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ATP

513: Scribble on the Shared Placemat

 

00:00:00   It's winter now and the temperature has finally dropped enough in our area that I'm using

00:00:06   humidifiers again, it's humidifier season.

00:00:09   And I'm wondering for to present a question to our, our well informed and oddly specifically

00:00:16   placed listener base in certain industries.

00:00:18   I want to know.

00:00:20   So every winter, I get like super cracked, like hand skin like around my nails, just

00:00:26   cracks and hurts and does any do any of these like hand cream things or even the even humidifiers

00:00:34   does this do anything like to do any of these things help is your question right can i can

00:00:39   i like this is kind of like the question that like many young children and often some adults

00:00:45   have it's another secret weird thing kind of uh rectum response where they're like sometimes

00:00:51   i get headaches but i don't believe that headache medicine medicine does anything does it do

00:00:56   anything? No, because a lot, first of all, a lot of medicines don't do anything, so

00:01:00   that's a reasonable question. Right, but I'm saying like the whole, the idea is

00:01:04   that the whole rest of the world, including doctors, would tell you, hey, if

00:01:09   you have a mild headache, maybe take like aspirin or Tylenol or Advil, right? But

00:01:12   you're living your whole life thinking, "Ah, that probably doesn't do anything,"

00:01:15   right? So here you are, you've got cold, you've got like dry cracked hands, and

00:01:19   your question is, do moisturizers moisturize? That's what it comes down to. Yes, yes, putting

00:01:25   moisturizer on your dry hands,

00:01:28   it's like what kind of question is that?

00:01:30   Or you could just not and continue to have dry hands.

00:01:32   Now your humidifier question is better,

00:01:33   because that's like okay, well I'm humidifying

00:01:35   the whole air, is that helping me as well?

00:01:37   But like, but stop, stop, if you have dry hands,

00:01:40   use moisturizer please.

00:01:41   - No, and I do, I mean, moisturizer sucks,

00:01:44   because like, you know, then you can't use that hand,

00:01:46   those hands for a couple of minutes as it like dries in.

00:01:49   - All right, well now that's a better question,

00:01:50   which is like tell me a good moisturizer

00:01:52   that doesn't have the--

00:01:54   - No, I have good moisturizers.

00:01:55   I have like stupidly good ones that I love,

00:01:58   like how they feel after a few minutes at least.

00:02:01   I just don't know if they're doing anything.

00:02:03   Like I, you know, are they actually fixing the problem

00:02:06   of my hands always crack and get painful in the winter?

00:02:09   - Moisturizers are not entirely placebos.

00:02:12   I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that.

00:02:14   Most moisturizers, I have to say most.

00:02:15   - Is that true?

00:02:16   That's kind of what I'm asking.

00:02:17   It's like, I don't know.

00:02:19   - Yeah, I think this is, I think it's a safe bet

00:02:21   that not all moisturizers are placebos.

00:02:25   - Is it?

00:02:26   - I think it is a safe bet.

00:02:27   I will say that I do not have anything

00:02:30   that really resembles a skincare routine,

00:02:32   and I don't say that with pride.

00:02:33   - Or winter. - Yeah, right, or winter.

00:02:35   Ha ha ha.

00:02:36   - Or air that's ever dry enough for this to be an issue.

00:02:38   - Ha ha ha, yes, yes, yes.

00:02:40   Anyway, I think it's gonna be like the low of 15 tomorrow

00:02:44   or something like that, so come off it.

00:02:46   Anyway, I have tried many a moisturizing lotion

00:02:51   in my day for my money, and I'm not trying to say

00:02:54   this is the universally correct answer.

00:02:55   Just for me, the one that I have had

00:02:58   the best experience with by a mile is cetaphil.

00:03:02   C-E-T-A-P-H-I-L, which is not an uncommon lotion.

00:03:05   - Yeah, I've seen that before.

00:03:07   - It's all over the place.

00:03:09   I vastly prefer this because with most lotions,

00:03:13   I feel like gross and weird on my skin.

00:03:15   You were kind of alluding to this.

00:03:17   But I feel that way for like 20 or 30 minutes.

00:03:21   With cetaphil, it dries in the span

00:03:23   of just a couple of minutes, and then it's like,

00:03:26   other than the fact that your skin has moisture in it now,

00:03:28   it's like it was never there.

00:03:30   And so I would strongly encourage you

00:03:33   to give Cetaphil a try.

00:03:34   I will put a link in the show notes

00:03:37   to what I believe is the one that I use,

00:03:39   as with all medicines or dermatological things.

00:03:43   There's a thousand variations

00:03:45   that are all basically identical.

00:03:47   But this is what I use and I recommend.

00:03:50   This may or may not work for you,

00:03:52   But again, the reason I like it so much is because after just a minute, maybe two tops,

00:03:57   that icky, like, oily feeling goes away. It is there at first, but it goes away super fast.

00:04:03   Like, how long after you've applied it can you open a doorknob?

00:04:06   That's a fair question. No, it's a fair-- Don't scoff at him, John. That's a reasonable question.

00:04:11   I would say--

00:04:12   Well, like, I think you could always open the doorknob. It's just that it feels icky to you,

00:04:16   though, or you don't want to get moisturizer on the doorknob.

00:04:18   No, sometimes it's genuinely hard if you put it on the palms of your hands.

00:04:22   - I mean, how stiff are your doorknobs here?

00:04:24   - Oh, stop it.

00:04:26   Anyways, I would say, to answer your question,

00:04:29   five minutes or less.

00:04:30   - And how long after you apply it,

00:04:32   could you touch a glass touchscreen

00:04:34   and have it not smear something on it?

00:04:37   - Five days, no, I'm kidding.

00:04:38   (laughing)

00:04:39   Again, I think that's a perfectly reasonable barometer,

00:04:42   and I don't know off the top of my head,

00:04:44   I mean, obviously neither of us, and certainly not John,

00:04:46   would be touching a glass screen

00:04:47   other than maybe a phone, but--

00:04:50   - I use my iPad, what are you talking about?

00:04:51   Oh, that's fair, fair, fair, all right, I take it back.

00:04:53   - It was touch screens all day long.

00:04:55   - I'd rather just avoid the need for these things

00:04:57   because I hate having goop on me.

00:04:59   And also, you know, I'm always, as I get older,

00:05:02   I'm increasingly conservative about like, you know,

00:05:05   what kind of chemicals I'm allowing to be applied

00:05:08   on my body or enter my body.

00:05:09   Like, you know, I wanna like not take unnecessary risks

00:05:13   with weird chemicals and stuff.

00:05:14   So, you know, I just, I'm trying to figure out like,

00:05:16   are there any other solutions to this problem

00:05:18   that don't involve gooping up my hands all day

00:05:20   with crap that I hate.

00:05:22   - My recommendation is to be 100% Italian

00:05:24   and produce so much skin oil that you never need

00:05:27   to use moisturizer in your entire life.

00:05:29   - Well, the other thing is, I'm also like,

00:05:32   you know, the division of labor in our house,

00:05:35   in broad strokes, there are some exceptions,

00:05:37   but in broad strokes, Tiff is in charge of soft things,

00:05:41   and I'm in charge of wires in the kitchen.

00:05:43   Oh, and dog is usually me too.

00:05:45   But the kitchen part of my duties mean that

00:05:47   my hands are often getting wet and dry, you know,

00:05:49   in cycles as I wash dishes or clean counters or whatever.

00:05:52   And then the dog part of my duties,

00:05:53   I mean I'm often putting on gloves,

00:05:55   going outside, taking off gloves when I come,

00:05:57   like a lot of that.

00:05:57   So like my hands just get destroyed in the winter.

00:06:00   But I just, I don't have a good solution here.

00:06:02   And humidifiers don't, humidifiers seem to be more

00:06:06   for other forms of comfort and for the happiness

00:06:09   of the plants in the house.

00:06:11   I'm not entirely sure humidifiers are doing much for myself.

00:06:13   - Humidifiers will help probably your sinuses

00:06:16   and like your breathing, 'cause you're breathing that in,

00:06:18   moisturizer hopefully you're not breathing it in but yeah for your skin

00:06:21   moisturize this is like my annual reminder like nobody understands

00:06:26   humidifiers really well I mean our listeners do but like you know regular

00:06:29   people out in the world they're like yeah I just you know I put a pot of

00:06:33   water on the radiator and that's enough for my whole house all day and I'm like

00:06:36   I'm evaporating six gallons a day into my house with my evaporative humidifiers

00:06:41   and that that raises the humidity like 15% like you're you're one pot of water

00:06:45   on the radiator is not doing anything. Let me tell you though, if you are going to go outside on a

00:06:51   dog walk and it's going to be cold, boy do I have an answer for you on what you can do to keep

00:06:57   yourself warm. John, can you tell me about this? The chicken hat. The chicken hat is back. Did you

00:07:02   miss out on the chicken hat before? Are you disappointed that you didn't get one? Are you

00:07:05   still wanting a chicken hat? Well, I mean, so here's the news. You too could you could miss out

00:07:11   out on the chicken hat again.

00:07:13   You're right.

00:07:14   Listen, this is on us.

00:07:16   We're bad at estimating how many chicken hats we need to order.

00:07:20   And it's because we have to pay for these up front.

00:07:23   No, it's because there's not a lot of data

00:07:26   to base our decision on on how many chicken

00:07:28   hats we should order.

00:07:30   Yeah, and so we have to buy them all up front.

00:07:32   So we're like, oh, it's expensive.

00:07:33   And you've got to outlay this money.

00:07:34   And what if we buy all these chicken hats

00:07:35   and nobody wants them?

00:07:36   Then we're just stuck with it.

00:07:37   So we kept ordering them in increasingly large amounts.

00:07:40   and then our sale ended, right?

00:07:42   And we told people, like, we're gonna try to get more

00:07:44   as soon as we can.

00:07:46   So we got some more chicken hats.

00:07:48   This is not part of one of our regular sales,

00:07:50   so there's no member-only discount code.

00:07:52   Like, it's not, this is just a one-off special thing.

00:07:54   'Cause we felt bad, 'cause like,

00:07:55   even after we sold through all our chicken hats,

00:07:57   more people wanted them.

00:07:58   So we ordered a bunch more

00:07:59   that we thought would satisfy the demand

00:08:01   of all the people who signed up and said,

00:08:03   "Hey, tell me when the chicken,

00:08:04   "tell me when the hat is back so I can order it."

00:08:06   We may or may not have done that,

00:08:08   because I put them on sale earlier today

00:08:11   and I posted about the hats to Mastodon.

00:08:14   I posted to Mastodon first

00:08:15   and I gave those people first crack at it.

00:08:17   So you're welcome if you're following me at Mastodon.

00:08:19   And then I posted on Twitter.

00:08:21   Anyway, I feel like we've already sold through half

00:08:23   of the hats and this episode is just being recorded now.

00:08:26   So maybe by the time you hear this, they're not there.

00:08:28   But if you go to atp.fm/store,

00:08:31   you may be able to get a chicken hat

00:08:33   and you may actually be able to get it

00:08:34   in time for Christmas as well

00:08:35   because these ship immediately,

00:08:37   There's no waiting or anything.

00:08:39   And if you live in the US, you could probably

00:08:40   get one in time for Christmas if you order,

00:08:42   at the time you hear this.

00:08:43   Or you could get there and find out they're sold out again,

00:08:45   in which case we're sorry.

00:08:46   But obviously we have no idea what we're doing

00:08:48   with these chicken hats.

00:08:49   Is there infinite demand for chicken hats?

00:08:50   Should I buy one for every person in the world?

00:08:52   I don't know.

00:08:53   But anyway, this is probably it for the chicken hats

00:08:56   for this year, because we will have put them

00:08:58   on enough heads for the winter.

00:09:00   This is the winter.

00:09:01   That's why we're doing this now.

00:09:02   It's a one-off winter sale.

00:09:03   So go to atb.fm/store.

00:09:06   If you want a chicken hat, there may be one available.

00:09:08   And also we have like our leftover mugs.

00:09:10   Like we always keep a bunch of mugs in reserve

00:09:13   for ones that like break and transport or whatever.

00:09:15   And now that all the mugs have gone out to everybody

00:09:17   and we've replaced any of the broke or whatever.

00:09:19   Now we have like the reserve available for sale.

00:09:22   So we do have a few ATP mugs hanging around as well.

00:09:26   I think they will also ship as soon as you order one.

00:09:28   So if you want to order a mug

00:09:30   and you didn't get one before, take a look now.

00:09:33   - Yeah, I can't stress enough.

00:09:34   I know I say this every time.

00:09:35   I know I do, but for real,

00:09:38   these hats are going like hotcakes,

00:09:40   which selfishly is great.

00:09:41   - Don't get too strong with the speech

00:09:42   because it could be by the time this thing is posted,

00:09:45   they'll all be gone already,

00:09:45   and I'll feel bad if that happens,

00:09:47   but that's why you should follow us on Mastodon or Twitter.

00:09:49   - Yeah, exactly, and really act now

00:09:52   because I know that's such a cliche,

00:09:54   but for real, act now because I bet you

00:09:57   there's a 50/50 shot that by the time you hear these words,

00:10:00   they will already be gone.

00:10:03   In fact, there's even a chance

00:10:04   that Marco will have to edit this very speech

00:10:07   out of the show because by the time he goes to publish it,

00:10:10   they may be gone.

00:10:11   So ATP.fm/store, please and thank you.

00:10:14   - Yeah, for the bootleg people, someone in the chatroom

00:10:16   just said that they, so they ordered a chicken hat last time

00:10:19   and they like it and they're thinking

00:10:20   of ordering a second one.

00:10:21   I endorse this behavior as a person

00:10:22   who loves to have backups, but really,

00:10:24   like this is what you're up against.

00:10:25   People who already have a chicken hat are like,

00:10:27   "Hmm, maybe I should get a second one."

00:10:29   (sighs)

00:10:30   Anyway, they're there or probably gonna be there.

00:10:33   - I'll tell you what, when I first got mine,

00:10:36   like whatever it was, three or four weeks ago,

00:10:38   it wasn't that cold yet, and I put it on,

00:10:40   I'm like, oh my God, this is ridiculously hot.

00:10:42   And I couldn't wear it, it was too hot.

00:10:44   Now, as I'm pulling it over,

00:10:47   as I'm pulling it with my dry cracked hands,

00:10:50   over my ears for my morning dog walks,

00:10:53   and it's 28 degrees, now,

00:10:55   that is an appropriately warm hat for what I am doing,

00:11:00   and I'm very thankful for it.

00:11:03   - Yeah, one other thing to scare people away

00:11:04   from the chicken hat, we're also getting a lot of people

00:11:05   who got the chicken hat to say,

00:11:07   it doesn't fit me, my head's too big.

00:11:09   As I said when we originally talked about this,

00:11:11   this hat is modeled on my hat down to the millimeter.

00:11:15   If you lay this hat on top of my original hat,

00:11:17   they are exactly the same in every single dimension.

00:11:20   And my original hat was from Eastern Mountain Sports,

00:11:23   and it was listed as one size fits all.

00:11:25   And like I said when we talked about the hat originally,

00:11:28   one size obviously doesn't fit all,

00:11:30   but there was no sizing on this hat.

00:11:31   There was no small, medium, or large.

00:11:33   I have the only size this hat was ever made in,

00:11:36   which is one size fits all.

00:11:37   Is this one size fits all gonna fit your head?

00:11:39   Maybe.

00:11:40   I mean, I don't know.

00:11:41   Like it is what it is.

00:11:43   So if you get this hat and it's too small,

00:11:45   I don't know, give it to someone with a smaller head,

00:11:47   sell it to someone.

00:11:48   There's some people reselling their hats on Twitter saying,

00:11:50   "Hey, I got the hat and I like it fine,

00:11:52   "but my head's too big for it.

00:11:53   "So if you want it, you can try it."

00:11:54   I think that this one is actually looser

00:11:58   And it accommodates a larger head than my original,

00:12:02   'cause my original has stiffened with time

00:12:05   and is thicker than this one.

00:12:08   Whereas this one is much, much looser.

00:12:09   So this one accommodates larger heads than the original,

00:12:11   even though in every dimension it is the same.

00:12:14   So be aware, you may get a hat

00:12:16   that doesn't fit on your head,

00:12:17   in which case just give it to someone with a smaller head.

00:12:20   - Also, I would like to make a request to Jon.

00:12:22   He genuinely does not know what I'm about to say.

00:12:24   So I received my chicken hat just a couple of days back.

00:12:27   I went on a walk around the neighborhood,

00:12:29   actually it was a dog walk in this particular case,

00:12:31   I went on a walk around the neighborhood

00:12:32   and it is quite brisk by Virginian standards today,

00:12:35   I think it was like mid 30s or something like that.

00:12:37   And I put my chicken hat on

00:12:39   and I was quite happy to have it.

00:12:41   It was absurdly warm, it genuinely was.

00:12:44   I'm not really sure why or how, but it was freaking warm.

00:12:47   However-- - The power of fleece.

00:12:49   - Right?

00:12:50   Either way, I remember us going back and forth

00:12:54   about the correct placement of the ATP logo

00:12:56   and which side is supposed to be where,

00:12:58   and that everyone is doing it wrong,

00:13:00   and I think I'm doing it wrong.

00:13:01   So can we have an official FAQ page,

00:13:04   or can you repost somewhere publicly

00:13:07   the correct place to put the chicken hat?

00:13:10   - I mean, I don't want to be too prescriptive,

00:13:11   because honestly, you wear it however the heck you want,

00:13:13   but the way it's supposed to be worn is seam in the back.

00:13:15   Like, that's true of most clothing.

00:13:16   If clothing has a seam, very often it goes in the back,

00:13:19   like with a hat, right?

00:13:19   So I know it's confusing,

00:13:21   'cause people want the logo to be in the front,

00:13:22   so you can see it, but it's not.

00:13:24   The logo is kind of towards the back,

00:13:25   the seam goes in the back.

00:13:26   But if you wanna wear it with the seam in the front,

00:13:28   go for it.

00:13:28   I'm just saying if you're asking the question

00:13:30   of how is it supposed to be done,

00:13:30   it's the seam in the back.

00:13:32   - And for whatever it's worth,

00:13:33   I have a fish beanie hat that has a little fish tag on it.

00:13:37   And that is also in the same location

00:13:40   near the seam in the back.

00:13:41   And if you know anything about fish,

00:13:43   you know that they know what they're talking about

00:13:45   with fashion.

00:13:45   - I'm glad you made that joke before I had to.

00:13:49   No, but you had posted a profile view at some point,

00:13:52   and I would like that profile view of you, John,

00:13:55   to live permanently somewhere.

00:13:57   - But the problem, I mean, it does.

00:13:58   It's on the Studio Neat page,

00:13:59   but the problem is that's my original hat,

00:14:01   not the ATP one.

00:14:02   - See, you gotta do a new one, please, and thank you.

00:14:04   - Well, why don't you model it?

00:14:05   You've got the hat, put it on the seam in the back.

00:14:06   - Because I'm doing it wrong!

00:14:07   Because I'm doing it wrong!

