00:00:00 ◼ ► I have recently given up on three fights or battles, I guess, that I've been battling for a long time.
00:00:06 ◼ ► Number one, yes, I saw the Technology Connections videos about dishwashers and dishwasher detergent.
00:00:42 ◼ ► The pre-rinse thing is just a place that's not covered up that you put stuff in, right?
00:00:59 ◼ ► But when you lift it up, like there's like little slots that like some of the powder and the pre-rinse will fall out when you close the door, like just from gravity.
00:01:06 ◼ ► You can just put some the pre-rinse thing like you should send me a photo of your thing.
00:01:11 ◼ ► But the point is you want it to be someplace where when you close the door, it just falls down because that's when it's going to be used.
00:01:17 ◼ ► You could do that too, but you're afraid of squirting it on the heating element or something, you know.
00:01:21 ◼ ► I believe in that same video, I haven't watched it in a long time, but Alec just said just dump it on the door and then close the door, which is what we do.
00:01:28 ◼ ► And the reason you don't do it in the bottom, like I said, is what if you're worried about a glob of it goes on the heating element and then like bakes on there or something?
00:01:34 ◼ ► Well, anyway, so reason number two that I'm just buying pods now is that it's getting harder and harder to find the powder.
00:01:41 ◼ ► Like, you know, I just have like a grocery store in the suburbs where I live here and like the grocery store that, you know, it's like a big chain grocery store.
00:02:11 ◼ ► But if you want powder, just buy a couple of boxes of it from Amazon and stick them in your basement.
00:02:48 ◼ ► I'm like, oh, I think like I think I mentioned this ages ago in the show that like somehow I've managed to avoid upgrading Dropbox to the to the new version that uses Apple's file provider framework, the same underlying framework that powers iCloud Drive, because that's the new recommended way to do it.
00:03:04 ◼ ► So when I was doing hyperspace development, I'm like, OK, I want to do the cloud storage support.
00:03:18 ◼ ► Not only did I not have the file provider version of the Dropbox client, but when I asked for it, it said, no, you can't have it like they wouldn't let you download it.
00:03:40 ◼ ► But anyway, I think in settings somewhere it says, please use the file provider version, which is weird.
00:03:53 ◼ ► So I've been using Maestral, this this open source Dropbox client that uses like their API.
00:03:58 ◼ ► And and the reason why I switched to Maestral in the first place, we talked about the show, I think, years ago at this point.
00:04:05 ◼ ► The reason why I switched is that the Dropbox app was getting really like just inefficient and bloated.
00:04:09 ◼ ► And Maestral was just like it was and this was right around the time that Dropbox switched to Electron for their app.
00:04:24 ◼ ► And it was also adding a bunch of like annoyances, like which it's still full of, you know, just like pestering you for more and more permissions, pestering you whenever you do anything in your computer.
00:04:32 ◼ ► The Dropbox might want a piece of the pop of, you know, a modal in the middle of your work.
00:04:36 ◼ ► So, hey, you know, you can use Dropbox for part of, you know, like this just nagging the crap out of you.
00:04:46 ◼ ► And it's like lightweight and very gentle in your resources and doesn't bug you at all.
00:04:51 ◼ ► The problem is it works like 98 percent of the time and that other two percent drives me nuts.
00:04:58 ◼ ► Like every time something doesn't sync from Dropbox or it syncs really slowly, like, you know, I have to wait like 10 minutes for something to appear that I know, like that I put there on a different computer or whatever.
00:05:18 ◼ ► So maybe the new one, maybe the current Dropbox app is just as inconsistent, but probably not.
00:05:24 ◼ ► It had a lot of other faults, but it was always it always performed consistently in terms of like actually syncing your files quickly and reliably.
00:05:31 ◼ ► I still find that to be true, by the way, with the non-file provider version works all the time.
00:05:35 ◼ ► I think when I gave up Dropbox's client for Maestral, I believe I was still on Intel Macs, I think.
00:05:44 ◼ ► Well, yeah, you what's different now is that we have all these efficiency cores and Mac OS is designed for Apple Silicon.
00:05:53 ◼ ► It's designed to put almost any background process on efficiency cores and to lock them there.
00:05:59 ◼ ► They aren't they like they aren't even able to use the performance cores in most cases.
00:06:03 ◼ ► So when Dropbox, if their client now has some kind of background process like pegging a CPU core, that's almost certainly going to spend its entire time running on an efficiency core.
00:06:13 ◼ ► And the efficiency cores on Apple Silicon are basically free in terms of like, you know, what it does to your computing experience.
00:06:28 ◼ ► You barely even notice any kind of power impact or heat or fan impact because the efficiency cores are really efficient.
00:06:37 ◼ ► So if an app like Dropbox starts spinning one of those cores now in on these modern Macs, it has almost no noticeable impact to the user or to the or to the system performance.
00:06:50 ◼ ► I guess I'll report back if I have any major problems, but I have given up on the Dropbox fight.
00:07:18 ◼ ► I used to also try to keep a second browser or third browser installed for not only sites that don't work in Safari, but also just like I like to have separate browsers to be able to test different account logins, logged in versus not logged in state one.
00:07:33 ◼ ► Like ever since I ever since I started the restaurant, I've been having a second browser for restaurant related accounts to be logged into all the time.
00:07:42 ◼ ► And so what I've used for this purpose for a while, I used Brave, which is it's one of those many browsers that's like, let's take Chrome and strip all the Google branding and certain integrations from it.
00:08:01 ◼ ► It's gotten a little weird over time with like some of its own pushiness and weirdness.
00:08:16 ◼ ► If you haven't used Firefox and, you know, since it was since a day a million years ago, give it a shot.
00:08:39 ◼ ► And some of this is just because they only want to test on Chrome because they're lazy or they're using some kind of cutting edge web API that is not well supported by other browsers.
00:08:52 ◼ ► So because like, again, they don't want to they don't want to bother checking for capabilities, which is bad in lots of ways.
00:09:00 ◼ ► Some of it is like, you know, like I try to pay my estimated taxes to a New York state website recently.
00:09:34 ◼ ► But it advertises a lot of like, you know, different features and compatibilities and everything.
00:09:55 ◼ ► And and when when my browser crashes like once a week, that's too much, even though that's all that's you.
00:10:18 ◼ ► Well, for your for your things that you listed of why you had alternate browsers, have you tried Safari profiles?
00:10:24 ◼ ► No, I didn't, because one of the one of the main reasons why is that I actually do want a Chrome based browser installed, because over time, it seems like Safari's compatibility with the web is actually getting worse.
00:10:38 ◼ ► Like, I think it peaked and then as as Google has pushed a lot of like, you know, app like native functionality to try to say, look, we're going to we're going to tell you what we want to undermine the app store and app app.
00:11:05 ◼ ► Like, there's so much BS and marketing and pressuring behind, quote, standards, because, like, who decides what's a standard?
00:11:18 ◼ ► But all the reasons you find sites that don't work in Safari has nothing to do with standards, has everything to do with what you just said.
00:11:25 ◼ ► Like, they're relying on some quirk or bug or legacy behavior that only exists in Chrome and is not compliant with any particular standard.
00:11:34 ◼ ► Even if the standard says, like, this behavior is undefined, but Chrome behaves in a certain way.
00:11:38 ◼ ► If you only test in Chrome, your site will only work in Chrome because if you rely on that, you know, undefined behavior.
00:11:43 ◼ ► And so it's kind of like Safari has an uphill battle here because of their smaller market share.
00:11:48 ◼ ► They have to figure out why doesn't this site work in Safari and what weird quirk of Chrome.
00:11:54 ◼ ► They're just like, well, we only test in Chrome because it's the only browser that matters.
00:12:00 ◼ ► And also, like, you know, I know Safari is doing a lot of things now with, you know, with privacy in mind to block certain behaviors or limit certain behaviors or filter certain, you know, sites or cookies or trackers or whatever.
00:12:20 ◼ ► But even like even when I disable those when certain functionality breaks, a lot of websites seem to be breaking in Safari on certain functionality now.
00:12:36 ◼ ► And it's to the point now where it's like I just my second browser should just be stupid Chrome because I know like no matter what, if something doesn't work in Safari, I know I can go over to Chrome.
00:13:26 ◼ ► No, I my last Synology, I got that that little four bay cheapo one and it was a bad experience.
00:14:00 ◼ ► But the reason I ask is I recently posted on my website about how you can excise Dropbox from your life if you do have a Synology in your in your world.
00:14:16 ◼ ► Even when I had a Synology, I didn't do that because, like, to me, that it's adding so many potential points of failure.
00:14:27 ◼ ► If you have this thing and this you install this thing on it and this other package, you know, connect this to this.
00:15:11 ◼ ► And it was turning into Electron where it was like, hey, have we told you about WorkChat or whatever?
00:15:17 ◼ ► It was turning into Evernote where it was constantly, like, pimping other things that it wanted you to use.
00:15:26 ◼ ► I mean, so what I'm hoping, like, because you're right, like, it is like growth hacked out the butt.
00:15:32 ◼ ► Like, Dropbox, it's one of those, they're just shamelessly just shoving crap in your face all the time.
00:15:38 ◼ ► Whenever you open up the, you know, like, the window on your Mac or if you go to, God forbid, the Dropbox website, it just shoves crap and promos and hooks at you.
00:15:54 ◼ ► So what I, what I need Dropbox to be is I'm going to give you some money every year and you're going to sync my files.
00:16:08 ◼ ► But yeah, but I'm hoping that by having installed the app and having paid them the money, if I never actually need to open the Dropbox window and I never have to actually open the Dropbox website, I'm hoping this will work the way I need it to, which is I gave you the money.
00:16:29 ◼ ► And, and again, like it does not, that, that is not something I want in my life and I'm willing to trade some complexity to not have to deal with that.
00:16:38 ◼ ► And in fact, probably the smarter one, if I'm honest with myself, uh, the other piece of follow-up just to get ahead of the 8,000 emails we are going to get.
00:16:56 ◼ ► And I, I didn't think that it was doing things that I wanted in my life, but they, the ARC people are going to come for you if you don't at least acknowledge the existence of ARC.
00:17:21 ◼ ► I've never, I haven't checked it out because what everyone says is a version of what you just said, which is like.
00:17:28 ◼ ► It's like all the, when all the reviews came out of the Palm Pre, you know, but it's going back a ways, but like all the reviews of the Palm Pre were like, this is really interesting.
00:17:41 ◼ ► No one said, I am personally switching to the Palm Pre, you know, maybe, maybe Christina Warren might've, but like, oh, no one else did.
00:17:48 ◼ ► And so like, there's a lot of, a lot of things come out in tech where it's like, this is interesting.
00:18:01 ◼ ► But when it comes to like actually real life use, like, oh, actually no, I want the normal way, please.
00:18:06 ◼ ► Like this is, it's too weird or it doesn't, it has too many downsides or quirks or edge cases.
