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160: Be Careful Out There

 

00:00:00   Are you sad at all about the M5 leaving?

00:00:03   You should pull the engine noise MP3s off the computer so you can play them anytime

00:00:06   you want when you miss it.

00:00:11   So let's move on to something super exciting.

00:00:14   Let's talk about SQL Server on Linux.

00:00:15   I couldn't even get it out with a straight face.

00:00:19   I tried so hard I couldn't even do it.

00:00:21   Well, this is kind of interesting, right?

00:00:23   Because like, you know, Microsoft had their database SQL Server, which forever has required

00:00:28   Windows Server.

00:00:29   And I would imagine a lot of Windows Server licenses were exclusively to run Microsoft

00:00:36   SQL Server.

00:00:37   So them announcing that it will be available for Linux is interesting, you know, because

00:00:44   that means, again, like we brought up last week how them bringing .NET to Linux officially

00:00:50   would be, you know, interesting and might have a negative effect on their Windows Server

00:00:55   licenses.

00:00:56   will probably have an even bigger negative effect

00:00:58   on their Windows Server licenses.

00:01:00   So I think what this is showing is that Microsoft

00:01:02   would rather that you use .NET and use SQL Server

00:01:07   rather than necessarily be stuck to Windows Server.

00:01:11   And so all the reasons that people have for not

00:01:14   using Microsoft Server products,

00:01:16   now they have one big one less.

00:01:19   - Fewer?

00:01:20   Didn't I bring this up last week?

00:01:21   I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering,

00:01:22   I remember talking about the similar issues of like that Microsoft is becoming more friendly

00:01:30   to Linux and how people don't like to run Linux servers and Windows servers, the two kind of

00:01:33   separate domains of knowledge, they really just run all Linux servers, Linux is everywhere in

00:01:39   the enterprise, and so that Microsoft could sell you, I think I might have said exchange server for

00:01:45   Linux or something like that, but anyway, I also like that Microsoft could have its own Linux

00:01:48   distro eventually and it wasn't you know that was like last week and then this

00:01:52   announcement came I mean I'm sure this announcement was telegraphed for people

00:01:54   who pay more attention to Microsoft than I do but I had no awareness they were

00:01:58   even close to this but then you know there went right after last week's show

00:02:02   so it and I think Christina Warren was also joking about a Microsoft Linux

00:02:07   distro around the same time I don't see that as implausible although a couple

00:02:12   people from Microsoft tweeted oh you know we partner with Red Hat and so on

00:02:15   and so forth and we let them do what they do best which is do a Linux distro

00:02:18   we don't have one or whatever, but if Microsoft pursues this strategy to basically we will sell you

00:02:23   Enterprise software and we're not going to be super picky about where you run it

00:02:28   Like if a lot of customers want to run our software on Linux fine

00:02:32   We'll we'll sell them a version to run on Linux because they're not

00:02:35   Not the the everything Windows company anymore. I mean they haven't been

00:02:40   For a while now since Palmer left basically or maybe even before

00:02:44   Yeah fair enough. It's an interesting push for sure and I'm curious to see

00:02:48   where this all ends up

00:02:51   But I like it. I think this is Microsoft playing to their strengths

00:02:56   Which we've talked about you know several times on and off in the past so good on Microsoft. Moving on

00:03:01   We got a lot of people that wrote in to talk about TV mounting over a fireplace

00:03:08   because unsurprisingly a lot of people were perturbed at where I mount my TV. And we got two

00:03:14   recurring links, which we'll put in the show notes, and it was Neil Weinstock that I guess was the first one in with these links.

00:03:22   One of them is dynamic mounting, which

00:03:26   is very similar to the other which we received far more often, which is mantle mount. And

00:03:32   And the two of these things basically allow you to stuff the TV over the fireplace when

00:03:38   it's not in use, but then drop it down kind of in front of the fireplace when you are

00:03:42   using it.

00:03:45   And these are very clever and things that I would never ever bother with because I just

00:03:49   don't care that much.

00:03:50   I would be so nervous about this.

00:03:52   Like I mean, again, I know that you can make a mount that's super strong and everything,

00:03:57   But man, having it, having the TV on the wall is bad enough.

00:04:01   Having it like suspended on this arm that reaches like a couple of feet away from the

00:04:07   wall.

00:04:08   It's like thinking about like the stresses on that mount.

00:04:10   Oh my God, I do, I could not sleep at night with that above my TV or on my TV.

00:04:15   TVs are light, it would be fine.

00:04:16   But it is kind of weird though because your room looks weird with your TV kind of hanging

00:04:20   in front of the fireplace.

00:04:21   Like, I guess it's kind of a solution.

00:04:24   And the idea is you can push it back up when you want the room to look nicer or whatever,

00:04:27   But it still seems weird to me.

00:04:29   And then, a final piece of follow-up.

00:04:30   I had tweeted a challenge to you/our mutual follows that here's the PDF of my owner's

00:04:37   manual for my TV, make it work.

00:04:39   I got a plethora of suggestions, most of which were actually very helpful, which I do appreciate,

00:04:45   because oftentimes with Twitter that's not the case.

00:04:48   Tentatively, I think it may be fixed.

00:04:52   It's been very not reliable.

00:04:56   Sometimes it seems to be working right, sometimes not.

00:04:58   When I say working right, what I mean is that it doesn't overscan or anything like that.

00:05:03   It appears to be...

00:05:04   I changed a million things at once because I'm a terrible debugger, apparently, when

00:05:08   it comes to these sorts of things anyway.

00:05:09   I think it is basically the showroom mode or something like it, some sort of like, "Ooh,

00:05:15   let me do everything automatically" mode.

00:05:17   When I first changed that, it didn't seem to make a difference.

00:05:20   Then all of a sudden it seemed to be working, so gosh, it only knows.

00:05:23   But the positive sign so far.

00:05:25   So thank you to the people on Twitter that had sent in some tips, and in theory I think

00:05:30   it might be better now.

00:05:31   So I think both you and Marco have had people download PDFs of things that you own and read

00:05:36   them for you and tell you how to work them.

00:05:38   Yeah, and I think the common thread between us here is that we just don't care enough

00:05:42   about this particular thing.

00:05:44   Like Marco does not care enough about—

00:05:45   See?

00:05:46   Well, but you should care.

00:05:47   About finding the battery in his car?

00:05:48   He cares.

00:05:49   Right.

00:05:50   Ish.

00:05:51   And about knowing how to do shortcuts on the iDrive, for example.

00:05:54   Personally, I think that's a little weird that you didn't care that much, but, you know,

00:05:57   to each their own.

00:05:58   And for me, I could not have possibly cared less about reading the manual to fix this

00:06:03   problem.

00:06:04   I had lived with it for like six years at this point.

00:06:06   I can live with it some more.

00:06:07   However, now that it is fixed, I am quite—well, tentatively—I'm quite pleased that—yeah,

00:06:13   I was going to say I spent the time, but really that the internet spent the time to read the

00:06:16   PDF for me.

00:06:17   So thanks, internet.

00:06:18   Our first sponsor tonight is Fracture.

00:06:21   Go to fractureme.com and use code ATP10 to get 10% off your first purchase.

00:06:27   Fracture prints photos directly onto glass.

00:06:31   Colors pop like you won't believe and it even comes in a solid backing that's ready to mount

00:06:34   right out of the package.

00:06:36   All you have to do is stick it on the included screw and hang it up on the wall.

00:06:39   Done.

00:06:40   It's all really affordable too.

00:06:41   Prices are just $15 for the small square size and are very reasonable after that.

00:06:46   Fracture prints look great.

00:06:48   They're all over my, they're all over our house now.

00:06:49   They just keep multiplying and they're everywhere.

00:06:52   We've given them as gifts.

00:06:53   People love these things.

00:06:54   They compliment them, they look great.

00:06:56   It is literally a photo printed on a piece of glass

00:07:00   and you stick it on the wall and that's it.

00:07:01   You don't have to frame it.

00:07:02   You don't have to worry about it like falling off

00:07:04   of some little weird hanger thing.

00:07:06   It just works and they're great.

00:07:08   They're big, they're beautiful, they're lightweight.

00:07:11   Again, no stress involved in hanging this thing on the wall.

00:07:13   The packaging has been wonderful.

00:07:15   We've never received one that was cracked

00:07:17   or broken or anything.

00:07:18   and you know you think sending a big piece of glass through the mail it'd be

00:07:21   risky but no they have to have that covered too it is great they make great

00:07:25   gifts they're great for yourself get your photos printed get them out of your

00:07:28   like weird Facebook and Instagram feeds where you see them for like a day then

00:07:32   they're gone forever you know bring them out put them on your wall it really

00:07:35   makes a difference they make fantastic gifts for family friends and loved ones

00:07:38   as well you can celebrate a shared memory with somebody if you go like you

00:07:41   know go on a trip with somebody or you like your kid has a birthday or whatever

00:07:44   takes pictures send them to your relatives or send them to the people who were on the

00:07:47   Each fracture is hand assembled and checked for quality

00:07:50   by their small team in Gainesville, Florida.

00:07:52   And if you need any more reasons to buy one,

00:07:54   besides them being our sponsors,

00:07:56   get 10% off right now with the code ATP10.

00:07:59   Go to fractureme.com to see for yourself.

00:08:01   Thanks a lot to fracture.

00:08:02   - So this past weekend we celebrated

00:08:05   my mother-in-law's birthday.

00:08:07   And we had gotten her a fracture print of a photo

00:08:10   that I had taken of Declan at a park nearby

00:08:13   that we really like.

00:08:15   That she had commented to me,

00:08:17   "Oh man, that's a really great picture. I really like it. Yada yada yada."

00:08:20   And that was like a month ago, and so we had pretty much instantly turned around, went to fracture,

00:08:26   knowing her birthday was coming, and had that printed, made, pressed, however you want to phrase it.

00:08:31   And she opened it up and instantly burst into tears because she was so overjoyed about how good it looked

00:08:37   and how awesome it was. And so, seriously kids, give it a shot. It's really good stuff.

00:08:42   So I actually have some surprise follow-up.

00:08:45   - Oh, I thought we were done.

00:08:47   - Nope, this is a surprise follow-up

00:08:49   because on my desk right now,

00:08:52   I have two of the Apple Smart Battery cases.

00:08:56   - Oh God, seriously?

00:08:58   - Seriously.

00:08:59   - We're back to this?

00:09:00   - We're gonna spend even more time

00:09:02   on the Apple Smart Battery case.

00:09:03   Just quick, just quick.

00:09:04   - You get one for the Plus and one for regular?

00:09:07   - They don't make it for the Plus.

00:09:08   No, one for me, one for TIFF.

00:09:09   - They only make it in the one size just for the 6S,

00:09:11   that's it?

00:09:12   - Yeah, 'cause the Plus already has enough battery life.

00:09:13   Anyway, I have my cheap Amazon One that I got,

00:09:18   and I expressed some concern about, you know,

00:09:20   being not MFI certified.

00:09:22   I'm a little worried about what am I doing to my phone,

00:09:24   but otherwise it seems all right.

00:09:25   But I decided for this trip, TIFF wanted one too,

00:09:27   and I decided, let's try these.

00:09:29   I'll give it a real shot, a real honest shot.

00:09:32   And honestly, it's pretty good.

00:09:35   (laughing)

00:09:37   - I feel like this is a common theme with you.

00:09:38   Oh, this is crap, fast forward.

