ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We never decided if we had a preshow.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Oh apparently we don't.

00:00:03 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:05 ◼   ► - I have a very boring preshow.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - It's perfect, perfect for the summer.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Let's give it a shot.

00:00:10 ◼   ► What do you got?

00:00:11 ◼   ► - Let me put it this way.

00:00:11 ◼   ► There are times that I'll find out or notice

00:00:13 ◼   ► that Marco has removed something that I've said

00:00:15 ◼   ► from the show.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I would say 70 to 80% of the time.

00:00:19 ◼   ► It's a good call.

00:00:21 ◼   ► It's for the best.

00:00:22 ◼   ► 10 to 15% of the time I'm like what the hell, man?

00:00:25 ◼   ► And then 5% of the time it's something else entirely.

00:00:28 ◼   ► But this is one of those things where you are probably

00:00:31 ◼   ► going to remove it and it's for the best.

00:00:34 ◼   ► But no, so--

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Wait, is your preshow something that you think

00:00:37 ◼   ► Marco's gonna remove?

00:00:38 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - 'Cause that's not a good preshow 'cause we can't use

00:00:41 ◼   ► that as the preshow.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - Look at it this way.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Anytime I try to come up with a preshow,

00:00:44 ◼   ► we end up going off on the rails, off the rails,

00:00:46 ◼   ► not on the rails, it's opposite of that, off the rails.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And then we find something actually interesting

00:00:50 ◼   ► to talk about.

00:00:51 ◼   ► So here we go.

00:00:52 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:54 ◼   ► And that's the preshow that's only for the bootleg

00:00:56 ◼   ► 'cause Marco's gonna remove it.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Exactly as promised.

00:01:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:01:02 ◼   ► - Let's start with an apology tour.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Let's do some follow up.

00:01:05 ◼   ► What happened with the theme song there, Marco?

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Okay, so last episode I accidentally put in the old

00:01:10 ◼   ► theme song about Twitter rather than the new theme song

00:01:13 ◼   ► about Mastodon.

00:01:14 ◼   ► My bad.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Ending theme one which I used for 10 years or whatever

00:01:19 ◼   ► it's been.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Have a bit of a habit on that one and I accidentally

00:01:22 ◼   ► picked that one instead of picking endingtheme2024.af.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So my bad, sorry.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It happens to the best of us.

00:01:30 ◼   ► The offending parties have been sacked as they say.

00:01:32 ◼   ► No big deal.

00:01:33 ◼   ► I would also like to go on an apology tour.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Last episode we were talking about overcast and call sheet.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And coincidentally today is the day, is the one year

00:01:41 ◼   ► anniversary of call sheet.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - Hey, congrats.

00:01:43 ◼   ► - Hey, thanks.

00:01:44 ◼   ► - Are you looking forward to the App Store Connect report

00:01:46 ◼   ► tomorrow morning?

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't even know how this works.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I've never had a subscription app before.

00:01:50 ◼   ► So I'm scared to look to be honest with you.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Mike on analog, we talked about this and Mike had advised.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Just expect like half of what you had originally.

00:02:00 ◼   ► And I thought, you know what?

00:02:01 ◼   ► He's probably right.

00:02:02 ◼   ► That's probably a good place to start.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Is that whatever money I made a year ago,

00:02:05 ◼   ► just expect half that.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And hopefully that's a good place to reach.

00:02:08 ◼   ► And hopefully I'll achieve that.

00:02:11 ◼   ► - Wait, don't you have to wait more than just like,

00:02:12 ◼   ► I know it's like the anniversary, but like isn't there kind

00:02:15 ◼   ► of, wasn't there several days between like the announcement

00:02:18 ◼   ► and the publication of the episode where you talked about it

00:02:21 ◼   ► and when people got around to listening to the episode?

00:02:22 ◼   ► Isn't this gonna be kind of smeared out over

00:02:24 ◼   ► at least a week?

00:02:25 ◼   ► - Although that's part of the reason why I didn't plan

00:02:26 ◼   ► on looking tomorrow.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I figured whenever we hit like September-ish

00:02:31 ◼   ► is when I'll start like looking into it

00:02:33 ◼   ► or just wait for, you know, hopefully a check from Apple

00:02:35 ◼   ► that hopefully is more than $10 and say, you know,

00:02:38 ◼   ► oh, that went well or, oh, wow, that really stinks,

00:02:41 ◼   ► you know, one way or the other.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So, but I digress.

00:02:44 ◼   ► So we were talking about Call Sheet and Overcast

00:02:47 ◼   ► and I had made a comment that I thought was very clear

00:02:51 ◼   ► what I was saying and it appears that a lot of people

00:02:53 ◼   ► did not understand 'cause I saw a lot of grumpy people

00:02:56 ◼   ► on Reddit, which is arguably redundant, but here we are,

00:02:58 ◼   ► and a handful of people reached out via Mastodon.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And what I was talking about was, and admittedly,

00:03:05 ◼   ► I used kind of like a mocky, you know, dorky voice,

00:03:07 ◼   ► but what I was trying to say was whenever an app

00:03:10 ◼   ► changes its interface, no matter if the change is better,

00:03:13 ◼   ► worse or whatever, just by virtue of the fact

00:03:16 ◼   ► that it is different, that pisses a lot of people off.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And a lot of times what those people will do

00:03:22 ◼   ► is they'll run to the App Store and do a one-star review.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Oh, it's different, one star.

00:03:26 ◼   ► I stand by that.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Now, maybe my delivery wasn't exactly the best,

00:03:30 ◼   ► but I stand by that, I still believe it.

00:03:32 ◼   ► But a lot of people seem to hear me say,

00:03:35 ◼   ► oh, anyone who whines about it being different is wrong,

00:03:39 ◼   ► which is not at all what I was trying to say.

00:03:40 ◼   ► There are legitimate reasons why one could complain

00:03:43 ◼   ► about Overcast, about Call Sheet.

00:03:46 ◼   ► You know, John's apps are so simple,

00:03:47 ◼   ► nobody could complain about them, but--

00:03:49 ◼   ► - If only that were true.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - Right?

00:03:52 ◼   ► But all kidding aside, you know,

00:03:53 ◼   ► there are very legitimate reasons to complain

00:03:55 ◼   ► about the changes that Marco has made,

00:03:57 ◼   ► or anything that I have done on Call Sheet.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Like, they are not above reproach,

00:04:00 ◼   ► and I think that that's what people got

00:04:02 ◼   ► from what I was saying, which I'm not really sure how or why,

00:04:05 ◼   ► but here we are, but I just wanted to be absolutely clear.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - I think it was the funny voice.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I think most people-- - I guess.

00:04:09 ◼   ► - The funny voice, you're putting yourself

00:04:10 ◼   ► in the place of the person complaining by saying,

00:04:12 ◼   ► these people sound like this.

00:04:14 ◼   ► That's, I think that's the main source of the complaint.

00:04:16 ◼   ► If you hadn't done the funny voice,

00:04:18 ◼   ► I think it would have worked out a lot better,

00:04:19 ◼   ► because it's like you're making fun of the people

00:04:21 ◼   ► who have this complaint.

00:04:22 ◼   ► When you do that voice, you're saying these people

00:04:24 ◼   ► are not justified in their complaints.

00:04:26 ◼   ► - What if they do sound like that, though?

00:04:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:30 ◼   ► - You still shouldn't make fun of them,

00:04:31 ◼   ► 'cause that's just their regular voice, then.

00:04:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, to be fair, like,

00:04:35 ◼   ► there are a lot of people who do sound like that

00:04:37 ◼   ► in their interviews, but also, like,

00:04:39 ◼   ► I see why people do the one-star thing,

00:04:42 ◼   ► because if you think about, like,

00:04:43 ◼   ► the perspective of a typical iPhone user,

00:04:49 ◼   ► what they are accustomed to is big companies

00:04:53 ◼   ► redoing their apps all the time, messing up their habits,

00:04:56 ◼   ► messing up their, you know, making their apps worse

00:04:59 ◼   ► for their customers, with their customers

00:05:01 ◼   ► having basically no power whatsoever.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Like, so customers feel powerless and kind of helpless,

00:05:08 ◼   ► and the one tool they have, the one lever they can pull

00:05:11 ◼   ► that they know will have some effect on every single app

00:05:16 ◼   ► is the one-star nasty review.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Like, they know that.

00:05:18 ◼   ► And so, I understand why people jump to that,

00:05:21 ◼   ► because the entire rest of the market and industry

00:05:24 ◼   ► has told them, has trained them, like,

00:05:26 ◼   ► that is your only power.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And, by the way, we don't care

00:05:30 ◼   ► about anything else you might do.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you just write into support

00:05:32 ◼   ► for most companies, that's going to be, you know,

00:05:35 ◼   ► even less effective than emailing me,

00:05:38 ◼   ► which is really saying something.

00:05:40 ◼   ► But, so, you know, so I get why people do it.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I still think it's not the nicest thing to do if,

00:05:49 ◼   ► you know, so the one-star review,

00:05:51 ◼   ► what they are often saying is,

00:05:55 ◼   ► "I dislike a change that's been made to this app."

00:05:58 ◼   ► But what one-star, you know, like,

00:06:01 ◼   ► the lowest rating you can give an app,

00:06:03 ◼   ► what that means, ostensibly, is,

00:06:07 ◼   ► this is a horrible, like, broken or dysfunctional app.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Like, this means this app is, like,

00:06:13 ◼   ► 0% useful to you or to me or to whatever.

00:06:17 ◼   ► And so I feel like it is, it's part of the problem

00:06:20 ◼   ► with the star rating scale.

00:06:21 ◼   ► We see this all over everything

00:06:22 ◼   ► that uses star ratings, not just apps.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You tend to get a lot of people who use

00:06:27 ◼   ► five stars and one star, and what they really,

00:06:30 ◼   ► I think, probably mean is, like, thumbs up or thumbs down.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But the scale, the rating scale gives the impression

00:06:39 ◼   ► of more granularity and more, kind of, you know,

00:06:42 ◼   ► consideration on what, is this a two-star,

00:06:44 ◼   ► is it a three-star, like, it gives the impression of that

00:06:47 ◼   ► and kind of the math is assuming that,

00:06:50 ◼   ► but what people actually do does not really reflect that.

00:06:53 ◼   ► So what I get annoyed by is when people are like,

00:06:57 ◼   ► this app that I use every day changed something

00:07:00 ◼   ► that I don't like, one star.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Well, you use the app every day?

00:07:05 ◼   ► And it's literally, you're giving it

00:07:08 ◼   ► the worst rating you can give it.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Like, that seems like an overreaction

00:07:12 ◼   ► or a misrepresentation of the feelings that you're feeling

00:07:15 ◼   ► or what you're trying to communicate.

00:07:17 ◼   ► But I understand, again, why people do it,

00:07:19 ◼   ► because they think this is the only chance I have

00:07:22 ◼   ► to maybe do something that works,

00:07:24 ◼   ► that gets noticed, that gets, you know,

00:07:26 ◼   ► that affects change.

00:07:28 ◼   ► So I see why people do it.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's a crap system, but it is the system we have.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And so we have to deal with it as app developers,

00:07:35 ◼   ► and we have no choice, maybe,

00:07:36 ◼   ► because of the way the app store works.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you do what Apple thinks never existed

00:07:41 ◼   ► and sell software on your website, for instance,

00:07:43 ◼   ► you can choose whether you display star ratings

00:07:47 ◼   ► from users or not, and you can kind of sell your products

00:07:50 ◼   ► however you want to sell them.

00:07:51 ◼   ► When you're on iOS, your only choice,

00:07:54 ◼   ► outside of the EU, I guess, but your only choice

00:07:57 ◼   ► is you have to accept that there's gonna be a star rating

00:08:00 ◼   ► and random reviews from random people

00:08:03 ◼   ► very prominently displayed on your app page

00:08:05 ◼   ► before anybody downloads it.

00:08:07 ◼   ► So you're stuck with the system that we have,

00:08:09 ◼   ► and you kind of have to play in it.

00:08:11 ◼   ► So that being said, like, the one star review dynamic

00:08:16 ◼   ► is incredibly dysfunctional, extremely harmful

00:08:19 ◼   ► to lots of developers, but also it's the tool people have

00:08:22 ◼   ► and they use it for a reason.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I wish they would use it with a little bit

00:08:26 ◼   ► more consideration.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I wish they would actually use the other ratings

00:08:30 ◼   ► that are not just one or five more often,

00:08:33 ◼   ► but hey, it's the system we got, we gotta live with it.

00:08:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would agree with that.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Although I will say, and I think I'm probably speaking

00:08:40 ◼   ► for you, Marco, but you can jump in and correct me if not.

00:08:43 ◼   ► For me, I don't actually pay close attention

00:08:47 ◼   ► to like reviews and star ratings and whatnot.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I do glance from time to time, but to me,

00:08:52 ◼   ► the best way to affect change in my apps

00:08:54 ◼   ► is to use the in-app contact form,

00:08:57 ◼   ► or which is really just sending an email,

00:08:58 ◼   ► but they effectively send me an email

00:09:00 ◼   ► and tell me what's bothering you and why it's bothering you.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And for triple bonus points, if you have a suggestion

00:09:05 ◼   ► as to what to do differently, like I don't like this.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Well, that's not necessarily actionable.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I don't like this because, well, okay, now we're talking.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Or even better, I don't like this because whatever,

00:09:17 ◼   ► and I suggest, well, you're my new best friend,

00:09:20 ◼   ► because now, even if I don't agree,

00:09:23 ◼   ► now I at least understand what the problem is,

00:09:25 ◼   ► why it's a problem, and here is what you consider to be,

00:09:28 ◼   ► and I don't mean this to be dismissive,

00:09:29 ◼   ► like I mean this genuinely, what you consider to be

00:09:32 ◼   ► a worthwhile and reasonable fix for the problem.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And that, to me, is way better and way more actionable.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And I agree with what you were saying, Marco,

00:09:41 ◼   ► that in terms of leverage, the only real leverage

00:09:45 ◼   ► anyone has other than stopping a subscription or something

00:09:48 ◼   ► is a one-star review, and I agree with that.

