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322: Morale-Sucking Maple Syrup Fires

 

00:00:00   Actually, you know what, I have a bone to pick with you, it just occurred to me.

00:00:03   Awesome.

00:00:04   I want you to fix a problem you're not going to fix because you shouldn't.

00:00:07   You're really making a good case for yourself there.

00:00:10   I wanted to listen under the radar when I went out for my run earlier today, and if

00:00:16   you recall I run with watch and AirPods only, and I went to run Overcast on my watch, which

00:00:22   worked, but the episode wasn't there because you had just released it like four and a half

00:00:26   minutes prior.

00:00:29   I want streaming or some sort of manual "please sir can I have it updated now" button, and

00:00:36   you're not going to do it, and you're probably right not to do it, but I want it.

00:00:39   I would love to offer that.

00:00:41   I would love if there was a way that I could reliably initiate a transfer that would happen

00:00:46   immediately to the watch.

00:00:48   There isn't.

00:00:49   No, but it's a cellular watch, man.

00:00:51   Go to the internets.

00:00:52   Well, okay, I could do that.

00:00:54   It would basically require a significantly different pipeline for that file to get into

00:00:58   the watch, for it to be processed and synced.

00:01:02   You would be dependent on whatever the bit rate and format of the audio would be, which

00:01:09   could be awfully large and complicated for the watch to handle.

00:01:14   Oh, and I wouldn't get smart speed, would I?

00:01:16   You definitely wouldn't get smart speed.

00:01:18   The watch is not fast enough to pre-process it, and the API doesn't exist to do it live.

00:01:25   It would basically be a really terrible experience.

00:01:28   Now that being said, if there's something you want to listen to that isn't already on

00:01:31   your watch, and you want to sync it over immediately, and watchOS just isn't syncing it, that's also

00:01:37   a terrible experience.

00:01:40   That's the kind of thing that I assume, and maybe after this many years, this might be

00:01:44   a bad assumption, but I assume that that's the kind of thing that Apple's likely to fix

00:01:49   sometime, whereas the complexity of having these two different ways for a file to get

00:01:55   on the watch, and having to sync things between them, having to manage the different experiences

00:02:00   that you get between them, that complexity is forever.

00:02:05   Shortcomings are usually temporary.

00:02:07   I decided to just wait and see.

00:02:10   Right now, the auto-syncing in the background is good enough for most people most of the

00:02:15   time.

00:02:16   Including me, for the record.

00:02:17   Right.

00:02:18   It's mostly fine, and so I'd rather not rapidly increase the complexity in order to improve

00:02:29   that a little bit.

00:02:31   Especially since most people don't have cellular watches, and even those who do, oftentimes

00:02:36   it isn't activated, because cellular Apple watches generally are very disappointing.

00:02:42   The cellular service is not good, and very unreliable.

00:02:45   Also, I'd be concerned about Apple rejecting the app for using the cellular data too aggressively,

00:02:51   if it happened during their testing, and maybe they downloaded a large file, and then they

00:02:54   would reject the app for using too much cell data.

00:02:57   There's all sorts of risks and problems with doing that, not to mention the fact that working

00:03:01   on watchOS is incredibly painful.

00:03:03   The process of developing all this complexity, this kind of stuff would be simpler to do

00:03:09   on iOS.

00:03:10   It wouldn't take as much effort on iOS, but everything on watchOS is like moving through

00:03:15   maple syrup.

00:03:16   And it's maple syrup that occasionally catches fire and burns you as you're in it.

00:03:20   It's just, it's terrible.

00:03:23   Working on watchOS is terrible.

00:03:24   It's time consuming and morale sucking, and just terrible.

00:03:28   So I'd like to do as little as possible.

00:03:30   It's understandable.

00:03:31   I don't know what the UI would look like for this, which is why I'm going to let it go,

00:03:35   because I know you should not make this feature, but I really wish there was some way to be

00:03:38   like, "Hey, I know that there is a specific podcast, and I want to listen to it right

00:03:45   frickin' now.

00:03:46   I'm willing to trade off the lack of smart speed and the bit rate issues you were discussing.

00:03:53   I don't care.

00:03:54   I want it now.

00:03:55   It's my podcast, and I need it now."

00:03:56   So run back to your house and grab your phone.

00:03:59   Yeah, I mean, because here's the other problem with this is, suppose I did all that work.

00:04:03   This feature is still used by very few people.

00:04:06   Like, actual offline playback, like playback on standalone watch without the phone.

00:04:12   Every time you hit play on that, I record, like, you know, "A user has done this."

00:04:17   And it's part of my analytics that I report only to me, so don't worry, but I can track

00:04:22   like what percentage of the active user base uses feature X.

00:04:27   And the percentage of people who use that is minuscule.

00:04:32   And it's really unfortunate because it took me a lot of time and work and morale-sucking

00:04:38   maple syrup fires.

00:04:41   It took so much out of me to do that feature, and almost no one uses it.

00:04:46   And part of it, like, I'm not mad at the public for not using it.

00:04:50   It isn't that good.

00:04:51   It's fine.

00:04:52   I got it to a point where it's usable after like three years, but it's not great.

00:04:59   Using your phone is better.

00:05:01   And the only reason to not have your phone usually is if you're running.

00:05:05   But runners usually want to listen to music and not podcasts.

00:05:09   So it's a very small percentage of people, I think, who really use this feature.

00:05:15   And so it's not worth massive investment.

00:05:18   And you could say maybe more people would use it if it was better, and that's probably

00:05:22   true.

00:05:23   But how many more?

00:05:24   Five times as many?

00:05:25   Probably not.

00:05:27   Is it maybe 50% more?

00:05:29   Maybe.

00:05:30   Probably not even that.

00:05:31   So I think it would still be a very, very low percentage.

00:05:35   By the way, even if five times as many people use it, that would still be embarrassingly

00:05:37   low.

00:05:38   Yeah, that's fair.

00:05:39   There are dozens of us, Marco.

00:05:41   Dozens.

00:05:42   There are literally dozens of you, I think.

00:05:43   I really don't think the number is that much bigger.

00:05:45   Is that something you could pull up easily, or is that the sort of thing where you eat?

00:05:48   Yes, it is.

00:05:49   Hold on.

00:05:50   Even a broad order of magnitude, I would be very curious to hear exactly how minuscule

00:05:55   it is.

00:05:56   Most days it's about 0.25% of active users.

00:06:01   That's my word.

00:06:02   Now to give you some idea, that is about half as much usage as the web player gets from

00:06:09   logged in users.

00:06:11   And no one uses the web player.

00:06:14   It's near the widget, no one uses the widget.

00:06:15   Now to give you some idea, about 30% of users have an Apple Watch paired to their phone,

00:06:24   and 0.25% use this feature.

00:06:27   Right.

00:06:28   So, not to put a terrible idea in your head, but why is it still there then?

00:06:34   It's the kind of feature that people think they'll use.

00:06:37   I thought people would use it when I was making it.

00:06:40   And so it's the kind of feature that you might make a competitive decision of which podcast

00:06:44   app to use based on whether this feature exists, even if you don't end up using it in practice.

00:06:49   So I think it is important to offer it, but if I was like starting over from scratch,

00:06:56   if I couldn't use any of my old code, if I had to rewrite my entire app from scratch

00:06:59   knowing what I know now, I wouldn't re-implement this feature.

00:07:03   But because it's already there, and because it serves a decent role in competitive customer

00:07:09   acquisition, then I'll keep it there.

00:07:11   But it certainly is not worth the effort it took to build.

00:07:15   - Yeah, that's fair.

00:07:16   And that bums me out, but I mean, the numbers tell you what the reality is.

00:07:21   It's funny too, 'cause when I was still a person with a job, there was a Oakland office

00:07:28   that opened for about a year.

00:07:32   And so we were an East Coast company, then this Oakland office comes in, and the product

00:07:36   owner and project managers from Oakland, all they wanted to do was A/B test everything.

00:07:41   The numbers will tell us all the answers.

00:07:43   And I always found that very disheartening and disappointing, because I felt like it

00:07:47   was just punting on making difficult decisions.

00:07:49   Oh, well, we'll just trust the users.

00:07:51   The users will definitely know what they want.

00:07:53   And that always seemed like a poor choice to me.

00:07:57   However, even I can agree that there are some numbers that are indisputable.

00:08:02   It's 0.25%.

00:08:05   That's some pretty big evidence that you should probably leave this crap alone, or not worry

00:08:08   too much about it.

00:08:09   Right, to give you some idea, Siri Intents, like SiriKit usage, which I would think would

00:08:15   be a very narrow feature, 5%.

00:08:19   Way way higher.

00:08:20   Speaking of that, I've been talking to my AirPods while playing Overcast, and the conversation

00:08:27   has not been going well.

00:08:32   I can ask my new fancy AirPods to start playing, or to stop playing, which is convenient when

00:08:40   my hands are all messy in the kitchen.

00:08:42   And I can also ask for volume adjustments, and those happen.

00:08:47   But anytime I want anything else to happen, I have a very one-sided conversation with

00:08:51   Siri that always culminates in whatever audio was playing stopping, and then me waiting

00:08:59   a certain amount of time to see if whatever I ask for is going to happen, and then me

00:09:02   giving up and then saying, "Hey, Dingus, play."

00:09:04   And it picks up right where I left off.

00:09:05   Usually what I want to do is skip forward a certain amount of time, skip back a certain

00:09:10   amount of time, go to the next track, go to the previous track.

00:09:14   Every time I say, "Hey, Dingus," to my AirPods and issue one of those commands in any way

00:09:18   I can possibly think of it, audio stops, and that's the end.

00:09:23   And then I just say, "Hey, Dingus, play," and it picks up right where the audio stopped

00:09:27   previously.

00:09:28   What can I say to my AirPods that Overcast will understand?

00:09:33   I don't know.

00:09:34   I should probably get AirPod 2s and see.

00:09:37   But I mean, I assume I can do the same thing with Siri on the phone.

00:09:41   Skip forward 30 seconds, skip back 30 seconds, next track, previous track, skip to next track,

00:09:45   go to next track, go to previous track.

00:09:47   I've tried every variation I could possibly think of, and I've tried pauses between, "Hey,

00:09:52   Dingus," and issuing the command.

00:09:53   That shouldn't matter.

00:09:54   And no pause.

00:09:55   And honestly, I don't know what it's doing.

00:09:57   It obviously hears me say, "Hey, Dingus," because it stops playing the audio, and it

00:10:02   still hears me when I give up and say, "Hey, Dingus, play," and it starts playing it again.

00:10:07   So, first of all, the Siri implementation in iOS 12 that I have right now, Siri does

00:10:15   some weird things with audio.

00:10:18   So for instance, iOS has the concept of, there's an audio session that your app has, which

00:10:24   is how your app audio interacts with the system audio and how it's managed with things like

00:10:29   whether things are allowed to play at the same time as your app audio, whether things

00:10:32   should duck your app's audio.

00:10:33   And there's concepts with things like the active app, things like whether your audio

00:10:37   session is active and whether it's currently being interrupted.

00:10:40   So for instance, if you're playing a podcast and you get a phone call, your audio session

00:10:44   gets automatically interrupted and paused.

00:10:47   And then when the phone call ends, you get the interruption-ended message, and you can

00:10:50   resume your audio.

00:10:52   Well, one of the things that also pauses your app's audio is Siri.

00:10:59   When you've held on the Siri button and Siri goes, "Boo-boo," and it kicks on and starts

00:11:03   listening, if you're playing anything, your session gets interrupted, and then it resumes

00:11:08   afterwards.

00:11:09   Also, if Siri has to respond to you, that maintains the interruption or starts if it

00:11:16   isn't already interrupted.

00:11:17   Now if you ask Siri to do something in Overcast, right now, the iOS 12 Siri kit intents have

00:11:25   only a very rudimentary idea of whether you're doing anything audio-related, and they seem

00:11:30   to have no barrier.

00:11:31   They seem to not really change their behavior at all if you're using the play media intent.

00:11:37   So when you get—one of the things I had to work around last summer when I was implementing

00:11:43   this is that if you send basically the Siri command for Overcast to start playing, Siri

00:11:50   will respond in audio like, "Okay, done," or whatever it says.

00:11:56   And that will interrupt the playback it just started by telling me to play.

00:12:00   Nice.

00:12:01   Yeah, right?

00:12:02   Is it great?

00:12:03   So there's also—and because these things all happen kind of at the same time or in

00:12:08   the same run loop iteration sometimes, because things are happening very quickly all at the

00:12:12   same time, sometimes it gets things wrong and deactivates your audio session permanently

00:12:17   or creates an interruption that it never ends.

00:12:21   So you're just permanently interrupted and you never resume.

00:12:24   So—and I've talked to people who make other podcast apps about this.

00:12:28   We've all had to do things like add delays before we actually start playing to give Siri

00:12:33   a chance to end its audio interruption that it's using to respond to you with before

00:12:39   we start playing.