00:09:41   Ah, you know, that's not so bad.

00:09:42   - Yeah, you're right.

00:09:43   And nobody else would ever do that, Casey.

00:09:45   Like Apple and BMWs and iPhones.

00:09:47   - Well, no, I'm not innocent on this one.

00:09:49   I'm not innocent.

00:09:51   I'm just bringing you down to my level.

00:09:53   - I understand the appeal of this case now.

00:09:55   So first of all, it is really easy to take on and off

00:09:58   because of the weird bendy top.

00:09:59   It does indeed look really stupid.

00:10:02   Holding it is actually not bad,

00:10:04   because the little ledge from the bottom edge of the bump,

00:10:08   you actually can rest it on your pinky

00:10:09   and have kind of a nice handhold there.

00:10:11   - Unless you're John.

00:10:12   unless you're Jon, but if you hold your phone normally,

00:10:15   you can do that.

00:10:15   (laughing)

00:10:17   And the smartness aspect of it is really nice,

00:10:20   where you never have to turn it on or off.

00:10:23   Like that to me, that is what really sets it apart

00:10:25   above all the other ones, is that it is always

00:10:28   just automatic, and you can see its status

00:10:31   in your today view in the batteries widget.

00:10:34   So, and when you first plug it in,

00:10:35   it shows both side by side,

00:10:36   it shows the case and your battery.

00:10:37   So overall, it's actually pretty nice.

00:10:41   It still looks stupid.

00:10:43   It's still big and clunky.

00:10:45   Not as big and clunky as some battery cases I've seen and used, but it's still big and

00:10:49   clunky.

00:10:50   The only major downside to it besides its stupid looks, I think, now having used it,

00:10:56   really the only major downside is that the amount of extra capacity that you get really

00:11:00   isn't that great.

00:11:02   It's something, I mean, I don't know, something like two-thirds of a charge or half a charge.

00:11:06   So it is enough if you need just a little boost.

00:11:09   But I feel like on the flight on the way out there,

00:11:12   we both drained our cases down to nothing

00:11:14   and drained our phones down partially.

00:11:16   Just like in the airports here and there,

00:11:19   going in and out of planes and everything.

00:11:21   And yes, you can plug it on the plane,

00:11:22   but then you have this cable running across your lap

00:11:24   and it's kind of inconvenient

00:11:26   and you gotta reach in the bag in and out.

00:11:27   So ideally you don't have to.

00:11:28   So ultimately it was, they did provide enough power,

00:11:32   but it would be nice if they provided more.

00:11:34   It's like if you're gonna have this big battery backpack

00:11:36   on your phone at all,

00:11:38   I would like a little more power than what this offers.

00:11:40   Other than that, pretty good.

00:11:43   I wouldn't say it's a great value for the money,

00:11:45   but, 'cause they're 100 bucks,

00:11:46   and you can get other battery cases for like 50.

00:11:50   So, you know, not a great value,

00:11:51   but the fact that you never have to turn it on or off

00:11:55   and it just automatically charges your phone as necessary,

00:11:58   and it depletes itself first and charges you first,

00:12:01   all those things actually pretty nice.

00:12:04   So that's my abbreviated review

00:12:06   the Apple smart battery case after having mercilessly made fun of it for like three

00:12:10   episodes.

00:12:11   Steve McLaughlin Did you get a white one?

00:12:12   Tim Cynova I got one of each color. Tiff insisted on

00:12:15   the white, I insisted on the gray. Both colors are crappy colors. The white hasn't discolored

00:12:22   itself yet, but I'm sure it will soon. They both pick up tons of pocket lint because they

00:12:26   are the rubbery silicone material. Physical form wise, they're exactly as mediocre as

00:12:31   you expect. But they do work pretty well. I would just only wish for a little bit more

00:12:36   power. Overall though, you know, it is not terrible. I expected it to be terrible and

00:12:42   it's not terrible.

00:12:43   Cool. Well, that's surprising but I guess it's exciting. Yeah, I mean the one I have,

00:12:50   I have this battery case, I think it's by Lenmar and yeah, I mean it's okay. It's a

00:12:56   little bit clunky, but I think they have a newer one actually now that's thinner. This

00:13:01   one I got with my 6. I like it, it works fine, but it's definitely big and large and I don't

00:13:11   know if I'd say heavy, but certainly not light. So it's alright. And I don't know, maybe if

00:13:18   I were to do it again, maybe I'd get one of these like you have. To be honest, I did get

00:13:22   one of those battery packs that you had recommended. What did, who makes that again?

00:13:26   - Volt ready.

00:13:27   - Volt ready, that's right.

00:13:29   It's gotta be reliable.

00:13:30   How could it not be?

00:13:31   - Yeah, $25 from a company you've never heard of

00:13:34   that has all these little flimsy cables on it.

00:13:35   It works most of the time.

00:13:37   - Why not?

00:13:38   - It works exactly what you'd expect for a $25 battery.

00:13:40   - That's fair.

00:13:41   And I got one of those on your recommendation,

00:13:43   which I guess was on someone else's recommendation first.

00:13:46   The one I got is a truly hideous gold color

00:13:50   because that was the only one that was available at the time

00:13:52   I don't even see it on Amazon anymore,

00:13:54   so maybe that's been updated since then.

00:13:56   But--

00:13:57   It's too-- it's too tacky even for Amazon.

00:14:00   Seriously.

00:14:01   So yeah, so I haven't traveled with it yet,

00:14:05   but I am going on a trip soon with a plethora

00:14:08   of other people.

00:14:09   And I presume it will be a mixed crowd of iPhones and Android

00:14:13   phones.

00:14:13   And it was appealing to me that this

00:14:15   would have a connection for each,

00:14:18   because I'm a nice guy like that.

00:14:19   So we'll see how it goes.

00:14:20   If my phone melts, then you can laugh at me and say

00:14:24   I should have gotten the smart battery case.

00:14:26   - I'm not sure I would ever tell somebody

00:14:27   they should have gotten the smart battery case.

00:14:29   (laughing)

00:14:30   Like it's not that good and it is fairly expensive.

00:14:33   Again, it's expensive for the capacity that you get.

00:14:36   But, again, it is really nice not to have to manage it.

00:14:41   Like flip it on or flip it off.

00:14:42   Like that part is really nice.

00:14:44   - Yeah, that makes sense.

00:14:45   - Yeah, I mean ultimately this might be just convincing me

00:14:48   that I should probably just go with the 7 Plus

00:14:50   when the 7 comes out.

00:14:52   but we'll see what happens.

00:14:53   - Oh, don't do it, man.

00:14:54   - Mike might have been right.

00:14:55   - Ah, don't do it, man.

00:14:57   - Now, you know, what's pushing me more and more

00:15:00   towards that as time goes on,

00:15:01   not only my battery preferences,

00:15:05   but also I really don't use iPads.

00:15:08   I at least didn't get myself a Pro,

00:15:11   and I'm probably not gonna get myself the new Pro Mini,

00:15:15   whatever the heck they're gonna call the new iPad Air

00:15:19   with pencil support and Pro speakers

00:15:21   pro-like style, you know, whatever. The rumors from Germin is that they're going to call

00:15:26   it iPad Pro also, which my theory on that actually, now that we're talking about it,

00:15:32   my theory on that is I think it makes sense for Apple's current marketing goals to name

00:15:40   all the big iPads Pro because they want people to be thinking of the iPad as a machine that

00:15:46   you can do professional work on to help differentiate it, not only from, you know, big phones and

00:15:51   and everything, but also to help differentiate it

00:15:52   from Amazon's six-pack of cheap tablets.

00:15:55   You know, they want the iPad to be a premium product

00:15:59   that you can do pro work on if you need or want to.

00:16:02   So I think that's, I think that their goal here,

00:16:05   if they do indeed call it a pro of some form,

00:16:09   I think their goal here is for you to just think

00:16:11   of the iPads as the pro tablets.

00:16:14   And yeah, they'll still have the mini

00:16:15   that probably won't be called pro, but you know.

00:16:17   - So that'll be only non-pro iPad left will be the mini?

00:16:20   Do they still call that one mini?

00:16:21   there's no more just plain old iPad?

00:16:23   - Maybe, I mean, for much of the,

00:16:27   well not much, for some of the years

00:16:30   that MacBook has existed,

00:16:31   there was no just plain old MacBook.

00:16:33   And if you look at the laptop lineup,

00:16:37   which I think is a fair comparison here,

00:16:38   this was covered pretty well on upgrade

00:16:41   and connected the last couple of weeks,

00:16:42   but if you look at the Mac lineup,

00:16:45   you have some on the low end,

00:16:46   and then you have the entire middle and high end

00:16:48   is all called Pro, right?

00:16:50   And that's partially because these are higher end things,

00:16:53   partially because I think Apple realizes

00:16:55   these are, that gives the whole line

00:16:57   an air of professionalism, of premiumness, superiority.

00:17:02   And it kinda makes MacBook, you just follow it with pro.

00:17:06   It kinda makes the whole line seem prestigious

00:17:09   to have so many of them called pro,

00:17:11   especially so many of them people actually buy.

00:17:13   So to have most of the iPads that end up being sold

00:17:18   have pro in their name,

00:17:20   I think helps contribute to the perception Apple

00:17:22   wants to create that the iPad can be used for pro use.

00:17:26   Whether or not it can is a different story,

00:17:28   that's, you know, many people can,

00:17:30   and people can't, not gonna get to that on this episode,

00:17:32   but I feel like that is a plausible reason

00:17:35   why they would want to do this.

00:17:36   - I was on one of those episodes of Upgrade,

00:17:39   and what I said on that episode was I think

00:17:41   that the middle size, like the plain iPad size,

00:17:46   the original iPad size, I guess you would call it,

00:17:48   I think there's room to have a model that's that big with Pro in the name, and a model

00:17:53   that's also that big without Pro in the name.

00:17:56   Because at this point there are enough Pro features, the smart connector, the pen, the

00:18:00   high refresh rate screen, the speakers, that it's enough to differentiate it to say the

00:18:05   Pro one has all that stuff and is more expensive, and the non-Pro one that is the same size

00:18:10   is thinner, lighter, smaller, cheaper, and worse in all those other ways.

00:18:14   Doesn't have a smart connector, doesn't support the pen at all, maybe the camera's crappier,

00:18:17   has even the last year's CPU or whatever but it just seems silly to me to require

00:18:24   what I consider the regular iPad size to be encumbered by all the pro features. I

00:18:31   mean if I just think about what kind of iPads do rich people want to buy for

00:18:35   their toddlers? They don't want to buy them the pro but mini is not you know it's

00:18:39   it's more fun for a toddler to have the big screen to like finger paint on and

00:18:43   play little games and just do stuff like that so I really hope eventually maybe

00:18:46   Maybe for this first one they won't do it, but I really hope eventually there is a Pro

00:18:50   9.7-inch one.

00:18:52   That's the regular size, right?

00:18:53   Yes.

00:18:54   9.7-inch, yeah.

00:18:55   There's a Pro 9.7 and a non-Pro 9.7 because already, I mean, there aren't even that many

00:19:00   Pro features, but I think there are already enough features to clearly differentiate the

00:19:03   two lines, that there wouldn't be any confusion about it.

00:19:05   And they can hit more price points.

00:19:07   They could push the Pro one up in price, and they could push the non-Pro one down by using

00:19:11   cheaper stuff.

00:19:12   Eh, maybe.

