0:00:00Casey, I just reloaded this page. I know we're not up to this yet. Tom, why do you give him bad ideas, Marco?
0:00:05All right, so we should probably explain what's going on. I mean, maybe, all right, so I'm gonna try to make myself feel okay about this, knowing how much crap you got last year, but I still think it's a little bit... a little bit weak sauce. We had an agreement.
0:00:28This is the payback for two consecutive years of making me donate under duress, because last year, I was recording analog, and you two numb nuts were like, "Oh, we have to donate now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now."
0:00:41I'm pretty sure that's an exaggeration of what happened. I do not recall typing the word "now" multiple times in a row.
0:00:47That was the effective message.
0:00:49Well, here's what happened. So we were talking about the St. Jude, you know, Real AFM raising money for St. Jude during Child Cancer Awareness Month, which is now September, and we're gonna talk about that in a second.
0:01:02But so we do donations as ATP hosts. We do three donations, and we try to do them roughly at the same time. So they show up three in a row on the page. And we try to match amounts, and we decided ahead of what the amount is going to be. And there it is.
0:01:16So last year, Casey apparently was recording analog at the time we decided to do this. And under duress, while meeting to allegedly type, Casey and Aaron Liss typed Casey asterisk Aaron Liss, which was followed by not only us giving him crap, but all of you gloriously giving him crap in your own donation names and notes that followed.
0:01:42So we ended up, you know, obviously, it's amazing to raise a bunch of money for a really good cause. But to do it while being able to troll Casey is extra amazing.
0:01:50So we had decided, you know, a couple weeks ago, all right, we're gonna we're gonna make our donations before the show on a certain date. And that date was a week from now. Next week's show is when we decided we were going to do it. And we had it in the calendar and everything like that's when we're gonna make our donations right before the show. And then we'll then we'll talk about the you know, give it a big push or in the show and everything.
0:02:11Well, 15 minutes ago, as we record, 15 minutes ago, john, you know, writes in the chat like, oh, it's weird how the page laid out like some complaint about the page layout, showing his donation at the top of the screen a week early.
0:02:26I was the top donor. And I was like, you know, I mean, what about worse is as the show approached, I would have been like, guys, are you gonna do the donation? Anyway, I got it wrong. I was right in the calendar. I think I'm the one who put it in the calendar. But the reminder on my the reminder on my phone came up and it said up time to donate. And I just went and did it blindly because I do whatever my phone tells me to do.
0:02:49Apparently, whenever I however I see read that reminder into reminders, I got the right the date wrong. So I just did what my phone told me I did it a week early. I'm sorry. But anyway, I did it. I posted the funny thing about the UI, which made it look like I donated twice. But I didn't donate twice. It was just once. And then Marco saw what I had posted, and he immediately donated. And so now it's two against one. And now it's now Casey.
0:03:11Which in and of itself was fine. But like I was in the middle of like getting kids ready for bed and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden my phone is blowing up about how we're donating right now. And I'm like, what the hell we said next week. But okay, whatever. That's fine. And so as I'm running over to my computer, which I think obviously this is not a big deal. But in the heat of the moment, I was like, and so now I'm doing it under duress again. And we all saw how well that went last year. So I run over to my computer. And as I'm sitting down to do the donation,
0:03:41somebody in the chat says, as punishment, you should donate $7,000 and one cent just to kick John off the top since it appears to not count a tie. If I did that, I'd be a jerk. But if Casey does it, it's funny. So I kind of did that and did $7,001.
0:03:57I still think it's kind of jerky when you do it.
0:03:59Well, come on. It was funny.
0:04:01So the most amazing part of this. So obviously, Casey's now on top kicking John off, which I think is appropriate for what John did. But I wasn't doing something malicious. On the other hand, Casey's was not an honest, malicious act. But also, between because there was this delay as Casey was, you know, I guess putting your kids to bed is important. So because there was this small delay between our donations, someone else got in right between mine and Casey's called not star
0:04:31Casey star list for $1. Well done person, whoever you are.
0:04:37We are we are a mess. All three of us are a mess.
0:04:40All right. Well, so let's let's have some unity here. How much has ATP the show donated to St. Jude this year?
0:04:46So 21,001.
0:04:53So as as I forget what we donated last year, I want to say it was $20,000 in some between the three of us. And this year, we thought, well, that seems silly because we were donating what $6,333 and 33 cents apiece.
0:05:05Nope. So it was like 667 or something.
0:05:08Early on, I can't.
0:05:09It's like it's just like an ugly kind of numbers.
0:05:10I was like, I was like, let's run it up.
0:05:12So we each donated well, two thirds of us donated. We get out with a straight. Two thirds of us donated $7,000. And your favorite and best host donated $7,001.
0:05:25So yeah, so as much as we're poke fun at each other, I really do need to lock it up and get serious for a second.
0:05:32September, as Marco had mentioned, is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And for the third consecutive year, Real AFM, of which we are all apart, even if this show isn't strictly speaking a part of it, you know, it is there in spirit, if not by URL.
0:05:45So we are all trying to raise money for third consecutive year for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
0:05:51So what is St. Jude? It's this it's this hospital that's in Memphis, which is where Stephen Hackett lives. And it is of the belief that, you know, hey, if kids can still get die from cancer, then we need to still try to figure out ways to prevent that from ever happening ever.
0:06:05And so what's even greater about St. Jude is that St. Jude families pay nothing for health care there.
0:06:13And that goes beyond just health care.
0:06:14I believe I believe that like some some travel costs can be covered on occasion, food can be covered in many occasions. They really take care of their families.
0:06:23And if you live in a country that makes sense, as in not America, this probably sounds like, yeah, okay, whatever.
0:06:28But I assure you for America, for Americans, this is a big deal.
0:06:33And so Stephen's family has probably received millions of dollars of health care, and they have paid literally nothing for it.
0:06:41That being said, it's because of donors like the three of us and like all of you, that these families never receive a bill for treatment for travel for food, etc.
0:06:51Because as St. Jude says, all the family should have to worry about is helping their child stay alive.
0:06:56So for a little bit of context, the average cost to treat just one kid with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the most common form of childhood cancer is $203,000.
0:07:07So it's expensive.
0:07:10So with that said, to make this possible, about 80% of the funds necessary to sustain and grow St. Jude must be raised each year from donors like you, listener to my voice.
0:07:19So if you have $1 to your name that you can send to kids that are fighting cancer and their families, please, please, if you can, stjude.org/ATP, I'll spell it out for you.
0:07:32S-T-J-U-D-E.org/ATP. I cannot think of a better organization to give money to.
0:07:40Obviously, the three of us have given what I'd like to believe is a fair bit of money over the years now.
0:07:45Please, listeners, stjude.org/ATP.
0:07:49And I will repeat my offer of last year.
0:07:52I will personally send you, no matter where you live in the world, I will personally use the United States Postal Service.
0:07:59So I hope you live in the States, but we'll see.
0:08:01What are you gonna be, like getting a helicopter?
0:08:03Like what?
0:08:03I will personally send you a handful of ATP, not for sale, ATP stickers.
0:08:09Somebody go to Antarctica and invite Casey.
0:08:11I will send you a small batch of small batch ATP stickers wherever you may be in the world.
0:08:20If you can top the current leading contender, let me check my notes here.
0:08:25The current leading donor, the List family.
0:08:27Oh, they seem very kind for having donated $7,001.
0:08:31So if you can beat that by even one cent, send me a screenshot, send me your address, let me know, and I will put some ATP stickers in the mail.
0:08:40Additionally, I don't remember if we mentioned this last week, but if you donate $100 or more, you get a bespoke sticker pack from the relay folks that have all sorts of fun stickers in it.
0:08:48Those are much less expensive stickers than ours.
0:08:50That is true.
0:08:51Only one winner is going to, like the Hunger Games, only one winner is getting our stickers.
0:08:56And that is the top donor, I guess the top donor who tells us about it.
0:09:00If someone donates a huge amount, but they're not an ATP listener, they don't count.
0:09:03So don't worry about them.
0:09:04You're just competing with the people who contact us and say, hey, I donated this amount.
0:09:09It's more than the current top amount.
0:09:10And here's the question.
0:09:11Do they have to donate more than, they don't have to donate more than those other people who don't know about ATP, right?
0:09:16They just have to be, right now, they just have to be Casey and then they have to compete with the other ATP listeners.
0:09:21But if someone donates a million dollars, but they're not an ATP listener, that doesn't count, right?
0:09:25That's correct.
0:09:26But I will say, unless the other two veto this, if you are at any moment the highest donor, even if you don't end the month at the highest donor,
0:09:34if you are at any point, if you are the highest donor, send me your address and screenshot just in case, you know, the donor list changes.
0:09:40And I will send you stickers.
0:09:42Even if you don't persist as the highest donor, if somebody donates $7,002 right now and you want to send me your name and information, I will send you stickers.
0:09:49And then if 10 minutes later, somebody donates $7,003, I'll send them stickers too.
0:09:55Just let me know.
0:09:55Very generous of you, but I feel like the game theory would say like, you want people to go as high as possible knowing it's their only shot, but that's fine too.
0:10:02Cause they're just stickers after all.
0:10:03So please go for it.
0:10:04And by the way, you keep saying, contact you Casey.
0:10:07How do people contact you?
0:10:08Well, the best way would probably be Twitter because I hate email, but if you need to email me, you can find my email address on my website.
0:10:16And that's part of the game is finding my email.
0:10:17Second challenge.
0:10:19You have to find Casey on Twitter, which may be very difficult.
0:10:23I know you might not know what Casey's Twitter handle is or how to spell it, but if you can find his website also very difficult, then maybe you can get some contact information there.
0:10:33And we know that like, you know, obviously not everyone is going to be able to donate this, this kind of large sum.
0:10:38We also know that, you know, any, every dollar helps, you know, so even if you can just donate a dollar, great, donate a dollar.
0:10:45You can, you know, we know also our rough audience demographics and we also know that you can probably do more than that.
0:10:51And, you know, one thing to keep in mind, I say this every year that in roughly probably two weeks or so, there's going to be an Apple event and they're going to unveil a new like $1,300 phone that we're all going to preorder.
0:11:02And when you're ordering a $1,300 phone that you might not necessarily need and you're thinking about, oh, do I, should I tack on like an extra 70 bucks for the newest case?
0:11:11Because it's slightly different that now I need a new $70 case or a new $150 AppleCare plan or any other, you know, look at how much you're going to pay in that case.
0:11:21If you're paying sales tax, it's going to be 100 bucks.
0:11:23Think about like donate that kind of amount or more because if you're willing to just kind of casually, you know, spend that for this frivolous hobby that we all have of buying gadgets that we, you know, quote need in finger quotes, but like really do we really need to buy the new one?
0:11:38Probably not.
0:11:40So if you're, if you're able to do stuff like that, I encourage you to also be generous towards this because this is a really good cause.
0:11:47And yeah, give them like, you know, a few hundred bucks if you can or, you know, whatever you can do, you know, give it a shot.
0:11:51Just skip your morning coffee one day.
0:11:54Send five bucks to stjude.org/atp.
0:11:57So thank you for anyone who has donated truly.
0:12:00Where do we stand right now?
0:12:02We are at $105,000 or thereabouts, which is excellent.
0:12:07And we are not that far away. What is it? $196,000 for the year or for this month would be a total of a million dollars across all three years that Relay has been doing this.
0:12:17So I think we can get there again.
0:12:19We're at $105,000 right now.
0:12:21Let's do it.
0:12:22Stjude.org/atp.
0:12:24All right, let's do some follow up.
0:12:26There's apparently we ruined Wirecutter.
0:12:30Do we have the same curse that like Connected did with photo sharing services or photo management services?
0:12:36Because we bring up Wirecutter and next thing you know, it's moved behind a paywall.
0:12:38I don't think that's ruining it.
0:12:40Like, I mean, it's we talked about finding product recommendations and mentioned Wirecutter.
0:12:44It's because it's a thing that people find valuable, unlike IMDB, which does not deserve to be in any results for movie stuff because their website is terrible.
0:12:52The Wirecutter does more or less what it says.
0:12:54You can disagree with their picks or whatever, but they're fairly straightforward.
0:12:56They explain their reasoning and, you know, they have affiliate links to products, which is how they make money.
0:13:01Now they're behind a paywall. I don't begrudge them that.
0:13:03They're the type of site that I would be willing to pay for because they provide a valuable service.
0:13:06And the plans are you can do it for five dollars, five dollars every four weeks, which is different than monthly.
0:13:11But anyway, if you're looking for a product, you can just say, I'll just pay the five bucks and then cancel.
0:13:16Now, that said, The New York Times is somewhat notorious in our circles as being one of the few, quote unquote, good companies that makes it next to impossible for you to unsubscribe.
0:13:25You have to like call someone on the phone or do like a text chat with them or something and they try to convince you to stay, which is crappy.
0:13:30But the other alternative is that Wirecutter is 40 bucks annually.
0:13:32And if you already have a New York Times premium digital subscription, you get it for free.
0:13:36So, you know, I think they can go behind a paywall because they have a service that people are willing to pay for.
0:13:41So kudos to them.
0:13:42What's the upgrade pick?
0:13:44Yeah, I mean, I feel like the $40 is the upgrade pick I get.
0:13:48I don't know. I would pay extra to be able to cancel more easily.
0:13:51One of us needs to go first. Whoever needs to buy an appliance first, sign up for it and see how hard it is to cancel.
0:13:58Yeah. And I think really the upgrade pick is having Marco Arment in your life who has also bought the particular item in question, say like a flashlight or something.
0:14:07And then you can just say, hey, Marco, what should I buy?
0:14:09And then the bad news is you'll be spending an asinine amount of money.
0:14:13But the good news is you're gonna get something really nice.
0:14:15So you just need a Marco in your life.
0:14:17And then tell me, speaking of Wirecutter experience, the best blender is not a wasteland?
0:14:22For some people.
0:14:23So best blender is a wasteland was titled last episode.
0:14:26It was about trying to Google do a Google search for best blender and just finding all these terrible SEO type results and not trying what you want and saying if you type best Blender Wirecutter, then you'll get the Wirecutter's recent review of Blenders and it will be more informative and useful than just typing best Blender.
0:14:40Someone sent me a screenshot and they type best Blender into Google.
0:14:43And the number one hit was the Wirecutter's Blender review.
0:14:45So like, how? Look at that. Wirecutter's, you know, it's so popular.
0:14:48It's got so many such good SEO and such good content that so many people link to it.
0:14:52They're the number one hit for best Blender.
0:14:54So I was going to follow up with that information.
0:14:56But then I figured, you know what, as usual, confirm what listeners send in.
0:15:00I type best Blender into Google.
0:15:02I'll give Marco the screenshot of this perhaps for the show art.
0:15:05Everything above the fold, meaning within the viewport of my reasonably sized window, is an ad.
0:15:14When I do best Blender, I've got a row of ads with pictures on top.
