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The Talk Show

319: ‘You Called Him Pixel Mature’, With John Moltz

 

00:00:00   Alright, you ready to go? Exciting.

00:00:01   Yeah, I'm ready. I'm recording. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Excited for later today? Is that what you mean?

00:00:05   Well, everything. I'm excited to be disappointed by it.

00:00:08   Excited for everything. No. No, I'm not excited for everything.

00:00:13   That seems like too much. That seems like too much.

00:00:18   We are recording on playdate day before playdates go on presale in like a little over two hours.

00:00:29   And I cannot wait to buy one. I would like to buy everything. I want the pen. I want to live the

00:00:34   playdate lifestyle. And I'm afraid that it's going to be like buying an iPhone back in the day.

00:00:41   That's what I'm afraid of too. Yeah. My delivery for mine is going to be sometime next year.

00:00:49   And just like buying iPhones immediately at 3am or 5am or whenever they go on sale,

00:00:56   it's also the kick in the pants is always that we've all got friends and we're all on Slack or

00:01:02   group text. And it's like, somebody's going to get in. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about this

00:01:07   yesterday. I was thinking that someday a company is going to come up with the idea of offering

00:01:13   a half-price device that you can get that works for an hour.

00:01:22   And so, when it's one of those launch day things, like you try and get the real one,

00:01:27   well, you could get this half-price one, and then you could say that you got it and that you played

00:01:32   with it and you loved it, but you only have to pay half price for it. But it broke an hour.

00:01:38   After an hour, it doesn't work anymore. I'm still excited about playdate. And I think I don't want

00:01:44   to go on about it because I have, it's just pre-orders and they're shipping hopefully later

00:01:49   this year, but I'm so proud of our pals at Panic. I think this is such an amazing, it is such an

00:01:54   amazing thing to do. And Nevin was tweeting, I think this morning about like how it was showing

00:02:00   Slack images from like four years, seven years ago when they were talking about it.

00:02:05   Right. One of the things about it being slightly retro inspired and I like, they're not all in on

00:02:12   retro. It's not like they're trying to emulate a 1987 Game Boy or something, but the fact that it's

00:02:17   a black and white display and it's not backlit and the games are therefore relatively simplistic

00:02:23   graphically compared to today's, you know, millions of colors, OLED screen world is that, okay,

00:02:32   maybe they're a year late, whatever. It doesn't really matter because the appeal of the thing

00:02:36   never had anything to do with any sort of technical specifications. Right. It's not like,

00:02:40   oh, now the CPU and the playdate is a year older. Yeah, it doesn't matter. No, no, it's like,

00:02:47   it's like a NASA launch. Everything was coded to something that, you know, was locked in years ago.

00:02:54   And it's so funny. It's like, you know, yellow, it's like of all the colors, who knows where that

00:03:03   came from? And it's like, you can have it in any color you want, but it's going to be banana yellow,

00:03:07   you know? And it's like, I certainly, if I were leading the project to make a little handhold

00:03:13   video game player, yellow would not be mine. Of course, it would be some boring shade of gray.

00:03:19   We'd have a month long discussion about dark gray versus light gray.

00:03:23   And maybe a special edition space gray, you know, very dark. What color is your car?

00:03:31   Black. Black. Okay. Yeah. Mine is mine. For 20 years, I had an Integra that was slate gray.

00:03:38   And I finally, like five, six years ago, went out and bought an ILX. And what did I get? I got slate

00:03:46   gray. It bothers me to this day that we have a very, it's now ancient. We're actually in the

00:03:53   market for a new car. We have to figure this out. But because our car is 15 years old, we just don't

00:04:00   drive much. But when we got it, it had the perfect Acura TL on the lot, black. Everything I

00:04:08   wanted, except the interior wasn't black as well. It was like the, not like the tan leather, but

00:04:15   like the dark, like my second favorite interior color, which is like a dark brown. Right. But

00:04:20   there's me to this day. I mean, who the hell knew I'd be driving the car for 15 years? Right. You

00:04:24   know what I mean? I might have held out for a month to get the black interior. Yeah. Yeah. I

00:04:28   wouldn't get, I wouldn't get tan, but I would get brown. That'd be fine. Yeah. But that might bother

00:04:33   me as well. Yeah. And it's funny how much, even though I don't put that many miles on it, it's

00:04:38   funny how much blue jean blue rubs off on a brown. I didn't consider that. It's just ever so slightly

00:04:47   blue, you know? And it's because all I ever wear are jeans. It's just everything that goes in my

00:04:51   pockets eventually gets stained blue. My Integra got stolen. Got stolen like two years before I got

00:04:58   rid of it from a, from a train station when I was commuting back when I was commuting up to Seattle.

00:05:04   And we got it, and it was gone for like a week and a half, and like the two weeks was like the

00:05:09   cutoff for the insurance. Like if it's still gone for two weeks, then we'll send you, you know,

00:05:13   we'll give you some money to buy, you know, give you $15 for it towards a new car. And I get this

00:05:19   call from the police and they found it like out on one of the islands in the Pacific Northwest.

00:05:26   And so I had to drive like 45 minutes out there. And it's in the bushes. It's like all the way in

00:05:31   the woods and they tow it out because the battery's dead and everything. And then they jump start it

00:05:35   and they get in and it's got like candy wrappers and stuff all over the inside. The stereo, of

00:05:41   course, is gone and it smells like cigarette smoke. And it did. It smelled a little bit like

00:05:46   cigarette smoke for the, you know, for like the next two years. But I was so happy to have it back

00:05:51   because I loved that car so much. I've, it's always, I've heard that story from a lot of

00:05:59   people. I don't know why, but that they've had their car stolen and then they, the police do find

00:06:05   it. I think somebody sent me a story about, it was like a reader who sent me a story about like,

00:06:10   it wasn't AirPods helping them. It was like the girl, his girlfriend left her phone in the car too,

00:06:16   and then find my, help them find it. And it's like, they kind of found it and called the police

00:06:20   and, cause they didn't want to go and, you know, confront, confront the people themselves. And the

00:06:25   police were like, okay, we'll take a note. And they're like, no, seriously, we know where it is.

00:06:30   It's right here. But it's always, it always seems a little gross to me to get back in, you know,

00:06:35   in the car and you don't know who the hell, what the hell was going on there when it was stolen.

00:06:39   Yeah. I mean, it looked like the guy was living in it for several days. It was not great.

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00:08:39   awaytravel.com/talkshow. I'll tell you what, I know you've been traveling. We traveled,

00:08:46   we took a little five day vacation a month ago. I forgot how to pack. I know that this sounds,

00:08:52   I know there's a whole bunch of like memes, you know, like, oh, 2020, I forgot blank.

00:08:56   Swear to God. And even my wife who is a truly expert packer, some, you know, by expert, I mean,

00:09:03   she starts earlier than like 10 o'clock the night before you leave. Sure. What I do, right. She's

00:09:08   actually very good. Almost never ever bitches like, oh, I forgot blank or whatever. Even she was like,

00:09:15   I don't know how to pack anymore. I don't remember what you bring. What do you take?

00:09:19   Yeah, yeah. Well, the bar problem was we took a car trip. So we took everything,

00:09:24   which was not really so we did a bad job. I mean, the car was overpacked. And the poor dog

00:09:34   was at a tough time finding a place to lie down. That is one way to pack though. You just like,

00:09:40   open up your underwear drawer. scoop everything out. Yeah. suitcase.

00:09:46   It's not a good way to pack but it's one way to pack.

00:09:49   Let me think here. I got some hardware reviews. If you'd like to listen to them. Sure. Absolutely.

00:09:59   I have the Apple magsafe battery pack. It's Oh, yeah, this arrived. I think literally the day

00:10:07   after I recorded my last episode, but I have it. I kind of like it. And I have the anchor

00:10:13   competing version. Yeah, I was gonna ask if you had something to compare it to right that the

00:10:17   anchor 5k, whatever, whatever their long name is for it. And here's, here's my short review.

00:10:26   They're very similar size. But the anchor one is a little bit thicker. But it's also a little

00:10:33   bit shorter. And I find that it actually is a little bit more pleasant to like kind of rest

00:10:38   your pinky finger under as a shelf while if you're using it while it's connected.

00:10:42   The anchor one is sort of a little a little neater in size.

00:10:46   The the difference in milli amp hours, which is what a lot of people are looking at where the

00:10:53   anchor one is like 4000 something and the Apple one is only like 1500 something and it sounds

00:10:59   like the anchor one has a lot more oomph. Forget about that. That is Apple's been telling people

00:11:06   not to look at milli amp hours forever. It's in I don't I don't even understand I forget it.

00:11:12   As soon as I learn it, I forget the the electrical engineering math of watts and voltage and blah,

00:11:18   blah, blah. The gist of it is they both have about the same charge in real life. If you're

00:11:23   charging magnetically, if you take a dead iPhone and connect the anchor one and let it go and if

00:11:29   you connect the Apple one, you're going to get about the same amount of charge. A mini is going

00:11:34   to have get to 100% and have a little bit of left it left in the battery pack. The regular iPhone 12

00:11:42   feel it seems like this is not scientific, but it seems like you get about 100% charge.

00:11:46   And then presumably, as most people say, if you have the pro max, gigantis, whatever it's called,

00:11:53   you get like 80%. But you probably need it less because you have a better built in battery and

00:11:58   longer battery life. And my first thought using both was that, hmm, price aside, the anchor one

00:12:05   is like 46 bucks, Apple's is $99. Price aside, even though it's half the price, I think I like

00:12:10   the anchor one better. It is just it just seemed like a better shape. But then I started it's like

00:12:20   snapping it on snapping it off pretending to use it. It felt like I liked the anchor one better.

00:12:24   And the anchor one has a USB C plug, which would mean you would only need to travel with USB C.

