00:00:00 ◼ ► So my day started out interesting. I got an email from my neighbor who was forwarding me the New York
00:00:06 ◼ ► announcement that you could now get COVID vaccines age 50 and up. And he was like, I'm not sure if you
00:00:12 ◼ ► make it, but here, this might be useful to you. Oh no! Rough. I am 38. Brutal. Well let me really twist the
00:00:21 ◼ ► knife because I'm that kind of jerk friend. So I had an occasion to be standing in line today, for
00:00:27 ◼ ► reasons we're not going to talk about. And somebody asked me, oh are you from one of the local colleges?
00:00:33 ◼ ► And I looked at that person and I was like, thank you. Thank you so much. And not even close. I turned
00:00:39 ◼ ► 39 last week, but thank you. Well did they think you were a student or a professor? Wow, you know,
00:00:45 ◼ ► you've ruined it for me. It's all about context, Marco. The assumption of your neighbor that you
00:00:53 ◼ ► would have to be approaching 50 to have a house on Fire Island is a safe bet, demographically speaking.
00:00:59 ◼ ► And if you're hanging around with a bunch of college students, someone who mistakes you for a
00:01:03 ◼ ► college student, it's all about context, right? You know, that's the least exciting, interesting, and
00:01:09 ◼ ► funny, but also probably most accurate explanation. And also the hair color. Those piano. Hey, I'm getting
00:01:15 ◼ ► a lot of salt in my pepper, if you know what I'm saying. So I shouldn't really be throwing
00:01:20 ◼ ► stones on that issue. Marco, what would get you to actually leave your house, like in COVID
00:01:27 ◼ ► notwithstanding, and go see a concert? Like we've established that you're not a fan of fish concerts.
00:01:32 ◼ ► Is there a concert or perhaps a musical or some other sort of theater-like thing that you would
00:01:38 ◼ ► be willing to attend? Or are you, again, COVID notwithstanding, are you totally hands-off on
00:01:44 ◼ ► anything that even vaguely smells like a concert? My thinking on that has kind of changed recently.
00:01:50 ◼ ► Oh, tell me more. Obviously, as everyone knows, I'm a huge Fish fan, and Fish is very much a band
00:01:56 ◼ ► about their live shows. That's very much, you know, the focus of the fandom, and most of the
00:02:02 ◼ ► music that comes out of them is from live shows. Since COVID, there have been no live shows. And
00:02:07 ◼ ► so I've been accustomed for the last decade or so to getting like 15 new Fish shows a year,
00:02:16 ◼ ► or whatever, you know, whatever the number is. And I buy them all through their website,
00:02:24 ◼ ► produces basically 15 new albums a year in the form of these live shows. As much as I love to
00:02:29 ◼ ► give you crap about Fish, that is really incredible. And you can do similar things with a lot of other
00:02:33 ◼ ► artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, but they are not soundboard recordings like you're
00:02:41 ◼ ► still audience recordings where somebody put two microphones on a stand and just recorded
00:02:51 ◼ ► just ballpark, how much is it for like a year or season pass to whatever service it is that does
00:02:56 ◼ ► this? It's from Live Fish, and I think it, they don't do like year passes, they do like tour
00:03:02 ◼ ► passes. So if there's like a summer tour, it ends up being like 10 bucks a show, whatever that is.
00:03:06 ◼ ► So like, you know, a tour might be like 150 bucks or something, but it's not, you know, it's not
00:03:10 ◼ ► like a huge, you know, massive thing considering that's like, you know, so it's so much music.
00:03:14 ◼ ► And as you said, like, it's not, it isn't just like a microphone in the audience. They,
00:03:18 ◼ ► the Fish community has that as well. You can listen to the same show through like tapers versus
00:03:23 ◼ ► the actual official releases. And it's, I mean, it's no contest. It's, the official releases are
00:03:28 ◼ ► way better. And so I'm accustomed to, you know, my favorite band releasing a pretty large amount
00:03:34 ◼ ► of new music every year. And then to go from that to nothing for, you know, probably a year and a
00:03:39 ◼ ► half or, you know, whatever it will end up being once this all opens up again for concerts. When
00:03:44 ◼ ► the time comes, when they start doing concerts again, I've thought about going to like one of
00:03:48 ◼ ► the first ones if I can, I'm sure it's going to be insane to try to get a ticket, but I've thought
00:03:51 ◼ ► about going to one of the early ones that I would be able to go to geographically because I can only
00:03:57 ◼ ► imagine like the jubilation that will be like the energy that would be in that crowd at like coming
00:04:02 ◼ ► out of this, going into that, I think would be really something to see. I think that could be,
00:04:14 ◼ ► - Yeah. My mom was only like 19, but yeah, it's like my parents went to Woodstock. That was like a,
00:04:19 ◼ ► you know, generation defining thing. And I don't think, you know, a Fish concert in 2021 or 2022
00:04:26 ◼ ► is a generation defining thing for most people. But I think the idea of having all this time off
00:04:44 ◼ ► to feel incredible. And if I was ever tempted to go to another concert, that's the time to go,
00:04:55 ◼ ► they tend to be worse. They tend to kind of suck, like they make more mistakes and, you know,
00:04:59 ◼ ► it's not as tight and everything because they haven't had as much time to practice and everything.
00:05:02 ◼ ► But like, I think this moment in live music is going to be really felt by everybody. I think
00:05:08 ◼ ► it's going to be a really big deal. And I can't think of a cooler way to celebrate like the world
00:05:15 ◼ ► reopening again, whenever that happens, then go into a Fish concert. Even though normally I'm,
00:05:22 ◼ ► as you mentioned, normally I'm not super into going to concerts. I love listening to them,
00:05:27 ◼ ► but I'm not super into going to them. There are no other bands at this point that I really consider
00:05:31 ◼ ► going to see in concert just because concerts I find most of the time I find that my attention
00:05:37 ◼ ► drifts and I get tired and I kind of just want to like, leave after a while. It's they're not
00:05:44 ◼ ► usually, you know, very appealing to me. But again, I think in this particular instance,
00:05:52 ◼ ► I hear you. Now, I feel like your destiny, if all the stars align, is to go to one of the New Year's
00:06:00 ◼ ► Eve shows. What is it? Madison Square Garden? Is that right? And be there for that, which I'm sure
00:06:10 ◼ ► that would, especially if it happened in 2021, which I'm super skeptical, but just hypothetically,
00:06:15 ◼ ► like, you know, Fish finally was able to do their New Year's Eve show again. And you were able to
00:06:20 ◼ ► get to it. I think I could see you really enjoying that and then saying I'll never do that again.
00:06:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, like, well, ideally, I mean, Madison Square Garden, that is actually the one place I
00:06:30 ◼ ► saw fish. The one time I went was it wasn't a New Year's Eve show, but it was at Madison Square
00:06:34 ◼ ► Garden. And, you know, it's fine, but it's giant indoor arena. Like one thing I really don't like
00:06:40 ◼ ► about concerts is all the cigarette smoke. And that's better in recent years, like since it's
00:06:45 ◼ ► mostly illegal in most places now. But like being at a concert where you just constantly breathing
00:06:49 ◼ ► at everyone's smoke really sucks. At fish, the entirety of Madison Square Garden will be one big
00:06:54 ◼ ► hotbox. Exactly. So ideally, it would be an outdoor venue. And what's really close to Fire Island?
00:07:01 ◼ ► Jones Beach. Yeah, I've actually seen a concert there. Fish has played there. So that I think
00:07:07 ◼ ► would be ideal. Like if they go there, I'll pay whatever it takes to get that ticket. Everything's
00:07:11 ◼ ► better at the beach. Of course. Do you have any interest Marco in any other concert adjacent
00:07:16 ◼ ► things like musicals or live theater or anything like that? Like if the original cast of Hamilton
00:07:21 ◼ ► was back on Broadway for 10 nights and you scored a ticket, would that be interesting to you? Or is
00:07:25 ◼ ► there is there nothing there for you? If I'm with other people who are into it, I'll go and I'll
00:07:30 ◼ ► have a good time, but I'm never really like initiating that kind of thing. Fair enough.
00:07:35 ◼ ► And John, I know you do enjoy musical theater, but similar question like, is there anything that
00:07:41 ◼ ► would get you to go to, I don't know, a U2 concert or perhaps some other concert for someone that
00:07:44 ◼ ► you're interested in? I don't think there's anything special about the end of COVID times.
00:07:48 ◼ ► I'm always game to go to a concert. Last one I think I went to was Amy Mann when she came to
00:07:52 ◼ ► Boston. I loved it. One of those concerts I've ever been to. I'm not a big music concert goer.
00:07:57 ◼ ► And there's, it would have to be a band that I really liked, but if it is a band that I like
00:08:01 ◼ ► and it's, and I don't have to travel that far, I go to it. Good deal. What was the, was it Rectifs
00:08:07 ◼ ► or was it Dubai Friday where Merlin was talking about what it's going to be like coming out of
00:08:10 ◼ ► the end of times? Probably both. We definitely talked about it in Rectifs. That was a really,
00:08:27 ◼ ► All right. We should probably start with some follow-up and we have some reports from the field
00:08:33 ◼ ► coming in live from the field. We have reports of the wheel of shame. I love, I love that we
00:08:39 ◼ ► could put out the request saying, Hey, if any, if any Tesla owners have gotten flat tires and
00:08:43 ◼ ► have gotten service wheels, let us know how they were spray painted and people, and we actually had
00:08:48 ◼ ► listeners respond. It is ridiculous that this is my life, that I can talk about some stupid flat
00:08:58 ◼ ► these things, but I love it and I'm thankful for it. So we got several reports. Apparently in
00:09:04 ◼ ► Hong Kong, the wheel of shame is a solid red and we'll put a link in the show notes. Well,
00:09:09 ◼ ► well I wouldn't go that far. So this is this, this is a several who wrote from Hong Kong and sent us
00:09:14 ◼ ► a picture of a Tesla with a wheel of shame and it is indeed spray painted red. And it's not like the
00:09:20 ◼ ► ones that Marco has showed us where it's a silver wheel and just kind of haphazardly spray painted
00:09:24 ◼ ► in a zigzag pattern red, but it is also not carefully sprayed entirely red. If you zoom in
00:09:31 ◼ ► on the wheel, you will see that they're maintaining that this shouldn't look like a red wheel. It
00:09:36 ◼ ► should look like a silver wheel that's that a small child's tried to spray paint red, but got
00:09:42 ◼ ► bored and left before actually covering the entire wheel. So it is a slightly better paint job, but
00:09:49 ◼ ► no one would mistake this for a red wheel. They'll say someone tried to spray paint their wheel
00:09:53 ◼ ► really badly, but there's splotches of gray showing through. So this is, this is Hong Kong.
00:09:57 ◼ ► This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just, you know, the Metro New York area, right? Worldwide,
00:10:03 ◼ ► the memo went out to all Tesla dealerships, Hey, take your wheels, get a can of spray paint from
00:10:09 ◼ ► the hardware store and go to town on them because we don't want people not bringing their car back
00:10:14 ◼ ► to get the quote unquote real wheel. I guess it looks like the really big version of, you know
00:10:20 ◼ ► how when you're in school and you tried to color something with a Sharpie, you try to like, you
00:10:24 ◼ ► know, change the color of like your shoe or something like it looks like that, but just really
00:10:28 ◼ ► you don't get good coverage and you kind of get tired of it because you do one area and it gets
00:10:32 ◼ ► darker red, but then it doesn't match the other areas. And you're just like, ah, forget it.
00:10:47 ◼ ► Now this blows my mind. It's red in Hong Kong. It's red in New York, but in DC it's blue. What's
00:10:53 ◼ ► going on? Is there, I mean, is DC just a, you know, a rebel, a rogue. They're just not, they
00:10:58 ◼ ► didn't follow the manual correctly. They ran out of red spray paint. Well down there. Red means
00:11:02 ◼ ► something else politically. Anyway, this is, this is the world's dumbest corporate policy and I
00:11:08 ◼ ► can't wait until they change it. Are red wheels ruined now too? Red pretty much everything is
00:11:13 ◼ ► ruined at this point. And then finally, uh, Aaron Farnham writes that the Tesla spare wheel graffiti
00:11:22 ◼ ► neatly stenciled on the rim. Unfortunately, no pictures. Well, there you go. That's exactly what
00:11:26 ◼ ► I was talking about, but neatly stenciled makes me think, do you mean someone held up a piece of
00:11:30 ◼ ► cardboard with a Tesla logo cut out of it and then took that same can of spray paint and sprayed
00:11:34 ◼ ► through it? Or do you mean actually neatly stenciled because there's like the drip mark
00:11:38 ◼ ► coming down, right? If there's neatly stenciled and there's neatly stenciled. So I think we need
00:11:44 ◼ ► more photos of this, but that is an interesting variation. Someone just couldn't bear. They
00:11:48 ◼ ► probably got the instructions, randomly spray painted, please. And I said, I randomly spray
00:11:52 ◼ ► paint. I'm at least going to take these scissors and some construction paper and cut out a stencil
00:11:56 ◼ ► of a big T and then spray it on there. And do you think that would be less effective at key at
00:12:01 ◼ ► making people return it? Cause it like, it might, it might look intentional. Well, that's what I'm
00:12:05 ◼ ► saying. I'm expecting it doesn't quite look as good as the phrase neatly stenciled. It's making it
00:12:10 ◼ ► sound, cause it's not an even surface and it's not easy to do. And it's not like a fact, a pre-made
00:12:18 ◼ ► factory decal that you apply. So someone had to sort of, someone had to do an arts and crafts
00:12:22 ◼ ► project to make this. So here's the thing, Aaron Farnham, if you really want to be an excellent
00:12:29 ◼ ► listener and an above and beyond feedbacker, I need you to pop one of your tires and get a spare
00:12:34 ◼ ► wheel and then take a picture for us. Drive over a spike strip. Yes, please. All right, John, do you
00:12:41 ◼ ► want to tell us about App Store pricing policing, please? We talked about this a couple of shows ago,
00:12:46 ◼ ► how Apple was telling certain people, essentially your app is not worth the price you are charging
00:12:51 ◼ ► for. It says us, so stop it. And this was in the context of scam apps, which are, you know, charging,
00:12:56 ◼ ► you know, trying to get people to sign up for, you know, a $5 a week fee for some app that does
00:13:02 ◼ ► nothing or whatever, and Apple is trying to get them out of the store. And the way they do it is
00:13:05 ◼ ► they send you an Instagram that says, nah, you can't charge that much because your app is bad.
