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ATP

128: Blue Ring Stud

 

00:00:00   Was it John that fixed my bullet issue? Yes, and I said

00:00:04   What magic did you use to do that?

00:00:07   Don't you know haven't you learned by now that when dealing with rich text editing applications?

00:00:12   Where you have a kind of a what you see is what you get?

00:00:15   Output that even though this is not probably technically the case although it used to be in some things you can conceptualize it as there being

00:00:23   individual

00:00:25   individual invisible formatting

00:00:27   characters zero with invisible formatting characters attached to text that you can't delete and

00:00:34   That when things touch them they infect the thing that they touch

00:00:38   All formatting and rich text editors like word or any of these types of things

00:00:43   involves manipulating

00:00:46   What you can conceptualize as invisible zero with formatting characters

00:00:50   What was the one that actually had them was a word star one of the old text editors that one of the old word processes?

00:00:55   really old one actually had invisible formatting characters and you could make them visible.

00:01:00   Those were the days.

00:01:01   You could do that in Word, I believe.

00:01:02   And I thought Clarisworks would do that.

00:01:04   I don't know if any of them still have it.

00:01:08   The old days of the word process actually were done that way.

00:01:09   These days, behind the scenes, I have no idea how it works.

00:01:12   I'm sure it's much more complicated than simple invisible formatting characters.

00:01:15   But anyway, yeah, you just have to learn how to bump the conceptual invisible formatting

00:01:21   characters up against each other to infect their neighbors, get their infection, and

00:01:24   move it down. It just... Well, that was the problem is I was trying to indent just

00:01:28   the Reddit related follow-up and I was unfortunately indenting all of the rest

00:01:34   of the topics and I couldn't figure out how to uninfect them. I am not as good a

00:01:38   doctor as you are. I know, I saw that you know and you just gotta like you just

00:01:42   gotta find a part that looks the way you want and use it to spread its correct

00:01:46   lookingness to its neighbors and it's... So this is like an outbreak I need to

00:01:52   find the monkey and then that'll solve all my problems.

00:01:55   - Word sometimes would defeat me.

00:01:56   Word, sometimes in Word I could not figure out

00:01:58   how to manipulate the invisible forces

00:02:01   that control the formatting and it's just like,

00:02:03   delete everything, start a new document.

00:02:05   (laughing)

00:02:06   - Right.

00:02:07   - 'Cause like even if you delete all the content

00:02:08   and you try to like paste it back in or type it in again,

00:02:11   it would like, it would still obey the--

00:02:13   - Oh yeah.

00:02:14   - It's like homeopathy where like the document

00:02:17   still has the, what is it?

00:02:18   - The essence.

00:02:19   - Sense memory or whatever of the content

00:02:22   was there before.

00:02:23   >> Deleted a million times.

00:02:24   It still has the essence of the old formatting.

00:02:27   >> Right.

00:02:28   You delete all the text, but when you put the text back, the document remembers the

00:02:31   text that used to be there.

00:02:34   >> Do you want timestamps to make your chapter markers easier?

00:02:39   >> No.

00:02:40   The timestamps move when I edit, so it doesn't matter.

00:02:43   Adding the chapter markers is only taking like five minutes.

00:02:46   >> Can I just point out that I think if we've received, let's say, 20 pieces of feedback

00:02:51   with regard to the chapter markers, easily 18 of which have somehow traced back to Germany.

00:02:56   - Oh, at least. I bet the other two that weren't from Germany were people who were actually Germans,

00:03:01   just were living somewhere else temporarily, you know? Maybe a German heritage, I don't know.

00:03:06   - It's so funny. I don't know what it is with the Germans and their chapter markers,

00:03:10   but God, do they ever love them. - They really do. It's funny,

00:03:13   because no one else really seems to care or even notice.

00:03:15   - Nope. - But the Germans love them.

00:03:18   - Well, they're all using a popular podcast client

00:03:21   that doesn't support chapter markers.

00:03:23   - Eh.

00:03:23   - I wonder, so what clients do support chapter markers?

00:03:28   You would know.

00:03:29   - I think I'm the only one who doesn't, actually.

00:03:31   I don't know. - Oh, really?

00:03:33   - I know the Apple one does to a limited degree.

00:03:36   I mean, it's easy because there's actually an API

00:03:38   in AAV Player to just fetch chapters

00:03:41   and it supports almost every format that's out there

00:03:44   in at least a basic way.

00:03:46   and I actually tried it briefly,

00:03:49   and it had an issue where it would just,

00:03:53   it would just write all over random memory garbage

00:03:55   with certain files that had embedded artwork

00:03:57   in their chapters.

00:03:58   - Ooh, cool.

00:03:59   - So it would just destroy the memory

00:04:01   and corrupt everything, and eventually the app would crash

00:04:03   when you loaded like this one particular file,

00:04:05   and it's, obviously it's not well-written enough to,

00:04:08   for me to wanna use, so I don't know.

00:04:10   - You know what you should do is,

00:04:12   whenever you're up for a new lease,

00:04:15   you should spend, you know, the time leading up to then building chapter support.

00:04:22   So when you return to Munich to do European delivery, you will be welcomed there like a god.

00:04:31   You think that would work?

00:04:32   I think so, because if there's anything that Germans love in the entire world other than order,

00:04:36   it is chapters.

00:04:38   Yeah, I really do like the Germans, though.

00:04:41   Actually, I do too. As much as I'm poking fun, I really do as well.

00:04:43   I feel like these are my people.

00:04:45   They're nerds who drive well and are on time to things.

00:04:49   (laughing)

00:04:50   It's just amazing.

00:04:52   - Again, as much as I'm poking fun,

00:04:53   I couldn't possibly agree with you more.

00:04:55   And as Eschatologist says in the chat,

00:04:57   chapters are a form of order.

00:04:59   (laughing)

00:05:00   That's a fair point.

00:05:01   - Well, I've never used chapters myself

00:05:03   as a podcast listener.

00:05:05   And maybe that's 'cause I spent the last

00:05:07   two to two and a half years or whatever it's been

00:05:09   using my own app, which doesn't support them.

00:05:11   but I've just never been compelled to,

00:05:14   and there's also a major supply issue

00:05:16   where very few podcasts use chapter marks.

00:05:20   What are people using to put them in?

00:05:24   I know there's a web service called Auphonic

00:05:26   that does a lot of podcast post-processing stuff,

00:05:28   and they offer it,

00:05:29   but that's like a paid monthly kind of service,

00:05:31   and I know Jason Snell uses that for Clockwise,

00:05:35   but beyond that, there used to be an Apple tool,

00:05:38   I think, in GarageBand or something,

00:05:39   but they discontinued years ago.

00:05:42   So I don't know what, I don't know,

00:05:44   like I think there's two problems here.

00:05:45   There's a tools problem and a client problem

00:05:50   and that combines to form at least part

00:05:52   of the demand problem.

00:05:54   So I don't know, we'll see.

00:05:56   - So what magic are you using?

00:05:58   - I'm solving the tools problem first

00:06:01   and we're gonna move on.

00:06:03   - Mm-hmm, all right, so we should probably do some follow up.

00:06:06   John, why don't you tell us about what Satya Nadella

00:06:08   said about your hatred of Apple. That's not what he's talking about. Anyway, this is a

00:06:13   review from a while, interview from a while ago where Satya Nadella is talking to Mary

00:06:18   Jo Foley at ZDNet in a long interview and one, I think we pulled a snippet from this

00:06:22   interview before which is why I had read it, but I pulled out this other snippet that I

00:06:26   thought was interesting. This is Satya Nadella talking. He says, "You've got to remember

00:06:30   even the Apple regeneration started with colorful iMacs, so let us first get the colorful iMacs.

00:06:35   I think with what we're doing with Lumia,

00:06:38   we're at that stage.

00:06:39   I wanna do good devices that people like,

00:06:40   and then we will go on to doing the next thing

00:06:42   and the next thing.

00:06:43   I thought this was really interesting

00:06:44   to see the CEO of Microsoft basically

00:06:47   like intentionally pull Microsoft down to Apple's level

00:06:52   to say, we are where Apple was before their resurgence.

00:06:59   We are at such an incredible low point

00:07:04   that we're at the stage where we're gonna make

00:07:07   some colorful IMAX.

00:07:08   We're not at the stage where we're making the iPod,

00:07:10   we're not at the stage where we're making the iPhone

00:07:11   or the iPad, we're at the stage where we're making

00:07:14   the colorful IMAX.

00:07:15   Which I think is sandbagging in the highest degree

00:07:19   because Microsoft is nowhere near the low point

00:07:21   that Apple was when Steve Jobs came back

00:07:23   or when they were introducing the IMAX.

00:07:24   Nowhere near that low, like financially,

00:07:27   like the quality and number of products they have

00:07:31   and that they sell and just like in every other respect.

00:07:34   But this is how the CEO of Microsoft

00:07:37   is positioning his company to say,

00:07:39   we want you to lower your expectations of us, I guess.

00:07:44   Like, think of us like where Apple was.

00:07:46   Like, you know, give us a chance where, you know,

00:07:48   maybe we're not blowing you away,

00:07:49   but we just want to make something cool

00:07:50   that kind of catches the imagination as kind of popular.

00:07:52   And that's what we think we're doing

00:07:53   with these new Lomiya phones.

00:07:54   I know they're not the next iPhone, but you know,

00:07:57   come on, give us a break.

00:07:58   It took Apple a while too.

00:08:00   Really interesting strategy.

00:08:01   Something that I think also

00:08:03   that someone from the old Microsoft like Gates or Ballmer

00:08:06   could not pull off just because

00:08:08   since they were the people in charge

00:08:10   when Microsoft was king of the world,

00:08:11   it would sound weird for them to say,

00:08:15   Microsoft is basically where Apple was in 1998.

00:08:17   'Cause it would just,

00:08:20   I don't know if those words could even come out

00:08:22   of their mouth or if they could put themselves

00:08:23   in that position, but a new CEO can say that

00:08:25   and I thought it was an interesting strategy

00:08:28   for how they're trying to position their company

00:08:31   to the outside world.

00:08:33   - Yeah, it's an odd analogy, but I mean,

00:08:36   it sort of makes sense.

00:08:38   Why don't you tell us about the Trim saga

00:08:39   that will never end?

00:08:40   - Yeah, I think we talked about the Samsung,

00:08:44   popular Samsung SSDs,

00:08:45   and people were filing bugs against them,

00:08:47   and then Samsung was like, "That's not our problem

00:08:50   "because you're using it in Linux,

00:08:51   "and Linux is in a supported platform,"

00:08:53   and people got angry, and then we didn't know

00:08:55   whether there were problems with these popular SSDs or not.

00:08:58   The latest development in that saga is that Samsung says,

00:09:01   it's not a problem with our firmware or our drives,

00:09:04   it's a problem with the Linux kernel,

00:09:05   and here's a patch to help fix it.

00:09:07   I don't know what the actual problem is.

00:09:09   Maybe their patch to the kernel works around a problem

00:09:12   in Samsung's SSDs.

00:09:14   There's another link that's eternally being put off

00:09:16   in the show notes where some Mac and an article

00:09:18   is trying to test these popular SSDs in OS 10

00:09:22   and see if they can create a corruption.

00:09:25   And I don't know how rigorous their testing is,

00:09:28   but I would say this whole thing

00:09:30   is still a question mark to me,

00:09:31   because just because Samsung says it's a bug in a Linux kernel and provides a patch to

00:09:35   work around it, was it a Linux kernel bug? Like I said, is there a patch just working

00:09:40   around a bug in the firmware? And is any of this relevant at all to people running OS

00:09:44   10? I don't know. So still, I'm just hanging back and not bothering with the trim stuff

00:09:48   and keeping my fingers crossed.