00:12:40   And like anytime you introduce an intentional delay into your app, you're just asking

00:12:45   for bugs at that point.

00:12:47   That's a huge code smell.

00:12:48   You never want to have like, "Dispatch after .25 seconds just to avoid some bug."

00:12:53   That's never a good thing to have to do.

00:12:56   But everyone I've known who's written a podcast app with SiriKit support has had to

00:12:59   do things like that, like put in a small delay before we actually start playback.

00:13:03   Otherwise Siri will kill it in a way that we can't undo.

00:13:06   There's all sorts of weird issues with the way Siri handles audio interruptions and the

00:13:12   way it responds to commands with SiriKit that make it very hard to make a lot of these things

00:13:16   reliable.

00:13:17   So it's possible that some of these things might just be like the exact timing Siri is

00:13:23   having for you with a certain combination of commands and hardware and whatever might

00:13:28   be wrong or might be hitting a bug with SiriKit.

00:13:31   And it's really hard to diagnose those things.

00:13:33   It's weird that asking it to play always works.

00:13:36   I assume whatever the media controls that are just presented in Control Center, Control

00:13:41   Center has the play button and it has the next and previous track button.

00:13:45   I'm basically trying to find the voice equivalent of, "Look, I know iOS, you probably

00:13:49   don't know much about the application that's playing audio, but one is playing audio and

00:13:52   you offer those three controls and they all work in Control Center, so just virtually

00:13:55   tap one of those buttons for me now, but I can't get it to do what I want."

00:13:58   Two other things.

00:13:59   For one, AirPods specifically, there's a lot of special case audio handling in the

00:14:04   OS for AirPods.

00:14:06   Whatever they do, and I haven't played with the second ones yet, but the first gen AirPods

00:14:10   do a lot of crazy stuff with Bluetooth recompression or transcoding or something.

00:14:15   There's all sorts of weird overcast bugs that I've hit that only happen with AirPods.

00:14:20   And sometimes weird system behaviors and things like that that basically only happen when

00:14:24   you have AirPods connected with no other Bluetooth headphones.

00:14:27   However they handle the AirPods at the system level, there's some kind of special casing

00:14:32   that breaks things sometimes.

00:14:33   And then secondly, you have an issue where whatever phrase you use to do overcast Siri

00:14:39   shortcuts, it's very hard to come up with phrases that that Siri will not try to be

00:14:45   smart about and take back the meaning of the shortcut to mean its own thing.

00:14:49   So for instance, if you have a play shortcut for overcast and you call it "play in overcast,"

00:14:56   that is very unlikely to work reliably because Siri sees "play overcast" or whatever,

00:15:02   and it'll start looking for an artist in Apple Music named overcast.

00:15:08   It tries to be smart when it sees phrasing that it thinks it recognizes.

00:15:12   And that's why with all my example phrases in the SiriKit dialog, I prefix them all with

00:15:17   overcast.

00:15:18   So I suggest you use phrasing like "overcast play."

00:15:21   And the reason I do that is because when you begin the command with overcast, then you

00:15:26   can use a phrase that Siri would normally pick up as a media phrase, and it seems not

00:15:30   to do it.

00:15:31   It seems to be able to keep those things separate if the first word is overcast.

00:15:35   But it's so complicated, and it's hard to make a lot of it reliable.

00:15:39   I'll try addressing the application.

00:15:41   I figured just because it was the current audio session that I was trying to essentially

00:15:44   do the verbal equivalent of just basic commands available to any playing audio stream, but

00:15:49   I'll try issuing application commands.

00:15:53   That should work.

00:15:54   In theory, that should even work better, because if you issue a command that it interprets

00:15:58   the same way it would have interpreted you tapping the buttons in Control Center, that's

00:16:01   a whole different mechanism of how it sends that command to the app that is way more reliable.

00:16:06   But I don't know what to say to make that happen.

00:16:09   Every combination of words I've tried has resulted in dead silence from the AirPods.

00:16:14   I mean, normally you should be able to say things like "skip forward 30 seconds."

00:16:18   That should work just fine.

00:16:20   It does not.

00:16:21   Casey, you should try that when you get a chance, because you've got the new.

00:16:25   I don't know if it's different on the new or the old ones.

00:16:27   The voice activation is the only difference.

00:16:28   The thing is, I never used Hadingus on the tapping.

00:16:33   The taps were always for play/pause on my AirPod 1s.

00:16:38   On the AirPod 2s, I just get the Hadingus for free, so I've been trying to use it, and

00:16:42   it doesn't want to listen to me.

00:16:45   I do find that normally if I say "Hadingus, turn off Michaela lamp" or something like

00:16:50   that, it does take annoyingly long to come back to playing, but it does usually start

00:16:57   playing again.

00:16:58   And typically, if I'm listening to something, it would be overcast.

00:17:02   Overcast on the phone, the AirPods are paired to the phone, and I say "Hadingus, turn off

00:17:06   Michaela lamp."

00:17:07   Wait, wait, okay.

00:17:09   Wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:17:12   Oh, okay, and there's my podcast again.

00:17:16   But I will say that there are definitely times that I have done the Hadingus dance and nothing

00:17:22   has happened afterwards.

00:17:24   It will typically do whatever request I've asked for, but then it will never restart

00:17:30   audio again.

00:17:31   Yeah, my audio never restarts when I issue one of those commands.

00:17:34   It just goes silent, and it still knows the playback position because I go "Hadingus

00:17:38   play" and it starts playing right where it left off.

00:17:40   So if you say "Skip forward 30 seconds," not only does it not skip forward 30 seconds,

00:17:45   but it also doesn't resume playback?

00:17:47   Nope.

00:17:48   Hm, that's really weird.

00:17:49   It is.

00:17:50   It sounds like, the way you're describing it, and Casey, you too, the way you're describing

00:17:53   it takes a long time to resume, that sounds like just bad interruption handling by Siri.

00:17:58   But I don't, and that's unfortunately, that's probably out of any apps control.

00:18:03   But it's so hard to work with this stuff.

00:18:07   The other problem, I frequently have problems with Siri that I can't use Hadingus when I'm

00:18:12   playing a podcast out loud because, or any Siri, rather.

00:18:19   When I hit the button to start Siri, or if I say "Hey, Dingus," but even if I hit the

00:18:23   hardware button on the side of the phone, it will pick up, it'll pause the podcast,

00:18:28   but it will insert as my query the last few words that were spoken in the podcast.

00:18:32   Yes!

00:18:33   Oh my gosh, I keep meaning to bring this up on the show.

00:18:35   If you cut all the rest of the crap we've been talking about, that's fine.

00:18:38   But you gotta leave this in, because this has been driving me insane.

00:18:42   That is exactly the behavior I've seen.

00:18:44   So a lot of times, I'll mash down on whatever the technical term is for the right side button

00:18:47   on the phone, the sleep/wake button, whatever it is.

00:18:49   I'll mash down on it, and just like you said, the podcast pauses pretty darn quick, and

00:18:54   before it appears that Siri is ready to listen.

00:18:59   But the first three to five words of my request to the Dingus are the last three to five words

00:19:05   I've heard on the podcast.

00:19:07   And it is driving me insane.

00:19:09   Like I understand what they're doing and it does make sense, but oh my word, it is

00:19:13   so frustrating.

00:19:14   - Yeah, and I have no idea how to fix that.

00:19:15   I mean, as far as I know, 'cause I can't, when the audio interruption happens, you don't

00:19:22   get notified in advance, and you have no control over it.

00:19:25   It interrupts your session, and it just says, "Hey, you're interrupted now, here's why."

00:19:29   And it cuts off your audio at whatever time it wants to, and that's it.

00:19:33   You lose complete control at that point.

00:19:35   So I can't cut off the audio at a different time.

00:19:39   I'm not cutting it off late.

00:19:42   It's totally out of my control, so that's just iOS being iOS.

00:19:45   - Yeah, the OS should be able to do this, 'cause the OS knows what sound it's putting

00:19:48   out through the audio system, and if the sound that it was putting out is suspiciously similar

00:19:52   to the sound that it was, I understand the preload buffer, like you wanna start listening

00:19:56   before, have a little bit of the buffer of the thing that's always listening, it makes

00:20:00   sense.

00:20:01   But it should know.

00:20:02   I just put out that audio around about the same time I was hearing it, so filter that

00:20:06   out, kind of like echo cancellation and all sorts of other things.

00:20:09   That would help it not be triggered by itself.

00:20:13   It probably wouldn't help with ambient noise, like if you're playing the podcast on another

00:20:16   speaker, there's only so much you can do.

00:20:18   - But the device itself tricks itself via its own speaker.

00:20:22   - Yeah, the internal speaker, yeah.

00:20:24   It was super clever, it could maybe even do it if it was air playing.

00:20:28   Obviously, if the audio is from an entirely different source, what can you do?

00:20:31   But it's coming from the phone in any fashion, it would be nice.

00:20:34   That's another feature they can add to iOS 13.

00:20:38   - We should probably actually start the show and do a little bit of follow-up.

00:20:41   And Anonymous writes, "Yes, AirPower was always going to be a 'place the device anywhere'

00:20:48   product, with multiple overlapping coils.

00:20:50   Early in the concept phase, it was going to be a much larger mat with a squared-off footprint

00:20:53   and something like three times as many coils, but that was scrapped pretty quickly because

00:20:57   using that much copper would have meant an astronomical retail price.

00:21:00   AirPower by proxy had zero involvement with the version of AirPower shown off on stage

00:21:04   in the 2017 iPhone event."

00:21:07   - So in our continued AirPower news, I love that we're still talking about this, I love

00:21:12   that we're still getting updates about this.

00:21:14   I wonder, when do you think is the last time that we will get tip info about AirPower?

00:21:21   Do you think it's already happened, where it's basically now, or do you think it's a

00:21:26   week out, a month out, a year out?

00:21:29   How long do you think the AirPower tipster train will go?

00:21:31   - I think this is probably the end of it, because we have like the, we started off with

00:21:34   the one story and this is refuting everything about that story, so I feel like they both

00:21:39   balance each other out and it'll be a long time before the actual truth, like you said,

00:21:43   is revealed because someone involved in the project writes about it in their memoirs or

00:21:47   something.

00:21:48   - I'm looking forward to that time, though.

00:21:49   - I'm not.

00:21:50   I just couldn't possibly care less.

00:21:53   - I don't know, I think it'll be fascinating seeing or hearing about what happened, although

00:21:57   to be honest, the reality of the situation is it's probably like every other botched

00:22:02   corporate product.

00:22:03   Oh, hey, there's this great idea, let's try it.

00:22:05   Oh, it didn't work, okay, let's kill it.

00:22:07   Okay, good talk.

00:22:08   - Yeah, probably.

00:22:09   - That's all right.

00:22:10   All right, iFred writes, "The Netflix AirPlay thing is likely driven by a royalty fee where

00:22:15   second screens and primary screens have different rights.

00:22:18   This isn't something that's going to be shared publicly because it just stirs stuff up.

00:22:22   I'm a video engineer in this field.

00:22:24   From player data and manifests being served, it still looks like you're just playing a

00:22:28   profile for iOS."

00:22:29   I think that Fred's point here is that you can't really tell what screen you're beaming

00:22:34   to if you're on the physical device's screen or if you're AirPlaying when you're the Netflix

00:22:39   app.

00:22:40   "It still looks like a nice protected video play pen, and you can say that it's still

00:22:44   a second screen experience.

00:22:46   Big corporation cable killed Chromecast support for a similar reason."

00:22:51   - It's so weird to think of like, when they say second screen, what they mean is like

00:22:54   the primary screen of the device the Netflix app is on, but it's a second screen because

00:22:58   it's not a television, right?

00:23:00   The lingo is so television-centric.

00:23:02   Television is the first screen, any other screen is the second screen.

00:23:04   Even if the Netflix app itself is running on the phone, the phone screen is a second

00:23:08   screen.

00:23:09   - Moving on, Mark Plus writes, "There's no quality loss when beaming full screen videos

00:23:14   via AirPlay.

00:23:15   The raw MP4 data is sent directly.

00:23:17   Recompression only happens when using AirPlay screen mirroring and no full screen videos

00:23:20   playing.

00:23:21   Can you play AirPlay 1 as well?"

00:23:22   Because that was not my understanding, but I could be wrong.

00:23:25   - I mean, I suppose it depends on when you're AirPlaying 2.

00:23:28   Maybe there's something in the specs.

00:23:29   Obviously, it can't send the raw data stream if the raw data stream is in a codec or even

00:23:35   in just a profile that the receiving device can't decode.

00:23:38   So there would have to be recompression, but presumably that doesn't happen with the Netflix

00:23:42   app.

00:23:43   Presumably, it intentionally makes sure that it sends data that can go straight through

00:23:45   to any existing AirPlay device without recompression.

00:23:49   Finally, Jon, tell us about your fidget spinner.