00:13:09 ◼ ► And I, we talked about it in the context of getting scam apps off the store. And I talked
00:13:14 ◼ ► about it in the context of Apple having the ultimate control over pricing and now flexing
00:13:18 ◼ ► that control. And because App Store policies, even the ones that we agree with are haphazardly applied,
00:13:23 ◼ ► you might think, well, I'm not a scammer, so I have nothing to worry about. But that's never a
00:13:33 ◼ ► app updates just got metadata rejected with quote, specifically, can you confirm that X is the
00:13:39 ◼ ► intended price of your in-app purchase product? Right. So he didn't give the price, but it's
00:13:43 ◼ ► basically they asked them that they read metadata rejected him and said, did you mean to charge
00:13:49 ◼ ► what you're charging? And he says, my plan hasn't changed price in years. And the price is $49 a
00:13:55 ◼ ► month, which might sound like a lot, but it's competitors are 50 to $150. These are not supposed
00:14:00 ◼ ► to be consumer apps. I replied that the price is intentional and they approved the app hours later.
00:14:05 ◼ ► It felt icky though. My app has been on the App Store since 2015 and the price hasn't changed
00:14:09 ◼ ► often. So this is kind of like, he didn't get rejected. They didn't tell him his app wasn't
00:14:14 ◼ ► worth that price, but they did say, are you sure you want to charge $50 a month? Kind of implying
00:14:21 ◼ ► that seems like a lot for your cruddy app. And especially for an app that's been on the store
00:14:24 ◼ ► for years and hasn't changed price a lot. That's I mean, you know, you counted as a win if it was
00:14:32 ◼ ► only a one or two day delay, but you start to get a little afraid that the next time you try to send
00:14:36 ◼ ► a bug fit upstate, they're going to be like, yeah, I'm sorry. It's just doesn't look like a $50 app
00:14:41 ◼ ► to me. I mean, on the one side, I'm glad that they're at least looking at this, but it seems
00:14:45 ◼ ► like they should be taking more than just a cursory look, like look at the history of the
00:14:50 ◼ ► app and look at what does the app do? Because it should in most cases, if the price hasn't changed
00:14:55 ◼ ► in years, then come on. Well, but I mean, even if it's a scam app that hasn't changed in years,
00:15:00 ◼ ► it seems to me like in most, but not all cases, it should be pretty obvious what's a scam and what's
00:15:05 ◼ ► not again. I mean, it's never a hundred percent, but it strikes me as though this app smells very
00:15:11 ◼ ► strongly of not scam. And most of the scam apps I've seen smell very strongly of scams. So a
00:15:18 ◼ ► slightly more discerning eye would probably do some service here. It was a related story. I didn't put
00:15:23 ◼ ► in the notes, but just reminded me that some people were getting their apps rejected simply because
00:15:28 ◼ ► they hadn't issued an update in a long time. One of them was like a sort of breakout style game
00:15:32 ◼ ► that had been in the store for three years without an update. And Apple is just like, look,
00:15:36 ◼ ► we're going to pull your app because it's obvious that you've abandoned it. Right. And the developer
00:15:40 ◼ ► was like, look, this app runs perfectly. It works on all the new iPhones and all the new shapes.
00:15:45 ◼ ► Like you wouldn't have no idea that this app wasn't released yesterday. There's nothing like
00:15:49 ◼ ► broken about it at 64 bit. It scales to the iPhone 10. It goes into the corners. It handles the notch
00:15:54 ◼ ► like it does all the things. It's a perfectly fine game. And the reason it hasn't had an update in
00:16:00 ◼ ► three years is yes, because the developer is not working on it anymore, but also because it hasn't
00:16:03 ◼ ► needed one. It's fine. It made me afraid that someday I'm not going to get to the point with
00:16:07 ◼ ► my apps where they work and I don't have any features that I want to add. And Apple is going
00:16:12 ◼ ► to say, I'm sorry, we're pulling your apps from the store because you haven't updated them in a
00:16:15 ◼ ► few years. Yeah. That's, you know, if you're going to pull things off the store, by all means,
00:16:19 ◼ ► pull abandoned apps that are crappy, but apps that three years is not abandoned, first of all. And
00:16:23 ◼ ► second of all, if it's like a game and it works fine, like, ugh, just again, inconsistent, you
00:16:31 ◼ ► know, application of rules that make sense. And, you know, if you heard them explains to you,
00:16:36 ◼ ► it's like, oh yeah, certainly we don't want zombie games in the store, but it's all about the
00:16:40 ◼ ► execution and execution at the scale Apple works. It's impossible to have any execution that is so
00:16:45 ◼ ► perfect that it does not produce stories like this. And of course, all we talk about are the
00:16:49 ◼ ► stories, not like this and not the 10,000 other actual scam games that were pulled, right? So
00:16:52 ◼ ► that's just the nature of dealing with the app stories. You're going to hear about the stories
00:16:56 ◼ ► that seem quote unquote unfair, and you won't hear about the thousands and thousands of ones that
00:17:00 ◼ ► work correctly, but that is the challenge before Apple when running something like this.
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00:18:54 ◼ ► Moving right along, Brett Johnson writes, "I've seen a lot of game devs giving up on Mac ports
00:19:02 ◼ ► over the last couple of years. Deprecating OpenGL is often an issue cited along with Metal just
00:19:07 ◼ ► being difficult, especially for those running custom or smaller game engines. The drop of
00:19:12 ◼ ► 32-bit support was a huge hit to a lot of devs too, but I've also seen a lot that give up because
00:19:22 ◼ ► Apple, but they could be doing more to help devs over these hurdles." So can you tell me,
00:19:30 ◼ ► Notification. What is App Notarization? So these complaints, you know, OpenGL being dropped and,
00:19:37 ◼ ► you know, the 32-bit and Metal versus the other APIs, right, and notarization are all kind of in
00:19:45 ◼ ► the bucket of, like, hurdles, hoops that you have to jump through if you want to have a game on an
00:19:48 ◼ ► Apple platform. Notarization in particular is the thing where you send your app to Apple and they
00:19:58 ◼ ► so it's been signed by Apple but it's not being distributed by Apple, right? But all those things
00:20:03 ◼ ► are nothing compared to the hoops you have to jump through to ship a game on any game console,
00:20:10 ◼ ► right? If you want to ship a game on a Nintendo game console, you will be begging for notarization.
00:20:15 ◼ ► The things you have to do, the things that they care about in your app that you are forced to
00:20:20 ◼ ► change and the things you have to support, it just, it is so much harder to ship for any game
00:20:25 ◼ ► console than for the Mac, right? So when I see things like this, all this is true, it does
00:20:30 ◼ ► discourage Mac ports and people decide not to port to Mac because of these things, but what it shows
00:20:36 ◼ ► is how small of a hurdle it takes for people to bail on the Mac when it comes to gaming because
00:20:42 ◼ ► there's not much money to be made, Apple's not particularly friendly to it, so all it takes is
00:20:45 ◼ ► a little bit of inconvenience like say notarizing your app which is a thing that iOS developers or
00:20:55 ◼ ► but it's like, "Eh, now it's not worth it anymore. Oh, I had a 32-bit game and I don't feel like
00:21:00 ◼ ► porting it and because it's the Mac, it's not worth it anymore." Whereas when Sony comes out
00:21:04 ◼ ► with a new game console, no matter how Byzantine it is, people say, "Oh God, this is so terrible,
00:21:08 ◼ ► but it's worth it. It's worth it because Sony wants my game on it, because Sony is courting
00:21:12 ◼ ► me, because I know Sony's going to sell a lot of these consoles and I know the people who buy them
00:21:16 ◼ ► are the kind of people who want to play the kind of game I'm making, so yes, we are going to jump
00:21:20 ◼ ► through all the hoops to get our game on these game consoles, but we are not going to jump through
00:21:24 ◼ ► the hoops to get the games on the Mac." So situations like this are just more proof that the Mac,
00:21:29 ◼ ► Apple has not made the Mac a platform that is attractive to game developers and that's Apple's
00:21:35 ◼ ► job to do. And most of the things they do either are neutral with respect to that goal or make it
00:21:41 ◼ ► worse, like adding a few more little requirements that game developers weren't used to. When Apple
00:21:47 ◼ ► added app signing to the Mac App Store and app signing in iOS, all those things they did were
00:21:54 ◼ ► also hurdles for people making applications for the iPhone and making applications for the Mac.
00:21:58 ◼ ► But Mac developers and iOS developers may have grumbled, but they continue because they say,
00:22:05 ◼ ► "Well, this is our business. If we're going to put apps on the phone, we've got to do what Apple says."
00:22:08 ◼ ► And even the Mac App Store, many companies went through heroic efforts because they thought that
00:22:13 ◼ ► the upside of being in the Mac App Store was worth making the effort. In some cases, they've changed
00:22:19 ◼ ► their mind on that, sometimes they change their mind and then change their mind back, but the
00:22:22 ◼ ► point is those platforms, the phone, the iPad, the Mac, are attractive enough for developers to be
00:22:28 ◼ ► willing to deal with these hurdles and games on Apple's platform or not. Yeah, and I think a
00:22:34 ◼ ► lot of this comes down to, I mean, some of it is definitely, you know, Apple's attitude towards
00:22:40 ◼ ► developers, which I think can mostly, most of the time be described as tense. Apple doesn't seem to
00:22:47 ◼ ► have it in them or have any interest in attracting developers to their platforms. Apple seems to
00:22:54 ◼ ► dictate certain things to developers. Certain things are nice, like I love a lot of the APIs
00:23:00 ◼ ► and everything, a lot of the tooling's pretty good. So a lot of it's good, but for the most part,
00:23:06 ◼ ► the overall attitude for Apple towards developers, Apple's sitting back waiting for people to come to
00:23:12 ◼ ► them and putting up hurdles and saying, "Hey, you all, here's a new hurdle, you have to deal with it,
00:23:17 ◼ ► period. What are you going to do?" You know, like John was saying, when there is a large potential
00:23:23 ◼ ► upside to a platform, we go through those hurdles. I'm willing to jump through all their stupid hoops
00:23:29 ◼ ► and go through their stupid code signing that still is completely broken if you use CarPlay,
00:23:34 ◼ ► you have to do it all manually still. And you know, you go through all this stuff, the notarization,
00:23:39 ◼ ► like you know, you go through all that stuff because you know what, I want to make a podcast
00:23:43 ◼ ► app on the iPhone and I want to make it badly enough that all those hassles and costs and the
00:23:50 ◼ ► App Store tax and app reviews BS, all of that, I'm willing to go through all that because there's a
00:23:57 ◼ ► big market for making a podcast app on the iPhone and also I use an iPhone and I want to have my own
00:24:06 ◼ ► - And let me just pause you there, and that is a key point. Apple sells a ton of iPhones, right?
00:24:13 ◼ ► Apple makes a platform that is attractive to use as a developer by selling tons of iPhones to people
00:24:18 ◼ ► who have money and are willing to spend it on software. That's why, it's not like, "Oh, I just
00:24:22 ◼ ► like the iPhone so I'm just going to make overcast for it." The overcast is where the customers you
00:24:27 ◼ ► want are and Apple really helped to make that happen. It's not true of games. Apple sells a
00:24:32 ◼ ► lot of devices but the people who buy them aren't waiting to sell out 60 bucks for games. People who
00:24:37 ◼ ► buy game consoles are. So it's like, it's where the customers are and that is the job of the
00:24:47 ◼ ► to people who buy them and then want to play games to make it worthwhile for games developers.
00:24:50 ◼ ► - Right, and that's where the iPhone is a pretty decent casual gaming device. Pretty good casual
00:24:58 ◼ ► gaming device. The iPad is also a pretty good casual gaming device. The Mac isn't for lots of
00:25:04 ◼ ► reasons but you think about how many gamers buy Macs? It is to some degree a chicken and egg
00:25:11 ◼ ► problem. Not a lot of gamers buy Macs because in part, because there's not a lot of good games on
00:25:17 ◼ ► Macs but also because Apple's hardware choices in especially things like GPU options, certainly
00:25:31 ◼ ► are really into, Apple has just given a huge middle finger to so often in their hardware
00:25:37 ◼ ► offerings and their pricing and things like that. And so most gamers don't buy Macs and therefore
00:25:42 ◼ ► there's not much reason for most game developers to go through Apple's hurdles and hassles to bring
00:25:48 ◼ ► their games to the Mac. Now, I was hoping that the era of the Apple ARM Macs coming in and the
00:25:57 ◼ ► availability of iOS apps on Macs, I was hoping that would improve things. So far it seems like
00:26:04 ◼ ► it hasn't but it is still early days and we'll see what happens. I think unfortunately what I've seen
00:26:10 ◼ ► mostly is Apple gave all developers the ability to opt out of their iOS apps being available on
00:26:19 ◼ ► M1 Macs and many large developers have taken that option. Many of them for not particularly good
00:26:26 ◼ ► reason, just like, "We don't want to go through the hassle of testing that so we'll just disable it
00:26:31 ◼ ► because who will care?" So I feel like that's kind of a non-starter. Catalyst has been mostly
00:26:36 ◼ ► a non-starter for most people. So the efforts to try to take that iOS effort that's being invested
00:26:43 ◼ ► on the iOS side and bring it to the Mac without much effort on the developer side mostly hasn't
00:26:49 ◼ ► panned out or hasn't panned out the way that we expected or wanted. So I don't see this...
00:26:53 ◼ ► I think the only thing that might save this is if Apple's laptop hardware for a while ends up having
00:27:02 ◼ ► really good GPUs and we're seeing the beginnings of that. The M1 GPU is pretty good for an integrated
00:27:09 ◼ ► GPU. It's very good for an integrated GPU. It's not very good for a gaming GPU. It's okay but it
00:27:15 ◼ ► could be a lot better and maybe the higher end ones will get better options there. We'll see what
00:27:19 ◼ ► happens but ultimately until and unless a lot of gamers buy Macs we're not going to see a lot of
00:27:28 ◼ ► games being developed for the Mac. I just don't see what gamers want in hardware and in customizability
00:27:36 ◼ ► and pricing and everything. I don't see Apple ever doing that. I think it's good to have a reminder.
00:27:44 ◼ ► When we talk about this I think most people are on the same page with us in terms of the context
00:27:48 ◼ ► of the conversation but the mobile gaming market is bigger than the non-mobile gaming market.
00:27:54 ◼ ► Mobile gaming of which Apple has a huge piece is the bigger piece of the pie. There's more money
00:27:59 ◼ ► flowing through mobile gaming than there is for quote-unquote "real gaming" right? The triple-a
00:28:04 ◼ ► games or whatever. The reason we always talk about it in this context of like well why is Apple so
00:28:10 ◼ ► bad at games? We're talking about the triple-a games kind of for the same reason that we talk
00:28:14 ◼ ► about blockbuster movies. I mean it's a little bit different but like it's because the people who are
00:28:20 ◼ ► the most into games like those big triple-a games. It doesn't mean that's where all the money is.