00:19:13   I don't know.

00:19:14   We'll see.

00:19:15   Apple, there's probably gonna be like 17 different iPads.

00:19:18   - Goodness, alright.

00:19:19   So do we wanna actually get to what we were planning

00:19:22   on talking about today?

00:19:23   - Our next sponsor is Squarespace.

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00:19:27   and your offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.

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00:19:34   I really, to me, like building a website

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00:19:42   And I just don't enjoy any part

00:19:44   of making a website anymore, if I ever did,

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00:19:50   I said I hate making websites.

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00:20:45   I consider that very valuable.

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00:20:51   fine, it probably isn't the best use of your time

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00:21:23   Thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

00:21:26   - All right, so there was a bit of a brouhaha

00:21:30   over the last week or two

00:21:32   about an OS X ransomware attack.

00:21:36   This is the one that was in the Transmit transmission,

00:21:39   which is a BitTorrent client and--

00:21:42   - No, it's a client for acquiring new home videos.

00:21:46   Home movies, what does the Apple TV call them?

00:21:48   Home videos or home movies?

00:21:49   - Yeah, home videos is a good call.

00:21:51   - So yeah, so transmission is a BitTorrent client

00:21:53   slash home movie acquirer.

00:21:55   And apparently, if I understood what happened correctly,

00:21:59   the website had been screwed with, hijacked, et cetera,

00:22:05   And somebody re-signed transmission with a valid Apple cert, although not the original transmission cert, I believe,

00:22:12   that also had ransomware stuffed within it.

00:22:15   And so a bunch of people downloaded from the website and got an infected version of transmission.

00:22:19   Now, Sparkle, which is the auto-updater that many, many, many apps outside of the App Store use,

00:22:24   that I believe was written by Andy Matuszak originally,

00:22:28   anyway, that, I guess, was not affected, but downloads from the website were.

00:22:32   And there was a ransomware virus thing in there that basically said, "Hey, we've encrypted your entire hard drive, pay us money, or you can never get any of your files back."

00:22:44   I thought it encrypted individual files, not the whole drive. It's not whole disk encryption. It would just find your files and encrypt them.

00:22:50   encrypt them. Yeah, you are correct. So this was a bit of an issue and the biggest issue

00:22:55   is it was signed. I mean it was a valid Mac app, not for the App Store of course, but

00:23:04   it was a valid Mac app as far as your installation of OS X was concerned because it was signed

00:23:09   with a valid development certificate. Shady perhaps because it was coming from a very

00:23:13   different place than the normal transmission cert, geographically speaking, but it was

00:23:18   still a valid cert, so it was a bit of a cluster to say the least. What do we think about this?

00:23:25   Well, the big angle that a lot of people started going for was, "Hey, if this was on the Mac App

00:23:31   Store, this would never have happened." And that maybe is true, because what you're relying on on

00:23:36   the App Store is, I guess, app review to realize that this supposed BitTorrent client, if you wait

00:23:45   a couple days and it starts encrypting your files, maybe they wouldn't have noticed that

00:23:49   because again it does wait a couple days, maybe they're trying to wait out app review,

00:23:52   like if the app reviewer launched this app and tried using it, it would work as expected.

00:23:58   Does app review like leave it on the system running for a couple days or leave it around?

00:24:03   Like maybe it would have got past app review as well.

00:24:07   But that's one angle on it.

00:24:08   The other one is that the developer ID signing thing that Apple created with Gatekeeper means

00:24:16   that you download applications and they come in three forms.

00:24:22   Totally unsigned, you know, pre-Gatekeeper applications, which is how every single Mac

00:24:26   app was in all the years before Gatekeeper was created.

00:24:30   Applications that are signed with a developer ID but don't come from the Mac App Store,

00:24:34   and then Mac App Store applications.

00:24:35   And that's sort of like three levels of, I guess, trust.

00:24:38   The totally untrusted one doesn't require any secretary.

00:24:41   You download a binary, you run it, it runs.

00:24:43   And that's the way Mac apps were for most

00:24:46   of the life of the Mac.

00:24:47   The developer ID ones, all that does

00:24:49   is tie it back to an Apple developer account, which

00:24:54   presumably ties back to a person or institution or somebody

00:24:57   that you can hold responsible or whatever.

00:24:59   That's kind of relying on Apple's sign-up process

00:25:02   to correctly identify somebody.

00:25:05   So like, can you go through,

00:25:07   can you get an Apple developer certificate

00:25:09   putting in totally fake information?

00:25:10   Probably.

00:25:12   But that's the only thing that developer ID is giving you.

00:25:15   Well, two things.

00:25:16   One, that your application hasn't been modified in any way,

00:25:19   which is kind of weird.

00:25:20   It's like, well, wasn't transmission modified?

00:25:22   Well, they didn't just modify it, they resigned it.

00:25:26   So after they modified it,

00:25:27   they signed it with their developer certificate

00:25:29   and that certificate authenticated the fact

00:25:32   that yes, this thing, if someone modifies this thing

00:25:35   after you download it, you'll know about it

00:25:36   because the signature won't match.

00:25:38   But what you're worried about is someone modified it

00:25:40   and then signed it and it is, you know,

00:25:44   a valid container for their malware.

00:25:46   So if anyone tried to mess with their malware,

00:25:48   signing would have caught it.

00:25:50   And then the Mac App Store, like it's the next leg up

00:25:52   where there's actual human beings

00:25:53   looking at your application and making sure it's okay.

00:25:55   So why wasn't this application on the Mac App Store?

00:25:57   My understanding is the Mac App Store

00:25:58   does not allow but torrent clients at all.

00:26:00   Do you guys know if that's the case?

00:26:01   - That's right.

00:26:02   - I believe that to be true.

00:26:03   And a quick real-time follow-up,

00:26:04   this encryption would never have worked in sandboxing.

00:26:07   So even if it made it through app review,

00:26:09   it wouldn't have been able to touch the rest of the--

00:26:11   - Oh, 'cause it can't get through,

00:26:12   it can't get to the other files.

00:26:13   - Well, I mean, in reality, this is a bit torrent client.

00:26:17   So it needs to be able to write torrent downloads

00:26:21   to a directory.

00:26:22   And so what would probably happen is,

00:26:23   yes, you could use sandboxing to have it pop up the dialog

00:26:28   and have you choose a directory where it can write.

00:26:30   much more likely would be that even if it was sandboxed

00:26:33   outside of the Mac App Store, even if it was sandboxed,

00:26:37   there would probably just be some option

00:26:38   where they'd be like, all right, well, just,

00:26:39   we need to write your whole drive to make some feature easier

00:26:42   or to make this flow better, and most people would say, okay.

00:26:45   - You can't even get that, you can't even get that,

00:26:47   what do you call it, entitlement anymore, I think.

00:26:49   - I think you're right, well, so then it just wouldn't

00:26:51   be sandboxed and nobody would care.

00:26:53   So yeah, what would make it useful in the App Store

00:26:57   is the sandboxing requirement of the App Store,

00:26:59   which is problematic in so many other ways,

00:27:02   but in this particular case, that would have helped.

00:27:06   However, the reality is, as long as there is a way

00:27:09   to download apps that aren't in the App Store on the Mac,

00:27:13   something like a BitTorrent client is almost certainly

00:27:16   going to be downloaded outside of the App Store

00:27:17   by almost all of its users, just because dealing

00:27:19   with the App Store kinda sucks even as a user these days,

00:27:22   and you can make a better BitTorrent app without sandboxing.

00:27:28   So where the developer ID thing really came in here is,

00:27:30   like this transmission could have been the third kind

00:27:33   of application that I said.

00:27:35   Not signed with any stuff, it's just a binary

00:27:36   that you download, sort of an old style Mac app.

00:27:38   And if that had been the case, and tons of people

00:27:41   had downloaded it, and it started encrypting their drives,

00:27:44   there would be no real way to help them

00:27:46   other than education, saying hey,

00:27:48   if you accidentally downloaded this from this website

00:27:50   during this time, you probably got an infected version,

00:27:52   you should delete it and do this and do that,

00:27:54   and here's how to disinfect your system

00:27:55   and so on and so forth.

00:27:57   But because it was signed with a developer ID,

00:27:59   Apple could revoke the certificate of that developer ID

00:28:02   through the little sneaky update thing

00:28:04   that we just described,

00:28:05   the checkbox that we didn't think was there.

00:28:06   The reason regular users should keep that checkbox checked

00:28:10   is that the Apple has central control

00:28:12   to make it so that this thing doesn't launch anymore.

00:28:15   - We actually are getting real-time follow-up

00:28:16   from Tifter in the chat saying that Apple can blacklist

00:28:19   any binary through that system, including unsigned ones.

00:28:22   - Oh, well then developer IDs wasn't helping at all.

00:28:25   That's a shame.

00:28:26   (laughing)

00:28:27   So what were the makers of transmission getting

00:28:32   out of using developer ID?

00:28:34   I suppose they make people not have to go

00:28:36   to their gatekeeper settings

00:28:37   and put it in the most insecure mode.

00:28:39   - Well, no, you can also, what is it?

00:28:42   Right click and select open, and then it'll say,

00:28:46   "Oh my God, are you really sure?"

00:28:48   And then you can say, "Yes, yes, I'm really sure."

00:28:50   - Yeah, I know, that's what I'm saying.

00:28:51   What do you get out of the developer ID thing?

00:28:53   as a developer, I guess you get less scary experience

00:28:56   for users because you don't require them to go

00:28:59   to a setting that they don't understand

00:29:00   and change it in a way that pops up

00:29:02   while warning dialog boxes or whatever.

00:29:04   - Yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't require them

00:29:06   to right-click and select open the first time

00:29:09   they run the app and then go through the extra scary.

00:29:11   They still have these scary, this is an application

00:29:14   you download from the internet dialog,

00:29:16   but if they just double-click on an app

00:29:18   under default settings that is unsigned,

00:29:21   it doesn't let them run it.

00:29:22   It says, "Oh, sorry, this is on-site."

00:29:24   And then you have to right-click and say open.

00:29:26   So it lets them bypass all of that.

00:29:28   If you're distributing Mac apps in this day and age,

00:29:33   you should almost always have at least developer ID,

00:29:36   if not the app store.

00:29:38   - And of course, in theory, you can track it back

00:29:40   to whatever Apple developer account signed the bad piece.

00:29:45   And again, that just gets back to the tech of work.

00:29:48   Can you find someone who you wanna hold responsible?

00:29:50   Do they put valid information?

00:29:52   Are they in a country that has a legal system that lets you find them or help them accountable

00:29:57   in some way?

00:29:59   I'm assuming not.

00:30:00   I mean, the other alternative suggested in the chat room is that maybe it was just a

00:30:03   legitimate developer that got a developer account hacked.

00:30:05   Someone got into their developer account, either were getting their password, doing

00:30:09   some other way to get into their developer account.

00:30:10   There's also been a couple of bugs around that make it seem like you could exploit Gatekeeper

00:30:15   to execute arbitrary software as if it's trusted.

00:30:19   have been surmised in years past.

00:30:24   But there's so many ways you can hide from the consequences of doing this bad thing.

00:30:30   That's like, the maker of this ransomware, they're a bad actor here.

00:30:35   Are they going to be caught and punished?

00:30:36   Do we have the tools to do that?

00:30:38   Maybe?

00:30:39   Maybe not?

00:30:40   Probably not?