00:14:08   - Well, I've told you how to do it now.

00:14:09   I've told you how to do it now.

00:14:10   So get Aaron to take a picture of you,

00:14:12   like in a three-quarters view,

00:14:14   showing the seam in the back, and you can be the model.

00:14:16   - Super.

00:14:17   A lot of people have very justifiably asked,

00:14:19   with regard to merchandise, like the chicken hat,

00:14:21   "Where do I put the discount code?

00:14:23   "Why isn't it working?"

00:14:24   Or, "How can I get it?"

00:14:25   We don't do discount codes for the anytime sales

00:14:28   like this one.

00:14:29   We only do them for the time limited sales.

00:14:32   Completely reasonable question.

00:14:33   I meant to talk about this a minute ago.

00:14:35   I apologize, I completely forgot.

00:14:36   Completely reasonable question,

00:14:38   but we only do the discount codes for--

00:14:41   - You need a 28 character backup code for your hat.

00:14:43   - Yeah, exactly.

00:14:44   You need to send us your 28 character backup code

00:14:46   and your Apple ID and then you can get a discount.

00:14:49   No, no.

00:14:50   Only for the time limited stuff.

00:14:51   So no discounts on this, I am sorry about that.

00:14:53   I don't think we're gonna do another time limited sale

00:14:55   until probably spring time,

00:14:57   but no discounts on these ones, our apologies.

00:15:02   Let's do some follow up.

00:15:03   Hey, tell me about recovery keys and backup contacts, please.

00:15:07   This is in the context of end-to-end encryption.

00:15:09   What is it, advanced data protection?

00:15:11   Do I have that right?

00:15:12   So please tell me more about this.

00:15:13   - Yeah, this is a question last time

00:15:15   with the whole 28-character code.

00:15:16   From the Apple document, they say,

00:15:18   creating a recovery key, this 28-character code,

00:15:20   turns off account recovery.

00:15:22   And it says account recovery is a process

00:15:23   that would otherwise help you get back your Apple ID

00:15:25   when you don't have enough information

00:15:26   to reset your password.

00:15:27   So there was the open question of, okay,

00:15:29   so they're giving you all these warnings about it

00:15:30   when you generate 28 character code,

00:15:32   and they say it turns off account recovery,

00:15:34   but what is account recovery?

00:15:35   And then they give that vague definition.

00:15:37   So Oliver Ames wrote in to say,

00:15:38   I have recovery key and three recovery contacts enabled

00:15:41   on my iCloud account.

00:15:42   I can't see any indication that a recovery key

00:15:44   disables these three recovery contacts.

00:15:45   The two seem to coexist.

00:15:47   So I think I have three methods

00:15:48   of recovering an encrypted key.

00:15:49   So that was the question last time.

00:15:51   Can you have backup contacts

00:15:52   and also have this 28 character recovery key?

00:15:54   And apparently the answer is yes,

00:15:56   or at least you can if you already had them.

00:15:58   I guess account recovery does not encompass

00:16:02   having backup contacts.

00:16:03   I guess it is a different thing.

00:16:05   I haven't actually gone through the process

00:16:08   and I'm assuming none of us have at this point.

00:16:10   I'm setting it up, but I believe it prompts you

00:16:12   and it says, "Hey, you're about to turn this thing on.

00:16:15   You should do one of these things."

00:16:16   And the choices are generate this 28 character code

00:16:19   and designate people to be your backup person for you

00:16:23   if you lose all your stuff.

00:16:25   And apparently you can do both.

00:16:27   - All right, Ezekiel Ellyn was one of many people

00:16:30   to write in with some information with regard

00:16:32   to getting a refund and how you can do that

00:16:37   and be explicit about what you want to refund on.

00:16:39   The context for this was, one of you,

00:16:41   was it Marco buying a bunch of stuff or was it John?

00:16:43   I thought it was John and then I could swear it was Marco.

00:16:45   It's always John.

00:16:47   Anyways, it was John looking at,

00:16:49   oh, it was for the face thing, wasn't it?

00:16:52   - The AI image generator thing,

00:16:55   he said I was messing with you.

00:16:56   - Yeah, yeah, okay, so anyways,

00:16:57   so we were, John was asking, you know,

00:16:59   how do I know what I'm requesting a refund on

00:17:01   and blah, blah, blah?

00:17:02   I had said, oh, I'm pretty sure you can do that

00:17:05   in StoreKit too, you can,

00:17:07   so I'll put a link to a tech talk that Apple did.

00:17:09   So anyway, on this video, they talk about exactly

00:17:11   how you can show like the,

00:17:13   a sheet that I believe is provided by the system,

00:17:15   but it lets you ask for a refund on a particular item,

00:17:17   asks you how or what the problem is, et cetera.

00:17:21   Continuing with what Ezekiel was telling us,

00:17:24   you can look at any of your order receipts

00:17:26   and there's a report a problem link

00:17:28   at the kind of the bottom of the order.

00:17:30   And there's also reportaproblem.apple.com.

00:17:33   And on the website, it shows you all of your purchases

00:17:38   ordered by date and grouped by order number.

00:17:39   You can choose request a refund and then see a list

00:17:41   of options including in-app purchase not received.

00:17:43   After selecting it, you can click in and out purchase

00:17:45   and hit submit.

00:17:47   And so there is a list that you were seeking, John,

00:17:50   we just didn't know where to get it.

00:17:51   - Yeah, the secret, the key for me is that I was looking

00:17:54   at these order receipts saying,

00:17:55   why is there no place for me to get refund?

00:17:56   And also, why can I not see a list of my transactions

00:17:59   like in the app?

00:18:00   On the receipt, the secret is look for report a problem,

00:18:03   which I don't know, I just was glancing over that of like,

00:18:07   oh, I don't really have a problem, I just want to refund.

00:18:09   - Yeah, I would have done the same.

00:18:10   - But anyway, that encompasses it.

00:18:12   And the website, reportaproblem.apple.com,

00:18:15   is where you can request a refund.

00:18:16   The UI is a little bit weird,

00:18:17   but that is the place where you can do it.

00:18:19   And there you actually do see your transactions.

00:18:20   There's actually many places

00:18:21   where you can see these transactions,

00:18:22   including on your devices.

00:18:24   It's just not straightforward to know where they are,

00:18:27   as anyone who's ever gone digging for something in settings

00:18:29   or whatever it is.

00:18:29   So this stuff is available.

00:18:31   And thanks to people pointing this out,

00:18:33   I did actually request a refund for that one thing

00:18:36   that didn't go through, and I got it back.

00:18:39   And same thing with the store kit two thing.

00:18:40   Like that's presenting a UI, but in the end,

00:18:43   you were still asking Apple for a refund.

00:18:45   The developer cannot grant or not grant you the refund.

00:18:48   So if you ask for a refund from Apple and Apple says no,

00:18:50   because like you're asking for a refund

00:18:52   on like some subscription that you've, you know,

00:18:54   used up all but one day of, and you want a refund on it,

00:18:56   maybe Apple would say no or something.

00:18:58   You can't, like the developer isn't doing that, it's Apple.

00:19:01   The good news is that Apple pretty much gives you

00:19:03   any refund you ask for, as long as it is reasonable.

00:19:05   So, you know, you are at Apple's mercy,

00:19:08   but they are merciful.

00:19:10   - That is true, I'm not arguing with what you're saying.

00:19:12   However, in that video that I was talking about earlier,

00:19:14   one of the things they say is when you do

00:19:16   the in-app refund dance, you can provide Apple

00:19:20   with some information about what the user has done.

00:19:23   And this is particularly in the context

00:19:26   of consumable in-app purchases.

00:19:27   So you buy a packet of credits, if you will,

00:19:31   that you're using over time.

00:19:33   Actually, I guess like this give me five avatars thing.

00:19:38   Well, anyways, what you can do is you can provide--as a developer, you can provide Apple

00:19:43   with, "Oh, they've used two of their six credits," or what have you, and then Apple puts that

00:19:48   in their little algorithm, their black box that decides whether or not you will actually

00:19:53   get the refund. I agree with you. I haven't heard of--from users or even the handful of

00:19:59   times I've done it myself. I haven't heard anyone say that they've been denied, but there

00:20:02   is some affordance in the flow, in the API, to tell Apple exactly what it is that the

00:20:10   user has done.

00:20:11   And in my case, remember, I made an in-app purchase and the app just failed to give me

00:20:15   anything for it.

00:20:17   But there would be no record of that and there's no way Apple has any information other than

00:20:21   from as far as they can tell, I did an in-app purchase and then I just like regretted it

00:20:24   and asked for my money back, right?

00:20:26   They'd have no way to verify my story that, "Hey, I did it and I got nothing for it,"

00:20:30   which is true.

00:20:31   nothing for it. It disappeared into the app, but they just gave me the refund anyway.

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00:22:23   Thank you so much to Linode for making cloud computing

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00:22:37   So we have a definitive answer on the Sharrow. This was brought to my attention from Ilya

00:22:41   Berman. I don't like to be that guy in Revels when your friends are wrong and just gets

00:22:47   excited when your friends are wrong. But when you're almost never wrong, like John Siracusa,

00:22:50   I can't help but get a little excited. So here I am getting more than a little excited

00:22:54   that apparently the sharrow is for real for real a real thing.

00:22:57   So Ilya points out, WWDC 2017, Essential Design Principles.

00:23:01   About 25 minutes in, the presenter

00:23:04   introduces the box with an arrow coming out of it.

00:23:06   And the presenter says the following.

00:23:08   The glyph that we use to represent

00:23:10   the concept of an action is an arrow that points up and away

00:23:14   from a box.

00:23:16   Because the most common action associated with this glyph

00:23:19   is share, we affectionately call this a share-o.

00:23:23   - Yes. (laughs)

00:23:26   2017.

00:23:27   - It is a real thing.

00:23:30   - Right, but here's the question.

00:23:31   Have they been able to make share-o happen since 2017?

00:23:35   I'm gonna say since none of us remembered this session,

00:23:39   I don't think it's really happening.

00:23:41   Anyway, I talked about this a lot with Merlin

00:23:43   on the rectiffs that we recorded

00:23:45   that will be out sometime in the future,

00:23:47   so you can hear more about it.

00:23:47   But yeah, lots of people have used inside of Apple

00:23:52   in Apple retail, this shortening of the thing.

00:23:57   But I feel like it hasn't really caught on.

00:23:59   I mean, that's why we had all these questions about it.

00:24:01   That's why we ended up having two episodes of fun

00:24:03   because it wasn't like, oh yeah, of course,

00:24:04   Sharrow, everyone calls it that.

00:24:06   And I'm kind of surprised that given these people

00:24:07   are inside Apple talking about design,

00:24:09   that I can't go into SF Symbols and type Sharrow.

00:24:11   I went and did that.

00:24:12   I mean, I made the joke last episode,

00:24:13   but I'm like, but if they call it that,

00:24:15   it's gotta be in like the synonyms.

00:24:17   No, it's not. It's called like upward facing box arrow or some whatever it's called

00:24:21   So I mean even if Apple puts it as the thing in SF symbols, I feel like making it catch on in the wire world

00:24:27   You know, I again I think us talking about it may actually be pushing into that direction much to my chagrin

00:24:33   So we should just I

00:24:35   Will concede as much as I love giving you a hard time

00:24:39   I will concede that the first time I remember having heard this was when Merlin brought it up on rectus

00:24:44   What like a month or two ago or something like that?

00:24:46   I don't remember having heard Sharrow before then.

00:24:48   - But we all probably did,

00:24:49   considering this is from 2017. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:51   No, I agree. - It just didn't stick

00:24:52   because it's dumb.

00:24:53   - It didn't stick, I'll leave it at that.

00:24:55   All right, so tell me about enabling

00:24:58   the aforementioned advanced data protection.

00:25:00   If you happen to really like Apple products.

00:25:02   - This is a joke I made last episode.

00:25:04   It's like, oh, you know, you would think that

00:25:06   people who are into Apple and are Apple enthusiasts,

00:25:09   they're gonna turn on advanced data protection right away,

00:25:11   and the requirement that all the devices be updated

00:25:14   to the latest OS isn't going to be a big deal because all these Apple enthusiasts and these

00:25:18   tech nerds, they are updating their devices all the time.

00:25:21   They want to be on the latest and greatest version of everything.

00:25:23   But the reality is, if you are an actual Apple nerd, what you end up accumulating is tons

00:25:28   and tons of older devices that you just refuse to get rid of, even though you should sell

00:25:31   them or give them away because you're using them as test devices or you just want to have

00:25:35   them or whatever.

00:25:36   And so here is Quinn Nelson posting a video showing his experience of trying to turn it

00:25:42   on and it shows you that screen that says, "Oh, you want to turn on advanced data protection?

00:25:45   Well, you got to have the latest version of all the OSes, so here's a list of the devices

00:25:49   you're going to need to update."

00:25:50   And he scrolls for like two pages.

00:25:51   We all have a lot of devices, devices that you've forgotten about that are not running

00:25:58   the latest OS.

00:25:59   They may be turned off, asleep in a drawer somewhere, and now you have to either fish

00:26:02   them out or go to the web page and like eject them from your Apple ID.

00:26:07   Yeah, that's not great.

00:26:09   I haven't done this yet.

00:26:10   we established earlier that none of us have.

00:26:11   But I do plan to, but if it requires everything

00:26:14   on the latest and greatest, it might take a minute.

00:26:16   - I mean, it's not, it's unavoidable.

00:26:17   There's a good reason for them doing that.

00:26:19   They're not doing it to be mean.

00:26:20   The whole point is, this is a security thing,

00:26:21   and if you leave the old ones on the old version,

00:26:23   that's a security leak, like you are not protected

00:26:26   unless you do this.

00:26:27   And it was the same thing with setting backup contacts,

00:26:29   that you had to update everything.

00:26:30   You know, time heals this.

00:26:32   Eventually, you will update all your things.

00:26:34   Eventually, you'll get annoyed enough

00:26:35   that you'll dig them out of drawers

00:26:36   or remove them from your app ID.

00:26:37   So it's fine, it's just funny.

00:26:39   - Yeah, agreed.

00:26:41   All right, it turns out that you can indeed quit the Finder.

00:26:44   So John Wen writes in episode 512 of ATP,

00:26:49   you were asked about a quit menu item for the Finder.

00:26:51   As expected, it's a default's right to the rescue.

00:26:54   In terminal, enter, and we'll put this in the show notes,

00:26:56   default's right, com.apple.finder,

00:26:58   quit menu item, bool true.

00:27:00   And then just restart the Finder

00:27:02   and suddenly you'll have a quit menu item, allegedly.

00:27:04   - Yeah, it behaves a little bit weirdly.

00:27:06   I mean, it's not as much fun as doing it in ResEdit for sure,

00:27:09   but, and I think I put this a lot

00:27:11   on my Mac OS X reviews back in the day,

00:27:13   but I've long since forgotten about it.

00:27:14   But when you do quit finder through that menu item,

00:27:17   it can behave a little bit strangely in that

00:27:21   sometimes it will hang, or sometimes it will hang

00:27:24   when it's trying to relaunch itself,

00:27:26   or sometimes it won't relaunch itself

00:27:28   and you'll have to kill it, and then it,

00:27:30   like I got it to a state where clicking on it in the dock

00:27:33   wouldn't relaunch it, so instead I had to go to the terminal,

00:27:35   which of course was already open,

00:27:37   and type the open command on open space dot

00:27:40   to open the directory and that will trigger

00:27:42   the Finder to open.

00:27:43   Just needless to say, this is not a supported configuration

00:27:47   from Apple's perspective, but the Finder team

00:27:49   did put the quit menu item there

00:27:51   and maybe it will work better for you than it worked for me.

00:27:53   - Sure enough.

00:27:54   Hey, Ventura 13.1 is out.

00:27:57   It is not in beta, it is for real for real.

00:27:59   In fact, I upgraded earlier today because I'm a dummy

00:28:02   and I do it on the day I record.

00:28:03   I don't know why I do this every time, but I always do.

00:28:05   But it worked, so it's okay.

00:28:07   But the point is-- - Why, why?

00:28:09   - Because of a dollar.

00:28:10   - I just today installed Ventura regular,

00:28:13   just because 13.1 came out.

00:28:14   - That's worse, that's worse than what Casey did.

00:28:17   - Yeah, that's aggressive.

00:28:18   - 'Cause you're going to, anyway,

00:28:19   I did it because I wanted to try the Freeform app,

00:28:22   which we'll talk about in a little bit.

00:28:23   But yeah, I updated, I got there yesterday.

00:28:25   - Oh, that's true, I forgot that it was on the Mac.

00:28:27   I was, we will talk about this, but I went--

00:28:30   - I forgot that it was any place but the Mac.

00:28:32   - 'Cause I wanted to try it on iPad

00:28:34   with my Apple Pencil and all that.

00:28:35   I completely forgot it was on the Mac.

00:28:37   Anyway, so yeah, so 13.1 brings back a relatively well hidden,

00:28:42   but there, network locations GUI, which is pretty cool.

00:28:46   I know a lot of people were sad and upset about that,

00:28:48   but it's there now.

00:28:49   And where it is, you go to System Settings,

00:28:51   you go to Network in the sidebar,

00:28:53   and these are all the way down to the bottom,

00:28:55   and there'll be a mysterious little thing that

00:28:56   looks like a button with three dots and a V on it.

00:28:59   And that will spawn a menu, and then

00:29:01   at the bottom of that menu, it will spawn another menu,

00:29:03   and at the bottom of that menu, you

00:29:05   can edit your network locations.

00:29:06   It's a fairly hilarious UI, but at least it's back.

00:29:09   - Indeed.

00:29:11   So Apple Music Sing isn't just for Atmos stuff.

00:29:14   And this is sent to us via Bill Klein.

00:29:17   Bill writes, "You mentioned the new Apple Music Sing feature

00:29:20   this week," I think that was a week or two ago,

00:29:21   "and John posited that this is not machine learning related,

00:29:24   but instead using Atmos encoded music objects

00:29:26   to strip out the vocals.

00:29:28   However, in my testing of this feature,

00:29:29   I found many tracks that do not have Atmos versions

00:29:33   on the service that function with this feature.

00:29:35   For example, the band Goose's last two albums, Drip Field and Shenanigans Nightclub,

00:29:39   it's a pretty good name for an album, do not have Atmos versions on Apple Music.

00:29:42   But if you try playing this track, which will link, or any other track on those

00:29:46   records on 16.2, you will get the microphone button to strip the vocals.

00:29:51   This fact, plus the compatibility list for this feature, which cuts off any devices

00:29:54   with an A12 or earlier, leads me, says Bill, to believe that this is in fact ML

00:29:59   powered and relies on the more powerful neural engine in the A13 and later chips.

00:30:03   Can we just take a minute to appreciate that a jam band

00:30:08   that I happen to be listening to recently,

00:30:12   somebody wrote in about that, like referencing music,

00:30:15   like that I'm not the only person listening

00:30:18   to the band Goose, which by the way--

00:30:19   - I was gonna say which one is the jam band, it's Goose?

00:30:22   - Goose, yeah. - Okay, sure.

