ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Did you see that thing about the anacondas spawning?

00:00:02 ◼   ► No, I did not.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm sorry, what?

00:00:05 ◼   ► My anaconda don't want that.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Unless you got, never mind.

00:00:08 ◼   ► So, it's hard to know these days, you know, when you see something breeze by on Instagram,

00:00:13 ◼   ► was that AI generated?

00:00:15 ◼   ► Like, I fell for the bunnies bouncing on the trampoline, like, I'm one of those.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Oh, Marco.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I know.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I mean, well, when I first saw the bunnies, I was like, oh my god, that's amazing.

00:00:24 ◼   ► And then, like, you know, a few posts later, I saw the same thing with, like, raccoons.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm like, oh.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Oh.

00:00:29 ◼   ► When one of the bunnies did a flip and winked at you, you're like, wait a second.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It wasn't that ridiculous.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It was pretty ridiculous.

00:00:34 ◼   ► But I guess, and like, okay, you can kind of argue, like, okay, that is, we're in this

00:00:41 ◼   ► kind of hellscape of, you know, all this AI generated stuff being fed to us on social apps

00:00:45 ◼   ► to keep us engaged.

00:00:47 ◼   ► But also, like, is it that different from them algorithmically feeding us stuff that humans

00:00:54 ◼   ► made that, you know, we're going to breeze through and never see again, and it's just,

00:00:58 ◼   ► you know, tickling our fancy for a split second as we waste time?

00:01:01 ◼   ► It's a little bit different.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Is it?

00:01:03 ◼   ► Yeah, because if you believe that it's real, you know what I mean?

00:01:07 ◼   ► I suppose, but like...

00:01:08 ◼   ► Because then, like, you get the sort of the, excuse me if everyone holds your ears because

00:01:13 ◼   ► I know it'll be upset people.

00:01:14 ◼   ► It's the Fox News effect, where if you're fed a constant diet of things that are not true

00:01:17 ◼   ► and accept them as true, even if each one individually is harmless, you essentially acclimate to the

00:01:21 ◼   ► idea that, you know, you're filling your brains with untruths but filing them under truths.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And so your whole worldview gets really distorted because you're like, look at all these things.

00:01:30 ◼   ► These are all things that happened.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And you're like, actually, no, all 8,000 of those were BS.

00:01:34 ◼   ► You're like, that can't be true.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Well, but like, I wonder, you know, what are we comparing it to?

00:01:39 ◼   ► Like, how accurate was the pool of slop that was being fed to us before AI?

00:01:44 ◼   ► Like, if it was just, you know, once you finish the handful of posts from your friends and

00:01:48 ◼   ► Instagram and, you know, between all of the thousand ads that you're seeing, you're mostly

00:01:53 ◼   ► just seeing, like, you know, memes and screenshots of funny things from Twitter or, you know, copies

00:01:59 ◼   ► of TikTok videos, you know, whatever.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Like, you're just seeing mostly low trust, low, you know, low nutritional value content anyway.

00:02:09 ◼   ► So now that if a bunch of that's going to be AI generated, like, I don't actually think

00:02:13 ◼   ► it's that much worse than it already was.

00:02:15 ◼   ► The tip of the specific kind of video you're talking about is the kind of like, look at

00:02:19 ◼   ► this amazing thing that happened.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And the, the entertaining value comes from believing that it happened.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Because as soon as you believe, as soon as you realize that it didn't happen, it loses

00:02:27 ◼   ► a lot of its value.

00:02:28 ◼   ► You're like, oh, now I'm not interested in seeing it.

00:02:29 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:02:30 ◼   ► So the value comes from, can you believe that this thing happened?

00:02:33 ◼   ► It's the closest analogy I think are, are the, um, the videos and this is kind of limited

00:02:38 ◼   ► by the, uh, how hard it is to be a good actor.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Uh, but the videos with it are clearly staged where they stage some kind of thing to try to

00:02:45 ◼   ► make it like, can you believe this thing happened?

00:02:47 ◼   ► But like, but the, the good thing about those is again, people aren't very good actors.

00:02:51 ◼   ► So it's usually very obvious that it's staged because it seems staged because they're bad

00:02:57 ◼   ► actors, but obviously the AI stuff sort of fixes that problem because, you know, the bunnies

00:03:01 ◼   ► don't have to be good actors, they just gotta be convincing on the camera.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Anyway, the bunnies are probably mostly harmless, but like, again, being, being fed a steady diet

00:03:09 ◼   ► of stuff like that and not being interested, like in not, not being interested, but like

00:03:14 ◼   ► accepting the truth of those because the value of them comes from them being true sort of primes

00:03:20 ◼   ► you to accept anything from that feed as true.

00:03:24 ◼   ► If the value of it comes from you thinking it's true.

00:03:26 ◼   ► So it's not great, but you know, we'll, we will, as, as you just noted, everyone knows

00:03:30 ◼   ► about that stupid bunny video because it's a good example of people essentially building

00:03:33 ◼   ► antibodies because now they've been burned.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Now they feel, they feel like they've been had, they feel betrayed.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And that feeling hopefully will stick with people to say, I'm going to be a little bit more

00:03:43 ◼   ► skeptical.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Again, not everybody, but you know, hopefully Marco, and the next time he sees one of those,

00:03:47 ◼   ► like the Anaconda one that you're about to describe to us before we got derailed, you're

00:03:50 ◼   ► thinking, is this real?

00:03:51 ◼   ► Maybe you wouldn't have been thinking that before the bunny video.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Well, and in a way, like, you know, like what you were saying about so many videos in the

00:03:58 ◼   ► past have been just stagged, you know, can you believe this thing that happened?

00:04:01 ◼   ► And then like, yeah, it's like that you're all just acting.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Or like, like a, like a, a man and a woman having a fake conflict over a thing that they

00:04:07 ◼   ► think will be humorous, but they're terrible actors and it's clear it was set up.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Or like, you know, like you'll see like, you know, the screenshot of the message conversation

00:04:14 ◼   ► that's outrageous and like that didn't, that wasn't a real conversation, you know,

00:04:17 ◼   ► like, but that, you know, back before AI, you would believe like, oh, maybe that happened.

00:04:23 ◼   ► That might be real.

00:04:23 ◼   ► But maybe, you know, now that we're in this AI world now, if everybody just believes that

00:04:29 ◼   ► by default, if you believe the thing you're seeing is probably fake, that's probably both

00:04:34 ◼   ► better and more accurate of how it has been than, you know, than believing most of it was

00:04:39 ◼   ► real.

00:04:39 ◼   ► It's like the, uh, am I the a-hole Reddit?

00:04:41 ◼   ► I just assume everything there is fiction, but in that context, it is a forum where people

00:04:47 ◼   ► practice fiction writing and entertain each other with their fiction, which I'm mostly

00:04:52 ◼   ► okay with, but like, but that's, you know, that's, that's sort of how you get, you end the, you

00:04:56 ◼   ► enter this sort of like, uh, trust no one X-Files type environment.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And I'm sure lots of people read, am I the a-hole and are entertained by it because they believe

00:05:02 ◼   ► they're all true, but I read it and I'm entertained because I believe these are all, this is a big

00:05:07 ◼   ► set of skilled fiction writers trying to, uh, you know, entertain the world with their,

00:05:11 ◼   ► uh, fiction.

00:05:12 ◼   ► But I bet when it started, I mean, I don't know anything about Reddit really, but I bet

00:05:15 ◼   ► when it started out, I bet that subreddit might was probably mostly true stories, but then

00:05:20 ◼   ► they probably quickly ran out and realized, oh, this is fun.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Let's just keep going.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I don't think they run out.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Like I'm sure there's true stories sprinkled in there.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It's just my, the way I take it is this is all fiction and then I'm able to be entertained

00:05:31 ◼   ► by it without having to worry about it one way or the other.

00:05:33 ◼   ► But I think most people read it and assume it's all true, except for the one that they really

00:05:37 ◼   ► can't believe.

00:05:37 ◼   ► These are all true, but this one I can't believe.

00:05:41 ◼   ► All right.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Do you want to start the show?

00:05:43 ◼   ► Do some follow-up?

00:05:44 ◼   ► That's what we do.

00:05:44 ◼   ► That's what we do.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So I did the unthinkable.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I put iOS 26 on my carry phone.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Ah, welcome.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And then promptly dropped it and the replacement had, uh, 18 on it.

00:05:55 ◼   ► How did you not?

00:05:56 ◼   ► No, not really.

00:05:57 ◼   ► No, but then you can't restore your backup onto it anymore.

00:05:59 ◼   ► You have to upgrade your new, whatever, whatever phone you replace this phone with when you

00:06:03 ◼   ► drop it, you have to first.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Don't this didn't say more than one backup?

00:06:06 ◼   ► Like don't, can't you just use your older backup?

00:06:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:08 ◼   ► But then you're going to have like a gap in time.

00:06:10 ◼   ► You can't, I mean, who knows what, you know, whatever new game you installed or whatever

00:06:14 ◼   ► in the meantime, like you're going to lose stuff.

00:06:15 ◼   ► You can't do that.

00:06:16 ◼   ► You can never go backwards, John.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Only forwards.

00:06:18 ◼   ► All right.

00:06:19 ◼   ► The only way out is through.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Uh, so yeah, so I've only, I did this yesterday late morning, I believe it was.

00:06:24 ◼   ► So it's only been a little over 24 hours that I've had iOS 26 on my phone and I've downgraded.

00:06:29 ◼   ► No, I'm just kidding.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Uh, I, I, it's so weird.

00:06:33 ◼   ► I have a fairly visceral love, hate relationship with it so far.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I really like that there is some modicum of whimsy to it.

00:06:44 ◼   ► So like in messages, when you, when you tap in the text field that you type into, it kind

00:06:52 ◼   ► of like flashes and like dances a little bit.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And I could see how somebody else would find that very frustrating, but I think it's kind

00:06:57 ◼   ► of cute and neat.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And generally speaking, I think it looks pretty good.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And I think that again, the animations are fun.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I do think they've done an incredibly good job of modeling what glass looks like.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And so like when you pull down a control center notification center, rather notification center

00:07:15 ◼   ► and you're watching the, the edge of notification center come down, like that looks really cool.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I really dig it.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Um, I, I really think at the surface level, a lot of this is very cool and I enjoy it and

00:07:30 ◼   ► I like it with that said, holy God, sometimes the legibility is zero.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And I know this is old news, but now I'm experiencing it like on my carry device, notification, notification

00:07:44 ◼   ► center in particular is so bad.

00:07:46 ◼   ► It is so bad on beta seven and it's, if I turn off, um, or if I do reduce transparency,

00:07:54 ◼   ► it basically looks like the iOS 18, which on the one side is good because it's readable on

00:07:58 ◼   ► the other side.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I don't like it because it's feels old and boring and whatever.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Um, but man, is that bad.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Additionally, Safari with the compact toolbar at the bottom, absolutely not.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I only have like, I have like maybe eight tabs on eight to 10 tabs on a general basis.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Meanwhile, Aaron has like 450.

00:08:16 ◼   ► It drives me nuts, but, um, that's her phone, her, her, that's what makes her happy.

00:08:20 ◼   ► But I only have like right now I have eight tabs as it turns out.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And that's probably too many by my own admission.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But you know, my point is it's not a ton, but I do flip between them somewhat often.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And the compact tab bar where I turned it off already, but I think it's like, uh, something

00:08:37 ◼   ► on the button on the left, the search slash URL field in the middle, and then basically

00:08:43 ◼   ► everything bucket on the right.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I hated it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► I tried to stick with it for the better part of a day and then realized, no, I can't, I can't,

00:08:51 ◼   ► I can't do it.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I hate it.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I hate it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I hate it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Um, but those are the only initial things that, that jump out at me that really, really

00:08:59 ◼   ► struck me one, you know, one way or the other.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Overall, I actually, despite my complaining just a moment ago, I actually do like it for

00:09:06 ◼   ► the most part.

00:09:07 ◼   ► And again, I think it's whimsical.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I think it's fun.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I think it looks good as long as we're in relatively decent legibility zone, which is a zone that

00:09:15 ◼   ► we dive in and out of with regularity.

00:09:17 ◼   ► But so far tentative thumbs up from me and we'll see how it goes over the next few weeks.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:25 ◼   ► I'm honestly like, I think that's going to be a pretty common take.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Like, I think, you know, those of us who care about things like user interface design

00:09:34 ◼   ► are going to have a lot of complaints about some of the things about it that just don't

00:09:38 ◼   ► work well as an interface, like legibility challenges, contrast challenge.

00:09:43 ◼   ► There's, there's a lot about it that just doesn't work well, you know, additional taps, things

00:09:46 ◼   ► buried in, as you call it, the everything bucket menus, which I think is a great term because

00:09:51 ◼   ► that's kind of how Alan Dye designs things is junk drawer design.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And, you know, so there, there is a lot of that, but also it does look clean, fresh and

00:10:00 ◼   ► cool.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And I think, you know, as I said in previous episodes, I think most people are going to

00:10:07 ◼   ► be fine with this.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Like I do think people are going to complain about slower performance, um, but especially

00:10:12 ◼   ► people on older phones, but otherwise I think for the most part, people are going to think

00:10:15 ◼   ► it looks cool and new and fresh.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And, you know, those of us who are on the grumpier side of a lot of these little, you

00:10:21 ◼   ► know, detailed problems, I think we're going to have to suck it up and realize that like

00:10:26 ◼   ► we care a lot more about certain factors here than anyone else is going to care, including

00:10:32 ◼   ► Apple's own designers.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And it does not feel great to be on that side of things, but that is the reality of where

00:10:38 ◼   ► we are.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Most people are going to think this is cool and Apple's not going to change their minds

00:10:43 ◼   ► on almost any of it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► What you see now in beta beta seven is almost certainly what's going to ship with pretty

00:10:49 ◼   ► much no changes or no meaningful changes.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Um, and this is the new design.

00:10:53 ◼   ► This is it.

00:10:54 ◼   ► So we can, you know, bury our heads in the sand and move, move to the woods, or we can

00:10:58 ◼   ► just go with it.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And, you know, we'll keep critiquing as we, as we need to, but, uh, this is it.

00:11:04 ◼   ► This is the design and only we will care about these things.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Everyone else will not.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Uh, also I should bring up, I have been talking specifically about my phone for the

00:11:14 ◼   ► last few minutes, but I put the beta on my iPad and vision pro pretty much immediately.

00:11:20 ◼   ► I've used my vision pro like thrice since then, but, um, I did put it on my iPad pretty

00:11:24 ◼   ► much immediately.

00:11:25 ◼   ► There are definitely times that the new windowing system gets in the way.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And it, you know, as an example, if I do something on the title bar, like pull down to get to

00:11:34 ◼   ► notification center from the top of the screen, sometimes it takes that as, Oh, I want to take

00:11:38 ◼   ► this window from full screen to a window.

00:11:40 ◼   ► If that makes any sense rather than, Oh, I'm trying to reach notification center.

00:11:44 ◼   ► There are things like that where it gets in the way that I find very frustrating, but

00:11:48 ◼   ► overall, I cannot say enough good things about iOS or excuse me, iPadOS 26.

00:11:55 ◼   ► Obviously on the iPad, um, it's incredibly, incredibly good.

00:11:58 ◼   ► You know, is, is saying iOS or iPadOS 26 on the iPad, is that like saying 4 30 AM in the

00:12:04 ◼   ► morning?

00:12:04 ◼   ► I hate that so much.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And I just did it, but I hate like 4 30 AM in the morning.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:12:09 ◼   ► You don't say, uh, but anyways, the point is, is that it's incredible on the iPad.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And I think overall, I do like it on the phone.

00:12:16 ◼   ► John, remind me, what is your beta situation for non-max?

00:12:20 ◼   ► I'm still avoiding, still avoiding iOS and iPadOS.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I'm avoiding iOS just because I don't know, like my phone, I don't, I don't want it to be

00:12:27 ◼   ► janked up, but all of the betas, uh, and I'm avoiding iPad cause I, I'm not ready to say

00:12:32 ◼   ► goodbye to slide over.

