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Connected

491: Improper Work Attire

 

00:00:00   [music]

00:00:07   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 491.

00:00:11   Today's show is brought to you by Zocdoc and Squarespace.

00:00:14   My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Federico Vichichi. Ciao, Federico.

00:00:18   Hello, Mike. How are you?

00:00:20   I'm feeling real good. I'm feeling real good.

00:00:23   And we're also joined by Mr. Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen.

00:00:27   Hey, Federico. Hey, Mike.

00:00:29   Hello. I'm feeling real good because we just had what I think is like an all-time great pre-show

00:00:35   for Connected members, where we spoke about the Yuzu emulator for Nintendo Switch,

00:00:40   and we made some cases as to whether we think it is legal, moral, or none of the above.

00:00:44   We are lawyers now.

00:00:46   We are. Federico has been studying case law.

00:00:50   I passed the bar, and it's all thanks to you, Connected Pro listeners.

00:00:53   I think Federico said the phrase "legal precedent" 16 times during the 20-minute pre-show,

00:01:00   which you can get by going to getconnectedpro.co, sign up, support the show, and get some fun content.

00:01:06   Before we get to follow-up today...

00:01:08   Have some follow-up. Follow me, boys.

00:01:09   No, no, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. I have a surprise.

00:01:14   So I set a goal for myself in 2024, and we are going to start working toward this goal here today in this episode.

00:01:26   In 2024, I want you guys... I think it's time.

00:01:29   We've been podcasting this year for 10 years together, right? Is that right? 10 years?

00:01:33   I want you guys to finally learn some Italian.

00:01:37   I am tired of having to talk in English all the time.

00:01:42   OK. So we are going to start this process that will likely take months or years,

00:01:50   but I want you, by the end of this year, to be able to speak, at the very least, some short Italian sentences.

00:01:57   OK. Are you going to teach us?

00:01:59   Yes. So we're going to start with the very basics, the alphabet.

00:02:05   Today, we're going to start very small. I just need you guys to learn how to pronounce a portion of the Italian alphabet.

00:02:15   Very, very simple. All right?

00:02:18   And obviously, as you know, in the future, in the next few months, we'll go deeper and deeper into the realm of the Italian language.

00:02:26   All right. So you guys are familiar with the alphabet?

00:02:29   I assume A, B, C, D, E, F, D.

00:02:32   I'm familiar with the alphabet's work, yes.

00:02:34   OK. So one of the things you should know about Italian is that we pronounce the letters as we say them, which this will make sense.

00:02:46   This will make sense. This will make sense later on. You'll see what I mean.

00:02:50   You'll see what I mean. So A, B, C. It's A, B, C. Mike, you go first.

00:02:57   A, B, C.

00:03:00   OK, let's C, more like A, B, C.

00:03:03   A, B, C. OK, go, Steven.

00:03:06   A, B, C.

00:03:08   No, no, it's A, no.

00:03:10   Here's the thing. OK, I think I can say this because I feel like the statute of limitations is up.

00:03:17   I had to take a foreign language in college.

00:03:20   OK.

00:03:20   And I really struggled. Like, I was a good student and I really struggled in high school and college in foreign languages, like Spanish, thinking it'd be the easiest.

00:03:30   And it was so hard that my last college Spanish class, my wife, who was fluent in Spanish.

00:03:38   Did a large amount of my online Spanish work for me, it was an online class and did the bulk of it.

00:03:46   And so, OK, well, I'm just saying I'm just saying this is not my strong suit, so I'm going to struggle.

00:03:53   Don't worry about it. We'll get you up to speed. So let's try again. It's not A, B, C. It's A, B, C.

00:04:01   A, B, C.

00:04:04   Yes, OK, next three.

00:04:07   Oh, God, I thought we were just going to do three.

00:04:09   We're doing the whole alphabet.

00:04:10   No, we're not doing the whole alphabet. We're just doing six today.

00:04:14   We're just doing six today and we'll do 12 next time and we'll go from there.

00:04:18   D, A, and the next one is a bit tricky, F.

00:04:24   OK, A, B, C.

00:04:28   Yes, D, A, F.

00:04:31   OK, it's D, D, A, F.

00:04:35   More like F.

00:04:37   F, A.

00:04:38   Yes.

00:04:39   All right.

00:04:40   All right. Go, Steven.

00:04:41   What happens if Mike is successful at this, but not successful in learning Romanian?

00:04:47   I'm learning Romanian. I'm doing Duolingo. I'm on a 50-day streak.

00:04:52   Ooh.

00:04:53   Yeah, take that.

00:04:54   What are the first six letters in the Romanian alphabet?

00:04:57   Oh, we don't do the alphabet. Duolingo is not alphabet. You're learning to speak.

00:05:02   You're not learning all of it.

00:05:04   Yeah.

00:05:05   OK.

00:05:06   All right, Steven. D, A, F, A.

00:05:09   D, A, F, A.

00:05:13   Yeah, so it's not F, A. It's like F, A.

00:05:16   That literally sounds the same to me.

00:05:18   No, you said F, A. It sounds shorter than it is. It should be F, A. Like more pronounced.

00:05:26   F, A.

00:05:27   Yes. All right. So that concludes our very first short. We'll find a name for this segment, I guess.

00:05:36   The six letters of the Italian alphabet. Thank you for collaborating, and we'll do this again next time.

00:05:45   I have a potential topic, like a segment name. Teach Italian.

00:05:55   OK. All right.

00:05:56   Come on, right? Can't be better than that, right? Teach Italian?

00:06:00   That's very good. Please, in your spare time, if you guys can, before next week,

00:06:05   re-practice these six letters, and we'll go from there next week. Follow up.

00:06:13   All right. So follow up. iOS 17.4 will indeed offer the ability for a developer to disable

00:06:21   video reactions. It's in the release notes now. It says developers can control the default behavior

00:06:26   of reactions. This is controlled per application, and user choice will override application declared

00:06:32   defaults. So you'll be able to choose what you want to do otherwise, but you can have,

00:06:39   by default, you can say no. You can turn it off for your app, but a user can choose to turn it

00:06:43   on if they want to. So that will probably help with that kind of stuff. That's a good change.

00:06:49   That's the only thing going on in 17.4, I think. I don't think there's anything else.

00:06:54   Yeah, I think so. Nothing else. We got some AI follow up. First piece comes from Frederick.

00:07:01   We were talking about Magic Eraser. It has been available in Google Photos on both iOS and Android

00:07:07   since February 2023, but only for paying customers who have Google One. So if you want Google's Magic

00:07:13   Eraser, it's possible to get it, but who wants to pay for Google One? You know what I'm saying?

00:07:17   Anders says, with regards to the Apple research papers, we were talking about the strange

00:07:23   formatting of them and nothing being in line. Well, it turns out they are not using Word,

00:07:29   as we expect, but some variant of Latex. This is great for mathematical equations,

00:07:35   but not so great for graphic design. Isn't it pronounced Latex?

00:07:38   It is pronounced Latex. Well, then what's the next four? Why don't they put a K there?

00:07:42   It's like Mac OS X. Yeah, but no one's like Mac OS X, are they?

00:07:49   Right? There is no scenario in which an X is pronounced of a K sound. Why would they do this

00:07:56   to me? Mac OS X. All right. I have now, oh, don't come at me and be like, oh, look in the chat. Like

00:08:06   it's the Greek key letter. No, that is BS. That is BS. I will not accept that. No one knows this.