0:15:19Then I've got Consumer Reports ad and recommendations and sublinks and a bunch of other pictures.
0:15:25So literally every single thing I can see in my browser window after having best Blender into Google.com is an ad.
0:15:30If I scroll, Wirecutter is right underneath that.
0:15:33And then another box that tries to where Google tries to answer the question and then good housekeeping and Forbes and Homes and Gardens and CNET and Consumer Reports again.
0:15:44And then a map with a bunch of stores on it and then NY Mag.
0:15:47Anyway, so I'm going to call this a medium.
0:15:51Best Blender is not really a wasteland.
0:15:54Maybe Google is a little bit of a wasteland though, because nothing that's not an ad above the fold is pretty crappy.
0:16:00I mean, I would not argue with Google being a wasteland at this point.
0:16:05Like Google web search is a disaster most of the time.
0:16:09Although to be fair, as a most of the time DuckDuckGo user who jumps over to Google when I can't find what I'm looking for there.
0:16:17It seems like all web search is a disaster these days.
0:16:20So Google might be like, you know, the least crappy of the options that are out there, but they're all I think just the web is a wasteland right now.
0:16:29That's the real the real problem is.
0:16:31Yeah, the web is a wasteland.
0:16:32Oh, man, that's tough.
0:16:34Yeah, DuckDuckGo has been doing what they need to to survive.
0:16:37But I'm seeing more and more stuff that I don't want to see and fewer and fewer things that I do want to see, which is very frustrating.
0:16:44I do still love DuckDuckGo, but golly, there's more and more and more ads every every year.
0:16:50And it's it's frustrating.
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0:18:57Cryptographic hashes versus Apple's CSAM neural hash.
0:19:05We got a little bit of feedback about this, about how some of the things we said weren't 100% accurate.
0:19:10John, you want to correct the record here?
0:19:12Everything we said was accurate. It was just overly general, right?
0:19:15So there's different kinds of hashes, right?
0:19:17And we just described the general case of hashes, which is a thing that takes a bunch of different inputs and maps them to a much smaller, finite number of outputs.
0:19:24Right. So the whole world of possible files of any size and make a function that's going to map each one of the contents of those files
0:19:35to one of a finite number of hashes.
0:19:38Obviously, there will be collisions because it's a one to many relationship.
0:19:41Right. That's what we were talking about in broad strokes.
0:19:43Right. In a more detailed view, there are different kinds of hashes for different purposes.
0:19:48One particular kind of hash that a lot of people brought up as an objection, but that we didn't talk about specifically is called a cryptographic hash.
0:19:54In certain cases, when you're trying to do encryption, you want a hash that has certain properties because there are lots of different ways that you can map from an infinite number of inputs to a finite number of outputs.
0:20:05Like the hashing algorithm decides how you do that mapping.
0:20:07There's lots of different choices you can make.
0:20:09So we'll link to the Wikipedia page for cryptographic hash function.
0:20:12But I pulled out two points that are salient to what makes them a cryptographic hash.
0:20:16One is that it's infeasible to generate a message that yields a given hash value, in other words, to reverse the process.
0:20:22Right. So if we tell you the hash value is this number and I say, you go get me something that hashes this value, it's really hard to do.
0:20:29Right. And two, it's infeasible to find two different messages with the same hash value.
0:20:33Right. So if I find one message hashed to this, find me another message that hashed to the same thing.
0:20:38And we know there are collisions because it's a hash function, but it's hard to find them.
0:20:43It's infeasible to find.
0:20:44Right. That's what we want out of a cryptographic hash function.
0:20:47Right. Now, compare this to Apple's CSAM neural hash.
0:20:50Like the purpose of this hashing algorithm is to take two different images and get the same hash.
0:20:57Like the purpose is to collide.
0:20:59What I mean by that is, remember, they're not just doing a one to one comparison against their database of pictures.
0:21:04They want to detect this picture, even if it's been modified in some minor way.
0:21:08Scaled, rotated, blurred, new text added to it, turned black and white.
0:21:13Right. So for this thing to operate correctly, multiple images that are different from each other are supposed to map to the same hash.
0:21:23That's how they tell if this is, quote unquote, the same picture.
0:21:25That's what makes this a neural hash.
0:21:27Again, it doesn't make it not a hash function.
0:21:29It is mapping from multiple values to a finite number of values.
0:21:31But the way this hash function works is we want it to tell us that these three images, even though they are technically different byte for byte, they are the same picture, just modified slightly.
0:21:42And we want them to hash to the same thing.
0:21:44So and that's what makes this very difficult to do and tricky.
0:21:48And it's not the cryptographic hash functions are easier.
0:21:50But like the demands of this neural hash are for it to be to have some kind of intelligent matching and collisions are what we want when it functions correctly.
0:21:58What we don't want are collisions that aren't the same picture.
0:22:00Like that is a different picture entirely.
0:22:02I don't want that to hash to the same thing as these three pictures.
0:22:05But these three pictures are all variants of the same picture.
0:22:08And so they should hash with Apple's neural hash to the same value.
0:22:12And then keeping in the same theme, Jonathan Trott wrote, if governments can mandate Apple make code changes to CSAM detection, then they can
0:22:20mandate making code changes to photo object recognition, machine learning and always on OCR.
0:22:26So in other words, I think what Jonathan's point here is that, you know, they could say, oh, if you detect, you know, certain phrases in what's being shown in the camera or if you if you detect certain things that they don't want you to see, then you could potentially be instructed to alert the authorities about it.
0:22:43So Jonathan continues, slippery slope arguments seem to skip over those.
0:22:47Yeah, the ML one is the most salient because people like I don't want my phone scanning all my pictures.
0:22:53Well, it's been doing that since Apple added the ML feature.
0:22:55Is the reason you can search for dog in your photos and find pictures of dogs.
0:22:58It's scanning every single one of your pictures and categorizing them using machine learning model.
0:23:02The only difference, obviously, with the same thing is that it also sends some data back to Apple about it.
0:23:08Right. But but if if people's hang up is I don't want my device device scanning a bunch of my pictures or I don't want that capability to exist.
0:23:16Where my my my device is passively scanning all my photos all the time and categorizing them.
0:23:21Or if they're afraid like it's too open ended.
0:23:23Yeah, they say they're not going to add anything to that Nic Mac database.
0:23:26But what if they get something else in there?
0:23:28They already have a completely open ended, totally not audited or controlled ML service running over all your pictures that probably expands in every release to identify more and more things.
0:23:37The only difference is that just doesn't transfer anything back to Apple.
0:23:40So, yeah, like I alluded to in the first episode, we talked about this trusting Apple is a key component of of having an iPhone.
0:23:49If you don't trust Apple, don't get an iPhone because Apple makes the OS and the hardware.
0:23:52They can do whatever they want with all your stuff and they can inform you about it or not.
0:23:57But it's very difficult for the average user to be able to audit that information.
0:24:01Like you can't expect the average user to know everything that's going on inside their phone.
0:24:06In the end, what it comes down to is trust that what Apple is telling you is true.
0:24:10And if you don't have that trust, don't get an iPhone.
0:24:12But like that's the problem with anything you buy.
0:24:15You must trust the brand, the company, the thing that made this product for you.
0:24:20If you don't trust that, all bets are off.
0:24:22What was that paper on trusting trust or something like that?
0:24:27What is the name of it?
0:24:27Yep, that's a super old one.
0:24:29I think I read that many decades ago.
0:24:31What year did that come out?
0:24:32It was thoughts on trusting trust.
0:24:34I think it was Dennis Ritchie, one of the C compiler guys.
0:24:37It was basically like a technical paper saying, hey, if you can exploit the lowest levels of a system,
0:24:43like, for example, if you can mess with the compiler that's used to build the operating system or whatever,
0:24:48like you can't trust anything like it's basically, you know, the computers are a big stack of stuff, right?
0:24:52From high level to low level.
0:24:54And if you can insert yourself at a low level, everything above it is suspect, right?
0:24:57Because once you're once you're down there, you can do all sorts of nefarious things.
0:25:00It's really cool paper.
0:25:01If you're a computer nerd and want to look at it, we will find the link for the show.
0:25:04Reflections on trusting trust by Ken Thompson.
0:25:06Does that sound right?
0:25:07Yep.
0:25:07What was the year?
0:25:08Ken Thompson, not Dennis Ritchie.
0:25:09'84.
0:25:101984.
0:25:11I did not read it in 1984, but I did read it in like 1993.
0:25:14Well, I was two in 1984, just to make you feel really and truly old.
0:25:19All right, moving right along.
0:25:20Let's see.
0:25:21So in the continued effort for Apple to own gold themselves as often as they possibly can when it comes to PR,
0:25:29Apple just banned a pay equity Slack channel.
0:25:32This is covered in The Verge.
0:25:33We're not going to go too deep into this, but I've been instructed by a dear colleague that I need to read the following.
0:25:38So from The Verge, Apple has barred employees from creating a Slack channel to discuss pay equity.
0:25:44Apple HR said that while the topic was, quote, "Aligned with Apple's commitment to pay equity," quote,
0:25:49it did not meet the company's Slack terms of use.
0:25:52Seriously, this is what rang your hat on.
0:25:54Yeah, that's where I said last time, like, oh, you can probably come up with some reason to not allow it.
0:26:00But so Apple is saying it's aligned with our commitment to pay equity.
0:26:04See, we're all on the same team here, but don't do it.
0:26:09Continuing from The Verge, quote, "Slack channels are provided to conduct Apple business and must advocate the work deliverables or mission of Apple departments and teams," quote.
0:26:17The employee relations representative told employees the company's rules for the in-office chat app say that, quote,
0:26:22"Slack channels for activities and hobbies not recognized as Apple employee clubs or diversity network associations, or DNAs,
0:26:29aren't permitted and shouldn't be created," quote.
0:26:32This is continuing from The Verge, but that rule has not been evenly enforced.
0:26:35Currently, Apple employees—
0:26:36You don't say. How is that possible?
0:26:38Who'd have thunk it?
0:26:39Apple employees have popular Slack channels to discuss Fun Dogs, which has more than 5,000 members,
0:26:44gaming with more than 3,000 members, and Dad Jokes, which I want to be a part of, which has more than 2,000 members.
0:26:50On August 18th, the company approved a channel called Company Foosball.
0:26:54The cat and dog channels are not part of official clubs, and all of these channels were specifically created to talk about non-work activities.
0:27:00So, turns out that they also need to work on equity within Slack channels, too.
0:27:05What a mess.
0:27:06Yeah, I'm just like, what a flimsy excuse of like, "Oh, yeah, no, we're totally for pay equity,
0:27:11but here's some, like, weird letter of the law rule about, 'Oh, you just can't do it in Slack, sorry, it's because of our Slack terms of use.'"
0:27:17And just like App Store review, it's not like you can go, "But what about the Dad Jokes channel?"
0:27:22Don't look over there.
0:27:24Like, it's just like App Review.
0:27:26It's like, "This is the new part of Apple's DNA, arbitrarily, you know, enforced or not rules, and by the way, you're not allowed to ask us."
0:27:33It's not about what Little Jimmy is doing.
0:27:35This is about you right now.
0:27:36Can we focus on you?
0:27:37Your Slack channel, unfortunately, doesn't meet the terms of use.
0:27:40It has nothing to do with the fact that it's pay equity.
0:27:42We're committed to pay equity, but really don't make that channel.
0:27:46It's so bad.
0:27:47Seriously, I'm telling you, Apple is just nothing but PR own goals for the last month or two.
0:27:51It's ridiculous.
0:27:51And if you don't believe me, listen to the last episode.
0:27:54All right, moving right along.
0:27:55We had some really interesting feedback from an anonymous feedbacker.
0:27:58This was with regard to how things are stored within, like, Apple Music and Spotify and whatnot, and what is an album, what is a track, what is a recording, and so on.
0:28:07This is a little bit long as well, but I do think it's absolutely worth it.
0:28:10So this anonymous person writes, "For a while, I worked on music metadata at Spotify.
0:28:14The data model is generally like this.
0:28:17Recordings are an audio record of a specific performance.
0:28:20They may appear on many albums as tracks."
0:28:23So what are tracks?
0:28:24Tracks are like a slot on an album where recording goes.
0:28:29So, for example, track number three on the white album is the song "Glass Onion."
0:28:34"Every recording, track, and album is attributed to an artist, but there are a lot of corner cases.
0:28:39Under pressure is a recording by both Queen and David Bowie.
0:28:42Should you attribute it to both of them separately with an entry under each artist?
0:28:45Should you make a new artist called Queen and David Bowie?
0:28:48Or what about tracks that feature an artist?
0:28:50Is Snoop Dogg the same artist when he did a reggae thing under the name Snoop Lion?
0:28:54What about various artists' albums?"
0:28:56And then that brings us, of course, to albums.
0:28:58Albums are way more complicated than they seem initially.
0:29:01There are usually many slightly different versions of an album to be released in different
0:29:04markets, US, Canada, UK, etc., or with bonus tracks or with special art.
0:29:08The same album is often released digitally on CD and on vinyl.
0:29:12Attributes of the audio, like live or radio edit or remix, can also be supplied at the recording
0:29:16track or album level.
0:29:18So this is pretty bananas.
0:29:20And then this individual gave us a link to Music Brains, which is musicbrains.org, which
0:29:27has, according to them, a pretty good schema that represents most of this.
0:29:31So you can go and check that out if you want to dig deeper.
0:29:34So this tells me that Spotify, unlike Apple, did spend some time thinking about the data
0:29:40model for music and all the various choices they have to make and how things are connected
0:29:43and so on and so forth.
0:29:45So I'm, you know, glad to hear that.
0:29:46Although I have heard a lot of complaints about Spotify getting confused about artists
0:29:50that have the same name.
0:29:51Merlin complains about that a lot.
0:29:52Yep.
0:29:53No, it's very true.
0:29:54Yeah.
0:29:55Not to mention they have like, they have spam issues.
0:29:56Like it's, it's, it's beyond like, they're not just confused.
0:29:59Like they're being actively spammed.
0:30:01Yeah.
0:30:02Well, that's, yeah, that's part of anything where you allow people to submit content,
0:30:06even if it's not like the whole world, but just people who record music, it's, you
0:30:10know, it's a problem.
0:30:11But I'm glad there's some thought put into this stuff on Spotify's end.
0:30:15Hopefully they do better than Apple in terms of tracking these things, but I still feel
0:30:19like yes, the data model is very complicated, but there are more complicated data models
0:30:23and just like spend a week maybe whiteboarding it before you just go ahead and point your
0:30:27thing.
0:30:28But Apple didn't do that, you know, a couple of decades ago.
0:30:30And now we're stuck with what we have.
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0:32:20My kid is nine and is super, let's say, made of me in certain ways.
0:32:30You know, half his DNA came from me.
0:32:33So, you know, unsurprisingly, he's super into technology and computing devices and he's
0:32:40very interested in learning how to write code.