00:12:32 ◼   ► I'm sure I'll find a random alternative, but it is, it is part of my television, iPad television

00:12:39 ◼   ► watching workflow to have a bunch of stuff and slide over.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And I know there are other ways to get around it, like to do similar things.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So I guess I'll just figure that out, but I'm figuring I'm just going to, because normally

00:12:50 ◼   ► I would have upgraded my iPad, but now I usually, that's usually my sacrificial machine, but

00:12:53 ◼   ► I'm in Tahoe all day doing dev.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm getting a full dose of Tahoe and, um, yeah, I'm sure I'll have more to say about

00:13:00 ◼   ► both of these things when they're actually released.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Cause I will, I will upgrade when they're all released.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Maybe I'll still hold off my iPad.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:13:06 ◼   ► But anyway, I'll, you know, we'll see.

00:13:08 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Good deal.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Uh, I have to, I, um, I'm really torn because on the one side, I want to take a victory

00:13:16 ◼   ► lap, but on the other side, and I will be taking that victory lap, but the other side

00:13:21 ◼   ► is I will, I would like to concede and congratulate you for admitting your own wrongdoing and doing

00:13:27 ◼   ► so publicly by putting this in the show notes.

00:13:29 ◼   ► There's no victory for you to lap here.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Oh, there absolutely is.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Are you kidding?

00:13:32 ◼   ► Nope, nope, nope.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I don't know why you're, you have the wrong view of this entirely, but go ahead.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Well, this is going to be an adventure for all of us, especially me.

00:13:40 ◼   ► So, I found in the show notes, which I did not put there, quote, myriad of, quote, is

00:13:43 ◼   ► okay.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Uh, so this was Ask ATP last week.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Uh, Daniel Liu had talked, Liu had talked about, uh, liquid glass and touch interfaces, which

00:13:53 ◼   ► included the phrase that Daniel wrote, quote, the myriad problems with legibility, quote.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And then I read that verbally as, quote, the myriad of problems with legibility.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And John jumped down my throat for it.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Uh, so Jason Eccles.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I issued a mild correction, but okay, jumped down my throat.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:14:12 ◼   ► All right.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Uh, agree to disagree, maybe?

00:14:14 ◼   ► Uh, no, anyway, so one way or another, uh, then Jason Eccles writes, myriad of is perfectly

00:14:19 ◼   ► fine.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And then someone, I presume John, found Merriam-Webster's grammar and usage blog, which

00:14:25 ◼   ► reads pretty aggressively that myriad of is just fine.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And reading the quote that I presume John pulled, somewhere along the way, someone made the ruling

00:14:34 ◼   ► that myriad is most properly an adjective, but we are all here to tell you that that is

00:14:38 ◼   ► simply not true.

00:14:39 ◼   ► One will occasionally find usage guides professional and otherwise specifying that myriad should

00:14:43 ◼   ► not be followed by an of, which is another way of saying it's just an adjective.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Myriad is a noun, and if anyone tells you otherwise, feel free to print this article and shove

00:14:50 ◼   ► it in their very wrong hands.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Maybe I misunderstood, but I'm reading that as myriad of is just fine.

00:14:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So here's, here's, here's, uh, how you're misreading this.

00:14:56 ◼   ► First of all, um, my correction of you is that you didn't read what Daniel wrote.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And the reason I was correcting you, which that, so that's, you, you need to be corrected

00:15:07 ◼   ► there, but why should you need to be right?

00:15:09 ◼   ► Because there are lots of people like me out there who will say, Hey, you shouldn't say

00:15:14 ◼   ► myriad of you should say myriad.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And I wanted to spare Daniel from the corrections of other people saying, Hey, when, when Daniel

00:15:19 ◼   ► wrote into that ask ATP question, he shouldn't have written myriad of it, but he didn't, he

00:15:24 ◼   ► wrote the myriad problem.

00:15:25 ◼   ► So I wanted to give Daniel full credit and it'll help him to avoid that correction.

00:15:30 ◼   ► So it's not that you're particular.

00:15:32 ◼   ► It's just that you're altruistic.

00:15:33 ◼   ► But then, yes, I did correct you.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And I said, I, I listened back to it.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And I, I, as usual, I have qualifiers to say, I believe you're not supposed to say myriad,

00:15:41 ◼   ► myriad, myriad of myriad is correct or whatever.

00:15:44 ◼   ► So yes, that correction does apply to me.

00:15:45 ◼   ► It's one of many of those things like, so as, as the Merriam Webster's usage blog says, some

00:15:51 ◼   ► style guides say that you shouldn't do it.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And it's one of those grammar rules that you learn if you're of a certain age, but the language

00:15:57 ◼   ► changes.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And, you know, just like people would be correcting, you know, you have to use whom here, you can

00:16:02 ◼   ► never use who.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And it's like too late, man.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Like that stuff has changed.

00:16:06 ◼   ► So I stand corrected that myriad of is perfectly fine in modern usage, even if some style guides

00:16:12 ◼   ► say that you shouldn't do it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► But most importantly, Daniel did not do it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► So he was avoiding the issue entirely by doing the one that pedants think is correct.

00:16:21 ◼   ► It's pedants, isn't it, John?

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's pedants.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Anyway, so I congratulate you, John, for admitting your wrongdoing publicly by way of my mouth.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Well, this is the reason I put this in here is because this will hopefully save us from

00:16:34 ◼   ► being corrected if any of us say myriad of it in the future, because now it's fine.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And I'm one of those people who had always heard that you shouldn't do the of.

00:16:42 ◼   ► So I learned something, too.

00:16:43 ◼   ► So I'm sharing it with everybody.

00:16:44 ◼   ► This is the nature of follow up.

00:16:45 ◼   ► This is the value of follow up.

00:16:47 ◼   ► This is TIL personified.

00:16:50 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Then related to the above, Brian Guffey writes, with regard to Daniel's question about liquid

00:16:57 ◼   ► glasses, decreased information density and touch interfaces.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Brian writes, Marco and John keep saying that all of the design changes that folks read

00:17:04 ◼   ► as, quote, setting things up for touch Macs are just accidental good luck.

00:17:09 ◼   ► How then would they read the size classes era where developers were encouraged to adopt a

00:17:13 ◼   ► flexible design, which most folks credit as, quote, looking forward to when iPads were introduced?

00:17:18 ◼   ► So actually, size classes were introduced with iPads for the distinction between iPad apps and

00:17:27 ◼   ► iPhone apps.

00:17:28 ◼   ► What Brian is most likely referring to here is auto layout, which was introduced, I believe,

00:17:34 ◼   ► for the Mac a year prior.

00:17:36 ◼   ► But it was introduced for iOS 6 in 2012.

00:17:40 ◼   ► So it was announced in June 2012.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And then the fall of 2012 was the release of the iPhone 5.

00:17:46 ◼   ► This was the first iPhone that had a new screen size besides, you know, all the iPhones that

00:17:51 ◼   ► preceded it.

00:17:52 ◼   ► That was and it was the same width, but it was like one extra table row basically in height.

00:17:58 ◼   ► So auto layout is is the reference here.

00:18:01 ◼   ► And the idea was, you know, that June before we knew about the iPhone 5, they were like,

00:18:05 ◼   ► hey, you should really use this auto layout system, not assuming anything about anything,

00:18:11 ◼   ► but use auto layout and you can you can define how your layout should respond to whatever size

00:18:17 ◼   ► it gets.

00:18:17 ◼   ► And, you know, they were very they were they were, you know, not subtle that you should really

00:18:22 ◼   ► probably have a dynamic layout.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And here's a new system to make that easier, you know.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And then, you know, four or three months later, then there was iPhone 5.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So the difference between these two things here is that with them saying we have a new system

00:18:36 ◼   ► that allows your content to adapt to containers and you should really adopt it.

00:18:39 ◼   ► It's strongly hinting that like this adopting to different size containers, like why would

00:18:43 ◼   ► we do that?

00:18:43 ◼   ► All the screens are the same size, like we kind of get the hint.

00:18:45 ◼   ► But with the less information density in liquid glass, first of all, I don't think Apple has

00:18:50 ◼   ► even ever said that liquid glass has lower information density or larger targets or anything.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And second, they certainly haven't said.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And by the way, when you're designing your UIs, make sure you make your targets on Mac OS

00:19:01 ◼   ► a little bit bigger.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Maybe you maybe make them a little bit taller, maybe make them a little bit wider.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Dropping those kind of hints of saying, like, we suggest you do this, not giving a reason.

00:19:11 ◼   ► You know, you should adopt auto layout.

00:19:13 ◼   ► It will allow your UI to adapt to different sizes where it might find itself.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:19 ◼   ► But they didn't say any of that.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Like they're not they're not pitching it.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And it's just two different situations.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:24 ◼   ► One is where they knew that they were creating a UI that they wanted developers to adopt because

00:19:28 ◼   ► they knew they were about to release a phone that was a different size.

00:19:31 ◼   ► I know that sounds like a big deal because it's like, well, so what?

00:19:32 ◼   ► It was a centimeter taller.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Big deal.

00:19:34 ◼   ► But every iPhone out before that had been like pixel perfect, exact grid to the size

00:19:39 ◼   ► of the iPhone screen.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So it was a thing that developers needed to get on board with.

00:19:43 ◼   ► But I haven't I haven't seen anything from Apple saying, yeah, on Mac OS, you should make

00:19:46 ◼   ► things bigger.

00:19:47 ◼   ► You just should.

00:19:48 ◼   ► It's a good idea.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And here's a system for making things bigger.

00:19:51 ◼   ► It's true that Apple's interface takes up more space in various places as low information

00:19:55 ◼   ► density.

00:19:56 ◼   ► But in some cases, as Marco pointed out, the actual touch target, quote unquote, touch targets

00:20:00 ◼   ► may be smaller because they wasted all the extra space on margins.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Yeah, they really I even found like it.

00:20:06 ◼   ► This is I think this is going to be an interesting problem as we see as apps adopt iOS 26.

00:20:11 ◼   ► When you make an iOS 26 toolbar button, just, you know, those round, glassy buttons with the

00:20:17 ◼   ► icon in the middle, if you in Swift UI, if you put anything in that button that is not a

00:20:24 ◼   ► label element, if you try to make your own button with, say, an image, you just put an image

00:20:28 ◼   ► in there, the touch target for the button is not the whole button anymore.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Like the round shape of the button.

00:20:36 ◼   ► If you touch the edge of the round shape, it will expand in response to your touch.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And then you let go and it just decreases right back down.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It does not.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It does not like fire the button.

00:20:46 ◼   ► So it looks like you're tapping the button.

00:20:48 ◼   ► It responds that you're tapping the button.

00:20:50 ◼   ► But the actual touch target of the of the item in the button is smaller than the circle.

00:20:56 ◼   ► If you use the the Swift UI label component, it does some magic where it takes up the entire

00:21:01 ◼   ► circle.

00:21:02 ◼   ► But anything else, even if you give it like a rectangle or whatever, like it doesn't take

00:21:06 ◼   ► the whole circle.

00:21:07 ◼   ► There's so many problems with like there's going to be so many like little subtle frustrations

00:21:12 ◼   ► like this.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And we're going to see in apps over the next few years until they fix that if they can or

00:21:18 ◼   ► will.

00:21:18 ◼   ► There's no button shape modifier or something that you can stick on to the.

00:21:21 ◼   ► There is, but it will not take up the bounds of the circle.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Yeah, cool.

00:21:26 ◼   ► There are a lot of problems with liquid glass in from the software stack.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Hopefully they sort some of the stuff out.

00:21:31 ◼   ► What's also fun is that if you put some if you define, say, if you put like, you know,

00:21:35 ◼   ► the dot frame specifier on the contents of a round button and you give it a square, the

00:21:41 ◼   ► button becomes not a perfect circle anymore.

00:21:43 ◼   ► It becomes oblong.

00:21:45 ◼   ► That's fun.

00:21:46 ◼   ► It's super fun.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Like, oh, God, it's I feel like we are, you know, designing for iOS 1.0 again.

00:21:54 ◼   ► But I was well, I guess I was 2.0, but as it was called an iPhone OS 2.0, the SDK was

00:22:00 ◼   ► actually a little bit more firm than like there's there's so much about designing with liquid

00:22:06 ◼   ► glass.

00:22:07 ◼   ► You saw my controls moving when you mouse over them.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Most of my Tahoe metals have been with the the settings screen and hyperspace, which is

00:22:16 ◼   ► just a bunch.

00:22:16 ◼   ► It's just a form with a bunch of toggles all using the modern interfaces.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And I can't get the thing to not have scroll bars because the size of it keeps changing.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I have condition.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Obviously, I have conditionals for Mac OS 26 or later, like runtime checks.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Is this Mac OS 26 or later?

00:22:31 ◼   ► Is this Intel or is this ARM?

00:22:35 ◼   ► Why would the layout change in Intel and ARM?

00:22:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I'm just telling you it does.

00:22:40 ◼   ► So I think think of the conditionals in the code.

00:22:42 ◼   ► It'll just it's and I keep hoping they're going to fix it.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And every new beta is just weirder in a different way.

00:22:47 ◼   ► I still need to file a bunch of stuff.

00:22:49 ◼   ► But yeah, like controls moving on mouse over and that movement changing the height of your

00:22:53 ◼   ► thing, causing a scroll bar to appear or disappear.

00:22:55 ◼   ► It's madness.

00:22:56 ◼   ► That sounds super fun.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I have been very, very busy and I've been kicking the can on my call sheet, you know,

00:23:04 ◼   ► update, rewrite, whatever you want to call it, reskin for iOS 26.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And man, it's definitely a roller coaster so far.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I'm only a couple of days in, but I'll start something and realize, oh, this looks like trash.

00:23:15 ◼   ► I hate every bit of it.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Then I'll try a different direction.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Oh, this looks good.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Oh, I'm cruising.

00:23:19 ◼   ► This looks great.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Oh, no, I hate this again.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Like, it's very one step forward, 10 steps back, two steps forward, 13 steps back.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And that's a lot.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Me, it's not exclusively Apple, but it's going to be a rough ride.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I would say that I would not expect that many apps will be 100% ready to rock on liquid glass

00:23:39 ◼   ► when iOS 26 drops.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I would expect it's going to be much more of a trickle out.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And I certainly hope so for selfish reasons, but that's what I expect will be the case.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Like, you know, those of you out there, we have a lot of opinionated app users in our

00:23:55 ◼   ► audience.

00:23:55 ◼   ► And I would urge you, please give the developers of iOS apps a lot of leeway and a lot of forgiveness

00:24:04 ◼   ► and a lot of time as we adopt liquid glass.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Because it's not a small job, even to just like, like what I decided to do with Overcast

00:24:15 ◼   ► is like, I'm not radically changing the interface.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I'm just updating it to, you know, use the native toolbars and stuff, you know, new design for

00:24:24 ◼   ► the mini player.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's just stuff to make it fit in a little bit better, but it's still going

00:24:28 ◼   ► to look effectively the same.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Like basically, you know, the, the, in broad strokes, it is not a complete redesign, but

00:24:36 ◼   ► even just that, even just adopting little things.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Like for instance, when you have a menu that has like, say a delete item in the menu and

00:24:45 ◼   ► you tap that and at, and before it deletes, it confirms, are you sure you want to delete?

00:24:50 ◼   ► Those confirmations used to be on the iPhone, the sheet that comes up from the bottom, or

00:24:56 ◼   ► you know, maybe like an alert dialogue in the middle.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Now it's like an iPad.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Now those pop out of a source view.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So ideally they pop out of, you know, maybe the button or the menu that, you know, spawned

00:25:08 ◼   ► this whole process in the first place.

00:25:10 ◼   ► But if you have an iPhone app, you've never had to deal with that.

00:25:14 ◼   ► So now you have to go and like move these around and make sure they're popping out of the

00:25:18 ◼   ► correct view, you have to go through every confirmation and every alert in your entire

00:25:23 ◼   ► app and every way you could possibly reach confirmation or an, or an, an alert.