00:30:24   - They just did a tour with Traina Stasio,

00:30:26   like kinda together as a whole thing.

00:30:28   And it's a fantastic tour, both the tab side of it

00:30:31   and the Goose side of it.

00:30:32   Anyway, oh my god, they're so good.

00:30:34   Like, if fish is like kind of in your real house,

00:30:38   but like you want something that's a little bit more

00:30:41   mass market palatable and maybe a little more like,

00:30:44   you know, a more modern take on something similar,

00:30:48   you should listen to Goose.

00:30:49   It's really good.

00:30:50   - So, with all that said, somebody, I think it was John,

00:30:54   put a link in the show notes that I'm assuming

00:30:56   is from someone that worked on all this?

00:30:58   - I don't know.

00:30:59   See, the information we got last show about the fact

00:31:01   It wasn't that they were using Atmos, but the idea was that Apple has access to individual

00:31:06   tracks in the same way that they have access to those things to do the Atmos mixes, because

00:31:10   they have to, you know, anyway.

00:31:12   But I think it was from Vitici or somebody was saying like this is not using machine

00:31:16   learning to do it, it's actually they have individual tracks and Atmos was an example

00:31:20   of why Apple had access to that.

00:31:22   But I don't know for certain.

00:31:23   So a lot of people are saying that the reason it's limited to the Apple TV 4K is because

00:31:28   it uses machine learning to do this and we need the A13 or better and that's why you

00:31:31   can't use the older Apple TVs to do it.

00:31:34   But I don't know if this tweet from John Druckmann is definitive because it's someone on the

00:31:39   inside who knows.

00:31:40   But either way, it seems to me like it would be more straightforward to just get the individual

00:31:44   tracks and certainly Apple through its connections in the music industry could get those.

00:31:48   But on the other hand, how many songs could they get them for?

00:31:52   Is this something they've been doing for a year asking all the music labels to get the

00:31:55   individual tracks, or did they just apply ML to it?

00:31:58   It's kind of weird that Apple wouldn't brag about it

00:32:00   if they used ML, like hey, look at this main thing

00:32:02   we're doing, the power of the neural engine, blah, blah, blah

00:32:04   but still a bit of a mystery, but most of the feedback

00:32:08   we got is people saying it's definitely machine learning.

00:32:11   - Let me ask you two, did either of you try

00:32:14   this feature at all?

00:32:15   - I think we are established and both can't sing, so no.

00:32:17   - Oh no, no. - Oh no, I can't either.

00:32:18   - Well, I mean, I do sing, I don't know if I can,

00:32:21   but I do in the car when I'm by myself.

00:32:25   When you're listening to Phish, you miss it,

00:32:27   you say three words every 30 minutes.

00:32:29   (laughing)

00:32:30   - Well done.

00:32:31   - I can sing other music also, but yeah.

00:32:34   But the problem is I haven't had a lot of that time

00:32:37   since I've upgraded to 16.2 and stuff, so.

00:32:40   - So I did try it very briefly on my iPad,

00:32:42   and I don't know how I got this impression.

00:32:45   I presume I just vastly misunderstood.

00:32:48   I thought that there was a lot to this,

00:32:51   or something more to this on the user side.

00:32:54   Clearly there's a lot to this on the implementation side,

00:32:56   as we were just discussing.

00:32:58   But on the user side,

00:33:00   it's basically just another volume control for vocals.

00:33:03   Maybe everyone knew this but me, but that's it.

00:33:06   It's just, you're looking at the lyrics view.

00:33:07   - Because the lyrics already did,

00:33:09   the things you're seeing in the lyrics,

00:33:10   the lyrics already did that.

00:33:11   - Exactly.

00:33:11   - They already looked like karaoke.

00:33:12   Like they highlight the words as they come up in the song

00:33:14   and they scroll automatically.

00:33:15   That existed that way for years.

00:33:18   And they just added the ability

00:33:19   to basically turn down the vocals too.

00:33:21   And I think one of the things that will maybe identi--

00:33:25   I haven't tried this, but one of the things

00:33:26   that will maybe identify it is whether it's

00:33:27   machine learning or not.

00:33:28   If you have the individual tracks,

00:33:29   you could put the vocals to zero

00:33:30   and you won't hear them at all.

00:33:32   Whereas if you're using machine learning

00:33:33   and you put the vocals to zero,

00:33:34   maybe you'll still pick them up a little bit.

00:33:36   I'll have to try it.

00:33:37   - So I did try doing exactly that.

00:33:39   Now, granted, I was doing this on my iPad,

00:33:41   not using AirPods, just the iPad speakers.

00:33:44   As far as I could tell, there was zero vocals,

00:33:47   but I very well could be wrong about that.

00:33:50   this is in five minutes playing about. Now it is very slick that you can just get a volume slider

00:33:55   for the vocal track, like that is cool, but for some reason I thought it was more involved than

00:33:59   that and it's not. Like that's all it is. I shouldn't say that's all it is, but that's all

00:34:04   it is and I was surprised to see that. But with that said it was extremely well done and if I

00:34:09   could carry a tune I could see it being a lot of fun to mess about with, but I cannot. All right,

00:34:15   - All right, so Marco, that Tesla that you've probably

00:34:18   either sold or about to sell, good news.

00:34:21   You can now use Apple Music in your Tesla.

00:34:24   - Great, I expect that to work super well.

00:34:28   (laughing)

00:34:31   - I mean, this is not them adding CarPlay,

00:34:33   but it is an improvement over not acknowledging

00:34:37   that Apple Music exists at all.

00:34:39   - And also not acknowledging that people just play music

00:34:41   from their phones.

00:34:43   The car has a built-in cell modem for things like traffic routing and stuff like that.

00:34:46   It was only like one or two years of that for free.

00:34:50   And then after that, you had to pay per month.

00:34:53   And I just never signed up for that because I'm like, "What do I need this for?"

00:34:57   Because they don't have CarPlay, I never use their media stuff anyway.

00:35:01   I have my phone doing directions using Waze or Apple Maps.

00:35:06   And then I have my phone also playing music or overcast

00:35:11   podcasts over the speakers.

00:35:13   And so what do I need the vehicles built in weird stereo

00:35:18   thing for if it's just playing a streaming service?

00:35:20   I can do that on my phone and have better integration and more

00:35:22   control and a more unified experience with the way

00:35:25   my phone works in other ways and have Bluetooth

00:35:28   connected and ready to go.

00:35:29   So it was a no-brainer for me.

00:35:31   I just never used that.

00:35:32   And so this adds yet another capability to that data stream

00:35:36   that I don't have access to for a car I'm trying to sell.

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00:37:34   (upbeat music)

00:37:37   - Moving on, we had just talked about this

00:37:39   kind of obliquely a second ago, but the Freeform app.

00:37:42   So this is new in, what is it, 16.2, something like that?

00:37:45   Whatever just came out in the last 48 hours.

00:37:47   This was teased, I believe, at WWDC.

00:37:50   Do I have that right?

00:37:51   - I think it was actually demoed, wasn't it?

00:37:53   - Yeah, they showed the app.

00:37:55   It's coming soon to all of Apple platforms.

00:37:58   So it's on the Mac, it's on the iPad.

00:37:59   Is it on the iPhone?

00:38:00   I don't remember.

00:38:01   Yeah, I think it's on everything.

00:38:02   Yeah, it was one of those features they said--

00:38:04   and the free form on Apple becoming--

00:38:06   whatever they said-- later this year.

00:38:07   One of those things that didn't launch when iOS 16 launched.

00:38:10   Yeah.

00:38:11   So this is now out.

00:38:12   It's everywhere.

00:38:13   And I only spent a few minutes playing with it.

00:38:17   I don't know what in my life needs an infinite canvas

00:38:22   sketching clip art app.

00:38:24   But holy cow, this app is really cool.

00:38:26   I really, really like it.

00:38:28   So again, what it is, it's an infinite canvas,

00:38:31   which when we were all together, maybe--

00:38:33   I don't know if that was the year that you were there, Marco.

00:38:35   But when at least the Syracuse's and us and the Underscore's

00:38:38   and maybe the Armin's were all at the Underscore's for New

00:38:41   Year's-- this is probably four or five years ago now--

00:38:43   we did a text-based adventure game

00:38:47   like they used to do with the upgrade Cortex Crossover.

00:38:50   Well, they still do it, but they do it differently now.

00:38:53   And anyways, I wanted to have an app on my iPad to draw a map.

00:38:56   And it was surprisingly challenging four or five years ago to come up with an app that

00:39:01   you had an infinite canvas, so you could go as far as you wanted in any direction.

00:39:07   And there were some that existed, and I think there was a Microsoft one, maybe OneNote,

00:39:11   that was actually pretty good.

00:39:12   There were a couple others that I found.

00:39:14   But this one feels very Appley, which makes sense because Apple wrote it.

00:39:19   But it's a really, really well done infinite canvas sketching app.

00:39:25   And I really, really, really like it.

00:39:27   If I was just doodling with no particular known endpoint, I really, really like Linnea.

00:39:36   I think that's how we were told to pronounce it.

00:39:38   Linnea by our friends at the Icon Factory is excellent.

00:39:40   Yeah, I love it too.

00:39:42   And I would still choose that probably in most cases in no small part because of some

00:39:47   of the tools that they have to like draw shapes very, you know, freeform but auto detect them

00:39:52   and turn them into shapes and I love that they have different like paper if you will,

00:39:55   they have like graph paper and they have, I think they have like iPhone screens so you

00:40:00   can draw mockups and stuff and so I really recommend Linnea, if I remember I'll put a

00:40:04   link in the show notes.

00:40:06   But this freeform thing for when you're doing freeform doodling or whatever is really really

00:40:12   good and I really, really like it. So I played with it on the iPad and there's like a bunch

00:40:18   of things that are across the top, a bunch of tools across the top that you can play

00:40:21   with. There's like the standard pen thing where you can doodle with the Apple Pencil.

00:40:27   But interestingly, the tools that you can use are a little different than normal, I

00:40:31   think. They have a pen that has a capital letter A on it. And that's basically to start

00:40:38   a text field if I understand it correctly. Then they have like a pen, a marker, a crayon,

00:40:45   which was a little surprising and kind of cool. They have something, maybe John you can tell me

00:40:49   if you've looked at this, what this is. It looks like a like a bottle of paint, but I don't think

00:40:52   that's actually what it is. The eraser and then the like squiggle blur things tool. They also have

00:40:59   a ton of clip art. I don't know if that's even what we're supposed to call it these days, but

00:41:02   but I'm old so I call it clip art. They have a bunch of stuff on here including

00:41:07   like an entire farm's worth of animals. They have a waffle which is round which

00:41:12   I personally believe is the correct shape for a waffle. They have a food

00:41:17   truck which I thought was funny. They have John Siracusa's refrigerator maybe

00:41:21   I don't know do you have a bottom freezer or a side freezer John? It's

00:41:24   French drawers on top freezer drawer on the bottom. Okay then they have your

00:41:27   actual refrigerator because it does not have water or ice dispenser on it and

00:41:31   And they have a turntable, I was excited to find.

00:41:34   So there's all sorts of fun clip art in here.

00:41:36   I also liked that when I was noodling about with it

00:41:40   that I was looking to move a couple of sticky notes

00:41:44   near each other and I was just messing about.

00:41:46   And sure enough, when they got close to each other,

00:41:49   they popped up alignment guides.

00:41:51   So they would align against text,

00:41:53   they would align against each other,

00:41:55   and it was really, really intuitive,

00:41:57   and it worked really, really well.

00:41:58   This whole thing, I really, really dig.

00:42:01   Again, I feel like it's a solution looking for a problem

00:42:04   in my particular case, but I was quite surprised

00:42:07   at how great this was for an initial release,

00:42:11   and especially for something that I was like,

00:42:12   yeah, whatever, I'll just try it out

00:42:13   and see if it's any good.

00:42:15   I really like it, and you can sync via iCloud.

00:42:19   I think it has affordances for live collaboration.

00:42:21   I didn't personally try this,

00:42:22   and I might be lying to you by accident, but--

00:42:24   - But that's kind of the whole point of this thing,

00:42:26   is supposed to be collaboration.

00:42:27   And by the way, it's not my fridge.

00:42:28   My fridge has French doors on top.

00:42:29   That's not French doors, that's just one big door.

00:42:32   - Jeez Casey. - Was it?

00:42:33   Oh shoot, I'm sorry.

00:42:34   (laughing)

00:42:35   The offending party has been sacked.

00:42:37   - So the fact that you used it on the iPad,

00:42:40   it's almost like you're describing

00:42:41   a slightly different app than mine.

00:42:43   Because I was using it on the Mac

00:42:44   and my frustrations were with the tools available.

00:42:49   What I wanted to do immediately was,

00:42:51   hey, this is Infinite Canvas, I wanna just scribble on it.

00:42:54   And I could not for the life of me on the Mac version

00:42:56   figure out how to scribble on this thing.

00:42:59   I have a pen tool, but the pen tool only lets me make straight lines, Bezier curves, stuff

00:43:05   like that.

00:43:06   I could not find a scribble thing.

00:43:07   Now obviously if you have the Apple Pencil or your finger it lets you do that, but on

00:43:10   the Mac you just can't draw with the cursor I guess?

00:43:13   They're just like no we can't.

00:43:14   I mean I grew up drawing with the cursor in Mac Paint and Super Paint.

00:43:18   It is a thing that you can do, but this app is like no you need Apple Pencil.

00:43:22   Or you need a touch device.

00:43:23   I don't understand that.

00:43:24   All those things you said, the pen with the little A on it, the bucket, the little bottle

00:43:29   thing like the crayon none of that is here or if it's here I'm not finding it

00:43:33   maybe I have to like make my screen bigger I don't know your screen bigger

00:43:37   that's what I'm saying like how is the window not big enough on here like when

00:43:41   I click on some things I see on the top is I see a thing to make a sticky note I

00:43:45   see a thing that looks like a circle in a square and in the upper right hand

00:43:50   corner of the popover that appears I see the pen tool the tooltip says draw with

00:43:54   the pen tool but all I can do with the pen tool is make straight lines and

00:43:57   bezier curves and then there's a million different clip art things or whatever

00:44:01   yeah I see what you're saying then there's mega text box right and you

00:44:05   click that it immediately makes a text box then there's the photo thing where

00:44:09   you can add a photo or a movie and then there's the choose a file to add there's

00:44:12   no scribble thingy you know for just like scribbling I don't understand it

00:44:16   yeah you're right on the Mac it does not have have any of these affordances that

00:44:21   I'm talking about and I wish I had I meant to try the collaboration thing

00:44:23   because I feel like that's where this thing really was really supposed to be

00:44:27   or us having multiple people do this.

00:44:28   But I look at this app, and not that there's anything wrong with it,

00:44:30   it's fine, but it boggles my mind that Apple decided to make this.

00:44:34   Because it's not like they don't have things to do.

00:44:36   I can give them a list.

00:44:37   We do.

00:44:38   They have to show us about this.

00:44:39   Plenty of things that they could do.

00:44:41   But somehow-- I mean, was this an acquisition?

00:44:43   Did they acquire a company that already had this app,

00:44:45   and they brought it to the Mac?

00:44:47   Was this just somebody's good idea?

00:44:48   Not that I'm saying they shouldn't do this,

00:44:51   but it's so weird for them to decide to make this specific app.

00:44:56   In particular, the challenge that I think most of their users face when it comes to

00:45:00   collaboratively working in a sort of multimedia environment involves communication with people,

00:45:08   right?

00:45:09   So that's why this is a collaborative tool, but the main communication thing that I think

00:45:12   people use with Apple devices is one, messages, iMessage, right?

00:45:16   And two, probably FaceTime.

00:45:18   And this is not FaceTime or Messages.

00:45:22   It's a whole other application.

00:45:23   Now it kind of integrates with those other things

00:45:25   and you can sort of fold it into that.

00:45:27   But I feel like the entry point should be

00:45:29   when you're in one of the existing applications,

00:45:32   here's a new way for you to collaborate

00:45:33   versus come through this app and then, I don't know,

00:45:36   maybe I'm wrong about that.

00:45:37   Maybe this is a really important tool

00:45:38   and they need to be competitive in this market

00:45:41   because if they have a free thing that does this,

00:45:43   it's really important to all their users.

00:45:45   But it seems to me that I would much rather have

00:45:47   the ability to have us all look at a frigging photo

00:45:49   when we're on a FaceTime call,

00:45:51   which is a thing that iChat can do

00:45:52   that FaceTime still can't do in a pleasing way.

00:45:55   - I agree with you.

00:45:56   Do you have your iPad within reach or no?

00:45:59   - No, it's upstairs.

00:46:00   - So Casey just sent a link for, a test link

00:46:03   for us to collaborate on a free form board.

00:46:06   I opened it, this is my first run experience,

00:46:08   I opened it up and it gives me an error

00:46:09   that the board can't be opened.

00:46:11   - Cool.

00:46:12   - Oh, now I got it, all right.

00:46:14   Oh, I can select things.

00:46:15   Yeah, see, so I mean, I have,

00:46:18   this is actually, I haven't used the app yet,

00:46:20   But I think there's two ways to look at,

00:46:24   why did Apple make this app,

00:46:25   and what's it going to do long term?

00:46:28   We can look at something like Clips,

00:46:31   and Clips basically has got,

00:46:34   it was put out there and then just left to die.

00:46:37   Like it just got no love, no ongoing support,

00:46:41   no ongoing features.

00:46:43   It was itself kind of redundant

00:46:45   with their other apps already.

00:46:47   You could argue like, why didn't they just make iMovie better

00:46:49   or whatever, you know, and so clips,

00:46:52   it was put out there and then just left.

00:46:54   And no follow up, no follow through,

00:46:58   and Apple's really unfortunately kind of good

00:47:00   at putting stuff out there and then never following through

00:47:03   with it and kind of getting it out there

00:47:05   like 80% of the way and then just letting it die.

00:47:08   So that's I think the pessimistic outcome here.

00:47:11   Like that could be what happens here.

00:47:14   Or it could be like Notes, where Apple Notes came out,

00:47:18   I mean, obviously not the very original,

00:47:20   like Marker felt one, but the modern app that we know

00:47:23   is Apple Notes, that came out and everyone was like,

00:47:26   huh, they put a lot of work into that.

00:47:28   And then they just kept iterating it.

00:47:31   Every OS release, Notes got a little bit better

00:47:33   and got some new capability and we all just started using it

00:47:38   because it was just good.

00:47:40   Maybe that will happen here.

00:47:42   Maybe this will actually, maybe, what's this called?

00:47:46   I already forgot.

00:47:47   Freeform.

00:47:48   (laughing)

00:47:50   Maybe this is just gonna become

00:47:51   one of those Apple system apps that,

00:47:54   you know, it doesn't get a lot of attention,

00:47:57   but people just slowly start using it.

00:48:00   And then it eventually becomes this thing that,

00:48:02   yeah, a lot of people just use this

00:48:04   and they get stuff done on it and it's fine.

00:48:06   And even though people don't often talk about it,

00:48:09   it's just one of those useful utility apps

00:48:12   that people like us Apple users tend to just enjoy

00:48:16   and use as part of our day and not really think about.

