily think they have major security implications, I think that's the kind of thing that should probably be enabled by default.
00:15:37 ◼ ► The biometric auth doesn't help with the one hour limit if you think the one hour limit isn't quite enough time for you to get to something. Like in general, the time limit thing, what you're worried about there is that when they have your phone plus your passcode, they can do a hell of a lot of damage without changing your Apple ID password.
00:15:56 ◼ ► So the Apple ID password and changing things about your Apple ID, yeah, they won't be able to do that because they need the second, you know, first and/or second authentication.
00:16:04 ◼ ► They need to wait a period of time. But while they're waiting, they can go into your iCloud keychain and get all your bank account passwords and go onto the web and go online.
00:16:12 ◼ ► Well, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. They can't get keychain stuff because it's also protected by biometric.
00:16:19 ◼ ► I believe that's one of the tweaks they've made for this. But I mean, look, there is a lot they can do.
00:16:24 ◼ ► Like, if you haven't all seen it, Joanna Stern did a wonderful interview video. She actually went to a prison. She went and found somebody who was in jail for doing this scheme at scale and interviewed him.
00:16:36 ◼ ► And it was very interesting. And he was saying, you know, most of the time, he doesn't need to like shoulder surf the passcode.
00:16:42 ◼ ► He just like kind of messes with the phone so it locks and he's like taking a picture. And people will just tell him their passcode just to like help him out.
00:16:49 ◼ ► Like, oh, yeah, it's one, two, three, four, five. Like they'll just tell him. And he was saying people put everything, all of their like passwords and details, they put them all in notes.
00:17:03 ◼ ► But even if it's not in notes, like that's the damage you can do with it with a phone with the passcode.
00:17:07 ◼ ► Like what if they in their email client, if you've got access to their email account, how many people's email clients, like say using the Gmail email client, is that going to lock when stolen device protection has come out?
00:17:16 ◼ ► No, you launch the Gmail client, you're already logged in, you have access to the email. Now you can reset every one of that person's passwords on their bank website or whatever. You know what I mean?
00:17:22 ◼ ► It's like, yeah, I think the email, having the email and having their phone number for SMS to FA codes.
00:17:29 ◼ ► Exactly right. Which of those websites are probably going to use as the lowest common denominator as we discussed before.
00:17:36 ◼ ► Your Apple ID is more protected with this, which is really important because then they could lock you out of like all your photos and all your purchases and all that stuff.
00:17:43 ◼ ► But they can still do a lot of damage with your phone and your passcode, even just your phone without your passcode.
00:17:48 ◼ ► They can do a lot of damage if they're having the phone and the passcode does even more damage.
00:17:52 ◼ ► So I would say the clock is still ticking when this happens. It's very important for you to get to a friend's phone or some of the devices as fast as possible.
00:17:58 ◼ ► And now you know what you can do to help with that. But don't think that you have unlimited time because like, well, it doesn't matter.
00:18:04 ◼ ► They'll never be able to reset my Apple ID password because they don't have my biometrics.
00:18:12 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about Beeper. Beeper is beeped, I guess. I don't know. This is all breaking news as we record.
00:18:22 ◼ ► They have all but given up on this. Eric Michalkowski writes, he is the co-founder of Beeper,
00:18:29 ◼ ► "Each time the Beeper Mini goes 'down' or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple,
00:18:39 ◼ ► As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist,
00:18:42 ◼ ► the truth is that we can't win a cat and mouse game with the largest company on Earth."
00:18:50 ◼ ► Why did you decide you were going to play a cat and mouse game with the largest company on Earth?
00:18:54 ◼ ► It's like somehow after two weeks of this, we just realized we can't play a game of cat and mouse.
00:19:05 ◼ ► "We believe we've created something that Apple can tolerate existing. We do not have any current plans to respond if the solution is knocked offline.
00:19:13 ◼ ► The iMessage connection software that powers Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud is now 100% open source for anyone who wants to use it or continue development."
00:19:23 ◼ ► And as far as I understand, apologies because I didn't have time today to do as much research into this as I would have liked,
00:19:29 ◼ ► but I believe what they said is, "Hey, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can run the software on it."
00:19:48 ◼ ► Yeah, right. It should watch some movies. Let's start with Elf or maybe Claymission Christmas.
00:19:55 ◼ ► Beeper will suggest that users get a hold of an old iPhone to get iMessage working on their Android phone.
00:20:00 ◼ ► Users will then be asked to install a FreeBeeper tool to generate an iMessage registration code that will reinstate the ability to register phone numbers on the service.
00:20:07 ◼ ► The catch is that the iPhone must first be jailbroken and it must be kept plugged into power at home and connected to Wi-Fi for periodic registration re-requests."
00:20:16 ◼ ► So you've got an iPhone already. Like, instead of using iMessage on that iPhone, just plug it in jailbreak and plug it in your house and keep it on the Wi-Fi.
00:20:27 ◼ ► Again, I respect the hacker mindset of trying to get this to work. That was really cool on a technical level.
00:20:35 ◼ ► Or they should have just released it open source and said, "Hey, do what you want with it, everybody."
00:20:39 ◼ ► It's been a fun story. This was never a business. And this is, as much as they're ever going to, this is them throwing up their hands and saying, "Never mind."
00:20:47 ◼ ► But honestly, I feel like the thing about, "Oh, just get an old iPhone and jailbreak it,"
00:21:02 ◼ ► I think the reality, unfortunately, that most people covering tech devices either rarely will point out or won't point out,
00:21:12 ◼ ► is that most people using Android in the US are not the super technical nerdy people who are going to be able to do all this stuff.
00:21:21 ◼ ► Yeah, there are some Android enthusiasts who are, who that well describes, but most of the US Android buying market is lower end users or non-technical users.
00:21:32 ◼ ► You know, I know the rest of the world is different, but in the US is where it's most needed.
00:21:36 ◼ ► And the reality is, like, you're not going to get your uncle whose Android phone is greeting all your group chats.
00:21:44 ◼ ► You're not going to get him to go get an old iPhone and get all this working. That's just not going to happen.
00:21:48 ◼ ► So I think if you are one of the people who is actually thinking about going through all those hoops to set up and keep running an old iPhone that you will somehow jailbreak and keep jailbroken,
00:22:00 ◼ ► like, I mean, look, that's a project, but is it really worth all that trouble? Just turn your iMessage just blue. I don't see that being worth it.
00:22:09 ◼ ► If that matters that much to you, you should probably just use an iPhone. And all the people who are using Android as nerds, like from the nerdy end of it, it probably doesn't matter that much to them to jump through all these hoops.
00:22:22 ◼ ► Like, they're using it for reasons that are strong enough that they probably don't even want to use iMessage this much.
00:22:27 ◼ ► So, you know, I don't think there's a great role for this product to exist. I think it made a wonderful tech story over these last few weeks and a few people enjoyed it maybe.
00:22:40 ◼ ► Yep, I agree. Although I just want to reiterate what you said a minute ago. I think as a technical exercise, this was fascinating and super cool.
00:22:48 ◼ ► And I'm glad that they've open sourced it. Like, I don't think anything will come of it, but I still think it's cool that they're contributing it back to, you know, the, I can't think of the word I'm looking for, not society, but the broader landscape, for lack of a better word.
00:23:02 ◼ ► But anyways, I think as a technical exercise, it's extremely neat and I applaud them from a technical level trying to accomplish this.
00:23:09 ◼ ► But in reality, like, how did you think this was going to end? You know, this is exactly what was always going to happen.
00:23:15 ◼ ► In fact, you know, Stephen Hackett summarized, "Regardless of what you think about Apple's control over iMessage, it's clear this party is over."
00:23:28 ◼ ► We had talked about this, I believe it was in Ask ATP last week, and we had a few people write in with some feedback.
00:23:33 ◼ ► The first person that I saw bring up UTM, which we'll put a link in the show notes, was Luke Channing, who writes UTM is a UI around, how do you pronounce this? It's Q-E-M-U.
00:24:04 ◼ ► Every time you are very consistent in getting it wrong, so just do the opposite. It's the George Costanza method.
00:24:13 ◼ ► Anyways, the Q-E-M-U that's quite popular these days has hardware acceleration on Apple Silicon and does architecture emulation.
00:24:20 ◼ ► Glenn Brown writes as well, UTM can run natively on Apple's Hypervisor framework on ARM Macs, plus it can emulate x86, PowerPC and a whole lot of other platforms.
00:24:28 ◼ ► When using it with Hypervisor framework on ARM Macs, you can enable the Rosetta x86 hardware extensions.
00:24:33 ◼ ► VirtualBox, which a few people brought up as well, does not have an ARM Mac version yet.
00:24:39 ◼ ► They had one in tech preview for a while, but it seems to have disappeared from their site.
00:24:42 ◼ ► And then friend of the show, Steve Tran Smith writes, the best and most flexible answer if you're on Apple Silicon is a separate machine running ESXi.
00:24:51 ◼ ► It's ideal if you can get your hands on a 2018 Mac Mini, as it requires the least amount of hacking around and lets you pass through the native GPU to the VM.
00:25:04 ◼ ► You can use the app stores that are on Intel versions in VMware to your heart's content.
00:25:08 ◼ ► So what Steve is saying is get a different machine entirely, which can be a Mac Mini, but there's other options as well,
00:25:14 ◼ ► where you run all this stuff on the other machine and you can remote desktop or VNC or what have you into them.
00:25:19 ◼ ► And that is the most native experience with the least amount of hacking about, but there's still some hacking about required.
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00:27:32 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about the Massimo patent-related things that we spoke about last week.
00:27:38 ◼ ► The two of you got on a tear, which I was all in on. I wish I had a bucket of popcorn that I could have consumed as I was listening to you guys.
00:27:47 ◼ ► But I think all three of us got a little off the rails about the specifics of this particular case.
00:28:05 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, I think we didn't fully dive into the details of this case, and that's bad on us, which we're about to correct.
00:28:12 ◼ ► But also, we were mostly railing against the patent system as a whole, and it deserves every part of the rant.
00:28:20 ◼ ► Yeah, we were complaining a lot about the patent system, and Marco went off on a big tangent about patent trolls,
00:28:31 ◼ ► And I can understand why they might have gotten that impression, because we did yell about patent trolls a lot,
00:28:35 ◼ ► and it was part of the same conversation, but it was just, "Hey, and by the way, a thing called a patent troll exists,
00:28:43 ◼ ► So the closest you can come to justifying this is something that Marco said, where he was trying to say something that...
00:28:48 ◼ ► He characterized Massimo's patents as being dumb patents in part of a conversation where we were calling patents dumb.
00:28:59 ◼ ► And this first feedback item from Martin Rommel says, "I agree that the US patent system has many issues as a holder of 12 patents,
00:29:06 ◼ ► most of them real, original ideas, but from what I've been reading, the Massimo case is actually an example of how it should work.
00:29:15 ◼ ► Here is the problem from my perspective with people understanding what I'm talking about.
00:29:19 ◼ ► The idea that in the Massimo case, they're not a patent troll, their patents are good and real, and this is an example of how the system should work."
00:29:27 ◼ ► Again, I'll reiterate, most people do not let this register with them because they assume I don't mean what I am saying.
00:29:40 ◼ ► So the idea that there's such a thing as a patent that is the way it's supposed to work, I personally disagree with.
00:29:47 ◼ ► I think there is no patent that should be allowed to be had because I don't think you should have exclusive rights to an idea that you came up with.
00:29:57 ◼ ► So if you say, "Well, but these patents, these are the ones that I think are valid and these are the ones that are invalid."
00:30:02 ◼ ► Now, given that, we do very often talk about very dumb patents because it is possible to look at patents and say, "How dumb is this?"
00:30:10 ◼ ► And so you may think, "But the less dumb ones, those are the ones of showing how it should work, right?"
00:30:15 ◼ ► I disagree. I think that's not how it should work, but I can understand the point of the thing of saying, "They're not a patent troll."
00:30:22 ◼ ► I agree that Massimo is almost certainly not a patent troll. They make real things. They have patents that people would consider not incredibly dumb.
00:30:29 ◼ ► Although I will point out that as part of battling them in court, Apple has invalidated a whole bunch of their patents.
00:30:33 ◼ ► Which is inevitable because, again, when these companies have a bunch of patents, inevitably, many of them are incredibly dumb and able to be invalidated by companies with a lot of money and motivation to do so.
00:30:45 ◼ ► And they invalidate them by saying, "This doesn't even meet the incredibly weak standards of patents that we have developed in this country."
00:30:51 ◼ ► It's so bad and so dumb that in court I can show that this is an original idea. It was invented before. It's obvious to people who are knowledgeable in the art.
00:31:00 ◼ ► They can knock down these patents even within our current system, which is so favorable to allowing you to patent any BS.
00:31:07 ◼ ► But just so you understand where I'm coming from, there's no such thing as a patent saying, "This is one of those patents that's working the way you think it should."
00:31:24 ◼ ► That said, a patent troll is a company that doesn't make anything or do anything. And that's not Masumu.
00:31:30 ◼ ► They make things and do things. Which is part of why Apple can't just swat them away entirely because they have actual products.
00:31:38 ◼ ► And that's why I think they're coming to getting favorable decisions in these various forums that they're battling on.
00:31:45 ◼ ► They're not out there with just, "We bought this pile of patents and we want to extract money."
00:31:50 ◼ ► And if they were, by the way, Apple would have just paid them off because they would have taken far less money.