00:25:28 ◼   ► You have to go through all of them to make sure it's popping out from the right place.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Now it's, there's so many of those types of things where like you think it's as simple

00:25:38 ◼   ► as like, Oh, I'll just replace my custom button with the system button.

00:25:42 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, yes, but then you have all these behaviors you have to, you have to

00:25:45 ◼   ► consider.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Uh, and then if you want to maintain compatibility with iOS 18 and earlier, you probably have

00:25:53 ◼   ► to do everything twice because not only do you, are you like, you know, okay, now I'm

00:25:56 ◼   ► going to, I'm going to use this, the system X instead of my custom X.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Well, you're going to probably have to keep your custom X for iOS 18 or figure out how to

00:26:06 ◼   ► make the system one work acceptably on iOS 18 when it doesn't have the 26 behaviors.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So it's, it's a lot of work, even just, even doing a, even doing what seems to the

00:26:18 ◼   ► user, like a pretty light adoption of the new design.

00:26:22 ◼   ► It's still a ton of work and a ton of QA, a ton of testing, a ton of little subtle bugs.

00:26:27 ◼   ► So, you know, be, be gentle with your app store, app store star reviews this fall to everybody's

00:26:34 ◼   ► apps.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Um, you know, we're all doing the best we can.

00:26:36 ◼   ► It's going to be a lot.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's not going to be great on day one.

00:26:39 ◼   ► You're going to have apps that are not ready on day one and maybe aren't even ready this

00:26:44 ◼   ► calendar year.

00:26:44 ◼   ► You're going to have apps that are ready, but are limited, uh, interpretations of the design

00:26:49 ◼   ► or that have weird edge case bugs because Apple is shipping a beta as a final version.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Like what they are going to achieve quality wise for iOS 26 is beta quality at best.

00:27:03 ◼   ► 26.0 is going to be a little rough.

00:27:07 ◼   ► It's going to have animation bugs.

00:27:08 ◼   ► It's going to have little behavioral things like this entire design is a beta and all of

00:27:15 ◼   ► our apps using it will basically also be betas.

00:27:19 ◼   ► And that's kind of, you know, Apple has kind of, you know, brought us here to this point

00:27:23 ◼   ► that we don't really have much of a choice in the matter.

00:27:25 ◼   ► Um, so please, you know, be, be gentle and be tolerant of your, your friendly neighborhood

00:27:30 ◼   ► app developers and, uh, you know, give them some slack this, this fall.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's going to, it's kind of a rough time for us.

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00:29:41 ◼   ► All right, John, you apparently have your own victory lap to take.

00:29:49 ◼   ► What's going on with your HomePod?

00:29:51 ◼   ► My HomePod is back.

00:29:52 ◼   ► I had one original HomePod from back in the day.

00:29:55 ◼   ► And then Marco gave me two of his also original HomePods, the very first generation.

00:30:00 ◼   ► They were all in various states of disrepair and dying.

00:30:03 ◼   ► Some of them totally dead.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I was like, OK, now that none of them work, because they got to the point where none of

00:30:07 ◼   ► them, I couldn't use any of them for any purpose.

00:30:09 ◼   ► Some of them turned on, but I couldn't use them to do things.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I couldn't get signed in.

00:30:13 ◼   ► It couldn't connect to my iCloud thing.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I couldn't do it in my home automations.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I could ask what time it was and maybe the weather, but that's about it.

00:30:18 ◼   ► But one of them just totally didn't turn on.

00:30:20 ◼   ► So I was looking for someone who I know people repair HomePods.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I found somebody online, nixfix.com, N-I-C-S-F-I-X.com, that he repairs HomePods.

00:30:31 ◼   ► And I figured I'll send him the dead one, the one that you plug into the wallet, nothing

00:30:35 ◼   ► happens.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It doesn't light up, doesn't make any noise.

00:30:36 ◼   ► It's just dead, dead, dead, which is the thing that happens to first-gen HomePods for a fairly

00:30:41 ◼   ► explicable reason, because some component burns out or something.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Anyway, and it's real easy.

00:30:45 ◼   ► You go to the website, sign up to do it.

00:30:49 ◼   ► He'll send you a box, a packing box for the thing, and then a return like a shipping label.

00:30:54 ◼   ► So I got the box, wrapped up the HomePod in the packing material, shoved on the prepaid

00:30:59 ◼   ► shipping label that he had sent, and arrives at Nick.

00:31:03 ◼   ► He streams his repairs live on YouTube, and we will put a timestamp link in the show notes

00:31:08 ◼   ► to his stream where he fixed my HomePod.

00:31:10 ◼   ► My repair starts at one hour and 54 minutes and 11 seconds in this video.

00:31:15 ◼   ► He spends a long time repairing a lot of HomePods.

00:31:17 ◼   ► He's so fast.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Like, he repairs them very quickly.

00:31:20 ◼   ► Let me jump in right there.

00:31:22 ◼   ► So I will concede that I was watching this at 2X, but I watch a lot of things at 2X, and

00:31:27 ◼   ► you get a pretty solid vibe as to how quick or how slowly something is happening, quickly

00:31:31 ◼   ► or how slowly something's happening.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Holy freaking crap, this dude was flying doing this repair.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Like, it is clear he has, you know, disassembled and reassembled thousands of HomePods.

00:31:44 ◼   ► It is incredible.

00:31:45 ◼   ► He does like, he does dozens in this video, just in this, that's just per day.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Like, it's, the backlog of HomePods is incredible.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Like, and the other fun thing, if you watch it at 1X, is to see exactly how painful it is

00:31:59 ◼   ► to open a first-gen HomePod, because he knows how to do it.

00:32:03 ◼   ► He's like, this is the best case scenario.

00:32:04 ◼   ► An expert doing it has done this so many times, and it still looks incredibly painful.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Like, are you breaking it?

00:32:09 ◼   ► Is that how you're supposed to do it?

00:32:11 ◼   ► Is that really the only way?

00:32:12 ◼   ► And it's like, yep.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Anyway, so his workstation is extremely dingy and scary-looking, considering that his dozens

00:32:20 ◼   ► of HomePods are going through it per day, and there's, like, you know, burn marks and solder

00:32:23 ◼   ► drips everywhere.

00:32:24 ◼   ► But, you know, he gets the job done.

00:32:26 ◼   ► And the care with which he, you know, de-solders and replaces surface mount components is maybe

00:32:32 ◼   ► not up to the sort of micro-electronic precision that you see from, like, some of the other

00:32:37 ◼   ► YouTubers.

00:32:37 ◼   ► But it's all about turnaround.

00:32:39 ◼   ► You know, you just got to go, go, go.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Bottom line is, he replaced a bunch of components that he knew would be, he doesn't even need to

00:32:45 ◼   ► diagnose this.

00:32:45 ◼   ► He knows, okay, I know what the problem with this one is.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Take these out, take these out.

00:32:48 ◼   ► He also replaced some other stuff of, like, the woofer cone that always fails.

00:32:52 ◼   ► He replaced that with a better one.

00:32:53 ◼   ► He just, and the other thing he has, like, in a checkbox in the form is, like, do you

00:32:57 ◼   ► want me to update your OS?

00:32:58 ◼   ► I'm like, yes, please do that, because one of the problems with my other HomePods is I

00:33:00 ◼   ► can't get something to do an OS update.

00:33:02 ◼   ► So he did everything.

00:33:03 ◼   ► He replaced a bunch of parts, including ones that weren't, that probably still worked, but

00:33:07 ◼   ► they were probably going to eventually fail.

00:33:09 ◼   ► He just replaced those two and sent it back to me.

00:33:12 ◼   ► And it works now.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So it was, like, 80-something dollars, and I basically paid, like, the maximum amount, which

00:33:17 ◼   ► is I'll pay for you to send me a shipping box, you know, because you could pay less

00:33:20 ◼   ► if you want to ship it yourself, and yada, yada.

00:33:22 ◼   ► I didn't want to deal with any of that.

00:33:23 ◼   ► The whole point is, I will give you 80-something dollars.

00:33:26 ◼   ► You take care of this for me.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And he did.

00:33:27 ◼   ► So my HomePod is back.

00:33:29 ◼   ► I'm debating sending the other two or just waiting to see if this one ever dies, because

00:33:32 ◼   ► I only really need one of them.

00:33:33 ◼   ► But yeah, the repair economy is real, even if Apple doesn't want it to be.

00:33:39 ◼   ► 80-something bucks to get a first-gen HomePod back to working order.

00:33:42 ◼   ► That is really incredible.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And about how long did it take from the time that you said, I would like it done, to the time

00:33:47 ◼   ► you unboxed the repaired HomePod?

00:33:49 ◼   ► I didn't time it all that well, because first of all, he had a little bit of backlog.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And second, when he was ready to repair it, I was about to leave on vacation.

00:33:57 ◼   ► So I said, oh, don't even bother.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Like, you can just push mine to the back of the queue, because I don't want him.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Because he repairs, as you saw, he repairs one HomePod in like three and a half minutes.

00:34:07 ◼   ► So he's not like he's going to take all day to do whatever.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And it was like, if you repair it and ship it back to me, no one is home to get it.

00:34:13 ◼   ► So you can just wait until X date when I come home from my vacation and then send it back

00:34:17 ◼   ► then.

00:34:17 ◼   ► And so there was some artificial delay for me being away.

00:34:21 ◼   ► But yeah, it was basically like, how long did it take me to get to the front of his extremely

00:34:25 ◼   ► long repair queue?

00:34:27 ◼   ► But once I got there, it's like, done, ship back the same day.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Like, it's, you know, it's very straightforward.

00:34:31 ◼   ► So I would recommend this or any other service that's like this.

00:34:35 ◼   ► Because look, I sent him a dead piece of electronics that would otherwise just go to like the electronics

00:34:40 ◼   ► recycling center.

00:34:41 ◼   ► And I got by a working HomePod.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fantastic.

00:34:45 ◼   ► And like John said, you know, you can watch the repair of John's actual HomePod and whether

00:34:50 ◼   ► or not you're interested in general in these sorts of things, I think there's something

00:34:54 ◼   ► fun and fascinating to watch when you see someone that has done this so many times and knows exactly

00:35:00 ◼   ► what to do.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I will concur with you that I was not in love with the haphazard nature by which he dropped

00:35:05 ◼   ► those, like, I think it was either three or six little rectangle bits.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I don't know what specifically they were, but, but he basically like put a bunch of wet solder

00:35:12 ◼   ► down, threw them on and then walked away.

00:35:14 ◼   ► And I was like, what?

00:35:15 ◼   ► No, you need to wait.

00:35:17 ◼   ► Make sure it hardens.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And nope, no, none of that.

00:35:19 ◼   ► I feel like he knows what he's doing.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And also, by the way, I think this was actually Marco's HomePod, not mine.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Oh, it was Marco's HomePod.

00:35:25 ◼   ► I talked about before that I couldn't tell, I couldn't tell which one was mine anymore.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So they got mixed up.

00:35:30 ◼   ► But the easy way to tell is Marco had chucked his two in a box haphazardly and sent them

00:35:34 ◼   ► to me.

00:35:34 ◼   ► So his are more scuffed up than mine.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Mine is pristine.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Like most of my things.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Of course.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It was taken, it was carefully taken out of its original box and placed in one place in my house

00:35:42 ◼   ► and never moved until, right?

00:35:44 ◼   ► So I'm pretty sure he actually repaired one of Marco's HomePods.

00:35:46 ◼   ► But anyway, yes.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Most likely.

00:35:48 ◼   ► My HomePod now.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Very cool.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Now, this, again, not required viewing by any stretch, but I do strongly recommend you

00:35:55 ◼   ► watch starting at one hour, 54 minutes and 11 seconds.

00:35:57 ◼   ► It's very, very cool.

00:35:58 ◼   ► All right.

00:36:00 ◼   ► So you had your victory lap.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Now, unfortunately, we're going to have to turn that smile upside down.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Tell me about your latest AppleCare One woes.

00:36:07 ◼   ► You know, when I put this item in here, it was just going to be a little bit of follow-up

00:36:10 ◼   ► on something that I said last week, but it just escalated since then.

00:36:12 ◼   ► So the little bit of follow-up from last week is I was saying that they had pulled off my

00:36:17 ◼   ► wife's phone.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I said, you know, because people have been asking questions like, why is your wife's phone

00:36:21 ◼   ► on there?

00:36:21 ◼   ► That's clearly not your device.

00:36:22 ◼   ► You're not signed into it or whatever.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I'm like, Apple recommended that I add it, but then they threatened to remove it.

00:36:27 ◼   ► And I said, well, I tried one thing, which is I'll sign into the App Store on her phone

00:36:30 ◼   ► with my Apple ID, which I did.

00:36:32 ◼   ► And that seemed to solve the problem, but not for long because eventually they just, they

00:36:36 ◼   ► just yanked her phone off the plan.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And I'm like, fair enough.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Like, I don't, I don't think it should ever have been on the plan.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And yes, it is a problem that they promoted the plan to me by saying, here, you should

00:36:44 ◼   ► use these devices.

00:36:45 ◼   ► And I just, I just took their word for it.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Silly me.

00:36:48 ◼   ► But clearly my wife's phone shouldn't be on the plan because the whole deal with the plan is it

00:36:53 ◼   ► has to be devices that are all on a single Apple ID or Apple account.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And her phone's not on mine.

00:36:57 ◼   ► So, and the store login thing, maybe you warned it off for a little bit, but not for long.

00:37:02 ◼   ► So I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm resigned to that.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Her phone should never have been on.

00:37:05 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:37:06 ◼   ► But of course, after I was resigned and they removed the phone immediately, I got a red

00:37:11 ◼   ► dot on my phone under the Apple care and warranty thing and settings, like a little red badge

00:37:15 ◼   ► saying, Hey, you should add this phone to Apple care one.

00:37:17 ◼   ► Of course, like get, get your, get your stuff together, Apple.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Like you, like I can tell you that you should not be recommending that I am like, it's, I've

00:37:27 ◼   ► never been signed into that anyway.

00:37:29 ◼   ► So that was my, that would have been my follow up.

00:37:31 ◼   ► But when her phone was removed from Apple care one, I had to, hers was one of the original

00:37:36 ◼   ► three devices.

00:37:37 ◼   ► You see, three devices for $19.99 a month or whatever.

00:37:39 ◼   ► So fine.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Hers gets kicked out because it never should have been on there, but I needed to replace it.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Otherwise I'm paying the full three device costs per month for two devices.

00:37:47 ◼   ► That doesn't save me any money.

00:37:48 ◼   ► So I replaced it with the Mac studio.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I have, so it's my phone, my iPad and the Mac studio, which yes, the Mac studio is technically

00:37:55 ◼   ► my wife's computer, but I bought it on my Apple ID.

00:37:59 ◼   ► I have an account on it.

00:38:01 ◼   ► So does everyone in my family.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And as I said in the past, when I complained about this, I'm logged into that computer

00:38:06 ◼   ► with my Apple ID on my account 24 seven, that computer is set not even to go to sleep.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It is on 24 seven.

00:38:13 ◼   ► I'm logged into it 24 seven.

00:38:15 ◼   ► And recently I'm actively using it every single day by sitting in front of it and using the

00:38:20 ◼   ► mouse that because that's essentially my Sequoia test machine while my Mac pro is in Tahoe

00:38:25 ◼   ► when I'm doing like dev work on my stuff, which is happening, you know, every single day.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Anyway, after recording a podcast at like 10 46 PM the other day, I get an email from

00:38:35 ◼   ► Apple that says, Hey, we're about to yank your Mac studio off Apple care one, which I had

00:38:39 ◼   ► gotten before.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And I'm just like, I was just at the end of my rope.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I'm like, stop threatening me for moving my Mac from the thing because the stupid email

00:38:46 ◼   ► is like a new account assigned into your Mac studio to avoid losing Apple care.

00:38:50 ◼   ► But like, what are you talking about?

00:38:52 ◼   ► I did I receive this email when I was logged into that Mac studio with my account?