00:18:22 ◼ ► I think the reason people didn't use the Palm Pre is the combination of ingredients to not make for a satisfying meal, uh, to talk to that analogy a little bit.
00:18:30 ◼ ► But many of the software and interface innovations on the Palm Pre eventually became the normal ways that phones work.
00:18:40 ◼ ► So there's like, there's a lot of good ideas here, but in the end, does this coalesce into a product that I think, you know, was going to replace whatever my current phone was?
00:18:58 ◼ ► So with Palm, you know, one of the problems was the Palm Pre, you know, it had, it had a bunch of good ideas, but it was like, is it better than the iPhone?
00:19:12 ◼ ► And over time it did, but no one was like, these, these ideas are so good that I'm willing to forego the other, like, you know, the ecosystem, the inertia, the developer support.
00:19:27 ◼ ► But, and that also got a bunch of the same reviews of like, this is really interesting.
00:19:33 ◼ ► But, you know, you check with those reviewers, like, did you actually buy Windows 8 Phone and use it full time?
00:19:38 ◼ ► Yeah, well, the ARC equivalent of that is there may be good ideas in ARC, but in the end, if what you want is a browser that you know the sites will work in, that's where you end up at the browser that has the most market share, which back in the day was IE.
00:19:55 ◼ ► And like, whenever, when you go off the beaten path, when you say, I'm not going to use the biggest choice or the most popular choice or the official app for something, you're oftentimes signing up for some degree of friction by doing that.
00:20:08 ◼ ► You're saying, well, yes, it's not going to quite work all the same way or certain things might be worse in order for me to get the better behavior I'm looking for with this other alternative or whatever.
00:20:21 ◼ ► Like, I do certain things the hard way or the weird way or the off-the-beaten-path way, but I can't do everything that way.
00:20:27 ◼ ► So I will have the areas that I care a lot about, like tweaking and having special certain ways, and I'm willing to tolerate the shortcomings or the missing features or the occasional friction that comes from those things.
00:20:49 ◼ ► You know what has also been killing me is not having a limited-time merch sale going on, but guess what, baby?
00:21:00 ◼ ► So, John, why don't you take us on a tour of the storefront and let us know what's available, please?
00:21:10 ◼ ► We used to try to get these on sale so that they could be manufactured and delivered to you so you could wear them to WWDC, where you'd see all the other nerds.
00:21:20 ◼ ► But we still want it to be early enough that if on the off chance that you did want to wear one of these WWDC, there is a chance that you could order it, receive it, and then wear it to California.
00:21:38 ◼ ► It occurred to me when I was making these that we never actually did a shirt for the M2 Ultra.
00:21:44 ◼ ► I don't know if it was just not exciting enough or it fell, when it was introduced, fell between sales.
00:22:05 ◼ ► Now, if you wear an M3 Ultra shirt, people might wonder, is he wearing that ironically?
00:22:15 ◼ ► Like, there's no one that's better than it, but the number is lower than the other chips.
00:22:38 ◼ ► Anyway, we also have, in the tradition of the M1 Ultra, which is the only other Ultra shirt that we did,
00:22:48 ◼ ► it recognizes the fact that the M3 Ultra, like the M1 Ultra, is made of two Max chips stuck together
00:23:10 ◼ ► But this time it doesn't say Max, because the M3 Ultra isn't really two M3 Maxes stuck together.
00:23:17 ◼ ► It's two M3 Max-ish chips stuck together, because they have Thunderbolt 5, and who knows what other changes?
00:23:40 ◼ ► So, anyway, this is the joke M3 shirt, and it says M3 Max question mark, and then flipped over Max question mark.
00:23:48 ◼ ► It's basically the same joke as we did with the M1 Ultra, only now with a question mark,
00:23:58 ◼ ► Because this is WWDC, and because I'm me, we are offering the Mac Pro Believe shirt again.
00:24:05 ◼ ► This is the shirt we offered, I think, like two years ago, when we were hoping for the Mac Pro to come back,
00:24:10 ◼ ► and it came back and had an M2 Ultra Interposer, and it was just a gigantic Mac Studio with slots.
00:24:15 ◼ ► Probably a giant Mac Studio with slots that has an M3 Ultra Interposer that costs $7,000 or whatever.
00:24:28 ◼ ► If I were going to WWDC, which I almost certainly am not, because of conflicts with my daughter's senior prom and her graduation,
00:24:53 ◼ ► So, if you don't want a T-shirt, but you want a long-sleeve T-shirt or a crewneck sweatshirt or a tank top,
00:24:59 ◼ ► So, we've got the Mac Pro Believe shirt with light and dark ink with a bunch of different colors.
00:25:03 ◼ ► Our returning product, because you usually like to bring, like, old products back from the Disney vault, so to speak.
00:25:09 ◼ ► We've got the Pro Max Triumph shirt, which I think is one of our better-looking shirts for people who have no idea what the shirt is about.
00:25:15 ◼ ► Because it's just a bunch of, like, solid shapes in the Apple six colors and then accidental tech podcast underneath it.
00:25:28 ◼ ► And if they don't know what all those shapes are on the top of it, it just looks like a nice design.
00:25:35 ◼ ► But, in fact, those are the silhouettes of a bunch of Apple's most powerful Macs, starting with the original Mac.
00:25:42 ◼ ► The Mac 2, the G3 blue and white tower, the original cheese grater, the trash can, and today's Mac Pro.
00:26:10 ◼ ► But the idea is, if you get the shirt wet, if you're, like, sweaty or whatever, you can still pull it off of you on, like, a regular cotton T-shirt, where it's, like, welded to your skin.
00:26:35 ◼ ► Listen to our member special episode about our logo to learn the difference between our monochrome logo and our color logo.
00:26:42 ◼ ► And then, of course, we have our classic ATP shirt with the six-color ATP logo on it, also available in long-sleeve sweatshirt, blah, blah, blah.
00:26:55 ◼ ► Unfortunately, the hoodie that we've been selling for years and years is no longer made.
00:27:03 ◼ ► But the same company offers a slightly different model of hoodie, and that's what we're selling.
00:27:10 ◼ ► Like, if you've got one of these hoodies, you know, like, the drawstring was kind of like a flat, like a big shoelace kind of thing, which I liked.
00:27:17 ◼ ► The new one has a drawstring that is more rounded, more like a, I don't know, like a normal hoodie drawstring.
00:27:26 ◼ ► We'll try to put links in the show notes to the old model and the new model so you can compare if you care.
00:27:43 ◼ ► And the last time we sold this, we introduced a couple of new colors, and those are available.
00:27:47 ◼ ► We're still trying to sell through the mugs that we just ordered too much of last time.
00:27:58 ◼ ► But it could be that we just keep selling these mugs forever because we bought too many.
00:28:13 ◼ ► Or we may take a long break from mugs because maybe people just don't want mugs anymore.
00:28:17 ◼ ► And finally, we've got the ATP hat with the embroidered ATP logo on it available in a couple of different colors.
00:28:41 ◼ ► If you are a member and you're logged in when you go to ATP.fm slash store, we will try to autofill that discount code for you.
00:28:48 ◼ ► But if the autofilling thing doesn't work, just copy and paste it from your member page.
00:28:59 ◼ ► But just mark that date in your calendar before Casey starts nagging you about forgetting about it.
00:30:04 ◼ ► And there are some interesting ideas of how we might mix it up a little bit and make them
00:30:31 ◼ ► First of all, a friend of mine pointed out to me the Voices of VR podcast episode 1557.
00:30:47 ◼ ► But this was an interview with Ant something or other, who was the star of the Apple immersive
00:30:58 ◼ ► This was a little less than an hour, and I found it fascinating because the star of the video
00:31:08 ◼ ► How did they record it to the degree that someone who is not a film professional understands and
00:31:24 ◼ ► Additionally, there's a new series on Apple, you know, Vision Pro on Apple TV Plus or whatever.
00:31:31 ◼ ► But suffice to say, you know, there's Adventure, there's, shoot, I forget what the other ones
00:31:40 ◼ ► But there's a new one called VIP, and this is where they're, I guess, going to take you
00:32:04 ◼ ► Matthew Fenselow writes, the HP crew has often complained about the lack of communication from
00:32:10 ◼ ► On the other hand, you guys correctly point out that as indie developers, you can't possibly
00:32:14 ◼ ► reply to individual bug reports, but that you find the reports useful in aggregate to guide
00:32:24 ◼ ► Even if 1% of Apple employees worked in iOS support, which would be a crazy amount, the
00:32:31 ◼ ► I have to assume if you guys had a million paying users, would have just bought John a non-Honda
00:32:37 ◼ ► Yes, I would have bought John a non-Honda car, and he would refuse to drive it, even if it
00:32:46 ◼ ► At that scale, it seems amazing to me that Apple responds to any bug reports from individuals
00:32:52 ◼ ► I would think just screening out the people who file bugs that their iPhone is haunted or
00:33:05 ◼ ► Apple gets 100 or 1,000 similar reports, it may result in a fix, but the expectation that
00:33:14 ◼ ► Yeah, this is kind of like the Fermi paradox type of thing for feedback in that I'm not
00:33:26 ◼ ► But to clarify, and this is one of the reasons I put this in here, when we're talking about
00:34:05 ◼ ► And the second thing is, of all the developers that you have, like those millions of developer
00:34:14 ◼ ► That's why we're saying that with the amount of money that Apple has and the number of plays
00:34:22 ◼ ► It doesn't mean that they're going to have personal support for every single thing, but
00:34:27 ◼ ► just sort of the basics we expect of automated systems where like when you do anything having
00:34:30 ◼ ► your customer support with like your cable company or whatever, like that you get a response
00:34:34 ◼ ► and you get a ticket number and you can see your support requests being processed through
00:34:41 ◼ ► Even that simple thing of like getting a number or whatever, you do get a ticket thing if you
00:34:46 ◼ ► like email the developer technical support or whatever, but Apple's feedback system for
00:34:52 ◼ ► And again, the assumption that I think is missing in this is that we're not talking about random
00:35:06 ◼ ► And as for 1% of Apple employees working in support, which would be a crazy amount, I don't think
00:35:13 ◼ ► If 1% of the company is doing support, I wonder if that, if they already have more than 1% of
00:35:36 ◼ ► that if you were making enough money to support yourself as an indie, you would get so much
00:35:41 ◼ ► The economics of games are probably different from utility apps, but I'm an indie developer
00:35:49 ◼ ► I answer every email I get because I typically only get one per day, and most of them are answerable
00:35:54 ◼ ► I think John probably, and I don't mean this to be dismissive, probably has the least users
00:36:01 ◼ ► I think I am in the middle, and I think Marco is far and away more users than John or I probably
00:36:06 ◼ ► combined, and I got to tell you, I feel like I get at least a few, at least a handful of
00:36:14 ◼ ► So yeah, I mean, I'm not saying this anonymous person's experience isn't what they claim it
00:36:23 ◼ ► Like, sort of the lower stakes apps where people either, like, it's not something they're using
00:36:29 ◼ ► for their work, and so if something goes wrong, it's like pressing, or it's not complicated.