00:08:13   I reject this. I'm furious now. Mike writes in to say with the discussion on episode 490 about a

00:08:21   five millimeter iPad Pro. Do you think Apple would make an iPad Pro without a camera? The thinness

00:08:27   about a case is nice, but it's ruined if it cannot lay flat on a desk because of a camera bump.

00:08:33   Do people really care about this thing with laying devices flat on a desk?

00:08:37   I had this thought and here I am to jump straight in with my counterpoint. Drawing on an iPad,

00:08:45   like it is a normal thing to put it down and use an Apple pencil to draw, right? Like on a phone,

00:08:50   no, it's fine. But the iPad is maybe the only device where like it actually would make it

00:08:56   nicer if it was flat, like realistically nicer if it was flat. That's a good point. But we all know

00:09:04   photography is the main use of iPad Pros. Yeah, definitely. Especially the 12.9 inch.

00:09:08   Really. Oh, I got it. I can't believe we haven't thought about this before. Okay. Camera bump

00:09:17   dongle. Okay. So you have a really, it has a built-in camera, but it's really bad. But if you

00:09:24   want a good camera, you plug in this USB-C thing. It's aluminum. It kind of wraps around the edge of

00:09:29   the iPad and you get a good camera. You should make a Kickstarter for it. I should. Who needs

00:09:37   calendars? Yeah, exactly. I'm so mad about this latex thing. I'm so angry about it because

00:09:45   everyone in the discourse, like all of my computer science professors, I don't care. Why did they put

00:09:51   the X there? It makes me like an idiot. You know, like I don't like this. I'm really mad about this.

00:09:55   Why did they do this? As soon as I saw this follow-up I realized, oh yes, of course they're

00:10:00   using LaTeX. Like, yeah. Uh, I wish I had thought of it live. That's my shame. Not that I don't know

00:10:06   how to pronounce it, which is weird. Cause normally that's my problem. There's an entire part of the

00:10:12   Wikipedia entry for pronouncing it. Of course there is. Why? But like, I'm so angry. Because the thing

00:10:22   is, right, here's the thing. It doesn't look like the Greek character, right? Cause it's an X, but

00:10:27   like a weird X and it's like drops down, right? It's just, I'm just so mad. I'm just so mad about

00:10:33   it. Shoot on in the discord with some beautiful Greek alphabet, which I can also read by the way.

00:10:39   That's that is excellent. I hadn't seen those letters in, in a few years. And this is proving

00:10:45   my point. It doesn't, if it looked like that, right? Like if the X in LaTeX looked like that,

00:10:51   I wouldn't call it LaTeX. I'd be like, oh, something weird is going on here. You know,

00:10:54   it's an X. Okay. It's okay. Mike, now, you know, it's LaTeX. This made me look like an idiot.

00:11:03   I'm very annoyed about this. Yeah. So the next night, the next time you got to go out and buy

00:11:08   something, you'd be like, Hey, uh, do you guys have any LaTeX suits? I have a LaTeX allergy.

00:11:14   Can we talk about showers some more? Yes. Chris wrote in and said, I wanted to share that I use

00:11:24   a MagSafe magnetic mount to hold my phone in the shower. And then I have an old set of beats fit

00:11:30   pro that I wear while showering. I take them out at the end to finish washing my ears and then

00:11:36   try them, dry them and myself off. Look, gang, just take 10 minutes where you don't have a

00:11:43   podcast. Obviously I'm a podcast. All right. Like I want you to listen to our shows. You don't need

00:11:48   to do this. You know, like it's fine. It's just take a few minutes to think to yourself. Jeremy

00:11:53   writes in to say, hang on, hang on. We just can't blow past this. All right, Chris, Chris, listen

00:12:02   to me directly. He's probably in the shower or the moment. Chris, Chris, you need to order some new

00:12:09   shampoo wearing. Look, I'm a podcast. Look, I understand like you need, I time with your thoughts.

00:12:16   I have other times a day for that, right? It's the headphones. It's the earbuds in the shower

00:12:23   that I don't like it. That's the problem. That's where it's gone too far. I don't mind. I don't

00:12:27   mind a good shower speaker. I think that's totally fine. Like I said, I've got one. It's the beats

00:12:32   fit pro wearing in the shower that, that, that for a couple of reasons. One like, yeah, you got to

00:12:39   take them out to wash your ears. They're wet. Aren't you going to drop them all the time?

00:12:42   But even with a shower speaker, I can still welcome. My bathroom is tiny. I can just see

00:12:49   when the door opens, but I can hear, right? I can like, if one of my kids needs something,

00:12:54   I can still hear them with, with things in my ears, in the shower, I feel like you're too

00:12:58   isolated, right? Like you need some connection to what's going on outside of the shower. And I feel

00:13:06   like there's too much isolation here and it feels icky. And I want to send you a shower speaker. I

00:13:11   think don't, don't use beef. It's pro anymore. Please. Jeremy says I too have the JBL clip two

00:13:19   in the shower. Uh, Jeremy felt the need to tell us that the JBL clip two was blue. Uh, I also have a

00:13:26   mag safe ring on the shower wall, clear of water danger to put my phone in the shower. I watch

00:13:34   YouTube, Hulu and stuff like that. Hulu in the shower. Only murderers in the shower. You know,

00:13:41   Hulu's greatest show. I'm okay. Again, listening is fine. The phone should not come in the shower

00:13:49   with you, right? This was the whole thing that started this a hundred years ago when this topic

00:13:54   started before it took over our podcast. I needed a thing to be able to put my phone on the counter

00:14:00   next to the sink. So I got the nomad leather back thing, which I'm still loving, but it can't come

00:14:06   in the shower with you. That's too much. How did we end up here? Why is there a temu.com link?

00:14:12   We're not putting that link in the show notes. I refuse to put that in the CMS. Go to Amazon.

00:14:17   Why are we doing this? This is the last time. This is, this is the last time. I don't know

00:14:22   if it is. I'm not done. The next piece of follow-up comes from Nick who says, I am surprised. And this

00:14:28   is hilarious to me, the word surprised in this follow-up. I'm surprised that the three hosts

00:14:33   did not originally land on the same conclusion I did for podcasts in the shower. I use a HomePod.

00:14:38   The outside, the fabric of the HomePod, it's like a loofah, right? Like you're having a great time.

00:14:52   What about the electricity part of that? It supports airplay is voice controlled and supports

00:14:58   home intercom. Ideally, the white one looks best in the bathroom. Fiddling with a cheap battery

00:15:03   power, Bluetooth, water speakers, or balancing your iPhone seems barbaric. Now I'm assuming,

00:15:09   right. That the HomePod is not in the shower cubicle because I think Nick would be dead by

00:15:14   now. I mean, look, all of mine were outside of the shower and all three of my big ones were dead now.

