ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► It feels like I haven't talked to you gentlemen for seven days.

00:00:04 ◼   ► It definitely hasn't been 48 hours. Definitely not.

00:00:07 ◼   ► It has been exactly seven days since we last spoke, allegedly, and boy, there sure was a lot of news seven days ago.

00:00:14 ◼   ► So I think we should talk about that now.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I think that sounds like a good idea. Are we doing any sort of pre-show or are we just going to skip that?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I think that was the pre-show.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Oh, son of a...

00:00:25 ◼   ► So we're gonna start with some follow-up and Alvy Stoddard writes in there's an Apple support document entitled about secure boot

00:00:31 ◼   ► Where it says and I'm quoting full security is the default secure boot setting offering the highest

00:00:37 ◼   ► Level of security and this was it with regard to the t2 chip the liquid metal chip

00:00:43 ◼   ► that is in the iMac Pro and

00:00:46 ◼   ► It is the thing where it will only let you boot stuff that Apple signs in

00:00:53 ◼   ► quasi not really at all accurate summary. So which one of you guys put this in here? Any other thoughts?

00:00:58 ◼   ► Yeah, just put it in there because

00:01:00 ◼   ► Are we pretending that we're recording this not recording this two days after the previous show?

00:01:05 ◼   ► We didn't have a lot of follow up and this is a straightforward follow up. We didn't know what the default was. Apple told us.

00:01:10 ◼   ► We got a lot of follow up seven days ago about this and we wanted to talk about it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► It's interesting that the cranked up security is the default one because remember the full security setting was the one that doesn't even let you

00:01:21 ◼   ► boot if you have an old version of the OS and I'm having a hard time figuring out who

00:01:28 ◼   ► would find that behavior desirable other than people who have a bunch of Macs, other than

00:01:33 ◼   ► enterprise people.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And you know, my old definition of enterprise software, like the people buying the software

00:01:38 ◼   ► and other people using it, well an enterprise situation is where the people deciding how

00:01:42 ◼   ► the computers work are picking things based on how easy it is for them to manage the computers,

00:01:49 ◼   ► based on how nice it is for the people who have to use the computers to use them.

00:01:53 ◼   ► But even in an enterprise scenario, enterprise people don't want their computers automatically

00:01:57 ◼   ► updating without them having extensively tested that every single piece of software on them

00:02:01 ◼   ► is compatible with it.

00:02:02 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Apple phrases this as being like the iPhone.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Oh, it's like the iPhone, all this physical security, so much stronger than the old just

00:02:11 ◼   ► firmware password.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Now it's like an iOS device.

00:02:14 ◼   ► But iOS devices don't refuse to boot unless you up – I mean, they're pretty naggy about

00:02:18 ◼   ► telling you, "Hey, there's a new update. Look at this red badge on your settings app."

00:02:21 ◼   ► But they don't, you know, they don't actually force the update on you. And that's not misunderstanding

00:02:26 ◼   ► how the full security works. But anyway, when Marco gets his Mac Pro, he will be able to

00:02:30 ◼   ► confirm this default, and then I suppose, like, just wait for the first dot release

00:02:35 ◼   ► of High Sierra to come out, and then reboot and see if it demands that you update. You'll

00:02:39 ◼   ► be a good guinea pig, right?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Well, I think we, yeah, a lot of this remains to be seen, but one thing I misunderstood

00:02:45 ◼   ► about it that I've seen, it seems like their language

00:02:48 ◼   ► is such that they're not necessarily requiring you

00:02:51 ◼   ► to have the latest.

00:02:53 ◼   ► They say that they can prevent you from booting versions

00:02:56 ◼   ► that Apple no longer trusts.

00:02:59 ◼   ► So I think what that could mean, and this is not from PR,

00:03:02 ◼   ► this is just from things I've read on the internet,

00:03:05 ◼   ► what that probably means is like if there's a version

00:03:07 ◼   ► of the OS that is an older version that security holes

00:03:10 ◼   ► were discovered in and somebody tries to boot that maybe

00:03:14 ◼   ► or install over your OS with that

00:03:16 ◼   ► so they can get to your stuff,

00:03:17 ◼   ► maybe that's what it's preventing,

00:03:20 ◼   ► which is a legitimate security concern.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Because I can't imagine, if it's actually just like,

00:03:26 ◼   ► whatever is telling it, hey, the newest version is

00:03:30 ◼   ► 10.13.7 or whatever, first of all,

00:03:33 ◼   ► what mechanism does it even learn about that from?

00:03:34 ◼   ► That's one question, but if it,

00:03:37 ◼   ► assuming that the secure boot enclave protection unit,

00:03:42 ◼   ► whatever's enforcing this,

00:03:43 ◼   ► - So assuming that doesn't like the version you're running,

00:03:47 ◼   ► I can't imagine it would just like brick your computer.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like it's probably about preventing you

00:03:52 ◼   ► from rolling it back.

00:03:54 ◼   ► - It's not gonna break it,

00:03:55 ◼   ► it's gonna download the update.

00:03:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, but so your computer can download updates

00:04:00 ◼   ► without you approving it?

00:04:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, like when you boot, it will download the update

00:04:06 ◼   ► before, like as part of the initial boot procedure.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna boot, but wait a second,

00:04:09 ◼   ► "I gotta do an update first."

00:04:10 ◼   ► And so it'll download, it'll know from the internet

00:04:12 ◼   ► what the latest version is,

00:04:13 ◼   ► will know from the internet all the information about.

00:04:16 ◼   ► This is the advantage/whatever of having a whole other CPU.

00:04:22 ◼   ► There is a boot procedure to boot up the T2 chip, and that's the thing going to the internet

00:04:27 ◼   ► looking up all this information, downloading the software update, applying it to your computer,

00:04:31 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

00:04:32 ◼   ► But your idea about the fact that it's not just like it has to be the latest, but that

00:04:34 ◼   ► it's only in cases where Apple says there's some version that we absolutely don't want

00:04:38 ◼   ► anyone running, that would make more sense to me.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Because if they do a point release where they fix a bug in mail or something, you don't

00:04:45 ◼   ► want the thing to force that update.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Or an update from Sierra to High Sierra.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Presumably the very last version of Sierra, whatever it was, 10.12.6 or whatever, doesn't

00:04:57 ◼   ► have any terrible security flaws, so it wouldn't force you to download High Sierra when you

00:05:02 ◼   ► boot.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It would only force you to update if there was some terrible security flaw in the one

00:05:08 ◼   ► you had.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:10 ◼   ► because you'll have this thing.

00:05:12 ◼   ► - I mean, that's the only way that I can figure

00:05:14 ◼   ► that this makes sense, because any other implementation

00:05:17 ◼   ► of this I think would wreak havoc,

00:05:18 ◼   ► and nobody would leave it on.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Especially, like you mentioned enterprise,

00:05:21 ◼   ► like the last thing enterprise IT managers want

00:05:25 ◼   ► is their computers forcing them to update their OS

00:05:29 ◼   ► without them doing it or approving it or testing it.

00:05:33 ◼   ► That's the last thing enterprise people would want.

00:05:35 ◼   ► So I have to imagine this is about just not letting

00:05:39 ◼   ► law enforcement take your computer over and overwrite your OS with an older version that

00:05:45 ◼   ► they have some tool that can hack and get your stuff.

00:05:47 ◼   ► That's probably what this is about.

00:05:49 ◼   ► But enterprise people do want you not to be able to boot their computers off an external

00:05:53 ◼   ► disk.

00:05:54 ◼   ► They do want you not to be able to install malware on their computers.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Or people who have, like, if you're running a computer lab in a college and you have kind

00:06:00 ◼   ► of public computers, a lot of these features appeal in that scenario of sort of protecting

00:06:04 ◼   ► the computer from the outside.

00:06:06 ◼   ► just like the final straw is like, oh, and by the way, also updates may be forced on

00:06:11 ◼   ► you and that is, you know, that's a bridge too far.

00:06:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't expect that this would be used to aggressively update like on day zero.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I expect this would be to more aggressively force along the stragglers to the point that

00:06:24 ◼   ► like Marco, you're still on Sierra, not High Sierra on most of your machines, is that right?

00:06:29 ◼   ► - On half of my machines?

00:06:31 ◼   ► - How many machines do you have?

00:06:32 ◼   ► - Oh wait, no, I have the Mac Mini, most of my machines.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - I always forget about the Mac Mini,

00:06:37 ◼   ► 'cause it's just like a headless server.

00:06:39 ◼   ► - Wait, the Mac Mini still exists?

00:06:40 ◼   ► Does it still work?

00:06:41 ◼   ► Actually, at this point, if you had Secure Boot,

00:06:43 ◼   ► it would probably refuse to start up because of its age.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Anyway, I bring this up to say--

00:06:48 ◼   ► - Maybe it would only run on a third of its performance,

00:06:50 ◼   ► 'cause it happened to change the battery.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

00:06:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:54 ◼   ► Can we not talk about that?

00:06:55 ◼   ► - Oh, we're definitely talking about that.

00:06:57 ◼   ► That was a huge deal seven days ago.

00:06:59 ◼   ► - It was a huge deal like two or three weeks ago,

00:07:01 ◼   ► and everyone has been begging us to talk about it,

00:07:04 ◼   ► and I really have no interest in it,

00:07:05 ◼   ► we'll talk about it. Anyway, the point is, I think at this point, you know, a couple of months on,

00:07:09 ◼   ► this may be the time when a secure boot thing may start to compel you, or I guess,

00:07:16 ◼   ► I was gonna say try, but I guess it would compel you to upgrade to High Sierra. But personally,

00:07:21 ◼   ► I can't imagine if I were to get an iMac Pro, or you know, whatever computers come with this in the

00:07:27 ◼   ► future, I don't think I would turn this from anything but full security. Like, I update not

00:07:32 ◼   ► day zero or day one if you will, but I update reasonably quickly and I don't think that

00:07:38 ◼   ► personally I would have any reason to crank this down. And it sounds like the two of you

00:07:43 ◼   ► guys would. Marco, is that what you're saying? That you would not want to run at full security?

00:07:46 ◼   ► - It depends. So I'm gonna have to do some research over the next negative three to six

00:07:52 ◼   ► days but it has to be something more like preventing you from like overriding the OS

00:07:59 ◼   ► with an old hacked version, it has to be.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I can't imagine it's gonna like,

00:08:04 ◼   ► I'm gonna wake up my computer one day

00:08:05 ◼   ► and it's gonna say, nope, sorry,

00:08:07 ◼   ► you can't run Sierra anymore.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Like that's, I don't think that's gonna be what they do.

00:08:12 ◼   ► 'Cause again, that would just wreak havoc

00:08:14 ◼   ► with so many like big installations

00:08:16 ◼   ► and people's needs and everything, I can't imagine.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So I'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt

00:08:20 ◼   ► and leave it on the default which is the full security.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And if I'm proven wrong in my research

00:08:25 ◼   ► three to six days ago, then maybe I'll change my mind.

00:08:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:28 ◼   ► I'm trying to look up, if I deleted from the show notes, the screenshot that Cable had

00:08:32 ◼   ► posted, but my recollection of it is that it is different than the screenshot that is

00:08:36 ◼   ► on the Apple support document that we'll put in the show notes, and the wording underneath

00:08:40 ◼   ► what full security means.

00:08:41 ◼   ► From Cable's screenshot, it was "Full security ensures that only the latest and most secure

00:08:47 ◼   ► software can be run."

00:08:49 ◼   ► Right?

00:08:50 ◼   ► It requires a network connection in software installation, right?

00:08:53 ◼   ► So that's the old wording.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Only the latest and most secure software.

00:08:56 ◼   ► and most secure, I mean is that just saying like the latest is always the most secure,

00:09:00 ◼   ► but latest is pretty unambiguous. New text on Apple's page ensures that only your current

00:09:05 ◼   ► OS or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple can run. And that is very

00:09:11 ◼   ► different. Very, very different. You know, so only your current OS, meaning whatever

00:09:15 ◼   ► is currently on your system, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple.

00:09:19 ◼   ► And that's more like what Marco was talking about. Currently trusted by Apple is Apple

00:09:22 ◼   ► could say, "Okay, we put out a bump point release that is no longer trusted, so that

00:09:26 ◼   ► particular one can't run."

00:09:28 ◼   ► But any of these other 20 versions are all fine.

00:09:30 ◼   ► So maybe Apple is changing its mind.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I would assume the one on the Apple site is the most up-to-date one,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and I would assume that the text changes reflect the reality of the feature.

00:09:41 ◼   ► But as we said, Marco will find out for us, I guess.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And I'd also like to reiterate what John, you had said a little while ago about any

00:09:49 ◼   ► sort of larger organization wanting complete and utter control over their machines.

00:09:54 ◼   ► At my work, which is a 500 employee company, I was put on the blessed list that I could

00:10:01 ◼   ► install High Sierra, but by default you are not allowed to install High Sierra.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And my work is actually fairly hands-off with our machines.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Like by default, average users do not get administrator privileges, but all developers

00:10:13 ◼   ► do.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And they're generally not too bad about giving us reasonably full access to our computers.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And yet, despite that, we are not allowed to install upgrades of operating systems without

00:10:27 ◼   ► them having blessed them and so on and so forth.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so they're kind of beta testing with a group of, I don't know, 10 or 20 of us internally,

00:10:34 ◼   ► of which I'm part of that.

00:10:35 ◼   ► But a friend of mine works at a very, very large financial organization.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And I've heard through this friend that their computer pretty much is inoperable.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Their MacBook Pro is pretty much inoperable unless they are connected to the company's

00:10:52 ◼   ► VPN or the company's Wi-Fi.

00:10:55 ◼   ► That's how stodgy these sorts of larger companies, especially in financial services, can get

00:11:02 ◼   ► over time.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Is that this person's computer, they basically can't get to anything on the internet, even

00:11:08 ◼   ► on their home wi-fi until they've connected to Big Brother, I mean to the company's VPN

00:11:14 ◼   ► so that they can be monitored. I mean tracked. I mean just taken care of. It's crazy out there,

00:11:19 ◼   ► I tell you. Anyway, William Pierce writes in, "There's a lot of women car journalists these

00:11:24 ◼   ► days, but one blog that sprung to mind is at blackflag.gelopnik.com, and it's by Steph

00:11:29 ◼   ► Schrader and Alex King. It's a great place for racing news, solid coverage, and they've gotten

00:11:34 ◼   ► plenty of scoops. I have not had the chance to check this out. I've been pretty much off

00:11:38 ◼   ► the internet all day. I'm assuming one of the two of you did, probably, Jon?

00:11:41 ◼   ► Jon Streeter Yeah, this was a—but we had an Ask ATP

00:11:44 ◼   ► question about, you know, car magazines for someone's kid, and I went into how a lot of the

00:11:49 ◼   ► car magazines are written assuming that everyone who's reading it is a dude, and, you know, and

00:11:58 ◼   ► how it's not really a great thing to introduce young readers to if you want them to avoid

00:12:05 ◼   ► perpetuating, you know, sort of behavior that excludes people, whatever. But the question

00:12:12 ◼   ► was specifically about magazines, and I'm assuming the person meant paper magazines,

00:12:16 ◼   ► because when I see magazines, that's what I think. But William brings up a good point

00:12:20 ◼   ► if you want to look for, you know, a more modern inclusive take on whatever your hobby

00:12:27 ◼   ► maybe, online is probably the place to do it.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And I do read some car sites, I watch more YouTube videos than I read car sites, but

00:12:32 ◼   ► I certainly go to Jalopnik a lot, mostly led there by other people that I follow linking

00:12:38 ◼   ► to cool car stories on Jalopnik.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And so yeah, they have blogs and journalists, and if you're looking for—it depends on

00:12:46 ◼   ► what kind of news you're looking for.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I looked at this thing and it's a lot of racing news and I'm really not into racing,

00:12:51 ◼   ► But that's probably a better bet for finding new voices, as they say in the automotive

00:12:57 ◼   ► of Nudist Industry.