00:38:57 ◼   ► Yes, I absolutely did.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Like all the other times that this email has come and I was so angry about it and I threw

00:39:03 ◼   ► a big tantrum about it and messed it on.

00:39:05 ◼   ► You did.

00:39:06 ◼   ► It was incredible.

00:39:06 ◼   ► It was just, it was like late at night.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Like, I feel like it's like, like that's the type of email that could like get lost in the

00:39:11 ◼   ► shuffle.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Cause like if it comes in late at night and the next day's email, when I wake up in the

00:39:15 ◼   ► morning, there's a new batch of the next day's email.

00:39:17 ◼   ► I don't see that one or whatever, like, like here's the thing warranty plans are the type

00:39:23 ◼   ► of thing you don't have to be vigilant about.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Like at any, at any time, a 24 hour timer should start, could start without your knowledge and

00:39:31 ◼   ► you have to do some nonsensical BS within that 24 hour window.

00:39:36 ◼   ► Otherwise they'll take away your warranty.

00:39:39 ◼   ► And many people said, sounds like Apple care one sucks.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Why don't you just cancel the whole plan?

00:39:42 ◼   ► Well, the problem with Apple care one is when you sign up for it, they cancel all the warranties

00:39:46 ◼   ► of the devices you put on it.

00:39:48 ◼   ► And Apple care one can be applied to any device that's four years older or less, but regular

00:39:53 ◼   ► Apple care plans.

00:39:54 ◼   ► I believe you still can't take like a three-year-old device and say, Oh, by the way, I don't have

00:39:59 ◼   ► Apple care on this, but now I want to add it.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Now there may be a grace period.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Like I may actually figure this out and try it and say, fine, cancel Apple care one.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Can I get, can I go back to getting plain old Apple care for devices that are, you know,

00:40:12 ◼   ► two or three years old, or can I only re-add Apple care one to them?

00:40:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:16 ◼   ► But you know, my, my complaint about this is like this, this Mac studio is compliant with

00:40:23 ◼   ► all of their rules.

00:40:24 ◼   ► I actually went to their website and looked up their terms and conditions PDF, like not

00:40:27 ◼   ► the little like footnote on the webpage, but let's see, let's see the legalese on this.

00:40:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:32 ◼   ► It's not that much different than the footnote.

00:40:34 ◼   ► So here's what it says.

00:40:35 ◼   ► We'll link to the, uh, the Apple care one terms and conditions.

00:40:37 ◼   ► You have to pick your state if you're in the United States.

00:40:39 ◼   ► So I picked Massachusetts, cause I guess it varies by state, but directly from the Massachusetts

00:40:43 ◼   ► PDF for the terms and conditions, it says, here's some of the relevant passages, all your

00:40:47 ◼   ► covered equipment must be remained signed in and associated with that Apple account during

00:40:51 ◼   ► the plan term.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I'm doing that.

00:40:55 ◼   ► It's signed in with my account with, with the one that purchased the plan like that.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And then later it says, if you sign out of your Apple account connected with this plan

00:41:03 ◼   ► on a covered device, except for AirPods beats and studio display and sign in with a different

00:41:08 ◼   ► Apple account on that covered device, you will have 24 hours to sign back into your Apple

00:41:11 ◼   ► account on that covered device to avoid looting coverage, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:13 ◼   ► So here's my new theory.

00:41:14 ◼   ► My new theory is whoever made this plan doesn't know that you can be signed into a Mac in multiple

00:41:20 ◼   ► accounts.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Which boggles my mind because that's not a new feature of Mac.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It's a thing that, right.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And like the feature is so broken because yeah, all four members of my family are currently signed

00:41:35 ◼   ► and signed into the Mac studio.

00:41:36 ◼   ► All four of us, right.

00:41:37 ◼   ► We're always all signed in.

00:41:38 ◼   ► It's kind of like the communal computer for like doing stuff because we do things on behalf

00:41:42 ◼   ► of our children and my wife is always signed into it.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I'm always signed into it.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:45 ◼   ► But, you know, so I don't know how they couldn't understand this, but that's my new theory.

00:41:51 ◼   ► I will eventually call Apple support and dedicate an entire day to essentially saying I don't

00:41:58 ◼   ► I do have a problem.

00:41:59 ◼   ► I don't expect you to solve it.

00:42:00 ◼   ► I just want you to convey like pass up the chain.

00:42:02 ◼   ► Max can have more than one person signed in.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And so that was yesterday.

00:42:06 ◼   ► That was like last night when I ranted about this.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I'm like at the end of my rope, a warranty is exactly the type of thing that should be like

00:42:11 ◼   ► secure and you don't have to worry about.

00:42:13 ◼   ► You should just pay and it should just be ready to go.

00:42:15 ◼   ► It shouldn't be something you have to be ever vigilant about.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:17 ◼   ► And their thing is just broken.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It just doesn't work right.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And then today, just before the show, I got the same freaking email again.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And people are asking like, will they yank it off your plan?

00:42:26 ◼   ► Yes, they absolutely will.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I've tested this.

00:42:27 ◼   ► If you don't do anything, they will yank it off and give you a little refund and then

00:42:30 ◼   ► tell you to put it back on, which I have done.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:32 ◼   ► So they will yank it off.

00:42:34 ◼   ► And how do I fix it?

00:42:35 ◼   ► So they don't.

00:42:36 ◼   ► What I do is I just go to my account that's already like I unlock the computer and see

00:42:41 ◼   ► before me my account that has logged into my Apple ID and is always there and always

00:42:46 ◼   ► on.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And I log out and back in.

00:42:47 ◼   ► That's how I fix.

00:42:49 ◼   ► That's how I fix it.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Like I'm already logged in.

00:42:52 ◼   ► I log out and I log back in and then it fixes it.

00:42:54 ◼   ► And then like the little orange text that says this is about true.

00:42:57 ◼   ► It disappears from my phone.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Like at least they don't.

00:42:59 ◼   ► They never tell you this, by the way.

00:43:00 ◼   ► There's never some email that says, yes, you've satisfied it.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Don't worry, your 24 hour timer has stopped.

00:43:04 ◼   ► The only way I can tell is if I go to the warranty section on my phone and look for the little

00:43:08 ◼   ► orange text underneath it.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So, yeah, like and and I think the thing that triggered the email tonight was the what is

00:43:16 ◼   ► it?

00:43:17 ◼   ► The let me look it up.

00:43:19 ◼   ► The Sequoia 15.6.1 update, which had security fixes.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I updated the Mac Studio from 15.6 to 15.6.1.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And when I updated it, everybody logged out because the machine had to restart.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And when it booted back up, I signed into my account first intentionally.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Did that help?

00:43:38 ◼   ► No.

00:43:38 ◼   ► A couple hours later, email that says a new Apple account to sign into your Mac Studio to

00:43:44 ◼   ► avoid losing Apple Care One coverage, you must sign into the Mac Studio, which I was already

00:43:47 ◼   ► signed into.

00:43:48 ◼   ► It's just it's it's killing me.

00:43:50 ◼   ► So this this this thing is so badly implemented.

00:43:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:43:54 ◼   ► So it's badly conceived because, as I said, confining Apple Care One to a single Apple

00:43:58 ◼   ► account is dumb, but whatever.

00:44:00 ◼   ► But it doesn't even do that correctly.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And I guess I mean, I've been warning people off saying don't do this because it's more

00:44:07 ◼   ► headache than it's worth.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Maybe if you don't have a Mac or you don't sign into your Mac with more than one account

00:44:11 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:44:12 ◼   ► But like, boy, how terribly botched of this.

00:44:14 ◼   ► So I'm I got to figure what to do.

00:44:16 ◼   ► I should probably cancel the thing and then just like complain on support until they restore

00:44:19 ◼   ► my old support things or whatever, but it's a mess.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I'm very upset about it.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And Apple Care One is the worst Apple thing that I have paid for in a long time.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And you've owned Mac Pros.

00:44:32 ◼   ► They're great.

00:44:34 ◼   ► They're great.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I'm kidding.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I shouldn't poke the bear.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I'm sorry, John.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I'm kind of glad my Mac Pro has been spared from this drama because it's too old.

00:44:41 ◼   ► That's very true.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Now, I don't take joy in your frustration.

00:44:46 ◼   ► However, seeing you lose your shit on Mastodon was incredible.

00:44:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:53 ◼   ► I don't know what pushed me.

00:44:53 ◼   ► It's just it's just the fact that it's a warranty.

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's supposed to be like so boring.

00:44:56 ◼   ► It's like insurance.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And why?

00:44:58 ◼   ► Why is insurance constantly threatening to take away your insurance unless you do something

00:45:02 ◼   ► dumb that you shouldn't have to do?

00:45:04 ◼   ► This is the worst idea ever.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Who came up with this?

00:45:08 ◼   ► Like what only time insurance companies are constantly trying to boot you off is if you're

00:45:13 ◼   ► like a higher risk, like Casey's keep shattering his phone or something like that.

00:45:15 ◼   ► All right.

00:45:16 ◼   ► You get into an accident.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Your car insurance drops you.

00:45:18 ◼   ► But this is like you get car insurance.

00:45:21 ◼   ► You never drive your car like you don't get any accidents.

00:45:24 ◼   ► You make never make any claims.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And at any point, like on a daily basis, they send you a threatening letter that says, hey,

00:45:30 ◼   ► if you don't, you know, switch your windshield wipers once, you'll lose insurance on your

00:45:34 ◼   ► car in 24 hours.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Like, why?

00:45:36 ◼   ► What?

00:45:36 ◼   ► Don't you want my money?

00:45:37 ◼   ► I'm trying to pay you monthly.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I feel your pain.

00:45:41 ◼   ► However, it was really something to see you go this this ballistic on something.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I'm so mad.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I think it was because it was at the end of a podcast.

00:45:49 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it's night.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I finished the podcast.

00:45:51 ◼   ► It's late at night.

00:45:51 ◼   ► I'm ready to go to bed.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Oh, but before you go to bed, here's a threat from Apple that you got to deal with.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And again, I got the same threat the next night.

00:45:59 ◼   ► So I think this is just going to be every day, maybe every day.

00:46:01 ◼   ► If I if like even maybe it's fast user switching, because if I'm logged in and my wife sits

00:46:06 ◼   ► down and the computer is locked, she just, you know, hits escape and then clicks on her

00:46:10 ◼   ► account and logs.

00:46:12 ◼   ► She's already logged in, but she's basically just switching to her account.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:14 ◼   ► We're all logged in all the time.

00:46:15 ◼   ► When she switches to her account, does does that trigger it?

00:46:18 ◼   ► Like, I'm just going to get this threat every day.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I guess I can't leave the Mac studio.

00:46:22 ◼   ► I have to stay here every day and log out of my account and back in to satisfy this stupid

00:46:26 ◼   ► thing.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I don't think anybody is that Apple who knows that Mac multi-user support exists anymore.

00:46:31 ◼   ► And, you know, it's one of those problems like the people who, you know, work on Apple

00:46:36 ◼   ► features like and this is the kind of thing like this is not, you know, you're talking

00:46:39 ◼   ► about adding, you know, a kind of a brand new kind of obscure kind of fancy warranty plan

00:46:46 ◼   ► to a Mac.

00:46:48 ◼   ► So this is already kind of like off the beaten path a little bit.

00:46:50 ◼   ► This is not like the next version of iOS, you know, it's, which itself has problems.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple care for Macs is off the beaten path, but go on.

00:46:58 ◼   ► This isn't going to get like the maximum amount of QA in the company.

00:47:01 ◼   ► They're too busy with the redesign.

00:47:03 ◼   ► They shouldn't have shipped this year.

00:47:04 ◼   ► What you're talking about is a problem that none of those people who actually work on this

00:47:08 ◼   ► would really face because Apple programmers and like Apple managers and stuff don't have

00:47:17 ◼   ► scarcity as a factor in their Macs.

00:47:20 ◼   ► They don't know a world where people might share a Mac the same way that Apple's software

00:47:27 ◼   ► tends not to deal very well with small amounts of disk space because Apple people can afford

00:47:33 ◼   ► or have access to larger disks than, than what many people buy.

00:47:37 ◼   ► So that's not a problem they run into very much.

00:47:39 ◼   ► So it doesn't get as much testing.

00:47:41 ◼   ► It doesn't get as much attention.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Multi-user support on the Mac is something that Apple could really make a lot better.

00:47:47 ◼   ► if they wanted to.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And when you do multi-user Macs, you run into a lot of problems, a lot of little bugs in

00:47:55 ◼   ► both Apple's stuff and in other people's apps because no one who makes apps for the Mac

00:47:59 ◼   ► really does a good job of testing that.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I don't think this is the case.

00:48:01 ◼   ► We've been running multi-users on all of our Macs for the entire existence of Mac OS X,

00:48:06 ◼   ► and it's been fine.

00:48:06 ◼   ► It sounds really fine.

00:48:08 ◼   ► But the two things that I've had was the, when you have hundreds of windows open, it gets

00:48:12 ◼   ► slow and Apple fixed that bug because I reported it and Apple care one.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Those are the, those are the two things that we've had.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Well, it's, it sounds like it's pretty much not super fine right now, but.

00:48:21 ◼   ► Like I said, that's one of the two things.

00:48:22 ◼   ► It was, it was the slow windows and Apple care one, but otherwise like there is no app that

00:48:27 ◼   ► I've seen that misbehaves because we have multiple, like the multi-user system is on Mac OS is

00:48:31 ◼   ► real multi-user system based on the real Unix multi-user system and it works fine.

00:48:35 ◼   ► It always has.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Sounds great.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So when you are off the beaten path, you are, you know, more at risk for things like this,

00:48:43 ◼   ► like more at risk for bugs and problems and everything.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Multi-user support on the Mac has now reached that point where like you are, you are now out of the

00:48:51 ◼   ► mainstream, you are off the beaten path, you are, you're going to have periodic problems like this.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And it's not, this is not a good answer, but I think this is the answer, which is Apple launched

00:49:02 ◼   ► a system like this that did not consider multi-user Macs at all because they

00:49:06 ◼   ► don't think that much about it.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:08 ◼   ► I'll try to give the feedback when I talk to them on support.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't think there'll be anything they can do to help me.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I'll just have to endure this or cancel the plan or whatever.

00:49:14 ◼   ► But I want to say like, can, is there some way we can convey to the people who created this plan

00:49:18 ◼   ► that, uh, the two things, one, that the plan is dumb as conceived, but two,

00:49:22 ◼   ► have the plan as conceived is implemented incorrectly.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And I think they will probably be able to fix this with updates, but I don't think it's going to be

00:49:31 ◼   ► top priority, like, especially heading into a fall season.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I don't know if this is one of those things that's ever going to get fixed.

00:49:38 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:49:38 ◼   ► Like it's for the reasons that you stated, like, it just seems like one of those things

00:49:42 ◼   ► that'll be like this, the problem you are describing affects so few people, nobody cares.

00:49:46 ◼   ► So I don't, and I'm just, and again, I'm just guessing at the, at the, what the problem

00:49:51 ◼   ► is based on like what I know of people talking to me on Mastodon who are and aren't having

00:49:56 ◼   ► the problem and my experimental evidence.

00:49:58 ◼   ► I'm still just guessing.

00:49:59 ◼   ► But like, all I, all I can tell them is like, here, here's what the plan says it's supposed

00:50:02 ◼   ► to do and it's not doing it.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And I'm not entirely sure why I have some ideas, but like, you know, just go fix it.

00:50:07 ◼   ► I will work with anyone in Apple who wants to debug this with me and figure out what the

00:50:11 ◼   ► problem is.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Like, whatever, we'll, we can work through it together, but it's, I'm not expecting this

00:50:15 ◼   ► to be fixed in the next five years.

00:50:17 ◼   ► I'm guessing it gets fixed in one year.

00:50:19 ◼   ► I'm guessing like with next fall's OSs, it'll be fixed.

00:50:21 ◼   ► But I think, I think you will have a year to wait.

00:50:23 ◼   ► All right.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Well, we'll see.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Anyway, I will, I will look into, Hey, if I cancel these plans, can I get warranty stuff

00:50:28 ◼   ► back on the, on, on these devices?