00:09:50 ◼   ► But in terms of actually achieving the goal

00:09:53 ◼   ► you're looking for, then to me anyway,

00:09:56 ◼   ► the best thing you can do is email me

00:09:58 ◼   ► or use the in-app feedback or what have you

00:10:00 ◼   ► in order to give me the justification for it,

00:10:04 ◼   ► not because I'm the king and I don't wanna be bothered,

00:10:07 ◼   ► but because I don't understand otherwise.

00:10:09 ◼   ► If you don't give me that justification and just say,

00:10:11 ◼   ► well, I don't like the way this works,

00:10:13 ◼   ► well, I don't know what to do with that.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Obviously, this was the best option I could come up with,

00:10:18 ◼   ► so explain to me why, or like I said, even better,

00:10:20 ◼   ► give me a suggestion.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the problem is, the one-star review thing

00:10:26 ◼   ► does work in the sense that, like,

00:10:29 ◼   ► I saw some news earlier, like Sonos is really,

00:10:32 ◼   ► they're still kind of reeling from their big app thing,

00:10:35 ◼   ► which scared the crap out of me when I saw it,

00:10:37 ◼   ► and now I'm still seeing, like,

00:10:39 ◼   ► my overcast reviews are terrible since the redesign.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Like, they are awful, to the point where, like,

00:10:46 ◼   ► my business is on fire.

00:10:48 ◼   ► It's a small fire on a pretty big building,

00:10:52 ◼   ► but it is on fire.

00:10:53 ◼   ► I need to react, I need to take action.

00:10:56 ◼   ► This is not optional.

00:10:57 ◼   ► If I do not take action, my business will go away soon.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Like, not too soon.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I have a lot of, you know, it turns out,

00:11:03 ◼   ► over, you know, when you don't reset your star ratings

00:11:05 ◼   ► over 10 years, the math works pretty well in your favor,

00:11:08 ◼   ► that, like, it takes a lot to move the average down,

00:11:10 ◼   ► because it's like, even, you know,

00:11:12 ◼   ► even a few straight weeks of one-star reviews,

00:11:14 ◼   ► there's, you know, thousands of reviews to balance it out

00:11:17 ◼   ► from the last 10 years, mathematically, with the average.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But all of these one-star reviews that I'm getting

00:11:23 ◼   ► are forcing me to take action.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I am being forced to make changes,

00:11:28 ◼   ► to, like, you know, consider, you know,

00:11:30 ◼   ► I had to re-add, you know, one-tap play,

00:11:33 ◼   ► I'm having to make design changes,

00:11:35 ◼   ► I'm going to have to add more options to the app,

00:11:37 ◼   ► I'm going to have to, like, add more buttons,

00:11:40 ◼   ► compromise my design, compromise my simplicity.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I'm actually going to have to make the app,

00:11:45 ◼   ► in certain ways, worse, in my opinion,

00:11:49 ◼   ► in order to placate the one-star review people,

00:11:51 ◼   ► because I have no choice.

00:11:53 ◼   ► As an iOS developer, if you're getting a ton

00:11:55 ◼   ► of one-star reviews over something, you have to fix it.

00:11:58 ◼   ► If you care about the future of your app,

00:12:00 ◼   ► because if your star rating goes down, like,

00:12:03 ◼   ► in a meaningful way on the average,

00:12:06 ◼   ► you will get way fewer downloads,

00:12:08 ◼   ► and it's really bad for your business.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So, the fact is, like, this method works,

00:12:13 ◼   ► and I kind of hate that it works,

00:12:15 ◼   ► but, again, this is the system we're in.

00:12:18 ◼   ► We have no choice.

00:12:19 ◼   ► If there are that many people leaving you one-star reviews,

00:12:22 ◼   ► you have to fix whatever they're complaining about,

00:12:25 ◼   ► whether you agree with it or not.

00:12:26 ◼   ► So, it is kind of frustrating, as a developer,

00:12:29 ◼   ► to have to give your customers that much power

00:12:31 ◼   ► over what you do, 'cause, you know,

00:12:33 ◼   ► your app design is not a democracy,

00:12:35 ◼   ► but they kind of turn it into one in a way.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And so, I can, again, I understand why people

00:12:42 ◼   ► use the one-star review lever,

00:12:45 ◼   ► because it's the only lever they have, as users,

00:12:48 ◼   ► but I also understand why developers are like,

00:12:51 ◼   ► I kind of hate that they hold this over me,

00:12:54 ◼   ► because it is quite a dysfunctional system,

00:12:58 ◼   ► and there is no way to opt out of it.

00:13:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, just to put a bow on this, though,

00:13:01 ◼   ► and to be absolutely clear, you know,

00:13:03 ◼   ► I am sorry that I came across in a not-so-kind way.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I try to be a decent guy, and I think I failed there.

00:13:10 ◼   ► But, you know, again, there's plenty of things

00:13:12 ◼   ► that are worth complaining about.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Just don't complain just because it's different,

00:13:15 ◼   ► and that's all I was asking.

00:13:17 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Revenue Cat.

00:13:21 ◼   ► Now, last week, you might recall in the after show,

00:13:23 ◼   ► Casey brought up that if he could start Call Sheet

00:13:25 ◼   ► all over again, he'd consider using Revenue Cat

00:13:27 ◼   ► for managing his in-app purchases.

00:13:29 ◼   ► And then he jokingly challenged them to sponsor the show.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Well, Revenue Cat's developer advocate is Charlie Chapman,

00:13:35 ◼   ► who you might know from his launch podcast,

00:13:37 ◼   ► which I think is great, and you should go listen to it.

00:13:38 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And so, he's a listener of this show,

00:13:41 ◼   ► and he said maybe let's actually sponsor them.

00:13:43 ◼   ► So, they got in touch, and here they are.

00:13:46 ◼   ► This might be the first sponsored follow-up in a way.

00:13:48 ◼   ► So, here's the deal with Revenue Cat.

00:13:50 ◼   ► They build an SDK and backend infrastructure

00:13:53 ◼   ► to make adding in-app purchases and subscriptions

00:13:55 ◼   ► to your iOS or Android apps incredibly easy.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So, let Revenue Cat's engineers keep track

00:14:00 ◼   ► of the constant changes to the store APIs,

00:14:02 ◼   ► and they can even handle your paywall UI

00:14:05 ◼   ► with their backend configurable,

00:14:06 ◼   ► but fully native paywall UI framework.

00:14:10 ◼   ► So, you can do stuff with this,

00:14:11 ◼   ► like run A/B tests with the experiments feature,

00:14:14 ◼   ► and that's, again, with a native UI.

00:14:15 ◼   ► You configure it on the backend,

00:14:16 ◼   ► but then it's using native code in the app.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So, you can do full A/B tests with that feature.

00:14:21 ◼   ► You can also use Revenue Cat charts

00:14:23 ◼   ► to go way beyond what App Store Connect offers

00:14:25 ◼   ► for understanding your business,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and they're constantly improving.

00:14:28 ◼   ► In fact, just this morning, they released a new chart

00:14:31 ◼   ► called the Prediction Explorer

00:14:33 ◼   ► that uses a predictive model to project

00:14:34 ◼   ► how much revenue to expect from users in the future,

00:14:37 ◼   ► which is exactly the kind of information

00:14:39 ◼   ► Casey was interested in last week.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Also, if you're an indie dev,

00:14:43 ◼   ► consider joining their hackathon they just launched this week

00:14:45 ◼   ► they call the Shipathon.

00:14:47 ◼   ► They're giving cash prizes, swag,

00:14:49 ◼   ► and even some digital billboard space in San Francisco

00:14:51 ◼   ► for the winning apps, really.

00:14:53 ◼   ► So, this is a great thing.

00:14:54 ◼   ► This is way beyond what I would ever be able to build myself.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So, check it out.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Come see why thousands of top apps

00:15:00 ◼   ► trust Revenue Cat to power their subscriptions

00:15:02 ◼   ► at revenuecat.com.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And if you're interested in that hackathon,

00:15:06 ◼   ► go over to their blog for the latest info on that.

00:15:08 ◼   ► So, once again, revenuecat.com

00:15:10 ◼   ► to power your in-app purchases and subscriptions.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Revenue Cat for sponsoring the show.

00:15:15 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:15:18 ◼   ► - All right, so we had a lot of genuinely

00:15:21 ◼   ► interesting feedback with regard to curbside charging

00:15:24 ◼   ► in the United States.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And I will try to make this as quick as possible,

00:15:27 ◼   ► but a bunch of people wrote in and said, surprise, surprise,

00:15:30 ◼   ► in some bigger cities, there is curbside charging.

00:15:33 ◼   ► So, it turns out Gareth Edwards pointed us to Plug NYC,

00:15:37 ◼   ► which was apparently in August, 2021.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Reading from untappedcities.com,

00:15:44 ◼   ► some neighborhoods in New York City

00:15:45 ◼   ► are welcoming Plug NYC,

00:15:46 ◼   ► the city's new curbside electric vehicle chargers

00:15:48 ◼   ► that are being tested as a pilot program

00:15:50 ◼   ► run as a partnership between NYC DOT, Con Edison, and FLO,

00:15:54 ◼   ► one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks

00:15:56 ◼   ► in North America, which is interesting

00:15:57 ◼   ► 'cause I've never heard of it, but that's right.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And an initial 34 stations with 100 plugs

00:16:01 ◼   ► are coming across the five boroughs.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - I do wonder, like this is just starting from 2021

00:16:05 ◼   ► where they had an initial 34 stations.

00:16:07 ◼   ► How many stations are there now in 2024?

00:16:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:10 ◼   ► But anyway, it seems like there's a pilot program

00:16:12 ◼   ► in New York City, at least one.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Then James Brown, presumably not the godfather of soul,

00:16:16 ◼   ► from Berkeley writes, "Berkeley launched a pilot program

00:16:19 ◼   ► in 2018 for homeowners to install curbside EV chargers.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Part of why it's so impractical,

00:16:24 ◼   ► they recommend a homeowner's budget

00:16:26 ◼   ► between $5,000 and $20,000 for the install,

00:16:30 ◼   ► including," that's like, what, half a Rivian repair?

00:16:32 ◼   ► Hey-o, "for the install, including $2,500 of permit fees.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I've seen exactly one of these, ever."

00:16:38 ◼   ► And we'll link in the show notes

00:16:40 ◼   ► something that James provided

00:16:41 ◼   ► with regard to how to make this happen.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Kiel from Seattle writes, "I drive an EV in Seattle,

00:16:47 ◼   ► and we have some city-sponsored

00:16:48 ◼   ► curbside fast charging, very convenient."

00:16:50 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes for that.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Vault is a great podcast about green technology.

00:16:55 ◼   ► They recently had an episode

00:16:56 ◼   ► about expanding curbside charging in the US.

00:16:58 ◼   ► They provided a overcast link, which 404s,

00:17:01 ◼   ► so I think I've dug up the right link,

00:17:04 ◼   ► and I'll put that in the show notes.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But if it's wrong, I guess blame me and not Kiel.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Seth Karras writes, "Baltimore has been

00:17:12 ◼   ► installing curbside electric chargers.

00:17:14 ◼   ► See the photo of the chargers along Boston Street

00:17:15 ◼   ► in Baltimore's Cannon neighborhood."

00:17:17 ◼   ► And I don't know if we're gonna include the photo,

00:17:19 ◼   ► but we saw it, and it looked cool.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Juan Boyce writes, "Pole vault," P-O-L-E-V-O-L-T.

00:17:24 ◼   ► That's very clever.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Curbside charging in North Carolina is a thing,

00:17:27 ◼   ► and included a link to Plugshare,

00:17:29 ◼   ► where you can see a photograph of that.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And finally, Sam Grover writes,

00:17:34 ◼   ► "Neighborhood EV charging also exists in Portland,"

00:17:36 ◼   ► which I think we've kind of talked about already,

00:17:38 ◼   ► but that's all right.

00:17:39 ◼   ► No, we didn't, never mind.

00:17:40 ◼   ► It exists in Portland,

00:17:41 ◼   ► and there's a link to the information on that

00:17:44 ◼   ► from the city of Portland as well.

00:17:46 ◼   ► - Seeing all these things of programs

00:17:48 ◼   ► that were started many years ago

00:17:50 ◼   ► makes me feel like there was some effort

00:17:52 ◼   ► to get curbside charging in some US cities,

00:17:55 ◼   ► and it just maybe didn't quite get critical mass, right?

00:17:59 ◼   ► But it's good that they're trying.

00:18:00 ◼   ► It's good that they're doing it.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Every little bit helps.

00:18:04 ◼   ► I just hope it really starts to snowball somewhere.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, the problem with charging infrastructure

00:18:09 ◼   ► is that I think it's kind of like when companies hired

00:18:14 ◼   ► a bunch of consultants to make their iOS apps,

00:18:16 ◼   ► and then said, "All right, thanks, bye."

00:18:18 ◼   ► And then a couple years later, like,

00:18:20 ◼   ► "Wait, we need to update the app now,

00:18:22 ◼   ► "'cause iOS changed, and we have no idea.

00:18:25 ◼   ► "We didn't budget for ongoing maintenance of this expense.

00:18:29 ◼   ► "We just thought it was a one-time thing.

00:18:30 ◼   ► "We make an app, check, done."

00:18:32 ◼   ► And that's curbside,

00:18:34 ◼   ► or any kind of EV charging infrastructure.