00:09:50   It's a bold strategy, Cotton. We'll see if it pays off for him. That's a reference, by

00:09:54   the way. Marco, tell us about your cellular option dilemma.

00:09:58   Yeah, so in last week's episode, I talked about how I was having an issue with deciding

00:10:06   Overcast cellular download preferences because I'm adding streaming for the next big version

00:10:12   and there was a question of should streaming have its own preference and I already had

00:10:16   these two other preferences and how do I combine these possibly three preferences in any way

00:10:21   that makes sense and is understandable by users and doesn't have too much clutter in

00:10:26   the options and complexity and everything. And I explained that part of the reason why,

00:10:32   so right now I have in the current version there's two options. One of them is download

00:10:35   over cellular which makes sense. The other one is basically like try to do anything over

00:10:39   cellular. And the reason why I couldn't just rely on the system toggle for that was because

00:10:43   of what I considered a bug in the system reachability framework which is that if a user had disabled

00:10:50   cell access completely for the app in iOS settings which you can do per app, the system

00:10:56   would still tell the app that it was connected to the internet via cellular. And so the app

00:11:00   would then have--the app would have no way to tell that it wasn't--that it wasn't allowed

00:11:03   to use this connection. So if it tried to use the connection, it would show their annoying

00:11:08   box to the user saying, "Cellular data is disabled for this app. You can change that

00:11:12   in settings." And my feeling was it should be the way it used to be which is that if

00:11:16   somebody disabled cell access for you in iOS 7, it would--the system would report to your

00:11:21   app that it was just offline when it was on cellular. So then you could just avoid doing

00:11:25   things and not show that stupid alert to people. Turns out in iOS 8.4 that bug is still there,

00:11:32   but in iOS 9 it's fixed. So in iOS 9, I did some testing over the last couple of days,

00:11:37   in iOS 9 if you as the app use the reachability framework to test the connection, if the user

00:11:44   is on cellular and you aren't allowed to use it, it properly reports it as offline, which

00:11:49   is the way it used to be and the way it should have always been. So this lets me remove that

00:11:55   second setting I have now, which is the, it's called sync over cellular, it lets me remove

00:12:01   that setting completely, which is great. So now I only will have the download over cellular

00:12:06   option in the, in the downloader area. And I don't need, I don't need a streaming option

00:12:13   at all, because streaming can just rely on the system setting. If you don't want Overcast

00:12:16   to use Solidata, just disable it in system settings. And that's it. So I've gone from

00:12:21   two settings in the current version to potentially needing three in the next version, but instead

00:12:26   going down to one, which is fantastic.

00:12:29   Why don't you need the settings anymore? Are you saying the next version is not going to

00:12:32   run on iOS 8?

00:12:33   I'm saying I will no longer care about a minor annoyance detail that will affect very, very

00:12:38   few people. It's not worth keeping it. So, for instance, the current version of the app

00:12:43   also has a setting in nitpicky details called "Seek Acceleration." This is a setting I've

00:12:49   I've actually had since 1.0.

00:12:51   When you seek an overcast, if you hit seek back or forward

00:12:55   by like the 30 seconds or whatever,

00:12:57   if you hit that a bunch of times in a row,

00:13:00   like so that you're doing like more than one per second,

00:13:03   basically, I forget exactly what my threshold is,

00:13:05   but if you do more than one of those per second,

00:13:07   after a few, I start increasing the interval

00:13:10   that they're seeking by.

00:13:11   So it lets you, if you're in a situation

00:13:13   where you only have access to seek back and forward features

00:13:17   like if you're in a car and it has the button integration,

00:13:19   or if you have headphones with those buttons on them,

00:13:21   or a remote with those buttons on it,

00:13:23   if you wanna seek a long distance in a track,

00:13:27   it lets you get there a lot faster.

00:13:29   So if you seek a whole bunch of times in a row,

00:13:31   it'll go like, you know, 30, 30, 30, 45, 50, 60, 90,

00:13:35   like it'll accelerate up to a certain ceiling.

00:13:38   And I've always had an option to disable that since 1.0.

00:13:42   And that option syncs to the server,

00:13:45   because that syncs to your account. So I can actually tell how many people use it. And

00:13:51   I've been watching and I brought up on Twitter a few months back, "Hey, can I just remove

00:13:55   this option?" And I learned that most of the respondents didn't really understand what

00:14:00   it did. Whether they said, "Yes, remove it," or "No, keep it," most of them seemed like

00:14:05   they were misunderstanding what it did. And so I decided that doesn't need to be an option

00:14:10   anymore. And I looked at the server and usage of it was under 1% of people who changed the

00:14:15   default, which is on. So in 2.0, that option is just gone. I'm not going to keep setting

00:14:20   around in what is a very small setting screen that's used by fewer than 1% of the users.

00:14:24   That's not worth the complexity. So, back to the cellular thing, this, you know, people

00:14:32   who are going to disable cellular in the system preferences completely for the app. I can't

00:14:37   measure that right now. I'm guessing it's probably not below 1%, but I bet it's pretty

00:14:41   low. So people who are going to disable that and also who are going to be running iOS 8

00:14:46   for longer than the next couple of months, it's not worth it. It's not worth keeping

00:14:50   that setting around just to have them be able to avoid seeing the cell data disabled dialog

00:14:58   box as often as they could. It's such a small gain for so few people for such a short time

00:15:06   that it's just not worth it. Also, I'm not taking the move to iOS 9 as something that

00:15:11   needs to be very carefully and slowly done. As soon as iOS 9 is out, I'm probably going

00:15:15   to release an update that requires it, or at least soon afterwards, depending on what

00:15:19   compelling reasons I have. Because the fact is iOS 9 runs on every device that iOS 8 runs

00:15:25   on. Jailbreakers haven't jailbroken it yet, I don't think, but I don't care. I honestly

00:15:30   do not care at all what jailbreakers can run. I don't follow that. I don't need to follow

00:15:34   that. I think if you jailbreak, that's up to you to follow, and I can't waste my time

00:15:38   on that because jailbreaking is just a nightmare of support complexity and it's just not worth

00:15:44   it. So regardless, I don't care about jailbreakability and people who hold on to old versions forever

00:15:52   because they just don't like the new version, I don't really cater to them either. I feel

00:15:55   like if your device can run iOS whatever, I don't feel bad requiring iOS whatever. Even

00:16:03   if you choose not to install iOS whatever, if you choose to keep the old version around,

00:16:07   I consider that like, okay, well,

00:16:09   part of your cost of doing that is you're gonna lose

00:16:11   future updates to apps that require all this stuff.

00:16:14   So, anyway, that's how I feel about that.

00:16:16   What was the question?

00:16:17   I forgot.

00:16:18   (laughing)

00:16:19   - I was basically asking you if you were gonna make

00:16:22   overcast iOS 9 only, and you eventually worked up to it.

00:16:25   - Yeah, I mean, right now, I'm building 2.0 against iOS 8

00:16:29   because I would like to release it

00:16:32   before iOS 9 is released.

00:16:33   I don't know if I will.

00:16:35   Like, I don't know if I'll be able to.

00:16:36   I mean, I'm trying.

00:16:37   I would like to release it as soon as I can.

00:16:39   - Just to be clear, the last time you said

00:16:41   you want to release soon, you ended up a year late,

00:16:43   is that correct?

00:16:44   - (laughs) Something like that, yes.

00:16:46   - Okay, just want to make sure we're all

00:16:46   on the same page here.

00:16:48   - Yeah, no, actually what is motivating me

00:16:51   to want to release this soon is actually

00:16:53   the playlist reordering bug.

00:16:54   (laughs)

00:16:55   Like, 'cause it's gonna be, it's too complicated

00:16:57   to backport the fix to that into the 1.0 branch,

00:17:00   and so I would like to, I'm actually planning on now

00:17:04   cutting a few features from 2.0's initial launch just so I can get it out faster and

00:17:09   then adding back those features later in like 2.1 or whatever.

00:17:12   Our first sponsor this week is Need. Need is a curated retailer and publication for

00:17:18   men and the people behind Need recently launched Foremost, a purveyor of small batch American

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00:17:28   He's a really, really super nice guy. He was, in case you guys don't know, not only was

00:17:32   he on, is he on the Bonanza podcast, but he's also, he was the British voice in our ATP

00:17:38   shirt parody promo. So, I want to thank him first of all for coming in last minute with

00:17:43   this because we had somebody drop out and he was awesome and picked it up. So, thank

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00:19:52   Alright. Check out Need and Foremost for men and women by visiting neededition.com and

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00:20:20   they've ever offered.

00:20:21   And personally, as I said, Matt's a really nice guy.

00:20:23   He came in at the last minute, saved our butts,

00:20:25   so support him, and he recently got engaged,

00:20:28   and he's super nice, and he supports us.

00:20:30   So I would like to challenge the listeners,

00:20:32   this is not in the script, I'd like to challenge

00:20:34   the listeners, let's try to sell them out completely.

00:20:36   Like I wanna deplete all of their stock of everything.

00:20:39   And foremost might be tough.

00:20:40   need we can probably do. Let's do it. Let's deplete their entire stock of everything.

00:20:46   Really. Go to neededition.com and foremostedition.com. Use code pre-followup for 25% off. Thanks

00:20:52   a lot to Need and Foremost for sponsoring our show.

00:20:55   All right. So we had a discussion about Reddit last episode. And we got some feedback about

00:21:05   that. We got nothing wrong. We got nothing wrong. Not a thing. We got some feedback about

00:21:09   that we got less than I expected, which I was kind of happy about, and it was less vile

00:21:15   than I expected, which I was super happy about, but we've got some new thoughts, or some things

00:21:20   to address perhaps.

00:21:22   Jon, would you like to tell us about some of the things that you've learned, discovered,

00:21:26   or thought about since then?

00:21:28   Back when this was in the follow-up section, seems so long ago, this topic, I mean, I thought

00:21:33   of removing a lot of it because I just listened to a last week episode, and I was like, "Yeah,

00:21:39   I pretty much I think I pretty much said everything I wanted to say on the topic and the reason I you know

00:21:43   Because I had all this fall of them, you know when feedback comes in I add corrections to the follow-up go through it

00:21:47   You know the normal pattern of stuff, but then I listen to the episode

00:21:50   I'm like but in that episode I had so many disclaimers like at the end of the thing

00:21:53   I was like, I know I got most of the details wrong, but it's not the details that I'm talking about

00:21:58   I'm trying to address the big picture blah blah blah people don't care. They still want to correct you any details, but just fine

00:22:03   so I in the end I left it in especially once Casey moved it down to be a topic but

00:22:08   But there are a couple just straight up factual things that I didn't later say that I knew

00:22:13   I got wrong.

00:22:15   One of them was that Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, and that is no longer the case.

00:22:19   We'll link to a little fact about it there where they were owned by Condé Nast, and

00:22:24   then they were owned by Condé Nast's parent company, but then they were spun out and reincorporated

00:22:28   independently.

00:22:30   And so, according to this thing, the best characterization might be to say that Reddit

00:22:33   is a part-sibling once removed of Condé Nast.

00:22:36   So that totally clears things up.

00:22:38   That was something I did not know I got wrong because most of the other details

00:22:41   I was just like winging it and giving examples and every time I gave an example

00:22:44   I was like, I know that's probably not accurate or true

00:22:46   whatever I mean

00:22:47   It makes it seem like I didn't read a lot about this when I did I just didn't write down or memorize the the individual

00:22:52   Facts, which is why I was trying to go big picture and that brings me to the next topic which is

00:22:56   the few

00:22:58   mildly mildly negative uh bits of feedback we got

00:23:02   Seemed to me to be treating all three of us as if we had never heard of reddit

00:23:07   Like what is this crazy reddit thing? Have you heard about this?

