00:00:00 ◼ ► Antitrust relief valve is also decent. Antitrust should be one word, I believe, but like no hyphen.
00:00:06 ◼ ► What? You know, we don't make these things up, Casey. It's not like we have a choice. It's not
00:00:14 ◼ ► like it's an optional thing where from week to week we can choose whether to add or remove hyphens.
00:00:20 ◼ ► We're telling you about a truth that exists. We are not making decisions on the fly. That's fake news,
00:00:25 ◼ ► John. Yeah, we don't just insert hyphens like in the middle of words that are our single words.
00:00:30 ◼ ► Like or choose or choose to remove them in our whim. It's like antitrust is a single word and
00:00:35 ◼ ► we didn't make that choice. Let's do it. Let's do relief, R-E-L-I-E-F. I wouldn't be surprised
00:00:41 ◼ ► with you two. I wouldn't be surprised at all. What we're telling you is that this is a world
00:00:46 ◼ ► of information that is knowable, Casey. It is knowable to you. So do I need a hyphen between
00:00:51 ◼ ► relief and valve? You never know these days. No, you can know. This is a thing that you can know.
00:00:56 ◼ ► It's a syntax. It's very easy to understand the syntax. There are fairly consistent guidelines
00:01:03 ◼ ► and through exposure you should be learning about how they're used. There are always going to be
00:01:07 ◼ ► edge cases that can be debated, but the basic rules you should be picking up by now. Nope.
00:01:11 ◼ ► Something I used to drive people crazy at work, one of the teams I was working with a couple years
00:01:17 ◼ ► ago, I constantly was trying to teach them the rules about hyphens. Surprisingly hard to do.
00:01:22 ◼ ► A, because they hate you for it, obviously, but B, they should still, even though they hate you,
00:01:27 ◼ ► like the many things you learn from your parents, you do eventually learn them. You may dislike the
00:01:33 ◼ ► person who taught them to you. We do eventually learn how to tie your shoes or whatever. You end
00:01:37 ◼ ► up being able to tie your shoes. That is the end result. Ending up being able to use hyphens, my
00:01:42 ◼ ► success rate is slightly more than 50%. Yeah, but I don't know if the full immersion hyphen school
00:01:49 ◼ ► is going to work for Casey. Actually, Casey, full immersion hyphen school. Where does hyphen or
00:01:54 ◼ ► hyphens go? It's between full and immersion and knowing you two. Why? Why is it between full and
00:02:01 ◼ ► immersion? Because you're specifying the kind of immersion. No, no. No, I don't know. Well,
00:02:07 ◼ ► you're correct. At least this is step one. He's correct. No, it's not the kind of immersion.
00:02:12 ◼ ► His reason, his explanation and rationale is totally bogus, but he is correct about the hyphen.
00:02:17 ◼ ► So we're making progress. Our full immersion hyphen school is working. Never in a million years
00:02:23 ◼ ► would I look at that phrase and think, "Oh, I need a hyphen between full and immersion." No way. I'm
00:02:27 ◼ ► not saying you're wrong, for the record. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'll explain it to you again,
00:02:30 ◼ ► which I reset in the past, but I'll explain it to you again so you can absorb it. It's when there's
00:02:34 ◼ ► a multi-word phrase that acts as an adjective that describes some other things. There's a thing in
00:02:39 ◼ ► there and they're saying, "What kind of thing is that?" And to describe what kind of thing it is,
00:02:44 ◼ ► there's multiple words that all combine to say, "It's that kind of thing." Right? What kind of
00:02:50 ◼ ► preschool is it? It's a full immersion preschool, but it's not a full immersion preschool. Full
00:02:58 ◼ ► immersion is required to describe. It's not a full preschool and it's not an immersion preschool. It's
00:03:08 ◼ ► that multi-word phrase together describes the preschool. So full hyphen immersion. That's the
00:03:15 ◼ ► basics. Before we go into when it's an adverb, you don't do a hyphen because you don't... Anyway, but
00:03:34 ◼ ► - I'll put that in the pre-show because then the actual people who know grammar are going
00:03:53 ◼ ► but it's much more difficult to be successfully educational, right? Like I tried to explain it and
00:04:00 ◼ ► they're like, "Well, actually your explanation is wrong in this subtle way." And they're going to be
00:04:04 ◼ ► right and I'm going to have to endure that. - Oh my God, a humongous gust of wind just went by.
00:04:10 ◼ ► - And there's no hyphenation in any of that. A humongous gust of wind is totally un-hyphenated.
00:04:36 ◼ ► - Oh God. Oh, I hate everyone. I hate everything. I hate everyone. I quit. You're both fired.
00:04:47 ◼ ► there are the major thing that most people do is just don't acknowledge the existence of hyphens,
00:04:51 ◼ ► so never use them. So normally someone would type something in Slack, which we were using then,
00:05:09 ◼ ► for a year, and still a year into it, I would say, "What kind of file?" And they'd answer the
00:05:18 ◼ ► it's because you used a multi-word phrase to describe the file, but didn't put hyphens in it.
00:05:22 ◼ ► I've done it a hundred times, and still when I say it, I say, "What kind of file?" And they
00:05:25 ◼ ► would just answer the question literally. So it's very difficult to get this to penetrate.
00:05:34 ◼ ► - ...is the same John that exists at work, and that everyone around John is subjected to the same John.
00:05:58 ◼ ► - No. Well, I mean, besides our usual content. - No, yeah, right. No, I'm hearing weirdness.
00:06:16 ◼ ► I'm just going to reboot, so entertain everyone. Yeah, I'm just going to can all this. I will
00:06:22 ◼ ► assume... If you guys, genuinely, if you just want to start the show, that's fine. I'll just pop in
00:06:25 ◼ ► in a second. But one way or another, I'll be back in a second. - It's not the show without you.
00:06:33 ◼ ► - Well, fair enough. All right. I was trying to be nice. All right. I'm hanging up now. Okay, bye.
00:06:42 ◼ ► I have been adding things to my radar that I had put in my feedback that I'd put a link to in the
00:06:49 ◼ ► last episode. I have been adding, what is it, spin dumps, tailspins, sys-diagnoses. I've probably got...
00:06:56 ◼ ► This is not an exaggeration. I probably got like a gig to a gig and a half worth of sys-diagnoses
00:07:01 ◼ ► and tailspins and whatnots on this feedback. And of course, as far as I'm concerned, I'm just
00:07:06 ◼ ► barfing this into a black hole. I mean, I would not be any wiser if it was just going to dev null
00:07:11 ◼ ► on some Apple server somewhere. But anyways, I have been adding all these things, trying to...
00:07:16 ◼ ► I've taken videos with my phone of my god-awful refresh rate and of my machine gun trackpad
00:07:22 ◼ ► and attached it to this feedback. I've been a good citizen in doing what I can to get my
00:07:27 ◼ ► problems fixed. And I have no idea if it's actually going to any human being, but that's okay.
00:07:32 ◼ ► But one of the things I'm trying starting today is something that had been suggested, and I had
00:07:37 ◼ ► actually tried myself with my old iMac, is not using Bluetooth for my peripherals, for my
00:07:44 ◼ ► keyboard and mouse, and instead plugging them in. So they're the... I don't know the official name
00:07:48 ◼ ► for this, but the Apple extended keyboard 2 that Gruber likes, whatever they call the magic keyboard
00:07:55 ◼ ► with the 10T. And then the magic trackpad, they're now both plugged in via lightning cables to my
00:08:02 ◼ ► iMac. And that seems to make things a little better so far. I've also seemingly seen that
00:08:08 ◼ ► a lot of network I/O in particular can really choke everything, which seems really not good,
00:08:14 ◼ ► but that's the way it is, or at least that's some solid anecdotal data I've got for you.
00:08:19 ◼ ► That if I'm running a time machine back up to the Synology while I'm doing something else on the
00:08:23 ◼ ► Synology, while I'm trying to play a video from NPR Tiny Desk Concerts as I've been doing non-stop
00:08:30 ◼ ► for the last few days, everything just gets real ugly real quick. So I have disabled time machine
00:08:35 ◼ ► temporarily, crash plan... Oops, I rebooted, so it is running. I got to turn that back off.
00:08:46 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Can we get a ruling on feedback versus radar? I know the app is called Feedback
00:08:52 ◼ ► and this new purple app, and we don't use radar web anymore, right? But aren't they still just
00:08:58 ◼ ► radars under the cover? Like referring to them as FeedBacks or my feedback seems weird to me.
00:09:07 ◼ ► noun? Are they actually called FeedBacks or are people just saying that because of the app name?
00:09:14 ◼ ► Stauffer** Well, let's just make an ATP ruling that it will be for now and forever more radar.
00:09:40 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** No, we don't want people to be with the Times. That's why I'm asking them.
00:09:44 ◼ ► Internally, they had an app called Radar and then what we were using was Radar Web or whatever,
00:09:50 ◼ ► because we just got to use the web interface. We didn't see the native application, but that was
00:09:53 ◼ ► ages ago. So now we have a new native app for regular people called Feedback. But given that
00:10:00 ◼ ► the actual issues and numbers are all the same as they were in Radar, I'm assuming it's still
00:10:06 ◼ ► just a different client for whatever is lurking behind Radar. Anyway, if some Apple person can
00:10:31 ◼ ► **Brian Stauffer** All right, let's move on. Let's get an update, Jon, if you don't mind,
00:10:36 ◼ ► on Switch Glass and desktop backgrounds. What is your vision quest taking you? Where is your
00:10:42 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah, just a little quick follow up on the big discussion last week about what I
00:10:45 ◼ ► was doing for desktop images. After the podcast, I delved more into the code I had for copying the
00:10:53 ◼ ► desktop window and I got a bunch of suggestions from a bunch of helpful people on Twitter and
00:10:57 ◼ ► through email that gave me a lot more confidence in my ability to identify which desktop belongs
00:11:04 ◼ ► to which monitor by comparing the coordinates. There was just a y-axis flip. This is the thing
00:11:09 ◼ ► about the Mac. I guess an iOS is probably easier and more consistent, but there are multiple
00:11:15 ◼ ► different competing coordinate systems on the Mac, which is a little bit tricky. And I knew about
00:11:21 ◼ ► that and I usually account for it, but in this case, I was being fooled by the particular
00:11:24 ◼ ► placement of my little sidecar display and my vast 6K display into me thinking that this isn't
00:11:31 ◼ ► a coordinate flip. I'm only off by a little bit, but I was just unlucky with the numbers. So it
00:11:36 ◼ ► looked to me as if it was an off by 10 error when really it was a complete coordinate system flip.
00:11:42 ◼ ► And just because of the nature of how they were anyway, once I got that straightened out and
00:11:46 ◼ ► like, "Oh, it's just y-axis flip." And then once I do the y-axis flip, I could positively identify
00:11:52 ◼ ► all the things. So now I'm super confident in that system. And I think the window copy system
00:11:57 ◼ ► is the way to go. That is my primary thing. I still have the fallbacks in there, but honestly,
00:12:02 ◼ ► I expect the fallbacks never to be used and I'll probably remove all that code. So that's what I
00:12:05 ◼ ► shipped. I shipped the window copy code. It's out there right now. And I thank everyone for the help
00:12:10 ◼ ► and clarification in figuring this out. I still think obviously there should be a sane API to get
00:12:15 ◼ ► this because it's apparently something that lots of developers want to do if they ever show like
00:12:19 ◼ ► a little miniature picture of your screen in like a preferences dialogue or something. Lots of apps
00:12:23 ◼ ► do this during onboarding when they show like a little picture of your computer or a monitor or
00:12:27 ◼ ► something. There should be an API. Did you just return an NS image? It should be an NS screen API
00:12:35 ◼ ► called desktop image. Or anyway, it's harder than it needs to be, but I'm glad I found a way to do
00:12:40 ◼ ► it. And then as for Twitch Pass itself, I am happy to say that thanks to all the people who listened
00:12:46 ◼ ► to the show and bought a copy and then aren't using it. Thank you everybody. I now fully funded
00:12:52 ◼ ► the $400 aluminum bracket that holds hard drives from iMac Pro and it is sitting on my desk right
00:12:58 ◼ ► now in its box. Hey. Although one of the things I didn't realize before I had an app on the app
00:13:04 ◼ ► store is exactly how long Apple takes to pay you anything. So in theory, I have paid for it, but
00:13:10 ◼ ► yeah, the actual payment according to the official party line at Apple is after the end of the month
00:13:16 ◼ ► in which you've had sales. So let's say January ends. You're like, when am I going to get paid
00:13:20 ◼ ► for all those sales I made in January? Apple says you will get paid 45 days after the end of the
00:13:25 ◼ ► month. Apparently that is a little bit too pessimistic and usually you had it around 30
00:13:29 ◼ ► days, but the point is I still haven't received a penny for any of my apps, not even front and
00:13:34 ◼ ► center, which was released a long time ago. So eventually I will get the money to pay for this
00:13:39 ◼ ► bracket, but I didn't wait to buy it. I bought it with the assumption that Apple will eventually pay.