00:23:51   - You're talking about the terrible clicking noise that some people's new AirPod cases

00:23:57   make.

00:23:58   I've heard from a few people who say their case doesn't make that sound, but I've heard

00:24:00   from many more that it does.

00:24:01   Anyway, I said they should have turned the case into a fidget spinner because it's kind

00:24:06   of good for that.

00:24:07   Lo and behold, someone actually has a product that turns your AirPod case into a fidget

00:24:12   spinner.

00:24:14   It's sort of like a sleeve that your AirPod case goes into with a little thing on the

00:24:18   front and back for you to put your fingers on, a little ball bearings in it, so you just

00:24:21   sort of pinch the case between your fingers and spin it.

00:24:25   And there you go, AirPods as fidget spinner.

00:24:28   - That's the gods intended.

00:24:29   - This is a real product.

00:24:30   It's $25 that you can buy right now.

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00:26:32   Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all of my servers and sponsoring our show.

00:26:40   I would like to take a moment—I don't have a good link in the show notes as I sit here

00:26:44   right now, but perhaps we can find one.

00:26:47   I'd like to take a moment to comment on the recent goings-on with the photo of the

00:26:55   black hole and the lead architect—I don't think that's the correct title, but for

00:27:01   lack of a better one, lead architect behind this—was a woman named Katie Bowman.

00:27:05   Shortly after this momentous astrological thing—not astrological, that's very wrong,

00:27:13   hello—this moment momentous moment in astronomy happened, it seems like all the idiot boys

00:27:21   had to come out of the woodwork to try to stir things up.

00:27:24   And I don't know that we need to go into it that much, but I find it extraordinarily

00:27:29   disappointing and gross and tacky and unnecessary and disgusting that a bunch of very insecure

00:27:37   boys decided to go trolling through various GitHub repos to try to prove that Katie Bowman

00:27:43   was taking credit for other people, particularly men's work.

00:27:47   And as far as I understand, some of the co-authors of the code and the different papers that

00:27:54   this work was based on, many of whom were men, have come out to say, "No, no, no, this

00:27:59   is her work.

00:28:00   This is really her."

00:28:01   And I just wanted to publicly say that I think this is bullsh*t, and it really makes me sad.

00:28:07   I admit I have not been following this incredibly closely.

00:28:10   I just have the high-level overview that I think everyone knows at this point.

00:28:15   But the reality is that men have a really hard time when women get credit for anything

00:28:21   because we are so used to getting all the credit ourselves.

00:28:25   When you've been the dominant class or whatever for so long, sharing power or credit with

00:28:35   anyone else feels like an attack on you because it was just you for so long that got all the

00:28:42   credit.

00:28:43   And so if anything starts moving towards equality or diversity, it's easy for a lot of people

00:28:51   who were in the dominant class to feel like it's an attack on them and to get super defensive

00:28:57   and try to discredit or do other horrible things.

00:29:01   If you feel threatened by being in the dominant class and slowly losing that dominance towards

00:29:09   something that's more equal and more diverse, that's a problem with you, not a problem with

00:29:15   the results in the system.

00:29:18   And I'm sorry, I'm probably butchering this because I'm not an expert in discussing things

00:29:21   like this, so I apologize if I'm butchering this, but basically anyone who feels threatened

00:29:28   or angry about a woman getting credit for an important scientific achievement, you have

00:29:34   to check yourself there.

00:29:37   And secondly, I think it's worth pointing out that the reality of any kind of large

00:29:42   project, whether it's a product being developed or a scientific achievement like this, is

00:29:49   that there's a team of people who work on it.

00:29:51   There's lots of people involved usually, but we still tend to give a lot of credit to the

00:29:57   leaders.

00:29:58   Like, Steve Jobs didn't make the iPhone.

00:30:01   He didn't invent it.

00:30:02   He didn't manufacture it.

00:30:04   He didn't write any of the software on it.

00:30:07   He probably designed none of the hardware on it.

00:30:10   But he gets a lot of credit for it because he was the leader of the company that made

00:30:15   it at the time they made it.

00:30:17   And forgive me, I'm not familiar with too many of the details of the various people's

00:30:21   roles in this and what title or role Katie Bowman had, but it's totally in line with

00:30:26   how people get credit for things, usually in our society, to say that this is hers,

00:30:32   that this was her project, that she led this and they did this as a result of her.

00:30:39   Like, this seems like the way we credit things in our society.

00:30:43   You have to really bend over backwards to suggest that she shouldn't get credit for

00:30:47   this.

00:30:48   I think if someone was listening to this and who's on the other side of it would probably

00:30:53   find everything you said unconvincing because they would say, "You're misunderstanding.

00:30:58   That's not the situation at all.

00:30:59   I'm not trying to discredit somebody.

00:31:01   I'm not being a meanie.

00:31:02   I'm not insecure.

00:31:03   I'm not threatened.

00:31:05   Basically all I'm doing is two things.

00:31:10   One, I am being vigilant and skeptical against a trend I see in the world, which is that

00:31:17   everyone is looking for a chance to raise up historically marginalized people and use

00:31:24   them as examples of good.

00:31:25   And I, as the rational skeptic internet person dude, obviously, I'm watching for that because

00:31:34   I think it would be very unfair to take somebody and hold them up as a great champion or someone

00:31:41   who's very successful just because they're from a traditionally marginalized group.

00:31:48   So anytime we see that happen, "Oh, look at this.

00:31:51   Someone is getting credit for a scientific discovery or achievement and it's not a white

00:31:57   guy," we should check this out because we know how all those people out there are always

00:32:01   just trying to champion anybody they see from a marginalized group.

00:32:07   So let's check this out.

00:32:08   We're not being mean or insecure.

00:32:09   We just got to check it out because it just seems unfair to, you know, people should get

00:32:14   credit when it's due to them, but when it's not due, I, the internet skeptic, I'm going

00:32:18   to make sure that I'm on the prowl for that.

00:32:21   And that happened a lot in the typical places you would imagine, Hacker News or Reddit or

00:32:25   whatever.

00:32:26   And during that process, the self-anointed, extremely non-experts in the field have examined

00:32:35   it and aside from the super duper trolls have basically come down, "Okay, we looked into

00:32:40   it.

00:32:41   We checked it out."

00:32:42   And despite some early suspicions about some things and some confusion about lines of code

00:32:46   when people check model files into GitHub and it ends up with almost a million lines

00:32:51   of code and we're confused by that because we don't know anything.

00:32:53   So we, you know, give us some credit, like self-appointed experts.

00:32:58   We sorted out and we eventually determined that, yes, she should get credit.

00:33:02   She was like her algorithm and her idea and she led the team and did all this important

00:33:07   work and it's checked it out and everything's fine.

00:33:11   And those people would say, "This is the system working as designed."

00:33:14   We here as a self-appointed experts are ensuring that no one gets credit when they shouldn't

00:33:22   because that actually would be counter to the idea of raising up marginalized people.

00:33:26   So we want to make sure if they're getting credit, they should.

00:33:29   And we looked into it and we checked it out and we had a discussion, a very rational discussion,

00:33:33   and we debated.

00:33:34   And aside from all the people who were currently down voting, who are super duper jerks and

00:33:37   misogynists, we determined it looks good.

00:33:41   She should get credit.

00:33:42   Everything's great.

00:33:43   And if you have some kind of super tunnel vision and you just look at it from that lens,

00:33:48   you're like, "Show me where something was wrong there."

00:33:51   We were on the internet and we were just having a discussion about a thing and there were

00:33:55   some doubts and we looked into it and we used our awesome rational membranes and we came

00:34:00   to what we think is the truth.

00:34:02   And it turns out in this case, the truth is what everyone wanted it to be and it's a feel

00:34:05   good story and it's great.

00:34:07   Everything's cool, right?

00:34:09   And to the people who either participated that or can identify with that or hear that

00:34:14   and think, "I mean, that makes sense.

00:34:16   How can you argue with that?

00:34:17   Show me the lie.

00:34:20   What's wrong about that?"

00:34:22   It's the tunnel vision.

00:34:23   You're missing the larger context.

00:34:24   And the larger context is that every time anyone from a marginalized group gets outside

00:34:31   of their pen or raises above their station or becomes slightly less marginalized for

00:34:38   even a moment, they are accosted by the entire universe of the status quo saying, "Whoa,

00:34:44   whoa, whoa.

00:34:45   Hang on a second.

00:34:46   Let's examine everything about this.

00:34:48   Can we get a DNA sample?

00:34:49   Is that really you?

00:34:50   Can we talk to everyone you ever knew?

00:34:52   Did you steal a candy bar when you were in fifth grade because I might have to put you

00:34:55   like…"

00:34:56   And that just doesn't happen when it's a white guy.

00:34:58   When it's a white guy, no one goes and examines everything about their life and interrogates

00:35:02   to make sure that they did everything they said.

00:35:04   And that is the lesson here, not the specifics of this story, but the idea like put yourself

00:35:10   in the shoes of a marginalized person and see what it would be like when you know, even

00:35:16   if you have any kind of 100% deserved success, the main story will be everyone else trying

00:35:21   to, even the best people, "make sure that you really deserve it."

00:35:25   And that just doesn't happen to other people.

00:35:28   And they would say, "Well, no, I do that for everybody.

00:35:31   Every scientific paper, I just make sure that all the male credits get… they don't.

00:35:34   It's not the way… writ large, it's not the way the world works."

00:35:37   That is the lesson here that you can't just look at the single case and say everyone,

00:35:42   the system worked the way it was supposed to and we're just doing our job.

00:35:44   You have to look at the larger context.

00:35:46   You have to put yourself in the shoes of one of those people and say, "What is it like

00:35:49   when anytime anything goes well for you, the main thing you have to deal with is attacks

00:35:56   and doubts systemically because of who you are?"

00:36:01   And that's the important part and that's the part that you'll never be able to argue

00:36:04   with because you're trying to tell the people like, I don't know what the analogies are,

00:36:08   trying to explain water to a fish or whatever that it's just the world they're living

00:36:12   in, it's the world everyone's swimming in, especially if they can't relate or don't

00:36:16   have enough experience being empathetic to that position or haven't heard enough, like

00:36:22   haven't listened to enough people explaining, "Here's what it's like to be me."

00:36:26   Like I don't know how many ways we can get it like the idea of empathy but like it's

00:36:29   a difficult… you can't explain empathy to someone.

00:36:32   You can intellectually but you have to… you know, it's not the point of empathy.

00:36:37   You have to feel it to make the connection to say, "What would it be like to be a woman

00:36:41   in science?"

00:36:42   Right?

00:36:43   What does that entail and how is it different than being a man in science?

00:36:47   And you can't look at one single case and say, "Well, everything there was justified."

00:36:50   You have to look at the big picture and the big context and people as a group and understand

00:36:56   the injustice and it's a difficult concept to get across and I feel like sometimes it

00:36:59   gets lost in any specific case of arguing over the details of like, you know, GitHub

00:37:05   source code and stuff.

00:37:06   It's like, "Why are we even that far down the rabbit hole here?

00:37:10   Think about why.

00:37:11   Why is this even happening?"

00:37:12   Anyway, that's my angle on this whole story.

00:37:15   John, I freaking love you.

00:37:18   Thank you for that.

00:37:19   No, and I really mean it.

00:37:20   I hope I don't sound sarcastic but especially when it comes to this sort of thing, you do

00:37:24   such a good job of taking my jumbled thoughts and making them make sense so I appreciate

00:37:31   it.

00:37:32   Yeah, I'm really glad that you are here to speak for us.

00:37:33   Yeah, because Marco and I are trying real hard.

00:37:36   We really, really are.

00:37:37   It doesn't mean we're succeeding but we're trying.

00:37:39   No, I'm afraid to talk about a lot of stuff like this because I'm not good at it and I

00:37:45   think if I talk about these kind of things poorly, I'm probably making things worse.

00:37:48   Well, I mean, I think both of you and a lot of people like myself included, the first

00:37:54   instinct is often like you feel the injustice.

00:37:57   You have enough empathy to understand like this seemed like I can imagine what it might

00:38:02   be like and this feels unjust and part of it is tribal and teams and if you are sort

00:38:07   of for more equality for women or any other marginalized group, if you're for that, you

00:38:13   instinctively root for that "that side."

00:38:16   You can get caught up in that part of it and in general, if you see someone being attacked

00:38:20   and you feel like that as far as you're concerned, you probably think it's unjust, you feel bad

00:38:24   and you rebel against the injustice and you get mad about it and you get worked up or

00:38:29   whatever.

00:38:31   The fighting the battles from that perspective like my side versus your side and us arguing

00:38:38   or whatever can lead to the situation where everything gets settled as it happened, as

00:38:44   it mostly got settled in these threads that were not in the, you know, that are in the

00:38:48   more reasonable parts of the internet.

00:38:50   And everyone thinks, "Okay, well, we worked it out.

00:38:53   The system works."