00:31:54 ◼ ► But Masumu is motivated by their righteousness of saying, "We're not just a patent troll. We didn't just buy a bunch of patents from some dying company and we're trying to extract money from them.
00:32:02 ◼ ► We actually are trying to do important things and Apple is stealing all of our ideas and here are all our patents on them."
00:32:10 ◼ ► And that's why Masumu is essentially fighting this tooth and nail but they feel justified because they feel they have been wronged.
00:32:17 ◼ ► It's important to separate out your concept of... not you, John. You, the listener. Your concept of patents is correct.
00:32:25 ◼ ► But it's important to separate our conception of patents versus what's actually happened in this story.
00:32:31 ◼ ► Obviously, Masumu is trying to paint it a certain way. Apple is trying to paint it a certain way.
00:32:37 ◼ ► What seems to have happened, based on most of the reporting around this particular dispute, is not necessarily blatant patent infringement. It's more poaching.
00:32:48 ◼ ► So what seems to have happened is Masumu had a bunch of ability to detect blood oxygen through small gadgets.
00:32:56 ◼ ► Apple apparently went to them and looked around and was like, "Hmmm, pretty cool, huh?" and then stole all their people they could.
00:33:04 ◼ ► They didn't steal them. They offered them more money to come work for Apple, which is part of how our system works.
00:33:12 ◼ ► When there was the no poaching agreement between Apple and Pixar, that's an example of something that shouldn't happen and is unfair because companies say,
00:33:19 ◼ ► "Hey," or whatever it was, ILM and Pixar, whatever, "Hey, don't offer our employees more money to come work there.
00:33:24 ◼ ► We'll all agree that we won't give our employees any raises above these levels and that way we won't poach from each other."
00:33:30 ◼ ► That is anti-competitive. That is anti-worker. Offering someone to double their salary and give them stock options and they come to work for you,
00:33:37 ◼ ► that is the foundation of our competitive system for employees. It's the way workers get more money because their skills are valuable and somebody wants them.
00:33:45 ◼ ► Now, that said, having someone come work for you and bring with them all the trade secrets and everything from their previous company is, you know, at least frowned upon
00:33:53 ◼ ► and you can imagine is ethically questionable and in some places not legal. And patents are in the mix there because you can say,
00:34:00 ◼ ► "Okay, well, I know things, but I think I can tell you, Apple, a way that you can do the thing that we did over there at Massimo,
00:34:07 ◼ ► but in a way that doesn't technically violate Massimo's patents." And that's when you get into this whole thing, which is, from my perspective,
00:34:13 ◼ ► becomes less about morals and ethics and more about the legality of a system that I've already said I don't agree with at all.
00:34:21 ◼ ► So yes, you have to work within US laws and US laws have patents and if you can offer an employee twice the money and they get to work in a cool spaceship
00:34:28 ◼ ► and they'll come to your company and they will try to figure out a way to do the same thing Massimo is doing without technically violating their patents,
00:34:40 ◼ ► Another thing I don't think was clear last time is that I'm not rooting for Apple here. I don't think Apple is right or Massimo is right.
00:34:49 ◼ ► I think it's just two big companies, as we did last time, two big companies with piles of patents fighting each other to the death in a legal system,
00:35:01 ◼ ► Who's right, who's wrong, it is a question for lawyers. Again, as far as I'm concerned, neither one of them should have any patents because patents shouldn't exist.
00:35:12 ◼ ► And is Apple shady for taking meetings and saying, "Oh, we're super interested in your company, maybe we'll even acquire you, just tell us everything about your company."
00:35:18 ◼ ► And then they go off and do the same thing? Yeah, that's not great. That's basically Sherlocking on a company-level scale, but I have news for you.
00:35:24 ◼ ► That's what every big company does. And it's crappy, but it's one of the powers that big companies with a lot of money have.
00:35:33 ◼ ► Making bigger and more powerful companies tends to not make the landscape for competition better,
00:35:40 ◼ ► because they can come to you and say, "Let's just have a meeting and you can sign these documents and tell us all about everything you're doing,
00:35:46 ◼ ► and tell us how you're doing it, and then maybe, who knows where this will lead, who knows?"
00:35:54 ◼ ► And they go off and do everything that your company did based on the knowledge you gave them in those meetings,
00:36:04 ◼ ► And you could say, "Well, the small companies should be smarter, they should sign agreements that doesn't let Apple do that or whatever."
00:36:12 ◼ ► They want to have that meeting because they think maybe they're going to be acquired, and then they maybe think,
00:36:16 ◼ ► "Well, don't worry if they try to copy what we're doing. It's all protected by our patents, and then I have to fight that stupid patent battle."
00:36:31 ◼ ► but the legalities of the whole patent system are so weird that it's not really easy to tell what will happen,
00:36:44 ◼ ► And as for the stories in the press, obviously, depending on which side you're hearing from, it can sound one side or the other,
00:36:50 ◼ ► but I think we can all agree that in general cases with a very large company, a smaller company,
00:37:10 ◼ ► I mean, again, in court, Apple did invalidate a bunch of their patents, but they also lost on a couple other ones.
00:37:15 ◼ ► So we hear Apple's side in court, but yeah, they're not going to the press and trying to counter the narrative for Massimo.
00:37:20 ◼ ► But I 100% believe everything Massimo is telling, because what they're describing is common practice in the industry.
00:37:34 ◼ ► that they went in there knowing they were going to steal all their stuff and then drive them out of business or whatever.
00:37:39 ◼ ► But that's the problem with patents, because Apple went in there knowing that they wanted their watches to check blood oxygen.
00:37:54 ◼ ► And are you telling us? Obviously, that's not what their patents are about, specifically,
00:38:01 ◼ ► and there's pretty much no way for Apple to do it without violating a whole bunch of dumb patents,
00:38:14 ◼ ► And maybe if there's some specific idea that they found out from those meetings that helped them,
00:38:18 ◼ ► but again, if you're coming from my perspective where no one should have an exclusive right to an idea, that is fine.
00:38:25 ◼ ► It's just kind of questionable within the legal system to have that meeting and to come away from it
00:38:32 ◼ ► and just try to do it all on your own and poach all their employees and do all that stuff.
00:38:36 ◼ ► It doesn't feel good if you're the smaller company because you're in a position of less power.
00:38:55 ◼ ► They look around the landscape. They see this company has the ability to do it and a whole bunch of patents that are related to it.
00:39:18 ◼ ► They want some absurd price or some absurd terms and we look around and we're like, "You know, upon closer inspection, these patents don't seem that strong."
00:39:30 ◼ ► What if we just hire them for way less money than what this company wants us to pay them and just develop our own version that goes around their patents.
00:39:37 ◼ ► That to me, if that's how it went down, and again, we don't know this, but if that's how it went down, I don't see Apple as being the evil bully in this situation.
00:39:48 ◼ ► It's a little bit of a bully to get the meeting and to have them open up to you about all that stuff because personally they learn something in those meetings.
00:39:54 ◼ ► Well, how much are they opening up? I mean, the whole point of patents is you're supposed to disclose everything about the invention.
00:39:59 ◼ ► I know, but there's more to it. Otherwise, what are they even talking about in the meeting? They're not meetings to acquire them.
00:40:04 ◼ ► No, my guess is they were meeting to basically look around and see, "Should we work together?"
00:40:15 ◼ ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You kind of have to take the meeting because it might lead to some lucrative deal for your company.
00:40:22 ◼ ► But yeah, I don't think they even got to the stage where anyone was demanding any kind of price.
00:40:34 ◼ ► In the absence of intellectual property that I don't agree with the existence of, like patents, they should be able to do it without them.
00:40:41 ◼ ► But having another company that has done it and has had some success, how much information are they getting that wasn't public?
00:40:49 ◼ ► I don't know. Again, the patents themselves, the whole point is the patents are public, so that's part of the whole patent system.
00:40:54 ◼ ► But I presume there are things they discussed in that meeting that go beyond what is known from the public patents.
00:41:02 ◼ ► But who knows? We weren't in those meetings. Again, they'll hash it out in court, I suppose.
00:41:06 ◼ ► Honestly, if Muslim was disclosing secret information to Apple in these casual meetings or whatever...
00:41:11 ◼ ► Not secret, but just things you learned about product development, what things do you have in development, what approaches have you found more promising.
00:41:21 ◼ ► That's another thing about patents that's stupid. You can patent all sorts of BS. You can go find all sorts of patents for things that are nonsensical.
00:41:27 ◼ ► So just because a patent exists, you don't actually know, "Well, did you try this and it ended up being a good idea and economically viable and it actually works the way you said it would?"
00:41:35 ◼ ► Or is it just an idea that you have? Again, I don't know what went on in those meetings.
00:41:38 ◼ ► But in general, I don't like the ideas of big companies jerking little companies around and squashing them or whatever.
00:41:46 ◼ ► So at this point, I understand the people who have these patents at Massimo or whatever, I understand their feeling of righteousness.
00:41:54 ◼ ► Because as you subscribe to the ideas of patents, it seems like we did the work to figure all this out, we published our patent, and part of the system is you're not supposed to steal our idea without paying us.
00:42:02 ◼ ► And if you really buy into that system and you agree with it, they should have a feeling of righteousness as they battle it.
00:42:07 ◼ ► I don't share that feeling because I don't think they actually have that right, but legally they do, so hash it out with the lawyers.
00:42:13 ◼ ► So Mark Hill continues, "The description of Massimo just being a patent troll throws them in a bucket of bad actors, which probably underplays the role that Apple played here.
00:42:20 ◼ ► I think this Verge article described the situation well, in which Apple behaved in a pretty predatory manner and for some reason has doubled down and sued Massimo.
00:42:29 ◼ ► I am sure there is much more to the story and loads of bad blood, but I feel the characterization of 'they are just an evil patent troll' is a bit unfair."
00:42:41 ◼ ► I listened back and the worst thing you said, Mark, was you characterized their patents as being dumb at some point.
00:42:51 ◼ ► But patent trolls are an entirely different beast, which is a company that makes nothing, collects patents, and just shakes people down for money. That is not Massimo.
00:43:00 ◼ ► Indeed. There is also an LA Times article from October, which I don't recall how it landed in the show notes, but I thought it was very interesting.
00:43:09 ◼ ► A few quick snippets from that. With regard to Massimo's CEO, he wants to stop Apple from delivering what he calls the "kiss of death" to more vulnerable companies,
00:43:22 ◼ ► Then, separately, earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal spoke to two dozen executives, inventors, and founders who feel like Apple delivered the same kiss of death.
00:43:33 ◼ ► And then finally, the LA Times wrote, "It requires an extremely powerful suspension of disbelief to not see a pattern here, to ignore how Apple's wielding its power to get what it wants when it wants."
00:43:42 ◼ ► Now, admittedly, I think this article had a point of view when it started, but it still was an interesting take on the matter.
00:43:52 ◼ ► Whether you think it's fair or right or whatnot, it's certainly not a very sporting way of going about it.
00:43:58 ◼ ► I mean, it's true of big companies. Big, powerful companies do this to small companies all the time.
00:44:05 ◼ ► Because you have to, because of the imbalance of power, because of the possible upside, right?
00:44:09 ◼ ► What are you going to do? Turn down that meeting? Say, "No, we refuse to talk to you, but I think that's not going to help you. You have to take the chance." And so they do.
00:44:15 ◼ ► It's a power imbalance. Whenever there's a power imbalance, even in a situation where the more powerful party is the most benevolent possible, they can accidentally do things that squish you because you're just a tiny ant compared to them.
00:44:32 ◼ ► Well, also, how much of this really has to do with the meetings? If Apple can hire away your key talent at massive salaries, it doesn't really matter whether they meet with you or not.
00:44:42 ◼ ► If they want to do that and if your key talent can just go to some other company and deliver the same value to them that they were delivering to you, it's unfortunate for the smaller company that can't afford to match those salaries or whatever.
00:44:53 ◼ ► But that's just capitalism. That's just the value of good people. I don't see Apple as being a wrongdoer here or some kind of bully or some kind of unscrupulous actor by being willing to pay top talent, top salaries to come work for Apple and develop their stuff there.
00:45:11 ◼ ► And that's not Apple's rep, by the way. Apple does not have a reputation for paying people top salaries.
00:45:16 ◼ ► The opposite reputation is Apple's salaries are actually a little bit lower than their competitors. I think saying that's just capitalism is not as big of a defense as you think it is.
00:45:24 ◼ ► But either way, the opposite, like I said before, is companies colluding to not poach from each other and that is worse for workers.
00:45:31 ◼ ► So people should be paid what they're worth. And if you have highly valuable skills that multiple companies want and you go to the one that gives you the most money, that's good for you.
00:45:39 ◼ ► That gives a little bit more power to the individual workers so they can get some of the money instead of it entirely being funneled to the people who run these giant companies.
00:45:48 ◼ ► Also, if somebody can come to your company and develop similar technology as they were doing for someone else that evades all the first company's patents, then I would say the first company's patents weren't that strong.
00:46:00 ◼ ► Sometimes they do things in an even stupider way to avoid the patents. That's why patents are so dumb. Everyone wants to do the same thing and it's like, "Well, we have to do it in a convoluted way to avoid this stupid patent, but we all want to get the same look." It's just stupid.
00:46:13 ◼ ► But yeah, how valuable are your skills to a particular company at a particular time will ebb and flow and so take advantage of it while you can.
