The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are you a Sopranos fan?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Yeah, love it.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I can't help but think that you were.

00:00:06 ◼   ► So Amy and I, we never rewatched it.

00:00:09 ◼   ► We watched it live when it was on, which I think was circa 1999 to 2006.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Everybody knows that it started before 9/11 because two or three seasons it had the Twin

00:00:25 ◼   ► Towers and the opening credits and then it of course didn't.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I have to say, we just got done two nights ago.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And I have to say, it was one of those things where we didn't rewatch it, not because we

00:00:41 ◼   ► didn't want to, but because I insisted on putting it off as long as possible to delay

00:00:46 ◼   ► the gratification.

00:00:49 ◼   ► And I have to say, it was so much better than I remember.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I always thought it might be my favorite show of all time and almost certainly would have

00:00:56 ◼   ► been my answer to what's the best show of all time.

00:00:59 ◼   ► But it's so much better and so much more enjoyable than I remembered.

00:01:03 ◼   ► It's stunning.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I've only seen it once as well.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I watched it in real time, but I started I think maybe the second, I didn't get HBO until

00:01:12 ◼   ► the second or third season, so I had some catching up to do, so I got to binge it a

00:01:16 ◼   ► little bit.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And that was fun in the old west of the internet, we had to try to find copies of the earlier

00:01:23 ◼   ► seasons before they were out on DVD.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And when the series was over, I essentially declared it my favorite TV show of all time,

00:01:31 ◼   ► but that was a long time ago and I've always kind of, not dreaded rewatching it, but wondered

00:01:36 ◼   ► if I rewatch it, it's probably not going to be your favorite show of all time again.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Maybe you just felt that way after you watched it because I really liked the ending and I

00:01:46 ◼   ► thought it was great.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And so much great TV has come since then that surely it probably doesn't hold up.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So I haven't rewatched it just because I'm letting it live in my memory as my kind of

00:01:56 ◼   ► default answer of, oh, if you had to pick your favorite TV show of all time, what would

00:01:59 ◼   ► it be?

00:02:00 ◼   ► And there's favorite versus best, right?

00:02:03 ◼   ► For many reasons, I'm coming from the New York metro area, being Italian American, there's

00:02:09 ◼   ► lots of things that make this show in my wheelhouse and I love these type of movies, Godfather,

00:02:14 ◼   ► Goodfellas, all that stuff.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And there's lots of things that make me predisposed to love it independent of its quality, but

00:02:20 ◼   ► also the quality is very good.

00:02:22 ◼   ► So I haven't rewatched it.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm saving it for my retirement or something because it's more of an investment

00:02:28 ◼   ► than rewatching The Godfather, which I've done many, many times, but I will eventually

00:02:31 ◼   ► rewatch it.

00:02:32 ◼   ► This, that, see, this is where you're in my Venn diagrams overlap.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And when they do overlap, they overlap so completely, you know, and then there's parts

00:02:41 ◼   ► that they're like diametrically opposed.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And that's why I almost feel like I insulted you by asking you if you enjoyed The Sopranos,

00:02:48 ◼   ► because I was so sure that you would for all the reasons you said, even if you had been

00:02:52 ◼   ► born in California, you know, I think you would have been, God forbid, right.

00:02:57 ◼   ► But I, you know, the fact that you are from New York and you are Italian American.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And I know that I know, I happen to know because you and I, you know, have talked about it.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I know you enjoy The Godfather and Goodfellas, you know, how could you not like The Sopranos?

00:03:09 ◼   ► But I never know when you and I are going to disagree on something.

00:03:12 ◼   ► But your reservations at rewatching it echo my own years, many years long procrastination

00:03:20 ◼   ► of rewatching it.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And I have to say it held up so much better than I expected.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It's remarkable.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Like, the one thing that I didn't anticipate was, because the thing I remember was it was

00:03:34 ◼   ► the first show, maybe the first show period, but it's certainly the first show I knew,

00:03:40 ◼   ► where they went way off an annual schedule, where towards the end, the gap between seasons

00:03:48 ◼   ► grew I don't want to say exponentially, but sort of exponentially, semi almost exponentially.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Like there were it was like two years between like some of the seasons.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And they one of the things that I actually like it about the show, but they never did

00:04:05 ◼   ► the, okay, the show opens up previously on The Sopranos.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And here's like a couple of clips from last week to refresh you.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And here's some clips from two years ago to remind you about this thing that's going to

00:04:18 ◼   ► happen on this show.

00:04:20 ◼   ► They didn't do that.

00:04:21 ◼   ► They've never done that.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So it's like you remembered what you remember.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And I got so much more out of it, binging the whole thing straight through six seasons,

00:04:31 ◼   ► because I could keep it all in my mind.

00:04:34 ◼   ► There was so much that I missed the first time because it was like I just forgot about,

00:04:37 ◼   ► oh, that's that guy from like two seasons ago.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a lot of characters in that show.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's so much not rewatching a TV show is so much more of a commitment.

00:04:47 ◼   ► You picked a good time to do it, you know, being trapped inside and everything.

00:04:52 ◼   ► But rewatching a movie, you can hold the whole thing in your head and keep it all together.

00:04:56 ◼   ► But I think that that is the advantage of the rewatch.

00:04:58 ◼   ► If you really can jam it all in, you have a much larger portion of the show and sort

00:05:02 ◼   ► of the working set of your brain's memory lets you appreciate all the details more.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Well, and the other thing that's so obvious is that, you know, it's not like they took

00:05:10 ◼   ► these gaps between seasons because they were the creators of the show were goofing around.

00:05:15 ◼   ► It was, you know, it was so rich that it took them a long time to write it, you know.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And it's so I just forgot that like in between seasons as a viewer, it felt like there's

00:05:28 ◼   ► a gap, whereas when you binge it, you're like, oh, these people who made the show, this is

00:05:33 ◼   ► like this is like one big novel that plays straight through over seven years, very naturally.

00:05:42 ◼   ► It's so impressive.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I'm just blown away.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I need to talk to somebody about it.

00:05:47 ◼   ► The worst moment was two, three nights ago, where we had three episodes to go.

00:05:52 ◼   ► We watched two.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So the third to last and then the second to last as they call it the penultimate.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And it didn't feel right to keep going right through to the finale.

00:06:04 ◼   ► And Amy was tired.

00:06:05 ◼   ► She gets a little bit tired before I do at night.

00:06:07 ◼   ► You know, it felt disrespectful to the finale.

00:06:10 ◼   ► So you got to save it.

00:06:12 ◼   ► But I wasn't that tired.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And the second to last episode leaves you so up in the air.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It was like the closest I've come to insomnia in years.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I was just laying in bed reading books on my iPad, like could not sleep because I didn't

00:06:29 ◼   ► remember everything that happened in the finale.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And I knew it was just sitting there waiting for us to watch.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So how did you handle the, was it always 16 by 9?

00:06:40 ◼   ► I forget.

00:06:41 ◼   ► It's the one that they had to redo the framing for, right?

00:06:44 ◼   ► I think they had to redo The Sopranos too.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I didn't notice.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Everything looked good in 16 to 9.

00:06:49 ◼   ► They must have gone back to the original.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Instead of just cropping, they must have gone back to the film because I don't think it

00:06:57 ◼   ► was even high def in 1999.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I remember when it switched to high def.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I saw this whole big thing about how they did the wire because the wire they did actually

00:07:06 ◼   ► shoot like the, you know, the 4 by 3 had a lot more information in it than was available

00:07:13 ◼   ► in the 16 by 9.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And so they, you know, they got, what's his name, David Simon or whatever the guy who

00:07:19 ◼   ► did the wire was involved in the, in attempting to make a good HD version of it.

00:07:25 ◼   ► And I think they did the best job possible, but it's still kind of weird when these shows

00:07:28 ◼   ► span the standard def and high def eras, you know?

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the first few, I would say they did a very good job and it was even to me

00:07:38 ◼   ► not noticeable.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And I don't remember ever seeing anything cropped out that looked bad.

00:07:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I don't know if they cropped out or if they had stuff that they could go wider.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I didn't look at it, but it stood up to me.

00:07:53 ◼   ► You can kind of see though, it was the thing to me was that in the, especially the first

00:07:58 ◼   ► season, there were some shots in some scenes and it wasn't a cropping issue.

00:08:04 ◼   ► It was like, it was like a noise issue.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Like somehow when they went back to it, there were some shots that were in low light that

00:08:17 ◼   ► once they blew it up to high, like maybe they didn't have the film.

00:08:22 ◼   ► That's what I'm thinking is maybe they didn't have the film for those shots and had to blow

00:08:26 ◼   ► it up from the standard def version.

00:08:30 ◼   ► There were a couple of shots, even Amy commented on it and she's not one to comment on something

00:08:35 ◼   ► technical like that, but only in the first season.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it almost makes me, it's kind of like playing old video games on like modern equipment.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I wonder if it would have been better to watch the first season on a standard F television

00:08:49 ◼   ► or can we just not go back to that anymore?

00:08:51 ◼   ► No, I think it holds up and it makes it seem more seamless.

00:08:56 ◼   ► It's like a more seamless experience to go straight through.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:59 ◼   ► You just watched it on HBO?

00:09:00 ◼   ► No, yeah, HBO Max.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:03 ◼   ► That's what they call it.

00:09:04 ◼   ► As if that's a thing.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Well, you know what really annoyed me?

00:09:10 ◼   ► Here's another thing.

00:09:11 ◼   ► This is true.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And I remember always enjoying the opening credits and theme song of the Sopranos.

00:09:17 ◼   ► So we binged the whole thing.

00:09:19 ◼   ► I don't know how many episodes it was at least 13 episodes this season, you know, times six,

00:09:27 ◼   ► 60 plus 18, 78.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But I think some of the seasons had more episodes.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I don't know, 70 to 80 episodes.

00:09:36 ◼   ► We watched the theme to every single one.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Even when we watched like three in a night, we'd never skipped the opening credits.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And Amy skips the credits to everything.

00:09:49 ◼   ► It's such a good theme song and such a good opening credit.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And they never changed the credits over the seven years.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good credit.

00:09:59 ◼   ► So they're kind of long.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I mean, I guess if you're getting settled in to watch, it's fine.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a thing.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And now I'm back on it.

00:10:07 ◼   ► The other thing too is that I associate when I hear the HBO static fanfare, I still for

00:10:14 ◼   ► years and years afterwards, as soon as I see any HBO show, I expect the Sopranos theme

00:10:20 ◼   ► song to immediately kick in.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And the only HBO show that rivaled that in terms of setting my ears expectation for what

00:10:29 ◼   ► to expect after the HBO static was Curb Your Enthusiasm.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Sopranos is still the one for me too, but it's shifting a little bit over time.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I do skip the intro.

00:10:41 ◼   ► There's one show that I've watched recently, I realized I watched almost all of season

00:10:45 ◼   ► one, and I realized I'm not skipping the intro on this show.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It was the TV adaptation.

00:10:51 ◼   ► No, it's not an adaptation.

00:10:52 ◼   ► The TV version of Snowpiercer.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Here's the movie Snowpiercer.

00:10:55 ◼   ► I did see the movie Snowpiercer, and I would like to watch the TV version, but I feel like

00:11:01 ◼   ► it might be a tough sell on the wife.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I mean, it's not the movie.

00:11:05 ◼   ► It's inspired by the ridiculous premise of the movie.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Here's a TV show with different characters.

00:11:14 ◼   ► And they do this thing, the show is pretty straightforward, but they do this stylized

00:11:19 ◼   ► thing where the show starts without any credits, you're just right in it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And they have a couple of scenes, it's usually from one character's point of view, and that

00:11:31 ◼   ► character is narrating.

00:11:33 ◼   ► So there's, I don't know, it's like 60, 90 seconds, two minutes of stuff where a character

00:11:38 ◼   ► is narrating, saying something about Snowpiercer.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And then whatever it is, you could have taken that scene and put it into the middle of any

00:11:46 ◼   ► episode because it fits perfectly, it's in the style of the show.

00:11:49 ◼   ► But then to the very end of that narration, the character always says some sort of wrap

00:11:55 ◼   ► up phrase, "That's what it's like on Snowpiercer," or, "Such is the way on Snowpiercer," or

00:12:02 ◼   ► "Something, something on Snowpiercer, 1001 cars long."

00:12:08 ◼   ► So they say, "And blah, blah, blah on Snowpiercer, 1001 cars long."

00:12:12 ◼   ► And they cut from that into the credits, the quote unquote "credits," which ties in with

00:12:18 ◼   ► the tagline, "1001 cars long."

00:12:20 ◼   ► Then they show a very brief musical thing that has diagrams of the train and whatever.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And before you know it, you're out of it.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And I think because of the sort of the routine, the tradition of always saying something,

00:12:36 ◼   ► something on Snowpiercer, 1001 cars long, leading into the credits, it makes it seem

00:12:41 ◼   ► like it's like, you know, someone doing shaving a haircut and not finishing it, right?

00:12:46 ◼   ► You have to play through the credits and they're so short, trying to skip them would be like

00:12:51 ◼   ► trying to cut someone off in the middle of a sentence.

00:12:53 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And I didn't realize that I was watching it, didn't realize I was not skipping the credits

00:12:59 ◼   ► until like literally three quarters of the way through the first season.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I said, "This show has found a way to make me watch the credits."

00:13:03 ◼   ► I didn't even realize I was doing it.

00:13:05 ◼   ► So I give that show props for that reason alone.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Snowpiercer, so the gimmick, what was it, a novel originally?

00:13:14 ◼   ► What's the source material?

00:13:15 ◼   ► Was it a graphic novel?

00:13:17 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe a French comic or something.

00:13:19 ◼   ► I have no idea what the actual origins are.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I first saw it when it was the movie.

00:13:24 ◼   ► But I think a bunch of people on Twitter told me it was like a French comic or something

00:13:27 ◼   ► like that.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a great premise because it passes the sniff test of it doesn't even try to be

00:13:34 ◼   ► vaguely plausible.

00:13:35 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like the fifth element, right?

00:13:39 ◼   ► Like the fifth element is like so dumb and nonsensical.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Well, the fifth element tries to make some sense, but then just falls back on.

00:13:50 ◼   ► But Snowpiercer is like, I don't remember what the movie tried to do.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Maybe the movie was just trying to kind of be like vague or like, oh, I think the movie's

00:13:58 ◼   ► premise idea was there's stuff that you don't know, viewer.

00:14:02 ◼   ► So maybe if you knew more as a viewer, this would all make sense.

00:14:05 ◼   ► But we're just not going to tell you.

00:14:06 ◼   ► But the television show is sort of obstinately insistent that, oh, no, viewer, you have all

00:14:12 ◼   ► the information.

00:14:13 ◼   ► No, this doesn't actually make sense.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But just we're going to put it right in your face and say, like the television show repeatedly

00:14:20 ◼   ► hinges on the nonsensical premise, right?

00:14:23 ◼   ► That the train has to keep moving or they all die, right?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Which doesn't make any sense in any way.

00:14:28 ◼   ► And they don't try to explain it, but they're insistent that that is true.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And it factors into the plot a lot.