00:18:36 ◼   ► The problem is it takes maintenance and follow-through,

00:18:40 ◼   ► and it isn't just like a one-time,

00:18:41 ◼   ► "Hey, let's put a bunch of chargers there,"

00:18:42 ◼   ► and then profit.

00:18:44 ◼   ► You know, it takes more than that.

00:18:45 ◼   ► It takes ongoing maintenance,

00:18:47 ◼   ► as we will get to maybe in the after show.

00:18:49 ◼   ► It's more difficult than you might expect

00:18:52 ◼   ► to maintain these things over time,

00:18:54 ◼   ► and at least it seems to be according to the failure rate

00:18:58 ◼   ► I'm seeing on Electrify America chargers.

00:19:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the curbside ones is an interesting case of that,

00:19:04 ◼   ► and I kind of understand why Berkeley

00:19:06 ◼   ► was doing the thing of basically making the homeowners

00:19:08 ◼   ► essentially pay for it and own it,

00:19:09 ◼   ► because if it's a thing that you paid for,

00:19:11 ◼   ► you have some stake in keeping it going,

00:19:14 ◼   ► 'cause presumably you're using it for your car.

00:19:16 ◼   ► That's why you did it, and it's your charger,

00:19:18 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:19:19 ◼   ► And so that's sort of distributing

00:19:21 ◼   ► the responsibility for maintenance.

00:19:23 ◼   ► For chargers where you, like destination chargers,

00:19:25 ◼   ► I don't know what the right term is,

00:19:26 ◼   ► like chargers that are like gas station.

00:19:27 ◼   ► There's a place where you go that's a charger,

00:19:29 ◼   ► and there's a whole bunch of chargers lined up

00:19:30 ◼   ► just like there'd be a whole bunch of gas pumps.

00:19:32 ◼   ► For those type of charger things--

00:19:34 ◼   ► - DC fast chargers, also called level three chargers.

00:19:36 ◼   ► - Right, but what I'm saying is they're not curbside

00:19:39 ◼   ► where it's just like they're dotting the streets.

00:19:40 ◼   ► There's a place you go where a bunch of cars

00:19:42 ◼   ► park and charge, right?

00:19:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, destination chargers are actually something else.

00:19:46 ◼   ► That's like the ones in the hotel parking lot

00:19:47 ◼   ► at some hotels. - Yeah, okay, got it.

00:19:49 ◼   ► - Those are level twos, yeah.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, although I would say for the hotel ones,

00:19:52 ◼   ► that's an example of where you feel like the hotel

00:19:54 ◼   ► presumably pays for and owns those chargers,

00:19:55 ◼   ► or maybe gets rent for them or whatever.

00:19:57 ◼   ► There's some responsible body.

00:19:58 ◼   ► For the ones that are like a place that you go

00:20:00 ◼   ► that's like a gas station, we would hope,

00:20:03 ◼   ► and I think this was the hope,

00:20:04 ◼   ► but apparently there are economics

00:20:06 ◼   ► that don't work out for this,

00:20:08 ◼   ► that whoever owns that place where the chargers are

00:20:13 ◼   ► would maintain them in the same way

00:20:14 ◼   ► that someone who owns a gas station maintains the pumps.

00:20:17 ◼   ► How often do you go and see pumps

00:20:19 ◼   ► out of order at gas stations?

00:20:20 ◼   ► It happens, but if you live near one, for example,

00:20:22 ◼   ► and one of the pumps is out of order,

00:20:23 ◼   ► you would expect like by next week,

00:20:25 ◼   ► the pump's not out of order anymore.

00:20:26 ◼   ► The people who own the gas station got it fixed, right?

00:20:30 ◼   ► And I know the economics of gas stations,

00:20:32 ◼   ► at least I've read, I think the economics of gas stations

00:20:33 ◼   ► very often has to do with selling things

00:20:35 ◼   ► from the convenience store,

00:20:36 ◼   ► and the gas is like a loss leader

00:20:37 ◼   ► to get people to buy potato chips or whatever, right?

00:20:40 ◼   ► And maybe there's just not enough places

00:20:41 ◼   ► where you can buy potato chips at like Tesla chargers,

00:20:43 ◼   ► and it's a bad example 'cause they maintain theirs,

00:20:45 ◼   ► but I feel like the failure rates on electric chargers

00:20:48 ◼   ► are so bad it's because people had that mindset.

00:20:50 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it's electricity.

00:20:51 ◼   ► It's not like a gas pump that has to be maintained

00:20:54 ◼   ► and inspected, you see those inspection stickers

00:20:56 ◼   ► and everything, and it's like all this whole infrastructure

00:20:58 ◼   ► of the big trucks come and they fill the big tanks

00:21:01 ◼   ► and the pumps are inspected and signed off on

00:21:03 ◼   ► and the people own things.

00:21:04 ◼   ► It's not like that, it's just a plug.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So like the iOS app you just described,

00:21:08 ◼   ► once we install the plugs, we're done, right?

00:21:10 ◼   ► It's like, no.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Someone needs to be looking at every single plug

00:21:13 ◼   ► every single day, just like at a gas station.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Someone who works at the gas station

00:21:17 ◼   ► notices if one of the pumps stops working

00:21:19 ◼   ► because they work at the gas station and someone says,

00:21:21 ◼   ► hey, the pump's not working, and they're there all day,

00:21:23 ◼   ► and they say, oh, pump number three is out,

00:21:25 ◼   ► and then they arrange to get pump number three fixed.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And it seems like an electric charger thinks,

00:21:29 ◼   ► A, there's nobody there,

00:21:30 ◼   ► and B, when it breaks, it just sits there

00:21:32 ◼   ► for months and months and months, and it's just like,

00:21:33 ◼   ► is anyone ever gonna notice that this plug has not working,

00:21:37 ◼   ► that the cord got yanked out, that it's fraying,

00:21:39 ◼   ► that the machine is on the fritz,

00:21:41 ◼   ► that the software update failed or whatever?

00:21:43 ◼   ► They just need someone to take ownership.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I'm holding up gas stations.

00:21:49 ◼   ► This is a paragon of responsible stewardship

00:21:52 ◼   ► of infrastructure, but honestly,

00:21:54 ◼   ► I don't think it's asking too much.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Gas stations, we're able to maintain those,

00:21:58 ◼   ► and they're just, I would argue,

00:22:00 ◼   ► mechanically more complex than chargers,

00:22:03 ◼   ► if not technologically more complex.

00:22:04 ◼   ► So I hope this does get better.

00:22:06 ◼   ► It seems like it could,

00:22:07 ◼   ► but maybe the economics needs to work out

00:22:08 ◼   ► to pay someone to sit there and sell you potato chips

00:22:10 ◼   ► at the Tesla charging station.

00:22:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:22:13 ◼   ► - All right, moving along,

00:22:14 ◼   ► we've got some color information.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Apparently, there's been some leaks over the last few weeks,

00:22:20 ◼   ► or week or so, with regard to iPhone 16 and 16 Pro colors.

00:22:25 ◼   ► So we've got a couple of posts from 9to5Mac

00:22:27 ◼   ► that include some pictures.

00:22:29 ◼   ► For the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus,

00:22:32 ◼   ► we've got white, very, very black,

00:22:36 ◼   ► blue, green, and pink.

00:22:38 ◼   ► And interestingly, this camera bump is different, right?

00:22:41 ◼   ► Because it's vertically up and down

00:22:43 ◼   ► with a flash kind of separated and not in the camera.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - That's what I was saying last week.

00:22:47 ◼   ► If you were expecting that just,

00:22:48 ◼   ► "Oh, it's great when there's gonna be top and bottom,

00:22:50 ◼   ► "it'll be a narrow opening."

00:22:51 ◼   ► But no, 'cause you gotta have that flash exposed.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And unless you wanna do a punch hole cutout for the flash,

00:22:55 ◼   ► which you probably don't wanna do

00:22:56 ◼   ► 'cause it won't be exact and it'll throw shadows,

00:22:58 ◼   ► it's gonna end up being like a triangular cutout,

00:23:00 ◼   ► don't you think, for cases on this design?

00:23:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:23:04 ◼   ► But the colors look good.

00:23:06 ◼   ► The black and blue in particular look very good to my eyes.

00:23:09 ◼   ► I can see why one would like the green.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It's a little bit on the bluey, turquoisey side,

00:23:14 ◼   ► just a touch, but it's, I mean,

00:23:15 ◼   ► actually all of them look pretty good.

00:23:17 ◼   ► - They are more saturated than all,

00:23:18 ◼   ► but they seem kind of pale, still a little bit pale to me.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And I kind of miss, my daughter's got the purple phone.

00:23:24 ◼   ► I think that's more fun.

00:23:25 ◼   ► There's no yellow, there's no red, but you know,

00:23:27 ◼   ► at least, like you said,

00:23:29 ◼   ► at least the black is black and the white is white.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Like those seem to be more solid and saturated.

00:23:33 ◼   ► And you know, anyway, not a great color year,

00:23:36 ◼   ► but not the worst.

00:23:37 ◼   ► But that's of course the 16 and the 16 Plus,

00:23:40 ◼   ► the phones for people who like colors.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, but if you are a professional,

00:23:44 ◼   ► you don't like color. - No.

00:23:46 ◼   ► - You still will not like color this September

00:23:48 ◼   ► because according to 95 Mac,

00:23:51 ◼   ► your choices are natural titanium, which is what I chose

00:23:54 ◼   ► and actually does look really good,

00:23:55 ◼   ► but that's neither here nor there.

00:23:56 ◼   ► You get natural titanium, rose titanium,

00:23:58 ◼   ► white titanium or black titanium.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Now in the defense of these colors,

00:24:03 ◼   ► I do genuinely think, and I am biased,

00:24:05 ◼   ► that natural looks really damn good.

00:24:07 ◼   ► And this black is freaking black.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Like this is a mighty black, black titanium,

00:24:12 ◼   ► but still can we not have fun colors on professional devices?

00:24:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, not very colorful.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Like I do like the black and white

00:24:18 ◼   ► and I do like the natural titanium

00:24:20 ◼   ► and the rose one presumably is red tinted.

00:24:22 ◼   ► We don't have like a picture of that,

00:24:23 ◼   ► but that's not really colors.

00:24:26 ◼   ► It's just shades of gray.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And a nice set of shades of gray

00:24:29 ◼   ► and one of the shades of gray has a tint of color in it.

00:24:32 ◼   ► But that's it. - Mm-hmm.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - I mean, just like all the pro phones

00:24:35 ◼   ► that pretty much have ever existed,

00:24:37 ◼   ► it's like, well, you can have very light gray,

00:24:39 ◼   ► which they call white, very dark gray,

00:24:41 ◼   ► which they call some form of black or space or whatever.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Then you can have maybe a medium gray

00:24:47 ◼   ► that has a color whiffed by it, but it's not,

00:24:50 ◼   ► it's basically like, and this year was even,

00:24:52 ◼   ► this year was like comically bad, but the 15 Pro line,

00:24:55 ◼   ► like now we have like four different shades of gray

00:24:57 ◼   ► and then a blue gray. (laughs)

00:24:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, people put cases on most time anyway,

00:25:01 ◼   ► it's not a big deal,

00:25:01 ◼   ► though like I said on my daughter's phone,

00:25:03 ◼   ► she has a purple 12 that she had a clear case on

00:25:07 ◼   ► and we recently got a new clear case

00:25:09 ◼   ► to replace the old yellowed one.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Looks really good in a clear case.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Clear cases do show off the color of the phone.

00:25:14 ◼   ► You know, it's like that purple is a great color.

00:25:16 ◼   ► She's gonna be sad when eventually

00:25:18 ◼   ► she has to replace that phone and her choice.

00:25:20 ◼   ► If she had to pick from these colors,

00:25:22 ◼   ► I don't know what she would do.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I mean, maybe she would like the pink or the pale green,

00:25:25 ◼   ► but that purple was great, I miss it.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - I wonder like if, I mean, this is wish casting

00:25:30 ◼   ► more than actual prediction, but I wonder if,

00:25:34 ◼   ► assuming that the iPhone slim rumor actually

00:25:37 ◼   ► has something behind it for next year,

00:25:39 ◼   ► I wonder if they would take advantage of the likelihood

00:25:42 ◼   ► that like I think slim owners might be less likely

00:25:45 ◼   ► to use cases than everyone else,

00:25:47 ◼   ► just 'cause they would wanna like kinda show off

00:25:49 ◼   ► the slimness of it.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Maybe it wouldn't need a case as much

00:25:52 ◼   ► because it would be much lighter, who knows.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Or maybe people would use more clear cases

00:25:56 ◼   ► to help show it off, you know.

00:25:57 ◼   ► But I wonder if they would take the opportunity

00:25:58 ◼   ► to maybe have some more desirable or more flashy colors

00:26:03 ◼   ► in the slim line, we'll see.

00:26:06 ◼   ► - Well, I guess that last week,

00:26:07 ◼   ► if it is going to be the most expensive phone,

00:26:09 ◼   ► that means no colors.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - That's true, I guess, yeah, following their trend,

00:26:12 ◼   ► like the less expensive phones have the most color,

00:26:15 ◼   ► the pros have only many shades of gray.

00:26:18 ◼   ► So I guess maybe the slim would only come

00:26:21 ◼   ► in like just an average, you know, 50% gray shade.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Like that's it, just the most average color

00:26:26 ◼   ► that is no color.

00:26:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean ultimately the pro phones

00:26:29 ◼   ► have about as much color in them

00:26:31 ◼   ► as my martinis have removed.

00:26:32 ◼   ► You just wave it nearby and call it a day.

00:26:34 ◼   ► All right, CrowdStrike, we're there.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So we have a lot of feedback about CrowdStrike

00:26:39 ◼   ► from various anonymous peoples.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And I will read at least a little bit of one.