00:46:22 ◼ ► So Apple has said that they are developing a possible software workaround in response to the forthcoming ban and actually as of today, I believe it was, they have stopped selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2.
00:46:37 ◼ ► And I think there's going to soon come a time that third parties like Amazon or Best Buy won't be able to sell them either.
00:46:46 ◼ ► Additionally, apparently they can't, I think Apple either can't import or can't buy or do something related to parts for older Apple Watches so older Apple Watches cannot get repaired, which is a bit of a problem.
00:46:57 ◼ ► Because the problem is it isn't just the Series 9 and Ultra 2 that have the allegedly patent-infringed hardware. It's every Apple Watch model that has a blood oxygen sensor, which I believe is Series 6, 7, and 8, right?
00:47:12 ◼ ► It's all of the high-end models since either the 6 or the 7. So if you have like a Series 7 that you're bringing in for warranty repair, they might not be able to actually give you a replacement for it because they can't legally do that or they can't get their hands on them or whatever.
00:47:28 ◼ ► Yeah, and by the way, the software workaround is not to disable the blood oxygen sensor. Apple believes that they can work around this in software by somehow doing something with the software that avoids the patents.
00:47:38 ◼ ► Masamo does not believe this, to be clear, and I'm sure they'll hash it out in court. Did the change that they make still violate the patent or not?
00:47:49 ◼ ► I mean, yes, worst case, I suppose Apple could disable it, but that would be a giant class action lawsuit for selling a product based on blood oxygen sensor and then disabling that feature after the fact.
00:47:59 ◼ ► So Apple's got to figure out a way to satisfy either the courts or Masamo to make this go away. And like I said last week, I believe they will in not too much time.
00:48:11 ◼ ► I really don't think they're going to let this drag out for all of 2024. So sometime after the new year, I expect them to figure this out and issue a press release through gritted teeth that makes it all seem like everybody's happy. Kind of like the Qualcomm thing.
00:48:26 ◼ ► Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if this was resolved before we actually published this episode.
00:48:30 ◼ ► We'll see. I mean, yeah, everyone plays all the cards they have, but at a certain point, yeah, we have to come to the table again and some money is going to change hands.
00:48:38 ◼ ► Indeed. Anonymous writes that "I'm an embedded controls technical lead at an automaker, specifically on new technologies, a position that essentially requires a lot of interface with the patent system.
00:48:52 ◼ ► A big measure of my success is how many patents my name is on. Figured I'd give this background before I say I agree with essentially everything you said about patents in this week's episode.
00:49:02 ◼ ► I have useless patents, obvious patents, patents on things that don't work, patents on things that have been done since before I was born, and even patents on technologies for cars that would only work on specific non-earth celestial bodies.
00:49:12 ◼ ► I'm not kidding. That is exactly what was written to us." The anonymous person continues, "What I don't have is any patents that feel like true contributions to the state of the art, let alone anything that would actually be worth actually defending.
00:49:27 ◼ ► I once had a dilemma over whether we needed to speak with one of our suppliers about licensing patents on a project we were developing in-house, as we knew they had substantial coverage in the area we were working in.
00:49:36 ◼ ► I spoke with one of our intellectual property lawyers about this and got the following paraphrased response, "We might not provably infringe on any of their patents in our implementation, and even if we did, it would be such a bad idea for them to sue us that we would never do it.
00:49:50 ◼ ► Generally speaking, if you ever wonder whether something you want to do is prevented by existing IP, just put that out of your mind and do it anyway.
00:49:59 ◼ ► No one will complain, and even if they did, the legal staff will make it go away without you ever hearing about it." That's all to say that big companies can basically get away with anything.
00:50:10 ◼ ► As you folks said, everyone is constantly infringing on each other's patents, and even if there isn't a business reason to not complain, as in the case of my supplier, any attempt to protect IP against a large company is an invitation for them to rain fire on you for all the things you're plausibly infringing on.
00:50:30 ◼ ► That is actually like, how does anyone get anything done? They just ignore it and put their fingers in your ears and go "la la la" and hope the lawyers make it go away.
00:50:40 ◼ ► That's why part of the job of these big companies is to amass defensive patent portfolios so that they are prepared to do battle with anybody who comes at them for IP infringing. It really does take a particular instance of someone really feeling that they've been wronged, that injustice has been visited upon them, for them to burn time and money to do what Massimo is doing.
00:51:05 ◼ ► The people behind that suit obviously feel really wronged, but in the rest of the industry everyone is just working within this dumb system as best they can, pretending it doesn't exist, and hoping that they all have their giant stockpiles of IP nukes pointed at each other as such that no one will really make a fuss.
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00:53:21 ◼ ► All right, so moving on. We had a fun conversation last week, again, from Ask ATP with regard to EVs that satisfy Rangachari Anand's requirements.
00:53:36 ◼ ► Again, I'm so sorry. And we had a lot of people write in with feedback. I don't think either of us or any of us had the time to independently verify any of these claims.
00:53:50 ◼ ► And to summarize, Rangachari's requirements were mostly about like physical controls for things like the HVAC system, having a sunroof that opens.
00:54:01 ◼ ► They're mostly about like physical controls and physical shifter and that kind of stuff.
00:54:05 ◼ ► Indeed. So Rick Gore wrote in the Audi e-tron line, perhaps the GT, which is basically a Porsche Taycan, the Audi Q4 e-tron or Q8 e-tron.
00:54:21 ◼ ► Also, all those are quite expensive. I don't have numbers in front of me, but they are very, very expensive.
00:54:31 ◼ ► So normally when people are asking for vehicle recommendations, they normally list things like price and form factor that they are looking for.
00:54:42 ◼ ► And Rangachari specified neither. So we don't know if they're looking for a motorcycle or a semi truck.
00:54:52 ◼ ► And by the way, I put all the pictures in the show notes for all of these because we were getting all these different suggestions.
00:54:57 ◼ ► I was trying to drive home at that point. It's like, look at all these different cars people are suggesting.
00:55:00 ◼ ► But then once I put all the pictures in here, I remembered, oh, yeah, every car looks like an SUV now.
00:55:07 ◼ ► Which, by the way, I've seen an e-tron GT in person and they actually look very nice, I thought.
00:55:13 ◼ ► Yeah, better than the Taycan if memory serves. But it's been a long time since I've seen it.
00:55:29 ◼ ► They suggested the Hyundai Kona, which I think is available in the States, but I certainly believe to be available overseas.
00:55:36 ◼ ► Doug Spry reiterated my recommendation from last week, which I don't know if Marco cut it or if people didn't listen long enough.
00:55:45 ◼ ► Fair enough. The Chevy Bolt, which apparently just stopped production literally in the last week or two.
00:55:54 ◼ ► Then the Strategery recommended the Mini Cooper SE. Vivica recommended the Fiat 500E La Prima,
00:56:02 ◼ ► the one model in trim level that's available in Australia. So I don't know if that's helpful here or not.
00:56:14 ◼ ► And Sam actually knows what he's talking about because he works in the industry. Not to imply that you all don't.
00:56:22 ◼ ► Sam suggested the Honda prologue, the Acura ZDX and I guess much to John's chagrin, the Mercedes EQB.
00:56:31 ◼ ► And this is another great thing about the EQ line. You may be thinking to yourself, wait a second.
00:56:35 ◼ ► I thought it was like the EQS was like the S class and the EQE was like the E class and the EQB would be like the B class.
00:56:40 ◼ ► But this looks like an SUV. They make a car called the EQS and they make it in sedan and SUV versions.
00:56:49 ◼ ► I don't know what they're doing over there. Mercedes. And by the way, the Honda prologue and Acura ZDX are actually GM EVs.
00:56:55 ◼ ► And to be fair, like seeing all these responses come in about all these EVs, like I thought that this list of requirements was going to be satisfied by like one or two maybe at most.
00:57:06 ◼ ► And no, there's tons. Like I'm very. Did we ever find out if heartened is a word? The opposite of disheartened?
00:57:12 ◼ ► It is a word. I don't know why you keep doubting it, but I'm going to cut you off there and say that I share your early earlier expressed doubt that these things actually fulfill all the requirements because we got a lot of feedback of like this fulfills all the requirements, except it's not an EV.
00:57:25 ◼ ► Like, well, this is all the requirements, except it doesn't have a sunroof. Like people were very willing to say, yeah, but it fulfills the important ones.
00:57:32 ◼ ► Yeah. So I'm still not convinced that every single one of these fills all the requirements. Probably they fulfill all their crimes except for one or two.
00:57:39 ◼ ► But without any prioritization, like, well, do you really care about the the glass full glass roof or not?
00:57:45 ◼ ► Like, but yeah, like the so some of these will get to more of this in a bit. But like Honda in particular has been good about trying to retain physical controls on just its cars in general, as people have gone all touch screen.
00:57:59 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I'm saying, but like for that, for that because this this this trend away from switches and storage screens is across all cars is just more pronounced than EVs.
00:58:07 ◼ ► Right. So Honda actually has been holding the line and they've been getting good reviews for years by saying, hey, the new Civic and it's got physical HVAC controls.
00:58:15 ◼ ► No, it's not an EV, but they've been holding line. But again, these two Honda's, the Honda and Acura are actually GM vehicles and their interior is filled with GM things.
00:58:23 ◼ ► Got GM stocks. It's got a GM steering wheel like it's a GM car on the inside because Honda has really dropped the ball on EVs.
00:58:30 ◼ ► So they've essentially had to say, GM, can we sort of reskin one of your EVs for two of our brands? So we actually have something to offer.
00:58:37 ◼ ► And so they have. But that also means that the interior of these looks like GM interiors and GM interiors have also not entirely gone all screen.
00:58:45 ◼ ► So, yeah. And the other ones is like a Fiat 500 and a Mini Cooper are very different from a Mercedes Q8 e-tron in price, size, capacity, everything about them.
00:59:01 ◼ ► So again, I feel like the criteria listed really do not allow anyone to narrow it down to anything sane, because if you really are cross shopping a Q8 and a Fiat 500, I'm not sure how you're shopping for cars.
00:59:15 ◼ ► Anyway, it is very heartening that there are this many options. In the not too distant past, if you were looking for a fully electric vehicle, you had three or four options in most markets.
00:59:38 ◼ ► So to have this many options that fit what I thought was going to be a very restrictive qualification list really says a lot about the EV market.
00:59:51 ◼ ► Like I said, last week they've essentially gone mainstream in all ways except for price and the stupid cost of the battery that's making that happen.
00:59:57 ◼ ► But you know, you can find them in all shapes and sizes across all makers, depending on how far along the curve they are.
01:00:03 ◼ ► All the car makers say they're going to go all EV by some unspecified point in the future, or they specify the point but we don't really believe them.
01:00:09 ◼ ► So that is definitely happening, but they're all still pretty expensive, just because the batteries are really expensive.
01:00:15 ◼ ► And thus far, especially in the US but less so in the rest of the world, companies have been reticent to say, "We will sell you a cheaper one with a smaller battery."
01:00:23 ◼ ► You've got the Nissan Leaf and a few other choices in the US, but in general they're like, "Oh, if you're going to sell it in the US, you better put a massive battery in there.
01:00:28 ◼ ► Otherwise Americans are going to be too afraid of it." And a massive battery costs large amounts of money.
01:00:37 ◼ ► Put a tiny little battery in it, you can make a bargain basement EV that no one will buy because it has 80 miles of range.
01:00:42 ◼ ► No one in the US, by the way. I know in the rest of the world they sell them and you've got the Honda E and stuff like that.
01:00:49 ◼ ► Oh, as an aside, did you see, I don't think I sent this to you guys, but there was a post that went around recently about the Chevy Blazer EV that somebody was testing.
01:01:04 ◼ ► There you go. Well, I bring this up because of that. The Chevy Blazer EV was tested by someone, I'll put a link in the show notes, they were testing it, they picked it up in like Ohio or something like that.
01:01:15 ◼ ► I mean, who would ever enter Ohio on purpose? Am I right, Marco? But anyways, they picked it up in Ohio and drove to somewhere in Virginia, somewhere in rural Virginia, which is not Richmond before YouTube jerks jump on me.
01:01:31 ◼ ► But anyway, they drove to somewhere in rural Virginia and the car basically was completely kaput.
01:01:36 ◼ ► Now this might have been, at least in part, electrify America's fault, but whatever happened, the tester had it for literally like 28 hours and then they had to have the Blazer trailered back to Michigan so they could figure out what the hell happened to it.
01:01:51 ◼ ► So not a good look. And that's now Honda EVs as well. Hooray! Anyway, so speaking of physical touch controls, this broke in the last, I think this was just in the last few days as well, right?
01:02:01 ◼ ► Volkswagen brings back physical buttons for all new cars. The Volkswagen ID2 All, what a terrible name, concept car features a slightly updated interior with the most notable change being the return of physical buttons below the central touchscreen.
01:02:15 ◼ ► According to the brand's interior designer Darius Watola, this will be "a new approach for all models" based on recent feedback from customers, especially those in Europe who wanted more physical buttons.
01:02:25 ◼ ► This is my people right here. I love this so much. I don't understand a desire to have fewer physical buttons. And there are people out there who have that desire.
01:02:40 ◼ ► And I don't understand it. Like I think for a lot of things, like take a Tesla for example. I think it makes perfect sense to have things like dog mode on the touchscreen.
01:02:52 ◼ ► I don't think you need a physical button for that. But it is bananas to me that things you fiddle with a lot don't have physical controls. Temperature, volume. Why do you have to have a motor?