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00:14:56 ◼   ► - Let's do some Ask ATP.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Scott Lougheed writes in,

00:15:02 ◼   ► "What do you think the odds are

00:15:04 ◼   ► "of attention detection on Apple Watch?

00:15:05 ◼   ► "It could really refine raise to wake.

00:15:07 ◼   ► "Display remains on as long as you're looking at it,

00:15:09 ◼   ► "turns on with attention, et cetera."

00:15:10 ◼   ► So, quick recap on the iPhone, don't call it X.

00:15:14 ◼   ► There is a feature by which,

00:15:16 ◼   ► If it realizes that you're not actively looking at the phone because it's using the front-facing

00:15:20 ◼   ► like camera array, if you're not looking at the phone it will dim itself reasonably quickly,

00:15:26 ◼   ► and if it's dimmed but still on, it will actually turn itself to full brightness again once

00:15:32 ◼   ► it realizes you've looked at it again.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And it's actually extremely cool.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And so Scott's thought was, "Hey, could we use that same tech in the Apple Watch?"

00:15:39 ◼   ► So as you're looking at the Apple Watch, then it will continue to be full brightness, it

00:15:45 ◼   ► it won't ever turn itself off until it knows that you're no longer looking at it,

00:15:49 ◼   ► in which case obviously it can turn itself back down or off or etc.

00:15:53 ◼   ► To my eyes, I do think that this will, on an infinite time scale,

00:15:57 ◼   ► be a thing, but I don't see it happening anytime soon because even though

00:16:01 ◼   ► they've taken what was effectively a Microsoft Kinect and shrank it down to be in the

00:16:05 ◼   ► notch in the iPhone X, I don't see it becoming small enough to be on the Apple Watch

00:16:09 ◼   ► anytime soon, much less having the battery power

00:16:13 ◼   ► power to power it, but that's just me.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Marco, what do you think?

00:16:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think it makes a lot of sense, honestly,

00:16:19 ◼   ► because for all the reasons you said,

00:16:21 ◼   ► I can't imagine that it would have the battery power

00:16:23 ◼   ► to be constantly scanning to see

00:16:25 ◼   ► if you're looking at it or not,

00:16:27 ◼   ► and also for the feature of things like

00:16:30 ◼   ► keeping the screen on for a while,

00:16:32 ◼   ► if you are looking at it, again,

00:16:35 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's worth the power,

00:16:36 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like they have the physical space

00:16:38 ◼   ► to put the sensors on the front of it.

00:16:40 ◼   ► I don't think they intend for you to be looking at the watch

00:16:43 ◼   ► without touching it for very long anyway.

00:16:46 ◼   ► - All right, Jon, any other thoughts?

00:16:49 ◼   ► - If they had the battery power to do the face detection,

00:16:53 ◼   ► to power all the cameras and have them do all the things,

00:16:56 ◼   ► they should spend that battery power

00:16:58 ◼   ► on having a watch face that never turns off.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I know it's probably different amounts,

00:17:01 ◼   ► but like that's the goal.

00:17:02 ◼   ► I think that's a better goal,

00:17:03 ◼   ► like to basically get to the point

00:17:04 ◼   ► where the watch face never turns off using whatever,

00:17:07 ◼   ► better technology, better screens, whatever they have to do.

00:17:10 ◼   ► That's what you want.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And so this in-between thing where you burn a lot of battery energy trying to be super

00:17:14 ◼   ► smart about when you turn the screen on and off seems like a bad trade-off to me.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Moving on, Max Velasco-Nott writes in, "I'm in the market for RAID 0 external SSD storage.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I'm wondering what you use and what you'd recommend.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I'm on a Thunderbolt 2 machine, but I'm open to a backwards compatible Thunderbolt 3 drive

00:17:31 ◼   ► if you happen to be using one.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Thank you for any advice.

00:17:34 ◼   ► I have precisely zero input on this, so Marco, take it away."

00:17:39 ◼   ► As mentioned, seven days ago, Tif's iMac has had a four

00:17:44 ◼   ► drive RAID 0 SSD Thunderbolt 2 enclosure

00:17:48 ◼   ► for the last few years.

00:17:49 ◼   ► So I have direct experience with these.

00:17:52 ◼   ► They're fine, they're nothing special.

00:17:54 ◼   ► They tend to come with really loud, crappy fans.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I replaced the fan in hers with a much quieter

00:17:59 ◼   ► Noctua Superquiet fan, and that was a very, very good

00:18:03 ◼   ► upgrade to do to it.

00:18:04 ◼   ► That didn't seem to reduce the life of anything at all

00:18:07 ◼   ► because it's really just cooling the very, very hot

00:18:10 ◼   ► Thunderbolt chip that's inside.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It's not really, you know, the SSDs don't need much

00:18:13 ◼   ► cooling themselves, so.

00:18:14 ◼   ► It's fine, we've never had any problems with it,

00:18:16 ◼   ► like, you know, disconnecting or failing

00:18:18 ◼   ► or anything like that, but they are,

00:18:21 ◼   ► it is a fairly expensive solution, a much better solution.

00:18:26 ◼   ► If, you know, I don't know what Max's needs are here,

00:18:29 ◼   ► but if you can all avoid having an external RAID enclosure,

00:18:34 ◼   ► you'll be better off for it if you can either just

00:18:36 ◼   ► like one big disk of some sort,

00:18:38 ◼   ► or if you can use network storage,

00:18:41 ◼   ► like a NAS or something like that,

00:18:43 ◼   ► that's generally better.

00:18:45 ◼   ► It's just less hassle and less crap

00:18:48 ◼   ► and less hardware to break and maintain.

00:18:51 ◼   ► But if you still wanna do this,

00:18:53 ◼   ► the enclosure we got was from OWC, maxsales.com.

00:18:57 ◼   ► I think it was a few hundred dollars maybe,

00:18:59 ◼   ► just for the enclosure.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Anything involving multiple disk enclosures

00:19:04 ◼   ► with a Thunderbolt interface is not going to be cheap.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Another option that you have is to use

00:19:09 ◼   ► the built-in software RAID in Mac OS.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I don't think that applies to APFS yet,

00:19:14 ◼   ► but is that right, John, do you know?

00:19:16 ◼   ► - What, do you wanna know if you can do

00:19:17 ◼   ► software RAID at all with APFS?

00:19:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:19:19 ◼   ► - I don't remember.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I remember, I have the same vague memory as you do

00:19:23 ◼   ► that there was a bunch of limitations.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I think they might have taken it away with APFS,

00:19:27 ◼   ► but I'm not sure.

00:19:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, so if you can do software RAID still

00:19:31 ◼   ► with whatever your file system needs are,

00:19:33 ◼   ► Another option you have, if the performance of this

00:19:35 ◼   ► won't be too bad, is to just get a bunch of really

00:19:38 ◼   ► inexpensive USB 3 enclosures.

00:19:40 ◼   ► 'Cause you can get a USB 3 SSD enclosure for like 15 bucks.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I have a few of these from my own computer.

00:19:47 ◼   ► - Bus powered, that's the important part, bus powered.

00:19:49 ◼   ► - Yes, and bus powered, right.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And because SSDs don't need additional power,

00:19:52 ◼   ► so that way you avoid having not only

00:19:55 ◼   ► additional cable clutter, but also if you can eliminate

00:19:58 ◼   ► some device's own power supply from your setup,

00:20:02 ◼   ► you eliminate a major source of failure and weirdness.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Because those little power bricks

00:20:06 ◼   ► that come with everything are terrible.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Like they just aren't very reliable,

00:20:09 ◼   ► they fail all the time,

00:20:11 ◼   ► not to mention that they're big and bulky and ugly.

00:20:13 ◼   ► So anything that can be bus powered

00:20:14 ◼   ► is generally a gain for you here.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And because you're powering SSDs

00:20:18 ◼   ► and not big spinning disks,

00:20:20 ◼   ► you should be able to get away with that.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So if you can get away with just a handful

00:20:23 ◼   ► of cheap USB enclosures,

00:20:25 ◼   ► if that will work for your performance and throughput needs,

00:20:28 ◼   ► that will be way cheaper

00:20:30 ◼   ► and just a simpler setup in general.

00:20:33 ◼   ► But again, it all depends on what you need.

00:20:34 ◼   ► If you do still truly need an external RAID 0 enclosure,

00:20:39 ◼   ► I've had totally fine luck with the OWC,

00:20:42 ◼   ► I think it's called the Thunder Bay Mini,

00:20:44 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's the one that holds,

00:20:45 ◼   ► specifically for two and a half inch drives,

00:20:47 ◼   ► it holds four of them.

00:20:49 ◼   ► It's Thunderbolt from OWC,

00:20:51 ◼   ► and it has a very loud fan

00:20:52 ◼   ► until you put a Noctua fan in there.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Joshua Rogers writes,

00:20:56 ◼   ► "Do any of you use any soundproofing

00:20:58 ◼   ► "or acoustic material in the room

00:21:00 ◼   ► that you podcast in to help with audio recording quality.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I will start.

00:21:04 ◼   ► I used to, before I moved rooms on account of our forthcoming kid, I used to use literally

00:21:11 ◼   ► a fleece blanket that I push pinned into the wall behind my iMac, and that was enough sound

00:21:17 ◼   ► deadening to get the job done.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Marco had told me very early on that I was echoing quite a bit, and this was probably

00:21:23 ◼   ► during the neutral time, in fact.

00:21:25 ◼   ► And something in like 2013 or thereabouts, I push pinned this blanket to the wall, and

00:21:31 ◼   ► it stayed up for about four years until we moved rooms.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Now we have some sort of soundproofing something or other that I think, Marco, you might have

00:21:39 ◼   ► recommended that I will put a link in the show notes.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Soundtracks Pro?

00:21:42 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:21:43 ◼   ► I'll have to look through my Amazon order history.

00:21:44 ◼   ► If it has the cool like swirly pattern, it's Soundtracks Pro.

00:21:47 ◼   ► No, definitely not.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I probably got something considerably cheaper knowing me.

00:21:51 ◼   ► So I will put links to both of these things into the show notes.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And basically I have a panel of nine of these.

00:22:02 ◼   ► So let me back up a half step.

00:22:03 ◼   ► So my iMac and my desk is in between two windows.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Above the iMac is a panel of nine, I don't know, foot long by foot wide sound deadening

00:22:15 ◼   ► things.

00:22:16 ◼   ► And so there's basically the wall behind my iMac is all sound deadening material.

00:22:21 ◼   ► There's nothing on the opposite wall because it's far enough away.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Not that this room is that big, but it's far enough away that I don't think it really matters.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I wanted to link to the thumbtacks that you use that kept a fleece blanket on your wall

00:22:32 ◼   ► for four years because I'm just thinking of the idea of I've got a fleece blanket that

00:22:35 ◼   ► I want to hold on the wall.

00:22:37 ◼   ► You know what I'll use?

00:22:38 ◼   ► I'll use thumbtacks, or as Casey would say, push pins.

00:22:39 ◼   ► I'll use thumbtacks to put it on the wall.

00:22:41 ◼   ► I would think within five minutes that thing would fall down.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Did you use a hundred of them?

00:22:45 ◼   ► Or are these the world's best thumbtacks?

00:22:47 ◼   ► No, it was not a terribly heavy nor thick fleece blanket.

00:22:52 ◼   ► I'm sure I have a picture somewhere of it, but I don't know if I could dig it up easily.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But it was not a very heavy blanket by any means.

00:22:59 ◼   ► It was fairly thin.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Do you feel like it made a difference?

00:23:02 ◼   ► Well, Marco—I mean this in the most respectful way possible—Marco complained and moaned

00:23:06 ◼   ► about my echoes, and then I put that up, and then he stopped complaining and moaning about

00:23:10 ◼   ► my echoes.

00:23:11 ◼   ► So either he figured out a way around it, or it was better.

00:23:14 ◼   ► - That's how I show my approval.

00:23:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:23:17 ◼   ► When Marco stops complaining, you know he's happy.

00:23:20 ◼   ► But anyway, Marco, tell me again what you have,

00:23:22 ◼   ► you have Soundtrax, Soundtrax?

00:23:24 ◼   ► - Soundtrax, T-R-A-X Pro.

00:23:27 ◼   ► You can get them on Amazon.

00:23:28 ◼   ► You get a decent-sized pack for like 40 or 50 bucks

00:23:32 ◼   ► with I think eight one-by-four-foot sections,

00:23:35 ◼   ► something like that.

00:23:37 ◼   ► They also make larger ones.

00:23:38 ◼   ► If you wanna do a big wall, you can get larger panels

00:23:40 ◼   ► that are about two by five, or two by four feet.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I have a few of those behind my computer.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is the kind of thing,

00:23:49 ◼   ► so it does help to treat the room with soft things

00:23:52 ◼   ► to make you sound better.

00:23:54 ◼   ► A lot of times people go a little overboard with it

00:23:56 ◼   ► and they just kind of keep going

00:23:57 ◼   ► 'cause they think they need it or it just looks cool.

00:24:00 ◼   ► It makes you look like a really professional podcaster

00:24:02 ◼   ► to have sound editing material in your entire office,

00:24:05 ◼   ► but usually you don't need as much of it as people use.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And also, there's lots of alternatives

00:24:12 ◼   ► that will work just as well.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Your hanging a blanket on the wall was totally fine,

00:24:17 ◼   ► because what you basically need is for the room

00:24:20 ◼   ► to be filled with as many soft things as possible

00:24:23 ◼   ► that can avoid echoes.

00:24:25 ◼   ► That's what you're trying to avoid here, is echo.

00:24:27 ◼   ► You're not trying to insulate, like sound insulation,

00:24:30 ◼   ► to make the room soundproof so that people

00:24:33 ◼   ► outside the room can't hear you

00:24:35 ◼   ► and that outside sounds can't get in.

00:24:36 ◼   ► That's not what this is.

00:24:38 ◼   ► that's a different thing, and you don't do that for 50 bucks.

00:24:42 ◼   ► All we're doing here is trying to reduce the echoes

00:24:46 ◼   ► of sound bouncing around hard surfaces of the room.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And so some places just don't need this.

00:24:52 ◼   ► One of the reasons why, like sometimes we joke

00:24:53 ◼   ► when podcasters have to record in our closets

00:24:56 ◼   ► for some reason, it sounds great,

00:24:58 ◼   ► because closets are small spaces filled with soft clothing.

00:25:02 ◼   ► So there's no echoes that can be had.

00:25:05 ◼   ► If you think about the opposite,

00:25:07 ◼   ► the worst place you could record would be in a bathroom,

00:25:10 ◼   ► with a hard floor and tile walls everywhere.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Especially if you ever moved out of an apartment,

00:25:16 ◼   ► and you've already packed up the shower curtain

00:25:19 ◼   ► and all your towels from the bathroom

00:25:20 ◼   ► so it's just totally empty,

00:25:21 ◼   ► and you notice how incredibly echoey it is

00:25:23 ◼   ► with no soft things in there.