00:14:36 ◼   ► But I think the thing that the movie was missing from the source material is the end.

00:14:40 ◼   ► What makes the real premise so interesting is that the train is gigantic.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Like you die, apparently they just...

00:14:46 ◼   ► It's 10 miles long.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's 10 mile long train with 1,001 cars.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Whereas in the movie, they only show you like, there's like four cars.

00:14:55 ◼   ► There's like, I don't know, there's like the place where all the poor people are in the

00:15:02 ◼   ► back, coach, whatever they call it.

00:15:04 ◼   ► The tail.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Yeah, there's the tail, there's the middle, and then there's the front and that's it.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Because they only have two hours.

00:15:12 ◼   ► And it's like...

00:15:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, even on a TV show, like they show establishing shots of the train being

00:15:16 ◼   ► humongously long, but they only make so many sets.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:21 ◼   ► And they also have it in a television show, since they have to sort of deal with this

00:15:23 ◼   ► more often.

00:15:24 ◼   ► They have a sort of a basement level in the train.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And within the basement level is a little miniature train that goes from one end of

00:15:32 ◼   ► the train to the other.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Oh, I like that.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Because how the hell else are you going to get your characters from the engine to the

00:15:38 ◼   ► tail?

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's 10 miles.

00:15:40 ◼   ► If they walk it, it'll take a really long time.

00:15:42 ◼   ► So they got to go into, I forget what they call it, it's like the sub train or whatever.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It takes long enough on the real world to sell it to get to the car where you can buy

00:15:49 ◼   ► a soda.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's like the 10 sets they built for the show.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And there's 10 miles of train.

00:15:57 ◼   ► But each of the sets is like, you know, 20 yards long.

00:16:00 ◼   ► But it is, it's an interesting premise, because you can have this 10 mile long thing with

00:16:04 ◼   ► thousands of people.

00:16:06 ◼   ► But because it's a train, it's completely linear.

00:16:08 ◼   ► You know, you can't just skip around.

00:16:11 ◼   ► But I guess with this little mini train underneath, you can skip around.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Yeah, because you kind of need that for plots.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Because if you really can't get from A to B without going through C, like it's the stories

00:16:21 ◼   ► you can tell are very limited.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And that's what the movie does.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It says, well, if you're going to get from the back to the front, you got to go through

00:16:25 ◼   ► the cars, right?

00:16:27 ◼   ► And this thing says, well, you can go under the cars, and then people in those cars won't

00:16:29 ◼   ► see you because you're going under and, you know, but but but the main premise like that,

00:16:34 ◼   ► you know, every it's super cold on earth, and everyone's on this train, all right with

00:16:38 ◼   ► you so far.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And the train has to keep moving, because if the train stops, then it'll run out of,

00:16:44 ◼   ► you know, run out of heat, like so as to keep moving to produce heat.

00:16:47 ◼   ► It's like, that's not how thermodynamics works.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Like, you know, the effort you're taking to move this train could be used to keep people

00:16:54 ◼   ► warm but no, the television show says, if this train stops, then there will be no more

00:16:59 ◼   ► heat there.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And they're producing midichlorians, John.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Yeah, like just the faster the train goes, the more the batteries get charged.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Right?

00:17:07 ◼   ► Is that how it works?

00:17:08 ◼   ► If only electric cars work that way.

00:17:10 ◼   ► The more you drive them, the more the battery gets charged.

00:17:12 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Thank our first sponsor.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Oh, it's our good friends at Mack Weldon.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I don't know why they're telling me, they want me to tell you about their spring essentials.

00:17:24 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like spring here.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I was shoveling snow.

00:17:27 ◼   ► But they've got all sorts of stuff coming up.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Spring is coming.

00:17:30 ◼   ► They've got a new set of stealth boxer briefs that deliver enhanced breathability and support.

00:17:36 ◼   ► Perfect for everyday wear or layered underneath your workout gear.

00:17:40 ◼   ► And for sweatpants you can wear outside without feeling like you're a lazy person wearing

00:17:46 ◼   ► sweatpants.

00:17:47 ◼   ► They've got a new ace line.

00:17:48 ◼   ► They've got these ace sweatpants.

00:17:50 ◼   ► I don't have a pair of these.

00:17:51 ◼   ► My son does, though.

00:17:52 ◼   ► He loves them, wears them all the time, looks very, very dapper in them.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I agreed that they do not look like sweatpants.

00:17:59 ◼   ► They look like nice pants, like nice athletic pants.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Very nice.

00:18:02 ◼   ► They're so nice.

00:18:03 ◼   ► I actually ordered a pair before I even knew that this sponsor, Reid, was going to have

00:18:06 ◼   ► me tell you about them.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I'm going to have sweatpants.

00:18:08 ◼   ► I haven't had sweatpants in years.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Mack Weldon sells all sorts of other men's essentials.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Tox shirts, hoodies, underwear, polo shirts, active shorts, all sorts of stuff.

00:18:19 ◼   ► It's all great.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I have lots of it.

00:18:21 ◼   ► I love it.

00:18:22 ◼   ► I'm wearing one of their hoodies right now as part of my multi-layering for the freezing

00:18:26 ◼   ► cold here.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I need a snow piercer.

00:18:30 ◼   ► You can look great, feel great.

00:18:31 ◼   ► They've got a great loyalty program.

00:18:33 ◼   ► You don't have to do anything.

00:18:35 ◼   ► When you buy stuff, you give them your email address so they can notify you.

00:18:39 ◼   ► You're already in the club.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And level one, you get free shipping for life.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And level two, you get there by just spending $200 total.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Not like one order, but when you get to $200, then you get 20% off every order for the next

00:18:54 ◼   ► year.

00:18:55 ◼   ► It's a great deal.

00:18:56 ◼   ► You don't have to do anything.

00:18:57 ◼   ► You just buy stuff.

00:18:58 ◼   ► You get in a loyalty program and you get free shipping and then you start getting 20% off

00:19:02 ◼   ► everything you order.

00:19:03 ◼   ► They want you to be comfortable.

00:19:05 ◼   ► So if you do not like your first pair of underwear that you get from them, you can keep them

00:19:09 ◼   ► and they will still refund you.

00:19:12 ◼   ► No questions asked.

00:19:13 ◼   ► They do not want the underwear back.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Just keep it.

00:19:17 ◼   ► But that's how confident they are that you're going to like it.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Anyway, you can start with 20% off your first order by going to Mack Weldon, M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com/talkshow

00:19:29 ◼   ► and enter that same promo code, talk show, when you check out and you will save 20% off.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So my thanks to Mack Weldon for reinventing men's basics.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Go to Mack Weldon dot com slash talk show.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I've got those sweatpants.

00:19:43 ◼   ► How are you doing all this COVID times without wearing sweatpants?

00:19:46 ◼   ► You're wearing jeans in your house?

00:19:47 ◼   ► I wear jeans every day.

00:19:50 ◼   ► That's madness.

00:19:51 ◼   ► I know.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Sweatpants is the outfit of the day.

00:19:53 ◼   ► That's why I ordered them.

00:19:54 ◼   ► I honest to God, you think I'm making this up, but you know me.

00:19:58 ◼   ► You know me.

00:19:59 ◼   ► I don't do homework before I do these podcasts.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And at least of all, I don't really look at the sponsor read stuff.

00:20:04 ◼   ► I was blown away.

00:20:05 ◼   ► I looked at this Mack Weldon thing five minutes before we started recording and I was like,

00:20:09 ◼   ► holy crap, I just ordered these sweatpants the other day.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Like literally and they ship stuff fast too.

00:20:15 ◼   ► It might've been yesterday.

00:20:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:18 ◼   ► I lose track of days.

00:20:19 ◼   ► I think it was yesterday because I knew I didn't have the Sopranos to look forward

00:20:21 ◼   ► to.

00:20:22 ◼   ► So I ordered.

00:20:23 ◼   ► So you're finally going to have some comfortable sweatpants just as like the vaccine is rolling

00:20:28 ◼   ► out across the country.

00:20:29 ◼   ► You're way behind on this.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I had to buy new jeans too.

00:20:34 ◼   ► I've worn out my jeans just by sitting.

00:20:37 ◼   ► It's really depressing.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:39 ◼   ► So it's the, uh, the rough and tumble nature of your work.

00:20:42 ◼   ► It really wears through your clothes quickly.

00:20:44 ◼   ► You know what?

00:20:45 ◼   ► I got injured yesterday.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I, I it's good thing I'm podcasting today.

00:20:48 ◼   ► I'm having, I have hand problems.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I got two blisters on my left hand from shoveling snow.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Do you, do you got city hands, Mr. Gruber?

00:20:57 ◼   ► Do you shovel the snow or do you, do you have, I shovel it, I shovel it with my bare hands.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:04 ◼   ► And every time I do it, I think to myself, I need, you know, what I need is one of those.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I don't even know what you call it.

00:21:10 ◼   ► I think it's a hoe, but it's not a shovel.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's a, it's a stick with a, like a thing at the bottom.

00:21:17 ◼   ► So you can chop up the snow, you know, you got it.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Well, you got to shovel it when it's fresh.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Like you can't let it just get all damp and crusty and frozen.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:26 ◼   ► See, I see.

00:21:27 ◼   ► We can't do that.

00:21:28 ◼   ► See, we live in the city and it's a busy pedestrian street.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And so no matter how on the ball I am, it's already been sort of trampled by pedestrian

00:21:36 ◼   ► traffic and that, that packs it down and, you know, it sort of turns it into an unshovelable,

00:21:43 ◼   ► you know, closer to ice than snow.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I remember dealing with that, you know, when it gets packed down, it happens less these

00:21:51 ◼   ► days, but all the tools for like breaking through that, like the ones that really work

00:21:57 ◼   ► well also end up damaging the sidewalk.

00:21:59 ◼   ► So, I mean, it's not your sidewalk.

00:22:00 ◼   ► You probably don't care, but you also don't want your sidewalk all broken up in front

00:22:03 ◼   ► of your house.

00:22:04 ◼   ► So you got to be careful.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I actually, I don't know who's sidewalk it is.

00:22:07 ◼   ► It might be mine.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I might be on there.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It's all of our sidewalk.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Well, I know this.

00:22:12 ◼   ► If I want it, if it did get damaged and I needed it fixed, I think I'd have to be the

00:22:15 ◼   ► one to fix it because, you know, I don't think, you know, like I said, the city hasn't fixed

00:22:20 ◼   ► that damn pothole with the, the buses run over in front of the house.

00:22:24 ◼   ► They're not going to fix the sidewalks either.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Anyway, blisters on my hand.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Can you believe it?

00:22:30 ◼   ► I do.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I do believe it.

00:22:32 ◼   ► That's the, you know, too many years just cradling the mouse and typing on the keyboard.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Not a lot of building up of calluses in that work.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And I gave up golf years ago.

00:22:41 ◼   ► This is right on the spot where, where before I had a kid, I played golf.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I'd have a bit of a callus there.

00:22:51 ◼   ► We've had so how much snow have you gotten?

00:22:53 ◼   ► We've gotten more snow this year than in a long time.

00:22:58 ◼   ► I don't mean to complain.

00:22:59 ◼   ► This sounds terrible because there's people in Texas who've don't even have electricity

00:23:03 ◼   ► and heat, but it's a bad winter.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I mean, we have more snow this winter than last winter, but our last several winters

00:23:10 ◼   ► have been incredibly mild in terms of snowfall.

00:23:13 ◼   ► This one is still, I think, below average for us for snowfall, but it's not, it's not

00:23:17 ◼   ► nothing.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Cause you got, I mean, I lived up there for two winters and it was, that was enough for

00:23:22 ◼   ► me.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I mean, the one time we got so much snow, you couldn't even tell whose car was whose.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I mean, it was ridiculous.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't, I should write down what year that is cause I'm already losing track of

00:23:32 ◼   ► it voted like the record breaking year in Boston, we got like 150 inches of snow or

00:23:36 ◼   ► something really goes like that.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And it was, it wasn't that long ago.

00:23:40 ◼   ► I want to say that it was like five years ago, but I'm so bad with time.

00:23:43 ◼   ► It could have been 15 somewhere between 15 and five years ago.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Our area had record breaking snowfall with the winter was like every single day, another

00:23:52 ◼   ► foot of snow would fall.

00:23:53 ◼   ► We were running out of places to put it.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I, this is the good thing about having taken pictures of everything.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I can actually go back in my photo library and just find the pictures of the ridiculous

00:24:01 ◼   ► sort of overlook hotel, you know, in front of our house and say, Oh yeah, that must've

00:24:06 ◼   ► been the year.

00:24:07 ◼   ► And then just look at the date on the picture.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I do.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I do remember that being an issue when we lived up there, we lived in an apartment and

00:24:15 ◼   ► I remember that it was an issue with the, the, the, you know, they had the apartment

00:24:20 ◼   ► complex would, would have a truck come through and plow the thing.

00:24:24 ◼   ► But then it, by the, you know, by this time of the winter, it was an issue is where to

00:24:28 ◼   ► put the snow.

00:24:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:30 ◼   ► We, we have like, so one of the big parking lots in the area, so we go for like walks

00:24:34 ◼   ► with the dog and we go buy these parking lots.

00:24:35 ◼   ► And it's one of those parking lots where they pile the snow, like the snowplows must come

00:24:39 ◼   ► there and like dump it or pilot or whatever.

00:24:41 ◼   ► And you know, we, we do that walk and it would be like springtime.

00:24:44 ◼   ► It'd be like April or May and we'd be walking around and we'd be seeing that the snow pile

00:24:47 ◼   ► still hasn't completely melted because it'd be like five stories high and it would just

00:24:51 ◼   ► go smaller and smaller and smaller as the spring wears on smaller and small.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And just as it gets smaller, of course, all of the dirt that was on the snow compresses

00:25:00 ◼   ► until it becomes just like, it looks like a dirt pile, but it's actually snow and ice.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:06 ◼   ► The amount of dirt that covers a five story mound of snow when it, when it gets down to

00:25:10 ◼   ► one story, you've got like, it's like exponential though.

00:25:15 ◼   ► It's not like five times the dirt.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It's like a five times pie times the dirt.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Is that how math works?

00:25:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Five pie cubed or something like that.

00:25:28 ◼   ► All right.

00:25:30 ◼   ► I want to get off the merry-go-round of current events and talk to you about the state of

00:25:38 ◼   ► the Mac.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And I feel like, I feel like we haven't done this in a while.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Here's my first question to you.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Do you, do you ever regret that you did, you don't write the annual Mac OS reviews anymore?

00:25:53 ◼   ► No, the way you phrased it, do I regret that I don't write them?

00:25:57 ◼   ► No, I do not regret that.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I regret that you don't write them.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Now you could phrase it a different way.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I say, do you ever regret that they haven't been written by you as in past tense?

00:26:10 ◼   ► That's different.

00:26:11 ◼   ► But the, but do you ever regret that I don't write them?

00:26:13 ◼   ► It's like, I was burned out on the writing process.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I don't, I wouldn't want to go through that again.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I did it for 15 years.