00:15:19   So yeah. And again, like I will say, I don't have an issue with people listening to music

00:15:25   or podcasts in the shower. For me, if you are going further than phone in the shower with you,

00:15:33   which I'm fine with, or simple speaker, I think it's too far, right? Like I think when we're

00:15:37   getting MagSafe rings and stuff like that, it's like we're gone too far using headphones. But this

00:15:42   is the reason why we've got some anonymous feedback who said, regarding the dangers of

00:15:47   phone in the shower, my wife is a manager of a HR company and twice in the last year has had to write

00:15:53   disciplinary actions because employees have accidentally joined video calls while in the

00:15:58   shower. After much deliberation, improper work attire has been the correct terminology for the

00:16:08   offense. The offenders seem to have accidentally hit the camera button during an active call

00:16:13   while otherwise occupied. What is wrong with people? What is wrong with people? This is so

00:16:19   much worse than the video reactions in macOS. This is why working from home should be illegal.

00:16:23   If this is what you're doing, you have lost your working from home privileges.

00:16:32   If you're supposed to be on a meeting and instead you're in the shower, no, you're not allowed

00:16:38   anymore. Well, maybe it was an unexpected call, right? It's not like, oh, I have a meeting with

00:16:44   my boss, let me go get in the shower. I've read this, someone, you know, look, people just make

00:16:50   teams calls and slack calls and you accidentally pick up. Don't take your phone in the shower.

00:16:54   Just don't, just don't do it. Don't do this. Improper work attire. Improper work attire.

00:17:00   Unbelievable. We all know, we all know there are specific reasons to have your phone in the shower,

00:17:10   right? And like to be on a call, like if you want to be on a phone call in the shower and what you,

00:17:14   that's good for you if you want to do that, but never in a work environment. You know what I'm

00:17:18   saying? Not in a work environment. Wait, what? Look, if you want to take a phone call with a

00:17:25   loved one while you're in the shower, that's up to you. Oh, sure. Okay. Sure. Okay. Sure.

00:17:31   Maybe you're traveling. I don't know what you're doing, right? Like that's on you.

00:17:35   Why can people just, you know, sing in the shower or something? Like it's, you know, old school,

00:17:43   like just, or, or, or be alone with your thoughts. Yeah. I get great thinking done when I'm in the

00:17:50   shower. Me too. Yeah. Great thinking. Yeah. Now I'm just going to think about how upset I am about

00:17:57   LaTeX. That's what I'm going to, when I take my shower this evening, that's what I'm going to be

00:18:02   thinking about. I'm not going to be able to get this out of my head. I'm so embarrassed. You know

00:18:07   what I once read about the, uh, the, the creator of the LaTeX syntax. Um, he pronounced, I believe

00:18:15   is a very tall guy. So, Oh yeah. Taller than me. Possibly. I expect. Right. Yeah. It's all of them.

00:18:22   Apple music in the shower. A good use for shower speaker is Apple music. Uh, Federico tell us about

00:18:34   this new feature and then tell us what it lacks. Yeah. So today they, uh, Apple music started

00:18:40   rolling out these new mix. It's called the heavy rotation mix, which is different from previous,

00:18:47   uh, heavy rotation things they have done. Uh, heavy rotation, I believe used to be,

00:18:51   or still is a section of the home view. This one is one of their algorithmic mixes.

00:18:57   However, uh, unlike their previous mixes, such as the, um, uh, what's, what's it called? A new,

00:19:04   new music mix, uh, my favorites mix. Uh, do they have also one called like, uh, my friends mix and

00:19:10   my chill mix or something? Yeah. There's friends mix, chill mix. I think there's like some kind of

00:19:15   like workout. Yeah. Like, uh, get up, feel good, something mix, um, heavy rotation. You said that

00:19:24   one. I've got my station, my discovery station. Those are the radio stations, which are different

00:19:29   from mixes mixes or basically get up, get up, get up, get up, chill mix, chill mix.

00:19:35   So heavy rotation mix is a, a, uh, as a collection of songs you have put in every rotation,

00:19:44   uh, supposedly from the past 24 hours, because this one is the first algorithmic mix to be

00:19:51   refreshed on a daily basis. Um, I think it's a good idea. Spotify has been doing lots of daily

00:19:58   mixes for years now of all kinds. Um, so Apple music now also doing a daily mix. Um, I think

00:20:05   it's a good idea. The one thing I noticed, which I believe is a bug at the moment and it needs to

00:20:09   be fixed is that this heavy rotation mix, I can say for certainty that for me, it picked up songs

00:20:18   that I listened to while I had enabled a focus filter that turns off music listening activity.

00:20:27   So if you recall, that was a feature that was rolled out in 17.2 or 17.3, the ability to

00:20:33   create a focus mode with a focus filter for Apple music to say, uh, when I'm listening to music and

00:20:39   I'm in the sleep focus or I'm in the driving focus or something, do not count this music activity

00:20:46   against my recommendations against what people will see that I listened to and all that sort of

00:20:51   stuff. Uh, but in this heavy rotation mix, I found my sleep music, which is the, you know, the music

00:20:57   I listen to when I go to bed. And I don't want that to count against my recommendations. And yet

00:21:03   it ended up here. So hopefully this, uh, the algorithm will be fixed here, not to count those

00:21:09   songs, but otherwise, um, I think it's a good idea. And, uh, it just, uh, maybe, uh, maybe about time

00:21:16   for the music app to get some sort of refresh because that, uh, that, uh, section of mixes and

00:21:22   stations is getting kind of confusing right now with all these options. Spotify has a dedicated

00:21:28   page, for example, for all your algorithmic mixes here, they're just a sort of put in a section of

00:21:35   the home tab and maybe there could be a better design to collect them all. Uh, we've seen the

00:21:41   discord from Jen. There is a singing in the shower playlist from Apple music. There you go. That's the

00:21:47   playlist that exists too. If you want that. Yeah. Is this a matter of Apple not remembering all the

00:21:57   features it has? Like I think so. Yeah. Cause this happens. I actually, it happens quite a bit. Look

00:22:03   at the sports app, like no live activities, no widgets, no iPad or Mac support. Like I just,

00:22:11   I understand it was something like that. They wanted to get it out for the beginning of MLS

00:22:15   play and it was at accused baby. So it got fast tracked. It seems, but something like this,

00:22:22   it's like, well, the music team supports these other features. It just, it, it kind of,

00:22:26   it kind of runs me the wrong way for a company that prize itself on the details, you know?

00:22:31   No, no, no. So, um, hope it gets fixed, but otherwise, uh, I think it's really a nice feature.

00:22:40   The other thing I'll say here is does it matter with, I mean, if this is the,

00:22:47   the heavy rotation, this is music you listen to a lot. Like, wouldn't that be fine to go back into

00:22:52   your, your history and everything because it's music you've already listened to a bunch. It's

00:22:56   not like you're off exploring something new and you don't want to accidentally be labeled as,

00:23:01   you know, someone who listens to a type of music you don't. Well, no, but if, but if for example,

00:23:06   my kid likes to listen to the frozen soundtrack 20 times when we're driving, uh, would you consider

00:23:12   that a heavy rotation for me? Okay. If there's a setting, you should respect that setting. I agree

00:23:19   with that. I just, I didn't know since this playlist is like an amplification, but yes, I,

00:23:23   I see what you're saying now. Or if you like, you know, you're, you listen to a piece of music on

00:23:29   repeat for four hours while you're writing, like, it's not like you always want that to show up when

00:23:35   you're like joking. It's like a different thing for some people, I guess. This episode of connected

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00:25:34   Our friend Greg Pierce of Draff's fame has laid tech. I think Draff

00:25:46   probably supports it. New app called Simple Scan, and it's great. This all unfolded on Macedon.