00:36:39 ◼ ► But they're a genre of application where if you make a good self-contained game without,
00:36:46 ◼ ► like, this complicated network component or any other part, like, it's true of any app.
00:36:54 ◼ ► So it's one of the things that was missed in our past conversation of this is like, well,
00:37:02 ◼ ► And I would imagine if you make a self-contained, non-server-based, non-multiplayer game with
00:37:09 ◼ ► no user-uploaded content, like if you make, like, a solitaire game or something, once your
00:37:12 ◼ ► bugs are all worked out and you have a fairly obvious user interface, I bet your support load
00:37:17 ◼ ► But if you're making something much more complicated, like, say, a podcast client that has to read
00:37:21 ◼ ► arbitrary podcast feeds and people are upset when their podcast doesn't download and so on
00:37:40 ◼ ► And this is part of why, for instance, like, you know, tools that work in, like, specialized
00:37:46 ◼ ► environments for professionals, any kind of, you know, production tool or specialized business
00:37:51 ◼ ► tool, their ratio of, like, how much support is needed per customer tends to be way higher
00:38:03 ◼ ► So, like, you know, I can tell you, like, I get, like, on a slow day, I might get 15 support
00:38:18 ◼ ► You know, certainly after the rewrite launch last summer, I was getting over 100 a day.
00:38:54 ◼ ► And Reddit, by the way, Reddit, like, they'll create one for you, whether you're there or
00:39:01 ◼ ► And so, suppose, suppose you have, you know, a few things trickling in every day from all
00:39:23 ◼ ► Maybe, you know, maybe if you want to send, like, a canned, you know, text expander kind
00:39:28 ◼ ► of shortcut kind of response to, you know, to some of them, depending on what they are,
00:39:39 ◼ ► down somewhere or add a vote somewhere to a tally if you're keeping some kind of system
00:39:42 ◼ ► Maybe they're actually reporting specific problems and specific bugs that you haven't seen before.
00:39:49 ◼ ► Maybe you have to try to work with them to troubleshoot things or walk them through something.
00:39:56 ◼ ► you know, in my case, or, you know, I need some help with my podcast being listed improperly
00:40:07 ◼ ► Some of them can take away hours from your day because all of a sudden you discover, oh,
00:40:12 ◼ ► this one, you know, image that this person used for their podcast artwork is breaking the
00:40:16 ◼ ► resizing thing because it uses some weird JPEG tag or, you know, like there's all these
00:40:30 ◼ ► So suppose that number for you is, you know, 30 emails a day or 30 inquiries or whatever
00:41:13 ◼ ► Like once you cross a threshold of, you know, whatever you can handle being a daily or accumulating
00:41:26 ◼ ► You have to start not responding to everything or giving things canned responses, which I hate.
00:41:32 ◼ ► But like support is a very, very difficult burden to do over time because it just never ends.
00:41:48 ◼ ► So what sounds like a small amount, it can quickly accumulate when life gets in the way.
00:41:54 ◼ ► Yeah, it's just, I do hear the argument about scale for Apple and scale even for us, but I don't know.
00:42:04 ◼ ► I mean, it's just, I feel like the amount of time it would take me to provide the support that I wish I could provide is astronomically more than I am capable or willing to give to that task.
00:42:17 ◼ ► And similarly, the amount of money it would take to solve this problem with money by paying somebody else to do it is astronomically more than I can afford for this task.
00:42:26 ◼ ► And by the way, and on that front, by the way, like the, the, like just pay someone else to do it idea.
00:42:31 ◼ ► One of the challenges that is like everything I just mentioned about like things that can take time response between emails.
00:42:38 ◼ ► Like if you are, if you are the programmer, if you're the only programmer on the app, which most indies are, you have to be the one to address most of those things.
00:42:46 ◼ ► So, you know, if you had another, a support person filtering through emails and maybe just escalating things to you that needed your attention, like that helps.
00:42:58 ◼ ► But, you know, that it helps to have that, but you're still getting enough stuff kicked up to you every single day that like, you know, the support person can't do that much.
00:43:09 ◼ ► If some, if a problem somebody reports is non-obvious, you know, they can maybe help somebody reset their password or something.
00:43:15 ◼ ► But like, if it's something like, hey, this, there's a bug with this artwork, as I said, or like my user account is behaving weirdly because of some entry in it, like that's probably going to get kicked to you no matter what.
00:43:25 ◼ ► So having any kind of filtering or person in front of you, it helps in some ways, but it doesn't really help the overwhelming buildup over time by an indie.
00:43:35 ◼ ► Vitor writes, it seems that someone inside Apple is feeling the bug reporting criticism.
00:43:40 ◼ ► I just noticed this in my feedback assistant inbox, and we'll put a link to the post or whatever it was in the show notes, but there are two images.
00:43:51 ◼ ► The final versions of these updates are now publicly posted and available through Software Update.
00:44:04 ◼ ► We realize that testing may have involved a great deal of time on your part to provide feedback, submit follow-up information, and reinstall software along with your daily work.
00:44:20 ◼ ► But like part of addressing this gap between what developers want out of processing feedback from Apple and what Apple does is, in fact, what we're seeing here.
00:44:33 ◼ ► You may look at this and saying like, oh, Apple can say all they want, but their words don't mean anything.
00:44:38 ◼ ► But this little passage here at the bottom of like, oh, here's the new betas, by the way, this little paragraph of saying like, we understand that it is work for you to do these things.
00:44:54 ◼ ► But saying this, acknowledging it, communicating in a more human way with developers actually is an essential part of a solution to this problem.
00:45:13 ◼ ► And for Apple, for Apple to like acknowledge that we exist and that providing this feedback is work and maybe even like with a little detail of like, oh, you got to reinstall the software and it's annoying.
00:45:25 ◼ ► And you got to like, like acknowledging how difficult it is for us to navigate their system or whatever.
00:45:30 ◼ ► It's just one tiny baby step towards, you know, an actual sort of, I don't know, like a more upfront acknowledgement of the problems.
00:45:46 ◼ ► And I want to congratulate whoever at Apple somehow snuck through this somewhat human paragraph of text to the developers.
00:45:57 ◼ ► You know, the challenge that Apple has with feedback and developers is that we feel like we are unappreciated and that they are wasting our time and they don't listen to us or they don't respect the time we put into things.
00:46:07 ◼ ► And there's no other like there's no person we can connect with because Apple like hides the people and just provides this sort of like impersonal face to everybody.
00:46:31 ◼ ► They're an essential part because we want we want them to acknowledge the reality that we see before us, like with them sort of just stonewalling and just.
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00:48:55 ◼ ► Mark Ehrman has said that Solarium is the code name for the iOS 19 and Mac OS 16 redesigns, which explains a lot about what's to come.
00:49:15 ◼ ► If you know what a sunroom is, if you're in the US, the definition that I got off the web was a room fitted with extensive, extensive areas of glass to emit sunlight.
00:49:22 ◼ ► If you're on Long Island, by the way, houses seem to come with these and they are all illegal.
00:49:27 ◼ ► Like literally every, every house that we saw contained an illegally built, like without a building permit kind of sunroom.
00:49:38 ◼ ► Anyway, there's a second definition, which I thought was fun, which is a room equipped with sun lamps or tanning beds that can be used to acquire an artificial sun tan.
00:49:46 ◼ ► I'm hoping that's not the definition that Apple was going with for their code name, but rather they were going with the room filled with glass, which makes some kind of sense.
00:50:00 ◼ ► And then we have a video from FrontPageTech, which does a bunch of really impressive looking mock-ups of how they believe iOS 19 to look based on, I guess their team has seen or used builds of iOS 19, and then they re-implement what they've seen in order to protect, you know, their sources and whatnot.
00:50:25 ◼ ► Yeah, this video was kind of a clapback, as the kids say, to Mark Gurman saying, oh, John Prosser and FrontPageTech, they don't know anything.
00:50:37 ◼ ► Well, actually, we've seen a new build, and we've seen more parts of the OS, and here it is.
00:50:41 ◼ ► And the whole FrontPageTech thing, which I think is actually fairly clever, is don't show, like, your inside information that you have.
00:50:48 ◼ ► Look at what either someone has shown you or screenshots they've sent you or something you've seen on a dev build on your own device or whatever, which, by the way, you probably shouldn't admit that you have.
00:51:01 ◼ ► Instead, look at it and then have artists essentially recreate it, kind of like a courtroom sketch or something where you can't have cameras in the courtroom.
00:51:20 ◼ ► And this video has way more than the old one, because the old one was like, here's the new camera app with the glassy stuff and everything.
00:51:36 ◼ ► This shows them in more places, for example, on the lock screen when you've got the little flashlight thing and the camera button.
00:51:41 ◼ ► Those are kind of like glassy with a supposed shimmer that moves around the edges, kind of like the old, I still don't know if iOS currently does this.
00:51:49 ◼ ► Remember the old parallax thing where you tilt your phone and the desktop background would shift to try to make it look like it's like embedded in the screen?
00:51:56 ◼ ► Well, this has a shine that moves around the rim of the round buttons on the lock screen to make them look shiny.
00:52:05 ◼ ► But the real, the real important thing here is, you'll see in the video if you watch the whole thing, talking about, oh, everyone, when we said it was going to look like VisionOS, everyone said, do you mean it's going to have round icons?
00:52:17 ◼ ► And they said, well, the build we saw back then didn't have rounded icons, so we didn't say that it did.
00:52:22 ◼ ► But apparently this current build that they're using has not circular icons, but icons where the radius, the corner radius is increased over what it currently is.
00:52:35 ◼ ► And to be clear, the current icons are not squares with quarter circles stuck on the edges.
00:52:39 ◼ ► They're squircles, which is a more complicated mathematical shape that blends the curve more seamlessly into the flat parts.
00:52:44 ◼ ► Anyway, in their video, they show icons that are basically more rounded but still not circular, which is like, why?
00:53:01 ◼ ► We don't know anything about this, but please watch the video if you would like to see how would iOS look if the corners on the icons had maybe a radius that was like twice as round.
00:53:16 ◼ ► Think about how that would affect every icon that was not made by Apple and had a year's notice about this.
00:53:25 ◼ ► I don't know if this is going to ship, but I'm just like, I look at this and I just shake my head and it's like, this, okay.
00:53:32 ◼ ► I'm almost at the point where I'm like, you know what, at least round icons would be a big fresh change and there would be this big dividing line.
00:53:44 ◼ ► It's let's cause immense disruption, but still not be distinct enough that most people will even notice.
00:53:50 ◼ ► But it will just drive developers up a wall as they have to redesign all their icons to handle a little bit more of the corners being cut off.