0:32:45I recognize nine is a little young, but not too young.
0:32:48He, to give you some idea of where he is, he has already seemingly very much mastered
0:32:54the language of Minecraft command blocks and a lot of the various things you can do with
0:32:59that.
0:33:00And so he's interested in learning how to code enough that he can start actually making
0:33:04his own games.
0:33:06So I was wondering if the audience had any feedback, and John possibly as well, because
0:33:10I know you went through some of this, at least if not all of it, but I'm curious, like, what's
0:33:16a good tool set and language and platform or whatever out there for kids to learn how
0:33:23to code?
0:33:25Some things to consider.
0:33:26So number one, I don't care what platform it's on.
0:33:28If he can do it on his iPad, that's better, but if it has to be on a Mac or PC laptop,
0:33:35that's fine too.
0:33:36We can make that work.
0:33:37I already have on his list of things to try that we're gonna give a shot, Swift Playgrounds
0:33:43and Hopscotch.
0:33:45And I think I'm also gonna have, he plays Roblox on his iPad.
0:33:49I don't know if you can create Roblox worlds on the iPad.
0:33:53I don't know literally anything about it.
0:33:54Yes, I've seen that video about how people get ripped off and I will show it to him when
0:33:58he's ready.
0:33:59But anyway, so maybe the answer is Roblox on a PC where he can like do the full blown
0:34:04creative experience.
0:34:05I assume that's what that is.
0:34:06But he wants to be able to make games and so I have concerns of like I don't wanna like
0:34:10just dump him right into Swift as a game platform because that's, I mean, I wouldn't even do
0:34:16that I think.
0:34:19'Cause he wants to make game worlds where like, okay, you're gonna do this, go to this place,
0:34:24you can get this thing, go to this place, go to this thing.
0:34:27These like multi-level game logic things that I feel like if I start them in a lower level
0:34:32language I'm afraid that he might like just kinda get intimidated by how much work that
0:34:37will be and how hard it is to get from zero to that and possibly give up too early or
0:34:41get frustrated.
0:34:43So I'm okay separating the concerns of like making games and learning programming.
0:34:49That might be two different activities.
0:34:51Like if he wants to make something in Roblox as a game and then in Swift Playgrounds or
0:34:56something like that learn the more low level coding stuff, that's fine too.
0:35:00This might be two different things, it might be one thing.
0:35:03He would get a lot of value in learning Swift because he knows I use Swift.
0:35:08And so that's like there's value there.
0:35:12Maybe he can teach me some stuff about it.
0:35:15And so anyway, so I'm curious like what people have done for that recently, like what's out
0:35:20there.
0:35:21If it's gonna feel too much like a toy language I think it would turn him off.
0:35:26And so like I don't know, I looked at Hopscotch, I downloaded it, it might be too like young
0:35:30for him, I'm not sure.
0:35:31I'm gonna find out and I'll report back as this series goes on.
0:35:36But anyway, so if anybody has any like really good stories about like what language or environment
0:35:41you were able to start a kid on who wants something that's not just a toy, like he wants
0:35:46to make real stuff obviously but within the realm of what a nine year old can make.
0:35:50And so let me know if you have any good experiences because I learned programming on QBasic and
0:35:58I thought briefly I'm like what if I just give him basic somehow, like whatever environment
0:36:03that would be if I can get an emulator or if somebody makes like a modern interpreter
0:36:06for it or whatever.
0:36:07- You should get DOSBox and run QBasic in that.
0:36:10- Well if Apple doesn't get you off the app store yet.
0:36:12- I'm talking about on your Mac.
0:36:14- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah so I mean maybe that's a fun answer.
0:36:17I even thought like maybe I should like get him an Apple II and just like boot it up and
0:36:23just like have him type in the command line like 10, print high, 20, go to 10.
0:36:30'Cause the more basic it is, lowercase b basic, the more basic it is I think the more accessible
0:36:36it is and the more kids can get into it even if they can't necessarily make the next Minecraft
0:36:41which no individual could.
0:36:45So anyway, yeah I'd love to hear anybody's suggestions and this is not gonna be a one
0:36:50week project, this is gonna be like probably a multi month or multi year project as we
0:36:54try different things and we kind of have a feedback loop from him and see what he likes
0:36:59and what he doesn't like and what he gets into and what he doesn't.
0:37:01So anyway, I appreciate any stories or input you can provide on like what should kids learn
0:37:06today, what makes a good balance between letting them do the kind of stuff they want to do
0:37:12but not being too frustrating up front.
0:37:15- The deal you're making though is that whatever you come up with, whatever you like, I want
0:37:19you to come back to the show please and let us all know because I'm probably, hopefully
0:37:23not too far away from wanting to answer the same question and granted it'll be a little
0:37:27different then but I would love to hear what you guys end up really really liking or not
0:37:31liking for that matter.
0:37:32- And once again, I have seen the Roblox video about how they rip everybody off, I don't
0:37:36need to be sent that, thank you.
0:37:38- So here's a little bit of stories from my experience trying to get my kids into programming
0:37:45and I think what you said about Q-basic, that probably led me down the wrong path because
0:37:53so every kid is different blah blah blah, there's our disclaimer right?
0:37:57But my impression from my kids and kids in general is a big part of the motivation is
0:38:04to do the thing, whatever the thing is right?
0:38:08Make a game let's say.
0:38:12We all know in the show that sort of the foundational programming knowledge is very important and
0:38:17transferable to lots of different uses and so on and so forth but I think it's pretty
0:38:22rare the kid, especially young kid that wants to learn how to program, it's only a means
0:38:29to an end and if I think about how I learned to program and the reason why that wasn't
0:38:35in the forefront of my mind is my, the thing I wanted to do like make the computer do the
0:38:39thing, computers couldn't do anything when I was learning.
0:38:43They could print like a VIC-20 can print text and colored blocks the size of characters
0:38:48on the screen right?
0:38:50That's all it could do and so when I wrote a program that you know, 10 print hello, 20
0:38:55go to 10, I was making the computer do the things that it does.
0:39:00Like it wasn't like oh that's just I'm just learning to program or learning conditionals
0:39:03and loops, that's all it could do right?
0:39:06Colored blocks, characters, print output, accept input from the keyboard, show it on
0:39:11your TV right?
0:39:12That's it and so it seems like oh you know, when I was a kid I learned the foundations
0:39:18of programming and I bet other kids would like to do it too but I think the only reason
0:39:22I was satisfied that and probably the only reason Marco was satisfied with QBasic is they
0:39:26could make computers do the thing that you thought was the thing.
0:39:29QBasic could make Windows right?
0:39:31Like Windows in Windows right?
0:39:32Am I getting QBasic?
0:39:36QBasic was like the DOS one, just a big blue screen of text and it had like you know, built
0:39:41in documentation so I could just hop over and look up every function and make you know,
0:39:44games like you know, really basic you know, text in and out games like you were just talking
0:39:48about or you know, you could do graphics.
0:39:51I eventually got to that in my later years of playing with it but it was initially just
0:39:56all text based stuff and then occasionally like you know, drawing like ASCII graphics
0:40:00basically.
0:40:01It was like a little like Bomberman clone using ASCII as the graphics.
0:40:05It was a mess but it was a lot of fun.
0:40:07So but it was like at least it was closer to like what the computer could do right?
0:40:11So when I tried to pitch my kids and things, I started with things like Hopscotch and a
0:40:15bunch of other stuff that were like tried to gamify learning to program right?
0:40:19So they were you know, there's all like kind of like Swift Playgrounds is today.
0:40:22I forget the names of the things but like Swift Playgrounds is like a little character
0:40:25that moves around.
0:40:26It's trying to make it fun for you to just be in a text window by pre-doing a bunch of
0:40:30stuff and letting you feel like hey, I'm making a cool looking character move around but you
0:40:34didn't make the character.
0:40:35It's just already there right?
0:40:37With my kids, I had no success getting them to want to learn to program at any age.
0:40:41I didn't really push it that hard but I always put it in front of them, see if they ran to
0:40:44it, see if it would grab them and they never got hooked and we all, all three of us know
0:40:48like what it means to get hooked on programming like.
0:40:51It just, it's one of those things that just happens right?
0:40:53It's like you can see when programming gets its claws into somebody and it you know, it's
0:41:00not subtle.
0:41:02You'll find yourself just sucked in and just constantly working on this program and just
0:41:06like we all experienced it.
0:41:07Like this is how we became who we are right?
0:41:09But when that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen right?
0:41:12And I don't know what it takes to make it.
0:41:14So I tried a lot of those things of like let's game if I learned to program.
0:41:17Didn't work at all.
0:41:19I think what will work with a lot of kids and the reason Roblox and everything are exciting
0:41:23is fastest way to do the thing and unfortunately for kids today, do the thing is make like
0:41:28a 3D game, 3D network connected game right?
0:41:33And that's so far above you know, print and input a dollar sign like it's so it's like
0:41:39you can, how are you going to go from zero to that?
0:41:41So you got to use these things like these, you know, these game, game creation engines
0:41:45where they basically do almost all of it for you.
0:41:47They take care of the networking, the multiplayer, the roster, the 3D graphics and you know,
0:41:52and you can start off with a bunch of canned stuff and make something that is recognizable
0:41:56to modern kids as a game and that can get them hooked on programming because they start
0:42:02using like the pre-made models and the pre-made everything but now they want to add some kind
0:42:05of behavior.
0:42:07When you hit this blocks, I want it to explode and so now they're into like, okay, well is
0:42:11there somewhere I can do that in the UI or do I have to type some kind of scripting thing?
0:42:14I start to learn about conditionals and variables and then they're off to the races because
0:42:19they want to make the thing and making the thing is tricky.
0:42:21I'm going to suggest something in a second that I think might not be that popular but
0:42:26not for the reasons we would expect.
0:42:27So the playdate is coming out soon and they have a web-based dev thing where you can have
0:42:32no programming skill and make a game that will run on playdate and also it has a scripting
0:42:36language built in and stuff like that.
0:42:37I'll link to an article in the show notes where Nevid Mergin again talks about how this
0:42:43IDE works, right?
0:42:46That's only useful if your son wants to make a game that runs on the playdate but does
0:42:52he want to make a game that runs on the playdate?
0:42:53He might want to make a game that he can show to his friends and they can play on their
0:43:01PCs at home and so this playdate pulp thing is of no use and no interest to Adam because
0:43:06he can make it for himself and play it on his dad's playdate or his mom's playdate or
0:43:10whatever that's in the house but it can't travel any farther.
0:43:13Do the thing means something different to a lot of kids.
0:43:15For some kids it means it has to be a Minecraft mod because all my friends are in Minecraft
0:43:19and they want to see the thing that I made.
0:43:21Some kids it wants to be a PC game or whatever it is.
0:43:24So I feel like that really is going to determine how you approach this and it could be Adam
0:43:30is super into programming as a programming thing, right?
0:43:32So who knows?
0:43:33Again, every kid is different, you'll find out but I think that is the tricky part about
0:43:37this that even though we as programmers value programming in the abstract, I think it's
0:43:42probably rare the kids that value it in that way.
0:43:46So the story for my kids, my son, I pitched him on, I tried to show him how to program
0:43:52Perl of course.
0:43:53Like hey look you can just get text input.
0:43:54You monster!
0:43:56Text input, I was trying to basically do the equivalent of like basic like hey you can
0:43:59print things and you can accept input.
0:44:01Were you trying to scare him away from programming?
0:44:03Really?
0:44:04No, it's like if you're trying to look for the equivalent of like basic where you can
0:44:08print strings, accept input, do conditionals, run subroutines, right?
0:44:12Just like you can make a text adventure in it, right?
0:44:14So I tried to show him those basics, not interested.
0:44:16Hopscotch, all that stuff, not interested.
0:44:18Scratch from MIT, not interested.
0:44:20And there are various times I would throw him in there.
0:44:22He played Minecraft like crazy, was not into making mods at all, had no interest, he just
0:44:26wanted me to bang my head against trying to install the terrible mods that other people
0:44:29made in past episodes of the show.
0:44:31But eventually in high school he decided he was going to take a programming course.
0:44:35And in that programming course he learned Swift and Java and he took the computer science
0:44:40AP test and then he took a course on iOS development and now he's got an iOS app.
0:44:46Yesterday he was asking me how do I get an app on the App Store.
0:44:49I think, and by the way this is my question to the audience, I said I didn't know and
0:44:53I said to try to look it up and what he determined is I think miners can have an app on the App
0:44:57Store even if it's free.
0:44:58He just wants his app to be free, he just wants to be on the App Store.
0:45:00But if anyone knows how is it that miners can get free apps on the App Store without
0:45:06having their parent do it or something, please let me know.
0:45:09So that's the state we're at there.
0:45:10Anyway, he did that all on his own.
0:45:12Like what is it that clicked in his mind?
0:45:13And by the way he's totally hooked now.
0:45:15It's like the programming thing got him.
0:45:17Not because of anything I did, not because of any of my attempts to encourage or support
0:45:21it or anything like that.
0:45:22In fact probably despite all my efforts.
0:45:25On his own he decided at age 15 or 16 that he's going to look into programming and fast
0:45:31forward a few years and he's spending hundreds of hours sitting in front of his laptop in
0:45:35Xcode every three days coming out of his cave to ask me some question that I can't answer
0:45:40about why something's broken in Xcode.
0:45:42And he's using Swift UI and Swift and doing all the things.
0:45:46And as far as I'm concerned he doesn't know the fundamentals of programming and didn't
0:45:50have a bottom up education, he just wanted to do the thing.
0:45:52So he made an app for his school to read his school's newspaper.
0:45:56It's basically an RSS reader combined with a podcast player.
0:45:58I sent Marco a few screenshots where it looks a lot like Overcast because he was quote unquote
0:46:02inspired by Overcast which is the only podcast player he's ever seen I think.
0:46:07But anyway that happened all on its own.
0:46:10So my advice to Marco is let Adam lead you where he wants to go and if it turns out that
0:46:16he's not into it it doesn't mean that he's never going to be into it, it could just be
0:46:19that he's not interested in the way that you want him to be interested in which is the
0:46:24story of kids all the time.
0:46:27They can be led by what their parents do but at a certain point what their parents want
0:46:30them to do starts to become less attractive.
0:46:32He's nine so that's probably not happening yet but rest assured it will happen.
0:46:36My only suggestion is to look at Pulp.
0:46:38If he's into it and he's into the playdate it's great, it's web based, runs on every
0:46:42platform you can program in it by writing code but you can also make a complete game
0:46:46without writing a line of code just by clicking on stuff.
0:46:49It's also not out yet?
0:46:50Yeah I know.
0:46:51I'm having minor detail.
0:46:54He's nine and it's going to be out soon.