00:26:45 ◼   ► One anonymous person writes,

00:26:47 ◼   ► "I am not a lawyer, but I have quite a bit of experience

00:26:50 ◼   ► in negotiating and then enforcing software agreements

00:26:52 ◼   ► between security vendors like CrowdStrike

00:26:53 ◼   ► and large organizations.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I can say definitively the type of click-through EULA

00:26:58 ◼   ► or end user license agreement individuals are subject to

00:27:01 ◼   ► are not in play when multinational giants do deals.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Each contract is spoke with vendors and customers

00:27:07 ◼   ► going back and forth over months

00:27:08 ◼   ► before inking deals lasting multiple years

00:27:10 ◼   ► and millions of dollars.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So any CrowdStrike lawsuits won't add or subtract

00:27:14 ◼   ► to case law about EULAs.

00:27:16 ◼   ► CrowdStrike Falcon isn't something they sell to just anyone

00:27:18 ◼   ► and for sure not to individuals

00:27:20 ◼   ► who would click through a one-sided EULA.

00:27:22 ◼   ► The final contracts between giants always have clauses

00:27:25 ◼   ► about things like software development life cycles,

00:27:27 ◼   ► supply chain management, security practices

00:27:29 ◼   ► and service level agreements.

00:27:30 ◼   ► It's very common to see these phrases like quote,

00:27:32 ◼   ► "Reasonable efforts" quote,

00:27:33 ◼   ► and quote, "Consistent with industry best practices" quote

00:27:36 ◼   ► scattered around.

00:27:38 ◼   ► One of the deals are in, excuse me,

00:27:39 ◼   ► once the deals are in place,

00:27:40 ◼   ► there are often squabbles

00:27:42 ◼   ► about what reasonable efforts look like,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but customers generally win

00:27:45 ◼   ► because vendors want to keep customers happy

00:27:47 ◼   ► and have a hope of renewal.

00:27:48 ◼   ► It's rare for disputes to see the inside of a courtroom

00:27:50 ◼   ► since litigation is so expensive.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Most of the time,

00:27:53 ◼   ► if a vendor isn't meeting their obligations

00:27:54 ◼   ► under the contract and shows no sign of improving,

00:27:57 ◼   ► it's much cheaper to just migrate to a different vendor,

00:27:59 ◼   ► providing similar capabilities

00:28:00 ◼   ► and then bad mouth them to your entire security network.

00:28:03 ◼   ► I guess that's the equivalent of a one star, huh?

00:28:05 ◼   ► This is not a typical outage

00:28:06 ◼   ► and there will be tons of litigation,

00:28:08 ◼   ► both by customers directly

00:28:09 ◼   ► and by their cybersecurity insurance underwriters,

00:28:11 ◼   ► today I learned that's a thing,

00:28:13 ◼   ► seeking to recover damages.

00:28:14 ◼   ► CrowdStrike clearly fell down

00:28:16 ◼   ► on the reasonable efforts part of many clauses

00:28:18 ◼   ► around their development and release practices,

00:28:21 ◼   ► so there's a pretty strong case.

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I remember from my jobby job,

00:28:24 ◼   ► we had a contract that basically said

00:28:27 ◼   ► that sort of the downtime stuff of like,

00:28:29 ◼   ► hey, I'm paying for you to do the service

00:28:32 ◼   ► and you're like a web based company,

00:28:33 ◼   ► but what if your site goes down?

00:28:35 ◼   ► That hurts my business.

00:28:36 ◼   ► What's the deal there?

00:28:37 ◼   ► And the deal was basically like,

00:28:39 ◼   ► okay, we guarantee X amount of uptime per unit

00:28:44 ◼   ► for a month, a week or whatever,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and if we fall below the amount that we guarantee,

00:28:48 ◼   ► we start paying you money for every minute that we're down

00:28:52 ◼   ► and it's just the negotiation,

00:28:54 ◼   ► just saying like, okay, well,

00:28:55 ◼   ► how many hours per month do we need to be up?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Like you can have one hour of downtime a month,

00:29:01 ◼   ► five minutes of downtime a month,

00:29:03 ◼   ► and how much do we have to pay

00:29:04 ◼   ► for every minute that we're down after that?

00:29:06 ◼   ► And that is clarifying to all involved,

00:29:08 ◼   ► both to the engineers who are running the sites

00:29:10 ◼   ► and also to the organization

00:29:12 ◼   ► to try to have quality control

00:29:13 ◼   ► and very often we would come close to,

00:29:15 ◼   ► I forget what the phrase was,

00:29:17 ◼   ► we would come close to our threshold

00:29:18 ◼   ► of the downtime for a month for a particular client

00:29:21 ◼   ► or a particular contract or all of our contracts or whatever

00:29:23 ◼   ► and you have the classic change freeze,

00:29:26 ◼   ► which is like, you know what,

00:29:27 ◼   ► let's just wait for the next two days to run out

00:29:28 ◼   ► so we can clear the end of the month and reset the clock

00:29:31 ◼   ► on the service level agreement, right?

00:29:33 ◼   ► And that's one way to do it,

00:29:34 ◼   ► but this type of thing is like,

00:29:37 ◼   ► in case of catastrophic failure like CrowdStrike,

00:29:40 ◼   ► what is the remedy there?

00:29:42 ◼   ► What was written into the contract?

00:29:43 ◼   ► What contracts did people agree to?

00:29:45 ◼   ► Does CrowdStrike have the same contract

00:29:47 ◼   ► with every single person that it sells to?

00:29:49 ◼   ► Probably not, so this is gonna be quite a mess.

00:29:52 ◼   ► - Yep, Marius writes,

00:29:54 ◼   ► the update was not released by timezone,

00:29:57 ◼   ► it was released globally at the same time.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I thought that's what we said last episode,

00:30:00 ◼   ► but I guess not. - No,

00:30:01 ◼   ► we were thinking that people in New Zealand

00:30:03 ◼   ► were noticing it first,

00:30:03 ◼   ► so my assumption at the time

00:30:05 ◼   ► was that it was released by timezone.

00:30:07 ◼   ► So one part of the world got it first

00:30:09 ◼   ► and then slowly as it went across timezones,

00:30:11 ◼   ► but according to Marius, that is not the case.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - Marius continues, the update propagation

00:30:15 ◼   ► took a few minutes to almost all their customers.

00:30:17 ◼   ► The source of this is the Risky Business Podcast,

00:30:19 ◼   ► episode 756, which we will link in the show notes.

00:30:22 ◼   ► But anyways, Marius writes,

00:30:24 ◼   ► I'm not sure why Australia and New Zealand reacted first.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Maybe it was during their afternoon,

00:30:27 ◼   ► but all the customers were affected at the same time.

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, this seems even more bonkers to me.

00:30:32 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:30:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like,

00:30:35 ◼   ► maybe we didn't say this on the show,

00:30:36 ◼   ► but I feel like we knew this even last week.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - I didn't know it, so that's why I put it in there.

00:30:40 ◼   ► But anyway, we have a source for it

00:30:41 ◼   ► from the Risky Business Podcast.

00:30:43 ◼   ► You can listen to the podcast inside,

00:30:44 ◼   ► but that's, you know, I believe it.

00:30:46 ◼   ► - All right, so another anonymous person writes,

00:30:48 ◼   ► a phased rollout approach for CrowdStrike updates

00:30:50 ◼   ► has its risks unique to the nature of CrowdStrike's product,

00:30:54 ◼   ► that bad actors will obtain the early rollout update

00:30:56 ◼   ► and through reverse engineering,

00:30:58 ◼   ► obtain information about ongoing attacks or vulnerabilities

00:31:00 ◼   ► and take that information and use it to attack

00:31:02 ◼   ► un-updated CrowdStrike customers and also everyone else.

00:31:05 ◼   ► CrowdStrike does a great deal of research

00:31:07 ◼   ► on the most sophisticated threat actors in the world.

00:31:09 ◼   ► They take that research funded by customers

00:31:11 ◼   ► who are at extremely high risk,

00:31:13 ◼   ► you know, government, news organizations, finance, et cetera,

00:31:16 ◼   ► and funnel the results into the Falcon sensor product.

00:31:18 ◼   ► The exploits used to get the malicious code running

00:31:21 ◼   ► are captured and sent back to the CrowdStrike mothership.

00:31:24 ◼   ► It's a virtuous cycle.

00:31:25 ◼   ► That cycle is disrupted if CrowdStrike

00:31:27 ◼   ► cannot respond to new threats in unison.

00:31:29 ◼   ► By not having patches shoved down to all high risk customers,

00:31:32 ◼   ► blog posts with data signatures, sample binaries,

00:31:34 ◼   ► ready for the entire industry,

00:31:36 ◼   ► then CrowdStrike expands access to really bad vulnerabilities

00:31:40 ◼   ► to everyone who wants them.

00:31:42 ◼   ► All a bad actor needs to do

00:31:43 ◼   ► is have a bunch of different CrowdStrike subscription accounts

00:31:45 ◼   ► on a bunch of different machines

00:31:46 ◼   ► and monitor those machines for updates.

00:31:48 ◼   ► If you get lucky and get selected

00:31:49 ◼   ► for an early update program, analyze the update.

00:31:51 ◼   ► I get that.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is an argument against the phased rollout,

00:31:55 ◼   ► but I feel like that maybe we weren't specific enough

00:31:58 ◼   ► for this, phased rollout doesn't have to mean

00:32:00 ◼   ► like how Apple does it or some companies do it

00:32:01 ◼   ► where you release to like 1% on the first day

00:32:04 ◼   ► and 10% on the second day and whatever.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Phased rollout can be over the course of 30 minutes

00:32:08 ◼   ► for the globe, right?

00:32:10 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be, or an hour or whatever it is.

00:32:12 ◼   ► Whatever window is too small for someone to get your update,

00:32:16 ◼   ► analyze your binary, figure out the exploit like this,

00:32:19 ◼   ► you're racing against that.

00:32:20 ◼   ► How fast can they figure that?

00:32:21 ◼   ► If they can figure that out in 10 seconds,

00:32:23 ◼   ► then yeah, phased rollout is difficult.

00:32:24 ◼   ► But honestly, any kind of phased rollout,

00:32:27 ◼   ► even if it's 10 second gaps between time zones, right,

00:32:30 ◼   ► and you just do 24 time zones or whatever,

00:32:33 ◼   ► even if it's just like any,

00:32:35 ◼   ► I know from experience, like when you're monitoring

00:32:37 ◼   ► during a release and something goes wrong,

00:32:40 ◼   ► especially something this catastrophic,

00:32:42 ◼   ► everything lights up within seconds.

00:32:44 ◼   ► You don't have to wait for a long time, right?

00:32:47 ◼   ► Phones start ringing, emails start coming,

00:32:50 ◼   ► alerts start turning red on the board, like things happen.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It's not, you know, this is what you're looking for

00:32:55 ◼   ► and rolling out with a 30 second gap between time zones,

00:33:00 ◼   ► you'll know four time zones in that this is catastrophic

00:33:03 ◼   ► and you pull the big stop everything thing.

00:33:06 ◼   ► And you can say, well, you stopped everything,

00:33:07 ◼   ► now they learned about your exploits.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Like it's better than bricking all of your customers

00:33:11 ◼   ► like CrowdStrike did.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So I still think that a phased rollout

00:33:15 ◼   ► is exactly what CrowdStrike should be doing.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I can't tell them exactly what those phases should be

00:33:19 ◼   ► and how long the gap should be

00:33:21 ◼   ► and what the risk is or whatever,

00:33:22 ◼   ► but all at once the entire world

00:33:24 ◼   ► is a capability they should have in cases of emergencies,

00:33:27 ◼   ► but should not be their standard practice.

00:33:29 ◼   ► That's just my opinion.

00:33:30 ◼   ► - No, I completely agree.

00:33:31 ◼   ► - Well, and it also seems like they didn't even have

00:33:33 ◼   ► like a staging environment.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Like before you roll out to anybody public,

00:33:38 ◼   ► why don't you try rolling out to some test servers

00:33:40 ◼   ► or some test clients?

00:33:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, obviously their QA process

00:33:44 ◼   ► all fell down or whatever.

00:33:45 ◼   ► I'm just saying like this, as with all security things,

00:33:47 ◼   ► it's a multi-level thing.

00:33:48 ◼   ► You have staging environments, you have test customers,

00:33:51 ◼   ► you have a QA plan, you have automated testing,

00:33:53 ◼   ► you have validation, you have people signing off

00:33:55 ◼   ► and you have a phased rollout.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Those are many different layers of trying to make it

00:33:59 ◼   ► so you don't screw something up, right?

00:34:01 ◼   ► And yeah, they fell down lots of ways.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I mean, you look at their analysis, like clearly,

00:34:06 ◼   ► hey, you pushed out a thing that didn't work.

00:34:07 ◼   ► That's a thing that you could have determined

00:34:08 ◼   ► before you pushed it out.

00:34:09 ◼   ► That is obviously what we're wrong here.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But like, we're always looking at like the very last thing.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Like the last line of defense is if it gets past

00:34:16 ◼   ► all your other systems and you messed up your QA

00:34:18 ◼   ► and all that other stuff, your last line of defense is

00:34:21 ◼   ► watch as you roll it out and see if you're hosing customers

00:34:24 ◼   ► as it goes up.

00:34:25 ◼   ► - Another anonymous person writes,

00:34:27 ◼   ► "CrowdStrike's driver is not the NVIDIA driver."

00:34:30 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I should give some context here.

00:34:31 ◼   ► This is with regard to how do you disable

00:34:33 ◼   ► a crashing kernel extension?

00:34:34 ◼   ► So back to anonymous.

00:34:36 ◼   ► "CrowdStrike's driver is not the NVIDIA driver.