00:26:19 ◼   ► That's long enough.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But I did enjoy after having written them.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And I also enjoyed knowing all the things that I was forced to learn by writing them

00:26:29 ◼   ► because now I, when I want to know something about Mac OS, I just got to go to the internet

00:26:34 ◼   ► and Google for it instead of just knowing it because I spent six months writing a review.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And even when there'd be a section where you would think, oh, well, I know this, but then

00:26:42 ◼   ► you start writing it and then you realize you don't know it.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And now, you know, you've got to spend an entire week learning about this new subsystem.

00:26:50 ◼   ► That's why they took so long and then just constantly revising them.

00:26:53 ◼   ► You'd know the facts because you'd be going over them again and again as every new build

00:26:56 ◼   ► came out.

00:26:58 ◼   ► But like, wow, I was, I was looking something up for ATP the other day and I, you know,

00:27:04 ◼   ► I go back to my own reviews as a resource because now I'm sold.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I don't remember the crap anymore.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So I go, I read my own reviews and it's like someone else wrote them.

00:27:10 ◼   ► It's like, oh, this is a lot of good information here about this topic.

00:27:13 ◼   ► What was the last one you wrote?

00:27:15 ◼   ► I got to look it up.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I don't even know that.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Was it Yosemite?

00:27:20 ◼   ► No, I don't know the names.

00:27:22 ◼   ► I forget.

00:27:23 ◼   ► I'm guessing it was 10 11 10 dot 11.

00:27:26 ◼   ► I can find out in a moment.

00:27:29 ◼   ► It was April 2015.

00:27:33 ◼   ► It was Yosemite.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Which, what's the number on that though?

00:27:36 ◼   ► 10 10 10 10.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I saw I was off by one.

00:27:41 ◼   ► What you're saying reminds me of the Mark Twain quip about the classics and that the

00:27:46 ◼   ► classics are the books that everybody wants to have read and no one wants to read.

00:27:52 ◼   ► You're saying that's how you feel about your reviews?

00:27:54 ◼   ► Well, no, I want you want to have written them, but the effort of writing them is very

00:28:00 ◼   ► out of proportion to, you know, the enjoyment of having them already be written.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Do you think it would have been harder?

00:28:08 ◼   ► It probably would have with their new annual, truly annual cadence, because at least for

00:28:16 ◼   ► much of the heyday of your writing those reviews, the schedule was sort of like the publication

00:28:24 ◼   ► schedule of this podcast, highly irregular.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Like I mean, towards the end, it got like it is now.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like it got harder as it went on because just look here, I'm looking at the dates.

00:28:37 ◼   ► July, July, October, October, those are 2011, 12, 13, and 14.

00:28:42 ◼   ► So they were basically on an annual cycle, give or take for the last four releases I

00:28:47 ◼   ► did.

00:28:48 ◼   ► And they were doing the thing where I was doing the thing where I had to have the article

00:28:52 ◼   ► up on day of release, right with all the ebooks in the stores and all that other stuff.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And so it was getting progressively harder in the beginning, there was so much more leeway.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Sometimes I didn't even publish on release day.

00:29:03 ◼   ► But yeah, the last four years were absolutely annual with just, you know, the annual in

00:29:09 ◼   ► July, then they shifted to annual in October.

00:29:11 ◼   ► So there was, you know, in the middle there a little bit of a gap, but that was hard.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And it would be even harder today, like just because Apple gives you so much less time

00:29:21 ◼   ► to know when the release is coming out, right?

00:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah, you'd have to more or less assume it was coming out at the end of September.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Well, even like, you know, the whole thing with iOS, like, oh, and yeah, and iOS 14 is

00:29:35 ◼   ► out tonight or whenever, you know, like, they used to give you a week or two notice.

00:29:40 ◼   ► And you would need that because you would never know like, is this build going to be

00:29:44 ◼   ► the GM?

00:29:45 ◼   ► Is this build going to be the GM?

00:29:46 ◼   ► And they could still change things, right?

00:29:48 ◼   ► So like the lead time on the ebook store stuff alone was such a so annoying, right?

00:29:53 ◼   ► You had to build the book and submit it to the stores and get it ready for publication.

00:29:56 ◼   ► So you could, you know, flip the switch on day of, but you have to know when day of is

00:30:00 ◼   ► otherwise like, when do you upload?

00:30:02 ◼   ► Like when do you submit?

00:30:03 ◼   ► Right?

00:30:04 ◼   ► These things just, yeah.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I don't envy that.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And I remember too that, and it makes sense.

00:30:10 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, I would have never thought of that.

00:30:12 ◼   ► But when you really think about it and really like flip back through your reviews and see

00:30:16 ◼   ► how copiously illustrated they are with screenshots, you were always a moment away from having

00:30:25 ◼   ► to retake every single screenshot in a review because of a cosmetic change in a late beta

00:30:31 ◼   ► to the OS.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Like, oh, the red, yellow, green buttons have changed slightly.

00:30:35 ◼   ► They change the shade of gray.

00:30:37 ◼   ► They move something by a pixel.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And the worst part is the screenshots weren't just there for the hell of it.

00:30:41 ◼   ► There was always a long section where I talked about the new look.

00:30:45 ◼   ► And if I had a whole big paragraph about, you know, the particular shade of gray and

00:30:48 ◼   ► they change the shade of gray, I got to rewrite it too.

00:30:50 ◼   ► I don't just know how to take new screenshots.

00:30:51 ◼   ► I got to rewrite it.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And there was no real way to, you know, you can't just automate it.

00:30:59 ◼   ► You can't write like a build script that would take every single screenshot you needed to.

00:31:03 ◼   ► No, you didn't.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I mean, I could, but writing that script would probably double the effort of doing the review.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:14 ◼   ► All right.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I figured you'd say that.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I mean, it was a lot of work, but it is.

00:31:21 ◼   ► It's hard because without it, and it, because it was a singular effort.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And I don't mean to take away from all the people who'd still write reviews of the annual

00:31:32 ◼   ► releases, but nobody, they weren't really even reviews.

00:31:35 ◼   ► I don't know what to call them.

00:31:36 ◼   ► They were like a sort of an encyclopedia of this, you know, you had your commentary in

00:31:41 ◼   ► there, but it was sort of a thorough examination of everything that's new, that's different

00:31:47 ◼   ► than a quote unquote review.

00:31:49 ◼   ► I think one way to think about it is like through the modern lens, without Twitter for

00:31:55 ◼   ► most of the period of time and without me having regular podcasts for most of the period

00:32:00 ◼   ► of time, I had all these thoughts and opinions and, you know, analysis and insight and everything

00:32:07 ◼   ► that didn't have an outlet.

00:32:09 ◼   ► And so when it came time to do the big review, everything that I had been thinking about

00:32:15 ◼   ► related to the OS and the Mac and the platform and everything that would normally get drained

00:32:20 ◼   ► out in a podcast episode or in a tweet or something got poured into the review.

00:32:24 ◼   ► So yeah, it was, here's all the new stuff in the operating system.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And yeah, it was, here's what direction we think Mac OS is going, but also every other

00:32:31 ◼   ► possible thought and the thing I had to say as, you know, as reflected by the change to

00:32:37 ◼   ► the operating system.

00:32:38 ◼   ► So that's why, you know, you get things in there like, you know, this whole big section

00:32:42 ◼   ► on the Swift programming language, which isn't technically part of the OS, but it's the thing

00:32:45 ◼   ► that I had been thinking about.

00:32:46 ◼   ► So that gets its own section or, you know, automatic reference counting or Unix permissions

00:32:52 ◼   ► and like all sorts of stuff that seems like, why is this even in the article?

00:32:55 ◼   ► But I was trying to sort of weave a story of how I was thinking about the Mac over the

00:32:59 ◼   ► course of the last year since I last spoke to you in long form.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And I had a blog on ours, like I had other outlets, but I didn't have a weekly tech podcast

00:33:08 ◼   ► most of that time and I wasn't tweeting for half that time either.

00:33:14 ◼   ► It is in hindsight, it is a tremendous accomplishment what Apple's done with, for lack of a better

00:33:21 ◼   ► catch-all name, Mac OS X, right, over the entire time that they've been doing it.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Like because they've never let it get stale.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I mean, there have been bad patches of time, poorer than others, but compare and contrast

00:33:39 ◼   ► with Microsoft and Windows, which is the obvious comparison where it's sort of a singular commercial

00:33:46 ◼   ► operating system and the way it's been all over the place, especially the years after

00:33:52 ◼   ► XP.

00:33:56 ◼   ► It's at a high level, it's really quite a thing and especially you gotta figure, you

00:34:02 ◼   ► know, we're looking at 20 plus years at this point, right?

00:34:06 ◼   ► I mean, they more or less got started on what became Mac OS X in 1997 in some fashion and

00:34:14 ◼   ► by, you know, '98, '99, they sort of had zeroed in on what it was going to be.

00:34:20 ◼   ► So 20 years, I mean, there's just a lot of turnover.

00:34:23 ◼   ► I mean, that's two decades is enough time that there's an awful lot of people who were

00:34:28 ◼   ► instrumental in it who've retired or, you know, in the case of Steve Jobs, died, right?

00:34:35 ◼   ► I mean, it's a long time to keep something going that I think when you look at it at

00:34:41 ◼   ► a very macro level, it has been continuously had a vision and a feel and a sort of true

00:34:52 ◼   ► to itself-ness.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's proven to be a pretty good foundation for Apple to explore the space, as they say.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Like it was a scaffolding on which they could hang all sorts of ideas and lots of stuff

00:35:08 ◼   ► in the operating system has changed.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Whole subsystems have been replaced and merged and split and the way things are done has

00:35:14 ◼   ► just changed radically and they've been able to make all those changes to the plumbing

00:35:20 ◼   ► without really, you know, totally breaking the UI or even without going through any sort

00:35:27 ◼   ► of cosmetic level changes that were particularly jarring.

00:35:30 ◼   ► It's just been a steady, I would say evolution that implies that it is improving with respect

00:35:37 ◼   ► to the environment that it's in, right?

00:35:40 ◼   ► But I think it's just been kind of meandering, right?

00:35:42 ◼   ► Mostly going in the right direction, supporting new hardware, supporting the, you know, more

00:35:47 ◼   ► features as they've become necessary.

00:35:51 ◼   ► But lots of sort of blind alleys and strange ideas.

00:35:56 ◼   ► And importantly, it's never really gone through a, like despite being as old as it is, it's

00:36:02 ◼   ► never gone through a radical change that is anything close to the change from classic

00:36:06 ◼   ► to 10.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Classic to 10 was like, not a clean sheet, obviously, but it was like, hey, there's these

00:36:12 ◼   ► next folks, they've got their ideas, this is max folks, we've got our ideas, plus there's

00:36:15 ◼   ► some new ideas we can come up with, they mash it together, and that was a big discontinuity

00:36:19 ◼   ► from classic to this.

00:36:21 ◼   ► But Mac OS X has changed a lot.

00:36:23 ◼   ► And if you look, well, look at 10.0 versus, you know, 10.16, look how different it is.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but in general, it's got a menu bar, it's got a dock, it's got windows, it's got

00:36:33 ◼   ► scroll bars.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Like it's not, you know, it didn't change it that radically.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Whereas the classic to 10 transition, no one even remembers that anymore, but it was such

00:36:41 ◼   ► a big change that the tech that the the capabilities underlying it were changed, our preemptive

00:36:46 ◼   ► multitasking, memory protection, the centrality of the doc, I think that didn't even exist

00:36:51 ◼   ► in the other thing, multi user versus single user, the permissions model, like all of that.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And even that change, you know, they still kept the top menu bar and the basics all you

00:37:01 ◼   ► know, all, you know, so there's, there is a through line through through the course

00:37:05 ◼   ► of the entire history of the Mac.

00:37:07 ◼   ► But there's just that one big jump.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And despite the fact that we went to, you know, this is Mac OS 11 now, right, or whatever,

00:37:15 ◼   ► right?

00:37:16 ◼   ► This despite the fact that we've incremented the number and gone on to the iOS numbering

00:37:19 ◼   ► scheme is going to be 1213 14.

00:37:21 ◼   ► It's, you know, I still think of it as one thing, whether you call it Mac OS 10 OS 10,

00:37:26 ◼   ► or just playing Mac OS.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Now, I don't know, I don't have a good phrase for it.

00:37:30 ◼   ► We have classic Mac OS is what we call the other thing.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I used to call this thing Mac OS 10.

00:37:34 ◼   ► But Apple keeps screwing that up.

00:37:35 ◼   ► So I know they'll to call it but I call it Mac OS 10.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Because it's still there are still parts of the OS that will report that.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I forget where you have to go.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But there's certain low level parts in that like in terminal where if you type some, you

00:37:51 ◼   ► know, in for system information things, it'll still claim to be Mac OS 10.

00:37:56 ◼   ► They did kind of screw us on that.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Right, but but it does it does seem like this, that Mac OS 10 has yet to have that moment

00:38:04 ◼   ► where someone comes in and says, we got to rethink this, right.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And I don't think it necessarily needs that.

00:38:10 ◼   ► But it's now gone longer than classic has without that big rethink.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It's gone longer than anything, really.

00:38:17 ◼   ► I mean, I think Windows has had several of those moments.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Although maybe not recently, maybe they're still

00:38:23 ◼   ► I think three three ones in 95 was probably the biggest jump.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And then there was mostly cosmetic crap.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Maybe you could say Windows eight, tried to pull in a direction but lurking underneath

00:38:33 ◼   ► Windows eight is still the XP stuff.

00:38:34 ◼   ► So I don't know how to make a Windows.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you have Windows installed as a gaming thing, right?

00:38:41 ◼   ► You play games.

00:38:43 ◼   ► So my son has a gaming PC.

00:38:46 ◼   ► And I've spoken about this on podcasts before, but I just don't use I have no interest in

00:38:50 ◼   ► it.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Don't use Windows haven't used it.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I think the last time I used it personally was let me think about this.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I was writing Daring Fireball.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So but I've had a consulting job in the suburbs for a few months to make you know, because

00:39:06 ◼   ► I wasn't making any money from Daring Fireball.

00:39:07 ◼   ► So I'm going to say it was like 2003 to four or four around there.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And I had to use a Dell PC to do some programming stuff.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And it was so bad.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It was it I do think I remember was that it had tapped to click on the trackpad, which

00:39:31 ◼   ► is the feature where instead of actually clicking the trackpad, you could simulate a click just

00:39:36 ◼   ► by touching with your thumb.

00:39:38 ◼   ► And of course, circa I don't know how good it is now.

00:39:41 ◼   ► But circa 2003, Windows and Adele trackpad, it was horrible, and there was no way to turn

00:39:46 ◼   ► it off.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And I spent like, two entire days on the clock getting paid searching for a way to turn off

00:39:54 ◼   ► tap to click on this thing.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And I wound up just like requisitioning a mouse and like putting tape over the trackpad

00:40:01 ◼   ► and just using a mouse with the laptop to do it.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I don't think I've used Windows in any regular sense since around then 2004.