01:03:05 ◼ ► The forward or reverse gear. Why do you have to have motors in the dashboard to point the air at you? Have a freaking lever.
01:03:14 ◼ ► I didn't mention that last time, but that was like, people just kept doing that. You can just grab the little thing and point it at you. It's so much better in every possible way.
01:03:23 ◼ ► And that one, I have to say, even that one, they don't save money on that one. I know it's more expensive at physical switches often, but the motorized things have to be more expensive. They're just putting a little handle on them.
01:03:37 ◼ ► We talked about it last time. There's the futuristic thing and then in many cases it actually is cheaper. And as I said last week, I had hoped that people had gotten this lesson and I was disheartened to see the latest line of cars from a bunch of car makers.
01:03:49 ◼ ► It's like, here's our second round of EVs and they make all the same mistakes. And as I said on the show last week, kind of like Apple Silicon, with the timelines being like seven years, maybe these were just designed before they took those lessons home.
01:04:01 ◼ ► And here is Volkswagen saying, we're going to fix this. But what are they showing? A concept car. And they're saying, in the future, all our new models will do this.
01:04:11 ◼ ► But the times to develop cars are so long, like the feedback loop is so long between sell a bunch of cars, have people tell you that you don't have enough physical controls. That loops all the way back through corporate.
01:04:22 ◼ ► And it's like, which car is in our pipeline now that we can actually make a change in at this point? It's like, well, you can't change the models that are coming out next year, so maybe the ones after that.
01:04:31 ◼ ► So that's why we end up with a whole bunch of 2024 models that still have no physical controls. And by the way, it's every individual company that has to figure this out.
01:04:39 ◼ ► And it's kind of like, how long does it take to convince Apple that their laptops needed more ports or that MagSafe should come back?
01:04:44 ◼ ► It is a long cycle when it comes to hardware and especially with cars, but I am glad to see things going the other direction, but still not enough and still not fast enough for me.
01:04:53 ◼ ► Agreed. Then coming back to Sam at Balsamid, the complaints about touch controls from customers and safety experts. And that's another thing. Safety experts.
01:05:02 ◼ ► Like you shouldn't be looking at the f***ing touchscreen in order to change where the air is pushing on your face. Like you shouldn't have to do that.
01:05:10 ◼ ► That's such a difficult battle, though, because of course the people who make the things say it's not unsafe. And then the people who say it's unsafe have to prove that it's unsafe.
01:05:19 ◼ ► And then it's like, well, I don't trust them because they're biased. And it's not... You can't just say like, this seems like it's less safe. You do actually have to test it.
01:05:26 ◼ ► And testing it to the satisfaction of all is very difficult because the people doing the testing have a vested interest in one direction or the other.
01:05:34 ◼ ► And so do the people who are making the cars. And so it is actually difficult to get... I mean, just think about things like seat belts. How long did it take to figure out the seat belts? Good.
01:05:43 ◼ ► Right? You would think that's a slam dunk because we all believe it now, but it wasn't. It took a long time with multiple parties battling over years and generations of people living and dying before we could finally get to the agreement of seat belts. Good.
01:05:55 ◼ ► And we did it all over again with airbags and anti-lock brakes and anything that costs more on the car. And so we're going through that again with touch screens.
01:06:02 ◼ ► Indeed. Anyway, let me repeat what Sam was trying to say before I interrupted him from the past or whatever, however you want to put this.
01:06:10 ◼ ► But anyway, Sam says, "The complaints about touch controls from customers and safety experts are finally being heard by most automakers, except Tesla, which doesn't actually care about either of those groups." Email Sam, not me, even though he's right.
01:06:20 ◼ ► "Hondai, which adopted a touch interface on many vehicles, just launched an updated version of the Tucson that ditches the system in favor of a return to physical controls.
01:06:29 ◼ ► Other Hyundai models that use the same interface will probably get updated in the next year or so. The new Santa Fe already has knobs and buttons for climate control and other features.
01:06:37 ◼ ► GMs, new vehicles all retain physical controls. Even Lucid has physical controls for volume and climate control, as it should be."
01:06:46 ◼ ► Yeah, that was one of the, speaking of Honda, that was one of the things back when everybody was going all touchscreen. Apple or Apple.
01:06:51 ◼ ► Honda did this thing where they did like, everything's a touchscreen, but they shoved a knob just on the side of their touchscreen and it looks so awkward and weird, but it was like some person with authority in Honda was like,
01:07:02 ◼ ► "I'm not letting, you can go as far as you want, but I'm not letting you get rid of the volume knob." And so they said, "Where are we going to put it? There's no place."
01:07:09 ◼ ► Just sticking on the side of the screen. It was like a big touchscreen with just a physical knob, just sticking in the bezel.
01:07:16 ◼ ► For years it was like that and I was like, "You go person in Honda, just keep holding that line, they'll come back around your way." And it, hopefully it seems like it's going the other direction now.
01:07:25 ◼ ► Kudos to that person. That person and the person who put the sync button in messages for the Mac all those years ago.
01:07:31 ◼ ► Plus five internet points for both of you. Alright, John, what is the iPhone 16 capture button? What's going on here?
01:07:39 ◼ ► We talked about this, I don't know, maybe it was when we were doing the exit interview or something, or no, it was a question about the action button, and I had said at that time, you know, after we discussed the action button, like, you know, the rumors are that Apple is going to add another button to the next iPhone.
01:07:55 ◼ ► And it's going to be below the power button where the millimeter wave antenna is. And I didn't think too much of it, because, you know, I read a lot of rumors or whatever, but this rumor has been gaining steam.
01:08:06 ◼ ► And so here, now Germin has chimed in, he's calling it the capture button. This is from MacRumors, summarizing the Germin report.
01:08:13 ◼ ► Germin says the iPhone 16 models will include a new dedicated button for taking video. In a recent early look at iPhone 16 prototypes, the capture button we located on the bottom right side of the iPhone 16.
01:08:24 ◼ ► It will replace the millimeter wave antenna on US phone models with millimeter wave antenna to be relocated to the left side of the device below the volume and action buttons.
01:08:32 ◼ ► Non-US models do not have a millimeter wave antenna needs to be relocated. The capture button will be a capacitive button with haptic feedback rather than a mechanical button and is expected to include a force sensor that can recognize pressure.
01:08:43 ◼ ► The capture button is coming to all four iPhone 16 models. So this is a combination of a bunch of rumors, because you remember for the iPhone 15, there were rumors that the volume buttons would be haptic, like not actually move in and out, but instead just shake when you hit them.
01:08:57 ◼ ► We talked about that rumor for a while, but then there was another follow-up rumor that said no, they're not doing that. So here's the haptic button coming back, only not for the volume buttons, or maybe it is for them, but that's not what this rumor is about, but for a capture button with force sensitivity.
01:09:09 ◼ ► So maybe the return of something like Force Touch, where if you press it, it does one thing, and if you press it a little bit harder, it does a second thing.
01:09:15 ◼ ► But the real purpose of this button is what the name says, capture button. And boy, after so many years of Apple not really changing anything on the physical outside of the phone, to go to new connector, lightning replace with USB-C, ring silent switch replace with the action button, and then the very next year, and guess what, we added another button?
01:09:40 ◼ ► I'm not entirely against it, but I'm really wondering, I mean, sorry, I'm not wondering, okay, I'm not wondering why they're doing this, I'm wondering if it is wise to do it.
01:09:51 ◼ ► The reason they're obviously doing it, if you look at the iPhone 16 rumors, is that they want the capture button to be a faster and easier way for people to capture video, including spatial video, because all the iPhone 16s are going to have two cameras that are lined up for spatial video instead of being on an angle, like they did with the 15 Pro hasn't like that, but the plane 15 still has them on the same plane.
01:10:09 ◼ ► The 15 still has them on an angle, kitty corner from each other. So on the 16 line, both the 16 and the 16 Pro will have the two cameras lined up, you know, for good for stereo, you know, vision, not any farther apart, but at least they'll be aligned.
01:10:22 ◼ ► And also the rumor is the 16 Pro will have a 48 pixel ultra wide. So we'll have a 48 megapixel main and a 48 megapixel ultra wide, and they'll be lined up.
01:10:31 ◼ ► The reason for this is to make more better spatial video, and then you've got a dedicated button for it, which presumably will bring up your the video app immediately without you having to futz with your phone and immediately start capturing that spatial video.
01:10:44 ◼ ► So you shouldn't capture the precious moments that everyone will watch on their $3,500 headset that they just bought.
01:10:50 ◼ ► That all, like I see the vision there, I understand what they're doing, but two things here. One, how many people are going to have a vision Pro in 2024? Apple's not even going to be able to make that many of them, even if they sell every single one that they make. They don't even be able to manufacture that many.
01:11:09 ◼ ► The stereo effect is not as impressive when the cameras are literally a centimeter from each other. It's not the centers of the cameras anyway. Move them a little bit farther apart.
01:11:21 ◼ ► Well, also, I think if you're going to optimize the camera hardware for stereo capture, give us two 1x lenses. Have that be the stereo.
01:11:29 ◼ ► Yeah, I know. We talked about that with you could add a fourth camera, but apparently they're not adding a fourth camera. So do you want to lose the ultra wide? Then we talked about that too. Would you like to lose the ultra wide to have two 1x's?
01:11:40 ◼ ► I don't think most people would. Again, who is the spatial video for? You could argue it's future proofing. It's like, well, it looks like normal video to you, but eventually when you buy the Apple headset three years from now when it only costs $1,000, you'll be able to see all that spatial video that you cued off of your kids.
01:11:54 ◼ ► I kind of get that, but I really like I'm with Apple. I understand the thing, but then when they say, okay, we're also adding a button and in the rumors, it seems to be a pretty big button to the right side of the phone under the power button as a capture button.
01:12:08 ◼ ► Why is the action button not a capture button? If people value capturing, wouldn't they configure the action button to bring up the camera?
01:12:15 ◼ ► The fact that it's force sensitive makes me think Apple has something in mind with that. I'm not saying that the iPhone doesn't need more buttons. In fact, I think I said in a past show that it should have more buttons.
01:12:26 ◼ ► I'm just not sure a really big button on the bottom of the phone below the power button dedicated to capture is how I would choose to add the next button to the iPhone.
01:12:35 ◼ ► First of all, I wouldn't read too much into the force sensitivity thing because that's probably just what works in cases. You figure anything that's just a capacitive button, that's going to be a problem with every case if it's on the side of the phone.
01:12:51 ◼ ► I didn't think it would be capacitive. I thought it would be like the iPhone 7 button. That wasn't capacitive, right? It was force sensitive.
01:12:57 ◼ ► That's true. Presumably, the force sensitivity is just so they can add a button that doesn't have moving parts that is also workable through cases.
01:13:08 ◼ ► So you think it doesn't mean that they'll use it to distinguish different levels of force? Like you pressed hard and you pressed soft?
01:13:14 ◼ ► Nope. I think it's literally just the mechanism by which the button works through cases without having moving parts.
01:13:18 ◼ ► By the way, speaking of that, a slight gamer aside, I believe it was the PlayStation 2. I remember when it was announced, they said, "And by the way, the controller has force sensitive buttons now.
01:13:38 ◼ ► They did, yes. I'm sure there were games that did, but it did not turn out to be a very important feature of the PS2, let's just say that.
01:13:43 ◼ ► And I think that continued through the PS3, 4, and maybe even 5. I don't know if and when they dropped it.
01:13:50 ◼ ► But this is to the thread of, do people like the idea of having something that they can press and then having something different happen when they press harder?
01:13:58 ◼ ► We talked about force touch last episode. There are proponents of that, but thus far, it has not either caught on or sustained itself in the market.
01:14:10 ◼ ► In any product that has a force sensitive thing, like a tech product like a game console or a phone or a computer.
01:14:17 ◼ ► There are certain game controllers, I believe the original Xbox did this, where the triggers would be force sensitive, depending on how much you pulled them in. There's analog triggers.
01:14:28 ◼ ► Every game console has that these days. They can tell how far you've put it, but it's not how hard.
01:14:33 ◼ ► Right, and it makes sense. A trigger button has a huge amount of travel, so it makes sense you can make that easily analog.
01:14:40 ◼ ► Whereas the top button of the controller where you just mash it harder, or in this case the button inside your iPhone, I don't think that's an idea that's going to stick around.
01:14:50 ◼ ► You should try the PS5 controller, Marco, if you haven't, because the PS5 controller has motors that resist your pressing of the triggers.
01:14:57 ◼ ► Did you play the chat room, the little game with the cute little robot, Astro's Playroom?
01:15:07 ◼ ► Anyway, if you play Astro's Playroom, you'll play certain levels. There are motors inside it that push back against your fingers when you use the analog triggers.
01:15:15 ◼ ► Which is kind of interesting if you haven't felt it before and kind of fun, although again, most games don't use it.
01:15:20 ◼ ► You spoke about travel distance, it's another fun thing that game consoles do, especially the fancy controllers like the Xbox Elite controller I have.
01:15:27 ◼ ► What they have is a way for you to adjust that travel, because in certain games you don't want it.
01:15:32 ◼ ► Like if you're playing a game and you're a sniper and you want to pull the trigger to fire the gun, you don't want to have to pull the trigger an entire centimeter.
01:15:39 ◼ ► So you can adjust it so it's essentially a hair trigger and you pull it like half a millimeter and it activates.