00:53:58 ◼ ► First of all, yes, this is a rumor and a mock up, you know, so it's like, you know, game of telephone based on probably already kind of sketchy and probably unreliable information to begin with.
00:54:09 ◼ ► And builds of the OS where this feature is not prominent and maybe was hidden on purpose or maybe was hidden because it's not a thing that they're doing.
00:54:15 ◼ ► Like if people don't know in dev builds of operating systems, there are many different features that may or may not ship that are some are enabled, some are not enabled and you can turn them on.
00:54:43 ◼ ► We'll see after it comes out who's the gloating video about all the stuff they got right.
00:54:48 ◼ ► But, you know, like, you know, as as observers and fans here, you can't really judge any details.
00:54:56 ◼ ► What we what seems to be very likely to be true is there is going to be updated designs of some of the system components this fall.
00:55:07 ◼ ► And so I'm actually when I when I see the the types of things they're reporting besides the new icon shape, which I think looks it.
00:55:25 ◼ ► And their recreation, it seems like in their recreation, they just took the existing icons and cut more off of the corners.
00:55:30 ◼ ► And you would imagine if the if the new outline was actually a real thing, that the icons themselves would also be changed to accommodate the new outline.
00:55:37 ◼ ► Because Apple has unlike the rest of us, Apple has advanced notice about this happening.
00:55:50 ◼ ► It looks like, you know, we're still going to have like, you know, tab bars, but they have different style.
00:55:56 ◼ ► We're still going to have, you know, like certain things about it are like re-skinned or slightly restyled versions of what we already know.
00:56:16 ◼ ► But if this is the type of thing we're seeing, that's maybe not what we think of when we think of like a whole system redesign.
00:56:29 ◼ ► It seems like a bunch of visual tweaks and new component layout options that you can use.
00:56:35 ◼ ► Like, you know, that floating bottom tab bar is probably going to be like one, you know, dot style modifier on Swift UI.
00:56:44 ◼ ► It's like, you know, your tab bar, you know, the bottom is like dot tab bar style parentheses dot grouped or whatever.
00:56:56 ◼ ► And by the way, on that on that floating tab bar, what does that floating tab bar remind you of?
00:57:04 ◼ ► Don't you remember when they redesigned Safari on iOS years ago and there was the weird floaty bar at the bottom?
00:57:24 ◼ ► But it's like a floating tab bar at the bottom of the window that it's like it's just like a lozenge that floats.
00:57:29 ◼ ► So not only do you see the content above it, but you see a sliver of the content below it and along the sides because the content is scrolling underneath it.
00:57:40 ◼ ► I hate that on phones because that sliver of content I can see at the bottom does nothing for me except distract me like and it makes the thing take up more room.
00:57:49 ◼ ► That was the problem with the old iOS Safari redesign was like the bottom floating bar floated up and it's like give me those pixels back.
00:57:54 ◼ ► I shove the bar down to the bottom of the screen and let me use those those pixels for content like why are you making my screen shallower so I can see a sliver of the content as it slides behind the thing and rolls off the end of the screen.
00:58:07 ◼ ► I hope that's not a real thing, but it's clear that someone in Apple really likes that.
00:58:10 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean I think the entire era of Johnny Ive and Alan Dye design like in the software side has been like obsession with let's expand the content to every possible edge even if that means we have to like put controls on top of the content have the content flow around the controls like it's like we're going to fill everything with background info basically.
00:58:33 ◼ ► And in reality that is often a bad design like in reality that because you're actually getting less content because the top part of the tab bar is where the usable content begins and all that part on the sides and the bottom that is useless to you and it just it's just empty space that's taking away from the content.
00:58:50 ◼ ► Well and you know it has a number of other effects too like it makes everything a lot more visually noisy it's it's I think it's harder to kind of visually separate the controls from the content in certain ways usually because it's because the content flows around the sides of it you need more padding on the sides which means the actual buttons in the tab bar cannot be as wide as they used to be so you have smaller touch targets.
00:59:08 ◼ ► They do like a drop shadow like remember like the bar cast like a shadow on the content so now you're not even seeing this content as it actually is you're seeing like the shadow content in the bottom part.
00:59:17 ◼ ► Yeah or or they make something translucent and you see a blurry color inspired by the content behind it which changes you scroll like that's also that also kind of sucks in a few ways so like there's a bunch of weird tricks they do to make these things that look really pretty in marketing shots but kind of have you know worse usability in the real world.
00:59:33 ◼ ► But so that's always been that's always been like attention with Apple's design you know they try to make things very pretty they try to hide controls they try to expand your content to be all the way to the edges it's it's all about you we're going to get out of the way of your content and we're going to take all the controls and get them out of your way too so you can't use them.
00:59:52 ◼ ► There is some of that that like yes that does end up looking very nice in marketing shots so there is always this balance with Apple you know form versus function in their UI designs and sometimes computers.
01:00:03 ◼ ► So we'll see how this turns out it never goes quite as far into function as nerds like us want it to there's always a little bit too much form prioritization in some of the UI choices but that does make the system look nice overall so you know I see why it happens.
01:00:22 ◼ ► I just we often go and go like a little bit too far in that direction and I hope they I hope they haven't one a couple of things to note about this that one of the screenshots that you'll see in the video is control center.
01:00:33 ◼ ► And this is a place where like a more rounded theme makes reasonable sense and freshens it up like for example the big brightness and volume sliders and control center right now they're essentially rounded rectangles big rounded rectangles that you can you know like go the progress bar type thing to bring the volume up and down and brightness up and down.
01:00:49 ◼ ► Now they are semi-circular on the top and the caps are semi-circular on the top and the bottom so increase the corner radius until they meet in the middle.
01:00:57 ◼ ► It's if you had round icons round top and bottom you know sliders for volume and brightness would make sense.
01:01:04 ◼ ► The other thing is all of the translucent elements here including like the control center things and even the icons have that sort of like beveled edge shimmer.
01:01:13 ◼ ► It's as if the icon was made out of a thick material and you'd cut a 45 degree angle bevel around the entire thing and then shined a light on it that sort of supposedly gyroscopically actuated shimmer.
01:01:25 ◼ ► It's not everywhere in the US but that that look of like a piece of glass that has an angled edge that the light is reflecting off of that is present in all these mock-ups.
01:01:33 ◼ ► And I mean I think one of the things based on the solarium name all the rumors and these mock-ups.
01:01:38 ◼ ► I think we can safely say that the redesigns theme is glassy stuff right maybe not the same glassy stuff as the vision pro but that it's so clear that that is a strong theme of this redesign which probably means the same glassy stuff is coming to the Mac even more which I'm not really looking forward to.
01:01:55 ◼ ► And we had during the show in fact some anonymous person send us an idea about I think this is just an idea and not a an attempt to predict or explain but anyway the idea is based on a past discussion.
01:02:08 ◼ ► It's like well vision pro has all these translucent windows because you have passed through and your windows are floating in the middle of your room.
01:02:13 ◼ ► It's it's it's a very different kind of interface so being able to see partially through things or at least to have things sort of feel integrated into your environment by showing through the background makes so much sense in the vision pro interface.
01:02:26 ◼ ► Maybe less so on phones and Macs but this anonymous person said well you know that's only true because right now we think of our phones as being like Mac screens where what's behind them is the wallpaper but the phones do have cameras on the back of them.
01:02:40 ◼ ► So technically you could do iPhone pass through and so that everything that's behind all these translucent things is literally what's behind your phone to that concept I think a don't give Apple any ideas and be I'm assuming that would just destroy your battery.
01:02:56 ◼ ► If anyone's ever left the phone out of the camera app open on your phone for a while you know that just leaving that app open makes your phone get hot now granted they don't have to do the massive amount of image processing that the camera app does they can do a much more dumb one especially if they're just using it to tint windows with a blurry background but please Apple don't listen to the show and don't do that.
01:03:14 ◼ ► It's a terrible idea but I think about solarium and a glass look and I'm like oh my god if if they could fit that in the battery budget I just know someone would try to do it so crossing my fingers that is not a thing that comes to pass.
01:03:26 ◼ ► All right so over the last week or so we've got some exciting news the Nintendo Switch 2 launch has well launched in so far as we now know what it's what it's going to be that has happened.
01:03:38 ◼ ► And so there was a like two hour video or maybe it was only an hour it felt forever I was packing for our spring break trip forever because you know as WDC watchers these are all game demos.
01:03:52 ◼ ► Oh that's true you're right you're right but anyways there was an hour long video we'll put a link in the show notes it's probably worth at least skimming through but one way or another the Nintendo Switch 2 is here or well I keep saying here that's not fair it has been announced I need to change check my vocabulary here it's been announced.
01:04:12 ◼ ► I think I feel good I think most people feel good and by the way the Nintendo Switch 2 was already announced but this is the reveal where you last time they just showed the hardware flying around and said here it is it's the Switch 2 but now this is more like you would expect that a WWC announcement where Nintendo gets up there and says here's the product here's what it does here are its features here are the games they're going to be for it here's the price here's the value like just it's you know completely revealed.
01:04:37 ◼ ► If you were if you saw the hardware reveal there weren't a lot of surprises here like it's a bigger version of the Switch with a bigger better screen and all the hardware features you could see before but they talked about a lot of the details.
01:04:50 ◼ ► A lot of people got hands-on so we'll link to the Verge's hands-on and Ars Technica's hands-on which give a lot of insight into the device from people who actually got to use it.
01:04:57 ◼ ► One piece that a follow-up for this program is that Marco doubted that the Joy-Cons would be used as mice in fact they are usable as mice in fact many of the hands-on things that you'll see reports.
01:05:09 ◼ ► Let's talk about how is it to use the Joy-Cons as mice and the answer is it's weird and not great.
01:05:17 ◼ ► What I posted about it on Mastodon when it came out was Joy-Cons are now mice controller goes sideways which is a very old weird obscure reference to a tweet when back when we cared about what Twitter was like and it was doing weird stuff.
01:05:34 ◼ ► Yeah, the main complaint is a like taking if you know what the Switch Joy-Con looks like putting it on its edge and using it as a mouse is not really comfortable or ergonomic or a great experience.
01:05:47 ◼ ► They were pushing it so much at the hands-on that I believe they were one of the games they were demoing was the new Metroid Prime thing which is a first-person shooter and I believe they they made you use it in like mouse look mode essentially like they didn't have controllers.
01:05:59 ◼ ► You had to use the Joy-Cons either by I think like uh gyroscoping them in the air or using them as mice and it's awkward but I hope this opens the door to if if not first party then at the very least third party like actual mouse shape mice for the Switch for people who want to do like first-person games with a mouse.
01:06:18 ◼ ► It's as many of the reviews pointed out it's kind of weird to let you use your controllers as a mouse for a device that people use on their couch Nintendo even promoted the idea that you can use them on your pants leg which I know if any of us have been like before the days of like if you didn't have consoles or when you tried to like hook up your gaming PC to your TV or something look we've all used a mouse on our pants.