00:23:09   And I don't know about you two guys who are younger than I am

00:23:12   But like if I gave the impression that you know, like we all said we don't we're not reddit regulars

00:23:17   We don't go to the site. We are not part of the community

00:23:19   We don't consider ourselves redditors or whatever but

00:23:22   It's not as if reddit is this new thing that we just learned about when this controversy came so I went and looked up my info

00:23:26   at least

00:23:28   Uh reddit was founded on june 23rd 2005 according to wikipedia, which is never wrong

00:23:33   My account at Reddit was created on August 8th, 2005, which is 46 days after it was founded.

00:23:38   So I'm sorry that I did not get in on the ground floor of Reddit. The site was around

00:23:42   the whole 46 days before I joined and was a member for the next 10 years. Like, again, I'm not a

00:23:48   regular member of Reddit, right? I do not go there frequently. But I think the most angry

00:23:56   characterization is us being entirely out of touch with Reddit or just having discovered Reddit due

00:24:02   to the Ellen Powell controversy is wildly inaccurate.

00:24:05   Yeah, and I think part of what we were trying to describe is expressly what an outsider

00:24:10   thinks of the situation. And I agree with you, john, I don't think any of us painted

00:24:15   us as experts on what the intricacies of how Reddit works internally, either for users

00:24:22   or moderators or employees. But I know that we were all speaking more of, hey, from from

00:24:29   From an outsider, kind of third party that's not really invested in this looking in, it

00:24:33   looks kind of gross. And I stand by that.

00:24:36   Yeah, like that's the perspective we were giving as casuals. Like, not as people who

00:24:40   are confused by what this whole crazy Reddit thing is, but it's just like, there's a community,

00:24:44   it exists, and we're not really that involved in it. We know about it, we dip in and out

00:24:48   of it, we see it, right? But we're, you know, and we're not, and I think, I think that's

00:24:53   most people, like most people are not hardcore Reddit users. Reddit has tremendous traffic.

00:24:58   a small portion of that tremendous traffic are the sort of very dedicated people who

00:25:03   are very invested in Reddit as a community. That's the nature of any high-traffic site.

00:25:07   You know, you don't have millions and millions of people, all of whom are super invested

00:25:11   in you. That's just numbers, right? So our perspective as sort of outsiders—outsiders

00:25:17   who I think understand the phenomenon of Reddit and sites like Reddit and the dynamics of

00:25:23   online communities, but are not so invested in it that sort of any discussion of any negative

00:25:29   aspect of Reddit is seen as a condemnation of all members of Reddit. Like, that's not

00:25:34   where we were coming from at all. I bet we were. We were giving an outside perspective.

00:25:37   And I think I certainly was not particularly interested in the specific details of whatever

00:25:44   the controversy of the day is about "he said and she said this," and "these people are

00:25:49   harassing this person, and these are the internal politics there," just trying to say, like,

00:25:53   Is Reddit a place that we feel like we would like to hang out?

00:25:58   And if not, why not?

00:25:59   Yeah, I agree with you.

00:26:02   The only somewhat decent feedback—well, that's not fair.

00:26:05   The feedback that struck me most that we got was someone who said, in so many words—you

00:26:13   were complaining and moaning about Reddit and how gross Reddit is, but a lot of gross

00:26:17   stuff happens on Twitter and none of the three of us really complained and moaned about Twitter

00:26:21   last episode. And that really made me think for a minute, and I don't have any good answers.

00:26:29   Maybe because I'm pretty invested in Twitter, and I'm invested in what I like to think of

00:26:34   as the good corner of Twitter, I don't see a lot of the just absolutely vile, terrible,

00:26:40   disgusting things that happen on Twitter. Because they happen. They definitely happen.

00:26:44   But I don't get exposed to it yet. I feel like I hear a lot more often about the terrible,

00:26:51   violent, disgusting things that happen on Reddit.

00:26:54   And I was curious, John or Marco,

00:26:57   if you guys had any thoughts about why Twitter is okay,

00:27:00   but Reddit isn't.

00:27:02   - Oh, they're both disasters.

00:27:03   We just know how to, I mean, I think it's,

00:27:06   you can look at both of those and say,

00:27:09   wow, both of these are absolutely horrible

00:27:10   at dealing with abusive people.

00:27:13   That's just the way it is.

00:27:14   In fact, Twitter might even be worse, I don't know.

00:27:16   I don't know enough about Reddit to say.

00:27:18   Twitter's really bad about it, I know that.

00:27:21   We did talk about it at the last show, and I mentioned this was the objection that I said like I was feeling some trepidation about going to Reddit because I felt like I was kind of tacitly supporting an organization that provides a home for communities that make me uncomfortable that I don't like.

00:27:39   And I didn't feel that with Twitter.

00:27:42   And I think for me, the difference is, and I'd mentioned like, well, because, you know,

00:27:47   I don't see any ads on Twitter, so what am I really doing that's supporting them?

00:27:50   But you know, this feedback from Don is right, that like, by my participation in Twitter,

00:27:54   I'm still supporting them, whether I see ads or not, right.

00:27:57   And I think the reason I feel differently about is not so much with my investment in

00:28:00   Twitter, but that for as bad as Twitter is about dealing with harassment, they have policies

00:28:09   in place that if you were to look at the policies you would say these are good

00:28:12   and they show that Twitter doesn't want this thing to happen. They're really bad

00:28:16   at implementing those policies. Many times their implementation again like

00:28:20   oh we have a way for you to report people for harassment we'll do something

00:28:23   about and like the form of require revealing your personal information to

00:28:26   the person you're harassing and they would their decision-making process

00:28:29   would not be great on it but like the fact that the Twitter CEO comes out and

00:28:33   said we are really bad at this and we need to get better and that they have

00:28:36   taken positive steps to make them to make their company better dealing with

00:28:41   this shows that they this is the direction they want to go in it's not as

00:28:44   if the CEO of Twitter is saying we're really bad at it and that's by design

00:28:48   because we don't want to clamp down too much we want to make sure people feel

00:28:52   free to say whatever they want to say that's not the message coming out of

00:28:54   Twitter at all execution wise still bad but everything they have done and

00:28:59   everything they have said and done is saying there it's aspirational they're

00:29:02   saying we want to be over there we want people to feel more welcome on Twitter

00:29:06   We want to deal with the harassment problem. We want to stop this from happening

00:29:09   And here are the things that we're going to do and then you know

00:29:12   They try to do something people complain or whatever and the thing that's most upsetting to me about reddit is

00:29:16   The aspirational thing does I don't agree with their aspirations it reddit says we want our community to be like this

00:29:21   I'm like, okay. Well, that's I don't like that. I don't like that goal state

00:29:25   I think Twitter's goal state if you were to talk to the CEO of what do you want Twitter to be like?

00:29:30   What are you trying to reach? I would agree more with what they're going for in terms of a

00:29:35   place where people feel like they're free from

00:29:37   Abusive behavior or have it not free from but have the tools to deal with abusive behavior, right?

00:29:42   The Twitter wants to provide that whereas reddit seems to want to provide a safe haven for people to trade

00:29:50   Ideas and behave in ways that I that I don't like right and again this like I'm glad no one has brought this up

00:29:57   To the credit of all the people of all the various reddit people who have listened to this thing and sent feedback

00:30:03   nobody has brought out the old, you know, the old saw about like

00:30:07   You're trying to say that reddit doesn't have a right to exist

00:30:11   like I'm so glad that that I mean either that speaks to the the small number of reddit people listen to our show or the

00:30:17   the general intelligence people who are reddit not to bring out that ridiculous argument of like I

00:30:22   Tried very hard in the last show to frame it as does this feel something?

00:30:26   Does this community feel like something that I want to participate participate in why and why not?

00:30:32   Everyone's free to make the community they want to make all I'm talking about is does this feel like something that I want to join

00:30:37   them and my secondary point which I think we'll get to in a little bit was like

00:30:41   Does the community that they say they want to make is it the type of thing that I think would be broadly appealing

00:30:48   Right, and I think that's that's where you get into you know, like Marco not allowing KKK podcasts on his hypothetical podcast network

00:30:55   That's the type of decision where you can say if you did that

00:31:00   Most people wouldn't care like that

00:31:02   That is something that excludes that that would be broadly appealing because it's not a system of government

00:31:07   it's just a private website and if a private website ban that type of

00:31:10   Content everyone be like, all right. Yeah, I'm fine with that

00:31:14   Like that is a broadly appealing decision less broadly appealing banning vegetarians, right then all of a sudden well

00:31:19   Now you are really narrowing your audience because if you decide that's what you want your site, that's fine

00:31:25   But a lot of people are going to rightly say

00:31:27   Now that's getting to be you know

00:31:29   Like that the whole idea that there are that there are standards sort of community standards like human community standards

00:31:35   whether they're local or state or country or international community standards that

00:31:40   Mean if you want something to appeal to the broadest number of people

00:31:44   Everyone's okay with you excluding these ideas and this behavior

00:31:47   But once you start getting what you know

00:31:49   Once you start crossing over into like well that just seems like arbitrary and weird like not allowing left-handed people

00:31:55   Hmm that's you know that that seems that doesn't seem weird but not allowing the KKK

00:32:01   Yeah, sure. Go ahead get banned them. I don't like I think that's okay. They were bothersome. Anyway, I don't like those ideas, right?

00:32:07   And that maybe that bothers a lot of people especially have a sort of logical mindset

00:32:12   I was like, no you can't you have to allow all ideas or allow no ideas if you can't

00:32:15   How do you describe that what's different about the KKK and left-handed people like they there are just it's equivalently arbitrary, right?

00:32:21   They're just ideas man

00:32:23   Yeah, and I think that that brings down to the reddit Q&A that someone linked to with the current

00:32:28   Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spes on on reddit. It's it's a it's a nice thing with the Q&A the best thing about it

00:32:35   Of course is speaking of Marcos complaints about the giant intent indented conversations a nice person emailed this to us

00:32:40   I'm for I lost the name because it's somewhere in the in our email, but

00:32:45   The Q&A is like a bunch of questions and that with numbers and then the answers follow them

00:32:50   So it's like questions one through seven questions one two three, you know

00:32:55   and then down below there are the answers and the nice person who emailed us did the same thing and

00:33:00   put the question then answer the question then answer instead of a giant list of questions and then a giant list of numbered answers and

00:33:06   You have to keep like mapping back and forth in your mind or keep scrolling back up or it's this is section two

00:33:10   Question number two the question was blah and I'll scroll down for the answer

00:33:15   Reddit just really is not yeah, this is totally aside from the policy issues

00:33:21   it's not a really welcoming site for people who don't like navigating giant walls of

00:33:26   indented text anyway a

00:33:29   few items from this Q&A which I think is

00:33:32   Doesn't pin anything down like they're still trying to work out what they're trying to do

00:33:36   But I picked out a few examples that spoke to the thing that I find

00:33:39   Unappealing about reddit so again, this is the CEO

00:33:45   answering some questions. "Mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment."

00:33:49   Right, that was an answer to which question? I gotta scroll up and find it.

00:33:54   "In regards to subreddits for mocking another group, what is the policy on them?"

00:33:58   Blah blah blah. So mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment. I assume

00:34:01   that it's defined as not harassment because either implicitly or earlier

00:34:06   they're saying, "Well harassment is something we don't want," and mocking and

00:34:09   calling people stupid is not harassment. Turning this position around, what it

00:34:14   basically means is if you come to participate on reddit it very well may

00:34:19   happen that you get mocked and called stupid which fine like that yeah again

00:34:23   you know you you define the rules of the community whatever you want right but I

00:34:27   would compare this to the ARK's technical policy that I talked about in the last

00:34:30   show where ARK's technical thing is no ad hominem attacks have a discussion on

00:34:34   the topic at hand disagree as violently as you want about you know whether the

00:34:40   whether Altavec or MMX is better, but no mocking people are calling them stupid.

