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ATP

367: Antitrust Relief Valve

 

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

00:03:03   not a full, immersion preschool. It's not a big, red bus or whatever. Full immersion,

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

00:03:19   like... - That's advanced course.

00:03:21   - This is the basic rule we're trying to get through, right?

00:03:24   - Oh, so many hyphens in these titles. Oh my goodness.

00:03:27   - Anyway, antitrust doesn't have one, so that's just all one word.

00:03:30   - There's no hyphens in this episode. I am stupefied.

00:03:33   - And now we have a pre-show.

00:03:34   - I'll put that in the pre-show because then the actual people who know grammar are going

00:03:39   to yell at me for my description. - Yell at you?

00:03:40   - No, that's even better. - That's even better, is it? I don't think it is.

00:03:44   - You think you're going to get more email than me about this?

00:03:46   All the emails go to all three of us. - It's very easy to be successfully ignorant,

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.

00:04:08   I feel like the house is about to fall down. That's not good.

00:04:10   - And there's no hyphenation in any of that. A humongous gust of wind is totally un-hyphenated.

00:04:15   - Oh God, here we go. - It's not true.

00:04:18   - Because it's just one word describing the gust of wind. It's just humongous.

00:04:21   - Exactly. - You don't have a multi-word phrase

00:04:23   that is describing the wind. - It's not humongous-gust-of-wind?

00:04:27   - No, because what kind of gust of wind is this? - I'm kidding, John. I'm kidding.

00:04:30   - Humongous. - Oh my God, I'm kidding.

00:04:32   - You are kidding, but I want you to internalize this.

00:04:36   - Oh God. Oh, I hate everyone. I hate everything. I hate everyone. I quit. You're both fired.

00:04:43   - So the thing I would do with the folks at work is whenever it came up is that

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,

00:04:55   or whatever, and I would say, "What kind of whatever?" That was always my cue.

00:05:00   They'd say something about a file, and I would say, "What kind of file?"

00:05:04   - You must be a joy to work with, John. - Right? And the thing is, I did this

00:05:09   for a year, and still a year into it, I would say, "What kind of file?" And they'd answer the

00:05:14   question, and be like, "Oh, it's like a text file." I'd be like, "Whenever I say that,

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.

00:05:29   - I'm glad that the John we have on the show... - There's only one.

00:05:34   - ...is the same John that exists at work, and that everyone around John is subjected to the same John.

00:05:42   - "Subjected" is a harsh word.

00:05:45   - "Gets to enjoy." How about that? - "Gets to" oh, God.

00:05:51   Oh, God. Oh, God. What is happening? What is happening? Do you hear weirdness?

00:05:58   - No. Well, I mean, besides our usual content. - No, yeah, right. No, I'm hearing weirdness.

00:06:04   I don't like it. I don't like it. - Oh, come on. Now what?

00:06:06   - No, I don't know. I think I might hear it. - What are you hearing?

00:06:09   - I'm hearing like... weirdness. Yeah, I don't like it.

00:06:14   - Not a good sign. - Right. Oh, there it is. Okay.

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.

00:06:28   You're the one who does the... Yeah, we wouldn't even know how to start the show.

00:06:33   - Well, fair enough. All right. I was trying to be nice. All right. I'm hanging up now. Okay, bye.

00:06:36   I should note, and then we can call this follow-up, and I guess just start the show.

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.

00:08:40   All sorts of things I have to do to get my computer to actually friggin' work. But no,

00:08:44   no, Catalina's great and I shouldn't complain about it.

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.

00:09:03   I'm not sure I'm ready for... Like is it appropriate to be using that as a new proper

00:09:07   noun? Are they actually called FeedBacks or are people just saying that because of the app name?

00:09:10   **Brian

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

00:10:11   let us know, are they still called radars internally? Do R, D, A, R URL schemes still

00:10:19   work for people internally for Apple? How should we be referring to them?

00:10:23   **Brian Stauffer** Like I said, I'm all in on calling it Radar and forever more,

00:10:27   as far as I'm concerned.

00:10:29   **Matt Stauffer** Don't get stuck in your ways, Casey. You're too young.

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

00:10:41   vision quest taking you these days?

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,

00:17:07   I was not the person who put this in the show notes. It's not my fault, I'm sorry."

00:17:10   Yeah, sure. So this was, yeah, I was again complaining about in the same segment about

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,

00:17:28   going from a playlist or browsing through somebody's albums and going to the albums,

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,

00:17:58   the way Overcast is structured data-wise, and you can see this on that root screen,

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,

00:19:13   like all that stuff. - It didn't have backgrounding, did it?

00:19:15   - No, of course not, no. But the iOS 2.0 SDK didn't have a lot of critical stuff,

00:19:21   most notably interface builder and core data. It also didn't have state restoration APIs.