01:06:47 ◼ ► Your leg is not a good mouse pad especially not for a game where you're doing things like quickly or whatever.
01:06:53 ◼ ► Anyway I thought one not one of the games they announced was a really interesting use of the Joy-Con mouse control though because both Joy-Cons can be used as mice.
01:07:03 ◼ ► And it was a wheelchair basketball game and you use the two mice to essentially like like you're grabbing the wheels and rolling them so to turn you just push like the right one up a bunch of times and you swipe swipe swipe just like you would turn turn turn the wheel and you use the gyroscope thing to like chuck the ball into the hoop.
01:07:22 ◼ ► It reminds me kind of the Wii Sports thing people would be like video games shouldn't be hurting my arms.
01:07:31 ◼ ► Another thing that they announced is that it does still have an SD card slot but it only takes micro SD express cards which is a standard that I did not wasn't even aware existed.
01:07:40 ◼ ► But it basically comes down to they want more speed like the internal SSD is presumably faster that you can't use the SD the micro SD cards you use with a plain old switch because they're just too slow.
01:08:00 ◼ ► Like that's the PS5 standard and the console tests any SSD you insert to make sure it complies with that.
01:08:17 ◼ ► But by seeing the hardware for more angles and more of their animations I think I have a plausible explanation of what the weird chunky things are on the kickstand.
01:08:26 ◼ ► I asked this when we talked about the switch hardware reveal a while back and it was like the kickstand is like this kind of u-shaped piece of metal that you fold out from the back of the switch and you can put it at different angles.
01:08:38 ◼ ► But there were these very thick like things protruding from the bottom of the kickstand.
01:08:50 ◼ ► There still could be some spring mechanism inside there with some mechanical thing that makes the hinge springy and stay in place.
01:09:01 ◼ ► But another function of these things is revealed in the shot where they show the kickstand being put to its maximum like extension where you start off with a switch at like 90 degrees to the table and you push it down.
01:09:20 ◼ ► At its maximum extension, I think those little nubbin things hit the table as essentially a stop for saying this is the maximum angle you can get this thing to go.
01:09:34 ◼ ► I could be wrong because they're not actually touching the table in the photo, but that's my best guess for what those things are.
01:10:11 ◼ ► It's just one of those fancy upscaling modes to be able to get 4K output when the game is not actually rendered at 4K resolution.
01:10:36 ◼ ► The announced price was $450 for the switch to, or if you want to get the bundle that comes
01:10:43 ◼ ► And the, the top end games are anywhere from 70 to 80 bucks, which people are flipping out
01:10:51 ◼ ► I should have found it in the show notes, but I didn't showing the inflation adjusted price
01:10:56 ◼ ► Uh, and I think just a lot of people who are gamers now, I just expect video games to be $60
01:11:09 ◼ ► Uh, and if you see the chart, you'll see the games used to be way more expensive than they
01:11:16 ◼ ► This adjustment does not bring them back to their historic highs, but you can't just expect
01:11:42 ◼ ► They're not selling you when you buy the game, you're not buying the, uh, cost of goods for
01:11:48 ◼ ► And by the way, it still does use little tiny cartridges, although they're, they're selling
01:11:54 ◼ ► So it's like a hardware dongle for the game because they want to be able to sell physical
01:12:01 ◼ ► Anyway, there's lots of weird stuff going on there, but suffice it to say, our all digital
01:12:09 ◼ ► Be willing to sell you a tiny little card that you can, uh, trade with people and sell when
01:12:36 ◼ ► Uh, I don't blink at the price because I, you know, it's like, I just bought a $700 PS5
01:13:13 ◼ ► They didn't want people buying up a bunch of switches and then selling them for tons of
01:13:17 ◼ ► So I guess you can only do this trick once, but they basically said, if you want to put
01:13:31 ◼ ► gameplay on the switch, 50 hours, 50 hours of gameplay on the switch, which I easily pass
01:13:37 ◼ ► And then two days later they said, uh, based on this tariff stuff, maybe we're going to
01:14:02 ◼ ► Like, I feel like a major, a major heyday of the switch one was 2020 with, you know, everyone
01:14:09 ◼ ► being stuck at home and then animal crossing came out and that was like such kind of a hallmark
01:14:26 ◼ ► And for Nintendo to, um, be releasing this, this year, uh, which is going to have what looks
01:14:34 ◼ ► like a really fun new Mario car game and whatever else they're going to be doing over the next
01:14:46 ◼ ► I don't know why this never occurred to me, but when they announced it, I'm like, oh, duh,
01:14:50 ◼ ► So what they, you know, with breath of the wild, they basically made Zelda an open world
01:15:11 ◼ ► You drive around one course and then you drive to the next course and then you drive around
01:15:31 ◼ ► Like whenever, whenever I see like the promotional videos or, or teaser images of a Mario card
01:15:37 ◼ ► game, like a new Mario card game, it always looks to me like just total, like overload mania.
01:15:44 ◼ ► Like every, every new one that comes out, my first impression when I see the videos is,
01:15:56 ◼ ► But when like, and, and when I saw like, you know, the, the very first teaser video for
01:16:00 ◼ ► this, I was like, oh God, they just covered this and like, it, it looked to me like, like
01:16:09 ◼ ► Like it's just, that's, that to me is like when I see these Mario cart promo videos, but
01:16:16 ◼ ► I saw like actual gameplay footage of just like a race and it looked a lot more normal.
01:16:24 ◼ ► And reportedly they've toned down the items, like in the old games, like for example, if
01:16:28 ◼ ► you got hit with an offensive item, it would essentially stop you dead in your tracks and
01:16:32 ◼ ► And due to like the nature of like the various modes they have, like knockout mode where you
01:16:36 ◼ ► have to be in, in a certain place, otherwise you get knocked out of the race as you go from
01:16:41 ◼ ► There's, it's reportedly from the people who have tried the game, fewer things that like,
01:16:55 ◼ ► going to get frustrated because I think there's some, I think I saw one item that randomly swaps
01:16:59 ◼ ► the place of people in the race, which I think will anger a lot of people in a fun way, maybe.
01:17:03 ◼ ► Um, but I'm looking forward to longer races where getting hit with a single item doesn't
01:17:08 ◼ ► feel like, well, I might as well just stop now because I've gone from a hundred miles an
01:17:12 ◼ ► They did make the maximum number of players up to 24 or something, which is probably a little
01:17:32 ◼ ► I mean, it's a question even for, even without the current political instability in our country,
01:17:45 ◼ ► And now it may be even harder, but you know, like if you can get the switch, it was going
01:17:49 ◼ ► If you can't trust me, eventually switch twos will be in stock and you'll be able to buy
01:17:55 ◼ ► Nintendo will make sure of it eventually, maybe next year, maybe the year after that, but
01:18:06 ◼ ► Uh, the iPhone 17 pro allegedly will have a new 48 mega megapixel telephoto lens reading
01:18:15 ◼ ► According to my Jin boo, the iPhone 17 pro will feature a new telephoto lens with a 48 megapixel
01:18:34 ◼ ► which is an 85 millimeter equivalent instead of the five X zoom or 120 millimeter equivalent
01:18:39 ◼ ► The big shift allegedly comes from the new 48 megapixel sensor in, in that the extras resolution
01:18:44 ◼ ► allows for digital cropping to simulate longer focal lengths offering less quality loss than
01:18:50 ◼ ► This is similar to what Apple already does with the main fusion camera on the iPhone 16, where
01:18:54 ◼ ► the 48 megapixel sensor enables a two X digital crop marked marketed as telephoto that still
01:19:08 ◼ ► I really like the five X zoom and maybe I would find in use that I would actually prefer the
01:19:31 ◼ ► But the thing about five X is you can always like zoom in a little bit more by using like
01:20:11 ◼ ► They're just pixel binning and cropping and doing like, they're, they're just giving you
01:20:28 ◼ ► straight up, uh, sensor crop of the thing because I like, I want the, the, like, I like
01:20:33 ◼ ► the five X thing, but when I use it on my, like, all right, when I'm trying to take pictures
01:20:58 ◼ ► I, I hope this rumor is true because I think it's a great compromise between the current five
01:21:05 ◼ ► I see, I'm assuming the camera is good quality, uh, but also giving more of the in-between
01:21:25 ◼ ► And so I find myself, you know, just digitally zooming on the two X sometimes between two and
01:21:29 ◼ ► five or whatever, but the five X lens, like it has always been the, the telephoto lens on
01:21:36 ◼ ► an iPhone, no matter what it was back when it was two X, when it was 2.5 X, when it was five
01:21:48 ◼ ► Uh, it is way less, you know, detail and way more noise, uh, compared to the big main, you
01:22:01 ◼ ► A bigger part of that's because of optics and, and physics of like how you have to fit that
01:22:13 ◼ ► It's not going to make it as good as the one X lens still because of the optics and the physics
01:22:20 ◼ ► And if they switch it to a three at 0.5 X or whatever sensor, like physically, and then you
01:22:26 ◼ ► digital zoom to five X, I think the resulting quality of the five X images is probably not
01:22:32 ◼ ► going to be that noticeably different or worse or better than the current five X lens with its
01:22:45 ◼ ► And then the advantage will be that you get a much better image quality at that middle range.
01:23:01 ◼ ► I didn't realize that it was in addition to five X, I mean, well, sort of, kind of, I thought
01:23:12 ◼ ► I totally missed the boat on this in that, you know, it's a, it's a digital crop or a sensor
01:23:25 ◼ ► happened this week or recently we've talked in the past episodes about the sort of elongated
01:23:31 ◼ ► camera Mesa where they just took the existing one and they just said, let's just extend that
01:23:36 ◼ ► But they left all the cameras in the same place and they just put like the flash and the lighter
01:23:48 ◼ ► And we were looking at those, uh, CAD, uh, drawings and the models made from them while
01:23:55 ◼ ► The cases look hilarious with just basically the top third of the case just open for the
01:24:04 ◼ ► I know like we're used to seeing a big hole in the back of a case, but now it's just like
01:24:17 ◼ ► the mock-ups that people have been making will not be a different color than the back of
01:24:30 ◼ ► The back of the phone being partially aluminum and partially glass with glass over the parts
01:24:39 ◼ ► So that's kind of the state of the rumors now, like the, the CAD drawings are so widely
01:24:54 ◼ ► Like the thorough leaking of the physical design of iPhones continues to just be massive and
01:25:00 ◼ ► Like I almost feel bad for if like you actually care about this and you want to be like remain
01:25:22 ◼ ► We are sponsored this episode by delete me delete me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove
01:25:28 ◼ ► your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make
01:25:33 ◼ ► Now, if you go and search your own name in a search engine, you're going to find pretty
01:25:39 ◼ ► quickly how easy it is for anybody to find out your home address, your phone number, you
01:25:50 ◼ ► And the reason why this is so out there and so easy is because there's these data brokers
01:25:54 ◼ ► that are compiling this information and publishing it on websites and trying to get people to,
01:26:14 ◼ ► They will go, they do go through the process of like filling out the takedowns, the opt
01:26:20 ◼ ► You tell delete me, go remove my info from everything out there and they will go to all
01:26:26 ◼ ► these different data brokers they know about hundreds of data brokers and they will file
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01:27:00 ◼ ► Okay, let's do some ask ATP and Robert Batau writes, what resources do you use for reviews,
01:27:18 ◼ ► I don't feel like, I don't even remember the last time I looked for like proper reviews
01:27:23 ◼ ► Typically I'll page through Amazon reviews if I'm looking at something on Amazon, which
01:27:39 ◼ ► What's the last thing you can recall buying that you like, that you bothered to do any kind
01:27:45 ◼ ► I mean, we've just replaced both of our refrigerators, our garage and indoor refrigerator.