00:38:54   And I feel like especially if the answer turns out like your side is the one on the right,

00:39:00   like, "Oh, it's great," you know, and if you still disagree, you're a bad person, but all

00:39:03   the other people agree.

00:39:05   The trap is thinking that that is the system working and not understanding that that whole

00:39:10   debate is, regardless of how it turned out, even, you know, regardless of just the fact

00:39:15   that we're discussing this at all, it's like all the things with like repeating lies.

00:39:19   Like I'm hesitant to even have this topic in the show just because discussing it at

00:39:23   all gives credence to the idea that a woman was getting credit when she shouldn't, even

00:39:28   though that is not the case, you know, studies have shown if you just repeat a lie over and

00:39:31   over again, it gains more weight in people's minds despite how, you know, how wrong it

00:39:36   might be, despite everyone agreeing that it's wrong because they heard it so many times

00:39:40   like it's wrong, but it's probably a thing that probably happens a lot and it could have

00:39:44   happened in this case.

00:39:45   It just happened to not happen.

00:39:47   And that's the worst part about it.

00:39:48   That is the fact that it happens and that's the systemic oppression that is difficult

00:39:55   to explain but is probably more significant than the details of any individual case.

00:39:59   Yeah.

00:40:00   Preach.

00:40:01   No, I just wanted to call it out because I really think it's too bad and I'm glad that

00:40:07   Jon you were there to clean up our mess.

00:40:09   Yes, thank you.

00:40:10   What we should really talk about is all the videos I saw explaining how cool, like why

00:40:16   the image looks the way it does.

00:40:17   I tweeted it.

00:40:18   We should put it in the link in the show notes.

00:40:19   There was Veritasium, I think.

00:40:21   Yeah.

00:40:22   I mean, when Interstellar came out, the same stuff went around like, "Here's why the black

00:40:27   hole in Interstellar looked the way it does."

00:40:28   Well, I didn't see it.

00:40:30   We consulted scientists and they told us the way it looks.

00:40:33   It's all true and they were explainer stories back then.

00:40:37   It's all just come back around now.

00:40:39   I thought that Veritasium thing with the model was a pretty concise way to explain it that

00:40:45   had the advantage of glossing over the details that aren't that important.

00:40:49   You basically just want to know why does it look like a black spot with a fuzzy ring around

00:40:54   in this particular – why does it look anything like that?

00:40:56   You don't want to know the super-duper details of why the Interstellar one looks exactly

00:41:02   like that or the Interstellar one leaves out some details as well for cinematic reasons.

00:41:07   But we will put that link in the show notes to get something positive out of this if you're

00:41:10   wondering why the hell does a picture of the black hole look like a coffee stain in the

00:41:15   sky.

00:41:18   We have a video that will answer that question and the answer is cool.

00:41:20   The answer is not, "Oh, it's just black but with stuff around it."

00:41:24   The answer is cool because black holes are cool.

00:41:26   Also, if your coffee is that color, you're doing something wrong.

00:41:29   It's not actually color.

00:41:30   It's a false color image, Marco.

00:41:32   They just assign colors to levels of – it's fine.

00:41:37   You can make it any color you want.

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00:42:51   Apple and Qualcomm have settled and within hours of that, Intel has decided, "Eh, maybe

00:42:57   this 5G thing ain't for us after all."

00:42:59   I like this story because it's so neat.

00:43:03   We know that Apple and Qualcomm have been not friends for a long time.

00:43:10   Qualcomm sells the modem chips, let your phone talk to the cell network and it's a super

00:43:15   important part of your phone.

00:43:18   Qualcomm has tons of patents.

00:43:19   There's all sorts of lawsuits about Qualcomm not licensing those patents to people for

00:43:23   reasonable rates and Apple not wanting to pay license fees because they felt like they

00:43:26   were already paid by the manufacturers and blah, blah, blah.

00:43:29   Big legal battle.

00:43:30   They're super not friends in the last round of iPhones and maybe a little bit of the one

00:43:34   before.

00:43:35   Apple has been getting its cell modems from Intel while it fights with Qualcomm and as

00:43:41   we've said many times in this program, Apple's solution to this problem long term is screw

00:43:46   you Qualcomm and Intel will make our own modem chips but that takes a long time.

00:43:50   Apple is still pursuing that strategy but in the meantime, it's got phones to make and

00:43:55   phones to sell.

00:43:57   I haven't really been paying attention to this battle.

00:43:59   I didn't know the first day of the court case between Apple and Qualcomm happened and it's

00:44:03   a separate thing where Qualcomm is being in a thing with the FTC about licensing.

00:44:09   Anyway, the situation came to a head for a variety of reasons.

00:44:14   One, Intel is having, as we all know, having problems getting its 10-nanometer process

00:44:20   online still.

00:44:21   That's why we have 14-nanometer chips in our Macs and it's kind of important if Intel wants

00:44:27   to continue to make these cell radio chips for phones, it has to be able to match the

00:44:34   process that Qualcomm is going to be able to fab on with Taiwan Semiconductor or whatever.

00:44:40   And Intel has seemed a little bit shaky about the idea of whether it really wanted to be

00:44:45   in this business because it's kind of compared to giant server chips where it's the dominant

00:44:49   force.

00:44:50   It's a lower margin business and Apple is a difficult customer and all that stuff.

00:44:54   So the way it came to a head is, and I'm not sure about the order of events at the time

00:44:58   we're recording this, there's still some speculation, but I assume the order of events is Apple's

00:45:04   hanging out there.

00:45:05   It's like Apple's fighting with Qualcomm and Intel is supposed to be making its cell radio

00:45:08   chips.

00:45:09   In particular, Intel was going to make the 5G radio chips for not this phone maybe, but

00:45:14   the next phone.

00:45:15   And Intel is not doing too well and Apple is like, "We're kind of between a rock and

00:45:19   a hard place.

00:45:20   We're making our own chips but we're not going to be ready in time for the next iPhone."

00:45:23   Intel is making chips but they might not be ready because we know they're having trouble

00:45:26   with their process and we don't want them to fathom it on the bigger process and Qualcomm

00:45:29   we're in a fight with.

00:45:30   So what do we do?

00:45:32   And sort of simultaneously, Intel says, "You know what?

00:45:37   Forget it.

00:45:38   We're not making 5G cell modems."

00:45:40   Apple settles with Qualcomm basically at, you know, not that they say Apple lost, but they

00:45:44   basically lost.

00:45:45   Apple settles with Qualcomm, makes nice with Qualcomm and does like a cross-licensing agreement

00:45:48   which they need to be able to make their own cell modem chips because Qualcomm has all

00:45:52   the important patents and patents are evil, but also like agrees to pay them some huge

00:45:57   amount of money that they supposedly owed them.

00:46:00   Because what choices do they have?

00:46:01   Once Intel either can't or doesn't want to make 5G, you know, cell modems in time for

00:46:08   Apple, Apple has to make up with Qualcomm because otherwise it would have no cell radios in

00:46:12   its phones and that's really bad.

00:46:14   So this is all nice and neat where Apple basically loses.

00:46:19   Intel also kind of loses, I feel like, and Qualcomm also kind of loses because, you know,

00:46:25   so Apple loses because they end up paying Qualcomm when they didn't want to and their

00:46:28   whole idea of playing Intel against Qualcomm didn't work out.

00:46:31   Intel loses, I think, because this is another situation where Intel says, "We like our

00:46:35   high margin businesses better."

00:46:37   And Intel apparently can't get its act together to get its, you know, process shrink online

00:46:42   and they just, you know, remove the risk.

00:46:44   Like let's not deal with that whole Apple thing because Apple is a demanding customer

00:46:47   and we're not even sure we want to be in this business and whatever, right?

00:46:51   It's not a strength move for Intel.

00:46:53   If Intel was super duper awesome and had the best fab like it did many years ago, it would

00:46:57   be able to serve Apple and sell tons of chip and it would have been good for them.

00:47:01   So they lose.

00:47:02   And then Qualcomm loses because regardless of the deal with Apple, they know that Apple

00:47:06   is making its own cell radio chips and they just gave Apple the license, the patent licenses

00:47:10   that it needs so that in a year or two or three, Apple is not going to be buying chips

00:47:14   from Qualcomm anymore either.

00:47:16   So everybody loses in giant corporation, you know, courtroom, bingo, whatever the hell

00:47:22   we're playing here.

00:47:23   What do you guys think of the order of operations was here?

00:47:26   Was it Intel voluntarily bailed or Apple knew that Intel wasn't going to be able to make

00:47:31   it and bailed on Intel?

00:47:33   It's kind of like who gets to announce first because I can imagine Apple in their boardroom

00:47:36   going, "Who here is confident that Intel is actually going to be able to give us cell

00:47:41   radio chips, 5G radio chips?"

00:47:42   And no one raises their hand.

00:47:44   Like maybe we should just tell Intel, "You know what?

00:47:46   Forget it and we should settle with Qualcomm."

00:47:49   And before they even tell Intel that, Intel gets a wind of it and says, "You know what?

00:47:52   No, we're out of the 5G business.

00:47:54   We weren't going to make you things anyway.

00:47:55   Forget it."

00:47:56   You can't fire me.

00:47:57   I quit.

00:47:58   Yeah.

00:47:59   Like I have no idea what the order is there.

00:48:00   And then Apple's settling with Qualcomm.

00:48:01   Qualcomm's lawyers would be more than happy to say, "So Apple, here you're going to settle.

00:48:04   Well, here's how much money we want and we'll do that cross-patent licensing."

00:48:08   Like depending on when those things happen, the negotiation between Apple and Qualcomm

00:48:13   could have been more or less in Apple's favor.

00:48:17   But I can't tell exactly what order things happened here.

00:48:20   But I really do feel like that everybody loses in some way.

00:48:23   Yeah.

00:48:24   If I were to wager a guess, I would say that Intel knew it was screwed.

00:48:29   I don't know if that got messaged to Apple or not, but I think Intel knew it was screwed.

00:48:35   Apple thus knew it was screwed.

00:48:37   And I bet you Apple said to Intel, "Eh, never mind on this whole thing."

00:48:41   And then Intel said, "Oh, thank God.

00:48:43   I mean, I mean, I mean, oh, that's too bad.

00:48:46   Okay."

00:48:47   Yeah.

00:48:48   This, the whole Qualcomm/Apple thing, this is two big companies that were fighting over

00:48:55   a lot of money.

00:48:56   I honestly, I don't think Apple had a leg to stand on.

00:48:59   I'm not a legal expert, but it sure seemed like Apple just decided, "We don't want to

00:49:03   pay this anymore.

00:49:04   So we're just going to stop and you can sue us and we'll see what happens."

00:49:08   Like that's, that's kind of how it seemed.

00:49:10   And we were all willing to kind of forgive that or the other way because anyone who looks

00:49:15   into this at all learns quickly that Qualcomm is like not a great actor most of the time.

00:49:21   Like it is, it, it really uses like horrible, like predatory licensing and, and pricing

00:49:27   and they're, they're really a big bully.

00:49:29   So.

00:49:30   Well, there was the other case involving like the FTC of saying, it's not just like they're

00:49:34   being mean.

00:49:35   Like legally, Qualcomm is supposed to allow people to use its patents for some reasonable

00:49:40   fee or whatever.

00:49:41   Like there's some, like that, that case is ongoing, right?

00:49:43   So Apple's bet was, I bet we can just not pay them because they're going to be so screwed

00:49:47   because we know they're in the wrong with this FTC thing.

00:49:49   And I bet they're going to lose that case.

00:49:51   And let's, our risk is let's just not pay them because they'll be distracted by that

00:49:55   thing.

00:49:56   And maybe if they lose that case, like maybe we'll get, you know, and the gamble didn't

00:49:59   pay off for Apple.

00:50:00   They like either the case took, went, took slowly or maybe Qualcomm is going to win that

00:50:04   case after all or whatever.

00:50:05   Like, yeah.

00:50:06   So it was kind of a, it's a thing companies do all the time.

00:50:08   A game of chicken of like, we have a lot of money and a lot of lawyers, so let's just

00:50:13   not do a thing and you know, come at me.

00:50:15   Right.

00:50:16   And it could have been that at the time he worked out differently, that Qualcomm might

00:50:19   have been in hot water with this patent thing and been willing to overlook Apple doing that

00:50:24   in exchange for some sort of deal that for Apple to continue buying it, selling it or

00:50:29   whatever.

00:50:30   Anyway, like, yeah, both Apple and Qualcomm were being big corporate jerks, but I feel

00:50:34   like Qualcomm had sort of the original sin, well the patent system is the original sin,

00:50:39   like of having these patents and hoarding them and charging a lot for them in a way

00:50:46   that made everybody unhappy and that is probably illegal according to the letter of the already

00:50:50   absurd patent law.

00:50:51   Right.

00:50:52   And then after that, it's like, well, Apple gets super cranky about that and then it does

00:50:55   something that is probably also illegal.