00:30:41   I mean, not everyone is somewhere where you can get at them.

00:30:45   So anyway, XProtect, the thing that downloads little updates in the background and disables

00:30:50   things.

00:30:51   Like your Ethernet driver.

00:30:53   Yeah.

00:30:54   It may have disabled your Ethernet driver one week, but the next week it may have saved

00:30:58   you from getting your files encrypted by ransomware.

00:31:01   Yeah.

00:31:02   I mean, this is one of those cases where most of the time, one of the angles that big business

00:31:10   tries to scare people with, to scare them away from piracy is, "Well, you know, if

00:31:16   you pirate stuff, you never know what you're getting. It could be dangerous. You could

00:31:20   get hacked. You could get malware." And most of the time, that doesn't happen with

00:31:25   piracy. Most of the time, it's fine, and that's one of the reasons so many people

00:31:29   do it. But this is like the one time where they were actually right. You know, you really

00:31:37   need protections from Gatekeeper and from sandboxing and you shouldn't pirate things

00:31:42   because you're putting yourself at risk downloading random software from random places. Like,

00:31:45   this is the one time where that was actually true. But that being said, I think this made

00:31:50   for interesting news and it could prompt some interesting discussions for these few days,

00:31:56   but I don't think this is going to meaningfully change anything for anybody. It's estimated

00:32:01   that, I think somebody said that the total number of downloads with the malware included

00:32:06   was only something like 6,000, which for something like this, that's not that giant of a number.

00:32:12   And then, you know, Apple fairly quickly blacklisted the binary, so it probably didn't even trigger

00:32:19   the malware, like the encryption step of the malware for most of those people. So I don't

00:32:24   -- this doesn't seem like it's that big of an event. It's more about, you know, what

00:32:29   it -- how we're all talking about, like, you know, does this change our opinions of what

00:32:35   the Mac should be, where it should go, security on the Mac.

00:32:38   And that, I think, is a conversation worth having.

00:32:41   But this particular malware, I think, is mostly a non-event.

00:32:44   And interestingly, it wasn't like pirated software that was infected.

00:32:48   It was the software you used to get the pirated software.

00:32:50   Right, exactly.

00:32:51   Which is slightly different, but...

00:32:53   And home movies, don't forget.

00:32:54   Yeah.

00:32:55   And this is kind of a shame, because developers like this, whose applications basically can't

00:33:00   be on the Mac App Store for a policy reason, setting aside all the things that you talked

00:33:04   about Marco about like, well, the good ones would want full access to your drive and it's

00:33:07   less annoying to users, but even just like if they're categorically denied, because we

00:33:11   think BitTorrent clients are just as a category a thing that we don't want in the Mac App

00:33:16   Store for whatever reason.

00:33:17   If you're a developer who makes a BitTorrent client and you're trying to like do as good

00:33:23   a job as you can do not being in the Mac App Store, you would get a developer ID and you

00:33:28   would sign your application and you would do all these things, but you know, everybody,

00:33:32   You know, everyone gets bored at some time.

00:33:36   You could end up getting hacked.

00:33:37   They could hack your website.

00:33:38   They could shove a little thing inside your downloadable application bundle and your reputation

00:33:45   is smeared because everyone thinks that whether you knew about it or not, it's like, "Oh,

00:33:51   transmission isn't that thing that encrypts your drive?"

00:33:55   I feel like they're doing everything they could within the bounds of the technology

00:34:00   and the rules of the system they're operating in, and I feel bad that they had a bad result

00:34:08   from that.

00:34:09   I don't blame the developers, and I do give credit to Apple for putting in the system

00:34:17   that they put in so many years ago to give them the ability to deal with this, but it

00:34:22   does make me feel a little bit less safe about downloading applications on the Mac.

00:34:27   Because I've downloaded plenty of applications not from the Mac App Store, or from the Mac

00:34:31   App Store for that matter.

00:34:32   And every single one of those is exploitable through a non-technological means, like for

00:34:37   example Mac App Store application.

00:34:39   I don't have any faith that App Review would correctly detect some sort of clever sleeping,

00:34:45   it waits a week and then it wakes up and does something bad to your thing.

00:34:49   And all that it takes for that to happen is for someone to get some poor legitimate developer

00:34:55   account password and, you know, muck up one of their builds or submit a build while they're

00:35:01   away on vacation or do something else.

00:35:03   That's just like a social engineering hack.

00:35:04   It's nothing to do with technology.

00:35:05   As far as the entire tech stack is concerned, this would be a completely validated, approved

00:35:10   Mac application.

00:35:12   And there would be sandbox and everything like that.

00:35:13   And I have, you know, is there a way to get out of the sandbox?

00:35:17   Within the bounds of the sandbox, can you do all sorts of damage?

00:35:20   Probably.

00:35:21   Like, you could turn on the camera.

00:35:22   you could capture keystrokes typed into that application,

00:35:25   who knows what you could do.

00:35:26   So like there is no truly safe scenario.

00:35:31   And I wonder exactly how much safer users are overall

00:35:36   if applications, if we assume that the Mac App Store

00:35:40   is a superior level of security to just the developer ID,

00:35:44   it seems to me that every category of application

00:35:46   that is just not allowed on the Mac App Store

00:35:48   for some reason is potentially decreasing the security

00:35:52   of users over what they could be if the Mac App Store was more permissive in terms of,

00:35:56   sure, you could have a BitTorrent client.

00:35:59   Like it's, you know, we don't say those things are, you know, no matter what, we don't say

00:36:04   those things are just evil.

00:36:05   We don't care how you use them because there are legitimate uses for them.

00:36:07   There's plenty of Linux distros and stuff that are distributed via BitTorrent because

00:36:10   it's a fast way to download stuff.

00:36:12   Anyway, software is dangerous.

00:36:16   Be careful out there.

00:36:17   - No man, this is like, that's the argument,

00:36:20   one of the strongest arguments for Apple

00:36:22   to actually improve the Mac App Store and sandboxing.

00:36:26   Because right now they have a situation

00:36:28   where the Mac App Store is just beyond disrepair.

00:36:33   I mean, it's seemingly totally unstaffed.

00:36:36   There's the app itself that is,

00:36:39   the store app that runs is horrible.

00:36:42   It's buggy, it's messy, it's inconsistent, it's outdated.

00:36:46   I mean, it's just, I'd say it's one of the worst apps

00:36:49   Apple ships right now, is the Mac App Store app.

00:36:51   The service behind it is spotty at best.

00:36:55   Review times for developers are lengthy and inconsistent,

00:36:59   way worse than iOS.

00:37:01   And you have this technical requirement of sandboxing

00:37:04   that, while great in theory, is a huge pain for developers

00:37:08   because it has also been kinda half-baked

00:37:11   in its implementation and also effectively unmaintained.

00:37:15   So, you know, and I wanna maybe get to

00:37:19   Steve Trout and Smith's post about his W2C predictions

00:37:22   that came up a couple weeks ago,

00:37:23   and his statement that Mac OS X is a dead platform.

00:37:28   I wanna maybe get to that, but,

00:37:29   and maybe this might lead us into that a little bit,

00:37:31   but it just seems like, you know,

00:37:33   Apple started Dennis Path with the App Store,

00:37:36   I mean, sandboxing, they kind of,

00:37:38   they said, "All right, here's the future,

00:37:39   "here's how we're gonna do this,

00:37:40   "this is gonna be great."

00:37:41   They started, and then it seems like nothing has changed

00:37:45   the Mac App Store launched, except the introduction

00:37:48   to sandboxing, which came shortly after that,

00:37:50   and then it seemed like nothing has changed

00:37:52   with sandboxing since then either.

00:37:54   So we have the situation now where we have

00:37:57   what is in theory a great system that could in theory

00:38:00   protect people's Macs better and have more secure software

00:38:03   and have easier distribution, but in practice

00:38:06   the implementation of that system has been

00:38:09   fairly mediocre and it's been almost untouched for years.

00:38:14   So if Apple really wants to improve the security of the Mac,

00:38:18   what they have to do is make these things better.

00:38:21   Make the App Store and sandboxing able to support more apps

00:38:25   so that more apps can do it, and make them good enough

00:38:30   that the developers are incentivized,

00:38:32   that they actually want to be in the App Store,

00:38:34   and they actually want to adopt sandboxing.

00:38:37   But it just seems like there's nobody

00:38:40   driving the ship or whatever.

00:38:42   - If you had been looking at the show notes,

00:38:43   would have seen when we pushed that down for next week.

00:38:45   And if you had not been on vacation,

00:38:46   you would have heard me talk about that exact question

00:38:49   on upgrade.

00:38:49   Jason stole that one.

00:38:50   - I did.

00:38:51   - Oh, spoiler alert, I haven't listened yet.

00:38:52   I was saving it for my car ride coming up tomorrow.

00:38:54   - All right.

00:38:55   But I did reject one of the topics that Jason suggested

00:38:58   because I wanted to save it for this show.

00:39:00   - Oh, thanks buddy.

00:39:01   - And it was not that one.

00:39:02   (laughing)

00:39:03   - I mean, I think there's some ground to cover here

00:39:05   that you guys didn't cover on upgrade.

00:39:07   Because you made a good case for what the Mac is

00:39:12   and what it should be, which I can summarize

00:39:15   if you'll permit, is basically like,

00:39:17   the Mac should be like the rock,

00:39:19   like the stable, reliable platform

00:39:23   that's kind of boring, doesn't get a lot of updates,

00:39:25   but is stable and reliable.

00:39:26   And I agree.

00:39:28   - That was one option.

00:39:28   The other option was you do another OS X type transition.

00:39:32   - Right, sure.

00:39:33   Honestly though, I don't really see Apple doing that.

00:39:37   I mean, I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong,

00:39:39   but it doesn't seem like they devote enough resources

00:39:43   to the Mac anymore to really do any more big transitions.

00:39:47   I think the era of big Mac transitions is over.

00:39:50   And that might be good, it's probably not,

00:39:53   but ultimately it seems like modern day Apple

00:39:57   seems to have this severe problem of basically just,

00:40:02   like as I mentioned before, like the drive-by updates,

00:40:05   'cause they don't really have enough people

00:40:07   that are permanently staffed on major parts

00:40:10   of their engineering stuff anymore.

00:40:13   It seems like so much of Apple's engineering resources

00:40:18   are being devoted to other things.

00:40:21   iOS, TV, watch, a car most likely, other things like that.

00:40:26   It seems like they keep moving the talent around so much

00:40:31   that there's just nobody left working

00:40:34   on boring old things like the Mac.

00:40:37   And we haven't even seen how they can do

00:40:39   their current platforms yet.

00:40:40   Like we haven't even seen what happens

00:40:43   with watchOS and tvOS this year.

00:40:46   They're each less than a year old.

00:40:48   Does Apple have the engineering capacity

00:40:53   to keep Mac OS, iOS on the iPhone and the iPad,

00:40:58   which are actually quite different these days,

00:41:00   tvOS, watchOS, and the future Car OS?

00:41:04   Do they have the capacity to maintain all of those

00:41:06   to a healthy level. From what we've seen so far, I think the answer is probably not.