01:15:44 ◼ ► And that is a feature of fancy controllers. Just sort of negating the supposed feature of having analog travel for using it as a gas pedal in a racing game or something.
01:15:54 ◼ ► Alright, the other thing we need to talk about tonight is that apparently the next-gen Apple Watch is again rumored to break compatibility with existing bands.
01:16:03 ◼ ► So since the original Apple Watch came out, there was only one real break in the cycle.
01:16:10 ◼ ► And that was when... actually was there ever? No, I guess that's not true actually. I'm thinking of my break in the cycle.
01:16:20 ◼ ► Although I will say they cheated a little bit in that various watch straps on various different sizes of watches have at various times looked a little awkward.
01:16:30 ◼ ► In terms of how even just the first party Apple bands connect into, fit in with, and extend from the bodies.
01:16:37 ◼ ► I've seen some combos that I look at and say "technically that fits" and you're not forcing it or anything, but it looks weird.
01:16:44 ◼ ► Well that's usually not a sizing issue, that's usually just a bad choice or a metal mismatch.
01:16:52 ◼ ► Like it doesn't look like... it doesn't look... I'm not going to say it doesn't look flush, but it doesn't seem to like...
01:16:59 ◼ ► Just the part that goes into the little slot. I've seen situations with particular watch bands on particular watch models.
01:17:05 ◼ ► It's very often a very old watch band with a very new watch model, especially when they sort of change the shape of them a little bit subtly.
01:17:15 ◼ ► Up close I could see... I mean Johnny Ive wouldn't like it, he would say. That doesn't look right.
01:17:19 ◼ ► But technically they've all been compatible across the... as long as you get the size match.
01:17:33 ◼ ► Right, but when you buy the bands you can buy them in small, medium, large, but that's just the length.
01:17:46 ◼ ► Is that I went from the original big size... when all the watches changed to get bigger, I dropped down to the small size.
01:17:57 ◼ ► It's not that at all, it's just that I had previously been getting the bigger size connector and for the last several... or a couple of watches at least I've been getting the small size connector.
01:18:05 ◼ ► But how does Apple characterize those by the way when they say the big size... because again the big size watches have changed.
01:18:19 ◼ ► Maybe that's what I was seeing. Maybe I was seeing a band made for the smaller big watch, used with the bigger big watch.
01:18:27 ◼ ► But still that's the correct band for it if you look on the box. It says this fits these models and you have one of these models and it does actually fit. It just looks weird.
01:18:34 ◼ ► I don't know. To me honestly if I was going to tweak the Apple Watch band sizing, to me the biggest sin of watch band sizing that they make is that on the smaller size watch the sport band is too wide.
01:18:49 ◼ ► Like the actual band part of it, after it tapers down from the lugs, the actual width of the band is way too wide for a watch that size.
01:19:03 ◼ ► Well one way or another it's been reported 9 to 5 back. Apple is once again said to be prepping for a big Apple Watch change.
01:19:09 ◼ ► According to a new rumor this week the band connection system for the next generation Apple Watch has been completely redesigned.
01:19:15 ◼ ► This means that all existing Apple Watch bands will be incompatible with the next generation Apple Watch.
01:19:20 ◼ ► The rumor comes from Kousutami on social media who has previously reported accurate information about Apple's plans for future accessories.
01:19:27 ◼ ► For example the account shared several details about Apple's switch from leather to fine woven accessories ahead of time.
01:19:32 ◼ ► Bloomberg first reported on Apple's plans to debut a major new Apple Watch 10 design or is it X? Who knows?
01:19:39 ◼ ► A few months ago in that report Mark Gurman explained that Apple was exploring a change to the way the bands are attached to the Apple Watch.
01:19:46 ◼ ► The current system reportedly takes up a considerable amount of space inside the Apple Watch which Apple engineers believe could be better utilized by bigger battery or other components.
01:19:54 ◼ ► Gurman has described the new Apple Watch band design as featuring a magnetic attachment system.
01:19:59 ◼ ► That sounds horrifying to me until I tell you that I have been carrying my gigantic phone via a magnet only pop socket for what, two months now?
01:20:13 ◼ ► That's fair too, that's fair too. They're quite a bit bigger than they would be on a watch.
01:20:18 ◼ ► I mean also like keep in mind magnets hold very strong in the like as you previously discussed like the sandwich direction.
01:20:29 ◼ ► So depending on how it's engineered it actually could be strong enough to you know to account for most problems.
01:20:36 ◼ ► I do worry a little bit about the you know the lateral movement possibilities you know dislodging them pretty easily.
01:20:41 ◼ ► Well I mean that's the easy thing to fix in a connector because they just have like prongs or teeth or other things that sort of like you know go in there.
01:20:47 ◼ ► Like when I'm thinking of these rumors I'm not thinking of MagSafe right because MagSafe does not have any of those things.
01:20:53 ◼ ► Although even MagSafe has a recess in it that like if you were to try to actually push it exactly sideways it would hit the lips of the recess.
01:20:59 ◼ ► Well keep in mind like imagine if the MagSafe connector if you couldn't move it up and down to take it off.
01:21:16 ◼ ► Yeah it is recess like but I'm thinking of like prongs or teeth or even things that could like clip into like little slots with little nubbins on them.
01:21:24 ◼ ► The magnets would be there as like maybe 50% of the attachment solution but I'm not entirely sure what to make of these things.
01:21:31 ◼ ► But I do the things that make me think something like this is probably coming are a few.
01:21:34 ◼ ► One I agree with the idea that the current system takes up room in the watch if you don't think that then look at the little naked watch body when you pull it out of the box and you realize oh this giant channel is hollowed out here where there's nothing in the watch.
01:21:44 ◼ ► That is every every square millimeter is precious on these things so I think an attachment system that doesn't do that.
01:21:51 ◼ ► If they can find one would be beneficial and that is something that Apple would pursue.
01:21:56 ◼ ► And two kind of like lightning and other things that Apple changes every once in a while.
01:22:00 ◼ ► The current watch straps Apple has maintained them and the basic design of the watch for what will be next year about nine years.
01:22:11 ◼ ► What you hope is that the follow-up attachment mechanism is even better and not a terrible mistake or something.
01:22:22 ◼ ► If we can do something better now is it a reasonable time to do it because we were all nervous when the Apple watch was developed like oh the new one come out is it going to invalidate all our bands and they kept those bands around for close to a decade.
01:22:33 ◼ ► And if they can come up with a way to do it without gigantic channels carved out of the thing.
01:22:45 ◼ ► One thing I will say about the existing mechanism is what it has going for it is very straightforward mechanical sturdiness.
01:22:58 ◼ ► So if you took a watch strap and just pulled the two ends that is where this thing does very well because it's a fat thing inside a little channel.
01:23:14 ◼ ► That little mechanism that makes this sort of click in when you slide that you have to press your little finger on the little button to get it out.
01:23:26 ◼ ► And it just goes to show that as far as that fashion mechanism is concerned the yanking on the straps thing very very strong straightforward nothing delicate or complicated about it.
01:23:36 ◼ ► And the other direction the finest piece of machinery you could possibly ever imagine the tiniest little most delicate thing has been sufficient.
01:23:43 ◼ ► So it seems like the direction that they have to worry about is the yanking on the things direction and the side to side direction.
01:23:53 ◼ ► The existing one is so strong in that direction because it is a fat thing shoved into a skinny channel.
01:23:59 ◼ ► It is the most brain dead thing you know it's like you slide it in from the side like it is it's like wood joinery like it's just it's straightforward.
01:24:07 ◼ ► You can look at it with your eye and understand how it works and think of have you heard any stories about Apple watches flying off people's wrists and the straps failing or whatever.
01:24:16 ◼ ► Like if straps do fail I imagine they're not failing at the attachment to the watch point that maybe they're failing someplace else due to like you know some sort of problem with the strap.
01:24:28 ◼ ► The straps that Apple sells have been really good even the third party straps that are presumably made to a less precise manner have been pretty good.
01:24:37 ◼ ► Like we've had a lot of years of the Apple watch and no one is saying Apple strap attachment mechanism sucks and falls apart.
01:24:43 ◼ ► And the risk of making a new one especially with magnets or anything that's going to have scare stories on it you know like oh you know we tried the new Apple watch magnetic strap mechanism in this you know NASA G4 simulator and it came off right.
01:24:56 ◼ ► Get ready for those like so I feel I feel for Apple this is what they're doing but I'm also kind of excited about the idea of getting rid of those slots and maybe you know either putting in more battery or making the making the watch slimmer.
01:25:13 ◼ ► This rumor has been circulating for something like three years that there is some major Apple watch redesign coming next year or coming this year like that's been happening now for so long it's almost like the year of Linux on the desktop.
01:25:25 ◼ ► Well are you counting the flat side one that we think might have just been the ultra rumor?
01:25:29 ◼ ► Maybe but but if so I mean the ultra is nothing like that so anyway so the point is Apple watch there's been a bunch of rumors about substantial Apple watch redesigns coming.
01:25:39 ◼ ► And they've seemingly gone nowhere so far so either the Apple watch rumor mill is comically inaccurate which has been the case so far.
01:25:48 ◼ ► Or they really have been working on something and it will be arriving soon you know like maybe they got the timing wrong or whatever but either way either the Apple watch rumor mill is terrible or this you know there's finally enough smoke behind this fire that maybe it'll actually happen.
01:26:02 ◼ ► But there's a third option right either they got all the rumors wrong or they're actually right but the third option I think is just as likely as all those is.
01:26:10 ◼ ► They're totally wrong about everything but inevitably the Apple watch will get a major redesign and when that happens they can try to claim that they're right because that's the nature of all products like that especially things like the Apple watch and the phone or whatever Apple is conservative about changing them.
01:26:23 ◼ ► But they do change them eventually after a decade like that it's going to happen right if the Apple watch continues as a product long enough it will get a major redesign it is inevitable and you can't then retroactively claim see all those rumors we had we were right.
01:26:36 ◼ ► Maybe you were and maybe you weren't but like you know it's like predicting you know new max will be released and then they release like see I told you like yeah they keep getting released until they cancel the line like that's the nature of the product.
01:26:47 ◼ ► So but again with the 10 year timer as in the beginning of the Apple watch we're all like well the next one look totally different eventually we're like no they're not going to look different.
01:26:55 ◼ ► They're going to look like they didn't change them they did but they all kind of look like you know the rounded little lozenges or whatever until the ultra and so the ultra is a new shape for the Apple watch.
01:27:07 ◼ ► I think that will happen to the regular I think there will be a new shape for the Apple watch that will happen and if you're going to make a new shape for the watch that's the time to rethink the strap.
01:27:16 ◼ ► It could be kind of like various things that they've tried to do that they they look into alternate strap designs they've been researching it for six years and they just can't get anything that's better and say you know what we tried we tried.
01:27:27 ◼ ► Well it's a regroup think of a new idea but in the meantime we have the redesign Apple watch same strap mechanism.
01:27:34 ◼ ► That is a possibility as well because I truly believe that Apple has been researching better straps in fact I think they were researching better straps before they shipped the first Apple watch they shipped the best strap that they came up with.
01:27:44 ◼ ► It's been a hit everyone loves it but they're always looking for a way to do it better it's just not like from the outside especially it's not like there's some obvious thing that they should do to make it better.
01:27:53 ◼ ► It's going to be difficult and so with anything difficult I am willing to believe that it's taking them multiple years I'm also willing to believe that takes multiple years and they say you know we couldn't figure it out regroup again in a few more years.
01:28:04 ◼ ► I mean the thing is like for them to to make all existing straps incompatible that is that's a big risk that they're taking it there's a big cost to that on lots of levels and so if they're actually going to do that I trust that they probably have really good reasons.
01:28:20 ◼ ► So we'll see I mean I would I'm not looking forward to that because I have a large collection of Apple watch straps that I've accumulated over the years and I don't I don't want to have them all be obsoleted very quickly but at the same time I am a little bit excited to see like well if they're going to go through that they again they probably have good reasons they probably were able to improve things significantly.
01:28:41 ◼ ► Like one other area besides the sports strap being too wide on the smaller watch that I would love to see aesthetically is that right now the combos that look good on Apple watches are partly restricted by the design of the current lug system where you can see a lot of the strap like inside the watch from the sides.
01:29:02 ◼ ► Like the part of it that sticks into the watch you see the color whatever color the strap is you see that running into the watch body for that you know whatever few millimeters that is that kind of restricts what combinations look good and I think it looks a little bit inelegant.
01:29:18 ◼ ► If they could design a strap system where you don't see the strap enter the watch anywhere except like the boundary of the case that would look nicer now that might have other downsides like you wouldn't have the lateral removal process so they maybe that's what the magnets are for who knows but if they can get rid of that side view of the of the side of the strap inside the watch body that would open up more aesthetic possibilities but also.
01:29:44 ◼ ► Maybe they just need to change the system as part of a larger redesign to help the basic Apple watch look fresh again because you know the current the current non ultra line of Apple watches.
01:29:54 ◼ ► I think it looks good overall like in totally absolute terms it looks good but it is starting to look dated now watch it watch fashion changes very slowly over time.
01:30:06 ◼ ► And they can keep selling exactly this for a while and be fine but they're also in the tech business and the tech business likes when things look new see the iPhone and how how we seem to demand case redesigns every roughly two to three years.
01:30:20 ◼ ► Just to keep it looking fresh the Apple watch certainly suffers from some of that you know people want their jewelry to look fresh and new sometimes and whatever so I think.