00:12:31   Right. And then you could like at the end of the night when you go to sleep, you could just use

00:12:35   this anchor thing as your bedside charger for your phone and plug it in by USB C. And then the other

00:12:42   advantage the anchor one has is that you can plug a USB C cable into it and use it as a traditional

00:12:50   non magnetic battery pack. So you could charge anything you could charge if you had like a USB C

00:12:55   to Apple Watch, you could charge an Apple Watch with it or an iPhone that doesn't have magsafe or

00:13:01   something. But then I in actual use in the in what I consider the use case for this, which would be

00:13:10   like, hey, I'm traveling, I'm taking a lot of photos and videos, my phone is definitely going

00:13:14   to be hurting. I want to keep this battery pack on the phone in my pocket during the day. The anchor

00:13:21   one gets pretty hot, sort of uncomfortable in your pocket hot, because I think it's not smart. It just

00:13:28   like the iPhone just thinks it's a regular Qi charger. And so the iPhone charges the same way

00:13:33   that it would charge if it was on like a desktop Qi charger. Whereas the Apple one is, you know,

00:13:41   they call it the smart battery pack. It is very smart, though, it clearly is not sucking power out

00:13:48   of it blindly. It seems like Apple's rough algorithm is try to get to about 70% and then slow

00:13:58   down. And like once your iPhone gets to like 70% charge, it really doesn't it it goes very slowly,

00:14:05   unless the battery pack itself is plugged into lightning. In which case it's like, okay, sure,

00:14:10   a full full steam ahead. So if you plan to use it in your pocket, I think the Apple one is is a

00:14:17   better product. I think if you just want a portable battery pack that could do everything, this anchor

00:14:24   product is pretty good for 46 bucks, but it's much less intended, I think to connect, keep it

00:14:32   connected, put the put the combination the sandwich of battery pack magnetically connected to the iPhone

00:14:39   in your pocket, because it's going to get hot. Yeah, it seems like now is a weird time. I mean,

00:14:44   I guess things are well, we'll see what happens. But we're starting getting back to normal anyway,

00:14:51   but it's a tough time to sell these devices. I mean, I certainly don't need one. And I've had

00:14:57   these I've had battery packs, I've had plenty of battery packs over my lifetime of using iPhones.

00:15:04   And right now I wouldn't, I wouldn't bother personally, but, but it probably will at some

00:15:09   point. Because presumably magsafe is not going to change either at all or radically or if it does,

00:15:15   it'll be backwards compatible for years to come. Right. I mean, it would be a gross disappointment

00:15:21   if certainly this year, but if even like next year iPhones come out and it's like magsafe now has a

00:15:27   new diameter and none of your magsafe docs work, and you need new magsafe docs, that would be a

00:15:34   disappointment. But Apple is generally pretty good with stuff like that. I mean, people bitch about

00:15:41   the fact that iPhones still use lightning instead of USB-C. But the truth is over 14 years, Apple

00:15:48   has had two connectors for iPhones. That right, the now seemingly ridiculous ludicrous 30 pin

00:15:56   adapter from iPods. Yeah. And then lightning and you, you know, there's obviously pros and cons

00:16:03   to the idea of iPhones switching to USB-C. I mean, the big pro would be what I mentioned with the

00:16:08   battery pack that you could sort of effectively go all USB-C as you travel and pack and just put

00:16:15   USB-C cables around your house. But the other advantage of sticking with lightning, the big

00:16:21   one is that all the stuff people already own continues to work. Yeah, that was and that was

00:16:25   what I was gonna say. It was like, you know, the minute they switch to USB-C, someone's gonna

00:16:28   complain that they have to get revolved or lightning cables, you know, everyone's like,

00:16:32   why not just use USB-C? It's in everything now. And now, you know, someone will grouse that.

00:16:38   But I have all this lightning stuff. So that's my review of the battery pack. It's pretty nice.

00:16:44   I wish it was black. It is nice. Yeah. It gets back to Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's another thing

00:16:49   that's probably going to get blue, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, it's probably got the

00:16:54   same amount exterior shell as my AirPods case, which is completely blue. Well, it's sort of

00:17:00   it's a yeah, mine's blue to AirPods. I forgot about my AirPods turning blue. It's a little bit

00:17:06   more rubbery. It's it's or less glossy. It's not quite rubbery. It's a kind of a weird I'm not

00:17:12   quite sure. Yeah, I guess that compared to but it's not that high gloss finish like the AirPods case,

00:17:17   but whatever it is, it clearly looks like it's not meant to go into a pair of Levi's.

00:17:23   I mean, they're not going to change the diameter of the mag safe. No, I don't think so. Yeah.

00:17:29   The other thing that's kind of interesting to me is it it the magnet sticks better when you have

00:17:37   an iPhone case on and particularly better with Apple's silicon cases. silicone, silicon, I always

00:17:44   forget silicone. I think either works. Yeah, no, silicon is what they make the chips out of. It's

00:17:49   like, Oh, you're, you're right. I think right. Is that right? I think you're right. But the

00:17:54   other right but the Apple, you know, rubber cases, it really snaps well to include and better than it

00:18:01   does to a naked uncased iPhone. It it has it has good pull it straight back magnetic strength,

00:18:12   but not very good twisty strength, you know, so it's just like taking an Oreo part. You don't want

00:18:18   to pull it apart. You want to twist a little right? You twist first. Or it including with

00:18:26   the Numino, which is of course the official same of course, yes, yeah, of the talk show, right.

00:18:31   But the side to side angle, it's a little twisty, but you put it put one of Apple's cases on and it

00:18:37   sticks even more. And I think it has something to do with in in Apple's mag safe cases, the,

00:18:44   the battery, the pass through battery is closer to the surface than it is through the glass back

00:18:50   of the naked phone itself. Right. I don't know. So yeah, it's gotta be something like that. But

00:18:56   yeah, there's definitely there's definitely math involved there.

00:19:00   My next product review is the fine folks at Logitech sent me their keyboard cover for the iPad.

00:19:13   So I have the 11 inch iPad Pro. And they sent me their their keyboard cover. It's sort of a direct

00:19:20   competitor against Apple's magic keyboard. Except, you know, the difference is you have to,

00:19:25   you have to put the iPad itself in a case sort of right case magnetically snaps to the keyboard.

00:19:32   And this is the one with the kick with it's got a kickstand on the it's got a kickstand. Yeah,

00:19:36   in the back, which is it works very well. I if you want to keep your iPad in a case, this is a

00:19:43   tremendous product. And and the keyboard, I think is very fine. It's very comparable to Apple's.

00:19:48   They made the exact same weird layout decision weird to me for the 11 inch where the left

00:19:56   bracket, you know, like square bracket or curly bracket with shift is a full size key next to P.

00:20:02   But the right bracket is a half size key. Yeah, they shaved off that they shaved off the

00:20:08   keys on the Android, right. But why not just make instead of making one full size and one half size,

00:20:15   why not just make them both three quarter size and then or at least symmetrical. The asymmetry of

00:20:20   this bracket keys bothers me all the time, even though I don't type that many. But I do type more

00:20:25   than most people because markdown uses square brackets. So I guess I shouldn't say I don't use

00:20:31   those keys more than most people. I probably use it more than most people. I was I was comparing

00:20:37   my use of square brackets only against Objective C programmers. And then I realized, yeah, I realized

00:20:43   that you can't write Objective C on an iPad anyway. It's the only the only programming you could do

00:20:49   would be with Swift and Swift playground. So yeah, I take it back. I probably am the number one

00:20:54   square bracket user. Anyway, it's a tremendous product. The biggest difference is just whether

00:20:59   or not you want your iPhone or iPad in a case, you know, yeah. So and it's a nice case and it

00:21:06   fits well and it doesn't you know, it's got a cutout for the pencil at the top. It all works

00:21:10   very well. So I am I am such a it does look like a nice product. And I'm glad to see that. And my

00:21:15   understanding is that they and the bridge seemed to like early on, I think bridge had a little

00:21:19   trouble getting the trackpad working correctly with iPad OS, but that they seem to have worked

00:21:28   out most of those issues and or at least all or maybe even all of them. Because based on some

00:21:33   reviews from Jason Snell that I read. Yeah. It's called the combo touch. That's what they call this

00:21:40   product is the the combo touch and it's 200 to $230. So it's cheaper than Apple cheaper.

00:21:46   Has like a fabric cover. I like it. It's a very nice, very nice feel. I feel it's going to wear

00:21:52   better than Apple's Magic Keyboard Cover, which just sort of picks up grease stains like the

00:21:57   rubber. And now that it comes in white, yeah, yeah. And it's gonna get blue jeans gonna get blue.

00:22:07   I gotta get ready for you putting it in your back pocket. I gotta get bigger jeans.

00:22:14   Well, I think I think the 90s styles are coming back right like the baggy pants. I know I just

00:22:24   saw pictures are not far from coming back. I know I just saw that I saw somebody you know,

00:22:28   I'm of the age now like where I'm so out of it where it used to be like they'd say like what's

00:22:35   in style now and I'd look and I think wow I'm getting old because that doesn't look right to me

00:22:39   and now I'm like I'm like are you putting me on is this a joke? Is this a gag site? Let me look at

00:22:46   the URL. Yeah, it's like oh no apparently the kids are dressing in sizes three sizes too large like

00:22:52   we did in the 90s. My dad used to buy like probably still does suits from Brooks Brothers,

00:22:59   right? And, and, you know, he got he got into a style and I think the 60s and he never changed it

00:23:06   all through all through the 70s when there was, you know, wide wide everything. He stayed,

00:23:13   he stayed with this like, not skinny particularly but you know, certainly not wide lapels and stuff

00:23:20   like that and he kept all those suits for years and just wore them over and over again until they

00:23:24   wore out and then he'd go buy exactly the same thing over again from Brooks Brothers and I'm

00:23:29   getting to the point where I'm like that's actually a really good idea. And then eventually it comes

00:23:33   back into style. Yeah, eventually you know, I mean half the time you're going to be in style,

00:23:37   half the time you're going to be out of style. What difference does it make? Yeah, eventually

00:23:39   you're going to go back and they're going to be like sorry sir we can't help you we're out

00:23:43   because that's that's a very popular style. Yeah, right. And they're going to think you're,

00:23:48   but he still has a closet full of them so he doesn't need.

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00:25:07   job for free. Terms and conditions apply. I talked about it last week with Panzorino,

00:25:15   the NSO group thing, but I still haven't written about it because it's just been hard for me to

00:25:23   coagulate all of my thoughts into something cohesive.

00:25:28   Yeah. There's a lot there.

00:25:32   Yeah. But I sent you a link that I didn't see and I just posted it to Daring Fireball before

00:25:37   starting the show. But a reader pointed it to me and I was like, "I forgot about that." And yet,

00:25:42   it was April of 2020. I guess I forgot about it because April of 2020.

00:25:46   Yeah. Might have been something else on your mind.

00:25:48   But a year ago in April, there was a story that came out in Motherboard reported by Joseph Cox

00:25:55   that the people from the NSO group, the same group that we've been talking about with this

00:26:01   Amnesty International Pegasus project the last few weeks, came out a year ago and said Facebook

00:26:09   came to them in 2018 and wanted to license Pegasus to monitor their iOS users and get more insight

00:26:17   into what they're doing on their iPhones. Yeah. So they basically would have baked this into a

00:26:23   product that they were shipping, like baked whatever exploit Pegasus has.

00:26:30   I guess they didn't want the exploit to take over the phone. They just wanted the stuff that runs in

00:26:35   the background to monitor what you're doing, like what they do after they exploit, right?

00:26:41   So there's like...