01:27:57 ◼ ► I mean, I did some cursory looking about, but we knew that we wanted to get something from
01:28:12 ◼ ► And then for the indoor fridge, they had like three or four options that we cared about.
01:28:23 ◼ ► I don't even know, like Aaron's car, but we, we comparison shopped ourselves and decided
01:28:33 ◼ ► No, because like we know people, we all know people who like, just don't do research for
01:28:41 ◼ ► And especially if you don't have hobbies that intersect with your purchases, like asking
01:28:51 ◼ ► You are aware of the Macs that are available and are coming and what their resources are.
01:28:55 ◼ ► We're like, you don't have to do any research for that because it's part of your hobby,
01:29:00 ◼ ► So when your refrigerator breaks, two things, one, as you know, we're listening to directives
01:29:04 ◼ ► when your refrigerator breaks, you don't really have time to leisurely research what kind of
01:29:22 ◼ ► But yeah, some people care a lot about every purchase and some people care not at all about
01:29:34 ◼ ► Like, so you don't, you care about which computers you get, but you do not have to actively do
01:29:46 ◼ ► So the key to sifting through reviews is you have to be able to kind of contextualize the
01:30:08 ◼ ► And the second part of it is, are they looking for the same things I'm looking for in this
01:30:19 ◼ ► Like, you know, so where you are looking has a certain set of like, you know, built in things
01:30:37 ◼ ► Like, there's so much gaming going on there or incentivizing going on in any kind of online
01:30:46 ◼ ► When you see a review, it's like, this looks like a, you know, a three paragraph essay written
01:30:53 ◼ ► Like, chances are that's not, you know, anything that looks kind of formulaic and, you know, it's
01:30:59 ◼ ► like, this is probably not a real thing that you're, that you need to be paying attention
01:31:02 ◼ ► Um, similarly, you have to consider like, what is the crowd I am watching or what is the
01:31:10 ◼ ► Like, for instance, if you go, if you find like Reddit posts about something you're buying,
01:31:16 ◼ ► well, most Reddits seem to be young men who are angry about the products they're reviewing.
01:31:29 ◼ ► Um, but you have to, you have to contextualize like, well, what are young, angry men saying
01:31:34 ◼ ► Like, or, or, you know, what, when this product breaks or doesn't work, like what, how does
01:31:40 ◼ ► But if you don't look at the, if you don't contextualize it properly, you might think like,
01:31:52 ◼ ► Like, you know, so Amazon, a lot of fake stuff, you know, other places online, like they have
01:32:04 ◼ ► Like, okay, well, if this product, if all the reviews of this are, are citing like some nitpicky
01:32:11 ◼ ► problem, but it has like 10,000 reviews on Amazon and the average is like 4.5 stars, odds
01:32:31 ◼ ► grater, it looks like it's really good, but maybe the handle breaks off under heavy use
01:32:44 ◼ ► So like there's, you have to kind of contextualize like, well, how will this fit my needs?
01:32:52 ◼ ► So if you're looking at like a restaurant, my, my favorite is like, if you're, if you're
01:32:56 ◼ ► like, you know, in America and you see reviews for any kind of non-American food, like you
01:33:07 ◼ ► tell when you look at those reviews, like which of these people don't really eat Thai food.
01:33:11 ◼ ► You can tell right there in the reviews because they'll, they'll make certain comments like,
01:33:15 ◼ ► oh, they're judging this harshly, but somebody who likes Thai food, that sounds like they probably
01:33:25 ◼ ► So it's, I can't just point to one place and say, this is the one that trust what this place
01:33:35 ◼ ► Even yes, wire cutter, wire cutter, despite the marketing of it, does not test a huge number
01:33:50 ◼ ► or whatever, and they'll like kind of filter out like what they don't even want to bother
01:33:53 ◼ ► testing because you can't test everything because there's so many products in most categories.
01:33:56 ◼ ► So like they'll, they'll use their own kind of filtering, you know, methods to say, all
01:34:01 ◼ ► right, well, we're only going to test like these 10 things in this category or whatever.
01:34:21 ◼ ► They might rule things out based on, you know, price or availability details that maybe
01:34:26 ◼ ► you don't care about, or they might not care about some feature or some functionality or something
01:34:33 ◼ ► So you kind of have to just look around and get a vibe for like, oh, it seems like most people
01:34:47 ◼ ► You know, like you can find stuff out, like you can find stuff out like that, but you do
01:34:50 ◼ ► have to kind of just develop that habit of just like being able to absorb a lot of info that
01:34:54 ◼ ► you're seeing from all these different sources, being able to pretty quickly realize what seems
01:34:59 ◼ ► credible and what seems non-credible and then what seems relevant and what seems irrelevant.
01:35:09 ◼ ► We get all the time, but every few years, I feel like it's worth re-answering it just to
01:35:15 ◼ ► And just to reiterate the answers that we usually get to these questions for listeners who haven't
01:35:30 ◼ ► Like you probably only care about certain things and other ones you just like, I feel like a
01:35:34 ◼ ► lot of people have less sort of the loss aversion where they're like, well, I just don't, I don't
01:35:41 ◼ ► You know, if you're looking for like, uh, you know, uh, a garbage can for your office, if you
01:35:53 ◼ ► Versus buying a refrigerator or a car where you're like, well, I don't actually even care
01:36:04 ◼ ► Like if you find yourself doing days of research about cheese graters and you don't actually
01:36:11 ◼ ► Only research the things that you actually, you know, either that you care a lot about, or you
01:36:17 ◼ ► feel like you have to care a lot about because the consequences of making a bad choice are,
01:36:22 ◼ ► But again, the consequences of buying a trash can for your office that you don't like that
01:36:31 ◼ ► Um, the resources that I use, I think it always helps for things that you do care about and
01:36:36 ◼ ► It always helps to sort of, first of all, find the place on the internet where the people
01:36:45 ◼ ► So for me, like for televisions, there are whole forms of people who just like spend all
01:36:50 ◼ ► day talking about TV, like talking about things like on their little, you know, PHP BB that's
01:36:55 ◼ ► been up for decades and they are just obsessed with TVs and they have dedicated topics and
01:37:01 ◼ ► channels for specific manufacturers and models and they share settings with each other and
01:37:14 ◼ ► You probably want to find those people, not because you're going to agree with them or do
01:37:18 ◼ ► what they say, but it's good to have that input of like, there are some people who are on top
01:37:23 ◼ ► of everything and their opinions are going to be weird and their priorities are not going to match
01:37:28 ◼ ► And so that really helps with like, like what Marco was saying, if you're like, well, this,
01:37:35 ◼ ► And when you find the people who care a ton about the product, you will see every concern reflected
01:37:41 ◼ ► So if you're wondering, like, I care about how noisy this thing is, but no one ever talks about
01:37:54 ◼ ► But the forum for the people who are obsessed with this thing, they're going to talk about
01:37:57 ◼ ► the noise, the weight, the color, the price that like, they're going to talk about everything.
01:38:01 ◼ ► So you can, you want like, if I want to know how noisy is this, you need somewhere to find
01:38:07 ◼ ► that information, not from the specs page of the thing and not from some paid review on
01:38:13 ◼ ► So find that, find where that is, whether it's a website or whatever, find the people who
01:38:20 ◼ ► Don't look at their recommended products and buy what they say, but instead use it as a
01:38:29 ◼ ► Second thing that I'll say is YouTube is a great resource when buying physical products
01:38:35 ◼ ► because almost anything you buy, you'll probably be able to find multiple YouTube reviews of
01:38:43 ◼ ► And the thing you're getting, I think the most important thing to get for a YouTube review,
01:38:47 ◼ ► if you're not lucky enough to like find like a YouTube channel that you trust and about
01:38:52 ◼ ► You just want to physically see the product in real conditions, in real lighting, in real
01:39:29 ◼ ► Yeah, again, to use as an input because you're wondering like, is that thing on the bottom
01:39:42 ◼ ► You will find the answers to those questions on YouTube because you'll search for this product
01:39:46 ◼ ► and model number and you'll find 100 amateur videos from random people in their houses.
01:39:53 ◼ ► And then finally, if you're super lucky and it's a thing that you really care about, you
01:39:59 ◼ ► When I was searching for speakers for my home theater setup and then later when I was searching
01:40:03 ◼ ► speakers for my computer, there are channels that I like and follow that review audio equipment
01:40:16 ◼ ► I know where to find the objective measures that I care about for the particular speakers that
01:40:22 ◼ ► And boy, is that nice because if I just like or my my whole AV setup of when I was looking
01:40:26 ◼ ► at my receiver and the television television channels, like if it's a big name thing, like
01:40:31 ◼ ► lots of people into TVs, lots of people are into gaming monitors, lots of people are into
01:40:36 ◼ ► There are a handful of YouTube channels where you can eventually find the people that you
01:40:45 ◼ ► And that could be a shortcut to all of this because you were like, I'm just going to go to
01:40:56 ◼ ► He says is the best I'm just going to get because I've watched this guy for seven years
01:41:37 ◼ ► I mean, we do have a whole member special about this that I recommend you ignore everything
01:41:43 ◼ ► Well, we just explain what we do, but we're not, again, with most of our member specials,
01:41:46 ◼ ► when we explain what we do in our lives, we're not necessarily recommending that you do the
01:41:52 ◼ ► So I honestly am not sure, other than maybe Google Photos, like I said, I'm not sure what
01:41:58 ◼ ► The last bit of like, you know, since I take pictures with my iPhone and Android phone,
01:42:04 ◼ ► Well, once you say iPhone and Android, you need something cross-platform because the whole
01:42:33 ◼ ► And it is a fairly comprehensive photo system that cloud syncs your photos and yada, yada,
01:42:39 ◼ ► And that's like, that's the only, literally the only thing I can think of because everything
01:42:44 ◼ ► I'm not even aware of any other service that tries to compete at the level of Google Photos
01:43:03 ◼ ► But be aware that Google Photos integration in the iOS ecosystem is not as smooth as the
01:43:36 ◼ ► Like, if you're trying to look for pictures of your kids, like, I just, I wouldn't trust
01:43:39 ◼ ► this to, not that I'm not to denigrate any third-party things, but both platforms, both
01:43:43 ◼ ► Apple's platforms and Google's platform and Microsoft's platform for that matter, don't
01:43:49 ◼ ► really bend over backwards to make sure that third-parties can provide as reliable a solution
01:44:02 ◼ ► And so that's why there's not a proliferation of third-party services that work across all
01:44:08 ◼ ► Google is really the only thing I can think of that has pretty okay iOS integration and
01:44:22 ◼ ► But like, given the constraints of your question, Anonymous, I don't have any better solutions.