01:30:29 ◼ ► The current line at the regular Apple watch line could use a redesign just to keep it fresh not to say there's any massive problems with the current design because I don't think there are really everything I mentioned so far has been small problems on big problems.
01:30:53 ◼ ► We hate to say it as nerds because this shouldn't be the case but the reality is people like new looking things sometimes and just having like a new watch style is something they should do ever so often.
01:31:05 ◼ ► And one other thing they could improve the new strap attachment aside from being able to the side thing is.
01:31:11 ◼ ► Sort of the departure angle of the strap is kind of dictated by the angle of the slots because the slots themselves have a direction to them and that angle.
01:31:20 ◼ ► I mean the thing is there is no one perfect angle given a watch size given a strap given a person wrist size there is too many variables that can dictate how good something looks and if they could come up with a strap attachment mechanism that was more flexible about the angle of departure from the watch.
01:31:39 ◼ ► Yeah that's hard but it's but it's possible I mean like you know regular watches with spring bars do that like but exactly like there is there are you know for for regular watches that don't have extremely easily removable.
01:31:49 ◼ ► Swappable straps there are lots of it's like oh just put it on a hinge and then it can depart at any angle that it wants but that's not the system Apple has for their watches because their straps are very easily changeable and so.
01:31:59 ◼ ► Yeah although to be fair to the watch world quick release spring bar bands are actually not really any harder to swap than Apple watch bands.
01:32:07 ◼ ► Really I mean I've never done it so I couldn't say it but like I just the Apple watch bands are so easy you can do with the fingernail.
01:32:12 ◼ ► Yeah so there's a type called quick release spring bars that like they have basically like a little peg that sticks out straight down from the lug it kind of in like the three quarters across the way of the watch band and you just like slide that little peg over with your fingernail and the whole thing pops out.
01:32:29 ◼ ► So it still uses a spring bar to poke through the two holes in your side but that little peg lets you pop it out really quickly and easily.
01:32:40 ◼ ► No no magnets. Well you don't generally speaking you don't want to introduce magnets unnecessarily to mechanical watches they don't like that usually.
01:33:05 ◼ ► Alright anyways it sounds more warm I tell you. Alright so let's do some Ask ATP. Ammar writes do Nvidia and Apple mean different things when they say cores?
01:33:36 ◼ ► What you call a core and a GPU it's up to, part of it has to do with the architecture but a lot of it is also marketing and what you decide counts as a core.
01:33:48 ◼ ► And the things that Nvidia is counting as cores are smaller and simpler than the things that Apple is counting as cores.
01:33:55 ◼ ► Ryan McDonough writes with the rumor of Apple creating their own LLM to build a better Siri.
01:34:00 ◼ ► Do you think this functionality will come to the existing HomePod mini range or will this be a differentiator for the next release?
01:34:06 ◼ ► I mean it should go everywhere but I think they will absolutely use it to get you to upgrade.
01:34:15 ◼ ► This is why I think this is an interesting question because it's like well okay is the thing versus Apple making you upgrade versus not?
01:34:25 ◼ ► Because Apple has a lot of, there was recently an Apple paper they published about how they found a way to do efficient inference in large language models on their own hardware even when it doesn't fit in RAM.
01:34:46 ◼ ► And all this combines into the HomePod and also Apple really doesn't like updating that line particularly often.
01:34:53 ◼ ► So I don't know how to go, it's like if it's all server side they don't need technically to update the hardware.
01:35:01 ◼ ► Because Apple's big thing seems to be, everyone assumes their thing is going to be oh we do a lot of stuff on device because we have amazing hardware.
01:35:09 ◼ ► And by the way if HomePods did have to send it to a server to get answers it's not going to make them any faster.
01:35:16 ◼ ► So if I had to bet on this I would say new HomePod because the old ones don't have beefy enough hardware.
01:35:27 ◼ ► But new HomePod because they want it to be done in hardware and that would mean Apple would be forced to actually make a new HomePod.
01:35:38 ◼ ► And even then I can't see Apple launching this new alleged Siri that's LLM based doing inference server side.
01:35:52 ◼ ► Number one Apple's cheap. Except when hiring people away from Massimo otherwise they're cheap.
01:36:09 ◼ ► They run services but their services tend to do simpler things in the large massive scale that they need to do them.
01:36:22 ◼ ► We also know that device side they are as John mentioned investing heavily in the AI side of device side inference.
01:36:34 ◼ ► So all of that suggests to me that the vast majority if not all of Apple's efforts with these new AI techniques are most likely going to be running device side.
01:36:51 ◼ ► The scale of that would be so immense that not only would they probably not do it for just practicality and cost reasons.
01:36:58 ◼ ► But also we probably don't want them trying that because I don't think they would do a very good job to be honest.
01:37:07 ◼ ► I don't think any of us do is because I think there are certain things that you can do with large language models.
01:37:23 ◼ ► It could be that they have their LMS they train them to do tasks that are simpler that can run device side.
01:37:34 ◼ ► We assume that they're going to leverage their strategic advantage which is they have literally billions of SOCs with neural engines in them out there in the world.
01:37:46 ◼ ► Like I think there's some stuff you can like type in the chat GPT or whatever that it responding to your query.
01:37:51 ◼ ► The amount of computing resources that are briefly marshaled to answer your question is larger than exists on your phone.
01:37:58 ◼ ► And so if your phone was forced to do it it would take an unacceptably long amount of time.
01:38:07 ◼ ► And so I'm not sure how that's going to shake out because we don't know what Apple's plans are with its LMS.
01:38:17 ◼ ► What we all wish is just say look just make it do everything Siri does but actually work this time.
01:38:28 ◼ ► Or again as we discussed in the past if you just put an LMS in front of the stupid Siri and had it figure out how to make Siri do what you actually asked for that would be useful.
01:38:45 ◼ ► And Apple's dedication to that entire product line has at various times been highly in question.
01:38:56 ◼ ► I mean keep in mind too like whatever Apple is going to do with Siri they're going to have also these different levels of quote Siri.
01:39:15 ◼ ► The phones and iPads and Macs they have these massively performing cutting edge processors with these huge neural engines that can run really advanced models and stuff.
01:39:42 ◼ ► And one of the things that you get with the new SoC is it does more Siri request processing on device.
01:40:03 ◼ ► Current Apple watch models at the high end are able to do some of that processing on device.
01:40:12 ◼ ► But you know the Apple watch, you can look at the HomePod and you can say well they're going to have to put a higher end processor in there to be able to do that.
01:40:28 ◼ ► The watch is like there's no cost they can apply here to build in iPhone class LLM execution into the Apple watch of any similar year.
01:40:47 ◼ ► Of like alright we're going to do the full blown LLM smart thing all on device on the phone.
01:40:58 ◼ ► Whatever the answer to that is, that's probably the same thing that the HomePods will end up doing if they're ever updated for this.
01:41:08 ◼ ► But it is kind of weird to think like well they can't do it on device on these much smaller processor products.
01:41:20 ◼ ► But if they take every iPhone out of the picture and have the iPhones do everything or almost everything LLM based locally on the hardware.
01:41:29 ◼ ► That might make it a much more scalable service on the back end to serve only the smaller devices.
01:41:35 ◼ ► This is a tug of war between their desire not to make a new HomePod and their desire to have the LLM power series on the HomePod.
01:41:48 ◼ ► So maybe it will go out and say "You know what, we're not making a new HomePod, just send it all to the server."
01:41:59 ◼ ► Alright, and then the final item for Ask ATP is from Listener John. Listener John, what do you got?
01:42:26 ◼ ► So Jim Callen writes, "Can you name all the Mac OS version names in chronological order?"
01:42:37 ◼ ► Now, before you... you can be thinking while I'm saying this, but before you say this, I'm going to say that I tried to do this straight up, no cheating, and could not.
01:42:45 ◼ ► I almost did it, but I did not. So I'm going to be honest and say that I did not succeed.
01:42:53 ◼ ► But we'll see how you do. And if you want, you can collaborate with each other to try to come up with a list together, or you can try to do it individually.
01:43:03 ◼ ► Major releases only, not counting betas, not counting dev things, not counting point releases.
01:43:22 ◼ ► Hard to believe. Alright, so now let's go from the top, maybe you can do it together. What's the first one?
01:43:26 ◼ ► I'm going to demand version numbers and names, because this just asks for version names.
01:43:31 ◼ ► So I know Jon has said in the past that it was kind of ironic that the first one had a fast cat name because it was so slow.
01:43:42 ◼ ► 10.0, you see, for people who don't know, Marco and Casey did not come to the Mac until after the error they're trying to remember. So they're at a disadvantage.
01:44:02 ◼ ► Wait, wait, wait, you're going too fast. Let's just start with 10.0. What's your guess for 10.0?
01:44:11 ◼ ► No, I was going to agree with Marco, but I don't know if I would have come up with that prior to Marco having said so.
01:44:16 ◼ ► And yes, it is the most hilarious name because it was the slowest version ever and they called it Cheetah. They burned that name real fast. Hilarious.
01:44:59 ◼ ► I'll give you a hint. It would be something that we would have fun making fun of the pronunciation of.
01:45:21 ◼ ► Instead of saying the word jaguar, apparently on the West Coast people say jagwire. Like it says W-I-R-E at the end of it.
01:45:42 ◼ ► You're sure the tiger again because that's one of the ones that was on machines that you bought?
01:46:24 ◼ ► I didn't actually need help until I got past the ones that I'd written reviews of, obviously.
01:46:27 ◼ ► But eventually when I did need help, what I started trying to think of was WWDC posters.
01:46:32 ◼ ► Yeah, no, I think that doesn't help me at all. I think 10.9 was when they switched to California names.
01:47:18 ◼ ► That's what Mav... Because Mavericks has the weird plural that no one knew about except for Californians.
01:47:42 ◼ ► Yeah, because it threw everyone off because it was not a cat and it had a weird plural thing.
01:47:58 ◼ ► So when I named these, I did obviously much better than you, but I did have this hole in my memory and you're in the hole now.
01:48:19 ◼ ► We talked about it on the show when I stopped writing it and also the version number. What version are we on?
01:48:24 ◼ ► Right, so that was a good stopping point for me. But what was that? And we're in the California name, so that narrows it down. What was 10.10?
01:48:33 ◼ ► No, I don't think that. It's not Catalina yet. But I can't come up with what it is, though.
01:49:02 ◼ ► What were the previous names with pairs? Just so I know that you understand what I'm saying.
01:49:13 ◼ ► I do not give a crap about California geography, and so they all just washed right over me.
01:50:44 ◼ ► El Capitan. Yeah, Yosemite. And what version number was that? Yosemite was 10.10. What was El Capitan?
01:51:02 ◼ ► I mean, you live... You have these on your Macs. Like, we're not in some obscure era that you don't... Like, it's recent and...
01:51:07 ◼ ► Yeah, but the thing is, I don't care about Californian geography. I just don't. And so it meant nothing to me.
01:51:14 ◼ ► And like, by this point too, like, we... At this point, we are well into the iOS era where iOS just has numbers, every version. It makes a lot of sense.
01:51:22 ◼ ► I... Like... So like, it... And they're coming out every single year. Like, it was one thing when I had my first Mac, I could remember a Leopard and Tiger and everything and Panther because those were only like every 18 months.
01:51:35 ◼ ► You know, it was more spaced out. There was less other stuff that I was tracking in the world because there weren't 17 platforms.
01:51:42 ◼ ► Alright, so I'll give you a hint on this next one. El Cap 1011 was your previous one, right? The next one is the first of a pair.
01:51:52 ◼ ► The pair should be easy because it helps you, you know, like, group them together. What's the next pair name? And you said the version was 1012. 1012 was what?
01:52:00 ◼ ► I love that you think that the version number will somehow remind me what this is. Like, I knew Snow Leopard was 106 and, you know, Tiger... I knew the early ones, but again...
01:52:08 ◼ ► If you are a Mac OS dev, you would probably be more familiar with these version numbers because you'd have to be doing the if-availability on them.
01:52:16 ◼ ► And every... Man, as a writer of frequent if-available statements, I wish Apple would align all the numbers. Just like, just skip them all so like next year is everything 18.
01:52:25 ◼ ► Like, make it Mac OS 18, make it watch OS 18, TV OS 18, like just line it all up. That would be great. But anyway, yeah, I don't...
01:52:38 ◼ ► Because I think this is the last... Is it the last pair? I don't know. I don't think I know.
01:52:41 ◼ ► Yeah, because I think after this they went over to just numbers. No, but there still was...
01:52:50 ◼ ► I'm glad you can't even go to the about screen in your current Mac. We've got to get up to the current version and see if you know what that is. But anyway, we're still stuck on this pair.
01:53:25 ◼ ► Think of the desktop backgrounds maybe? The default desktop backgrounds you might have used?
01:53:33 ◼ ► You're doing so well, Markra. I can't believe you can't dig this one out. You've got to Liz Miles this.
01:53:41 ◼ ► It's a Scottish lady who can talk her way into knowing the answer to questions that she seemingly didn't know the answer to. It is an amazing phenomenon. Listen to the incomparable to hear it.
01:53:52 ◼ ► Hold on. What do we have left? We have Sonoma left. I know that's not this one, but we have it left.
01:54:02 ◼ ► Catalina. Yeah. We still didn't do big sir. There is a big sir, right? We didn't do it yet.
01:54:15 ◼ ► You have not gotten to any. Those are all names that you have said, but they are not this one.