00:41:10   So the question is, what gets back-burned? What gets put in Casey's parking lot full

00:41:14   of white cars? What gets ignored? And I think usually it's been the Mac and the iPad. That's

00:41:20   usually what gets ignored. This year, the iPad got some attention. We'll see what

00:41:25   happens as time goes on, but they probably are not in the position where they're going

00:41:31   to devote tons of engineering talent to the Mac. And that's unfortunate. And it is a

00:41:36   mature platform that doesn't need a lot of attention. But I, again, I'm concerned whether

00:41:41   they'll be able to do any kind of big changes in the future. So I think it's more likely

00:41:45   that we'll keep it on its current path of basically being the nice boring thing that

00:41:51   most of us use and depend on very heavily for our work. But it doesn't really get a

00:41:57   lot of attention from Apple.

00:41:58   I don't know if it's so much about their capacity to do it as like that they're going to put

00:42:04   resources towards things with growth potential and regardless of the size of the Mac and

00:42:09   how it may be growing I think the company feels that the potential growth that is does

00:42:15   not warrant putting lots of resources behind it versus say the watch where it's conceivable

00:42:21   that they could believe that the watch is like the start of a whole wearables thing

00:42:25   and that the potential upside is huge.

00:42:27   So we're going to put lots of time and effort into the watch, and then we'll see if the

00:42:30   growth potential is there.

00:42:31   But the Mac, I think the company feels like, and most customers and observers of the industry

00:42:36   feel like, there is not a tremendous growth potential in traditional personal computers

00:42:42   anymore.

00:42:43   So when it comes time to allocate Apple's billions of dollars, it's easier to make the

00:42:49   argument for the car or the watch or even the TV, because they're all so small or so

00:42:54   so new or so non-existent that it's very easy to spin out a tail of potential huge growth.

00:43:00   That we will start down here and the graph will go way up there, whereas the Mac, if

00:43:04   it has to argue for its resources, it can show what its revenue is and how it's growing

00:43:09   faster than the industry and how it's taking its share from Windows PCs. But if they say,

00:43:13   "Okay, is the Mac going to be four times the size it is in a couple years?" they have to

00:43:19   say, "Well, no, probably not." And so maybe they just don't get the resources.

00:43:23   Hold on, before we go too far deeper on this,

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00:45:48   So I think with the Mac, what's important about it

00:45:52   is that they just maintain what they've started here.

00:45:56   You know, the Mac is the pinnacle of personal computing.

00:46:00   It really is the best personal computer out there.

00:46:03   And whether or not personal computing

00:46:05   has a huge growth potential in front of it,

00:46:07   I think you're right, it probably doesn't.

00:46:09   But that doesn't mean it's going away.

00:46:11   And that doesn't mean it isn't already big and important.

00:46:14   And yeah, it isn't as important as the iPhone.

00:46:17   but it is still really important to a lot of people.

00:46:21   And it is also the area in which I would say

00:46:23   Apple has the worst and least threatening competition.

00:46:28   You know, that Apple has tons of competition,

00:46:30   you know, very strong competition in phones,

00:46:33   in tablets, in watches, in TV boxes,

00:46:36   and they will have tons of competition in cars

00:46:38   if they're doing that, which it sure sounds like they are.

00:46:41   In the Mac, for personal computing,

00:46:44   I don't know a lot of Mac users who are like,

00:46:46   "You know what, I'm tempted to go try Windows."

00:46:48   Like, that never happens.

00:46:50   Like, yeah, they don't have, you know,

00:46:52   Windows is still the majority market shareholder.

00:46:54   But, first of all, that says something about growth, I think.

00:46:56   (laughs)

00:46:57   But, you know, Windows is still, you know,

00:46:59   the majority holder here, but the Mac is so good.

00:47:04   And so many of us rely on it.

00:47:06   And I feel like it's Apple's responsibility

00:47:09   to keep it decent, to keep it good.

00:47:12   You know, Apple needs the Mac also.

00:47:14   I mean, what are they writing these iOS apps on?

00:47:16   I guess we can get to Xcode on the iPad

00:47:18   as a potential future thing, but.

00:47:20   - Xcode for iOS, it's coming.

00:47:22   - Is it?

00:47:23   - Someday.

00:47:24   Remember the Swift announcement?

00:47:26   I totally thought that was going to be,

00:47:28   I tried to, I did tweet about it a while back.

00:47:29   I pinpointed the exact second in the video

00:47:31   when they were leading up to the Swift announcement.

00:47:33   They said a bunch of, a couple sentences,

00:47:36   and I thought the sentences were like, this is it.

00:47:37   It's Xcode for iOS.

00:47:39   It wasn't.

00:47:40   But the fact that I was,

00:47:42   The fact that I was so willing to believe that that's what they were announcing based

00:47:45   on like their vague introductory statements, it just seems inevitable to me someday.

00:47:50   But yeah, like the Mac is not, you're talking about the weak competitors to the Mac, like

00:47:56   you know, no one wants a Dell running Windows or whatever.

00:47:58   You know, as we all know, the real competitor to the Mac is things that are not personal

00:48:02   computers.

00:48:03   Apple knows that, everybody knows that.

00:48:04   The maintenance argument is like, right, well, so until something, until and unless something

00:48:08   comes along that can do everything, the Mac does better, right?

00:48:11   the iPad Pro grows into that role or whatever the heck grows into that role, like maybe

00:48:15   we're all into VR by then, who knows.

00:48:17   Until that happens, we've still got Macs, it's still a big business, you have to put

00:48:20   a certain amount of effort into it just to keep that business going.

00:48:24   And that argues for the suggestion you mentioned from Upgrade, my one of two paths for the

00:48:30   Mac, which is the stability path, which is not just like, do what it takes to keep the

00:48:37   sort of humming along the way it is but like you know I basically have two

00:48:42   strengths of the Mac one strength of the Mac is that it is the platform that you

00:48:47   expect not to change and grow that much like it's not in the the market that's

00:48:51   taking off like a rocket ship or whatever so how can you turn that into a

00:48:54   strength you could turn that into a strength by saying okay what we're gonna

00:48:57   do with the Mac year after year after year it's all we're gonna do is find

00:49:00   every single thing that doesn't work on it and make it work like that's all

00:49:03   we're gonna do we're not gonna care how many bullet points or features that we

00:49:06   have like, you know, like you're not going to add features, but every single

00:49:09   big release, all you want to do is brag about how much better the thing, you

00:49:14   know, how much more it does, what it was always supposed to do in the first

00:49:18   place, how much more stable it is, you know, how, how many bugs you squashed,

00:49:23   uh, any part of it, you know, security would be a great area to go into on the

00:49:27   Mac, because that's kind of a stability thing.

00:49:29   It's not like a feature.

00:49:29   Like we're really nailing down security even more and more closing more security

00:49:32   holes being, you know, that's one way to go.

00:49:35   And so that would make an experience as a Mac user.

00:49:37   It's like, well, every year there's not a million new features, but every year the

00:49:41   Mac gets better and better.

00:49:42   Like it gets better for the purpose that we're using it.

00:49:44   And that would be, and you would sell it based on that.

00:49:47   You would say like, you can start saying the world's most reliable operating

00:49:51   system or Bulletproof or, you know, whatever, however you want to spin it.

00:49:55   Like you can sell stability because if you told any Mac user right now that we

00:50:00   have a new version of the Mac operating system that, you know, snow leopard style

00:50:04   has no new features.

00:50:05   And not only that, but also, like,

00:50:07   we didn't rip out any subsystems and change them or anything.

00:50:09   We just, like, we said, what it does now,

00:50:11   we're going to make it do that better.

00:50:12   People were like, yeah, sure, sign me up.

00:50:14   If you heard from friends that, hey, I installed the new Mac

00:50:18   operating system and everything was exactly the same,

00:50:20   except for whatever problem I used to have is gone now,

00:50:23   they would love that, right?

00:50:25   And the other option to go on the Mac

00:50:27   is what is the other strength of the Mac?

00:50:30   It's not-- you have-- I'm not going to say it's not battery

00:50:33   powered because laptops are the majority of the Mac sold but you have a higher power envelope

00:50:37   than you do on iPads and phones and stuff like that.

00:50:42   Right now you can put more powerful stuff inside a Mac, even a laptop, than you can

00:50:46   inside a phone or tablet because iPads or because Macs and even the thinnest laptop

00:50:53   Macs and everything, they have a higher overhead.

00:50:56   You can fit more stuff in there, you can put a bigger battery in, you can put a higher

00:50:59   CPU.

00:51:00   that much hotter in the case of the MacBook One, but certainly much hotter in the case

00:51:04   of the iMac which is plugged into the wall or the Mac Pro or the 15 inch or whatever.

00:51:10   Take advantage of that.

00:51:12   Pursue the high end there.

00:51:14   Try to install the fastest of the fast stuff.

00:51:17   Cater to the idea that if you have minimal computing needs, get the MacBook One or an

00:51:23   iOS device, but if you really want a big strong Mac, we'll make you the biggest strongest

00:51:26   Mac that you can have.

00:51:27   what you would do with the software is say every year is going to get faster and more

00:51:31   powerful and we're going to have the fanciest features and the best GPUs and the best CPUs

00:51:37   and the fastest SSDs and stuff like that really make it like a pro product that takes advantage

00:51:42   of the Mac.

00:51:43   And so far Apple seems to be doing neither one of those things.

00:51:47   Instead they're kind of like limping along every year they feel like they need to do

00:51:50   a release where they have some features to tout and they're kind of monkeying around

00:51:54   inside there and they do fix the bugs.

00:51:56   don't make it super-duper fast, but on the other hand, they don't do nothing year after

00:52:02   year and make it boring. And that strategy of maintenance-level investment with an outward

00:52:10   appearance of every year there's an amazing new OS just doesn't seem to be striking

00:52:14   a good balance for customers.

00:52:17   One thing I would say, too, and Steve Tratt and Smith covered this in his blog post also,

00:52:23   I really think that development of apps for the Mac is really seemingly at a standstill.

00:52:31   Even Apple can barely keep their own apps developed for the Mac. And certainly third-party

00:52:35   development for the Mac seems to be almost non-existent. There's just very little action

00:52:40   happening there, all the actions on iOS. And obviously a big part of that is that developing

00:52:47   apps on iOS has a bigger market. You can sell to more people, there's more people shopping

00:52:52   in the app store, so the chances of you making a ton of money by being on a top chart is

00:52:57   higher on iOS probably. But there is a big part of this too on the Mac where the Mac

00:53:04   does not run UIKit. The Mac runs AppKit, its own older framework that is kind of like UIKit,

00:53:11   but when you write apps for iOS, you're running against this newer, cleaner, more modern framework,

00:53:17   and when you write apps for the Mac, you're running against this crustier, older framework

00:53:20   that has a lot more baggage and legacy in it.

00:53:22   UIKit for iOS was kind of like the new version

00:53:27   of the UI framework with all the lessons they've learned

00:53:29   from AppKit over the years.

00:53:31   And the Mac has gotten some of those lessons

00:53:34   ported back to it from iOS for developers

00:53:37   to make their lives easier,

00:53:38   but I think still not most of them.

00:53:41   And I think as a developer who came here

00:53:46   kind of through iOS and I currently am not,

00:53:51   I don't have any Mac apps that I've released.

00:53:54   Or that I'm working on really, don't get crazy.

00:53:58   Sorry.

00:54:01   So you know, I would be so much more likely

00:54:05   to put effort into Mac apps if they used

00:54:09   a version of UIKit.

00:54:11   And I've tried AppKit, I've tried making Mac apps before

00:54:15   and I'm sure if I was entirely motivated to do it,

00:54:20   I'd plow through and I'd learn and it would be fine.