00:50:30 ◼   ► Cause they're all so old, right?

00:50:31 ◼   ► And maybe there's a grace period.

00:50:33 ◼   ► As soon as you cancel AppleCare, you can start a new one or something like that.

00:50:35 ◼   ► So I'll figure it out.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's definitely going to be a phone call with support for a while for that one.

00:50:39 ◼   ► I bet.

00:50:40 ◼   ► I know.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Like just imagine trying to explain this.

00:50:42 ◼   ► It's just, it's, I'm tired of even thinking about it.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Well, Godspeed, John, cause that is not going to be fun.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Not at all.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And again, and I do think it's, you know, for, to kind of generalize the lessons here,

00:50:54 ◼   ► I think this is one of the situations where like, this is kind of a warning sign of like,

00:51:00 ◼   ► or a warning, what are those warning stories called?

00:51:02 ◼   ► My brain is melted.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Cautionary tale.

00:51:04 ◼   ► There you go.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I didn't know where you were going with that.

00:51:07 ◼   ► That's exactly what I was thinking.

00:51:08 ◼   ► I also apparently have a melted brain.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Okay.

00:51:09 ◼   ► So it's a warning story that like, you know, it's when, when you are off the beaten path,

00:51:15 ◼   ► again, problems like this can arise.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And over time, you know, things that maybe could have worked at one time or worked okay,

00:51:22 ◼   ► start to work worse as they get, you know, further into the, you know, the, the lesser

00:51:27 ◼   ► used options or configuration.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So one, one example is like, if you relocate your home directory on the Mac, like you can

00:51:35 ◼   ► do that.

00:51:36 ◼   ► You can even, I think you can be even put on an external drive.

00:51:39 ◼   ► This is not a good idea.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And a lot of things break if you do, but you can, you know, like, or you can start playing

00:51:46 ◼   ► Simlink tricks and stuff like that.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Or like, you know, Hey, if you want Dropbox to sync some other folder, like you can play

00:51:51 ◼   ► a Simlink trick and kind of like, it kind of works or it might work briefly, but you know,

00:51:56 ◼   ► you're kind of signing up for bugs and problems.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Now, multi-user Mac configurations are now that class of risk.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Again, we're going to push back pretty hard against using multiple user support in MacOS

00:52:11 ◼   ► versus changing where your home directory is with Simlinks.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Those are two very, one is a hundred percent supported, used by millions of people every

00:52:19 ◼   ► day.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And the other one is a thing that might work if you figure out how to hack it.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I take your point, Marco, but I think John's right that this is a false equivalence, but it's

00:52:28 ◼   ► certainly, as we've said many times in this program, I think there's something to the theory

00:52:32 ◼   ► that if this is something Apple people do, then it will work.

00:52:36 ◼   ► See for the, you know, the classic example of, oh, Maps has always been great in Silicon

00:52:41 ◼   ► Valley.

00:52:42 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:52:43 ◼   ► It's always been great.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Whereas Maps, you know, on the East coast was not great for a long time.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And I think this is another example in, or I think this very well could be another example

00:52:52 ◼   ► where who at Apple doesn't have a Mac per person in their lives, much less their households.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And one of you said this earlier, you know, it's not a concern that they have and thus

00:53:02 ◼   ► it's not something that they tested.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I mean, this is still a piss poor experience for you, John, and I feel awful for you, but

00:53:07 ◼   ► ultimately I think this is, uh, this very well could be a lack of dog food.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I mean, it is, it is a less commonly used feature than the other case, which is not to do

00:53:17 ◼   ► this, but I, it's just so supported and has been for so long.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And as like, there's, there's really no excuse for this.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And really the other pushback I have on this whole feature is what I want to tell the people

00:53:27 ◼   ► like talking about product sense and product design.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Don't design a warranty system called, you know, Apple care one that is confined to a

00:53:34 ◼   ► single Apple account.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Like it doesn't make any sense except for as like they've decided they could.

00:53:38 ◼   ► It's right there in the name, John.

00:53:39 ◼   ► It only supports Macs with one user account on them.

00:53:42 ◼   ► They couldn't afford to do it because like if families were allowed to, they would lose too

00:53:46 ◼   ► much money.

00:53:47 ◼   ► But again, that's one of the reasons, even though I'm sometimes an early adopter, sometimes

00:53:50 ◼   ► not.

00:53:51 ◼   ► One of the reasons I jumped on board with this is that the come on was very compelling, which

00:53:54 ◼   ► is like, Hey, save $18 a month.

00:53:56 ◼   ► I'm like, yes, please.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Like it was going to save me money.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Uh, and technically it still is saving me some amount of money, although no longer $18.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Um, although it might be close because the Mac studio is a pretty expensive computer, putting

00:54:07 ◼   ► expensive, uh, hardware on Apple care one saves you more money than putting cheap hardware

00:54:12 ◼   ► on and putting really cheap hardware loses you money.

00:54:14 ◼   ► But anyway, um, it's just, you know, it's an ill-conceived thing.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It's a poorly conceived product.

00:54:19 ◼   ► This is the wrong product offering that by the way, also doesn't work.

00:54:22 ◼   ► But even if it did work, it would still be the wrong design choice for this.

00:54:27 ◼   ► They should adjust it.

00:54:28 ◼   ► So they still make money, uh, but allow it to be used across families.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Like that's, that's the no brainer thing.

00:54:33 ◼   ► And it should never like save yourself from work.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Apple don't have any mechanism whatsoever to try to figure out if a device should be yanked

00:54:41 ◼   ► off.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Just don't do it.

00:54:42 ◼   ► You don't have that for regular Apple care.

00:54:43 ◼   ► It's tied to the serial number.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So long as someone pays the bills, that serial number is covered.

00:54:47 ◼   ► That's all you should care about Apple.

00:54:48 ◼   ► All right, let's do some topics.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And there's some breaking news from, I think it was last week that the blood oxygen sensor

00:54:58 ◼   ► for Apple watches sold in the U S recently is sort of back.

00:55:02 ◼   ► So reading from Apple's newsroom post, Apple will introduce a redesigned blood oxygen feature

00:55:07 ◼   ► for some Apple watch series nine series 10 and Apple watch ultra two users through an iPhone

00:55:11 ◼   ► and Apple watch software update coming what was later today, which was August 14th.

00:55:18 ◼   ► This update was enabled by a recent U S customs ruling.

00:55:21 ◼   ► So jumping to Gruber's reaction, what this workaround does is process and display the blood oxygen

00:55:28 ◼   ► sensor data on your watches paired iPhone rather than on the watch itself.

00:55:31 ◼   ► That apparently is what the new U S customs ruling holds does not violate Massimo's patent.

00:55:36 ◼   ► No processing of the sensor data on the watch and no display of the results on the watch.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Then reading from Victoria's song of the verge, this redesign only covers Apple watches sold

00:55:45 ◼   ► after January 17, 2024.

00:55:46 ◼   ► Once the ITC import ban took full effect, it doesn't impact models sold before that date

00:55:52 ◼   ► or watches sold outside the U S all of which still have the original blood oxygen feature.

00:55:56 ◼   ► You can tell if you have a covered model by checking if the serial number ends with a LW slash

00:56:00 ◼   ► a to get the redesign feature.

00:56:03 ◼   ► People with the series nine 10 and ultra two watches will have to update their devices to watch

00:56:06 ◼   ► OS 11.6.1 and their iPhones to iOS 18.6.1 coming back to Gruber after the iOS 18.6.1 and watch

00:56:15 ◼   ► OS 11.6.1 software updates, the iPhone and Apple watch need to download an over the air asset to

00:56:20 ◼   ► enable the redesigned blood oxygen feature.

00:56:22 ◼   ► This apparently may take up to 24 hours until the asset downloads until the asset download

00:56:27 ◼   ► happens.

00:56:27 ◼   ► The blood oxygen app on your Apple watch will say the blood oxygen app is no longer available

00:56:31 ◼   ► to jumpstart the download users can open the health app on their phone and the ECG app on their

00:56:36 ◼   ► Apple watch.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Just opening the ECG app is enough to trigger the asset download needed by the blood oxygen

00:56:42 ◼   ► app.

00:56:42 ◼   ► What a weird way this has gone.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Like we've been talking about this patent fight and then we say like, well, it looks like

00:56:47 ◼   ► they can't get around it.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Apple should just settle.

00:56:49 ◼   ► But, uh, somehow quote, they're, they've been giving this out of like, well, if you do this

00:56:56 ◼   ► thing in this way, technically it won't violate the patents.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And I think the patents expire in like 2028 or something.

00:57:02 ◼   ► So now it just seems like Apple's going to wait it out because the way of doing it, like,

00:57:06 ◼   ► okay, well you can do stuff on your watch, but you can't look at the results except on

00:57:11 ◼   ► your phone.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And the phone is technically the thing doing the analyzing.

00:57:13 ◼   ► I mean, that's the reason number a million why patents are dumb.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Uh, like it's, it's, this is all a, uh, an unfortunate situation, but it's an unfortunate

00:57:22 ◼   ► situation that Apple has been very typically, uh, very typical of them stubborn about by saying,

00:57:28 ◼   ► we're just, we're just gonna not, you know, not remove the feature.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Like we'll, we will, we, you think we won't remove a feature from the Apple watch for people

00:57:35 ◼   ► in the U S we'll do it, but we're not paying you any money, Mossimos.

00:57:37 ◼   ► We hate you so much.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And so now they found a way around it possibly because of their bribery of our terrible government.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:57:44 ◼   ► Uh, either way, this is, I guess it's better for people who bought the watch and hadn't had

00:57:49 ◼   ► the feature.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Now they have the feature in a not so great version.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And by 2028, this will all be behind us.

00:57:54 ◼   ► but this is a strange ending to, uh, uh, a long running saga with Apple and their watches.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Apple is very cheap and very patient.

00:58:05 ◼   ► So I am not surprised to see this, this kind of stubborn.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:12 ◼   ► So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's an interesting fix or workaround, I guess.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:18 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, if Apple had never gotten this fix and just had not been able to the future,

00:58:22 ◼   ► I think they still would have waited it out.

00:58:24 ◼   ► Like, it seems like the, it just, at this point they were resigned.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Like, we're just, we're going to wait till 2028.

00:58:28 ◼   ► And the fact that they got this out, however they got it, there's like, oh, bonus.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Actually, we can give it back to our customers.

00:58:33 ◼   ► But even if they didn't, they had shown that like, we're just never going to pay you.

00:58:37 ◼   ► We're never going to settle.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Like, we're just going to wait.

00:58:38 ◼   ► It's weird, but I mean, I guess, I guess at least Apple got what they wanted.

00:58:44 ◼   ► I feel bad for the Massimo people, assuming that there's more to this, like Gruber's post at

00:58:49 ◼   ► one point, basically all but said that he thinks they're patent trolls.

00:58:52 ◼   ► And I don't know one way or the other, but I feel bad for them if they're more than patent

00:58:56 ◼   ► trolls.

00:58:56 ◼   ► But if they are patent trolls, then screw them.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Well, I mean, like, here's the thing.

00:58:59 ◼   ► Like, I disagree with the entire concept of patents, as we've discussed in the past.

00:59:02 ◼   ► But Apple has to operate within the system which has patents.

00:59:07 ◼   ► And so that's the choice before them.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Massimo is not entitled to the money from Apple to license this patent if Apple doesn't want

00:59:13 ◼   ► to license it.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They sued.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They won.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Massimo's reward is Apple's not allowed to do this in the US.

00:59:18 ◼   ► You won.

00:59:19 ◼   ► And what did Massimo do with that?

00:59:21 ◼   ► Did they take advantage of it by deploying their own products that they made money from?

00:59:25 ◼   ► Like, that's not Apple's problem to do, right?

00:59:26 ◼   ► So, like, I think it's terrible, but it is the system that we have.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And so this is one way that can turn out where there's no licensing.

00:59:36 ◼   ► There's no, like, it's just one party waits out the other.

00:59:39 ◼   ► And, yeah, sometimes people, sometimes companies just don't get along.

00:59:42 ◼   ► And I don't think, like, whether or not Massimo is a patent troll, they certainly didn't reap

00:59:47 ◼   ► any massive reward from winning this case against Apple.

00:59:49 ◼   ► I think I saw some report about how much money Massimo has spent on this lawsuit.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And it's, like, hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I do wonder if that was the correct choice for them.

00:59:59 ◼   ► There's another terrible thing about our system that even if you have a patent in our stupid

01:00:02 ◼   ► system and it's valid and you successfully deploy it against a big company like Apple,

01:00:07 ◼   ► doing so will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars and you may get nothing out of it

01:00:10 ◼   ► anyway, except for the satisfaction of defeating Apple in court.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I will say, too, like, I don't think they're a patent troll at all.

01:00:17 ◼   ► You know, the idea of a patent troll is not a company that sues over patent infringement.

01:00:22 ◼   ► That's, patent trolls do that, but not all companies that do that are patent trolls.

01:00:26 ◼   ► A patent troll is a company that doesn't actually really make anything, that basically buys up

01:00:32 ◼   ► patents for the sole purpose of suing.

01:00:35 ◼   ► And usually it's, like, historically the way that term has been used, it's, like, really

01:00:40 ◼   ► obvious, usually software patents, because software patents are even more dysfunctional

01:00:46 ◼   ► than other kinds of patents, which is really impressive because I think, like, John, I think

01:00:50 ◼   ► the entire patent system is incredibly dysfunctional.

01:00:52 ◼   ► And it is my opinion that no patents should exist.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Yes, I'm also even including, you know, prescription drug patents.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I don't think any patent should exist because I think the net harm they do to the world is

01:01:04 ◼   ► much greater than the net benefit they bring to the world.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And the entire patent system is based upon a fallacy that ignores things like principles

01:01:12 ◼   ► of simultaneous invention.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Or, you know, it's kind of based on this fantasy that we have these, like, individual inventors

01:01:18 ◼   ► in a garage somewhere.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Like, and that's not really the truth at all for almost any patents.

01:01:22 ◼   ► But anyway, Massimo's a product company.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Like, they're really big in healthcare.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Like, they have a lot of presence in healthcare stuff.

01:01:29 ◼   ► And so this was not a patent troll.

01:01:33 ◼   ► This was a legitimate patent lawsuit.

01:01:36 ◼   ► And I think if the patent system is deemed to need to exist, this was probably a valid case

01:01:43 ◼   ► to bring.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Apple was bullying them around and saying, no, we're just not going to pay you.

01:01:48 ◼   ► And Apple is ultimately going to come out ahead because it doesn't really, you know, Apple

01:01:53 ◼   ► had more leverage.

01:01:53 ◼   ► You know, they didn't need this feature on the Apple Watch.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And now they found a workaround that will probably hold until the patent expires.

01:02:01 ◼   ► But this is not a victory of Apple over, you know, a patent troll.

01:02:06 ◼   ► This is Apple bullying another company because they didn't want to pay.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Like, this actually, if you look at, like, Apple's behavior here, it's awful.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Like, Apple is definitely the bad guy in this story.

01:02:17 ◼   ► No question.

01:02:18 ◼   ► All it took was one gold trinket and a little bit of glass.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I don't know of the details of the case because, as you noted, Margot, a lot of these things,

01:02:27 ◼   ► Apple may feel that, like, that they didn't even know Massimo existed and they just happened

01:02:32 ◼   ► to come up with a similar idea because it's obvious, like, so many patents are.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And the fact they lost the case may, like, they may feel essentially justified in saying,

01:02:40 ◼   ► we didn't take an idea that should have been licensed.

01:02:45 ◼   ► You know, they just beat us to the punch with patenting it because Apple patents everything

01:02:49 ◼   ► as well.

01:02:49 ◼   ► But I don't know enough of the details to know that.

01:02:51 ◼   ► But yeah, I think people call it, think it's a patent troll because even though Massimo does

01:02:54 ◼   ► make things, they don't make, like, a direct Apple Watch competitor.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And sort of the simplified view is like, well, if Apple Watch can't have this feature, then

01:03:02 ◼   ► where is your Apple Watch equivalent of this feature?