00:28:25 ◼ ► There's a lot of money in triple-a games but there's more money in quote-unquote "casual"
00:28:29 ◼ ► mobile games. So it's actually kind of hard to pitch Apple and say oh here's how you can get
00:28:35 ◼ ► better at gaming. They'd be like we're already making you know a ton of money because mobile
00:28:39 ◼ ► gaming is the biggest kind of gaming and we may have a big chunk of that. Why would we go after
00:28:44 ◼ ► this smaller piece of the pie that you tell us maybe we could get some piece of if we fight
00:28:47 ◼ ► against Microsoft and Windows PCs and game consoles? That doesn't sound like a fun time
00:28:51 ◼ ► to us. We'll just keep being dominant in mobile gaming because that's where the money is and
00:28:56 ◼ ► that's where the future is and everybody has a phone and everyone plays games on those things
00:28:59 ◼ ► and only a few people have gaming PCs. But it's still when we you know when they sell machines
00:29:04 ◼ ► that are ostensibly capable of these type of games. It's got a keyboard, a mouse, a big screen,
00:29:09 ◼ ► a fast GPU, a fast CPU. People buy them for you know a lot of money and say it's a shame that I
00:29:16 ◼ ► can't play these popular games on this because the hardware is capable. That's where you get
00:29:22 ◼ ► letters like this that say developers aren't doing Mac ports of these games. I mean they're
00:29:26 ◼ ► not doing Mac ports of mobile games either but the mobile games are already on the iPhone.
00:29:34 ◼ ► I think the reason developers bail because if they're like if we ever decide to address the Mac
00:29:38 ◼ ► we'll sell them a separate SKU. We don't want to just let them have our existing game and we don't
00:29:42 ◼ ► want them to buy it and play it on the Mac. We'll have a Mac specific game but we're never going to
00:29:45 ◼ ► do that because nobody games on the Mac anyways so who cares right. But like the mind it's kind of
00:29:50 ◼ ► like the alpha geeks when that our whole article from back in the day O'Reilly wrote about the
00:29:54 ◼ ► alpha geeks moving to the Mac in like 2003 and 4 right. When this subset this smaller subset of
00:30:01 ◼ ► the gaming population the people who are super into games who are willing to get play games for
00:30:05 ◼ ► hundreds of hours that are very complicated and intricate and difficult and aren't quote
00:30:10 ◼ ► unquote casual that that minority of the gaming world has disproportionate influence because they
00:30:17 ◼ ► are sort of on the bleeding edge of gaming technology on the the bleeding edge of gaming
00:30:21 ◼ ► complexity and of the advancement of the art form you know using the best technology available and
00:30:27 ◼ ► that's why we always talk about in this context. Obviously that's my bias too of the type of games
00:30:30 ◼ ► I like and play but it is important to recognize that from Apple's perspective there's nothing
00:30:40 ◼ ► Well the good news is that Apple's documentation is so flawless that if you ever have anything
00:30:44 ◼ ► you're confused about you can look at their perfect documentation and find the answer every
00:30:48 ◼ ► time. I don't think people are refusing to port games to the Mac because of bad documentation.
00:30:54 ◼ ► Uh you say that but if notarization was easily explained then perhaps that wouldn't be such a
00:30:58 ◼ ► hurdle. I think those people are looking looking for any excuse to not do the port oh what I got
00:31:03 ◼ ► to notarize to that's it I'm not making a game. I'm just saying I'm just gonna throw that out there
00:31:08 ◼ ► not that I ever burrow up my butt or anything. Anyway Marco uh tell me about what's going on
00:31:12 ◼ ► with your home pods. Yeah so I wanted to just do a little bit of quick expansion on the the home pod
00:31:17 ◼ ► discontinuation discussion from last week because there were a couple things that I learned in the
00:31:21 ◼ ► meantime or that I forgot about. So one of them a bunch of people wrote in to point out that
00:31:31 ◼ ► $300 big smart speaker. It apparently was again $300 so similar price you know big speaker but
00:31:38 ◼ ► that also had a home system built in and it also had an aux in jack apparently which what we were
00:31:44 ◼ ► imagine that didn't didn't Google also have a sphere that they canned before they even shipped
00:31:48 ◼ ► it they had that tv box that was like the q something what was that that that never shipped
00:31:54 ◼ ► I don't think but there was yeah there was some Google I thought it was a smart speaker that was
00:31:57 ◼ ► spherically shaped that got canned before but anyway continue. So a lot of people were saying
00:32:01 ◼ ► like okay well look the the Google Home Max which was similar you know marketing wise was also
00:32:06 ◼ ► discontinued so there must just there must just not be a market for a premium smart speaker and
00:32:12 ◼ ► I don't think that follows. No because Google cancels everything. Yeah Google discontinued
00:32:17 ◼ ► stuff all the time and they suck at hardware and they've discontinued lots of hardware of all sizes
00:32:22 ◼ ► big and small different prices and everything so yeah I wouldn't necessarily say that says anything
00:32:26 ◼ ► about it. There is an echo studio that is $200 and looks kind of like a knockoff home pod. I've never
00:32:33 ◼ ► seen one in person but Amazon's been selling it for a while so you know that that product seems to
00:32:38 ◼ ► be similar and just exists there and you look at the entire product line by Sonos almost all of
00:32:45 ◼ ► which cost significantly more than the home pod or at least in the ballpark of the home pod and
00:32:50 ◼ ► they've been selling that stuff for years and they seem to not be out of business yet so clearly the
00:32:57 ◼ ► market is there. I mean look at like any of the speakers Apple has sold in the Apple stores in
00:33:03 ◼ ► throughout history you know not just like the Apple high-fi which we'll get to in a second but like
00:33:07 ◼ ► you know you look at like all of the you know Bose and B&W and B&O and all these things like all
00:33:14 ◼ ► these like big speakers and speaker docks and things like that over the years and they're all
00:33:18 ◼ ► like $300 so I don't think we can say there's no market for this. I think there's clearly a market
00:33:24 ◼ ► for this if they're good and if they're compelling and the home pod was not good and compelling
00:33:30 ◼ ► enough for its price I think that's the real problem here. We also heard from a few people
00:33:35 ◼ ► who pointed out something I should have thought of but didn't that with both the iPad or sorry
00:33:40 ◼ ► both the iMac Pro being discontinued and the home pod being discontinued one factor that I don't
00:33:46 ◼ ► think we mentioned or at least didn't mention a lot is possible component shortages due to COVID.
00:33:51 ◼ ► There's apparently been a massive like chip and component shortage in the industry so it's
00:33:57 ◼ ► possible that Apple intended to have these things these products in the lineup for longer before
00:34:02 ◼ ► like maybe until their replacements were ready but they had to start making tough decisions because
00:34:07 ◼ ► of some kind of component shortages that they literally just can't get you know even if it
00:34:10 ◼ ► isn't Intel with the Xeon maybe they literally can't get like you know the speaker rim holder
00:34:16 ◼ ► or like you know some you know the Bluetooth chip or something anymore for the iMac or you know for
00:34:21 ◼ ► the home pod it could have been anything because when you look at what goes into a full-size home
00:34:27 ◼ ► pod this is kind of where I wanted to go with this you look at what goes into a full-size home pod
00:34:31 ◼ ► compared to the home pod mini and you see very very different engineering and cost priorities
00:34:39 ◼ ► in these things you know you look at the home pod the full-size one and one of the headlining
00:34:45 ◼ ► features of it was this automatic sensing of the room where it would like it would detect where the
00:34:51 ◼ ► walls and stuff were and it would bounce the sound off the walls and reflect it all around the room
00:34:58 ◼ ► to basically try to simulate it being more than just one speaker to say like oh you know you
00:35:03 ◼ ► can make great sound room filling sound with just one speaker and you look at all the product
00:35:08 ◼ ► marketing like depictions of the home pod that Apple had at that time and it was always like
00:35:13 ◼ ► the home pod magically with no power cord sitting in the middle of a table in the middle of a room
00:35:18 ◼ ► and you know somehow filling the whole room with sound and I think that's that's how they design
00:35:24 ◼ ► them this you know and they probably they're like let's let's make the the maximum you know
00:35:28 ◼ ► maximum engineered thing we can here and if you look at all the hardware it's in the home pod
00:35:34 ◼ ► it has to quote their page an array of seven horn-loaded tweeters each with its own custom
00:35:42 ◼ ► amplifier so there's seven amps and this is for the tweeters not to mention I assume that the
00:35:48 ◼ ► woofer has its own amp as well it must so there's you know eight amps inside a home pod seven
00:35:54 ◼ ► tweeters they have this internal low frequency calibration microphone for automatic bass correction
00:36:02 ◼ ► direct and ambient audio beam forming all this all this like you know processing intensive stuff
00:36:08 ◼ ► all the tweeters to be able to fire 360 degrees in all the directions and you know be able to sense
00:36:14 ◼ ► the room and adjust things and everything meanwhile if you have one home pod playing by itself without
00:36:20 ◼ ► a second one paired to it it sounds pretty good but you know it sounds a hell of a lot better
00:36:27 ◼ ► getting a second one and making an actual stereo pair that actually has a physical space between
00:36:39 ◼ ► oh my and so the way that I've heard home pods for most of the time that I've been using them
00:36:45 ◼ ► I'm almost always listening to a stereo pair and the stereo pair really does sound way better than
00:36:50 ◼ ► a single one way better and it's not even then using all that stuff or it's using very little
00:36:56 ◼ ► of it at least if you want room filling sound you can do it you can try it with like one thing in one
00:37:03 ◼ ► place that's doing all these tricks you know sound bars which I hate as a category often advertise
00:37:08 ◼ ► similar kind of things oh they bounce the sound off the walls you don't need rear speakers you don't
00:37:11 ◼ ► need like and and you know what doesn't really work that well I've never been fooled by these
00:37:17 ◼ ► things I've never once thought wow it sounds like their speaker is actually on the left and right
00:37:22 ◼ ► of me or it sounds like I actually have rear speakers from this sound bar no you know why
00:37:26 ◼ ► because of physics it's not that easy to bounce stuff off walls in ways you can actually tell
00:37:31 ◼ ► with reasonable volumes that doesn't that don't sound really overwhelmingly weird from certain
00:37:35 ◼ ► angles it's just physics you need multiple points of sound to actually fill a room with sound that
00:37:42 ◼ ► sounds good the entire idea of cramming all this stuff into one speaker I think was bad engineering
00:37:50 ◼ ► and cost management I don't think this product should ever have been released in the way it was
00:37:54 ◼ ► that added so much cost to it meanwhile you look at the HomePod mini a device that was almost
00:38:02 ◼ ► certainly prioritizing cost over almost all else it's 100 bucks compared to the 350 they were
00:38:14 ◼ ► because it only has one driver it doesn't even have like a dedicated like tweeter and woofer it's
00:38:21 ◼ ► one single speaker driver that does both jobs which is one of the reasons it doesn't sound very
00:38:25 ◼ ► good because that's that's fairly hard to make work physics wise to make it sound good but just
00:38:30 ◼ ► one thing doing everything they really cut down so much like if you look at the teardowns on iFixit
00:38:36 ◼ ► versus the HomePod full size one and you can see there's just all this massive complexity and
00:38:42 ◼ ► engineering and components in this thing and then you look at a teardown of the HomePod mini and
00:38:53 ◼ ► simpler and it starts to seem obvious like the HomePod the first HomePod just it seems like Apple
00:39:01 ◼ ► totally ignored cost when designing it like it seems like they totally over engineered it thinking
00:39:07 ◼ ► that they could just kind of walk into the market and just start taking money and a lot of people
00:39:12 ◼ ► have made the same uh have made an analogy to the iPod Hi-Fi the old speaker dock it's actually a
00:39:20 ◼ ► very good analogy because that was another area where Apple didn't have a passion for speaker docks
00:39:25 ◼ ► they were not the first ones to the speaker dock market I think Steve Jobs was jealous of all the
00:39:31 ◼ ► money that Bose was making selling 300 speaker docks for their iPods and they're like we can get
00:39:36 ◼ ► that 300 ourselves and they made one that was a little bit more expensive and a little bit nicer
00:39:41 ◼ ► in certain ways not nicer in other ways sound familiar and and it flopped in the market because
00:39:45 ◼ ► it turned out most people don't need one of those at all and the ones that did want speaker docks
00:39:50 ◼ ► would much rather buy one of the like hundred dollar JBL ones that sound pretty decent than
00:39:56 ◼ ► buy the like almost 400 dollar you know Apple or Bose or whatever ones and I think the HomePod
00:40:02 ◼ ► it was a similar flaw and a similar flop in that they just over engineered it so much in ways that
00:40:11 ◼ ► they didn't need to like it it's not like they made it sound too good it doesn't sound that good
00:40:16 ◼ ► when you only have one of them they just over engineered it you know and and the HomePod mini
00:40:21 ◼ ► sounds significantly worse not because it only had not because it lacks seven tweeters and a special
00:40:29 ◼ ► microphone to tune itself to the room like you know how you can tune your woofer to the room for
00:40:35 ◼ ► automatic bass correction remove one word automatic and offer an eq or at least a bass knob in the
00:40:45 ◼ ► adjustment panel for the HomePod in software which by the way as a HomePod owner and as someone who
00:40:51 ◼ ► has heard from a lot of other HomePod owners we all want that if there was adjustable base on the
00:40:58 ◼ ► HomePod that would solve the vast majority of issues people have with its audio like and you
00:41:04 ◼ ► know because it works pretty well for me but yeah there are times where I would want to adjust it
00:41:09 ◼ ► and I've heard from so many people who are like I tried it but it's too much bass so many people
00:41:14 ◼ ► would love a software adjustment of just a bass knob in the control panel in the software and they
00:41:21 ◼ ► can get rid of that microphone and they can also you know design a product that's made to either be
00:41:27 ◼ ► firing in one direction or paired with the second one and get rid of most of those seven tweeters
00:41:33 ◼ ► and seven custom amplifiers that are on each one they can get rid of the direct and ambient audio
00:41:39 ◼ ► beam forming because again like you're not trying like if you don't try to fill a room with one
00:41:46 ◼ ► single point and just say all right here's one point it'll be inexpensive if you want to fill
00:41:49 ◼ ► a room get two of them and pair them that is such a different engineering goal and and that makes
00:41:55 ◼ ► such a different product and then you can make that product cheaper and maybe you could make
00:41:59 ◼ ► a really good sounding one for 200 bucks and then a pair would be 400 bucks instead of 700 bucks
00:42:05 ◼ ► and that's a really big difference like that that would be that that alone even ignoring the input
00:42:11 ◼ ► issue and the siri issues that alone could have been a huge deal and then finally they put all
00:42:17 ◼ ► this engineering and all this cost into the HomePod and then the CPU they put into it was the A8
00:42:32 ◼ ► Now this has been the one of the only things that I miss about the Alexa ecosystem when I when I
00:42:40 ◼ ► switched over to this Alexa is faster faster to respond like way faster and always has been even
00:42:46 ◼ ► on their very first generation hardware and I have to wonder you know obviously most of that is
00:42:50 ◼ ► probably the service side but I have to wonder how much of that could Apple have solved with a higher
00:42:57 ◼ ► end or faster processor or some kind of different processor choice like they spent all this
00:43:02 ◼ ► engineering and all this cost in all these fancy audio features that nobody was asking for for
00:43:11 ◼ ► and yet the actual like main interaction method to this thing is slow. Now the HomePod mini
00:43:26 ◼ ► So the HomePod mini actually has an Apple Watch CPU in it. I couldn't find many good direct
00:43:32 ◼ ► comparisons of how the performance between the A8 and S5 is like the one benchmark I found which
00:43:38 ◼ ► was not very reliable suggested the S5 is way faster at certain things than the A8 was so that
00:43:43 ◼ ► the HomePod mini should in theory be way faster than the original HomePod at certain things.