00:34:38 ◼   ► If the NVIDIA driver keeps crashing, sure,

00:34:39 ◼   ► unload it and continue to boot.

00:34:41 ◼   ► But not the cybersecurity driver.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I imagine every IT admin's head exploded

00:34:46 ◼   ► upon reading Tom Warren's quote unquote brilliant idea

00:34:48 ◼   ► to just unload endpoint protection

00:34:51 ◼   ► if it crashes enough times in a row.

00:34:52 ◼   ► That machine not booting is a much better outcome

00:34:54 ◼   ► than flying blind with my entire organization on the line."

00:34:57 ◼   ► That's very much the vibe of a security professional,

00:35:00 ◼   ► but I do understand what they're saying.

00:35:02 ◼   ► - But yeah, I mean, you still,

00:35:04 ◼   ► we're talking about what can Microsoft do?

00:35:06 ◼   ► Microsoft isn't responsible for CrowdStrike's thing,

00:35:09 ◼   ► but they make the OS,

00:35:10 ◼   ► and the OS could be resilient against failure by,

00:35:13 ◼   ► if something keeps crashing on load,

00:35:15 ◼   ► don't load that thing next time.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean silently don't load that thing.

00:35:20 ◼   ► It could immediately send out some kind of alert

00:35:23 ◼   ► through some kind of Windows thing to say,

00:35:24 ◼   ► "Hey, I just booted into safe mode

00:35:28 ◼   ► because this thing kept crashing."

00:35:29 ◼   ► And that should light up somebody's board somewhere anyway.

00:35:31 ◼   ► So you don't have to,

00:35:33 ◼   ► this doesn't have to imagine that the worst case scenario

00:35:35 ◼   ► of like it silently doesn't load your endpoint protection

00:35:37 ◼   ► and you're running unprotected for months at a time

00:35:39 ◼   ► because you don't realize,

00:35:40 ◼   ► like a smart implementation of this feature

00:35:43 ◼   ► would light up people's boards in the knock

00:35:46 ◼   ► just like any other thing would.

00:35:49 ◼   ► It's just that your machine wouldn't be down, right?

00:35:51 ◼   ► Maybe it would just be booted into safe mode

00:35:53 ◼   ► where it doesn't actually load anything,

00:35:54 ◼   ► but it just says, "I'm sitting here waiting for you

00:35:55 ◼   ► to update me because I couldn't boot all the way."

00:35:57 ◼   ► And that is, for some people,

00:35:59 ◼   ► preferable to it not booting at all.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And on that topic is the next item.

00:36:03 ◼   ► - Right, so what happens if you need to recover

00:36:05 ◼   ► an unbootable Windows machine?

00:36:07 ◼   ► Enterprise Windows machines often have

00:36:08 ◼   ► lights-out management technology.

00:36:11 ◼   ► An IT department can reach out

00:36:12 ◼   ► and touch Windows clients from anywhere.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Just pull up the ILO, integrated lights-out,

00:36:16 ◼   ► management product you use

00:36:17 ◼   ► and remote into your non-functioning client.

00:36:20 ◼   ► You can push out an EFI application

00:36:22 ◼   ► that boots the machine, decrypts the disk

00:36:23 ◼   ► with the boot locker key,

00:36:24 ◼   ► deletes the bad CrowdStrike update and reboots the host.

00:36:27 ◼   ► You can script Windows itself,

00:36:28 ◼   ► have your Windows clients boot into safe mode,

00:36:30 ◼   ► log in, delete the bad file and reboot.

00:36:31 ◼   ► All via integrated lights-out.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is a cool feature that you can have,

00:36:35 ◼   ► which is essentially like,

00:36:36 ◼   ► when they say pushing an EFI application,

00:36:38 ◼   ► that's like the firmware.

00:36:39 ◼   ► That's like before the OS boots.

00:36:40 ◼   ► It's just the firmware that's bringing up the computer

00:36:42 ◼   ► before it even starts loading an OS from a volume somewhere.

00:36:45 ◼   ► So if you have the ability to sort of

00:36:48 ◼   ► remotely push something, push out an EFI application,

00:36:51 ◼   ► you can get that part of the machine up and running,

00:36:54 ◼   ► get the EFI program to run,

00:36:56 ◼   ► and as they said, decrypt the disk and do the video.

00:36:58 ◼   ► That is complicated and invasive,

00:37:00 ◼   ► but the thing is, not everybody has that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Yes, maybe it's industry best practice,

00:37:03 ◼   ► but as I think we're learning the Delta lawsuit,

00:37:05 ◼   ► even big companies sometimes don't follow

00:37:07 ◼   ► industry best practices that are up to date

00:37:09 ◼   ► within the current decade.

00:37:10 ◼   ► That was what Microsoft's big slam on Delta was.

00:37:12 ◼   ► They said, you know,

00:37:13 ◼   ► because Delta's yelling at Microsoft,

00:37:14 ◼   ► and Microsoft was like,

00:37:16 ◼   ► Delta, unlike some of its competitors,

00:37:17 ◼   ► has not updated its IT infrastructure.

00:37:19 ◼   ► I think something, I'm paraphrasing what they said,

00:37:21 ◼   ► but yeah, best practices may provide a solution

00:37:24 ◼   ► to a non-booting machine,

00:37:25 ◼   ► but they're not ubiquitous,

00:37:26 ◼   ► and even just reading this description,

00:37:28 ◼   ► it seems fairly sophisticated and complicated,

00:37:30 ◼   ► so I would imagine there are a lot of companies

00:37:32 ◼   ► that don't have that capability,

00:37:34 ◼   ► even though they technically could.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - And then finally, with regard to CrowdStrike,

00:37:37 ◼   ► Michael Cook writes,

00:37:39 ◼   ► "Do you think there is any chance the CrowdStrike incident

00:37:41 ◼   ► "will lead to requirements for heterogeneous systems

00:37:43 ◼   ► "in companies, either in OSs or security software,

00:37:46 ◼   ► "to try to prevent future incidents

00:37:47 ◼   ► "from taking out all systems at once,

00:37:49 ◼   ► "or would it be judged too risky/expensive for the benefit?"

00:37:52 ◼   ► I am not the most recent actually employed person,

00:37:56 ◼   ► that would be John,

00:37:57 ◼   ► but to my eyes, knowing IT folks to the degree that I do,

00:38:02 ◼   ► I feel like this is a perfectly reasonable question,

00:38:05 ◼   ► but I think most IT security professionals

00:38:09 ◼   ► that I've ever worked with emphasize simplicity

00:38:12 ◼   ► more than anything else,

00:38:13 ◼   ► and making their jobs and lives simpler.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So yes, what Michael's saying makes sense,

00:38:18 ◼   ► like if you have a bunch of Macs

00:38:19 ◼   ► as well as Windows computers,

00:38:20 ◼   ► and if you have CrowdStrike

00:38:21 ◼   ► as well as one of their competitors,

00:38:22 ◼   ► that does cover this base

00:38:25 ◼   ► so that if CrowdStrike breaks everything Windows,

00:38:28 ◼   ► you either have Macs that you can use

00:38:30 ◼   ► or something that's not on CrowdStrike,

00:38:32 ◼   ► but I just don't see that juice being worth the squeeze

00:38:34 ◼   ► from the perspective of IT folks.

00:38:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, so there's two kinds of heterogeneity here.

00:38:38 ◼   ► One is across the industry,

00:38:41 ◼   ► and I think we kind of have that,

00:38:42 ◼   ► like this affected like 1% of Windows machines,

00:38:46 ◼   ► which there's obviously not some,

00:38:49 ◼   ► CrowdStrike was not a 99% of machines, right?

00:38:51 ◼   ► So I think across different companies

00:38:54 ◼   ► across the entire world,

00:38:55 ◼   ► there's enough heterogeneity

00:38:57 ◼   ► that not everybody is running CrowdStrike.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Maybe they're running one of CrowdStrike's competitors,

00:39:00 ◼   ► maybe they're running nothing at all.

00:39:02 ◼   ► So I think we have that.

00:39:03 ◼   ► Within a given company, like should Delta Airlines

00:39:06 ◼   ► not use CrowdStrike on all their machines?

00:39:08 ◼   ► No IT person wants to do that, right?

00:39:10 ◼   ► They really want a unified solution

00:39:13 ◼   ► because running something CrowdStrike

00:39:15 ◼   ► plus a CrowdStrike competitor on half your machines,

00:39:18 ◼   ► now you have two places where things can go wrong, right?

00:39:20 ◼   ► And also, it's not like the company

00:39:22 ◼   ► can keep running successfully

00:39:23 ◼   ► if only half of its computers are affected, right?

00:39:26 ◼   ► You know, 100%, half, any significant percentage,

00:39:29 ◼   ► even just a few in key areas is bad.

00:39:32 ◼   ► And I think in general, people don't want to,

00:39:35 ◼   ► which is why like why CrowdStrike is available

00:39:37 ◼   ► for Mac and Linux and everything too.

00:39:38 ◼   ► They don't want to have seven different

00:39:40 ◼   ► endpoint protection solutions deployed in their company.

00:39:43 ◼   ► It's a hassle to manage,

00:39:44 ◼   ► it's difficult to keep up with all those different things.

00:39:47 ◼   ► You have to sign seven different contracts,

00:39:49 ◼   ► and now your user base slash machine base

00:39:52 ◼   ► are divided into sevenths,

00:39:54 ◼   ► all of which can fail for different reasons.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I don't think this will change much.

00:39:58 ◼   ► It may make vendors consider,

00:40:01 ◼   ► make companies consider other vendors

00:40:03 ◼   ► than CrowdStrike, obviously,

00:40:04 ◼   ► and the contact renegotiations for CrowdStrike

00:40:07 ◼   ► will probably be very interesting

00:40:08 ◼   ► in the coming year for the company.

00:40:10 ◼   ► - If the company still exists in a year.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - But I think that,

00:40:15 ◼   ► I think that actually the world of computing

00:40:19 ◼   ► showed some resilience given that this company

00:40:22 ◼   ► and this update was just as catastrophic

00:40:23 ◼   ► as you can imagine it,

00:40:24 ◼   ► and it was only like a story for a week

00:40:26 ◼   ► and only affected 1% of Windows PCs.

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00:42:29 ◼   ► - There's been a whole kerfuffle as we record this today

00:42:36 ◼   ► about macOS Sequoia.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And it apparently has added a weekly permission prompt

00:42:43 ◼   ► for anything, any app that takes a screenshot

00:42:46 ◼   ► or does a screen recording or anything along those lines.

00:42:48 ◼   ► So reading from 9to5Mac,

00:42:51 ◼   ► with macOS Sequoia this fall,

00:42:52 ◼   ► using apps that need access to screen recording permissions

00:42:55 ◼   ► will become a little bit more tedious.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Apple's rolling out a change that will require you

00:42:57 ◼   ► to give explicit permission on a weekly basis.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And every time you reboot your Mac,

00:43:04 ◼   ► multiple developers who spoke to 9to5Mac

00:43:06 ◼   ► say they've received confirmation from Apple

00:43:07 ◼   ► that this is not a bug.

00:43:08 ◼   ► In the current macOS Sequoia beta, this prompt says,

00:43:11 ◼   ► whatever the name of the app is,

00:43:13 ◼   ► can access this computer screen and audio.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Do you want to continue to allow this access?

00:43:16 ◼   ► This application may be able to collect information

00:43:18 ◼   ► from any open applications on your desktop

00:43:19 ◼   ► while the app is running.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Users can choose to continue to allow that app

00:43:24 ◼   ► to have screen recording access

00:43:25 ◼   ► where they can click open system settings

00:43:27 ◼   ► and immediately be taken to the preferences pane

00:43:29 ◼   ► for screen recording permissions.

00:43:30 ◼   ► This prompt is designed to appear on a weekly basis.

00:43:35 ◼   ► This has made a lot of people, justifiably,

00:43:38 ◼   ► very, very, very upset.

00:43:40 ◼   ► And Jason Snell did the Lord's work.

00:43:42 ◼   ► He did the thing that nobody wants to do.

00:43:46 ◼   ► He filed a feedback.

00:43:47 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - I know.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Which generally speaking is an entire waste of time

00:43:52 ◼   ► for anyone outside of Apple, but here we are.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Jason filed a feedback number 14689927,

00:43:58 ◼   ► asking for one week permissions is untenable and insulting,

00:44:01 ◼   ► which Jon then duped as feedback 14698922.

00:44:04 ◼   ► We'll put links in the show notes.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And then, or I guess the numbers in the show notes,

00:44:08 ◼   ► I should say.

00:44:09 ◼   ► And then finally, Jason was so fired up

00:44:11 ◼   ► and my favorite Jason is Salty Jason,

00:44:13 ◼   ► was so fired up that he wrote an entire post

00:44:15 ◼   ► about all these features

00:44:16 ◼   ► because it's basically the Windows Vista-ing of Mac OS.

00:44:20 ◼   ► And it's gotten bad.

00:44:22 ◼   ► It's gotten real bad.

00:44:23 ◼   ► But before we discuss it, the rest of the news

00:44:26 ◼   ► with regard to this is a dear friend of the show,

00:44:28 ◼   ► Craig Hockenberry, came up with a possible solution.

00:44:32 ◼   ► There's a new API, or I guess a new entitlement really.

00:44:35 ◼   ► - It's an entitlement, yeah.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - Com.developer.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Excuse me, com.apple.developer.persistent-content.

00:44:41 ◼   ► -capture.

00:44:42 ◼   ► This is an entitlement for persistent content capture.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Craig writes, "The issue here is that Apple's provided

00:44:47 ◼   ► "no documentation."

00:44:48 ◼   ► Imagine that.