00:48:18   So that's, I think, the ideal outcome here.

00:48:22   And I think that's possible.

00:48:24   Even if the collaboration features,

00:48:26   which Apple has always done at best an okay to poor job at,

00:48:31   even if those end up not being as good as something like

00:48:36   what we see from the G Suite or from Microsoft or whatever,

00:48:41   even if it's never quite to that level,

00:48:44   If it's good enough to be okay usable

00:48:47   within a small group like us or within a family,

00:48:49   that's how we use Notes.

00:48:51   We have shared Notes within our family

00:48:53   and we have a couple for us for various ATP things.

00:48:57   If it ends up being that kind of app,

00:48:59   then that's fine, that's great

00:49:01   because it's not gonna take over,

00:49:04   it's not gonna suddenly make businesses stop buying Office.

00:49:08   It's not gonna make schools stop buying Chromebooks.

00:49:11   It's not gonna radically change collaboration forever,

00:49:14   but it could just be a really nice thing

00:49:16   that Apple users get to enjoy and use for themselves

00:49:18   and their families and small groups here and there.

00:49:21   And if that's quote all it is, that's great.

00:49:25   For it to be that thing instead of ending up like clips

00:49:28   merely requires that it's useful to some people

00:49:32   in some certain ways, which I think it probably is

00:49:35   on track to that now if not already there.

00:49:38   And then secondly, it requires Apple to actually invest in it ongoing,

00:49:43   to actually care about this app,

00:49:46   make sure it has a staff of more than zero people after this week and really

00:49:51   follow through and make sure like, is this getting love every OS release?

00:49:55   Are they,

00:49:56   are they listening to customer feedback and making tweaks and making adjustments

00:49:59   and fixing problems and addressing shortcomings?

00:50:02   If they can do that on an anywhere near regular basis and keep this thing from

00:50:07   dying on the vine, this could be really cool.

00:50:10   - Yeah, I think it could definitely benefit from,

00:50:13   it's not like, you know, I was just complaining

00:50:15   about the feature set and I do feel like the Mac

00:50:17   is getting the short end of the stick here,

00:50:18   but it's not like it needs tons of features,

00:50:20   but for version one, I think its main strength

00:50:22   that Apple should leverage is system integration, right?

00:50:25   Kind of like the quick note thing where you can, you know,

00:50:27   make a note by going up in the corner,

00:50:29   it took a long time for that to arrive,

00:50:30   but that's the type of thing that Apple can do

00:50:32   that third party developers have a harder time with.

00:50:34   So this is like, you know, across all of Apple's platforms,

00:50:36   a theory useful app, but it shouldn't feel so much

00:50:39   like an island.

00:50:40   It should be thoroughly integrated

00:50:42   with FaceTime and Messages, I feel like.

00:50:44   You should be able to seamlessly,

00:50:46   OpenDoc-style transition from, hey, I'm in a message thread,

00:50:48   and now everyone in this message thread

00:50:50   is scribbling on this document.

00:50:51   Oh, sorry, Mac users, you can't scribble,

00:50:53   'cause everyone knows that's impossible with a mouse.

00:50:55   But anyway, you don't need sophisticated tools

00:50:58   and grid snapping, and it doesn't need to become

00:51:02   Illustrator or whatever, but if it just had integration,

00:51:05   I think that would get people using it more.

00:51:07   Because right now, no one's going to even know

00:51:08   this app is installed.

00:51:09   Like it comes in-- it came in an update.

00:51:10   It comes in 16.2 and 13.1.

00:51:12   Oh, don't worry.

00:51:13   It puts itself on the dock.

00:51:15   I know, but that's why people have tons of things in the dock.

00:51:17   They have no idea what those icons are.

00:51:19   Whereas if it was well integrated into Messages,

00:51:22   and if the Messages team would get their head out

00:51:24   of their butts and put the thing to add a photo to Messages

00:51:28   back prominently placed and get rid of the microphone thing.

00:51:31   There's a lot of things we can do to Messages to sort of find

00:51:34   the most common things that people do.

00:51:36   And when you have that real estate,

00:51:38   you could put your new app in that position

00:51:41   to say, we think that this is a thing people would like to do

00:51:44   even though they hadn't never realized it before.

00:51:46   Like, 'cause they're not used to having

00:51:47   this kind of collaboration,

00:51:48   but just like how we put the one tap way

00:51:51   to add a photo to a message thread

00:51:53   back in a prominent place

00:51:54   where you don't have to dig for it.

00:51:55   Likewise, we decided that we think free form

00:51:57   is equally important.

00:51:58   And so we put a little icon up on there too,

00:52:01   and we put it in place of the microphone or something.

00:52:03   Anyway, put it in people's faces where they're like,

00:52:06   "Huh, maybe we would like to do this."

00:52:08   And then people find it useful for,

00:52:10   imagine if you could pull up a map

00:52:12   and then scribble on the map in a message thread

00:52:14   in real-time collaboration on your phones, right?

00:52:16   That might be useful.

00:52:17   Whereas this is like a curiosity of like,

00:52:19   "Oh, well, if you launch the app

00:52:21   and if other people also know the app exists

00:52:22   and you send them a link, you can both scribble together."

00:52:24   It's like, it's more of a corporate thing.

00:52:26   Your coworkers will definitely do this

00:52:28   and use an app like this.

00:52:29   Although your coworkers are gonna say,

00:52:30   "Well, that's great and all,

00:52:31   but we can only use the worst version

00:52:33   that comes with Microsoft Office Suite, which what else is new.

00:52:37   But if Apple wants to make this thing,

00:52:39   I feel like it needs much better system integration.

00:52:42   I still question-- maybe they know something I don't about

00:52:44   a gaping hole in the lineup of default installed stuff,

00:52:50   that people get Apple devices.

00:52:52   And what I really want is an infinite canvas

00:52:54   where I can collaborate, right?

00:52:56   Because this app, they're not selling it.

00:52:58   It comes free with your devices, which is great.

00:53:00   But when Apple does stuff like that,

00:53:02   It's to fill a need that they think is big.

00:53:05   Like you get a web browser, 'cause everybody needs that.

00:53:07   You get a mail client, 'cause it's a really common thing.

00:53:09   You get a notes app.

00:53:10   It's not the best notes app in the world,

00:53:11   but it's a pretty good one.

00:53:12   Lots of people need notes,

00:53:13   especially when they need to write long apologies

00:53:15   on Twitter or whatever.

00:53:16   Like it's an important application, right?

00:53:18   But they don't need to include everything.

00:53:19   Like it doesn't, I was gonna say,

00:53:21   it doesn't include like a multi-track audio editor

00:53:23   like Logic, but it does include GarageBand, I suppose.

00:53:26   But yeah, the question of which applications

00:53:28   is Apple going to pay to develop

00:53:31   and then give away for free as a way to add value

00:53:34   to its devices.

00:53:35   And that list really has to be either things

00:53:39   that they already know people want to do,

00:53:41   like email and web browse, or things they're pretty sure

00:53:43   that a lot of people are going to want to do.

00:53:44   And maybe this qualifies.

00:53:45   Maybe I'm totally off base about it.

00:53:47   But right now, it seems like a bit of a curiosity.

00:53:49   - I think this is really slick.

00:53:50   And I saw Marco doodling in there to a degree

00:53:54   while I was working in there,

00:53:55   and it didn't seem to completely fall apart.

00:53:58   So I don't know.

00:53:59   Again, after only having used this for a few minutes,

00:54:01   I'm pretty impressed.

00:54:03   - I'm just so angry that I can't scribble.

00:54:05   I'm unreasonably angry. - I can tell.

00:54:07   - Like I don't understand it.

00:54:09   Who doesn't wanna scribble on the shared placemat, right?

00:54:12   That's the whole fun of it.

00:54:14   And you guys are all having fun

00:54:16   and doing your little messages with your handwriting,

00:54:18   with your fingers or your Apple Pencil,

00:54:20   and here I am, I can draw like,

00:54:21   look, it's a box, it's a square I can draw.

00:54:24   (laughing)

00:54:25   It's just so terrible.

00:54:27   It's just, I don't understand.

00:54:29   I don't understand why I'm being left out

00:54:31   of the scribble party.

00:54:32   - Because you insist on using a Mac

00:54:34   and putting your iPad up near your bed.

00:54:36   That's why.

00:54:37   - I don't even currently have an iPad

00:54:39   that I'm signed into with my Apple ID.

00:54:41   (laughs)

00:54:42   I can't even do like, I guess like,

00:54:45   I always want to be the kind of person

00:54:48   who writes and draws like with pencils or pens

00:54:51   or Apple pencils.

00:54:52   I always want to be that kind of person

00:54:54   and I'm just not, I end up wanting to draw something

00:54:58   and actually doing it maybe three times a year.

00:55:02   And then I'll take out Linnea and do it on the iPad

00:55:05   with the pencil and everything.

00:55:06   The pencil's of course dead, I have to like wait

00:55:08   for it to charge a little bit.

00:55:10   Like I want so badly to be that kind of person

00:55:12   because Apple pencils and notebooks and pens are so cool

00:55:16   and I'm just not that kind of person.

00:55:19   - It doesn't, I just take it back,

00:55:20   it doesn't even have like a circle and a square tool,

00:55:22   it's just got the pen tool.

00:55:23   Like I can't even make, I can draw a circle

00:55:26   with the pen tool or a square.

00:55:27   It's just, I don't understand it.

00:55:30   It seems like the tools here are more limited

00:55:32   than they are in the, what are they called?

00:55:34   They're called markup, like when you do the share sheet

00:55:36   and you get the little pen.

00:55:38   That seems to have more extensive tools on the Mac

00:55:40   than this does, which is really mind boggling.

00:55:43   The other thing is you can do little sticky notes.

00:55:45   That's why I've been moving these sticky notes around.

00:55:46   You can make a little sticky note.

00:55:47   - Yeah, but they have to be square.

00:55:49   - Yeah, it has to be square, first of all,

00:55:50   which kind of makes sense 'cause it stops reading

00:55:52   as a sticky note if it's not square,

00:55:53   although they do make sticky notes that aren't square.

00:55:55   But anyway, you can put stuff on it like text and scribbles,

00:55:58   but then when you move the note, text and scribbles

00:56:00   don't go with it.

00:56:00   Yeah, I noticed that too.

00:56:02   It seems that is a bummer.

00:56:03   I don't know.

00:56:04   That seems like a decision and not a mistake to me,

00:56:06   because they're like, OK, if the stuff went with it,

00:56:09   that makes sense, but then what if someone

00:56:10   writes outside the edges?

00:56:11   How does that work?

00:56:12   So I kind of see how they arrived at this decision,

00:56:14   but it really does break the illusion.

00:56:16   Yeah, I would agree with that.

00:56:17   I don't know.

00:56:17   All told, John gives us a triple F minus,

00:56:20   and I give it a B plus, maybe an A minus.

00:56:25   I am impressed by the collaboration ability.

00:56:27   This is one of the first apps that I've ever seen from Apple

00:56:29   where I can actually see you two doing things in real time

00:56:32   and the app isn't crashing.

00:56:33   And it seems to be like,

00:56:35   I think I'm seeing you do stuff as you do it

00:56:37   as opposed to Apple's previous overt set collaboration

00:56:40   which was not like that.

00:56:42   - Yeah, like when you're editing notes together

00:56:43   with someone else, it's like,

00:56:45   they're basically sending it via carrier pigeon.

00:56:48   Like, at some point the person's gonna see what you wrote,

00:56:51   but I mean, well, geez, first of all,

00:56:53   your own stuff doesn't sync that quickly

00:56:55   between your own devices.

00:56:56   It's like, ugh.

00:56:57   - The problem with Notes is I think,

00:56:59   especially on iOS and iPadOS,

00:57:01   I don't think it syncs in the background,

00:57:02   so I think you actually have to launch the Notes app

00:57:04   to make it sync, which is, again, mind boggling to me.

00:57:07   - That's, to me, that's my number one

00:57:09   feature request for Notes.

00:57:10   Like, if they just make Notes always sync itself

00:57:14   in the background.

00:57:15   You are Apple, you can do that.

00:57:17   I can't do that with Overcast, but that makes sense.

00:57:20   You, Apple, should be able to do that.

00:57:22   Always keep it up to date in the background.

00:57:25   - And it's not gonna kill our batteries

00:57:26   'cause people shouldn't be sharing

00:57:28   like 60 megapixel images.

00:57:31   It's like, it's Notes.

00:57:32   It's probably just syntax.

00:57:34   Just send it.

00:57:34   - Right.

00:57:35   - This collaboration seems pretty good.

00:57:38   Although I think Notes has also gotten an update in 16.2.

00:57:41   I think they mentioned that you can now see

00:57:42   other people's cursors in Notes,

00:57:44   which is kind of a Google Docs style thing.

00:57:45   I wonder if that is just a cosmetic change

00:57:47   or if they've also revamped the syncing.

00:57:49   - Yeah, I mean, I agree with what you're saying

00:57:50   about syncing, but yeah, I believe Notes

00:57:52   in 16.2 ads real-time collaboration,

00:57:54   which I have not tried yet,

00:57:55   but I've understood to be pretty good.

00:57:58   - I mean, I'm looking at a shared note in 16.2 right now,

00:58:00   but no one is editing it, and I don't know.

00:58:02   Maybe I'll experiment with it for next week.

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01:00:05   (upbeat music)

01:00:08   - Hey, Jon, tell me what convergent encryption is, please.

01:00:12   - This was something that Ben Thompson noticed

01:00:15   in the Apple's Advanced Data Protection announcement

01:00:17   that I thought was interesting and worth surfacing.

01:00:20   He talked about it in his Sir Tech Arena newsletter.

01:00:22   We'll put a link.

01:00:23   This is not one of the free things.

01:00:24   You have to be a subscriber to read it.

01:00:27   But it was in the Apple document that we linked last week

01:00:31   that's like an explanation of how this stuff works.

01:00:33   It's talking about some things that Advanced Data Protection

01:00:38   doesn't encrypt and it gives some details

01:00:41   on the little nitty gritty things here.

01:00:42   It says, "iCloud stores some data without protection

01:00:45   of user-specific Cloud Kit service keys,

01:00:46   even when the advanced data protection is turned on.

01:00:48   Dates and times when a file or object was modified

01:00:51   are used to sort a user's information,

01:00:52   and checksums of a file and photo data

01:00:55   are used to help Apple deduplicate and optimize

01:00:57   the user's iCloud device storage,

01:00:59   all without having access to the files and photos themselves.

01:01:01   So it's saying some of your data is not encrypted,

01:01:03   and one of the things that is not encrypted

01:01:06   is a checksum of files and photos, right?

01:01:09   Like just a hash of the file or photo.

01:01:12   They don't encrypt that hash or whatever.

01:01:14   And the reason they're doing it is for data deduplication.

01:01:18   This is, we talked about last time,

01:01:20   of like by encrypting everything end to end

01:01:22   and by taking the keys away from Apple,

01:01:25   in theory, Apple doesn't have a way to scan things

01:01:27   on the server side to look for, you know,

01:01:29   child sexual abuse material and other things like that,

01:01:32   because they can't see your files, right?

01:01:34   But they can see the checksum of your file.

01:01:37   Now, this doesn't help with their previous system

01:01:39   where they're like, we have this database

01:01:41   known bad material and we use this what procedural or was it perceptual hash or

01:01:46   something it was like a hash that was saying okay we're looking for this photo

01:01:51   that we know is bad and even if you scale the photo crop it a little bit

01:01:55   rotate it a little bit make it black and white we'll still find it and that is a

01:01:58   fuzzy system that is not a hundred percent accurate they can't do that

01:02:03   because they don't have access to your photos data but they do have access to a

01:02:06   a checksum of your photo.

01:02:08   So if you have an image, one of those images

01:02:13   that's in that database of bad images

01:02:15   that is not modified in any way, the checksum will match.

01:02:19   Now the problem with checksums and the reason

01:02:21   you use checksums, the beauty of checksums is

01:02:23   if you change just one bit in the image,

01:02:25   the checksum is totally different.

01:02:27   That's the point of checksums, right?

01:02:29   So it's not really, they can't really do

01:02:32   what they were proposing to do before

01:02:33   because it's trivially easy to defeat this

01:02:37   by just changing one pixel in an image

01:02:39   and now you have a totally different checksum

01:02:41   and no one can find it.

01:02:43   But setting all the CSAM stuff aside,

01:02:44   the checksums will let them de-duplicate

01:02:46   because when they're de-duplicating,

01:02:47   they're just trying to save storage and say,

01:02:49   okay, look, if we have literally the same file 700 times,

01:02:52   let's just store it once

01:02:54   and then just point everybody at that one thing.

01:02:56   And even within your own data,

01:02:58   if you accidentally have 17 copies of the same photo,

01:03:01   there's that de-duplicating function in photos

01:03:03   that will say, hey, we found duplicates of this photo.

01:03:05   It will only-- I mean, obviously,

01:03:06   when you're doing with your own photos,

01:03:07   you have access to the data.

01:03:08   But Apple on its end can de-duplicate the storage on--

01:03:12   I was going to say on your behalf,

01:03:13   but really it's on Apple's behalf

01:03:14   because they pay for all that storage, right?

01:03:16   This lets them do that.

01:03:18   And it's pretty interesting if you look at the Wikipedia page

01:03:20   on convergent encryption.

01:03:21   Like, how do they do that?

01:03:24   Basically, they use the hash as the encryption key,

01:03:29   and then they use your encryption key

01:03:32   to encrypt the hash.

01:03:34   It sounds kind of like, as Merlyn would say,

01:03:37   locking your keys inside your keys.

01:03:38   Read the Wikipedia page, it's not actually that complicated.

01:03:41   But it lets them have an unencrypted version

01:03:45   of the checksum or hash of your photo

01:03:48   while still not knowing what's actually in your photo.

01:03:51   In theory, this is a possible security hole

01:03:55   because let's say there is,

01:03:57   somehow it gets out into the world that,

01:03:59   hey, this photo has this checksum.

01:04:01   this exact photo has this checksum.

01:04:04   Then they could find every single user on iCloud

01:04:07   who has that photo in their library.

01:04:09   But again, considering if you change any aspect

01:04:13   of the photo in any way, the checksum is entirely different,

01:04:15   it's probably not that big of a deal.

01:04:16   But that's why they put it in this document.

01:04:17   If you're wondering, do they keep a checksum of your files?

01:04:19   They do, and that's for storage to duplication purposes.

01:04:23   Because you know they can't be giving you

01:04:24   that five gigabytes of free storage without doing this.

01:04:27   (laughing)

01:04:30   Oh, man.

01:04:31   Yeah, I don't want to get myself on a tear

01:04:34   about iCloud storage stuff.

01:04:36   So I will just let this go.

01:04:37   But yeah, this is clever.

01:04:39   And I don't think I have any particular problem with it.

01:04:42   But it definitely gets me a little--

01:04:44   I'm tugging at my collar just a little bit, hoping

01:04:46   and wondering if this is exposing data

01:04:48   that I don't want it to.