00:25:55   Greg said he needed something to scan some things. He wrote a little app, and I had a

00:25:59   bunch of other people told him, "Please make this an app on the App Store." Yes, you can scan

00:26:04   documents into Apple Notes. Yes, you can scan in the Files app, but there are other times that you

00:26:12   want to scan something and you want to just send it as an email, or maybe you don't want to open

00:26:18   the Files app because it makes you sad, and Greg's Simple Scan app does just that. There's a handful

00:26:24   of options. You can set your format to PDF or images. You can turn OCR on or off, and there's

00:26:31   some other things you can do like set up custom email destinations like scan this and send it to

00:26:36   Federico. I think this is awesome because Apple's solution is good, but a little bit limited, and

00:26:43   this coming from Greg who makes Draff's, this is just Draff's for scanning. You open it and you

00:26:49   pick your destination, and then you scan your thing. I'm glad he built it because a lot of

00:26:55   third-party scanning apps have felt icky over the years with business models or the one my wife

00:27:02   uses. I forget the name of it, and she likes it. It's fine, whatever. It syncs with iCloud,

00:27:07   but it's like a whole document library inside the scanning app. I'm like, that's fine, but for what

00:27:14   I want most of the time is scan something to email it to somebody, which I have to do a fair amount

00:27:19   for work. I get a scary letter in the mail. I scan it, send it to our CPA, and he says, "No,

00:27:25   you're getting scammed. Don't answer that," or whatever. That sort of use case is pretty common

00:27:31   for me, and so I signed up for this immediately. It's $4.99 a year or $20 lifetime. Greg has a long

00:27:40   history of building excellent iOS apps, and I was like, "Yeah, lifetime. Let's go. This is now on my

00:27:46   phone." I love this idea because it's the kind of utility that doesn't do anything revolutionary.

00:27:54   It's just a much more intuitive and simplified version of a feature that exists elsewhere,

00:28:01   and here it's being made like a dedicated utility that does just that. If there's one piece of

00:28:07   feedback that I could sort of file on the show, I would love to- Use it in the shower.

00:28:16   No, I don't scan documents in the shower, but I would love to create- Maybe somebody out there is

00:28:24   like, "No, I do it all the time." I'm convinced now one of our listeners scans their documents

00:28:28   in the shower. You need the humidity to smooth the paper out. Now, you got to work fast though,

00:28:33   which is why this is a good product because some of these other scanning apps are slow,

00:28:37   and this thing is just like you got to get in there just as the paper is smooth but not ruined.

00:28:43   Yeah, that's why you need simple scan because it's so fast. It's shower proof. No, but I would

00:28:48   love to create favorite folders so that the next time I scan something, I need to always go to my

00:28:58   scanned documents folder in iCloud Drive. That's something that you can do on iOS. You can pick

00:29:02   a folder beforehand. That sort of becomes a bookmark of sorts, and then the next time I scan,

00:29:09   the app would save the PDF directly inside that folder without me having to pick that folder

00:29:14   manually every time. So that would be nice to have. But yeah, I think a really cool example of

00:29:20   a developer looking for something that didn't exist, builds it for himself, becomes a product

00:29:26   for sale. Really nice story, I think. Every time someone says "simple scan," I hear "simple plan."

00:29:32   That's where my brain is. Do you know I saw them live in Viterbo when I was 15?

00:29:43   You know, that's wild to me that they made it out to you. You know, like I'm from Canada.

00:29:51   Let's talk about PWAs and iOS 17.4. Okay. This is a topic I have brought to the show today.

00:30:03   I think I'm in a bit of a spicy mood today. It's all to do with latex. So as part of the

00:30:09   changes coming in iOS 17.4 in Europe to comply with the DMA rules, Apple has removed the support

00:30:18   in Europe for PWAs on the iPhone. PWAs, progressive web apps, or as I think of them, programs of

00:30:24   attitude. Essentially, what this allows you to do is add a web app on your iPhone to your home

00:30:36   screen, but then it acts like an app. So when you tap on the icon, it opens full screen. It looks

00:30:43   like an app. It doesn't have like web browser Chrome around it. And then over time, they've

00:30:47   added features like push notifications you can receive from PWA. And it has some form of reliable

00:30:54   storage. So the app remembers states it has data like an app would like a native app. The PWA does

00:31:01   as well. But in 17.4, Apple has removed the additional functions that a PWA can have on the

00:31:08   iPhone, essentially reducing it back to being like a bookmark to open a web page in your chosen

00:31:14   browser. Many people in the community are upset about this and believe that Apple is doing it to

00:31:20   make the experience, to make PWAs a worse experience than using an app. I'm seeing this

00:31:29   spoken about a lot. The term malicious compliance has been used to describe what Apple has been

00:31:34   doing. That Apple is using the DMA as a cover to remove PWAs because there is a feeling that like,

00:31:42   I think in the PWA community that Apple doesn't want them to exist because it allows for a new

00:31:51   form of distribution of applications with Apple taking no money from them.

00:31:56   It's very clear Apple wants money from all apps. Apple have given the following statement on this.

00:32:03   I'm going to quote from 9 to 5. Apple explains that it would have to build an entirely new

00:32:08   integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS to address the complex security and

00:32:14   privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines. This work was not

00:32:20   practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of home

00:32:27   screen web apps, Apple explains. And so to comply with the DMA's requirements, we had to remove the

00:32:33   home screen web apps feature in the European Union. EU users will be able to continue accessing

00:32:39   websites directly from their home screen through a bookmark with minimal impact to their functionality

00:32:45   Apple continues. That part is not true at the end. That's just not true. The functions are being

00:32:50   removed, like the storage, the push notifications. I don't know what everything else in that

00:32:54   statement reads fine. I don't know why they say that part at the end. As you would imagine,

00:32:59   complaints on this have been made to the European Commission and they say that they are looking into

00:33:04   it. What do you boys think about this? I don't understand, and maybe you guys can explain this to

00:33:09   me, why the feature had to be taken away because of the DMA. So I have a thought on this and like

00:33:17   I've done a bit of reading on this. Essentially, so they had to take it, well Apple

00:33:25   said they had to take it away because they are not going to do the work to allow say Chrome

00:33:31   and Mozilla to do this. Like if you choose Chrome as your default browser and you get the browser

00:33:35   ballot, you then can't use WebKit from Apple right to power the PWAs. That's kind of the thinking.

00:33:42   And it seems like Apple is not willing to do the work to allow for PWAs to work no matter what type

00:33:49   of browser you use. That's a decision that they have made. And I think they've then had to remove

00:33:54   it because then Safari would have this feature and it would have an edge over Chrome. It would

00:34:00   be better than Chrome. So if you stuck with Safari, then you could have PWAs. But if you chose

00:34:07   Chrome, you can't. So I think they've basically they have to neutralize the impact. They're not

00:34:13   actually allowed to have one web browser be better than any of the other web browsers. Is that codified

00:34:20   in the DMA? I think I've read that that's the case. Like they can't allow for benefits to Safari

00:34:29   over Chrome. Like they have to neutralize them, right? So this is from 9 to the Mac. The DMA

00:34:38   requires that all browsers have equality, meaning that Apple can't favor Safari and WebKit over

00:34:43   third-party browser engines. Therefore, because it can't offer home screen web apps for third-party

00:34:47   browsers, it also can't offer support via Safari. Thanks for that. It just seems

00:34:55   my thought is that it seems a bit odd to me that you go to such great lengths to build all these

00:35:03   features that the DMA requires you to. And the one thing you fail to implement is arguably something

00:35:14   that would have allowed a lot of web apps to be used locally on an iOS device in full screen

00:35:21   with app-like behaviors and features. Like it seems a bit odd. Yeah, but if that was the case,

00:35:28   then why do PWAs have any support currently like in the rest of the world? What do you mean with

00:35:33   that? Well, like PWAs work everywhere else. It's not like they've gotten rid of them everywhere

00:35:37   else. So like that threat still exists in other places. Sure. So like if that was the case, then

00:35:44   like why did they introduce them in the first place and have made them better over time if

00:35:50   they don't want them to exist? Right, and so if they want them to exist, why didn't they build it?