0:46:56I actually thought about the playdate as a possible thing because it is a simplified
0:47:00environment like it has this monochrome small screen, it has some of these really easy to
0:47:04use tools allegedly that I haven't actually looked at them yet but this is one of the
0:47:07goals that they have of developing the playdate is like in addition to the available lower
0:47:12level language there's also this easier thing that you can do.
0:47:17That's certainly something that I'll be happy to explore with him once we get ours but I'm
0:47:22not sure, he might fall in love with the thing but he might not.
0:47:26As you were saying you kind of don't know and so I was going to kind of wait and see
0:47:29on that but I think he's very motivated to write code as a thing.
0:47:38He's also very motivated to create custom game worlds and stuff that might not be tied
0:47:44together.
0:47:46That might be two different interests that happen to overlap but maybe he'll get into
0:47:51the coding side for its own sake, who knows?
0:47:53So we'll see.
0:47:54He wants to write a spreadsheet.
0:47:56I mean probably not that but I mean look I've been programming for a very long time.
0:48:01I've never written a spreadsheet so there's a lot more to this world than that.
0:48:05So yeah, so we'll see.
0:48:06I'm glad to hear that it worked out for your son.
0:48:09I mean it worked out.
0:48:10I mean like he came to it on his own.
0:48:11The other thing I would suggest by the way is web programming.
0:48:13I know you're not super into that but like you can do a lot of, I mean I don't have any
0:48:17again concrete suggestions.
0:48:18I'm sure listeners will send in good stuff but there's a lot of stuff you can do with
0:48:21JavaScript and web pages and the advantages that has is that all his friends have access
0:48:25to web, the web browser.
0:48:27Like it is a platform that everybody can access and you can write some pretty cool quote unquote
0:48:32web based games you know with using web processing dot JS or all sorts of other stuff that my
0:48:36son was also into at various times.
0:48:38Web tech is easy in terms of you don't need a complicated IDE.
0:48:42The language is pretty friendly.
0:48:44There's lots of examples you know you can create even just learning HTML and CSS and
0:48:47then learning CSS animation and then making some stupid fart thing with CSS animation.
0:48:52Like that's great.
0:48:54That's fine.
0:48:55Like that maybe you know it really depends on where his values are.
0:48:58His values I want to make a cool thing for me or his values I want to make a cool thing
0:49:01to show off to my friends or his values like literally I want to learn about programming
0:49:04because I'm intellectually curious about it or is it a spectrum and like you said are
0:49:07they separate things or are they actually combined.
0:49:09Yeah I guess we'll find out.
0:49:11I'll report back.
0:49:12Yeah please do.
0:49:13I'm really genuinely interested to hear.
0:49:15John what is the latest because how old is your son?
0:49:19He's a rising junior?
0:49:22Senior.
0:49:23Nice license to drive.
0:49:24That's right that's right.
0:49:25OK.
0:49:26And I remember I wrecked if you're starting to talk college so sitting here now is he
0:49:31going for like CS CPE or something equivalent is going to be computer science major in college.
0:49:35Nice.
0:49:36Not CP or computer engineering like I told them like if you're in computer science is
0:49:40probably going to be on liberal arts college and you have to take more English courses
0:49:43and that's turning him off.
0:49:44So you'd rather be in engineering but he does like computer science.
0:49:47So there are some cool schools with CE and actually I think Cornell lets you take computer
0:49:51science in the engineering school.
0:49:53So does Virginia Tech.
0:49:55Just saying.
0:49:56It's not a country Virginia but yeah.
0:49:58Computer science.
0:49:59What the hell man.
0:50:00What is that absolute disgust in your voice.
0:50:03He's trying to stay close to home.
0:50:05All right all right.
0:50:06I'll allow it.
0:50:07I'll allow it.
0:50:08So in the last I don't know it was like a week ago or something like that.
0:50:11It was mere hours after we released the last episode.
0:50:15That's right.
0:50:16That's right.
0:50:17Thank you.
0:50:18It's news that Apple has made all of our lives so much better.
0:50:23According to the Washington Post Apple loosens rules for developers in a major concession
0:50:28amid antitrust pressure.
0:50:29The Wall Street Journal says that Apple set to let app developers alert users to alternate
0:50:33payment methods.
0:50:34Financial Times says Apple makes App Store concession on payments.
0:50:37The Verge says Apple finally agrees to let app developers communicate with their customers.
0:50:42Finally CNBC says in major policy change Apple will allow developers to email customers about
0:50:47alternatives to App Store billing.
0:50:49Oh hell yeah gentlemen we are gonna be rich.
0:50:52And those headlines by the way are from St.Tecory.
0:50:56Ben Thompson collected them all and it is a great example of how the initial flurry
0:51:00of stories about this thing were reported.
0:51:02And I saw some of these headlines flying across on Twitter.
0:51:04I'm like wow what is this big news.
0:51:07Turns out maybe not.
0:51:09So I don't think we really need to go that deep into this famous last words but basically
0:51:15there aren't any concessions at all.
0:51:17And it seems like the only people that really understood what was happening here were Bloomberg
0:51:21where their headline is Apple settles with app developers without making major concessions.
0:51:28Almost accurate headline.
0:51:29Almost accurate.
0:51:30Settles with app developers.
0:51:31Who are these app developers?
0:51:33Bingo that's like I look and we did we did a lot about this on Under the Radar this week
0:51:39that came out today so I will also refer people to that.
0:51:42I think it's a very good episode if you're a developer or not.
0:51:45And I strongly even if you don't listen to Under the Radar normally I strongly recommend
0:51:48this week's episode.
0:51:49I think it was a really good one.
0:51:50But anyway I'm gonna cover some of the same ground here.
0:51:53But yeah there is no dealing with quote app developers.
0:51:57App developers are not a unified group.
0:51:59No one speaks for me.
0:52:01No one speaks for all the other developers.
0:52:02Like I'm not part of some organization.
0:52:04I'm not part of a union.
0:52:05I'm not part of some kind of trade group.
0:52:07Like I don't know any developers who are.
0:52:09We all want different things.
0:52:10Like we have some common themes about what we want and you know we have some communities
0:52:15that are somewhat cohesive but it's a pretty big group of people with lots of different
0:52:21communities lots of different cultures lots of different priorities lots of different
0:52:24needs and there is no you know app developers suing Apple.
0:52:30There is no Apple settling with app developers because that group doesn't exist.
0:52:34And so anyway minor nitpick there.
0:52:37No one speaks for me.
0:52:38Okay.
0:52:39So I'm not part of any group that's like oh I didn't agree to this.
0:52:41I didn't even honestly frankly I didn't even know about this lawsuit until this press release.
0:52:46So it's a class action lawsuit and the class is developers on the App Store and you know
0:52:51the nature of class action lawsuits is that they are a big payday for the lawyers involved
0:52:56and you may or may not be in the class and maybe you'll find out about it later right.
0:52:59So here's what this the all right so the the overall story is that it seemed like that
0:53:04this class action lawsuit was going to fail that Apple was going to win because it was
0:53:08a flimsy case I don't remember what the details were it was just something like oh the Apple
0:53:12being unfair whatever but it seemed to observers that Apple was probably going to win it.
0:53:16So Apple settled it and they settled it on terms that as the Bloomberg headline said
0:53:21didn't give any major concessions because why give concessions when you're going to
0:53:24win the case anyway.
0:53:25You're settling it to save everybody time and money just take the settlement be lucky
0:53:29be happy with what you got and what did the class of App Store developers get.
0:53:34Well Apple put together a 100 million dollar fund to help app developers out and I think
0:53:39they're going to like if you're in the class you can apply to essentially get like 3% of
0:53:45what you would have gotten if Apple's cut was 15% instead of 30 likes Apple recently
0:53:51reduced the cut for the small business program.
0:53:53You know if you make less than 1 million dollars in revenue per whatever and you apply to this
0:53:57program and Apple approves you then instead of taking 30% of all your sales they'll take
0:54:0115%.
0:54:02So if you were in the class a developer and you choose to receive some of this money this
0:54:09100 million dollar pool would be divided up amongst all the people who asked all the people
0:54:13who were in the class who paid 30% during the time that it was supposedly unfair.
0:54:20The lawyers also get paid out of this 100 million dollar fund and they want 30 million
0:54:24of it so kiss that money goodbye which gloriously is 30% which I love so much.
0:54:30Lawyers take 30% so a handful of lawyers get 30 million dollars you may possibly get up
0:54:36to 3% back on what Apple took from you in some period of time.
0:54:41Oh and by the way if you take the settlement if you take this money from Apple this piddling
0:54:45amount of a couple hundred bucks that you're probably going to get you also promise to
0:54:48never ever sue Apple for anything ever again like this whole big legal agreement it's like
0:54:52by taking this money you agree that Apple must be held harmless and didn't do anything
0:54:57wrong and you're not allowed to and you agree that the app store rules are fair and so on
0:55:02and so forth there's all these all these sort of stipulations right so that's one thing
0:55:06that's part of the second element.
0:55:08Second thing is Apple has clarified and again Ben Thompson and Sir Tucker you have to pay
0:55:12for this article but you should because he goes into way more detail than we're going
0:55:15to here also clarified an existing rule that says they Apple had flip-flopped back and
0:55:20forth on it but previously they had said app developers you cannot communicate with your
0:55:25customers by collecting information in the app so in other words you couldn't make an
0:55:28app that says hey customer enter your email address here and then and to sign up for my
0:55:34whatever and then you would get their email address and then you would use that email
0:55:37address to say hey customer you gave me your email address and I just wanted you to know
0:55:40that if you go to my website you can sign up for an account or subscription or blah
0:55:44blah and if you do it through the web you don't have to pay Apple 30% there used to
0:55:47be a rule where Apple said you couldn't do that and now Apple is clarifying that developers
0:55:52can use communication such as email to share information about payment methods outside
0:55:57of their iOS app but wait wait outside their iOS app yeah outside your iOS app well that's
0:56:03not a concession no it's not really they're basically saying if you want to email people
0:56:07and you already have their email address that you didn't get from the app that's fine thanks
0:56:10Apple am I allowed to talk to the person sitting next to me or do I need your permission to
0:56:14do that too it's like Apple's like you know we don't want you ever saying anything about
0:56:19other payment methods to your customers even if you do it outside of the App Store but
0:56:24now you're allowed to it's fine you can talk you can talk to your friends we won't we won't
0:56:28I do not I mean how would Apple even stop us it's totally unenforceable Apple's just
0:56:31saying now don't tell anybody about other payment methods outside of your app anyway
0:56:37so that's clarified Apple also agreed to keep the small business program for at least three
0:56:42more years which is nice but it's like wait a second there's an end to this program yeah
0:56:45I was gonna say I do not recall there ever being any mention of this being a temporary
0:56:49thing they didn't say one way or the other but they could say hey let's throw them bone
0:56:53it's like oh if you're worried about this program going away it'll be here for at least
0:56:56three more years and also Apple also agreed not to make the App Store search even worse
0:57:01by doing things like unfairly unfairly waiting its own apps which is a thing that Apple totally
0:57:06did right in the epic trial that came out that Apple had been unfairly waiting some
0:57:10of its apps for a while and then reverse that so the Apple also agreed yeah we won't do
0:57:15that anymore either aren't we great so yeah Apple gave basically nothing I mean a hundred
0:57:19million dollars is nothing but by the way that that search thing is nothing because
0:57:23what what the what the seven allows them to do is use like objective metrics like you
0:57:29know user downloads and reviews well yeah guess what apps have the most usage on the
0:57:33App Store Apple's apps so they can just say oh we're gonna rank them by usage there being
0:57:38Apple's apps come out on top it's not artificially waiting that's that's a meritocracy yeah right
0:57:44the bottom line is Apple can do whatever it wants with its search like the only way we
0:57:47would ever find out that they did anything like like we have no visibility into their
0:57:51algorithm right it's the reason we didn't know that they had been unfairly waiting their
0:57:54app until we saw there we saw the you know the discovery in the epic trial so I mean
0:57:59in all fairness their algorithm is pretty easy to see because it's so terrible I think
0:58:02I think it just it's like a MySQL like query yeah so basically Apple didn't have to give
0:58:08anything here and they didn't give anything and in some ways this like people saying well
0:58:12you know what do you expect Apple's gonna win the case they're not gonna give any concessions
0:58:15but it's actually a tricky situation for Apple because if you know you're gonna win like
0:58:19I bet somebody thought if we do this 100 million dollar thing like that'll make us look good
0:58:23but it doesn't it doesn't make it only makes them look worse than doing nothing like if
0:58:27they had given no money it has been like well Apple won that case and didn't give anything
0:58:30it's almost like a slap in the face the hundred million dollars when you know that the lawyers
0:58:34take 30 million of it and then you're gonna get pocket change out of it and in exchange
0:58:39you agree that Apple never did anything wrong on the App Store yeah I mean I think there's
0:58:44a couple angles to this obviously some of this is probably over our heads in terms of
0:58:47like the legal ramifications and everything and and you know some of the strategy behind
0:58:50some of it but one one theory I did hear a few times that makes a lot of sense is even
0:58:56though Apple was probably not going to lose this case if it went to trial Apple I think
0:59:00has learned from the epic trial that they really don't want to go to trial it's it's
0:59:04bad for them in a number of ways to go to trial because then you start getting discovery
0:59:08and you start getting these like controversial emails coming out and and Apple's executives
0:59:13making asses themselves in the stand and so you just I think Apple learned hopefully like
0:59:18yeah we'd actually don't really want to go to trial if we can help it like if there's
0:59:21a way to settle easy lawsuits like this so they don't even get that far it's better for
0:59:26us to settle them so that's probably what happened here as part of this and you know
0:59:31I'm not and for the you know accepting the settlement a lot of people keep asking me
0:59:34if I'm gonna if I'm going to accept it I don't know yet I have to look at like what it means
0:59:37to accept it really in more detail but if it's along the lines of like you agree not
0:59:42to sue Apple over these particular claims in this particular time span like if I can't
0:59:49sue Apple for this same thing like it's like double jeopardy kind of thing we're like okay
0:59:53I can't say you took too much money from me between you know 2015 and 2020 or whatever
0:59:58oh well like I wasn't gonna do that anyway like that I'm not gonna sue Apple none of
1:00:02us are gonna sue Apple like they have bazillions of dollars like no no individual on this podcast
1:00:06is ever going to sue Apple probably unless it's like a wrongful death suit for a phone
1:00:10that explodes or something like that so or a car yeah so I don't like it's just like
1:00:17it's mostly the optics it's not mechanically like oh you give up all these rights because
1:00:21again we're never gonna sue Apple but it just seems like a slap in the face for what I assume
1:00:25will be a pilling amount of money and I'm kind of disappointed just I mean it's just
1:00:28dumb luck for me but like all the money I've ever made in the App Store came during the
1:00:3330% times more or less and then the 15% like the the small business program happened after
1:00:38my apps had like sold their initial burst of stuff or whatever so I would love to have
1:00:42only had Apple take 15% of that first burst of money but you know bad luck bad timing
1:00:47and if I can only get 3% of that difference back for me it's like chump change it's like
1:00:51200 bucks or something so who cares right so I probably won't do it but part of I think
1:00:57part of this like most class-action lawsuits in theory depends on how many people ask for
1:01:02the money so if more people ask the money you get a smaller cut or something like that
1:01:05anyway.