00:34:44   Don't attack the person, attack the ideas. That's the Ars Technica comment

00:34:48   policy, right? And I don't think Ars Technica is a super high-minded site

00:34:51   where everyone has good behavior. It is a pretty rough and tumble crowd there, right?

00:34:54   It's also probably male-dominated, it's got all sort of similar pathologies of

00:34:59   the Reddit stuff, and yet Ars Technica has this rule that says don't attack the

00:35:02   person, attack the ideas. Reddit, they're saying mocking and calling people stupid

00:35:06   is not harassment. That's something we think is acceptable behavior in all of

00:35:09   communities it's going to happen it's going to happen to you you can't ban

00:35:12   someone for doing it just because they call you stupid or mock you that I find

00:35:17   that distasteful I don't think that's beyond the pale where it's like oh now

00:35:21   your site is not broadly appealing but I think it does I mean like Twitter if you

00:35:25   come on to Twitter and people are going to mock you and call you stupid you're

00:35:28   going to want something you're not gonna like that you're gonna want to not see

00:35:31   their tweets here when I'm able to block them and if they keep doing it then it

00:35:34   might become harassment but anyway they're categorizing it's not

00:35:37   harassment if people do that. What if you come onto a Reddit and everybody says

00:35:41   that you're stupid but everyone only says it once and every time you appear

00:35:45   and post anything on Reddit each individual person on that entire forum

00:35:50   mocks you or calls you stupid but only does it once. That's I guess still not

00:35:54   harassment. Your experience of Reddit is that anytime you appear no one addresses

00:35:58   anything that you say but they merely download you, download you, call you

00:36:01   stupid and mock you. That's not a particularly healthy or welcoming

00:36:04   community where you where that I would want to participate and yet that's the

00:36:08   one there type of thing they're defining another item filling someone's inbox

00:36:12   with PMs private messages saying kill yourself is harassment calling someone

00:36:16   stupid on a public forum is not again now it's like if you fill their inbox

00:36:20   with private messages that only they can see saying kill yourself that's

00:36:22   harassment but if you just call them stupid in public that's not it doesn't

00:36:26   make any sense to me these are outlining behaviors what they're basically saying

00:36:29   is if you're just if you're just sending people private messages and saying mean

00:36:32   things to them. That's harassment. But if you're just saying it in public and you say

00:36:36   it once, it's okay. And again, they can figure out what they want the rules to be. This is

00:36:41   the things that I read that make me feel like this is not some place that I would like to

00:36:45   hang out. Because I'm not interested in watching people call each other names, even if I'm

00:36:49   not involved. I'm not interested in seeing people mock each other and call each other

00:36:53   stupid. I'm interested in an exchange of ideas. I don't think any of this makes Reddit broadly

00:37:01   unappealing but the type of communities that can fit within the rules that they're laying

00:37:07   down a lot of those communities are broadly unappealing.

00:37:11   And I think like if you follow the letter of the law as Reddit appears to be defining

00:37:15   things you can have a community that is just terrible that all it is is a bunch of people

00:37:18   reinforcing their own really bad ideas.

00:37:20   There was another really good one here is the number one thing was harboring unpopular

00:37:24   ideologies is not a reason for banning which sounds great it's like exactly like you know

00:37:29   "Well, just because my ideology is unpopular,

00:37:32   I shouldn't be banned."

00:37:33   I think when people read that on Reddit,

00:37:35   what they have in their mind is,

00:37:37   "If I think Enterprise is the best Star Trek series,

00:37:40   I shouldn't be banned."

00:37:41   That is definitely an unpopular idea,

00:37:45   that Enterprise is the best Star Trek series.

00:37:47   And so that's kind of what's in their mind.

00:37:48   Yeah, why should I be banned?

00:37:49   Because I have just, you know,

00:37:50   this is tyranny of the majority.

00:37:52   Why should I have to agree with everybody else?

00:37:53   It's supposed to be a free and open exchange of ideas.

00:37:56   Harboring unpopular ideology

00:37:57   is not a reason for banning, right?

00:37:59   But ideologies are different than just ideas

00:38:01   or statements or opinions.

00:38:03   Harboring unpopular, there's lots of unpopular ideologies

00:38:07   that you would say are not reasons for banning.

00:38:09   But if your unpopular ideology

00:38:11   is that all black people should be slaves,

00:38:13   that is a different unpopular ideology

00:38:15   than you think there should be a flat tax

00:38:17   of 90% on all Americans, right?

00:38:20   And from sort of logical perspective,

00:38:23   those are just both unpopular ideologies.

00:38:25   Why should one be banned and another not be banned?

00:38:27   it's all up to what kind of community you want to make.

00:38:31   Especially if you had rules against attacking the idea,

00:38:34   not the person.

00:38:34   I think you could have a community in which that person

00:38:36   who's really in favor of the 90% flat tax on all Americans

00:38:39   could have a reasonable discussion or debate

00:38:44   about his or her position.

00:38:47   And the person who thinks all black people should be slaves

00:38:49   is never going to have a reasonable debate about it.

00:38:51   Like they are different by their nature.

00:38:52   And I think anyone can tell that they're different,

00:38:55   But the rules, according to the letter of the rules,

00:38:58   they're both unpopular ideologies

00:39:00   and neither one is a reason for banning.

00:39:01   And that's the type of community

00:39:02   that Reddit seems to be trying to create.

00:39:04   And, you know, go for it.

00:39:06   Like that's the one I make, that's the one I make.

00:39:08   That's why, that's what I'm getting at when I say,

00:39:10   when I read their sort of goal state,

00:39:13   what are we trying to make Reddit become?

00:39:15   Like they're still working on the details.

00:39:16   I'm not saying they gotta have it all figured out now.

00:39:17   The site's only 10 years old, you know, take your time.

00:39:20   But it's this, that's what's repelling me.

00:39:25   And I think, like I said, I think the rules sort of,

00:39:28   as they're evolving them now,

00:39:30   allow for a lot of things that would definitely be

00:39:33   beyond what regular people wanna get involved in.

00:39:36   And I guess the final other item I had on this

00:39:40   is a couple of people saying the bad stuff on Reddit

00:39:42   doesn't affect me.

00:39:43   Some people saying the bad stuff on Reddit does affect them

00:39:45   and they're thinking of pulling back.

00:39:47   There is something to be said about subreddits

00:39:51   that you don't go to not affecting your life

00:39:53   on the Reddit with the cat pictures, right?

00:39:56   And I think this gets back to like, is all of Reddit,

00:40:00   you know, are all the people on Reddit bad?

00:40:02   No, obviously not.

00:40:02   The vast, vast majority of people who are heavily,

00:40:04   even like the super heavy users,

00:40:06   they just wanna look at cat pictures, man.

00:40:08   Like, you know, it's all good.

00:40:09   Like, and there's great forums there

00:40:10   and where they discuss interesting things,

00:40:12   like tons of great stuff on Reddit.

00:40:14   This is a case of the rules that allow all that great stuff

00:40:18   to bloom on forum, on forum, on Reddit,

00:40:21   also allows some bad stuff.

00:40:23   and you don't wanna think about the bad stuff

00:40:24   and you don't wanna see it,

00:40:26   but sometimes those people wander over to your end.

00:40:28   And even if they don't wander over,

00:40:30   you know you're participating in a system

00:40:32   that provides a little incubator

00:40:34   for these people to reinforce their own ideas

00:40:37   and recruit new people.

00:40:38   And even if they stay within the letter of the law

00:40:42   on the subreddit stuff,

00:40:44   it's basically an organization tool

00:40:47   for things that you don't want to happen.

00:40:49   Like, so fine, maybe they email each other privately

00:40:51   about inciting violence.

00:40:52   Maybe they they email each other privately about doxxing people about harassing them about doing all the things

00:40:56   It's always long. You don't do it on reddit. It's fine

00:40:58   Like what do you think these communities are about like they're just hateful, right?

00:41:02   And if you are on reddit some some people isn't bothered like I stick to the cat picture reddit subreddit

00:41:08   And I'm fine and I don't associate with them at all

00:41:10   I don't think the cat picture reddit people are tainted by the other people

00:41:14   But they are participating in a system that allows for that

00:41:18   Whereas if you're on Twitter you are participating as a system that would like not to allow for that

00:41:22   but does because they're incompetent about enforcing it. So I think that is a fine line.

00:41:26   They're like, it's not clear cut. It is definitely not clear cut. But I like where Twitter says

00:41:32   it's trying to go. And so far, where Reddit says it's trying to go doesn't match up with

00:41:39   what I prefer.

00:41:40   David Tompa It just seems like they pride themselves in

00:41:44   these decisions that, like you, I find kind of distasteful. And it doesn't take a very

00:41:51   big logical leap to realize that, just like you said, saying "enterprise is the best

00:41:57   Star Trek" is a very, very, very different thing than saying that, you know, all black

00:42:01   people should be slaves.

00:42:02   It's just—

00:42:03   Eric Lander One is not an ideology.

00:42:04   That's why I said the flat tax.

00:42:05   The, like, the 90% flat tax, it's more of an ideology, or like Marxism or communism,

00:42:09   some really unpopular, but it's an ideology, right?

00:42:13   I think that type of ideology, like, there are certain ideologies that we collectively

00:42:18   all agree as society are so distasteful that you don't want them to be part of your community.

00:42:30   People talking about that, groups discussing it, again, because your community is a private

00:42:34   website. Obviously, we're not the United States government. People should be allowed to protest,

00:42:38   say what they want, print what they want, do whatever you want. We're talking about

00:42:41   what kind of community does Reddit want to create on their private website? And the kind

00:42:45   they want to create allows for things that I don't like. And the Enterprise example,

00:42:49   so that's why I'm trying to come up with something that is like non-controversial but is also

00:42:53   an ideology that is super unpopular but I think perfectly okay to discuss in a constructive

00:43:00   way, you know what I mean?

00:43:02   Yeah, absolutely. All right, anything else on Reddit? Marco, you've been quiet for a

00:43:05   while. Any thoughts?

00:43:07   I just don't care, honestly. There's a limited number of things I can care about, and the

00:43:12   the drama of what seems like a really fragmented and sometimes good but sometimes extremely

00:43:19   problematic community that I'm not in. I can't make myself care. I just can't.

00:43:27   It's not really the specifics of Reddit that I care about so much because again I'm

00:43:30   not that regular of a user and I don't think it's like a linchpin of the internet that

00:43:34   if something bad happens to it, it diminishes, that that will be the end of the world.

00:43:39   Oh, that's not what Redditers think though.

00:43:42   Well, you know, I think it'll be fine.

00:43:44   But anyway, it is, I think it's just a good example of how,

00:43:48   if you read like these guidelines,

00:43:51   they all seem to make sense.

00:43:53   You know, like you read them and you feel

00:43:54   they're egalitarian, they're high-minded or whatever.

00:43:58   But I, you know, as a incredibly insightful podcast

00:44:03   once said, it's ramifications.

00:44:05   Harboring on popular ideologies is not a reason for banning.

00:44:07   That sounds awesome, right?

00:44:09   What are the ramifications of that?

00:44:10   What does that lead to?

00:44:12   What do these series of guidelines lead to?

00:44:14   Mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment.

00:44:16   What kind of community do you build

00:44:18   with this set of guidelines?

00:44:19   The shape of that community is not appealing to me.

00:44:23   And I'm making, you know, I'm gonna get called on this

00:44:26   and I think it's true.