00:25:26 ◼   ► So we're going for the opposite of that.

00:25:28 ◼   ► You generally just want soft things in the room.

00:25:31 ◼   ► That doesn't have to be sound editing material.

00:25:33 ◼   ► A rug helps tremendously.

00:25:36 ◼   ► and just having blankets around.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Like if you have a giant open hard floor,

00:25:42 ◼   ► put a blanket or a rug on it while you record.

00:25:45 ◼   ► But the best thing you can do is,

00:25:47 ◼   ► as Casey mentioned with the blanket,

00:25:49 ◼   ► the best place to put something soft

00:25:51 ◼   ► is on whatever wall or whatever else

00:25:54 ◼   ► is behind the microphone.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Because if you think about how you talk

00:25:57 ◼   ► towards a microphone, the first place

00:25:59 ◼   ► that you're gonna get those echoes

00:26:01 ◼   ► is they're gonna be bouncing off the wall behind the mic.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Either your sound's gonna go past the mic,

00:26:05 ◼   ► bounce off the wall behind it,

00:26:06 ◼   ► and then get fed back into the mic as an echo

00:26:09 ◼   ► from the back or from the sides or whatever else.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Anything you can do to minimize sound echoing

00:26:14 ◼   ► from right behind the mic,

00:26:16 ◼   ► you will see a large result from that.

00:26:18 ◼   ► It can be sound-absorbed material.

00:26:20 ◼   ► If you're looking for something,

00:26:22 ◼   ► you know, more like a permanent kind of setup

00:26:24 ◼   ► that you can hang up and just leave there for years

00:26:26 ◼   ► and be done with it,

00:26:27 ◼   ► yeah, go for some kind of acoustic foam.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And honestly, it doesn't really matter

00:26:30 ◼   ► which acoustic foam you get.

00:26:31 ◼   ► They're not very different.

00:26:32 ◼   ► All you're looking for is like soft, squishy material

00:26:35 ◼   ► to absorb the echoes.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I like the Soundtracks Pro because it looks cool,

00:26:38 ◼   ► it has this nice little like swirly kind of hexagon-like

00:26:40 ◼   ► pattern, so that's kind of fun, but it doesn't really

00:26:43 ◼   ► matter, you can get pretty much anything at pretty much

00:26:45 ◼   ► any price and it'll work about the same.

00:26:47 ◼   ► A second thing that you should consider if this is a problem

00:26:49 ◼   ► for you, consider using a different microphone.

00:26:53 ◼   ► A lot of microphones that come highly recommended on like

00:26:57 ◼   ► gear guides and stuff and how to podcast and even come

00:27:00 ◼   ► recommended from podcasters who just don't have a lot of

00:27:02 ◼   ► experience with other microphones.

00:27:04 ◼   ► A lot of them are inexpensive, large diaphragm

00:27:08 ◼   ► cardioid condensers.

00:27:10 ◼   ► This includes things like the Blue Yeti

00:27:12 ◼   ► and a whole lot of entry level microphones.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Basically, if it's a condenser and you spent

00:27:17 ◼   ► less than 200 bucks for it, it's probably one of these.

00:27:20 ◼   ► The problem with these, they do sound very nice and crisp

00:27:23 ◼   ► and they pick up a lot of detail in your voice,

00:27:25 ◼   ► but they also pick up like if a pin drops in the room,

00:27:28 ◼   ► like they'll pick up any background noise.

00:27:31 ◼   ► And as a result, they also very, very easily

00:27:33 ◼   ► pick up echo from the walls.

00:27:36 ◼   ► If you just use a mic with a different pick up pattern,

00:27:39 ◼   ► some people say you have to use a dynamic mic,

00:27:41 ◼   ► this is not actually the case,

00:27:42 ◼   ► you have to use a super cardioid mic.

00:27:43 ◼   ► That's what you actually want.

00:27:45 ◼   ► It can be a condenser or dynamic,

00:27:46 ◼   ► it should be super cardioid or hyper cardioid.

00:27:49 ◼   ► What you're looking at, and I did a whole review,

00:27:51 ◼   ► you can listen to audio samples,

00:27:53 ◼   ► what you're looking at basically is the Shure Beta 87A.

00:27:57 ◼   ► That's what you're looking at.

00:27:58 ◼   ► It is about 250 bucks, it's an XLR mic, not a USB mic.

00:28:02 ◼   ► I don't know of any USB supercardioid podcast microphones.

00:28:07 ◼   ► If anyone knows of any, please let me know.

00:28:09 ◼   ► But what this does, the supercardioid pickup pattern,

00:28:12 ◼   ► it basically tightens and narrows the area

00:28:17 ◼   ► from which it picks up sound.

00:28:18 ◼   ► So it will pick up a lot less sound

00:28:21 ◼   ► coming from different directions

00:28:23 ◼   ► and coming from further away from the mic,

00:28:26 ◼   ► which in turn will kind of inherently

00:28:28 ◼   ► reduce the amount of echo it picks up.

00:28:30 ◼   ► It's also really nice that it'll reduce

00:28:31 ◼   ► amount of background noise it picks up.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Like if somebody breaks a plate in the next room over,

00:28:35 ◼   ► like you'll hear a much quieter version of it

00:28:38 ◼   ► than you would on a different pickup pattern.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Because the sound drops off further

00:28:42 ◼   ► the more you go away from the mic.

00:28:44 ◼   ► So anything you can do to narrow that pickup pattern,

00:28:48 ◼   ► that will serve you very well in the mic.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And then you won't need to do as much babying of the room.

00:28:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, it's really weird.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I was using a Rode Podcaster for, I don't know,

00:29:00 ◼   ► something like the first year that I was doing this with you two fine gentlemen

00:29:03 ◼   ► and then I am now using what do I have I don't have the 87 I have 58 a is that

00:29:08 ◼   ► right yes remember you should switch to the 87 a by the way yeah I guess it's

00:29:13 ◼   ► you sound you sound good enough that I don't bother you about it that's the

00:29:18 ◼   ► Marco seal of approval it really is it really is tremendous the difference

00:29:23 ◼   ► because right now you know my my mouth is within an inch of the pop filter not

00:29:29 ◼   ► the pop filter, but the foam on the edge of the microphone. And if I were to turn my mouth

00:29:33 ◼   ► and maybe do something like 90 degrees the other direction, it is tremendous the difference

00:29:39 ◼   ► that that makes. And if I go 180 degrees the other direction, you can barely even hear

00:29:45 ◼   ► me. It's really crazy what a supercardioid, supercardioid, yeah. And that's what you're

00:29:51 ◼   ► using. Yeah, the Beta 58A is a supercardioid dynamic mic. It is very good for the price.

00:29:58 ◼   ► It's a little bit like boomy and fat

00:30:01 ◼   ► in like the mid-base frequency area.

00:30:03 ◼   ► - Yeah it is, I mean, what?

00:30:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, but for the price it's pretty good.

00:30:10 ◼   ► But I do recommend it, you know,

00:30:11 ◼   ► if you have a setup that can take an XLR mic

00:30:15 ◼   ► and you can spend whatever that is,

00:30:17 ◼   ► like 160 bucks for that,

00:30:19 ◼   ► save up another 80 bucks and get the 87A instead,

00:30:21 ◼   ► it's better.

00:30:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is 160, you're right,

00:30:24 ◼   ► and if you say the 87A is 60 more, then so be it.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - John, what is your situation with regard to

00:30:30 ◼   ► sound deadening material?

00:30:32 ◼   ► - John does not count.

00:30:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:34 ◼   ► John has an inexpensive large diaphragm condenser microphone.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - Not that expensive, it was like 315 bucks or something,

00:30:40 ◼   ► wasn't it?

00:30:41 ◼   ► - No, well, you probably,

00:30:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:44 ◼   ► I think the most it ever cost was 250, but still.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Yeah, you have the Shure PG42 USB.

00:30:50 ◼   ► It sounds incredible, it sounds very, very good,

00:30:55 ◼   ► but it is an incredibly picky microphone for room dynamics

00:30:59 ◼   ► because it's, what I mentioned earlier,

00:31:01 ◼   ► it's the kind that picks up like a needle dropping,

00:31:02 ◼   ► like it picks up anything.

00:31:04 ◼   ► However, all the rules of this microphone

00:31:08 ◼   ► cease to apply in John Syracuse's office

00:31:11 ◼   ► and I don't know why and I've never wanted to tell him

00:31:14 ◼   ► to change anything because for some reason

00:31:17 ◼   ► that I cannot fathom or figure out,

00:31:19 ◼   ► he sounds perfect all the time.

00:31:21 ◼   ► He does not have any echo, there's never any noise

00:31:24 ◼   ► hits on the track, all the problems that you would usually

00:31:27 ◼   ► get with this type of condenser.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And I bought that exact microphone to try in my mega review

00:31:33 ◼   ► and it was incredibly picky for me.

00:31:35 ◼   ► But for some reason, it's perfect for Jon,

00:31:38 ◼   ► so I don't, like the rules do not apply in Jon's office.

00:31:42 ◼   ► - Well, some rules do.

00:31:43 ◼   ► I mean, so, from the sound deadening material,

00:31:46 ◼   ► for getting to this question, the main reason

00:31:49 ◼   ► I don't have sound deadening material is,

00:31:51 ◼   ► back when we were all buying sound foam and stuff, of course Marco bought this really

00:31:56 ◼   ► one that he was just telling you about, and I went, I'm like, oh, I should get that same

00:31:58 ◼   ► swirly stuff Marco got, and I went to the web page where they sell it, and it was $60,

00:32:02 ◼   ► and my interpretation was, it's $60 for one rectangle of the foamy stuff. And then I looked

00:32:08 ◼   ► at how much, how many rectangles Marco has on his balls, and I'm like, well, Marco, you

00:32:12 ◼   ► know, all right, fine, but no way in hell I'm spending $60 times, you know, 12 to put

00:32:21 ◼   ► foam on my wall and I'm like, "This is ridiculous." And I did some researching for cheaper foam,

00:32:24 ◼   ► but I was just like, "Yeah, I'm just not going to do it." So anyway, now that I know that

00:32:29 ◼   ► it is not $60 for one square, it's $60 for what? How many is it? I forget, eight or something?

00:32:33 ◼   ► - I think six or twelve. It's enough. The $60 pack of the one by two sheets, whatever

00:32:39 ◼   ► that is, that's enough for pretty much anybody to make their setup sound great.

00:32:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that sounds more reasonable, although it really annoys me that the pattern doesn't

00:32:47 ◼   ► line up if you buy all the squares. That really annoys me.

00:32:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so I have some of the big ones that I mentioned.

00:32:52 ◼   ► It doesn't line up on them either,

00:32:54 ◼   ► but at least with the big ones you have fewer seams.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, but I still don't have the phone.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And also I wanna ask Marco how he attached it to his wall

00:33:01 ◼   ► and he's like, "I permanently stuck it on there

00:33:02 ◼   ► "and if I ever wanna remove it, I have to repaint the wall."

00:33:04 ◼   ► And I was like, "Eh."

00:33:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's like adhesive squares

00:33:08 ◼   ► that they recommend that you use with it

00:33:09 ◼   ► and I got those.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So each one of them is stuck on with something like six,

00:33:14 ◼   ► like little two by one inch adhesive square things,

00:33:17 ◼   ► like double sided tape kind of things.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And yeah, I'm pretty sure,

00:33:20 ◼   ► and they haven't fallen off at all, which is great,

00:33:22 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure that's a pretty permanent installation.

00:33:25 ◼   ► - That's it for the wall.

00:33:26 ◼   ► You should've used Casey's thumbtacks.

00:33:28 ◼   ► - Well, it's funny you bring that up.

00:33:31 ◼   ► We tried to use command strips on the foam that we have

00:33:34 ◼   ► and they have all fallen over time.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But I think if memory serves,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I did get the adhesive squares that Marco recommended,

00:33:44 ◼   ► and then we put those on the back of the foam

00:33:47 ◼   ► and then command stripped those.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:33:50 ◼   ► So it's foam, adhesive squares, command strips,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and that actually seems to be holding pretty well so far.

00:33:57 ◼   ► - That's a good idea.

00:33:57 ◼   ► You can put it right over the thumbtackles if you have them.

00:34:00 ◼   ► But anyway, as for my room, early on in this series,

00:34:05 ◼   ► someone, I forget who it was, Marco, do you remember

00:34:07 ◼   ► which one of the helpful audio people

00:34:08 ◼   ► I'm about to talk about?

00:34:09 ◼   ► - I believe it was Marcus DePaulo.

00:34:11 ◼   ► - Yes, there you go, that's probably it.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Sent us a bunch of advice about what we're doing

00:34:15 ◼   ► and what he had to say about my mic

00:34:16 ◼   ► was that he heard a lot of echo and he surmised that I had my monitor really close to my microphone

00:34:22 ◼   ► and he was right.

00:34:23 ◼   ► And so the only thing I've done to make this room better for audio when I'm podcasting

00:34:28 ◼   ► is I move my monitor farther away from my microphone or my microphone farther away from

00:34:31 ◼   ► my monitor.

00:34:33 ◼   ► I still think the echo is there, it's just the delay is slightly different.

00:34:38 ◼   ► The thing I think that's good about this room is like to my right is a giant bookshelf and

00:34:44 ◼   ► bookshelves are surprisingly good baffles for sound because of all the little knobbly

00:34:47 ◼   ► books, you know, and the little gaps between them and behind them and even my bookshelves

00:34:52 ◼   ► where every spine is meticulously lined up.

00:34:55 ◼   ► It helps if the spines are uneven.

00:34:58 ◼   ► I bet it works even better.

00:34:59 ◼   ► This room is carpeted, which also helps.

00:35:02 ◼   ► And the windows do have blinds on them, which are also kind of knobbly.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But yeah, it's not that – and the gain is really low on my mic.

00:35:10 ◼   ► And I have like tons of, I have a double pop filter and a foam shield on it.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So I don't know, I'm dreading changing my setup, but I think I will eventually when

00:35:18 ◼   ► I get my new computer in 20 mumble mumble.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I'm going to have to because, anyway.

00:35:24 ◼   ► The new one has USB.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Marco's recommended mic and Marco's recommended little hot box with knobs for my brand new

00:35:33 ◼   ► computer and then I'll just, you know, we'll see.

00:35:37 ◼   ► That's what I call those like,

00:35:39 ◼   ► you can spend $750 for a hotbox with knobs.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's actually up to like $900 now.

00:35:43 ◼   ► The one I like is the USB Pre 2 from Sound Devices.

00:35:46 ◼   ► So this is the box that converts USB to microphones.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I've tried a lot of these things.

00:35:50 ◼   ► There's lots of them that are totally fine

00:35:52 ◼   ► for like $150 bucks.

00:35:54 ◼   ► But I wanted something that was better than totally fine.

00:35:57 ◼   ► I wanted something that was great.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And Sound Devices USB Pre 2 is great.

00:36:02 ◼   ► It's the kind of thing that if you've ever had a problem

00:36:04 ◼   ► or bad performance with one of the $150 ones

00:36:07 ◼   ► and you just get fed up and you're like,

00:36:08 ◼   ► "Can I just throw money at this problem to make it go away?"

00:36:10 ◼   ► This is the answer to that question.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And the reason you should get it, Jon,

00:36:14 ◼   ► is that it has amazing knobs.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Like, all the other ones have cheap, crappy--

00:36:19 ◼   ► - But I'm not supposed to ever touch the knobs.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - No, well, you gotta touch them a couple times

00:36:23 ◼   ► to set it up, and trust me--

00:36:24 ◼   ► - Once and then never move them again.