00:35:55   I genuinely, okay, so I am taking Apple's comments at face value that like

00:36:05   is a minuscule percentage of users are actually using this feature,

00:36:08   and they had to build so much they deprioritized it. So they didn't have time basically? No,

00:36:14   it's not time. They didn't want to do this work. Like that's how I look at it. Like they had so

00:36:19   many things to do. They didn't want to do this. I hope they will do it. Like that they haven't done

00:36:25   it now. So if Apple is not, if Apple is not maliciously complying here, I think they would

00:36:31   have, they would have, they could have just said, look, we deprioritize this. It's coming later,

00:36:37   but we are going to do it. Case closed. Like, unless there's something else. They don't make

00:36:42   those kinds of statements, right? But, but now, but now you just caused a lot of controversy and

00:36:48   the EU to look into this again. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, it's not like they haven't caused

00:36:54   enough controversy in the EU looking into things with even just their response to the VMA. I think

00:36:59   it is a shame to remove them from Safari. Like I think it's a shame to move them at all, but I do

00:37:04   believe that the usage of PWAs on iOS is really low. Like I do believe this to be the case.

00:37:09   About why is that low? Like, like, yeah, I think you're right. But also arguably you could say that

00:37:14   it's been low because Apple has been very slow to adopt modern PWA features. I just don't, I just

00:37:20   don't think people are going to do it. It's that sort of problem. It's like the chicken leg problem

00:37:24   where like, yeah, adoption is low because really like, you know, you only recently they like,

00:37:31   was it last year that they added support for push notifications? Yeah. I mean like, yeah,

00:37:39   that usage is low because obviously you always pushed for the app store instead of the web.

00:37:47   Like, so yeah, you know, not a shocker that usage is low. That is a very good point. There is one

00:37:54   thing I wanted to just mention here though. Like a lot of people are calling PWAs the biggest threat

00:37:58   to the app store, which is why Apple's getting rid of them. Like I'm seeing that time used a lot,

00:38:02   which is, I mean, it's funny to me because like, I think the biggest threat to the app store

00:38:07   is alternate app stores, which is what's happening in the countries where P, like places where PWAs

00:38:14   have been removed. I think the biggest threat to the app store is Apple itself. Yeah, I love it.

00:38:19   Yes. I love it. Like, look, I find this whole thing to be, uh, I can see why people are frustrated

00:38:25   about it. I do. I really, I personally take Apple at face value here that like, it's a small

00:38:34   percentage of users that use it. They haven't done it. And that's that, like, I want them to do more,

00:38:41   but I, I don't see this as like some mastermind scheme to neutralize this like oncoming threat.

00:38:50   Yeah. I don't think that. I think you're right. I don't think that either. Uh, but as with many

00:38:55   other cases of Apple in the press, I think sometimes they just have a bad way to get their

00:39:04   message across. Yeah. Cause I, I expect they probably, somebody is probably working on this.

00:39:12   Like someone at Apple is probably working on this. They could just say what you suggested, right?

00:39:20   Like we're working on this, but it is not going to make 17.4 and to comply, we've had to remove it.

00:39:26   They do it for other things. I mean, Tim Cook literally said, we're going to have AI features

00:39:32   later this year. They pre-announce their accessibility stuff weeks before the OS is

00:39:38   unveiled. It wouldn't kill anyone to say, yeah, we're going to do this, but it's coming later.

00:39:42   Like, you know, it's no big deal. It's not like they are unveiling the, you know, the next,

00:39:48   you know, Apple hardware or something like, just say that it's a feature coming later

00:39:52   and nobody gets upset. I don't get it. They want your money. That's for sure. Right. And they will

00:39:58   do anything that they can to get the money. But I just, I feel like, I don't feel like that's what's

00:40:05   going on here. Like I really don't think they're removing PWAs because they consider PWAs a threat

00:40:11   because if that was the case, why do they exist outside of here? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's

00:40:18   a good point. And I think you're right. I don't think they're doing this maliciously. The timing

00:40:23   is, you know, the timing makes you think that, makes you skeptical. But if you consider how

00:40:29   they're still available, you know, outside of the EU, I think you make a good point.

00:40:34   And I think the company culture right now, they are so begrudgingly doing this, right? Like they

00:40:39   are so begrudgingly going along with the DMA. I think that they are doing the bare minimum amount

00:40:46   of work that they have to do. And the easiest way to deal with the PWA thing is just to turn it off

00:40:56   than to build a function for Mozilla and Google and Microsoft to have their own PWAs on the iPhone.

00:41:05   Yeah. So they're just doing that. Like they, I wouldn't call it malicious compliance in this

00:41:09   scenario. It is like bare minimum compliance is what Apple is going for with this specific thing,

00:41:14   I think. That's my read on the situation anyway. It's like a mom, I don't want to brush my teeth

00:41:20   compliance. Yeah. And so instead you're just like, you just like take the brush. You don't even put

00:41:26   toothpaste on it. Just water one in one out. Done. That's it. Yep. Yep. Yep.

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00:43:26   We now come to a sad moment in the podcast where we say goodbye to a project that we have talked

00:43:32   about just about the whole run of this podcast. I went back, and we'll get into this, I did some

00:43:39   history digging through what was once called Project Titan, which was Apple's initiative,

00:43:47   or initiatives, I think it was more than one, looking into at some point some combination of

00:43:54   an electric vehicle, a self-driving vehicle, and/or software to run a self-driving vehicle.

00:44:04   At one point they weren't going to make hardware, other points they were hiring people who knew how

00:44:08   shocks and brakes worked. So the big news is, I'm sure people have seen this,

00:44:13   Mark Gurman reported on Bloomberg that Apple has canceled its "decade-long effort to build

00:44:21   an electric car." So this is what Gurman said, this is a quote, "The two executives told staffers

00:44:27   that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team, known as the

00:44:33   Special Projects Group, or SPG," this is me now speaking, not Gurman, Project Titan was a pretty

00:44:39   cool name, Special Projects Group, pretty boring. "So those employees will be shifted to the

00:44:44   Artificial Intelligence Division under executive John Gendrea," who we spoke about last week,

00:44:50   "those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the

00:44:57   company." A side effect of this seems that our boy Kevin Lynch is now reporting to John Gendrea

00:45:04   as a result of this. Is he our boy?

00:45:07   He seems like a cool guy. He seems like a cool guy, but like...

00:45:13   Kevin's our boy, Kevin's our boy. I could see Kevin coming out, you know, for dinner with us,

00:45:19   you know, having a good time. I have nothing against him, I just wasn't sure if I missed a

00:45:23   thing where he became our boy. Kevin's got our sort of vibe.