00:50:57   And then, you know, he, you know, he, he started it as not a great argument legally speaking,

00:51:01   but it's the reason, it's the reason I think that Qualcomm is the worst actor here.

00:51:08   Yeah.

00:51:09   I mean, yeah, like I, I honestly didn't like the way Apple handled this.

00:51:12   Like it sure, it sure seemed like Apple was cutting off their money in order to hurt them

00:51:19   financially like fatally.

00:51:21   Like I think Apple decided to stop paying them hoping that, that not only would they

00:51:25   lose so much revenue that it would, that they would be forced to negotiate, but that they

00:51:30   would, that their stock price, cause they're a public company, that their stock price would

00:51:34   go down so much that like, I think Apple was basically trying to strangle Qualcomm out

00:51:37   of existence by just not paying something that by, by like their contract, like they

00:51:42   clearly owed the money and Apple decided we're going to stop paying and see what happens.

00:51:46   And that's, that's kind of a big bully move right there.

00:51:49   So I don't like the way Apple did this.

00:51:52   Even though I don't like Qualcomm either.

00:51:54   I think Apple went about this in a really a very like big bully kind of way.

00:51:58   But regardless, it seems to be over now for the time being because Intel can't get their

00:52:04   crap together and that's not really news to anybody.

00:52:10   Long term I think, I think Apple will get their cell modem team going quickly enough

00:52:16   that I think maybe in five years they won't need to deal with Qualcomm anymore.

00:52:21   But we're not there yet.

00:52:22   I don't know how long their patent license is, but I feel like with, with Qualcomm, like

00:52:26   it's shortsighted to take the giant bucket of money that Apple gave them.

00:52:30   I mean, I guess Qualcomm has no choice.

00:52:32   Like the point is they have to license them and so now they have, but now that gives Apple

00:52:36   the keys to be able to be the master of its own destiny and do its own chips.

00:52:40   I feel like Apple's one regret is probably we should have started that make your own

00:52:43   modem thing two years ago, like two years earlier than we did.

00:52:46   Not two years ago.

00:52:47   Right.

00:52:48   Whenever they started it, starting it two years before that would have saved them from

00:52:51   this whole mess.

00:52:52   And Intel, I'd love to talk to Intel and say, guys, like I know you're having trouble with

00:52:55   your process thing, but like this whole idea of let's stick to the high margin multi-core

00:53:00   like 58 core, $30,000 server thing because it's a better business.

00:53:05   Like it kind of is, but how many times are you going to skip out on making the cheap

00:53:11   consumer commodity part in large numbers because it's a low margin business?

00:53:16   Like that's, you can do that when, you know, if you're coming from a position of strength,

00:53:20   but you're not anymore.

00:53:21   Like I'm not saying they have to take every single deal, but Intel has a history of like

00:53:25   they passed on making the iPhone CPU.

00:53:27   I'm sure they've passed on making stuff for game consoles, like all sorts of businesses

00:53:32   that don't look as good to them as their high margin multi-core X 86 CPU businesses.

00:53:39   It's true.

00:53:40   They're not as good businesses, but the volumes are high.

00:53:42   And if you skip all of those, eventually the world just leaves you behind.

00:53:45   And every device that matters is using something other than an Intel chip.

00:53:48   And I'm sure they have, you know, better reasons than I can think of right now, but it just

00:53:54   seems like not a great thing for Intel to be like constantly retrenching because eventually

00:53:58   the only thing they're going to sell are the equivalent of mainframe chips and there's

00:54:01   not going to be a lot of them.

00:54:03   Well, I think ultimately one reason that they might've had to retreat on this one is like

00:54:09   Intel obviously has two big problems in this market.

00:54:12   Number one is they can't get their crap together to even ship their existing products.

00:54:16   Like, like they can't even keep their mainstream like product line going at a healthy rate

00:54:23   without massive problems.

00:54:25   And so that's probably a problem.

00:54:26   Number two is that the right time to get into the cell modem business was 10 years ago.

00:54:33   Like they're a little late.

00:54:35   And so I imagine anyone who tries to enter this business now, including Apple, probably

00:54:40   has a pretty serious set of problems on their hand that a, they're starting from zero and

00:54:45   b, they have patent issues, major, major patent issues.

00:54:49   And that's just, that's the kind of thing that does not get solved quickly or easily.

00:54:54   Like if you wanted to start a cell modem business today, as Apple apparently has, has, is rumored

00:54:59   to have done or has actually said they're doing, whatever it is, that's a, that's

00:55:02   a massive undertaking that is going to take years and years and years before there's

00:55:07   going to be any payoff whatsoever.

00:55:09   And even then, as soon as you release something, Qualcomm is going to sue you and that's

00:55:12   going to take years and years to resolve and you might be on the hook for lots of money

00:55:15   after that.

00:55:16   So there's just a lot of challenges in entering that and entering the market of cell modems

00:55:21   now today, which is like, and Intel started a few years ago, but like they, well, they

00:55:26   didn't start 10 years ago or 15 years ago when they probably should have.

00:55:29   Well, I mean, they, I mean, we're all holding Intel cell modems in our phones right now

00:55:32   as we all have a 10 S right.

00:55:34   And I think they did like the Intel has been Apple supplier while they've been fighting

00:55:38   with Qualcomm.

00:55:39   So they've had some success in that area.

00:55:40   Like I don't think that any, you know, remember the year when they had the, you could get

00:55:44   the Intel modem and you could get the other modem and there was debates about the iPhone

00:55:48   seven and I had the Intel one and it sucked.

00:55:50   Right.

00:55:51   But since then, you know, it's been a non, whatever, uh, you know, however good they

00:55:57   might be compared to the Qualcomm ones.

00:55:59   It's obviously Intel's modems have been good enough that we have not had any discussions

00:56:03   about the quality of the cell radios in our current iPhones or the previous gen or whatever.

00:56:07   So like, but I guess that was, that business was not, you know, attractive to Intel, uh,

00:56:13   you know, and, and the process issue comes to a head where eventually everybody else

00:56:19   offers, you know, Taiwan semiconductor, seven nanometer things and Intel can't match that.

00:56:24   What does Intel do?

00:56:25   Like maybe it's just a, you know, concentrating, you know, so it's not, it's not like Intel

00:56:29   starting from zero.

00:56:30   They're already making someone.

00:56:31   It's just the question of, can you make a five G one?

00:56:33   It's a larger effort.

00:56:34   And as for being sued by Qualcomm, like everybody has to license these patents and the whole

00:56:37   idea is that Qualcomm is supposed to let people license them.

00:56:39   And that's what that whole FCC argument is about.

00:56:43   But Apple, Apple's, uh, some of them thing I think started several years ago.

00:56:47   So I think they're sort of on track to be in the 2020 or 2021 iPhone, which, you know,

00:56:53   it's reasonable timeline given how long things take.

00:56:56   If they had started a year or two earlier, things would be better.

00:56:59   But as things stand, you know, I was saying everybody loses in some way.

00:57:03   Everybody does, but Apple probably loses the least because the main thing Apple lost is,

00:57:07   you know, the public opinion, like they're the loser in this thing.

00:57:11   And it's clear, right?

00:57:12   You know, if you care about the horse race, like Apple versus Qualcomm, who won basically

00:57:15   Qualcomm, but they, the main thing Qualcomm won is a bunch of money and Apple has a lot

00:57:21   of that.

00:57:22   And longterm what Apple won is, you know, it's freedom eventually.

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00:59:20   (upbeat music)

00:59:23   It was a couple of weeks ago, maybe three or four weeks ago now that Apple had three

00:59:28   or four consecutive days of releases and embargoes and things of that nature.

00:59:32   Well friend of the show, Guy Rambo has decided to mimic that but with leaks.

00:59:38   So this has been the week o leaks and we are recording on Wednesday the 17th.

00:59:45   I genuinely don't know if more stuff is coming or not.

00:59:48   But holy cow it's been a busy last several days.

00:59:52   So this started I think on the 13th which is actually last week.

00:59:56   That would be Saturday with iOS 13 rumors specifically dark mode detachable panels,

01:00:02   safari and mail upgrades, an undue gesture, a new volume, a heads up display and more.

01:00:08   So this starts with Guy Rambo saying a long awaited dark mode is finally coming to the

01:00:13   iPhone and iPad with iOS 13.

01:00:15   There'll be system wide dark mode that can be enabled in settings including a high contrast

01:00:19   version similar to what's already available on Mac OS.

01:00:22   And speaking of Mac OS, the iPad apps that run on the Mac using Mars Panel will be able

01:00:25   to take advantage of dark mode on both platforms.

01:00:29   Additionally there are many changes coming to the iPad with iOS 13 including the ability

01:00:33   for apps to have multiple windows.

01:00:34   Each window will be able to contain sheets that are initially attached to a portion of

01:00:38   the screen but then can be detached with a drag gesture becoming a card that can be moved

01:00:42   around freely similar to what an open source project called Panelkit could do.

01:00:47   And I think I heard on upgrade that apparently the developer of Panelkit now works for Apple?

01:00:53   Which I did not know.

01:00:55   So that's kind of interesting as well.

01:00:58   Anyway these cards can also be stacked on top of each other and use a depth effect to

01:01:01   indicate which cards are on top and which are on the bottom.

01:01:04   Cards can be flung away to dismiss them.

01:01:07   That's a lot and that's just day one.

01:01:10   All these things sound like, I mean dark mode we more or less knew was coming.

01:01:14   The volume HUD as noted in the article has been a joke for such a long time.

01:01:18   It's one of those overdue things.

01:01:20   The complaint about the volume HUD in case you're new to iOS or don't see anything wrong

01:01:23   with it is that when you change the volume a gigantic square comes in the middle of your

01:01:27   screen and hides things that are behind it.

01:01:29   Lots of apps override that and we all love those apps where you can, I mean Instagram

01:01:34   is an example but basically any good player application or whatever, replaces the volume

01:01:38   HUD with a tiny thing that is tucked into an unused portion of the screen due to like

01:01:44   letterbox video or whatever or is at the very top at the very bottom and just shows like

01:01:47   a line filling or whatever.

01:01:49   So the article doesn't say what it's going to be but anything other than a giant thing

01:01:52   in the middle of the screen that obscures the video will be great.

01:01:56   The mail upgrade I thought was interesting because I mean the Safari and Mail stuff they

01:02:00   talk about those applications getting more features which after yesterday's, last week's

01:02:06   show where we were worried about Mars Ban apps coming to the Mac and just being like

01:02:13   a Mac-ified equivalence of their iOS versions that don't have a lot of features.

01:02:20   Maybe it wasn't entirely clear in the last show or I think we mentioned a few times we

01:02:24   don't know what the Mars Ban apps that come to the Mac are going to be like.

01:02:28   We're worried that they might have far fewer features but we don't actually know.

01:02:34   So here is one of the first rumors that's not even about the Mac it's about iOS and

01:02:38   saying hey the mail application on iOS might get some new features added to it which happens

01:02:43   from time to time in small amounts but it turns the knob slightly towards the possibility

01:02:52   that Mars Ban apps on the Mac might not be as feature poor as they are in iOS 12 especially

01:02:59   if the iOS 13 incarnations have a bunch more features.

01:03:01   Now maybe they have a bunch more features because those features are added partially

01:03:04   in service of the Mars Ban version which would be the advantage of Apple being able to put

01:03:08   a single team on mail for all of its platforms.

01:03:12   So when they add features they don't need to add them to the iOS version and to the

01:03:15   Mac version they just add it to one version.

01:03:18   I don't know but anyway I found that encouraging.

01:03:23   And then the undo gesture what they say is like three fingers on the keyboard and a swipe.

01:03:29   I mean it's better than shaking the phone but it's still an awkward gesture and if the

01:03:34   keyboard is up as Gruber pointed out you've got undo and redo buttons right above the

01:03:37   keyboard most of the time anyway so I'm not entirely sure how awesome that's going to

01:03:41   be except trying to explain to people how they accidentally did a bunch of typing and

01:03:47   then it all disappeared and it's like oh you accidentally three fingers swiped on your

01:03:49   keyboard because you were typing really fast or something but hopefully that gesture like

01:03:53   the other multitasking gestures will be able to be turned off or whatever.

01:03:57   But anyway all these things they sound good to me.

01:04:01   These features sound good none of them sound stupid or frivolous or particularly unexpected

01:04:08   except for the addition of features to applications.

01:04:13   Yeah this I mean the keyboard undo thing I don't really care about honestly.

01:04:17   That's yet another multi finger complex undiscoverable gesture to fix keyboard navigation on iOS

01:04:24   like no one's going to find it.

01:04:26   Assuming that even ships by the way because that type of feature is very easy to like

01:04:29   play with and have experimentally in builds and say you know what never mind.