00:44:50 ◼   ► Or any other guidance on how to get this entitlement

00:44:52 ◼   ► to prevent an app from becoming NagWare.

00:44:55 ◼   ► In the defense of Apple,

00:44:55 ◼   ► they've actually gotten much, much better

00:44:57 ◼   ► with their documentation,

00:44:58 ◼   ► but I feel triggered whenever I see something like this.

00:45:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, click through on the page.

00:45:02 ◼   ► That's why, the thing I quoted there,

00:45:03 ◼   ► persistent content capture,

00:45:04 ◼   ► that is the extent of the documentation

00:45:06 ◼   ► of what this entitlement is for or does

00:45:08 ◼   ► or anything about that.

00:45:09 ◼   ► - Well, is it no overview provided or something like that?

00:45:11 ◼   ► - I forget what it is.

00:45:12 ◼   ► - No, it's not that bad, but you can click on the link.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Take a look at the page for this.

00:45:14 ◼   ► It's not particularly informative.

00:45:16 ◼   ► So on this whole topic,

00:45:17 ◼   ► just to give a brief review for people

00:45:19 ◼   ► who are less familiar with this

00:45:21 ◼   ► or just familiar with it from the perspective of an end user

00:45:23 ◼   ► being annoyed by these dialog boxes,

00:45:25 ◼   ► the thinking behind stuff like this,

00:45:28 ◼   ► and it happens on iOS with a different system as well,

00:45:30 ◼   ► is Apple's trying to prevent the case

00:45:33 ◼   ► where someone gets an application,

00:45:36 ◼   ► and that application asks for some very

00:45:38 ◼   ► potentially invasive permissions,

00:45:40 ◼   ► screen recording permission is a great one,

00:45:42 ◼   ► because that's like you're allowing this thing

00:45:43 ◼   ► to record your screen,

00:45:44 ◼   ► and you can imagine all the things

00:45:46 ◼   ► an evil application could do with that ability.

00:45:48 ◼   ► So they get this application,

00:45:50 ◼   ► and on their initial run up to,

00:45:51 ◼   ► they were highly motivated to get it

00:45:53 ◼   ► because it seemed like some cool game or thing or whatever,

00:45:55 ◼   ► and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever.

00:45:57 ◼   ► The prompts come up, they're like, allow, allow, go, go,

00:46:00 ◼   ► and they wanna play the thing,

00:46:00 ◼   ► and they're like, do it,

00:46:01 ◼   ► and then they find out it's a scam app or it's stupid

00:46:03 ◼   ► or they don't like it, or they're just like,

00:46:04 ◼   ► all right, they leave it and don't think about it again.

00:46:06 ◼   ► But unbeknownst to them,

00:46:08 ◼   ► they gave that permission, that app,

00:46:10 ◼   ► screen recording permission,

00:46:12 ◼   ► and on the Mac, maybe it installed a background agent

00:46:14 ◼   ► that they also said, yeah, allow, fine, or whatever.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Now there's this thing that's on their computer

00:46:18 ◼   ► that has the ability to record their screen,

00:46:20 ◼   ► and they completely forget about it.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And so what Apple's trying to do is every once in a while

00:46:23 ◼   ► and go, hey, I know maybe you forgot about this,

00:46:26 ◼   ► but a while ago, you said that this app

00:46:29 ◼   ► could do this extremely invasive thing.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Do you still want it to be able to do that?

00:46:33 ◼   ► And I think on iOS, it says no,

00:46:34 ◼   ► uninstall the app or whatever.

00:46:36 ◼   ► It's kind of like preventing people from clicking

00:46:39 ◼   ► through something and then forgetting about it.

00:46:41 ◼   ► That's the motivation for features like this.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Why wouldn't they just take my answer and just say,

00:46:45 ◼   ► I told you, it's supposed to be allowed.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Don't bother me about it again.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Because human nature is that people will sometimes

00:46:50 ◼   ► click through those things without reading

00:46:52 ◼   ► and they want to remind you.

00:46:53 ◼   ► The reverse side of that is,

00:46:56 ◼   ► and Apple made fun of this in its famous Windows Vista ad,

00:46:59 ◼   ► the more of these dialogues you throw in someone's face,

00:47:01 ◼   ► the more you are training them to just say,

00:47:03 ◼   ► okay, allow, okay, allow, whatever, okay,

00:47:06 ◼   ► just let me use my computer.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And doing it once a week, plus on every system reboot,

00:47:11 ◼   ► is way, way, way too frequently.

00:47:14 ◼   ► That is annoying people to death.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Not only will that make people click through dialog boxes

00:47:18 ◼   ► and say, okay, okay, okay, they're gonna be so annoyed

00:47:21 ◼   ► and related to our previous topic,

00:47:23 ◼   ► they're probably gonna think it's the developer doing it.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And the developer has no choice

00:47:28 ◼   ► 'cause this is an Apple thing or whatever.

00:47:31 ◼   ► This is way too frequent.

00:47:32 ◼   ► I just, I can't even believe that they would think

00:47:34 ◼   ► that this is okay.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And this is on a system, like Jason and I

00:47:37 ◼   ► have been riding this hobby horse for a while.

00:47:39 ◼   ► On the Mac, where in recent years,

00:47:41 ◼   ► they've been getting worse and worse

00:47:42 ◼   ► throwing more and more dialogs.

00:47:44 ◼   ► At least when iOS does it,

00:47:45 ◼   ► I don't know what algorithm it uses,

00:47:46 ◼   ► but it's like, just so you know,

00:47:49 ◼   ► Google Maps is allowed to use your location

00:47:51 ◼   ► while on the background.

00:47:52 ◼   ► You want it to keep doing that?

00:47:53 ◼   ► I see stuff like that occasionally,

00:47:55 ◼   ► but it's not every week.

00:47:56 ◼   ► It's not every time I reboot my phone

00:47:58 ◼   ► and it seems to basically take my word for it

00:48:00 ◼   ► after I've said yes to it maybe once or twice.

00:48:03 ◼   ► So it's a balancing act.

00:48:06 ◼   ► That's what the title of Jason's blog post about this is,

00:48:08 ◼   ► that Apple's permissions features are out of balance.

00:48:12 ◼   ► It's not saying that they're good, bad, indifferent.

00:48:15 ◼   ► There's a balance to be struck

00:48:16 ◼   ► between making something secure

00:48:18 ◼   ► while still not annoying people

00:48:21 ◼   ► and also not inducing alert fatigue, approval fatigue.

00:48:26 ◼   ► And they're just way over that line on Mac OS.

00:48:28 ◼   ► And I really hope, that's why I duped the feedback.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Like I wrote my own feedback and I didn't reference this,

00:48:32 ◼   ► but I basically filed the exact same bug.

00:48:34 ◼   ► They said, this thing where you ask every week

00:48:36 ◼   ► and every reboot, it's terrible.

00:48:38 ◼   ► You need a way to allow someone to say,

00:48:41 ◼   ► you know, allow permanently.

00:48:42 ◼   ► And when Jason was really angry about it on Maston,

00:48:45 ◼   ► I was basically saying, and I agree with him,

00:48:47 ◼   ► what you're basically saying Apple,

00:48:48 ◼   ► is that I as a user can never be trusted

00:48:52 ◼   ► to give an application permission

00:48:53 ◼   ► to record my screen permanently.

00:48:55 ◼   ► That's what you're saying to me,

00:48:56 ◼   ► that I am so infantile that I am not a fully,

00:48:59 ◼   ► I cannot never make this,

00:49:00 ◼   ► not that I have to be asked twice, fine.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Ask me twice, ask me are you sure or whatever,

00:49:04 ◼   ► but that at no point will I ever be qualified to say yes.

00:49:08 ◼   ► I swear to you Mac OS,

00:49:09 ◼   ► it is okay for this application to record my screen.

00:49:11 ◼   ► It is my preferred screenshotting application.

00:49:15 ◼   ► I've been using it for years.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I'm saying yes.

00:49:17 ◼   ► What you're saying Apple is you are never going to be able to,

00:49:20 ◼   ► you never are never competent to make that decision.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And that's insulting.

00:49:24 ◼   ► That's insulting your users.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Your users aren't babies.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Like yes, your users are human and fallible or whatever,

00:49:29 ◼   ► but there's a difference between making sure people

00:49:32 ◼   ► are aware of what's going on

00:49:33 ◼   ► and deciding that they are not legally capable,

00:49:36 ◼   ► not mentally capable of ever making that decision.

00:49:39 ◼   ► That's absurd.

00:49:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's real bad.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And it's incredibly frustrating when you have a new computer

00:49:47 ◼   ► and at least last time I did an OS upgrade,

00:49:50 ◼   ► it was the same story.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Just okay, I'm finally ready to go.

00:49:53 ◼   ► I'm excited.

00:49:54 ◼   ► - The user's brand new machine is so pretty and beautiful.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh yep, yes, that's loud.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Oh, that's loud, all right.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - There's good news here on that front though.

00:50:02 ◼   ► - Well, apparently yes.

00:50:04 ◼   ► So Jason writes on Mastodon,

00:50:06 ◼   ► I haven't verified it yet, but it's my understanding

00:50:07 ◼   ► that permissions now survive a system migration,

00:50:10 ◼   ► meaning that when you migrate,

00:50:11 ◼   ► you won't have to approve 200 dialog boxes

00:50:13 ◼   ► and check boxes and settings to get apps up and running.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - That'll be great 'cause that is one huge source

00:50:17 ◼   ► of a barrage of these dialogs.

00:50:19 ◼   ► 'Cause you kind of do them gradually over time

00:50:20 ◼   ► as you install apps, but then you migrate to another Mac

00:50:23 ◼   ► or something and suddenly you get them all at once.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And this is what we were saying

00:50:26 ◼   ► when we discussed this topic last time.

00:50:28 ◼   ► If they can migrate these settings to say,

00:50:30 ◼   ► okay, if you already approved these on your old Mac,

00:50:32 ◼   ► they're also approved on your new Mac, that will be great.

00:50:34 ◼   ► So hopefully if they did that work

00:50:37 ◼   ► and that seems like it would be a lot of work,

00:50:38 ◼   ► hopefully they are willing to hear feedback on this

00:50:41 ◼   ► and are trying to make changes,

00:50:43 ◼   ► but this weekly screen recording thing, right?

00:50:45 ◼   ► And the entitlement, right?

00:50:48 ◼   ► If they're doing this weekly screen recording thing,

00:50:50 ◼   ► they should have A, documented it,

00:50:52 ◼   ► B, announced it and C said,

00:50:53 ◼   ► and by the way, if you don't like this,

00:50:55 ◼   ► please request the new persistent content capture thing.

00:50:57 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't even know

00:50:58 ◼   ► if that persistent content capture thing

00:51:00 ◼   ► is the entitlement that will stop these things from coming.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And how hard is it to get that entitlement?

00:51:04 ◼   ► How long would it take to get that entitlement?

00:51:06 ◼   ► Sequoia is gonna come out, I don't know,

00:51:08 ◼   ► maybe not soon, maybe in October, but whatever.

00:51:10 ◼   ► This seems like people who have applications

00:51:12 ◼   ► that require screen recording permissions

00:51:14 ◼   ► are kind of getting caught with their pants down here

00:51:17 ◼   ► of like, wait, what are we doing?

00:51:18 ◼   ► What is my app throwing up now?

00:51:20 ◼   ► What can I get?

00:51:20 ◼   ► Can I get this entitlement?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Is this undocumented entitlement?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Is that the thing I should be asking for?

00:51:24 ◼   ► This is just not a great way to support your developers

00:51:29 ◼   ► in their applications.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And if there is this one that allows you to do persistent,

00:51:33 ◼   ► what's the whole point of alerting for weekly?

00:51:34 ◼   ► 'Cause won't all the bad actors have requested this one?

00:51:36 ◼   ► How will you stop them from getting it?

00:51:38 ◼   ► Maybe this will all be resolved by next week,

00:51:41 ◼   ► but it is an upsetting regression

00:51:43 ◼   ► in Apple's handling of permissions on macOS.

00:51:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just,

00:51:50 ◼   ► it's one of the things where I don't think

00:51:53 ◼   ► any of this happened spitefully or anything like that.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But if you look at security professionals,

00:51:59 ◼   ► we've spoken a lot about this episode,

00:52:00 ◼   ► a security professional's job is to come up with

00:52:04 ◼   ► effectively infinite amounts of dialogues and nag screens

00:52:08 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, because their job is to make sure

00:52:10 ◼   ► that their users are as safe as possible.

00:52:13 ◼   ► But as you said, it's a balancing act.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And ultimately, I think this pendulum has swung

00:52:18 ◼   ► way too far in the bad direction,

00:52:21 ◼   ► to the point that I don't often pay attention to these.

00:52:25 ◼   ► And I'm the kind of nerd that usually reads every dialogue

00:52:28 ◼   ► and reads every word of every dialogue.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And most of the time, I'm just like,

00:52:30 ◼   ► yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever.

00:52:32 ◼   ► It's just so disruptive and so frustrating.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And Apple was right to poke fun at Vista,

00:52:36 ◼   ► because it really was that bad.

00:52:39 ◼   ► I mean, I think Marco was mostly gone at this point.

00:52:41 ◼   ► I was half in that world. - I never used Vista.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - Okay, I was half in that world at this point.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It was real bad, it was real, real bad.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And my recollection anyway,

00:52:51 ◼   ► and admittedly I have a terrible memory,

00:52:52 ◼   ► but my recollection is that this is worse.

00:52:55 ◼   ► It's just incessant, and it's not helping anyone.

00:52:58 ◼   ► And hopefully, somebody with a little bit of,

00:53:02 ◼   ► I was going to say design sense,

00:53:03 ◼   ► but really just empathy for the user.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Hopefully, someone will be the voice of reason

00:53:07 ◼   ► within Apple and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

00:53:09 ◼   ► let's pump the brakes on this

00:53:10 ◼   ► and figure out a better approach.