00:26:42   Yeah. But you would have to do that because you'd have to break out of the sandbox environment,

00:26:47   right?

00:26:47   I guess, right.

00:26:48   Just like, yeah. Yeah. So you have to have the exploit.

00:26:50   Right. Yeah, I guess. It's unclear exactly what they wanted to do, but it was related to the...

00:26:58   It's clear what they wanted. It's clear what they wanted. It's not clear exactly how they

00:27:01   were planning on getting there.

00:27:02   Right. Exactly what sick things they wanted to do. Well, but it was from the people who

00:27:11   were deploying what the Onavo Protect, that was the VPN product that Facebook purchased,

00:27:18   and which is sort of exhibit A on the list of, "Hey, be careful with whom you choose to be your

00:27:25   VPN provider." Because Facebook bought this product that Onavo, which I think was when they bought it,

00:27:33   just a legitimate VPN, but they bought it so that they could use... Or your VPN provider

00:27:41   sees all of your network traffic or could see.

00:27:43   They could get all that information.

00:27:44   Right. And that's exactly why they wanted it. And that was the thing that they were paying

00:27:48   teenagers to install, like giving them 15 bucks if you'll do this so they could see

00:27:53   what they're doing. And it was the product that gave them the analytics, or I think it was,

00:28:00   that led them to make a big purchase. It wouldn't be Instagram because Instagram was too long ago.

00:28:06   But, oh, WhatsApp. That's right. Remember they bought WhatsApp for like $5 billion or $20 billion

00:28:13   or something like that. But...

00:28:14   So that was based off the information that they got from Onavo?

00:28:17   Yeah. Yeah. They were like, "Hey, look at the usage of this WhatsApp all over the world. This

00:28:22   is crazy. We need to buy this immediately. Look at this." And they're like, "Okay." And everybody

00:28:27   at the time, because I think WhatsApp, which was either privately held or they weren't a public

00:28:33   company, I think they were a little guarded about their usage stats. Or even if they weren't, maybe

00:28:40   people didn't believe them. "Oh, they're just... They're trying to sell themselves." But Facebook

00:28:44   had data that showed that Facebook users who they care about were using WhatsApp in extraordinary

00:28:51   numbers and paid what people thought was too much for it. And now people think, "Oh, they got it at

00:28:56   a steal." Anyway, really sick to think about that. It really is. Yeah. I mean, it's really just

00:29:06   malware. I mean, it's unbelievable to think that they would just put that into a product and ship

00:29:14   it and expect to think that that was okay. Yeah. This is the statement in a court filing

00:29:19   from NSO's CEO, Shalev Hulo. Hello. There's a quote. So, this is in a court document. So,

00:29:28   the guy's presumably under oath. The quote is, "The Facebook representative stated that Facebook

00:29:35   was concerned that its method for gathering user data through Onavo Protect was less effective on

00:29:42   Apple devices than on Android devices. The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted

00:29:47   to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing

00:29:52   to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users." So, I guess, yeah, I guess you're right

00:29:58   that they did want exploits. They were saying, I guess, that statement was there.

00:30:02   Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's any other way to do it. They basically wanted to get all

00:30:06   of that stuff that Pegasus does. Seeing all of your network traffic isn't enough.

00:30:11   Right. You need to see your pictures. We need to see everything else.

00:30:18   Uh, anyway, I'm curious what your thoughts are in the larger sense on the whole NSO group

00:30:25   expose, for lack of a better word.

00:30:28   It's weird. Have you addressed the question of whether or not it's cool that these guys are doing

00:30:39   this in the first place? No.

00:30:41   Because it doesn't seem terribly cool. I mean, I get that sometimes, you know, like if they're

00:30:46   a terrorists, it seems there are certain situations, you know, you can dream up any kind of

00:30:53   Jack Bauer situation you want where, yeah, we want to get these people, you know, like if we want to

00:31:01   save a bunch of people's lives and stuff like that. But these guys are not really, they're not

00:31:08   caring who they're selling it to particularly. They are selling it to nation states that are

00:31:18   using it against dissidents, using it against members of political parties that are not,

00:31:26   you know, not in power. Just, yeah. And, and, and, and members of minority groups that are

00:31:31   being persecuted and journalists who are reporting on this stuff. So it's like, while I think that

00:31:38   yeah, maybe there is a case to be made for this. Using these exploits in these ways. NSO group does

00:31:49   not seem to be careful enough to be putting it putting it behind the right actors. It's,

00:31:57   it is, it's like they, their, their, their list of countries they won't sell to are, you know,

00:32:04   lots of countries, you know, they're not, they don't sell to China, they don't sell to Russia,

00:32:08   they don't sell to, you know, countries that are accused of outright authoritarianism. But

00:32:18   it's like the countries they do sell to, it's, it's no, but no country, including the United

00:32:25   States, you know, certainly not. I mean, we, you know, you can, you can watch, you can lose

00:32:30   yourself watching documentaries about the morally corrupt ways the things the CIA has done around

00:32:38   the world, right? 20th century. Well, if this, you know, if smartphones were around in the late 60s,

00:32:44   they certainly would have used this against Martin Luther King. Right? Yeah, the FBI too,

00:32:48   you know, domestically, internationally, you know, it's, but it's the nature of being in

00:32:55   counterintelligence, you know, and I'm not saying it's the nature for the domestic law enforcement

00:33:02   to monitor Martin Luther King, you know, that's obviously wrong, and was terrible. But even in an

00:33:12   ideal situation, they're going to, they're going to find themselves in morally moral gray zones,

00:33:18   in terms of what, it's the nature of being a spy agency. And you multiply that by selling it around

00:33:26   the world and the, you know, the chance that it's going to be misused is like 100%. I mean, like,

00:33:31   Macron was, was apparently attacked, or his phone number might have been on the list, you know,

00:33:37   the actual, the, what's his title? Is he the president of France? I forget if they have a

00:33:41   prime minister or president. I forget that too. We'll call him president. President of Macron.

00:33:46   That sounds right. Yeah. It, and that's the part that I still find so strange about this is I'm not

00:33:56   quite sure I don't get why Israel, a country with excellent, you know, intelligence agencies,

00:34:05   and that punches way above its weight population wise militarily, thanks to it, you know,

00:34:13   allies ship with the United States. I don't get why they let NSO group do this. Why don't they

00:34:19   just sort of conscript them and say, you know, this, your technology is too, too good, too

00:34:24   important. We need to keep this to ourselves. Why, why do they even let them sell it around the world?

00:34:29   I would imagine at some point, once you develop a sophisticated and well healed intelligence

00:34:41   organization within your, within your government, those people eventually quit. They eventually go

00:34:48   out and what do they know? That's what they know. So they start up their own business. And then that,

00:34:53   and that kind of thing perpetuates. And you have to, and the other hand, the other way is

00:35:00   that helps build people who then go into the intelligence organizations. And so it's,

00:35:05   you know, it's the same thing like in, you know, Washington, DC, the lobbyists, you know,

00:35:12   funnel in and out of the government and end up working for the departments that they lobby.

00:35:18   And just it makes its own ecosystem. Well, and it's the same thing with lobbying. What

00:35:27   do you think pays better working as a high level analyst for the Israel State Security Agency or

00:35:36   working for the NSO group where they auction these things off to the highest bidder?

00:35:40   Yeah, yeah. Which it's, it's, you know, money, right? And I guess and when I say allow,

00:35:46   I get it that Israel is a liberal democracy. And like, I'm not quite sure, like, if you and I were

00:35:53   to start the john and john group, here, selling NSO group, like spyware, like, I don't think

00:36:02   that's illegal, we could start that. And it's, you know, there's no sure I when I so when I say,

00:36:07   why does Israel allow it? I just mean, why don't they just make them an offer? You know,

00:36:11   even if it's not like a legal thing, which I'm not quite sure I'm not, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm

00:36:15   certainly not an Israeli legal expert. But you know, you could make them an offer financially,

00:36:21   they couldn't refuse to be to nationalize it. Yeah, well, to just take it off the market,

00:36:27   because I don't think it's good. You know what I mean? Like, in some ways, it's self defeating,

00:36:31   where how does Israel know that, you know, if they're selling this technology to other Arab

00:36:36   countries, you know, like Saudi Arabia, how does Israel know that the same thing isn't being used

00:36:43   against them that they're, you know, you know, technology developed in Israel is being used to

00:36:47   attack the phones of people in the Israeli government?

00:36:52   I bet the people who work at NSO don't allow it.

00:36:54   I would guess but I don't know.

00:36:56   Because like I said, I mean, they rub shoulders, they had very, you know, if they are not

00:37:01   almost literally the same people who are going in and out of Israeli intelligence

00:37:06   organizations, they are rubbing shoulders with them constantly.

00:37:09   But they're they say that once they like, give it to the government of Mexico, that then they're,

00:37:16   they don't know what Mexico does with it, you know, that they they're, they're careful about

00:37:20   the license it to but then once the law enforcement has it, NSO group isn't involved

00:37:25   every step of the way with every single person who gets targeted.

00:37:28   But it seems like also this is this is these things have shelf lives, right?

00:37:32   Because eventually, whatever exploits being used, Apple's gonna find it

00:37:38   and close it. And then they have to and then they have to buy another one.

00:37:41   Right, I guess, you know, presumably, I guess, but you know, who knows, who knows how many of

00:37:46   them have been around and are you so seldomly that Apple hasn't found it? Because, yeah,

00:37:51   it's possible. You know, if if I get targeted, and and they send me one of these text messages

00:37:58   that I never see, but it corrupts my phone, how's Apple find out that John Gruber's phone

00:38:03   was hacked by this particular exploit, you know, and

00:38:07   well, I thought that was the interesting thing about the whole thing, right is because the one

00:38:12   of the reasons why Amnesty International focused on iPhones was because iPhones had better iOS

00:38:18   had better logs, and they were actually able to see the fact that they were infected with this

00:38:24   left more malware malware. Yeah, left more evidence behind whereas they couldn't even

00:38:29   do the research on Android. Right? It's it. I and and the publicity also sort of works against

00:38:39   Apple's interests, right? It's like, you know, by having a reputation for being far more secure,

00:38:48   then when there's proof that there's that's, you know, not impregnable. It, it seems more

00:38:55   sensational, right? And it's right. It's like, it is a frustration for me with all of these stories.

00:39:02   It's always been I mean, and you know, this, we've been writing about Apple stuff long enough where

00:39:07   that whole argument about the back when Windows truly had like a malware, for lack of a better

00:39:15   word, pandemic, right? And the argument was, well, that's because Windows has terrible,

00:39:22   it's just terribly engineered and has all these glaring vulnerabilities, you know,

00:39:27   where you just double click a word file and you're running code. I mean, this is nuts.