01:04:33   Right and I do think if you look at the information that they are reporting here in these various

01:04:39   reports that we've gotten over the last few days it sure seems like this is coming

01:04:42   from like a class dump or something like some like it seems like somebody has access to

01:04:46   a build but I don't think Gee Rambo has a build because if he had a build he could get

01:04:53   things like resources and images and things out of that build that could probably be more

01:04:59   newsworthy than like the features that might exist so I'm guessing this is reporting

01:05:04   on somebody who has access to a class dump of the build because it's sounding like

01:05:08   you know features that might exist in the SDK and that might have like you know function

01:05:13   names and class names that can be seen in the SDK that's what that's what this sounds

01:05:16   like to me and based on that then that supports what you said John like that this might not

01:05:21   ship like there might be a class called like you know keyboard multi finger undo gesture

01:05:26   or something like that but that might not be enabled at the end or you know whatever

01:05:31   build ships even if it's enabled like at the wc seed that still might not ship this

01:05:35   fall so that's all that aside the multi window panel kit like thing I think is very

01:05:44   interesting there's a lot of challenges with getting rich functionality in iOS and

01:05:52   part of it you know initially you know in the early days of iOS there were hardware limitations

01:05:57   there were screen size limitations or limitations in the kind of sophistication that the software

01:06:02   could even enable in any reasonable way but over time many of those limitations have gone

01:06:08   away or have been significantly lifted the hardware is now more powerful than many laptops

01:06:15   even many desktops like John's the software is incredibly capable there's tons of API's

01:06:24   but one of the biggest challenges that we still have on iOS and in all touch based OS's

01:06:31   is how do they expose complex functionality in a way that is discoverable at all and that

01:06:41   works with touch and that isn't hideously ugly or confusing and those are really hard

01:06:46   design challenges one of the cool things about panel kit is that it basically is like an

01:06:52   extension of popovers it basically like treats popovers as like detachable pains that you

01:06:59   can then like dock into a sidebar is kind of how I can summarize this and it does this

01:07:05   with minimal new UI and as we as we think about how to expand especially the iPad like

01:07:13   on the phone you're kind of limited by screen size and you know often times you need to

01:07:17   be need to operate things one-handed and so not needing controls to be very far away or

01:07:21   near the corners or anything so like on the phone I don't think we have a lot of UI innovation

01:07:27   left to do if with like multitasking and advanced operations because there just isn't space

01:07:32   really but on the iPad is where things get really interesting and especially as you as

01:07:36   you think about now like combining iPad and Mac designs in the future or having designs

01:07:40   that can adapt both very easily the iPad suffers still so much from a lack of progressive disclosure

01:07:48   of complexity and a lack of advanced functionality being present even in pro apps for things

01:07:54   like customizing your workspace things like multitasking having multiple windows or multiple

01:07:59   tabs or whatever open and various things and so to have strong rumors of significant progress

01:08:06   in those areas is very exciting to me now even though we don't really know much of anything

01:08:12   about what any of these things mean how they're actually implemented things like that I am

01:08:17   extremely excited about the apparent amount of work going into this that Apple Apple seems

01:08:25   not to think that the iOS 11 version multitasking is done like it's like sometimes Apple solves

01:08:31   a problem and then they don't come back to it for years if ever and they kind of you

01:08:35   can tell they kind of just think like well that's a solved problem check done and clearly

01:08:39   iPad multitasking is not done clearly they have other plans and they have and they want

01:08:46   to make things more advanced for both multitasking and for what you can do inside of one app

01:08:52   and that combined with marzipan and everything I'm just I'm very excited even though we know

01:08:58   so little I'm very excited to see where all this goes and I think again like it's hard

01:09:06   to know for sure because there's so much that's still speculation optimistic predictions wishlist

01:09:14   type things but I think Apple has their head on straight again after some years kind of

01:09:21   in the wilderness with lots of different things regarding power users and pros and hardware

01:09:28   and software it sure seems like they have their heads on straight again and that's why

01:09:33   I'm optimistic that this is going to be good I think Apple is still taking a pretty cautious

01:09:38   approach here like and the main problem I feel like is that nobody knows the answer

01:09:43   yet including Apple so if you look at the sort of more complex applications on the iPad

01:09:49   they've all been experimenting with different ways to deal with complexity of user interface

01:09:53   in their own way and none of them is so clearly the one and only way Apple and none of them

01:10:01   come from Apple so if you are making a sort of professional complex iPad application you're

01:10:06   kind of on your own you can look at your competitors and you can come up with some ideas on your

01:10:10   own you can try some experiments but there's no there's no OS framework level standard

01:10:16   for the type of things that you need to do you need to invent it yourself so I feel like

01:10:20   what Apple is doing here is not like we've gone up with an entirely new paradigm of how

01:10:23   to use the iPad it's well I can see a bunch of apps out there that are complex enough

01:10:28   that they need more than we offer and sort of look at what they all do and what is that

01:10:32   what is the main need that most people are filling and I guess maybe you know according

01:10:36   to this rumors like beside like well you need some way to have some kind of panel card thingy

01:10:44   that is not like a full-fledged window window it's not like us you know we're not turning

01:10:49   into a multi window interface where you have separate documents open in separate windows

01:10:52   but it's like you have bits of user interface and you want to be able to break them out

01:10:56   and arrange them and so we're gonna provide a system level framework to do that one thing

01:11:02   which doesn't seem like it's that significant it's like well I could do that already if

01:11:05   I rolled my own it's true but by Apple not really picking a winner but by Apple sort

01:11:09   of putting its foot down and saying this is an important enough need that there should

01:11:16   be a system standard system control for it and you won't have to write it and we will

01:11:22   hopefully make it good enough that we will encourage you to use it in your app it will

01:11:25   save you a lot of development time and if a bunch of people use it and find it useful

01:11:28   their apps will work more like each other it's the whole point of the GUI that if you

01:11:31   learn one app you can transfer those skills to another but there are so many issues with

01:11:37   dealing with complex operations on the iPad this does not solve all of them it you know

01:11:42   to your point Marco it shows that they are going in the right direction they're recognizing

01:11:46   this need and they're not going to be like well we've done all that we need to do and

01:11:49   people can just make their own custom apps with their own custom UI's right like everything's

01:11:53   gonna be kais power tools it may be a reference before your time but like do completely no

01:11:57   I got it yeah like we don't provide controls for the giant scaly you know speckled orb

01:12:06   that you can make one of your own and then you know anyway so I'm happy that they're

01:12:11   they're doing this but it's still very cautious like they don't they no one has the full sort

01:12:16   of here's how to do here is a sort of regular toolkit for dealing with complexity dealing

01:12:23   with functional complexity you know the Mac has a very regularized toolkit for dealing

01:12:28   with functional complexity it may not be the world's best toolkit but it is eminently composable

01:12:32   it involves windows at resizable windows menu bars palettes like there's very few sort of

01:12:39   nouns and verbs but you can compose them on a very large screen to solve very complex

01:12:44   problems doesn't make for a particularly friendly interface but you can get the functionality

01:12:48   out there and you can make an application that lets people create an on-screen environment

01:12:54   where they can get their work done witness every pro application you could possibly imagine

01:12:58   right you know Photoshop and logic and CAD applications and all you know like anything

01:13:04   anything with a lots of menu commands and lots of floating windows and toolbars and

01:13:08   palettes right simply porting that to the iPad is probably not the right thing to do

01:13:14   but they've got to do something so and keep in mind that everything we're seeing in iOS

01:13:19   13 supposedly is stuff that might have been in iOS 12 but they decided let's not ship

01:13:25   it half-baked and saved it so hopefully when it comes in 13 it'll be nice and polished

01:13:30   but I still think even after 13 like we're on this run the sort of a two-year Vitigi

01:13:34   cycle where he has to wait around for enhancements of the iPad and then he gets a huge amount

01:13:40   of them and then there's a quiet year then he gets another huge amount I really hope

01:13:43   this is a big year like you know obviously these are just rumors and we have no idea

01:13:47   what's really coming and it could be way more than even these rumors suggest but this seems

01:13:51   like a year where the iPad is going to get a bunch of stuff but I still I mean we'll

01:13:55   wait and see but I still feel like from the rumors so far there is not a grand unified

01:14:00   vision of how to deal with functional complexity on the iPad but there is one more tool in

01:14:06   the tool belt that seems to be mostly based on the sort of real-world research and development

01:14:13   done by third-party developers coalesced into an Apple blessed version which is great that's

01:14:18   the way many things work and the Apple world and it's fine but I think there's also room

01:14:22   for the other side of that which is Apple coming up with a really good idea and rolling

01:14:26   that out and you know that that might be coming too there's another rumor later on if we get

01:14:31   to it from Mac OS that potentially relates to some of Apple's ideas about how to deal

01:14:36   with that but in the meantime I still feel like Apple is being cautious and that caution

01:14:40   is probably warranted.

01:14:41   You know I'd be interested to see or try to discover how this is implemented on the iPad

01:14:50   versus on the Mac like let's say that we get PanelKit obviously it'd be different but for

01:14:54   the sake of conversation we need a name for it so let's say we get PanelKit on the iPad

01:14:59   on iOS but then we also have to support that well not we Apple has to support that on Mac

01:15:05   OS potentially because marzipan I can't help but wonder if the under the hood implementation

01:15:12   would be very different even if the API's would be the same you know so so what is actually

01:15:19   what on the iPad is not a new window is actually like an NS window or something like that on

01:15:25   Mac OS and to be fair I know very little about Mac OS programming so I might have already

01:15:29   butchered the idea here but you know what I mean like it would be fascinating to me

01:15:33   if there was one API that was common between Mac OS and iOS but the implementation was

01:15:39   wildly different between the two.

01:15:41   That's the old world that's the old world of like share sheets and extensions and things

01:15:45   that are ostensibly the same and have very similar API's but are implemented totally

01:15:48   differently under the covers I think we like the promise of marzipan is and actually they're

01:15:53   implemented the same way under the covers because it's all UI kid under there like I

01:15:56   don't know if they're in a position to pull that off and who knows how you know marzipan

01:16:02   is implemented on under the covers whether underneath that there is some you know app

01:16:08   kit stuff lurking who knows like the historically we have carbon cocoa as examples of two API's

01:16:14   that were separate but also had a surprising amount of sharing where it was very difficult

01:16:22   to make any Mac application that was purely cocoa or purely carbon back when they were

01:16:28   sort of mixed together in various bits under the covers but I think the promise of this

01:16:33   new system is let's not do that anymore and let's literally have the same framework that

01:16:39   runs on both platforms and granted with behavioral differences to your point Casey that you can't

01:16:43   actually make them the same because I mean the Mac just doesn't work like iOS everything's

01:16:49   not trapped inside this one frame and like having a panel you know like you can on the

01:16:53   iPad you can't really take a thing outside the bounds of the thing because some window

01:16:59   is always filling up the whole screen like you can't there's no as far as I'm aware no

01:17:03   one has ever there is no way in iOS to peek out peek you know behind the currently running

01:17:12   application like as if you could see like your springboard hiding behind there like

01:17:16   I don't even think it is behind there right it's not like it is in the Mac where your

01:17:19   applications are floating on top of a bunch of other stuff but that is the way it is on

01:17:23   the Mac so there's going to be different differences but I really think the promise here is finally

01:17:28   a unified codebase underneath it all even if it is super awkward for the first few years

01:17:33   because it's just going to look like phone stuff.