00:54:23   I'd learn AppKit, I'd tolerate the inconsistencies

00:54:24   and it would be fine.

00:54:25   But the fact is right now,

00:54:27   the fact that I have to learn this similar

00:54:31   but still fairly different UI framework on the Mac

00:54:35   to make Mac apps, that is a big barrier

00:54:38   that is discouraging me from doing it.

00:54:40   So you have a combination of no UI kit on the Mac

00:54:44   plus the crappy app store situation,

00:54:47   plus the fact that it's a smaller market to begin with,

00:54:50   I feel like something there has to change

00:54:53   for developers to be interested in making Mac apps.

00:54:56   And right now, it seems like nothing is on the horizon

00:54:59   for any of those few things to change.

00:55:02   You know, AppKit proponents or experts

00:55:05   can make all the same arguments that that shouldn't matter

00:55:08   that people like me make about Swift not being necessary.

00:55:12   Like, you can look at that and you can say,

00:55:15   "Well, I could learn Objective-C,

00:55:18   "but it has all these ugly brackets, I don't want to."

00:55:20   And Swift comes along eventually,

00:55:21   and Swift is getting a lot of people

00:55:23   into iOS and Mac development who weren't there before,

00:55:27   because they just didn't want to learn Objective-C.

00:55:31   A similar kind of effect could happen on the Mac

00:55:33   with UIKit, if they brought UIKit in some form,

00:55:37   obviously it couldn't be identical,

00:55:39   but if they brought it in some form to the Mac,

00:55:42   I think that would really bring in a lot of developer interest and really help reignite

00:55:47   third-party interest in the Mac as an application platform.

00:55:51   So, I hear us, and we're not the only ones, talk about, well, the Mac App Store is a dumpster

00:56:01   fire, which, to be frank, it kind of is.

00:56:05   Nobody's doing much for the iPad these days, by and large.

00:56:10   Federico amongst others would disagree, but certainly there's a lot of people that aren't

00:56:16   paying a lot of attention to the iPad. You're not paying much attention to the iPad, Marco,

00:56:20   for example. And, oh, pay up front apps are a dumpster fire. Maybe that's a poor way of

00:56:28   phrasing it, but they don't really work. The only thing that's even slightly working seems

00:56:32   to be free within app purchase. So I feel like the three of us, and again, we're not

00:56:39   the only ones. Say the Mac App Store sucks. iPad App Store sucks. The iPhone App Store

00:56:46   has a lot of great options, but it sucks to make money in. Are we crazy? Like, there's a lot of apps

00:56:53   in the App Store, and there's a lot of stuff getting made every single day. So why? Like,

00:56:57   either we're a little bit crazy, or it's just not as dire as we think it is. Does that make sense?

00:57:04   like it just the situation cannot be as bad as we're painting it.

00:57:09   I think you're confusing different kinds of badness.

00:57:12   So one kind of badness is the fact that it doesn't seem to be a lot of people making

00:57:18   new Mac applications.

00:57:20   Every week there aren't thousands of new Mac applications, most of which may be crap, but

00:57:23   every once in a while there's a good one.

00:57:25   There's not a lot of activity, not a lot of churn, not a lot of like, there's not a growing

00:57:29   base of customers to sell to, that base is small and there's not tons and tons of developers

00:57:33   knocking on the door to make tons of new Mac apps. So that's one kind of ailment. Because

00:57:37   if you have a software market and not many people are making new applications for that

00:57:42   platform, the platform feels kind of crappy. The iPhone has the opposite problem. Everybody

00:57:46   wants to make an app. Everybody's making an app and they're just all climbing all over

00:57:49   each other to get the last scraps and figuring out how to exploit people, how to extract

00:57:52   money from people. There's so many apps. There's too many apps in the app store. It's not because

00:57:56   people don't care about the iPhone. People care about the iPhone a lot. Like there's

00:57:59   There's tons of developers, there's tons of apps.

00:58:01   And all the things you described about there, about how you can't have paid upfront apps

00:58:05   and blah, blah, blah, that's a symptom of an entirely opposite problem, which is too

00:58:10   much activity, lots of competition, lots of people trying to figure out how to get money.

00:58:15   And plenty of people are getting rich on the app store, like enough people that it attracts

00:58:20   other people, right?

00:58:21   From the outside, it looks like all you hear about are the stories of the five developers

00:58:24   who are getting rich and you don't realize that there were 10,000 apps submitted that

00:58:27   week, right?

00:58:28   none of those people are gonna get rich.

00:58:30   But there's enough people getting rich

00:58:31   that it seems like that's the place to go.

00:58:33   Everyone has phones, it's a huge market,

00:58:35   even if that market isn't growing, it's still tremendous.

00:58:38   So there's just two ends of the spectrum,

00:58:40   the phone and the Mac, both of which have problems,

00:58:42   but they're totally opposite problems.

00:58:44   I mean, you would kill to get a little bit

00:58:46   of that iOS App Store problem on the Mac

00:58:48   where, oh, we can't handle the overflow.

00:58:50   Every time I look at the Mac App Store,

00:58:52   there's 10,000 new applications, I can't handle it.

00:58:54   That just doesn't happen, right?

00:58:56   So, and then in the middle, the iPad,

00:58:59   I think it has more of the Mac's problem where it's like,

00:59:01   yeah, there's lots of applications

00:59:03   that you can run on the iPad,

00:59:04   but not a lot of them really take advantage

00:59:06   of what's different about the iPad.

00:59:08   You know, the big complaint now is that people are,

00:59:10   iOS applications that already run on the iPad,

00:59:12   but don't take advantage of split screen

00:59:14   or don't support the iPad Pro's display or both.

00:59:18   And why don't they all update them?

00:59:19   Well, it turns out that they're,

00:59:21   even though the iOS platform has tons of customers,

00:59:23   the iPad subset is much smaller.

00:59:26   And so it's more like the Mac where you're like,

00:59:28   if I have to spend some time,

00:59:29   I'm gonna make sure that my iOS application

00:59:31   is updated for the iPhone 7

00:59:33   or whatever new features that has.

00:59:34   And then maybe when I have time, I'll update the,

00:59:37   if I get around to it,

00:59:38   I'll update the iPad version of my iOS application

00:59:40   to take advantage of something that only works

00:59:43   on the big iPads like split screen or whatever.

00:59:45   So you're right that there's something

00:59:47   to complain about everywhere,

00:59:48   but I don't think it's,

00:59:50   I don't think it's as if we're saying

00:59:52   that they all have the same problem.

00:59:54   They have very different problems

00:59:56   with very different causes and very different solutions.

00:59:59   So it doesn't seem to be a contradiction to me.

01:00:02   - I guess that's fair.

01:00:03   I don't know, it just seems weird

01:00:06   that all three platforms seem to have

01:00:09   some really, really systemic issues.

01:00:12   And I'm not saying that those issues aren't real.

01:00:16   I'm not saying that they're not extremely important,

01:00:19   but I don't know.

01:00:22   How does Apple not either not care or not fix this or we crazy and it's not as bad as

01:00:28   we think it is?

01:00:29   I don't know.

01:00:30   It just seems weird to me that we feel, and again, it's not just us.

01:00:35   So many people feel like this is broken and there seems to be not a lot of care given

01:00:42   to it from Apple.

01:00:43   And I presume that there is care, but as usual, it's all happening internally and we're none

01:00:47   the wiser.

01:00:48   Golly, it's just, it seems weird to me that there's no action on this.

01:00:54   Well, you haven't listed like the pros of, for example, the Mac side, where something

01:00:58   that we all hear from our developer friends and is probably true is that it's easier to

01:01:04   make money with a really good application on the Mac than it is on iOS.

01:01:07   Because if you have a really good application on iOS, guess what?

01:01:09   There are thousands of really good applications on iOS.

01:01:12   If you have a really good application on the Mac, there are not thousands of really good

01:01:16   applications on the Mac, especially not thousands in your category, whatever kind of application

01:01:19   that you made, and for whatever reason, again it may just have to do with physical size

01:01:23   or whatever, you can tend to charge more for the Mac versions.

01:01:26   Not tremendously more these days, but still more.

01:01:28   So if you are a super talented developer, and you can make a really good application

01:01:34   in a category that is not overcrowded on any platform, if you make it a Mac application,

01:01:40   $9.99 for it. Even though you will sell far fewer copies, you will make up for it for

01:01:46   the fact that you'll make more money on the Mac. And again, it's hard to go apples

01:01:54   and tarranges there. It's like, well, you can't make the same application that you can

01:01:56   make on iOS. And who knows, maybe it'll take you longer to make it on the Mac because,

01:02:00   like Marco, you don't know the Mac and you have to learn it or whatever. There are lots

01:02:02   of variables in the mix here, but I would imagine sort of the average price of applications

01:02:09   sold on the Mac, the ones that are not free, is higher than an iOS, and Mac users are still

01:02:14   willing to pay money for good applications.

01:02:16   And your application really will stand out because you don't have to compete with the

01:02:19   thousands and thousands of other really talented developers who may have the same idea for

01:02:23   an application in the same category as you.

01:02:26   And that's, again, it's the opposite type of problem.

01:02:29   If you look at someone like Omni who does both things, they have great Mac applications

01:02:35   that they charge real money for, not 99 cents.

01:02:37   And they also have companion iOS applications.

01:02:40   And I think they're finding a way

01:02:42   to play to the strengths of each platform.

01:02:46   Like we should make a Mac application

01:02:48   because our applications are complicated and sophisticated

01:02:51   and we can charge high prices for them

01:02:52   and Mac users will pay it.

01:02:53   Whereas if we have sophisticated, complicated applications

01:02:56   that either won't work on iOS

01:02:58   because it's just not a platform that supports this complexity

01:03:01   and if it does work, we have to charge less money.

01:03:03   And on the other hand, people want to have access to their data on the go and so on and

01:03:07   so forth, so it will make a series of iOS applications, which will be high priced for

01:03:11   iOS applications, but still lower priced than like a $99 Mac app or whatever, and it'll

01:03:15   be a virtuous cycle and you'll be able to use your Mac and your iOS applications together.

01:03:21   It is possible to take advantage of the ecosystems as they exist and make money off of it and

01:03:26   do a good job.

01:03:27   But Omni, I feel like, is kind of grandfathered in in that they have the expertise and talent

01:03:33   and experience on the Mac platform and have expanded out into iOS. If I think of like,

01:03:37   where is the next omni coming from? Is there going to be a company that starts up now that

01:03:42   has that deep expertise on the Mac and is able to make amazing Mac applications and

01:03:47   charge reasonable prices for them and also make companion iOS applications? I don't know

01:03:52   how many of those are popping up. Whereas on iOS, like I said, since there are so many

01:03:57   people, since the numbers are so big, even if a fraction of a fraction of a percent of

01:04:00   them end up striking it rich. It's enough that you -- I just saw a story the other day,

01:04:04   like some story about the people who make Clash of Clans, how many millions and millions

01:04:08   of dollars they're making off of that stuff. There's just so much activity in so many customers

01:04:13   happening at iOS that it is attracting people, whereas the Mac, I don't see it attracting

01:04:20   people. Even I felt even better in the days of TextMate, where it's like, "What's this?