00:40:09 ◼   ► So anyway, Jonas has a gaming PC.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And you know, I let him know, you know, this will be mostly on you to become an expert

00:40:16 ◼   ► on because I don't know anything about it.

00:40:19 ◼   ► But he had a his video card went bad.

00:40:23 ◼   ► He has a 4k monitor.

00:40:26 ◼   ► And the manifestation was that the monitor would only run at like 640 by 480, or maybe

00:40:33 ◼   ► 800 by 600, but nowhere near enough.

00:40:36 ◼   ► And it was stretched horribly.

00:40:38 ◼   ► And none of his games, of course, would run.

00:40:40 ◼   ► And it was using it, but he he was still connected to his video card.

00:40:46 ◼   ► And so I didn't, we didn't know how to troubleshoot it.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And we googled it.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And there was all sorts of things that you could try to do, but I, you know, got to got

00:40:54 ◼   ► to know Windows a lot better than I then I had 15 years.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And what blew me away troubleshooting this is that for everything that looks totally

00:41:05 ◼   ► different in Windows 10, there's like a second level that looks like Windows from 10 years

00:41:11 ◼   ► ago.

00:41:12 ◼   ► And then there's a third level that's just Windows XP.

00:41:15 ◼   ► So like, like, when you're like goofing around with the system settings for the display,

00:41:19 ◼   ► there's like a new one that looks like the new Windows 10 look, but it only has like

00:41:24 ◼   ► the very high level stuff to set.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And then there's like a button somewhere in that, but that's like advanced and you click

00:41:30 ◼   ► that and it opens up a window that literally it doesn't even have the new theme.

00:41:35 ◼   ► It just looks like Windows from 10 years ago.

00:41:38 ◼   ► But then in that dialogue, there's another button that opens up a button that just looks

00:41:42 ◼   ► like Windows XP.

00:41:43 ◼   ► And that's where like all the driver stuff is.

00:41:46 ◼   ► It's just, they just built all of this new crap on top of the old crap without getting

00:41:52 ◼   ► rid of it.

00:41:53 ◼   ► It's all still there.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And when you get into trouble, you kind of have to dig into it.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And even like the, just the Chrome, just the UI Chrome isn't updated.

00:42:03 ◼   ► It's like every sci fi story, I think most famously parody in Futurama, where the new

00:42:08 ◼   ► city is built on top of the old city, which is built on top of the old city, you just

00:42:11 ◼   ► keep going down and down and get to the Morlocks that are down there editing the registry keys

00:42:15 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:42:17 ◼   ► It blew me away, but it also gave me a tremendous appreciation for the way that for all of my

00:42:24 ◼   ► gripes about Mac OS and the ways that I worry that it's gotten worse in recent years, philosophically,

00:42:38 ◼   ► it made me appreciate how much work and constant effort it takes for Apple not to have ended

00:42:47 ◼   ► up with that sort of architecture of new crap built on top of old crap.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I mean, it's actually not that different of a mechanism that's causing those two things

00:42:57 ◼   ► to happen.

00:42:58 ◼   ► The results are obviously very different.

00:42:59 ◼   ► But the mechanism is basically companies preserving their value proposition.

00:43:02 ◼   ► And the value proposition of Windows is, or was and still mostly is, we make this operating

00:43:08 ◼   ► system that will run on an entire market of hardware, right?

00:43:12 ◼   ► So we, Microsoft, don't make the hardware, didn't used to.

00:43:16 ◼   ► And lots of people can make the hardware and it's diverse.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And Windows derives its value from being able to be the platform that is built on all that

00:43:24 ◼   ► hardware and Apple and Apple and Microsoft have been defending that value proposition

00:43:29 ◼   ► saying we're not going to change our software in a way that chops off one of the limbs of

00:43:34 ◼   ► our value proposition of saying, you know, the reason we are valuable is because you

00:43:37 ◼   ► can just buy a PC from whoever you want and Windows will run on it.

00:43:41 ◼   ► So anything we do to break backward compatibility or do something in a way that some old crappy

00:43:46 ◼   ► Dell notebook won't be able to handle or anything that requires us to tell every single hardware

00:43:51 ◼   ► manufacturer to do something different going forward because we really want to do it.

00:43:55 ◼   ► It's like pulling teeth.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Microsoft has done that plenty of times, like changing the driver model and everything,

00:43:58 ◼   ► but it's so painful for them because they have to convince every quote unquote PC hardware

00:44:04 ◼   ► maker in the world to make those changes.

00:44:06 ◼   ► So Microsoft is not going to do what Apple does, which is like, well, we're just making

00:44:10 ◼   ► some changes and everyone will deal with it because that would that it would have slowly

00:44:12 ◼   ► eroded or if not, you know, very quickly destroyed their entire value prop.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And Apple is the reverse.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Their value proposition is we make the whole widget, everything works together seamlessly

00:44:23 ◼   ► and in exchange, you know, that it makes everything simpler and more reliable or whatever.

00:44:27 ◼   ► And so when we change things and we say, guess what, for now, we're using Intel processors,

00:44:32 ◼   ► we convert the whole line and we just do it from now on.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Some are using this weird Unix based thing that came from next and we're getting the

00:44:38 ◼   ► classic is gone and the new thing is here.

00:44:39 ◼   ► And doing that seems daring and, you know, bold and wow, Microsoft would never do that

00:44:45 ◼   ► because they're wimpy.

00:44:46 ◼   ► But really, Apple is doing what it has to do to maintain the advantages of its vertical

00:44:50 ◼   ► integration.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:52 ◼   ► So in both cases, it would be like both companies are disinclined to do the opposite, not because

00:44:58 ◼   ► either one of them is brave, but because they're both cautious about keeping their good thing

00:45:03 ◼   ► going.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So they're both very different good things.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Now in the modern era with Microsoft making its own hardware and things changing rapidly

00:45:08 ◼   ► that and you know, Microsoft generally focusing more on services and less on Windows and all

00:45:12 ◼   ► that other stuff, and more on Office and less on, you know, Windows Office, that may be

00:45:18 ◼   ► changing.

00:45:19 ◼   ► But for Apple, it's still the same deal.

00:45:20 ◼   ► They make the whole widget.

00:45:21 ◼   ► Now they're making the chips in the widget, they're going even harder in the same direction

00:45:24 ◼   ► they've always been going.

00:45:26 ◼   ► There is the one there are certain areas where I feel like Apple is sort of doing the new

00:45:33 ◼   ► city built on top of the old city.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And it's sort of a disdain for the user.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And well, before you even get into that, like, obviously, Next is built on top of BSD, and

00:45:49 ◼   ► Mac OS X is built on top of Darwin, which is, you know, like, so there is Mac OS X specifically

00:45:54 ◼   ► was a city built on top of a city, it was a GUI built on top of Unix, and you know,

00:46:00 ◼   ► a different GUI built on top of Unix.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And then we had Mac OS, the carbon APS and everything built on top of AppKit, which is

00:46:06 ◼   ► built on top of BSD.

00:46:08 ◼   ► But that's not quite the same thing as like, like, there's no digging in Mac OS X where

00:46:13 ◼   ► you'll find classic Mac OS lurking underneath, right?

00:46:15 ◼   ► So that's, that's the difference.

00:46:19 ◼   ► The closest you can get is probably AppleScript and OSA, which is like, of all the things

00:46:24 ◼   ► that have lived on from 1993, who would have guessed?

00:46:30 ◼   ► It was AppleScript and OSA, which is just mind boggling to me.

00:46:38 ◼   ► You don't, you've, you don't really write AppleScript, right?

00:46:41 ◼   ► Not a fan.

00:46:43 ◼   ► But do you ever have to use, do you ever use it?

00:46:45 ◼   ► I have, I've used it, I've, you know, used it to get things done that that was the most

00:46:50 ◼   ► direct way to accomplish, but I just as a programmer, I just, it rubs me the wrong way.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I've never been able to get into it.

00:46:58 ◼   ► But I find it harder than actual programming just because it doesn't match with my programmer

00:47:03 ◼   ► mindset.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And like, and the whole, even back in the day, when it was the modern technology, the

00:47:08 ◼   ► whole thing of scripting dictionaries and Apple events just didn't match the way I thought

00:47:12 ◼   ► about automating things.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So I always found it frustrating.

00:47:17 ◼   ► I've been using it a lot, just in recent weeks, because I, it's like one of those things where

00:47:22 ◼   ► once you dig something out, then it's like, ah, it's well, I've got it out, I might as

00:47:27 ◼   ► well.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And I've been like, crossing off a list of very old years long to do's of little Apple

00:47:33 ◼   ► script things I wanted to make, or ones I wrote many years ago and wanted to edit.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And a couple of them involve me doing stuff in Perl, and then calling to OSA script from

00:47:50 ◼   ► Perl with the, you know, the shell script, OSA script command.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Like, to show a notification, like, here's a little thing I have in Perl that I run all

00:48:00 ◼   ► the time, but wouldn't it be nice to have like a notification center thing, do this,

00:48:05 ◼   ► show this thing.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And you can do that by calling out to the OSA script thing.

00:48:10 ◼   ► But I'm mixing, like, BB Edit in one window writing Perl.

00:48:16 ◼   ► This is literally something happened to me today.

00:48:19 ◼   ► It's such an impotence mismatch of styles of programming, where I had written in Perl

00:48:27 ◼   ► my whatever variable name to the value instead of an equal sign.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Because in Apple script, you don't assign with an equals, you say set the variable name

00:48:37 ◼   ► to the value.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And it was one of those bugs where I wrote it, but also wrote a couple of other lines.

00:48:48 ◼   ► And then I started getting an error from Perl.

00:48:52 ◼   ► But it was so confusing to the Perl parser that the error message was no help at all.

00:48:58 ◼   ► It gave me the line, and I could look at the line, but I was in such a weird half writing

00:49:03 ◼   ► Apple script, half writing a normal, here I am calling Perl a normal programming language,

00:49:08 ◼   ► but you know, at least it uses equals for assignment, that I couldn't see the twos that

00:49:13 ◼   ► I wrote the word TO as an assignment.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And then I was like, oh, I need to stop.

00:49:19 ◼   ► But anyway, switching back and forth in languages always does that.

00:49:23 ◼   ► I imagine for people who are multilingual in spoken languages, there's the same problem,

00:49:27 ◼   ► but I get it all the time, programming languages, because being a web programmer, you're always

00:49:32 ◼   ► dealing with multiple languages.

00:49:33 ◼   ► For the longest time, it was JavaScript on the client and something other than JavaScript

00:49:37 ◼   ► on the server.

00:49:38 ◼   ► These days, you can't actually do JavaScript on the server and the client, but there are

00:49:42 ◼   ► still other things in the mix there, like CSS and all the other stuff.

00:49:45 ◼   ► So having to be multilingual is kind of a requirement, but yeah, it can really screw

00:49:49 ◼   ► you up if you forget where you are.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Like even just switching back and forth from Swift to anything else, the whole semicolons

00:49:54 ◼   ► at the end of the line thing can really throw you off.

00:49:58 ◼   ► That's definitely true.

00:49:59 ◼   ► All of a sudden, well, does Swift let you put semicolons and they don't do anything

00:50:06 ◼   ► or no?

00:50:07 ◼   ► They bark at you.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I rarely, I can't remember what it does because my failure mode is I stop putting the semicolons

00:50:14 ◼   ► in all the other languages.

00:50:16 ◼   ► I don't start putting them in Swift.

00:50:17 ◼   ► I just did that today.

00:50:19 ◼   ► I was writing Perl code today, didn't have a semicolon, tried to run it, it's complaining.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I'm like, "What the hell?

00:50:23 ◼   ► It's perfectly fine."

00:50:24 ◼   ► Oh, the semicolon.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Well, and in hindsight, too.

00:50:26 ◼   ► I mean, I don't write Swift.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I can't do a whole podcast talking about Swift fairly, but it's true that the C derivatives

00:50:37 ◼   ► that all put semicolons at the end of their lines, it's very crufty.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And it's all just to support the idea that you can cram more than one line of code onto

00:50:48 ◼   ► an actual line of your text editor, which is a very, very bad idea.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And it makes the compiler, writing the compiler easier.

00:50:56 ◼   ► That's really what it is.

00:50:58 ◼   ► It's not like the secret technology didn't exist to not have semicolons, but it just

00:51:02 ◼   ► makes it so much easier that I can imagine if you're back in the '70s saying, "We're

00:51:06 ◼   ► going to make a language and it's not going to be line-based, so we can't just use new

00:51:10 ◼   ► lines as the end of the line."

00:51:12 ◼   ► But we have to have some delimiter, right?

00:51:14 ◼   ► Because if it's not a new line, it's got to be like a semicolon.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And someone would say, "Well, you can figure out when the line is over based on the syntax

00:51:20 ◼   ► of a language."

00:51:21 ◼   ► Because if you know the next thing that you see is not something that could possibly be

00:51:26 ◼   ► a continuation of the previous statement, you've found the barrier.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And like, "Why would we do that complexity?"

00:51:30 ◼   ► Someone would say, "You're right.

00:51:32 ◼   ► We could do that, but why would we do that to ourselves?

00:51:34 ◼   ► Why don't we just pick a character like new line or semicolon, and then the parser will

00:51:38 ◼   ► know when it's over instead of us having to guess?"

00:51:40 ◼   ► But things have changed so much since then that in a more modern language like Swift,

00:51:46 ◼   ► we understand now that the pain of the compiler designer is nothing compared to the pain of

00:51:54 ◼   ► all the people who are going to write programs.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Because the compiler is written relatively few times by a relatively small number of

00:51:59 ◼   ► people, and the programs are written by millions and are constantly being written and rewritten.

00:52:03 ◼   ► So yeah, we'll put the complexity in the compiler.

00:52:06 ◼   ► We'll do the work to figure out where one statement ends and another statement begins,

00:52:11 ◼   ► because it is a solvable problem, because the language is not infinite.

00:52:14 ◼   ► We know what can be a continuation of the previous statement and what can't be.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And we'll do it for the programmer, and that saves a lot of typing and a lot of pinkies

00:52:22 ◼   ► on the semicolon.

00:52:23 ◼   ► If you didn't know any better, you would think that the standard QWERTY US keyboard layout

00:52:29 ◼   ► that puts semicolon right under one of your fingers all the time, that the keyboard layout

00:52:34 ◼   ► was made by somebody who was programming C or a C derivative language.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Because programmers who write in those languages use semicolon all the time, at the end of

00:52:45 ◼   ► terminating every line.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Whereas normal people, most normal people, even people who write all day long, maybe

00:52:51 ◼   ► even people who call themselves writers—I think Kurt Vonnegut famously, he has like

00:52:56 ◼   ► a good rant about the semicolon, that he thinks it's terrible, that you should never use it

00:53:00 ◼   ► and it's pretentious.

00:53:02 ◼   ► But there's your pinky finger under this punctuation character that most people never,

00:53:08 ◼   ► literally never use.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Don't even know the rules of grammar when they're supposed to use it, ostensibly.

00:53:14 ◼   ► The QWERTY layout has many quirks that don't seem to make sense when you examine them,

00:53:19 ◼   ► but it's like just one of those things.