00:39:32   And the argument from the Windows side was no, it's because Windows has all the market share,

00:39:37   so nobody attacks the Macintosh. And if, you know, Apple had a bigger market share, they

00:39:43   would be just as bad or worse. And it's like, no, I really don't think so. But now we see it like

00:39:48   iOS is is more popular than Windows and doesn't have the malware problem. It is more secure.

00:39:55   But it's still a frustration for me that Windows is so it never gets mentioned with all these

00:40:00   talks of ransomware attacks, which is one of the big tech stories of 2021. I mean, there was a time

00:40:08   a couple weeks ago, where a big portion of the United States couldn't buy gasoline because

00:40:14   a ransomware attack led a company shut down a pipeline, right? Did you see the details about

00:40:21   that too, that they shut down the pipe? It wasn't that the ransomware shut down the pipeline. It was

00:40:25   that the company shut down the pipeline, because the ransomware only affected their ability to meter

00:40:31   the oil. That's right. They couldn't send out bills. Right. They couldn't send out bills. They

00:40:36   could have kept the oil flowing and kept people with gas. I mean, I'm not saying I would have

00:40:40   given away free gas either. But they were very, they didn't, they didn't release that version of

00:40:48   the story right away. It seemed that the story that came out was that the ransomware shut down the

00:40:52   pipeline. But these ransomware attacks, as far as I am aware, they all attack Microsoft systems.

00:41:00   They're all like attacks on exchange servers. Yeah. And it just goes without, it's like the fact that

00:41:06   these are Windows machines and exchange server systems and corporate systems. It's it's it's so

00:41:12   goes without saying that doesn't even get mentioned in the stories. But then this NSO group thing

00:41:16   comes out and it's all about how the iPhone is not is not not secure. Right. Right. And that was that

00:41:22   was the Washington Post's headline headline, basically. Yeah. Which is, you know, when you

00:41:30   read the the actual report, it's sort of infuriating. Because, you know, like I said,

00:41:35   it's like the reason they're focusing on iPhones is because they get more information out of them.

00:41:39   It is funny, too, that the information they got comes out of an iTunes backup.

00:41:44   Yes, SQL Lite SQLite database. Yeah. I read that. I think I read that like three times. Like, wait,

00:41:51   what? Why? iTunes? Speaking of the 30 pin connector cable era.

00:41:57   It still is cool that you can do that, though. I I'm happy that you can do it. I don't I haven't

00:42:05   backed up via iTunes. I'm an iCloud person myself. But I'm glad you can. And it's a I did it. I did

00:42:12   it for years. I did it for a long time. And I don't really now I don't remember why exactly.

00:42:16   I think I think for a while, it seemed like when you restored the backup in iTunes restored more

00:42:23   of your information. Yeah, I think you get your pass, like you get your passwords and everything

00:42:27   like that. And then I wasn't paying enough attention and didn't realize that Oh, now I cloud

00:42:31   did all that, you know, did it like that as well. I was just reading a tweet thread, by the way,

00:42:36   and I go through this more than most people because I get all these review phones that I'm

00:42:42   setting up. But it's always unclear to me what the best way to up you know, to set up a new back new

00:42:50   phone from a backup is because now there's the phone to phone method where you you leave the two

00:42:56   you know, your old phone next to your new phone and it just magically transfers some stuff over

00:43:01   the air and then gets the rest from the cloud. Right. And I was somebody on Twitter. I'll never

00:43:08   find the link but was saying that that method restores even more than just a pure cloud backup.

00:43:15   Like if you have certain apps that Oh, yeah, that they're no longer on the store. Well, or no,

00:43:23   but there's some apps like I think like authy, you know, which gives you two factor code. Oh,

00:43:28   yeah, that you have to, or like signal, if you use signal the messaging service, you can only use it

00:43:35   on one phone. And it's sort of a frustration that you, you know, you could set up like a Mac or an

00:43:41   iPad as a secondary device to your phone. So you can use signal on those devices, but you can't set

00:43:47   up a second iPhone. That is a signal device you have to you can only have one phone at a time and

00:43:53   it needs your phone number SIM card. So every day, if you get a new phone and you want to make the

00:43:58   new phone your signal phone, you have to like re log into signal and, and stuff like that. But if

00:44:03   you do the phone to phone thing, it transfers even those apps that don't put their stuff in their in

00:44:08   your iCloud backup, they go directly they somehow over the air securely send the credentials from

00:44:14   your old phone to your new phone. So I think from now on, that's how I'm going to set up all my

00:44:17   phones. Now. Anything else on that on the NSO group thing? No, I mean, the only thing that

00:44:28   I guess the I mean, it seems like the way these things get fed is by these companies paying. I

00:44:33   mean, it's, you know, there's not that many of them, but they pay a significant amount of money

00:44:37   in order to get these exploits. And the only way that I think that Apple can improve the situation

00:44:43   is paying more. Yeah, I that's, I there's an angle on this where and I know the Washington Post,

00:44:51   I think bit into it the heaviest that Apple is doing wrong by its platform by being too secretive

00:44:57   and not allowing third party security researchers to do and see more on the iOS system, you know.

00:45:05   And my retort to that and and one of them even said, had a quote from somebody who's like,

00:45:12   you know, Microsoft shows the way here, you know, Microsoft is really opens themselves up to

00:45:17   security researchers, and we get everything we need, and we can see these internals. And it's

00:45:20   like, well, then how come ransomware is still rampant problem on Windows systems? So I guess not

00:45:26   it. It's, I could see the argument. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it's there's clearly it's not as

00:45:32   clear cut as the security researchers would say. It's sort of like that. If you have a dentist who

00:45:37   says you should come to the dentist for a checkup every three months. It's like, yeah, sure. You'd

00:45:41   say that, you know. You know, it's like, yeah, it's a lot of glad it's a lot of glad handing.

00:45:49   Yeah. I mean, it's it's good. It comes from a lot of people who want to be in the business of making

00:45:55   dumb virus scanners for iOS.

00:45:59   Trenton Larkin Right. And that's the other thing, too,

00:46:01   is that there's a market for selling actual antivirus or anti malware, whatever software

00:46:07   monitoring software, which none of the of course, is far far not even close, not even

00:46:12   near can't even see the gray zone with binoculars as to what is allowed in the App Store. And of

00:46:18   course, they'd like to be able to sell it. But I don't think that's the answer. I think it

00:46:21   knows what you said that they need to pay more. And yeah, the Apple has the financial wherewithal to

00:46:28   I'm not saying they can put NSO group out of business, but they could by paying more for the

00:46:35   exploits, whatever it takes, it's a drop in the bucket for Apple. And, you know, they can make

00:46:44   you know, if it costs a million, if NSO group considers an exploit worth a million,

00:46:48   Apple shouldn't be trying to pay 1.1 million, they should pay 20 million and say, if you've

00:46:53   got an exploit NSO group is willing to pay you a million dollars for will pay you 20 million,

00:46:58   or whatever it takes. I'm not sure the Well, I mean, I'm not sure they need to do that. They

00:47:03   could certainly do that. Because even if you're I don't know where the obviously, I don't know where

00:47:08   the cutoff line is. But even if you're just like, he may not get the person who's who says that they

00:47:13   want to make that 1.1 million, like Venice, our group is offering 1.1 million, you could you might

00:47:18   still give somebody else an incentive if you were going to give them $750,000. You know, you could

00:47:26   you might be able to get somebody else who is not willing to deal with some bad actor in order to

00:47:35   white hat find your your the exploit the same exploit, basically. So but it's just but you do

00:47:43   you do have to you do have to be willing to put a lot of skin on the game. Yeah, and there's,

00:47:48   you know, I, I get it that, you know, and they have a bounty program. And the Apple touts it as

00:47:56   like the best paying bounty program in the business security researchers, the type of people

00:48:02   who who I mean, there are people who make a living by, you know, going after these bounties. And

00:48:07   it's it's such an inner it's such an interesting thing to me to way to apply a rather unique skill

00:48:14   set, right? It's it's such a weird ability that some programmers have where like their special

00:48:22   talent is being able to find these sort of exploits and take advantage of them. I don't

00:48:28   even have a good idea of like, how it works. I don't really either. I can't wrap my head around.

00:48:34   No, it's how this actually happened. Like, zero day. I'm like, what? I don't even know.

00:48:39   I only have a very vague idea. But it's like, just all of a sudden, like, I've got access to

00:48:45   executable code and memory. And now I can write and say, what are you talking about? I don't know.

00:48:49   Yeah, how do you think about this? But they, you know, they can do it. It's a great idea. But

00:48:55   there, I believe it that there's a lot of these people who are involved in these bounty programs

00:48:59   who say Apple's program is a real pain in the ass and that you submit things you feel like you know,

00:49:03   you've you've got it fair and square and you don't it they they pay late or you know, they

00:49:08   drag their right, right. They should have a reputation amongst these people having a just

00:49:14   bar none, moon star, you know, right. They are to about bounty programs, what the Apple retail store

00:49:22   is to shopping for electronics in a retail store. It's it, you know, nobody's ever going to be fully

00:49:27   happy. I would like a register I can get in line for. But but it is the best. It's nobody can argue

00:49:35   it is the best. I had one more thought about it. But oh, I know it's the other thing to me that is

00:49:42   so fascinating is that apparently the technique that they're using to get in the sending a

00:49:50   iMessage and then having like a corrupt gift or ping or something, or JPEG and having the image

00:49:57   processing exploited. It's so fascinating to me that that's exactly what Apple's blast door was

00:50:03   intended to to sandbox. And then it's, you know, somehow incomplete. G Rambo extra, you know,

00:50:13   hacker extraordinaire, DME last week after my last talk show and said that it he's not quite sure

00:50:20   what the limits are. He doesn't have like a exact map. But he does know that some image processing

00:50:25   and iMessage still doesn't go through blast store as of iOS 14.6 for some reason for reasons,

00:50:31   you know that it wasn't Yeah, complete and maybe that's it maybe that they've just honed in

00:50:36   on the pathways to delivering a message that don't go through blast story yet. Right. But

00:50:43   g thought I think, I think I don't want to put words in his mouth. But basically, he thought that

00:50:49   that one of the changes in iOS 15 before this news was that blast door had expanded the scope of

00:50:57   what's in there. So I was 15 might mitigate a lot of this. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

00:51:01   I mean, the thing is, you know, if you are someone who is a high profile target for somebody,

00:51:10   currently, they're, they're gonna get you. Right. Right. I mean, it doesn't matter what I mean,

00:51:17   unless unless you are not going to use a smartphone. You're probably kind of screwed.