00:43:47 ◼ ► I don't know if that's actually if that actually plays out. Anecdotally it does seem like the HomePod
00:43:52 ◼ ► mini responds faster based on my limited experience here but it certainly does seem like
00:43:58 ◼ ► they gave the original HomePod a way too slow processor and spent way too much money on all
00:44:06 ◼ ► the other stuff inside of it that mostly wasn't necessary or was over engineered and the HomePod
00:44:11 ◼ ► mini was able to be so much cheaper because they designed it that way from the start and so I think
00:44:16 ◼ ► they're totally able to make a really good larger HomePod for 200 bucks if they actually go and go
00:44:26 ◼ ► into it with that goal in mind with some kind of degree of like humbleness like the first HomePod
00:44:32 ◼ ► was like we're gonna waltz into this market we see what everyone else is charging we're gonna
00:44:36 ◼ ► charge two and a half times as much or whatever it is and people will buy it because we're because
00:44:40 ◼ ► it's good and I think hopefully they can re-enter this market when they're ready with a little bit
00:44:47 ◼ ► more you know humbleness and reality check and engineer a higher end product that sounds way
00:44:55 ◼ ► better than the HomePod mini which again is not super difficult and can actually be sold at a
00:45:01 ◼ ► compelling price of I'd say around 200 bucks and I think that could be a really good product.
00:45:05 ◼ ► People like me who want bigger sound can buy two of them significantly more affordably than when
00:45:11 ◼ ► it was 350 dollars and ideally integrate it better into the ecosystem and give it a little bit faster
00:45:17 ◼ ► processors so we can respond faster and that could be a really good product so I'm looking forward to
00:45:21 ◼ ► where this is going although at least I was until I saw the rumor from Germin this week about
00:45:29 ◼ ► apparently they're working on future HomePods with screens. What do you that? I think that's a good
00:45:37 ◼ ► idea because a lot of the possible utility I mean especially if they make it kind of a home hub
00:45:41 ◼ ► thing like yes the using it as a speaker as you described they could definitely make that product
00:45:45 ◼ ► fewer drivers less smarts lower price and now you can get two of them more easily and you're all set
00:45:53 ◼ ► but it's still just a speaker and all the things that the HomePod can do like you can all the
00:45:58 ◼ ► questions you can ask Siri you know a lot of them would benefit from having a screen. Show me the
00:46:06 ◼ ► weather don't just tell me when I wake up in the morning have a little display ready for me have a
00:46:10 ◼ ► rotating you know thing of picture is if I ask to see a picture of somebody put it on the screen for
00:46:15 ◼ ► me if I'm looking at a recipe show me your recipe like this the Amazon products and the Google
00:46:21 ◼ ► products that have screens I think enjoy popularity because a screen is a really useful thing to have
00:46:27 ◼ ► for a voice assistant in your house if you stop thinking of it as a speaker which is mostly what
00:46:32 ◼ ► you were talking about and start thinking of it as a voice assistant that happens to have a non-terrible
00:46:37 ◼ ► speaker a screen is very attractive and I think plays much more to Apple's strengths because
00:46:42 ◼ ► there are lots of things that I just described that are already possible on watches and phones
00:46:49 ◼ ► and iPads so Apple has already done some of the work for it and if Apple half butts it as
00:46:55 ◼ ► Marco says they could do a poor job of it but you can imagine a really good implementation of oh I
00:47:00 ◼ ► roll out of bed and in the kitchen there's my home pod with a screen showing me today's schedule and
00:47:06 ◼ ► a weather forecast and I can ask it to do things and I can intercom to wake the kids up and like
00:47:11 ◼ ► the ad rights itself like Apple I think once Apple has a screen they are more comfortable
00:47:15 ◼ ► whatever that thing is on top of the the home pod is not a screen and the product is lesser for it
00:47:21 ◼ ► because without a screen Apple doesn't know what to do and it has to lean entirely on its sluggish
00:47:27 ◼ ► and not so smart voice assistant yeah by the way thank you for for uh hoofed in the chat for giving
00:47:35 ◼ ► me the word that I was looking for with humbleness apparently there's already a word for that called
00:47:38 ◼ ► humility I couldn't get it like as I was saying I'm like I know there's a word for this I can't
00:47:43 ◼ ► think of what the word is humblebility they call it that's it yeah humbleocity oh and one more
00:47:48 ◼ ► thing on the on the chip shortage thing of like all the different you know the COVID has caused
00:47:52 ◼ ► a shortage of parts or whatever and that could explain why uh stuff's uh getting cancelled
00:47:57 ◼ ► early or whatever uh some of this is just I don't know if this is a real thing but I saw it
00:48:03 ◼ ► three or four times on Twitter and on websites so who knows but it was people buying home pods
00:48:08 ◼ ► like they said hey get them all supplies last so people are like okay well fine I guess I'll get
00:48:12 ◼ ► one now so they would order a home pod to get one of the last ones and you know before they're all
00:48:16 ◼ ► out of stock right and they would receive them and reportedly the manufactured date was the launch
00:48:21 ◼ ► date of the home pod oh yeah I saw them meaning they made they made a bunch of home pods in like
00:48:26 ◼ ► 2017 or whenever it was and they never made any more and they just have been trying to sell those
00:48:31 ◼ ► like like us with the ATP pins which we made many years ago and we're still trying to sell them
00:48:36 ◼ ► because apparently everybody who wants an ATP pin has one right and we just have a you know a handful
00:48:41 ◼ ► of the left but you know if you buy an ATP pin today you're getting a pin that was made three
00:48:45 ◼ ► years ago luckily there are no electronics in it and it's still supported by all our software
00:48:49 ◼ ► but buy an ATP pin but yeah so shortages could have contributed to the early as we discussed
00:48:56 ◼ ► the Xeon being discontinued stuff the early demise of the iMac but it seems like from people buying
00:49:00 ◼ ► them that home pods are not suffering from a lack of parts because Apple isn't making home pods
00:49:05 ◼ ► anymore yeah Apple hasn't made home pods in years apparently right they're just they're just trying
00:49:10 ◼ ► to sell through the warehouse filled with home pods someone's built like a fort out of home pods
00:49:14 ◼ ► in the back room it's like that remember that i don't remember what like magazine or company
00:49:19 ◼ ► it was or whatever but that did these the wheel oh iMac boxes you know what i'm talking about yeah
00:49:25 ◼ ► the same same basic idea yeah and and like i'm i'm kind of surprised like as of now when we record
00:49:30 ◼ ► they still aren't sold out i assumed that when they announced that they were discontinued
00:49:36 ◼ ► that they would sell out within a day right and and the the space gray ones did they sold out
00:49:41 ◼ ► pretty quickly but the white ones which is actually my preferred color of them are still
00:49:45 ◼ ► for sale now like two weeks later or whatever it's been did they did they introduce the space gray
00:49:50 ◼ ► one later or was that at launch day it was always at the same time yeah i don't know maybe that was
00:49:58 ◼ ► originally whatever year it was yeah yeah but i i really and i've been tempted to buy one you know
00:50:05 ◼ ► now because i really do enjoy them because you have so many and they need friends yeah right like
00:50:10 ◼ ► but i just like i don't really have anywhere else i could put a full-size home pod you could make a
00:50:14 ◼ ► fort yeah but like but if any of mine die and if they haven't released a new one by that point
00:50:21 ◼ ► i will actually really regret not having one you need to have spare home pods this is this is how
00:50:26 ◼ ► you end up with a closet full of cheese graters except for you it'll be a closet full of my thing
00:50:33 ◼ ► my thing that i'm collecting costs like uh nine dollars each though it's a little bit uh easier
00:50:38 ◼ ► to get them yeah it won't be too long until those are nine dollars each as well so they'll they'll
00:50:43 ◼ ► cheese graters only appreciate in value the price of cheese graters has never gone down kasey
00:50:48 ◼ ► sure like honestly like as you know ever since the home pods death was announced and and as i've kind
00:50:54 ◼ ► of waffled on getting any spares i've i've started to realize like i really like the way it works
00:50:59 ◼ ► most for the most part first of all if anyone out there does not yet have airplay 2 in your household
00:51:08 ◼ ► i would strongly recommend giving it a shot in some form whether it's playing stuff to an apple tv
00:51:12 ◼ ► or to a home pod mini or a regular home pod or whatever or any of the other ecosystem stuff that
00:51:18 ◼ ► supports it like obviously all of sonos's stuff or all sonos's recent stuff supports it a lot of
00:51:23 ◼ ► other manufacturers starting to add it as well airplay 2 is awesome it is by far my favorite
00:51:29 ◼ ► household multi-room whatever audio management thing because as i mentioned a few weeks ago
00:51:35 ◼ ► you can you can control it not only from the voice assistant that's built into the speaker
00:51:39 ◼ ► but you can also control it from your phone and from your ipad and everyone else can in the house
00:51:44 ◼ ► too so if you have like an apple household where everyone has iphones or ipads whatever
00:51:47 ◼ ► everyone can control it and it's it just shows up in control center and you can you can hand off
00:51:52 ◼ ► from your music app to it or from it to your music app and it's really nice it's a it's a wonderful
00:51:58 ◼ ► interaction method if you are in apple's ecosystem and especially if you use apple music now here's
00:52:04 ◼ ► the thing like i understand that everyone who uses spotify everyone a hundred percent of you
00:52:11 ◼ ► hi think that everyone uses spotify and that's not that far off spotify is very popular but
00:52:19 ◼ ► not everyone uses spotify and like the spotify people look many of you are my friends but hi
00:52:29 ◼ ► spotify is not everyone it's not everything it's not all music it's not the way everyone wants to
00:52:34 ◼ ► listen to music their app honestly is garbage apple music is also garbage in their apps but you
00:52:40 ◼ ► know it's like there's a lot of problems spotify that i have but if you're not a spotify user there
00:52:46 ◼ ► are dozens of us dozens the home pod is actually amazingly good because if you're not a spotify
00:52:51 ◼ ► user you're probably either an apple music person or if you are especially old like my neighbor
00:52:58 ◼ ► thinks i am you might be an itunes slash like music on the mac person and if you are still
00:53:05 ◼ ► keeping a music library again spotify people you think quote nobody does that anymore i assure you
00:53:12 ◼ ► there are people out there who do it i recognize it isn't the majority anymore but we're out there
00:53:18 ◼ ► and nothing integrates better with an itunes music collection than a home pod nothing like no none of
00:53:25 ◼ ► the other speaker things come close and so i have you know i have between me and tiff we both use
00:53:32 ◼ ► apple music we both used itunes before that i have playlists in there i have a music collection in
00:53:39 ◼ ► there i have all my fish stuff that i've downloaded legally from their site then like that's not listed
00:53:44 ◼ ► in spotify or an apple music's online directory but i have my own collection merged in with that
00:53:49 ◼ ► tiff has her own stuff the home pod recognizes each of us by voice and if tiff wants to play
00:53:54 ◼ ► one of her playlists she asks for it and it just knows it's her and knows which collection it's in
00:53:59 ◼ ► if i ask for something it knows it's me and it plays stuff tailored to me based on my collection
00:54:03 ◼ ► that i built up over years my ratings my my play frequency and stuff like that and it has all my
00:54:08 ◼ ► fish stuff so if i want to say hey play my you know best of fish playlist that i maintain on my
00:54:12 ◼ ► own devices and with my own collection it has access to that and it can do it that's one thing
00:54:17 ◼ ► that whenever we had alexa stuff in the house it can't do that doesn't have access to it and amazon
00:54:21 ◼ ► has ways to upload stuff to it so does spotify they suck and they don't work like believe me
00:54:27 ◼ ► i've tried them over the years they don't work and so the home pod is really good for this set of
00:54:35 ◼ ► needs and if you don't care about audio quality or can't you know afford the really high price tags
00:54:43 ◼ ► of some of this gear or if you are super into spotify and you and all you listen to is stuff
00:54:57 ◼ ► and for all those people this might not be the best choice or might not be a choice at all but
00:55:03 ◼ ► that's not everyone and for those of us who still do things kind of the old way or more into the
00:55:09 ◼ ► apple music ecosystem for various reasons the home pod is great and the other solutions out there are
00:55:15 ◼ ► not and so i really really hope that apple is just again taking a step back to regroup and will come
00:55:23 ◼ ► out with better offerings here as opposed to abandoning this market forever it's funny i uh
00:55:28 ◼ ► i am a devout spotify person when it comes to music obviously i have many problems with what
00:55:32 ◼ ► they're doing in the podcast space uh but i just in the last 48 hours paid for another year of
00:55:37 ◼ ► itunes match because i still do use it from time to time and there's still plenty of music that
00:55:42 ◼ ► i have in my library that with time i listen to less and less often but nevertheless i do want it
00:55:49 ◼ ► available and i want it available without having to carry my entire library on my phone or my ipad
00:55:54 ◼ ► or what have you and just today when i was in the car for a few hours i was listening to some of my
00:55:59 ◼ ► library that was in itunes match and so i i have i think i have a foot in both of these worlds i
00:56:05 ◼ ► have never used a home pod ever ever ever i've never heard one playing to my recollection
00:56:09 ◼ ► um but i don't debate anything that you've said i'm not trying to say you're wrong i will say that
00:56:14 ◼ ► my experience uh with the echo and spotify is actually pretty good i i'm not asking it to do
00:56:20 ◼ ► a lot of the things that you're doing like i'm not a heavy playlist person and and i basically
00:56:24 ◼ ► our entire family just uses my spotify account as the canonical spotify account um and it works
00:56:30 ◼ ► pretty well for our needs so it depends on what your needs are i don't think it would work well
00:56:34 ◼ ► for your needs marco but it does work pretty pretty well for our simplified needs but i
00:56:40 ◼ ► ultimately i agree with you that i think it would be too bad if apple just pulled an airport
00:56:44 ◼ ► extreme express or whatever and just walked away from this market because i think for a company
00:56:49 ◼ ► that seems to claim to really care about music and and once bought a company that was entirely around
00:56:59 ◼ ► something apple should do well even if they haven't yet and god gosh knows my airpods are some of my
00:57:06 ◼ ► favorite devices in the entire world those things are freaking magic so i i would hope that they take
00:57:11 ◼ ► a second crack at this i don't really or maybe a third crack i don't really consider the the home
00:57:16 ◼ ► pod mini to be but a refinement of what they've already done but a perhaps complete rethinking of
00:57:22 ◼ ► what they've already done would be pretty good we are sponsored this week by squarespace start
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00:58:12 ◼ ► personally built lots of websites there both for myself and for other people and it's really great
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00:58:22 ◼ ► they're never going to have to worry about software updates or security patches you aren't going to
00:58:27 ◼ ► have to be involved once you hand it off like squarespace has their own dedicated amazing
00:58:31 ◼ ► support team so you can just like you know make a website for somebody or direct them to squarespace
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00:59:17 ◼ ► squarespace. All right moving right along we have to do a little bit of housekeeping but it's a happy