00:13:43 ◼ ► And of course it came with that eight terabyte hard drive, which I'm not sure what I'm going
00:13:47 ◼ ► to do with. I'll probably stick it inside my Mac and see if I can tolerate the noise. But if I
00:13:51 ◼ ► can't, we'll see. Well, I'm glad that you have lent yourself some money in order to get this
00:13:58 ◼ ► toy that you've been wanted, but not wanted for so long. So congratulations. Marco Andrew Larson
00:14:04 ◼ ► would like to know, have you tried enabling high quality streaming? I've had, this is Andrew
00:14:08 ◼ ► writing. I've had always had this on and I've never heard what you're referring to. So this
00:14:12 ◼ ► was with regard to Apple music and hearing like crummy versions of songs. Is that correct? In the
00:14:18 ◼ ► very beginning that is, and then they'll get better. Sort of. Yeah. So in Ask ETP last week,
00:14:23 ◼ ► the question was like, you know, if it was like, if you could fix one little bug that you could
00:14:26 ◼ ► fix in one day, what would it be? And mine was that when I start streaming over cellular in the
00:14:32 ◼ ► music app, every track begins with like a half second of very low bit rate audio that sounds
00:14:37 ◼ ► awful. And then it like snaps to the higher bit rate, like responsibly, like as it gets the
00:14:41 ◼ ► connection. I said, just, you know, buffer it for a second and then play the higher one from the start
00:14:46 ◼ ► or, you know, preload it before you play it or whatever it is. And a bunch of people wrote in
00:14:52 ◼ ► basically say there's a setting under a, I think it's under music cellular and it's a high quality
00:14:59 ◼ ► streaming. And if you turn this setting on, this doesn't happen anymore. So it wasn't technically a
00:15:06 ◼ ► bug. It was a bad default setting. So I turned this setting on and it, in one day, my bug got
00:15:14 ◼ ► fixed. So how, how are you two doing on your one day bugs? Not well, not well at all. Oh man,
00:15:22 ◼ ► that's funny. All right. And then at some point yesterday, I don't remember yesterday at some
00:15:26 ◼ ► point last week, I don't remember when it was, we were talking about the static analyzer in Xcode
00:15:31 ◼ ► and Aaron Farnham writes, and I don't know if this is true, but I have no reason to believe it isn't.
00:15:36 ◼ ► Aaron writes that the static analyzer skips Swift files and only looks at C++, Objective-C and
00:15:41 ◼ ► Objective-C++, which is a bummer, but I can't say I am surprised. That was the explanation for why
00:15:45 ◼ ► I never saw any complaints in the static analyzer. Why is it there's no issues with it? It just
00:15:50 ◼ ► doesn't, it's skipping all my files. Although I do technically have a couple of Objective-C files
00:15:54 ◼ ► mixed in there, but they're small. But anyway, yeah. It's interesting. I mean, obviously the
00:15:58 ◼ ► static analyzer was introduced back when, you know, before Swift existed. So that kind of makes sense
00:16:03 ◼ ► why it doesn't work with Swift. It's kind of like Swift has the static analyzer built into
00:16:07 ◼ ► the compiler and that Swift is all about being able to reason about everything that's going to
00:16:13 ◼ ► happen in your program and know, you know, that's what optionals are about. That's what
00:16:17 ◼ ► its type system is about. It's not to say that Swift doesn't need a linter or a static analyzer,
00:16:21 ◼ ► but I think Swift itself, the language, it goes a long way towards catching the kinds of mistakes
00:16:27 ◼ ► that you could, you know, that the Objective-C compiler will not complain. That's why you need
00:16:31 ◼ ► the static analyzer or some kind of linter to yell at you for doing things that are potentially
00:16:36 ◼ ► dangerous in Objective-C. But in Swift, the compiler has got your back for most things.
00:16:40 ◼ ► Indeed. Don Libes writes, "I was startled to hear Marco complain that the iOS music app loses its
00:16:47 ◼ ► place in the navigation hierarchy because his own podcast player, Overcast, has the same feature.
00:16:51 ◼ ► If relaunched in the background, Overcast forgets where it was navigated to in a smart playlist,
00:16:55 ◼ ► I assume regular playlists too. Similarly, if I navigate up one level and then back down to the
00:17:00 ◼ ► end of the playlist, Overcast resets the view to the beginning of the list rather than what I was
00:17:03 ◼ ► previously looking at. Marco, would you like to defend yourself and let me state for the record,
00:17:17 ◼ ► the music app that it basically forgets everything about your navigation stack every time the app
00:17:22 ◼ ► quits, which is very frequent. And so if you got to whatever you're now playing thing is by, say,
00:17:32 ◼ ► like it just loses all that and it launches you into like nothing. And by the way, iTunes is the
00:17:37 ◼ ► same, or now music does the same thing. Every time we launch it, it's like this is the first time
00:17:42 ◼ ► it's ever been launched. It doesn't even remember what song you were playing. It certainly doesn't
00:17:44 ◼ ► remember your spot in the song. So anyway, yes, Overcast does not remember your scroll position
00:17:52 ◼ ► in those lists. It does, however, remember what screen you were on and in what mode. So basically,
00:18:01 ◼ ► there's a concept of playlist provider. And that can be either a playlist or a podcast in that
00:18:09 ◼ ► root entry. And however you got to what you're playing is a playlist provider. So either you
00:18:16 ◼ ► went to a playlist and picked an episode and hit play, so in which case the playlist itself is a
00:18:20 ◼ ► playlist provider and the episode is the current episode, or you went to a specific podcast from
00:18:25 ◼ ► the root screen, which then that is the playlist provider, and then the episode within that is your
00:18:31 ◼ ► current episode. And Overcast always saves the current playlist provider and the current episode.
00:18:37 ◼ ► So when you relaunch it from scratch, it will do that. It will resume back to where it was. However,
00:18:42 ◼ ► this person is right. It does not record your scroll position within those lists. That's
00:18:47 ◼ ► something that, frankly, I just hadn't considered that people would care about scroll position. But
00:18:53 ◼ ► honestly, I just never really considered it. That's not a bad complaint, and I might implement that.
00:18:58 ◼ ► And I'm doing all this manually. I actually, because I learned iOS development with the first
00:19:04 ◼ ► SDK, which didn't have state restoration, it didn't have storyboards, it didn't have core data,
00:19:21 ◼ ► most notably interface builder and core data. It also didn't have state restoration APIs.
00:19:32 ◼ ► manually. Whatever the APIs are to do it, I'm not familiar with them at all. I've never used them,
00:19:36 ◼ ► never even looked at them. I just do it manually. And in this case, I just save two bits of data,
00:19:44 ◼ ► - I know there are a lot of state restoration APIs, and I believe they were introduced right
00:19:48 ◼ ► before backgrounding became a thing, or maybe it was the same time, it doesn't really matter when.
00:19:52 ◼ ► But my point is they've been around for a long time. And I haven't looked at them in ages,
00:19:55 ◼ ► but they are definitely a thing. Moving on, Jon, I'm assuming you put in the show notes
00:20:04 ◼ ► - Yeah, this is a Microsoft product. They have an antivirus product. It's available for the Mac.
00:20:11 ◼ ► There was some recent news that they're making it available for iOS 2, which is slightly confusing,
00:20:15 ◼ ► because how the hell does antivirus work on iOS? But anyway, but it's called Microsoft Defender
00:20:21 ◼ ► Advanced Threat Protection. It's abbreviated by Microsoft as their product name as Microsoft
00:20:28 ◼ ► Defender ATP for Mac, which I think is funny. This is in the category of antivirus or anti-malware
00:20:41 ◼ ► recommendations for things that are lighter weight and don't do giant scans and don't install kernel
00:20:47 ◼ ► extensions that intercept all file and network IO and stuff like that. And apparently the Microsoft
00:20:52 ◼ ► Defender series, both for Windows and for the Mac, have a reputation for being less terrible.
00:20:59 ◼ ► And in general, I would recommend virus anti-malware products from companies that...from
00:21:08 ◼ ► very large companies or companies that sort of make the platform. I tend to trust more.
00:21:14 ◼ ► If a company's sole purpose is to be antivirus, I have to think they are highly motivated to
00:21:28 ◼ ► because that's another check mark on their product. Like, "Our product does this, does that,
00:21:31 ◼ ► and the other thing." Whereas Microsoft is highly motivated not to make your PC bogged down,
00:21:38 ◼ ► the antivirus things, anti-malware things that Apple has are so invisible that people think
00:21:42 ◼ ► they're not even there. Even, you know, they are the extra protect stuff and all the stuff they do
00:21:47 ◼ ► with the file system behind the scenes. And obviously in Catalina, slightly more visible
00:21:50 ◼ ► with all those dialogue boxes asking you for a permission. So antivirus stuff from platform
00:21:55 ◼ ► owners, I tend to be more optimistic about. I still don't recommend anyone get any of these
00:22:01 ◼ ► things, but I thought it was funny that Microsoft has a product that is generally well regarded and
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00:24:29 ◼ ► to ProClip for making awesome phone clips and for sponsoring our show. Safari insert expiration.
00:24:38 ◼ ► So starting in September, Safari will no longer accept HTTPS certificates older than roughly 13
00:24:47 ◼ ► months. Not true. Okay. Tell me what's true then. Didn't do your homework. Did you read
00:24:52 ◼ ► this article? I read it very quickly about 30 seconds ago. Does that count? Oh, yeah. You're
00:24:57 ◼ ► doing your homework while the teacher is collecting it? That's right. I've done a tried and true
00:25:02 ◼ ► method. I know that's why it's good to be. Sometimes it's good to be at the back of the
00:25:06 ◼ ► class, but if they pass the papers forward, it's good to be in the front. This is what I learned
00:25:11 ◼ ► in school. How do most efficiently do homework? 30 seconds before it's due. So yeah, if Safari
00:25:20 ◼ ► just started rejecting certificates that are more than X amount old, the web would break.
00:25:24 ◼ ► It's slightly more nuanced than that. Certificates that were issued before some upcoming cutoff date
00:25:34 ◼ ► are grandfathered in. So if you just got a five-year certificate yesterday, I don't even
00:25:37 ◼ ► know if they make them five years anymore, but anyway, if you got a long-lived certificate
00:25:41 ◼ ► yesterday, you're good. Safari will not reject that certificate. But there's a point coming up,
00:25:50 ◼ ► then Safari will only consider it valid for a year after the point you got it. So they're not
00:25:57 ◼ ► breaking the entire web, but they are taking a unilateral stand to say, even though the rules
00:26:03 ◼ ► about how long SSL certs can last – they're not even called SSL certs anymore, whatever.
00:26:12 ◼ ► Even though the rules about how long they can last don't say that they can only be a year-old,
00:26:22 ◼ ► and mobile, less so on desktop – to say, "Our pretty popular browser is not going to accept
00:26:37 ◼ ► If it was issued after that, and it's more than a year old, we're going to reject it. Even though
00:26:42 ◼ ► technically the certificate is still valid, and Chrome will accept it, and Firefox will accept it,
00:26:45 ◼ ► or whatever, we're going to say it's too old. This is Apple taking its ball and going home after
00:26:52 ◼ ► losing the larger committee argument of, "Should we make this a rule, and we'll all just agree
00:26:57 ◼ ► after this date certificate authorities won't issue certificates that last longer than a year?"
00:27:07 ◼ ► Yeah. That's one of those things. We think we have things like standards bodies or official
00:27:17 ◼ ► committees or whatever else, but when you have a really powerful vendor, they can just choose
00:27:23 ◼ ► when to ignore the standards bodies and do things themselves. Apple does this. Google does this.
00:27:34 ◼ ► and that's just the reality of how the world works. In this case, Apple is basically saying,
00:27:40 ◼ ► "Well, we tried to make you all agree on this. You didn't, so we're going to do it anyway without
00:27:45 ◼ ► your agreement." There's lots of reasons why having short lifetime SSL certificates is better than
00:27:54 ◼ ► having long lifetime ones. Ultimately, though, I'm not really sure that this is worth it.
00:28:06 ◼ ► if somebody compromises your certificate, then they can use it, and that's really bad." It's like,
00:28:16 ◼ ► they can now still use it for up to a year. That's not that much. Whatever time interval you pick,
00:28:30 ◼ ► A year instead of before the longest cert you could get was, I think, two years recently.
00:28:36 ◼ ► In the past, it used to be up to, I think, five years, but in the last couple of years,
00:28:40 ◼ ► it's been hard to buy anything longer than, I think, two years. Anyway, that risk is still
00:28:46 ◼ ► there no matter what that duration is. It's an arbitrary number, and shortening it from
00:28:51 ◼ ► two or three years down to one year, I mean, yeah, that helps, but that's still a massive risk.
00:28:58 ◼ ► If you're going to say that certs get stolen all the time, then this is obviously a problem
00:29:04 ◼ ► that can happen now within one year instead of within two or three. Then secondly, this just
00:29:10 ◼ ► adds more and more to the huge annoying barrier of entry that the increasingly strict SSL requirements
00:29:21 ◼ ► have brought to people who are just trying to run small websites. I know that on a lot of levels,
00:29:27 ◼ ► SSL is great, or whatever, TLS, whatever it is, HTTPS, on a lot of levels, this is great,
00:29:32 ◼ ► and we should be using it for a lot of things much of the time. I'm a little more on the side of,
00:29:41 ◼ ► I think, people like Dave Weiner who are like, "We don't really actually need this for as much
00:29:47 ◼ ► as it's being pushed on us." There's a whole lot of websites out there that are just playing
00:29:52 ◼ ► content sites that, yes, there are advantages to them using HTTPS. There's proxies not being able to
00:30:00 ◼ ► inject JavaScript when you're on a plane or whatever, crazy ISPs who inject JavaScript into
00:30:06 ◼ ► unscripted pages. There's stuff like that, and there's things like the way browsers treat HTTPS
00:30:12 ◼ ► traffic a little bit differently with things like when refers are set or when cookies can be
00:30:16 ◼ ► restricted and everything like that. There are some technical advantages besides the encryption
00:30:21 ◼ ► itself, but ultimately, for a lot of sites, they just don't care, and the people who are browsing
00:30:26 ◼ ► them wouldn't care, and it's not that big of a deal. The browsers react so aggressively now,
00:30:33 ◼ ► whenever you have something that's not super current or not using HTTPS at all, it'll say
00:30:38 ◼ ► things like "not secure" in the address bar, which is kind of misleading when you're just going to
00:30:45 ◼ ► some blog and reading a blog post and it says "not secure." That kind of suggests that you're getting
00:30:49 ◼ ► compromised, but that's not really what's going on. Anyway, the browsers and everything are so
00:30:55 ◼ ► aggressive about this now, and everyone says "oh, it's easy just"--everything that begins with "it's
00:31:01 ◼ ► easy just" is usually more complicated than that in practice. The reality is you're now forcing
00:31:08 ◼ ► every website owner out there to comply with increasingly strict requirements and mess with
00:31:15 ◼ ► it increasingly frequently. And ultimately, a good solution is probably something like Let's Encrypt,
00:31:23 ◼ ► which is a great idea. Let's Encrypt is basically this automated thing that you can set up. They
00:31:29 ◼ ► are their own cert authority. They issue only 90-day-long certs, and the idea is it's so short
00:31:37 ◼ ► that it forces you to automate the renewal. And that's a cool idea, and it's working for a lot of
00:31:42 ◼ ► people. It doesn't work everywhere. There's a lot of context in which that can't fly or that's very
00:31:48 ◼ ► cumbersome and not really worth it. And so keep in mind that when the browser makers or whoever else
00:32:04 ◼ ► sites to continue operation or to start a new site. Or it raises the barrier so high that it
00:32:12 ◼ ► further entrenches the existing massive hosting platforms or massive web hosts instead of making
00:32:19 ◼ ► it so that smaller players can really stay competitive. And so there's all sorts of issues
00:32:23 ◼ ► here that every time they ratchet this up, it deals with this. And it's like a lot of the benefit
00:32:28 ◼ ► of HTTPS, all that stuff about not being able to be injected by your ISP and the way browsers treat
00:32:37 ◼ ► it and everything, a whole lot of that has very little to do with the actual encryption being used.