00:44:27   I'm making the extrapolation that

00:44:29   because this is not appealing to me

00:44:31   and because I think I kind of understand

00:44:33   what is generally accepted to be sort of like

00:44:37   okay within polite society,

00:44:39   Certain things that fit within the letter of these guidelines

00:44:42   are things that most people will find distasteful

00:44:45   and would not want to be associated with.

00:44:48   Our coontown, people do not want to be associated with that

00:44:51   in general.

00:44:51   Advertisers certainly don't.

00:44:53   And just general people, if it gets too close to them

00:44:56   or they realize what's going on back there,

00:44:58   definitely is not something they want to deal with.

00:45:01   And I think there is a standard for that.

00:45:03   It's hard to define.

00:45:04   That's why it's hard to write down rules.

00:45:05   And if you write down the rules for it, it's like, oh,

00:45:07   slippery slope.

00:45:07   You're gonna ban everything right, but it's something that every

00:45:11   community of real people virtual communities everything I

00:45:15   think deals with much more naturally and and calmly like I

00:45:20   Can't think of another group of people that you know

00:45:23   Like if you had a bowling league and people came in the bowling lead and were mocking people and calling them stupid

00:45:30   And you're like well, that's not against the you know that's fine like people say you're jerks

00:45:34   I don't want to bowl with you anymore."

00:45:35   Right?

00:45:36   That's the way, and somehow online it's like, well, they must be allowed to do that because

00:45:40   we need to allow them to put their hateful words into our database, otherwise we're monsters.

00:45:46   Free speech doesn't mean what you think it means.

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00:48:21   - So one of the things that's been announced

00:48:24   for El Capitan, is this rootless mode thing.

00:48:29   And I have not had a chance to look into this at all, but I'm very fascinated by what it

00:48:32   means to me.

00:48:34   And I say that because my day-to-day life is—I live in VMware Fusion.

00:48:41   And I am running Windows and VMware Fusion in order to do my day job.

00:48:46   And it may be—and we'll find out shortly—that this will not affect VMware Fusion at all.

00:48:52   Or it may be that VMware will have to go to extraordinary lengths in order to get themselves

00:49:01   back to where they are today.

00:49:03   So Jon, tell me about rootless mode and what does that mean?

00:49:07   The framing for this is I just want a brief review of the basic Unix security that OS

00:49:15   10 has.

00:49:16   Unlike classic Mac OS, which these days no one listening to this show probably remembers,

00:49:22   There are user accounts on OS X. You log into one, maybe get logged into one by default.

00:49:27   Your user account, when you create files from a user account, you're the user that owns

00:49:32   them.

00:49:33   You can only mess with, for the most part, the files that you own or that have permissions

00:49:37   for anyone in your group or anyone at all to modify.

00:49:41   And in practice what that means is the operating system itself and other users' crap does not

00:49:46   have permissions set on it that allow you to do anything to it.

00:49:49   So the files that make up the operating system are owned by a different user, they're in

00:49:53   a different group, and you as your regular user can't mess with them.

00:49:57   You can have an administrative user which is in some elevated privilege groups including

00:50:02   something that lets them become the super user.

00:50:06   Like when something asks you to enter an admin user password, that's elevating your privileges

00:50:10   to okay, now even though you logged into whatever your account is, now you have super user privileges,

00:50:17   you can modify anything on the system.

00:50:19   And usually you're doing that on behalf

00:50:21   of a program that wants to mess with files

00:50:23   that otherwise you as a user wouldn't be able to mess with.

00:50:26   And this was seen by Mac users as a little bit

00:50:28   of an annoyance, but also as a big win of like, oh, finally,

00:50:33   I'll only be able to mess with my files by default.

00:50:35   So you can also make non-admin accounts that can't

00:50:37   elevate their privileges.

00:50:39   You'd have to enter some other administrative account password

00:50:42   to elevate privileges.

00:50:43   So those people maybe couldn't install applications

00:50:45   are best with the operating system or whatever.

00:50:48   The downside of this, as people have always discussed,

00:50:51   and which rootless does not really address that much,

00:50:54   but it's worth keeping in mind, is that--

00:50:56   all right, so say you have a non-admin account, which

00:50:58   a lot of people recommend.

00:50:59   You should have a non-admin account,

00:51:00   because that way you can't elevate your privileges

00:51:02   to the level where you can modify anything.

00:51:04   And all you'll ever be able to modify is your own files.

00:51:06   You can't delete the operating system.

00:51:07   You can't mess with anything like that.

00:51:11   So if somehow malware got onto your system

00:51:14   or hijacked your web browser or whatever,

00:51:16   and it was running as you, the lowly user,

00:51:19   it would only be able to modify files owned by you.

00:51:21   Well, guess what?

00:51:21   If they delete everything in your home directory

00:51:23   owned by you, you're gonna be super sad

00:51:25   because that's all your crap.

00:51:27   That's all the stuff that you care about.

00:51:29   In the end, you don't really care about the operating system

00:51:31   or so this counter to the Unix security model goes.

00:51:35   You can reinstall the operating system,

00:51:38   but you own all of the pictures

00:51:39   that are in your iPhoto library,

00:51:41   all the music that's in your iTunes thing,

00:51:42   all the documents, all your reports,

00:51:44   all your homework things, all your work files,

00:51:46   all your source code, that's all owned by you.

00:51:47   All the files you care about are owned by you

00:51:49   for the most part.

00:51:50   So what is this little model where I have a regular user

00:51:53   and then the root user is elevated privileges,

00:51:56   it doesn't really help me.

00:51:57   Like if some piece of code runs loose on my system,

00:52:00   it can delete all my stuff anyway.

00:52:01   That is the sort of counter to,

00:52:04   oh, the Unix security model sounds so great

00:52:05   but really it doesn't help me

00:52:06   because it still can delete all my stuff.

00:52:09   That is all true,

00:52:11   But that's not what malware wants to do most of the time.

00:52:14   Malware, kind of like viruses

00:52:15   that kill their host really fast,

00:52:17   like literal, you know, biological viruses,

00:52:20   malware that wants to either be useful or to spread

00:52:23   can't kill its host immediately.

00:52:24   Malware that immediately deletes someone's hard drive

00:52:26   is not gonna get very far

00:52:27   because it's not gonna have a chance to propagate

00:52:29   because it's gonna immediately nuke the person's computer

00:52:31   and, you know, not delete their hard drive,

00:52:32   delete all their files.

00:52:33   Like that'll be really obvious that all their crap is gone.

00:52:36   They're gonna be super mad and it won't spread.

00:52:38   What malware wants to do,

00:52:39   both for the spreading purposes

00:52:40   and like, why does it wanna spread?

00:52:43   It wants to spread because it wants

00:52:44   to become a powerful thing.

00:52:46   What you want malware to do is

00:52:47   to silently infect someone's computer,

00:52:49   to make it a slave of your botnet,

00:52:51   to let it mine for bitcoins,

00:52:53   to launch distributed denial of service attacks,

00:52:55   to do keystroke logging, to steal pictures,

00:52:58   to turn on the webcam and record people.

00:53:00   Like, what most malware wants to do is be hidden.

00:53:04   It doesn't wanna delete all your files

00:53:05   'cause that would be really obvious.

00:53:07   And you would notice,

00:53:08   and you would immediately know something is messed up.

00:53:11   It wants to get its hooks into your system

00:53:13   in an invisible way.

00:53:14   And that's where the standard Unix protection comes from.

00:53:18   Where if it wants to really get its hooks into your system,

00:53:22   what it really wants to do is modify files

00:53:23   that are part of the operating system.

00:53:25   So it can like log all the keystrokes

00:53:26   of every user logged in or control the hardware

00:53:29   in ways that an individual user couldn't.

00:53:31   It wants to sort of infect the binaries that you run,

00:53:34   a lot of which are applications installed

00:53:36   in the application folder that maybe you don't own

00:53:37   as they were installed by a different user or domain user

00:53:39   or infect the operating system itself

00:53:41   or get into the IO level, you know,

00:53:42   that's what malware wants to do.

00:53:44   And so having a separate set of permissions

00:53:46   where your plain old user account

00:53:49   can't modify system files,

00:53:51   can't install kernel extensions

00:53:53   that intercept all your keystrokes or whatever,

00:53:56   that's a good thing, right?

00:53:58   So that's the content, that's the current situation.

00:54:00   We haven't discussed anything about El Capitan yet, right?

00:54:03   What El Capitan's system integrity protection

00:54:05   or rootless mode or whatever is trying to do is add another layer of protection, which

00:54:09   is instead of just having your regular user that can elevate the privileges up to the

00:54:15   root user that can do anything and having the root user account that can do anything,

00:54:19   they want to say, "Okay, I've got a regular user account.

00:54:22   Some of those regular user accounts are admin users who can elevate their privileges to

00:54:25   root level, but even root can't do everything."

00:54:29   So even if you elevate your permissions by entering an admin password or you become the

00:54:32   root user or whatever, even that user still can't do some stuff. And the some stuff that they can't do

00:54:38   is modify system files, inject their code into other running processes, and all sorts of other

00:54:46   things that you would take for granted on a regular UNIX system. Once you elevate your

00:54:49   privilege to super user level, you can do anything. That's the whole point of the super user. They are,

00:54:53   you know, id zero. They can do anything they want. It doesn't matter who owns it, doesn't matter,

00:54:57   they can do everything. This is limiting the power of the root user. And it's doing that because

00:55:03   history has shown that it's not too difficult to take an admin user account and either trick them

00:55:09   into entering their admin password or find an exploit that elevates their privileges up to

00:55:13   admin level and that's where the malware can really get its hooks deep into your system.

00:55:17   And this is saying even if the malware gets that far, even if the malware tricks a user into

00:55:21   entering their admin password and they are an admin user or finds a bug that elevates their

00:55:25   privileges, we still don't want them to be able to mess with the operating system.

00:55:29   Not because the operating system is super important, like that's where their stuff is,

00:55:32   but because that's what Mailware wants to do to really take over the computer, to really

00:55:36   like install that key logger that gets every single keystroke that every user ever types

00:55:40   in this computer and emails it to everybody and takes pictures of them and records their

00:55:44   credit card number and does all sorts of nasty things.

00:55:48   That's what these things want to do.

00:55:51   So yeah, this is the feature as described.

00:55:56   And the details, if you want to see the details of this, this is in WWDC session 706, innocuously

00:56:01   named Security and Your Apps, which is probably the reason I didn't even favorite it when

00:56:05   I was at WWDC.

00:56:06   You know, because it's like, what are they going to talk about there?

00:56:08   That's boring.

00:56:09   But by the time I heard what it was in, it was too late.

00:56:10   But anyway, videos are freely available.

00:56:12   We'll put the link in the show notes.

00:56:13   You can take a look at it.

00:56:14   It goes through all the different things it's going to do.

00:56:16   I'm heartened to learn that like the directories they're limiting to the system only is like

00:56:22   slash system slash bin slash user slash s bin all the things you would expect them to forbid

00:56:26   messing with. Where are you supposed to put your stuff your unixi stuff? User local like like

00:56:33   they've been saying for years and years put your stuff in user local user local belongs to the user

00:56:38   apple will not blow it away on system installs i've been using it for a long long time now i've

00:56:43   I've never had it go wrong.

00:56:45   Usually local is your friend.

00:56:46   That's where you should put your Unix stuff.

00:56:49   And of course in your home directory

00:56:50   and all sorts of stuff like that.

00:56:52   The limitations that they're adding here,

00:56:55   you know, all sound good for the purposes

00:56:58   of increasing security,

00:57:00   but there are once again,

00:57:02   ramifications of them that are worth considering.

00:57:04   Like, you know, can't modify system binaries.