01:04:23   A text editor coming in? I never heard of this TextMate text editor. How dare he try

01:04:27   to make a text editor. Everyone knows a text editor on Market is all sewn up by a certain

01:04:30   name of other competitors here. But TextMate was very popular. And it could have been a

01:04:37   going concern if the Mac market had been enough to make the maker of TextMate as much money

01:04:45   as Clash of Clans got. You can be sure he'd still be making that and Marko wouldn't be

01:04:51   using TextMate 2 or whatever old version he's using now. He is still making it. 2 is in

01:04:55   in beta with constant updates?

01:04:57   - I know, it's the open source thing.

01:04:59   - Welcome to the end of Build and Analyze

01:05:02   like five years ago or whatever that was.

01:05:04   - Yeah, I know.

01:05:05   But not that text editors are an exciting field,

01:05:08   but text editing is something that people do on the Mac.

01:05:11   And it's not as if there are 17 really good

01:05:15   high quality text editors that come out

01:05:17   for the Mac every week.

01:05:18   There's maybe like one or two a year, right?

01:05:21   And they usually have to have an iOS counterpart

01:05:22   or no one's interested in them.

01:05:24   So another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is, am I an old man?

01:05:29   Bear with me here.

01:05:31   But I think it is really silly, the hoops that someone like Federico jumps through.

01:05:42   And I have deep respect for Federico, but it seems silly to me, the hoops that Federico

01:05:47   jumps through in order to accomplish things that are very quite, really quite simple on

01:05:52   the Mac.

01:05:53   a few weeks ago when I was talking about signing a PDF from my iPad and in

01:05:58   dealing with scans and things like that and how for me it was very very difficult

01:06:02   to do that. And I talked with a handful of people like Mike Hurley about that

01:06:10   segment because Mike used to be very anti-iPad and then now is like almost as

01:06:18   big an iPad fan is, Federico is. And I don't know, it just seems to me like they feel like

01:06:25   I'm missing the point. And in Federico's case, it is deeply important to him to be able to

01:06:30   work from anywhere. And that's semi-true with the Mac-ish, or maybe it's true with a Mac

01:06:40   and a tethered phone, but it's not as true as an iPad Pro. You can take an iPad Pro anywhere,

01:06:48   It has its own internet connection, and you can work anywhere.

01:06:51   And it just, it still seems to me to be a bit crazy.

01:06:56   And I can't help but wonder, are the three of us just too old to understand the purpose

01:07:01   of the iPad?

01:07:03   And is, and to bring this back to what Steven was saying on his post, is OS X really kind

01:07:09   of dead?

01:07:10   Like, I don't know, it just seems like maybe we're the ones that are missing the boat.

01:07:14   What do you mean you're lumping me in with you?

01:07:16   I'm the one who wanted an iPad Pro. I'm the actual iPad user. I'm the one sitting next to my bed.

01:07:21   Well, I use my iPad daily. So I am also a very, maybe not devout, but a very frequent iPad user.

01:07:29   I love my iPad. I love it. But I would never in a million years look to my iPad to get something done

01:07:36   over looking at my Mac. Even to some degree, the typical things like consumption.

01:07:43   Maybe if I'm just cruising Twitter, I would probably choose my iPad over my Mac, but damn

01:07:47   near anything else, man.

01:07:48   I'm going to go to my Mac first, because I just feel faster, quicker, better with it.

01:07:53   And I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is, is that because it's what I'm used

01:07:55   to?

01:07:56   And it's not that the Mac is faster and quicker and better.

01:07:59   Sure, empirically it is, but you know what I mean?

01:08:02   Like, is it just because that's what I'm used to and I have severely OS X colored glasses?

01:08:07   Let me settle this for you.

01:08:09   We are all old men.

01:08:11   I am, in this way, the oldest.

01:08:14   (laughing)

01:08:15   I am the least flexible, most skeptical of new things,

01:08:20   most defensive of my old ways of the three of us.

01:08:25   I also like the iPad the least out of the three of us,

01:08:28   I think.

01:08:29   That being said, I have no problem with people

01:08:32   who can do tons of their work or all their work on the iPad.

01:08:35   - Oh, sure, sure. - I wish I could, honestly,

01:08:37   because there's a number of advantages

01:08:39   to going all iPad, obviously there's the physical advantages

01:08:44   that iPads are smaller and lighter

01:08:47   and have better battery life usually

01:08:49   than most Mac laptops.

01:08:52   But also that's kind of where Apple's attention is.

01:08:56   Now again, that being said, I wouldn't necessarily assume

01:08:59   that the iPad version of iOS is going to keep

01:09:03   Apple's attention for very long.

01:09:04   It has it now, but it didn't have much attention for years.

01:09:09   And as we see Apple getting pulled

01:09:11   in all these different directions,

01:09:12   as they try to tackle everything all at once

01:09:15   with limited engineering resources

01:09:17   and a few ways that they're unwilling to budge

01:09:20   that will make it hard for them

01:09:23   to attract more engineering talent

01:09:25   to get as much as they need.

01:09:27   Things like remote workers, salaries,

01:09:30   terms of employment, stuff like that,

01:09:31   that just make it hard for them to attract certain talent.

01:09:37   It's only a matter of time before the iPad

01:09:40   falls out of the spotlight for Apple.

01:09:44   It's only a matter of time before the resources

01:09:46   that were devoted to making iOS 9 really great on the iPad

01:09:50   and getting the iPad Pro out the door

01:09:52   and getting the multitasking and stuff like that,

01:09:55   getting the special things for the iPad that are in iOS.

01:09:58   It's only a matter of time before those resources

01:10:00   are put somewhere else, before the attention

01:10:02   is directed somewhere else in Apple.

01:10:03   So I don't necessarily expect the iPad

01:10:07   to be Apple's star platform for long,

01:10:11   but right this second it is.

01:10:13   So right this second, if you are a person

01:10:16   who gets all your work done,

01:10:17   or a lot of your work done on an iPad,

01:10:18   this is a great time to be one of those people,

01:10:20   because you're getting cool new stuff from Apple recently,

01:10:24   and seemingly you might get a little bit more soon.

01:10:27   Who knows?

01:10:28   We'll see what iOS 10 does.

01:10:29   But it's kinda nice to be in Apple's sweet spot,

01:10:33   like where they're putting their attention,

01:10:34   where they're putting their resources,

01:10:37   and what they're likely to do in the future.

01:10:39   So that's nice.

01:10:40   But I don't, to me, it just doesn't stick, right?

01:10:46   The iPad, to me it does feel like

01:10:49   jumping through tons of hoops,

01:10:51   but that's just the work I do,

01:10:52   and it's the kind of use that I do,

01:10:54   it's the kind of user I am, it's what I'm used to.

01:10:57   I think personal computers with keyboard,

01:11:01   mouse, big monitor, at a desk a lot of the time. I think that world is going to stay

01:11:07   for a long time. I don't think it is as dire as a lot of people have said. But I also,

01:11:13   I totally don't begrudge anybody else for using whatever they think is better and whatever

01:11:19   they're most comfortable with because for them it's iPads and phones maybe, for me

01:11:23   it's Macs. That's fine, you know. And the only problem is that it is pulling Apple and

01:11:31   in all these different directions.

01:11:32   It is pulling their resources

01:11:33   in all these different directions.

01:11:34   And I think that could be a bit of a problem.

01:11:37   And we've seen it become a little bit of a problem so far

01:11:39   with just things that get ignored

01:11:42   and things that get neglected

01:11:43   and things that get these drive-by updates.

01:11:45   I hope they can find a way to resolve this,

01:11:49   but I'm not hopeful about the chance

01:11:53   of that actually happening.

01:11:54   I don't know.

01:11:55   I really hope I'm wrong about all this

01:11:57   and that over the next couple of years,

01:11:59   prove us wrong and we see major significant changes to the app stores and Mac OS gets

01:12:07   notable updates and they keep updating all their new product lines and not just neglect

01:12:12   the ones that aren't getting them a lot of attention forever. But I don't see any evidence

01:12:16   that we're heading in that kind of direction and that's my concern.

01:12:19   Yeah, and I don't mean to begrudge those that prefer to use an iPad. It's just it's hard

01:12:25   for me to understand why that's better.

01:12:29   I mean, other than the mobility, which is pretty much unequivocal, I just don't get

01:12:34   why that's better.

01:12:35   And I think what I really should be saying is that for me, it's not better.

01:12:40   And I don't mean to begrudge that it is better for Mike or Federico or anyone else.

01:12:45   I'm just saying for me, it's hard for me to wrap my head around why that would be better.

01:12:49   And I think, Marco, you made a great point that a lot of that relates to the fact that

01:12:52   now I'm living in Xcode.

01:12:53   previously I was living in VMware Fusion,

01:12:55   that's my day-to-day job, whereas for a lot of these people

01:12:58   that's not their job.

01:12:59   - Well also, what I said earlier,

01:13:01   all the action in the App Store,

01:13:03   like all the action in apps is happening on iOS right now.

01:13:06   Like, if you make use of cool new modern apps

01:13:11   to do pretty much anything, to do different workflows,

01:13:15   maybe you're doing like photo editing,

01:13:17   and you wanna use like cool plugins

01:13:18   and effects and everything,

01:13:20   all of that action is happening on iOS.

01:13:22   iOS, if you wanna play games ever,

01:13:24   games on the Mac are kinda miserable most of the time.

01:13:26   Like, all of the action for cool new apps

01:13:31   that are being developed, cool new workflows,

01:13:33   cool new things you can do with your computer,

01:13:35   most of that is happening on iOS.

01:13:39   Most of it's on the iPhone in particular,

01:13:40   but some of that's also getting to the iPad.

01:13:44   On the Mac, there's no action to be had.

01:13:46   Mac apps are seemingly either in stasis

01:13:51   or dying, like you have like, you know, aperture gone,

01:13:55   you know, logic and Final Cut are like barely supported,

01:13:59   you have third party apps that are kind of

01:14:01   withering on the vine a lot of the times,

01:14:03   it's tough, it's a little scary to be a Mac user right now

01:14:08   as we see kind of a big part of the world moving on,

01:14:12   you know, a big part of Apple's and third party developers'

01:14:15   efforts moving to other places.

01:14:17   - What you said before about the iPad,

01:14:20   like you'd think that eventually their attention will go elsewhere like it's in the sun now

01:14:24   with like the iPad Pro but that eventually they'll lose interest again because you know

01:14:29   the early in the iPad's life it was basically like a less important version of iOS that

01:14:36   didn't have many iPad specific features for several years.

01:14:41   And that may be the case but I have to think that Apple overall as a company has one of

01:14:47   its goals that it has to have somewhere on its big list of like multi-year goals is to

01:14:54   do what it normally does and be the company that cannibalizes the Mac. So they see the

01:14:58   Mac with no big growth potential. They see it as another market that could potentially

01:15:04   be cannibalized by other markets. Like it's small, these other markets are growing. Apple's

01:15:09   whole thing is, "We want to be the ones to cannibalize the Mac. We want to be the ones

01:15:13   to cannibalize the iPod by replacing it with the iPhone.

01:15:16   Because if we don't do it, someone else will eventually.

01:15:19   Because if whatever thing that we're talking about being cannibalized does not have a very

01:15:22   big growth trajectory, eventually, whatever size it is, will be dwarfed by whatever the

01:15:28   next big thing is.

01:15:29   So Apple is kind of in the business of, "Well, okay, well, let's figure out what that next

01:15:34   big thing is, because if we just do nothing, someone else will do it for us."

01:15:39   And the iPad, and the emphasis on the iPad Pro, is one effort to do that.