00:32:42 ◼ ► And the actual strength of that and the actual lifetime and privacy and sophistication of the
00:32:48 ◼ ► key being used to encrypt it and the method and everything. A lot of that is just because of the
00:32:52 ◼ ► protocol and of the different ways it works. A lot of the benefit could be had with certificates
00:32:59 ◼ ► that never expire. Like you could just have literally non-expiring permanent certificates
00:33:06 ◼ ► that would solve a lot of problems for use cases where the data being transferred actually
00:33:11 ◼ ► isn't all that sensitive. Things like my blog being hosted, our website, stuff like that.
00:33:17 ◼ ► A lot of that stuff, you don't really need the encryption for encryption's sake. You do it for
00:33:23 ◼ ► other reasons or for less important reasons. You're not dealing with people's credit cards,
00:33:27 ◼ ► you're not dealing with their personal data, you're not dealing with anything like that. So
00:33:29 ◼ ► instead what we have is everything's being ratcheted up so much that it's just causing a
00:33:37 ◼ ► huge tax on everybody who runs websites, which these days is by the way pretty much everybody.
00:33:43 ◼ ► Every business, tons of individuals. They're making it a giant pain and I'm not sure the
00:33:58 ◼ ► >> I feel like the other benefit to secure, I know the thing that's like secure versus insecure,
00:34:09 ◼ ► it's like well this is just a blog, who cares, there's nothing security sensitive here,
00:34:14 ◼ ► is the idea that the person on the receiving end has greater confidence that what they're seeing
00:34:21 ◼ ► in their web browser is actually what was published by this website, like the authenticity.
00:34:26 ◼ ► So if you just get HTTP, anything between you and them can completely replace the content,
00:34:30 ◼ ► can replace the content of your blog with anything else and make people think that you wrote
00:34:34 ◼ ► something that you didn't write. How can I be sure that the person who controls Marco.org actually
00:34:40 ◼ ► serves this content versus it just being corrupted or replaced or whatever. So that's part of the
00:34:48 ◼ ► assurance, data integrity, what they are sending me is what I'm getting. Obviously that itself is
00:34:54 ◼ ► not hard and fast because there's all sorts of man in the middle attacks that SSL is meant to
00:34:58 ◼ ► prevent but there are situations where things can be transparently re-encrypted and there's all
00:35:02 ◼ ► sorts of hacks or whatever. But in general, having completely unencrypted traffic traveling between
00:35:07 ◼ ► your web server and the people reading it means that anything in that flow can just modify the
00:35:15 ◼ ► content easily and the person on the receiving end has no idea and the person on the sending end has
00:35:20 ◼ ► no idea. That said, the pain in the butt for people is real. When I first read this, I kind
00:35:30 ◼ ► of groaned because my web hosting situation grew organically from its origins as I don't want to
00:35:39 ◼ ► pay a lot for this web hosting, which is a good strategy when you have nothing on the web but
00:35:46 ◼ ► once you have more stuff on the web and you've just been adding little pieces to that strategy,
00:35:50 ◼ ► it's not great. So I've got many SSL certificates, many domain names, many virtual hosts, many
00:35:57 ◼ ► everything's all acquired piecemeal over long periods of time and in recent years I've been
00:36:04 ◼ ► acquiring SSL certificates, sometimes because I've had to, for example switchglass.app. I didn't know
00:36:10 ◼ ► until I got that and front and center.app and front-and-center.app, I didn't know that .apps,
00:36:19 ◼ ► that domain requires SSL. If you have a .app domain you literally cannot serve it over HTTP.
00:36:25 ◼ ► Browsers will not go to it through HTTP. It's like built into client browsing software that certain
00:36:30 ◼ ► subdomains are HTTPS only and .app is one of them. So I was forced to get SSL certificates for those
00:36:37 ◼ ► things. So that's a pain and I'm dreading dealing with that because I'm bad at keeping track of
00:36:44 ◼ ► these things. When do my certificates expire? Did I write it down? How do I renew them? Where did I
00:36:53 ◼ ► things like let's encrypt. So on the one hand you've got pressure of saying long-lived certificates
00:36:58 ◼ ► are bad for security and as Marco rightly pointed out, a year is still pretty long. Any window of
00:37:04 ◼ ► time is not great. Apparently the system for revoking certificates is basically useless.
00:37:10 ◼ ► So if someone compromises your key there's not much you can do about it which is why shorter
00:37:15 ◼ ► lifetimes are better. But it's a pain for people who have websites and on the flip side of that
00:37:21 ◼ ► it's okay. So it's a pain for people who have websites. If we make it more and more painful
00:37:24 ◼ ► by increments hopefully something on the other side of this will say we need a system that makes
00:37:30 ◼ ► it easier. Like you were saying Marco about like let's encrypt during 90 days. Like we'll make it
00:37:33 ◼ ► so short that you have to automate it because it's so painful if you don't automate it. And by the
00:37:38 ◼ ► way we'll make it free. So why are you paying for your SSL certs? Go to let's encrypt and they're
00:37:42 ◼ ► free. Don't pay some company to do it. That's I see those the tension between those two things.
00:37:49 ◼ ► I want it to be easier and for years and years it hasn't gotten easier because there hasn't been
00:37:54 ◼ ► a force on the other side saying we're going to make it such a pain in your butt that you
00:37:57 ◼ ► better make it easier or otherwise you're going to be screwed. In fact one of the parties that
00:38:02 ◼ ► in some of the articles that I read that doesn't want the certificate lifetime to be shrunk are the
00:38:08 ◼ ► companies that sell ussl certs. Because from their perspective kind of like me with switch glass
00:38:12 ◼ ► their ideal customer gives them a big wad of money and then five years later gives them another big
00:38:17 ◼ ► wad and in between you don't have to deal with them. Whereas if they have to give you a small
00:38:22 ◼ ► amount of money every 90 days or deal with you know they don't they don't want this like every
00:38:26 ◼ ► time there's a touch point between the customer and them like their systems have to be more robust
00:38:29 ◼ ► they need to be more responsive they need to deal with the customers more often it's much better to
00:38:34 ◼ ► get a bunch of money not hear from me in five years and then hear from me every 30 days or whatever
00:38:37 ◼ ► right and you know their systems are designed to vend certificates most people buy them for
00:38:42 ◼ ► lasting a long time or whatever maybe they can't handle this this is all just speculation but in
00:38:53 ◼ ► equipped to deal with a radical shortening of certificate lifetime as people who run websites
00:38:58 ◼ ► are. In my particular case I really wanted to use Let's Encrypt because who wants to pay I want it
00:39:03 ◼ ► to you know I'd rather use Let's Encrypt and have it be free but my hosting company does not support
00:39:08 ◼ ► Let's Encrypt it's one of the few companies that doesn't support it most of them do they support
00:39:13 ◼ ► their own thing and I just wanted to click a bunch of buttons and give someone 10 bucks and get a
00:39:17 ◼ ► certificate and you know it wasn't too painful but because I did it through my hosting company that
00:39:22 ◼ ► that did it through this third-party thing that shoved it into a shared host that has 57 virtual
00:39:27 ◼ ► hosts that all have different certificates and domain names all on different registrars
00:39:30 ◼ ► all different IP addresses and all the different mail routes and it's it's confusing and it's
00:39:36 ◼ ► difficult all this is to say that I really want the the tooling to be easier and cheaper and
00:39:43 ◼ ► ideally free for everybody and I think history has shown if there is no force on the other side
00:39:50 ◼ ► making it painful that will never happen like SSL certificates have been a pain in the butt
00:39:54 ◼ ► for decades like on their own they weren't getting easier Let's Encrypt is the first effort to try to
00:39:59 ◼ ► make them easier and that I don't know if that was a reaction to the shortening of the lifetime but
00:40:04 ◼ ► it took a long time to arrive so while I'm dreading the potential pain that is in store
00:40:10 ◼ ► for me personally for this I'm hoping what it will do is put ever more pressure on all the different
00:40:15 ◼ ► hosting companies and all the different you know people who sell certificates to make it ever
00:40:21 ◼ ► easier to automate things to follow Let's Encrypt's footsteps and anybody who doesn't support Let's
00:40:25 ◼ ► Encrypt start supporting it or if you don't want to support Let's Encrypt support one of the other
00:40:30 ◼ ► ones that charges you but make it way easier to deal with because instead of it being something
00:40:34 ◼ ► that people think about every two to five years if it was something people had to think about every
00:40:38 ◼ ► 30 days it would have to be automated otherwise you know bad things would happen and then the
00:40:43 ◼ ► other thing that made me think about is we hear about this all the time I think it happened
00:40:45 ◼ ► recently where like I think Microsoft teams let one of their certs expire do you remember the news
00:40:50 ◼ ► on that we use teams at work so I'm I think it was teams every once in a while you hear of some
00:40:56 ◼ ► giant multi-bazillion dollar company where like no one was watching the certificates right and
00:41:01 ◼ ► all of a sudden their entire application breaks and everyone runs around like what's wrong what's
00:41:09 ◼ ► says wait a second our certificates expired whose job was it to look at that and it's like I don't
00:41:13 ◼ ► know we got it five years ago and the answer is it's nobody's job like this happens in big
00:41:18 ◼ ► companies where if you do a thing and that thing is done and doesn't doesn't require any additional
00:41:22 ◼ ► work or even if it does require additional work it's very attractive for management to take the
00:41:26 ◼ ► people who did that job off of that task and put them onto something else and so then nobody's
00:41:32 ◼ ► looking at the certificates you you your job is to get a certificate for our new product good I got
00:41:36 ◼ ► a certificate okay great now you're assigned to this team to do this other thing and then maybe
00:41:39 ◼ ► you leave the company or maybe you go onto another project and forget about that and then five years
00:41:43 ◼ ► later the cert expires and no one was watching it and if that can happen to Microsoft with tons of
00:41:50 ◼ ► money and tons of smart people you bet it can happen just to an individual person with a blog
00:41:54 ◼ ► or something and it's definitely gonna happen to me I put a bunch of things in my calendar I think
00:41:58 ◼ ► reminding me like two years from now because I did get the longest certificates I could
00:42:07 ◼ ► renew the certificates what certificates was I talking about and how did I get those and I'll
00:42:13 ◼ ► be going through my email receipts what company did I get them from did I use let's encrypt for
00:42:18 ◼ ► that one did I not what was that company called what domain is this for so yeah um and then
00:42:25 ◼ ► finally as for apple being unilaterally doing this you know the judgment call like does apple have
00:42:32 ◼ ► the weight to do this on the desktop I would say no on the desktop I think today the default answer
00:42:37 ◼ ► for certainly for any sort of enterprise thing is safari support on the desktop it's a nice to have
00:42:43 ◼ ► but if you don't have it it's not a big deal safari mobile is obviously way more important
00:42:53 ◼ ► the possibility that if safari does too many things off on its own they become a pariah and
00:42:58 ◼ ► people say oh we're not going to support safari anymore because it's doing too many annoying
00:43:01 ◼ ► things like our website works fine in chrome it even works fine in edge but it doesn't work in
00:43:06 ◼ ► safari because it complains about our cert our cert doesn't expire for another year screw safari
00:43:10 ◼ ► right it's you know it's a game of chicken see who's going to win that one depending on who the
00:43:15 ◼ ► vendor and who the customers are apple may lose that fight but in general especially on the iphone
00:43:23 ◼ ► which is so incredibly popular if an iphone user can't load your web page and you try to blame
00:43:27 ◼ ► apple that's not going to work people who have the iphone are going to say it's an iphone make
00:43:33 ◼ ► your website work with the iphone then you're just going to have to get a new cert like that's how
00:43:36 ◼ ► that's going to happen so uh i mean at the very least this is apple trying to do the right thing
00:43:44 ◼ ► like it doesn't want these shortened certs because it helps it increase its revenue for ad tracking
00:43:49 ◼ ► or like it doesn't help it sell more iphones it doesn't help it sell more max doesn't help it
00:43:53 ◼ ► sell more apple tv plus subscriptions like this does not help apple's bottom line at all really
00:43:59 ◼ ► they're just doing what they think is right and they're they're basically potentially harming
00:44:04 ◼ ► their own business to do it so i give them kudos for having guts to do that i'm not entirely sure
00:44:08 ◼ ► that it's going to work out as well as they think but i can't think of any particularly nefarious
00:44:14 ◼ ► motive for them doing it we are sponsored this week by linode my favorite web host go to linode.com
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00:46:27 ◼ ► there was an interesting article from mark german in bloomberg recently wherein uh german is claiming
00:46:37 ◼ ► that apple is at least considering letting users switch some default iphone apps to those of rivals
00:46:43 ◼ ► so they're considering apparently letting you set maybe chrome or some other browser as a default
00:46:52 ◼ ► uh i don't even keep up with the alternative mail apps because it's silly to use one and so whatever
00:46:57 ◼ ► the alternative i used to think that until ios 13 and now i'm like am i am i the fool for sticking
00:47:03 ◼ ► with the built-in one that's fair well why is it silly to use one isn't it just because you can't
00:47:07 ◼ ► change the default is that why it's silly no i i was just snarking but if since i've now dug this
00:47:12 ◼ ► hole for myself i'm going to have to try to dig it deeper i mean try to climb out uh i just personally
00:47:16 ◼ ► i think fighting a platform is silly i also think that trying to staple on functionality that email
00:47:22 ◼ ► just wasn't designed for like snoozing and things like that is also fairly wasn't designed for
00:47:29 ◼ ► you like an email originalist i mean it wasn't designed for styled text either you're going to
00:47:35 ◼ ► reject that dude you view all your email in plain text and don't even question because enough people
00:47:39 ◼ ► to do that oh my god you know when other people use like outlook in plain text mode and they send
00:47:44 ◼ ► you everything and it comes through with like whatever your configured monospace font is and
00:47:48 ◼ ► they can't they can't do like yeah anyway go on sorry i didn't realize i didn't realize that uh