01:04:49   But I think we're in the clear here.

01:04:52   All right, tell me what's going on in Europe these days.

01:04:55   Or soon, I guess I should say.

01:04:56   It's not these days.

01:04:57   But allegedly, it will be happening soon.

01:04:59   This is a confusing story, because we

01:05:02   started seeing these stories earlier this week that, hey,

01:05:04   it was a Bloomberg, Germin rumor thing.

01:05:07   So Apple is preparing to allow third party app store

01:05:10   or whatever things, because they're doing this.

01:05:13   They're going to have to do it to comply with this new EU

01:05:16   regulation.

01:05:17   What is it called?

01:05:18   The DMA, the Digital Markets Act, right?

01:05:20   Yeah, Digital Markets Act, right.

01:05:22   And the story was Apple is working on this,

01:05:24   and it's going to be in iOS 17.

01:05:27   And as Apple has said in past interviews,

01:05:29   obviously they will comply with the laws

01:05:31   that they have to comply with, right?

01:05:34   That's where the confusion begins.

01:05:36   Okay, what does Apple have to do to comply with this law?

01:05:41   And the more I read about this,

01:05:43   the more it seemed to me that either

01:05:45   I don't understand this law at all,

01:05:47   or this law is really dumb

01:05:51   and is not gonna have the intended effect.

01:05:53   It might be both.

01:05:54   - It's a little column A, little column B, I reckon.

01:05:57   - Yeah.

01:05:58   So digging into this, Ben Thompson's analysis

01:06:02   was that one of the important things in this law

01:06:06   is that it says Apple has to allow third party

01:06:10   applications to be installed or to allow third party stores.

01:06:13   So it has to either allow sideloading or third party app

01:06:16   stores.

01:06:16   And his interpretation was that you can do one or the other.

01:06:19   So for Apple to comply, they can either allow you to sideload,

01:06:21   which means allow you to install applications without going

01:06:24   through the app store, or allow third party app stores.

01:06:28   so like Epic could have their own app store

01:06:30   where they sold their games, right?

01:06:32   But then other people read that same text and say,

01:06:33   "No, this is saying you need to allow both of them.

01:06:36   Like people can either do A or B,

01:06:37   but you have to allow both of them."

01:06:39   But even setting that aside,

01:06:41   and you keep reading the text, it's like,

01:06:43   "Okay, but what does this actually mean?

01:06:44   Does that mean that Apple has to allow this,

01:06:47   but then they can't charge money?"

01:06:48   Well, no, it seems like they can charge money.

01:06:50   "Okay, does it mean that Apple has to allow this,

01:06:52   but then they don't have any control

01:06:54   of what's in those stores?"

01:06:55   Well, no, Apple can ask to see everything

01:06:56   that's in the stores and be able to approve them.

01:06:58   okay, but does this mean that Apple can't stop someone

01:07:00   from having a third party store?

01:07:01   No, maybe it means that Apple's allowed to tell you

01:07:03   whether you're allowed to have a third party store or not.

01:07:06   It's like all past leave through Apple,

01:07:08   and there's no way to avoid getting Apple's permission

01:07:11   to do something and also paying them

01:07:13   probably the same amount of money you're already paying them

01:07:15   all so they can comply with the law.

01:07:16   So that in the end, this doesn't increase competition

01:07:19   or make anybody's lives better.

01:07:20   All it does is let Apple say,

01:07:22   yes, we are compliant with the law,

01:07:24   and yes, we understand that nobody likes it

01:07:26   and it hasn't proved anything for anybody,

01:07:27   but it's because you made a dumb law.

01:07:30   - First of all, I think we have not seen anything yet

01:07:34   with what Apple's gonna do in response to the DMA.

01:07:38   Is anything else like this,

01:07:39   is the DMA gonna be the way it is now?

01:07:43   Is it gonna be changing over time?

01:07:44   Is the US or other places gonna do similar laws

01:07:48   and how will they be similar and how will they not be?

01:07:50   - Will this just be in Europe and it's totally irrelevant

01:07:52   to anybody who doesn't live in the EU?

01:07:54   - Right, and there's so many angles of this.

01:07:57   This was actually very, very well covered by Ben Thompson

01:08:00   in today's Stretecore daily update.

01:08:02   If you are a Stretecore subscriber,

01:08:04   definitely check that out.

01:08:05   If you are not, you should honestly really consider it.

01:08:07   It's a very good buy and there's a lot of good stuff there.

01:08:10   Anyway, so there's multiple angles to the DMA

01:08:15   and we probably can't talk about all of them today.

01:08:16   Like one of them is basically message

01:08:20   and FaceTime interoperability requirements

01:08:22   and that's I think a whole can of worms

01:08:25   that is probably practically impossible, but anyway.

01:08:29   - I thought they backed off on that one.

01:08:31   - No, I think it's still in it.

01:08:31   - I thought it didn't make it into the thing.

01:08:33   - I think it did.

01:08:34   Anyway, so we're gonna set that aside.

01:08:36   Let's just talk about the App Store stuff today.

01:08:38   So I agree with Ben's take that the wording certainly says

01:08:42   that they can allow sideloading or alternative App Stores,

01:08:47   but you know, and let's assume

01:08:49   that they won't have to do both.

01:08:51   As a user of this platform and as a developer

01:08:54   on this platform, I would greatly prefer,

01:08:58   if they have to do one or the other,

01:09:00   I would greatly prefer them to do sideloading

01:09:02   and not alternative app stores.

01:09:04   Which, you know, they could easily technically do that.

01:09:06   They could just say, all right, well,

01:09:07   we will allow third-party apps to be sideloaded,

01:09:09   like from Lynx or whatever,

01:09:11   similar to enterprise provisioning, how that works now.

01:09:14   But third-party apps can't themselves

01:09:16   install other third-party apps.

01:09:18   That would be greatly preferable to me

01:09:20   as a user, as a developer.

01:09:22   I don't want to have to deal with other app stores.

01:09:25   Side loading itself brings enough gotchas

01:09:28   and possibilities for weirdness

01:09:31   without as many downsides as third party app stores.

01:09:36   I do not want to deal with third party app stores.

01:09:39   I don't wanna have to list my app in third party app stores.

01:09:42   I don't want to have to install third party app stores

01:09:45   'cause who's gonna be the app stores?

01:09:48   It's gonna be big companies.

01:09:50   To leverage big apps they already own,

01:09:52   to get people to install their store

01:09:53   so they can have more control over more apps

01:09:56   and more of the economy.

01:09:56   So think Facebook.

01:09:58   Say you're gonna be required to install Instagram

01:10:02   and the Facebook app and WhatsApp

01:10:04   from the Facebook app store.

01:10:06   Sorry, excuse me, the meta app store.

01:10:09   And these things will require the meta.

01:10:10   And then once you have the meta app store installed,

01:10:13   oh, well actually you can get all these wonderful

01:10:16   great deals here in exchange for selling your soul.

01:10:19   And then if that becomes popular,

01:10:20   am I gonna have to list Overcast there?

01:10:22   Are developers gonna have to list our apps

01:10:24   in these other stores?

01:10:25   So that's a whole thing that both,

01:10:28   as a user and a developer, I don't want any of that.

01:10:31   Like that to me is not good.

01:10:34   Side loading I think takes care of the competitive,

01:10:39   or the anti-competitive angles here.

01:10:42   Apple has refused to self-regulate.

01:10:46   They have acted extremely anti-competitively.

01:10:48   they continue to act extremely anti-competitively,

01:10:51   and so this is being forced upon them,

01:10:53   and it's entirely 1,000% their own fault.

01:10:57   But sideloading, I think, takes care of

01:11:00   a lot of that anti-competitive stuff.

01:11:03   It removes a lot of that pressure.

01:11:05   - Does it take care of any of it, though?

01:11:07   Like, that's my question about all those requirements.

01:11:10   I look at all of them, and kind of like

01:11:12   Grubber's most recently posted thing,

01:11:13   I look at them and I look at what I've seen

01:11:15   of the regulation they're trying to comply with,

01:11:17   And it's like the things that we're trying to solve here,

01:11:21   these competitive problems, don't appear to be solved at all

01:11:24   by side loading according to this requirement.

01:11:27   Because like, OK, so side loading allows,

01:11:29   say there's some app that Apple can't put on.

01:11:30   The one I always think of, the one that Jason Snell also

01:11:32   thought of in his six colors thing is emulators.

01:11:35   We all love emulators.

01:11:36   If you were playing with that Palm emulator recently,

01:11:39   why can't there be a cool Palm emulator on the App Store,

01:11:42   or an old Atari emulator, whatever?

01:11:43   Apple just doesn't allow emulators.

01:11:45   Nintendo emulators, all sorts of emulators

01:11:47   that you could get for the Mac and the PC,

01:11:49   but Apple tends not to allow them on the App Store,

01:11:51   either for intellectual property reasons

01:11:54   or just because they don't want you to have

01:11:56   JIT compiled code or all sorts of stuff like that.

01:11:59   So great, sideloading will allow those things

01:12:01   to be on the store, right?

01:12:03   But then you get into the details and it's like,

01:12:04   okay, well, so sideloading,

01:12:07   how are things gonna get sideloading?

01:12:08   Well, Apple probably won't allow things to be sideloading

01:12:10   unless they're notarized.

01:12:11   Okay, well, who notarizes them?

01:12:12   Well, Apple notarizes them.

01:12:14   And who's allowed to notarize an app?

01:12:15   - Well, someone who has an Apple developer account.

01:12:17   And so there's like 17 different places

01:12:18   where Apple can prevent something from being sideloaded,

01:12:21   not by saying you're not allowed to sideload it,

01:12:23   by saying, oh, you can't be a developer.

01:12:25   Oh, I'm not gonna notarize that app.

01:12:27   And they would still be complying with the letter of law.

01:12:29   And the other thing is like, okay,

01:12:30   I wanna be able to buy Kindle books from the Kindle app.

01:12:33   I don't wanna, you know, Apple doesn't let me do that

01:12:35   because I have to pay 30%.

01:12:36   Well, now I'll be able to sideload the Kindle app

01:12:38   and get around that.

01:12:39   Well, no, you won't, because Apple still is gonna want

01:12:40   29.9% of the in-app purchase that you make,

01:12:45   and Apple will still control whether you're even allowed

01:12:47   to load that application by deleting your developer account

01:12:52   or denying you notarization services.

01:12:55   It's almost like the people who wrote this law

01:12:57   didn't understand how Apple was going to react to it,

01:13:00   didn't see all the ways that Apple

01:13:01   could technically comply with this

01:13:02   without giving any of the things

01:13:04   that it's supposed to be providing.

01:13:06   More competition, cheaper payment processing,

01:13:09   more kinds of app that Apple doesn't allow.

01:13:12   Like, I don't know if Apple's going to do this

01:13:13   and be this particularly evil,

01:13:15   but looking at it, it seems like if they wanted to,

01:13:18   they could have all the same control,

01:13:20   and the only thing this law would do,

01:13:22   to Marco's point, is make it worse for users,

01:13:24   because now there's confusion,

01:13:25   and people are gonna try to make alternate app stores, and--

01:13:28   - And there'll be worse security, you know,

01:13:29   in the sense that, like, you know,

01:13:32   obviously some of this is OS-level security,

01:13:35   but like, you know that the version of the Facebook apps

01:13:39   from the meta store, they're gonna be a lot creepier.

01:13:44   They're gonna stay running in the background all the time.

01:13:46   They're gonna take more of your data.

01:13:48   - That brings up the notarization thing again.

01:13:51   So lots of things you can't do on iOS

01:13:53   because Apple doesn't let you use private APIs.

01:13:55   There's all sorts of cool things that your phone

01:13:56   and iPad can do that are APIs

01:13:58   that Apple hasn't published yet.

01:13:59   And so you technically shouldn't be using them

01:14:01   and the next OS update could break them.

01:14:03   But if you really, really wanna do, you could do it.

01:14:06   But you can't because Apple scans your app

01:14:08   for the use of these private APIs.

01:14:09   Even my stupid Switch class app,

01:14:12   I wanted to know on what edge of the screen the dock is,

01:14:16   even if it's hidden,

01:14:19   and there's no API for that in the public API on macOS,

01:14:22   but there's a private API for it.

01:14:24   And so I tried submitting a version of Switch class

01:14:26   that used the private API,

01:14:27   and sure enough, the automatic scanner said,

01:14:29   "Ah, ah, ah, you can't use that framework

01:14:31   "for knowing where the dock is.

01:14:32   "That's not public.

01:14:34   "Naughty app, sorry."

01:14:35   So you're like, okay, well now with sideloading,

01:14:38   with third-party app stores, I can just use that API.

01:14:40   They can't stop me to do it, right?

01:14:42   And I could do that on the Mac.

01:14:43   I would just have to be outside the Mac App Store, right?

01:14:44   But let's say on iOS where you don't have that option.

01:14:47   Now I have that option.

01:14:48   But the notarization service that Apple runs

01:14:50   may scan your app for private API usage

01:14:52   to prevent security problems.

01:14:54   And they won't notarize your app.

01:14:56   And that will make your app harder to sideload

01:14:58   or more scary warnings,

01:14:59   or maybe you won't be able to do it at all.

01:15:01   - Yeah, and I think that we, as both the tech press

01:15:06   and as enthusiasts of this platform,

01:15:09   we see a law like this coming through

01:15:11   and the reporting that Apple's gonna do something

01:15:14   maybe to comply with it.

01:15:15   We see this as, oh great, they're gonna do

01:15:18   what is most obvious to us, which is, okay,

01:15:22   we give up, you win, here's sideloading

01:15:24   on alternative app stores.

01:15:25   But what's much more likely to happen,

01:15:27   if you look at what Apple has actually done

01:15:31   in relation to various laws that have been passed

01:15:34   around the world in recent years.

01:15:36   You look at the Korean thing,

01:15:38   you look at the Japan Fair Trade Commission,

01:15:41   you look at the, what was the dating app on?

01:15:44   Was that Norway, where was that?

01:15:45   - Netherlands.

01:15:46   - Yeah, right.

01:15:48   So you look at these, at how they've complied with these,

01:15:51   and it has been, first of all, fighting them tooth and nail,

01:15:56   and then when they do finally "comply",

01:16:00   they do it in the most narrow

01:16:03   an extraordinarily middle finger way possible.

01:16:06   Because look, Apple does not think

01:16:07   they're doing anything wrong here.

01:16:08   They don't think that they deserve any less

01:16:12   than what they're getting.

01:16:13   They don't think they should be forced to compete

01:16:15   in the areas that these are trying

01:16:16   to force them to compete in.

01:16:17   They believe they are entitled to a third

01:16:20   of everyone's money that goes through a phone

01:16:22   no matter what it's doing.

01:16:24   The only reason they don't collect everything,

01:16:26   like they don't collect 30% of your bank transfers

01:16:29   because they can't, but otherwise,

01:16:31   like whatever they can--

01:16:32   - They want to.

01:16:33   - I know, whatever they can, they do.

01:16:35   And they are so far up their own butts about this stuff,

01:16:40   they really don't think they're doing anything wrong.

01:16:41   And so they feel fully entitled

01:16:44   to extract every single thing they can.

01:16:46   So here's what they're actually probably going to do.

01:16:49   They're not gonna just do this and say,

01:16:51   "All right, we give up, hands up, you win, everyone here,

01:16:54   "you can sideload your emulators if you want to."

01:16:56   No.

01:16:57   What's actually much more likely to happen

01:17:01   is first of all, anything they loosen here

01:17:04   will most likely only apply in the EU.

01:17:07   So that's big step number one.

01:17:10   Like all of us here in the US and everyone else,

01:17:12   like tough luck, you're not gonna have it on your phones.

01:17:16   Then they're gonna say, okay,

01:17:18   if you actually want a developer account

01:17:22   that can create and sign apps that will run this way,

01:17:26   you're gonna have to find some other way

01:17:28   to pay us the 27% that you owe us.

01:17:30   And the law might say, oh, they aren't allowed

01:17:34   to pull it from in-app purchases or whatever,

01:17:38   but the law doesn't say that Apple has to charge $99

01:17:41   for a developer's certificate.

01:17:42   So Apple can go right back and say, okay, actually,

01:17:45   we now have enterprise pricing for these certificates.

01:17:49   And that means that we're gonna look into your pockets

01:17:52   and see how much money you have,

01:17:53   and we're gonna take 27% of it.

01:17:55   - And they could just ask you to do that auditing yourself.

01:17:57   Like, this isn't what they did with the dating app?

01:17:58   - Yeah. - They would just say,

01:17:59   - Basically, hey, you have to tell us

01:18:01   how many people went through your in-app purchase system

01:18:04   that's not ours and give us 27% of it.

01:18:06   - Exactly, that's exactly what they do with dating apps

01:18:08   and part of the contract is they reserve the right

01:18:10   to come audit your finances themselves

01:18:12   and or have their auditors do it.

01:18:14   So there's no way Apple's gonna just do the right thing here

01:18:19   because Apple doesn't believe it's in the wrong.

01:18:21   Apple believes it is 1,000% in the right

01:18:25   and therefore they are going to fight this tooth and nail

01:18:29   and they're gonna be massive (bleep) about it

01:18:32   because that's what they do with the App Store money stuff.

01:18:36   They're massive (bleep)

01:18:37   and again, they are so self-righteous.

01:18:41   They think they're doing the right thing here

01:18:43   because the reality is, you know,

01:18:45   Apple as a company largely does pretty good things

01:18:48   a lot of the time in a lot of areas.

01:18:50   They feel a lot of self-righteousness

01:18:52   because they are often righteous.

01:18:55   And that bleeds unfortunately into areas where they're not.

01:18:58   And this is probably the biggest one of those areas

01:19:02   where we see their worst behavior.

01:19:03   So this is not gonna be some easy thing

01:19:06   where we just kinda get what some of us want

01:19:09   and that's the end of it.

01:19:11   This is gonna be fighting tooth and nail

01:19:14   for outcomes that nobody is really going to get

01:19:17   what they think they're gonna get.

01:19:19   It's gonna, again, look at the dating thing,

01:19:21   the dating apps thing in the Netherlands.

01:19:23   Did anybody actually benefit from that besides Apple?

01:19:26   - That's what I'm saying.

01:19:27   When they write these laws,

01:19:28   it's almost like they don't understand

01:19:31   how they can tell when they've succeeded.

01:19:33   They should write on a light board,

01:19:34   how will we tell when we have succeeded?

01:19:36   And the answer is not,

01:19:38   people don't have to use Apple's in-app purchase.

01:19:40   That's not the thing people are complaining about.

01:19:42   People were complaining that they have to pay Apple 30%.

01:19:45   And there's no way, apparently,

01:19:46   with any of these regulations

01:19:47   that they can stop that from happening.

01:19:48   So they make it difficult for everybody,

01:19:50   and they say, "Yay, you don't need to use

01:19:52   "Apple's in-app purchase, but you still need to pay Apple

01:19:54   "the same amount, only now you have extra bookkeeping to do."

01:19:56   Are you happy?

01:19:57   No, nobody's happy.