00:57:07   That's fine. You shouldn't be able to do that anyway.

00:57:08   Can't install things in the system locations.

00:57:10   That's fine.

00:57:11   Kernel extensions have to be signed.

00:57:12   Well, they had to be signed already.

00:57:12   That's not a new thing.

00:57:14   There may be some badly behaved software out there

00:57:17   that does currently try to shove stuff into bin,

00:57:19   user, Sbin, or something like that.

00:57:21   Maybe VMware does, but it's pretty easy for them to fix that

00:57:24   by just putting their stuff in user local.

00:57:25   So that's why I think VMware will probably be okay.

00:57:27   Kernel extensions, VMware, I think has kernel extensions.

00:57:29   I don't know, Casey, maybe you.

00:57:31   - I've never paid close enough attention,

00:57:32   but I would presume so.

00:57:34   - But if they do, you can still have kernel extensions.

00:57:35   Kernel extensions are still a thing.

00:57:36   They just have to be signed.

00:57:38   And I think there's probably some approval process

00:57:41   or something of that.

00:57:42   Like you know, official ATVtipster and VMware doesn't have kernel extensions.

00:57:45   But anyway, you can still have kernel extensions, they just have to be signed.

00:57:48   Oh, now he says it does and they're assigned.

00:57:52   Anyway, I think they're behind.

00:57:55   Anyway, that's not a big deal either.

00:57:56   It's just probably like installers that put stuff in slash bin just because they're shirts

00:58:00   in everybody's path and they realize you put it in user local bin and then, you know, modify

00:58:05   people's path or do whatever they have to do.

00:58:09   attached to running processes and inject code, you know, can't use dtrace probes on these

00:58:14   projected processes, all sorts of stuff like that.

00:58:17   This is a thing that you can disable, obviously.

00:58:20   You can't disable it by becoming root, so you're not going to do sudo some command and

00:58:24   then turn this off, because the whole point is root's power is limited.

00:58:27   If you want to disable it, you have to boot into the recovery OS and disable it from there,

00:58:31   the little recovery partition they put in there.

00:58:35   The configuration changes are stored in nvram, and if you turn off this mode, if you say

00:58:43   I don't want this rootless prediction anymore, that setting will persist across OS install,

00:58:47   so if you install a new OS it won't suddenly turn back on or whatever, so they're trying

00:58:50   to be friendly about this, although the slides say this system of how do I actually enable

00:58:54   this if I don't want it is subject to change.

00:58:59   This is again, I doubt most people will bother messing with this.

00:59:02   It's kind of like when trim support was only available if you turned off the kernel extension

00:59:06   signing verification.

00:59:07   Nobody wanted to do that and it was scary.

00:59:09   I don't think anyone would want to turn this off.

00:59:13   But there are ramifications for this type of decision and the one that came to my mind

00:59:17   immediately after hearing all sorts of Mac developers talk about this and developers

00:59:22   complaining for years about the things that the Mac App Store doesn't allow to exist,

00:59:26   like the kinds of apps that aren't allowed in the Mac App Store are very often the most

00:59:30   interesting apps to me.

00:59:31   And the one I thought of immediately is Dropbox, a fairly popular application that got its

00:59:37   start, the Mac version of it, got its start by making that magical folder that syncs.

00:59:43   But one of the key features I think of Dropbox when it was introduced and to this day is

00:59:48   that when you install Dropbox on OS X and you have your little Dropbox folder and you

00:59:53   drag things into it, it badges your little icon with like a little blue spinny thing,

00:59:58   and when it's completely synced you get a little green checkmark badge.

01:00:01   And those little badges, like it's like, oh, it's just a magical folder, but also there's

01:00:04   this little extra bit of UI that tells me when something has finished syncing.

01:00:08   Right?

01:00:09   That is, there weren't many features for Dropbox.

01:00:10   I made a folder with an icon, it did a bunch of magic stuff behind the scenes, and those

01:00:15   little icons were basically the whole UI, and also adding a context menu that pops up.

01:00:19   But those little icon badges, how the hell did they add little icon badges to the Finder?

01:00:23   Like, they didn't install an alternate version of the Finder.

01:00:25   Well, they did in-memory patching of the Finder process.

01:00:29   They, the finder was a running process

01:00:31   as part of the operating system,

01:00:32   and they would inject their own code

01:00:35   into the running image of the finder

01:00:37   to make it do those little badges.

01:00:40   You could not have Dropbox in a world

01:00:42   where rootless mode exists, in the old days.

01:00:44   Obviously now you can't because Apple made an official API

01:00:46   for it because there are no dummies

01:00:48   and they know Dropbox is really popular.

01:00:49   But what I'm thinking of is the next innovative app,

01:00:52   like Dropbox, like, you know, if Dropbox didn't exist,

01:00:56   El Capitan came out, became the dominant OS

01:00:58   install and someone had the idea for Dropbox, it could not exist on OS X

01:01:02   because there's no way to do what it did. The path that it followed was do

01:01:07   something super nasty that Apple doesn't like, keep fighting Apple for years to be

01:01:11   able to in memory patch their running process, eventually become so popular that

01:01:16   Apple is forced to give you an official API and then have Apple

01:01:20   close the door behind you and say now no one else can do what Dropbox did. And

01:01:25   And this is the type of thing that I worry about

01:01:29   from all of Apple's policies.

01:01:32   Not so much that they're going to stop me as a user from doing

01:01:35   what I want, because Apple's pretty good, at least on OS X,

01:01:37   for giving you a way to turn all this crap off

01:01:39   if you don't want it.

01:01:40   But that is necessarily limiting the types

01:01:44   of things creative third-party developers can do.

01:01:48   Where is the next Dropbox-- is the next Dropbox going

01:01:51   to even be on the Mac?

01:01:52   Is it even going to be able to get off the ground?

01:01:54   going to be able to get to the point where it can get to the level of popularity where

01:01:58   Apple is forced to put official support for the APIs that it wants into its operating system.

01:02:03   Or is Apple just slowly closing the door on interesting application ideas, which have never

01:02:11   been available on iOS because you've always been limited to what you do there, but the Mac has been

01:02:15   the remaining area where people can try crazy sorts of things, and even if Apple doesn't have

01:02:20   have an official API for them.

01:02:22   If something works and it becomes popular

01:02:24   and people want it, that's sort of the signal to Apple,

01:02:26   "Hey, people really like using their Macs to do this,

01:02:28   "and this company has been doing it

01:02:30   "in a super dangerous ways for years,

01:02:31   "maybe you can give them a nice API for that."

01:02:33   This rootless thing is like,

01:02:35   "Nope, you're never even gonna be able

01:02:36   "to do it a dangerous way,"

01:02:37   because no one's gonna be able to tell everybody.

01:02:39   Like Dropbox could not have gotten off the ground

01:02:40   if they had to tell everybody,

01:02:41   "Hey, by the way, reboot into recovery partition

01:02:43   "and turn off the security thing you don't understand

01:02:45   "and then install Dropbox, it's great."

01:02:46   Nobody would do it, it would not become popular.

01:02:48   So that is the promise and the worries

01:02:53   surrounding rootless mode or system integrity

01:02:57   or whatever you wanna call it in El Capitan.

01:02:59   - Do you think some degree of that might be solved

01:03:02   by market forces if necessary?

01:03:04   So for instance, suppose one of the ways

01:03:07   that a lot of these, one of the most common categories

01:03:10   of this kind of thing that I know of

01:03:12   are kind of hacks and plugins to mail .app.

01:03:16   Aren't most of those using some kind of thing like this

01:03:18   that won't be possible anymore?

01:03:20   - They were back in the day.

01:03:21   I don't know if they are, if that's the thing that goes on.

01:03:24   Does Apple have an official API

01:03:26   for mail plugins at this point?

01:03:28   I don't remember.

01:03:29   - I'm not sure.

01:03:29   Anyway, you can look at situations like that

01:03:33   where there's some system app and it has some shortcomings

01:03:37   or there's some compelling features

01:03:38   that can only be added by these kind of things, right?

01:03:42   And so you're saying like,

01:03:43   you know, we're not gonna see those at all.

01:03:45   I'm saying we will probably still see that.

01:03:48   Like if it's compelling enough,

01:03:50   we will still see those things,

01:03:52   but we will see them just in other places.

01:03:55   So in the example of Dropbox,

01:03:57   like we just won't see it on Mac.

01:04:00   You know, if that kind of thing is not possible,

01:04:01   it'll come to Windows first.

01:04:04   In reality, these days, mobile really matters so much,

01:04:07   I'm not sure, something like that could launch today

01:04:09   and end up mattering.

01:04:11   But regardless, you know, it would go on to platforms first.

01:04:14   In the case of application plugins, like mail plugins, if those become not possible through

01:04:20   any kind of rootless protection or anything like that, then we'll just see things like

01:04:25   alternative mail clients coming up with compelling features instead.

01:04:29   Do you think that's an equivalent thing, though?

01:04:31   Like the people who would make the mail plugin, making a full-fledged mail application that

01:04:36   includes the feature that you're on is a way higher bar than figuring out how to hack some

01:04:40   plugin into mail.

01:04:41   Well, look at where the innovation's happening now.

01:04:43   It's not in mail, it's in Gmail.

01:04:45   Anyway, maybe that was a bad example,

01:04:49   but there are things like that where there are other ways

01:04:52   for great compelling ideas to gain traction and get out.

01:04:56   And maybe it's harder,

01:04:56   and maybe some of them are closed off.

01:04:58   But overall, I see this as really just

01:05:02   another technological progression.

01:05:04   First, in the early days, you could just scribble

01:05:07   all over memory, now we have projected memory,

01:05:09   and you can't just do that quite as easily.

01:05:12   and a lot of these things are kind of

01:05:14   memory invasion hacks like that,

01:05:16   but some of them are not quite as bad as that,

01:05:19   but as technology progresses,

01:05:21   we're getting more and more protections and safeties

01:05:26   around things like system processes

01:05:29   and user security and everything,

01:05:30   and most of these protections cut off

01:05:34   categories of apps and hacks and add-ons

01:05:37   that were previously possible.

01:05:39   And so far, you can look back at these progressions

01:05:42   and I don't think anybody's arguing that we should undo

01:05:45   any of them or make holes in any of them.

01:05:47   Overall, I think we really have made substantial

01:05:52   improvements by adding more protection over time.

01:05:54   And there are certain things like, you know,

01:05:56   like the political downside of these protections

01:05:59   are things like they're not being able to side load apps

01:06:02   on iOS for users, you know, stuff like that.

01:06:03   And that's bad.

01:06:05   - Well, they improved that too on iOS 9.

01:06:07   Like now a regular person can build and sign

01:06:11   their own applications in Xcode and put it on their device

01:06:13   without doing any weird stuff, right?

01:06:15   - Well, yeah, I mean, yes, that's true.

01:06:17   It's, you know, that's of limited usefulness maybe

01:06:20   'cause most people are not gonna be able to do that,

01:06:22   but just skill-wise and time-wise, regardless,

01:06:26   these protections over time

01:06:28   generally improve computing for people.

01:06:30   They generally improve stability and improve security,

01:06:33   and usually we look at them all and say,

01:06:35   "You know what, we're better off now."

01:06:37   So most of these rootless protections are common sense.

01:06:40   There's only, you know, some of them might be restrictive

01:06:44   to applications and innovation and everything,

01:06:46   but I think the percentage of those

01:06:50   is gonna be extremely low,

01:06:51   relative to everything that matters in computing today,

01:06:54   where the innovation is happening in computing today.

01:06:56   I think it's moving away from places where it's important

01:06:59   to be able to inject code in random places

01:07:02   or modify system files.