01:54:19 ◼ ► Yeah, we didn't do Monterey. So is it like Monterey then Catalina? Because aren't those related? I don't know. They're all California.
01:54:58 ◼ ► We were running the show during these years. We talked about these OS releases at length on this very podcast using their names the whole time.
01:55:06 ◼ ► See, this is where your memory hole is. I did have a memory hole. Yours is worse than mine.
01:55:11 ◼ ► At least I could name these, but I couldn't put them in the right order or whatever. Anyway...
01:55:17 ◼ ► But we all talked about it on the show. Okay, so I'll give you the final hint here. The modifier...
01:55:23 ◼ ► How can I say this without giving you the actual word? The modifier... I just have to give you the word.
01:56:06 ◼ ► Of course it wouldn't... they wouldn't do that. Yes, that would totally make sense. That's not what they did.
01:56:29 ◼ ► As an iOS developer, I have things very, very, very easy compared to most Mac developers.
01:57:02 ◼ ► It was an M when they redesigned everything, and I hated the toolbar design, but I forget which M.
01:58:07 ◼ ► This is so bad. And you've done so much better than me and I'm embarrassed for both of us.
01:58:16 ◼ ► I mean, I have to say that the listeners, if they're honest with themselves, if you're not a Mac developer, there's no way you know these version numbers either.
01:58:42 ◼ ► I can't even tell you the current version. That's how overwhelming these names always are to me.
01:59:28 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean now that you're saying it, I totally forgot that we had ever used that name.
01:59:45 ◼ ► The best thing about these version numbers is you always think that's when they change to no.
01:59:53 ◼ ► 10.13 would have been a great time to go to 13 and maybe the version numbers would be synced up now, but they didn't do that.
02:00:28 ◼ ► Okay. I'm sorry California. You don't know every detail about New York. It's fine. It's a big world.
02:01:37 ◼ ► Wow, I did not predict this. I thought for sure that you wouldn't know the old ones and then when you got up to recent times you'd be like, "Yeah, I can remember that. That was...
02:02:32 ◼ ► And we're on present day. You did it. That was incredibly painful. I cannot believe it.
02:02:37 ◼ ► Can we please, for the love of all that is good and holy, can we cut the sad release version?
02:02:50 ◼ ► I can tell you when I did it. Obviously, 0 through 10 I noticed there were reviews of, right?
02:03:31 ◼ ► They're fanciful. If you want to come up with a new scheme instead of California place names, I'm all on bar with it.
02:03:48 ◼ ► Because the thing is, you always have to write the same pairings because the APIs across all the platforms change in the same way each year.
02:04:17 ◼ ► As you know or should know from web development, you should really be checking for capabilities and not version numbers.
02:04:22 ◼ ► Yeah, but that's a lot harder in Swift. Like that's much harder. You can do it, you know, but it's a lot harder and doesn't have as granular of control with a lot of this stuff.
02:04:40 ◼ ► It's Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Cap.
02:04:46 ◼ ► Sorry, I always say it that way. Sierra Hi Sierra Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma.
02:04:58 ◼ ► If we were the triumvirate or whatever, I'm probably using that word wrong, to come up with the naming scheme for future versions of Mac OS, what would we choose?
02:05:24 ◼ ► Here's what I would do Casey. I will play in the space with you because I'm not a spoilsport like Marco.
02:05:28 ◼ ► I would do animals. I liked the big cat names, but obviously when you pick something limiting like big cats, there were more big cats by the way, they just showed us not to use them.
02:05:36 ◼ ► But I like the animal names and I would be more expansive than saying it has to be cats or even just mammals or whatever because there are so many cool animals, animals that look cool in marketing materials and animals with names that sound cool. I would go back to animals.
02:05:48 ◼ ► I don't know what I would do. What would I do? What about like elements that are related to like computing? So silicon is the obvious example, but you know, other elements that are...
02:06:01 ◼ ► Yeah. Something like that. You know, Mac OS titanium, that is a cool ring to it. I think Mac OS silicon is cool.
02:06:12 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean there are a bunch of cool element names, but you run out of them real quick I think.
02:06:23 ◼ ► Can that be the title, please, dad, please, dad, please, please, please, please, please.
02:06:33 ◼ ► That's, I don't know. I'm just curious if we had any good ideas. Marco, do you have anything you'd like to share?
02:06:37 ◼ ► I'm surprised neither of you said some sort of BS New York geography or something like that. Like all the islands that are or are not Long Island.
02:06:46 ◼ ► I think it's only a California thing that they think their place names are so awesome. All our place names are sort of anglicized, mangled Native American names anyway.
02:06:55 ◼ ► And it's, you know, I'm not holding out for Mac OS Hop Hog. Although they did make the Hop Hog Win TV card, so who knows. There is some precedent.
02:07:03 ◼ ► Those were the best TV tuners and I always, I owned I think one or two of them in my college years and I always said Hopage in my head because I had no idea.
02:07:12 ◼ ► Same, same. But I lived in Hop Hog so I didn't have that problem. And over my back fence when I lived in Hop Hog was what we called the Hop Hog Industrial Park.
02:07:19 ◼ ► And I would go through the dumpsters of the companies like the company that eventually would make Hop Hog Win TV and dig out all sorts of electronics like big speakers and stuff and printed circuit boards and wires.
02:07:28 ◼ ► The best thing about the Hopage TV tuners is that they, as part of their name, had an exclamation point at the end like Yahoo. So it was Hopage. I always felt like I really had to announce it.
02:07:45 ◼ ► Although it kind of amazed me that A) they would pick a name like that that they knew would be difficult to pronounce, but B) if I had a company name that I knew was difficult to pronounce and I really wanted it because it had some meaning to me, the most prominent thing on the homepage of every piece of literature I put out would be a pronunciation guide. And yet they didn't. So now this is what happens.
02:08:03 ◼ ► Thank you so much to our sponsors this week for sitting through that. They probably, the sponsors, I can't imagine they would have gotten through that. Anyway, but they're wonderful anyway. Squarespace and Green Chef.
02:08:14 ◼ ► And thank you to our members who support us directly and maybe who also got through that somehow and are still listening to our show. You can join us at ATP.fm/join and we will talk to you next week.
02:08:26 ◼ ► And now the snow is falling. Their kids are building snowmen. It's accidental. (Accidental) Holiday fun time. (Holiday fun time)
02:08:40 ◼ ► John's gonna make snow angels. Marco and Casey are gonna let him. It's accidental. (Accidental) Syracuse Angels. (Holiday fun time)
02:09:28 ◼ ► It's an accidental, accidental Snowball fight. It's an accidental, accidental Holiday tech podcast so long.
02:09:44 ◼ ► So I had a bit of an adventure earlier this evening that I feel like you're gonna want to know about. Oh no. I don't like where this is going at all. So I was driving back onto the beach tonight.
02:09:59 ◼ ► I really don't like where this is going at all. And as I approach the cut in the dune that you drive through to get from the beach to the side streets, I see there's a giant chain across it and it says no vehicular traffic.
02:10:16 ◼ ► If only there was an app you could have checked for this. Yeah, right. So I had to turn around and go back to the previous cut and cut in there earlier and then drive on more of the interior roads.
02:10:27 ◼ ► So I turn around and promptly got stuck. How did you do that? Well, turning around on a less trafficked part of the beach like a closed cuts on ramp is, there's a lot of powdery loose sand at that point.
02:10:48 ◼ ► Had you come to a stop? Had you come to a complete stop at the chain and then like how did you like reverse three point turn? Like what is the maneuver you're performing here?
02:10:55 ◼ ► I did a three point turn. Because at that point the beach was pretty skinny. It wasn't quite enough room to do a big loop around, especially without stopping. So I had to do a three point turn. And I did a really bad job of it and got myself extremely stuck in the sand.
02:11:13 ◼ ► At what point in the turn did you get stuck? I guess the third point. Like as I'm pulling in the other direction.
02:11:20 ◼ ► And I think I was going to make another California joke, but I think people in other parts of the country might also call this a K-turn.
02:11:26 ◼ ► Oh, I guess that makes sense. Alright, anyway. So when I first got my sand permit, the other people who have lived here for years, they said, "Everyone gets stuck." And I said, "I'm going to see if I can never get stuck."
02:11:41 ◼ ► And I really thought, "I'm going to get the greatest vehicles that can do this. I'm going to have all my gear in the frunk. I have the MaxTrax Pro traction boards. I have all these different ropes and stuff."
02:12:00 ◼ ► Yes. But I've used them only three or two times so far to help out other people who were stuck. And they actually work pretty well. If you're not too, too stuck, they actually work quite nicely.
02:12:13 ◼ ► So here I am. I do my three point turn. And on the last point of it, I'm not going anywhere. And I made a critical mistake. I hit the gas harder.
02:12:29 ◼ ► And by the way, on the topic of, "I'm not going to get stuck and everyone gets stuck," I'm pretty sure there is no vehicle in existence that will not get stuck in loose enough sand.
02:12:42 ◼ ► I say this. The only thing I can think of is maybe, you know that dump truck you always see in the books for kids that's like the size of a seven story building? Like at mines, you know that one?
02:12:50 ◼ ► Maybe that one. It's not possible for it to get stuck in sand. But I think like an Abrams tank could get stuck in sand. Like there is no, like a monster truck could get stuck in. I don't think there's any vehicle with wheels that is of reasonable size that cannot get stuck in sand under the right conditions because that is the nature of sand.
02:13:08 ◼ ► Because it moves out of the way and allows your vehicle to sink. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe someone knows that like actually this vehicle, there is a vehicle of a reasonable size that literally can never get stuck in sand. But I immediately went to like military vehicles with like tank trucks and stuff. No, they can get stuck in sand too.
02:13:24 ◼ ► So I mean if there is one that exists, there would have to be something kind of like a tank or I guess hovercrafts don't count. So don't feel too bad because I think you are like, you know, it's going to happen.
02:13:35 ◼ ► I mean obviously driving skill and choices can help you a lot here but your number was up.
02:13:41 ◼ ► Yeah and this is why too like I mean I do definitely blame myself in the fact that I've gotten too cocky with the Rivian because it has proven to be so insanely capable off road in all other ways.
02:13:54 ◼ ► And look, as before, the Land Rover Defender was an amazing off road vehicle overall. The Rivian is even better. Like it is fantastically good off road. It is an amazing off road vehicle. In addition to being an amazing vehicle in pretty much every other way as well. I'm very happy with the Rivian.
02:14:11 ◼ ► But it is in particular as a sand driving vehicle, it is fantastic. I'm very happy with it. And so I've gotten accustomed to being able to basically drive however I want on the sand and it'll work itself out.
02:14:25 ◼ ► You know, I don't take crazy risks or anything. I'm not like driving into the water or anything but I've learned that I've gotten into the habit of not really avoiding any sections of the beach sand because I figure, oh yeah, I'll just drive through it. It's fine.
02:14:42 ◼ ► And that was my mistake in this case because this was a very, very like soft powdery deep section that's based on, we had a bunch of storms recently so everything's all messed up. So this was like a kind of newly soft and newly squishy section that was the wrong time to turn around.
02:15:00 ◼ ► So anyway, I got myself really stuck and I thought, okay, I've prepared for this. I've watched all the videos from all the Australian off roaders telling me how to do things. I have all this gear. I know what to do. Let me try to do it.
02:15:14 ◼ ► So first thing I try to do is just try like, you know, very slow backing out because reverse seemed like the easier way to get out of what I was in. So I tried, you know, very slowly trying to make the wheels really crawl. Let me tell you, the Rivian is not good at this. Like, you know, other off roaders have like a crawl mode or some kind of like sand creep mode.
02:15:37 ◼ ► There's not an electronic mode that changes the throttle response to the pedal and is essentially the equivalent of crawl mode?
02:15:43 ◼ ► I could not find one. So there is a soft sand drive mode, which is what I use when I'm on the sand. But it does not seem to do that. So there is, I couldn't find anything that was like, I am stuck, get me out. Whereas other off roaders will have various techniques to do that. Some of them will like use the suspension like a trampoline almost and like kind of try to bounce you out.
02:16:04 ◼ ► Some of them will have these creep modes that will try to slowly creep with all the wheels and slowly crawl you out. As far as I can tell Rivian doesn't have that. They could add it in software, I think, but they don't. So I tried just like, you know, slowly crawling the wheels out, no dice. I tried then lowering the tire pressure on all the wheels even further.
02:16:23 ◼ ► Yeah, because I've heard like you can basically just lower the tire pressure and probably just drive out carefully. And I also had the MaxTrax boards. So I tried, you know, digging out. I mean, I was, the problem was like, it was deep. I was like, well, unfortunately, Casey, I did not take a picture because it was dark.
02:16:41 ◼ ► We talked about this when you first were talking about making a sand thing. When you do get stuck, you need to document it and you didn't. I know because it was dark and it's freezing. It's December. I know that's the best part. We wanted to see the suffering.
02:16:53 ◼ ► Just like look how terrible this condition is. And by the way, I think when you were envisioning getting stuck, maybe you weren't envisioning doing it with a 7000 pound vehicle. Possibly. Yeah, yeah. Certainly the weight of the Rivian is not that is the one downside of it.
02:17:06 ◼ ► It's not helping you, especially when you're trying to wedge things under the wheels. Right, exactly. But it was just, it was so deep and it was deep enough that the Rivian itself was also complaining that there was something under it. Like it starts showing these alert messages like, "Caution, there's something under your vehicle." Right? And it's like, yeah, I know there's a lot of small things under the vehicle actually.