00:53:21 ◼   ► He gets his foot in the door and that's just the way the keyboards are, and we just

00:53:24 ◼   ► deal with it.

00:53:25 ◼   ► The semicolon has to be one of the strangest quirks of the keyboard, though.

00:53:28 ◼   ► I mean, that's good for, you know, it was a happy accident for programmers, and maybe

00:53:32 ◼   ► that's why they picked semicolon.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I don't know the history of whoever first picked semicolon as a separator, but, you

00:53:38 ◼   ► know, underscore requiring the shift key is, is, it kind of counterbalances that a lot.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Well, if anything, you would think just logically if you could redo it, even if you were only

00:53:47 ◼   ► going to make just one tiny tweak, you would just change the colon and the semicolon in

00:53:53 ◼   ► terms of making the colon just your pinky and semicolon the shift variant.

00:53:59 ◼   ► They probably would have picked colon as the, I don't know what they would have done.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Colon doesn't really work as the statement ending because it has other meanings than

00:54:06 ◼   ► languages.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I wonder, I don't think that's why they picked the semicolon.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I think it's, you know, because dot was too valuable even in C. They had to use, you know,

00:54:14 ◼   ► couldn't use period, but you know, exclamation mark would have made it look like you were

00:54:18 ◼   ► angry at the end of every line.

00:54:21 ◼   ► So you know, like, you know, I don't know if lexically is the right word.

00:54:25 ◼   ► What linguistically, semantically, semicolon makes sense, right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► It's like, it's sort of the end.

00:54:31 ◼   ► I mean, I mean, a period would make sense.

00:54:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:34 ◼   ► But I'm, you know, but period was too valuable.

00:54:36 ◼   ► You know, they wanted to use it for something else.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I mean, they used period for decimal point, but like in, in modern languages,

00:54:43 ◼   ► they all, they all use period where C decided to use hyphen and then shift for the, for

00:54:49 ◼   ► the greater than sign.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:52 ◼   ► To make a little arrow.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:54 ◼   ► And no one wants to type that anymore.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Modern languages that said are not, not all about typing little arrows.

00:54:58 ◼   ► They just use the dot for that all the time.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Have you seen the, uh, the programming fonts that use ligatures to combine hyphen greater

00:55:07 ◼   ► than to become an arrow ligature?

00:55:10 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Terrible idea.

00:55:13 ◼   ► If you want to, I could see making a language that would make the actual Unicode right,

00:55:20 ◼   ► facing arrow, an alternative to, I don't even like that.

00:55:24 ◼   ► It's too hard to type.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Well, as an alternative.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:28 ◼   ► But then you're editing someone's code and they decided to use that.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And now you feel like you have to match that.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Now you got to figure out how to type that and you're copying and pasting.

00:55:34 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:55:35 ◼   ► No, it's not good.

00:55:36 ◼   ► Well, you could make like a macro that, I mean, the ligature is the worst of both worlds.

00:55:40 ◼   ► You got the ugly looking thing, but really under the covers, it's just a hyphen and a

00:55:43 ◼   ► greater than sign.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:45 ◼   ► But it looks like, oh, just, and they're ugly.

00:55:47 ◼   ► They, they're, they don't look right.

00:55:48 ◼   ► They don't look like code.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And then it's masking the actual characters that you've written.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Like ligatures are things where you want beautiful typography for artistic purposes and code

00:55:59 ◼   ► is not that.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Well, the whole reason, and the whole reason that most people like to write their code

00:56:05 ◼   ► in a still even today in a monospace font is not because it looks better, but because

00:56:11 ◼   ► it makes it so, so much easier to make sure that, oh yes, this is a single quote and then

00:56:19 ◼   ► another single quote.

00:56:21 ◼   ► It's not a double quote because they're spaced, you know, and that you can, you get the clarity

00:56:26 ◼   ► of, of, you know, punctuation characters don't just fly by there.

00:56:30 ◼   ► They all get lots of emphasis.

00:56:33 ◼   ► It's predictability and consistency.

00:56:34 ◼   ► That's why they go with monospace.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Now there have been at various times fads of trying to program proportional fonts, but

00:56:40 ◼   ► the, the, the ability to program, but the ability to look at code and, and see, because

00:56:48 ◼   ► it's so important that it'd be unambiguous to you about what characters are actually

00:56:51 ◼   ► out there.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Any kind of ambiguity, even if it quote unquote looks better from artistic perspective is

00:56:56 ◼   ► terrible for code.

00:56:57 ◼   ► So you want to know that everyone knows characters are going to take up the same amount of space

00:57:01 ◼   ► and you can look at it.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And this is setting aside things like Python, where you're lining things up with white space,

00:57:05 ◼   ► but just even just regular programming languages, like you said, there should be no ambiguity.

00:57:09 ◼   ► You should be able to tell a single quote from, you know, a double quote from two single

00:57:12 ◼   ► quotes in a row completely unambiguously because you can't go, it's hard enough to find bugs,

00:57:18 ◼   ► like legit, regular, just human error bugs, let alone sneaky ones like that.

00:57:22 ◼   ► That's why there's all these, you know, troll memes where people will put, what is it?

00:57:26 ◼   ► There's some character that looks exactly like a semi-colon, but isn't a semi-colon

00:57:29 ◼   ► in Unicode.

00:57:30 ◼   ► There's a bunch of characters that are like that.

00:57:31 ◼   ► And we just went through that with the, with the title of that, that we're a game engine

00:57:36 ◼   ► app that shows your weather in a big 3D font, like the little lowercase letter A, that didn't

00:57:39 ◼   ► look like an A.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Yep.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Yep.

00:57:42 ◼   ► The note, it's the, the no more, I haven't linked to it from Daring Fireball yet, but

00:57:45 ◼   ► by the time this podcast airs, I will have, so I can talk about it in the past sense,

00:57:50 ◼   ► but the Andy Works apps under the banner, no more boring apps.

00:57:56 ◼   ► They're, they're, they're, I wonder how many people have noticed.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I haven't seen anybody on Twitter complaining yet, but like the weather app in, on the iOS

00:58:05 ◼   ► home screen just says weather, but the A is a, in typography terms, a single story A,

00:58:14 ◼   ► just like a sort of what you think of little kids, right?

00:58:17 ◼   ► It's a circle with just a bar next to it, as opposed to the sort of fancier double story

00:58:22 ◼   ► A. And San Francisco, the Mac, or actually Apple's system font everywhere, has an alternate

00:58:30 ◼   ► glyph, like an OpenType feature.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And I guess it's not really OpenType because it's TrueType, but it's the same sort of thing.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And if you're in an app that lets you have control, you know, like Adobe apps or the

00:58:41 ◼   ► typography panel in some of the AppKit apps that give you the alternative glyphs for fancy

00:58:50 ◼   ► fonts that have multiple versions of letters like A, you can do that.

00:58:55 ◼   ► But how did, how in the world did he specify it on the home screen?

00:58:58 ◼   ► And we figured out that it's just the Unicode, what's the code?

00:59:02 ◼   ► It's like 0251.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Unicode code point.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a Unicode code point to specify an A like that.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And it looks clever because if you notice it, it's like, huh, he's got the different

00:59:17 ◼   ► lowercase As in the app names.

00:59:20 ◼   ► But the downside is if you go to search for apps and type W-E, if you type W-E, it shows

00:59:27 ◼   ► up, but once you get to W-E-A, it no longer shows up because it's not really an A.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, really the search should be doing so there's some kind of normalization

00:59:37 ◼   ► or folding to try to match that the same way it does case folding, but it's actually

00:59:40 ◼   ► a pretty hard problem.

00:59:41 ◼   ► And that's why the trolls of like putting in the, what is it, the German question mark

00:59:44 ◼   ► looks like a semicolon or something like that.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And people's code won't compile and they'll stare at it for hours and say, but it's

00:59:49 ◼   ► right, it's perfectly fine, what is it complaining about?

00:59:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And then, you know, eventually if you debug code long enough, you'll start doing things

00:59:56 ◼   ► that make no sense to you, like deleting the line and retyping it, and that will actually

01:00:00 ◼   ► solve the problem and you won't understand why.

01:00:02 ◼   ► It's because you deleted the fake semicolon or at least it was the real one.

01:00:05 ◼   ► But you could have programming languages that are smart enough to do this.

01:00:08 ◼   ► The other one is people, I used to say this on Windows, but Windows, people programming

01:00:11 ◼   ► on Windows platforms would do this all the time.

01:00:13 ◼   ► They would copy and paste something out of Word or out of like an email from Outlook

01:00:17 ◼   ► on Windows and it would be filled with non-breaking spaces and the compiler would choke to death

01:00:22 ◼   ► on the non-breaking spaces, but they look exactly the same as spaces in your text editor

01:00:25 ◼   ► and they were just, you know, that's why BVET has zap gremlins, right?

01:00:31 ◼   ► You don't see it anymore because I think it was so pernicious, but in the earlier days

01:00:35 ◼   ► of the web when it was, CSS either wasn't even invented yet or it wasn't taken over,

01:00:41 ◼   ► people would indent code, like code examples on a webpage with non-breaking spaces because

01:00:47 ◼   ► it was the only way to get it to work because you, white space collapses in HTML and then

01:00:54 ◼   ► you'd, oh, okay, there's a line, there's a couple lines of code that'll work.

01:00:57 ◼   ► You copy, you paste, and then your whole program falls apart and then you realize that it was

01:01:01 ◼   ► because you copied and pasted non-breaking spaces.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And the compiler would give you some error message that made no sense.

01:01:07 ◼   ► No sense at all.

01:01:08 ◼   ► It wouldn't say there's a non-breaking space, it would just say some other error like on

01:01:12 ◼   ► the, like, yeah, the message wouldn't be helpful.

01:01:14 ◼   ► I mean, and you could put code in pre-tags or whatever, but people wanted it to be in

01:01:18 ◼   ► a nice font and all this other stuff.

01:01:21 ◼   ► That gets to my point though, is that some of the changes to Mac OS over the years that

01:01:26 ◼   ► are unpleasant but I completely understand is the ways that the world has changed for

01:01:35 ◼   ► the worse and that the broader world of scammers, if not outright criminals, you know, who have

01:01:43 ◼   ► caught onto things.

01:01:44 ◼   ► And one of them is, you know, the same thing with the alternate glyphs where, remember

01:01:50 ◼   ► when there were like domain names that would look like Yahoo except instead of two Os, it

01:01:56 ◼   ► was like some weird alternate glyph and Unicode that looked like Os.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But how in the world is a normal person supposed to know that's not Yahoo.com?

01:02:04 ◼   ► You know, it looks like it.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And so all the browsers and everybody had to sort of go through this absolutely Byzantine

01:02:13 ◼   ► normalization to make sure that spoof URLs or domain names wouldn't go through.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And there's so much stuff in Mac OS X now that it's sort of like that too.

01:02:27 ◼   ► I mean, that's why all this security stuff has been added.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I mean, just the way, I guess that Apple kind of bit the bullet in Catalina 1015 with a

01:02:39 ◼   ► lot of this where when you first updated to 1015, you'd get an awful lot of, oh, the first

01:02:47 ◼   ► time you wanted to use your clipboard manager in every app.

01:02:51 ◼   ► It would be like, oh, do you want to give permission to Payspot to automate this?

01:02:56 ◼   ► You have to go to system preferences and give it the permission to control your screen,

01:03:03 ◼   ► the accessibility thing.

01:03:05 ◼   ► And it's such a big, as a normal long-standing Mac user, it's like you just want to do the

01:03:11 ◼   ► stuff you've been doing on your Mac forever.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And all of a sudden now it does feel like you're the John Hodgman character in that

01:03:19 ◼   ► old I'm a Mac, you're a PC ad where you're caught in a loop of authorizing every single

01:03:24 ◼   ► step of the way.

01:03:25 ◼   ► But you know why they're doing it because if they didn't, there were scammy apps that

01:03:30 ◼   ► were taking advantage of it.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a bright side to this too, though.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Windows went through the same thing.

01:03:36 ◼   ► They went through it a little bit earlier.

01:03:38 ◼   ► But the cool technical side of it is not just security requirements on apps and having them

01:03:45 ◼   ► ask for permissions, but all the most dangerous things on the Mac have been redesigned to

01:03:52 ◼   ► be, and on Windows, have been redesigned to be less dangerous.

01:03:55 ◼   ► The biggest and most recent one, I think on both platforms, and Windows again did it before

01:03:58 ◼   ► the Mac, I think, is user space drivers.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Get third-party software out of the kernel.

01:04:04 ◼   ► If you just want to plug in a new mouse or something or a webcam, you shouldn't have

01:04:08 ◼   ► arbitrary code from a third party running in kernel mode where it can do essentially

01:04:11 ◼   ► anything to your entire system.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And getting all the processes that already were running in user space to put them in

01:04:19 ◼   ► sandboxes to basically say there is less that can really take down your computer.

01:04:26 ◼   ► And these days we don't think about that too much.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Kernel panics are rare, and Apple hates kernel panics, and they're disastrous.

01:04:35 ◼   ► But nowadays Apple is really trying to get everybody out of the kernel except for Apple.

01:04:39 ◼   ► And so yeah, you still have kernel panics, and they're 100% Apple's fault then.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's much better than having kernel panics because you bought a new mouse at Egghead,

01:04:47 ◼   ► and it came with a driver, and now that's kernel panicking your computer, right?

01:04:51 ◼   ► And it takes a long time to engineer that the right way to get all the drivers or even

01:04:56 ◼   ► the trivial stuff like USB peripherals out of the kernel while still allowing them to

01:05:00 ◼   ► have good performance and be able to do all the stuff they're doing.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Same thing with network filters and the new OS being all in user space.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And then sandboxing for all of Apple's demons that run all the stuff, trying to make them

01:05:12 ◼   ► be not only separate processes, which happened years ago, but separate processes that have

01:05:17 ◼   ► almost no permission to do anything except for the one thing they need to do.

01:05:21 ◼   ► If this process never needs to access the network, why does it have access to the network?

01:05:25 ◼   ► If this process never needs to access the file system, it shouldn't have access to the

01:05:27 ◼   ► file system.

01:05:28 ◼   ► And all of that makes our Macs better and more stable in the long run.

01:05:33 ◼   ► In the short run, it's like, oh, they just ripped out the whole driver system and replaced

01:05:35 ◼   ► it with the user space one, and now all the scraps buggy and Bluetooth doesn't work, right?

01:05:39 ◼   ► So that feels bad.

01:05:41 ◼   ► But in the long run, that is good.

01:05:43 ◼   ► And it's the type of good that doesn't come with permission dialogues, right?

01:05:47 ◼   ► Because Bluetooth or whatever comes and it's pre-installed and it works, and you have no

01:05:53 ◼   ► idea whether it's running code inside the kernel or not.

01:05:56 ◼   ► But eventually, once it settles down stability-wise in terms of the Bluetooth part functioning,

01:06:02 ◼   ► it's no longer going to have the capability to take down your whole computer, right?