00:53:11 ◼   ► - As I said, it's not just empathy for the user.

00:53:13 ◼   ► It is in the service of better security,

00:53:15 ◼   ► because alert fatigue or approval fatigue reduces security.

00:53:20 ◼   ► It's a thing you want to avoid for security purposes.

00:53:22 ◼   ► So if you're in the security team,

00:53:24 ◼   ► your job is to increase security,

00:53:25 ◼   ► you should know enough, and I'm sure they do,

00:53:27 ◼   ► that too many dialogs reduces security.

00:53:29 ◼   ► It doesn't increase it

00:53:30 ◼   ► because that's how people react to them, right?

00:53:33 ◼   ► People don't react the same way to one alert

00:53:37 ◼   ► as they do to 100.

00:53:38 ◼   ► It changes how they deal with alerts,

00:53:40 ◼   ► and it changes that on a going forward basis

00:53:43 ◼   ► so that from now on, they will be less inclined

00:53:46 ◼   ► to read any alert that you put in.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Even if you reduce the number massively,

00:53:49 ◼   ► you've trained them, I never want to read these,

00:53:51 ◼   ► okay, okay, okay, you make them angry about it, right?

00:53:54 ◼   ► That's the last thing you want.

00:53:55 ◼   ► That's bad for security.

00:53:58 ◼   ► - Well, and I can see why,

00:54:00 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple's engineers and product people

00:54:04 ◼   ► who are making these decisions to add these alerts,

00:54:07 ◼   ► I'm sure they have all the best intentions

00:54:09 ◼   ► because the reality is, yeah, some of these alerts,

00:54:11 ◼   ► especially on iOS, you look at the possible attack surface,

00:54:14 ◼   ► the possible damage done, some of the actual sleazy things

00:54:18 ◼   ► that companies, big and small, have done,

00:54:22 ◼   ► you can kind of see why they think they have to do this

00:54:25 ◼   ► or why they think this is the best approach moving forward.

00:54:27 ◼   ► But because there are these downsides and these costs

00:54:32 ◼   ► to having these controls and warnings and everything,

00:54:35 ◼   ► both to the user experience and, as Jon was just saying,

00:54:37 ◼   ► to security itself, I feel like there has to be

00:54:41 ◼   ► a known amount of damage that was being done

00:54:45 ◼   ► or that we've seen in the wild being done

00:54:48 ◼   ► to prompt this kind of change.

00:54:50 ◼   ► And I just don't, I've never heard of that level of damage

00:54:54 ◼   ► happening on the Mac that would cause anyone,

00:54:57 ◼   ► any user to say, oh, thank God they're making this

00:55:01 ◼   ► harder for me.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I don't think we're seeing where is the justification

00:55:07 ◼   ► out there in the wild for tightening these things down.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Now obviously, you don't want to just let security problems

00:55:15 ◼   ► happen to your users and then only react to them afterwards.

00:55:19 ◼   ► But I feel like there has to be some balance of

00:55:22 ◼   ► is there really a significant threat that's really actually

00:55:27 ◼   ► even ever being seen to have happened here?

00:55:30 ◼   ► Is there a lot of Mac malware that's using

00:55:33 ◼   ► screen recording permissions and not just security holes

00:55:37 ◼   ► to cause problems for people?

00:55:40 ◼   ► I don't know, we've never recently ever heard of that.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Maybe it happened or was starting to happen

00:55:45 ◼   ► and Apple tamped down on it and that nip it in the bud,

00:55:48 ◼   ► who knows, but we've never seen any evidence of that.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So it's hard for us to see as the users,

00:55:54 ◼   ► what justifies this level of annoyance and alert fatigue?

00:55:59 ◼   ► - I think the right tool for that, if you have,

00:56:03 ◼   ► if there was that type of outbreak, and again,

00:56:05 ◼   ► maybe Apple would be quiet about it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I think the right tool for that is Apple having the ability

00:56:10 ◼   ► and they probably either already have this ability

00:56:12 ◼   ► or could make it easily to essentially cause all the Macs

00:56:15 ◼   ► to reprompt for a screen recording permission

00:56:19 ◼   ► because due to an acute outbreak,

00:56:21 ◼   ► to nip it in the bud, but that's so different

00:56:24 ◼   ► than every week and every reboot forever.

00:56:27 ◼   ► That's situational, that's like here's a situation,

00:56:29 ◼   ► everyone, here's a one-time push to every Mac out there

00:56:32 ◼   ► that's on the network,

00:56:33 ◼   ► re-approve the apps for screen recording.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Maybe you could even have a system where you could put

00:56:38 ◼   ► a message to that effect that says just, you know,

00:56:41 ◼   ► due to a recent outbreak or whatever,

00:56:43 ◼   ► I don't know how you're gonna do it,

00:56:44 ◼   ► but anyway, like a one-time thing, it's understandable,

00:56:47 ◼   ► it's justifiable, even Apple doesn't wanna talk about it.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Everyone would just be like, huh, it's weird,

00:56:50 ◼   ► I got reprompted for screen recording,

00:56:52 ◼   ► but anyway, going on with my life.

00:56:53 ◼   ► It's so different than as Jason was snarkily putting it,

00:56:57 ◼   ► making a schedule on your weekly,

00:56:59 ◼   ► making a slot on your weekly schedule

00:57:00 ◼   ► to re-approve screen recording of the application

00:57:02 ◼   ► you've been using since the '90s, right?

00:57:04 ◼   ► It's just, it's absurd to say,

00:57:06 ◼   ► then the solution is weekly and on every reboot,

00:57:08 ◼   ► that's the wrong frequency.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I don't know what the right frequency is,

00:57:11 ◼   ► but that ain't it, right?

00:57:12 ◼   ► So think again.

00:57:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, somebody just wrote in and wondered,

00:57:16 ◼   ► could this be in response to rewind.ai or Limitless

00:57:18 ◼   ► or whatever they're calling themselves right now?

00:57:20 ◼   ► - No.

00:57:21 ◼   ► - Okay, good talk.

00:57:22 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't think Apple has anything against rewind,

00:57:24 ◼   ► and that's like, that product is so clear.

00:57:26 ◼   ► Like, you know it's recording your screen,

00:57:28 ◼   ► it's part of the functionality.

00:57:29 ◼   ► You go back and look at the recordings to find things.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Like, that is not the threat actor

00:57:34 ◼   ► that Apple is worried about, right?

00:57:37 ◼   ► And that would make using rewind super annoying,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but still, like, I love rewind, I use it all the time,

00:57:41 ◼   ► it's important to my workflow,

00:57:42 ◼   ► and I have to approve it every week.

00:57:43 ◼   ► And every time I reboot, like, if you're like Jason,

00:57:45 ◼   ► who I think still, which boggles my mind,

00:57:48 ◼   ► reboots his Mac every single day,

00:57:49 ◼   ► you're approving it every single day, not every week.

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00:59:52 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:59:55 ◼   ► - Google is apparently a monopolist in a US antitrust case.

01:00:00 ◼   ► This is reading from The Verge.

01:00:02 ◼   ► A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law

01:00:05 ◼   ► by maintaining a monopoly

01:00:06 ◼   ► in the search and advertising markets.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Quote, "After having carefully considered and weighed

01:00:10 ◼   ► "the witness testimony and evidence,

01:00:12 ◼   ► "the court reaches the following conclusion.

01:00:14 ◼   ► "Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one

01:00:17 ◼   ► "to maintain its monopoly," according to the court's ruling.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It has violated section two of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

01:00:24 ◼   ► Google's fate will be determined

01:00:25 ◼   ► in the next phase of proceedings,

01:00:26 ◼   ► which could result in anything from a mandate

01:00:28 ◼   ► to stop certain business practices

01:00:29 ◼   ► to a breakup of Google search businesses.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Judge Amit Mehta rejected Google's arguments

01:00:35 ◼   ► that its contracts with phone and browser makers like Apple

01:00:38 ◼   ► were not exclusionary and therefore shouldn't qualify it

01:00:41 ◼   ► for liability under the Sherman Act.

01:00:42 ◼   ► The prospect of losing tens of billions

01:00:45 ◼   ► in guaranteed revenue from Google,

01:00:46 ◼   ► which presently comes at little to no cost to Apple,

01:00:49 ◼   ► disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine

01:00:51 ◼   ► when it otherwise has built the capacity to do so.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Time and again, there's another quote,

01:00:57 ◼   ► "Time and again, Google's partners have concluded

01:00:58 ◼   ► "that it is financially infeasible to switch

01:01:01 ◼   ► "the default general search engines

01:01:03 ◼   ► "or seek greater flexibility in search offerings

01:01:06 ◼   ► "because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions,

01:01:08 ◼   ► "if not billions of dollars

01:01:09 ◼   ► "that Google pays them as revenue share," the judge wrote.

01:01:12 ◼   ► In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion

01:01:16 ◼   ► to be the default search engine in Safari.

01:01:19 ◼   ► During the closing arguments,

01:01:20 ◼   ► the judge honed in on these payments,

01:01:22 ◼   ► wondering how other players in the market

01:01:24 ◼   ► could possibly displace Google from that position.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Quote, "If that's what it takes for somebody

01:01:28 ◼   ► "to dislodge Google as the default search engine,

01:01:31 ◼   ► "wouldn't the folks that wrote the Sherman Act

01:01:33 ◼   ► "be concerned about it?"

01:01:34 ◼   ► Then continuing in a different post from The Verge,

01:01:40 ◼   ► according to Eddie Q, Apple's senior vice president

01:01:42 ◼   ► of services, there's no other meaningful alternative

01:01:44 ◼   ► to Google.

01:01:45 ◼   ► During the trial, he said that quote,

01:01:46 ◼   ► "There's no price that Microsoft could ever offer,"

01:01:48 ◼   ► to Apple to get the company to preload Bing and Safari.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Quote, "I don't believe there's a price in the world

01:01:53 ◼   ► "that Microsoft could offer us," Q said at another point.

01:01:55 ◼   ► "They offered to give us Bing for free.

01:01:58 ◼   ► "They could give us the whole company."

01:02:00 ◼   ► Geez, Eddie. - Sick burn.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - I think you might wanna talk to Tim about that,

01:02:03 ◼   ► 'cause I'm pretty sure Microsoft is worth

01:02:05 ◼   ► more than $20 billion, but maybe before you turn down

01:02:10 ◼   ► Microsoft offering to give you the whole company,

01:02:12 ◼   ► Eddie may be right there.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Obviously, he was humorously exaggerating there,

01:02:14 ◼   ► although it is a quote that ended up in a bunch of stories.

01:02:17 ◼   ► - I love Eddie Q.

01:02:18 ◼   ► - According to the judge, it's not just that Google

01:02:21 ◼   ► pays Apple not to challenge its search supremacy,

01:02:23 ◼   ► it would be unbelievably difficult for Apple

01:02:25 ◼   ► to get in on the action at all.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Unsurprisingly, both Google and Apple have looked into this,

01:02:28 ◼   ► and their own internal estimates came out at trial.

01:02:31 ◼   ► Apparently, Apple has calculated that, quote,

01:02:33 ◼   ► "It would cost $6 billion annually,"

01:02:35 ◼   ► on top of what it already spends developing

01:02:37 ◼   ► search capabilities to run a general search engine.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Meanwhile, in late 2020, Google estimated how much

01:02:42 ◼   ► it would cost Apple to create and maintain

01:02:44 ◼   ► a general search engine that could compete with Google.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Apple would have to spend something in the rough order

01:02:47 ◼   ► of $20 billion in order to reproduce

01:02:50 ◼   ► Google's technical infrastructure dedicated to search.

01:02:53 ◼   ► - I do like that.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I love the stuff that comes out in trial,

01:02:55 ◼   ► like the fact that both Apple and Google

01:02:57 ◼   ► had done some math to say, you know,

01:02:58 ◼   ► if we did, if Apple did make a competitor to Google search,

01:03:02 ◼   ► how much would that cost?

01:03:02 ◼   ► And Apple's estimate is like $6 billion a year,

01:03:04 ◼   ► and Google's estimate is $20 billion.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And you would think Google would know more,

01:03:08 ◼   ► 'cause Google has built Google,

01:03:10 ◼   ► and Apple's like, "Ah, probably $6 billion,

01:03:13 ◼   ► "like not even as much as the car we never shipped."

01:03:16 ◼   ► So, this is, I mean, these things take years and years

01:03:20 ◼   ► to go, so there'll be more about this trial or whatever,

01:03:23 ◼   ► but this is a verdict, and the verdict is,

01:03:25 ◼   ► does Google have a monopoly in search,

01:03:26 ◼   ► and did they abuse it?

01:03:27 ◼   ► Yes, that's the straight up, like,

01:03:29 ◼   ► there was even quotes in the thing of like,

01:03:30 ◼   ► I think some Google argument in court was like,

01:03:33 ◼   ► you know, "This isn't illegal,

01:03:35 ◼   ► "'cause we've been doing this for years."

01:03:36 ◼   ► And the judge pointed out, it's like,

01:03:37 ◼   ► "Things that you did when you weren't a monopoly were okay,

01:03:39 ◼   ► "but when you become a monopoly, they become illegal,

01:03:41 ◼   ► "and guess what, you're a monopoly."

01:03:42 ◼   ► And this is like the Windows antitrust case,

01:03:45 ◼   ► where it's like, there is no question

01:03:47 ◼   ► that Google has monopoly-sized market share.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Like, how many people run Windows?

01:03:53 ◼   ► It was like, everybody, right, 90-something percent.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Google search has just the massively dominant play,

01:03:58 ◼   ► like 90-plus percent in search.