00:47:54 ◼ ► that you're a bad cop this week i'm sorry uh anyway so point being that uh you can maybe
00:47:59 ◼ ► change safari to chrome or something you can change mail to something else and potentially
00:48:04 ◼ ► uh you might even be able to use spotify uh through your home pod which would be excellent
00:48:08 ◼ ► and it might even be the default through siri if you recall i think it was i was 13 that allowed you
00:48:13 ◼ ► to say you know hey dingus play the latest album from new math using spotify and then it would
00:48:20 ◼ ► actually you know pipe that through to spotify and that works reasonably well so this is not being
00:48:27 ◼ ► announced obviously because it wasn't even apple that made this or that wrote this article and
00:48:31 ◼ ► furthermore german said they're just considering it um i don't see why not like this sounds
00:48:38 ◼ ► excellent to me i'm assuming as many others have that this is because there's been a little bit of
00:48:44 ◼ ► smoke around the thought of there being potential antitrust uh investigations into apple for locking
00:48:49 ◼ ► people into this stuff uh but i don't know marco what do you think about all this i think from a
00:48:56 ◼ ► user point of view this makes total sense i mean you know apple is never going to give up more
00:49:04 ◼ ► control than they need to ever in anything uh but sometimes they get pressured to in in ways that
00:49:11 ◼ ► are compelling and they eventually just do it and almost always it actually works out better for
00:49:15 ◼ ► everybody including them usually like it makes their stuff better it makes them sell more you
00:49:20 ◼ ► know whatever it is that you know and there's you can look at tons of examples things like obviously
00:49:24 ◼ ► like the old uh you know running itunes on windows to let people buy ipods who weren't mac owners
00:49:29 ◼ ► stuff like that but in general ios has you know obviously it started out from a very locked down
00:49:35 ◼ ► state and in many ways it still is very locked down and apple's apps still have lots of custom
00:49:40 ◼ ► abilities that third-party apps can't do but over time with almost every version of ios apple has
00:49:46 ◼ ► somehow enabled third-party apps to integrate better with the os or to to have like a more
00:49:52 ◼ ► first-class experience to do things that previously only apple apps could do or to behave in ways that
00:49:58 ◼ ► only apple apps could behave and over time they have they've just kept knocking down those walls
00:50:10 ◼ ► maybe they were gonna eventually get to this anyway they just hadn't gotten to it yet you
00:50:14 ◼ ► know or that or that there were there were complexities behind this they didn't want to
00:50:22 ◼ ► other factors as you mentioned antitrust is i think a big one which i'll get to in a second
00:50:25 ◼ ► but you know so over time apple does knock down these limitations and they do allow third-party
00:50:32 ◼ ► integrations in ways that we previously wouldn't they didn't think they ever would and then every
00:50:37 ◼ ► wbc we are like oh my god they're they're now letting us do this thing we didn't we never
00:50:41 ◼ ► thought they let us do this um so that's it's a common pattern this is noteworthy because it's
00:50:46 ◼ ► been such a long-standing request ever since app stores ever since the app store ever since like
00:50:51 ◼ ► there were third-party apps ever since well ever since shortly after the app store when apple
00:50:57 ◼ ► relaxed the rule that said you can't make apps that replicate the built-in apps functionalities
00:51:02 ◼ ► remember that when podcast apps were illegal for a little while i mean it's still true if you try
00:51:08 ◼ ► to make a springboard clone they're gonna reject that for sure totally yeah yeah any kind of like
00:51:11 ◼ ► you know app launcher that contains other multiple apps unless it's uh wechat but otherwise i was
00:51:15 ◼ ► afraid i was gonna reject it get rejected for switch glass because it's like the doc yeah same
00:51:23 ◼ ► i think it's still very rarely gets enforced in weird ways of that but for the most part it's
00:51:29 ◼ ► that rule doesn't hasn't existed for a very long time which is why we have things like podcast apps
00:51:33 ◼ ► notes apps we literally didn't have those things for the first couple years for that reason anyway
00:51:38 ◼ ► over time you know apple has relaxed the system and allowed more third-party integrations at various
00:51:43 ◼ ► different endpoints and they've also pushed the ipad specifically into the mac territory and a
00:51:51 ◼ ► lot of different ways of how this thing can be used what users need and want from it what you
00:51:56 ◼ ► know what degree of quote professional or power usage can be done with it and a lot of that
00:52:02 ◼ ► requires more mac like features to be adopted so you know things like the files app coming over
00:52:08 ◼ ► you know to the ios to you know multiple windows and apps having multiple windows in the same app
00:52:14 ◼ ► on the on the ipad stuff like that like they're slowly breaking down some of these walls one so
00:52:19 ◼ ► for this the rumor is they're going to allow you to set your own default mail app and browser which
00:52:26 ◼ ► the mac has offered forever like there's a preference in safari and in mail and you can set
00:52:30 ◼ ► your default mail app and apps apparently have some api to call it which is why every single time
00:52:35 ◼ ► you launch chrome for a long time after you install it hey you should set this as your default browser
00:52:40 ◼ ► and they're always you know fighting back and forth and now apparently safari shows a notification
00:52:44 ◼ ► the first time you launch chrome on on catalina saying like hey you should try safari something
00:52:49 ◼ ► like that i don't know it's it's one of this glorious uh you know eggplant waving match
00:52:55 ◼ ► between those two companies but anyway so they've been they've had this ability in the mac forever
00:53:00 ◼ ► of you can set your default browser to something else in the same way that there's a system for
00:53:05 ◼ ► file extensions and associating a file extension with a given app to be its default app when you
00:53:11 ◼ ► double click files of that type there's the same thing for url schemes and there and it's simply
00:53:17 ◼ ► you know http or htps url schemes will open the default browser whatever that's set to mail to
00:53:23 ◼ ► links will open the default mail app whatever that's set to on the phone you have a few others
00:53:27 ◼ ► you have things like tell to make phone calls you have some messages things a few others that are
00:53:31 ◼ ► special but anyway ios to date has not had a way to first of all if multiple apps can open the same
00:53:39 ◼ ► file type or accept the same url scheme ios has dealt with that very poorly so far um url schemes
00:53:46 ◼ ► it doesn't deal with it at all it actually just you know kind of picks one and just makes them
00:53:49 ◼ ► all open and that you have no choice over it and it won't let apps register for the the ones like
00:53:54 ◼ ► http or mail to to let them do that for file extensions it has a system that's kind of wonky
00:54:00 ◼ ► and kind of work sometimes but anyway for them to add the system to ios to basically allow
00:54:06 ◼ ► web browsers on ios to register for the http and htps schemes and to have some kind of ui somewhere
00:54:13 ◼ ► in the system to choose which app that supports those schemes is going to be your default app
00:54:20 ◼ ► it's a big step because we've wanted it for so long but that seems like it's it's right in line
00:54:26 ◼ ► with that gradual progression of both apple letting third-party apps integrate with the
00:54:31 ◼ ► system more and more over time and with apple pushing the ipad to be more of a a mac replacement
00:54:39 ◼ ► for more people because look at what what else has come to the app recently they they recently
00:54:43 ◼ ► brought over in the latest beta they have the keyboard modifier keys panel so now you can do
00:54:48 ◼ ► what i've been doing forever on on max you can change the caps lock key to escape which you could
00:54:54 ◼ ► never do on the ipad before now you can do that because they brought over that little preference
00:54:58 ◼ ► pane that's in the the modifier key section of of the keyboard preferences that's now in the ios beta
00:55:04 ◼ ► they are clearly making the ipad more and more mac like in feature set not like necessarily the way
00:55:09 ◼ ► it works but like in feature set they they're bringing over like some some pretty good like
00:55:14 ◼ ► macisms that help power users get their work done the way they want so this could just be one of
00:55:20 ◼ ► those things and you know the combination of adding third-party capabilities and progressing
00:55:26 ◼ ► ipad os to be more of a mac replacement totally could make this plausible on its own but the
00:55:32 ◼ ► any trust angle i think is is what is the driving force here that is making them go a little bit
00:55:38 ◼ ► further or or pushing them to do a thing that was probably not high on the priority list
00:55:42 ◼ ► and is probably a pain in the butt in certain ways and and i think now the antitrust angle is getting
00:55:49 ◼ ► substantial because apple clearly has a problematic monopoly over over software and purchases that
00:55:59 ◼ ► happen on the iphone because it is such a massive and important computing platform in the world
00:56:04 ◼ ► and so and and they they have already had antitrust probes and investigations and and claims
00:56:12 ◼ ► in various countries the eu has been pretty good about it so far the us of course we don't have
00:56:19 ◼ ► functioning antitrust anymore so i don't think we would ever be a problem for them in the foreseeable
00:56:23 ◼ ► future but if our antitrust worked the way it should we would government worked it would be
00:56:28 ◼ ► a good yes exactly yeah that's yeah the larger problem but anyway but you know countries that
00:56:34 ◼ ► actually have functioning governments and and that care about functioning markets are actually
00:56:39 ◼ ► already opening probes and spotify has been very loud and they i believe they've been filing legal
00:56:44 ◼ ► things in the eu and i haven't been paying attention to the specifics of them so forgive
00:56:49 ◼ ► me if i'm misstating any of that but uh anyway the antitrust pressure is mounting on apple from
00:56:55 ◼ ► a number of angles and to me like i said in in past episodes of the show um i think the two big
00:57:03 ◼ ► escape valves that they have that they could pull but they did i'm sure they don't want to
00:57:08 ◼ ► one is side loading apps into like to allow apps to be installed outside of the app store
00:57:14 ◼ ► i don't think that's ever going to happen on ios ever ever ever i also by the way i don't think
00:57:20 ◼ ► the mac is ever going to go the other way i don't think the mac is ever going to go app store only
00:57:23 ◼ ► because that would break things in a lot of other ways but on ios i never see them enabling side
00:57:29 ◼ ► loading i i just i think for so many reasons that's never going to happen the other thing
00:57:35 ◼ ► that would relieve a lot of interest pressure from them is to drop the requirement that all
00:57:40 ◼ ► purchases that are done in apps use their in-app purchase system to to basically allow somebody
00:57:45 ◼ ► like amazon to build an ebook purchasing right in their kindle app or to allow netflix to take your
00:57:51 ◼ ► credit card information right in the netflix app and sign up for their service without going through
00:57:55 ◼ ► that purchase without paying the 30 percent slash 15 percent and that that would relieve almost all
00:58:02 ◼ ► the interest pressure that's on them but that would also cost them a lot of money and i don't
00:58:07 ◼ ► think they're ever going to do that either so i think they're looking for other ways that they
00:58:11 ◼ ► could maybe relieve some of the antitrust pressure without doing the expensive thing and by the way
00:58:17 ◼ ► apple would be fine without that like whatever the whatever amount of money they would lose
00:58:26 ◼ ► first of all i think it's not that much money in the grand scheme of apple second of all
00:58:31 ◼ ► i think the amount of money is going down over time as most of those companies give apple the
00:58:35 ◼ ► finger and just leave anyway and just don't accept purchases at all in their ios apps anymore
00:58:40 ◼ ► which is an increasing like youtube uh is just doing that now you can't buy youtube premium
00:58:45 ◼ ► anymore or red whatever it's called this month you can't buy that anymore um as of i think march 1st
00:58:49 ◼ ► uh you can't you can't do netflix anymore i i don't know if you can still do hbo like so many
00:58:55 ◼ ► of like the big top grossing in-app purchases by big companies have dropped apple's system because
00:59:01 ◼ ► it's just they're just losing too much money on the fees so i i actually think that the the the
00:59:06 ◼ ► amount of money apple would lose if they started allowing external purchase systems is not as big
00:59:12 ◼ ► as it was a couple years ago and and is probably not going to matter in the grand scheme of things
00:59:18 ◼ ► but apple is really good at making money and they're really stingy and so they're not going
00:59:23 ◼ ► to give this up of that without a major fight so instead they're probably looking for other
00:59:28 ◼ ► antitrust relief valves that they are that they can swallow that they're willing to pull to reduce
00:59:35 ◼ ► some of the complaining from people like spotify and other you know powerful entities maybe like
00:59:40 ◼ ► google uh for chrome you know so so there's they have a good reason to start looking for those
00:59:46 ◼ ► handles to pull that are not the ones that will cost them money that's probably a major driving
00:59:51 ◼ ► force here all that being said i would like them to go slightly further than what this rumor
00:59:56 ◼ ► suggests this rumor is suggesting basically browser mail and music i hope and if not if this
01:00:04 ◼ ► isn't what they have planned i suggest this this should apply to anything that you can operate with
01:00:10 ◼ ► a serie context where multiple apps are supported for me one of the things i would definitely use
01:00:15 ◼ ► it for is reminders for as i mentioned before on this show i use the app things great app i almost
01:00:23 ◼ ► always enter things into things using serie on my phone and the syntax you have to use to do that as
01:00:30 ◼ ► case you as you mentioned earlier with spotify you have to say something like remind me at 10
01:00:35 ◼ ► o'clock in things to do xyz and i would love to just not have to say in things on every single
01:00:43 ◼ ► invocation of that phrase and so this is like this infrastructure already exists for apps to expose
01:00:50 ◼ ► their capabilities via intents and they have classifications of okay this is a reminders thing
01:00:56 ◼ ► this is a notes thing this like and you can apps can say which of those things they can respond to
01:01:00 ◼ ► what kind of app they are so the system already exists for apple to make a preference pane
01:01:05 ◼ ► somewhere in the settings app that says all right what is your what's going to be your default
01:01:08 ◼ ► reminders app what's going to be your default notes app etc i think everything supported by