00:36:25 ◼   ► - You feel any other microphone interface's knob,

00:36:28 ◼   ► and you're gonna be like, "Oh, God,

00:36:29 ◼   ► "my toaster's better than this."

00:36:30 ◼   ► You try these knobs and you're like,

00:36:31 ◼   ► "Oh, my God, I want these knobs on everything I own."

00:36:34 ◼   ► They're so much better.

00:36:35 ◼   ► - Oh, my God, I love you guys.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Anyway, I may eventually get something new,

00:36:39 ◼   ► but we'll see.

00:36:40 ◼   ► But that's it, no foam.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - I love you guys so much.

00:36:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:45 ◼   ► What is this show about?

00:36:46 ◼   ► - Knob feel, that's what this show is about.

00:36:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:49 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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00:38:38 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:38:41 ◼   ► - So for the last few weeks,

00:38:43 ◼   ► we've had a reasonably significant amount of people tell us

00:38:48 ◼   ► in various states of anger that we need to take Apple to task

00:38:53 ◼   ► about how iPhones are throttling CPU performance

00:38:57 ◼   ► when the batteries get old and how this is horse crap

00:39:01 ◼   ► We really need to beat Apple up because apparently they think that people who matter listen to the show and guess what they don't but anyway

00:39:07 ◼   ► They do point is people were really upset about this and this has been going on for probably about a month now

00:39:14 ◼   ► Or near abouts and I never found this to be a particularly interesting

00:39:21 ◼   ► Thing to talk about a particularly particularly interesting topic because I mean hey guess what as your phones get old

00:39:28 ◼   ► they're gonna get slow. That, I mean, like, I understand that that probably shouldn't happen, that a CPU is a CPU is a CPU,

00:39:35 ◼   ► but, I mean, hey, as stuff gets older, it gets worse. As I get older, I get worse.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And so it stands to reason as other things get older,

00:39:43 ◼   ► maybe they will get worse too. But there's been a whole bunch of activity about this not today, but seven days ago exactly,

00:39:51 ◼   ► wherein we actually got some information from Apple.

00:39:54 ◼   ► So I'm going to try to do my chief summarizer in chief, and you guys jump in and/or correct

00:40:01 ◼   ► me after the fact.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And what it sounds like is--and I experienced this with my 6 or maybe it was my 6s--as my

00:40:09 ◼   ► 6 or 6s got older, occasionally it would go from something like 20 or 30% charge, as reported

00:40:16 ◼   ► by the iPhone, to dead.

00:40:18 ◼   ► It just turned itself off.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And this was deeply infuriating, because here it is, I'm trying to perform some sort of

00:40:25 ◼   ► task and my battery says that it's at something like a third charge.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I don't use battery percentage, or I didn't use battery percentage before the iPhone X

00:40:33 ◼   ► because I'm not a monster.

00:40:35 ◼   ► And so anyway, I just look at the—

00:40:37 ◼   ► You're going to make a lot of friends with this segment.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Oh, I know.

00:40:39 ◼   ► I know.

00:40:40 ◼   ► But regardless—well, I already made friends with my Fahrenheit discussion, so you know

00:40:43 ◼   ► what?

00:40:44 ◼   ► Why not?

00:40:45 ◼   ► Sorry, I'm not sorry.

00:40:46 ◼   ► The point is that, you know, I look at the little icon and it says it's about a third full.

00:40:51 ◼   ► I go to perform some sort of operation, suddenly the phone turns off.

00:40:55 ◼   ► So then I turn it back on, suddenly it's back at a third battery.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And that seems really, really weird.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Well, what it sounds like was happening was that when the CPU or other components were really, really asked to do a lot,

00:41:10 ◼   ► it would cause enough draw on the battery that the battery would end up kind of just not failing,

00:41:15 ◼   ► but just going kaput. And so the phone would turn off and that would be that. And so what

00:41:19 ◼   ► Apple's decided to do is as the battery gets older and as they realize that the battery can't really

00:41:23 ◼   ► handle this anymore, they will start throttling the CPU. And so they'll not let the CPU operate

00:41:30 ◼   ► at 100% speed in order to prevent these sorts of things from happening. Which to my eyes is a

00:41:37 ◼   ► perfectly reasonable engineering solution to a problem. And this problem is that batteries,

00:41:42 ◼   ► as they get older, they get crummier. That's the way batteries work. It may not be the way CPUs work,

00:41:48 ◼   ► but it is the way batteries work. And so, to my eyes, that's perfectly fine. I don't see why

00:41:56 ◼   ► everyone has gotten up in arms about this. But, oh man, a lot of people are really angry about this.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And I think part of that is probably because as you upgrade to the latest versions of iOS,

00:42:08 ◼   ► And as you have operating systems that are more and more taxing on the CPU, it ends up

00:42:14 ◼   ► causing a system-wide slowdown.

00:42:17 ◼   ► So not having experienced that, because I've gone on the complete douchebag, I get a new

00:42:25 ◼   ► iPhone every year train, but I was not always on this train.

00:42:31 ◼   ► And I do remember times when my older phones got a little bit slow over time.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And I think the moral of the story is these devices, or certainly the latest versions

00:42:43 ◼   ► of iOS, aren't really designed to use two-plus-year-old phones, maybe three- or four-year-old phones.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And maybe the thing that we should all be up in arms about is why is iOS 11 being supported

00:42:55 ◼   ► all the way back to the iPhone 4 or whatever?

00:42:57 ◼   ► That's probably not accurate, but just for the sake of conversation.

00:43:00 ◼   ► And that's, to me, the thing that maybe is a little bit more controversial.

00:43:06 ◼   ► But the fact that the CPU is being slowed down, like, "Hey, this is making it so your

00:43:10 ◼   ► phone doesn't spontaneously die.

00:43:12 ◼   ► But okay, fine.

00:43:13 ◼   ► If you prefer that, go ahead.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Maybe that's what we should do."

00:43:16 ◼   ► And I think it was either Panzareno or Gruber that said, I think it was Panzareno that said,

00:43:22 ◼   ► "Hey, the issue here is really communication, that Apple never told anyone why this was

00:43:26 ◼   ► happening."

00:43:27 ◼   ► And if they just disclosed, "Hey, we've realized that these spikes in battery draw have caused

00:43:33 ◼   ► the batteries to temporarily fail" — fail probably isn't the right word, but you know,

00:43:37 ◼   ► give up — "that's why we've throttled your CPUs, is to prevent that problem."

00:43:42 ◼   ► And if they had said that up front, then I think this wouldn't be an issue.

00:43:46 ◼   ► But they didn't, and so here we are.

00:43:48 ◼   ► So that is not a very succinct summary, but that is the summary nevertheless, and I apologize.

00:43:54 ◼   ► But Marco, tell me about this.

00:43:56 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:43:58 ◼   ► - So this is, it seemed like this is a very well-intentioned

00:44:02 ◼   ► solution to a very real problem.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:44:06 ◼   ► - But because of the context that is complicated

00:44:10 ◼   ► and hard to get rid of, which I'll get to in a second,

00:44:12 ◼   ► so because of the context and because of the execution

00:44:16 ◼   ► details of this, I think it's a really big problem for them.

00:44:19 ◼   ► So the context is probably the most important part here

00:44:23 ◼   ► that we've known anybody who is an Apple fan

00:44:27 ◼   ► or Apple defender in any way ever,

00:44:29 ◼   ► and Apple frequently needs defense,

00:44:31 ◼   ► 'cause people out there have a lot of horrible misconception

00:44:33 ◼   ► about Apple, and they have forever, right?

00:44:37 ◼   ► And I think this is part of why Apple fans

00:44:38 ◼   ► are so defensive so much at the time,

00:44:40 ◼   ► because there's so much bad information out there

00:44:42 ◼   ► about Apple, and people are always having to

00:44:45 ◼   ► fight it or correct it.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And so one of the things that a large portion

00:44:51 ◼   ► the population who buys iPhones believes

00:44:55 ◼   ► is that Apple intentionally makes their phones slower

00:44:59 ◼   ► with every new software update to make them buy new phones.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And there is some truth in this,

00:45:06 ◼   ► not in the intentionality of it,

00:45:07 ◼   ► but there is some truth that new OSs do usually run slower

00:45:11 ◼   ► on old hardware than the ones that they shipped with.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I don't think Apple's doing any of that intentionally.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I think as John Gruber wrote today,

00:45:19 ◼   ► I think Apple employees would just quit

00:45:22 ◼   ► before they would do something as crazy

00:45:24 ◼   ► and fraudulent and evil as that.

00:45:26 ◼   ► But the fact is the new OSes do usually run worse

00:45:29 ◼   ► on the old hardware than what shipped with them.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And that's just because they're new OSes.

00:45:34 ◼   ► There's new animations and higher memory usage

00:45:37 ◼   ► and more stuff happening in the background

00:45:40 ◼   ► because it seems like these are designed

00:45:43 ◼   ► to run really well on the current generation

00:45:45 ◼   ► and making them run on previous generations is,

00:45:49 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's a very high priority

00:45:52 ◼   ► to make that smooth or awesome.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And maybe, honestly, I don't know, maybe it is,

00:45:56 ◼   ► maybe there's tons of people working on that,

00:45:57 ◼   ► but the results that people see usually

00:46:00 ◼   ► is that when they update their two-year-old phone

00:46:03 ◼   ► to the newest OS that comes out every fall,

00:46:06 ◼   ► it's slower and it gets worse battery life.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Now, there's lots of complicating factors to this

00:46:13 ◼   ► that make this partially true, partially not true,

00:46:17 ◼   ► partially the inevitable behavior of lithium ion batteries over time, the progress of software

00:46:23 ◼   ► over time. But the fact is there is this very widespread belief that this is planned obsolescence,

00:46:30 ◼   ► that Apple is forcing people's phones to be slower over time so that people go out and

00:46:35 ◼   ► buy new phones. So that is the context in which this story now comes out. Now, Apple

00:46:41 ◼   ► has been doing this for almost a year, and even, it depends, we're going to link to an

00:46:46 ◼   ► an article he wrote last February,

00:46:49 ◼   ► like almost a year ago, saying like,

00:46:51 ◼   ► Apple said this about this new update

00:46:53 ◼   ► and here's what it does.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Because there was a big problem back then

00:46:56 ◼   ► about iPhone 6 and 6S, I believe,

00:46:58 ◼   ► as you mentioned, doing like the whole

00:47:00 ◼   ► unexpected shutdown thing,

00:47:02 ◼   ► when they were getting a little bit old.

00:47:03 ◼   ► What has come out over the last few days,

00:47:05 ◼   ► as you mentioned, there was a Reddit post

00:47:08 ◼   ► that kicked it all off,

00:47:09 ◼   ► we'll link to it in the show notes,

00:47:10 ◼   ► where somebody basically said that

00:47:12 ◼   ► he ran Geekbench, which is a popular benchmark,

00:47:15 ◼   ► before getting his battery replaced.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And then he got his battery replaced by Apple

00:47:19 ◼   ► and ran Geekbench again, and that his CPU performance

00:47:24 ◼   ► before the battery replacement was like half

00:47:26 ◼   ► of what it was after.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So he made this Reddit post saying like,

00:47:30 ◼   ► "Hey, it looks like Apple is throttling CPU performance

00:47:33 ◼   ► "when your battery is old."

00:47:35 ◼   ► And it took a while before, like everyone was getting

00:47:37 ◼   ► all up in arms for a few days, and then about nine days ago,

00:47:43 ◼   ► John Pool, you guys name it Geekbench?

00:47:45 ◼   ► I believe it's John Pool.

00:47:47 ◼   ► The developer of Geekbench went through all the data

00:47:49 ◼   ► and found like trends and peaks of like all the iPhones,

00:47:54 ◼   ► 6s and 6s, Ss and 7s that are running Geekbench

00:47:57 ◼   ► before and after the software update

00:47:59 ◼   ► that added this behavior.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And there are different performances like in the aggregate.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And there were very, very clear peaks.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Like before the update, there was a clear peak

00:48:11 ◼   ► where it's supposed to be.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And then after the update, there was still that main peak

00:48:15 ◼   ► where it's supposed to be, but then there were like

00:48:17 ◼   ► three other peaks at lower levels at about even intervals.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Like it's like, it's subtracting like 20%, 20%, 20%.

00:48:26 ◼   ► There were clear peaks there that like, okay,

00:48:27 ◼   ► there's clearly a lot of phones that are benchmarking

00:48:30 ◼   ► in these levels here.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And that came out about nine days ago,

00:48:36 ◼   ► and then exactly seven days ago, Apple issued

00:48:39 ◼   ► a press statement basically saying,

00:48:40 ◼   ► "Look, here's what we do.

00:48:41 ◼   ► "This is to combat lithium-ion battery problems over time

00:48:45 ◼   ► "when they get older and they can't maintain

00:48:47 ◼   ► "like the highest peak output

00:48:49 ◼   ► "when the CPU is drawing the most energy.

00:48:51 ◼   ► "And so we throttle down those peaks only when necessary

00:48:55 ◼   ► "to keep the phone running basically

00:48:57 ◼   ► "to prevent it from shutting down."

00:49:00 ◼   ► So they basically just did and then confirmed

00:49:04 ◼   ► that they did something that slows down your phone

00:49:07 ◼   ► when it gets older.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And I know they had, like I'm sure they had

00:49:11 ◼   ► the best of intentions.

00:49:12 ◼   ► It's clear from their statement, you know, I believe them,

00:49:15 ◼   ► I believe this is why they did it,

00:49:17 ◼   ► I don't think they're trying to push new phones even harder,

00:49:19 ◼   ► I think the iPhones sell themselves,

00:49:21 ◼   ► like I don't think they need to break your old phone

00:49:24 ◼   ► to sell new ones at a regular basis.

00:49:27 ◼   ► But I do think this was done very poorly.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Even if this is the right thing to do,

00:49:33 ◼   ► the right way to do it is to tell the user.

00:49:38 ◼   ► And I said on Twitter earlier,

00:49:40 ◼   ► this should be a setting and you should tell the user.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I have since come around,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I don't think it needs to necessarily be a setting

00:49:46 ◼   ► because as somebody pointed out,

00:49:48 ◼   ► if you turn the setting off,

00:49:49 ◼   ► your phone just randomly dies all day.

00:49:50 ◼   ► That's not great.

00:49:52 ◼   ► So maybe it doesn't need to be a setting.

00:49:54 ◼   ► But it absolutely needs to be communicated to the user.

00:49:58 ◼   ► These phones are people's primary computers.

00:50:01 ◼   ► You can't slow down people's primary computers

00:50:03 ◼   ► by seemingly 20 to 50%

00:50:07 ◼   ► for a reason that you don't tell them about

00:50:09 ◼   ► and that they have no way to know

00:50:10 ◼   ► unless they run a benchmark.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Like, all they know is my phone is really slow

00:50:16 ◼   ► and maybe it's just 'cause it's old, I guess,

00:50:18 ◼   ► maybe I have to get a new one

00:50:19 ◼   ► and a new phone is a lot of money

00:50:22 ◼   ► and a battery replacement is not.