01:03:04 ◼   ► And that's just not Massimo's business and their business is lower volume.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And again, the amount of money they've spent on this case is like, like, it doesn't seem

01:03:10 ◼   ► like they, like, the victory for them is basically a legal, a legal concept.

01:03:16 ◼   ► But, like, it hasn't been a boon to their business because they spent all this money on the

01:03:21 ◼   ► case.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It hasn't increased the sales of the things that they have.

01:03:24 ◼   ► They just have this feeling of righteousness, I guess, that they won a case.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But, you know, in the end, like so much things in our legal system, if you're, if the person

01:03:32 ◼   ► you're suing has more money than you and is never going to do the thing you want, which

01:03:36 ◼   ► is to license your patent worth a bunch of that money, then what did you, what did you

01:03:39 ◼   ► gain, right?

01:03:40 ◼   ► Like, you stopped this feature from shipping an Apple Watch as you won the case for, for a

01:03:45 ◼   ► time anyway.

01:03:46 ◼   ► But you didn't get any additional revenue from licensing the patent, and you spent a

01:03:50 ◼   ► huge amount of money for a company that size to win the case.

01:03:54 ◼   ► All right.

01:03:55 ◼   ► So there is a rumor first posted at Macworld that apparently there might be a M5 MacBook Pro

01:04:03 ◼   ► with cellular being tested.

01:04:07 ◼   ► So Felipe Esposito at Macworld writes, internal Apple code seen by Macworld now reveals that

01:04:12 ◼   ► the company has indeed been testing an unreleased MacBook Pro model with an M5 Pro chip and Apple's

01:04:17 ◼   ► first 5G modem.

01:04:19 ◼   ► The code, which also revealed the existence of a new Mac Pro with an M4 Ultra chip, which

01:04:24 ◼   ► nobody cares about, right, John?

01:04:25 ◼   ► Now confirms that the company is at least experimenting with the idea of a MacBook with cellular

01:04:29 ◼   ► connectivity.

01:04:30 ◼   ► This Mac laptop found in the code is powered by the M5 Pro chip, codenamed T6050, which

01:04:36 ◼   ► indicates the upcoming generation of MacBook Pro.

01:04:38 ◼   ► The same code suggests that this could be the first Mac ever to include a Centauri chip, which

01:04:42 ◼   ► is the codename for Apple's 5G modem, also known as the C1, which was introduced earlier

01:04:46 ◼   ► this year with the iPhone 16e.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Oh my gracious, please make this so I can give you all of my money.

01:04:52 ◼   ► All right, so let's just set expectations accordingly.

01:04:55 ◼   ► I don't know if this kind of indication is a sign that Apple is, you know, preparing this

01:05:04 ◼   ► as a launchable product or that this is just like something that they had to build in software

01:05:09 ◼   ► support so that they could start engineering testing to have cellular support in a MacBook

01:05:14 ◼   ► at all.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Earlier rumors from, I believe about six months ago, had suggested that they weren't going

01:05:21 ◼   ► to consider cellular until the second generation cellular modem and the, I believe, the OLED

01:05:27 ◼   ► redesign of the MacBook Pro, which I don't think is slated for another, like, year and

01:05:31 ◼   ► a half or two.

01:05:32 ◼   ► That's the M6 is the OLED one.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Correct.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So I don't think this necessarily contradicts that.

01:05:39 ◼   ► I, so this could just be like, they made this, this configuration supportable by the software

01:05:45 ◼   ► so that they could test it internally.

01:05:47 ◼   ► So that's kind of like, I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much because I've, I've wanted

01:05:52 ◼   ► this for so long.

01:05:53 ◼   ► But it is, either way, it is very promising that like, this seems to be something they are,

01:06:01 ◼   ► they are starting to work on.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Like there, there is a lot more smoke behind this fire than, than I think we had originally

01:06:09 ◼   ► seen.

01:06:10 ◼   ► So that's great.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I cannot wait for this.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And even though I just bought this M4 14x MacBook Pro, I would gladly replace it with another

01:06:21 ◼   ► one if it had cellular because it is just such a difference, like in, in terms of practicality,

01:06:29 ◼   ► usefulness.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Although that being said, I, the timing of this is fantastic.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Ever since I updated to the Tahoe betas on that laptop, it's a lot better at automatically

01:06:41 ◼   ► connecting to tethering than it ever has been.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

01:06:44 ◼   ► I like for the last like few weeks, I've noticed I don't need to go to the menu and select my phone

01:06:50 ◼   ► anymore and it doesn't prompt me anymore.

01:06:52 ◼   ► It just connects to my phone when it can't find Wi-Fi, which is pretty awesome.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Now, my phone is still draining its battery the whole time and heating up like crazy.

01:07:05 ◼   ► And, you know, like it's, I would still rather it be built into the MacBook, but they made

01:07:11 ◼   ► tethering, it's at least it's working now.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Like the, somebody pointed out months ago when we last talked about this, that there was like,

01:07:17 ◼   ► there was that setting somewhere in network settings of like automatically connect to

01:07:20 ◼   ► tethering.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And I remember I tried it and it just didn't work.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Like it just kept prompting me anyway and it just never actually worked.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And I talked about it on the show, but in Tahoe, it seems to be working.

01:07:30 ◼   ► And so maybe this is like a HDMI CEC unicorn kind of thing.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Like maybe I'm just like lucky and knock on all the wood I can find.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Like hopefully this stays this way because it is a lot nicer.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And again, it's not the same as having a built-in, but it gives you a glimpse of what it is like to

01:07:46 ◼   ► have it built in because it is closer to that than, than it not auto-connecting.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And it's glorious.

01:07:53 ◼   ► So I really, I hope, I hope that it continues to work well on my existing laptop until they

01:08:00 ◼   ► make one with it built in.

01:08:01 ◼   ► But when they do make one with a built in, it will be better.

01:08:03 ◼   ► So that's what I was about to ask.

01:08:05 ◼   ► If you, if you could guarantee, you know, if I could wave a magic wand and I could guarantee

01:08:11 ◼   ► that tethering would connect every single time without fail.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Do you think you would still want a MacBook Pro with a cellular chip in it?

01:08:20 ◼   ► It makes it a lot less urgent.

01:08:23 ◼   ► So for like another thing I've noticed, uh, back again, six months ago, whenever, whenever

01:08:27 ◼   ► it was, we talked about this last one thing I complained about on the show was that if say

01:08:32 ◼   ► you were on a train and it went through a tunnel, you lose your signal.

01:08:35 ◼   ► If the tethered phone lost its cell connection and was offline previously, it would cancel

01:08:43 ◼   ► the tethering session on the Mac and it would never reconnect automatically.

01:08:46 ◼   ► So you would, you know, go through your tunnel, phone would drop the connection, the Mac would

01:08:50 ◼   ► drop the connection to the phone, and then it would never, it wouldn't tell you this and

01:08:54 ◼   ► it wouldn't reconnect.

01:08:55 ◼   ► So, you know, five minutes later, you'd be back out in the world, your phone would have

01:08:58 ◼   ► a connection, but your Mac would still be disconnected from the phone.

01:09:01 ◼   ► That seems to have also been fixed.

01:09:05 ◼   ► When the phone loses the cell connection to the network, it no longer drops the tethering

01:09:10 ◼   ► session with the Mac.

01:09:11 ◼   ► So they've done something, they've changed something and they've made it a lot less crappy.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Maybe they've been in there doing a lot of code related to cellular on Mac OS.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

01:09:21 ◼   ► I will say tethering in the last, like tethering in the Tahoe beta has worked better for me than

01:09:27 ◼   ► it ever has.

01:09:28 ◼   ► So it does actually remove some of that urgent, oh, gotta have it, you know, nature of my

01:09:35 ◼   ► desire for MacBooks with tethering, however, or with cellular rather.

01:09:38 ◼   ► However, again, like once I can buy one with it built in, I'm going to there.

01:09:43 ◼   ► That's not a question.

01:09:44 ◼   ► It's just, it's just a matter of, you know, between now and then, which is probably at least

01:09:49 ◼   ► six months to a year away, at least possibly longer.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's less painful now.

01:09:54 ◼   ► That's awesome.

01:09:56 ◼   ► I'm happy to hear that.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Some meta commentary on this.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Felipe Esposito or Felipe Esposito at Macworld.

01:10:02 ◼   ► He's had a bunch of stories that are, they read kind of like Mac rumor stories where there's

01:10:07 ◼   ► like, you know, Apple code seen by Macworld.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Like Macworld didn't used to sort of be on the rumors beat.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Occasionally, maybe they would report on something that someone else.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But this is a sort of direct reporting from Macworld about rumor stuff.

01:10:18 ◼   ► So I keep seeing that name with a lot of this stuff.

01:10:21 ◼   ► I don't know if Macworld is branching out into the rumors world because that stuff gets a lot

01:10:25 ◼   ► of traffic.

01:10:25 ◼   ► But just keep an eye on that.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And on the Mac Pro thing, like this is, these are all existing rumors.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Like, this is not any new news.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Like, look, you got to introduce the machine, Apple.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Like, we could just sit here.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I'm waiting all year for it to see what they're going to do with the Mac Pro.

01:10:38 ◼   ► The rumor is essentially like there's no Ultra Fusion on the M4.

01:10:40 ◼   ► So if there's an M4 Ultra, it's not two of any other M4 6 chips stuck together.

01:10:45 ◼   ► It's its own chip.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Like what?

01:10:47 ◼   ► Like this rumors have been around for ages and ages, but they need to ship a thing.

01:10:51 ◼   ► So I'm like, I'm not really, I'm just waiting.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Like, I need to see what they will actually release.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Not more rumors and part numbers about this is the exact right part numbers.

01:11:00 ◼   ► that should be for an M4 Ultra.

01:11:01 ◼   ► But of course, Apple has directly said that the M4 is never meant to have Ultra Fusion

01:11:05 ◼   ► and yada yada.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Like, so I'm just waiting.

01:11:07 ◼   ► I hope you're waiting.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Put out a new Mac Pro and we'll see what it's like.

01:11:11 ◼   ► So I'm not getting too worked up about it.

01:11:12 ◼   ► But I'm glad it looks like we're getting closer to cellular Macs.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I would definitely choose that over tethering, even if tethering worked perfectly every time.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:20 ◼   ► All right.

01:11:21 ◼   ► The A19 Pro chip could be coming to a Studio Display 2.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Reading now from Mac Rumors.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Yesterday, signs of the second generation Studio Display with the codename J14

01:11:30 ◼   ► A27 were spotted in Apple code.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Now it has emerged that the device will contain the as-yet-unreleased A19 Pro chip.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Rumors suggest that the next generation Studio Display will come out in early 2026,

01:11:41 ◼   ► when we're also expecting new Macs.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Little is known about the new Studio Display,

01:11:44 ◼   ► but it could feature mini-LED backlighting for improved brightness, contrast, and color.

01:11:48 ◼   ► If it didn't, I would be disappointed because it would just be the same as the current one.

01:11:51 ◼   ► But this is a hilarious rumor because the rumor for the low-cost Apple laptop that we talked about all those shows ago

01:11:57 ◼   ► is that it would have an A18 Pro.

01:11:58 ◼   ► So the monitor would have a more powerful SoC than the low-cost laptop that you connect to.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Now, granted, the monitor presumably wouldn't have like a 512 gig SSD in it,

01:12:10 ◼   ► and it doesn't have all the ports or whatever.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Like, I get it.

01:12:12 ◼   ► It's not quite the same thing.

01:12:13 ◼   ► But, like, the current Studio Display has, what, an A13 in it or something?

01:12:16 ◼   ► And we always thought that was weird.

01:12:17 ◼   ► But it's like, well, Apple's got a bunch of those chips laying around.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Might as well use it.

01:12:21 ◼   ► And then that thing was buggy and had all sorts of problems.

01:12:23 ◼   ► So maybe they work that out.

01:12:25 ◼   ► But that's what a world we live in where the monitor, which, God, I hope that, I mean,

01:12:31 ◼   ► the rumor is like, oh, it might be mini-LED.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Like, if it's not, why even bother?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like, if you don't improve, like, they're always so cautious it might actually be better than the current one.

01:12:41 ◼   ► But, oh, you think after six years or whatever it's been, it would be better than the one I replaced?

01:12:46 ◼   ► I would hope so.

01:12:47 ◼   ► There's like a million things they could do to make it better.

01:12:49 ◼   ► But anyway, having an A19 Pro, like, can you offload stuff?

01:12:53 ◼   ► Like, maybe that'll mean it'll be like a smart monitor where, like, the Samsung ones, like, with no Mac attached to it,

01:12:59 ◼   ► it can still do stuff.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Like, with the addition of an SSD, how is that not like an iMac?

01:13:06 ◼   ► Like, it's got a A19 Pro in it.

01:13:09 ◼   ► You're just like, can I just stick some storage here with a Thunderbolt?

01:13:12 ◼   ► I know it's quite the same because, again, of all the security and the boot-up process.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Like, I get it.

01:13:16 ◼   ► But it's just, what a world that we live in.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And obviously, this would probably be way more expensive than a low-cost laptop.

01:13:23 ◼   ► So it's not, although the screen would be substantially larger as well.

01:13:26 ◼   ► But this is just one of the most absurd situations I have ever heard.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And it's, you know, because we talk so much about the Apple Silicon chips.

01:13:35 ◼   ► But as we occasionally note when we talk about these things,

01:13:37 ◼   ► they are pretty much never the most expensive component in any of these systems Mac Pro possibly accepted,

01:13:43 ◼   ► depending on what Apple does.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Like, the screen is the most expensive component, I imagine, in the studio display.

01:13:50 ◼   ► The screen is often one of the most expensive components.

01:13:52 ◼   ► And these SoCs, as amazing as they are, they're fairly small.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And they're not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Like, retail price, if they were selling, like, the Mac Pro chip,

01:14:02 ◼   ► maybe it would be thousands and thousands of dollars.

01:14:04 ◼   ► But, like, to manufacture it, you can kind of know, like, how much does this cost?

01:14:07 ◼   ► It's like, well, here's what TSMCs cost for its highest, you know, for their highest process,

01:14:13 ◼   ► whatever process Apple is using.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Here's how much it costs per, like, you know, area of the die.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And here's how much their weird assembly thing is, where they fuse the parts together and put the RAM on it.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Or, like, you can calculate it, like, what the cost is, plus TSMC's margin.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And it doesn't come out to be more expensive than the screen, in many cases.

01:14:30 ◼   ► But it's so central to the device.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Like, it makes it what it is.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's how fast it can do the stuff you want it to do.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It determines the capabilities.

01:14:38 ◼   ► And, yeah, look at this monitor with a more powerful SoC than Apple's low-cost laptop.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Again, both RuneBird, but I'm watching for that.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's bananas.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I'm curious to see what they do with MonitorStory, because, obviously, y'all's XDRs are positively ancient.

01:14:54 ◼   ► I mean, what was that, like, 2020 or something like that?

01:14:56 ◼   ► 2019.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Was it 2019?

01:14:58 ◼   ► So, I have a 2019 Mac Pro that I bought with the XDR when it was new.

01:15:02 ◼   ► That's why I can't put AppleCare 1 on them, because they're all too old.

01:15:05 ◼   ► But I'll tell you what, the XDR, it is incredibly solid.

01:15:10 ◼   ► I know, I know.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Again, everyone's problems they have with studio displays up front.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Like, I haven't heard about them recently.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I assume they maybe fixed.

01:15:15 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:15:16 ◼   ► They got most of the stuff worked out, but it is still weird that you have to do, basically, a software update on your monitor.

01:15:21 ◼   ► I mean, I guess there's firmware updates for the XDR, too, but it's just like, yeah.

01:15:24 ◼   ► It's a different world where you're running a full Apple OS versus whatever weird firmware that the XDR is running.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, like, the XDR is great.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I mean, it is a little long in the tooth, and, like, there are certain parts of it that I would love to see updated.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Obviously, like, number one would be, like, you know, maybe get rid of those dim edges on the outside and maybe more dimming zones and maybe 120 hertz.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Like, I think those would be, like, my top three.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Those are the ones.