01:06:06 ◼   ► It will only have the capability to screw up Bluetooth, which is bad, but I think they'll

01:06:08 ◼   ► work that out.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So I'm mostly optimistic about all those changes.

01:06:13 ◼   ► There are bumps in the road where maybe they're asking this dialogue too much, or maybe it's

01:06:16 ◼   ► too hard to allow it.

01:06:18 ◼   ► They don't want to do the Windows thing, which is what the ad was making fun of, which is

01:06:22 ◼   ► bring up a dialogue and just have a button that lets you proceed and give permission.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Apple makes you dismiss the dialogue and it makes you go to a whole other application

01:06:31 ◼   ► on your own, maybe with some assistance from a very clever Mac program, and do with things

01:06:35 ◼   ► somewhere else and come back.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Like they make it enough work so that you can't just go, "Okay, okay, okay, okay," because

01:06:41 ◼   ► that would defeat the entire security purpose because everyone would just be going, "Allow,

01:06:44 ◼   ► allow, allow, allow, allow," which is kind of what they do on iOS.

01:06:48 ◼   ► But iOS is so locked down from the beginning that you can't really allow, allow, and yeah,

01:06:52 ◼   ► you'll probably leak your personal information, but there's never been anything an iOS app

01:06:55 ◼   ► can do to kernel panic your phone, right?

01:06:58 ◼   ► Or at least if that happens, it's not the app's fault, it's Apple's fault doing that.

01:07:03 ◼   ► And I don't blame them for it.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I don't blame them for making you do that and go to system prefs and go to security

01:07:08 ◼   ► and privacy and do it.

01:07:10 ◼   ► What I do blame them for is that they haven't gone and really thoroughly redone the interface

01:07:18 ◼   ► for that in system preferences.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Like you wind up with these little tiny, unresizable panes, like for here's my list for location

01:07:27 ◼   ► services.

01:07:29 ◼   ► And I've got, I don't know, every app that's ever asked for location services is listed

01:07:35 ◼   ► here, but the little tiny pane in the security prefs, it only shows four apps at a time,

01:07:42 ◼   ► and there's no way to resize it.

01:07:44 ◼   ► I do, I don't know if I appreciate this.

01:07:48 ◼   ► It could be an accident, but now look at stuff like this.

01:07:51 ◼   ► This is the thing that I definitely would have talked about if I was doing reviews.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Scroll your list of location services all the way up to the top.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Notice that the tiny little porthole that we're viewing through does not exactly hold

01:08:03 ◼   ► an integer number of items, and that's to give you a visual clue that there's more,

01:08:08 ◼   ► but that clue depends on the next icon being tall enough to peek its little head out.

01:08:13 ◼   ► If it doesn't, it just looks like a screwed up window that doesn't fit the number of items.

01:08:18 ◼   ► So I think someone is trying to do the right thing, which is you really should, in this

01:08:24 ◼   ► stupid era where the scroll bars are hidden by default, unless you have a mouse attached

01:08:28 ◼   ► or whatever with a scroll wheel, you have no way to know that there's any more.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And I've seen this failure mode.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I've seen this failure mode.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I'm trying to coach my parents through doing things like this.

01:08:35 ◼   ► They go to the thing, I'm like, okay, I see a list, but I don't see that thing on the

01:08:38 ◼   ► list.

01:08:39 ◼   ► I'm like, scroll list.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Like scroll what list?

01:08:41 ◼   ► Like scroll all the things that says, you know, these four apps, there's more underneath.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Well, how was I supposed to know that?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Sometimes I can say, well, you could see the head of the little icon poking up, but other

01:08:49 ◼   ► times I'd say, you just need to know that sometimes you can scroll or I just turn and

01:08:53 ◼   ► make the scroll bars be always on.

01:08:54 ◼   ► But either way, it's, I hope someone was trying to do the right thing, but you're totally

01:08:58 ◼   ► right that this interface is suboptimal, let's say, and it's an example, and you're probably

01:09:03 ◼   ► not going to like this, but I feel like it's an example of where web UI, web page, web

01:09:08 ◼   ► UI generally does this better in terms of the mechanics, if not the specifics of the

01:09:14 ◼   ► UI elements, web UIs, if they have a long list, they give you a real time filter at

01:09:19 ◼   ► the top of it, right?

01:09:21 ◼   ► And they give you an indication of how long the list is, and they give you way more information

01:09:24 ◼   ► in a way more flexible thing, because there's lots of things on the web that give you a

01:09:27 ◼   ► long list that they want you to quickly filter or find something on.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And in the dark corners of the Mac, yeah, scroll view is fine.

01:09:34 ◼   ► That's all they need.

01:09:35 ◼   ► But if you know there's going to be 50 items there, give me the little quick search thing.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Give me a little information that says 55 items showing items five of 25 or whatever.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Lots of sort of web UI conventions that we're used to on the web are actually useful if

01:09:51 ◼   ► backported to native UI to help us deal with the same problem, which is a big list of things.

01:09:56 ◼   ► I don't disagree with that.

01:09:57 ◼   ► I mean, that certainly isn't one of my beefs with web apps.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I think that it honestly feels to me almost like a 20-year-old idiom that's just been

01:10:12 ◼   ► cemented is the idea of little—like you called it a little portal.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Like a fixed-sized list in an unresizable window, and it's just laid out like this,

01:10:25 ◼   ► it just feels like something from a bygone era.

01:10:29 ◼   ► I mean, it feels like a web 1.0 thing back when web pages were not as—it's hard to

01:10:35 ◼   ► believe that someone had to make a word called "responsive," which meant that web apps

01:10:38 ◼   ► changed size based on the window size.

01:10:41 ◼   ► From day one, Mac UIs have been essentially responsive in that you changed the window

01:10:46 ◼   ► size and they would expand to fill it.

01:10:47 ◼   ► It's just that system preferences in particular has been—we inherited it from Next, and

01:10:52 ◼   ► it's changed a lot over the years, but one thing that hasn't changed is it's a single

01:10:56 ◼   ► window and you type on an icon and the contents of that window change.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Even though the height of the window changes, the width does not, and it's not resizable.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Can you imagine a version of system preferences that was resizable?

01:11:07 ◼   ► I have seen no reason why we can't have that.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Like we have the technology to lay out scroll views in a resizable window, I swear, but

01:11:16 ◼   ► no one has ever bothered to do that to system preferences because it would—I don't know—maybe

01:11:20 ◼   ► break the layout of the main page and they'd have to make the icons bigger.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:11:24 ◼   ► It's just a corner of Mac OS, and there are a lot of them, that hasn't gotten that

01:11:28 ◼   ► much attention because it works.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And I think it was okay back when people were not expected to visit here very often, but

01:11:36 ◼   ► starting Catalina, everybody's visiting this particular preference pane a whole lot,

01:11:40 ◼   ► so they really should reconsider the UI of system preferences, essentially.

01:11:45 ◼   ► There are tons of ways to do system preferences better than it's done now, and it just hasn't

01:11:51 ◼   ► been changed in what?

01:11:52 ◼   ► I'm not going to say 20 years because they did change it from like—I don't know if

01:11:56 ◼   ► you remember, but what it looked like in 10.0 or the bay is it was totally weird, but it

01:12:01 ◼   ► hasn't changed in many, many years, let's say.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and especially with a lot of the new security stuff, it's like one of the really

01:12:09 ◼   ► neat innovations that Next came up with and carried through is the column view.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And it's an interesting way of showing hierarchy, and it really shined at its brightest with

01:12:24 ◼   ► the original iPhone, right?

01:12:27 ◼   ► Because the general metaphor for most iPhone apps right from the original iPhone in 2007

01:12:33 ◼   ► was effectively column view, except it would only show you one column at a time because

01:12:37 ◼   ► the phone was tall and skinny and very small.

01:12:40 ◼   ► But you'd go to, you know, just look at system prefs or look at mail, where you'd open mail,

01:12:45 ◼   ► and to this day, you open it up, and here's a list of your accounts, and you click an

01:12:49 ◼   ► account, and then there's a list of mailboxes, and you click a mailbox, tap a mailbox, and

01:12:53 ◼   ► it just keeps pushing over left to right as you go down the hierarchy.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Whereas in system preferences, the hierarchy isn't indicated in any logical way at all.

01:13:07 ◼   ► It's all just sort of abstract, where you go to security and privacy at the top level,

01:13:11 ◼   ► but you're picking from a list of icons.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Then you have to go to privacy, which is a tab at the top, which is a totally different

01:13:19 ◼   ► thing you're picking, and then you've got a list on the left side of the different privacy

01:13:25 ◼   ► things to go to, which is how you get to the little tiny four-row window on the right.

01:13:32 ◼   ► It's like every single layer of the hierarchy is a completely different UI paradigm.

01:13:40 ◼   ► And that's just security and privacy.

01:13:42 ◼   ► All the other pref from Pranes are totally different.

01:13:44 ◼   ► They do their own thing.

01:13:45 ◼   ► You never know what you're going to find when you click one of those icons.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So there's an area where I would have a complaint.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Let me take a break here.

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01:15:45 ◼   ► So zooming out again, big picture.

01:15:49 ◼   ► A couple years ago, let's say leading up to that crazy in hindsight roundtable thing that

01:15:55 ◼   ► me and Panzerino and a few others got invited to when they reset the, said, "Hey, we're

01:16:03 ◼   ► going to do a Mac.

01:16:04 ◼   ► We have ideas for an iMac Pro, and we're going to start all over right now with a new Mac

01:16:09 ◼   ► Pro," which you're probably podcasting on right now, right?

01:16:12 ◼   ► I sure am.

01:16:14 ◼   ► There was, I wouldn't say it was a consensus, but certainly a very strong contingent of

01:16:21 ◼   ► people who thought that Apple was showing Mac OS the door.

01:16:28 ◼   ► And oddly to me, often based on quotes from Tim Cook claiming that he does all of his

01:16:35 ◼   ► work on iPads, which to his credit, one of the great things about Tim Cook as CEO of

01:16:43 ◼   ► Apple is he has seemingly zero ego whatsoever about the fact that he's not a product person.

01:16:53 ◼   ► He's replacing arguably the best product person CEO of all time, certainly in tech.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And you saw it with Scully, right?

01:17:04 ◼   ► Scully came from Pepsi and Apple had good years under Scully, but he obviously, the

01:17:10 ◼   ► way he spearheaded the Newton and pushed that out the door, seemingly, not to psychoanalyze

01:17:18 ◼   ► him from afar, but it seemed like he wanted to put his mark on product.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Tim Cook doesn't really have that.

01:17:25 ◼   ► So I wouldn't take Tim Cook's, I think Tim Cook just likes to say good things about Apple

01:17:29 ◼   ► products and that's why he says good things about the iPad.

01:17:31 ◼   ► And I'm sure he does use his iPad a lot, but I never ever took it as meaning that Apple

01:17:37 ◼   ► had a vision of pushing the Mac out the door and we'd all be using iPads for everything.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Well, we should be kind of thankful that Cook didn't want to be that kind of product person

01:17:51 ◼   ► because one possible vision that a new CEO of Apple Post jobs could have had is exactly

01:17:57 ◼   ► what everyone thought he was going to do or feared he was going to do, which is just one

01:18:00 ◼   ► big unified OS based around the one in the iPhone, because that's our bread and butter

01:18:03 ◼   ► now and slowly phase out the Mac.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And if we think of almost any other CEO that would have come in after Jobs, if they were

01:18:11 ◼   ► the type that said, I'm really going to put my stamp on this company by driving it the

01:18:15 ◼   ► same way Jobs did through product decisions and product vision, that is kind of like the

01:18:20 ◼   ► obvious product vision.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you were to look back at the company and say, okay, if I have to reassess,

01:18:26 ◼   ► what should we do?

01:18:28 ◼   ► Even Jobs himself has voiced it in the quote that's, I have no idea where it's from, but

01:18:33 ◼   ► it's like, what I would do is, you know, think about what's going to come next after the

01:18:37 ◼   ► Mac, you know, what I mean?

01:18:38 ◼   ► What quote am I trying to remember?

01:18:43 ◼   ► I know what you're talking about.

01:18:45 ◼   ► It was sort of like, milk what they've got for all it's worth and then move on to the

01:18:50 ◼   ► next big thing.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:52 ◼   ► He's got a bunch of quotes about not dwelling on your accomplishments and moving on to the

01:18:54 ◼   ► next thing, but he had one that was even more specific about the Mac.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And so I feel like that if he had felt like I need to really just change the direction,

01:19:05 ◼   ► like a lot of CEOs assert themselves to sort of put a stamp on the company and make it

01:19:10 ◼   ► their own, whatever the previous guy did, especially if he was super famous and super

01:19:14 ◼   ► successful, you got to do something different.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Otherwise it just seems like you're steering a ship that, you know, is going in a direction

01:19:20 ◼   ► pointed to by somebody else.

01:19:21 ◼   ► But Tim Cook hasn't felt that at all, really.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it's so hard to tell inside Apple, but it feels to me that he has, you

01:19:29 ◼   ► know, he has things that he cares about.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And he's always been steering those and continues to steer those.

01:19:34 ◼   ► But those aren't things related to the products that Apple makes like, you know, what kind

01:19:37 ◼   ► of product?

01:19:38 ◼   ► How many ports should be on this laptop?

01:19:40 ◼   ► Should we make laptops anymore?

01:19:42 ◼   ► But like, that's not it.

01:19:43 ◼   ► It's all about, you know, supply chain.

01:19:46 ◼   ► And I think even the services stuff like the sort of economics and big picture manufacturing

01:19:50 ◼   ► supply chain, inventory management, sales channels, all that, like, that was always

01:19:56 ◼   ► his, Ben still is his and it's a strength and he sticks to that.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And so what that has left, it feels like to me from the outside is the lieutenants on

01:20:05 ◼   ► down inside Apple, the various, I'm not gonna say warring factions, but the various subsets

01:20:10 ◼   ► of Apple that have their own opinions about product direction have been sort of fighting

01:20:15 ◼   ► it out through consensus, eventually always bubbling up to Tim to probably to give a go,

01:20:19 ◼   ► yes, no, or point in this direction or that or kick out forestall and keep eye or whatever

01:20:23 ◼   ► the big decisions are.

01:20:24 ◼   ► But still, the direction is being set by the strongest factions below Tim in the company,

01:20:31 ◼   ► some of which are populated with old people from next, some of which are populated from

01:20:34 ◼   ► classic Mac OS long timers, some of which are populated with people who never knew Apple

01:20:39 ◼   ► before the iPhone, right, and the all and the iPod people and all those factions are

01:20:43 ◼   ► all mixing together and fighting it out to try to set a direction as opposed to a top

01:20:48 ◼   ► down thing where Tim Cook says one day, you know, the Mac is going in the gutter, the iPad

01:20:53 ◼   ► and the iPhone of the future make it happen like that didn't happen.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Even the Mac roundtable thing I feel like, like the closest Tim Cook team to making a

01:21:00 ◼   ► decision was not making a decision to can the Mac which meant the Mac had to continue.