1:01:06You see there's a press release that just came out right now that's something else now
1:01:10what the hell is this?
1:01:11What?
1:01:12We don't have we can't do this Apple stop stop with the uh.
1:01:14I mean at least it's now.
1:01:18Okay Japan Fair Trade Commission closes apps investigation Apple will let developers of
1:01:22reader app that has a special meaning will get to around the world link to an external
1:01:25website to set up or manage an account beginning early next year what oh my god this is big
1:01:33whoa well in app purchases through the App Store commerce system remain the safest and
1:01:36blah blah blah Apple will also help developers of reader apps protect users when they link
1:01:41them to an external website to make purchases.
1:01:44Is this only in Japan?
1:01:45No it says worldwide.
1:01:47While the agreement was made with the JFTC Apple will apply this change globally to all
1:01:51reader apps on the store.
1:01:52Oh it's reader it's reader apps only.
1:01:54We yeah so what that that has special meaning so while I think about how this actually might
1:02:00be really big but um all right if we're reading it obviously you gotta like you know get around
1:02:05Apple's PR spin here but this might this might actually be a really big deal but what they're
1:02:10talking about reader apps means things like Netflix Amazon ebook you know Kindle app things
1:02:18like that it's like it's a special category of apps where they it's the same category
1:02:22that they would allow you to like have externally purchased stuff in these apps and not use
1:02:28an app purchase only if you didn't mention how to purchase it that kind of it was that
1:02:33whole category of apps so it's they've used this term reader apps throughout the App Store
1:02:37rule evolution and it's grown like in scope over time so if this is what we think it might
1:02:43be what this would basically be is like you know kind of everything but games basically
1:02:47is what this would most likely mean in practice you know the big companies that are giving
1:02:51them the most trouble Spotify Amazon Netflix HBO all that kind of stuff they would all
1:02:58be able to link out to make external purchases that well be a really big deal to set up to
1:03:06set up or manage an account no no but then it even says so but see this is the this is
1:03:11the the third paragraph here about safe guidelines this is where it can get tricky so they're
1:03:18saying you know before the change into effect next year Apple will update its guidelines
1:03:22and review process to make sure users of reader apps continue to have a safe experience on
1:03:26the App Store blah blah blah Apple will also help developers of reader apps protect users
1:03:32when they link them to an external website to make purchases so that to me kind of sounds
1:03:37like Apple's going to be heavily reviewing and probably have a lot of rules around like
1:03:43if you link out for an external purchase what you can do there how you can do it what you
1:03:47might have to offer the users like safety wise or control wise which if this is as big
1:03:53as I think it kind of might seem like it is that might be a pretty good compromise but
1:03:59man this is I'm gonna like analyze every word of this to really know for sure what's going
1:04:04on yeah we'll see well to that end to that end in the end of the second paragraph Apple
1:04:10agreed with the JF TC to let developers of these apps share a single link to their website
1:04:17to help users set up and manage their account so do they get like a single like literally
1:04:22one link Netflix.com slash sign up or whatever it could be through like the associated domain
1:04:28system like they could actually so you know so right now apps have these the concept of
1:04:31the associated domain this is how universal links work where you open up certain links
1:04:34and they open up the app instead of the website and you can you can you have a way for an
1:04:39Apple system to kind of you know verify between an app and a website or web domain like I
1:04:45own this domain this domain is related to this app and so they could possibly use that
1:04:49system and have like a field somewhere that says like this is my purchase page or whatever
1:04:54this is my this is my login or sign up page and then maybe they can have some way for
1:05:00boy I don't I mean this is all like you know shot in the dark here maybe they could have
1:05:02some way like you know how they can manage payments kind of kind of centralized control
1:05:06flow or something I don't know it this if this is what it sounds like it is this is
1:05:13a going to be a really big deal and be going to depend a lot on the implementation details
1:05:20and there's a lot of details here that are kind of saying all right coming early next
1:05:22year you know hand wavy and maybe it's going to take maybe it's going to take until that
1:05:28because this is kind of a big deal like then it might require some software updates infrastructure
1:05:33building in addition to working out the rules and trying to settle down the regulators around
1:05:38the world you know given how well the app store review folks are at understanding and
1:05:44figuring out what apps do like very often they will misunderstand like screens in the
1:05:49app or how to get between them or what is actually available the idea of them clicking
1:05:53through to your website and making sure that your website is satisfactory according to
1:05:57some set of rules like just I feel like their main skill set is finding where you hid the
1:06:01link to netflix.com it is not once you get to let netflix.com figuring out if the website
1:06:07complies with whatever rules they're going to make up or whatever so anyway we like this
1:06:11this story is literally breaking news while we're recording the podcast so we apologize
1:06:15if we got any wrong surely we'll talk about it more next week but it transitions nicely
1:06:19into the next item.
1:06:20I love by the way I love the concept of like we we just were saying how all the initial
1:06:26headlines about the other thing were totally wrong so I really hope that we didn't just
1:06:30make our own like totally wrong summary of it.
1:06:32Well we have an excuse we're getting it thrown at us in real time on a podcast we didn't
1:06:36write an article and post it to the web about it we would have done a little bit more research
1:06:40there so so actually so here's a question before we move on just you know ballpark if
1:06:44this is kind of what it sounds like and if it's actually you know that that you know
1:06:48the reader apps which by the way those are the rules so what reader apps is defined as
1:06:50apps that allow users that may allow users to access to previously purchased content
1:06:55or content subscriptions specifically magazines newspapers books audio music and video so
1:07:00that's that's how they define reader apps so what this would basically mean is like
1:07:04you know that kind of app you know magazine paper books audio music and video would be
1:07:07allowed to have external purchase systems but things like games would not and this is
1:07:13this is not unprecedented that I believe the Google whatever store also has like you know
1:07:17that the games have to do things a certain way but other apps were able to do things
1:07:20a different way although I believe that's not changed but anyway so if this is what
1:07:24it sounds like that external purchases would be allowed to be used for these kinds of apps
1:07:29but not games and other kinds and other stuff do you think that's a good compromise I think
1:07:35it kind of is it really depends on the implementation obviously from Apple's perspective since we
1:07:39know that like 85% of their profits or whatever come from games that you can do a lot of stuff
1:07:43in the non-game part without hurting yourself too too much but historically Apple's been
1:07:48like but why would we give up that 15% like why why would we even screw with like I know
1:07:52it's not the majority and I know games are where all the big money is but why are we
1:07:55giving up anything and the answer is because world governments are getting up on your business
1:07:59and making you do it or like are threatening to make you do it the US government is doing
1:08:03stuff this is the Japan trade commission and the other story we have in Korea where they're
1:08:07trying to say you have to the South Korea has passed a bill that is trying to make it
1:08:12so that app stores like Apple and Google have to allow alternate payment systems right this
1:08:18bill it's it hasn't been signed into law by their president yet but it is it looks like
1:08:23it's going to be right and so again a country you know somewhere in the world not in the
1:08:30US is going to have a law that's going to apparently affect both Apple and Google on
1:08:35their app stores and you know what I was going to talk about before the Japan thing came
1:08:38out it's like okay well if some country makes some law that you have to you know allow alternate
1:08:42payment methods or you know do whatever with the the reader app things and linking out
1:08:46to websites do you just do it in that country or you do it do you do it everywhere and you
1:08:52know I'm glad that it seems like Apple has chosen to do it everywhere at least in the
1:08:55case of the Japan thing because it's just such a pain to try to have different sets
1:08:58of rules and different approvals you know of like what apps can and can't do based on
1:09:02country it's much better to have one set of rules if you can possibly help it especially
1:09:06for stuff like this and to build a system around it and the larger story is like look
1:09:12governments are making Apple do what it previously wasn't doing on its own because various governments
1:09:17think that the current competitive landscape for app stores is not great for the people
1:09:22who live in those countries so they're passing laws to make these people do things and that
1:09:26apparently is literally the only thing that will make Apple do this stuff either the threat
1:09:30of them like the small business program or whatever the threat of laws or actual laws
1:09:34I thought this story about Korea was interesting because it's got response quotes from both
1:09:39Google and Apple like here's what spokespeople from those companies had to say about the
1:09:43idea that Korea says you have to allow alternate payment methods in the apps as a not in-app
1:09:47purchase but some other way to pay for things inside your app right so go here's Google
1:09:53just as it cost developers money to build an app it costs us money to build and maintain
1:09:57an operating system in an app store oh so much money to run an app store where is Google
1:10:04gonna get all that money from how can you take money away from Google they're the ones
1:10:07trying to build to maintain an operating system build an app store cry poverty Google all
1:10:14right we'll reflect on how to comply with this law while maintaining a model that supports
1:10:19high quality operating system and app store and we will share more in the coming weeks
1:10:23so Google is going to reflect they're going to reflect on how they're going to comply
1:10:26they want to comply but they also want to provide that high quality experience after
1:10:29they just said feel bad for us because it costs so much money to make this operating
1:10:33system this is like soccer injuries I don't know how we're gonna do now that people can
1:10:39use different payments we needed that cut of that money because I don't know where else
1:10:43we would get money it's really confusing Google I don't know anyway Apple here's what Apple
1:10:50says their response is very different in tone the proposed law will put users who purchase
1:10:57digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud undermine their privacy protections
1:11:01make it difficult to manage their purchases and features like ask to buy and parental
1:11:04controls will become less effective we believe that user trust in the app store purchases
1:11:08will decrease as a result of this proposal leading to fewer opportunities for the over
1:11:12four hundred eighty two thousand registered developers in Korea who have earned more than
1:11:16eight point five trillion Korean currency units whose name I don't know to date with
1:11:22Apple so they're basically saying you are inviting fraud you will cause confusion and
1:11:26delay this is going to be a problem you're going to destroy the app store and you're
1:11:31going to take money out of the mouths of those hard-working Korean app store developers that's
1:11:36what Apple says very different in tone they just go right to the dire consequences most
1:11:40of which are you know mostly BS because the whole ask to buy group had a good post about
1:11:45it ask this doesn't preclude continuing to support s to buy and parental controls you
1:11:49know as we just read in that Japan press release Apple can totally make any external payment
1:11:54methods also feed into the ask to buy before approval like I can make an API for this is
1:12:00the thing that Apple is able to do like payment anyway whether they do or not it's entirely
1:12:04possible right the this story where is it from this is from the verge I think yeah this
1:12:10story continues lobbyists for the two companies have reportedly argued to American officials
1:12:14that Korean legislation violates a trade agreement as it seeks to control the actions of US based
1:12:19companies so they're lobbying the US government to say we don't have to we don't have to follow
1:12:23that Korean law right because we have a trade agreement with them and this violates the
1:12:26trade so they're trying full court press we don't want to have to do with this Korean
1:12:30thing says because it basically says you know you in Korea anyway you in your apps you're
1:12:35allowed to collect payment through some way other than an app purchase now obviously already
1:12:39iOS apps can collect payment not through an app purchase for physical goods and somehow
1:12:45the world doesn't end or services you know things like Ubers and services yeah somehow
1:12:51somehow that happens and we are not all just dead from fraud like we're gonna allow people
1:12:58to enter credit card and Amazon.com the world will and how will people know what to trust
1:13:03how do people buy things online it's like it's okay we buy things online all the time
1:13:08like it's fine right and also on top of that especially now you know what you can buy things
1:13:13online with Apple pay it's really easy turns out and it's also Apple service you don't
1:13:19even have to enter your address you use Apple pay it Apple pay is a product that succeeds
1:13:24based on its merits it's a convenient way to pay because we already have Apple accounts
1:13:29they already have our address you do the little click you do touch ID whatever Apple pay right
1:13:35and but Apple every time they talk about this is like you know I swear if you let anyone
1:13:39enter a credit card or pay with anything other than app purchase the world will end it's
1:13:43like the whole world outside of the app store is constantly buying stuff online with their
1:13:47credit cards and they're doing inside your apps for physical goods and services which
1:13:52you know like would you think they'd be even more fraud of like oh you know I have to get
1:13:56a physical good who knows if it's actually gonna arrive and I might get defrauded but
1:14:00then once you touch you know what Apple never says but now you're touching our money because
1:14:04we get 30% of all the in-app purchases and please don't touch our money right and they
1:14:08and they frame it as a big fraud problem or whatever so I don't know what's gonna come
1:14:11to this Korean thing especially in light of the Japan announcement of maybe they're gonna
1:14:16take the Korea thing and say well if it turns out we have to do it in Korea we'll do it
1:14:19everywhere as well well we'll see but but either way I'm reading the Japan press release
1:14:25a little more closely it seems less well you get fooled just like the verge well there's
1:14:30an important detail in the Japan press release so it's in the second paragraph so you know
1:14:35they're talking about reader apps again what that you know what that means to ensure a
1:14:39safe and easy user experience the app stores guidelines require developers to sell digital
1:14:42service and subscriptions using Apple's in-app payment system here's the here's the important
1:14:46part because developers of reader apps do not offer in-app digital goods and services
1:14:51for purchase Apple agreed blah blah blah to let these share a single into the website
1:14:54okay so here's here's what this means so it's for sign up only yes what this what this means
1:14:59if I'm reading it correctly now is you are allowed to take purchases on your website
1:15:05and you are going to be allowed once this goes into effect to link people to your website
1:15:11to create a to create your account what you cannot still do is allow them to purchase
1:15:16stuff in the app using your system so we're gonna have a similar situation as we have
1:15:22now where you have you know like that the dumb situation with the Kindle app or like
1:15:26you can go here and look at your books that you've already purchased and we can't tell
1:15:30you how to purchase new ones but you can look at these books look at that how great are
1:15:34they oh you want you want more books well you got to figure that out on your own so
1:15:38it's gonna probably still be that but somewhere in the app they'll be allowed to link you
1:15:44probably out to Safari like not definitely not like an in-app web you'll be allowed to
1:15:48have a sentence next that link explaining that if you follow this link it's a place
1:15:52where you can buy ebooks and you'll see them in this app I bet that's the key thing like
1:15:57the details right so if Apple lets you have a link but all you can literally do is put
1:16:01a URL that people can click on but you can't explain anything like you have to be able
1:16:05to put a sentence there that says hey go to Amazon.com and buy Kindle books and when you
1:16:10do that you'll see them in this app that's the key information that we can't get out