00:51:23   Which is sad. Well, and then there's still, you know, it's there's still good old fashioned

00:51:29   spy movie stuff, you know, and like with Bezos, right, when Bezos had his phone hacked,

00:51:35   you know, salacious pictures of him and the woman he was cheating on his wife with came out. It,

00:51:43   there was all sorts of he hired experts in there's all sorts of talk about, you know, maybe, you know,

00:51:47   the Saudi Arabians had done it because he owns the Washington Post and the Washington Post was

00:51:53   Yeah, the home of kashigi, the columnist, you know, who was an enemy of the state and they

00:51:59   murdered. And it turns out it was his girlfriend's brother.

00:52:04   Like took the pictures off her. Yeah.

00:52:12   And that they just paid somebody just paid the guy paid him money and he

00:52:16   Right, right. It's like, that's even worse, right? It's like as scary and spooky as you think it is

00:52:21   that maybe Saudi Arabian spies are like, yeah, you know, setting up shop a quarter mile from

00:52:27   your house with a little satellite dish and right hacking your phone remotely. It's like even worse

00:52:31   than your brother in law. That's your brother in law. It's always your brother locked. It's scary.

00:52:37   I think there was there was like a time where Gary I don't know what his name is. But Gary,

00:52:50   Gary, Gary's nervous because he knows what he's done. And it's all over the news. And it's,

00:52:55   you know, it's a front page all over the place. And it's the blockbuster gossip story of,

00:53:01   you know, billionaires weekly. And then all of a sudden, his phone rings and the caller ID says,

00:53:07   Jeff. Right? You're just like, don't answer red button, red button. Right?

00:53:14   Yeah. And I wonder I mean, I wonder but also, though, if he was like,

00:53:19   it felt like it was smiling spiraling out of control when when there was speculation that it

00:53:23   was Saudi Arabia, like, you know, I mean, if you thought that was funny, or if you thought, Oh,

00:53:27   I may be making making a problem here.

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00:56:08   today. Yeah, I'm looking at the swim trunks right now because I was the other thing I noticed on

00:56:12   vacation I put my swim trunks on I was like, I like these but they're like they're falling apart.

00:56:18   They've got they've got a thing I should buy more really I've got like at least two I've got the

00:56:23   Navy in the black. They have these polo shirts that are super lightweight. Like the light and

00:56:29   they're so good for really hot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I've got Yeah, I've got one of those. I got

00:56:33   one of those. I love those. Oh my god. Because it's like there are times where it's like it you

00:56:37   know, it's gonna be really hot and humid East Coast summer. But it's like you're going somewhere

00:56:42   where you kind of want to wear at least some kind of collar. It is great, right. unprecedented. I

00:56:46   have never seen a polo shirt like it where it looks good. And I this is not I'm not making this up.

00:56:51   I have worn these shirts multiple times. And my my son has said, Hey, that's a nice shirt.

00:56:56   And my son does not often say to me, hey, blank about you looks nice. You know?

00:57:02   Yeah, yeah. I have noticed the thing about like upper end menswear. And maybe any anybody's wear

00:57:11   but that have a very subtle logo. That seems like a trait of upper end menswear upper end clothing,

00:57:20   these days. And they have a very subtle logo that is in a great spot, which is like just on the side

00:57:25   near the seam. It's just a little MW and and I actually really like that. I usually don't like

00:57:32   a logo on my clothes. But that one I actually think is really cool. Yeah, it's just sort of

00:57:38   subtle. Yeah, yeah. Very nice. Have you been using the Safari public betas? I have a little bit on

00:57:46   iPad OS. That's the only I had the public beta on my iPad. Yeah. And yeah.

00:57:51   It's a whole thing. It is I the iPad is where I've been. I only have one iPad. So I when I put it on

00:58:01   right after I don't really care that much about my iPad, which is why I was like, ah, screw it beta one.

00:58:06   I have the beta on a spare iPhone. And I have it on the I still have the the orange iMac

00:58:13   M one review unit. So I was like, well, that's Apple's review, and I'll put the betas on it.

00:58:18   The betas for the iPad were really for Safari were really rough until last week when beta four came

00:58:28   out. Like, right. It really was and I get it. They're betas. And they're they're obviously

00:58:34   trying to react significantly and yet quickly to the to the critical response to Safari. And the

00:58:44   fact that iPad OS didn't quite make the cut for beta three with the Okay, we'll give you a full

00:58:49   tab bar. I get it. It's a beta there in rush, but it was sort of a kick kicking the balls because

00:58:55   it's like, Oh, that's the one I really wanted. Some kind of help, please help.

00:59:03   Yeah, it takes it takes time and they hadn't been able to react fast enough.

00:59:07   The more I use it, the less I like it, I have to say and on the iPad in particular,

00:59:12   and I guess the Mac is the same. I just don't use the Mac version much. But on the iPad,

00:59:16   the problem I keep having, even now that they have the tab bar back in beta four,

00:59:20   I can't tell which tab is selected. Like when I look at the tab bar, and in fact, sometimes

00:59:25   it's scrolled off to the side, the active tab is off because it's like the rightmost and you know,

00:59:32   I've got like, I don't know, 30 tabs in the window. It's it, the currently, it's like,

00:59:38   it's not just my eyes or my inability to see the slight difference in darkness of the round

00:59:43   wreck that indicates the selected tab. It's, it's not even in the tabs that are in the tab bar. I

00:59:50   find that to be just Yeah, I don't know how it's choosing which ones it's showing. I don't either.

00:59:56   And I don't understand how anybody who's ever used tab browsing, even if you're the sort of person,

01:00:01   if you're, you're an Apple engineer working on the new Safari, and you personally don't typically

01:00:08   have a lot of tabs in a window at a time. So it might be an oversight in your initial beta one

01:00:13   implementation, that you're not really coding it up exactly the way you'd want it to be, if there

01:00:21   are 30 or 40 tabs in the front window, right? I get it, you know, it could happen. But it's like,

01:00:26   you would at least think, though, that you're always going to keep the current tab visible,

01:00:30   maybe it would get too small, because it needs to be the design needs to be tweaked, you know, but

01:00:35   right, and you'd scrunch them in the middle rather than but just having it be all the way off the

01:00:38   side. It seems crazy to me that the selected tab isn't visible. Sometimes. Yeah. It's not. Do you

01:00:43   have dark mode on on your No, I think if I were younger, I'd be all over dark mode. And I'm Yeah,

01:00:49   there's something about dark mode that no longer. It's like my brain is too old to to,

01:00:54   yeah, to adapt. Well, so yeah, I mean, I do. And I think maybe that makes it worse. Because I'm

01:01:01   looking at Mac rumors. And, you know, they're a little piece, their piece on this change in the

01:01:07   latest beta. And, and of course, they have, you know, they have light mode on, and they have three

01:01:14   tabs open. Right. And so, so it looks like it's very straightforward. But it's like, yeah, like

01:01:21   you said, I mean, I have way more tabs open than that. And it is very confusing. It's I don't want

01:01:28   to rehash arguments I've already made, you know, there's only so much to be said. And but I just

01:01:33   feel like it's such a fundamental own goal, like, to, to, to make these things that they're calling

01:01:42   tabs that don't look like tabs at all. And I know that some of us have complained ever since iOS

01:01:51   seven about buttons that don't look like buttons. And yeah, right. But it really is true. Like,

01:01:56   what is the difference between the URL field, the address field in Safari and the tab indicators?

01:02:05   They're just they're both just round recs with a different background color and text in them. So

01:02:12   yeah, they've literally made it so that tabs and a text field look identical. Like they're not even

01:02:17   close to identical. It's not like there are two types of buttons, you know, and the whole tabs as

01:02:24   skeuomorphic tabs to some degree, you know, some correlation that whatever your app or operating

01:02:33   system you're using, that you have tabs in your browser or tabs in some other app, you know,

01:02:39   that works like this, you know, where you it's like putting two windows in the same window.

01:02:44   Or like in system preferences, when a sub panel of a preference panel has tabs, right? The tabs

01:02:51   always look like actual physical paper tabs, like tabs on a file folder, because it's a metaphor

01:02:58   that works. It's it right. You don't have to think about it. When tabs look like tabs, the metaphor

01:03:04   is so clear that there's no cognitive load at all. It's it's this thing is connected. There's

01:03:11   there's a visual indication that says this selected tab is connected to this content. And

01:03:17   all these other tabs look like they're in the background. And when you click or tap on them,

01:03:23   then they're connected to their content underneath them.

01:03:27   Jared: Firefox also uses RoundRx, which, but they have it, they have them in a separate space

01:03:34   from a very visibly different space from the, like the search field, the URL field.

01:03:41   And so it actually works better. I still don't like it as much because like you said, I'd rather

01:03:45   have, I'd like the metaphor. I think the metaphor makes sense. And why would you change? Why would

01:03:52   you not use the metaphor if you could? So just to be just to be different is like the only reason

01:03:57   that they can come up with. I yeah, it just seems like being different for being different,

01:04:02   which really is antithetical to the typical Apple way, which is that they don't make things

01:04:09   different just to be different. They only make things different when they are certain that it's

01:04:13   better. And, and that's, I've had discussions with, you know, really high level people at Apple

01:04:18   on and off the record. But they often reiterate that, you know, that what, why, why do certain

01:04:26   like Mac books look the same for so many years? Because they don't have a better idea yet for what

01:04:34   would be better. So they're not going to just make minor cosmetic tweaks just because this one's two

01:04:40   years old and will tweak something. No, until they have something that they feel is all together,

01:04:45   this is way better. And then it's an all new design, but then they'll let that stand. And

01:04:50   this tab thing really feels like cleverness in search of a problem that needed additional

01:04:57   cleverness. Right. I could be wrong, too. This is one of those things where I, you know, as a

01:05:04   professional columnist and podcast pundit, I'm supposed to have hot takes, right?

01:05:11   And I feel, you know, every once in a while, I'll make people angry. Like,

01:05:17   like all of my good friends who work at IBM. But that was not the hottest of hot takes.

01:05:26   But I feel like my take isn't hot enough on this. But I, who knows, I don't want to state with

01:05:34   certainty how the mass public will react to this design come fall when these releases come out.

01:05:41   Maybe nobody will notice. Maybe this is the sort of thing where 95% of people just are so

01:05:48   just don't really think about user interfaces that adapt and they'll just poke around. They're like,

01:05:54   Oh, this is new. And they'll poke around, right? Figure out where the stuff they used to use is now.

01:05:59   Maybe I can't help my gut feeling is that people who are going to be angry about this

01:06:07   because they're going to feel lost and discombobulated in the new Safari.

01:06:10   Yeah, I mean, the fact that Firefox uses it, I, I would imagine that most people would probably be

01:06:20   okay with it. But it does, it does lose a sense of sense. I guess, making sense.