01:17:35   All right moving on we also heard that Apple is revamping find my friends and find my iPhone

01:17:41   into a unified app and additionally they're going to develop a tile like personal item

01:17:47   tracking device so there's several things in one it's merging find my iPhone find my

01:17:53   friends which is fairly self-explanatory and it seems like it'll carry through most of

01:17:57   the features you would expect between the two apparently the new app will create or

01:18:03   will let you create your quote-unquote find network which includes devices and family

01:18:07   and friends and things from that of that nature and then additionally Apple also want this

01:18:12   is reading from gee now Apple also wants users to be able to track any item not just their

01:18:16   Apple devices using this new unified app the company's working on a new hardware product

01:18:19   known only as quote B389 by the people involved in its development this new product will be

01:18:24   a tag that can be attached to any item similar to other products like tile the tag will be

01:18:28   paired to the user's iCloud account by proximity to an air to an iPhone like AirPods users

01:18:33   will be able to receive notifications when their device gets too far away from the tag

01:18:37   preventing them from forgetting the item the tag is attached to and then finally you can

01:18:41   put this tag thing in lost mode and then apparently it will show your own contact information

01:18:47   on other people's iPhones if they happen to be within range of it which is not you know

01:18:52   brand new ideas but seems like a really really solid implementation thereof I do use find

01:18:58   my friends particularly for Aaron but occasionally for friends and I very rarely use find my

01:19:04   iPhone but man when I need it I am very happy to have it I don't have any tiles or tile

01:19:09   like devices at the moment but all this sounds really good I mean nothing again nothing earth

01:19:14   shattering but all this sounds really good how do you feel about this Marco I am really

01:19:19   intrigued I it sounds like a good idea I mean I don't I don't think there's that much to

01:19:23   say yet I am very curious to see if that dedicated hardware item ships that would basically be

01:19:30   like you know a tile replacement that just it just seems unlike the kind of thing Apple

01:19:37   would do yeah so so that's that just seems odd to me so I wouldn't be surprised if that

01:19:42   doesn't ship or maybe it's some kind of odd like not really meant for mass consumers kind

01:19:48   of thing like Bluetooth le tags and things like you know like maybe you're supposed to

01:19:52   use these for other like you know business to business uses or who knows what but anyway

01:19:59   I do think it's smart to take advantage of the fact that like Apple has a lot of access

01:20:05   to to Bluetooth proximity radios and things like that the the types of wireless communications

01:20:12   the kind of ad hoc communications that airdrop is based on where your phones don't have to

01:20:17   know about each other to talk to each other they don't have to be on the same network

01:20:21   they don't have to be on Wi-Fi at all necessarily and they can like form their own little Wi-Fi

01:20:26   network with a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that coordinates things so they have

01:20:30   access to these radios they also have they started in I think the last little one before

01:20:36   that version of iOS where if you do things like turn off Bluetooth if you have an Apple

01:20:42   watch paired which communicates over Bluetooth it can still communicate with the phone like

01:20:46   when you hit the Bluetooth off thing control center it turns off most Bluetooth devices

01:20:51   but not all devices it leaves the Apple watch connected if you if you have one and so they've

01:20:57   already kind of like broken the seal on making those radio off toggles not a hundred percent

01:21:03   off and not for all things and not all the time so if they were do something like this

01:21:09   where a phone that's been told to iCloud that it's lost maybe it's radios get forced on

01:21:17   and then it can talk to other devices through this Bluetooth based proximity system and

01:21:23   then it can be found better and and like the thieves if it's stolen can't just turn the

01:21:27   radios off they have to actually power the whole phone down to prevent it from being

01:21:30   found this way so it seems like a cool idea it's certainly probably going to be more useful

01:21:38   to actually locate lost and stolen devices so sounds pretty cool I don't necessarily

01:21:45   think they're going to broaden it to other products with this weird hardware tag thing

01:21:49   but just as a way to improve find my iPhone that sounds awesome and I also I I'm not entirely

01:21:56   sure why find my iPhone would ever be in the same app as find my friends I can I can tell

01:22:03   you why like I'm so glad that they're combining these apps because there's a constant source

01:22:07   of frustration for me right so I use find my friends which is an inappropriately named

01:22:12   application because I use it to find my family most of the time I think find my friends tries

01:22:18   to be smart like it's trying to help you find a person it's right there in the name of the

01:22:23   application but because our were a house full of multiple people and multiple devices sometimes

01:22:30   it's confused about like what it wants to be doing so I'll try to find out where my

01:22:35   daughter is and I'll go to find my friends and I'll see here a little icon on the overhead

01:22:41   view of my house but I know she's not in my house but it but her phone is in the house

01:22:44   and it thinks by finding her phone it has found her what I wanted to do is find her

01:22:49   watch but find my friends as far as I'm aware doesn't give you that granularity so you go

01:22:53   to find my iPhone and also an inappropriately named application which lets you find all

01:22:58   the devices that belong to anybody in your family so I go to find my iPhone and I select

01:23:03   my daughter's Apple watch and then I find out where she really is right and I don't

01:23:09   know having two different applications one that's like a limited sort of I'll guess

01:23:14   which device you mean the other one which just gives you a big list of devices I want

01:23:18   them combined it's basically like find like I applaud the idea of helping me find the

01:23:23   person and being smart about like whatever device the motion sensor says is moving or

01:23:27   whatever you know I I think that's a good idea but I don't have to go to a different

01:23:31   app if that thing gets it wrong and in the end the sort of very straightforward bottom

01:23:37   level of like just find my devices I can use that to figure out what I want to do in the

01:23:44   worst case so combining them into a new application that is not called find my friends that is

01:23:47   also not called find my iPhone will really help and I and history has shown that I am

01:23:53   the only one in my family who understands this separation because very often they'll

01:23:57   say I did I tried to find out where somebody was and it shows they're here but they're

01:24:00   not really there and you know I'm like well you have to use the find my iPhone but I don't

01:24:05   want to find that I found like I know just but it's not it's not my phone I want to find

01:24:09   you know my daughter's it's like just it's in that app trust me just scroll yep keep

01:24:12   scrolling there's more and see the list there it's there it's our daughter's devices and

01:24:16   then pick her yeah so I think that unification is long overdue and it's a great idea as for

01:24:21   the tile thing I mean I don't know anything about hardware rumors Apple has all sorts

01:24:28   of ideas that it doesn't ship the thing that occurred to me when I saw this was that could

01:24:32   be a logic device or you know apples farms a lot of stuff out to other vendors these

01:24:37   days so just because it has a code name and there's code supporting it and the OS doesn't

01:24:43   necessarily mean it's a first party Apple product it could be something that they essentially

01:24:48   build for a third party and a third party cells or whatever so anyway I can also see

01:24:53   it being an Apple thing because it would be a very small piece of white plastic and Apple

01:24:55   loves to sell us those very very true square even a white plastic square that is Apple's

01:25:02   core demo oh what if we did a rounded rect instead now I have to be what is it called

01:25:07   the the super ellipse Johnny the Johnny I've curve yeah wouldn't it be great something

01:25:12   something shaped like an iOS app icon that's perfect for children to swallow kids love

01:25:19   apps millions alright finally maybe not finally but finally for tonight anyway Mac OS ten

01:25:28   point fifteen rumors I'm happy to summarize this but I have a feeling that John you and

01:25:35   Marco are frothing at the mouth John do you want to take it away on this one summarize

01:25:38   that's why I did all these things in bold okay so this this rumor is the ability to

01:25:45   send any window of any app to an external display which doesn't a sentence that doesn't

01:25:50   make much sense from a Mac users perspective is you're like if I have multiple displays

01:25:54   on my Mac I can quote-unquote send any window there I just drag it there that's how windows

01:25:59   work again getting back to the fairly flexible generic composable UI paradigm that is the

01:26:06   Mac with a bunch of resizable windows that you drag around and the multi-screen paradigm

01:26:10   where you have screens that you arranged in relation to each other in 2d space and that

01:26:14   you drag the windows between the screens and all that stuff but the the key part here is

01:26:19   the external display can be an actual external display connected to the Mac or even an iPad

01:26:24   now before I get to the iPad part the sending part is in the vocabulary of people who are

01:26:30   not my people who full screen everything and I can imagine if you have multiple monitors

01:26:35   and full screening that it's still kind of a headache to get the things to display on

01:26:39   the screens that you want and all that other stuff so having a better either a better UI

01:26:44   or a better API or both for sending a full screen window to the screen you want is great

01:26:49   but of course when that other screen is an iPad you know there was that third-party product

01:26:55   does that Luna display maybe there's a bunch of parties to do that basically let you use

01:26:59   your iPad your very expensive iPad with a very nice screen on it as essentially an external

01:27:05   display for your Mac even though it's not connected to your Mac by a cable you can do

01:27:08   it does it wirelessly right yep yeah so that's cool that's a great idea and this feature

01:27:16   is called sidecar which makes some sense is like your iPad is like a sidecar to your Mac

01:27:20   oh I love that name don't even don't even start I love that name I think it's delightful

01:27:25   and so you know there's more details in the article about how you can move a window to

01:27:31   an iPad and full screen mode or whatever and apparently you can also once it once you have

01:27:35   that window on your iPad again it's a Mac it's just your Mac displaying a Mac application

01:27:39   or whatever marksman application on your iPad as if it's an external display but then you

01:27:43   can take the pencil and draw on the iPad and it counts as input for the Mac which is super

01:27:48   neat and so basically turns your iPad into a little sort of Cintiq style tablet for your

01:27:55   Mac presumably the lag is acceptable all that stuff and then there's some more info about

01:28:01   snapping windows to the side and doing all you know you've seen in Microsoft Windows

01:28:05   they have all sorts of features and keyboard commands that you accidentally hit that take

01:28:09   windows and divvy and you know like slamming the window against the right edge will make

01:28:14   it fill the right third of your screen or the top half or the bottom half there are

01:28:18   tons of utilities for the Mac that do similar things the Mac itself the current version

01:28:22   of Mac OS has features vaguely related to this in terms of splitting the screen obviously

01:28:28   I'm not a fan of these features because I feel like that paradigm is not as pleasing

01:28:33   to me as the paradigm of resizable windows but lots of people do like to they feel comforted

01:28:38   by the simplicity of having either one application fill their entire screen or one application

01:28:45   be on the right and one on the left or one on the top or one on the bottom or quadrants

01:28:48   or all sorts of tiling window manager stuff so this seems like more features to help those

01:28:53   people now all that said in my experience watching people who are not like me use the

01:29:00   Mac like basically most people most people using the Mac I mentioned before that I see

01:29:04   them all use full screen all the time often because they're on laptops and that maximizes

01:29:09   your you know the room you have for your content I don't see a lot of people using tiling window

01:29:16   managers I don't see a lot of people using the existing features that were added like

01:29:19   Sierra or whatever for splitting the screen they're not particularly obvious it's not

01:29:25   particularly obvious how to trigger them and most people don't know third-party Mac applications

01:29:28   exist at all so how would they know to go find something like Moom or whatever and you

01:29:33   know use that I was I think that on the of all the people I've seen use iOS devices I've

01:29:41   seen more of them use split screen just because it is literally the only way to get more than

01:29:46   one thing on the screen at the time that people find themselves forced to learn it like if

01:29:50   you want to be if you want to be more productive than just seeing one whole application full

01:29:54   screen at any time ever ever you have to learn this whereas on the Mac you never have to

01:29:58   learn those gestures because you can just use regular resizable windows and you can just

01:30:02   exit full screen mode and not again not an option on the iPad there is no exiting full

01:30:05   screen mode on the iPad all you can do is split it and swipe it and do all that other

01:30:09   stuff so these features are a little bit of a head scratcher for me because I feel like

01:30:14   it's kind of adding enhancements to features that are not widely used anyway and that are

01:30:19   generally both inferior and not as obvious as the existing features that the Mac uses

01:30:28   to deal with multiple windows essentially but I'm glad they're doing something having

01:30:33   to do with window management and the sidecar thing sounds like a great way to sell more

01:30:36   people iPads because if you can use your the iPad that you already bought as a really cool

01:30:41   tablet for your Mac especially if it has really good Apple pencil support that's great like

01:30:45   that's you know that's a big win for everybody if the lag is acceptable like you know I've

01:30:52   who wouldn't want that I and Wacom or however you pronounce the name of that company probably

01:30:56   doesn't like it but I'm kind of looking forward to that and I you know it may be a reason

01:31:03   that we could end up with a new iPad mouse which thus far we've avoided but if we can

01:31:08   do this cool thing especially if it's only for iPad pros or some other feature like that

01:31:11   we might end up with a new one you know someone who does believe in full screening windows

01:31:16   or split screening I think this sounds really great I really do I think taking the windows

01:31:22   snapping I can't remember the name of it and I'm sorry but whatever the snappy thing is

01:31:26   that windows does Microsoft windows has you're talking about that feature yeah yeah where

01:31:31   you just you know as you had described it earlier John where you'd say drag a title

01:31:35   bar to the very right extreme edge of the screen and then it takes up the right hand

01:31:39   and then the windows will resize that window to take up half of the screen Jay stretch

01:31:45   in the chat room saying it's called snap that sounds right to me but anyway like that feature

01:31:49   super convenient and pretty much everyone I I've ever seen use windows even not power

01:31:55   users understand how that works and leverages it I like having my window or my my Mac screens

01:32:03   split up into like tiles I know that that drives you insane John but that's just the

01:32:07   way I like to use my computer and so anything that makes us better I think sounds great

01:32:12   and the idea of having like a software based Luna display also tentatively sounds good

01:32:19   I don't recall if Luna is sponsored in the past I don't know if they're sponsoring in

01:32:21   the future I paid my own money for one and I can tell you it is really freaking good

01:32:26   and I do love this thing I love it even despite the fact that it takes up the one and only

01:32:30   USB C port on my poor laptop but does it have does it have the pencil support too I mean

01:32:36   I guess I've never really tried it but I guess you can't really draw a pencil onto the Mac

01:32:41   no I see your point no then I guess I guess it doesn't but again I've never tried it so

01:32:46   I'm not entirely sure that would be the type of thing that would be you know easy for Apple

01:32:49   to add and difficult for a third party add if the OS didn't support sure because you

01:32:52   have to get those input events efficiently to up to software running on the Mac yeah

01:32:57   absolutely yeah again I've never tried it but I mean even just the quote unquote regular

01:33:03   Luna display it works stunningly well and I really do like it and and I and when I do

01:33:08   travel with just the MacBook and my iPad Pro you know say if I'm going to library to do