1:16:15to people and they like I said they just had to figure it out on their own yeah my best
1:16:18guess here is that so there's still there's definitely not you know using your saved Amazon
1:16:23credit card to buy an e-book in the app except for maybe in Korea yeah actually that's true
1:16:28yes in Korea that I believe by the wording of the laws we understand and I believe that
1:16:32would be a expert especially allowed in Korea but what this is saying I think is we will
1:16:38literally just allow you to have a link in the app that will link out to your website
1:16:43to then have people do stuff there if they want to but you're definitely not buying stuff
1:16:47in the app using their system which is still an important change it's like that's still
1:16:51a really big deal but it's not quite what people want I didn't I skipped the important
1:16:56part of the Korean law so the law is a thing that will will prevent major platform owners
1:17:02like Google and Apple from restricting app developers to built-in payment systems so
1:17:06it's like basically saying Apple and Google you cannot restrict app developers to your
1:17:10payment systems which implies that that means you'll be able to use other payment systems
1:17:15like it's no longer you can't say you have to use in-app purchase which leaves the door
1:17:18open to other thing and some people have been questioning okay well what does Apple do like
1:17:21do they have to build something whatever like if Apple wanted and this becomes a law and
1:17:26Apple felt like they had to comply with it like all their lobbying efforts the US government
1:17:31failed and they had to comply with it they don't have to do anything they just have to
1:17:35approve apps that do this because you can send an app to the app store app review right
1:17:39now that has a little web form that it takes a credit card like this is not complicated
1:17:43technology Apple doesn't need to do anything Apple probably should and will do something
1:17:48like by making API's and so on and so forth right they'll comply with the letter of law
1:17:52but say hey if you want to use alternate payment methods use this new API that will trigger
1:17:57the parental controls and they asked to buy and you know we'll be able to collect analytics
1:18:01on it and find out how bad we're doing against your payment you know like there are things
1:18:05Apple could do but the thing about the Korean laws Apple doesn't need to build or do anything
1:18:11technically they just need to give thumbs up where previously they were giving thumbs
1:18:14down because believe me app developer in epic hell epic shipped it already with it behind
1:18:19the toggle remember where they would take money you know for instead without using an
1:18:23app purchase app developers are more than capable of collecting money from people in
1:18:27iPhone apps without any help from Apple so I am interested to see how the Korean thing
1:18:32shakes down assuming get signed into law and assuming Apple has to comply with it then
1:18:35they have to choose are we just doing in this Korea are we doing it worldwide and it seems
1:18:40potentially more damaging than the Japan thing now that we know more about it the Japan thing
1:18:45seems like a you know minor concession on the linking out things subject to lots of
1:18:50details that we don't know the answers to in terms of how draconian is Apple gonna make
1:18:54it are they gonna let you explain what the link is for why do you only get one link how
1:18:58annoying are they gonna be during app review about getting your app through because Apple
1:19:02can say whatever it's want or whatever it wants about the supposed rules on the App
1:19:06Store but experience has shown that even though 100% legit right down the middle within the
1:19:12rules thing can be very hard to get through app review because sometimes they just don't
1:19:15understand or disagree about the reality of the app you've submitted to them well breaking
1:19:21news as that since we began is there any new press releases travel besides the Japan one
1:19:26I think only that one okay well just don't know if we should wait a couple minutes to
1:19:29save another one yeah I think this is the first time they've announced a significant
1:19:33App Store rule change during our show it's a Wednesday what are they understand whatever
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1:21:37so a week or two ago in the show notes in the section that we keep for potential aftershow
1:21:48topics the following appeared Marco bought two new cameras and then we were talking before
1:21:54the show and we thought well maybe we should upgrade that to a an actual topic so that
1:21:58time has come Marco what the hell are you spending on it money on man it's not what
1:22:03you think and it's more than two now actually it was two oh god did you buy like home security
1:22:09cameras yes I did hey you figured it out all right good I want I want all the knowledge
1:22:14you have about this because I want to do this on my at on whatever to my house but I haven't
1:22:19done it yet okay so here's how I was hoping to trip up John with buying two new cameras
1:22:23thinking I bought like you know a bunch of mirrorless stuff or whatever my guess was
1:22:27these especially since I saw some stories about the new magnetic nest ones that has
1:22:31dissuaded me from buying those so I hope you have some stories that are more encouraging
1:22:35that what I heard about those so here here's here's the deal here so you know as I mentioned
1:22:40you know I kind of live in a in a party beach town and as a result you know we have things
1:22:45like casual bike theft all the time we also have you know we've because it's a party town
1:22:51in the summertime you definitely get people you know like coming onto your property and
1:22:56doing weird stuff whether it's you know just like sneaking under your deck to drink if
1:23:01they're teenagers or or worse it's just like you know it's certain things you kind of want
1:23:06to discourage and a lot of people around here have cameras and so I thought you know what
1:23:12let me see I'll at least put a camera like where we park our bikes and in this area that
1:23:16that was under a part of our deck that that keeps getting like you know liquor bottles
1:23:19left there by strangers and we've caught people enjoying each other there a few times and
1:23:25so like okay so you know let me put up some cameras and maybe that'll you know make the
1:23:29people go somewhere else. So I've had a little bit of experience before with nest cams we've
1:23:38we use nest cams for a few years now to like watch our porch to see like more packages
1:23:45delivered you know and we could like you know make sure we bring them in or whatever else
1:23:48we also would have nest cameras like if we were like if we're gonna be away from home
1:23:52for a while we would we put one like in the bedroom just in case like somebody broke in
1:23:57and who knows right which has never happened but we that's kind of the context of how we're
1:24:01using them. So the nest cameras we don't have the current models we have we have whatever
1:24:06the nest cams were that that were available like four years ago so the nest cams we have
1:24:11are admittedly very out of date but at the time they were something like 200 bucks each
1:24:17or they weren't they weren't cheap like two or three hundred bucks each and we have a
1:24:22couple outdoor ones couple indoor ones the ones I bought for this I decided not to go
1:24:26with nest because it first of all nest as a like software and services company has just
1:24:34been going so far down the tubes in recent years I believe I mentioned the show a little
1:24:39while ago that I ripped out all the nest thermostats in this house and replaced them all with the
1:24:43echo bee home kit compatible ones because I was just so tired of dealing with nest crap
1:24:47like their stuff just is very unreliable it's hard to set up their web service is down all
1:24:52the time they they're making this weird transition to thread radios that has a lot of bugs in
1:24:58this transition and makes it very hard to like manage their thermostats and set them
1:25:02up and get them on the network and so I'm just like I'm done with nest I'm so done with
1:25:05nest and then setting aside the fact that they are owned by Google which I you know
1:25:09has always been a little bit creepy and like when I first bought their stuff they weren't
1:25:13but anyway so nest I wasn't super happy with I also know from having nest cameras for the
1:25:19last four or five years whatever it's been I know that they are reliable in the sense
1:25:25that you know you will record video footage but I also know that their object detection
1:25:29and people detection is really bad it's really unreliable I get false alarms all the time
1:25:34like I have the camera that I have set up all the time from that's a nest in in another
1:25:39location I get an alert every single day that there's movement detected in my room because
1:25:47the sun moves and the sun moves very slowly throughout every day and you would think that
1:25:52that nest would accommodate for this and maybe design their algorithms to account for the
1:25:56fact that the sun is real but they don't so I don't know if the new ones are better in
1:26:01this regard but the old ones they literally like alert me every day that the sun has moved
1:26:06at about the same time every day and then this is I've tried like a little bit different
1:26:10positions of the camera it doesn't matter at all like that's it always happens so anyway
1:26:15not super thrilled with nest nest is also somewhat expensive you know like for something
1:26:20that you know if you want nest is only cloud-based like it's recording and streaming stuff to
1:26:26the cloud there is no local storage there is no option for local storage and you pay
1:26:30for their cloud service to retain your stuff for however you need to be retained so those
1:26:35are the downsides of nest so for this I decided let me look at other stuff if I if it ends
1:26:40up I need to go to nest fine but let me look at other stuff so the two things I wanted
1:26:43to try were first I wanted to try home kit secure video because this this is you know
1:26:49this is what apple keeps talking about in the keynotes and everything and it looks really
1:26:52cool and I love the idea that I'm not sending my video to some like weird companies service
1:26:59I'm sending it to apples weird service Marco you have a solution in your house already
1:27:04but carry on it's an old you does this man it's an algae does this but carry on carry
1:27:09on did you really get a viper slap for Synology I sure did have the elegance of the bell I
1:27:19feel like it's a little maybe you need to get closer to the mic it's it's more of an
1:27:22operation to pick it up and you know you gotta hit it the other solution you have in your
1:27:27house is your what do you call it what's your fancy Wi-Fi thingy you pick woody yeah you
1:27:32bake what do they have they have security cameras to write yes they do but the thing
1:27:35is like I don't have a NAS set up here I don't want one and I'm trying to get myself out
1:27:41of operating that kind of stuff like I don't want I don't want to deal with that my needs
1:27:44are not big enough for that anymore and so I don't want that kind of thing also you know
1:27:50the cameras that are that are made for these kind of things are like they're like you know
1:27:53bigger bulkier you know like it's like it's kind of more serious stuff and and that's
1:27:57my needs aren't that high either even the ubiquity ones I thought they were tiny the
1:28:01ubiquity security cameras so maybe I don't have a sense of scale when I see them online
1:28:05oh maybe I'll have to look but but the impression I got was that they were like you know bigger
1:28:09higher-end stuff but anyway so the ones I first tried to get the Logitech Circle View
1:28:16and and the problem with Logitech Circle View is it's it's like weirdly backordered and
1:28:20it's hard to get and there it was gonna be a long wait and so I decided to take another
1:28:24risk also on the Eufy line EUFY this is Anker's home security brand so Eufy has a bunch of
1:28:32options and some of them are home compatible some of them most of them aren't but I decided
1:28:37you know let me I'll get both so I'll get a Logitech Circle View and I'll get I got
1:28:42the Eufy Solo Indoor Cam C24 so a point of comparison here so you know as I said Nest
1:28:49Cams are like you know 150 to 200 bucks usually the Eufy Indoor Cams are $70 for a two-pack
1:28:57oh my and the outdoor models are like 80 to 150 the Logitech Circle View is 160 and is
1:29:04outdoor sort of and that sort of is important the Logitech Circle View is outdoor compatible
1:29:10in the sense that the power cord is sealed around its back and it has no no openings
1:29:15but the power adapter it comes with which is a USB power adapter is not waterproof so
1:29:22you have to you can mount the camera in the in the elements but then you have to run the
1:29:27cable to somewhere that's inside or sheltered because I was thinking about with your house
1:29:32I would not want to drill any holes in your house and I have just me right just yeah so
1:29:37like if the requirement is you must drill a hole in your house I would pass on no and
1:29:41I definitely wouldn't do that I also I'm only trying to cover a couple of small areas here
1:29:47critically the areas that I want to cover are not visible from the street because I
1:29:50don't want my house to look like a prison like I don't want to have like look at my
1:29:55camera stay away like I don't want that I just want if people sneak under my house I
1:29:58want them to be discouraged and leave all that aside so here's how this stuff works
1:30:02in practice so first of all the Eufy HomeKit support is terrible it does not work reliably
1:30:09it was very hard to set up I did eventually get it working it kept like disconnecting
1:30:13and what you find out when you when you hook it up to HomeKit is that only a small subset
1:30:18of the camera's features are actually supported if it's in HomeKit mode so I would I would
1:30:23not recommend the Eufy cameras for HomeKit I did eventually as I was playing with these
1:30:29over the last few weeks my Logitech circle views did eventually come in and so I mounted
1:30:35a circle view right next to a Eufy looking at the same area and I set up you know the
1:30:40Eufy I set it up in just its own app and the Logitech I set up and yes I did put a Eufy
1:30:46indoor camera outdoors it's under shelter so it's fine this is your big thing now you
1:30:52like to take non-outdoor electronics and put them outdoors because you think it's fine
1:30:56yeah well because the Eufy ones that are outdoor compatible they weren't shipping yet like
1:30:59the ones that I wanted is that is that an explanation like the problem here is putting
1:31:05thing electronics that aren't waterproof outside where there's water you're like well the other
1:31:08one wasn't shipping so it's okay yeah well it's when when it's a two-pack for 70 bucks
1:31:14and I can put it under a shelter and so practically practically disposable so so yeah so I have
1:31:21like the Eufy and the Logitech right next to each other to kind of compare like how
1:31:25good these are and I have the Eufy running only through its own app now and what you're
1:31:28saying about the Eufy is that it they don't have well I guess I think they do have a cloud
1:31:32service but you don't have to use their cloud service they you can view their cameras remotely
1:31:37but I guess it's just like you know relays through them to like a lot to like you know
1:31:40set up the IP connection but but your camera is not recording to their cloud your camera
1:31:46has local storage like you you put a micro SD card on it or some of the other ones have
1:31:50like built-in you know solid-state storage so when you connect to your camera you're
1:31:54just having it playback from its own local storage and I like that a lot because this
1:31:59is I've thought about this like with the storage question and I know why people don't want
1:32:04like their private footage from like especially inside their house going up to a cloud thing
1:32:09but anything where there's storage in your house and especially if the storage is in
1:32:13the camera I feel like almost defeats the purpose because you know I don't know how
1:32:19smart thieves are but it's like look you just yank the camera off the wall and now you've
1:32:23got the camera and all the footage so you you commit the robbery break into the house
1:32:27get the stuff and on your way out yank the camera off the wall and you're on your way
1:32:30and you've got the little SD card with the footage of you doing the crime and you're
1:32:33all set and if it's in your house same deal if they break into your house they can just
1:32:36go find your servers yank all this I mean that's harder obviously yank all the stuff
1:32:40out and they got the footage wherever it's recording constantly to the cloud there's
1:32:42nothing they can do your house that prevents the recording from happening never mind that
1:32:45having a recording of someone breaking into your house means nothing because the police
1:32:48are never gonna do anything about it you're never gonna get your stuff back but just let's
1:32:51pretend I'll get to that's not the case I'll just but yeah you're right I mean and this
1:32:55is why I think homekit secure video is an interesting option because homekit is streaming
1:33:00it to the cloud but here's a key difference for homekit secure video it is not a constant
1:33:05recording it is event based so it like it doesn't record 24/7 to the cloud it's looking
1:33:11for motion and if it detects motion then it records you know for a some brief amount of
1:33:17time until it stops you detecting motion so you have only events so one thing I was curious
1:33:22to see it's like well how responsive are they like if somebody walks into this area real
1:33:28fast grabs my bike and walks out is it gonna react fast enough to start that recording
1:33:31and and send that to me or not and and so and if you actually want continuous recording
1:33:3724/7 recording nest does that to the cloud and you feast cameras will do it to their
1:33:43internal storage obviously it'll probably wear out your micro sd card faster but they