01:15:43   "Hey, if the Mac's gonna be cannibalized, let us do it."

01:15:46   I've always said that the iPad has the potential

01:15:49   to be the thing that replaces the Mac

01:15:51   if given enough attention

01:15:52   and if its capabilities are extended

01:15:54   and the iPad Pro could be like the very, very beginning

01:15:56   of that process, but say it doesn't work out.

01:15:57   So they try to cannibalize the Mac with the iPad Pro

01:16:00   and it doesn't work.

01:16:01   If the iPad loses Apple's attention,

01:16:05   I think it will be because they have another idea

01:16:08   of a thing that's gonna cannibalize the Mac.

01:16:10   And they only have a certain number of shots of this idea

01:16:12   what's going to cannibalize the Mac before someone else does it for them.

01:16:15   But I think that Apple as a company does not want some other thing made by some other non-Apple

01:16:21   company to be the thing that finally makes the Mac irrelevant.

01:16:24   I think Apple wants to make the Mac irrelevant, and right now the iPad is the thing that's

01:16:27   doing that.

01:16:28   So I have to think that attention is going to be paid to the iPad until either something

01:16:33   else makes the Mac irrelevant as not an Apple product, or until Apple gives up on the iPad

01:16:37   doing that and decides that it needs another solution.

01:16:40   I don't think there is any long term where 60 years from now the Mac soldiers on pretty

01:16:46   much exactly as it is.

01:16:47   I just don't see that happening.

01:16:49   So my hope is that Apple figures out what to replace the Mac with.

01:16:55   And I think the iPad line has the potential to do that if enhanced in all the ways that

01:17:00   we've discussed in past shows in terms of larger screens, iPads that aren't really particularly

01:17:05   way more capabilities in iOS, figuring out the whole file situation, so on and so forth.

01:17:11   - I think you're probably right long term on an infinite time scale thing. You're probably right.

01:17:18   But I have a hard time seeing how iOS gets from here to there. And technically, you know,

01:17:27   like on a low level, like on an API level, on a kernel level and everything, you're probably

01:17:31   right that the next version, the next major version

01:17:36   of Mac OS is probably an iOS derivative.

01:17:40   And I don't know when that's coming out

01:17:41   and whether that'll be good, but I think what replaces

01:17:46   Mac OS eventually will indeed be a version of iOS.

01:17:50   And we will just have large iOS devices

01:17:54   with keyboards and mice, I guess, I don't know.

01:17:58   I mean, probably, you know, but,

01:18:00   and that would also solve my UI kit problem,

01:18:03   you know, UI kit versus app kit kind of thing.

01:18:06   But I don't know, there's so much distance

01:18:10   between iOS today and what it would have to be

01:18:15   to be even a basic Mac OS replacement

01:18:18   that I have a hard time seeing that happening,

01:18:23   just because the distance is so great.

01:18:24   And maybe that's a short sighted of me, I don't know.

01:18:27   I mean it may not have to be an equivalent for you, but like when you're retired or dead

01:18:32   it just needs to have the capabilities of the people who grew up in the generation that

01:18:36   grew up with iOS devices find acceptable to do.

01:18:39   Like the same kind of things you're doing now, developing software, like I don't know,

01:18:43   whatever it is that you're doing with your Mac that you feel like you can only do on

01:18:46   your Mac, all that needs to happen is there needs to be a generation of customers who

01:18:50   feel like they can best do that on some tablet type device.

01:18:56   or not you can best do that on a tablet-type device doesn't really matter.

01:19:00   You just need -- the capabilities need to be there.

01:19:02   It's like Casey was saying about the mic.

01:19:04   Well, the mic finds the iPad experience superior in ways that Casey doesn't understand.

01:19:08   I can understand some of them in terms of just the simplicity, and there's fewer things

01:19:12   that can go wrong on an iOS device, and there's fewer things to worry about or whatever, and

01:19:16   also that things feel better sometimes in terms of just like body gesture or touching

01:19:20   the screen or using a pen or whatever.

01:19:22   And those can go a long way towards covering up the fact that you're actually -- it takes

01:19:27   more steps or it's less efficient or it's, you know, it's not as straightforward as it

01:19:32   would be on the Mac or whatever.

01:19:34   But I'm totally willing to give the iPad Pro and that type of thing a shot.

01:19:39   Because like Apple has just barely scratched the surface.

01:19:41   They just now divided the screen up into two pieces.

01:19:44   Like that's the level they're at, right?

01:19:46   They've just now offered you an actual keyboard that you can attach to the thing.

01:19:49   Like this is the babiest of baby steps.

01:19:51   They just now gave you a stylus which is a thing that has not really taken off on the Mac

01:19:56   But it offers you know a new angle, so I'm willing to give that a few years

01:20:01   I'm not it's not a slam dunk

01:20:02   But I think there is a fruitful Avenue of pursuit there and what they're pursuing again is not the phone obviously what they're pursuing is

01:20:09   If the Mac is gonna go away, I'll be replaced with something

01:20:13   We think it might be this and then we would benefit because it's like well fine Mac shrinks iPad Pro grows

01:20:19   All that money goes to Apple the iPad is gets on a better growth trajectory or whatever

01:20:24   If that turns out not to be the case at least have it be from you know that that

01:20:29   Not because you didn't put money into it because like for the first several years of the iPad

01:20:33   It was if Apple almost as like they thought if we make a tablet device

01:20:36   That's all we have to do and then instantly it will become the new future personal computer

01:20:40   It's like no you gotta actually put more effort into it than that otherwise people are gonna keep using Macs, so

01:20:45   I feel like the Mac is safe for a long time just because even if Apple is 100% right,

01:20:50   it will take them a long time to figure out all the ins and outs, and probably the Mac

01:20:54   will last for all of our active careers or whatever, but when we're in our dotage and

01:20:58   retired, don't be surprised if we're looking at grandkids on a big iPad Pro screen.

01:21:04   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Squarespace, and Hover.

01:21:09   And we will see you next week.

01:21:11   [MUSIC]

01:21:21   Oh it was accidental.

01:21:23   Accidental.

01:21:24   John didn't do any research.

01:21:26   Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:21:29   Cause it was accidental.

01:21:31   Accidental.

01:21:32   It was accidental.

01:21:33   Accidental.

01:21:34   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:21:39   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

01:21:45   C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:21:53   Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA, Syracuse.

01:22:01   It's accidental.

01:22:04   They didn't mean to.

01:22:07   Accidental.

01:22:09   Tech podcast so long.

01:22:14   - So John, let me ask you something.

01:22:16   Have you ever been to Las Vegas,

01:22:18   and if not, how badly do you wanna go?

01:22:20   - You know the answers to both of those questions.

01:22:22   (laughing)

01:22:24   - I did that more for my own laughter.

01:22:26   - So as I was in Vegas last weekend,

01:22:30   and Casey, as you are headed to Vegas in a few days,

01:22:33   I hope that you consider while you're there,

01:22:38   as I did while I was there,

01:22:40   what it would be like to see John Siracusa in Vegas,

01:22:43   and the state of mind he would be in to be sitting there.

01:22:48   I felt so bad for him even not being there.

01:22:51   Like, just I felt so bad for theoretical

01:22:53   Syracuse in Vegas, like that.

01:22:55   (laughing)

01:22:56   Oh my God, he would be so miserable.

01:22:59   Not to mention the flight on the way there,

01:23:01   but you know, any, I mean, my God.

01:23:03   To see him in any part of Las Vegas

01:23:05   would be both sad and incredible.

01:23:08   - It's not my cup of tea, but I'm not a miserable person.

01:23:11   Like I would find, like they have food there, right?

01:23:13   At the very least, I would find some kind of food that I could eat that I would like.

01:23:19   You know, how could you not?

01:23:20   There's got to be a million different restaurants there that make some kind of hopefully good

01:23:24   food.

01:23:25   I wouldn't be interested in gambling.

01:23:27   Smoking is disgusting.

01:23:28   I don't like lots of people.

01:23:29   Like yeah, there's not a lot there for me, but if I was stuck there, there are a lot

01:23:33   of restaurants, right?

01:23:35   So I could find something.

01:23:37   There are excellent restaurants, however, many of them require walking through a smoky

01:23:42   casino to get to.

01:23:43   Yeah, that's pretty gross.

01:23:45   Delightful.

01:23:46   Did you end up up or down against the house?

01:23:50   Down by roughly a hundred bucks.

01:23:54   That's not bad.

01:23:55   Not only is that not bad, but that was after three nights, and a lot of that was given

01:23:58   out as tips to the dealers.

01:24:00   You were up 50% the last time I heard, and you were like, "Maybe I can just stop now,"

01:24:04   but apparently you didn't.

01:24:06   I was up 40% after the first night,

01:24:08   but then the second night was way down,

01:24:10   and then the third night was kind of even.

01:24:12   - Right, but you said after the night that you were up,

01:24:15   you mused to yourself, I believe, in Slack,

01:24:17   "Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead," he said.

01:24:20   And then didn't.

01:24:22   - Yes, I mean, gambling is always,

01:24:23   in hindsight, gambling is very easy.

01:24:26   (laughing)

01:24:28   - No, it wasn't hindsight, it was current, right, then,

01:24:30   site, you had that insight immediately, at the time,

01:24:34   Not later, not the next day you didn't say,

01:24:36   "Boy, I really should have quit when I was up 40%."

01:24:38   When you were up, when you were up you said,

01:24:40   "Maybe I should quit now."

01:24:42   - I did say that, but then I wouldn't have had

01:24:44   as much fun the next two nights,

01:24:45   'cause I wouldn't have had that activity.

01:24:47   So it's like, I paid that money for an activity.

01:24:51   Most of the games that you can gamble on in Vegas,

01:24:55   the odds are always in favor of the house,

01:24:58   but the percentage that they're in favor of the house by

01:25:01   is usually not that big.

01:25:02   And so if you kind of bet responsibly,

01:25:05   you don't make really huge bets

01:25:07   or make accelerating bets,

01:25:09   try to win back your money.

01:25:10   Like my strategy was very simple.

01:25:12   I bet the same amount of money on every bet I took.

01:25:14   I was playing to play, not to win a bunch of money,

01:25:17   because I know that the chances of winning

01:25:19   a bunch of money were very, very low.

01:25:21   So simple as that, you know?

01:25:23   It was a fun activity and it served its purpose.

01:25:26   And I paid about 100 bucks for three nights.

01:25:27   And that includes tips,

01:25:28   and that includes all the free drinks I got at the time.

01:25:30   So I think that's actually pretty good

01:25:33   for my first gambling experience.

01:25:35   - Not bad.

01:25:35   - Actually, that was my second gambling experience.

01:25:37   My first gambling experience was in college

01:25:40   when I discovered that online blackjack existed.

01:25:45   And I put 20 bucks of real money

01:25:47   into online blackjack in college,

01:25:49   lost it in about 10 minutes,

01:25:51   and was like, "Well, I'm an idiot, that was dumb."

01:25:53   (laughing)

01:25:54   I didn't do it again.

01:25:55   - Never again.

01:25:56   - Yeah.

01:25:57   'Cause that's not really a lot of fun.

01:26:00   That's a very short time to lose all your money.

01:26:02   And it just, yeah, it wasn't.

01:26:03   That one was, it didn't have the same feel.

01:26:06   - It would have been better if someone smoked a cigarette

01:26:07   next to you while you did it.

01:26:09   (beep)