00:45:27   I think he does. Remember he showed up at a keynote with long hair all of a sudden?

00:45:30   It's like, yeah, let's go. Special project, that was your special project.

00:45:35   Yeah, he knows about special projects. So a little history for you, because I started

00:45:41   looking at this and I was like, okay, we talked about this literally the entire run of our podcast

00:45:45   and I just had forgotten how much it happened. So just, just give me a second.

00:45:51   Project Titan was kicked off in 2014 with approval from the newly minted Tim Cook. Tim Cook could

00:45:58   only be in charge about three years at this point. This was right at the same time the

00:46:03   Apple watch was announced and coming out. So about that timeframe, Apple was rumored at the time to

00:46:09   have hired Johan Jungwirth, a former president and chief executive from Mercedes-Benz R&D,

00:46:17   North America. Out of the gate, hiring car people, right?

00:46:22   Okay. Then in 2015,

00:46:24   I had forgotten about this and I reread it, like fell out of my chair. In 2015, Apple board member

00:46:30   Mickey Drexler told an interviewer that Steve Jobs had a car on Apple's radar. This is a quote,

00:46:39   "Steve Jobs, if he had lived, was going to design an iCar," said Drexler. "I think cars

00:46:45   have an extraordinary opportunity for cool design." What a sentence. What a sentence.

00:46:52   iCar.

00:46:52   iCar. It's a different time, you know, different, you know, now it'd be Apple Car Pro.

00:46:56   Later that year, Apple started taking meetings with the state of California over self-driving

00:47:04   regulations, thinking that they were going to be putting tech on the roads at some point,

00:47:09   wanted to make sure the state of California was, all that was up to speed. In 2016,

00:47:16   Bob Mansfield returned from retirement.

00:47:19   Hi, Bob.

00:47:19   Hi, Bob.

00:47:22   Came back from retirement to lead Project Titan and was given a quote,

00:47:26   "Fall 2017 deadline to report to Tim Cook if the project was viable." So this is a couple of years

00:47:33   in. Maybe there's not much to show for it. As you go through this, it seems like maybe Bob blew

00:47:39   through that deadline.

00:47:40   Yeah, that was 2017. It's now 2024, in case you've been asleep for five years. Bob Mansfield

00:47:50   previously had been involved with Apple's other hardware products, right? Like he was in a bunch

00:47:55   of videos about MacBook Pros and stuff, so he had the chops, came back. I'm not sure what happened

00:48:00   here, but we blew through 2017. And about this time, like the AI stuff we spoke about on our

00:48:07   previous episode, about this time, research started coming out from people at Apple about

00:48:14   self-driving cars, about lidar systems, camera vision, computer vision, that sort of thing. So

00:48:21   there was work going on, sort of academic work in these areas that very clearly was going to

00:48:26   be tied to this product. In January of 2018, Apple registered about two dozen self-driving cars with

00:48:35   the state of California. Pictures of these were all over the place. They weren't Apple

00:48:40   cars, right? They were like some vans. I think there were some Lexus SUVs, I think, if I remember

00:48:45   correctly.

00:48:45   I think they had Jaguar. I think they were using Jaguar.

00:48:48   Maybe. All white, of course. And then a bunch of sensors and stuff on it. Other companies have

00:48:56   done this a lot. Also in here, I didn't put it in my notes, but I read it. Also in here,

00:49:00   there was a lawsuit about a guy who left Apple and apparently stole a bunch of self-driving

00:49:04   data. That happens all the time in these car companies. It's wild.

00:49:07   In 2018 and 2019, Apple was meeting with a bunch of car companies. And this is not the

00:49:16   only time. This was a time period where looking at people reporting on this, looking at LinkedIn

00:49:23   and looking at job postings, Apple was hiring people with car suspension engineering work

00:49:30   under their belts.

00:49:31   I think this was when it was also rumored that they were going to buy Kia.

00:49:35   This was in there too, because they were also in South Korea a bunch talking to Kia and

00:49:41   other companies about manufacturing and maybe purchase.

00:49:45   Which at the time seemed silly, but now if you look at what Kia's transition to electric,

00:49:53   yep, they're incredible. They make such great cars. And so at the time it seemed funny because

00:49:58   Kia were maybe more of a budget car and the cars weren't very good looking in a lot of

00:50:04   instances. But now they're crushing it. The logo is funny, but that was also a good thing.

00:50:13   But it was good to change it, right? Because now they have a new brand.

00:50:17   The new logo is pretty bad though.

00:50:18   KN is one.

00:50:19   It's bad.

00:50:21   But yeah, they make great cars.

00:50:23   And they are, at least in North America, killing it on the electric car front. A lot of good

00:50:28   options from Kia and its sibling brands.

00:50:31   2018 also brought the hire of Doug Field. We talked about this on Connected. He was formerly

00:50:38   the SVP of engineering at Tesla. A job that I think later would go to Chris Latner, who

00:50:46   invented Swift. He had a short stint in this job at Tesla or a job like this at Tesla.

00:50:52   So Doug Field comes over.

00:50:54   They just high five as they switch, you know?

00:50:57   Yeah, exactly. In 2019, Apple bought a company called Drive AI. This was an AI self-driving

00:51:07   vehicle startup. They, according to reporting at the Verge, were getting ready to go out

00:51:12   of business and Apple scooped him up on the cheap. Apple bought other companies in this

00:51:16   time, but this I think was maybe one of the most notable ones. Definitely one of the more

00:51:21   public ones.

00:51:21   Right before COVID, Bob goes back into retirement.

00:51:26   What did he know?

00:51:28   Yeah.

00:51:29   As I'm getting out of here, work from home, forget that. I got a podcast shower lined

00:51:36   up, you know? What do you think Bob listens to in the shower?

00:51:40   The sound of car engines.

00:51:42   Maybe. Remember there was also a report like Apple owned this building somewhere in California?

00:51:46   People were like, we hear engines racing around at night. It's like, okay.

00:51:49   I don't remember that, but I love that.

00:51:52   Dude, I've read so much about Apple's car stuff over the last two days. It's just like,

00:51:57   my brain is full of it. So John Andrea took over. And then in 2021, it was reported that

00:52:04   Kevin Lynch was in charge. So there was a lot of shuffling going on. And in that shuffling,

00:52:09   Doug Field from Tesla left and went to Ford, which is now building EVs.

00:52:15   A lot of movement. Around this time, a deadline of 2024 was floated. So I guess 2017 didn't

00:52:22   work out. 2024, we're going to do something. And this whole time, right, there's reporting

00:52:27   again, Apple's going to make an electric self-driving car. They had really ambitious

00:52:34   goals about the self-driving is broken into levels, like levels one through five. And

00:52:38   basically, as you move up the stack, they become more and more aware of self-driving.

00:52:44   There were rumors of no steering wheel for a while, right? That was what they wanted

00:52:47   to make, a car with no wheel. Yeah. Who would? Yeah. A yoke or something? No, no, nothing.

00:52:52   And then there were also reports that, okay, the self-driving stuff is harder than we thought.