1:33:47will do it if it's an option it's off by default but so anyways that's an option you have with
1:33:51those you don't have that option with homekit secure video basics here the image quality
1:33:56on the modern cameras the the eufy and the logitechs is great like this is one of those
1:34:00areas where like the the progress of technology I can't believe the eufy image quality for
1:34:06$70 for a two-pack it's really good the logitech circle view is a much more like almost a fisheye
1:34:12view it's ultra wide I think it's actually 180 degree it's right there in the name circle
1:34:17in a circle as we know is 180 degrees the front of every camera is a circle the opening
1:34:24to the lens is a circle a circle is in profile not head on yes I know anyway and I swear
1:34:30if someone writes and tells us a circle is 360 all right here we go sometimes I make
1:34:35a joke and I think better of it let me just save myself I was trying to make a joke was
1:34:39it funny no but please so anyway so the the motion detection the image quality so the
1:34:47image quad is actually great as I said it's the new ones they're far better than whatever
1:34:50my old nest cameras are which of course that makes sense that's like five years later the
1:34:54ultra wide fisheye view of the logitech is nice in a small space but it's it's less useful
1:35:01in if your camera is going to be like higher up or further away from the area you're looking
1:35:05at and the problem with home kit secure video is that there's almost no cameras that support
1:35:10it like there's only of it's like two or three models of cameras that are actually on the
1:35:14market that support it and the logitech is the only outdoor one that's currently in the
1:35:19market so that's that's a little bit you know the again welcome to homekit right like you
1:35:23have less choice but I will say the logitech again the eufy it has homekit support officially
1:35:30on this model but it sucks don't use it it doesn't and I couldn't even get recordings
1:35:34working like I can only get live view working through homecut on the eufy the logitech works
1:35:39perfectly like it is exactly what I want so logitech circle view to homekit secure video
1:35:46is a great setup if that fits what you want again it is an outdoor camera but you have
1:35:51to the power cord is something like maybe like about 10 feet long so you have to you
1:35:56know not put it too far from some kind of sheltered area where you could have the power
1:35:59adapter the video quality is great and one thing I noticed for a while and so I ran this
1:36:05like in our bike area which gets multiple events per day because you know me and tiff
1:36:11and adam we're going in and out of the area all the time occasionally somebody will creep
1:36:14and try to look under our house so we have like the actual use case there as well all
1:36:19of this has happened a lot over the few weeks that I've had these cameras up and so I have
1:36:24a good amount of data now and I can tell you that the person detection for them like the
1:36:30motion and you can say like detect any motion or detect people or animals I think one of
1:36:37the thing and that works great and in fact between the logitech using homekit and the
1:36:44eufy camera using its own app both of them would notify me at almost exactly the same
1:36:49time every time I would like go under to get my bike out or somebody else would go under
1:36:52there I was notified on time every time and as far as I remember I had zero false positives
1:36:58there was never a time when either camera said it detected a person and there wasn't
1:37:02a person there so good on them like and there were also zero times where I went under there
1:37:07and it didn't detect me so it seems like the the people detection for both for both eufy
1:37:13and you know homekit secure video are it's great and it worked so much better than nest
1:37:18I can't even tell you it's so big big thumbs up there the homekit the eufy one you can
1:37:25you can configure it to put a thumbnail like a still thumbnail in the notification payload
1:37:32so that when you get the notification on your watch or your phone or whatever you can pop
1:37:35it up right there and you can see that eufy's app you can also install on a mac if you have
1:37:40an m1 mac because it's in the mac app store because they didn't opt out of the m1 you
1:37:44know ipad app compatibility so that's all really nice the logitech one it's just it
1:37:49just shows up in the home app so for all the pluses and minuses that means the logitech
1:37:54one it's right there in the home app it's very convenient it does alert everyone in
1:37:59the home so like tiff was complaining that she's getting all these alerts but but I was
1:38:03gonna say one of the things I always see about homekit video is they always show the picture
1:38:06of someone watching tv and then someone's at the front door and this little picture
1:38:09and picture pops up on their apple tv and I don't want that is there a way to not make
1:38:14that happen you know I didn't actually see if that works there was never a time we were
1:38:18watching tv when somebody did was under there so I have to be watching apple tv I assume
1:38:22to yes well we usually are but yeah but I will I'll take a look I'll try to reproduce
1:38:26that and see if I can get it to work I don't know if that feature is actually out yet or
1:38:28if that's like I feel like that's an anti feature I mean you could probably turn it
1:38:32off like if you're watching tv that's the last thing that I want like sure by all means
1:38:36notify me on my phone and if I have my phone and do not disturb that's a signal I have
1:38:39I don't even want to be notified about that but don't pop it up on top of the tv show
1:38:43I'm watching it's basically letting someone outside your house screw with your television
1:38:47show yeah right but yeah I mean and that's you know one of the problems of homekit is
1:38:52that there aren't just aren't a lot of settings and options there's some and the ones they
1:38:56have do seem to work pretty well so I'm happy with that overall but also the eufy app has
1:39:03I mean yeah it's it's what you'd expect from like a manufacturer making an app it's not
1:39:06like the best ui but it works really well and the only the only thing that homekit really
1:39:12outclassed it on is that the homekit notifications would have video clips instead of image clips
1:39:19so the home notifications you could like hit little play on them or like you know open
1:39:22it up to you know make it you know push it so it opens it up and you can actually see
1:39:26a brief video clip of what's going on so that's really nice so again the homekit just seems
1:39:32like a little bit of an upgrade in like how well it integrates with your apple stuff obviously
1:39:37but the eufy app is really good and for 70 bucks for a two-pack again for the indoor
1:39:41camera but still that's really good and so I'm actually going to keep the eufy ones even
1:39:47though I think I'm going to go all homekit for the outside needs with one little possible
1:39:53change in the future which I get to in a second so a couple of weeks ago during recording
1:39:57this show I got a notification on my watch that somebody was spotted under the deck and
1:40:04again we're recording the show while this is happening and I open up the app on the
1:40:08phone to see what's going on and I see you know a young couple enjoying each other and
1:40:13I'm like oh god I don't want to deal with this oh my no I mean it wasn't you know quite
1:40:17that bad but it would have I mean it would have gotten there it was going that direction
1:40:22and so I'm like all right I'm like I don't I just want them to leave like I don't I don't
1:40:25want to deal with this I don't want to like call the cops either and also I'm recording
1:40:29a podcast it's like I don't want so there's like I don't want to I just don't want to
1:40:31deal with this right so at first I messaged Tiff I'm like hey can you go like you know
1:40:35go down there like turn the light on or something and eventually I learned she's not home and
1:40:39so I'm like okay what do I do and I see in the eufy app there's one of those options
1:40:44that you can speak through the camera oh nice and I'm like okay great so I just I held down
1:40:51my mute button here to you guys and I talked to the camera and I said something like you
1:40:55should leave nice like what do you say right and you can tell they kind of like looked
1:41:02up for a second and then like kind of you know went back to it I'm like oh crap so I'm
1:41:06like maybe that maybe they're just like you know they're gonna get up in a second they
1:41:09didn't so if you like you know a few seconds later I said something so I'm like you leave
1:41:13now or so I forget exactly what something like that then they got up and left why didn't
1:41:18you just say I am watching you on my security camera and I would like you to leave like
1:41:23you could say full sentences like you have to spell it out because they're highly motivated
1:41:27not to stop you really need to you really need to make the case I didn't I wasn't sure
1:41:33like how clear the voice would be coming through you know I don't want it to sound just like
1:41:36all right so I chose like few words you know anyway and I don't know what to say what am
1:41:42I gonna do like and the other thing is I don't want to sound like a jerk because what if
1:41:46they vandalize my house you know like I don't like it's like there's no good way out of
1:41:49this right so anyway so you know they left and so all right fine you know problem solved
1:41:54I didn't have to like involve the cops or go out there and interrupt the show or anything
1:41:57like that so good okay so that's I caught that and I guess took care of it I also you
1:42:05know there were a number of occasions where we've seen people literally just walk up to
1:42:08our house and like peer under it and like look around and then they see the camera they kind
1:42:12of like run a little bit but the other day somebody came under the house where this where
1:42:16the young couple was being that and some guy just comes under and like changes his bathing
1:42:22suit nice in the middle of the day and I'm like that's spectacular I mean like so I'm
1:42:27like all right I have cameras they work it's fine but I wonder like was I better off not
1:42:36knowing before like maybe like is this actually serving an actionable role here like am I
1:42:43actually getting actionable information from these cameras and I'm not sure that I am like
1:42:50so if things were actually getting stolen or broken into or you know then we'd have
1:42:55a different story then I could try to bring these videos to the police and have what John
1:43:00said happen which is nothing so again it's like I don't even know how actionable this
1:43:05would be and the other problem is that people don't seem to be seeing the cameras so I think
1:43:12what I actually want to do is add like motion lights I think that no no not motion like
1:43:18you need what you first of all if you could buy like and you know when you go to Ikea
1:43:22and they have a little like cardboard television sets the furniture you don't need cameras
1:43:27you just need like the shell of a camera like a little blown plastic thing that looks like
1:43:32a camera they saw what you need what you need is signage you learned anything from if you've
1:43:37ever done anything like an upstate New Yorker or whatever that say this area under surveillance
1:43:42with a giant red arrow pointing to your fake camera right that might get people's leave
1:43:46and motion lights can contribute to that is how they're gonna read the sign when it's
1:43:49dark like so that's part of it but like it's the reason people have all those signs on
1:43:52their lawn of like burglar you know if the cameras only work is it a turn if people know
1:43:56they're there so you need signage yes well but again I don't want my house to look like
1:44:01a prison and I don't want it and I don't want to be a jerk right so I'm trying to avoid
1:44:05that like again this is like my goal here is can I just make these problems go away
1:44:08I don't I don't want to be a jerk I don't want to you know look like I'm a massive Republican
1:44:15like I just want people to not be doing weird stuff under my house right so like what I'm
1:44:20gonna try next is I just ordered the new Eufy camera that has a built-in light on the camera
1:44:28that's an a real certified outdoor camera so John is happy so I ordered one of those I'm
1:44:32gonna try that in one of these areas and see how it is which which model is that I was
1:44:35looking at these Eufy things I can't find the model that you were talking about it's
1:44:38two for 70 bucks or something so what tell us model numbers two for 70 bucks is the solo
1:44:42indoor cam c24 and the the one I just ordered is the l20 yeah I think it's the l20 it just
1:44:51came out like last week so it's I'm hoping this will this will improve things like I
1:44:57actually don't want to video footage people doing stupid stuff under my house I just want
1:45:01them to not do it or if they if they're if they're thinking about starting to do it maybe
1:45:04they run away before they like leave you know liquor bottles and stuff behind so you know
1:45:09that's that's the main goal here so I'm gonna try like some kind of motion light options
1:45:14and and see if that does better because ultimately the cameras are working great but I'm not
1:45:21sure I actually am benefiting from having them in my life now I do I do intend to keep
1:45:29at least the Eufys going indoors sometimes because what I want is also during this few
1:45:35weeks that I've had these cameras we had to evacuate because of a hurricane coming up
1:45:38the coast and so I set up the indoor cams indoors John to look at areas of my house
1:45:46that I was afraid might be like water leak risks or damage risk areas if a hurricane
1:45:51came through it was really strong and so I was able as we were not here anymore because
1:45:55we were evacuated I was able to monitor how my house was doing in the storm and that was
1:46:00great I was very happy to have that ability and again to have that with no you know cloud
1:46:05service monthly fee kind of stuff to have that just be like on these cameras in here
1:46:09that was awesome and so that was again for 70 bucks for a two-pack highly recommended
1:46:16that's kind of the same thing though is your question about what value am I getting like
1:46:20being able to see in real time as a lawn chair comes through your windows I mean I suppose
1:46:24it could be diverting and entertaining but the bottom line is you're not there there's
1:46:29nothing you can do about it and you're gonna come back to your house and we know people
1:46:33who were here including our contractor like we know people who could who could come and
1:46:37you would so you're gonna send someone over and say hey a chair just went through our
1:46:41sliding glass door could you go over there and what remove the chair and put plywood
1:46:44up on our house like not like during the storm but like you know afterwards I can I can say
1:46:49like oh you know we can't come back for another day or two or whatever like can you go you
1:46:54know put plastic over that you know like I obviously hope that never happens but it does
1:46:58provide a level of like peace of mind to be able to look directly at like here look here
1:47:05is my sliding door that leaks water during heavy storms sometimes and it's look it's
1:47:08not leaking yeah I guess it's better to know that it's safe like you want to know you want
1:47:12a positive result if you have a negative result that doesn't really help it's almost like
1:47:15well we'll find out when we get there but the positive result is you can sleep easy
1:47:19knowing that nothing bad happened to your house right I was nervous as hell all night
1:47:22and I kept I like woke up a couple times and checked the cameras and it's like a baby monitor
1:47:26like you wake up you look at it you know it's like that's because when you because you're
1:47:29nervous right so that's it made sense that's not the kind of thing that would be healthy
1:47:32to do all the time but in a situation where like oh I live near the coast and there's
1:47:36a hurricane like that's that's a big thing to do like that that helps a lot so I I definitely
1:47:43will love keeping the indoor cams around for that kind of thing where you know if we can't
1:47:47be here and some kind of severe weather is happening or something that's a great time
1:47:50to have indoor cams I do not intend to have indoor cameras in my house all the time that's
1:47:54that to me is not the kind of lifestyle that I want to leave but the outdoor cams hopefully
1:47:59I can find some kind of balance with you know maybe motion light integration to serve as
1:48:04the deterrent role that I want them to serve without being too oppressive yeah I feel like
1:48:09you can mount all sorts of like what would otherwise be fairly ugly and you know like
1:48:14oppressive stuff under the bottom of your house where it's not visible until you go
1:48:17under there to change your bathing suit and then you see the big sign with the arrow pointing
1:48:21it says smile for the camera right and then the motion light comes on the one under your
1:48:24house and hopefully you can also map the stuff under your house to point at the bike area
1:48:27you know what I mean like no one can see that unless you are in fact trespassing and wandering
1:48:32around under your house right but otherwise your house looks normal I mean that's how
1:48:35they are now the problem is they're too subtle now I know I know what I'm saying like you
1:48:40should you should be feel free to get less subtle with big scary signs and humor and
1:48:45motion lights because it doesn't make your house look like a prison because it's all
1:48:48underneath well but I also like I don't want like every time I go get my bike out I don't
1:48:52want to have a science they smile for the camera like that's such a jerk move like I
1:48:56because like I always like I my old dog walk route there is this house that has you've
1:49:04probably seen these it's like it's like a cast iron thing you stick in the ground that