01:21:05 ◼   ► But then without a strong direction to say, let's make sure that the Mac continues to

01:21:11 ◼   ► be successful by these criteria, merely continuing to have max that the people below him said

01:21:17 ◼   ► were the right thing to do for the Mac.

01:21:20 ◼   ► That you know, with Tim Cook going seems reasonable.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Turns out they took a wrong turn.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And they had to backtrack and do something different.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And I don't think without the outside input, Tim Cook would have necessarily seen anything

01:21:35 ◼   ► particularly wrong with the Mac to lead to that roundtable discussion, but the customers

01:21:40 ◼   ► did and the people who ran all the Mac stuff did and so and that sort of, you know, again,

01:21:46 ◼   ► probably had to bubble up to Tim and say, you know, why are people complaining about the

01:21:50 ◼   ► Mac?

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like, it seems fine to me, but apparently some people don't like it, please fix it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► And then you get the roundtable.

01:21:55 ◼   ► Here's the quote from Jobs.

01:21:56 ◼   ► I doesn't have a date.

01:21:58 ◼   ► It's from Goodreads, but it had to be 1994 1995 because it wouldn't make any sense before

01:22:04 ◼   ► or after.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:06 ◼   ► It had to be before he came back.

01:22:08 ◼   ► If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth and get busy

01:22:13 ◼   ► on the next great thing.

01:22:15 ◼   ► The PC wars are over done.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Microsoft won a long time ago, which is funny because now you look back at that actually

01:22:22 ◼   ► was wrong.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I mean, it was right in the way that he meant it.

01:22:26 ◼   ► And if you come back to Apple, the move is not let's get 90% PC market share, right?

01:22:30 ◼   ► Which Apple never did and never probably never will do and didn't try to do.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And Apple did get working on the next big thing with the iPod, the iPod, and eventually

01:22:39 ◼   ► the iPhone.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:41 ◼   ► But it also didn't get rid of the Mac.

01:22:43 ◼   ► And part of that, I think, is because, you know, Jobs is baby.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Part of that is just because Jobs liked Macs.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And so if he got rid of them, he'd have to use a PC and he wouldn't like that.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And he wasn't going to be Tim Cook getting everything done on his iPad.

01:22:58 ◼   ► But you know, it's just like the people at Apple like the Mac and thought it should continue

01:23:02 ◼   ► to be a thing.

01:23:03 ◼   ► But that was not, you know, and then you can say that wasn't the focus of the company.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Jobs' big comeback was a Mac, the iMac.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:10 ◼   ► And he was like, "Oh, I want to get this company around with a Mac because in the short period

01:23:13 ◼   ► of time, that's what you've got.

01:23:14 ◼   ► That's what you can do."

01:23:15 ◼   ► So he was absolutely like right in the sense that he meant that phrase and acted accordingly,

01:23:22 ◼   ► but never took the step that people would, you know, get from that phrase, which is like,

01:23:25 ◼   ► "Oh, I guess that means he just wants the Mac to go away."

01:23:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Steve Jobs absolutely did not want the Mac to go away and it didn't go away.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And Tim Cook probably could take it or leave it.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And so it stayed and it floundered a little bit, but now it seems like it's turning around.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Flash forward to just like two or three WWDCs ago, I think it was right before the introduction

01:23:43 ◼   ► of Catalyst.

01:23:44 ◼   ► So it was probably two of them ago.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And Federighi's on stage and has in his introduction to Catalyst, the UI kit to make Mac apps framework,

01:24:01 ◼   ► which is in other words, a way to port your iOS apps to the Mac with.

01:24:06 ◼   ► However, minimal the change is certainly far more minimal than rewriting them in AppKit.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And it was a, "Are we moving towards a single unified operating system?"

01:24:18 ◼   ► And it's WWDC, they've got bigger screens than they even have at Steve Jobs Theater

01:24:24 ◼   ► and a giant screen with the word "No" dropping down in an animation.

01:24:31 ◼   ► And even still, lots of people, like I really felt like that was a moment where Apple really

01:24:36 ◼   ► broke a little character and was like, "Look, we know a lot of you think that's what we're

01:24:40 ◼   ► doing.

01:24:42 ◼   ► That's what Microsoft seems to be doing, but they don't have a phone.

01:24:46 ◼   ► We're not doing that.

01:24:47 ◼   ► We really aren't."

01:24:48 ◼   ► And then lots of people are like, "Yeah, that's what they're doing.

01:24:51 ◼   ► They're going to just have one operating system and it's going to be iOS."

01:24:54 ◼   ► It's like, it feels like there's no way they can refute it and they're trying to, didn't

01:24:58 ◼   ► really get away with it.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Didn't really do anything to quell it.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, again, that's clearly a discussion that had to be had inside Apple.

01:25:07 ◼   ► It's just a question of what level it's at.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And I feel like that debate of, "Hey, what should we do with our whole platform story?"

01:25:14 ◼   ► probably is the type of thing that took place with, I forget if Bertrand was still the head

01:25:19 ◼   ► when this was taking place, but eventually with Federighi.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Like whoever's in charge of all the software platforms at Apple and all of that person's

01:25:27 ◼   ► lieutenants and vice presidents or whatever, you got to hash that out and say, "What's

01:25:32 ◼   ► our OS strategy for the next 10 years or whatever?

01:25:34 ◼   ► What are we going to do?

01:25:35 ◼   ► Are we going to merge into one big thing or are we going to keep them separate?"

01:25:37 ◼   ► And they had that debate and the decision they made is we're going to keep them separate.

01:25:41 ◼   ► And if everyone on the outside is like, "Are you going to merge?

01:25:44 ◼   ► Are you going to merge?"

01:25:45 ◼   ► But people on the outside didn't participate in those debates.

01:25:47 ◼   ► And I'm sure that decision was pitched to Tim Cook.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Tim Cook has to know, "Hey, what's the deal with the software platform?"

01:25:52 ◼   ► They have to say, "Here's what we've collectively decided and here's why."

01:25:55 ◼   ► And Tim Cook has to say, "Yeah, okay, that makes sense, do that," or disagree.

01:25:59 ◼   ► But I don't think Tim Cook is up there saying, "I have the vision for our software platforms

01:26:03 ◼   ► for the next 15 years.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Here's what we're going to do.

01:26:05 ◼   ► We're not going to merge them.

01:26:06 ◼   ► We're going to merge them or whatever."

01:26:08 ◼   ► But even today, the reason he had to say that is with the Catalyst thing.

01:26:11 ◼   ► I think on ATP, I described the introduction of Catalyst as an extinction level event for

01:26:16 ◼   ► Cocoa or for AppKit at that point because there are so many more UIKit developers.

01:26:22 ◼   ► And okay, we're not merging OSs, but there's two angles in that.

01:26:27 ◼   ► One, the OSs were never really unmerged.

01:26:30 ◼   ► Like the whole point is that the iPhone OS was, quote unquote, "Jobs based on OS X,"

01:26:35 ◼   ► whatever the hell OS X was in his mind.

01:26:37 ◼   ► It's Darwin under there.

01:26:38 ◼   ► It's BSD Darwin.

01:26:39 ◼   ► It's the foundations of the thing.

01:26:41 ◼   ► The iPad runs it.

01:26:42 ◼   ► The Mac runs it.

01:26:43 ◼   ► The phone runs it.

01:26:44 ◼   ► Right?

01:26:45 ◼   ► The things built on top of it vary, but there's tons of common components.

01:26:48 ◼   ► If Apple had -- let's pretend Apple had built the iPhone based on that PixOS platform that

01:26:55 ◼   ► ran the iPod.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Right?

01:26:58 ◼   ► If they had done that, and then at some point they had said, "Guess what?

01:27:01 ◼   ► We're not using PixOS on the iPhone anymore.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Now we're going to be using a variant on OS X."

01:27:06 ◼   ► The story would have been Apple merges Mac and iOS operating systems.

01:27:09 ◼   ► But because they started with that basically merged foundation, now what we say when we

01:27:14 ◼   ► merge is like, "Well, it's just the same operating system like Windows 8.

01:27:18 ◼   ► It's just Windows 8, Windows 8, Windows 8.

01:27:19 ◼   ► Windows 10, Windows 10, Windows 10.

01:27:21 ◼   ► It's just the same name and it runs everywhere."

01:27:22 ◼   ► And it's like you're really starting to get into a place where the differences start to

01:27:26 ◼   ► become more academic.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Yes, we all know if you're a developer, AppKit versus UIKit versus SwiftUI, and that muddies

01:27:32 ◼   ► the water.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And the operating systems themselves have details that are different, and the phone

01:27:36 ◼   ► doesn't use swap.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Right?

01:27:38 ◼   ► And there's so many things that are different.

01:27:41 ◼   ► But fundamentally, Apple doesn't have a split OS strategy.

01:27:45 ◼   ► They don't even have a split OS strategy like Microsoft used to when it had NT versus the

01:27:49 ◼   ► 95 thing, right?

01:27:51 ◼   ► They have always had a single OS foundationally strategy across their entire line, and it's

01:27:57 ◼   ► just the level where it varies is the part where the tension is.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And on that level, Apple has been "merging" them in one particular direction by making

01:28:08 ◼   ► it possible to write UIKit on the Mac, whereas you couldn't before, by making it possible

01:28:12 ◼   ► to literally run iOS applications on your Mac by using the same CPU architecture on

01:28:17 ◼   ► the Mac as they do.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And notice the direction that Arrow is always going.

01:28:20 ◼   ► He's always going, "Whatever we were doing on the phone and the iPad, bring that over

01:28:24 ◼   ► to the Mac," and much, much less of the opposite direction, right?

01:28:27 ◼   ► So this whole debate about merging, I think it means something in people's minds, but

01:28:33 ◼   ► from a technical perspective, like from Federighi's point of view, they've been marching along

01:28:38 ◼   ► a fairly -- another fairly obvious technological path to basically leverage their assets.

01:28:45 ◼   ► We have millions of developers who know UIKit.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Why shouldn't we let them write Mac apps more easily?

01:28:51 ◼   ► We're really good at making CPUs for our phones and our iPads.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Why shouldn't we use them in the Mac?

01:28:56 ◼   ► It'll make our Macs better.

01:28:57 ◼   ► While at the same time not saying, "Oh, you're going to turn on your Mac, and it's just going

01:29:01 ◼   ► to be, like, you know, Launchpad, and it's just going to look like a springboard filling

01:29:04 ◼   ► your whole screen, and you're going to touch your Mac and do all that stuff," right?

01:29:07 ◼   ► That's the level of consumerist thing, so when that big no comes down, it's trying to

01:29:10 ◼   ► tell people, "It's not going to be a dock.

01:29:12 ◼   ► It's still going to be a menu bar.

01:29:13 ◼   ► You're going to have a mouse.

01:29:14 ◼   ► It's a Mac," right?

01:29:16 ◼   ► Meanwhile, every single technical person at Apple is essentially taking the best parts

01:29:21 ◼   ► of all the OSes and combining them together to make them closer and closer to each other.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I mean, for crying out loud, running phone apps natively on your Mac, right?

01:29:29 ◼   ► And yet they can still have that big slide that says, "No, we're not merging them," right?

01:29:32 ◼   ► So it's really just a question of what level are we communicating, right?

01:29:36 ◼   ► That no is communicating at one level, and I think it's saying the right thing for people

01:29:40 ◼   ► operating that level, but if you're a developer, looking at how the OSes have been evolving

01:29:45 ◼   ► towards each other, let's say, that doesn't conflict with the no and is in many ways comforting,

01:29:52 ◼   ► but it does have ramifications, and so the ramifications I was getting at with the extinction

01:29:55 ◼   ► level event is there are so many more iOS programmers, and if you can use UIKit to write

01:30:00 ◼   ► apps for the Mac, how long is it going to be before there are fewer and fewer people

01:30:04 ◼   ► writing Mac apps with AppKit?

01:30:06 ◼   ► And then the third one in the mix is there, well, is anyone using either of those APIs

01:30:09 ◼   ► or they're just using Electron and doing everything with web apps to make everything cross-platform?

01:30:13 ◼   ► So that battle is yet to be hashed out.

01:30:16 ◼   ► It's going on right now.

01:30:17 ◼   ► This is a hot war on all of our Macs.

01:30:20 ◼   ► What API do I use to write apps for this Mac?

01:30:23 ◼   ► What API is used to write the apps that I use every single day?

01:30:27 ◼   ► And that still needs to sort itself out.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Well, Apple can continue and insist, no, we're not merging the OSes, and no, we're not taking

01:30:35 ◼   ► away your menu bar and your dock, right, and the finder's still there, but that war is

01:30:40 ◼   ► happening whether you want it or not.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's, the way I see it, and I think it's what people miss, is that it's

01:30:47 ◼   ► less of a technical thing and more of a philosophical thing, that philosophically the Mac is still

01:30:52 ◼   ► a Mac, even if technically it's more and more alike, you know, processor architecture.

01:30:58 ◼   ► UIKit now being a first-class citizen that you can write apps for the Mac, and literally

01:31:04 ◼   ► being able to just double-click an iPhone app on an Apple Silicon Mac, and it launches,

01:31:10 ◼   ► you know.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Which, again, I, you don't, do you, do you have, what do you have, a DK?

01:31:15 ◼   ► What's your Apple Silicon story?

01:31:17 ◼   ► I've got an M1 MacBook Air, and I've still got a DTK, because Apple won't tell me how

01:31:21 ◼   ► to return it.

01:31:22 ◼   ► They know how to make people angry.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll be talking to you in a few weeks.

01:31:29 ◼   ► Just go find the box now, but.

01:31:32 ◼   ► One of the things about the double-clicking, you know, just launching iOS apps, I guess

01:31:37 ◼   ► they're not really iPhone apps, they're iPad apps right now.

01:31:40 ◼   ► If it's an iPhone-only app, I don't think it works.

01:31:43 ◼   ► I think it has to be iPad.

01:31:46 ◼   ► This tells you how much I've used that feature on the M1 MacBook Air, because my son uses

01:31:49 ◼   ► that computer, and I always forget, is it the iPhone ones that run, or the iPad ones?

01:31:53 ◼   ► Technically speaking, there's no reason it couldn't be both of them, but I don't, is

01:31:56 ◼   ► it just the iPad ones?

01:31:57 ◼   ► No, it's just iPad ones.

01:31:58 ◼   ► But there's also, it's also the case that for me personally, so few of the apps I use

01:32:02 ◼   ► are iPhone-only, but that's, you know, I don't know if that's the only reason why Instagram

01:32:07 ◼   ► does that.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Just does Instagram, I was about to say that.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:32:10 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of other apps I use that don't have both.

01:32:13 ◼   ► It's just sort of a dying breed.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe your banking app.

01:32:16 ◼   ► Yeah, probably, I don't know.

01:32:18 ◼   ► But I actually don't even use, my banking app is awful, because I have, at the same

01:32:22 ◼   ► bank, I have a business account and a personal account, and the website—

01:32:25 ◼   ► You can't swap between them.

01:32:26 ◼   ► Well, yeah, the web, yeah, you can't swap between them.