01:07:03   I don't think we're seeing a lot

01:07:04   of that kind of innovation anymore,

01:07:06   I don't think we will, 'cause it's just the way

01:07:07   the world is moving.

01:07:08   So even if Apple didn't do this,

01:07:10   how likely is it that the next disruptive startup

01:07:12   was gonna be a finder hack?

01:07:14   Honestly, not that likely.

01:07:15   - How likely was it to begin with?

01:07:16   But it was, it totally was.

01:07:19   Dropbox was essentially a finder hack

01:07:20   and a bunch of Python scripts.

01:07:22   - Yeah, but how many years ago was that?

01:07:24   - I know, but I don't think it's outside

01:07:26   the realm of possibility.

01:07:27   As doors close, obviously it's like,

01:07:28   "Oh, we've seen less of these hacks."

01:07:30   Well, no doubt you're seeing less of these hacks,

01:07:31   'cause they're making them less possible.

01:07:33   But I agree with you.

01:07:34   I think I wouldn't, I'm not arguing against these protections, but I think if you're going

01:07:38   to add these protections, which I think you should do, you have to modify your other policies

01:07:45   to match the reality that you are now disallowing.

01:07:48   Because previously, intentionally or not, what Apple was relying on is sneaky, clever

01:07:54   people will find ways to bypass things and do things that we don't want them to do.

01:07:58   We will be angry about it and try to stop them.

01:08:02   But despite our best efforts, some of them are going to become wildly popular, and then

01:08:05   we will grudgingly add official API support.

01:08:08   And whether that is a conscious strategy or just how things turn out, that is sort of

01:08:14   the life cycle of the innovative software application on the Apple platform.

01:08:20   And if you change that life cycle by saying, "You know what?

01:08:24   We want to cut out the early part where they do the nasty thing in the gross way that we

01:08:27   don't think they should, because it's dumb.

01:08:29   We don't want people hacking.

01:08:30   I don't want people, you know, I didn't like the fact

01:08:32   that Dropbox did in-memory hacking.

01:08:33   I remember finding ways to disable it

01:08:34   by removing the little context menu,

01:08:36   like injecting things and stuff like that.

01:08:37   Like that's all bad.

01:08:39   But if you take that away,

01:08:41   you have to come up with a new life cycle.

01:08:43   And the new life cycle could be a developer, you know,

01:08:47   a bunch of developers have a reasonable request

01:08:49   for system API support for badging icons in the Finder.

01:08:53   The current Apple would,

01:08:55   there's no mechanism for you to get that API.

01:08:57   Like it's chicken and egg.

01:08:58   You can't say no matter how many developers say,

01:09:01   boy, we really wish there was a way

01:09:02   we could intercept audio system wide

01:09:03   'cause we have some great ideas

01:09:04   for like audio hijack three or whatever.

01:09:06   Like even if it's 15 different companies

01:09:09   or even if like Adobe and Microsoft said Apple,

01:09:11   it's just like, that doesn't seem important to us.

01:09:14   You shouldn't do that anyway.

01:09:15   Like there is no alternate life cycle for these innovations.

01:09:19   It's, they're cutting off one way

01:09:21   for these things to come out.

01:09:22   And I don't see them opening up to the point where like,

01:09:24   we're willing to entertain your suggestions for new APIs,

01:09:27   even if it's a lot of work for us to implement,

01:09:29   and it will only benefit you as a third party,

01:09:31   simply because we want those kind of innovative ideas

01:09:34   on our platform, right?

01:09:36   Like they need to, they need to make an alternate path.

01:09:39   Like I just put a link in the show notes

01:09:41   for the umpteenth time to my really old paths

01:09:43   in the grass thing with the,

01:09:45   which is a thing about hacksies with the Larry Wall quote,

01:09:47   which is not really his quote,

01:09:49   but he's quoting somebody else about university campus

01:09:53   where they don't pave anything

01:09:54   and they just let people walk around

01:09:55   and wherever they wore down the grass,

01:09:56   That's where you put the path

01:09:58   System hacks like that are telling you

01:10:00   What is it that people want to do and it's really like you need to come up with a good way to find out

01:10:04   All right

01:10:04   Do people really want stupid badges in their icons or this is just something some random kid at MIT thinks would be cool for people

01:10:10   To have it's not even a product. It's just a feature like it doesn't sound like

01:10:14   could

01:10:16   What's his name drew whatever could he somehow have convinced Apple to add an official API for badging icons in the finder?

01:10:23   I don't see how there's any way he could possibly do it like there needs but there needs to be some way

01:10:27   For if you can't do it the hacky way. What is the official way of doing? What is the official way of making?

01:10:34   OS X or iOS or any platform that Apple controls a

01:10:39   Viable place for you to do this new innovative thing that currently there's no well supported way to do and I use that Marcos like

01:10:46   Well, they can't do it here. They'll do it first on Windows or whatever like I think all computing platforms are moving in this direction

01:10:53   And secondarily, I don't think Apple would be happy

01:10:56   with the answer, oh, we'll just let the innovation happen

01:10:57   on another platform and we'll copy it, right?

01:10:59   Apple wants the innovation to happen on its platform,

01:11:02   but innovation is weird in that you can't predict

01:11:03   what it's gonna want, so you have to have some way

01:11:05   for the people with good ideas to be able to do

01:11:10   what they wanna do on your system.

01:11:12   And that's a harder problem, I think,

01:11:13   because back when you just let them hack stuff up,

01:11:16   you didn't have to decide.

01:11:18   You'd be like, well, that person did a crazy hack

01:11:19   and no one cares.

01:11:20   That person did a crazy hack and no one cares.

01:11:21   That one did a crazy hack and no one cares.

01:11:23   oh, this person did a crazy hack

01:11:24   and the entire world loves Dropbox.

01:11:26   Apple can't make that call.

01:11:27   How does Apple know?

01:11:28   Is it gonna listen to all those guys

01:11:30   and say, I want an API for this, I want an API for that?

01:11:32   Like in some respects, the old one

01:11:33   where you let the people hack your system

01:11:35   was easier for Apple,

01:11:36   but now they're kind of putting themselves on the hook

01:11:38   to either box out these creative ideas

01:11:41   or find some new way to sort of vet

01:11:44   which crazy ideas are worth implementing and which aren't.

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01:13:54   - Before we leave this topic,

01:13:55   real time follow up from the ATP Tips there.

01:13:57   VMware doesn't shove stuff in the system directories.

01:14:00   VMware does use kernel extensions

01:14:02   and VMware currently works in El Capitán's

01:14:05   seeds one through four.

01:14:06   - So life is good for me.

01:14:08   - Right, and he mentioned also too,

01:14:10   like Roga Miba's various audio hijacked products

01:14:13   and stuff like that, those all have signed kexts,

01:14:16   so those will all still work as well.

01:14:17   So I mean, I think--

01:14:18   - But they're not available in the Mac App Store, right?

01:14:20   - No, definitely.

01:14:21   Well, that doesn't mean anything these days.

01:14:22   - Right, but couldn't be available.

01:14:24   Not just basically their choice to put it there,

01:14:25   but they could not put the,

01:14:27   my understanding is that you could not put AudioHijacked

01:14:29   on the Mac App Store.

01:14:30   It violates the guidelines of the Mac App Store.

01:14:32   - As far as I know, that's true.

01:14:33   I mean, there are certain loopholes.

01:14:35   Some apps will, they'll have a basic version

01:14:38   on the App Store that can do some functionality,

01:14:39   but then to do anything fun,

01:14:40   you have to go to their website

01:14:41   and download this optional extra component

01:14:43   and all sorts of stuff like that.

01:14:44   there are there are different hacks, but for the most part, I think

01:14:48   whether something is allowed in the Mac App Store is almost completely irrelevant

01:14:54   to the possible innovation that can happen on the Mac because the fact is

01:14:58   the Mac App Store is just a disaster. If in so many ways, I mean the the actual

01:15:03   app itself from user perspective is awful. The policies are draconian and

01:15:09   restrictive and oppressive and way worse than iOS relative to what's normal on

01:15:14   the platform. It's buggy, it's just awful. There's so many things about it that are terrible

01:15:21   that we can't say that, well, if that won't fly in the Mac App Store, then it won't happen

01:15:27   on the Mac, because the fact is it's getting to the point now where the App Store is really

01:15:30   a ghost town and almost everything good on the Mac is outside of it.

01:15:34   But the Mac App Store, as bad as it is and people might be leaving it, I think it does

01:15:39   express what Apple wishes Mac apps would be like, like the fact that sandboxing was there

01:15:44   first and was a requirement and, you know, they don't want you to do any sort of hacks

01:15:49   and they don't want you to install stuff. Like, Apple wishes all apps, whereas nice

01:15:53   and neat and self-contained as the Mac App Store guidelines dictate.

01:15:58   Yeah, but the Mac App Store, it's like, it's like XHTML.

01:16:02   You really hate XHTML, don't you? You keep pulling that one out.

01:16:06   "Really, why not start?"

01:16:07   Well, no, it was a great example of like,

01:16:09   the cat was already out of the bag,

01:16:10   everyone was already doing things this whole other way,

01:16:13   and the standards groups would say,

01:16:14   "All right, we're gonna lock everything down

01:16:15   "and be very restrictive and formal.

01:16:17   "Here's the new way to do it."

01:16:18   And everyone basically just said, "No."

01:16:21   - XHTML had a transitional DTD.

01:16:23   It wasn't that hard and fast.

01:16:25   But I think the Mac App Store is more like,

01:16:28   it's all gonna be S expressions.

01:16:30   Forget about all those attributes and tags.

01:16:32   It's so limited, but the limitations of the Mac App Store,

01:16:35   I really feel like they express what Apple wishes Mac software development was like.

01:16:42   They don't match the reality of what Mac software development actually is like, and I don't

01:16:47   think they also are enough of an overlap with what users actually want.

01:16:52   I think applications like Audio Hijack fill a need for people who want that type of application.

01:16:57   Like this is great.

01:16:58   It makes me happy that I have my Mac, because this Mac can do this amazing thing with this

01:17:02   application that like lets me use my Mac to do interesting things but that can't

01:17:07   fit within the guidelines of the Mac App Store so I you know history has shown so

01:17:11   far that Apple has been really good about like well we'll have this Mac App

01:17:15   Store where we show you what we want to be but we're not gonna stop you from

01:17:18   loading crap like we'll do everything they can with like developer IDs and the

01:17:22   the what is it called gatekeeper thing and they even have like the gatekeeper

01:17:25   setting toggle back from the insecure one to the secure one if you like turn

01:17:29   on the insecure mode for a second you forget about it and you don't launch an

01:17:31   that wouldn't be allowed, like it toggles back, like they're trying to do everything they can

01:17:35   while allowing power users to do what they want, but still they just want everything to be kind of

01:17:39   herded over there. And eventually they're just going to come up against these hard things like

01:17:43   what if, you know, they should go through the exercise and say what if you really did want

01:17:47   everything to be in the Mac App Store but now you couldn't have Photoshop anymore? How would you

01:17:52   square that circle? What would you do to deal with it? You'd obviously have to do something because

01:17:55   you're not gonna say like, "Well tough luck, Adobe's got to rewrite their application so it fits in the

01:17:58   in the Mac App Store.

01:17:59   Like they would figure out, hey, Adobe, what do you need to get like, and they just don't

01:18:03   seem to extend that sort of effort to these smaller applications.

01:18:09   And so we're left in the situation where most Mac software that people really like and care

01:18:12   about is either not in the Mac App Store or not in the Mac App Store only, and more and

01:18:17   more software that people do care about is leaving the Mac App Store because it's too

01:18:19   much of a hassle to be there.

01:18:21   And I don't think this is bad software, like Panix applications, you know, talk about the

01:18:24   poster child for like doing things the Apple way.