01:06:31   But the iPhone is obviously more used because it's a more popular device. And the iPhone to me is

01:06:36   still it's more problematic. And I know that the latest beta put the share button back, but they

01:06:41   all they really did was turn the dot dot dot button into a share button. And a lot of the

01:06:47   stuff that they had stashed junk drawer style and the dot dot dot menu button is now just in the

01:06:53   share menu. It's, I just think fundamentally, the old Safari design that we've had ever since iOS 1.0

01:07:03   had two toolbars, there's a thing at the top, and then there's a thing at the bottom. And then as

01:07:08   you scroll the page, they would fade away to take up less space until you needed them. And

01:07:16   trying to cram what for 14 years had been two rows of touch controls on a phone into one row.

01:07:25   It's too much. I feel like that's that you could get into all of the examples of this particular

01:07:33   thing feels hidden or the old AA menu was was way more obvious for getting into reader mode because

01:07:39   the AI icon signifies font settings and readability. And there's all sorts of specific or,

01:07:46   you know, how do you get to your bookmarks, it feels very complicated and discombobulating now,

01:07:51   but all those specifics aside, it's that there used to be two rows, and they kind of needed

01:07:56   two rows. And now they only they've decided to put everything in one row. And it's too much to put in

01:08:02   one row. And you could you can make the argument that okay, we but we really want everything at

01:08:08   the bottom because we want everything to be one hand reachability with your thumb, which is an

01:08:13   okay goal. I think it's overrated. I think it's something that sounds like it's very, would be a

01:08:18   great idea. And I feel like in practice, the fact that some of safaris lesser use stuff was at the

01:08:24   top is was fine. That's fine. You can't put everything at the bottom. But even so make it make

01:08:31   the address bar right above the toolbar puts keep it as two rows, but put them both at the bottom.

01:08:37   If more people would use the the 12 mini, then we wouldn't have this problem.

01:08:40   That's exactly right.

01:08:42   Just throwing that out there.

01:08:45   I've got the I'm running the beta on the mini.

01:08:48   That seems Yeah,

01:08:51   I is such a delightful device. What are you going to do? I know we talked about this.

01:08:56   I Yeah, well, so yeah, so it seems like there's going to be a 13 mini and there's not going to be

01:09:02   I mean, at least no plans to have a mini after that. Right. So I was planning on keeping this

01:09:07   for two years and then getting another one. Now I think I might get the 13 under the right idea

01:09:14   that it'll be the last phone that I get. I don't know. The last small phone I get and then go back

01:09:22   to and then probably go back to the se assuming that they keep making the se which I think they

01:09:27   it seems like they will do that. I mean, I it seems like I was perfectly fine when the se was

01:09:35   the small phone that was also the cheap phone. I like it better as a small phone that I get more

01:09:42   modern features with but I would take that just because I'd much prefer the smaller size.

01:09:50   So the rumors and I I had the rumor game bores me the older I get more less I'm interested but the

01:09:58   the basic state of the rumors for iPhone are this year, two months from now, they'll they're coming

01:10:05   out with a new lineup there. That'll either be I guess the 12 s or the 13. And as usual, it seems

01:10:12   like the actual name of the product is is one of the best kept secrets, you know, the and I still

01:10:20   wonder if that's why they don't print the name of the product anywhere like on the box or anything.

01:10:24   Yeah, that the boxes are so they can they can change it at the last minute or just keep it

01:10:28   secret. I don't know. But yeah, but then it's just the same lineup as last year. So a mini,

01:10:34   a regular, and then a pro that's the same size as the regular and a pro max that's the same size as

01:10:42   last year's pro max. But that next year, in 2022, the lineup is two 6.1 inch phones and two 6.7 inch

01:10:55   phones, which would, I guess imply that they're going to add a big ass iPhone at a consumer level

01:11:06   price, which has been, you know, like a product they don't make right the two products they don't

01:11:10   make right now is they don't make a stainless steel three camera lens mini and they don't make

01:11:18   a aluminum two camera lens consumer priced big ass giant fablet 6.7 inch phone.

01:11:27   And there have been reports all all year long that the the 12 mini isn't selling in

01:11:37   blockbuster numbers, and may be disappointing to even Apple's projections that they've had to cut

01:11:43   back, you know, dial back the production of the 12 mini to make other models that it's less popular

01:11:49   than they anticipated. I've long just pure spitball, just a spitball. Maybe it's totally

01:11:56   off base. Maybe there's I just vastly because I tend to think it's a really cool product. Maybe

01:12:02   I'm just obsessed with small products. But I've had the idea that then to really appreciate the

01:12:08   mini, you need to see it in person. But 2020 was not a great year for going into retail stores to

01:12:13   see new guy. Yeah, really person. Right. Right. That may be well. But then I mean, I think that

01:12:19   well, I don't know the numbers. They know the numbers. But just from the outside, it's in my

01:12:28   experience, because if you're a person who I and I don't know, like, it's I don't know how many people

01:12:32   are like this. I know there are people like this, because I've talked to a number of them. But it's

01:12:38   that's sanic data. So people who bought the original se hung on to it for a long time and

01:12:44   love that device. I mean, I had it for four years. And it was but like, at the beginning of 2020,

01:12:50   it was really showing its age. It was very hard to work with. I had had the battery replaced,

01:12:55   and I still had to put it in a battery case, because it wasn't holding enough charge to get

01:13:01   through the day. And so when the se two came out, I was like, well, I gotta, I gotta get an se two,

01:13:08   because that's, you know, it's a reasonable size, it's bigger than I want it to be. But it's a nice

01:13:13   phone. And it's available now. And it's really, it's relatively inexpensive. So I got the se two,

01:13:21   and then, you know, sure enough, four months later, they shipped the phone that I actually

01:13:26   wanted. The iPhone 12 molt. Yeah, so I sold my se two, I returned, you know, whatever, got a refund

01:13:35   for my, whatever I got back for it, not full price, obviously, and got the got the new one.

01:13:41   But I gotta believe not many people did that. Yeah. Everybody, everybody who had and held on

01:13:47   to an se got the se and including people who were not necessarily put off by the price of the 12

01:13:54   minute would not have been put up by the price of the 12 minute, they got it because they desperately

01:13:59   needed a phone at that point. I it makes me wonder and part of it too. And I get it like it, let's

01:14:06   just say in some alternate universe, the 12 mini actually sold in surprisingly good numbers, right,

01:14:13   that it was that that they were short, in short supply all throughout this year. And all by all

01:14:21   signs, it was it's a smash hit that Apple underestimated. I you know, I'm not saying that

01:14:27   next year's plans wouldn't then include that size iPhone, you know, they could change, you know,

01:14:32   two years, one year is enough lead time. But a lot of this, though, Apple does plot out years in

01:14:37   advance. And I can't help but think that there's a chance that they actually had this planned out all

01:14:42   along that the mini size would only be for last year and this year. And not that it's going away,

01:14:49   but that they'll just keep the iPhone 13 mini in the lineup. And then a year later, lower it in

01:14:55   price. And it'll be like an SE or maybe they'll make a SE three that would be that size. You know

01:15:03   that that that they'll just put a new chip. I think I think you're probably I think you're

01:15:07   probably right. I think that they look at the people who want the small phone as a market that

01:15:12   they don't care about as much and are going to toss things to whenever they feel like.

01:15:19   Trenton Larkin Well, the other thing that the market that I think,

01:15:23   even I who try to keep, I try to cognizantly be aware of the typical person, right. But I think

01:15:30   that like me and you and everybody who listens to shows like this tend to overestimate the typical

01:15:38   user and the other way more than people like us who really like having like you bought the mini

01:15:46   and I know Marco has the mini and likes it and I was so close to buying it as my personal phone

01:15:51   and still sort of feel like maybe I should have because it was the one year where I didn't need

01:15:55   long battery life blah blah blah. I love that it's there. But that market I think is small compared

01:16:02   to the number of people who want an iPhone that works like their old iPhone and has a button that

01:16:09   they put their thumb on and they click the button to go home. And I think that's true. I think that

01:16:16   market is huge. I know and I, you know, anecdotal, but that's my mom has the SE two because she

01:16:23   replaced like I think it was a six s that just could not hold. That's what my mom that's what

01:16:28   my mom currently has. Yeah, she has a success. And I was like, you got to get an SE two. And

01:16:32   you know, and she was it the battery was so I don't even know what was going on because like

01:16:37   the battery health I was, you know, and it was all last year all remote when you know, during

01:16:42   the stretch where I hadn't seen, you know, didn't see my parents for God, I guess it was a year or

01:16:47   whatever. So it was all tech support over the phone with mom. But like, the battery thing in

01:16:55   settings wasn't saying it was terrible. I think she was like it was saying it was like 85% or

01:17:00   something. And it wasn't terrible. But she was getting she'd like, she'd like leave the house

01:17:06   and like three hours later, her phone was dead. I was like, well, that's not right. And it's like,

01:17:10   we try to reset and restore from iCloud, nothing really is like, you know what, you shouldn't even

01:17:15   get this fixed. Let's get your phones old. Let's get you the SE two. But there was no question just

01:17:20   looking at the website, she, she didn't want anything to do with the phones that didn't have

01:17:25   a button down there. She just I think it's very hard to get a grasp on how many people are like

01:17:34   that. And I see it like I look, I often read the comments on Mac rumors. You see it even like

01:17:39   people who are enthusiastic enough to be like commenting on Mac rumors. There's a lot of people

01:17:44   who really, really want to stick with a phone that has touch ID and a thumb button.

01:17:50   Jared: It'll be interesting because they've just were given a patent for

01:17:54   touch ID on the screen, right? So it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I assume eventually

01:18:02   they're going to try and put that in. Because it's been not just because of that patent,

01:18:06   but because they've been talking about it for years. And I think they would probably keep both,

01:18:11   right? They would keep face ID and touch ID on the same device. But it'd be interesting to see

01:18:14   once they put touch ID into the screen, if they keep having one with a button, because

01:18:18   I still think that those people want the button. Like, like, like, I tried to tell my mom like,

01:18:26   okay, you got to do now you do the same thing, except on the screen. I don't know how well that's

01:18:30   going to work. No, and I it's, it's sort of new territory for Apple. Like Apple, you know,

01:18:36   as at a philosophical level, has always moved stuff ahead and deprecated stuff, right? Like,

01:18:44   you can't run 32 bit apps anymore. You know, they they they warn people wasn't like they pulled the

01:18:49   rug on them and like, surprise, this phone, here's a new phone, and it doesn't run any of the 32 bit

01:18:54   apps. You know, they come out at WWDC and say, we're moving to 64 bit, we're going to deprecate

01:19:00   32 bit apps at some point. And you know, you can kind of read between the lines and think,

01:19:04   well, this means next year. And Microsoft's philosophy is the opposite. They tried to,

01:19:10   you know, you can run like old DOS programs from 1983. And they still run in the terminal in

01:19:15   Windows and when 32 apps still work, and you know, you can defend both philosophies, but Apple's has

01:19:23   always been to move stuff forward. And I kind of, you know, but then that philosophy runs into

01:19:30   reality of human psychology when you have over a billion iPhones in use, right? I think that's what

01:19:38   they said at the in the the the analyst call this week with Apple's results, was they were one of

01:19:46   the questions was about active devices or something and and they clarified that it's over a billion,

01:19:52   you know, like 1.4 billion devices in use, but like over a billion of them are iPhones.