01:01:14 ◼ ► serie intents should have that ability as well not just uh you know uh mail and web and music
01:01:21 ◼ ► yeah the interesting thing here is interesting because everything you said about the especially
01:01:27 ◼ ► about the uh the in-app purchases and access to customers like and all the things with the uh
01:01:35 ◼ ► with spotify complaining and the eu like that pressure is real and is there but this default
01:01:41 ◼ ► app thing although it's related i still feel like it's the type of thing that apple would have
01:01:48 ◼ ► eventually done on its own anyway like we've been talking about it for years and it's always just
01:01:52 ◼ ► been a question of when do you want to pay that cost because it's added complexity and it's weird
01:01:56 ◼ ► and in the beginning of the iphone's life it's not appropriate because you want to just establish
01:02:00 ◼ ► you know the platform for what it is and then in the middle you're like well we could do it now
01:02:07 ◼ ► we're kind of into the natural portion of ios's lifetime when apple would be looking at this
01:02:12 ◼ ► anyway uh so even though all that antitrust stuff is definitely a real thing and and is
01:02:18 ◼ ► surely influencing how they consider what they're doing to the platform i think this stuff might have
01:02:24 ◼ ► just like its time just might have come anyway maybe was accelerated a little bit it's so hard
01:02:29 ◼ ► to tell because you don't know what's going on inside the company but all that said um i think on
01:02:34 ◼ ► iowa on this this the speculation about ios but even on the mac the way apple handles this now is
01:02:41 ◼ ► not great like you were you were staying it with an eye towards it working the way it does on uh
01:02:48 ◼ ► you know like like under the covers like oh there's a url scheme or a file type or whatever
01:02:54 ◼ ► and you have a thing where you map an application to it and you can choose from all the ones that
01:02:58 ◼ ► can handle it but that's not even how it's been on the mac for ages you just mentioned it before
01:03:02 ◼ ► with uh launching chrome like how do you change your default browser in mac os well it's in
01:03:09 ◼ ► safari's preferences and if you launch chrome you might get prompted and chrome will prompt you like
01:03:13 ◼ ► it's basically just a shouting match between the participants and say over here i'm over here set
01:03:17 ◼ ► me as a default no set me the default right and there are places where you can find this like it's
01:03:21 ◼ ► buried or whatever but i feel like doing it that way just extending that system hey you know how
01:03:28 ◼ ► you pick your default browser on the mac if you set it to mac user they'll be like uh no i don't
01:03:32 ◼ ► know that well what if we extended that system that you don't know about already to everything
01:03:37 ◼ ► i was like that's not attractive there was time in the past when this was a lot more straightforward
01:03:42 ◼ ► and worked more or less the way marco explained which is there was a control panel where you could
01:03:46 ◼ ► list i mean it was techie and nerdy and that's the difficult part of it but like i believe that
01:03:50 ◼ ► apple could overcome this here are all the protocols maybe you can't call them protocols
01:03:56 ◼ ► here are all the use cases and here is what you've chosen as your application to handle that by
01:04:03 ◼ ► default and here are all the other choices that you could choose from in a single place i hate
01:04:08 ◼ ► when they spread these things out i don't want to go to each individual application's preferences
01:04:12 ◼ ► and hunt in their individual preferences to find the thing that lets them you know retain or
01:04:18 ◼ ► surrender their defaultness and i don't want them yelling at me about make me the default no make me
01:04:22 ◼ ► there's a limited amount you can do to fix that but if i could just go to a single preference
01:04:26 ◼ ► pane and system preferences on the mac and see all that information that would be extremely helpful
01:04:31 ◼ ► because there's more than just the protocols you know that you just listed there's all sorts of
01:04:35 ◼ ► weird secret things like the universal links or whatever like on ios where if you go to twitter.com
01:04:39 ◼ ► what if i don't want to go to the twitter app what i want to go to twitter.com is there one central
01:04:43 ◼ ► place where i can control not only who controls this url scheme but also for universal links
01:04:47 ◼ ► whether i go to the web or to the application that's not easily under user's control probably
01:04:54 ◼ ► there's some technique or when you go there go there but then hold long press on this and force
01:04:58 ◼ ► it open in the browser like there are ways to do this but it's so byzantine right so i think it
01:05:04 ◼ ► could be way better on the mac and i hope what they do on ios is not what they do on the mac
01:05:09 ◼ ► because they're just repeating that problem i hope they take both of them and say imagine if all these
01:05:13 ◼ ► settings could be in a single place because honestly it's not that many settings like start
01:05:18 ◼ ► small web browser mail you know reminders podcast app like this you know they'd fit on a screen
01:05:24 ◼ ► right and then for universal links a section for anything that claims a universal link and say
01:05:29 ◼ ► should i use the app or should i use the web like just something anything like it's not it's not
01:05:33 ◼ ► like apple's afraid of having too many settings have you seen settings on a phone really there's
01:05:37 ◼ ► a million of them right it's you know just just centralize them and make it more that you know
01:05:44 ◼ ► that was the promise of settings like oh we won't have the settings and apps in ios because there's
01:05:47 ◼ ► not much room and it's a full screen thing or whatever we'll put it all in the settings app
01:05:50 ◼ ► and then just things got spread everywhere and on the mac i don't know why honestly they got rid of
01:05:54 ◼ ► the old style internet config thing where you just had a single control panel where you set up all
01:05:59 ◼ ► this stuff but they did get rid of it and the system is worse uh and it's also a weird command
01:06:05 ◼ ► line incantations that people try to deal with to change all this stuff but it's just it's like dark
01:06:09 ◼ ► matter on both of these things why is my computing device that i ostensibly control acting in this
01:06:14 ◼ ► way why does this app launch when i do this thing right why does this go to an app instead of a web
01:06:20 ◼ ► browser how do i change my default app for this type of thing it's you know it it needs improvement
01:06:27 ◼ ► and it's not a super big technical hurdle i think all the plumbing is there on both systems for all
01:06:38 ◼ ► apple has done before on much weaker platforms with much you know more difficult technical hurdles
01:06:45 ◼ ► surely they can make a preference pane and make a setting screen for some upcoming major versions
01:06:51 ◼ ► of both ios and mac os to let us do all these things i just want spotify to be my fault is that
01:06:57 ◼ ► so terrible i just want it's terrible for for apple's perspective as far as selling apple music
01:07:02 ◼ ► subscriptions like that's where i think the antitrust thing was apple doesn't want you to be
01:07:05 ◼ ► able to use your home pod for a spotify there's no way to hell they want that no and apple sure as
01:07:10 ◼ ► hell also doesn't want chrome to become a popular app on their iphone because they see how much
01:07:14 ◼ ► browser market share they've lost on the desktop to it yeah i mean the thing that the other thing
01:07:20 ◼ ► that people are talking about this is like alternate browsers on ios is pointless because
01:07:24 ◼ ► apple forces them all to use webkit which is yet another onerous restriction arbitrary onerous
01:07:29 ◼ ► restriction that apple you know applied very in the beginning some much better reasons you know
01:07:34 ◼ ► like in terms of security and reliability now those reasons are less good but still somewhat
01:07:39 ◼ ► relevant given the nature of web technologies like web gl could own your phone if you know whatever
01:07:44 ◼ ► but anyway making chrome your default is like now you have a different candy color wrapping around
01:07:50 ◼ ► the exact same browser engine that safari is which still apple doesn't like it well but but there's a
01:07:55 ◼ ► lot more to a browser's functionality and you know in today's world than the rendering engine like
01:08:00 ◼ ► you know there's all the stuff about syncing your preferences and your tabs and all that's you know
01:08:04 ◼ ► the whole ui can be different and keep keeping track of what you do yeah we'll definitely keep
01:08:08 ◼ ► track of that that's why do you think the world's biggest advertising company wants to do this
01:08:17 ◼ ► date that are older than a year long but chrome doesn't um but yeah like it's like you said before
01:08:23 ◼ ► why give up that control if you can't uh if you don't have to uh i've never found chrome on ios to
01:08:29 ◼ ► be remotely tolerable uh i still feel like safari on ios can probably still win on the merits in
01:08:37 ◼ ► terms of what it's like as a user to use that application uh on the desktop you know people
01:08:44 ◼ ► have differing opinions i run both all day long and i actually like chrome despite it being this
01:08:49 ◼ ► weird mutant beast um on laptops less as we've talked in the past chrome is a lot less desirable
01:08:54 ◼ ► than safari because it will eat your battery much more than safari will um well and then now imagine
01:08:59 ◼ ► that on the phone like imagine you know i know the reasons would be very different and and it
01:09:04 ◼ ► probably wouldn't be this way but what if chrome on the iphone was a huge battery hog i mean that
01:09:09 ◼ ► that's that's part of like that's that's part of what we're getting at is like if you let the apps
01:09:13 ◼ ► compete on their merits uh people can choose not to use chrome because it's your battery same way
01:09:18 ◼ ► they choose not to use chrome on their max even you know over safari laptops because it is your
01:09:22 ◼ ► battery like right but apple might my apple's point of view might be like what if chrome eats
01:09:27 ◼ ► your battery and it becomes really popular on ios because now now it's a lot easier to use because
01:09:30 ◼ ► it can be set as the default browser and then instead of blaming chrome people blame their
01:09:34 ◼ ► iphones for having bad battery life well don't worry apple will pop up a dialogue that says did
01:09:38 ◼ ► you know chrome has been eating your battery for the past 24 hours try safari it's much more
01:09:46 ◼ ► i've gotten really good about nagging you about whether applications are doing that it thinks they
01:09:50 ◼ ► shouldn't even if you're already given information yeah anyway the web browser one is is fraught
01:09:54 ◼ ► honestly that one is i think the least important from my perspective anyway the mail one kills me
01:10:00 ◼ ► i know casey said he thinks it's you know who wants to use a third-party mail app or whatever
01:10:04 ◼ ► and about the nature of mail apps trying to do things that mail wasn't designed to do but
01:10:08 ◼ ► forget about all that just sometimes you don't want to use a mail application uh because you
01:10:15 ◼ ► like some other one better that does basically exactly the same thing nothing weird no weird
01:10:20 ◼ ► alternate interface to email and snoozing and different threading views just like it basically
01:10:26 ◼ ► works like mail does but let's say better like like you don't have to go back to the inbox list
01:10:32 ◼ ► and go back in again to see all your messages or whatever by the way i have an update on that bug
01:10:36 ◼ ► that bug is still there in the 13.4 betas however i got uh somebody tipped me off i forget who on
01:10:41 ◼ ► twitter i'm sorry um but the the messages that are missing so the bug is like you're looking at your
01:10:47 ◼ ► inbox view and your and new messages are actually arriving in your email account but they're not
01:10:52 ◼ ► showing up in the list they actually are showing up they show up at the very bottom of the list
01:10:58 ◼ ► so it basically breaks the sorting and so it it show it thinks you're showing all your all
01:11:04 ◼ ► your messages because like they're they're in the data list that's being shown on screen but if you
01:11:08 ◼ ► don't scroll all the way down to the bottom of your inbox which most people don't if it's more
01:11:12 ◼ ► than a couple screens long you're not seeing the new messages a lot of times you have to go back
01:11:16 ◼ ► and then go back in so like they're there but they're in the wrong place which makes me think
01:11:21 ◼ ► that this is a really you know possibly tricky bug maybe with like combine or whatever the ui
01:11:26 ◼ ► diffable data source thing is maybe it's a ui choice to not to not make the screen reshuffle
01:11:32 ◼ ► when you're staring at it maybe it's intentional i don't know but i i bet like ios 13 had a whole
01:11:37 ◼ ► bunch of stuff about like diffable data sources and having table views be able to like insert
01:11:42 ◼ ► stuff dynamically automatically based on responses in the data model and everything i'm guessing
01:11:46 ◼ ► there's a bug somewhere in that or the way that's being used here uh that is resulting in this and
01:11:52 ◼ ► that's why it's been in every single ios 13 version of mail yeah probably um but but yeah like the
01:11:58 ◼ ► the thing about uh mail applications is like if you don't i don't know maybe it's not as bad but
01:12:05 ◼ ► like i feel like it is web browsers i know you can have bookmarks and all sorts of other stuff
01:12:10 ◼ ► but in general there there's not lots of data there they're mostly stateless whereas email
01:12:14 ◼ ► like if you configure a mail client with your email account it's going to receive that email
01:12:21 ◼ ► and especially on ios depending on the app you have limited control over how much it does right
01:12:24 ◼ ► so on ios i don't ever want to use the mail app but i am forced to have it both installed and
01:12:32 ◼ ► configured with a working email address because anytime i tap any mail thing on my phone it's
01:12:37 ◼ ► going to launch mail and if i don't have any email accounts configured i can't send any mail which
01:12:42 ◼ ► means i have to configure at least one email account which means it's going to be receiving
01:12:45 ◼ ► that email even though i'm never going to be looking there and i have a lot of email and i
01:12:49 ◼ ► have a limited control over how much of that email gets downloaded so i really really really want to
01:12:54 ◼ ► use something other than mail on my phone just so i don't have to have this sort of stub email
01:13:00 ◼ ► application that exists solely so i can send mail but must also be considered configured to receive
01:13:07 ◼ ► mail from one of my actual accounts and i hate it so much which is not the case in browsers like i
01:13:13 ◼ ► have a second browser and i always wanted to use it yeah it's a pain that but like my my browser
01:13:17 ◼ ► doesn't isn't constantly downloading web pages or you know something like you don't need to configure
01:13:21 ◼ ► it in a way you can just have it installed another valid reason i could think of well i shouldn't say
01:13:26 ◼ ► valid as though i'm the arbiter of such things but whatever another decent reason i can think of that