00:59:26 ◼ ► kind of housekeeping this is for ATP membership Marco has been doing a lot of work and I say that
00:59:33 ◼ ► with not an ounce of sarcasm Marco's been doing a lot of work to add a couple of options that
00:59:37 ◼ ► I've been doing work take credit take credit Marco's been doing a lot of work for me it's a lot
00:59:44 ◼ ► for that people have been asking for for a fair bit of time now and we're approaching one year
00:59:50 ◼ ► of ATP membership we're getting there and we wanted to try to add a few options for for those
00:59:56 ◼ ► of you particularly those who are not American so we have new options for annual billing both in
01:00:03 ◼ ► US dollars of course but also in euros and in pounds Marco can you talk through kind of what
01:00:10 ◼ ► what the situation is there and perhaps how you would switch from monthly billing to annual
01:00:15 ◼ ► billing? Sure yeah although first a little bit of housekeeping if you see a bunch of refunds on your
01:00:21 ◼ ► bill this month that is because we had a bug where under certain like billing failure and renewal
01:00:27 ◼ ► scenarios it was possible to have two subscriptions active at once for the same member I detected
01:00:33 ◼ ► those I ran a script to cancel all the duplicate subscriptions and issue back refunds for anybody
01:00:38 ◼ ► who would had like you know four months of double payments whatever I'd go refund half of them and
01:00:43 ◼ ► so some people out there I think there's like 40 of you total not a large number some number of
01:00:48 ◼ ► people out there will have some refunds this month so if you see that that's why and that should be
01:00:52 ◼ ► not possible in the future yeah so now back to the good news yeah so we now have euro and great
01:01:01 ◼ ► British pound options for currency and we also have an annual billing option instead of monthly
01:01:07 ◼ ► that was another very hotly requested item because a lot of people for whatever reason either don't
01:01:12 ◼ ► want you know a certain number of small charges to happen every month as opposed to one big one
01:01:17 ◼ ► every year or people you know who you know maybe it was easier to account for that or whatever else
01:01:22 ◼ ► so annual billing is now a thing as well as euro and pound support we tried to make the prices
01:01:29 ◼ ► pretty pretty reasonable on those so that they they all equate to about eight dollars so you know
01:01:35 ◼ ► the it's seven euro or six pounds the one thing that a lot of people have asked is how do you
01:01:44 ◼ ► to switch your account from us dollars where you already created it to euro or pound and
01:01:52 ◼ ► there is a way to do it it kind of sucks and I'm sorry but there's reasons so we always heard from
01:01:58 ◼ ► people who are like who tell us the why it's so hard to move an apple id between like if you move
01:02:05 ◼ ► to a different country and you need to move your apple id apparently you have to like cancel all
01:02:09 ◼ ► your subscriptions and wait for them to all lapse so it might be like a year out and then they can
01:02:15 ◼ ► like move your apple id or some there's some like something like that well that's kind of how this
01:02:18 ◼ ► works too probably for the same reasons for various reasons dealing with like you know how
01:02:24 ◼ ► stripe deals with customers and and credits and refunds and currencies and international currencies
01:02:30 ◼ ► things like that you can switch your account to a different currency but you have to cancel the
01:02:36 ◼ ► existing subscription which doesn't actually cancel it instantly because people don't expect it to
01:02:40 ◼ ► work that way so I had to change that last summer when you cancel your subscription it just turns
01:02:45 ◼ ► off auto renewing but you still get the rest of whatever you know the month or whatever you paid
01:02:50 ◼ ► for so you have to wait for that month to be over and then your membership will still exist but it
01:02:56 ◼ ► will go into like the expired state and it'll tell you and say hey you should renew at that point
01:03:02 ◼ ► then you can sign up with any currency you want to so yeah short version is to switch currencies
01:03:06 ◼ ► with an existing account you have to cancel your existing membership wait for that month to expire
01:03:11 ◼ ► and then re-enable it with the new currency. Additionally coming soon and we don't know exactly
01:03:17 ◼ ► when but coming soon there will be WWDC merchandise coming up we are definitely going to have an all
01:03:26 ◼ ► new shirt design we are not going to talk about what it is it's good but nevertheless it's it's
01:03:31 ◼ ► going to be something pretty cool and John has spent a lot of time working on this basically on
01:03:36 ◼ ► the slacker the three of us this month John has spent a lot of time working on this and I'm really
01:03:40 ◼ ► excited for it although I guess I'm not entirely slacking I've also come up with an entire new
01:03:45 ◼ ► product well kind of that's over selling it a bit but nevertheless here we are I've come up with an
01:03:51 ◼ ► entirely new product to the ATP world which I'm very excited about and the spiritual return of
01:03:57 ◼ ► something from several years ago so I'm really excited about that too and we don't have an exact
01:04:03 ◼ ► date for this but we bring this up in part to say that members ATP members get 15% off on all ATP
01:04:11 ◼ ► merchandise so if you wanted a reason to join but we're holding out for annual billing or we're
01:04:17 ◼ ► holding out for billing in weight I mean pounds then now is the time and the merchandise is just
01:04:24 ◼ ► the icing on the cake so ATP.fm/join. John today is a big day for you and and particularly you
01:04:33 ◼ ► Mac OS X 10.0 is 20 years old today I was still a teenager 20 years ago today lots of people are
01:04:42 ◼ ► tweeting about it and posting articles and stuff and it you know we just it's just a coincidence
01:04:46 ◼ ► that today literally the day of the recording this March 24th is the exact day that is the 20th
01:04:51 ◼ ► anniversary or the release of Mac OS X 10.0 I didn't do anything for it sorry Mac OS X I didn't
01:04:58 ◼ ► get you anything this year part of it is because you know I wrote all those reviews of it way back
01:05:05 ◼ ► when right and then I did a five-year retrospective when Mac OS X was five years old and then I did a
01:05:11 ◼ ► 10-year retrospective when Mac OS X was 10 years old I just feel like not only am I done reviewing
01:05:16 ◼ ► Mac OS X I'm also done writing retrospectives on it like it's like well you did a five year into
01:05:21 ◼ ► 10-year you got to do a 20-year apparently I don't but it's worth marking the occasion if you want to
01:05:29 ◼ ► look back at some of my old reviews we'll put a link in the show notes to I collected all the
01:05:35 ◼ ► links on my website when I stopped writing them so there's the reviews of the releases 10.0 10.1 you
01:05:40 ◼ ► know so on and so forth up to when I stopped there's also links to all the pre-releases so
01:05:45 ◼ ► developer preview 3 developer preview 4 the public beta and then there's the links to my
01:05:52 ◼ ► retrospectives that I just talked about I think the retrospectives maybe are the most interesting
01:05:55 ◼ ► because like 20-year is it's a retrospective moment let's look back especially because what
01:06:01 ◼ ► we're looking back on is Mac OS X I know it's not such a big deal if they change the name they
01:06:05 ◼ ► change it to OS X and then they change it to Mac OS but I do feel like Mac OS X sort of ended
01:06:13 ◼ ► and and now we're just in the age of like modern Mac OS because a lot of the defining characteristics
01:06:19 ◼ ► of Mac OS X slowly faded not that I'm saying this is a new operating system it's obviously Mac OS X
01:06:25 ◼ ► you know it's the same thing that it always was it's the you know the next drive operating system's
01:06:28 ◼ ► got a dock it's got a menu bar like it's the same OS right but I do feel like there's sort of been a
01:06:33 ◼ ► you know a slow changeover in the OS so I feel like the the era that we are celebrating 20 years
01:06:41 ◼ ► ago today Mac OS X 10.0 was released that era has a beginning middle and an end and now we're in this
01:06:47 ◼ ► new era of sort of the modern Mac maybe maybe this era will come to be defined as like the arm
01:06:51 ◼ ► transition be the turning point or whatever but anyway it's always fun to look back on those
01:06:55 ◼ ► things unfortunately some of my old reviews are slowly deteriorating through bit rot on the
01:07:00 ◼ ► internet not literal bit rot but just like if you write something on the web and it stays there for
01:07:05 ◼ ► 15 or 20 years and the site that it was written on has gone through like five different CMS's on
01:07:11 ◼ ► the back end things inevitably get a little bit creaky I also always push the limits of the
01:07:16 ◼ ► Ars Technica CMS by writing like custom HTML and JavaScript and doing my own thing all over the
01:07:20 ◼ ► place and that stuff has particularly rotted kind of like doing custom UI and like a Mac or iOS app
01:07:27 ◼ ► you come to regret it as the OS's keep changing and your custom stuff starts breaking I did that
01:07:31 ◼ ► with all my articles right someday I will probably put up like because you know I used to have a
01:07:39 ◼ ► a quote-unquote blog over at Ars Technica called fatbits and I have reproduced every single one of
01:07:49 ◼ ► someday I will eventually ask Ars and say hey it looks like my reviews are getting creaky you
01:07:54 ◼ ► probably don't get any traffic on them because they're super old can I just put up you know
01:07:59 ◼ ► versions of them on my website where I'll make sure all the links work and all the screenshots
01:08:04 ◼ ► are there and all that other stuff unfortunately one of the big factors here and I was going
01:08:08 ◼ ► through this this weekend is that a lot of the you know the thing you can't avoid is actual link rot
01:08:14 ◼ ► as in you know if anyone if you ever read any one of my magwest interviews like every 15th word is
01:08:18 ◼ ► a link that's just my style of writing on the web I make lots of links and those links all went
01:08:24 ◼ ► somewhere when the review was published but 15-20 years later a lot of those links don't go anywhere
01:08:30 ◼ ► anymore right you click on them and they 404 you click on them or they go to a page that doesn't
01:08:35 ◼ ► look anything like it did before some of those you can pull from archive.org that's what I was doing
01:08:40 ◼ ► this weekend was fixing a bunch of broken links on from from fat bits posts actually linking a lot of
01:08:45 ◼ ► them to the archive.org page just to say hey if you were reading this at the time and you clicked
01:08:50 ◼ ► on this and it took you to this section of apple's website this is what it looked like back in you
01:08:54 ◼ ► know 2002 or whatever and that's fun to do but archive.org doesn't have everything either and
01:08:59 ◼ ► then there are things that are just obscure or just don't exist in any fashion or were never
01:09:03 ◼ ► spidered because of robot.txt I feel so weird saying spidered kids don't kids don't say that
01:09:08 ◼ ► these days do they they say crawled I guess back in the day we called them spiders because they were
01:09:12 ◼ ► cool um yeah so I but I would like to have sort of a modern local incarnation of my stuff just so
01:09:21 ◼ ► I can point somebody to it and they can essentially just enjoy the screenshots or whatever and then I
01:09:25 ◼ ► could fix some of the typos and remove the smileys yes in some of my earlier reviews I put literal
01:09:29 ◼ ► ascii smileys it was a long time ago okay it was it was literally the 90s please have mercy on me
01:09:36 ◼ ► I love that you say that as I was spending a few moments just a few moments ago choosing exactly
01:09:47 ◼ ► I don't did emoji exist when I wrote the first ones I don't think so or no maybe in Japan it
01:09:51 ◼ ► existed I feel like we've had this debate before but that's okay yeah but anyway whether or not it
01:09:56 ◼ ► existed it certainly wasn't a viable thing that I could type into a web page in 1999 so that's true
01:10:01 ◼ ► speaking of curious apple decisions and and that same decision made better by somebody else google
01:10:09 ◼ ► play has dropped commissions to 15 from 30 following apple's move last year this is from
01:10:15 ◼ ► tech crunch google is reducing the service fee for google play to 15 down from 30 for the first
01:10:20 ◼ ► 1 million of revenue 1 million dollars of revenue developers earn using play billing system each year
01:10:26 ◼ ► the company will levy a 30 cut on every dollar developers generate through google play beyond
01:10:30 ◼ ► the first million in a year it said this is the way it should have worked for apple but no because
01:10:37 ◼ ► they're either cheap or annoying or a combination of both you have to join the small business
01:10:43 ◼ ► program then you have to get approved and then you have to make sure you make less than a million but
01:10:48 ◼ ► uh but yeah but you have to make less than a million in order to get the 15 and then if you
01:10:53 ◼ ► make even a dollar more than a million you get 30 on everything not 30 on the news it's just
01:10:57 ◼ ► preposterous 30 on everything the next year yeah yeah I'm sorry that's true yeah but you get
01:11:02 ◼ ► punished the whole next year it's not like it's not like a marginal tax rate where you know the
01:11:06 ◼ ► your millions and first dollar is charged at 30 I think you get 15 for that whole year but because
01:11:11 ◼ ► you went over a million that year your whole next year is blown from day one of the next year you're
01:11:15 ◼ ► at 30 percent no you don't you don't get it for the whole year you you get it until like the next
01:11:20 ◼ ► payment so it's like every month it it you get paid out is a monthly cycle yeah no no it's I think
01:11:25 ◼ ► it's monthly but um and you know for the rest of the year but no it's like people have run the
01:11:29 ◼ ► numbers or you know estimated how many apps for developers are affected by apple's new new uh you
01:11:36 ◼ ► know the program and everything and people try to figure out like what would it cost apple to
01:11:42 ◼ ► run their program the way google's is running which is like similar kind of deal but way simpler
01:11:48 ◼ ► and removes some of these weird like anti-incentives and removes the need to apply and try to get
01:11:53 ◼ ► approved and everything just applies automatically and it's not a small amount of money it's a
01:12:00 ◼ ► significant amount of money that apple like by apple doing it their weird way they're doing it
01:12:06 ◼ ► they actually are saving a lot of money but it's not like it's not make or break the company kind
01:12:12 ◼ ► of money so it's something like i think you might notice it on the quarterly earnings report for like
01:12:17 ◼ ► some tiny percentage of one one department would be smaller by a noticeable amount but it's not like
01:12:24 ◼ ► it's a kind of thing like the reason apple is doing it the way they're doing it is because
01:12:28 ◼ ► they're being cheap like that's that's the real that's the real answer and i would say though like
01:12:32 ◼ ► i wonder if that estimate accounted for the extra cost of apple doing the bookkeeping for its
01:12:37 ◼ ► byzantine program like this simple program you know because as you noted pretty much nobody
01:12:44 ◼ ► makes more than a million dollars in terms of percentage on the app store like there's just
01:12:48 ◼ ► so many developers only a tiny tiny part is making that million so who is a potential member of the
01:12:54 ◼ ► small business program essentially everybody in the app store that's a lot of stupid applications
01:12:59 ◼ ► to deal with and doing the bookkeeping to make sure that you apply the rules and make sure you
01:13:03 ◼ ► count their revenue when they go over then they have in the other bracket but they want to get
01:13:07 ◼ ► back into the other one like it's complicated to run a complicated program one of the beauties of
01:13:12 ◼ ► google's plan is nobody signs up these are just the new rules and the rules are so simple can
01:13:16 ◼ ► explain them in a paragraph that's it right it's easier to run that program because it is a uniform
01:13:21 ◼ ► set of rules for everybody you don't have to like sign up all these people and you don't have to