01:44:28 ◼ ► Yertle writes, do you guys have any strategies or philosophies around documenting complex setups
01:44:33 ◼ ► that others might need to support, like Marco's wiring layout and network config for the restaurant?
01:44:48 ◼ ► For me, generally speaking, I'll create like an Apple note when it's something that I think I want to refer to in the future.
01:45:00 ◼ ► When I redid the switches in the house, that gave me an excuse to go figure out what all the different fuses in the fuse box or breaker box or whatever you want to call it, what they correspond to.
01:45:11 ◼ ► So I made a little ASCII table that matches the breaker box and says, you know, breaker one is the bedroom and breaker two is the bathroom or whatever the case may be.
01:45:23 ◼ ► For my website, as another silly example, when I moved to Linode, I was very diligent about documenting all the things I did in order to make sure I knew how to do it again in the future because I knew I'd never remember any of it.
01:45:38 ◼ ► Although quick aside, I've been meaning to tell you to, you can finally stop yelling at me about something that is not a problem.
01:46:10 ◼ ► Anyway, the point is that what made me think of this was I was looking at how I set up the Let's Encrypt like cron job or whatever it was I did in order to set up the SSL cert for my website because I needed to rejigger that a little bit.
01:46:30 ◼ ► And so as I was going through the stance of trying to figure out what the heck it was I did and how to augment it to allow for, you know, like a bare bones domain, I then documented it.
01:46:46 ◼ ► But generally speaking, I use Apple Notes religiously and diligently to document these sorts of things.
01:46:56 ◼ ► So God forbid if I drop dead tomorrow, Aaron or whoever's coming after me to clean all this up is going to be it's going to be a mess for them.
01:47:07 ◼ ► You know, Aaron has access to my Apple Notes if she wants it, but it's still going to be difficult.
01:47:24 ◼ ► If there is any situation where I feel like if I encountered it again in the future, I would just have to do what comes natural to me and I would it would solve the problem.
01:47:36 ◼ ► So, for example, let me keep track of like how I did this or what I named this thing or where I put this.
01:47:45 ◼ ► I will come upon the same situation years later and just say, oh, well, I don't know how I did this or where I put it or what I called it before, but I'll just do what I feel like doing.
01:47:55 ◼ ► And lo and behold, that's exactly what I did five years ago, because I am the same person and I'm very predictable in certain ways.
01:48:08 ◼ ► I do document for things that are not like that I don't have any kind of strong feeling about and therefore my deterministic nature is not going to help me here.
01:48:16 ◼ ► I do have an Apple note, for example, where I keep a bunch of crap on my house, things that really should be leaving my house.
01:48:33 ◼ ► I think the first year I really started doing this is like it was hiding Christmas presents.
01:48:40 ◼ ► And then like in February, I'd find something that I forgot to give someone on Christmas, buried in a drawer somewhere.
01:48:47 ◼ ► I need to write this down because I'm old and apparently I can't remember where I put this stuff.
01:48:52 ◼ ► So I will do that kind of documentation for technical stuff or for like the examples here, like wiring and like my AV stuff or whatever.
01:49:00 ◼ ► Most of that stuff, I assume documenting it is not useful because the next time I touch it, I'm going to be overhauling it anyway.
01:49:12 ◼ ► My setup on my AVs thing is, I don't know, it's not complicated, but it is, it is involved.
01:49:27 ◼ ► That's one of the few things I do have documented in my website things, just because it was, every time I did it, it'd be like, how would this work again?
01:49:37 ◼ ► Remember back before you had to redo it every year when you could have an SSL search for five years?
01:49:42 ◼ ► Five years roll around and you're like, oh, I have no idea what I did for this last time.
01:49:46 ◼ ► Well, I did document it and now I have to do it every year for multiple sites and that is convenient.
01:49:51 ◼ ► And by documenting, it's usually just a matter of writing down instructions, but then I'm like, you know, why don't I just make this a shell script?
01:49:57 ◼ ► And, you know, anyway, most everything else, no, like I'm kind of in the same situation as you, Casey.
01:50:05 ◼ ► Like if I get hit by a bus, you guys are never going to be able to watch TV again, which sounds bad.
01:50:08 ◼ ► It's like, why do you have such a complicated setup that no one in your house can figure it out?
01:50:22 ◼ ► And I do like, you know, if anything ever goes wrong, something's wrong with the computer, television, anything that is a remotely computer thing, they just throw up their hands and walk away.
01:50:32 ◼ ► So if I ever disappear, they're just, I don't know, they're going to be Amish or something.
01:50:40 ◼ ► But yeah, I guess I write down what the breakers are for inside the breaker box on the little lines where they say to write that stuff down.
01:50:51 ◼ ► But yeah, I guess that's the extent like the real answer to this question is, do you have philosophies for documenting complex setups or do you do like the answer is I don't do it enough.
01:51:09 ◼ ► Like with this stuff, like, you know, you do your best, but every system like you maybe like forget about it a little bit or you get a little sloppy.
01:51:20 ◼ ► You know, the breaker labeling is most is it's required by code for new construction or renovation.
01:51:26 ◼ ► But like, of course, over time, the breaker labeling diverges from reality becomes fiction.
01:51:36 ◼ ► But then like, well, you know, a few weeks later, something some circuit had to be moved for some reason or you added more circuits and now you have like six unlabeled breakers at the bottom of the box that do who knows what.
01:51:48 ◼ ► You know, there's reality always interferes with the systems like, you know, even, you know, so the questioner asked, like, what am I doing about the wiring and network configure at the restaurant?
01:52:04 ◼ ► I wrapped little labels around them, both ends of each one with a naming scheme that I think makes sense.
01:52:18 ◼ ► Then now we have like three wires that aren't labeled or like, oh, let me just connect this real quick to test it.
01:52:29 ◼ ► Now, I did like, you know, I made like a diagram of the building and like what, you know, where each wire goes.
01:52:36 ◼ ► Like I have like the main, I call them the trunk wires, the main like big ones that go like from kind of the sub switches to the main switch.
01:52:52 ◼ ► And it labels where trunk one, trunk one, and trunk three, like where those go, where the switches are.
01:53:03 ◼ ► But like in six months or three years, when something has to be added or changed or replaced, am I going to go back and update that PDF?
01:53:12 ◼ ► If you're going to be able to find that PDF, which is another problem with documenting things, then you have to remember where you put the documentation or whether it exists or what it was called or how it was organized.
01:53:21 ◼ ► And if somebody down the road has to do this without me, are they going to even know to look for something like that?
01:53:28 ◼ ► They're probably going to just look at the system the way it is and figure it out as best as they can.
01:53:32 ◼ ► You know, and that's, you know, one example where like it's kind of hard to run out everything new.
01:53:39 ◼ ► The only way to ever edit AV receiver wiring is to disconnect everything, pull it all out, and do it all again.
01:53:46 ◼ ► You probably should because there's probably wires that are no longer connected to anything that have been behind your TV for years.
01:54:09 ◼ ► You know, you take a day and you test all your circuit breakers and you figure out what goes to what and you label them all.
01:54:15 ◼ ► Odds are that day will never come that that's a good idea for you to spend your time doing that and you'll just plow through and it'll be fine.
01:54:21 ◼ ► And there is an anti-pattern to watch out for here for like – I think what we're representing is kind of like middle of the road.
01:54:40 ◼ ► But like some people feel like they need to laboriously carefully document every aspect of their lives.
01:54:46 ◼ ► And almost certainly if it is not a thing that they enjoy in a hobby, they are burning time that could be better used doing something else.
01:54:54 ◼ ► Not everything deserves the level of careful documentation based on its value of like essentially will I ever have to refer to this?
01:55:06 ◼ ► Again, if you're not doing it as just like a fun thing that you like to do and this is your hobby, but you're doing it because of like a concern that like I might need this again, maybe try to keep track for a year of how many things that you spend time carefully documenting have value in the future.
01:55:26 ◼ ► And the thing is if that happens once, you're like, oh, that means my entire year full of doing this was worthwhile.
01:55:37 ◼ ► Like so you can go – what I'm saying is you can go too far in the other direction too.
01:55:40 ◼ ► Obviously not documenting anything and not keeping track of anything and having things leave your head the second you do them is not ideal.
01:55:45 ◼ ► But the reverse is also not ideal where you feel like you have to spend hours and hours documenting everything and you refer back to one out of those 100 things on a yearly basis.
01:55:58 ◼ ► I think I'm probably more on the – I should probably be documenting a little bit more than I am.
01:56:01 ◼ ► But be aware that that spectrum exists and sort of be aware of your place on it and see if you can find peace with that.
01:56:27 ◼ ► You can join and you can listen to everything we've ever done in the past and all ongoing ones in the future.
01:57:54 ◼ ► So, uh, here in the U.S. and the world, we're kind of messing with the entire global economy.
01:58:08 ◼ ► So, you know, we're in the era right now of like these, you know, the Trump tariffs, you know, hitting the economy.
01:58:15 ◼ ► And today he is delaying them for 90 days because, of course, you know, what we need is more uncertainty from this administration.
01:58:24 ◼ ► That's the whole thing about the situation is we're recording this at like, you know, 10 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9th.
01:58:33 ◼ ► So, like, we're not – we can't possibly say anything that is relevant to like, oh, here's what's happening, what you should do.
01:58:48 ◼ ► But what I wanted to cover here, which is I think more directly relevant for our show, is how do we think the tariffs are going to affect tech products and what we might do or have done as a reaction to that?
01:59:15 ◼ ► But what we do know is that the era of like – I'm pretty sure, you know, like it's – I think it's going to be very similar to early COVID when like supply chains are thrown into chaos.
01:59:29 ◼ ► Things have, you know, ripple effects like, you know, it might seem okay now but then like for some reason in six months you can't get a car because everything – there's some shortage or something.
01:59:38 ◼ ► Like there's going to be stuff like that that happens because our supply chains, as we learned during COVID, like our supply chains are very fragile.
01:59:46 ◼ ► Like everything has been optimized to the ends of the earth and so everything is like interlinked and optimized and there's no slack anywhere in the system.