01:32:28 ◼   ► Whereas the website, you just log out, and then you log in with your other, you know,

01:32:32 ◼   ► saved password.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Who's gonna have more than one banking app?

01:32:34 ◼   ► I opened up a business banking account recently, too, and I picked the bank that was like,

01:32:38 ◼   ► that I can walk to from my house.

01:32:40 ◼   ► That's exactly what I did.

01:32:41 ◼   ► Because I'm like, oh, that'll be super convenient, and their app sucks.

01:32:44 ◼   ► No, it's true.

01:32:45 ◼   ► Like, those big banks that have a hoe-jillion dollars under these giant national chains,

01:32:49 ◼   ► I assume they have better apps, but this rinky-dink local bank just has got one poor iOS programmer

01:32:55 ◼   ► that worked on this once, like five years ago, and that's it.

01:32:59 ◼   ► My bank's website is pretty good.

01:33:01 ◼   ► It's good enough that I don't complain.

01:33:02 ◼   ► But the app is not as good as the web.

01:33:05 ◼   ► But I have to use the app to cash checks with the camera.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:33:10 ◼   ► But when they added that, they also added, it was like a $400 limit.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's another thing I didn't, for my business account, like, I set up this

01:33:19 ◼   ► business account, and I should have asked more closely what all the limits are, because

01:33:24 ◼   ► a lot of things are tedious when there are limits and like, number of transactions per

01:33:26 ◼   ► day and maximum amount of the transactions, and yeah, live and learn.

01:33:36 ◼   ► But I do think, one of the interesting things about that feature is, to me, A, to me, it

01:33:43 ◼   ► doesn't work very well.

01:33:44 ◼   ► And I wrote about it when I wrote about the M1 Macs, that like, the HBO app scrolls terribly,

01:33:50 ◼   ► which apparently was maybe my fault, because I turned on the weird feature where you get

01:33:55 ◼   ► like, multi-touch support, and if you turn that off, scrolling works a little better.

01:34:02 ◼   ► But still, the HBO app, which you would think would be an app you might want to use, because,

01:34:06 ◼   ► you know, watching, you know, they don't have a proper Mac app.

01:34:11 ◼   ► You might want to watch your HBO shows, and the app ought to be better than the website,

01:34:17 ◼   ► but you couldn't go full screen.

01:34:19 ◼   ► It was crazy.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Like, why, you know, of all the things that can't go full screen, why wouldn't a video

01:34:24 ◼   ► app?

01:34:25 ◼   ► But that's because they didn't really make it for that.

01:34:27 ◼   ► It was just, here, we'll let your iPad app run, and the iPad app thinks that the window

01:34:32 ◼   ► is the screen, and so it only expands the video to fill the window, but the window can't

01:34:38 ◼   ► go full, et cetera.

01:34:39 ◼   ► It's just bad.

01:34:40 ◼   ► Anyway, several months in now, here we are towards the middle of February, end of February.

01:34:46 ◼   ► I don't hear anybody ever talking about running those iOS apps on their M1 Macs.

01:34:52 ◼   ► It's kind of like the first round of Catalyst, where all the apps were scaled by like, you

01:34:55 ◼   ► know, 1.7% or 1.3% or whatever it was.

01:34:59 ◼   ► I forget, like, they weren't quite the right size, and everything was a little janky, and

01:35:02 ◼   ► then now there's the Mac native mode where you get to one-to-one scaling.

01:35:07 ◼   ► Trying to bridge the divide of these APIs without breaking compatibility is tricky,

01:35:11 ◼   ► so that's why it wasn't an overnight cascade of iOS apps.

01:35:15 ◼   ► But I really think that the real competition is these web-based apps, Electron-based cross-platform

01:35:23 ◼   ► apps.

01:35:24 ◼   ► So many of the apps that we use every day, I think about this every time I have a podcast

01:35:29 ◼   ► with someone who's around for a long time, I just think about all the hours I spent on

01:35:32 ◼   ► my computer with no internet connection.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Seems like most of my life it wasn't, but like...

01:35:37 ◼   ► I know.

01:35:38 ◼   ► None of those apps had anything to do with the network.

01:35:40 ◼   ► Now, pretty much every single app I do every day is useless without the internet.

01:35:46 ◼   ► Web browser, useless.

01:35:47 ◼   ► Slack, useless.

01:35:48 ◼   ► iMessage, useless.

01:35:49 ◼   ► Like, Skype, useless.

01:35:51 ◼   ► Like, these applications do not function without a network connection.

01:35:55 ◼   ► And so in that world, it's no surprise that these cross-platform, you know, web-based

01:36:00 ◼   ► frameworks that run seemingly half of the apps I use these days are, you know, are a

01:36:06 ◼   ► thing.

01:36:07 ◼   ► And so that is Apple's real competition.

01:36:08 ◼   ► So even though old-timers are fretting about AppKit versus UIKit versus SwiftUI, Apple

01:36:13 ◼   ► should be fretting about Electron versus everything.

01:36:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:17 ◼   ► Let me take a break, because I want to pick up from that.

01:36:18 ◼   ► It's too big a topic.

01:36:20 ◼   ► But let me thank our third sponsor.

01:36:22 ◼   ► It's a fellow ATP sponsor, FlatFile.

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01:37:42 ◼   ► FlatFile.io.

01:37:43 ◼   ► They've been sponsoring ATP for a while.

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01:37:47 ◼   ► I wonder why it took them so long.

01:37:50 ◼   ► Seems like a mutual audience.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Must be the funny name.

01:37:54 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:37:55 ◼   ► I agree with you.

01:37:56 ◼   ► I think that the existential threat to the Mac, for decades, literally since its inception,

01:38:03 ◼   ► everybody always thought the threat to the Mac, the extinction threat was the PC.

01:38:08 ◼   ► It was DOS.

01:38:09 ◼   ► I was going to say Windows, but back in the day it was DOS.

01:38:13 ◼   ► Then it was Windows.

01:38:16 ◼   ► It was deafening by 1995, right?

01:38:19 ◼   ► Then Windows 95 came out, which was actually better looking and worked better, and Apple

01:38:26 ◼   ► was mismanaged, to make a long story very short, and sort of lost in the woods at a

01:38:37 ◼   ► management level and at an engineering level had failed on several major...

01:38:43 ◼   ► They needed a next generation OS, and their engineering efforts in those regards had failed.

01:38:51 ◼   ► It's easy to...

01:38:54 ◼   ► It's like Apple hasn't had a failure like that in a very long time, but these were major

01:39:01 ◼   ► operating system initiatives.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Number one, it's a little bit telling that there were several of them, and they were

01:39:07 ◼   ► concurrent.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Remember PINK?

01:39:09 ◼   ► intelligent, PINK, Copeland.

01:39:13 ◼   ► Copeland.

01:39:14 ◼   ► Gershwin?

01:39:15 ◼   ► Wasn't Gershwin the one that was going to come after Copeland?

01:39:20 ◼   ► Times are different.

01:39:21 ◼   ► They blabbed about them, showed screenshots, released screenshots of them to Macworld.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Published a book sitting on the shelf next to me, Mac OS 8 Revealed, describes an operating

01:39:32 ◼   ► system that Apple never released.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Instead, they released a totally different operating system also called Mac OS 8.

01:39:43 ◼   ► In some sense, for a brief period of time there, '95, '96, even after the next, as I

01:39:50 ◼   ► call it, the reunification, and they acquired Next and had therefore owned a decent starting

01:39:57 ◼   ► point for a next generation operating system, it was still years away from actually being

01:40:02 ◼   ► usable as something to offer to the Mac community that was keeping Apple going.

01:40:09 ◼   ► And they had one false start there, too, because remember Rhapsody was the first run at that,

01:40:14 ◼   ► and that didn't work.

01:40:15 ◼   ► And then they released the weird Mac OS X server that would, you know, no relation to

01:40:19 ◼   ► the future operating system of the same name.

01:40:21 ◼   ► But then the second try, they got it.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:24 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe, arguably, the third try, really, right?

01:40:28 ◼   ► Mac OS X server wasn't really, or whatever they called it.

01:40:31 ◼   ► What did it, was it just called?

01:40:32 ◼   ► No, Rhapsody was the project, right?

01:40:34 ◼   ► That was like Mac OS X without carbon, essentially, and with a different idea of the UI.

01:40:38 ◼   ► It was the next, it was the next-ies take on what the next generation operating system

01:40:42 ◼   ► to be, and the Mac market said, "No thanks."

01:40:44 ◼   ► And then they released Mac OS X server, which was essentially Rhapsody, but the server version

01:40:48 ◼   ► of it, just because I feel like someone probably had that on their thing as like, "Oh, we should

01:40:52 ◼   ► just get this out the door and accomplish it."

01:40:54 ◼   ► But then they said, "No, the new strategy is Mac OS X."

01:40:58 ◼   ► And that was the one that stuck, and that was the one with Aqua and the whole nine yards,

01:41:01 ◼   ► and that was the one with carbon, right?

01:41:03 ◼   ► Aqua and carbon were the, and the porting of many more Mac APIs, like QuickTime and

01:41:08 ◼   ► stuff, were the big things that differentiated Rhapsody from Mac OS X.

01:41:11 ◼   ► But essentially, they said, "We took a run at it with Rhapsody, and nobody bit."

01:41:15 ◼   ► And they basically did the same thing again, but with a few particularly strategic and

01:41:19 ◼   ► important changes that they got away with.

01:41:21 ◼   ► It's kind of like they tried to do Copeland, and no one stuck, so they did the same thing

01:41:26 ◼   ► as Copeland, but with a different skin and one or two new APIs, and it worked.

01:41:30 ◼   ► It was interesting, though, seeing something that looked, because the skin of it, the theme,

01:41:36 ◼   ► whatever you want to call it, was the Mac OS 9.

01:41:40 ◼   ► Platinum.

01:41:41 ◼   ► Platinum.

01:41:42 ◼   ► Yeah, platinum.

01:41:43 ◼   ► But was better, right?

01:41:44 ◼   ► It was like they'd improved a couple of the elements, and funny enough, from where Mac

01:41:50 ◼   ► OS X wound up being with Aqua, it was snappier.

01:41:53 ◼   ► It was a very snappy interface.

01:41:55 ◼   ► Memory protection, the multitasking, but it was this weird-looking next thing.

01:42:01 ◼   ► Even in the early versions of Mac OS X, you could switch the UI back to the next UI.

01:42:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:42:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:42:09 ◼   ► Which I think was what...

01:42:10 ◼   ► I think the people who actually used it did that, whereas we Mac nerds were like, "Well,

01:42:14 ◼   ► let's just kick the tires on this thing and see where they're going."

01:42:18 ◼   ► But there were a few years there where it did look like, yeah, the Mac might just become

01:42:22 ◼   ► one of those things like the Amiga.

01:42:25 ◼   ► Remember this.

01:42:26 ◼   ► Remember the Mac.

01:42:27 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, that was a good one.

01:42:28 ◼   ► But then once they got their feet under them and Mac OS X was clearly as rough around the

01:42:34 ◼   ► edges as it was when it finally shipped, it was clearly going in the right direction and

01:42:39 ◼   ► made progress very steadily.

01:42:41 ◼   ► It was like, yeah, there's a future here.

01:42:43 ◼   ► The PC really was never again the threat to the Mac.

01:42:48 ◼   ► And the threat to the Mac, in my mind, clearly is the rise of web apps and the generational

01:42:58 ◼   ► change in terms of how younger people view apps or what they do on computers.

01:43:05 ◼   ► Yeah, or whether they want to use a computer at all for anything ever.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and I saw an OS market share pie chart recently.

01:43:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:43:16 ◼   ► Was this on your side?

01:43:17 ◼   ► Was it Stratechery?

01:43:18 ◼   ► I think it was me.

01:43:19 ◼   ► But anyway, it was the current snapshot of "Desktop OS market share."

01:43:26 ◼   ► If you didn't see the same thing as me, what's your guess on the breakdown?

01:43:30 ◼   ► Well, is it supposedly polling the market as a whole?

01:43:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if it was installed based or active users, but it was a current snapshot

01:43:40 ◼   ► of the market of like how many people out there.

01:43:43 ◼   ► It was basically OS market share.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And are we counting, what are we counting Chrome as?

01:43:49 ◼   ► Chrome or Chromebooks?

01:43:50 ◼   ► Are they counting as PCs?

01:43:52 ◼   ► That's desktop, yeah.

01:43:53 ◼   ► I would guess 7% Mac, 50, and the rest split evenly between Windows and Chrome.

01:44:06 ◼   ► So like 47, 47, and 7.

01:44:13 ◼   ► You had a more pessimistic picture than I did.

01:44:17 ◼   ► Of course, I don't actually have this URL handy, but the upshot of it was that Chrome

01:44:21 ◼   ► OS had just overtaken the Mac.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Oh, just the Mac.

01:44:25 ◼   ► I thought maybe it was up there with Windows.

01:44:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:44:27 ◼   ► I just assume that there's a gazillion Chromebooks out there.

01:44:30 ◼   ► Chrome OS had overtaken the Mac here and there going back and forth a few years, but now

01:44:34 ◼   ► it's like decisively ahead of the Mac.

01:44:37 ◼   ► So it's like, but it wasn't that much bigger than the Mac.

01:44:40 ◼   ► And then there was the Mac and then there was Windows.

01:44:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm crazy.

01:44:43 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:44 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:45 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:46 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:47 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:48 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:49 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:50 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:51 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:52 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:53 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:54 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:55 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:56 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:57 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:58 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:44:59 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:00 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:01 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:02 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:03 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:04 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:05 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:06 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:07 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:08 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:09 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:10 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:11 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:12 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:13 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:14 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:15 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:16 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:17 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:18 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:19 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:20 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:21 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:22 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:23 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:24 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:25 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:26 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:27 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:28 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:29 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:30 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:31 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:32 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:33 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:34 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:35 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:36 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:37 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:38 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:39 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:40 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:41 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:42 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:43 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:44 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:45 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:46 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:47 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:48 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:49 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:50 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:51 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:52 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:53 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:54 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:55 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:56 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:57 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:58 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:45:59 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:00 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:01 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:02 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:03 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:04 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:05 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:06 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:07 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:08 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:09 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:10 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:11 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:12 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:13 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:14 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:15 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:16 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:17 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:18 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:19 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:20 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:21 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:22 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:23 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:24 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:25 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:26 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:27 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:28 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:29 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:30 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:31 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:32 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:33 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:34 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:35 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:36 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:37 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:38 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:39 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:40 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:41 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:42 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:43 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:44 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:45 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:46 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:47 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:48 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:49 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:50 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:51 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:52 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:53 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:54 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:55 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:56 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:57 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:58 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:46:59 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:00 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:01 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:02 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:03 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:04 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:05 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:06 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:07 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:08 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:09 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:10 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:11 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:12 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:13 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:14 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:15 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:16 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:17 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:18 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:19 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:20 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:21 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:22 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:23 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:24 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:25 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:26 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:27 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:28 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:29 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:30 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:31 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:32 ◼   ► I'm crazy.

01:47:33 ◼   ► I'm crazy.