01:13:25 ◼ ► carefully watch and do the you know the monthly billing cycle roll over now you're in the 30
01:13:30 ◼ ► bracket or however it works in the apple one it's easier to run a simple program and i don't think
01:13:36 ◼ ► that any cost estimate is factoring in now i agree that even when you factor that in it's still
01:13:44 ◼ ► i heard uh i think ben thompson and dithering was was chalking it up to just simply if you're
01:13:50 ◼ ► incentivized to run your business in a way that you make the most money possible from the app
01:13:54 ◼ ► store if you're in charge of the app store financials or whatever of course you're going
01:13:58 ◼ ► to pick the complicated program because you want the goodwill but you also don't want to give up
01:14:02 ◼ ► too much money i feel like that flies in the face a little bit of apple's supposed philosophy for
01:14:07 ◼ ► many years ago where there's just one profit and loss for the whole company and we don't think
01:14:12 ◼ ► about it as okay well you in charge of the app store you're going to be judged on the profit and
01:14:17 ◼ ► loss from the app store itself and so you are incentivized as king of your little kingdom here
01:14:22 ◼ ► to make sure that you make the most money possible from those developers rather than thinking about
01:14:29 ◼ ► big picture what's good for apple what's good for apple is to make developers happy even if it is
01:14:34 ◼ ► slightly worse for this specific aspect of app store revenue right do you think apple thinks
01:14:41 ◼ ► that i mean that was the whole pitch with the whole we're a functional organization we have one
01:14:45 ◼ ► profit and loss like even in the tim cook era and you know did jobs before jobs but also in the
01:14:50 ◼ ► temple care the idea that we don't have each individual department worrying about their
01:14:55 ◼ ► individual profit and loss because and you know like the end of the year when they do the bigger
01:14:58 ◼ ► part they don't say okay well the mac team did great but the iphone team did not so well it'd
01:15:04 ◼ ► probably be the reverse but anyway it's like how do we do as a company because if you don't do that
01:15:08 ◼ ► you create perverse incentives for someone to make their little corner of the business very profitable
01:15:15 ◼ ► at the cost of the big picture at the cost of apple as a whole at the cost of the brand
01:15:19 ◼ ► the cost of something that doesn't show up on their individual profit and loss that has always
01:15:23 ◼ ► been the pitch in the modern in the post steve jobs 2 era was that's why apple is great because
01:15:30 ◼ ► they do this thing that other companies don't do there are no little tiny subsets that are fighting
01:15:36 ◼ ► for themselves inside apple it's all one big apple and we all work together and that way people
01:15:42 ◼ ► aren't punished in their careers for for example forgoing a bunch of revenue in the app store if
01:15:48 ◼ ► overall apple does better because of it because developers are happier and more developers come
01:15:53 ◼ ► to the platform or whatever um all that said that sounds like a pretty ideal and there's a reason
01:15:58 ◼ ► lots of other companies don't do it that way and i can imagine no matter how much apple says that's
01:16:03 ◼ ► the case there's still a little bit of that going on inside it's still though it it baffles me why
01:16:09 ◼ ► apple came up with this plan because i don't think it you know it it's like if you had a company that
01:16:16 ◼ ► was really ruthlessly every individual subset has its own profit and loss numbers and has to live
01:16:23 ◼ ► and die on its own this is the type of pricing system i can imagine it would come up with but
01:16:27 ◼ ► apple that's the other extreme i refuse to believe apple is at the other extreme i can believe they
01:16:31 ◼ ► don't necessarily achieve their ideals but i think that are that is their ideals and i think a lot of
01:16:36 ◼ ► other things they do look that way but here is google showing apple how it's done this in and
01:16:42 ◼ ► like we were to say this is the apple plan oh apple doesn't do things complicated they just
01:16:45 ◼ ► want it simple just like 70 30 was simple we may not have liked it but they said well it has that
01:16:50 ◼ ► apple feeling to it because it's like look it's just 70 30 never mind about netflix and everybody
01:16:54 ◼ ► not getting 70 30 to ignore that everyone is treated the same in the app store right but to
01:16:59 ◼ ► a first approximation everybody except for literally companies you can count on your hand
01:17:03 ◼ ► got 70 30 and it was not a complicated graduated scale where you sell this much and you get
01:17:08 ◼ ► different it was just 70 30 very apple like simply in its simplicity and then when they did the small
01:17:14 ◼ ► business program is totally on apple like both in its conception as let's pinch as many pennies as
01:17:20 ◼ ► we possibly can uh you know and try to get goodwill at the same time it's clear that we don't want that
01:17:24 ◼ ► much goodwill because we don't lose that money right and then google does the apple style which
01:17:29 ◼ ► is like google there's nothing for you to do there's nothing to install you just get more money now
01:17:33 ◼ ► and it's easy for everyone to understand done and done so i like apple really embarrassed google
01:17:38 ◼ ► or google really embarrassed apple here and i don't i hope apple responds this i hope apple feels
01:17:44 ◼ ► suitably chastened by google doing the apple thing and i hope they realize you know like a part of it
01:17:50 ◼ ► they're saying well yeah google has to do that because their store sucks and we're our store is
01:17:53 ◼ ► awesome so we're we have more to lose so of course our plan is more complicated google's desperate
01:17:58 ◼ ► right but google is doing the thing that actually produces more goodwill like why squander any of
01:18:04 ◼ ► your goodwill if you're going to forego this money and have any kind of you know go from 30 to 15
01:18:08 ◼ ► percent why squander an ounce of that by making the small business plan and making people apply
01:18:14 ◼ ► and having this rule that incentivizes people to stop selling their application at a certain point
01:18:19 ◼ ► so they don't go into the higher quote unquote tax bracket or whatever but just dumb because
01:18:23 ◼ ► tax brackets don't work like that tax brackets are marginal like the google thing yeah it's the
01:18:26 ◼ ► opposite yeah like i i think the um the idea first of all that that apple is kind of more holistic in
01:18:36 ◼ ► its incentives and everything and and doesn't have these divisional you know dysfunctional goals and
01:18:41 ◼ ► everything i think that's a wonderful idea and i think many people at apple think it's that way
01:18:46 ◼ ► but the reality that we hear over and over again from people inside is that it's very different
01:18:50 ◼ ► than that it sounds when when they say that though apple saying like in a formal literal sense like
01:18:56 ◼ ► when they tally up the numbers at the end of the year and how they report things they don't do
01:19:00 ◼ ► individual profit losses like that is a provably true statement right but what you're saying is
01:19:06 ◼ ► okay that's fine that's the financial reality but everybody kind of knows that you know you have an
01:19:11 ◼ ► interdepartmental rivalries and people you know wanting not wanting wanting to get glory for the
01:19:15 ◼ ► good stuff and not wanting to get blamed for the bad stuff and wanting quote unquote their numbers
01:19:20 ◼ ► to look good even though we all know that's not how apple reports things right but there it's this
01:19:24 ◼ ► is not just totally bs like this is how apple reportedly internally physically runs its company
01:19:31 ◼ ► in terms of the you know financials and year-end reports and all the type of things they do inside
01:19:36 ◼ ► the company to keep track of things yeah i think the reality is that they're a big company and
01:19:42 ◼ ► whenever you have a company big enough you're gonna have like inter-manager disputes and weird
01:19:50 ◼ ► incentives that that are bad for the company as a whole but happen because they benefit certain
01:19:55 ◼ ► people at certain ranks and everything and you're gonna have all that so set that aside i i also
01:20:00 ◼ ► think that apple does not like when apple doesn't have their heart in something you can usually tell
01:20:08 ◼ ► they're not good you know from from steve on forward they're not good at hiding when they
01:20:16 ◼ ► are contemptuous or half-assed about something and the developer small business program is clearly in
01:20:24 ◼ ► this category they clearly don't think they need to be doing this they clearly hate that they need
01:20:30 ◼ ► to be doing this and they want to put in the least amount of effort possible and the only reason
01:20:35 ◼ ► they're doing this is because of regulatory pressure because if they don't do this they're
01:20:40 ◼ ► going to lose a lot more or they stand to lose a lot more they want they want to lose the least
01:20:43 ◼ ► amount of money possible but they're doing that by putting in more effort to make this complicated
01:20:48 ◼ ► program that they have to administer well i wonder if they had they probably had to hire people
01:20:52 ◼ ► perhaps temporarily just to deal with the influx of applications to the small business program
01:20:56 ◼ ► they're making their lives more miserable because they want they want to pinch every one of those
01:20:59 ◼ ► pennies yeah well if anything they could uh you know this this probably shows that there actually
01:21:06 ◼ ► is a decent amount of money in like the app store middle class basically like you know the the the
01:21:12 ◼ ► numbers in the app store the people who are affected by this there actually is like money
01:21:17 ◼ ► there that apple is making for real i mean it's all the money i've made for them it's not the
01:21:22 ◼ ► middle class it's it's it's everybody but like the top fraction of a one percent like isn't it
01:21:27 ◼ ► like 99 of the store qualifies for the small business program like it is essentially the
01:21:32 ◼ ► entire store you know because there's so many developers yeah but i think it also like it shows
01:21:37 ◼ ► like how much money the app store makes as a whole even though even though most of it is from
01:21:43 ◼ ► that top one percent that is that is not going to qualify for this it just makes so much money for
01:21:48 ◼ ► apple because they are doing so little it yeah apple has i'm sure a lot of people on staff for
01:21:55 ◼ ► things like app review and i'm sure maintaining the store has some costs and they are spending
01:22:00 ◼ ► some money on you know servers and bams and everything but it's such a massively high margin
01:22:05 ◼ ► business for them they are making a killing on the app store even at 15 let alone the one percent
01:22:11 ◼ ► that's paying the 30 that's getting probably most of their money in like they're making billions and
01:22:16 ◼ ► billions and billions of dollars from just being a rent seeker being in this gatekeeper position like
01:22:22 ◼ ► they're they're putting in very little relative to what they're making so there is enough money in
01:22:27 ◼ ► there that they can afford to hire an army of probably you know relatively low to middle wage
01:22:32 ◼ ► workers to actually go through these applications and and do all that and that's still worth it
01:22:37 ◼ ► because they're still even at 15 making a killing from you know those of us who were in this you
01:22:43 ◼ ► know app store middle class thing it it just shows like quite how egregious this whole scheme has
01:22:48 ◼ ► been and how how incredibly profitable it still is for them i don't know if this falls under the
01:22:53 ◼ ► category of rent seeking but it's the other common analogy here for how to make money um is that so
01:22:58 ◼ ► yes apple certainly is gatekeeping and rent seeking from if you want to get your thing on on our
01:23:03 ◼ ► platforms you got to go through us and give us our cut right but they're also doing the cliche thing
01:23:07 ◼ ► of oh if there's a gold rush you should be selling shovels because all the people who want to come
01:23:12 ◼ ► and make their fortune fame and fortune on apple's platforms make an iphone app every one of those
01:23:17 ◼ ► people has to buy apple shovels first right like it's not it's not about rent they haven't done
01:23:22 ◼ ► anything yet they haven't made any apps yet it's like well come over here and pay us our 99 dollars
01:23:26 ◼ ► a year which if you add up times the number of developers is not a small chunk of change
01:23:30 ◼ ► just to get there to get your shovel and then you get to start digging and then you get to try your
01:23:34 ◼ ► luck try your luck in our market right so field an app uh and if you do well we'll get our cut
01:23:40 ◼ ► but if you don't you already did give us 99 dollars and it costs us almost nothing for you to try
01:23:44 ◼ ► launching your app on our platforms right so the this is this is what we've gotten too many times
01:23:49 ◼ ► about the incentives for a services company are very different from the incentives of a product
01:23:53 ◼ ► company product company wants to sell products that people like and a service company wants to
01:23:56 ◼ ► find a way to sell you a service or insert itself between you and the thing that you want and for
01:24:02 ◼ ► customers you know they're inserting itself between them and the apps that they're going to buy and
01:24:06 ◼ ► taking money from that purchase but for developers they're inserting themselves as the shovel
01:24:11 ◼ ► salesman and saying okay well if you want to come and try your luck and panning for gold and
01:24:15 ◼ ► and then our hills uh start by giving us 99 dollars not to mention you know the 1200 bucks
01:24:21 ◼ ► you had to spend on our computer to to build yeah also buy all the equipment from us to develop for
01:24:25 ◼ ► it obviously but you're gonna buy that anyway and your thousand dollar iphone and but i still feel
01:24:29 ◼ ► like you know like again selling the products the incentives are aligned do you want an awesome
01:24:33 ◼ ► computer that you're happy with that helps you do your job we will sell you that and we are
01:24:36 ◼ ► incentivized to make that computer more and more awesome for your particular job and the incentives
01:24:40 ◼ ► for running the store are very different yeah oh don't forget about search ads still make a killing
01:24:45 ◼ ► on that i almost feel good that apple is so bad at like doing things based on ads because they
01:24:52 ◼ ► would say oh google does stuff based on ads but apple doesn't apple does they're just terrible
01:24:55 ◼ ► they're just not good at making money from it can you imagine if google had the same platform
01:25:00 ◼ ► for me if google had the same platform that apple has like it you know switched the management and
01:25:06 ◼ ► now you told those google people can you figure out how to make money from ads given this platform
01:25:10 ◼ ► google would be like are you kidding me yes yeah we can make a ton of money from ads look at all
01:25:14 ◼ ► your customers look how much money they have we can sell ads and every but apple's like well
01:25:19 ◼ ► we'll sell search ads just enough to make our search even crappier but not enough to really
01:25:27 ◼ ► no they discontinued the ads in your app that was called i ad which yeah yeah because it because they
01:25:32 ◼ ► they did a bad job of it they're bad at and i'm glad i'm glad they're bad at that it's just too
01:25:36 ◼ ► bad they're not bad at services too not not in the sense we used to say apple needs to get good at
01:25:40 ◼ ► services we meant like reliably running iPhoto in the cloud right we didn't mean finding a way to
01:25:46 ◼ ► insert itself in every transaction in your life so they can take a cut but they're really good at that
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01:27:07 ◼ ► can we do some ask atp let's do it let's start with matt fence allow who writes listening to
01:27:13 ◼ ► your 10th anniversary discussion about photo libraries i return to a question i've always
01:27:17 ◼ ► had why aren't photos just treated as files which can be selectively shared using any file sharing
01:27:22 ◼ ► approach icloud dropouts etc when when was the fundamental decision made to treat photos as