1:49:09is a silhouette of a dog pooping and it says under it no they've made their house ugly
1:49:17right like these people are so obsessed with dogs not pooping on their lawn that they have
1:49:23a statue of a dog pooping on their lawn like that to me that's ridiculous like I would
1:49:29never want that that to me is like a weird like toxic attitude thing so I don't want
1:49:34an intimidating sign in front of my bike all the time that I'm going to multiple times
1:49:39a day and that my whole family is going to like I don't want signs and be like look look
1:49:44at the camera you're under surveillance like that's that's not the kind of thing I want
1:49:47to do so that's why I'm hoping like I'm hoping a motion light setup combined with a visible
1:49:52camera should probably make this a balance that that works enough but it doesn't make
1:49:59me it doesn't like you know make me feel like I live in a prison take a look at the the
1:50:03most obnoxious dog you know deterrent sign I've ever seen in my life I just put it in
1:50:08the slack oh my god this is a whole paragraph yes very poorly written Casey would you like
1:50:14to read this because because I feel like it is some of your my goodness I also like the
1:50:19the dollar sign s that reminds me of you Casey would you like to do a dramatic reading here
1:50:23hi we hope you're enjoying your dog walk just in an off chance you don't realize that what
1:50:28your dog does in our lawn costs us hundreds dollar sign letter s every year to fix we
1:50:33assure you it does please keep your dog off our lawn if you still decide to let your dog
1:50:37use our lawn please smile for the camera have a nice day they've got a comma splice they've
1:50:43got dollar sign s and they've got a lot of attitude and can you imagine like having this
1:50:47on your house so you see it all the time like that's that's not the kind of attitude like
1:50:53I I just I don't want that kind of attitude you know and this is this gets into the same
1:50:57problem Margot was just saying before if you still decide to let your dog use our lawn
1:51:01please smile for the camera okay what the hell is the camera gonna do are you going
1:51:05to use the photo to track me down and what nothing's gonna come of this you can't get
1:51:10anything to happen from having footage of something maybe if you're if you're the neighbor
1:51:13down the street and they'll be like now I know the neighbor down the street is doing
1:51:16it so what now you're going to sick the police on your neighbor you're gonna sue your neighbor
1:51:19like this is the type of well then like and what do you have at the end of the day you
1:51:24have a bunch of videos of dog pooping like why who wants that right and then you have
1:51:28to use them as evidence to say this dog is doing hundreds of dollars worth of damage
1:51:31to our lawn you're gonna bring your neighbor to small claims court it's like what kind
1:51:35of what kind of life do you want to lead exactly yeah it's like I don't want like you don't
1:51:39want if you're so obsessed with dogs not pooping on your lawn but then you spend time in your
1:51:44day reviewing footage of dogs poop on your lawn and planning your law planning your lawsuits
1:51:50right or whatever you're whatever you're gonna do like it turn them into the police like
1:51:53it's just yeah you're not gonna be a popular neighbor and you may want to pick your battle
1:51:57slightly different and honestly I walk past that lawn there was no dog poop on their lawn
1:52:01like I think maybe it's a different neighborhood than I live in but I think everyone around
1:52:05here is pretty good about picking up her dog poop people should pick up the dog for sure
1:52:08but that sign feels like overkill maybe it works maybe that's why there's no dog maybe
1:52:14no dogs live in this neighborhood they're just they're just waiting for somebody like
1:52:17the person who buys a gun just waiting for someone to break into their house so they
1:52:19can be a hero god so Marco I have to ask you why why didn't you look at like power over
1:52:26ethernet powered cameras because I know almost nothing about any of this and I have not started
1:52:31my you know research or anything but it seemed to me like if I were to do it I would do something
1:52:38that is powered via PoE and would would be streamed either to my Synology or I am I am
1:52:45right there with you with home kits here video whatever it's called I think one of those
1:52:49two options so if you do PoE then it makes a lot of the indoor outdoor in terms of power
1:52:55anyway go away doesn't it or is that is that not solving the problem I think it's solving
1:52:59so you'd have PoE Eufy Eufy is such a terrible name it's like someone trying to hold in a
1:53:04sneeze I mean so if I was doing like a really serious setup for something that had larger
1:53:10needs or if I was putting a camera somewhere where there was there weren't nearby outlets
1:53:14for USB cables fine but these cameras they need like a micro USB one amp like you like
1:53:20you can feed them off of anything and so their needs just aren't that high now as you get
1:53:26into things like cameras with bright lights in them then you have more serious needs and
1:53:31that being said usually most of the cameras in this space that are at least the outdoor
1:53:34ones at least most of them have batteries and the idea usually is because they're not
1:53:38doing continuous recording because they're doing event based recording like you know
1:53:41motion based recording then they can run on battery for like months at a time without
1:53:46need to be recharged some of them have batteries and USB and you can run USB to them if you
1:53:50want to to you know to have continuous power or not so there's lots of options here and
1:53:56this again like this is why I was actually pretty impressed with Eufy's offerings if
1:54:00you don't need HomeKit compatibility because they have tons more models that don't have
1:54:03HomeKit and because like you know the HomeKit secure video thing it works great again as
1:54:09I said but there's just so few hardware options to choose from so if you have certain needs
1:54:13like that like you have way more options in other people's ecosystems but yeah the PoE
1:54:17stuff my needs aren't that high you know if I my main need here is a deterrent and if
1:54:24I really need like you know perfect crisp 4k video to turn into the police and have
1:54:30them you know analyze it like CSI like that's one thing but that's not reality for definitely
1:54:36not for me and theoretically for not for anybody like that's not a kind of thing that I really
1:54:40need so in this case you know deterring people from stealing our bikes and having fun under
1:54:45our deck that's that's all I really want to do.
1:54:48Well then to build on your call for listeners help with regard to Adam and programming if
1:54:53listeners you have a power over ethernet powered camera that works well with HomeKit and or
1:55:01Synology Surveillance Station then I would like to hear about it via Twitter please and
1:55:04thank you so do let me know.
1:55:06I don't even want to use something called surveillance station like that to me it's
1:55:10so like imposing I don't want that HomeKit secure video is so much more friendly.
1:55:16It is the same thing though it's kind of the record people doing stuff under your neck.
1:55:20I know I know exactly I don't know I my dad uses surveillance station with like three
1:55:26or four cameras in and in and out of his house and he seems to think it works pretty well
1:55:33I have only very briefly looked at you know his setup and I haven't quizzed him about
1:55:37what he's done and how he's done it and so on and so forth but yeah if you have a suggestion
1:55:42for a camera indoor or outdoor please let me know probably I'm probably more concerned
1:55:47about out than in actually I am more concerned about out than in but if you have a suggestion
1:55:52please let me know on Twitter.
1:55:53Thanks to our sponsors this week Squarespace, Linode, and Fastmail and thanks to our members
1:55:59who support us directly you can join us at ATP.fm/join.
1:56:03We will talk to you next week.
1:56:05[music]
1:56:08Now the show is over.
1:56:10They didn't even mean to begin.
1:56:13Because it was accidental.
1:56:15Oh it was accidental.
1:56:18John didn't do any research.
1:56:20Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:56:23Because it was accidental.
1:56:26Oh it was accidental.
1:56:29And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.
1:56:34And if you're into Twitter you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
1:56:43So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M.
1:56:47N-T Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C.
1:56:52USA, Syracuse.
1:56:55It's accidental.
1:56:58They didn't mean to.
1:57:00Accidental.
1:57:03Tech podcast so long.
1:57:08So Casey, it says here in the show notes you are trying out Bottom Dock.
1:57:13Is that code for something?
1:57:15It's something that happens under my deck.
1:57:18Well played.
1:57:20This is with regard to Connected episode 358, which I think it was a couple weeks ago at this point.
1:57:26And the title of the episode was Roast My Dock.
1:57:29And this was, I think it was Mike and Steven, I think Federico was out that week if I recall correctly.
1:57:34And they were making fun of each other's docks.
1:57:38And I have very strong opinions, as I am wont to do, about where the docks should be.
1:57:45And for forever and a day, I have been of the opinion that the docks should be on the left hand side of the screen.
1:57:52And it should be always auto hidden.
1:57:54I am, and this is where everyone is going to get very angry at me, I do like magnification.
1:57:59I am a magnification user, which I know drives everyone nuts.
1:58:02I don't have it magnifying very much, but I do like it.
1:58:05And that is the way I had my dock.
1:58:07Now I am not really looking to turn this into a Roast My Dock like reprise, if you will.
1:58:12But just for context, Jon, where do you keep your dock, generally speaking?
1:58:17Bottom on desktops and on laptops, either bottom or right.
1:58:21Doing it on the left is ridiculous because we live in a country where the predominant language is left to right.
1:58:26So why does that make the left ridiculous?
1:58:28Because that is where your windows start with the text in them.
1:58:32I don't want a dock overlapping them and I don't want to have to avoid it.
1:58:35That is prime real estate.
1:58:36That is why the cursor starts in the upper left hand corner of the Mac screen when you boot.
1:58:40Or I think it still does.
1:58:41But that is the origin, upper left.
1:58:43You read from left to right, top to bottom, in English.
1:58:46And we are all using our Macs in English, so left hand dock is ridiculous.
1:58:50Now you hide it so it is not the big deal.
1:58:51It is not really messing with your window space.
1:58:53Whatever. But anyway, that is what I do.
1:58:54Bottom everywhere pretty much.
1:58:55But if I do it on the side because I have a small laptop screen, I do it on the right side.
1:58:59And pin to the bottom back when I could pin.
1:59:02Yeah, whatever.
1:59:04Alright, and Marco, what is your situation?
1:59:05I am a left dock with no auto hide.
1:59:08Except on laptops where I do auto hide.
1:59:10Interesting.
1:59:11I am a side dock, which is for the same reason that almost everyone, except apparently you and Jon,
1:59:18but almost everybody would choose the side because we usually have much more width in our screens these days than height.
1:59:25Yep, yep, yep.
1:59:26And I am glad you brought that up because that is exactly how I landed on a side dock myself.
1:59:30It occurred to me, wait, what am I doing?
1:59:32And this is early on in my Mac life when I would not auto hide.
1:59:36What am I doing having this dock taking up all of this precious vertical real estate when every Mac I own is a wide screen?
1:59:44So why would I not put it on the side?
1:59:46Well, I can give you an answer to that question.
1:59:48So everyone, yes, the screens are wider than they are tall unless you have an XDR and rotate it, which is a possibility.
1:59:53But still, they are wider than they are tall.
1:59:54But that does not mean that vertical space is more valuable to you than horizontal.
2:00:00Because being able to make a window an extra inch tall might have less value to you than having an extra inch of width in which to arrange more windows.
2:00:11So maybe you could have three nicely sized windows, but oh, the dock is overlapping one of them, so I have to make one window narrower than I wanted.
2:00:18Whereas, if you have to cut an inch off the bottom, it is probably not that big a deal because in general width is more important than height when reading stuff.
2:00:25Because you want a reasonable size width to contain the content, but of course you are always going to scroll, especially if they are web browser windows or text editor windows.
2:00:30It is always more vertically, but you want to get a good size horizontally.
2:00:34So I am not saying this is wrong, like, you know, again, there is more horizontal space and you can divide it up how you want.
2:00:40But I would introduce the thought technology that it could be in your situation, depending on how you do window management, that horizontal space is more valuable to you even though there is more of it around than vertical space.
2:00:52I understand what you are saying. I cannot say I agree with you. And I have reached the same conclusion as Marco.
2:00:57Try bottom dock for a while, Steve. What do you think?
2:00:59Well, it is funny you bring that up. Because it occurred to me, well, I am not doing the always visible dock anymore.
2:01:06And I have not for, I do not even know how long. I do not recall when I made the switch from always visible to auto hide, but it was many, many, many years ago.
2:01:13Do you have the animation crank down?
2:01:15No, no.
2:01:16Using the default animation delay with auto hide, I find that a little bit, I feel like I am waiting around.
2:01:22And people do not know that you can do that. You can make the animation delay basically zero.
2:01:26So as soon as your cursor hits the edge, the dock just appears fully formed in its position.
2:01:31And I feel like auto hide in general, if you do that, the edge is so much less important because the dock is not getting in the way of any of your windows because it is not visible all the time.
2:01:38And that is exactly it. It occurred to me, well, wait a second. Since I am auto hiding anyway, it does not matter what side of the screen I am on.
2:01:46I can put it wherever I want because it is not taking up real estate always, always, always, always.
2:01:51And so for the last couple of weeks now, I have been trying bottom dock and my probably decade, maybe less than that, but many years of muscle memory is I am still reaching for the left hand side of the screen.
2:02:00As my like default idle gesture. But I think I kind of like having bottom dock again, especially since for better or worse, I often have many different applications running and my dock is often relatively large.
2:02:12So I wanted to encourage those of you who maybe had very strong feelings about side dock when you were not auto hiding.
2:02:19If you are an auto hide person like I am, maybe consider using the bottom dock again.
2:02:24And one advantage to what you just said is like now you can, you know, you have more room for your dock. You can also make your dock bigger.
2:02:30Like I like looking at nice icons. I mean, granted, we are not in a good age of Mac icons right now because the current predominant style is pretty boring.
2:02:37But, you know, I still use custom icons for the things or whatever. It is nice to see pretty icons for your apps.
2:02:44And if you are auto hiding, like why not have big, meaty click targets when they come up, right?
2:02:49Make them really big. They will shrink if there is not enough room, right? But you have got all that room down there.
2:02:53And for magnification, I have not tested this in recent years, but magnification as originally implemented does not actually make the click targets any bigger.
2:03:02So if you want to make the click targets bigger, you kind of have to actually just make the dock bigger.
2:03:07But again, if you are auto hiding, no big deal. So I would say try that. Try giving yourself a little bit bigger dock than you expect.
2:03:13And then maybe try turning magnification off and see if you prefer that.
2:03:18Because I get where you like the magnification. It feels like it is bigger and the one you are going to click on is more prominent and you can kind of make sure you are on the one that you wanted.
2:03:25But if you just made all the icons as big as your current magnification size, try that for a little bit.
2:03:30Hmm, I take your point. Anyway, I just thought it was a fun observation because I was very, very devout in my side dock only.
2:03:37You would be a monster to use the bottom dock until I had that epiphany/apostrophe that I could put it on the bottom with auto hide and everyone is still happy.
2:03:46Or you could be like me and have two docks on your screen the whole time.
2:03:50Talk about bad, hard habits to break from Mac OS 8 whatever.
2:03:55I am so used to having the list of running applications and the little vertical, running application icons and the vertical list in the upper right corner of my screen.
2:04:05And my cursor just goes up there. So I have Switch Glass, my silly little thing that basically has the little icons for all my running apps in the upper right.
2:04:13And then I also have the dock which also features all my running apps plus a bunch of folders plus the trash can.
2:04:19As I have said many times, I would love to not have to run the dock.
2:04:23But I do because a bunch of the stuff that the dock does can't be done with public APIs anywhere else and no one is willing to maintain, including me, to maintain an application that somehow hacks into the private APIs to get the notification badges and the menus and the notification bounces and all the other things that only the dock can do.
2:04:42So I am kind of stuck with it. But hey, that's another reason I have this giant screen.
2:04:47I can afford to have two always visible things showing all my running apps and still have plenty of room for everything.
2:04:53[beeping]