01:19:58   Apple's not happy 'cause they had to do a thing

01:19:59   they didn't wanna do, and the developers aren't really happy,

01:20:02   so it's like, well, we still have to pay.

01:20:04   So the whole thing of like, there's not,

01:20:07   I've talked about this ages ago when I wrote about eBooks

01:20:09   when I worked for the eBook company,

01:20:10   there's not another 30% in eBooks available to pay Apple.

01:20:15   You have to pay, of the amount that people pay for eBooks,

01:20:18   A portion goes to the publisher

01:20:19   and a portion goes to the seller.

01:20:21   There is not an additional 30% to go to the platform owner.

01:20:24   There's just not.

01:20:25   Which is why you don't see eBooks being sold

01:20:27   through the Kindle app and paying Apple 30%.

01:20:30   It's not financially viable, right?

01:20:32   So what is the solution to that?

01:20:34   The solution to allow the Kindle app

01:20:36   to be sold someplace else

01:20:37   where they don't have to pay Apple 30%?

01:20:39   But none of these regulations make that happen

01:20:42   because they don't give enough freedom.

01:20:44   They don't say, hey, like on the Mac,

01:20:47   you could sell an app that sold Kindle books through it

01:20:49   and you wouldn't have to pay Apple 30%

01:20:50   because the Mac is a platform that allows you to do that.

01:20:53   Apple does not extract 30% of every transaction

01:20:55   that happens on the Mac, right?

01:20:56   Nor do they do it through a web browser.

01:20:58   Hey, if you use Safari to buy something on Amazon,

01:21:00   Apple doesn't take 30%, right?

01:21:02   But on iOS and iPadOS, they do.

01:21:05   That's the problem.

01:21:06   And they keep making these laws to try to say,

01:21:08   can we make iPad and iOS and these other platforms

01:21:12   like the web, like the Mac?

01:21:15   And all these laws they write fail to do that in every way.

01:21:18   They don't give the technical freedom,

01:21:20   they don't give the financial freedom,

01:21:22   they just make everything more complicated for everybody.

01:21:25   And they're failing to do what they're setting out to do

01:21:27   and they don't quite understand

01:21:28   why they keep screwing up in that way.

01:21:30   Just to clarify something I said earlier,

01:21:32   notarization for Mac apps does not scan for private APIs.

01:21:35   That's App Store submission that does that.

01:21:37   But there's no reason it couldn't.

01:21:38   Like there's nothing in this law that says,

01:21:40   oh, and by the way, Apple, you have to notarize everything.

01:21:43   Or by the way, it doesn't say anything about notarization.

01:21:45   doesn't get into that level of detail.

01:21:47   I feel like these, I don't know how to write laws,

01:21:49   but it almost seems like the law should be written

01:21:50   to say, hey, the end goal is you should be able

01:21:55   to sell things that people can run in their phones

01:21:57   without paying Apple any money.

01:21:59   And that's, obviously that would be

01:22:00   the most extreme version of this.

01:22:02   And that's not what they asked for, right?

01:22:05   Or that you'd have to pay a nominal fee,

01:22:07   a nominal flat fee to be a developer

01:22:09   and then you would be allowed to sell things

01:22:10   and not pay Apple any money.

01:22:11   But like all these things are written such that Apple

01:22:13   can continue to extract all the money

01:22:16   and all the power it wants just in different,

01:22:18   more annoying ways.

01:22:19   So again, Apple's not happy about it

01:22:21   and I don't think any of the developers are gonna be.

01:22:23   Even the ones that make a go of it.

01:22:24   Epic makes their game store, right?

01:22:26   Valve makes the Steam store, you know,

01:22:28   Meta makes their store.

01:22:30   Even if they all try to do it,

01:22:31   I think it's just gonna be unsatisfactory

01:22:35   for everybody involved, including the customers, right?

01:22:39   And developers who are like,

01:22:40   oh, do I have to put something in the Epic store?

01:22:42   Do I have to put my game in the Steam store?

01:22:45   It's just worse for everybody.

01:22:47   And it's not because I'm for third-party stores

01:22:51   and sideloading and all that other stuff,

01:22:53   but only if it's done in a way

01:22:54   that actually delivers the benefits.

01:22:57   Because what I want to happen is I want Apple

01:22:59   to feel competitive pressure to do better.

01:23:02   If there was competitive pressure, say,

01:23:04   okay, well, I could put my app on the App Store,

01:23:07   I have to pay Apple 30%,

01:23:08   or I can put my app on this store and pay 10%.

01:23:12   That's competitive pressure.

01:23:13   Now I have a place where I can get more of my money

01:23:15   from the customers and the store takes less.

01:23:18   How annoying is it to deal with payments?

01:23:20   Does this store let me issue refunds

01:23:22   directly to customers myself?

01:23:24   That's better than Apple.

01:23:25   Like they need competitive pressure.

01:23:27   But every time they write a law to try to do this,

01:23:29   they don't actually provide any competitive pressure

01:23:32   because in all situations, Apple finds a way to say,

01:23:35   I'm gonna make sure that your store

01:23:37   cannot possibly be better than mine.

01:23:39   It can't be better for developers,

01:23:41   it can't be better for users,

01:23:42   it's just a question of how much worse it's gonna be.

01:23:45   That's not competition.

01:23:46   That is not, like the whole point of these things is,

01:23:48   we feel like Apple has too much power,

01:23:50   if there was more competition, things would be better.

01:23:52   And they're written in such a way that Apple ensures

01:23:56   that there will be no competition as in something

01:23:59   that is preferable to the Apple store

01:24:02   in some way for everybody involved.

01:24:04   And that is extremely depressing.

01:24:06   - Yeah, the thing that I find most frustrating

01:24:09   and to some degree depressing about all this

01:24:11   is something that Marco had said earlier and that we have all touched on many times over

01:24:15   the years is that Apple could, I think, have gotten in front of this and could have avoided

01:24:21   government intervention in a lot of this. But because they're so petulantly convinced

01:24:28   that they are owed, and this is exactly what Marco said earlier, that they are owed all

01:24:32   of this money, that they refuse to take what I think are common sense and reasonable, like

01:24:38   half measures in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening. As an example, if

01:24:44   you were allowed as the Kindle app, for example, to link to a specific buy page, you know,

01:24:52   on the Amazon website, I think that would have made a lot of people in the companies

01:24:58   in the situation, that would have probably been enough. Like, of course, they still would

01:25:02   have wanted to use native UIs in order to do this sort of thing.

01:25:08   But you could have used Apple Pay, which does not charge 30%.

01:25:11   That's true.

01:25:12   Actually, that's a good point.

01:25:13   But you know what I'm driving at, right?

01:25:15   They could have let you do something as simple as link to your own website.

01:25:19   And I didn't actually realize this, but obviously up until semi recently, you weren't even allowed

01:25:24   to mention that something else existed in other places or goodness, if it was cheaper

01:25:30   off of the app store. That was absolutely forbidden. And I believe they've relaxed on

01:25:34   that. How did you not realize that until recently? We've talked about it for years on the podcast.

01:25:38   This one, the one that you're on. Oh yeah. But I, I, I forget everything that I do ever

01:25:42   always. You did know past Casey. No. Past Casey knew current Casey had forgotten, but

01:25:47   anyways, um, yeah, so the, there are things that they could have done to make this less

01:25:54   egregious and to make themselves seem less obnoxious. And that's the thing is for a company

01:25:58   that I really enjoy, despite all my complaining about it, I don't like it when they're bullies,

01:26:05   which is probably more often than I give them credit for, but certainly when it comes to

01:26:09   the App Store, they are freaking bullies. And I don't like it when they're just obnoxious.

01:26:15   And that's exactly what this is. It is just obnoxious. And it's so wild to me that the

01:26:22   same company that does something as delightful as Freeform can be just such jerks. And I

01:26:28   it's different parts of the company. I know it's a big company, like conceptually I can understand it,

01:26:32   but it just, it kind of blows my mind that they can build these amazing products and this amazing

01:26:38   software sometimes. And yet they can be such turds about the app store and it didn't have to come to

01:26:47   this. It didn't have to come to this. And yet they looked at the governments of every country on the

01:26:54   the planet and basically said, you try me. And that's just not going to work. You guys,

01:27:00   it's, it's not going to work. You are not going to win this battle. But here we are.

01:27:04   They think that because they did this genuinely incredible stuff back in 2007, they think,

01:27:10   what is it? 15 years for 18 years later that they are still entitled to all this money.

01:27:16   Like, Oh my word. And I could not agree with you both more. Like they will get their money.

01:27:21   they will find a way.

01:27:23   - That's why I said it's not gonna work

01:27:24   by challenging the governments,

01:27:25   but apparently it is because the government can't write laws

01:27:27   that achieve the desired effect.

01:27:29   - Fair, fair, fair.

01:27:30   - The desired effect is increased competition

01:27:32   because when there's competition,

01:27:33   Apple feels pressure to make their stuff better.

01:27:36   And right now, when they don't have that competition,

01:27:39   they don't feel pressure.

01:27:40   Like the pressure to do all,

01:27:41   like the pressure from developers,

01:27:43   like, oh, you take a lot of my money,

01:27:45   you give me poor tools,

01:27:46   you don't let me refund my customers,

01:27:49   you don't let me even know who my customers are,

01:27:51   You don't reward me for being a good developer.

01:27:53   App review is capricious.

01:27:54   Like all the things that the developers

01:27:56   have complaints about, the reason those complaints

01:27:58   just go so poorly addressed over years and years

01:28:01   is there's like, the developers are captive audience.

01:28:04   Where else are you gonna go?

01:28:05   The App Store is the only thing.

01:28:06   Competition will make Apple's products better.

01:28:09   Competition from Android has made the iPhone

01:28:12   phenomenally better.

01:28:13   If Android didn't exist and it was just the iPhone,

01:28:15   who knows if we'd have copy and paste now?

01:28:17   I mean, that's an exaggeration, but like,

01:28:19   It's competition, and obviously it's hard,

01:28:22   like when you're a company, why would I invite competition?

01:28:25   Like that makes my life more miserable.

01:28:26   It makes me make less money, it puts more pressure on me.

01:28:30   You know, if you're a company, you don't like competition.

01:28:33   So that's why when Apple's presented with these laws,

01:28:35   is there a way we can comply with this law

01:28:37   without increasing competition in the market at all?

01:28:39   The answer is yes, okay, we're gonna do that.

01:28:40   And that's what you're both characterizing

01:28:41   as being a big jerk.

01:28:42   But it is really just like any company that saw this,

01:28:45   it's like, we have to comply with this law.

01:28:47   Should we do so in a way that gives our competitors

01:28:50   advantages against us?

01:28:51   No, of course not.

01:28:53   They're gonna, you know, and I agree with you, Casey,

01:28:56   that they could have avoided this regulation

01:28:58   by giving earlier or whatever,

01:29:01   but I think they have correctly calculated

01:29:03   that no one knows how to write a law

01:29:05   that will actually increase competition in the markets.

01:29:07   So like, just let them write the law,

01:29:09   and then when they're done,

01:29:10   we'll be able to comply with it in a way

01:29:12   that just proves our case that this was a,

01:29:14   see, this was a bad idea to begin with.

01:29:16   You haven't increased competition and everybody's sadder, right?

01:29:19   And then they could use that and say, "Well, we had to comply with the law,

01:29:22   talk it to your lawmakers.

01:29:23   I know everything is worse in the EU now and your iPhone, but it's not our fault."

01:29:26   And we told them this wouldn't do anything because there was a way to comply with it

01:29:30   without increasing competition.

01:29:32   And I'm a big proponent of increased competition because there's lots of places

01:29:36   where Apple needs competition to drive them to be better.

01:29:40   If they're so confident that they are so amazing, if the App Store is so great,

01:29:44   if their developer experience is so great,

01:29:46   if their in-app purchase system is so wonderful,

01:29:49   then it should stand up to competition.

01:29:51   We all know that it won't,

01:29:52   because it charges a lot of money

01:29:53   and doesn't have a lot of features and annoys people.

01:29:55   Same thing with App Review.

01:29:57   And what we're hoping for is that if there was another store

01:30:00   that could compete against Apple,

01:30:02   they could just do everything a little bit better than Apple

01:30:04   in the areas that developers care about,

01:30:06   and that would be competition.

01:30:08   But it doesn't seem like this law

01:30:10   is going to make that happen.

01:30:11   it's just going to make things,

01:30:13   it's going to make things more difficult for Apple to comply with it,

01:30:15   but mostly it'll make things more difficult and confusing for customers and

01:30:19   possibly more difficult and confusing for developers.

01:30:21   Yeah. It just, it bums me out so much that, that they're, I,

01:30:26   this entitlement just is gross in that they just wouldn't listen and just get

01:30:31   ahead of it. Give us, give us an inch, you know, we're, we're in, in hell.

01:30:38   And the drop of cold water would have been amazing.

01:30:41   - They have given several inches.

01:30:43   They released the in-app purchase,

01:30:45   they did the subscriptions, they do improve things.

01:30:46   But the thing is like, those are like concessions.

01:30:49   They were trying to stave off like dissatisfaction

01:30:51   and trying a little bit to stave off regulation,

01:30:54   but they wouldn't go far enough

01:30:57   to actually stave off regulation.

01:30:59   Again, like I said, perhaps correctly calculating

01:31:01   that the regulators will not understand the problem

01:31:05   well enough to write regulations

01:31:07   that actually increase competition.

01:31:09   And so far, that's been true.

01:31:10   Regulators have done a bunch of stuff and none of them have had what I think should have been the desired effect

01:31:15   Which is increased competition that drives Apple to?

01:31:17   To improve to compete to improve their products in the ways that they are bad, right?

01:31:23   They haven't had to do that. They have improved things. They have reduced the cut. They have made the App Store better in small ways

01:31:30   Over the many years but not to the satisfaction of developers

01:31:35   So developers are still dissatisfied that long-standing complaints have not been addressed

01:31:40   to their satisfaction.

01:31:42   And Apple would say, "Well, users don't care because they don't see any of this."

01:31:45   And so it's just kind of like this infighting behind the scenes, but users like the fact

01:31:49   that they're just one app store or whatever, because users have no idea how it works anyway.

01:31:53   But this is really just a battle between the competitors, developers, Apple, and other

01:32:00   people who would want to do similar things to the app store, whether it's payment processing

01:32:03   or actually having a full-fledged app store or even just sideloading apps.

01:32:06   And users mostly are collateral damage in this battle, but it does affect them.

01:32:11   It affects them because of all the apps that users never got to see because they did not

01:32:15   fit into Apple's design, because Apple didn't allow them, because, you know, even just something

01:32:19   as simple as for all these years you could have been buying ebooks in the Kindle app

01:32:22   and you haven't been able to.

01:32:23   Maybe users don't know or care about that, but if you went in an alternate timeline and

01:32:26   took someone from that timeline where you've always been able to buy Kindle books on your

01:32:30   iPhone and said, "Okay, well in this timeline, the iPhone's been out since 2007 and you still

01:32:34   can't do that."

01:32:35   And they'd be like, "What?

01:32:36   That sucks.

01:32:37   I buy them all the time.

01:32:38   I go on vacation, I'm on the plane, I'm waiting to board, I buy myself an e-book and the Kindle

01:32:42   app and I'm right."

01:32:43   It's like, "Well, this one, you have to know to go to the Amazon app and have it delivered

01:32:47   to your Kindle, then relaunch the Kindle app and it syncs with your library."

01:32:50   Like, "Why do you have to do that?

01:32:51   Oh, different timeline."

01:32:52   It's depressing.

01:32:55   And I think Apple also, I mean, we've said it many times before, you know, the, the App

01:33:00   Store in general really brings out the worst in Apple. Like it represents the worst that

01:33:05   they are. It brings out the worst characteristics of them. They introduce the worst justifications

01:33:13   and anger the most people with all of their, their policies and comments on the App Store.

01:33:19   Anytime they have to testify in front of Congress or a court about the App Store, they always

01:33:24   is just have the maximum level of BS

01:33:27   and the most inflammatory comments that just anger all of us.

01:33:31   And I think they, you know,

01:33:33   they largely are blind to the problems here

01:33:36   because they're making so much money.

01:33:38   And again, for mention, because they feel so entitled

01:33:41   to demand whatever they want out of the commerce

01:33:43   that they have quote created on quote their platform.

01:33:46   But it is actually, you know,

01:33:49   in many ways that John was just saying

01:33:50   and in a couple others, I think it's actually better

01:33:53   for Apple and their products to have more competition.

01:33:57   And it's better for them to break this addiction

01:34:02   they have to the App Store revenue.

01:34:04   And I'm not sure that they ever will.

01:34:06   But we've talked recently about,

01:34:09   there's a lot of garbage in the App Store,

01:34:11   but because Apple makes so much money from it,

01:34:14   they turn the other way.

01:34:15   You can do all sorts of manipulation and scams

01:34:21   and just overall toxic behavior

01:34:23   that makes worse experiences for your customers,

01:34:26   but as long as Apple's making 30% of that,

01:34:28   they are okay with it.

01:34:30   And that's very corrosive

01:34:33   and has a lot of negative effects on their products.

01:34:36   - And even not like, for that thing

01:34:38   with the garbage in the App Store,

01:34:39   some of it they make a lot of money off of it,

01:34:40   but the other problem that they have

01:34:41   is there's just so much on the App Store

01:34:43   that they can't actually police at all.

01:34:45   So there's this whole sort of like long tail of apps

01:34:48   that don't actually make Apple a lot of money,

01:34:50   but there's just so many of them that Apple has not invested enough to police them.

01:34:54   And Apple is stuck in this place that we talked about on past shows where it's like,

01:34:57   they want the app store to be a high quality experience,

01:35:01   but also since they are literally the only app store,

01:35:05   they can't be as restrictive as would be required to make sure all the apps are

01:35:10   good. And so they have to say, well, we want it.

01:35:12   We don't want to be like the arbiters of what is it? What is a good app?

01:35:14   What is not a good app?

01:35:15   We'll basically allow anything subject to these rules.

01:35:18   And that results in this huge long tail of garbage apps

01:35:21   that are kind of scammy,

01:35:22   that don't really make Apple a lot of money,

01:35:25   but Apple doesn't get rid of,

01:35:26   not because they're like,

01:35:27   "Oh, we need the money from those scam apps."

01:35:28   'Cause the scam apps to give them money,

01:35:29   they can probably put on one sheet of paper, right?

01:35:31   But Apple does want those, to be clear, right?

01:35:33   But all the rest of those apps,

01:35:35   the ones that most people are gonna run across,

01:35:36   the thousands and thousands of garbage-y scam apps

01:35:40   that don't make much money for Apple, but are still there,

01:35:43   Apple can't snap their finger and get rid of those

01:35:45   and be like, "Ah, but like,

01:35:47   There's just too many of them, and we don't want to be so restrictive.

01:35:50   So, again, another thing that they've done to themselves,

01:35:53   by not allowing any other distribution technique for their platform,

01:35:57   they are stuck between a rock and a hard place of,

01:36:00   "We would like it to be high quality, but also we don't want to be so restrictive."