01:19:57   Like, that's crazy. Yeah, it was, you know, that's like one out of every seven people on the planet

01:20:04   is using an iPhone. And most of those people are not enthusiasts who really look forward to,

01:20:10   whether it's a better design or not, I think it's a better design. I love the new iPhone 10 era,

01:20:18   okay, just swipe up from the bottom instead of having a button. I think it's a better design,

01:20:23   but it is new and you tell people new and unfamiliar. Right. And again, that sort of

01:20:29   mindset is where I really have to think about like, what the reaction to the new Safari on iOS

01:20:35   15 is going to be, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, we'll see. You're so you're thinking

01:20:44   about buying the new mini? I think, I think that's probably the smart money at this point. Like,

01:20:50   you know, not that I ever do. Why should I start now? You owe yourself some new iPhone

01:20:59   phones though, after having rocked the S series for four years. That's what I said. That's what

01:21:02   I told my wife. I said, I had the same phone for four years. But now, yeah, but now I'm going to

01:21:08   get like, I got two last year. And then I'm going to get another one this year. That's, yeah. So now

01:21:14   I'm overdoing it. Somebody has a problem. Yeah. I mean, if it's, I only remember what plan I'm on.

01:21:19   I think I'm on, I think I'm on, I think I'm on a Verizon. I think I got a Verizon plan this time.

01:21:24   So I, if I could get the new phone, I probably will, I will, you know, without changing anything,

01:21:30   I'll definitely do it. It's my payment. If my payment stays the same and just extends,

01:21:34   I will definitely do it. All right, let me take a break here and thank our next sponsors,

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01:23:25   and heard about Linode here. Let's shift gears. Do you watch the Loki?

01:23:34   Tim Cynova I was actually just thinking about that. Yeah,

01:23:38   yeah, quite a bit. Because I covered it with Dan and Guy for Biff.

01:23:45   Dave Asprey Biff, your other podcast.

01:23:46   Tim Cynova Yeah, yeah. So I quite enjoyed it and

01:23:50   was thrilled to see there's going to be a second season.

01:23:52   Dave Asprey I am too. I love it. I have a review of it that I feel I keep hesitating to write it

01:24:00   on Daring Fireball. I'll tell it to you here. I'll let listeners of the show. I know it's going to

01:24:04   make a certain crowd very angry. I think Loki is the best season of Doctor Who ever made.

01:24:13   Tim Cynova Right. I think that may be true.

01:24:18   And then I liked Doctor Who quite a bit.

01:24:22   Dave Asprey I do too. Although I'm like a couple years

01:24:24   behind. Like Jonas and I tend to fall seasons behind because I get confused about when BBC

01:24:29   shows are available. And then we fall behind and then like binge them over Christmas or something

01:24:34   like that. But it's that type of sci fi sort of time travel alternate thing. It's like if you like

01:24:44   Doctor Who, you're gonna love Loki. And it's so smart. And I'm, I just adore the art direction.

01:24:51   It is that's absolutely amazing stuff. Just like these are just gadgets that look old but new. And

01:25:00   I just love it.

01:25:01   Tim Cynova Yeah. I mean,

01:25:03   what was we just talked about this earlier? This thing because I was thinking I was gonna bring

01:25:08   that up like the temp pad. And, and the design of that. Oh, I was thinking because you were talking

01:25:13   about the 30 pin connector, I think made me think of that. It's like I want to I want to go back and

01:25:19   like get like maybe I think I still have an iPhone 4. Like see if I could make it look like a temp pad.

01:25:26   Just like build a case around the outside. I wonder I so the temp pad for people who have I

01:25:33   don't want to spoil it. I really recommend it if you have Disney Plus. And even if you don't like

01:25:38   a lot of the Marvel stuff, it Loki is sort of the opposite of like the Avenger movies,

01:25:45   right, which are these big blockbuster three hour amusement park rides. I enjoyed all of them. But

01:25:52   you know, like the last two are sort of just big battle royale. Everybody's punching each other

01:25:59   for three hours. Right. Crashing skyscrapers. Loki is low key. And it's about characters and

01:26:06   sort of the opposite. You know, it's like the quiet notes, you know?

01:26:11   Yeah, it's all quiet notes. And I enjoy that so much more personally.

01:26:16   Jared

01:26:23   out from the Avengers movie, the first Avengers movie and goes on this, this real journey.

01:26:30   I mean,

01:26:31   and you can see why in addition to just, you know, Disney writing Tom Hiddleston a check,

01:26:37   you know, like that has enough zeros at the end that he'd agreed that you can see why an actor

01:26:42   would say, Yeah, all right. This concept, sure. I'm in this is this actually seems like a lot of

01:26:49   fun to play because it's not just me getting CGI thrown into walls. Right? Nonstop. It is actual

01:26:57   acting. It's good work. Yeah, yeah. There was, there was a panel sort of zoom thing with all

01:27:04   the actors from the three Marvel TV shows that they've done so far. And Anthony Mackie was giving

01:27:10   him a hard time because he apparently conducted a Loki seminar. And he was instructing, you know,

01:27:20   like when they started the show, he sat down a bunch of people and talked to them for hours

01:27:25   about the character, which was funny. And you know, Mackie gives everybody a hard time. But

01:27:30   I think it's also interesting and I think a credit to Hiddleston that he cares enough about the

01:27:38   character and is invested in it so much that he can talk about the character for hours on end

01:27:43   and like and go into deep detail about so many different aspects. And, and he's, I think I've

01:27:50   always thought he was terrific. I mean, from the from the Thor movie, which is not necessarily one

01:27:55   of the best ones, but I think it's a very good movie. And because I enjoy all of them, really,

01:28:00   he just that that moment when he sort of, you know, like his when Thor says this is madness,

01:28:07   and he like sort of spits at him like, is it is it like he like he doesn't even know he's gone so

01:28:12   far off the deep end that he's not even sure what he's doing anymore. He's just reacting. And I

01:28:16   think he's a terrific actor and just really seems to revel in the character. Yeah.

01:28:21   I called him Hiddleston. His name is Hiddleston. I don't know why I feel Hiddleston rolls off my

01:28:28   tongue. But you called him you called him pixel mature. He was in a limited

01:28:37   series. What was it called? It was this? The Night Manager?

01:28:40   Oh, I never saw Oh, you should absolutely try to do it. This is my recommendation of the week is to

01:28:47   to watch the limited series. The Night Manager. It's based with Hugh with Hugh Laurie. Yeah,

01:28:52   Hugh Laurie. It is based on a john lakar novel. And it's one of those things where

01:28:58   I always say this, like Hitchcock used to famously say that he never read novels, because

01:29:06   he learned that you can't whatever makes a good novel good. It's too much to fit in a two hour

01:29:12   movie. And but so he doesn't want to see he doesn't want to be tempted by great stories from a novel.

01:29:18   So he likes to read he used to read short stories because short stories turn into two hour movies

01:29:23   much more naturally. And I love it's one of the great things about modern premier TV that you can

01:29:30   make. Like, if you have a six hour story to tell, you can make it six hours, you don't have to cut

01:29:37   it to three, you know, and have Oh, my God, one three hour movie. And it's like, I got, you know,

01:29:42   this isn't right. You can just tell a six hour story, or you could tell a 10 hour story. And

01:29:46   the Night Manager is that sort of thing. And it there were rumors that you know, that he was into

01:29:53   running to maybe be James Bond at some point. And you could see it, I think you could see it with

01:29:59   Loki, which is weird, because Loki isn't James Bond like at all. But you know, there's but in

01:30:05   that series, you could see it in him. But the Night Manager is sort of a spy movie. You can

01:30:10   definitely see how he could do it. And he'd be very cool. Yeah, I'll check. I'll check that out.

01:30:14   Good cast. Yes. Olivia. Olivia Coleman. Oh, it's a terrific cast. It's really it's really

01:30:18   unbelievable. So anyway, the Night Night Manager is my pick of the week. I swear to God, it's so

01:30:24   good. It's really good. Yeah, so the temp pad, I don't want to spoil it. But the temp pad is like

01:30:31   a little iPhone size sort of Palm pilot II thing and and the tech in the Loki in this Loki series

01:30:39   world is all of this sort of retro. Like a mishmash of like, stuff from the 50s 60s 70s 80s,

01:30:48   you know that in the temp pad, it reminds me to do what's the game? It's like, it's called like a

01:30:55   Pip Boy or something. One of the there's like some post apocalyptic video game where where the tech

01:31:02   sort of looks like this, but it doesn't really matter. But it's all very cool. But it's like a

01:31:07   one bit screen. It's like a like a like a black screen with just orange picture. Oh, and that's

01:31:12   that's what Yeah, that's I think that's what I was thinking of when we were talking about the

01:31:15   playdate. Right, right. No, it all ties together. Yeah. Yeah, no, and yeah, and then there's Miss

01:31:22   Meneses. Who is a fallout is the name of the game. And there's this technology. Okay. You I'm sure

01:31:32   Hank, I didn't be the Hank. I'm sure hang split it. I Yeah, it's like a big wrist computer that

01:31:37   the that you that your character plays in Fallout. And it's sort of is like that where it's a one bit

01:31:43   display. And looks old school, even though it takes place in the future. And the Pip Boy is

01:31:48   how you interact with all of your it's like the HUD for the video game. It's all very clever.

01:31:53   I was saying to you, I don't think it would work. I mean, and again, to be, you know, a good way to

01:31:59   flush millions of dollars down the toilet, but if somebody were to start, you know, some idea of

01:32:06   like, what, what kind of cell phone could somebody make that? That would be interesting, but yet

01:32:15   isn't even trying to completely against high end Samsung and iPhones. You can't beat Apple and

01:32:20   Samsung on display technology. What if you made like a super retro looking phone that was like,

01:32:25   acted like a modern smartphone and was all, you know, like a temp pad? Like, would hipsters buy it?

01:32:31   Maybe? Yeah, I don't know what the breakeven point is.