00:50:25 ◼   ► So for a lot of people,

00:50:27 ◼   ► they could just get battery,

00:50:28 ◼   ► if they knew that their phone would be way less slow

00:50:31 ◼   ► if they just got a battery replacement for $20 to $70,

00:50:36 ◼   ► a lot of people would choose that option

00:50:37 ◼   ► and save their money and maybe that'll help them out.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And to not tell them, to slow it down

00:50:44 ◼   ► for reasons that are not apparent to the user

00:50:47 ◼   ► and are never told to the user,

00:50:49 ◼   ► no matter what Apple says the reason is,

00:50:52 ◼   ► the users don't know that or don't believe them.

00:50:55 ◼   ► So this narrative that we have been battling for years

00:51:00 ◼   ► that Apple is intentionally slowing down phones

00:51:03 ◼   ► with each OS update to make you buy a new one,

00:51:05 ◼   ► And we've been saying, no, no, no,

00:51:07 ◼   ► they wouldn't do that, they don't do that.

00:51:10 ◼   ► They actually just did that.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Not to make you buy a new one,

00:51:12 ◼   ► but they are now slowing down old phones

00:51:17 ◼   ► with a new software update.

00:51:19 ◼   ► And even though their justifications are good,

00:51:23 ◼   ► that is not how it looks to the people

00:51:25 ◼   ► who it's happening to.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And now, this is not a small thing.

00:51:31 ◼   ► We've talked before about how certain

00:51:35 ◼   ► tech myths get embedded in people.

00:51:37 ◼   ► We talked about things like how,

00:51:39 ◼   ► "Oh, you should quit all your apps to save your battery."

00:51:42 ◼   ► Those things get embedded

00:51:44 ◼   ► and are very, very hard to ever remove.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Windows people probably still are defragging

00:51:48 ◼   ► their hard drives.

00:51:50 ◼   ► It's like, this is the kind of thing,

00:51:51 ◼   ► this doesn't change.

00:51:53 ◼   ► You still have people,

00:51:55 ◼   ► when their Macs are having weird problems,

00:51:58 ◼   ► you still have everyone in the world

00:51:59 ◼   ► telling them to reset their PRAM and stuff

00:52:03 ◼   ► and all these weird little voodoo things

00:52:04 ◼   ► that usually don't do anything.

00:52:06 ◼   ► What Apple has done with this

00:52:09 ◼   ► is they have confirmed the fears

00:52:13 ◼   ► of a very, very persistent and pervasive

00:52:17 ◼   ► and damaging theory or myth that was going on

00:52:20 ◼   ► about what Apple does with iPhones and iOS updates.

00:52:23 ◼   ► I think this is going to hurt their reputation

00:52:26 ◼   ► in this area for a decade.

00:52:28 ◼   ► It might even be longer.

00:52:30 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing that people do not forget quickly.

00:52:33 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing that,

00:52:34 ◼   ► while we might know the truth,

00:52:36 ◼   ► or how things are perceived,

00:52:40 ◼   ► or what things probably mean,

00:52:41 ◼   ► or what Apple probably intends,

00:52:42 ◼   ► we may know that.

00:52:44 ◼   ► But where this is going to linger forever

00:52:48 ◼   ► is like your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving table,

00:52:51 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:52:52 ◼   ► People who, like kind of casual users

00:52:54 ◼   ► who think they know what they're doing,

00:52:56 ◼   ► and who spread that knowledge

00:52:58 ◼   ► around their friends and family,

00:53:00 ◼   ► this is going to persist with them

00:53:03 ◼   ► for a decade, and this is going to just be,

00:53:07 ◼   ► Apple's gonna have to fight this for a decade.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And what they really, really should have done instead,

00:53:14 ◼   ► which would have, like, anything they would have done here

00:53:17 ◼   ► to solve this problem is hard.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Like, there's downsides to any solution to the problem.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Like, oh, if your battery can't actually run the phone

00:53:25 ◼   ► at its full speed and you get random shutdowns,

00:53:27 ◼   ► well, yeah, that's bad.

00:53:28 ◼   ► They should do something to fix that if they can.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And they did, even with the fix.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Even if they did it perfectly with great communication,

00:53:36 ◼   ► people would say, "I am upset that Apple was slowing

00:53:40 ◼   ► "down my phone until I replaced the battery."

00:53:42 ◼   ► But at least they would know.

00:53:43 ◼   ► It wouldn't seem like deception.

00:53:45 ◼   ► It wouldn't seem like there's like this huge ulterior motive

00:53:48 ◼   ► that they want you to buy a new phone,

00:53:49 ◼   ► they wanna trick you into buying a new phone.

00:53:52 ◼   ► The only way to make this right is to clearly communicate

00:53:57 ◼   ► to the user when this throttling happens,

00:54:01 ◼   ► to put up a notification or something,

00:54:03 ◼   ► it can't just be buried in the battery screen

00:54:05 ◼   ► in settings like waiting for you to go check it.

00:54:07 ◼   ► You have to notify the user with a dialogue

00:54:10 ◼   ► or a notification that says something like,

00:54:14 ◼   ► your battery condition needs to be serviced

00:54:17 ◼   ► or is too worn out or something like that.

00:54:19 ◼   ► As a result, your phone will not perform at its fullest,

00:54:22 ◼   ► something like that.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Tell people exactly what is happening when it happens.

00:54:27 ◼   ► The first time that it has to be throttled

00:54:29 ◼   ► this mechanism, put up a notification, put up a dialogue

00:54:32 ◼   ► that says, your battery is too weak to do this,

00:54:35 ◼   ► your phone will now be slower because of this,

00:54:38 ◼   ► and click here for more information or whatever.

00:54:41 ◼   ► You have to tell people.

00:54:42 ◼   ► This problem would have been so much smaller

00:54:46 ◼   ► and more manageable and so much better received

00:54:49 ◼   ► if they would just tell people when this happened.

00:54:53 ◼   ► - So I agree with you that the messaging

00:54:55 ◼   ► is the crux of the issue, but do you really think

00:54:58 ◼   ► like Joe Consumer is going to be aware

00:55:01 ◼   ► of this whole kerfuffle?

00:55:03 ◼   ► Has this reached regular media?

00:55:06 ◼   ► Because it seems to me like this is just,

00:55:09 ◼   ► this is just nerds getting angry about nerdy things,

00:55:12 ◼   ► is it not?

00:55:13 ◼   ► Or maybe I'm missing the boat.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - Oh no, no.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, my tweet about this

00:55:16 ◼   ► has like hundreds of retweets already as of seven days ago.

00:55:21 ◼   ► It's like, this is spreading far and wide,

00:55:25 ◼   ► And it doesn't, regular people don't have to know

00:55:28 ◼   ► about this, their crazy uncles at the Thanksgiving table

00:55:31 ◼   ► are the ones that have to know about this.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And they're all the ones on Reddit

00:55:33 ◼   ► who are picking all this up.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Believe me, it spreads, it spreads to all of them.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It's all those people who advise everyone in their life

00:55:41 ◼   ► that they have to quit all their apps.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It's the same thing, it's spreading

00:55:45 ◼   ► through that support channel.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Like the casual, crazy power user support channel

00:55:51 ◼   ► of people who are partially but not adequately informed

00:55:55 ◼   ► and who spread that to all the people they know.

00:55:58 ◼   ► This will be there for a decade.

00:56:00 ◼   ► - You two aren't really helping much on this

00:56:03 ◼   ► and neither are the million headlines

00:56:04 ◼   ► that have been about this because I, you know,

00:56:07 ◼   ► setting aside all the perception issues

00:56:09 ◼   ► which are totally true and like, you know,

00:56:12 ◼   ► at this point there's not much Apple can do about it

00:56:13 ◼   ► and they should have communicated better

00:56:14 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, everything Marco's already covered.

00:56:18 ◼   ► for the people who who know or are casually listening to this podcast or it's not in the

00:56:24 ◼   ► background whatever the essential thing that both of you did that i that i think is not the right

00:56:29 ◼   ► thing to do is to promote the the sort of summary narrative like not the nuanced detailed exactly

00:56:37 ◼   ► what's going on thing but the summary narrative is that uh as i would describe it there was a

00:56:42 ◼   ► perception that apple's doing a thing to make their phone slower to make you buy new phones

00:56:47 ◼   ► People in the know said they're not doing that, but now we have new information that shows that actually they kind of were.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And that's where I draw the line, because the perception was, Apple is doing something, doing whatever, to make you buy a new phone.

00:57:01 ◼   ► That's the important part of the story, because it makes Apple the bad guy.

00:57:06 ◼   ► Not that Apple is doing something that makes you phone slow, because we all know that Apple is doing something to make your phone slow.

00:57:09 ◼   ► It's called releasing new OSs. Like, that's what they're doing.

00:57:12 ◼   ► But that's what we would tell them. It's like, they're not doing it on purpose.

00:57:16 ◼   ► They just made a new OS and new OS is very often make your phone slower for all the reasons Marco listed

00:57:20 ◼   ► And we can go into all the details and they don't even care right, but they said no no

00:57:22 ◼   ► It's not like they're doing that they're doing something on purpose that they don't have to do

00:57:28 ◼   ► That's not part of the new OS to make your phone slower so that you will buy a new phone

00:57:34 ◼   ► not for any other reason not because

00:57:36 ◼   ► You know they added more features or background processing or blah blah blah and for no reason other than you must buy a new phone and

00:57:43 ◼   ► To make the summary narrative. It says we said they were never doing that but guess what they were they weren't

00:57:48 ◼   ► They're not doing a thing to make you buy a new phone that I feel is the important thing

00:57:55 ◼   ► You're right that people don't won't catch this nuance like everyone will just assume it's been confirmed

00:57:59 ◼   ► But I think it's irresponsible of people who run tech websites and do tech podcasts to say that in any way what came out today

00:58:07 ◼   ► Confirms the false narrative from before it seems like it might if you don't know what you're talking about

00:58:11 ◼   ► about and it will make people think it confirms. I totally agree that perception is there.

00:58:16 ◼   ► But the truth of the situation is that Apple is not and was not doing something to make

00:58:21 ◼   ► you buy a new phone. And that's the only nuance point I want to make to the people who care

00:58:25 ◼   ► about nuance points. Not that it's going to help. You could talk about it as carefully

00:58:29 ◼   ► as you want. People are going to believe what they want to believe. So I'm totally pessimistic

00:58:33 ◼   ► and cynical about the communication thing. But I do want to make that point here that

00:58:38 ◼   ► I think no part of this confirms the false narrative, right?

00:58:42 ◼   ► It makes people think it does, which is terrible for Apple,

00:58:44 ◼   ► and Marco's right, this is going to be really,

00:58:46 ◼   ► really bad for them, but it doesn't actually confirm it.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And on that issue, if they had communicated it better,

00:58:52 ◼   ► that would be better, but in the same way

00:58:56 ◼   ► that I'm pessimistic that even if you understand

00:58:57 ◼   ► all the nuances, it doesn't matter,

00:58:59 ◼   ► like perception is reality to lots of people,

00:59:01 ◼   ► by the same token, if Apple had communicated this,

00:59:06 ◼   ► guarantee some percentage, perhaps a smaller percentage,

00:59:09 ◼   ► but some percentage would say,

00:59:10 ◼   ► that message is fake, Apple just puts that up.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Why do they put that up?

00:59:13 ◼   ► To make you buy a new phone.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They're lying to you with this dialogue box

00:59:16 ◼   ► that says your phone's gonna slow to make you buy an,

00:59:18 ◼   ► oh, what a coincidence, new iPhone comes out

00:59:20 ◼   ► and I get this dialogue box on my old phone

00:59:22 ◼   ► that's telling me I need to buy a new phone, right?

00:59:24 ◼   ► Now, again, it doesn't mean they shouldn't do it.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It's still the right thing to do.

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's still way better than what they did.

00:59:28 ◼   ► But this is the job of, you know,

00:59:31 ◼   ► and arguably this is why they made this decision

00:59:34 ◼   ► not to say anything about it,

00:59:35 ◼   ► they're trying to find the way to minimize the bad perceptions. And I think probably

00:59:42 ◼   ► communicating would be the way to minimize it, because the really hurtful part of this

00:59:46 ◼   ► is like the error of omission, the deception by omission of like, "Apple never said anything

00:59:52 ◼   ► about this before," right? And that is a deceptive thing to do, and so that's on Apple, and they

00:59:57 ◼   ► deserve some of the reputation hit they were taking there. But yeah, there's no perfect

01:00:03 ◼   ► So, you know, even if they change it to do that, and I heard some good suggestions on

01:00:07 ◼   ► Twitter, I forget who's just, maybe it was Marco, maybe it was someone else, like change

01:00:10 ◼   ► the color of the battery meter to like purple or I don't know, they already use red and

01:00:15 ◼   ► green and yellow, but some other color to show like, it's not just that your battery

01:00:19 ◼   ► is like lower in the middle, but we found out that your battery is underperforming.

01:00:23 ◼   ► And to what Casey said at the beginning of this, your battery doesn't give up, it just

01:00:27 ◼   ► is not capable of delivering either the volts or the amps that are required by the CPU.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And the CPU has things that cause it,

01:00:34 ◼   ► you know, not the CPU, but like the parts

01:00:36 ◼   ► of the electronics say, look, if my voltage or current

01:00:39 ◼   ► are both dropped below some threshold, game over, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► And that's what's happening.

01:00:43 ◼   ► So the battery is there dutifully pumping out

01:00:44 ◼   ► as much energy as it can and the CPU is like, nope, sorry,

01:00:47 ◼   ► game over, can't do it, everything goes black.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Not that it really matters the details, but anyway,

01:00:52 ◼   ► that's what's happening.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And, you know, if you want to get on Apple

01:00:59 ◼   ► for doing a thing that, you know, 5Y this down to like,

01:01:04 ◼   ► what is the root cause here?

01:01:06 ◼   ► You could get to the battery's not easily replaceable,

01:01:08 ◼   ► but you know, it's not that expensive to replace it.

01:01:11 ◼   ► You could get to the size of the battery,

01:01:13 ◼   ► you could get to how long,

01:01:14 ◼   ► if you use your phone like a regular person,

01:01:16 ◼   ► how long does your battery last?

01:01:17 ◼   ► Like the planned obsolescence thing is,

01:01:20 ◼   ► I feel like different than the perception

01:01:23 ◼   ► that Apple is doing, you know,

01:01:24 ◼   ► an evil thing to make you buy a new phone.

01:01:26 ◼   ► 'Cause planned obsolescence, you could say,

01:01:28 ◼   ► They make a sealed phone with a battery that will be crappy after two years.

01:01:32 ◼   ► And they know all those numbers.

01:01:34 ◼   ► They know how long it will last, they know that it's sealed, so on and so forth.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Isn't that planned obsolescence?

01:01:38 ◼   ► Because this phone is released to you and they know the plan is that if you use this

01:01:42 ◼   ► like a regular phone, it will be a much worse phone in two years.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And that's essentially their plan.

01:01:48 ◼   ► They could make a phone that becomes a much worse phone in a week.

01:01:52 ◼   ► They could make a plan, a phone that becomes a much worse phone in five years.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Where have they chosen to draw that line is wherever they – I don't know if it's

01:01:58 ◼   ► two years.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I'm just making a number.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But that is a design choice.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And this brings me to a thing that has been buried in our show notes for a while that

01:02:04 ◼   ► I will now hoist up because it is relevant.

01:02:07 ◼   ► This is a YouTube video from – God, one of the things I hated most about YouTube is

01:02:12 ◼   ► how hard they make it to find the stupid date.

01:02:14 ◼   ► From September 1st, 2017.