01:36:04   Because when we're restrictive, developers don't like that either.

01:36:06   Which one is it?

01:36:07   Do you want me to allow every app to be in the App Store,

01:36:09   or do you want the App Store to be nice?

01:36:10   And developers are like, "Well, we just want you to let the good apps,

01:36:13   like mine, on there."

01:36:14   But every developer says that.

01:36:15   This is why when you're the only app store,

01:36:18   you're kind of screwed.

01:36:19   'Cause there's no solution to this problem

01:36:20   other than, hey, imagine if there was competition,

01:36:23   then Apple could be super restricted

01:36:25   and if you didn't like it,

01:36:26   go to one of the other app stores.

01:36:28   But that's not the world we live in.

01:36:30   - I think the other angle to consider here too is that,

01:36:33   you know, again, Apple seems totally 1000% blind

01:36:38   to any problems with their current approach

01:36:42   to the App Store and to developer relations largely

01:36:46   because they make so much money off of it

01:36:47   and they think they're gods and their farts smell amazing.

01:36:51   But they also rely on developers

01:36:56   to make their platforms useful and marketable and popular.

01:37:01   And that works really well on the iPhone

01:37:04   because there are a lot of iPhones.

01:37:06   That has not worked as nearly as well

01:37:10   on all of their other platforms.

01:37:12   That really has hampered the iPad in particular.

01:37:16   The Mac is a deteriorating wasteland of software.

01:37:21   And the Apple Watch has some third party apps,

01:37:25   but fairly minimally now,

01:37:28   and many of them have been abandoned,

01:37:29   even by big companies who have the resources to do it,

01:37:32   because it's not worth them dealing with it,

01:37:35   or it doesn't work as well as they want it or whatever.

01:37:37   Apple TV never took off as a third party platform

01:37:40   for anything but video watching stuff.

01:37:42   They have all these different ways in the system

01:37:45   that you can hook into the system

01:37:47   and make richer experiences, things like iMessage apps,

01:37:52   ShareTime, SharePlay, yeah, SharePlay,

01:37:56   all these different ways they can hook in there,

01:37:57   different extension points that most big apps

01:38:00   by big companies that people are actually using,

01:38:02   they just don't use those features.

01:38:04   And let me remind them, they are apparently

01:38:08   about to launch a completely new class of device

01:38:12   in the alleged AR or mixed reality headset family

01:38:17   that will presumably depend to some level

01:38:21   on people writing software for it.

01:38:23   And if they continue to run the app store

01:38:27   with the attitude they have been running it,

01:38:29   the amount of developer goodwill they have torpedoed

01:38:34   from indies over the years is massive and always going up.

01:38:38   And they've also angered all the big companies now so much

01:38:41   that the big companies, for various reasons,

01:38:43   some of which are because of the way they're treated

01:38:45   or because of the rules or because of the economics,

01:38:48   and some of which are just because big companies

01:38:49   suck at this stuff.

01:38:50   - And because the big companies,

01:38:51   they wanna be the rent seekers, not Apple, to be clear.

01:38:54   They just wanna replace Apple

01:38:55   in doing exactly the same thing.

01:38:57   - Largely, yes.

01:38:58   But also more so just because big companies

01:39:01   don't like being told what to do.

01:39:03   which Apple is one, and that's, anyway.

01:39:06   So they're about to launch this new family of hardware

01:39:10   at a time when I don't really see a lot of developers

01:39:15   that will be super interested in making new apps for it

01:39:20   because so many of us are just tired of Apple's BS

01:39:23   and we can see it coming a mile away.

01:39:25   And so it's not to say there won't be any software for it

01:39:28   in the same way that there are lots of iPad

01:39:30   and Apple Watch apps.

01:39:32   Well, there's lots of iPad apps.

01:39:34   But how many really great ones will there be?

01:39:37   Will the next big thing be made there?

01:39:40   Apple is so restrictive.

01:39:42   That could really cost them in big ways

01:39:45   that they will never know

01:39:46   when they go to launch a new hardware platform

01:39:48   that doesn't start out with a huge installed base.

01:39:51   Maybe they don't care.

01:39:52   I mean, chances are, chances are they're telling themselves

01:39:56   two big delusions.

01:39:57   Number one, they're telling themselves,

01:39:59   our software is gonna be so great for this thing,

01:40:01   We won't even need that much third party software.

01:40:04   Then number two, they're telling themselves,

01:40:06   but the third parties will line up

01:40:08   to make software for this, it'll be great.

01:40:11   There'll be so many people just dying to make software

01:40:14   for this that they'll put up with all the crap

01:40:17   that makes people put up with.

01:40:19   And that doesn't always happen with their platforms.

01:40:23   That happened occasionally, mainly that happened

01:40:25   with the iPhone because there were so many of them

01:40:27   and we all use them and love them.

01:40:29   And if they launch something new like an AR headset,

01:40:31   That might happen there, but it would be much better

01:40:35   chances of that happening if Apple was better to developers

01:40:40   and to companies developing for them.

01:40:42   And I think they're too delusional about their own

01:40:47   grandiosity and generosity to see that.

01:40:52   I don't think they're ever gonna see that.

01:40:53   They're never gonna see that, hey, maybe we should look

01:40:58   at companies, like how Microsoft treats its developers,

01:41:00   like way better. Maybe there's something we can learn from from the way other

01:41:05   people treat developers that might result in our current and future hardware

01:41:10   platforms having bigger and healthier software ecosystems than they have now

01:41:14   because you know you look at again look at the iPad. The iPad has amazing

01:41:21   hardware that has been ridiculously tragically held back by software for its

01:41:27   entire life, both application software and Apple's own OS for it. Just hugely

01:41:33   held back by software. And then you look at again the Mac is is really you know

01:41:39   the Mac hardware is in an amazing place. They're making these ridiculously

01:41:44   awesome Mac hardware devices and the software ecosystem is really iffy on the

01:41:49   Mac. It's really it's getting it's getting you know worrisome. I think the

01:41:54   The Mac example is a counter example to what you were just saying though because the Mac

01:41:57   is the platform where you can make a living selling software without involving Apple at

01:42:03   all.

01:42:04   It is the most free platform that Apple has and still it suffers from a lack of developer

01:42:10   interest.

01:42:12   And I think this is not a, the Mac is suffering for different reasons than the iPad.

01:42:15   We're just suffering from different reasons than the AR headset will suffer.

01:42:18   So the iPad suffers because the OS is so limited and you have to go through Apple's distribution.

01:42:23   There's lots of really cool killer apps that could have been made for the iPad if developers

01:42:27   were allowed to use the full power of the device without going through Apple.

01:42:31   But they haven't been, so they haven't.

01:42:33   Even Apple hasn't ported its Pro app, so Apple is to blame for that one for sure.

01:42:37   The AR headset, the first thing Apple would have to do is sell a lot of them because you

01:42:42   need to have the market out there for developers to sell it to.

01:42:46   But if they sold a lot of them, I think there would be a bit of a gold rush there.

01:42:50   if it was a hit product, developers will come.

01:42:53   You can't, no matter how mean Apple is,

01:42:55   if they have a hit product.

01:42:56   So that's Apple's job on the AR headset is.

01:42:58   - That's why we're all on the iPhone.

01:43:00   - Even if the iPhone wasn't a hit,

01:43:01   when the iPhone was announced,

01:43:03   all of the sort of diehard Apple developers

01:43:06   were dying to make apps for the phone.

01:43:08   Even before Apple allowed you to make apps for the phone.

01:43:11   Even before the, certainly before the phone was a success.

01:43:14   The phone wasn't even out yet,

01:43:16   and the really hard ones were dying to make stuff for it.

01:43:18   That could also be the case with the AR headset

01:43:20   because it's really cool.

01:43:22   But then after that, you have to actually make

01:43:24   the headset a success.

01:43:25   And then the Mac, the Mac is having problems with software,

01:43:27   not because Apple restricts things that are on it,

01:43:30   but because Apple hasn't paid enough attention to it

01:43:32   as a platform to make sure that its APIs

01:43:34   are sort of up to snuff.

01:43:36   Like it seems to, it has always been like

01:43:38   the third place child in terms of the stuff.

01:43:41   And SwiftUI is helping sort of with the unification

01:43:43   of that or whatever, but that's why.

01:43:44   - SwiftUI is not helping anything on the Mac, I'm sorry.

01:43:48   - It is because the alternative was that they were just,

01:43:49   well, we're just not gonna develop AppKit anymore,

01:43:51   and also there's no way for you to write an application

01:43:53   that runs on the Mac, the iPad, and the phone.

01:43:55   So SwiftUI is--

01:43:56   - Yeah, but SwiftUI is totally broken on the Mac.

01:43:59   I don't know anybody who uses SwiftUI on the Mac

01:44:01   who comes away not regretting that.

01:44:03   - But it is, but like, speculatively,

01:44:06   that is what they're trying to do.

01:44:07   They're trying to make it so that you can use

01:44:09   a one familiar API to more or less make apps

01:44:13   on all their different platforms.

01:44:14   Whereas before, you could make an app

01:44:16   for the iPhone and iPad and the Mac

01:44:18   have this entirely different thing

01:44:19   that had been neglected for a while.

01:44:21   So it's three different problems

01:44:24   that it has to address on its three different platforms.

01:44:27   The sort of--

01:44:28   - This is not three different problems.

01:44:30   - Yeah, well no it is, it is three different problems.

01:44:32   - This is one problem and it's called the App Store.

01:44:35   - No, the one problem, because the App Store,

01:44:37   again, the App Store doesn't limit stuff on the Mac.

01:44:39   The one problem is sort of developers being cranky.

01:44:41   - Although, well, I think the Mac App Store

01:44:43   did a lot to damage the relationship

01:44:46   of Mac developers on Apple.

01:44:48   - It did, but it also allowed Mac developers like me,

01:44:51   who otherwise wouldn't be able to sell anything on the Mac,

01:44:53   'cause our apps are just too, you know,

01:44:55   like there's tons of apps on the Mac App Store

01:44:59   that are made by developers who wouldn't,

01:45:01   it wouldn't have been worth their while

01:45:02   to even just hook up to Stripe and do all that stuff,

01:45:04   right, you know what I mean?

01:45:05   - Agreed.

01:45:06   - Like that's why I'm on the Mac App Store

01:45:08   and not elsewhere, because my apps don't sell enough,

01:45:10   it's not worth my time,

01:45:11   So I think it would have to be freeware,

01:45:14   which is not great, or I can make a little bit of money

01:45:16   on the Mac App Store.

01:45:17   But that's not the show, clearly, right?

01:45:21   Photoshop and all these big apps

01:45:22   and BB Edit going in and out of the Mac App Store, right?

01:45:26   But again, on the Mac, the reason there's been

01:45:29   that pressure and the reason Apple has done anything

01:45:31   is because BB Edit could just leave the Mac App Store

01:45:33   and say, "Ah, we tried it, it was too annoying,

01:45:35   "we're going back at it."

01:45:35   And that forced Apple to come back to the table

01:45:37   and say, "Hey, we would like you to come back

01:45:40   to the Mac App Store, what do we gotta do to get you back into the Mac App Store at

01:45:43   this time, right? But they still have the problem of, you know, what do we do against

01:45:46   web apps? All the apps people use every day, either web browsers or Electron apps or web

01:45:51   views, like we're losing the battle for the desktop. But still, if you want to use Final

01:45:55   Cut Pro or whatever the hell it's called now, it's just called Final Cut, I think? No more

01:46:00   Pro. I believe. You can't use that on your iPad because iPad Pro doesn't have any Pro

01:46:04   apps like Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro.

01:46:07   Anyway, the tax across all of this is general dissatisfaction with Apple being mean, right?

01:46:14   And that hurts them across all the platforms.

01:46:16   That is the one unifying thing.

01:46:18   And you feel that it has different strength.

01:46:20   Mac users, like someone who's a user or developer on the Mac may also have sour feelings because

01:46:26   they can't get an NES emulator on the App Store, right?

01:46:29   It's not even a Mac thing.

01:46:30   We're talking about iOS, right?

01:46:32   Why are they mad about that?

01:46:33   Well your iOS customers probably also have a Mac, or are likely to also have a Mac, and

01:46:38   so yeah, they're a little bit sore.

01:46:39   I don't think that's true of a large portion of them.

01:46:41   Yeah, and certainly all your developers do because it's the only way to make apps, because

01:46:44   you can't make apps and Xcode on your iPad yet.

01:46:47   They have a lot of problems here, but yeah.

01:46:50   Meanwhile all these regulations and laws and things that they're skirting are not helping.

01:46:55   They're not helping Apple to get better, and they're not helping the market to become more

01:47:00   competitive to force Apple to get better.

01:47:02   it's forcing Apple to do things that they're mad about,

01:47:05   and the things they do will make us mad.

01:47:07   - Well, and Apple's continued refusal to

01:47:10   behave in a more reasonable way in some of these areas

01:47:13   is going to make governments keep trying

01:47:16   to make even more ridiculous laws.

01:47:19   And every time a government tries to make a law,

01:47:22   that runs the risk of them really messing stuff up.

01:47:25   And that, you know, long-term with Apple,

01:47:27   I think that's a huge risk to them.

01:47:29   Like, look, as part of this DMA law,

01:47:32   that was, I think, mostly theoretically about app stores

01:47:36   and in-app purchase, they tacked on this messaging thing

01:47:39   that is a huge problem for Apple and for all their stuff.

01:47:44   And maybe if Apple was less anti-competitive in the money

01:47:49   areas, maybe this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

01:47:53   And they didn't have now this huge messaging and FaceTime

01:47:59   interrupting to deal with.

01:48:01   The longer Apple goes not addressing their worst

01:48:05   anti-competitive behavior, and the more loopholes

01:48:08   they pull when these laws are passed,

01:48:11   the more laws they're gonna try to make.

01:48:14   And again, we really, we've been lucky in tech.

01:48:19   Most of the time we're allowed to kinda do what we want,

01:48:22   and lawmakers and regulators don't really keep up.

01:48:26   And therefore, they don't really interfere that much.

01:48:29   That has been largely a good thing overall,

01:48:32   not 100% of the time,

01:48:33   but I think overall it's been a net win.

01:48:36   Now that tech is such a big part of the world

01:48:39   and controls so much of all of commerce and business,

01:48:43   we are inviting regulation

01:48:45   whenever we behave anti-competitively.

01:48:47   We have to really be careful

01:48:49   when we invite regulation as an industry.

01:48:51   That doesn't always work very well

01:48:53   and governments are so bad at understanding tech

01:48:56   and regulators and lawmakers are so, so bad

01:48:59   at understanding tech that we really don't want them

01:49:03   doing this more than necessary.

01:49:04   We don't want them to be making laws

01:49:06   that are gonna issue these blanket regulations

01:49:10   and requirements that actually could do a lot of damage

01:49:12   'cause they don't think 'em through

01:49:13   or they don't understand stuff well enough or whatever.

01:49:15   And so it is in our best interest as an industry

01:49:18   to self-regulate as much as possible,

01:49:20   to avoid the need for governments to do it for us.

01:49:23   And Apple is just rolling that dice every single time,

01:49:27   every given day that they keep going,

01:49:31   being the way they're being.

01:49:32   And then if they react to the DMA

01:49:35   the way that we're all fearing that they probably will

01:49:37   in this weird like piecemeal FU kind of way

01:49:40   where they still make all their tax in some way,

01:49:43   it's gonna just keep happening.

01:49:46   We're gonna get more laws and they're gonna roll the dice

01:49:48   that they don't get ruined too badly by them.

01:49:51   But meanwhile, we, the users, we are the ones

01:49:53   who are gonna pay the price for all this.

01:49:56   Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:49:57   Squarespace, Linode, and Collide.

01:50:00   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:50:02   You can join at atb.fm/join.

01:50:06   And we will talk to you next week.

01:50:08   (upbeat music)

01:50:11   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:50:13   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:50:16   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:50:17   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:50:18   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:50:20   John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

01:50:26   'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental

01:50:31   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:50:36   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:50:41   @CASEYLISS

01:50:46   So that's Kasey Liszt

01:50:47   M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:50:50   Auntie Marco Arment

01:50:53   S-I-R-A-C

01:50:55   USA, Syracuse

01:50:58   It's accidental

01:51:01   They didn't mean to

01:51:03   Accidental

01:51:06   Tech podcast

01:51:08   ♪ It's been so long ♪

01:51:11   - So I went on a self-created useless adventure

01:51:14   over the last week and a half to two weeks

01:51:15   and I thought I'd tell the tale.

01:51:17   I have on my Synology.

01:51:21   - Oh, oh.

01:51:21   - I never had to do this with file system.

01:51:25   I would just rely on him, he'd be there, he would catch it.

01:51:27   But poor Casey, every time he says Synology,

01:51:29   who knows, like Marco has to go into another room

01:51:32   and get his Viber slap and come back to the seat.

01:51:35   He's not, and you did this to yourself, Marco.

01:51:37   I know it made you decide that Vibra Slap

01:51:39   was gonna be selling.

01:51:40   You decided to do that, but you're not on the ball.

01:51:42   - The bell is one hand in operation.

01:51:46   It's right next to my mute switch, so I can quickly--

01:51:48   - No one made you do this.

01:51:50   You chose this.

01:51:51   - The bell, I can hit the bell with one hand so fast

01:51:54   'cause it's right here.

01:51:55   - It could've been the Synology Bongo.

01:51:57   So many other things that could've been easier

01:52:00   to have close at hand.

01:52:01   - So the Vibra Slap, it's like across the desk.

01:52:03   So I gotta like lean over, reach out, reach over, and get it.

01:52:05   you have to pick it up and then hit it with the other hand.

01:52:08   It's a two-handed operation.

01:52:10   - I understand, but you, again, this was a choice you made.

01:52:13   I feel like you didn't think it through.

01:52:14   - I gotta get one of those desktop gongs.

01:52:17   - It could've just been the Synology clap.

01:52:19   Your hands are right there, you know?

01:52:21   - It's still a two-handed operation.

01:52:23   - That is true.

01:52:24   - You could've just smacked yourself in the face.

01:52:26   The Synology slap.

01:52:27   - Face pop, the Synology face pop.

01:52:30   Congratulations, you played yourself.

01:52:32   Anyway, so I had a series of containers,

01:52:36   Docker containers running on the Synology,

01:52:38   and I'm not going to talk about what specifically there are,

01:52:40   but there are four of them.

01:52:41   Well, there's actually more than just the four of them,

01:52:44   but four of them in particular were important to me.

01:52:45   - Wait, how many of them are involved

01:52:48   in your garage door automation situation?

01:52:51   - One of them. (laughing)

01:52:53   Because one of them is Homebridge,

01:52:57   which does the interaction between HomeKit

01:53:00   and the garage door apparatus.

01:53:03   But anyway, so I have these four containers

01:53:06   that are working in unison in order to do something.

01:53:09   And we're not gonna talk about what that something is,

01:53:11   don't worry about it.

01:53:12   But those of you who know, you know.

01:53:14   So anyway, I realized that my 10-year-old Synology,

01:53:18   which I love, I still love this thing, it's an 1813+.