01:33:13   work or something it is very convenient to have that so all this sounds great sidecar

01:33:18   sounds great the snappy thing sounds great the Wacom thing and whatever I mean it's not

01:33:23   really for me I don't think but that's it's still cool it's still very awesome if that

01:33:28   if you're the kind of person that needs that sort of thing so yeah this isn't maybe except

01:33:33   maybe sidecar I don't know if this is quite as sexy as the other things we've talked about

01:33:36   but I'm in I'm excited about it real-time follow-up the app the existing third-party

01:33:42   app does it a cold astro pad so let's use the pencil turn your iPad into a professional

01:33:48   graphics tablet yeah so this is another example of oh and that's by Luna actually of Apple

01:33:55   seeing what seeing third-party applications are doing and then coming with the first party

01:33:59   implementation of it but this is much more of a this is the risk anytime you add something

01:34:04   that could be an OS level feature the risk is that Apple will eventually make it an OS

01:34:09   level feature in general users like it when that happened but the makers of the applications

01:34:13   that are essentially Sherlock probably don't like it they can still exist because they

01:34:17   can have features that Apple is never going to add and yada yada and of course they got

01:34:20   to make all that money before Apple came out with this feature but astro pad folks are

01:34:24   probably a little bit bummed if this room turns out to be true well and I think actually

01:34:29   I think it is likely to be true in part because it sounds like a really good idea also in

01:34:34   part because we've been hearing about this for like two years like ATP tips told us about

01:34:40   this back when he was still alive before he perished in a maple syrup fire he we he was

01:34:46   talking about this like two years ago as like something that was about to ship for Mac OS

01:34:50   so we've been hearing this for a long time they've probably been working working on it

01:34:54   for a long time since even before lunar display was a thing that we knew about so this might

01:34:59   be like a simultaneous invention kind of thing not like they saw them display and had to

01:35:04   ape it like six months later I think they've been working on this for a while yeah I mean

01:35:08   I guess the the fact that the third-party apps could exist probably means there was

01:35:11   some some amount of plumbing was already there in the OS that they were able to build on

01:35:16   top of yeah I think it's a type of feature that if you're Apple it's easy to make an

01:35:21   argument for it's like it makes our products more valuable like it makes you more likely

01:35:26   to buy both a Mac and an iPad because they're great products separately and there's also

01:35:30   a synergy where they work together and we know people like to use tablets with screens

01:35:35   on them like the the Wacom Cintiq thing like that that is a product that has proven its

01:35:40   popularity but it's an extra purchase and those tablets are not cheap I own one sitting

01:35:45   right here and I think it was something like $800 like that's iPad level prices and that

01:35:49   tablet is useless when not connected to a Mac unlike an iPad which is not useless when

01:35:53   not connected to a Mac so this seems like a really good idea for everybody the sending

01:35:59   windows and splitting though I'm not sure Casey I'm curious when you see other people

01:36:02   using Macs you like to use the split stuff that I added a couple years back do you see

01:36:08   other people use that well it's hard to say because now the only people I see using a

01:36:13   Mac is my coworker and she generally uses her iPhone so Erin is not her Mac very often

01:36:20   and in fact her poor MacBook Air the same one that's been in the drink a couple times

01:36:23   I haven't updated to it's it's about as updated in terms of OS as your cheese grater is but

01:36:30   I'm trying to remember when I was at work I don't remember one way or the other seeing

01:36:35   a lot of full screen stuff my inclination is to say no I did not see a lot of full screen

01:36:40   use or split screen use but not full screen but split screen specifically full screen

01:36:45   whatever but like same for the people who were in full screen do they even know the

01:36:49   Mac OS splitting thing exists have you ever seen anyone use it besides yourself not my

01:36:54   recollection no and to be honest it's not terribly discoverable like we have to do is

01:36:58   you have to mash down on the green I don't know what the technical term is but the green

01:37:02   light in the upper left of a window you mash down on that and hold for a few seconds and

01:37:05   then it kind of like shrinks or it makes that take up half the cues it up to take up half

01:37:11   the screen and then you can make a selection of what you want the other half of the screen

01:37:15   to be like it is by no means perfect but it is workable and if I would again I would love

01:37:22   to have the like arrow snap style thing at a window yeah I think it is less even less

01:37:26   discoverable than the Microsoft Windows equivalent feature because great like I said you accidentally

01:37:31   discovered on Windows pretty easily and I think more people would use it on the Mac if it

01:37:38   was more discoverable or if there weren't other options to be fair I don't see a lot

01:37:43   of people using the splits on the iPad either but it's the same type of thing on Windows

01:37:48   I think you can accidentally discover that like I know because I accidentally do whatever

01:37:53   the slide in from the side what do they call that where you on iOS where you swipe from

01:37:57   the side yeah do it all the time so even if you didn't know that feature exists you may

01:38:01   find yourself discovering it and once you do discovery like oh that's useful I can imagine

01:38:05   that being useful and then you just get annoyed when you do it accidentally and that's not

01:38:10   to complain about iOS but like I don't know how tenable it is to like I was saying before

01:38:18   that Apple being cautious with iOS 12 or 13 rather and with the rumored features that

01:38:23   we think they're adding for panels or whatever and the main thing that Apple has thus far

01:38:28   not been willing to let go of which I think is probably the right move but it's limiting

01:38:32   them is extending everything to the edge like the menu bar doesn't really exist as a system

01:38:40   level thing in iOS despite the fact that various iOS applications have toyed with having their

01:38:44   own menu bar the edges of the screen like there is your thing always takes up the entire

01:38:49   screen which is a paradigm that was introduced when it was absolutely the right thing to

01:38:55   do on a tiny little phone screen but as like on the big iPad that's bigger than laptop

01:38:59   screens used to be not being able to have any kind of margin or any kind of OS level

01:39:05   permanent thing whether it be a dock or a shelf or a menu bar or you know a toolbar

01:39:10   or anything like that and having everything extend all the way to the edges means that

01:39:14   you're fighting for like the reason you accidentally do that swipe over gesture because if that

01:39:21   gesture didn't exist how would you get that thing that's invisibly off to the side how

01:39:25   would you get it every pixel on the screen is owned by a single application that has

01:39:29   no idea about like the thing over there the only way you can get that is to come up with

01:39:33   some kind of gesture because there's nothing on the screen and no way to invoke a thing

01:39:39   other than a gesture to say application this is not for you I'm telling the OS show me

01:39:45   the little thing that's off to the side or whatever if you didn't extend all to the edges

01:39:49   or any kind of you OS level UI or Chrome anywhere on the iPad you would have some kind of like

01:39:56   escape hatch porthole like imagine if it's just like one little square like a tiny little

01:40:00   Apple menu or some part of the screen that is owned by the OS that you could use to tell

01:40:07   it the OS to do something related to windowing but we don't have all we've got our gestures

01:40:13   and you know swipes and used in the old days double tapping the home button like anything

01:40:17   out of band anything that we can say application this is not for you and even with the gestures

01:40:22   there's conflicts of like you know just fruit ninja or whatever that game was fighting with

01:40:27   the multitasking gestures of the five finger swipe to go back to springboard and all that

01:40:30   other stuff I'm not sure how long they can keep that up it obviously it's probably still

01:40:37   absolutely the right thing to do on the phone and maybe even on smaller iPads but as iPads

01:40:41   become bigger and more capable there's a war for the pixels on the screen on the iPad and

01:40:45   I think the OS has to win at least a pixel or two just two secret pixels up in the left

01:40:51   hand corner that if you can find a way to tap them with your fatty meat fingers congratulations

01:40:55   you get an apple menu or some kind of toolbar popover or whatever is that because I don't

01:41:01   think gestures like gestures are great but I don't they're totally non discoverable they're

01:41:05   easy to do accidentally and when it comes to complex applications that people use to

01:41:11   have lots of functionality and you know it's hard enough to get the functionality to the

01:41:17   app and then to say oh by the way the OS has a bunch of features to where do those get

01:41:21   to go it's like those can only be invisible sorry I don't think that's sustainable long

01:41:26   term they just need a little pie icon in the bottom right that'll solve it can't that those

01:41:30   pixels are owned by the app sorry I get the reference I get it thanks Marco we all get

01:41:35   the reference if you sure you do Casey makes a reference and we all don't say that's from

01:41:40   the net doesn't mean we don't know it it just means that we're letting you like we're all

01:41:45   we're all happy and proud of Casey for making a reference and we're all smiling knowingly

01:41:50   like when you did that what did you do the song reference the other day that Marco and

01:41:54   I got but we had to hear everybody tell us that we didn't get it although I admit I was

01:41:57   surprised that Marco got it yes what was that it was the black curtains in the white room

01:42:01   and oh yeah yeah that's right that cream yes yes yes yes did you know the net was filmed

01:42:06   in San Francisco's Moscone Center and Mac world on July January 5th 1995 escape the system

01:42:12   just think they might like their crew might have eaten the same box lunches that we ate

01:42:17   literally the same they've just been sitting there since then yeah seriously since 95 all

01:42:21   right thanks to our sponsors this week Squarespace Jamf now and Linode and we will talk to you

01:42:27   next week.

01:42:31   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin cause it was accidental.

01:42:38   Oh it was accidental.

01:42:40   John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental.

01:42:47   It was accidental.

01:42:48   It was accidental.

01:42:49   It was accidental.

01:42:50   It was accidental.

01:42:51   It was accidental.

01:42:52   It was accidental.

01:42:53   It was accidental.

01:42:54   It was accidental.

01:42:55   It was accidental.

01:42:56   It was accidental.

01:42:57   It was accidental.

01:42:58   It was accidental.

01:42:59   It was accidental.

01:43:00   It was accidental.

01:43:01   It was accidental.

01:43:02   It was accidental.

01:43:03   It was accidental.

01:43:04   It was accidental.

01:43:05   It was accidental.

01:43:06   It was accidental.

01:43:07   It was accidental.

01:43:08   It was accidental.

01:43:09   It was accidental.

01:43:10   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM and if you're into Twitter you can follow them

01:43:11   @m Marco R. Men S-I-R-A-C U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A.

01:43:18   It's accidental.

01:43:21   They didn't mean to accidental.

01:43:26   Tech broadcast so long.

01:43:30   Oh god.

01:43:32   I finally finished watching Heat and I did it off of your Plex Casey.

01:43:37   I mean I bought it of course.

01:43:39   But I also watched it off of your Plex because the version I bought looked too good and so

01:43:43   I wanted a crappier version so I streamed it off your Plex and ooh.

01:43:48   I think that was a direct leery rip that I did myself.

01:43:51   Why?

01:43:52   What was wrong?

01:43:53   Streaming it off your Plex was challenging.

01:43:55   Really?

01:43:56   That shouldn't have been.

01:43:58   I watched it over the course of two nights and in both cases Plex had a very hard time

01:44:04   streaming it consistently until I dropped the bandwidth down to 0.7 megabits at which

01:44:11   point that finally streamed reliably and looked horrible.

01:44:14   That is insane.

01:44:15   Really?

01:44:16   That being said it matched my opinion of the movie as well so it was fine.

01:44:23   Oh my god I can already tell.

01:44:26   I'm dread this top four episode because I don't agree with any of your tastes in movies.

01:44:31   Yeah this episode of top four might be the new.

01:44:35   You know what we should do John is we should rank the top four episodes of top four.

01:44:40   No no that have the worst conclusions.

01:44:43   That's what we need to do.

01:44:44   Do any of them have conclusions?

01:44:46   Whoever is maintaining the top four wiki has their work cut out for them.

01:44:51   Yeah.

01:44:52   Anyway I mean we're going to record the top four pretty soon.

01:44:54   I will just say that I don't know why Heat is on so many lists of top heist movies because

01:45:03   while I could appreciate parts of it as a decent movie it is in no way a heist movie

01:45:09   and so it should not be on those lists and that's all I'll say for now.

01:45:13   I will save the rest for top four.

01:45:15   Marco it's I can't I can't I can't I can't.

01:45:20   Whatever they do categories on top four it ends up being all about what is best fit for

01:45:26   the category and they set aside like what is actually a good movie so like I'm sure

01:45:30   whatever they pick is their best heist movie is not going to be the best movie on the list.

01:45:33   It's not no no it's not the format it's not that we set aside like that the quality

01:45:39   it's that it's that how much it adheres to the quality we picked is a factor like

01:45:45   it's it's a weight on its big often it is a very big factor.

01:45:49   Yes well because if we say top heist movies and then two movies on the list are really

01:45:56   barely or not really heist movies.

01:45:58   Well I mean I guess it comes back to what I said before and how my taste in movies differs

01:46:03   so I just I often can't stomach the idea that you would because it fits with the heist movie

01:46:08   and you like it but I think it's like the worst movie on the list and I don't care how much of a heist.

01:46:12   Anyway we'll see we'll see what you guys end up picking.

01:46:15   [beeping]

01:46:17   [ Silence ]