01:59:54 ◼ ► And so when you have like big shocks to it or big unpredictability to it, you can have weird ripple effects that are bigger than you think they'll be or that are further in the future than you think they would be.
02:00:05 ◼ ► And so what I think this affects for us as tech fans is pricing and availability of hardware.
02:00:14 ◼ ► I think that that is like the number one thing that we will see that's relevant to us as nerds besides, you know, global economic changes.
02:00:22 ◼ ► But like how this will hit nerds specifically I think is hardware pricing and availability.
02:00:27 ◼ ► So I'm wondering like do the two of you – like have you considered this and have you maybe made any decisions or plans as a result?
02:00:36 ◼ ► This was an easy one for me as soon as – I mean I should have actually done this sooner but being a procrastinator, I just waited until it was like, oh yeah, I meant to do this.
02:01:07 ◼ ► Like I always plan to get it a little bit early because I'm going to use it on my Long Island vacation as my photo computer.
02:01:15 ◼ ► As it became – as it became more likely that the various random things our idiot president was saying about tariffs were actually going to result in some kind of action for some period of time.
02:01:29 ◼ ► There's not going to be a better different computer that comes out between now and September.
02:01:35 ◼ ► And by the way, because my son is also in college, I can just use his student discount, which actually isn't that great these days.
02:01:51 ◼ ► And I bought it now just because, first of all, like I knew I was going to buy like custom config, like I'm getting more RAM and blah, blah, blah.
02:02:05 ◼ ► And so this wasn't even a difficult choice because sometimes it would be like – like for replacing my Mac.
02:02:28 ◼ ► And I think it is one of those – when you buy custom ones, don't they all ship from China these days?
02:02:50 ◼ ► And it could be that she skips this year if it turns out the phones are either not available or horrendously expensive
02:03:04 ◼ ► But the only thing I've actively done was I moved up the purchase of a computer that I was already going to buy.
02:03:10 ◼ ► Not because I think necessarily anything is going to happen, but that's the whole thing.
02:03:33 ◼ ► Although it did occur to me earlier today, like a few hours ago, that I'm really glad that the fridges died when they did
02:03:42 ◼ ► because I have no idea if those came from China or if there will be more brought to the states.
02:03:59 ◼ ► I don't think I really understand what the goals are, and I'm not sure that the government does either.
02:04:04 ◼ ► It just seems like a measuring contest to me, and I'm not sure that we're winning, but that's okay, I guess.
02:04:33 ◼ ► Presumably, I would be getting a phone this September, I guess, maybe, if it's not $3,000.
02:04:40 ◼ ► I personally perceive it as part of my job to get a new phone every year so I can talk about it.
02:04:48 ◼ ► But I might take the John approach this year because I think it's well within the realm of acceptability to buy a $1,500 phone on an annual basis.
02:04:59 ◼ ► Because I genuinely, as much as I snark, I genuinely believe that it makes a show better by two-thirds of us getting a new phone every year.
02:05:17 ◼ ► I mean, you could end up getting, for example, the non-pro phone if that saves any money.
02:05:31 ◼ ► And the few times I've responded to people about this, I've basically said, like, there's no – like we can't give any advice.
02:05:39 ◼ ► Like there's no plan or thing that you should do other than like this type of thing that I did, which is like you were going to do this anyway.
02:05:48 ◼ ► Like if it's not – if you have the money now and you were going to get this – you know exactly what computer you were going to get.
02:05:55 ◼ ► Everything else is 100% speculative because honestly we can't give any advice like, oh, if you care about something, you should buy it now.
02:06:06 ◼ ► Like, oh, Casey, you should definitely get a new fridge if your fridge is old because you're not going to be able to get fridges.
02:06:11 ◼ ► We have no idea what's going to – like it's just – it is like the beginning of COVID.
02:06:23 ◼ ► Like it's not even obvious advice to say you should buy things that you think are going to be expensive later because like maybe that's just causing you to make a purchase that you wouldn't have made otherwise, right?
02:06:33 ◼ ► And especially with tech products, like half of the things we talk about in the show is like, is this the time to buy product X, right?
02:06:39 ◼ ► I'm going to say this is not the time to buy an M3 Ultramac studio for the same reason as we discussed in the show unless you really, really know you need it.
02:06:50 ◼ ► Like so don't be careful about like, I don't know, like panicking or like doing something that you would otherwise not do because you think you know what the future will hold.
02:07:01 ◼ ► And it could cause you to – like if it turns out like, oh, I was worried about which tech product I'm going to get, but it turns out I can't get potable water anymore.
02:07:08 ◼ ► Suddenly, the fact that you pre-purchased an M3 Ultra Mac Studio doesn't look like such a wise decision.
02:07:31 ◼ ► And if you see anyone saying with certainty that you should do X, Y, and Z that you weren't going to do before because they know what the future will hold, they don't.
02:07:58 ◼ ► Like on Friday, you know, as it was becoming apparent this past weekend that like, oh, stuff's going to go bad on Monday probably.
02:08:08 ◼ ► So I went to the family and I'm like, hey, is there any technology that we think needs to be replaced this year?
02:08:27 ◼ ► Like this is probably going to be – like this could be a dicey situation for pricing, availability, or both.
02:08:36 ◼ ► And for the most part, like everything, you know, you start looking around like, well, this looks fine.
02:08:42 ◼ ► Like, you know, this iPad, you know, this ancient iPad, like the battery doesn't last very long.
02:08:51 ◼ ► The one thing I decided to, you know, send my M2 MacBook Air down the line of hand-me-downs to a different role
02:09:08 ◼ ► Nanotexture screen, which will solve some of my train and ferry usage problems in the sunlight.
02:09:15 ◼ ► So I got like a pretty low-spec M4 MacBook Pro, the 14-inch one, and the regular M4 series, not the M4 Pro and Max one.
02:09:23 ◼ ► And it'll be interesting for you to report on that because I'm not entirely sure nanotexture will actually help you with your sun situation.
02:09:32 ◼ ► I guess it depends on whether what you are being distracted by reflections versus having sun fall on the screen at an oblique angle,
02:09:45 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, the reality is it'll probably be an improvement in both ways because in addition – you know, when you compare it to the MacBook Air screen,
02:09:53 ◼ ► in addition to it having nanotexture as an option, it's also way brighter at the max setting.
02:10:00 ◼ ► So like, you know, right now, like when I'm using my MacBook Air on the train or on the ferry, it's almost always at max brightness.
02:10:15 ◼ ► You should try those utilities that let you, like, turn, like, go above – I think the limit is, like, 700 nits now.
02:10:31 ◼ ► But, yeah, and I think, as John was saying, like, I think, you know, for listeners, I think that is probably –
02:10:37 ◼ ► probably, you know, the right move is, like, look at what you're going to need for, like, the rest of the year
02:10:40 ◼ ► and anything where, like, the price isn't really going to change or it's not about to be updated in some major way that you care about,
02:11:02 ◼ ► You know, like, that kind of thing where I'm like, oh, this laptop, I'm probably going to replace this laptop in the next few months.
02:11:08 ◼ ► The next – you know, yeah, the M5 version is coming out in the fall maybe, but, like, the M4 to M5 probably isn't –
02:11:14 ◼ ► like, it isn't rumored to be that big of a deal, whereas the M6 one is rumored to be a big deal,
02:11:20 ◼ ► So, like, you know, like, okay, I'll get the M4 one now, see how it goes, and, you know, figure that out later.
02:11:25 ◼ ► The only caveat I'll add on this is that if you are moving a purchase up on the calendar to, like, do it sooner than you expected to,
02:11:36 ◼ ► I think twice, because that, again, gets back to my thing of, like, well, what if two months from now I don't have potable water?
02:11:49 ◼ ► I was going to get this laptop anyway, but actually I have two more months where I'm saving money for it,
02:11:52 ◼ ► and I don't actually have the money now at all, but I can dip into savings a little bit to get this sooner.
02:12:11 ◼ ► But if there's any impact, think twice about it, because even though that's, like, quote-unquote,
02:12:18 ◼ ► are tech purchases going to be the most important thing to you in X number of months or years?
02:12:23 ◼ ► There's so much uncertainty about just the basic functioning of society that it's hard to know –
02:12:29 ◼ ► like, it's hard to recommend people to move up tech purchases unless they're sure that they have the means to cover that
02:12:42 ◼ ► What about when your government contracts that used to fund the company you work for go away and you don't have a job anymore?
02:12:49 ◼ ► But, you know, even in an optimistic scenario where a lot of this stuff gets never minded away,
02:13:20 ◼ ► And I think one thing to consider, too, is, like, Apple is actually pretty well positioned to play the tricks required to not be hit too hard by this.
02:13:50 ◼ ► not only through just, you know, direct butt-kissing and, you know, bribing our dictator,
02:14:40 ◼ ► I think this is more likely to have a bigger hit on other companies, especially smaller companies.
02:14:47 ◼ ► So, you know, if there's something made from foreign parts, which is many things for many good reasons,
02:14:53 ◼ ► but if something is made from foreign parts that you are looking to get maybe in the near future,
02:14:58 ◼ ► especially from, like, a smaller company or a less, you know, high-profile company than, like, a big tech giant.
02:15:09 ◼ ► Huge companies make TVs, but the margin on TV sets, unless you're buying one of the very highest end of one of a few brands,
02:15:25 ◼ ► And, by the way, on that topic, I saw at least one person saw Benedict Evans doing the math,
02:15:45 ◼ ► And I don't know how accurate his math was, because nobody really knows what the real number is here,
02:15:49 ◼ ► but it's within the realm of possibility, especially given the ever-increasing tariffs on China,
02:16:01 ◼ ► They could not absorb them, because they would be losing hundreds of dollars in every phone sold,
02:16:11 ◼ ► well, we worked the system such that our 38% hardware margin is now going to be, like, 30%.
02:16:27 ◼ ► Rest assured, like, if these tariffs end up happening and affecting Apple, we will pay higher prices, no question.
02:16:39 ◼ ► Like, if you want to, like, replace, you know, like a Kindle or something, I mean, you know,
02:16:45 ◼ ► or, like, you know, some, like, you know, boutique electronic thing that you're getting off of, you know,
02:16:55 ◼ ► Because the smaller the manufacturer, the more likely it is for them to have their costs go up significantly
02:17:10 ◼ ► Like, if you maybe have, like, an important household appliance or a car that you think needs to be replaced,
02:17:21 ◼ ► And so maybe do what you can to maybe, you know, explore some options for that, like, yesterday.
02:17:42 ◼ ► But, like, in two years, maybe used cars will be impossible to find and cost a whole jillion dollars.
02:17:53 ◼ ► Like, everything is connected and you have no idea what's going to be the thing that you didn't think about.
02:18:08 ◼ ► If you think, if you're worried, like, I don't want to be in a situation two years from now