01:15:52 ◼   ► You got them.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:53 ◼   ► But, like, the, and, of course, you know, can it not be $5,000 plus a Sanford and $1,000?

01:15:57 ◼   ► Nope, sorry.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Now you're asking too much.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Like, it's, it is a great monitor in all other respects.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And for it being six years old and still being amazing and still having almost no peer, like, we talked a little bit about, like, there's some recent ones just coming out now from other companies that, you know, match the resolution and some of the specs.

01:16:20 ◼   ► But not Apple's design sense, obviously, because they just, you know.

01:16:23 ◼   ► And certainly not matching Apple's hardware.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But, yeah, it is unique in that way.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And you pay for it.

01:16:28 ◼   ► But, like, being a thing that has a pretty okay screen in it, even all things considered, and with, you know, an exquisitely designed, horrendously expensive Apple matching case.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah, like, it is a very good product.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Like, there's, it doesn't leave me wanting much.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And, in fact, selfishly, I kind of, I'm kind of waiting, you know, I'm like, well, I kind of want to get my $6,000 worth out of this.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I don't want it to be replaced too soon.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I'm, to be clear, if and when I buy a new computer, I'm not buying the monitor.

01:16:55 ◼   ► I'm using this computer until, using this monitor until it dies.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Because I'm, I'm perfectly satisfied with it.

01:17:00 ◼   ► It does everything I need it to do.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It's flaws accepted.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I'm, I would love, you know, to not have the vignetting around the edge to have 120 hertz.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And to have more dimming zones and yada yada.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But, like, I don't need any of that to do what I'm doing.

01:17:12 ◼   ► So, I'm, I'm using this computer until it dies from the vertical red line that has been haunting underscore.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Yep.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Now, I, I don't know if there was, if there were to be a studio display to, because I have no self-control, I'd probably get one.

01:17:28 ◼   ► But, if you recall, my setup right now is a LG 5K on my left, LG 5K on my right, and a studio display dead center.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And, the difference between the two, or the three, I guess I should say, you would think that it would be minor.

01:17:40 ◼   ► But, oh, no.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Even on these amounts, where that awful stand from the studio display is irrelevant, the display quality is very, very, very different.

01:17:49 ◼   ► It's quite a bit different.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And so, I would love a studio display, too, I think.

01:17:53 ◼   ► But, depending on how hilariously expensive it is, I may or may not end up getting one.

01:17:57 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like they should be able to match the close to the current price of the studio display, because that A19 is not going to add that much to the price.

01:18:03 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it would, like, be inflation-adjusted similar to what it is, because you can get a mini-LED backlit 120 hertz screen for enough money to fit comfortably within the ridiculous margins of the studio display.

01:18:16 ◼   ► So, I hope the price doesn't get inflated by too much.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Maybe let's just say, just the Apple standard, oh, it costs $100 more than it used to.

01:18:23 ◼   ► And I think you would still end up buying one, and I think you'd be happy with it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Why aren't they going OLED yet?

01:18:28 ◼   ► Is it not ready at those sizes?

01:18:31 ◼   ► I mean, it's been a while, right?

01:18:33 ◼   ► There are rumors of that sometimes, but the OLED burn-in issue is still a thing.

01:18:39 ◼   ► There are, I mean, I'm looking at them for my PlayStation 5, that you can get a 27-inch 4K QD OLED or tandem OLED gaming monitor that has high refresh.

01:18:49 ◼   ► They're great, right?

01:18:51 ◼   ► But burn-in is still a thing, and especially for, like, desktop things with lots of windows on it.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like, what is it?

01:18:57 ◼   ► The monitor's on box has been doing, like, a year-long test on, like, I think it's an Alienware QD OLED 27-inch 4K thing using windows on it, just like a regular computer.

01:19:07 ◼   ► It's got a little bit of burn-in.

01:19:09 ◼   ► You can detect it.

01:19:09 ◼   ► It's not a problem with mini-LED, so I wonder if Apple is a little shy about that.

01:19:15 ◼   ► I mean, they're going to go OLED with the MacBook Pros in the M6 generation, so maybe that'll be the testbed.

01:19:21 ◼   ► But I don't think there are any 32-inch 6K OLEDs from anybody, anywhere, ever.

01:19:27 ◼   ► But for 4K, I'm not sure about 5K, but right now you can get 4K and 1440 OLEDs that are amazing.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Apple tends not to be an early adopter in display tech, so I think we really have to wait for the current refresh and then wait another seven years or whatever the normal Apple time is.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And by then, hopefully, the issues will have been worked out because, you know, again, like, our phones are all OLED.

01:19:52 ◼   ► It's like, well, why is burn-in not a problem on our phones?

01:19:54 ◼   ► I think we've talked about this before.

01:19:55 ◼   ► It's just, like, the screens aren't on as much, the power is lower, the brightness is lower for less time.

01:20:00 ◼   ► But for, like, for desktops that are, you know, just showing static stuff for a long period of time and are on a lot, it's an issue.

01:20:07 ◼   ► In fact, one of the clever features that Asus recently added is essentially a proximity sensor to their monitor.

01:20:12 ◼   ► So when you get up and walk away, it turns the monitor off, and it's just a hardware thing that has nothing to do with the OS.

01:20:16 ◼   ► It's just a monitor hardware feature.

01:20:18 ◼   ► That's to save burn-in.

01:20:19 ◼   ► It's a smart feature.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And, yeah, Apple would probably have to look into something like that if they ever went to OLED on their big monitors with current tech.

01:20:28 ◼   ► All right.

01:20:29 ◼   ► And then we need to talk about gaming on the Mac, which, believe it or not, is a thing.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And apparently, if you're gaming on your MacBook Pro, your game is probably rendering blurry.

01:20:40 ◼   ► John, do you want me to read this?

01:20:41 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about this?

01:20:42 ◼   ► How do you want to proceed?

01:20:42 ◼   ► You can go through it.

01:20:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:20:45 ◼   ► So from Colin Cornaby, they write,

01:20:48 ◼   ► If you game on a MacBook Pro display, your game is probably rendering wrong unless you've adjusted your settings.

01:20:52 ◼   ► If you're a developer building a full-screen game in AppKit or Catalyst, Apple's APIs have some issues you need to be aware of.

01:20:58 ◼   ► When most games start, they ask the system what resolutions are available for the current display and pick the best one.

01:21:03 ◼   ► A Mac app can get a list of suggested output resolutions through the CG Display Copy All Display Modes function.

01:21:08 ◼   ► This worked well for decades on Macs with regular displays, but modern Apple laptops have a notch at the top of the display.

01:21:14 ◼   ► The full-screen area your game runs in is not the same resolution as the screen.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Most games do not account for this problem.

01:21:21 ◼   ► They output frames size for the entire screen instead of the region they can draw to.

01:21:25 ◼   ► This output is height compressed and blurry.

01:21:27 ◼   ► The problem is that the resolutions returned from the CG Display Copy All Display Modes function are mixed in a single list with no built-in way to filter.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Worse yet, most games default to the first resolution on the list.

01:21:39 ◼   ► That happens to be the resolution of the entire display instead of the area under the notch.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Out of the box, most games draw using this squished-down output.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I've submitted the issue described in this post as a blah-blah-blah feedback number, which will be in the show notes.

01:21:51 ◼   ► The issue has been open since September of 2023, which means it's a wee little baby feedback.

01:21:57 ◼   ► It's barely alive at this point.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so just to clarify what they're talking about here is like the game thinks it's going to draw on the whole screen, like basically drawing behind the notch, like the whole resolution of the screen.

01:22:09 ◼   ► But then when it actually does display, it displays in the region below the notch because you don't want your notch interfering with things.

01:22:16 ◼   ► So they're taking the full screen's worth of pixels and just squishing it down a tiny little bit to get under the notch, which is terrible.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Like it's not like non-native or whatever, but you would hope that the game spends the time rendering the pixels at a certain resolution that it would display it at that resolution.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Instead, like squishing it, making things look, I mean, it'll make things look wrong and blurrier and just it's bad.

01:22:39 ◼   ► This reminds me of when I think I had a rant about this on one of my old article blogs or something like Mac games would you'd launch a Mac game, a Mac OS 10 game back in the day, and it would go full screen.

01:22:51 ◼   ► But it wouldn't use the Mac OS APIs for essentially locking the screen like there's an API that said, hey, I'm a game.

01:22:58 ◼   ► I'm about to go full screen.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Give me exclusive control over the screen and then change to whatever res the game is going to be running at and then play the game.

01:23:06 ◼   ► And then when you quit, unlock it.

01:23:08 ◼   ► And the reason you'd want to do that, the reason it was important to me, you'll be shocked to learn, is that if a game didn't do that, it would say, I'm going full screen and my settings are set to, you know, 1024 by 768.

01:23:19 ◼   ► So please go full screen, 1024 by 768.

01:23:22 ◼   ► And every other Mac app that you had running when you launched that game would get a notification that says, hey, FYI, the screen resolution just changed to 1024 by 768.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And Mac OS itself would say, oh, all you other apps just changed to 1024 by 768.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And it would gather all the windows so they fit on screen in 1024 by 768.

01:23:43 ◼   ► So when you quit the game and it turned back to like whatever your, you know, Apple cinema display resolution was, all your windows have been moved and squished into it 1024.

01:23:54 ◼   ► And it drove me bonkers because Apple had an API said, hey, game developers, before you go full screen, call this API.

01:24:00 ◼   ► So we won't tell the whole rest of the system that the resolution has changed because we trust that you're going to change it back before you quit.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Like there'll be, there'll be none the wiser, right?

01:24:07 ◼   ► You're going full screen.

01:24:08 ◼   ► You've blacked out the whole screen.

01:24:09 ◼   ► You've locked the screen.

01:24:12 ◼   ► Don't tell all the other apps that you squished, you know what I mean?

01:24:14 ◼   ► And they made a specific API for this.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And this is one of the frustrations with Mac gaming is that to properly port a game to the Mac or write a game on the Mac, you have to actually understand the platform enough to get basic stuff, right?

01:24:30 ◼   ► Like how do I display full screen in a game on Mac OS?

01:24:34 ◼   ► And the right way to do it was back then to lock the screen.

01:24:36 ◼   ► So you don't destroy the placement of everybody's windows, right?

01:24:39 ◼   ► Even if you're not like a picky window person, like me, people notice when suddenly all their windows that used to be arrayed across their screen are squishing to a little central.

01:24:47 ◼   ► Like imagine if you went to 640 by 40 in the game to get higher frame rates and all your windows are now squishing to 640 by 480.

01:24:52 ◼   ► This is just like that, where it's like Apple's doing all this stuff about the game porting toolkit.

01:24:57 ◼   ► And look at all these AAA games that are coming to the Mac and we're getting all these game developers.

01:25:01 ◼   ► And these games can't be bothered even with Apple's presumably direct support to make sure they're correctly drawing their, you know, correctly sizing and drawing their display to account for the notch.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Again, the notch is not a new thing.

01:25:14 ◼   ► All these games have basically come out on the Mac in the post-notch era.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And so does Apple not care enough to say, hey, we looked at your game and it looks like you're squishing your output to fit under the notch because you're picking the wrong resolution from this thing?

01:25:27 ◼   ► And in this case, it seems like Apple doesn't even have an API that says, or I guess they do.

01:25:31 ◼   ► You can still find essentially the safe area inside or whatever, but it's just so disappointing with all this press and all this technology about gaming on the Mac.

01:25:39 ◼   ► They can't be bothered.

01:25:40 ◼   ► No one, no one in this situation can be bothered to make sure something basic about the games is correct,

01:25:45 ◼   ► which is that they are drawing into the size and area that they think they should be drawing into on Apple's most popular Macs.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Very disappointing.

01:25:53 ◼   ► I like this post from Colin because this is an issue I had never heard of because, again, I don't have a laptop with a notch that I game on or a laptop with a notch at all.

01:26:01 ◼   ► And I don't like the laptop, so this doesn't affect me.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Like every time they show gaming on the Mac, it's like, look at it.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And you can run on your laptop if you don't mind shoddily constructed games that don't correctly render by default.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Oh, and there was a list of affected games.

01:26:18 ◼   ► That's why I saw Shadow of the Tomb Raider was used as an example, which is a game that was poured to the Mac ages ago.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Maybe this predates it, but Colin says Riven defaults to a squash resolution.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Stray, the cool game where you play a cat, defaults to 1728 by 1117, which is not 16 by 10 in a squash.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Control Ultimate Edition.

01:26:36 ◼   ► Colin says Control gets around the issue by just making up its own resolutions.

01:26:39 ◼   ► There are a few 16 by 10 resolutions on the list, but none of them are the actual native resolution of Colin's MacBook Pro.

01:26:45 ◼   ► No Man's Sky defaults to squash, non-1610 resolution.

01:26:48 ◼   ► The resolution pickers lists both safe area and non-safe area resolutions.

01:26:53 ◼   ► So, you know, a lot of these cases, it's just like what it defaults to.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And you can, you know, change the settings to make it not squish.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So it's not like a permanent thing, but it's embarrassing when it's the default.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And then honorable mention for World of Warcraft, which has actually been a pretty good Mac OS citizen for its entire life.

01:27:07 ◼   ► World of Warcraft at first looks wrong, but World of Warcraft is an older game used in legacy Core Graphics Display Services fullscreen API.

01:27:13 ◼   ► That API actually allows World of Warcraft to draw into the notch.

01:27:17 ◼   ► So in this case, the 34 or 56 by 2234 resolution is correct.

01:27:21 ◼   ► So if your game is super old, it has no idea the notch is there.

01:27:23 ◼   ► It uses the old things, but at least it doesn't draw squished.

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01:29:35 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP and let's start with Aaron Bushnell, who writes,

01:29:38 ◼   ► with Apple working on new LLM, AI, and voice technologies, do you think the name Siri will

01:29:43 ◼   ► continue to be used?

01:29:44 ◼   ► Or do you think it will be retired and they'll use a new name after years of Siri disappointment?

01:29:48 ◼   ► This is a really great question because as soon as I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, they should

01:29:53 ◼   ► get rid of Siri if it's actually good now.

01:29:55 ◼   ► But I don't think that's what they would do, but I think it would be a very wise choice

01:30:02 ◼   ► to do it.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Let's start with Marco.

01:30:04 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:30:05 ◼   ► I think they won't, you know, but if they did, I think they would call it just Ask Apple because

01:30:12 ◼   ► that's kind of their direction.

01:30:14 ◼   ► Oh, I hate that, but you're probably right.

01:30:16 ◼   ► And we would sue them, right?

01:30:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Because we invented the entire concept of Ask Something and didn't steal it from another

01:30:21 ◼   ► podcast.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:30:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:25 ◼   ► So I think if they did, if today's Apple, you know, like with moderate, with, you know,

01:30:30 ◼   ► this group of, you know, marketing and decision making people, I think they would just say,

01:30:34 ◼   ► ask like, hey, Apple, what's the answer to this question or whatever?

01:30:37 ◼   ► Like, I think that would be their answer, which I kind of hate, but that is probably what

01:30:42 ◼   ► they would do.

01:30:42 ◼   ► But that being said, I don't think they're going to change it because to change it away

01:30:47 ◼   ► from Siri, like number one, Apple would have to think Siri is unrecoverable.

01:30:52 ◼   ► And I don't think anyone high up at Apple actually realizes how bad Siri is and how bad the Siri

01:31:00 ◼   ► reputation is.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Certainly many of the non-high up people know very well, but I think the people at and near

01:31:07 ◼   ► the very top have convinced themselves that Siri is awesome.

01:31:11 ◼   ► And I don't, I don't think they have the, the self-reflection to really see how bad it

01:31:17 ◼   ► is.

01:31:17 ◼   ► Also, Apple, you know, we said earlier, they're a very patient company.

01:31:22 ◼   ► Apple loves recycling names and using them for a long time.

01:31:27 ◼   ► We have MagSafe.