01:13:30 ◼ ► you would want a different mail app is if you have some sort of like corporate situation where you
01:13:36 ◼ ► have to use some blessed corporate app that only you know something like outlook although outlook
01:13:41 ◼ ► is reasonably standards compliant if i remember right but anyways you know something where it's
01:13:46 ◼ ► acme co's proprietary mail app and that's what you want to use on say your work phone then that would
01:13:52 ◼ ► make perfect sense to me and that's one of a million different reasons why one would genuinely
01:13:56 ◼ ► want to do a separate mail app even if they don't do like you said the snoozing and all the weird
01:14:01 ◼ ► stuff that's stapled on the side of of of email these days well the pessimistic take on this whole
01:14:08 ◼ ► default app thing is like it's the flip side of the the reasoning behind apple having such control
01:14:13 ◼ ► in the beginning like when the iphone was first introduced you know there's obviously no third
01:14:17 ◼ ► party apps right like but the whole the product image like how does the iphone how is it received
01:14:27 ◼ ► were the only apps in the platform and even when third-party apps started coming in apple was still
01:14:31 ◼ ► very sensitive to the idea that if you get an iphone we apple want to make sure that you have
01:14:42 ◼ ► a web browser that we think is good a mail client that we think is good eventually a podcast app
01:14:46 ◼ ► that we think is good which wasn't really in the beginning but anyway like they're trying to define
01:14:50 ◼ ► the experience right by saying we'll give you they're not the fanciest like the whole point is
01:14:55 ◼ ► they're supposed to be simple and apple quality but good quality applications because we know most
01:14:59 ◼ ► people if they get a phone they just want to start using and it should work and it should be pleasing
01:15:02 ◼ ► we don't want like you to unbox your phone and then say now i have to spend 10 you know an hour
01:15:07 ◼ ► wandering through the app app store the giant forest of applications trying to find the one that
01:15:13 ◼ ► is free or cheap that is well reviewed like i don't i don't want to have to go shopping i mean
01:15:18 ◼ ► i want to get the phone out and say i can already browse the web i can already send email i can
01:15:22 ◼ ► already read the news i can already listen to podcasts i can already you know like comes
01:15:26 ◼ ► bundled with that stuff and that it's important for that stuff both to be there and to be good
01:15:32 ◼ ► and in recent years a lot of the complaints that we've had on the show and that other people have
01:15:50 ◼ ► i think safari is great right that's the one of their best examples but the mail application
01:15:54 ◼ ► it has never been bad but i don't think people look at it and say boy if you really want to
01:16:01 ◼ ► see how to make an email client look at apple mail i haven't heard that in a long time either
01:16:05 ◼ ► on the desktop or on ios and even for podcasts they made that really weird app with the real
01:16:10 ◼ ► to real tape thing in the beginning which is kind of a misfire and it was entering into a
01:16:14 ◼ ► market that already had some applications like apple is not clearly the the leader even in these
01:16:21 ◼ ► sort of you know simple to use like i just want a basic app that does the basic thing in many
01:16:25 ◼ ► categories third-party applications are clearly better in all ways than stuff that apple offers
01:16:33 ◼ ► not just because they're more complicated and have tons of features and they're pro and expert
01:16:36 ◼ ► but even just within the same realm of simple applications that do a basic thing and understandable
01:16:42 ◼ ► there are many categories where apple is not the leader one way apple could deal with that is double
01:16:47 ◼ ► down and make their apps better like they did with notes for a long time notes was just not a
01:16:52 ◼ ► good notes application even for simple purposes the new notes is way better also not being more
01:16:57 ◼ ► complicated it's not like the new notes is overwhelming and people can't handle it it's
01:17:00 ◼ ► just a better notes app right that's one path you can take to this is if you don't want people to
01:17:05 ◼ ► constantly complain about not allowing third-party apps make sure all your apps keep up make sure
01:17:10 ◼ ► every apps has a notes like revival where maybe it falls behind a little bit maybe people like
01:17:14 ◼ ► oh i don't even want to use the default notes app it just it's like it's not bad but it's not good
01:17:19 ◼ ► and just make it just make it better right but that doesn't seem to be happening that quickly
01:17:24 ◼ ► and maybe you know that's potentially a waste of resources the whole point of apple having this
01:17:29 ◼ ► rich ecosystem of these developers they brag about all the time is that those people can make a really
01:17:34 ◼ ► good reminders app like things and then it's not on apple to also have a team internally that also
01:17:40 ◼ ► makes the best reminders app in the world or whatever like it was a million you know to-do
01:17:43 ◼ ► lists and all those other things right apple should be investing in making a great web browser
01:17:48 ◼ ► and i think they continue to with safari but does apple need to continue to invest and worry about
01:17:54 ◼ ► reminders being great they just did this big reminders revision too but i feel like they're
01:18:03 ◼ ► it's leaving money on the table for apple not to say when you get the phone you will have good
01:18:08 ◼ ► apps in all these categories but also there are even better ones on the app store that you can go
01:18:14 ◼ ► you know buy or download and it's really easy for you to say i'm going to use that one instead
01:18:19 ◼ ► that makes people like their phones better not worse so they get the benefit of not having to
01:18:28 ◼ ► but if they're interested in one particular thing like i'm not really into these things but i'm
01:18:32 ◼ ► really into you know reminders or note-taking apps they can just go and swap out that one component
01:18:39 ◼ ► that they're interested in with one of the many third-party things that apple has like take
01:18:42 ◼ ► advantage of their ecosystem and they'll like their phones better so that's the world that i
01:18:46 ◼ ► would like to see and i feel like apple should have the courage to do that both because they
01:18:51 ◼ ► should have some confidence that on a level playing field their good apps like safari will compete
01:18:56 ◼ ► pretty well and also because they shouldn't be afraid of someone getting a thing and deciding
01:19:01 ◼ ► they want to replace reminders with things like that's good for apple they're not making any
01:19:05 ◼ ► money on reminders it has to be there and has to be good but if someone replaces it with things
01:19:10 ◼ ► and they love their phone more that's good for apple too because they'll buy another phone
01:19:13 ◼ ► so i'm i really hope this rumor is true and i really hope they do it and do it in a better
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01:20:24 ◼ ► for sponsoring our show. All right let's do some ask ATP and Steven Gerstacker writes now that the
01:20:34 ◼ ► three of you have apps on the app store i'd be curious to hear how each of you handles the quote
01:20:37 ◼ ► unquote business side of the app store i'm in a similar situation to john where i have a handful
01:20:42 ◼ ► of apps that i ultimately wrote for myself and i've made a very minimal amount of money from it
01:20:46 ◼ ► the app store setup can be daunting so i'd love to know how you guys set yourselves up from hobbies
01:20:50 ◼ ► development to full blown self-employment development i i understand the words that that
01:20:56 ◼ ► are written here but i i'm not clear what steven is looking for so john it since he seems most
01:21:02 ◼ ► interested in you what did you do i think i talked about this when i talked about first getting front
01:21:08 ◼ ► and center up that there is a surprising amount of like forms that you have to click around through
01:21:12 ◼ ► and things that you have to fill out but in general you know i think just you don't need
01:21:19 ◼ ► that much hand holding if you go to the web apple's web pages and you just go through all
01:21:22 ◼ ► the screens and fill out all the things uh you can get it to the point where apple can successfully
01:21:29 ◼ ► give you money and if you're not making any real money like i am like i'm you know on applications
01:21:33 ◼ ► that you just made for yourself or whatever i think that's fine like you as an individual person
01:21:38 ◼ ► there is i don't think there was anything i needed to do you can just come off the street as an a
01:21:47 ◼ ► and go to apple's website and sign up for a developer account and download xcode and build
01:21:52 ◼ ► an app and upload it and click around through many many many screens of things on apple's website
01:21:58 ◼ ► and eventually you'll have an app on a store and in theory apple will be able to pay you if you have
01:22:03 ◼ ► a bank account of some kind that you could enter information for that's what i'm doing because i'm
01:22:07 ◼ ► not an app developer by trade it is the most simple possible setup you can have is just me as
01:22:12 ◼ ► an individual person and apple in theory paying me as an individual person and that's it obviously
01:22:17 ◼ ► uh i think you know the next step up would be someone like casey and then marco even a farther
01:22:21 ◼ ► step up and then a step up from that would be a large company with multiple developers and
01:22:25 ◼ ► multiple teams and multiple applications and so on and so forth i don't know anything about them
01:22:29 ◼ ► but i'm here to say that if you just have a bunch of little apps you wrote yourself or are going to
01:22:34 ◼ ► write yourself and you just want to sell them on the store you can do that and you don't need any
01:22:38 ◼ ► anything else you don't need a lawyer you don't need to create a company you don't need to have
01:22:45 ◼ ► employees you don't need to do well i don't know if you need to do weird tech stuff i guess i'll
01:22:48 ◼ ► find out but i think it's other than some a few wrinkles about selling things in other countries
01:22:53 ◼ ► i'm hoping it's not going to be too intimidating i guess i'll find out but uh i think the barrier is
01:22:59 ◼ ► actually pretty low and i think if you are just a hobbyist doing it for fun and a little extra money
01:23:04 ◼ ► there's no real need to go farther than that but you know i i'm a beginner at this so i obviously
01:23:11 ◼ ► ask me again next year and maybe i'll eat all these words uh so i'm not i'm still not entirely
01:23:18 ◼ ► clear what steven was after but what it's worth uh for fast text may it rest in peace just doing this
01:23:24 ◼ ► on uh for pika view and vignette i am using the lc that i had set up for basically all of my
01:23:31 ◼ ► then extracurriculars and now my my life um and that was mostly unremarkable because i'd set up
01:23:38 ◼ ► the lc previously you do need to get a duns number a dun and bradstreet number which i forget exactly
01:23:44 ◼ ► what that involved but i don't remember it being terribly bad and i remember them really really
01:23:50 ◼ ► wanting me to pay them a whole pile of money to do something and marco and underscore saying for the
01:23:53 ◼ ► love of god don't do it so that was good this is duns to be clear this is duns not apple um but i i
01:23:59 ◼ ► i and marco perhaps when we get to your section you can explain duns i'm still not entirely clear
01:24:03 ◼ ► what the purpose it serves is but nevertheless uh but yeah i i am or my lc gets paid by apple
01:24:09 ◼ ► apple's relationship is with the lc and i am not a lawyer this is not legal advice but my very
01:24:15 ◼ ► limited mostly ignorant understanding is that if something went wrong somewhere somehow you know
01:24:21 ◼ ► i could my lc could be sued and all of the lc's money could you know go up in smoke but
01:24:26 ◼ ► hypothetically from legal legal perspective me the person in my family would be protected and so
01:24:33 ◼ ► that's part of the reason why i did it again not legal advice don't trust me on this look it up for
01:24:38 ◼ ► yourself this is obviously very very very different depending on where you live but that's the way i
01:24:44 ◼ ► i have set mine up and i think i don't think it's that dissimilar from you marco although maybe if
01:24:49 ◼ ► you wanted to at least throw in a comment about when you choose to set up a new lc and a new
01:24:55 ◼ ► uh you know uh set up with apple because my understanding was a while ago it was very very
01:25:01 ◼ ► difficult to sell an app and you had to basically sell an entire company in in order to make it
01:25:06 ◼ ► easier on the apple side can you perhaps talk a little bit about that in addition to whatever
01:25:09 ◼ ► else you'd like to add uh yeah on that on that point they they didn't have before now they have
01:25:15 ◼ ► something called like an app transfer that you can do and at least when that launched it wouldn't work
01:25:20 ◼ ► if you ever used certain entitlements including icloud or cloudkit or anything that used like
01:25:26 ◼ ► that so like you just couldn't transfer it then i don't know if that's still true i haven't listened
01:25:31 ◼ ► to it recently it might still be but yeah in general it's a lot easier to sell an entire
01:25:36 ◼ ► developer account to another company than to try to break an app out of your account and and then
01:25:42 ◼ ► give it to them um it it used to be and probably still is possible to upload apps to the app store
01:25:48 ◼ ► using your personal apple id because of what i just said about how it's very hard to ever transfer an
01:25:53 ◼ ► app out of it out of a developer account i don't recommend doing this um because unless you you
01:25:59 ◼ ► truly are doing it just for like you know a pure hobby thing and you never expect to make significant
01:26:02 ◼ ► money from it and you never and your use case would never have anybody want to buy it like want
01:26:08 ◼ ► to buy the app from you then fine you know then use your personal one but otherwise setting up a
01:26:13 ◼ ► business one is probably the right move i too use llcs um i do pretty much everything under llcs
01:26:21 ◼ ► that's at all professional um for the reasons casey mentioned of you know legal protection
01:26:25 ◼ ► and everything as casey also mentioned we are not lawyers uh and these things vary depending on where
01:26:31 ◼ ► you are so speak to a lawyer if you're concerned about liability protection uh but yeah that's how
01:26:36 ◼ ► that's how we do it um yeah that's it should tell me that before i uploaded these lucrative apps
01:26:42 ◼ ► under my personal apple id what if i want to sell front and center now it's tied in the same account
01:26:46 ◼ ► it's not actually my personal apple id it is a separate apple id but both of them are in the
01:26:49 ◼ ► same apple id they'll have to buy them as a set collect the whole set billionaires don't worry
01:26:54 ◼ ► i'll sell you both the prices are very reasonable oh my goodness uh star susumi writes what's the
01:27:01 ◼ ► different what's the different consideration when shopping for a tv for a console a monitor for a
01:27:05 ◼ ► console or a monitor for a gaming pc i have no input on this and i'm guessing that marco may not