01:02:17 ◼   ► This is another typical, sensational thing like all the articles today about, you know,

01:02:21 ◼   ► new information reveals that Apple is just as deceptive as your crazy uncle always said.

01:02:25 ◼   ► No, that's not what it confirms at all.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Anyway, "Is Apple ruining your max performance?"

01:02:30 ◼   ► Isn't that a great clickbaity title?

01:02:33 ◼   ► - That's like every Doug DeMuro title ever.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - Yes, his are boring because they're too same.

01:02:41 ◼   ► The number one pinned comment on this,

01:02:44 ◼   ► "Is Apple ruining your max performance?"

01:02:46 ◼   ► Spoiler alert, yes.

01:02:47 ◼   ► This article is about thermal throttling on max,

01:02:53 ◼   ► which actually Marco talked about a little bit,

01:02:55 ◼   ► although he surmised it was thermal based,

01:02:57 ◼   ► like when you plugged in your external monitor

01:02:59 ◼   ► at the beach house, like how it slowed down the clocks

01:03:02 ◼   ► on your MacBook Pro, am I remembering that right?

01:03:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is a pretty significant limitation

01:03:08 ◼   ► of the 2017 MacBook Pro, actually.

01:03:10 ◼   ► - And this is not just the, this test was in iMac, right?

01:03:13 ◼   ► So this is another case where, again,

01:03:16 ◼   ► the sensational headline would make you think

01:03:18 ◼   ► that Apple is inserting code,

01:03:19 ◼   ► I mean, this isn't about making you buy a new Mac,

01:03:21 ◼   ► but Apple's inserting code that says,

01:03:23 ◼   ► your computer could be faster, but we're going to do something in software to make it not

01:03:28 ◼   ► faster and withhold the performance from you.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Because we're evil Apple and we do this for insert reason that doesn't make any sense.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Because obviously, as Gruber points out and as many people point out, people think it's

01:03:37 ◼   ► in Apple's interest to make you buy a new phone, but it is not in Apple's interest to

01:03:41 ◼   ► make you buy a new phone by sabotaging your current iPhone.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Because that will just make you feel bad about iPhones and it'll make you want to buy a different

01:03:49 ◼   ► phone.

01:03:50 ◼   ► But anyway, setting that aside, logic doesn't factor in.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Like, again, perception.

01:03:52 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Logic does not enter into it.

01:03:54 ◼   ► The reason so many Macs thermal throttle,

01:03:58 ◼   ► and if you watch his video,

01:03:59 ◼   ► this is about gaming performance on an iMac,

01:04:03 ◼   ► or actually MacBook as well.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Maybe it's both, I forget.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Anyway, he puts it in a freezer and runs the benchmark

01:04:10 ◼   ► and having it out of the freezer.

01:04:11 ◼   ► - Of course.

01:04:12 ◼   ► - All these sort of temperature things.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Look, I'm not making this up.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Look, performance is here,

01:04:17 ◼   ► but then as things warm up, performance goes down,

01:04:19 ◼   ► you can see this stair-step pattern

01:04:20 ◼   ► the graphs of what your frame rate is, and then you put it in the freezer and you don't

01:04:23 ◼   ► see that, like it's pretty clear that things inside this computer run at more of a slow

01:04:28 ◼   ► speed until it gets kind of hot and sweaty in there, and the mechanisms inside the computer

01:04:33 ◼   ► that are there to protect the silicon from melting itself say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's

01:04:38 ◼   ► start slowing things down," and it cranks down the clock speed. And this doesn't have

01:04:43 ◼   ► to do with battery life, this has to do with performance. And I would say that, again,

01:04:48 ◼   ► And Apple is not doing a malicious thing to make your computer bad because they are evil,

01:04:52 ◼   ► you know, rubbing their hands together villains, twirling their mustaches.

01:04:56 ◼   ► But they did design a computer in which if you play a game on it in a certain reasonable

01:05:04 ◼   ► ambient temperature for human kind of room, eventually it gets so hot that the mechanisms

01:05:09 ◼   ► that protect the silicon will kick in and it will start throttling down.

01:05:12 ◼   ► And Apple designed that computer, right?

01:05:14 ◼   ► Now, is it a manufacturing defect?

01:05:16 ◼   ► Did they put it together wrong?

01:05:18 ◼   ► Is the thermal paste not working?

01:05:19 ◼   ► Is the heat pipe not working right?

01:05:22 ◼   ► Or are they all like that?

01:05:23 ◼   ► Or are they all like that after a certain number of years and then in the beginning

01:05:26 ◼   ► they're not like that?

01:05:27 ◼   ► Whatever the thing is, this is a product that Apple made and you are not getting all the

01:05:32 ◼   ► performance you would hope to get out of it, that you could get out of it if it had better

01:05:36 ◼   ► cooling.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And same thing with the plugging in the external monitor.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Whether that is a sort of programmatic when the external monitor is plugged in just throttled

01:05:42 ◼   ► down immediately because we know there's going to be thermal issues, or whether it just so

01:05:45 ◼   ► happens that as soon as you plug in the external monitors, it immediately trips the thermal

01:05:48 ◼   ► thing and it drops it down. Either way, Apple's ability to extract heat away from the heat-sensitive

01:05:56 ◼   ► components is inadequate to allow those components to run at their top-rated speed all the time.

01:06:01 ◼   ► And that is a design choice by Apple, or a design flaw from Apple, however you want to

01:06:05 ◼   ► phrase it. In no case is it malicious, but it is a real fact of the products. And, you

01:06:11 ◼   ► another reason I'm waiting for a Mac Pro is like,

01:06:13 ◼   ► it's a compromise that you may say,

01:06:17 ◼   ► well, that compromise allows it to be thinner and lighter,

01:06:18 ◼   ► especially with a laptop.

01:06:20 ◼   ► With an iMac, it's harder to justify.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Say, yeah, it is thin back there,

01:06:23 ◼   ► but does it really need to be?

01:06:25 ◼   ► But we want it to be sleek and elegant, whatever.

01:06:28 ◼   ► These are real, and this is like the phone with like,

01:06:32 ◼   ► oh, they chose to put a battery in there

01:06:34 ◼   ► that maybe if it was a bigger battery,

01:06:37 ◼   ► it'd have more headroom,

01:06:38 ◼   ► and you wouldn't have to charge it full as much,

01:06:40 ◼   ► you could have more buffer on either side of it, sort of use the middle part of the

01:06:43 ◼   ► battery like Marcos Tesla does, or they could buy batteries from a different manufacturer,

01:06:47 ◼   ► or they could – there are things you can do to design the phone to try to avoid this

01:06:51 ◼   ► situation. And that, I think, is a legitimate place of potential difference with Apple.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And arguably, they have made different moves there, because this is about the sixth generation

01:07:03 ◼   ► with the shutdown stuff. The 7 had a bigger, better battery than the 6, right? And the

01:07:08 ◼   ► seems to have a bigger, better battery still, right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► So it seems like they are making adjustments

01:07:14 ◼   ► and learning from where they came from,

01:07:15 ◼   ► but that I feel like is, you know,

01:07:18 ◼   ► the communication stuff and everything,

01:07:20 ◼   ► I feel for Apple, but at the same time,

01:07:22 ◼   ► by being secretive and crossing their fingers

01:07:25 ◼   ► that people wouldn't notice, that's on them,

01:07:27 ◼   ► and they get all the bad PR.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I do feel bad that the perception will not match up

01:07:33 ◼   ► with reality even more so now because of this,

01:07:36 ◼   ► But I also think that the design choices that Apple has made that cause performance degradation,

01:07:45 ◼   ► like their compromises, I'm not sure they have struck the right balance.

01:07:50 ◼   ► It really depends on who you are.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Obviously, tech nerds are going to say that, of course, you struck the wrong balance because

01:07:55 ◼   ► I'll give up half a pound to get a non-throttle GPU.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Other people might want the half a pound because they don't care about throttling and all they

01:08:02 ◼   ► do is use Microsoft Word all day.

01:08:05 ◼   ► But from my perspective as a tech nerd, it bothered me to get a product that has to be

01:08:10 ◼   ► sort of babied or used in a freezer to get the rated performance out of it.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Kind of, not to trash on Marco's Tesla, but kind of like the Teslas where a lot of people

01:08:22 ◼   ► wrote in, we talked about Teslas and road tests and how I felt like it wasn't getting

01:08:26 ◼   ► its due and how it's such a great performance car but it's never put up against the real

01:08:31 ◼   ► ones and a lot of people pointed out, and I should have recalled this from reading all

01:08:33 ◼   ► lighting laps. A lot of that is not just because it's not great at handling because it's really

01:08:37 ◼   ► heavy, but also because you drive a Tesla hard to run a racetrack and eventually the

01:08:41 ◼   ► Tesla is like, "Eh, not so much. How about you lay off a little bit?" And it goes into

01:08:47 ◼   ► not limp mode, but it goes into please stop hurting me mode because my battery is getting

01:08:51 ◼   ► really hot and I really don't like doing hot laps as they're called, like literally hot

01:08:56 ◼   ► I'm not up for this. And so it's hard to get a bunch of good lap times because you do one

01:09:03 ◼   ► or two fast laps and then Tesla says no more. Like thermal throttling on a Mac and like

01:09:11 ◼   ► the battery that can't give enough juice, it says, "Can we just wait for the battery

01:09:15 ◼   ► to cool down a little bit maybe?" And that's not something you're looking for in a performance

01:09:21 ◼   ► car. So fast in a straight line, not so fast around curves, and you drive it fast for a

01:09:27 ◼   ► long time and it really, really doesn't like that and says with its electronics, "You will

01:09:33 ◼   ► not be doing that anymore for a while. I'm sorry. Physics." You know, my bad. So anyway,

01:09:39 ◼   ► to wrap this up, somehow I've managed to turn this story about Apple software protecting

01:09:47 ◼   ► its hardware into a story about how I really wanted the Mac Pro to not be thermal throttled

01:09:53 ◼   ► and Apple should make its computers faster.

01:09:54 ◼   ► - Shock horse.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - Right.

01:09:56 ◼   ► But, yeah, like I said, if you take one thing away from this, take away the sad realization,

01:10:04 ◼   ► the idea, the knowledge that none of this information actually confirms the evil things

01:10:10 ◼   ► people used to think about Apple, but everyone will believe it does.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And that's a bummer for Apple and they're partially to bring with bad PR handling.

01:10:18 ◼   ► But you should continue not to believe that Apple purposely slows down computers because

01:10:21 ◼   ► A, that would be a dumb thing to do and B, they don't do it to make you buy a new phone.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Also, please never put your computing devices in the freezer.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Condensation exists.

01:10:32 ◼   ► This is a problem.

01:10:33 ◼   ► Put them in mineral oil.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Come on.

01:10:35 ◼   ► You probably don't know about this because you were always a Mac person.

01:10:38 ◼   ► In case you might remember, do you remember back then, like, one of the early heydays

01:10:43 ◼   ► overclocking in like the very late 90s or early 2000s.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Overclockers started using, I don't know how these

01:10:48 ◼   ► are pronounced, Peltier plates?

01:10:51 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about?

01:10:52 ◼   ► - I know about this.

01:10:53 ◼   ► - No. - I think I know about this.

01:10:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, so one of the ways that, you know,

01:10:56 ◼   ► water cooling was not extreme enough if you wanted

01:10:58 ◼   ► to push like a Celeron up to two gigahertz or whatever.

01:11:00 ◼   ► So people started using these Peltier devices,

01:11:03 ◼   ► which are these like thermoelectric things.

01:11:06 ◼   ► They're like, they're solid state, no moving parts,

01:11:09 ◼   ► and you apply a ton of power to them,

01:11:11 ◼   ► and one side gets super cold and one side gets super hot.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I think anti-griddles use these, I'm not sure.

01:11:19 ◼   ► But anyway, however you pronounce those things,

01:11:22 ◼   ► overclockers decided that this was a good way

01:11:25 ◼   ► to get even colder cooling of their CPUs,

01:11:28 ◼   ► they could push them even further.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And it's especially egregious because all the power

01:11:34 ◼   ► that it draws, which is a lot to perform this cooling,

01:11:38 ◼   ► the hot side gets all the heat of the processor

01:11:41 ◼   ► plus that wattage that it's using.

01:11:42 ◼   ► So, like, the cold side gets a little cold,

01:11:45 ◼   ► the hot side gets really hot.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - It was the Mac DLT of cooling solutions.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Hot side hot, cold side cold.

01:11:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:54 ◼   ► I miss the Mac DLT.

01:11:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, and so one of the problems,

01:11:58 ◼   ► one of the reasons, one of the many reasons

01:12:00 ◼   ► why people, I don't think, really use those

01:12:02 ◼   ► for more than about six months is because

01:12:06 ◼   ► once you introduce the possibility for something

01:12:09 ◼   ► in your computer case to get below ambient temperature,

01:12:12 ◼   ► you start having problems with condensation

01:12:14 ◼   ► and possibly frost.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And this is a really big problem

01:12:18 ◼   ► inside of a computer case.

01:12:19 ◼   ► - Electronics do not like water.

01:12:22 ◼   ► - And of course they decided,

01:12:23 ◼   ► okay, now we can back off frost and condensation

01:12:26 ◼   ► and now we can just go to pumping water through our case.

01:12:28 ◼   ► That's much better.

01:12:30 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, like you said,

01:12:31 ◼   ► it's all about ambient temperature

01:12:32 ◼   ► because if you start making the surrounding air cooler

01:12:34 ◼   ► and it can no longer hold the water that is in it

01:12:37 ◼   ► and it condenses out of the air, that's a problem.

01:12:39 ◼   ► If everything is at air temperature or higher, it's still way lower than the temperature

01:12:43 ◼   ► of the little hot piece of silicon in there.

01:12:45 ◼   ► So you're fine with condensation.

01:12:47 ◼   ► You just gotta make sure you have no leaks.

01:12:50 ◼   ► So is that it on the deliberately planned obsolescence?

01:12:54 ◼   ► That may or may not really be a thing?

01:12:56 ◼   ► It's not!

01:12:57 ◼   ► You're doing it again!

01:12:58 ◼   ► Not may or may not really be a thing.

01:12:59 ◼   ► It's not really a thing!

01:13:00 ◼   ► I'm kidding!

01:13:01 ◼   ► I'm kidding!

01:13:02 ◼   ► Good grief, John.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Like, see, this is the problem.

01:13:04 ◼   ► No matter how much people talk about it, they're like, "Yeah, but this does kind of confirm

01:13:05 ◼   ► what everyone said, doesn't it?"

01:13:06 ◼   ► No!

01:13:07 ◼   ► No, it doesn't!

01:13:08 ◼   ► - What they were saying was not that they're slung

01:13:10 ◼   ► down the computer, but for a reason.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And I know this is a nuance, and I totally agree

01:13:14 ◼   ► that no one is gonna get this, but the ATP listeners

01:13:16 ◼   ► will know, and I would caution you, ATP listeners,

01:13:19 ◼   ► do not attempt to explain this to other people

01:13:20 ◼   ► like at Christmas dinner, 'cause it will not go over well.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Just nod your head and say, "You were right all along."

01:13:26 ◼   ► Don't even confirm that they were right,

01:13:27 ◼   ► just go have a different conversation.

01:13:30 ◼   ► - No, yeah, guess what?

01:13:31 ◼   ► You're not gonna be the one bringing it up.

01:13:34 ◼   ► All of our listeners who are known probably

01:13:36 ◼   ► has the computer people in their family,

01:13:38 ◼   ► all their other relatives are gonna ask them about it.