02:17:25 ◼ ► But anyway, so what the Rivian will do if it thinks that you are hitting something, it just stops the vehicle and puts it in park. So I'd be able to creep the wheels a little bit or spin them a little bit and then it would just beep, park and stop me.
02:17:42 ◼ ► Even when it's in the off-road sand mode. So I'm like, okay, that's not great. That's actively fighting against me in addition to the lack of any kind of easy creep mode. And so anyway, a driver comes by and they're like, the guy rolls in the way, he's like, "Hey, I can't help you, but do you want me to call for someone else to help you because you're gonna need help getting out of that?"
02:18:04 ◼ ► And of course I was like, "Thank you, but actually let me try first, you know, because I don't want to call someone and have them come all the way out here. Let me see if I can get out first." The guy's like, "All right, cool." And then he leaves. Okay, great.
02:18:14 ◼ ► Are you still on the beach now? Podcasting for your car. Let me just try. I refuse help. I think I can do it. I have a new idea.
02:18:22 ◼ ► That would be so amazing. Like I don't want that for you and yet I want it for the show.
02:18:27 ◼ ► All right. So next thing I try is I'm going to do the full blown max track experience. And by the way, I should say at this point, like the, my efforts to get myself out have only made the problem worse. And now the bottom of the vehicle is resting on sand. So that's really bad.
02:18:46 ◼ ► Yeah. Like that, that you really don't want. So I had the great idea, "Hey, I was in the like standard ride height mode. The sand mode normally has a higher ride height. So like, let me try lifting the suspension."
02:19:00 ◼ ► Yeah. So I hit the button to raise the suspension and it says highest and it blinks for a little while and it's like, and then it's, then it's claims to be done. And I looked down, I'm like, I don't think it looks any different. In fact, I look pretty close to the sand still. So I'm like, I don't think that worked. Anyway, so we start digging out. Tiff gets the shovel. Tiff and Adam are in the car. My whole family's in the car.
02:19:30 ◼ ► Yeah, I got one at the end. You'll see. Anyway, so Tiff gets out, she starts shoveling under one wheel. I start going, I'm like trying all my, you know, tricks of like, I'm going to wedge it under the wheel in this one way.
02:19:42 ◼ ► So this is why if you had more experience on the beach making sand castles, this is where that would come in handy. If you build those giant trenches to let the ocean come in, if you tried to build the moat to keep the ocean out, digging in sand, suddenly those skills, a lifetime of skills, a childhood spent on the beach.
02:19:59 ◼ ► I know, right? And so if I had a lot of time and a lot of patience from my family and a lot of shovel ability and it wasn't so freezing, because it's again, it's December, it's cold.
02:20:16 ◼ ► So like Tiff and I are digging out and like our hands are frozen. Like Tiff like tore through her gloves. Like it was there's sand everywhere. Like it was a disaster.
02:20:27 ◼ ► Fortunately, soon enough after that, the mayor drove by. Just coincidentally, he was going home. He's like, ah, rookies.
02:20:39 ◼ ► He knows instantly like, yeah, we're going to need to get pulled out. So he turns his giant, I think he, I think it's a suburban or something. He turns that whole thing around.
02:20:48 ◼ ► I pull out my, my tow rope and my shackles and all that stuff. I got, I got loops in the front, so tie it up and he, you know, yanks me out and it took two seconds. I'm like, yeah, okay.
02:21:00 ◼ ► I guess like, I guess I need help. Sometimes I need, I need to ask for help. Sometimes it turns out like, you know, he pulled me out in, you know, three minutes of total time.
02:21:13 ◼ ► Whereas, you know, I was freezing my butt off and freezing Tiff's hands off trying to shovel myself out.
02:21:19 ◼ ► So I think if, again, like if I had a lot more time, if I had, like if no one had come by and I had to get myself out, I think with enough time and digging, I could have.
02:21:34 ◼ ► But it was, I'm very glad I didn't have to. And certainly, you know, taking help from somebody driving by was the way to do it.
02:21:40 ◼ ► And this, this kind of doubles my commitment to be, I'm very happy that I am equipped to be that person if I encounter someone else who stuff like I have enough gear that even if I encounter somebody who has no gear, no rope, nothing, like I can probably pull them out.
02:21:56 ◼ ► And so I like the idea that we all help each other out here. That's, it's wonderful. It's one of the best things about this community.
02:22:02 ◼ ► But anyway, so got pulled out. And so anyway, so as I'm driving back, the car is still saying, you know, 20 mile an hour limit. And so I could be it's in the high suspension mode.
02:22:14 ◼ ► So I try lowering the suspension back to the regular standard height so I can go faster because it's kind of, you know, it's kind of difficult to drive on the beach with that speed limit without, you know, being stuck where like in the ruts you're already in, as Casey was describing two weeks ago.
02:22:27 ◼ ► And so I tap the button to lower the suspension and just it just doesn't respond like it just it does nothing. The suspension stays at the high state I stay 20 miles an hour state, whatever.
02:22:35 ◼ ► Like, okay, well, I'm sure I'm sure all the crazy, you know, warnings about stuff being under the car and everything. I'm sure I have to like, you know, let the car recover.
02:22:43 ◼ ► Maybe I have to like spray some sand out of somewhere with a hose or something. So I get back to the house and turtle mode and 20 mile an hour mode very slowly.
02:22:53 ◼ ► And every time I turn I hear like rubbing, I'm like, Oh God, it's like sand and sand is somewhere bad. And like as ever as I'm turning, it's like chunking it off probably.
02:23:01 ◼ ► Is there a max track stopping stuck in your wheel? Well, no, I got them all back. My front is now full of sand.
02:23:07 ◼ ► But anyway, I got back to the house and I get out of the car and I noticed, Hmm, I am much closer to the sidewalk than I usually am getting out of my car.
02:23:17 ◼ ► The car thought it was in the highest suspension setting. Oh no. But you get out of it and it looked like a low rider.
02:23:25 ◼ ► The rubbing I was hearing was the tire rubbing against the wheel arch on turns. Oh no. Oh, that is not desirable. No.
02:23:33 ◼ ► And so I'm like, uh, this is not good. So I, you know, parked the car in front of my house. I go get the hose. I hose everything out of all the wheels and wheel wells.
02:23:47 ◼ ► And there is just massive quantities of sand like stuck in all the wheels. Like the sidewalk looks hilarious after I moved the car because like it's just covered in sand from having fallen off my car.
02:23:58 ◼ ► I finally get everything out. And you know, during this process I'm out of the car, you know, hosing stuff out. So the car is in park and is like turning itself on and off as I approach and go away with the proximity phone feature.
02:24:09 ◼ ► Eventually I get back in the car to go move it to its driveway. I tried tapping the suspension button to put it back and it says, you know, check for obstructions under the vehicle.
02:24:20 ◼ ► Are there, is it clear of obstructions now? And I said, yes. And it said it was lowering the ride height. And I thought, Hmm. Oh, I don't think I want it to go any lower because that would be crashing into itself.
02:24:35 ◼ ► Like there's nowhere else for it to go lower. So I was a little scared, but fortunately it raised it back to standard height. So it seems to have worked. It seems to have been some kind of weird software detection of the sand below it where I guess it like disabled the suspension in some ways to make it sink all the way down. I don't know.
02:24:59 ◼ ► Does it have air suspension? Yes. I think there, there is some way that this could be maybe a bug or unintended behavior because like seeing how it drove off the beach in totally flat low rider mode. No wonder I couldn't get out.
02:25:13 ◼ ► If that's how it got itself, like when I tried to lift it and it didn't look like it was lifting, that's cause it wasn't lifting. Had I been able to lift the suspension all the way up, maybe it would have been easier to get it out.
02:25:24 ◼ ► Or maybe you just would have dug yourself down another foot. I mean, it's possible. Look, I'm not going to say I have the best technique in the world. This is the first time I ever got stuck. I'm not very good at it yet. But, but I will say, yeah, based on all of this and we'll see, you know, tomorrow if I'm able to drive off the beach normally, I probably, it seems like it was reset to normal condition again.
02:25:42 ◼ ► And of course I'm going to bring it to a car wash tomorrow and have everything really blasted out. But I, I think the Rivian is so far proving to be an amazing vehicle to drive on the sand, but it was actually a pretty awful vehicle to get stuck in the sand with.
02:26:02 ◼ ► Although I have to say, like if the air suspension was, the bladders were fully compressed, I would still not expect the front wheels to be scraping against the wheel wells. Like it's a, it surprises me that the suspension geometry is such that in fully compressed mode that it could have that kind of failure mode where the wheels are rubbing. Although I'm not entirely sure where they're rubbing. I would look at that and say, have I done damage to the inside of my wheel wells with my wheels?
02:26:28 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, and I mean, and you know, it wasn't a ton of rubbing and it was at very low speeds for only a small number of turns. So I don't think it would have damaged anything permanently. But, but yeah, it was concerning to me that like, wow, it looks like it looks like the car is broken basically.
02:26:44 ◼ ► But now, like once I, you know, re-inflated it afterwards, it seems to be normal now. But yeah, so we'll see. But yeah, overall I got myself stuck for the very first time in the sand. I was not able to easily get myself out. I had to rely on a wonderful tow from the mayor, which took two seconds and it made me instantly realize it is so much easier to have someone else help you than to try to do it yourself.
02:27:09 ◼ ► And finally, the Rivian is a terrible vehicle when it gets stuck in the sand. But as long as it's not getting stuck in the sand, it's an amazing vehicle.
02:27:16 ◼ ► Well, you don't have anything to compare it to because you didn't get stuck with the other vehicles. You know what I mean?
02:27:26 ◼ ► Yeah. It kept going into park and it, and it, when the suspension obviously did not behave correctly. So, you know, something, something went wrong there where it's really not made, it really was not designed to get yourself out of that kind of thing very easily. And sure, probably I would have needed help anyway, you know, or at least it would have taken me a very long time to help myself out. But it could, like they could, if they made a few tweaks to the software, this could be a lot less crappy.
02:27:53 ◼ ► And I know this probably wouldn't have helped you in your situation, especially looking at the pictures and knowing the geography you're dealing with. But if you had a winch and something to attach it to, you could pull yourself out. But you didn't have a winch and you wouldn't have anything to attach to anyway.
02:28:04 ◼ ► That's, yeah, I thought about, like when I, when I was first equipping myself for off-road stuff, I, I thought about getting a winch. But first of all, they are very expensive and very large.
02:28:18 ◼ ► I don't think so, no. There was one for the Defender actually, there was an option for that. But, but the other thing is, like, for most places where you're getting stuck, anything you'd attach to would be too far away. Like, you're looking at like, you know,
02:28:31 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. You know, here it might be like 200 feet away to the nearest thing you could attach to, so.
02:28:39 ◼ ► What are you going to attach it to? Are you going to attach it to some, some beach grass?
02:28:42 ◼ ► Now, they do, well they do have stuff you can like stick into the sand and then attach a winch to it to form some kind of anchor, but I don't know, I mean, again, like, you're getting pretty esoteric at this point.
02:28:52 ◼ ► And, you know, if I got stuck once in two years, that's not that crazy. The tow rope worked fantastically.
02:28:58 ◼ ► Well, I'm glad you survived. So, in the span of December, because it was December 1st that I almost destroyed your car, I believe, so this December has not, it has been a December to remember for the Rivian, for sure.
02:29:14 ◼ ► I mean, in all fairness, though, like, once we, you know, once we got off the beach with your experiment, and then once I got off the beach with my stuff and the car had a chance to like reset itself, it did go back totally to normal.
02:29:26 ◼ ► But, I think, you know, when I spoke to somebody at Rivian who advised, like, maybe I should just bring it in and just get everything checked out at some point just to make sure nothing's wrong.
02:29:35 ◼ ► I think I'm going to probably do that after the holidays. I think I'm going to bring it in and just say, I would suggest that.
02:29:41 ◼ ► Yeah, it's time for you to give them the feedback of the software changes they could make, like not having the thing put itself into park when it's afraid that, you know, that's, that's the thing that dumb, older, dumber vehicles is like, well, they'll let you flog them until you break them.
02:29:53 ◼ ► And this one is trying to protect itself, but in the process, sort of like not letting you, you know, do what you want. It's kind of like the first bad versions of traction control that essentially made it impossible to go pills in the winter.
02:30:04 ◼ ► Because the brake, it would apply the brakes and you would like, I'm going to progress up the hill and be like, Whoa, I feel a wheel slightly sweeping. Let me apply the brakes and it would just come to a stop.
02:30:19 ◼ ► It's like, if I stay with my kids, did you not have appropriate clothing for the weather? And what my kids would say is, I'm not going to be outside. It doesn't matter. And I bet that's what you were thinking when you were driving home. But look, you were outside.
02:30:29 ◼ ► No, I always carry appropriate clothing for the weather in the car because I always think if I get stuck, I'm going to have to be outside for a while. I better have like a hat and gloves and a good jacket. I had all those things. I was wearing none of them because at every single point, I thought I was only going to be there for a minute.
02:30:48 ◼ ► As I see you in the picture, not wearing a coat, not wearing a hat, not wearing gloves.
02:30:56 ◼ ► But yeah, it'll just be a second and I'll just do this one thing and I'll be able to get out.
02:31:00 ◼ ► When you took out the MaxTrax, that would be the time to put on the coat and the hat, I think.