01:27:12 ◼ ► either so let's just cut straight to the chase and john what do you do here it used to be that there
01:27:16 ◼ ► weren't i mean there were some answers to this but it wasn't that complicated it was like well tvs
01:27:21 ◼ ► they're bigger and they do tv things and generally you can't connect computers to them and consoles
01:27:26 ◼ ► connect to tvs not computers and computer monitors have a couple things to worry about different
01:27:32 ◼ ► kinds of flat panels or different kinds of crts back in the day but it wasn't that complicated now
01:27:37 ◼ ► it is much more complicated than used to be partly because every tv can also more or less double as a
01:27:44 ◼ ► computer monitor every console can connect to your television or computer monitor like the convergence
01:27:49 ◼ ► of monitor and tv thing like to the point where it's ces this year tv makers were really pushing
01:27:56 ◼ ► television sets essentially made to be gaming monitors right there's a major convergence going
01:28:00 ◼ ► on here but there are concerns that are different in each domain even though the actual physical
01:28:05 ◼ ► devices and software related to them there has a huge amount of overlap they are tailored for
01:28:11 ◼ ► certain purposes so these days if you're looking for something that you're going to play a game on
01:28:16 ◼ ► there are some features that you're interested in that you don't care about if you're just going to
01:28:20 ◼ ► watch tv on it and those are the the hdmi spec the latest hdmi spec and some of the ancillary
01:28:32 ◼ ► written these things down there's there's a bunch of acronyms for things that let you change the
01:28:36 ◼ ► frame rate from a moment to moment basis and there's a bunch of standards so that related
01:28:40 ◼ ► to the hdmi spec um there's some proprietary things depending on what you're going to be
01:28:47 ◼ ► connecting to it like nvd is g sync which do similar uh things there's auto low latency mode
01:28:53 ◼ ► on televisions which tries to detect that you have a console connected and goes into a mode where you
01:28:58 ◼ ► have the lowest amount of input lag years ago tv manufacturers didn't even know what input lag was
01:29:04 ◼ ► they didn't even list it in their specs nobody cared about it except for video gamers and they
01:29:07 ◼ ► would test themselves using these light rigs nowadays they're building in features for it
01:29:12 ◼ ► it used to be called game mode now it's auto latency mode what the hell is the frame rate
01:29:16 ◼ ► thing called someone in the chat room could tell me there's an acronym for it anyway if you are
01:29:20 ◼ ► gaming care about those things look at the input lag look for auto latency mode look for variable
01:29:26 ◼ ► refresh rate uh that's another thing thank you chat room it's not what i was trying to think of
01:29:30 ◼ ► the uh variable refresh rate is the not just variable refresh rate the actual refresh rate
01:29:37 ◼ ► right so televisions used to only have to refresh it like some reasonable multiple of the frame rate
01:29:44 ◼ ► of television and maybe movies right but video games especially for hardcore gamers like higher
01:29:51 ◼ ► and higher refresh rates it's no point in having 100 frames per second on your game if your screen
01:29:56 ◼ ► is updating 60 times a second that's just wasted right so gaming monitors and now televisions that
01:30:01 ◼ ► support gaming applications have higher refresh rates so don't get a television that has a maximum
01:30:07 ◼ ► refresh rate of 60 hertz expecting to play 120 frames per second it's pointless you're not going
01:30:13 ◼ ► to get any benefit so if you're going to game on it look for all those things high refresh rate
01:30:17 ◼ ► variable refresh rate auto latency mode and then also all the things that we normally talk about
01:30:23 ◼ ► picture quality price size heat fan noise the whole nine yards right so it's more complicated
01:30:29 ◼ ► than it used to be but there are a bunch of things that you should look at that are only apply to
01:30:34 ◼ ► games you're just going to watch tv on it you actually do care about frame rate a little bit
01:30:37 ◼ ► if you want to see those weird high frame rate movies at like 60 frames per second but as far
01:30:41 ◼ ► as i'm aware there's not a lot of television or movie content at 144 frames per second so you
01:30:45 ◼ ► don't have to worry about that too much a variable refresh rate is not really an important thing for
01:30:50 ◼ ► video because most video content has a single refresh rate through the whole thing and it
01:30:53 ◼ ► certainly isn't changing from moment to moment although that's not entirely true there are some
01:30:57 ◼ ► things where it varies um and yeah auto latency mode doesn't matter when there's no input so
01:31:02 ◼ ► there you go finally future ben writes i've been tearing my hair out over this question for years
01:31:08 ◼ ► when to use a notes app like apple notes versus traditional files for casual users they may not
01:31:13 ◼ ► be an issue but the further down the rabbit hole you go the more these paradigms compete with one
01:31:17 ◼ ► another uh for me if i am writing something down or copying a url or something along those lines
01:31:24 ◼ ► it goes into apple notes and if it's like a pdf or something like that it goes into the file system
01:31:29 ◼ ► and that's about it marco how do you handle this i don't have a great system for this honestly like
01:31:37 ◼ ► notes is when i basically this is like my scratch pad and i do actually use it for like some long
01:31:43 ◼ ► term storage or some things but i'm not very consistent about it um i'm using it more over time
01:31:48 ◼ ► this wasn't part of the question but i i do wish that notes had a file system representation that
01:31:56 ◼ ► was meaningful and that could be backed up and imported and exported uh that is that is one thing
01:32:02 ◼ ► like as i use notes for more and more stuff i am a little bit afraid of someday losing all my notes
01:32:10 ◼ ► because of some icloud mishap or some local whatever and i don't know how to back it up and
01:32:17 ◼ ► i don't know how to restore it and i think there are apps where you can like export your notes out
01:32:21 ◼ ► in various formats but i don't know of any kind of import after that so i don't i don't know that it
01:32:27 ◼ ► makes me the fact that notes doesn't just store your notes in an easily parsed file system
01:32:33 ◼ ► representation uh makes me a little bit uneasy john yeah marco hit the major point that i wanted
01:32:40 ◼ ► to hit which is the the decision point about this is do you want to use and trust an app that owns
01:32:49 ◼ ► a collection of data whether it be apple notes or any other any other app that mediates the data
01:32:54 ◼ ► store because once you do that bugs in that app changes in business models of that app anything
01:33:01 ◼ ► having to do with that app can get between you and your information whereas if you do it as
01:33:06 ◼ ► individual files especially if those are plain text files it's more annoying and loosey-goosey
01:33:11 ◼ ► and you lose some of the features but you also don't have to worry about uh you know the app that
01:33:18 ◼ ► controls them even just changing in a way you don't like oh i put all my life in insert app
01:33:23 ◼ ► x and then app x changed their user interface and now i hate it now you're like well that's all
01:33:36 ◼ ► good export ability ability to back up to a standard format and maybe an import ability
01:33:47 ◼ ► business model changes you worry about app ui changes all that stuff uh on a recent episode
01:33:52 ◼ ► of rectus i was talking about exactly that thing with notes i'm putting an increasing amount of
01:33:55 ◼ ► stuff in notes too and i was getting paranoid about backups well and recommended this notes
01:33:59 ◼ ► exporter app there's a couple of apps out there that do similar things where they will i think
01:34:03 ◼ ► they just use the apple script dictionary or something like that they will go through all
01:34:05 ◼ ► your notes and export each one as like a pdf or something which is not great but it's better than
01:34:10 ◼ ► nothing so i ran that to export all my notes a lot of people tried to make shortcuts for it and other
01:34:15 ◼ ► sort of automations and apparently at a certain point notes just surrenders and stops exporting
01:34:22 ◼ ► it's been a challenge to do with shortcuts but the notes is an example of an application that
01:34:29 ◼ ► i think is pretty solid and i haven't had any problems with it but it does not have really good
01:34:34 ◼ ► export and import functionality built into the app as far as i'm aware which is why we're trying to
01:34:38 ◼ ► use the third-party apps so i kind of organically grew into notes that's the thing to watch for
01:34:44 ◼ ► if you decide i'm going to use an app and not a bunch of individual files because individual files
01:34:48 ◼ ► are a pain in my butt and it's so much easier to just take up my phone and use and use notes
01:34:52 ◼ ► that's an easy decision to make in the moment and then fast forward six months and now you have
01:34:55 ◼ ► substantial amount of valuable data and notes and now you're worried about how to back it up so
01:34:59 ◼ ► happens to the best of us but that i feel like is the distinction it's trusting a sort of mediator
01:35:06 ◼ ► and owner for the data versus you having to do all that stuff yourself yeah it's like notes to me
01:35:11 ◼ ► it's like nuclear power it's like like i can't wait for this analogy go ahead chances are chances are
01:35:18 ◼ ► nothing will ever go wrong and as long as nothing ever goes wrong there's a lot of things to like
01:35:24 ◼ ► about it and you just hope nothing ever goes wrong because if something goes wrong it's going to go
01:35:28 ◼ ► really wrong does it produce a waste that we have to dispose of in ways that we haven't figured out
01:35:35 ◼ ► yet we're just going to put that question off to another time thanks to our sponsors this week
01:35:54 ◼ ► oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him because it was
01:36:03 ◼ ► accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at atp.fm and if you're into twitter
01:36:15 ◼ ► you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o a r m anti-marco armen s i r
01:36:41 ◼ ► tech podcast so long i really really did not want to downgrade this machine to mahavi that this
01:36:52 ◼ ► motherfucker's going getting mahavi tomorrow oh my god i'm so angry so all of a sudden the came back
01:37:01 ◼ ► and i'm like okay and then all of a sudden you guys disappeared okay but audio hijack is still
01:37:10 ◼ ► counting skype is still counting everything's fine and then i heard and skype said oh your
01:37:18 ◼ ► microphone is screwed uh unplug it and try again so marco you're gonna have a fun edit i'm sorry
01:37:25 ◼ ► but i i am i am putting it on record that if i am still on catalina this time next week please
01:37:32 ◼ ► some way somehow send somebody to kick me square in the gentleman region because this this is
01:37:39 ◼ ► intolerable and i can't stand it and this is a we got oh my god we got so many so much flak
01:37:45 ◼ ► last week after i went on a tear about catalina and you know somebody would say oh why did you
01:37:50 ◼ ► say it's unusable okay here's why i think catalina is unusable because i am trying to do my job and
01:37:56 ◼ ► i cannot because things failed while i was trying to do my job is that a satisfactory enough reason
01:38:02 ◼ ► for you everyone so this is getting mahavi tomorrow and i am so cranky right now and you're
01:38:08 ◼ ► going to be cranky when you deal with my 400 files tomorrow so and that makes me cranky because i
01:38:12 ◼ ► don't like making other people cranky and you're going to be cranky the first time you go to use
01:38:16 ◼ ► swift ui on mahavi after after having it on catalina you're going to be cranky when you
01:38:21 ◼ ► you revert to swift ui and when you revert to mahavi and you still have these problems then
01:38:26 ◼ ► then what will we say then apple care apple care plus becomes a thing or whatever it's called on
01:38:30 ◼ ► this but yes i think some evil spirit has inhabited your computer room at least if not i hear you i i
01:38:38 ◼ ► honestly hear you and and if i were in your shoes i would say the same thing but all i know is this
01:38:42 ◼ ► machine was bulletproof on mahavi and since i put catalina on because i'm a darn fool everything has
01:38:50 ◼ ► gotten worse everything everything everything has gotten worse yeah all signs point to that being
01:38:55 ◼ ► the case i hope your downgrade fixes everything god i hope so too the only question is do i use
01:39:00 ◼ ► the super duper backup that i took and have not modified right before i do the upgrade did the
01:39:04 ◼ ► upgrade or do i just you know it seems like you're like hoteling in your own house like you have no
01:39:08 ◼ ► data like every night someone could come and erase your whole computer and you wouldn't notice because
01:39:12 ◼ ► you don't actually store data on it right which in a lot of ways we talked about this a few weeks ago
01:39:17 ◼ ► in a lot of ways i think that's a testament to like github and well i don't use dropbox anymore
01:39:20 ◼ ► but you know dropbox and things like that but the the the good news from having to do this 84 times
01:39:26 ◼ ► over the last few months is that i've become very very good at it and so it's a very streamlined
01:39:30 ◼ ► operation my uh my dad when he was uh well no i think i think i might have been just born he had
01:39:36 ◼ ► a Plymouth Duster if i remember correctly and i forget what the issue ended up being like something
01:39:42 ◼ ► was misaligned but they didn't know it for the longest time i might have told this story as well
01:39:46 ◼ ► but um the house that that we had lived in when i was freshly born um my dad had had the house built
01:39:52 ◼ ► and in the garage he actually had a pit so you know you would draw you would drive the car onto
01:39:57 ◼ ► like boards or planks or i don't know like maybe it was metal for all i know but you would drive it
01:40:01 ◼ ► on these pieces of metal let's say and then you could climb down under the car so it's like in you
01:40:06 ◼ ► know the inverse of a lift and what had happened is he was he kept going through clutches in this
01:40:11 ◼ ► uh in this duster and my understanding of family legend tells me that they that mom and dad could
01:40:18 ◼ ► do an entire clutch in this car in like the span of two or three hours or something like that like
01:40:22 ◼ ► something absolutely preposterous because they were doing it like once every two months or something
01:40:26 ◼ ► like that and they eventually figured out the problem and fixed it properly but yeah that's me
01:40:30 ◼ ► with this with this darn computer um so all kidding aside i i have what i thought to be
01:40:36 ◼ ► a bulletproof super duper backup of mohavi sitting on a hard drive on my desk starting with marco and
01:40:44 ◼ ► then john would you trust and use that and just plow what's currently on the machine or would you
01:40:48 ◼ ► just go for broke and install fresh i would maybe first boot it and see how it boots you know and
01:40:56 ◼ ► and then maybe decide after that weird stuff would happen if you just went back in time and like