01:53:21   This was given to us for free 10 years ago,

01:53:23   or just shy of 10 years ago at this point.

01:53:25   And it's getting old.

01:53:28   Like, I love it.

01:53:29   I plan to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of it,

01:53:32   probably in the next couple of months.

01:53:35   But this one was free, and I adore it, as we well know.

01:53:39   And with that said, it's getting old

01:53:42   and it's getting a little slow.

01:53:44   And I think running all of these containers

01:53:46   on the Synology was not helping things.

01:53:49   And sometimes they would seem to fail

01:53:51   to respond to network requests,

01:53:53   and I don't think it was because, like,

01:53:54   the containers were falling down or anything like that.

01:53:56   It's just that the Synology was overwhelmed.

01:53:59   And I decide, all right, I really feel like I need to move

01:54:02   these containers off of the Synology

01:54:04   and put them somewhere else.

01:54:05   And so my initial thought was, okay, perfect.

01:54:10   I'm gonna move them to the Mac Mini.

01:54:12   The Mac Mini currently hosts my media empire,

01:54:15   which is to say it hosts channels and Plex,

01:54:18   and it does very little else, to be honest.

01:54:20   And yes, it is overkill to have an M1 Mac Mini

01:54:23   to do basically two things,

01:54:25   But this is my system.

01:54:26   There are many like it, but this one is mine.

01:54:28   That's a reference, John.

01:54:30   So anyway, so I decide, all right, I'm going to install

01:54:32   Docker Desktop, the free community or whatever edition

01:54:34   on my Mac Mini.

01:54:36   And I'm going to move all of these containers, these four

01:54:38   particular containers, over to the Mac Mini.

01:54:41   And by moving them, I mean I'm just going to basically use

01:54:45   the export features on the software that these containers

01:54:48   are running to export all my settings and whatnot.

01:54:51   And then I will make new instances of these containers.

01:54:54   I will do that on the Mac mini,

01:54:56   then I will import the settings and data and whatnot

01:54:59   that I had generated off the Synology version

01:55:01   of the containers, and I'll import them onto the Mac mini,

01:55:03   and then I should be right as rain.

01:55:06   And so I did all of this, and my exposure to Docker

01:55:10   and my use of Docker is very, very limited.

01:55:11   I'm pretty ignorant about most things Docker related.

01:55:14   And with the Synology,

01:55:15   they have their own Docker like front end,

01:55:17   which is now I know is kind of sort of similar

01:55:21   to a crummy version of Portainer,

01:55:23   but it gets the job done even though it's not stupendous.

01:55:27   And I've occasionally dabbled with using Docker

01:55:31   on the command line, but I've done it very, very rarely

01:55:33   and I'm very bad at it.

01:55:34   I am aware of Docker Compose as a thing, fast forwarding,

01:55:38   I actually now am using it, but at this point,

01:55:40   I'm aware of Docker Compose as a thing.

01:55:42   Marco, since you probably have no idea

01:55:43   what I'm talking about, it's basically, you use YAML,

01:55:46   which I don't particularly care for, but whatever,

01:55:49   you use YAML to specify, okay, I want these containers

01:55:53   and here's how each of these containers gonna be set up.

01:55:55   It's kind of like writing an INI file,

01:55:58   but in a more modern format.

01:56:00   - I hate YAML for the record.

01:56:01   It's--

01:56:02   - Yeah, I don't like it.

01:56:03   I don't think it's very good.

01:56:04   - As picky as things are that are made for programmers,

01:56:09   but with none of the mechanics that programmers would expect.

01:56:13   - Yeah, well put.

01:56:14   I don't love it, but that's not the point.

01:56:16   That's neither here nor there.

01:56:17   So at this point, I'm not using Docker Compose.

01:56:20   I am just running things either via the Synology UI

01:56:24   or now I'm getting to the point

01:56:25   that I'm doing it via the command line.

01:56:27   I get everything set up on the Mac mini,

01:56:29   things are going great.

01:56:31   I am loving life.

01:56:32   The Synology seems like it's working better,

01:56:34   maybe it's a placebo, who knows,

01:56:36   but the Synology seems a little bit faster,

01:56:38   a little bit more peppy.

01:56:39   The Mac mini is looking at these four containers

01:56:42   and laughing like, oh, psh, that's nothing, I got this.

01:56:45   And things are going well for like a few hours.

01:56:49   And then all of a sudden, I go to look at one

01:56:52   of these containers.

01:56:53   And what these containers are doing is, again, don't worry

01:56:56   about it, but you interact with these containers via

01:57:00   websites hosted one per container.

01:57:03   And so I go to go to one of the containers via the web on

01:57:06   my MacBook Pro, and it just hangs.

01:57:09   There's no response.

01:57:11   It doesn't hang up on you, so to speak, and say, nope,

01:57:14   there's nothing here.

01:57:15   It just hangs.

01:57:16   It's just waiting for a response from the web server.

01:57:18   It doesn't get anything.

01:57:19   Huh, that's weird.

01:57:20   So I restart Docker on the Mac mini,

01:57:23   everything comes right back, I'm right as rain.

01:57:25   Then I go to do something with one of these containers

01:57:27   that involves a lot of network access,

01:57:29   and all of a sudden it hangs.

01:57:33   Okay, that's weird.

01:57:35   Restart the Docker, restart Docker desktop,

01:57:37   restart all these containers,

01:57:39   everything's right as rain again.

01:57:40   I go through this cycle more times than I care to admit,

01:57:43   and I come to realize just something ain't right here.

01:57:46   And after doing a whole bunch of digging,

01:57:48   it appears that running Docker desktop on a Mac,

01:57:53   it's something you're supposed to be able to do,

01:57:58   but is really unreliable.

01:58:01   And I guess they're on version like 4.16

01:58:05   or something like that.

01:58:06   And around version 4.12,

01:58:07   they introduced a different way of interacting

01:58:09   with the network stack on macOS.

01:58:12   And apparently everything got real bad at that point.

01:58:14   I tried to roll back all the way to 4.11

01:58:17   it didn't make anything better. I am commenting on a couple of GitHub issues with regards to this,

01:58:23   with regard to this, and I'm not really getting anywhere. So it occurs to me, okay, obviously I

01:58:29   can't do this on the Mac Mini. I'd rather not do this on the Synology, even though by and large

01:58:33   everything was working. It was just not as peppy as I wanted it to be. So if I can't do it on the

01:58:39   Mac Mini, I can't do it on the Synology, and I don't think I want to do something like go to

01:58:44   to Linode and host it there. What else do I have left? Can either of you guess?

01:58:49   Raspberry Pi? I can look in the show notes and know the answer.

01:58:53   The answer is the Raspberry Pi. I have a Raspberry Pi 4, I think with 2 gigs of RAM.

01:58:58   I bought it so long ago I don't remember. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 sitting here.

01:59:02   Why don't I try that? Great. So okay I decide to install Docker on the Raspberry

01:59:08   I load up one of my containers and the container says,

01:59:13   and I forget the exact error message,

01:59:15   but something on the lines of,

01:59:16   "Hey, this is the 32-bit version of me,

01:59:20   and this is like not supported anymore.

01:59:22   You really should be running the 64-bit version."

01:59:25   Huh, okay.

01:59:26   Well, do a little bit of digging and come to find out,

01:59:29   oh, I'm running the 32-bit version of Raspbian,

01:59:32   which is the Raspberry Pi OS, you know,

01:59:33   their flavor of Linux.

01:59:35   And there doesn't seem to be, understandably,

01:59:38   any real upgrade path to the 64-bit version,

01:59:40   or at least I couldn't find one at the time.

01:59:43   So now I've got to reload my entire Raspberry Pi.

01:59:47   So what started as, huh,

01:59:50   I wonder if I could make this technology faster,

01:59:52   has gone through the Mac Mini into the Raspberry Pi,

01:59:56   and now I am reloading my Raspberry Pi.

01:59:59   Now, Raspberry Pi already has a fairly integral part

02:00:04   in my networking life.

02:00:06   It hosts my, Marco, my pie hole,

02:00:09   and it also hosts my WireGuard VPN.

02:00:12   And so those are the two primary things it does.

02:00:15   It does a couple of other things that are less important.

02:00:17   But any time I leave the house, I tend to want to be,

02:00:21   if I'm on a WiFi connection,

02:00:23   I don't bother when I'm on cellular,

02:00:24   but if any time I leave the house on WiFi,

02:00:26   I really, really, really, really feel safer and better

02:00:29   if I am connected to my own VPN here at the house.

02:00:33   And I really, really, really don't like

02:00:36   state of web advertising these days, so I prefer to have my piehole in the house.

02:00:40   And when I'm on the VPN I get it for free anyway. So at this point I realize,

02:00:46   okay, I'm gonna take this thing that, second to the Synology, I would even

02:00:51   potentially say it's more critical than the Mac Mini, because I feel like my

02:00:55   entire computing life is wrong and upside down without the Raspberry Pi,

02:00:59   where it's just my media empire that's wrong and upside down without the Mac

02:01:02   Mini. So I decided, all right, we're gonna give it a shot. So luckily I had a spare SD

02:01:07   card, because remember the Raspberry Pi's hard drive is an SD card. I have a spare SD card,

02:01:11   so I'm gonna try and, you know, I'm gonna leave the existing one alone. I'm not gonna, like,

02:01:15   format the one that I've already got. I'm just gonna put it aside. And I'm gonna start a new on

02:01:21   this new SD card. And so I reinstall everything. I reinstall a 64-bit version of Raspbian, which,

02:01:30   by the way, is like only a few months old, I think, or maybe a couple of years old. This

02:01:33   is a relatively recent development. I install that. I install PyVPN for WireGuard. I install

02:01:40   PyHole. I install all my things. I install Docker. At this point, I think to myself,

02:01:46   okay, I should probably figure out what the hell Docker Compose is. And I teach myself

02:01:50   how to use Docker Compose. About five minutes later, I decided I really hate YAML. So there's

02:01:55   that. But nevertheless, I now have everything running on the Raspberry Pi. I have my four

02:02:01   containers on the Raspberry Pi. Then later I came back and decided, you know what, I

02:02:05   got to figure out what this portainer thing is all about. I've had, I never really understood

02:02:08   what that's about. I should give this a shot. A short, short version. It's basically like

02:02:12   a front end to managing all your Docker containers. I got that installed. And so now I have my

02:02:20   four, don't worry about it, look over there, containers that I really, that were really

02:02:25   critical and portainer all running on the Raspberry Pi. And I thought this would now

02:02:29   move the sluggishness from the Synology into the Raspberry Pi. But as far as I can tell,

02:02:35   knock on wood, the Raspberry Pi also is laughing at the load from these four containers. So

02:02:40   baby, I'm back and better than ever. And I am very happy with this. But I bring all this

02:02:46   up just because it's so funny when you're a super nerd, how one small thing, it's like

02:02:50   that Malcolm in the Middle clip. Do you remember that? Where he like comes home and decides

02:02:54   he wants to change oil in his car, and next thing you know he's like rebuilding his bathroom

02:02:57   or something like that. I'm sure I have that wrong, but you get the idea.

02:03:01   So I started with, man, wouldn't it be nice if I could move this stuff off of the Synology

02:03:07   to somehow reloading my Raspberry Pi from scratch, which ended up being not that big

02:03:12   a deal, but when I started that portion of the project I was like, "I don't know if this

02:03:17   is gonna go, this might not be a good idea at all." The only problem that I have lingering

02:03:21   at this point other than everything I've just said, is that I really want to get myself

02:03:26   a new Pi, a new Raspberry Pi 4, because they have an 8 gig of RAM version now. But I don't

02:03:33   know if you two have happened to glance at all.

02:03:36   Yeah, are they are they acquireable yet?

02:03:38   No. Oh, no. Not unless you want to spend way more money than you should. They actually,

02:03:44   Raspberry Pi, just the foundation or whatever, just had a post in the last week or two talking

02:03:48   about supply chain and how supposedly it's going to get way way way better starting really

02:03:53   soon after the new year.

02:03:56   But nevertheless, I really would love an 8GB Pi 4 and I can't get my hands on one at the

02:04:03   moment.

02:04:04   But with that said, my 2GB one, or it might be 4 actually, it might be 4 I don't recall,

02:04:10   but whatever it is, it's actually working really well and I am really really impressed

02:04:16   that this little teeny tiny computer that I think was like 40 or 50 bucks a couple of

02:04:19   years ago is so happy with these containers.

02:04:22   Now, granted, these containers happen to be fairly straightforward.

02:04:25   There's not a lot to them, but it's working really well and I'm really happy with it.

02:04:30   And then yesterday, maybe the day before, I went back and thought, you know what, I

02:04:33   bet I could connect Portainer to the Docker instance running on the Synology because there

02:04:39   were, like I said, like Homebridge is still there.

02:04:41   There's a couple other small ones that are unrelated to these four important ones that

02:04:45   are still there. And so I thought, man, I should be able to get Portainer connected

02:04:50   to this analogy. And it took a little bit of time because I made a bunch of dumb mistakes

02:04:53   because I'm ignorant. But I learned and I got it working and man, I am happy. Everything

02:04:59   has clicked into place and I'm very happy about it. In a perfect world, I would have

02:05:03   preferred to have all this on the Mac Mini because they had so much spare power that

02:05:07   it's not using. But I am really happy with where this is and I'm glad that I spent all

02:05:14   this time doing all this. I wish I didn't have to, but I'm glad I did. And I've learned

02:05:18   from my mistakes. The key thing is, when it was all done, I wrote notes for myself. So

02:05:24   when I eventually have to, for some reason or another, go back and do all this again,

02:05:29   I'll have notes on what the hell I did. So I don't have to go spelunking in the Raspberry

02:05:32   Pi file system realizing, "Oh crap, I forgot this way off in the ether. Oh crap, I forgot

02:05:37   I made some changes to etc or etc or however you pronounce it, John. etc such and such

02:05:43   and such and such, I need to go grab that file

02:05:44   from the old hard drive.

02:05:45   So I hopefully have pretty copious notes at this point.

02:05:48   But when you get Docker working,

02:05:50   and when Docker is on a host that it actually wants

02:05:54   to be on, Docker is pretty, pretty cool.

02:05:57   It is really impressive how quick you can go

02:06:00   from nothing on a device to having this entire,

02:06:04   like stack or swarm, I don't even know

02:06:06   the right terminology, but this entire group

02:06:08   of four containers up and running lickety-split.

02:06:11   It is very good stuff.

02:06:12   - I was just wondering the description,

02:06:14   the joke description of what Docker is.

02:06:16   It was like a solution to the problem

02:06:17   of a developer making software and saying,

02:06:19   oh, it works on my computer,

02:06:20   I don't know what the problem is.

02:06:21   (laughing)

02:06:22   The solution was, okay, we're gonna ship your computer.

02:06:25   - Yeah, exactly.

02:06:27   What if every computer was your computer?

02:06:28   - Yeah, a little heavy weight.

02:06:30   To that end though, is your Mac mini Intel?

02:06:32   - No, it's a M1 Mac mini.

02:06:34   - I was gonna say, if your Mac mini was Intel,

02:06:35   you just could've run a Linux VM

02:06:37   and then run Docker inside the Linux VM

02:06:38   'cause you do have the power to spare?

02:06:40   - Yes, and it's funny because a lot of people

02:06:42   recommended doing exactly that,

02:06:44   like both when I asked about this.

02:06:45   - Can you still do that on ARM-based Macs with Rosetta?

02:06:49   - I think you can, and it probably would be fast enough

02:06:53   for the purposes I needed, but I don't have a license

02:06:56   like VMware Fusion anymore, I've never used Parallels,

02:06:58   and I bet I could probably work this up with the--

02:07:00   - I mean, VirtualBox is another free one.

02:07:02   - Yeah, but I never liked VirtualBox,

02:07:04   I just felt it was kinda gross.

02:07:05   - Anyway, because you do have the power to spare,

02:07:07   if you just run Linux on your Mac in a container

02:07:10   in some kind of virtualized container, you could do it.

02:07:12   - But then I'm putting a hat on a hat to use a Merlinism,

02:07:15   and it's just, you know, there's a container in a container,

02:07:17   and it just seemed like, and in a container--

02:07:19   - I mean, it would still be fine,

02:07:20   like what you're doing is working on a Raspberry Pi.

02:07:22   - Yeah, exactly, you're right, you're right.

02:07:24   But anyway, I just thought it was interesting,

02:07:26   and even if none of that was interesting to you,

02:07:29   I will say, as someone who doesn't really

02:07:30   do web development anymore,

02:07:33   just the whole idea of Docker and having

02:07:36   entire environments installable as an app,

02:07:39   I'm dramatically oversimplifying,

02:07:41   but that's kind of sort of what Docker does.

02:07:43   That is really, really slick.

02:07:45   And once you wrap your mind around it,

02:07:47   it is really, really cool.

02:07:49   And if you've never dabbled with it,

02:07:51   and I'm not at the point that I'm like creating

02:07:53   my own Docker containers or anything like that,

02:07:56   but it is good stuff.

02:07:58   You were using this a bunch before you left your job.

02:08:00   Are you talking about?

02:08:01   - Yeah, I put my website, hypercritical.co.

02:08:03   I've got a Docker container with it.

02:08:04   Not that it really, I just did it because

02:08:06   I just got paranoid because I don't like running it

02:08:08   in a Docker container.

02:08:09   I don't really like the Docker desktop app,

02:08:11   but I'm like, you know what?

02:08:12   I should probably have a containerized version

02:08:15   of my website.

02:08:16   So now I do, but I don't really mess with it.

02:08:19   Yeah, I never be, you probably know more about it

02:08:23   than I do at this point because I've forgotten so much,

02:08:25   but I did use Docker Compose and plain old Docker

02:08:27   and looked into Docker Swarm and you know,

02:08:31   it is a fruitful area of investigation,

02:08:34   but I never got to the point where I felt like

02:08:36   I was comfortable with sort of running a production service

02:08:40   off of Docker.

02:08:40   So doing hobbyist things is about my level of comfort.

02:08:43   - Yeah, like I wouldn't advocate necessarily,

02:08:46   you know, running overcast through Docker,

02:08:48   although I presume there's no reason

02:08:50   why hypothetically one couldn't, but what is really-

02:08:52   - I probably should, honestly, not the database though.

02:08:55   - Well, but what's really neat about it is,

02:08:59   especially for development purposes,

02:09:00   and I'm not saying that this is a problem

02:09:02   that needs solving Marco,

02:09:03   but just for the sake of discussion,

02:09:05   you could have like a Docker compose YAML file.

02:09:07   And once you stop vomiting over YAML

02:09:09   and I'm right there with you,

02:09:10   you could have this one file and you can say to Docker,

02:09:13   okay, look at this file and stand up

02:09:15   all the stuff you need to stand up

02:09:17   in order to make an entire overcast system on this computer.

02:09:22   Which again, I don't know that that's a need

02:09:24   you really have, I would argue it's probably not,

02:09:26   but just the fact that it can be done,

02:09:27   I think is pretty darn slick.

02:09:29   (beeping)