00:53:00   Who would have guessed? And they were maybe looking at something more like GM Super Cruise,

00:53:07   which is really highly reviewed. But Super Cruise self-driving technology only works on

00:53:13   highways mapped out by GM and then fed into their system. So it's not like, it's not like

00:53:21   something like Tesla full self-driving where it can kind of do it wherever. And I'm not,

00:53:28   we're not going down that road, just saying that sentence and moving on. GM Super Cruise

00:53:33   is only on select highways. And maybe Apple wasn't happy with that. But after all of this,

00:53:39   right, this is a very like spicy decade long story. And now Gherman says it's over, a bunch

00:53:46   of people are going to go work on AI. No doubt some people will lose their jobs. And that sucks,

00:53:51   especially like in the background of all this is this kind of meta story that EV demand in

00:53:57   North America is really drying up. And so some of these people, it's a bad time to be let go

00:54:04   from a company like this, which is unfortunate, but that's where we are. And I'd love to know

00:54:10   what you all think about it. I definitely have thoughts, but that's kind of the background.

00:54:14   Well, it's a relief to start with because now none of us have to buy a car that Apple makes

00:54:23   because, you know, you think it was bad that we had the Biodivision Pro.

00:54:27   It was bad. Yeah.

00:54:29   Let's start with $90,000 car, right? That would have been unfortunate for everybody involved.

00:54:34   Can't have John ship it to me. You know, that could have been.

00:54:37   Yeah. John is the most relieved, I think.

00:54:39   Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is something that like, I kind of never really cared for it. So like,

00:54:45   I'm not really, you know, it would have been fun to talk about. Like there would have been

00:54:51   interesting, weird stuff to talk about with this, but it doesn't like, I'm kind of,

00:54:57   I'm kind of happy they're not doing it. I don't think that this was a good idea to be honest.

00:55:02   I mean, honestly, was this ever really going to happen? Like.

00:55:06   I think there is another timeline where, where yes, it was going to, but I just think it,

00:55:12   it didn't take off. I don't know. Maybe it's just me,

00:55:17   but I've always felt very ambivalent about the idea of the computer company now making a car.

00:55:24   And I mean sure there's, there's a, you know, the counter argument will be, but like for example,

00:55:31   Tesla used to be, you know, brand new company, never made a car before. And then they made a car

00:55:36   and now they are arguably readers in the EV marketplace. So it is possible for a

00:55:44   company that has never done cars before to do cars.

00:55:47   Especially now that cars are just more and more technology than they are motors.

00:55:53   Exactly. But still like, I've always felt very like, would I really drive an Apple car?

00:56:02   Like would I feel safe, you know, from a company that, you know, makes smartphones and laptops and

00:56:10   now headsets like, okay, now you want me to drive your car?

00:56:13   It's going to drive you, man. That's the whole, that's the whole idea.

00:56:17   I am on the record as a, as a self-driving non-believer.

00:56:23   Because I am confident when I say this, it's never going to work in Italy.

00:56:27   So but Hey, maybe it works in the American highways. Great. But yeah.

00:56:34   You know, life's a highway. But I would like to counterpoint there.

00:56:41   I have felt that way too, that like the idea of a self-driving car seems bananas,

00:56:49   but then I think about large language models and it feels...

00:56:55   It's going to hallucinate you right off the highway.

00:56:58   No, but like, if you just think about that technology, right? Like it's so impressive

00:57:04   what it can do. Like, you know, it can take in a bunch of data and can make something new out of

00:57:12   it. And I don't know, there's just something about like that advancement in technology makes me feel,

00:57:17   I feel less skeptical of the idea that a large set of data couldn't achieve that problem.

00:57:28   Have you ever seen a lady in Rome traffic chase you and honking

00:57:32   her car at you and chasing you for several minutes?

00:57:36   But the self-driving car wouldn't do that. You know, it's not going to honk and chase.

00:57:39   What I'm saying is that, is that there are some

00:57:42   locales where traffic and driving is so wildly unpredictable and you do things that are arguably,

00:57:53   you know, illegal when you're driving that it is from my perspective. Yeah. Oh, by the way, Zach,

00:58:00   yes, this happened to me. I mean, we all assumed that that happened. It was happening to you or

00:58:05   you were happening it? To me, to me. So we're driving, I'm driving, Sylvia's in the passenger

00:58:11   seat, the dog's in the back seat and I'm just driving Sylvia to school. And I start hearing

00:58:18   this honk behind me, like it must be someone who's upset at somebody else because I didn't

00:58:23   do anything. Right. I was just driving and the honking persisted and it's like going and going.

00:58:29   And then after like a good minute, Sylvia's like, who's this lady behind us honking at?

00:58:37   It's like, and so I look at the rear view mirror and I see her gesturing like very

00:58:44   aggressively toward me. She then sort of she she tries to pass me, stops her car because there was

00:58:54   a red light and she starts yelling at me and she gets out of the car. So basically she was and I

00:59:02   start I just I just laughed in her face. I just I didn't even do anything. Just started laughing.

00:59:07   She believed that I cut her off at an intersection, which I didn't do, which I absolutely didn't do.

00:59:13   So anyway, that was that was weird. And we had a laugh and then we just left.

00:59:18   Well, I feel like I mean, I don't I'm not arguing for this possibility, but like,

00:59:24   I'm just wondering, like, can you not imagine a future where a computer would be able to reason

00:59:31   what to do in that scenario like a human can? Like why not? You don't think a computer would

00:59:36   ever be able to do that? I think I think self-driving can absolutely work on a highway,

00:59:41   on a freeway or on large roads. I don't think it's ever going to be able to figure out how you

00:59:49   should live in Rome or in, you know, in any other city where going downtown or in certain

00:59:56   neighborhoods is it requires a very special type of human skill, which is improvising.

01:00:03   You think it's a uniquely human thing? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just like,

01:00:07   I think I really think it is. I mean, I agree with you that, like, it feels much more doable

01:00:13   on predictable roads. Yes. Like where like America is more predictable, right? Like the

01:00:19   road infrastructure in Europe is very different because it's older. And so like you have a look,

01:00:23   y'all barely have any other Apple features because you're outside. That's true. You know,

01:00:27   that's true. It's going to be U.S. only forever. Progressive web apps, self-driving kind of the

01:00:33   same. Exactly the same thing. You got to drive it on Apple-approved roads and they're going to

01:00:38   take 30% of that pavement. Of the roads, of the toll booths, all toll booths, 30% of toll booths.

01:00:45   Yeah. I mean, Federico, I think there's definitely something to what you're saying.

01:00:49   And that's exactly why this is such a hard problem. And there were people when Apple

01:00:54   went into this saying like, no one else has figured this out. Tesla hasn't figured this out,

01:00:58   surely. Like this is a very hard thing. And these companies have the best people in the world

01:01:04   working at them. Right. What's the company? Waze? Wave? There's other companies out there doing

01:01:11   this. I forget the name of it. Waymo. Waymo. Waze is the Google mapping. Yes. Yeah. I think there's

01:01:19   something to that. I think there is something also that like they're going to be there for a long

01:01:24   time, maybe not forever, because that's a risky bet. But for a long time, they're going to people

01:01:28   who want to drive, who enjoy it. Right. And will struggle with self-driving. Those people are

01:01:35   already struggling with EVs. Right. Because they think there's something special about the internal

01:01:39   combustion engine and shifting your own gears. Like people are emotional about cars. And I

01:01:44   totally get that. And I'm, to a degree, one of those people. You're a car guy. Yeah. Yeah. I

01:01:51   think from the perspective of like Apple doing this, I've got a couple of big thoughts.