01:04:00 ◼   ► It's fine to be a monopoly.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Did you abuse that monopoly to extend or maintain it?

01:04:04 ◼   ► And the courts say, "Yes, you totally did

01:04:06 ◼   ► "by various things that you do,

01:04:08 ◼   ► "including making contracts that, for example,

01:04:11 ◼   ► "dissuade Apple to the tune of $20 billion a year."

01:04:14 ◼   ► You shouldn't make a Google search competitor now.

01:04:16 ◼   ► They've been rumors for years that Apple

01:04:18 ◼   ► was considering making a Google search competitor,

01:04:20 ◼   ► and I always looked at those,

01:04:21 ◼   ► especially in the early days of like,

01:04:23 ◼   ► that is not Apple's strength.

01:04:25 ◼   ► But one of the strongest arguments with respect to that

01:04:28 ◼   ► is the very early spat between Apple and Google over Maps.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And Apple said, "You know what?

01:04:33 ◼   ► "We're gonna make our own Maps."

01:04:34 ◼   ► And they were bad, and Apple wasn't good at it.

01:04:37 ◼   ► But Apple kept plugging away,

01:04:39 ◼   ► because there was apparently no reconciliation

01:04:42 ◼   ► between Apple and Google with regard to Maps.

01:04:44 ◼   ► And today, Apple Maps is a viable competitor to Google Maps.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Who would've thunk that?

01:04:50 ◼   ► I mean, it took years and years, right,

01:04:51 ◼   ► and still some people like Google Maps better,

01:04:53 ◼   ► but I use both of them on a regular basis.

01:04:55 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna say Apple Maps is better than Google Maps.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I'm not even gonna say it's as good as Google Maps,

01:04:59 ◼   ► but it is definitely a viable competitor.

01:05:02 ◼   ► It does some things better, it does many things worse,

01:05:04 ◼   ► but Apple built that with tons of money,

01:05:07 ◼   ► and that's a competing product to Google.

01:05:09 ◼   ► What if Google had been paying Apple $20 billion a year

01:05:12 ◼   ► to make Google Maps the default mapping service?

01:05:14 ◼   ► Apple would've never made that.

01:05:15 ◼   ► That's anti-competitive, right?

01:05:17 ◼   ► I mean, we're not talking about mapping,

01:05:18 ◼   ► we're talking about search, but like,

01:05:20 ◼   ► that's what, you know, the judge isn't saying,

01:05:22 ◼   ► there's no remedies here.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It's not like, what are we gonna do about this?

01:05:24 ◼   ► That's a whole other phase, and they're gonna appeal,

01:05:26 ◼   ► and they could appeal all the way to the Supreme Court,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and they might be overturned, and like,

01:05:30 ◼   ► with court cases, you don't know what's gonna come of this,

01:05:32 ◼   ► if anything.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Change in administration could change stuff.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Like, there's so many factors here,

01:05:37 ◼   ► but this is a significant finding and victory

01:05:39 ◼   ► for the Department of Justice of saying,

01:05:42 ◼   ► Google, you're a monopoly.

01:05:43 ◼   ► You did stuff that's against the Sherman Antitrust Act

01:05:45 ◼   ► to maintain it, and we're gonna figure out

01:05:48 ◼   ► what that means for you.

01:05:50 ◼   ► And the reason this is fun to talk about

01:05:53 ◼   ► is because Apple's over there going, wait, what?

01:05:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:05:57 ◼   ► We get $20 billion a year for Google

01:06:00 ◼   ► for having like, a URL and a P-list somewhere, right?

01:06:05 ◼   ► It's the easiest money we ever made.

01:06:06 ◼   ► It has essentially 100% profit margins.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And this is relevant because Apple's services revenue,

01:06:13 ◼   ► and the story about services,

01:06:15 ◼   ► service is where the growth is for Apple.

01:06:17 ◼   ► As it came out in the earlier trials,

01:06:19 ◼   ► when we all kind of learned the magnitude of this,

01:06:22 ◼   ► a huge chunk of Apple's services revenue,

01:06:25 ◼   ► and also, services profit, services income,

01:06:29 ◼   ► is that 20 billion.

01:06:30 ◼   ► It's like 25% of their services profit.

01:06:33 ◼   ► That's not a small amount.

01:06:34 ◼   ► It's not like a 2% thing or whatever,

01:06:36 ◼   ► and if Apple's whole story for their company is like,

01:06:39 ◼   ► yeah, the phones aren't growing anymore,

01:06:40 ◼   ► and other stuff is kind of stable too,

01:06:42 ◼   ► but services is growing like gangbusters year over year,

01:06:45 ◼   ► what if I told you, Apple, that potentially in five years,

01:06:49 ◼   ► some court decision could say,

01:06:52 ◼   ► yeah, 25% of your services revenue,

01:06:55 ◼   ► that's going to zero, starting now.

01:06:57 ◼   ► That would be bad for Apple, for their stock,

01:07:00 ◼   ► for their story about services growth.

01:07:02 ◼   ► I mean, that, I mean,

01:07:03 ◼   ► and what did Apple do to bring that about?

01:07:06 ◼   ► Like, did Apple do anything wrong by taking that 20 billion?

01:07:09 ◼   ► Like, the courts would say no.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Apple, you know, the courts would potentially say,

01:07:13 ◼   ► they could say, agreements like the one

01:07:15 ◼   ► you made with Apple, those are illegal,

01:07:16 ◼   ► so you gotta cut off that deal,

01:07:17 ◼   ► and Apple's like, oh, they have to cut out that deal.

01:07:19 ◼   ► We like that money.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But according to the courts, and I can see their point,

01:07:24 ◼   ► that money is Google using its monopoly in search

01:07:29 ◼   ► to prevent competition, to say,

01:07:31 ◼   ► we are dominant and we are going to use that dominance

01:07:34 ◼   ► to make sure nobody else ever challenges our dominance.

01:07:36 ◼   ► We're gonna make sure that Bing doesn't get to be the default

01:07:38 ◼   ► because they can't match our 20 billions

01:07:40 ◼   ► that we're paying Apple.

01:07:41 ◼   ► We're gonna make sure Apple never makes a competitor,

01:07:43 ◼   ► one of the few companies in the world

01:07:45 ◼   ► that could potentially even have the funds

01:07:47 ◼   ► to try to make a competitor.

01:07:48 ◼   ► We're gonna make sure they don't do that

01:07:49 ◼   ► because we'll literally pay them off every single year

01:07:51 ◼   ► to the tune of 20 billion dollars

01:07:52 ◼   ► to make sure they don't even think

01:07:54 ◼   ► about making a competitor.

01:07:55 ◼   ► That's anti-competitive.

01:07:56 ◼   ► But looking at it from Apple's perspective,

01:08:00 ◼   ► it's like, this sucks.

01:08:01 ◼   ► We like getting 20,

01:08:03 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think Apple wants to make a search engine,

01:08:05 ◼   ► and Eddy Cue's there in court saying,

01:08:07 ◼   ► I don't know what his motivation was,

01:08:08 ◼   ► but he's basically saying, honestly,

01:08:09 ◼   ► it's like, from his perspective,

01:08:11 ◼   ► Apple thinks, or Eddy Cue thinks,

01:08:13 ◼   ► that Google is better than Bing.

01:08:15 ◼   ► And Apple's saying, we wanna ship the best product

01:08:17 ◼   ► to our users, when it comes time

01:08:19 ◼   ► to choose the default search for Safari,

01:08:21 ◼   ► we're gonna pick what we think is the best one,

01:08:23 ◼   ► and we think Google is the best one.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And the 20 billion dollars doesn't hurt,

01:08:26 ◼   ► but he's making the argument that,

01:08:29 ◼   ► Microsoft could give it to us for free,

01:08:30 ◼   ► and we wouldn't take it,

01:08:31 ◼   ► because it would be making a worse experience

01:08:33 ◼   ► for users on our phone.

01:08:34 ◼   ► And obviously, the EU would say,

01:08:38 ◼   ► why not give them a choice screen

01:08:39 ◼   ► where they get to pick what their thing is?

01:08:40 ◼   ► And honestly, that's always been a question

01:08:42 ◼   ► about the 20 billion.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Like Google, if Apple just gave people a choice

01:08:45 ◼   ► of what they want their default search engine to be,

01:08:47 ◼   ► even if they randomized the list,

01:08:49 ◼   ► most people are gonna pick you anyway,

01:08:50 ◼   ► because you got to your dominant place,

01:08:53 ◼   ► not through illegal deals or anything,

01:08:55 ◼   ► but because people love Google search.

01:08:57 ◼   ► So if you just let everybody pick,

01:08:58 ◼   ► 95% of the people are probably gonna pick Google anyway,

01:09:01 ◼   ► but still, good business is like,

01:09:03 ◼   ► why would I give them that chance?

01:09:05 ◼   ► Why would I take that risk?

01:09:06 ◼   ► That 20 billion dollars is money well spent,

01:09:08 ◼   ► because it prevents Apple from ever wanting to do this,

01:09:10 ◼   ► it puts us as the default search engine,

01:09:12 ◼   ► in the handheld platform where people spend the most money,

01:09:15 ◼   ► it's no brainer that we should do this.

01:09:16 ◼   ► So if the remedies of this court case,

01:09:20 ◼   ► if one of the remedies is that they can't do deals

01:09:22 ◼   ► like that anymore, I think it makes sense,

01:09:24 ◼   ► and I think it kind of sucks for Apple,

01:09:25 ◼   ► but honestly, we've talked about Apple's,

01:09:28 ◼   ► how services revenue have been distorting Apple for a while,

01:09:31 ◼   ► not with respect to this so much,

01:09:32 ◼   ► much more with respect to what are your incentives

01:09:35 ◼   ► when your growth is service revenue,

01:09:38 ◼   ► in terms of product design,

01:09:40 ◼   ► and how many ads you throw on people faces,

01:09:41 ◼   ► how many come ons you have,

01:09:42 ◼   ► but this is another aspect of it,

01:09:44 ◼   ► it's like, what is this money preventing Apple from doing?

01:09:49 ◼   ► How is this money causing Apple to become misshapen

01:09:52 ◼   ► in its decision making to say,

01:09:54 ◼   ► well, we could do X and we think it would be better,

01:09:57 ◼   ► but 20 billion dollars,

01:09:58 ◼   ► like 20 billion dollars is a big counterweight

01:10:00 ◼   ► to lots of people who might have notions about things

01:10:02 ◼   ► inside Apple, like, oh, what about this, what about that?

01:10:05 ◼   ► And someone says, 20 billion dollars,

01:10:06 ◼   ► and you're like, okay, nevermind, right?

01:10:08 ◼   ► Little things like that,

01:10:09 ◼   ► how many little things just never got going

01:10:11 ◼   ► because 20 billion dollars, right?

01:10:13 ◼   ► So I think, in the end,

01:10:15 ◼   ► although it will be painful

01:10:16 ◼   ► to remove this 20 billion dollars from Apple,

01:10:19 ◼   ► it will make them a more effective organization

01:10:22 ◼   ► that makes better decisions.

01:10:24 ◼   ► It doesn't at all solve the problem

01:10:26 ◼   ► of Apple being motivated to throw stupid come ons

01:10:28 ◼   ► for their services interface constantly,

01:10:30 ◼   ► which I think is the worst aspect of their services revenue,

01:10:33 ◼   ► like sort of focusing on

01:10:34 ◼   ► how can we extract more money from people

01:10:36 ◼   ► on a monthly basis rather than how can we satisfy people,

01:10:39 ◼   ► but that's a whole separate issue.

01:10:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel bad, not for Apple,

01:10:43 ◼   ► but for, I think Mozilla people have said repeatedly

01:10:47 ◼   ► that almost all their revenue

01:10:48 ◼   ► comes from their own Google search deal,

01:10:51 ◼   ► and even though I haven't personally used Firefox

01:10:55 ◼   ► in 20 years or something like that,

01:10:58 ◼   ► nevertheless, it's just, it's too bad.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Like, I think Mozilla, by and large,

01:11:02 ◼   ► is doing pretty good work, and for them to--

01:11:04 ◼   ► - No, like, you haven't been keeping up

01:11:05 ◼   ► with the Mozilla thing.

01:11:06 ◼   ► They've been-- - Oh!

01:11:07 ◼   ► - They've been building adware into their browser

01:11:09 ◼   ► to try to essentially get money from, like,

01:11:11 ◼   ► they're, the same thing happened to them.

01:11:15 ◼   ► This revenue sort of enabled a set of leadership

01:11:19 ◼   ► that's like, we got the Google gravy train,

01:11:21 ◼   ► and now we can get the whole ad tech

01:11:24 ◼   ► built into our browser gravy train,

01:11:25 ◼   ► and Firefox users are like, we hate this.

01:11:28 ◼   ► The reason we use this Firefox

01:11:29 ◼   ► is not to have to deal with this stuff.

01:11:31 ◼   ► You're betraying us or whatever,

01:11:32 ◼   ► and it's like, if Mozilla didn't have that money from Google

01:11:36 ◼   ► and had to find some other way to fund itself,

01:11:38 ◼   ► one argument is, like, they'd be gone,

01:11:39 ◼   ► and there'd be no Firefox, doesn't that suck?

01:11:41 ◼   ► But the other argument is they would've been forced

01:11:43 ◼   ► to find some other way to make money,

01:11:45 ◼   ► and maybe that would've led them down

01:11:46 ◼   ► this ad tech thing faster, I don't know,

01:11:48 ◼   ► but like, having this amount of money from monopolists

01:11:51 ◼   ► just swayed you from ever thinking about doing anything

01:11:54 ◼   ► except for using them is not healthy for anybody involved,

01:11:58 ◼   ► even though it seems like it is.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Like, oh, it's keeping Firefox alive, that's good,