01:27:26 ◼ ► anything other than files john i think we covered that last time we were talking about what is the
01:27:30 ◼ ► difference between like an album and a library right the photos themselves are files although
01:27:36 ◼ ► they do have embedded metadata right in the form of the exit and everything but what makes something
01:27:45 ◼ ► starting point then there's everything you apply on top of them all of your edits all of your crops
01:27:51 ◼ ► all of your adjustments all that stuff metadata that you add to them adjustments that you make
01:27:55 ◼ ► maybe you make adjustments to the date but you don't want to actually change the xf data that's
01:27:59 ◼ ► embedded inside the file you want that adjustment to be outside right you want to sort of manage
01:28:03 ◼ ► your collection of things tag them favorite them file them away adjust the ones you want rotate
01:28:09 ◼ ► crop duplicate do all sorts of things to it that's what makes a photo library that's what makes a
01:28:13 ◼ ► collection you know you curate the collection you sort things into bins you put them into subsets
01:28:19 ◼ ► you you modify them right all of that is metadata that is attached to the data that is your photos
01:28:26 ◼ ► even the adjustments is metadata because a good photo library will not destructively make those
01:28:31 ◼ ► changes your original is always there as the file but the value you're adding to it is the metadata
01:28:37 ◼ ► and so you can't just have it be files you got to keep all that metadata somewhere uh the metadata
01:28:41 ◼ ► could also be in files but it's probably in some kind of a database as well and that's what makes
01:28:46 ◼ ► something a photo library so it's not a decision of them not being treated as files it's the if
01:28:52 ◼ ► you want to curate a collection of thousands and thousands of files you need some form of
01:28:57 ◼ ► metadata and photos in particular is a bunch of obvious kinds of metadata that go along with
01:29:00 ◼ ► photos that's why you've got photo libraries and not just folders full of files i think it's also
01:29:06 ◼ ► you know you have the the technical realities of doing this uh you know for many people their
01:29:13 ◼ ► entire photo library doesn't fit on their local drive and so you have to have some kind of like
01:29:18 ◼ ► dynamic functionality to be able to offer the photo library but not have it all stored there
01:29:24 ◼ ► additionally you have the issue of fast browsing through thumbnails of photos and if all the photos
01:29:31 ◼ ► are just like you know one-to-one files on your hard drive then it's going to be really hard for
01:29:36 ◼ ► the display mechanism however you're viewing these whether it's just you know finder windows or
01:29:42 ◼ ► whatever to be able to render a whole bunch of thumbnails all very very quickly for you to scroll
01:29:46 ◼ ► through and scan for that one picture you're looking for even if it pre-renders them and puts
01:29:50 ◼ ► them off to the side like essentially to try to solve this problem like say you take photos in raw
01:29:54 ◼ ► which is the thing that people actually do you like you can't if you do the math i'm like i'm
01:29:59 ◼ ► going to scroll through this collection of thousands of photos but i don't have thumbnails
01:30:02 ◼ ► but they're all on disk it's just just plain files i'll just read all the raws figure out like the
01:30:07 ◼ ► io in terms of gigabytes per second that you would need to read and decode you know because
01:30:11 ◼ ► if they're if they're compressed raw or like a jpeg or something to be able to scroll smoothly and
01:30:16 ◼ ► say okay well i'll just do that ahead of time and i'll cache the thumbnails and you're well on your
01:30:19 ◼ ► way to making a photo library right it doesn't take long it's like once you start trying to
01:30:23 ◼ ► solve this problem yeah you're making a photo library that's why photo libraries exist once
01:30:27 ◼ ► you try to accomplish the tasks that you think should be able to do them with just files like
01:30:31 ◼ ► oh just files in the finder i just have thumbnails like that works up to a point and then beyond that
01:30:36 ◼ ► point the finder starts doing things like making thumbnails and hiding them from you in either an
01:30:41 ◼ ► in-memory or a file cache or something and the scrolling is still a little bit clunky and then
01:30:45 ◼ ► you're just like i wish this was better and you just you're slowly inventing iPhoto right and then
01:30:49 ◼ ► also you know you have the issue of different ways to browse photos like sometimes most of the time
01:30:54 ◼ ► i'm browsing photos just in a big chronological list just by time and i can scan back well but
01:31:01 ◼ ► sometimes i want to browse by location so somewhere there has to be an index of all the locations from
01:31:08 ◼ ► all my photos and i want to i want some interface to be able to browse them by that sometimes i make
01:31:14 ◼ ► albums and want to share them oh you want to share this photo oh well you're going to need now
01:31:19 ◼ ► a few versions of this photo to be sure you're going to need like the heek original and then
01:31:24 ◼ ► you're going to want a jpeg that was rendered for sharing maybe a smaller sized one to be shared in
01:31:29 ◼ ► certain ways where you're going to put all those right next to it oh oh what if it's a live photo
01:31:34 ◼ ► that's actually two different files uh you know do you do you store like the little h265 video
01:31:39 ◼ ► clip next to the jpeg or do you store them both in some kind of weird complex heek format that
01:31:44 ◼ ► nothing reads and so again like you get into all this complexity of how you want to actually use
01:31:49 ◼ ► this data most of the time or across different devices or across different technical needs
01:31:55 ◼ ► and it becomes very hard to just have them be you know a set of files and folders and also offer the
01:32:03 ◼ ► kind of functionality that most people want these days all right dan young writes what's your take
01:32:09 ◼ ► on apple's awful user experience with modern mac os updates as someone who knows the value of os
01:32:13 ◼ ► updates i already procrastinated on installing them this seems like it will teach people that
01:32:18 ◼ ► os updates are bad and should be avoided i'm not really sure what dan's going for here can
01:32:23 ◼ ► one of you translate it's because you didn't read the links um so this is uh this is on the eclectic
01:32:29 ◼ ► light company um there's a good website diving into details of this and uh the person who writes
01:32:35 ◼ ► it has been very annoyed that uh the os updates that have come recently there's been a bunch of
01:32:39 ◼ ► security type packages have been like two gigs like no matter how small the change is oh we're just
01:32:44 ◼ ► patching one or two files and it's just a minor security update you still have to end up downloading
01:32:50 ◼ ► like two to three gigabytes uh and he's been blaming this on the uh what is it called sealed
01:32:58 ◼ ► system uh disk or whatever you know the catalina i think introduced the read-only uh system volume
01:33:03 ◼ ► and now it's like cryptographically sealed and apparently it is easier or more straightforward
01:33:09 ◼ ► to just ship a huge wad of the entire os and install that as the new sealed system snapshot
01:33:17 ◼ ► rather than trying to uh you know mount read only one of you know mount the system volume read only
01:33:27 ◼ ► right that's my guess as to why these updates are big now that doesn't make a lot of technical
01:33:33 ◼ ► sense to me because part of the beauty of apfs and the snapshotting system is and and the ability
01:33:39 ◼ ► to do diffs between snapshots all that should make it much easier to send smaller updates because we
01:33:46 ◼ ► can it doesn't they don't have to make their own system like oh how do i send the deltas and i we
01:33:50 ◼ ► have to write our own code to figure out which files we have to patch and make sure that the
01:33:54 ◼ ► checksums are exactly the same after the patching snapshot diffing already does that with the
01:33:58 ◼ ► snapshot diffing since apple knows that you have a sealed system volume we and we know every single
01:34:03 ◼ ► bit that's on your your mac os 11.1 system volume like down to the bit because it's read only and
01:34:09 ◼ ► it's cryptographically signed so we don't have to speculate about what you have it seems to me that
01:34:14 ◼ ► they could make mac os 11.2 do a snapshot diff locally in apple's you know headquarters between
01:34:21 ◼ ► 11.1 and 11.2 and then they would know the they would you know ship that snapshot diff and have
01:34:27 ◼ ► it applied because they know what they they they're applying it to a known target there's no mystery
01:34:32 ◼ ► about what's on people's disks out here in the world but apparently that's not what they're
01:34:36 ◼ ► doing apparently they're shipping the entire new image no matter what change so i hope this is a
01:34:41 ◼ ► technical limitation where they're just being cautious with how they do this and i can understand
01:34:45 ◼ ► why people are annoyed and i know it is a you know it is uh nice for me to sit here with my gigabit
01:34:50 ◼ ► fiber connection and go oh i don't care how big the os updates are but it does matter and one of
01:34:55 ◼ ► the supposed promises of the new the quote-unquote new update system that apple touts which is i
01:35:01 ◼ ► think i mentioned the past show is really mobile update from ios and ipad os and tv os and probably
01:35:06 ◼ ► watch os anyway mobile update one of these supposed advantages faster more secure updates
01:35:16 ◼ ► uh i think it is it seems like it's it's something that should be better but it also seems like it's
01:35:23 ◼ ► the type of thing where especially how slow they've been moving on this where this seems
01:35:28 ◼ ► like the sort of first most cautious most naive implementation that is wasteful and i hope the
01:35:34 ◼ ► underpinnings are all there to make this better over time finally matt ewins writes you're given
01:35:39 ◼ ► the green light to buy your spouses to take down all the walls and rewire your home networks how
01:35:43 ◼ ► do you plan your new networks what is installed for now and what is installed for later what
01:35:46 ◼ ► ethernet or networking gear would you use this is actually extremely pertinent and it might as well
01:35:51 ◼ ► have been written by me because sometime in the next couple of weeks we're going to get to the
01:35:54 ◼ ► point on our house edition to do electrical and also a couple of ethernet drops so tell me marco
01:36:01 ◼ ► what what do i need to glean from your terrible terrible mistakes and do differently for this
01:36:05 ◼ ► um i've gotten various bits of advice over the years some of which i followed some of which i
01:36:12 ◼ ► wish i'd followed um some of which i regret following uh one of the things that i that i
01:36:17 ◼ ► heard from people was to have them run conduit like little tubes in the wall as opposed to just
01:36:26 ◼ ► running the wire straight in the wall the idea being that obviously no matter what wiring you
01:36:31 ◼ ► pick sometime down the road and you know it takes a while for these things to change but sometime
01:36:36 ◼ ► down the road the wiring you have will be obsolete and you will want to change it and ideally you'd
01:36:41 ◼ ► want to change it without tearing open the walls again and having to run all new wires in like you
01:36:46 ◼ ► know a very invasive way so the idea is if you run conduit through the wall and put those little like
01:36:53 ◼ ► pull strings in along with the wires the idea is that you could just pull out the old wires and
01:36:58 ◼ ► run some new wires in through these little tubes in the wall and then you can have modern wiring
01:37:05 ◼ ► down the road without tearing open all your walls in practice i've been told by many people who
01:37:12 ◼ ► install these things that's not really going to ever work and i actually did install it in part
01:37:18 ◼ ► of my house and uh and that it's the installer was like yeah we probably can't ever actually
01:37:24 ◼ ► pull the wires through like the bends and everything so like i think in practice if you
01:37:30 ◼ ► have a very if you have very simple like wall geometry and in a reasonably like straightforward
01:37:35 ◼ ► construction maybe that might work in the real world i think you're gonna have like a bender
01:37:40 ◼ ► two here or there that has to go around something and it's going to be very hard to get anything
01:37:44 ◼ ► through there in practice although the real the real barrier to conduit though is usually that
01:37:56 ◼ ► know separating your two by four framing or whatever conduit is much more commonly used in
01:38:00 ◼ ► offices where it's actually used like that like you you can't open up the walls every time you
01:38:04 ◼ ► want to rerun wires so they have to be conduits especially during it's like roads like the major
01:38:12 ◼ ► offices office buildings get reconfigured a lot there's room and the gigantic office walls and
01:38:23 ◼ ► walls just aren't thick enough for you to put a giant pvc pipe in that run your wires through it
01:38:27 ◼ ► so normally the conduit has to be smaller and that's where you get into okay well the conduit
01:38:31 ◼ ► is barely the size of the wire all that said if you don't have conduit and someone just takes a
01:38:35 ◼ ► drill and drills a hole that's the size of an ethernet cable through one of your two by fours
01:38:39 ◼ ► there's no way you're ever getting anything back through that so as difficult as conduit may be to
01:38:44 ◼ ► navigate some corners at least you have a fighting chance whereas if you don't run conduit and just
01:38:52 ◼ ► the structural integrity of your wall framing but you can't even get the rj45 back through that hole
01:38:58 ◼ ► because it's literally the thickness of the wire and it's also by the way embedded in your wall
01:39:01 ◼ ► that you don't want to open up so it really depends on uh you know how how much do you plan on ever
01:39:09 ◼ ► yanking out the wire and putting in new wire if you do it is a good idea to see if you can use
01:39:14 ◼ ► conduit at least for the major runs but don't compromise the structural integrity of your
01:39:19 ◼ ► house by putting a giant three inch conduit through a load-bearing wall because that's not
01:39:22 ◼ ► a good trade that's not a good trade-off right um and and yeah and i mean heck the first time i did
01:39:28 ◼ ► this i did it in a wall that was then later being spray foamed and then you just spray foamed right
01:39:33 ◼ ► over the bare wires and so those are those are in there forever yeah those are not coming out
01:39:37 ◼ ► and that's that's the beauty of conduit if you have spray foam insulation with the conduit
01:39:41 ◼ ► just spray over the conduit that's fine that's the whole point of it right exactly so anyway yeah so
01:39:44 ◼ ► that's all right um i would say you know the the easiest way to do this is to have as little wiring
01:39:53 ◼ ► running through the walls as possible and to have it instead all go like straight up to an attic or
01:39:58 ◼ ► straight down to a basement where then it can run in a more accessible place so like you have all
01:40:04 ◼ ► the runs that just are like you know straight you know which is similar to how usually you're
01:40:07 ◼ ► run ducting for air conditioning and stuff is that you know you you have like the main like most of
01:40:12 ◼ ► like the the main trunks and the the runs of it are mostly in accessible areas and then you like
01:40:18 ◼ ► shoot straight up a wall to get to a room but like you're not running side to side within the within
01:40:22 ◼ ► like the deep parts of the wall um otherwise kind of just accept the fact that okay whatever i'm
01:40:28 ◼ ► going to put in there now in x number of years it's probably going to be at least partially
01:40:35 ◼ ► obsolete uh and it'll and i'll just i'll have to live with it or we'll have to move by then
01:40:42 ◼ ► or whatever or terrible and shoot through by rats yeah right because that's the other problem with
01:40:48 ◼ ► things in the wall that's true um but that being said like the first the first out of this wiring
01:40:53 ◼ ► i did that got spray foamed in that was at this point almost 10 years ago and that was at the time
01:40:58 ◼ ► i said put in the best and at the time that was cat six and cat six today is still fine like it
01:41:04 ◼ ► can still do a lot i've never had a problem with those wires on those walls they just work 100% of