01:13:41 ◼   ► You won't have to bring it up, people will ask you.

01:13:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, then you can tell them the truth, I suppose,

01:13:46 ◼   ► but it's a nuance that people don't care about,

01:13:48 ◼   ► 'cause people really, really wanna be right

01:13:49 ◼   ► about their conspiracy theory.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And we can get into the psychology of this,

01:13:52 ◼   ► of why everyone wants to seem like they are savvy,

01:13:57 ◼   ► like that the world's not pulling one over at me,

01:13:59 ◼   ► this is how they get ya.

01:14:00 ◼   ► The world attempts to pull one over, but I'm no dummy.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I know what the truth is.

01:14:06 ◼   ► So Apple, people think Apple's great, but I know the truth about Apple.

01:14:10 ◼   ► The truth about Apple is they intentionally make your phone slower to make you buy a new

01:14:13 ◼   ► one.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And I'm on, you know, they're not fooling me, right?

01:14:16 ◼   ► And it's important to them to feel like they are, that the world is not fooling them.

01:14:22 ◼   ► This is often people who are mostly being fooled by almost everything in the world,

01:14:27 ◼   ► and so they, you know, it's important that they show that that's not the case.

01:14:32 ◼   ► So no matter how much, you will never convince these people that it's not the case.

01:14:36 ◼   ► There is no, literally you will never convince them.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Like if they could personally speak to and live with for a year every employee living

01:14:43 ◼   ► in debt of Apple and be truly convinced that they were never doing this, they would do

01:14:47 ◼   ► that in their infant lifespan and come back and say, "Yeah, but I kind of think they were

01:14:50 ◼   ► really doing it."

01:14:51 ◼   ► Well, and it really doesn't help that Apple just basically proved the first two-thirds

01:14:55 ◼   ► of their theory correct.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but that's the thing.

01:14:59 ◼   ► There is no two-thirds of the theory.

01:15:01 ◼   ► the conclusion. Like, it's like, this is what they're doing. Like, they're doing it to make

01:15:05 ◼   ► you buy a new phone. Because the other part of it is not something to get worked about.

01:15:08 ◼   ► They're doing it to make sure the hardware, to make sure my phone doesn't turn off. Well,

01:15:12 ◼   ► that doesn't sound like something I should get mad about. Because they don't care about

01:15:15 ◼   ► the nuances like PR, communication, and so on and so forth, right? Maybe, if you want

01:15:19 ◼   ► to convince them, maybe you could say, "What you should really be mad about is the fact

01:15:21 ◼   ► that Apple didn't say this earlier." And then they can get mad about that and maybe they'll

01:15:25 ◼   ► feel like they still are righteously angry. And they can be righteously angry about that,

01:15:29 ◼   ► fine. But some people will never give up on the notion of malice. Like Volkswagen engineers

01:15:36 ◼   ► secretly cheating emissions tests, because that's the worst thing about this. As Gruber

01:15:40 ◼   ► points out in his article, he uses Uber as an example because he doesn't know about the

01:15:43 ◼   ► automotive world, but VW is probably a more apt example. Large corporations do legitimately

01:15:50 ◼   ► do actual, actively, maliciously evil, cheaty things like this. Not by accident, not to

01:15:56 ◼   ► protect the engine but like detect when you're being emission tested and pretend like you

01:16:01 ◼   ► have less emissions than you do but then really when you get used as a car put out way more

01:16:05 ◼   ► emissions.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Volkswagen did that.

01:16:07 ◼   ► That's not good for that company.

01:16:09 ◼   ► So it's not a stretch to believe the corporation would do that but you know the reason I mean

01:16:13 ◼   ► I guess we have to say like the reason we all believe Apple wouldn't do this is mostly

01:16:19 ◼   ► because it doesn't make sense.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I mean it's partially because we know people at Apple and we trust Apple and believe it

01:16:24 ◼   ► and maybe we're suckers and blah blah blah.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But also because unlike cheating on emissions tests, which has a big upside for VW if they

01:16:31 ◼   ► can pull it off, successfully pulling off, intentionally making your phones worse to

01:16:36 ◼   ► make people buy new ones, like it wouldn't make people buy new ones.

01:16:39 ◼   ► As Gruber has pointed out many, many times, it would make people buy an Android phone.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like if they knew, like if their phones just get worse.

01:16:45 ◼   ► And this has happened by the way with the shutdown stuff.

01:16:47 ◼   ► I've seen stuff like I bought my last iPhone but then it just kept turning off.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Forget it, next time I'm getting an Android phone, it's way cheaper anyway, right?

01:16:53 ◼   ► That's what actually happens if you intentionally, or not intentionally, if the phone you have

01:16:58 ◼   ► starts getting worse, you know, like Casey with his BMW, if your engine keeps blowing

01:17:02 ◼   ► up, you're thinking maybe my next car won't be a BMW.

01:17:06 ◼   ► He's not like, "That clever BMW tricking me into buying another BMW, but making my engine

01:17:10 ◼   ► blow up intentionally."

01:17:12 ◼   ► That's not how the world works.

01:17:14 ◼   ► But people do really want to feel like that they understand how they get you and the world's

01:17:17 ◼   ► not pulling one over on them.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Well, because in this case, the world did pull one over on them.

01:17:22 ◼   ► This one's like the only fix to this.

01:17:25 ◼   ► I mean, it's gonna be a long-term reputation problem

01:17:27 ◼   ► and having malice attributed to it

01:17:30 ◼   ► is gonna be a very long-term problem.

01:17:32 ◼   ► But the only way to start fixing this

01:17:36 ◼   ► is to communicate about it from the phone.

01:17:38 ◼   ► A PR statement is not enough

01:17:39 ◼   ► 'cause most of these people will not read PR statements

01:17:41 ◼   ► and if they do, they won't believe them.

01:17:43 ◼   ► The phone has to tell them when this throttling happens

01:17:47 ◼   ► and tell them why it's happening.

01:17:49 ◼   ► - How much do you think that will help?

01:17:51 ◼   ► - I agree that it will help, but how much?

01:17:53 ◼   ► - Oh, massively, because that totally changes

01:17:57 ◼   ► the view of it, not for everybody,

01:17:59 ◼   ► they're not gonna convince everybody,

01:18:01 ◼   ► but they will, it'll at least appear

01:18:04 ◼   ► that they're not trying to hide this fact from you.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Because the narrative is that they are secretly,

01:18:11 ◼   ► like trickily, like slowing down your phone.

01:18:14 ◼   ► If they tell you your phone can't run at full speed

01:18:17 ◼   ► because the battery is too worn out,

01:18:20 ◼   ► That's a very different look.

01:18:22 ◼   ► And again, that's gonna piss people off too,

01:18:25 ◼   ► but not as many.

01:18:26 ◼   ► It's way fewer.

01:18:28 ◼   ► - Right, well, let's give a percentage.

01:18:29 ◼   ► If 100% is everyone suddenly has good feelings,

01:18:32 ◼   ► and 0% is this doesn't make anybody feel better,

01:18:35 ◼   ► what percentage would you say that this helps?

01:18:36 ◼   ► - Maybe half to two thirds, I'd say.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I mean, a lot.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - We're on the same page, 'cause I think it's half as well.

01:18:41 ◼   ► My guess would be about half.

01:18:43 ◼   ► Half of the people will see that dialogue,

01:18:45 ◼   ► and will be like, yeah, it's a bummer,

01:18:47 ◼   ► but I understand what's going on.

01:18:49 ◼   ► And the other half of the people, like I said, will say, "This dialog box proves that Apple's

01:18:53 ◼   ► trying to get me a new phone by lying to me with this dialog box."

01:18:56 ◼   ► So it is way better than what they did this time, but I'm pessimistic that this will...

01:19:02 ◼   ► And if you think about it, the not saying anything strategy...

01:19:08 ◼   ► Pretend the not saying anything strategy had been ongoing, and this whole information had

01:19:14 ◼   ► not come out.

01:19:15 ◼   ► They just continued with the not saying anything thing.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Apple could have theoretically weathered that storm and just put better batteries in their

01:19:21 ◼   ► phone and eventually the 6s all cycle out and then they sort of "win."

01:19:28 ◼   ► So this strategy they chose to do is riskier because something like what just happened

01:19:33 ◼   ► could happen, but the potential upside I think is better than the 50% solution where half

01:19:38 ◼   ► the people think now the dialog box is proof positive that Apple is trying to trick you

01:19:43 ◼   ► into buying a new phone by making your phone slower because that dialog box is totally

01:19:46 ◼   ► "Yes, my battery's fine, I know it's fine."

01:19:48 ◼   ► But it's telling me I didn't need a new phone,

01:19:49 ◼   ► it's just, you know, anyway.

01:19:50 ◼   ► - Well, and to be clear, they said, like,

01:19:52 ◼   ► they said in a statement that right now

01:19:53 ◼   ► it applies to iPhone 6 and 6S, but it's going to,

01:19:56 ◼   ► but the 7 is gonna be added soon,

01:19:58 ◼   ► and future devices will be added as time goes on.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Like, they said that.

01:20:01 ◼   ► So it isn't a problem inherent to the 6 and 6S.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Like, this problem isn't gonna go away.

01:20:05 ◼   ► - Right, but I think the battery's better in the 7, though.

01:20:07 ◼   ► Like, I think, like, they put a bigger battery in it,

01:20:09 ◼   ► and that supposedly will make it, you know,

01:20:11 ◼   ► so that it doesn't get, go under current as, you know,

01:20:14 ◼   ► So maybe it'll last instead of two years,

01:20:15 ◼   ► two and a half years or whatever.

01:20:17 ◼   ► I think they're, because I think the root problem

01:20:19 ◼   ► is sort of the design lifetime of the phone, right?

01:20:22 ◼   ► It's not like, you know, they have to pick a design lifetime.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Like you have to, like I said,

01:20:25 ◼   ► they could pick any number they wanted as their target.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I think they've been moving their target up,

01:20:29 ◼   ► which will help them with this problem.

01:20:30 ◼   ► There is no phone that can make a design

01:20:32 ◼   ► where this problem will never come up

01:20:33 ◼   ► unless they have totally different battery technology.

01:20:35 ◼   ► So they have to pick a time.

01:20:37 ◼   ► And no matter what, they need to have this messaging

01:20:40 ◼   ► so if someone happens to keep their phone,

01:20:42 ◼   ► they make a phone the last five years,

01:20:44 ◼   ► What if someone keeps it for six years?

01:20:46 ◼   ► You still need all this mechanism in there for when it goes bad.

01:20:50 ◼   ► It's just a question of what that number is, and I think the number is farther out on the

01:20:55 ◼   ► sevens and tens.

01:20:56 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:20:57 ◼   ► We'll see when they have the software feature.

01:20:58 ◼   ► I mean, you'll find out basically of like, do people have sevens now that are like switching

01:21:01 ◼   ► off like KC6 used to, or are all the sevens too young at this point?

01:21:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:21:06 ◼   ► I haven't heard any.

01:21:07 ◼   ► I mean, I have a seven, so I'll be watching for it, but it's an inherent problem with

01:21:13 ◼   ► battery technology and the problem with having a sealed battery and all that stuff.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And so communication will help with that, but I think Apple also dreads the idea of

01:21:25 ◼   ► people seeing that dialogue box because some people, some percentage of people will see

01:21:30 ◼   ► that dialogue box and have a concrete thing to point to to say that Apple is malicious

01:21:38 ◼   ► and evil.

01:21:39 ◼   ► Like, "Look at this dialogue box.

01:21:40 ◼   ► is coming right out and telling me, "You should buy a new phone because we're artificially

01:21:45 ◼   ► making your phone slow to make you buy a new phone."

01:21:47 ◼   ► That's how they'll read that dialog box.

01:21:48 ◼   ► That's a bummer.

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01:23:34 ◼   ► [Music]

01:23:38 ◼   ► Apple is taking a page from the Windows

01:23:41 ◼   ► playbook.

01:23:43 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that. At least I hope not.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Just today, and by today I mean exactly

01:23:49 ◼   ► seven days ago,

01:23:50 ◼   ► Apple, or I should say that Bloomberg

01:23:53 ◼   ► released a post, this is Mark Gurman,

01:23:57 ◼   ► saying "Apple plans combined iPhone, iPad,

01:23:59 ◼   ► and Mac apps to create one user

01:24:01 ◼   ► experience."

01:24:02 ◼   ► Speaking of a Microsoft tagline, "One user

01:24:04 ◼   ► experience. And speaking of a headline that does not accurately represent the

01:24:07 ◼   ► ideas contained in the article. That's true too. I'm shocked. Yeah, no way. So this is

01:24:13 ◼   ► a again a post by Gurman and and the summary seems to be that there will be a

01:24:20 ◼   ► change probably next year if he's right that what we currently think of as a

01:24:25 ◼   ► universal app or maybe there'll be a new term for it but but there will be a

01:24:29 ◼   ► mechanism by which the same app can be run on iOS and Mac OS.

01:24:37 ◼   ► And so in the same way that we have universal apps on the iOS App Store, which can be run

01:24:42 ◼   ► on iPhone and iPad, in the future there -- and I guess Apple Watch, although that's not really

01:24:48 ◼   ► part of being universal, but anyway, it's three different platforms -- in the future

01:24:53 ◼   ► There may or perhaps will be a mechanism by which we will have the same app running on

01:25:00 ◼   ► iPhone, on iPad, potentially on Apple Watch, and on Mac OS.

01:25:06 ◼   ► And nobody really knows what the engineering mechanism is behind this, but that supposedly

01:25:14 ◼   ► is the future if you believe Mark Gurman.

01:25:16 ◼   ► So I think it's worth pontificating about what the different paths are to this end,

01:25:25 ◼   ► but before we go down that road, are there any immediate thoughts on this, starting with

01:25:30 ◼   ► Jon?

01:25:31 ◼   ► Jon Streeter I think the important thing, the important

01:25:33 ◼   ► part of this story to think about, and this is just a rumor so we don't know, blah, blah,

01:25:36 ◼   ► blah, they did a lot of equivocating in this.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, it might come next year, but they might cancel it, but it might not."

01:25:42 ◼   ► Great.

01:25:43 ◼   ► Okay.

01:25:44 ◼   ► The motivation behind this is something that we've talked about in this show a lot, specifically

01:25:47 ◼   ► when Marco's been making Mac applications and stuff.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Poorly.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and the struggles he's had with that.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Here's what I think, why I believe that projects like this are conceivably going on inside

01:26:02 ◼   ► Apple and may actually ship.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Apple has an important asset that they brag about in keynotes all the time, but that I

01:26:13 ◼   ► I think people tend not to think about that much, which is, you know, when they put up

01:26:18 ◼   ► that slide it says, "We have X number of thousands or millions of developers."

01:26:22 ◼   ► They brag about number apps, but number of apps is a proxy for number of developers,

01:26:25 ◼   ► because developers are writing those apps.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Apple used to have a certain amount of people who were Mac developers, but now they have

01:26:32 ◼   ► way, way more people who are iOS developers.

01:26:34 ◼   ► There are a lot of iOS developers.

01:26:37 ◼   ► That is a tremendous asset for Apple.

01:26:39 ◼   ► It's a huge number of people who know how to write applications for iOS and do it to

01:26:45 ◼   ► make money.

01:26:46 ◼   ► It's a virtuous cycle, like it's, you know, the whole marketplace, it's great for...