01:31:29 ◼   ► Like that's one, you know, like we have a lot of, like once Apple comes up with a term and

01:31:34 ◼   ► they market it, they tend to return to it whenever possible.

01:31:38 ◼   ► So even if Siri is damaged now, I can see them, you know, possibly even, oh, hold on.

01:31:44 ◼   ► My phone just woke up.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Thanks.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Thanks for that.

01:31:46 ◼   ► Even if it is considered damaged now, like I can see them, you know, just kind of downplaying

01:31:53 ◼   ► it for like a year or two and then going right back to it again or, or never leaving it in

01:31:57 ◼   ► the first place because Apple loves the names they invest in, you know, and, and they, they

01:32:02 ◼   ► continue to use them as much as they possibly can.

01:32:04 ◼   ► So even, so again, I don't think they're leaving the name Siri, but if they did leave the name

01:32:10 ◼   ► Siri, they would just say Apple because they would want it to stand for Apple intelligence.

01:32:15 ◼   ► And so it would just be, you know, Hey Apple, what, what's the weather tomorrow?

01:32:18 ◼   ► Like that's what it would be.

01:32:19 ◼   ► I agree with you in both in that that's what they would do and I hate it, but do you think

01:32:24 ◼   ► they would do Hey Apple even considering that Hey Google has long been a thing?

01:32:28 ◼   ► Well, it used to be okay Google, which.

01:32:30 ◼   ► No, that's true.

01:32:31 ◼   ► You're right.

01:32:31 ◼   ► It was like, so when, when all of these wake phrases started, they needed to have certain

01:32:36 ◼   ► audio characteristics to make them more easily distinguished from other words and other sounds

01:32:41 ◼   ► and, you know, the, and the, the hardware and the software back, you know, back with Alexa

01:32:46 ◼   ► and the first Google home things like the hardware and software were much simpler and much more

01:32:50 ◼   ► primitive.

01:32:50 ◼   ► So they like certain words and rhythms and sounds and frequencies would work better than others

01:32:56 ◼   ► and would be more easily distinguishable from background, like, you know, from false wake

01:33:00 ◼   ► ups, basically from, from like other sounds and other, and other words as technology has

01:33:04 ◼   ► gotten better and more advanced.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Now I think they have a lot more flexibility in what those words can be.

01:33:10 ◼   ► You wouldn't know it from how my phone just woke up.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Um, but, but they do like over time, we do have, you know, better, better options available

01:33:19 ◼   ► to us.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Um, that's, and like, you know, that, that's why they, they dropped the Hey requirement recently.

01:33:24 ◼   ► Although I'll tell you, if you turn the Hey requirement back on, it reduces

01:33:30 ◼   ► the frequency of miss wake ups.

01:33:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:33 ◼   ► That's why I never turned it off.

01:33:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Um, but anyway, I, I don't think they care that Google was okay.

01:33:40 ◼   ► Google.

01:33:40 ◼   ► And then I, I believe now they're Hey Google.

01:33:42 ◼   ► I don't think they care.

01:33:43 ◼   ► You can do both.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:44 ◼   ► I don't think Apple would, would avoid using the word, you know, Hey Apple or just

01:33:49 ◼   ► Apple.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Like, I don't think they would avoid that for that reason.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:52 ◼   ► I don't think they will because the earlier discussion about Apple stubbornness, like just

01:33:57 ◼   ► because they're just, damn it.

01:33:58 ◼   ► We're going to make Siri good at some point.

01:34:01 ◼   ► Surely.

01:34:01 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:01 ◼   ► Um, there, I thought we had this in fall for next week, but apparently we don't, but there

01:34:06 ◼   ► is actually a story about, um, maybe I just didn't pull out of my stuff.

01:34:09 ◼   ► So maybe I'll spoil it here, but like there was a story this week about, uh, rumors of

01:34:14 ◼   ► a visual redesign for the new Siri because they burned their pretty, pretty cool current

01:34:20 ◼   ► visual redesign for the Siri that wasn't any better.

01:34:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:23 ◼   ► And so they're, they're thinking of having to do a new one.

01:34:25 ◼   ► And that's, that's, I feel like how they're going to, like, there may be like a rebrand,

01:34:29 ◼   ► even if they say like Siri two or Siri, now it's good.

01:34:32 ◼   ► Or like new Siri or next gen Siri or whatever.

01:34:34 ◼   ► Like, but I feel like Siri is going to be in there.

01:34:36 ◼   ► I think they should do like, you know, the whole, uh, I don't know, like, uh, bell Atlantic,

01:34:41 ◼   ► Verizon, AT&T, like the airlines that changed the name, like, uh, uh, Comcast, Xfinity, right?

01:34:48 ◼   ► The, the reputational, uh, associations of Siri are so bad with just regular people justifiably

01:34:57 ◼   ► bad that they should get rid of Siri and pick a new one if, and only if they have an actual

01:35:03 ◼   ► good voice.

01:35:04 ◼   ► Well, that's the thing, right?

01:35:05 ◼   ► It's so clear.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Like they did the visual design, which I think, I think the new one is cool and they wasted

01:35:09 ◼   ► it.

01:35:10 ◼   ► Yep.

01:35:10 ◼   ► Like they just, so like, if that is true, if they come out with a new visual design and

01:35:15 ◼   ► the people who designed the current cool one, they'd be like, oh man, like we, we made this

01:35:20 ◼   ► cool thing.

01:35:21 ◼   ► You just didn't give us a thing to associate it with.

01:35:23 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't think they will change it, but I think they totally should.

01:35:26 ◼   ► And I'm secretly hope that they do.

01:35:28 ◼   ► Rolly C writes, does John have an update on the accessibility feature vehicle motion cues?

01:35:33 ◼   ► Have, have you tried it?

01:35:35 ◼   ► So to recap, I think this was, I was 18, maybe even 17, but recently, uh, there was a thing

01:35:41 ◼   ► you could opt into where, and I think it would try to do it automatically, but you could also

01:35:45 ◼   ► put it in control center where there would be a series of dots predominantly along the side

01:35:50 ◼   ► of the screen, if I recall correctly.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And as the car that you're in or the boat or what have you moves around, those dots would

01:35:57 ◼   ► move in a commensurate way, which allegedly will help keep your inner ear and eyes in sync.

01:36:02 ◼   ► I presume that this didn't work for you, John, because you are, you have more severe motion

01:36:07 ◼   ► sickness than pretty much anyone I know, but tell me what has happened.

01:36:11 ◼   ► I've never tried it.

01:36:13 ◼   ► Um, Oh, come on.

01:36:14 ◼   ► Well, okay.

01:36:15 ◼   ► In John's defense, it was announced, you know, like Apple does those, those big accessibility

01:36:19 ◼   ► feature previews in the spring, but those features often are like months away from shipping.

01:36:24 ◼   ► And so when it was announced, we talked about it, but I don't think it shipped for like

01:36:29 ◼   ► at least three or four months after that.

01:36:31 ◼   ► And so I think we all just forgot about it.

01:36:32 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't forget about it.

01:36:34 ◼   ► And that's not why I didn't try it.

01:36:35 ◼   ► Like, look, I've, I've been, I've been this motion.

01:36:38 ◼   ► I've known that I've been this motion sick since fifth grade.

01:36:40 ◼   ► Um, there's a lot of things early on.

01:36:44 ◼   ► I tried all the various things that you can try.

01:36:47 ◼   ► Granted, they were different back then, but like what I've learned is I've learned what

01:36:51 ◼   ► works for me and what doesn't work for me.

01:36:53 ◼   ► And those dots, like my motion sickness was to just laugh at those dots because they are

01:36:58 ◼   ► insufficient to properly sync up my inner ear and my eyes.

01:37:02 ◼   ► I would, here's the thing.

01:37:03 ◼   ► I would never attempt it because the punishment for finding out that they don't work is so

01:37:09 ◼   ► terrible when I have a known solution, which is do the things I currently do.

01:37:13 ◼   ► Like, you know, make sure you're looking out the front of the car or stare at the horizon

01:37:17 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:37:17 ◼   ► I have known things that I know will work for me.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I would never risk, like, let me see if I can ruin my entire day and puke my brains out

01:37:25 ◼   ► to see if these dots work.

01:37:26 ◼   ► So I don't have anything against the dots.

01:37:28 ◼   ► I'm sure they work for a lot of people.

01:37:29 ◼   ► I just don't expect them to work for me and I don't need them to work for me.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Currently don't need them to work for me because I have other things that I can do to accommodate

01:37:38 ◼   ► this.

01:37:38 ◼   ► The most important being like, don't put yourself in situations where you're getting

01:37:41 ◼   ► motion sick.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Now, if someone said you have to be on a boat, I'm going to puke my brains out anyway.

01:37:45 ◼   ► So of course I'd try the dots then because hell, I'll try anything.

01:37:48 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:37:49 ◼   ► But like, I'm just not going to go on a boat that rocks like that.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:37:54 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:37:54 ◼   ► Like it's so, yeah, I haven't tried them.

01:37:58 ◼   ► I know it's disappointing to some people.

01:37:59 ◼   ► What I have done is heavily promoted these dots to my children because my children insist

01:38:04 ◼   ► on being on their phones or iPads in the back of the car and then complain that they get

01:38:09 ◼   ► motion sick.

01:38:09 ◼   ► I'm like, I know you're on your phone.

01:38:11 ◼   ► You have some of my genes.

01:38:13 ◼   ► I, this is not a surprise to me.

01:38:15 ◼   ► And I'm like, they won't get off their phones.

01:38:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:38:18 ◼   ► So I'm like, try the dots.

01:38:20 ◼   ► And they're like, ah, the dots or whatever.

01:38:21 ◼   ► I'm like, at least like, it's, it's like me on the boat.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Like you're gonna like, apparently you can't stop looking at your phone while we're sitting

01:38:26 ◼   ► in the car and you always complain that you get motion sick.

01:38:28 ◼   ► And the same thing with reading.

01:38:29 ◼   ► They'll read a book.

01:38:30 ◼   ► I'm like, don't try to read.

01:38:31 ◼   ► You're my kids.

01:38:32 ◼   ► Don't try to read a book in the back of the car.

01:38:33 ◼   ► It's not going to work out well for you.

01:38:34 ◼   ► Like, oh, I feel so sick.

01:38:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

01:38:38 ◼   ► I know you've, they're not as bad as me.

01:38:39 ◼   ► Like they're not as bad.

01:38:40 ◼   ► They don't have the problems that I have.

01:38:42 ◼   ► But like all child things, like I've been trying to tell them to use the dots because

01:38:45 ◼   ► I think they're, they're at the level maybe the dots would help them.

01:38:48 ◼   ► The dots are a good idea.

01:38:49 ◼   ► They're, they're sound.

01:38:50 ◼   ► There's a rationale that makes sense and I'm sure they do work for some people, but I'm

01:38:54 ◼   ► just probably never going to try them unless if you see me trying them, you know, everything

01:38:58 ◼   ► else has fallen apart and I'm, I'm completely desperate.

01:39:01 ◼   ► All right.

01:39:02 ◼   ► Well, uh, homework assignment have Tina drive you around.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Cause I want to know if this works.

01:39:07 ◼   ► I've been meaning to ask myself.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Come on.

01:39:10 ◼   ► All right.

01:39:11 ◼   ► So I'll do that.

01:39:11 ◼   ► If you drink some Ipecac.

01:39:12 ◼   ► All right.

01:39:13 ◼   ► I think that's not exactly apples to apples.

01:39:15 ◼   ► It is.

01:39:16 ◼   ► Cause the, the, the, the, the, the failure scenario is the same.

01:39:19 ◼   ► Where's your sense of adventure?

01:39:21 ◼   ► Ellie writes, when you use a trackpad, what method do you use to actually register a click

01:39:25 ◼   ► tapping, clicking with your pointer finger or the old style clicking with the thumb?

01:39:28 ◼   ► I've realized at some point since the introduction of click anywhere trackpads, I've switched

01:39:32 ◼   ► from old style to clicking with my index finger, but I don't know when that happened.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Uh, I'm an old and I'm the only one who regularly, or well, pretty much always uses a trackpad

01:39:40 ◼   ► of the three of us.

01:39:41 ◼   ► And while I will occasionally like click anywhere, 99% of the time I am doing a, uh, doing my

01:39:49 ◼   ► thumb on the bottom of the trackpad click.

01:39:51 ◼   ► And that will probably never stop happening because I'm an old, uh, Marco, you occasionally

01:39:56 ◼   ► use laptops.

01:39:56 ◼   ► So what do you do?

01:39:57 ◼   ► Sometimes I will do the old style.

01:40:00 ◼   ► Like, you know, like what you were just saying, like where the button used to be.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:03 ◼   ► I will, you know, sometimes I'll do that.

01:40:05 ◼   ► Um, usually I'll just click the finger I'm using to move around, which is almost always

01:40:12 ◼   ► my, uh, index finger.

01:40:13 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:40:14 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:40:14 ◼   ► John, uh, I know you hate trackpads and avoid them at all costs.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Do you have any thoughts on this?

01:40:18 ◼   ► So, uh, I, I avoid them, but they still exist and I have to use them as much when I'm fixing

01:40:22 ◼   ► my kids' laptops and stuff.

01:40:24 ◼   ► Or, uh, you know, I, my laptop is another one of my, uh, Tahoe test machines.

01:40:27 ◼   ► So I have an Intel Tahoe machine, an ARM Tahoe machine.

01:40:29 ◼   ► And anyway, um, so I do have to use trackpads.

01:40:32 ◼   ► I hate trackpads.

01:40:33 ◼   ► I'm not my friend.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Um, but when I read this question, like I thought about it for a little bit.

01:40:38 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, we'll put that in like next to whatever.

01:40:39 ◼   ► But then the next time I was using the laptop, I started to pay attention to what I do because

01:40:43 ◼   ► I was like, what do I do?

01:40:45 ◼   ► How do, because, you know, I, I started using trackpads when they had the physical button

01:40:48 ◼   ► at the bottom part of the thing.

01:40:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:50 ◼   ► Um, so I'm like, that must be what I do.

01:40:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:53 ◼   ► But no, it seems like most of the time I do the clicking anywhere with my, with my pointer

01:40:58 ◼   ► finger.

01:40:59 ◼   ► And once I realized that that's what I was doing, I don't know when that transition happened,

01:41:03 ◼   ► but like, um, you know, some, at some point after they introduced the, you know, the trackpads

01:41:07 ◼   ► where you can click anywhere, I started doing it because it is convenient.

01:41:09 ◼   ► But once I realized that I was doing that a lot, I said, I shouldn't be doing that because

01:41:13 ◼   ► one of the things I hate most is when I'm doing that and I'm like doing a drag and I

01:41:16 ◼   ► like get to the limits of the trackpad because the tracking isn't quite what I expected it

01:41:21 ◼   ► to be or whatever.

01:41:21 ◼   ► And then it's like, I got to like do this little maneuver to like continue the drag without

01:41:26 ◼   ► releasing it, but give myself more room.

01:41:28 ◼   ► You don't have to do that if you do it the old way and the thumb is holding down the quote

01:41:31 ◼   ► unquote button while the other finger goes swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe to move over.

01:41:35 ◼   ► So I've consciously been trying to change how I use the trackpad to not run into these

01:41:41 ◼   ► more problematic scenarios.

01:41:43 ◼   ► And obviously, again, I'm not a great, obviously I'm not a very good trackpad user.

01:41:47 ◼   ► Like it's one of the reasons I don't like it.

01:41:48 ◼   ► It doesn't, it doesn't fit with my, it doesn't fit with the way I use computers and I've never

01:41:53 ◼   ► really gotten particularly good at it, but, uh, paying more attention to how I'm using it

01:41:57 ◼   ► and using different techniques.

01:41:58 ◼   ► I've even gone so far as occasionally to the old person thing where I use my other hand

01:42:03 ◼   ► to be the holding down the quote unquote button and then use that hand to do like dragging

01:42:08 ◼   ► things or whatever, I still feel so constrained by trackpads and I hate it.

01:42:11 ◼   ► I'm a mouser for life.