01:41:01 ◼ ► you don't have any of your files and like i don't know i think that that's a recipe for
01:41:07 ◼ ► accidental data loss of stuff you've made in the meantime well i mean the first thing i want to do
01:41:12 ◼ ► is is go through my list of places where i do store stuff you know i'm like there are a handful
01:41:17 ◼ ► of things on my desktop there may be some things and downloads that i care about you know etc etc
01:41:21 ◼ ► and i'll back up my plex you know database and so on and so forth all that stuff will happen before
01:41:26 ◼ ► i even worry about you know booting off of the super duper backup but assuming that the super
01:41:32 ◼ ► duper backup boots reasonably well do you think you would use it but you know like you know take
01:41:37 ◼ ► it and put it onto the machine i mean how old is it at this point three weeks a month that's too far
01:41:45 ◼ ► but i mean i saw actual data i would never like that's too far back for me i would be missing too
01:41:49 ◼ ► much stuff and i have no way to sort of like diff it i don't know if i if i had down if i actually
01:41:55 ◼ ► had to downgrade my machine which obviously i can't but if i had to i would i would install mojave on
01:41:59 ◼ ► top of of catalina i know that's not what you want to do especially if you want to eliminate the
01:42:03 ◼ ► source of weird errors but you're you're into the hoteling lifestyle anyway you should just wipe
01:42:07 ◼ ► this machine and put a fresh like save your if you think you actually know how to save your data
01:42:11 ◼ ► do that i would suggest making a full clone and setting that aside because then you know if you
01:42:16 ◼ ► just remember it oh by the way i was also keeping something in this obscure directory you've got it
01:42:19 ◼ ► right do that and wipe the whole machine and mojave from scratch like wipe wipe as in repartition as
01:42:25 ◼ ► in get rid of all the catalina like you know the whole nine yards like you know get go to the the
01:42:31 ◼ ► the actual partition level not the apfs container level with the actual gpt portion partition level
01:42:36 ◼ ► and then get rid of all that stuff no yeah i think you probably convinced me first of all that i'll do
01:42:42 ◼ ► i'll do a super duper this one just for safety's sake and then i'll i'll go into internet recovery
01:42:48 ◼ ► delete everything on this hard drive to your point and then start fresh with mohabi i'm just
01:42:53 ◼ ► a super duper also get caught up on time machine you need to have all your data in two places
01:42:57 ◼ ► before you erase it from your computer at least two places that's fair but anyway i promise
01:43:01 ◼ ► gentlemen that by this time next week i will no longer be on catalina because this is driving
01:43:05 ◼ ► me absolutely batty and i do love dark mode i really do in the dark and when it's evening that
01:43:10 ◼ ► is um i do love dark mode and i do love having that sweet sweet swift ui preview but it is just
01:43:15 ◼ ► not worth it it is not worth it not for me i got well i wonder like what's your long-term game plan
01:43:20 ◼ ► here i honestly don't know i hope kalina is gonna yeah either skip catalina or or perhaps wait
01:43:28 ◼ ► another few point releases and see what happens you know like what are we what is it right now it's
01:43:32 ◼ ► what are you going to use to gauge whether it's safe to play to 10 15 5 10 15 6 because i don't
01:43:38 ◼ ► know i mean this is why like my like i've never downgraded like this before because my strategy
01:43:43 ◼ ► is basically like once i'm once i'm on like i don't go backwards i only go you know i i only
01:43:48 ◼ ► on defense like i only go forward because that's offense whatever going back is a you know a big
01:43:56 ◼ ► deal it's it's hard and and potentially destructive to certain things and then b you're gonna have to
01:44:03 ◼ ► go forward again at some point anyway yeah but what do i do in the meantime though you know like
01:44:07 ◼ ► this is unacceptable for me and for you yeah so so i think i think the other answer is like
01:44:13 ◼ ► there's lots of us who are doing podcasts on catalina without this problem so catalina is
01:44:25 ◼ ► it's a coincidence of timing who knows but like i'm podcasting on catalina using the same USB
01:44:32 ◼ ► device that you that you're using well i did last week and it was fine yeah you did last week and
01:44:36 ◼ ► it was fine so so obviously like it is possible to use catalina without having the specific problems
01:44:42 ◼ ► you're having right now so the os version itself is probably not the problem it may have exacerbated
01:44:49 ◼ ► things it may have brought things to the foreground or it may just be coincidence so i would i would
01:44:54 ◼ ► start investigating other potential explanations and solutions so things what though so you know
01:45:00 ◼ ► things like changing out the trackpad for a trackpad that like it's just swapping out like
01:45:05 ◼ ► do you don't you have to i do yeah so just try the other one do you use it in wired mode
01:45:16 ◼ ► well no no but here's the thing well maybe maybe you're right or at the very least unplug it when
01:45:22 ◼ ► i'm podcasting that's actually a very interesting point but the reason it got plugged in in the
01:45:26 ◼ ► first place was because of all the issues i was having you know with like really bad latency and
01:45:32 ◼ ► the machine gun trackpad and all that so it seems like my choices are use it on bluetooth where i've
01:45:37 ◼ ► got machine gun trackpad and really bad pointer latency or use it when it's plugged in and
01:45:44 ◼ ► potentially have some sort of issue with my microphone so i guess the answer is i unplug when
01:45:49 ◼ ► i record and plug in when i'm not recording like this shouldn't be a problem do you have any other
01:45:53 ◼ ► stuff connected to your computer like that's the usual dance you do is like start removing
01:45:56 ◼ ► disconnecting everything from your computer until it is just the computer by itself with nothing
01:46:01 ◼ ► connected to it and then you connect a keyboard and then you try it and it's okay and then you
01:46:04 ◼ ► connect the pointing device like do you have anything else do you have any external drives
01:46:08 ◼ ► do you have an ethernet cable like there is a plug-in i mean like i have a bunch of things
01:46:12 ◼ ► that are hanging on like a bunch of usb cords that aren't connected to anything right now so as
01:46:15 ◼ ► an example like i have a cord connected to my computer that that i could plug into an external
01:46:20 ◼ ► hard drive but it's not presently plugged into an external hard drive that's that's probably not it
01:46:24 ◼ ► but i would unplug those anyway just you know it's typical troubleshooting like remove all variables
01:46:30 ◼ ► try to figure out what the hell is the problem with the thing like with that staticky thing like maybe
01:46:34 ◼ ► it was the simulator maybe that's just a simulator hangover and maybe the only way to cure that it
01:46:38 ◼ ► was a reboot but i rebooted afterwards i did reboot that's and then you got it again i mean
01:46:42 ◼ ► maybe you're maybe your audio boxes fritzing who knows like what about like you know there's
01:46:48 ◼ ► possible other explanations like or other things to try like making sure that the audio interface
01:46:54 ◼ ► and the trackpad are not sharing a usb bus i don't know how you can do that maybe certain ports or
01:47:00 ◼ ► different buses maybe you can put the trackpad on a hub and not put the audio interface on a hub like
01:47:06 ◼ ► put the audio interface directly into one of the ports in the back and then put the trackpad
01:47:10 ◼ ► interface on or put the trackpad on its own hub or something or like use one of the usb-a ports for
01:47:15 ◼ ► the trackpad and use the usb-c port for the audio interface using a c2b cable like there's there are
01:47:21 ◼ ► there's options like that that's what i do honestly i do the c2b cable thing um you know ways to just
01:47:26 ◼ ► try to separate this device that you think is possibly causing you problems which is the trackpad
01:47:31 ◼ ► from things that are critical to work for your job like the audio interface um so you know have
01:47:36 ◼ ► it be two separate parts of the computer like i you can probably look up somewhere like i mean i
01:47:40 ◼ ► bet i bet certain port uh pairs or sets are on certain usb buses it probably isn't all one bus
01:47:48 ◼ ► it's probably like you know two or three different controllers in there so i would try that
01:47:57 ◼ ► sometimes and like one bad usb device can wreak havoc on a system so the more you can do to like
01:48:04 ◼ ► try to isolate it or try to swap out the trackpad for a different one and see if that works you know
01:48:09 ◼ ► trying that first is easier and probably more more likely to work than changing your entire os version
01:48:18 ◼ ► yeah i just i feel like i want the nuclear option but you're convinced the two of you are convincing
01:48:22 ◼ ► me that maybe i'm getting a little but if you didn't have this problem with mohavi it really
01:48:25 ◼ ► is quite a timing coincidence you know it could be like some bad behavior that unless you did
01:48:30 ◼ ► actually move things to different ports or connect new things but it could just be some bad behavior
01:48:34 ◼ ► that mohavi handles differently thank catalina so downgrading may actually solve the problem without
01:48:39 ◼ ► actually letting you know what it was like the problem might be some chatty usb thing or the fact
01:48:44 ◼ ► that you refuse to go into your own attic and get uh the trackpad out from the other computer all
01:48:48 ◼ ► right i super duper promise well let me ask you i'm not trying to snark would you would the two
01:48:52 ◼ ► of you rather me try a different trackpad or go back to a mouse because i'm perfect i i i don't
01:48:57 ◼ ► have an issue with the mouse i use the mouse up until literally like six months ago so i would
01:49:01 ◼ ► i would like i have so much data that i would never want to downgrade so i would i would my
01:49:07 ◼ ► first choice would always be debug it figure out what the hell is wrong like the same thing i did
01:49:11 ◼ ► with my sleep issues when i got my mac pro it wasn't sleeping and it kept waking up and like
01:49:16 ◼ ► what option do i have that i couldn't you know i was going to figure out what the hell is waking
01:49:20 ◼ ► it up and by process of elimination and figuring out and disconnecting everything and connecting
01:49:24 ◼ ► one device at a time and you know running a bare operating system and saying what if i have this
01:49:28 ◼ ► program but you know eventually got it mostly under control because that was my only option
01:49:33 ◼ ► that's always my first choice is to actually debug it which is annoying and laborious but
01:49:39 ◼ ► usually can be done or at least leads you to a conclusion that's like i found the problem and
01:49:45 ◼ ► i have no fixed word therefore we'll have you downgrade it's the only option right but at least
01:49:48 ◼ ► you'll know something about it then yeah yeah that's fair all right so i'm sorry where did we
01:49:56 ◼ ► different trackpad or just issue track pads entirely and just go to a regular magic magic
01:50:02 ◼ ► mouse i mean i think drive pads are garbage you should use a mouse but either one change that part
01:50:06 ◼ ► change that part of the equation like remove all the variables disconnect everything from your
01:50:10 ◼ ► computer find a reproducible test case that causes the problem and then just start subtracting even
01:50:14 ◼ ► more like okay now i can get this thing to do weird crap does it still do weird crap with a
01:50:18 ◼ ► mouse does it still do weird crap with my other trackpad like whatever just start you know running
01:50:23 ◼ ► experiments until you can figure so you can make it misbehave and then figure out when it does and
01:50:28 ◼ ► when it doesn't misbehave yeah i think get the get the other trackpad of the attic use it in bluetooth
01:50:34 ◼ ► mode and see if you have the machine gun issue that's that's step one and then if you do you know
01:50:39 ◼ ► then possibly try the usb in different port kind of situation but i would say first try it as
01:50:44 ◼ ► bluetooth um i would also uh i i heard as i as i was frequently complaining about various like you
01:50:50 ◼ ► know bluetooth disconnect bugs that i've been having for years on my max with the mouse and the
01:50:54 ◼ ► trackpad a few people have told me over the years that this can happen with 2.4 gigahertz interference
01:51:02 ◼ ► and that trying to minimize that as much as possible had a pretty good effect for them and
01:51:08 ◼ ► so this could be things like switching as much as your wi-fi stuff as possible over to 5.8
01:51:18 ◼ ► you could try that as well although i actually i i hate to jinx anything here and maybe i should
01:51:26 ◼ ► knock on if i could find some actual wood around here i have not had the bluetooth mouse and trackpad
01:51:35 ◼ ► random disconnection bug in a little while i i don't know i remember exactly when the last time
01:51:40 ◼ ► that it happened was but it hasn't been recently it's been probably at least a month or two so i
01:51:46 ◼ ► think they might have fixed that finally after like three years of it being a constant problem
01:51:53 ◼ ► uh so i think that i that my bug is fixed just like my music bug yay i'm doing great sorry casey
01:52:00 ◼ ► you're not but you know great yeah so anyway i so if there's anything to that try to reduce 2.4
01:52:08 ◼ ► gigahertz radio traffic in the area and try and switch over to bluetooth so to try to test the
01:52:14 ◼ ► machine gun trackpad thing to see if it still is still applies to the new trackpad that you should
01:52:19 ◼ ► have been switching to a long time ago all right i will try the trackpad first the problem is i
01:52:24 ◼ ► don't have any like i have a bunch of anecdotal like i said earlier on things that seem to make
01:52:30 ◼ ► it worse but i don't have anything where i can say do this then this then this then this and bam
01:52:35 ◼ ► it happens you know yeah it's just so frustrating and sleep wake problems are the same thing i had
01:52:40 ◼ ► to wait for hours you'd put it to sleep and then you'd have to come back in the morning and see
01:52:44 ◼ ► when it woke up and how frequently and why and yeah it's it's a tough uh it's a tough debug cycle
01:52:50 ◼ ► but i mean if it actually is a problem you should be able to make it happen just by using your
01:52:54 ◼ ► computer right if you have to hook up your podcast microphone and just be recording all day long
01:52:59 ◼ ► with your headphones on while you do development work and eventually if it starts glitching out
01:53:05 ◼ ► you'd be like aha and then you have to already have console open and you know like i don't know
01:53:10 ◼ ► it's it's annoying but uh i don't you know debugging is debugging programs is no fun and
01:53:16 ◼ ► debugging your computer setup is also no fun they are very similar at least at least you're sitting
01:53:21 ◼ ► there in front of your computer i spent today debugging uh a switch glass bug on someone else's
01:53:26 ◼ ► computer across the internet which is worse oh god yeah it does not seem fun but through email
01:53:32 ◼ ► to be clear not through screen sharing which would have been so much easier and you know and you're