01:41:10 ◼ ► the time as good network wiring tends to mostly do uh and it's been great so the amount of time you
01:41:17 ◼ ► have is potentially long and so even despite all this like it's probably still worth doing so uh
01:41:24 ◼ ► and and the time you might have longer than you think before you actually are having problems with
01:41:29 ◼ ► that and and you know even though right now 10 gig ethernet stuff exists and i think those old cat
01:41:36 ◼ ► six wires uh i don't know exactly the tolerances that makes it so i can't do all these things but
01:41:42 ◼ ► like i'm pretty sure i can't do 10 gig i might be able to do like 2.5 or something like that
01:41:46 ◼ ► no i think you can do 10 gig over cat six just over shorter runs yeah but who knows like if they
01:41:51 ◼ ► accidentally like bent it too too close to a power line somewhere or something who knows but anyway
01:41:55 ◼ ► it does gigabit just fine and still like now 10 years later that's still fine and when i put it
01:42:03 ◼ ► in 10 years ago gigabit wasn't new like it was it was like well into its lifespan but gigabit
01:42:10 ◼ ► networking is still really fast and for what you like it's still the fastest internet connection
01:42:16 ◼ ► you can get in the house so the wire at least you know in the us in most places and even that like
01:42:21 ◼ ► you're lucky if you can get that and so you know i'm not being held back for internet connectivity
01:42:27 ◼ ► by that the only thing that's really holding back for me is like computer to computer file transfers
01:42:32 ◼ ► and that's not something i do so often that i need that to be super fast as long as my internet
01:42:39 ◼ ► connection is fast which it is over over cat six just fine then that's i don't have any problems
01:42:45 ◼ ► with that and so if i'm if i'm going to continue to use cat six for another 10 years it would
01:42:51 ◼ ► probably still be fine and i probably would still not really be feeling a lot of like i'm being held
01:42:58 ◼ ► back by the wiring on my walls that's that would at that point be almost 20 years old i would plan
01:43:03 ◼ ► for 10 gig though because i feel like 10 gig is going to come around and not just because i have
01:43:06 ◼ ► a computer with two 10 gig ethernet ports on it just because i feel like it's in in shouting
01:43:10 ◼ ► distance and it's kind of sad now as i was pointed out recently that uh the crappy usb connections
01:43:15 ◼ ► on our computers are now significantly faster than our ethernet connections uh you know whatever
01:43:20 ◼ ► whatever the current pick your pick your ethernet pick your usb standard you can do 10 gig 20 gig 40
01:43:26 ◼ ► gig right over and forget about thunderbolt this is just a thunderbolt i guess is the 40 gig one like
01:43:31 ◼ ► usb is surprisingly fast and we think of that as a thing we use to connect you know a mouse and
01:43:35 ◼ ► a keyboard right so 10 gig ethernet you know in the data centers there are much faster variants
01:43:39 ◼ ► of ethernet that are in common use all the time but those are obviously super expensive but i feel
01:43:43 ◼ ► like 10 gig we're in shouting distance right but that said uh you know the chat room just looked
01:43:48 ◼ ► up the distance apparently uh cat6 can do 10 gig up to like 50 meters or something 55 meters
01:43:52 ◼ ► most houses are not that big right so just look at the length of your runs uh i think it is worth
01:43:58 ◼ ► future proofing for 10 gig but to do that you might not have to do anything more than do cat6
01:44:04 ◼ ► in reasonable runs like marco said like i have them from a central point everyone just drops down
01:44:08 ◼ ► into in between two studs and comes out of port and you're done right so if you don't have a
01:44:13 ◼ ► gigantic house and each individual run is not longer than 55 meters not 55 meters total wiring
01:44:18 ◼ ► in your walls but like from the switch to wherever you're going then you're all set for 10 gig and i
01:44:23 ◼ ► think that is reasonable future proofing uh given marco's experience with the weird cat7 connectors
01:44:29 ◼ ► and the videos i saw the cat8 ones i think it is not worth messing with that just because of the
01:44:35 ◼ ► the weird grounding sheath that you have to do and the the size of the tiny connectors but
01:44:39 ◼ ► i wouldn't go below cat6 no i think there's a cat6a now or something that i don't think that
01:44:44 ◼ ► existed when i did my first set but um anyway yeah from what i've heard cat6a is is totally fine for
01:44:51 ◼ ► almost any modern use so that's probably what i would do if i was doing it again now now that
01:44:55 ◼ ► being said the second half of this question was about um networking gear and stuff like that
01:45:00 ◼ ► and i have been a fan and user of ubiquity for quite some time now um i would never recommend
01:45:09 ◼ ► it to like a typical home user but if you're listening to this podcast there's a greater than
01:45:15 ◼ ► average chance that you're a nerd and for those of you out there who like to have you know networking
01:45:19 ◼ ► nerdy stuff ubiquity is pretty cool but it is very nerdy that being said their latest generation of
01:45:27 ◼ ► stuff um the the dream machine uh router and and dream machine pro have had problems uh i i'm using
01:45:36 ◼ ► one now and the other day i had to reboot it to let new devices join the wi-fi network and part
01:45:45 ◼ ► of the reason why and this is not the first time this has happened and part of the reason why i've
01:45:49 ◼ ► loved ubiquity for so long is that the previous gear i had the old like edge router and then the
01:45:56 ◼ ► old security gateway that i had after that um the previous ubiquity gear i would set it up and it
01:46:02 ◼ ► would just run for years and i had never there was never a problem that i had that was solved by
01:46:10 ◼ ► rebooting my ubiquity router like i never had to do that for any reason except like occasionally
01:46:15 ◼ ► a firmer update or something or like it would lose power and that would reboot but like the uptime my
01:46:20 ◼ ► routers had was ridiculous and i i always knew that the ubiquity gear was so rock solid that
01:46:28 ◼ ► that was never the problem whatever problem i was seeing wasn't it wasn't the ubiquity gear's fault
01:46:32 ◼ ► and that was a great place to be i can't say that right now and that's very disappointing to me i
01:46:39 ◼ ► i'm and a lot of ubiquity people are are kind of you know having a bad time right now because
01:46:45 ◼ ► their recent gear they're moving very fast on the on the software front the software is like you
01:46:50 ◼ ► know move fast and break things kind of philosophy it seems like now which is not what you want out
01:46:54 ◼ ► of your router like that's not you want something a little more slow and non-breaking conservative
01:47:00 ◼ ► and you know and and that's what ubiquity used to offer and all and their newer stuff it seems
01:47:05 ◼ ► like they're not there yet with the stability and it might be getting worse and they're going
01:47:10 ◼ ► through a lot of changing and everything keeps like oh now this new control panel is this new
01:47:14 ◼ ► version it looks totally different and a third of the features are missing in the new version
01:47:18 ◼ ► but just wait or go back to the old version to access them like there seemed to be a lot of flux
01:47:22 ◼ ► going on with ubiquity right now that's not good and i hope they work this out and get back to
01:47:28 ◼ ► the level of reliability that they've had for years that they built their reputation on
01:47:32 ◼ ► the whole reason i buy this stuff is because it was in the past rock solid and low maintenance
01:47:39 ◼ ► and right now it's not so i really hope this is a temporary thing right now with what is offered
01:47:47 ◼ ► i can't recommend it i'm using it and i'm tolerating it and it works well much of the time
01:47:52 ◼ ► but it doesn't have the appeal that their old stuff had when it just was super reliable it
01:47:58 ◼ ► doesn't do that right now so hopefully they move past this and get better right now i don't know
01:48:04 ◼ ► what i would recommend thanks to our sponsors this week squarespace backblaze and flat file
01:48:11 ◼ ► and thanks to our members you can now get an annual membership or you can get euro or pound
01:48:16 ◼ ► billing and you can join with any of those options if you want to atp.fm join and we will talk to you
01:48:24 ◼ ► all next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
01:48:54 ◼ ► and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o
01:49:26 ◼ ► so my birthday was last week and my parents got me a new dongle for my car they got me the carlink
01:49:38 ◼ ► kit wireless carplay adapter so this is something that i think i'd obliquely mentioned many many
01:49:44 ◼ ► many many episodes ago as a an adapter that you plug into the usb port in your car that is designed
01:49:51 ◼ ► to accept a lightning cable and for carplay purposes well you plug this adapter in and then
01:49:56 ◼ ► your phone talks to the adapter the adapter talks to your car that means you can leave your phone in
01:50:01 ◼ ► your pocket and have carplay even if it's not physically connected to the car does it come with
01:50:07 ◼ ► a lowered uh what is this an r8 a lowered r8 with a giant wing holding a canoe on top of it what i'm
01:50:14 ◼ ► confused by the marketing of this website there are several different manufacturers that do the
01:50:18 ◼ ► same thing they're probably just you know different labels on the same guts but uh this particular
01:50:23 ◼ ► yeah i actually have one of these but for for like my dev kit i i bought one of these not this brand
01:50:30 ◼ ► but i bought like one of the other brand ones that said it might work and it didn't yeah well so if
01:50:34 ◼ ► based on this website i i would not have bought this particular one because it is it is rough some
01:50:40 ◼ ► of the product photography but here we are um and so i had the occasion to be in the car for about
01:50:45 ◼ ► five hours today and i used the carling kit adapter for uh four of the five hours that i was driving
01:50:52 ◼ ► and uh it worked actually quite well it i i feel like i can tell and maybe it's all in my head i
01:51:00 ◼ ► feel like i can tell that it's not hardwired carplay anymore uh in the sense that like there's
01:51:05 ◼ ► a little bit of lag a teeny bit um when i would play like audio after siri was talking i feel like
01:51:14 ◼ ► the the bit rate was like really low for a second or two and then it would it would figure itself
01:51:19 ◼ ► out and it would be you know regular quality but that being said it seemed to work just fine this
01:51:26 ◼ ► thing is about 130 and it's the perfect kind of gift right it's the sort of thing that you don't
01:51:32 ◼ ► necessarily want to spend 130 on but you don't mind if somebody else spends 130 on you and gets
01:51:36 ◼ ► you this thing that may or may not work well and and actually it's worked fine um what's nice about
01:51:43 ◼ ► this particular one i presume the others are the same is that it also has a usb power pass through
01:51:48 ◼ ► so it has usb c to usb what is it a or b i always get it wrong a thank you um if it's a printer it's
01:51:55 ◼ ► b okay there you go so it's usb c to usb a it's a little you know stubby cable and the usb-a goes
01:52:00 ◼ ► in your car usb-c goes in the little dongle and then it also has a usb-a receptacle on the other
01:52:06 ◼ ► side of it so you can plug in your lightning cable and charge your phone while you're using carplay
01:52:10 ◼ ► now i don't think it will use carplay it's not like a pass-through for wired carplay when that
01:52:16 ◼ ► happens i think what it's doing is it's just charging with the powers there the data is not
01:52:22 ◼ ► but it worked well and for the last hour i was in the car i took it off the charger just to see how
01:52:29 ◼ ► it did and my battery plummeted by 15 but also consider i was listening to overcast at the time
01:52:35 ◼ ► and more importantly hey don't blame me just hold on hold on hold on and more importantly as i was
01:52:41 ◼ ► starting to say i was also using the gps and oh yeah so that i think overcast gps ways they're
01:52:50 ◼ ► equal battery hog totally yeah you know so thankfully apple has this little thing where you
01:52:56 ◼ ► can see what's what your battery usage is and it has so happened that it was 11 to 12 this morning
01:53:02 ◼ ► that i was on battery and using carplay and so on and so forth and it was uh ways at 23 and overcast
01:53:10 ◼ ► at 21 so says apple i i concur with you i i think that seems a bit ridiculous i would expect ways
01:53:18 ◼ ► would be the overwhelming majority of it but nevertheless uh i don't actually have that much
01:53:23 ◼ ► else to say about it to be honest it is definitely a hack and it wouldn't surprise me if this hack is
01:53:27 ◼ ► somehow closed up in the future but for now it works and i'm pretty satisfied with it and it's
01:53:34 ◼ ► nice to be able to use carplay always so the way i treated carplay in the past was if i was going in
01:53:41 ◼ ► the car for like more than just a few minutes i would probably plug in or if like i'm in the
01:53:45 ◼ ► middle of a text conversation where i want to be able to easily dictate and so on and so forth
01:53:49 ◼ ► i would plug it in but otherwise i just would use bluetooth to the car like no carplay involved at
01:53:55 ◼ ► all i would just use bluetooth to the car in in in stream you know overcast or music or what have you
01:54:01 ◼ ► and now now every time i get in the car i have the full carplay experience just like bmw drivers have
01:54:06 ◼ ► had for years and i think outie is now starting to do wireless carplay there's a few other makes that
01:54:10 ◼ ► are doing it too um but yeah i it actually works and i'm really surprised and you know the super
01:54:16 ◼ ► discerning among you will definitely be able to see the difference but for me i'm willing to trade
01:54:20 ◼ ► a little bit of latency and lag for a lot of convenience and that works for me the website says
01:54:26 ◼ ► suitable for 98 car models not for 90 98 of car models it says suitable for 98 car models
01:54:43 ◼ ► i would really want to know is my car one of the two percent that i can't use what is it
01:54:48 ◼ ► if it's like carplay adapter why would it care what the car is isn't it just tricking all the
01:54:53 ◼ ► cars into i don't know have you well no first of all the way it works it doesn't work with
01:54:57 ◼ ► everything second of all the website has other gems as well have you have you um scrolled down
01:55:02 ◼ ► a little bit to the row of documents that includes things such as their us trademark document
01:55:09 ◼ ► oh my gosh i i've scrolled onto a heading that says if the product worked normally no need update
01:55:13 ◼ ► i did see that uh yeah it's uh it's something but it worked for me that's all i care about
01:55:21 ◼ ► actually it's down to 110 right now i'm sorry these are a lot of these i seem to recall a
01:55:27 ◼ ► a long succession of kind of not particularly nice looking car related accessories that i've
01:55:36 ◼ ► purchased for things like ipods and iphones in the past especially back when cars were not as savvy
01:55:42 ◼ ► about collecting connecting to any kind of electronics and they all look similar to this
01:55:45 ◼ ► they're all like a you know nondescript plastic box with maybe a light on it and some wires that
01:55:50 ◼ ► you connect to it i mean they serve me well like i'm not putting down these type of products like
01:55:54 ◼ ► when you need a thing that does the thing and you just need it want it in your car you just stick it
01:56:00 ◼ ► in there and forget about it and either you know shove it up inside your glove box or inside a
01:56:04 ◼ ► little console or in the case of like adding aux audio input to like my original honda civics and
01:56:09 ◼ ► accords just like you know it's all entirely hidden underneath the plastic of the center
01:56:14 ◼ ► tunnel yeah so it's money well spent it improves the uh the functionality of your car and you never
01:56:20 ◼ ► need to think about it again and then when you get rid of that car the thing leaves with it and your
01:56:23 ◼ ► next car has this built in and so i think that's a uh that's the reason this market exists right
01:56:28 ◼ ► uh modify a car to get a new capability and don't worry about it this thing doesn't last too long