01:26:49 ◼   ► Apple makes money when they make money, but really the important asset is a bunch of people

01:26:53 ◼   ► out there know how to write iOS apps.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Fewer people out there know how to write Mac apps.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Fewer every year, because the Mac developers get older and most people who are learning

01:27:03 ◼   ► to write apps are learning to write them on iOS.

01:27:06 ◼   ► One way Apple could deal with this is say, "We're just going to sunset the Mac.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Whatever the Mac was the past, iOS is the future.

01:27:12 ◼   ► All these developers know how to develop for iOS.

01:27:13 ◼   ► We'll just let all the Mac developers retire and go off into the sunset, and we'll can

01:27:18 ◼   ► the Mac line, and blah, blah, blah."

01:27:22 ◼   ► And everything we've seen out of Apple VR has said, "No, we're not doing that.

01:27:25 ◼   ► The Mac is important, blah, blah, blah."

01:27:27 ◼   ► And yeah, it's important until it's not, but so far the messaging is pretty clear.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Thumbs up on the Mac.

01:27:32 ◼   ► In fact, we're rededicating ourselves to the Mac.

01:27:35 ◼   ► The Mac is an important product.

01:27:36 ◼   ► The Mac and iOS fill different roles.

01:27:38 ◼   ► We're never going to force the Mac to be like iOS

01:27:41 ◼   ► or force iOS to be like the Mac.

01:27:43 ◼   ► All those things that they said.

01:27:45 ◼   ► But they do have the problem of a small number of Mac

01:27:48 ◼   ► developers, a small number of Mac apps,

01:27:50 ◼   ► and it's smaller all the time.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Tons of applications are available on iOS and tvOS,

01:27:58 ◼   ► but not on the Mac.

01:28:00 ◼   ► In the old days of just the PC world,

01:28:02 ◼   ► of course they'd be available on the Mac

01:28:03 ◼   ► if they were available on any Apple platform.

01:28:05 ◼   ► Now, many things are available on Apple platforms

01:28:07 ◼   ► that's not available on the Mac.

01:28:08 ◼   ► And one of the big reasons is,

01:28:10 ◼   ► you have all these developers who know how to write iOS apps

01:28:12 ◼   ► but they don't know how to write Mac apps.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And writing Mac apps is different enough

01:28:16 ◼   ► that it is non-trivial to do that.

01:28:18 ◼   ► So they're, assuming Apple wants to keep the Mac around,

01:28:22 ◼   ► which they keep saying they do,

01:28:24 ◼   ► one way to solve that problem is to find a way

01:28:26 ◼   ► to let the huge number of people

01:28:29 ◼   ► who know how to write iOS apps

01:28:31 ◼   ► Reuse some or all those skills to target the Mac.

01:28:35 ◼   ► And that I think is what any project like this would be about.

01:28:41 ◼   ► It would be about leveraging that asset to, you know, bring up their other platform.

01:28:49 ◼   ► And yes, the unification is important too, like trying to unify.

01:28:51 ◼   ► But you know, the reason I said the headline was misleading is because it says,

01:28:55 ◼   ► uh, to create one user experience.

01:28:58 ◼   ► But then you read the article and it's like, the application sometimes will use touch.

01:29:01 ◼   ► But then sometimes we'll use a mouse and a pointer.

01:29:03 ◼   ► It's like, that's not one user experience.

01:29:05 ◼   ► That's two user experiences.

01:29:06 ◼   ► And it should be, because a mouse cursor

01:29:07 ◼   ► is different than touch, and you can't use--

01:29:09 ◼   ► different things work in different--

01:29:11 ◼   ► anyway, this is all about leveraging those skills.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And I think Marco already talked about this on one

01:29:18 ◼   ► of his podcasts, that he's already

01:29:20 ◼   ► recorded in the past future.

01:29:21 ◼   ► I don't know how time works anymore.

01:29:23 ◼   ► The days of future past.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Seven days ago, we discussed under the radar.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:28 ◼   ► But I think you'll hear a lot about iOS developers

01:29:31 ◼   ► saying, "Yeah, if I could use my skills to either make a Mac app or to bring the app

01:29:37 ◼   ► that I already have on iPhone and iPad to the Mac, maybe that would make sense. At the

01:29:41 ◼   ► very least, I would entertain it. Like, I wouldn't rule it out. Like, I'd have to see

01:29:44 ◼   ► if it makes sense in terms of economics and so on and so forth. There are some potential

01:29:48 ◼   ► upsides and potential downsides. But a lot of time, you know, like, it's when you remove

01:29:54 ◼   ► the barrier and say, "You can use your skills that you have for iOS and you know how to

01:29:58 ◼   ► UI kid and make table views and do all this stuff and there's some new stuff you might

01:30:01 ◼   ► learn but you can reuse your code and you can reuse your skills to varying a sense.

01:30:07 ◼   ► They would be open to that idea because it is a potential new way to make money and yes

01:30:10 ◼   ► it's a smaller platform but in theory, we don't know if this is true, but in theory

01:30:14 ◼   ► you might be able to charge even higher prices than you do on the iPad.

01:30:18 ◼   ► So that's the lens through which I'm viewing all these rumors and getting at what Casey

01:30:22 ◼   ► was talking about.

01:30:23 ◼   ► Yeah, but how?

01:30:24 ◼   ► But how would they do that?

01:30:25 ◼   ► There are many ways that they could do it that would be bad for Mac users and bad for

01:30:28 ◼   ► for developers, like they could blow it,

01:30:30 ◼   ► but if I wanted to put up like,

01:30:32 ◼   ► what are the goals of this project?

01:30:34 ◼   ► The goals are leverage one of Apple's greatest assets,

01:30:37 ◼   ► tons of developers who know how to develop for iOS.

01:30:39 ◼   ► - Right, so before we talk how, Marco, any other thoughts?

01:30:44 ◼   ► - The devil's in the details,

01:30:45 ◼   ► but conceptually, I love this idea.

01:30:48 ◼   ► It is not gonna be an easy thing to do.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Assuming this is really a thing they're working on,

01:30:56 ◼   ► That's not easy because the two platforms are

01:30:59 ◼   ► very, very different from each other.

01:31:01 ◼   ► And I don't just mean like at an API level.

01:31:04 ◼   ► I'm talking about just like the interaction

01:31:06 ◼   ► and usefulness level and the needs of a Mac app versus iOS.

01:31:11 ◼   ► In many ways, developing an iOS is way easier

01:31:15 ◼   ► because there's a lot of things

01:31:16 ◼   ► that you don't have to worry about that on the Mac

01:31:19 ◼   ► you have to accommodate or think about or support

01:31:23 ◼   ► just because people expect different kinds

01:31:24 ◼   ► of interactions on the Mac.

01:31:26 ◼   ► just simple things like you have the entire menu system.

01:31:30 ◼   ► You also have things like drag and drop

01:31:32 ◼   ► and different types of data providing services

01:31:35 ◼   ► that you have.

01:31:36 ◼   ► All sorts of different, you have windowing,

01:31:39 ◼   ► multiple windows, multiple documents being open,

01:31:42 ◼   ► the entire document system behind that.

01:31:45 ◼   ► You have things like undo,

01:31:46 ◼   ► which you don't have really on iOS.

01:31:49 ◼   ► All sorts of rich behaviors that have been built over time,

01:31:55 ◼   ► many of which quite a long time ago,

01:31:56 ◼   ► that people expect all, quote, computer apps

01:31:59 ◼   ► to be able to do now, things like scriptability,

01:32:03 ◼   ► even like there's so, so much that Mac apps do

01:32:06 ◼   ► that iOS developers don't ever have to worry about

01:32:09 ◼   ► or don't have to even think about.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Making something that can do that rich power of the Mac

01:32:15 ◼   ► with iOS-like code or iOS-like UI frameworks,

01:32:21 ◼   ► that's not a small job.

01:32:23 ◼   ► And there's lots of ways to do that very badly.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And so a lot of Mac people are wary of this announcement,

01:32:31 ◼   ► or they were seven days ago at least,

01:32:33 ◼   ► where they're worried, like, you know,

01:32:35 ◼   ► we don't want like the equivalent of an iOS app

01:32:38 ◼   ► running in a simulator window, just, you know,

01:32:42 ◼   ► and here we are like dragging our mouse over it

01:32:44 ◼   ► to simulate tuck swipes and everything,

01:32:46 ◼   ► like nobody wants that.

01:32:48 ◼   ► And if that's what this ends up being,

01:32:49 ◼   ► that would be a huge failure on a number of levels,

01:32:51 ◼   ► and a tragedy, honestly.

01:32:54 ◼   ► But I have a feeling Apple's better than that.

01:32:56 ◼   ► I don't think they would do that.

01:32:57 ◼   ► I think if they're gonna do this at all,

01:33:00 ◼   ► hopefully they're gonna do a really good job of it.

01:33:02 ◼   ► And that's, again, that's not easy.

01:33:06 ◼   ► And it wouldn't surprise me if they go down this road,

01:33:09 ◼   ► if they've been going down this road for a while,

01:33:11 ◼   ► and then they eventually decide, you know what,

01:33:12 ◼   ► this actually isn't good enough,

01:33:14 ◼   ► we shouldn't do this anymore.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Like that wouldn't surprise me at all.

01:33:17 ◼   ► - But I feel like even if they did,

01:33:18 ◼   ► and maybe they've done that three times already,

01:33:20 ◼   ► they would take another run at it,

01:33:21 ◼   ► because I feel like the only two possible options are sunset the Mac or find a way to

01:33:26 ◼   ► leverage your fleet. Because eventually, you know, in a not huge number of years...

01:33:33 ◼   ► Would you say on an infinite time scale?

01:33:35 ◼   ► No, on a non-infinite, on a finite and fairly short time scale...

01:33:39 ◼   ► That one just gets the desk gone.

01:33:41 ◼   ► The number of people who know how to make a good Mac app is not going up. It's just

01:33:45 ◼   ► not, right? And the number of people who know how to make a good iOS app is going up, and

01:33:50 ◼   ► tremendous number of this. You have to find a way to either, you know, don't have people

01:33:54 ◼   ► develop with the Mac anymore or repurpose, repoint your big ass out of that fleet of

01:33:58 ◼   ► developers at the Mac, because that's the only way you're going to get an ongoing supply

01:34:02 ◼   ► of good Mac apps, right? And so I think, you know, like you said, there are just so many

01:34:08 ◼   ► ways to do this wrong, right? And if they tried a bunch of approaches and they suck,

01:34:12 ◼   ► I think they would say, "Okay, but let's try again with a different approach." Eventually

01:34:16 ◼   ► you assume the one they come out with is an approach that they feel kind of okay with,

01:34:20 ◼   ► but they could blow it and try again.

01:34:22 ◼   ► Anyway, for the approaches,

01:34:24 ◼   ► I think there's a few obvious ones.

01:34:27 ◼   ► A couple of the obvious ones,

01:34:28 ◼   ► it's not clear to me whether these are approaches

01:34:30 ◼   ► that they've decided suck and they don't wanna pursue,

01:34:32 ◼   ► but at the very least,

01:34:34 ◼   ► these are approaches they have code for

01:34:35 ◼   ► are things like UXKit,

01:34:37 ◼   ► which is like when a lot of applications

01:34:39 ◼   ► start appearing on the Mac

01:34:40 ◼   ► and people said they looked and smelled

01:34:41 ◼   ► kinda like iOS applications,

01:34:43 ◼   ► a lot of them used either actual UXKit

01:34:45 ◼   ► or similar approaches where it is like a UIKit

01:34:49 ◼   ► sort of facade that just calls App Kit stuff under the covers

01:34:52 ◼   ► to let you repurpose code that you originally

01:34:54 ◼   ► wrote for iOS devices to make a quote unquote Mac

01:34:57 ◼   ► application that kind of looks and behaves a little bit

01:35:00 ◼   ► like an iOS application.

01:35:02 ◼   ► Photos for the Mac is a great example.

01:35:03 ◼   ► This, you know, arguably like contacts or even something

01:35:07 ◼   ► like the new Notes application.

01:35:08 ◼   ► A lot of these applications that you look at them--

01:35:11 ◼   ► Maps, yeah.

01:35:12 ◼   ► A lot of apps out there, they kind of--

01:35:15 ◼   ► I mean, there's a family resemblance, but also

01:35:17 ◼   ► behavior-wise, you can kind of tell that they're not just using straight AppKit

01:35:20 ◼   ► because a lot of the stuff that you basically get for free with AppKit

01:35:23 ◼   ► doesn't exist in these applications, like different behaviors, different, you know,

01:35:27 ◼   ► behaviors in terms of focus and keyboard shortcuts and stuff like that that are

01:35:31 ◼   ► just different for reasons that don't make sense until you realize that they

01:35:34 ◼   ► probably just reused a lot of UI kit code. So a UX kit-like approach is one

01:35:39 ◼   ► possible way to do that, and like I said, it's not clear to me whether they did

01:35:42 ◼   ► that and decided actually that's not great so we're not taking that approach,

01:35:45 ◼   ► or they did that over many years with many applications, decided,

01:35:48 ◼   ► "Actually, this approach works pretty well, and this is what we're going to go with."

01:35:50 ◼   ► So that approach would be essentially a new framework that's not AppKit,

01:35:56 ◼   ► but not UIKit, but it looks very much like UIKit,

01:35:58 ◼   ► and lets people reuse some of their code from UIKit,

01:36:02 ◼   ► maybe with small tweaks, but a lot of their skills.

01:36:05 ◼   ► "Oh, I kind of know how table views work. I know how buttons work.

01:36:07 ◼   ► I know how, you know, animations and transitions work," right?

01:36:11 ◼   ► And there's tons of new stuff you have to learn, too, with menus and so on and so forth.

01:36:14 ◼   ► But that's one approach.

01:36:16 ◼   ► A second approach is make a new toolkit, and unfortunately, Apple has really used up a

01:36:22 ◼   ► lot of the good names.

01:36:25 ◼   ► It's a kit for making apps.

01:36:26 ◼   ► Oh, we can't call it AppKit.

01:36:27 ◼   ► It's a UI kit.

01:36:28 ◼   ► Oh, no, forget about that one.

01:36:29 ◼   ► It's an HI tool, but no, never mind.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Like, they've really used...

01:36:33 ◼   ► HI kit is one of the ones I've heard, like, you can combine kit with...

01:36:36 ◼   ► Anyway, come up with a new framework that looks almost exactly like UI kit, but presumably

01:36:41 ◼   ► the UI kit represents the best thinking the company has about how to make a UI, but with

01:36:46 ◼   ► changes to fundamental things about it that allow it to handle all the things the Mac

01:36:52 ◼   ► does, menus, cursors, scrollbars, blah, blah, blah, and also all the things the UI kit does.

01:36:57 ◼   ► So that's the actual sort of grand unified, like there is one framework to write applications

01:37:04 ◼   ► for everything. And that would mean that it's not a shim on top of AppKit that presumably

01:37:11 ◼   ► they would implement, whatever behaviors they implemented would define going forward what

01:37:15 ◼   ► it means to be Mac-like, right?

01:37:18 ◼   ► As opposed to now where AppKit defines what it means to be Mac-like, more or less.

01:37:22 ◼   ► And AppKit itself is influenced by being smushed together with Carbon and HI, Toolkit and all

01:37:27 ◼   ► that other stuff.

01:37:28 ◼   ► That's why, what defines our definition of Mac-like.

01:37:32 ◼   ► And that definition changed from classic Mac OS as well.

01:37:33 ◼   ► So it's not like the definition of Mac-like can't change.