01:32:38   But like the playdate of cell phones, you know, something like that, you know, would have to be

01:32:42   backlit. But what if it just was orange pixels on a black screen? And it just looked like that. And

01:32:47   it was like your way of asserting, I'm so hip that I don't even have a color. I don't have a color

01:32:53   phone. I don't have a TV. Like, I listen to vinyl. You'd have to, like,

01:33:01   you'd have to have, I put too much thought into this, but it's like, have you ever seen,

01:33:06   like, I think Hockenberry made one, right? Icon factory made like a pixel camera that takes

01:33:11   black and white. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Yeah. That looked like they're dithered

01:33:16   for the classic black and white Macintosh back in the day. So like, you could do it. You could take,

01:33:22   I mean, presumably, if, if such some idiot actually made this idea, I'm talking about made

01:33:28   temp pad, modern smartphone, presumably, you would want the camera to capture a full,

01:33:35   full color images, but on the one bit display show it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have, I got a

01:33:42   Kobo e-reader a couple weeks ago. And one of the things I only just discovered yesterday was that

01:33:50   it's got a bunch of beta features, and one of them is a web browser. So it's just interesting

01:33:55   to browse the web in, you know, on an E-ink device, which is, you know, a little bit similar

01:34:03   to what you're talking about. Just, it's not, it's not pixeled very much, but it's, it's all

01:34:08   in black and white. I'm trying to remember that it was like the tail end of the Newton era,

01:34:13   coincided with the rise of the web. And there was a, there was a web browser for the Newton.

01:34:19   I'm trying to remember what it was. Nootskate. Nootskate. No, that wasn't the name, was it?

01:34:26   There were, oh yeah, that was definitely one of them. Anyway, I don't know if maybe there

01:34:29   were more. Maybe. The icon factories app is called bit cam, B I T C A M. Yeah. I'll put it in the

01:34:37   show notes. I swear it's the world's most advanced camera for your mini pocket computer. That's right.

01:34:42   I can't, I can't find it. I'm sure I'm right. I, you know, I, I'm an idiot. I'd buy it. I,

01:34:48   if somebody made like a $300 cell phone with a, you know, and what if the choices were just

01:34:54   whether you wanted green pixels on a black background or orange pixels on a back by.

01:34:58   That should be the iPhone SE. Yeah.

01:35:01   I don't know. I think that, again, I think that it would be a sensation in our crowd.

01:35:09   Yes, for sure. And you know, it would be like 0.00000000001% of the population would buy one.

01:35:23   I've even heard of it, but I would dig it. And especially if like the industrial design looked

01:35:28   like a 1983 Apple II or something, you know, maybe. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know,

01:35:35   I mean, you know, most of the, like, or I don't know about most of them, but many of the show

01:35:38   runners for Loki were big fans of madman. I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one of the,

01:35:47   you know, that was one of the reasons why they sort of have that aesthetic of like a 1960s office.

01:35:53   Yeah. The monologue analog devices that have incredible power.

01:35:58   Well, and like the furniture. Yeah, that makes, I mean, I guess it makes sense, you know, I mean,

01:36:04   you don't have to even know that they've ever even heard of madman to know that they're fans of 60s

01:36:09   architecture and furniture and clothing and style and stuff like that. Yeah. All right. I have one

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01:38:00   Squarespace for their continuing support of the show. Any other summer watching, any other movies

01:38:06   or TV shows that caught your eye? Well, there's this little show, I don't know if you've heard

01:38:11   of it. It's called Ted Lasso. They had their biggest viewing episode, I guess, the biggest

01:38:23   viewing for the season two premiere for Ted Lasso. Yeah, well, it's such an interesting era now that

01:38:29   we're sort of set. It struck me when I looked at the Emmy nominations, and I'm not a big awards guy.

01:38:35   I tend to think the awards never go to the best show. The Emmys seem to be the one that I agree

01:38:41   with the most, though. It seems like Emmys tend to stand the test of time better than the Oscars.

01:38:48   The Oscars often are like, you look back and you're like, "That won? What?" But the Emmys

01:38:57   really struck me as to how clearly, it's no longer a transition from traditional networks to streaming

01:39:06   services for where the best shows are. It's already over. And the networks just show stuff like

01:39:13   reality shows and game shows. I don't know, I guess old people still watch Tom Selleck on CBS.

01:39:21   I don't know. But the other cool thing about the streaming era is there's no penalty for being late

01:39:30   to a show. In the old days, if you didn't watch shows when they were on, you just missed it.

01:39:36   And somebody would be like, "Do you ever watch Cheers?" And you'd be like, "No, what's that?"

01:39:40   And they're like, "Oh my God, it's hilarious. It's about this group of people in a bar in

01:39:43   Boston. It's just terrific. It's such a smart show." And you're like, "Oh." And then you're

01:39:47   like, "When's it come back on?" They're like, "September." And you're like, "Okay, I'll try

01:39:51   to remember to watch it." And you had no chance to catch up on season one because they didn't go into

01:39:55   reruns until years later. And now— Well, it's still that way. It's still that way with my parents.

01:39:59   Well, my parents too, definitely. Because while we were with them, we showed them an episode of

01:40:06   Holy Moly. Have you ever seen Holy Moly? No. Holy Moly is a show that I got into during the pandemic.

01:40:14   And the first season is, I think on YouTube, at least it was when I started watching it. And then

01:40:19   it's on ABC on Thursday night. It's on ABC Tonight. And it's Extreme Mini Golf.

01:40:28   Oh! You know what? I have seen commercials for that. I would love to watch that show.

01:40:33   It's hilarious. I think it's hilarious. It's super dumb. It is exceedingly dumb. But it's

01:40:38   got Rob Riggle, who is always a delight. And it's just, you know, I mean, they have holes,

01:40:42   like one of the holes is called Uranus. And obviously, they have as much fun with that

01:40:47   as they possibly can. So we watched it, you know, my parents are super into golf. And so we watched

01:40:52   it with my parents, and they just thought it was absolutely hilarious. And my mom was like, "How

01:40:58   can I see Holy Moly?" I was like, "Well, for you, you got to watch it." You know, there's days at

01:41:03   nine o'clock on ABC. Because it's on Hulu. But you know, they don't get Hulu. If I get it, I mean,

01:41:12   they don't understand. We, Amy and I have gotten back into Press Your Luck, the new Press Your

01:41:17   Luck now hosted by Elizabeth Banks. Because I always, I loved the old Press Your Luck back in,

01:41:24   when it was on with Peter Tamarkin. It was one of my favorite daytime game shows. I just loved it.

01:41:32   So much fun. I don't know. It's just pure, I don't know how you pronounce the word, Shadenfreude,

01:41:42   Shadenfreude, it's just the delight in watching people have experienced bad luck and lose all

01:41:50   their money. It's a lot of fun. But they have the commercials for Holy Moly, you know, if you're

01:41:56   watching Press Your Luck, it's sort of like the old school ad recommendation engine, right? Like,

01:42:05   we don't need to track you or spy on you or anything. If you're watching Press Your Luck,

01:42:12   you're gonna like this. Oh, so I should mention, like, so the hallmark hole on Holy Moly is

01:42:21   Dutch courage, which is, so you know, you go to a mini golf, there's always a windmill hole,

01:42:25   right? And you got to putt through the windmill to get to the hole. So there's two windmills on this

01:42:30   hole. And there's a walkway through them, and you have to dodge the blades as you go through. And

01:42:39   the blades move pretty fast, and they're big. They're padded, but if they hit you,

01:42:44   they knock you into the water. See, I got it. And people, you know, most people do not make it

01:42:51   through. And so it's mostly just the delight of seeing people get, you know, clobbered by giant

01:42:56   windmill blades and thrown into the water. I've, as soon as we're done recording, I'm going right

01:43:01   upstairs and I'm setting the TiVo to record this. All right, I had to look it up. I know it's,

01:43:09   it's one of the ones that make me the most angry about the Academy Awards. 1981 Academy Awards.

01:43:14   Oh, really? I don't, I don't, I don't have to be more specific because I can't. I was alive.

01:43:22   But did not win for best picture, Raging Bull, which is perhaps, perhaps one of the finest

01:43:30   top five motion pictures ever made. You could easily find it in a lot of top 10 lists.

01:43:35   The best picture, Ordinary People. Which is, it's like going to the dentist.

01:43:42   [Laughter]

01:43:43   Matt

01:43:56   Bull.

01:44:16   To ordinary people, this movie is riveting. It's gripping. It's a thrill ride, edge of your seat.

01:44:26   We did this to a friend in high school. We had a friend, my friend Todd, and I forget how it came

01:44:32   up, but we were listening to the radio one day and a Steely Dan song came on and me and my, I don't

01:44:38   know how me and my pal Ethan just kind of without plotting it, we latched onto it and we're just

01:44:44   singing the praises of Steely Dan. And he's like, "I never heard of them." And we're like, "Oh my

01:44:48   God, you never heard of Steely Dan. It's like, oh, they're the best." And then like a couple of weeks

01:44:54   later, we were in Todd's car. He had a, he had a, like the ugliest Ford Mustang Ford ever made.

01:45:01   Like when the Mustangs got like Sedani.

01:45:04   Matt

01:45:05   Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember that.

01:45:07   Matt

01:45:07   And it was old. It was only like eight years old, which sounds cool for a high school kid to have

01:45:11   an eight-year-old Mustang, but it looked, it was just the worst. But anyway, he had an old Ford

01:45:15   Mustang and we were in it and he had his tape box and he had four Steely Dan tapes. And it turns out

01:45:24   he, on our recommendation, went out and bought four Steely Dan tapes. And he wasn't going to tell

01:45:32   us. And he goes, "You son of a bitches. I spent 40 bucks on those tapes." And it's awful. And I

01:45:45   swear to God, I've never laughed so hard. Because I had forgotten that we'd even done it, that we

01:45:49   had tried to sell them on it. Anyway, ordinary people, go run it.

01:45:53   Matt

01:45:53   I bet a lot of people will react the same way to Holy Moly. But I think it, because it is dumb.

01:46:02   It is definitely dumb. But I find it delightful.

01:46:06   Pete: Well, I think that your description conveys that, where it's, the highlight is

01:46:10   people inadvertently getting knocked into a walk.

01:46:12   Matt

01:46:13   Turn your brain, turn your brain all the way up.

01:46:15   Pete By a padded windmill.

01:46:16   Matt Watch Holy Moly.

01:46:18   Pete Have a good rest of your summer, John. It's been good talking to you. Good luck with

01:46:22   the playdate. Oh.

01:46:24   Matt Yeah! Yeah, I gotta limber up. Gotta, I hope you've been hydrating.

01:46:28   Pete Yeah. Fingers crossed. Alright, thank you, John.