01:01:57   The, the first of which is I think we're already seeing the, the benefit of this failed project.

01:02:04   Right. One of the things you have to do in a car is a real-time operating system.

01:02:08   And that sure seems like something that, that our one chip vision pro image pipeline thing

01:02:19   is closely related to. Right. Where the timings of things, the absolute certainty

01:02:26   that things are going to work a hundred percent of the time has to be present in a car. And the

01:02:32   vision pro, I think benefits, if not directly than indirectly from some of that work. I would,

01:02:37   if we were on a slightly different timeline and the car was real, I would imagine that that R1

01:02:45   chip would have a counterpart in the car. Probably several counterparts. The C1. We're never going

01:02:52   to get to experience it. It's so sad. The bigger thing for me is on the relief side. And I agree

01:02:59   with you. Like I read this, I was like, Oh, thankfully finally we're past this. Hopefully

01:03:03   it wasn't so much, even though there was a little bit of like, how do we even talk about this?

01:03:09   Cause this is our career. Right. But this always seemed like a weird fit for Apple, the company,

01:03:19   a company that predominantly makes consumer technology devices. And now a bunch of services

01:03:25   that feed into those devices. If you look at what they make, it's all kind of in that diagram,

01:03:32   right? Even from the vision pro to the Apple watch, the Mac, the iPhone and iPad,

01:03:36   they're all different types of computers that do different things. And, and we,

01:03:40   and our friends and, and our community, we get to debate those differences endlessly. And we love it.

01:03:46   We love the car outside of that, even though the car is more and more rolling computer, right?

01:03:53   Even my pickup truck, which is like internal combustion engine, right? It is, it is not an EV.

01:03:59   Even that has some limited like computing stuff going on, right? It can center itself in the lane.

01:04:08   It has radar cruise control. It has, um, these other like built-in features, like secure safety

01:04:15   is going to stop me before I hit something or before I back into traffic. Computers and cars

01:04:22   are on a collision course. And it felt weird to me that Apple was going to potentially be the first

01:04:31   big tech company to get there because it just doesn't seem like something they would be good at.

01:04:35   How do you sell it? How do you service it? How do you manage the relationship over a long time?

01:04:44   We're talking about people with an iPhone for four or five years, a Mac five, six, seven years.

01:04:48   People buy a car and ideally want to keep it for a long, long time. And that's a question all EV

01:04:56   make, all EV makers have to face. And so far the answers aren't super encouraging. Uh, if you're

01:05:03   going to try to find like an early model S, uh, from Tesla or even like a Chevy volt or bolt, like

01:05:11   older GM electric cars, like there's a lot of questions there and how was Apple going to be

01:05:17   different and be able to, to manage that relationship over a long time. I just didn't see

01:05:23   them being good at it. And so I, as sad as this news is for the people involved and that sucks,

01:05:30   like, I'm not trying to not say that, but I think from the 40,000 foot view, this was never going to

01:05:38   be a good fit with what Apple's good at. And from that perspective, I'm kind of glad this is the end

01:05:44   of the road for this project. Do we expect that they're going to try and like be more present in

01:05:52   cars with carplay and stuff like that? Do you think maybe more effort will go into that now

01:05:57   for as much as car companies might want or not? I don't know about more effort, but one other

01:06:05   thing that's related to this is that car manufacturers love control. Look no further

01:06:11   than Tesla, Rivian and GM's electric vehicles where they're not allowing carplay. They're not

01:06:18   allowing Android auto because they want to control the whole stack and they think it's better. And

01:06:23   there are some benefits to that. Like the phone experience, not knowing about the battery state

01:06:30   of the car and that sort of thing. These things just have to be closer together. That is a huge

01:06:35   uphill battle for Apple. And one so far that they've been only partially successful at because

01:06:41   they're not on Tesla's, they're not on Rivian's, they're not on GM electric vehicles. But as hard

01:06:47   as that is already, if they were in the marketplace with their own car, game over for carplay. I think

01:06:53   I think it would really be hard for them to convince car makers to either get in bed with

01:07:03   carplay in the first place or to stay there. And now that they're not going to be shipping a car,

01:07:08   it seems like they don't have that additional hurdle. I don't think it means carplay is like

01:07:17   totally set, ready to go and like it's going to succeed. But I think it is good for carplay

01:07:22   in the sense that it keeps Apple's relationship with these other companies a little bit simpler.

01:07:30   And the, you know, the report you were mentioning is that the, a lot of people are now going to move

01:07:37   to AI and they're going to start working on generative AI stuff at Apple instead of the

01:07:41   people that are in these teams under Kevin Lynch, under John Giannandrea. Yeah, Kevin sandwich.

01:07:47   Yes. I guess that probably makes sense, right? I think there's a lot of overlap there in terms of

01:07:54   computer vision. A lot of the real time OS stuff maybe not be, may not be extremely applicable to

01:08:02   AI, but in terms of optimization and efficiency in computing, all that's good. And so I would imagine

01:08:11   that there are things that they were working on there that yeah, the project they were working on

01:08:16   may not move over, but they sort of information they have and the sort of experience and knowledge

01:08:23   they've gathered, I think could be useful. Well, goodbye Apple car, I guess. Goodbye.

01:08:30   We never knew. You know, they would have just called it car, right. As well.

01:08:34   I, you know, I'm just going to put my flag in the ground. Like I really want to know everything

01:08:43   about this and I cannot wait 30 years for the book. I would just love to know what Apple and

01:08:49   Johnny Ive and these people thought the future was going to be. I think that does it. If you want to

01:08:56   find links to the stuff we spoke about this week, they're in your podcast player. They're also on

01:09:00   the web at relay.fm/connected/491. There's a feedback form on the website, and there's a link

01:09:07   in the pod, in your podcast player to leave us feedback. There's an option to make it anonymous.

01:09:11   So if you know more about Project Titan and you want to spill the beans, please let us know.

01:09:17   You can also become a member and get connected pro, which is the longer ad free version of the

01:09:21   show each and every week. Like Mike said at the top, we had a really, I think a really good

01:09:25   conversation about Nintendo and emulators and lawsuits and what a time. If you want more of us,

01:09:32   you can find us online. You can find Federico at maxstories.net, where he's the editor in chief.

01:09:38   Some, some fun stuff coming to max stories. Yes. Stay tuned. I'll just, I'll leave it there. You

01:09:45   can follow Mike. You can follow Mike. Well, you can follow Mike, but I'm talking about Federico

01:09:49   right now. You can follow Federico. Follow Mike. Follow Mike. You can follow Federico as Vitici,

01:09:55   V-I-T-I-C-C-I on threads. And he is vitici@maxstories.net on Macedon.

01:10:01   Maybe ask him for some Italian tips, you know, learn, learn the alphabet with us.

01:10:06   You can find Mike on a bunch of other shows here on relay.fm. Upgrade, Cortex,

01:10:11   Panetic, Thoroughly Considered, Remastered, Analog. Don't try and list them all because

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01:10:28   You can find me online on threads as ismh86 and ismh@eworld.social on Macedon. You can

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01:10:42   We have new episodes each and every Sunday. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,

01:10:47   ZocDoc and Squarespace. And until next time, say goodbye.

01:10:51   Arigatou gozaimasu!

01:10:59   Bye y'all!

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