00:19:26   And so I actually didn't implement state restoration in any of my apps ever. I do it

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,

00:19:41   like the playlist provider ID and the current episode ID, and that's it.

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

00:20:00   the following Microsoft defender...ATP, question mark?

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

00:20:38   products for the Mac that do not destroy your entire computer. A couple of people have

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

00:21:19   make the threat...to take the threat very seriously and do everything in their power,

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,

00:21:35   because they get blamed for that because they're the platform vendor. Similarly,

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

00:22:04   it's available for the Mac and soon iOS and it's called ATP.

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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,

00:25:46   or in the near future if it hasn't already passed, if you get a cert after that point,

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.

00:26:07   We're just going to call them that for the hell of it, like radars.

00:26:12   Even though the rules about how long they can last don't say that they can only be a year-old,

00:26:17   Safari is going to use whatever market cloud it has – significant market cloud,

00:26:22   and mobile, less so on desktop – to say, "Our pretty popular browser is not going to accept

00:26:28   your certificate if it was issued after September." I don't remember the date.

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?"

00:27:04   There wasn't consensus on that, so Apple's just doing it itself.

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.

00:27:31   No one's hands are clean here. No one obeys the standards committees all the time,

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.

00:28:00   I know there's lots of arguments from the security people about, "Well, you know,

00:28:06   if somebody compromises your certificate, then they can use it, and that's really bad." It's like,

00:28:10   "Okay. Well, that's true." My two kind of arguments for that would be, number one,

00:28:16   they can now still use it for up to a year. That's not that much. Whatever time interval you pick,

00:28:26   there's going to be the risk of somebody using a certificate within that time window.

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

00:31:57   ratchet up the security on this stuff, it just makes it harder and more cumbersome for

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

00:33:53   benefit is worth it or necessary for the majority of sites out there.

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

00:36:48   buy them from? So on and so forth. So the countervailing force against all of this is

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

00:38:46   general these big companies that give out certificates you know are are just as ill

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

00:41:05   happening is are the servers down I don't understand why people connecting someone

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

00:42:03   to renew the certificates but by the time that event comes up I'm gonna be like

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

00:42:48   just because they have bigger market share and bigger sort of money share but there is

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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00:46:22   thank you so much to linode my favorite web host for sponsoring our show and hosting all my stuff

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

00:50:03   many many times and so from one point of view you could you could see this as like

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

00:50:18   deal with so they put it off but you know eventually it becomes more compelling as

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

00:51:19   here with the peek of you i was expecting them to be like no just use photos go away

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

00:58:22   by enabling people like you know like the big companies to to not use a net purchase

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

01:02:03   it wouldn't be a big deal but we have more important things to do and now i feel like

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

01:06:32   this stuff to work it is just a fairly straightforward sort of ui task a thing that is

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

01:08:12   or like just like you said safari rejects certificates that are issued after whatever

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

01:09:42   services are you sure you want to give this application location service always

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

01:14:23   by customers what is it that they see it's entirely defined by apple apps because they

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

01:14:37   you know a good experience with the basics so we're going to give you

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

01:15:37   had is that apple's first party applications while not terrible are no longer like the

01:15:44   shining example of saying this is how and insert whatever application should be made

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

01:17:59   always they're always going to lag behind the really good third-party application so

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

01:18:24   go shopping you know getting something with batteries included that does all the stuff

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

01:19:18   way than the mac is currently done we are sponsored this week by indeed when you start

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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

01:21:43   an adult human at least in the u.s maybe it's different for in other countries

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

01:28:26   things related to uh what are they called adaptive frame rate or god i should have

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

01:33:28   all my data is they have a good export functionality can i get it import like

01:33:32   there are good apps and bad apps for that you're looking for an app that does have

01:33:36   good export ability ability to back up to a standard format and maybe an import ability

01:33:42   to go in the other direction uh but you're worried about syncing bugs you worry about

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

01:34:19   things and i don't know if it's a bug with the automation or something like that but

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

01:35:40   linode indeed and pro clip usa and we'll talk to you next week

01:35:44   now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

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

01:36:31   a c u s i c recuser it's accidental

01:36:36   they didn't mean to accidental

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

01:44:18   probably not the problem there maybe maybe something is being worse on catalina maybe

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

01:45:12   i actually am tonight that's the first time which okay so to that end unplug it

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

01:47:51   um because like you like usb is a weird uh protocol with weird devices that flake out

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

01:49:52   land so would you rather me get a different traveling again go to the attic and get a

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

01:51:12   and or especially stuff that would be in or near your office where your computer is

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

01:53:35   just like i i need to run xcode on your machine and step through the debugger but that's not

01:53:40   possible so you just builds back and forth with print statements it's great

01:53:45   found the bug though oh good oh good that's exciting yeah a lot of print statements