01:18:26   they're practically a miniature Apple,

01:18:28   even they can't stick it out in some cases

01:18:30   for the Mac App Store for their applications

01:18:31   'cause it's just too darn much of a hassle.

01:18:33   Did they leave the App Store

01:18:34   or did they just get rid of the iCloud thing?

01:18:36   I forget, I think they just did their own sync service

01:18:38   'cause they couldn't handle the iCloud thing.

01:18:40   Maybe they did leave for one of them, I don't remember.

01:18:43   - Anyway, the fact is the Mac App Store

01:18:46   has been, I think, a colossal failure.

01:18:48   I mean, not a level of ping, but not,

01:18:52   but honestly not that far off in just like,

01:18:56   how much people are using it these days, how relevant it is, how much it is

01:19:01   really not at all the future of of deployment and sales on the Mac. I mean

01:19:06   it again it's not as bad as ping but I don't like it's that far off. It really

01:19:10   is terrible. It really has been a huge failure and it seems like it seems like

01:19:15   there are lots of forces within Apple and and you know some of it just like

01:19:20   inertia. Some of it might be politics. I don't know. I don't know the internals,

01:19:23   but it just seems like whatever forces got it to that state

01:19:27   where it's in now where Apple just tried to rule

01:19:31   with such an iron fist, especially with sandboxing

01:19:34   coming in after the fact, which really hurt things.

01:19:37   Just ruling with such an iron fist there

01:19:39   that everyone really just left.

01:19:42   And now as a consumer, we've tipped the point where like,

01:19:45   I used to, when it first came out,

01:19:47   I used to buy as many things there as I could

01:19:49   because then I wouldn't have to deal

01:19:51   with serial numbers or anything.

01:19:52   and I knew I could install it on my laptop and my desktop

01:19:55   and it wouldn't give me crap.

01:19:58   But what has happened since then is enough big apps

01:20:01   have left it that now I'm afraid to buy anything there.

01:20:06   Now if something's available in or out of the App Store,

01:20:09   I'll buy it out of the App Store by default now.

01:20:11   So, and I feel like that's happened with a lot of people.

01:20:14   Like as soon as that happens to you once,

01:20:16   where like an app you bought in the App Store

01:20:18   then leaves the App Store,

01:20:18   I think as soon as that happens to you once,

01:20:20   you're very likely to switch in that way, the way I did.

01:20:24   - Yeah, there's still a barrier though

01:20:25   to buying outside the App Store for normals, right?

01:20:27   For regular people, like, there's a reason

01:20:29   everyone loves the iOS App Store.

01:20:31   Like, you just click, click, oh, you got a thing.

01:20:33   Like, especially because so many people

01:20:34   have iTunes accounts and their credit card is already there.

01:20:36   Like, the benefits are there for regular people.

01:20:38   It's a luxury that we have to be like,

01:20:40   oh, I know what to do when I get burned in this way.

01:20:43   'Cause I think regular people do get burned.

01:20:45   And by the way, CMF in the chat room pointed out

01:20:46   that Coda 2 is the one I was thinking of,

01:20:48   is out of the Mac App Store.

01:20:49   What about all those people who bought Coda on the Mac App Store and now it's out of it?

01:20:53   They have the frustration, they're in the situation, but are all of them ready to know

01:20:57   which website to go to and know how to buy it online and deal with the serial numbers

01:21:03   and do it like, "We're okay with that," because that's the way it was for the longest time,

01:21:07   but for people who came into computers in the iOS App Store age, they're used to just

01:21:12   going someplace and clicking a thing and getting the application and just having it there.

01:21:18   Those benefits are still there.

01:21:19   And you mentioned like them ruling with an iron fist

01:21:21   in the Mac App Store.

01:21:21   I think the problem is that they,

01:21:26   it wasn't that they're ruling with iron fist.

01:21:27   They have the carrot and the stick, right?

01:21:29   And the stick was sort of floppy and non-existent

01:21:33   because bottom line,

01:21:34   you didn't have to buy through the Mac App Store.

01:21:36   You can get your stuff.

01:21:37   So the stick is barely there.

01:21:38   Like they don't really have much of a stick

01:21:40   to make people be in the Mac App Store

01:21:42   as evidenced by all the people leaving it, right?

01:21:44   And the carrot was kind of a rotten, crappy carrot too.

01:21:47   So there was no real stick to force people to be there

01:21:50   and no real carrot for you.

01:21:51   Like, this is why you should be in it.

01:21:53   In the beginning, it seemed like there was a carrot.

01:21:54   Hey, people are excited by the Mac App Store.

01:21:55   I gotta be there to get the sales.

01:21:57   But as it kind of fizzled,

01:21:58   the carrot is looking less appealing.

01:22:00   And like there basically is no stick.

01:22:02   Like even for regular people,

01:22:04   if anyone has a Mac and knows how to buy software

01:22:07   for it at all, like you can Google and find something

01:22:11   and something like it's difficult,

01:22:12   but it's no more difficult than it was before the App Store.

01:22:14   It's exactly as difficult.

01:22:15   And before the Mac App Store existed,

01:22:17   people made money selling software for the Mac somehow.

01:22:20   It wasn't a mass market like iOS.

01:22:22   It wasn't something that everybody did.

01:22:24   The number of people who owned Macs

01:22:25   and who bought software for it was much smaller

01:22:27   than the number of people who had iOS devices

01:22:29   and install apps.

01:22:30   Everyone who's got an iOS device

01:22:31   is just tapping around that app store

01:22:32   and installing something, right?

01:22:34   Even if it's just a Facebook app, right?

01:22:36   But it was still a viable business.

01:22:37   So it seems like we're slowly reverting to that

01:22:39   where the Mac App Store is filled with the few apps

01:22:42   that can still fit within its guidelines

01:22:45   And again, like Coda and Panic,

01:22:48   when Panic can't get their app on your thing,

01:22:49   like they're like the most conscientious,

01:22:52   like made in Apple's image,

01:22:54   all the similar like quality

01:22:57   and wanting to do the right thing.

01:22:59   And they struggled with a really long time

01:23:00   with sandboxing with their application,

01:23:02   trying to make a go of it,

01:23:03   working with Apple for like a year, two years.

01:23:06   Like if they can't make them go with like,

01:23:08   what hope is there for anybody else?

01:23:10   Because Coda is not like, you know,

01:23:14   an application that's injecting code into the finder

01:23:16   to put badges on icons.

01:23:17   Like, it's an IDE for web development,

01:23:19   for crying out loud, and you can't have that,

01:23:21   is that outside the realm of things

01:23:22   you can have on the Mac now?

01:23:24   - Well, Xcode's in the Mac App Store,

01:23:25   not that that counts 'cause it's Apple's.

01:23:27   - That's the best thing, like, you know,

01:23:28   Apple can put stuff in the Mac App Store,

01:23:29   it does whatever the hell it wants,

01:23:31   'cause the rules don't apply to Apple.

01:23:33   - Which is part of the problem, I mean,

01:23:34   that's part of the problem with both App Stores,

01:23:35   but especially the Mac one is that they don't dog food

01:23:37   most of these things, so it's really, it's a disaster.

01:23:40   Well, and even as users, so not only am I now

01:23:43   disincentivized from buying things there

01:23:46   that are available elsewhere, but in recent times,

01:23:49   I don't even look there anymore,

01:23:51   because so many great apps are not available there,

01:23:54   and it only takes a couple of times you're looking for an app

01:23:57   before you kind of develop that pattern of,

01:23:59   you know, now I have to look in the App Store

01:24:01   and out of the App Store.

01:24:02   Like in iOS, it's great, you can just look in one place

01:24:04   and you can see this is everything

01:24:05   available for this platform.

01:24:06   For the Mac, it was never that way,

01:24:08   but at least when it started, you could tell

01:24:10   it's going this way, and there was more stuff there

01:24:13   it seemed like. Now it's like if I want an app to do X, I have to search in the Mac App

01:24:17   Store and then I also have to do a web search and I also have to find, it's like...

01:24:20   - Yeah, it's like the bad old days when you just like, you didn't have one place to look.

01:24:24   Again, this is something that should be an advantage for the Mac App Store and it's just

01:24:28   not enough, it's just not enough of a carrot. That's why people weren't in the beginning.

01:24:31   Well, I'll be findable. People don't even know that a website exists. People don't know

01:24:35   where to even start to get Mac App Store, to get Mac software. But hey, here's a place

01:24:39   to start. It's right at the top of the Apple menu. Let me just go there. And I think, I

01:24:43   fear what's happening now is people go to that item at the top of the Apple menu

01:24:48   and they think that's all there is for the platform. Like that's a natural thing

01:24:52   to think if you are someone who like came to the Mac from iOS or whatever, "Oh

01:24:55   I guess these are all the things I can get for the Mac." Maybe someone might have

01:24:59   heard of Photoshop and go, "Where's Photoshop? Isn't that it? I've heard of that. Isn't

01:25:02   that not that I guess the casual people wouldn't buy Photoshop because it's an

01:25:05   expensive application but or I guess Microsoft Office too. Is that in the

01:25:09   Mac App Store? I forget. I think it might be actually. Yeah. Anyway like some things

01:25:12   are still outside of it.

01:25:14   And there are applications, like Apple applications,

01:25:16   that don't have to abide by the rules.

01:25:18   But that would be the worst thing.

01:25:20   If you get a Mac and think that the stuff on the Mac App

01:25:23   Store is the extent of what you can do with a Mac,

01:25:27   you're just missing out on too much stuff.

01:25:31   Is Dropbox in the Mac App Store?

01:25:33   Maybe it is now that they have the icon badging thing.

01:25:35   But certainly in the old days, that Dropbox

01:25:37   couldn't be in the Mac App Store because it injected code

01:25:39   into the Finder.

01:25:40   Not going to be on the Mac App Store.

01:25:41   if you thought that you got a Mac and you couldn't get Dropbox? Like, I went to the

01:25:45   Mac App Store and I couldn't find Dropbox. Is that not a thing on the Mac? Like, because

01:25:48   I've heard my friends talk about it and they said I should get it, but I don't see it anywhere.

01:25:51   - Right, and like, first of all, little aside here, Dropbox for me has never worked worse

01:25:57   than it does on Yosemite. It has, because when they added that integration, the Finder

01:26:03   integration with the extension point so they don't have to inject code, it's buggy as hell.

01:26:07   It's so buggy. I can't, and I tweeted about this and a bunch of people said they see the

01:26:11   the same thing. I constantly have issues where a file will be updated, you know, remotely

01:26:17   from somewhere else. Often it's like our shared folder when you guys upload your audio. A

01:26:21   file will be updated and in Finder, in Finder windows, it will lose its badge and it will

01:26:28   be the old file name, not the new one. So basically a ghost file name will appear to

01:26:34   be there. And if you go into terminal and you LS it, it shows the correct contents.

01:26:37   But in the Finder window, it's showing stale contents.

01:26:39   And it'll still show an old file,

01:26:41   and a new file won't show up until you relaunch Finder,

01:26:44   in which case it'll be fixed for 20 minutes, maybe.

01:26:47   So many people have reported that they have the same problem.

01:26:50   Old Dropbox never had that problem.

01:26:52   Like, this is, you get another thing,

01:26:53   it's like they, ugh, high ground.

01:26:55   Anyway.

01:26:56   (laughing)

01:26:57   - Haxes, man, hacksies, like,

01:26:59   that's the thing about the whole, like,

01:27:00   injecting memory into another process.

01:27:02   - Yeah, I know, right?

01:27:03   - The applications that become popular that do that

01:27:06   necessarily have to be the ones written by people who really know the ins and outs.

01:27:10   Not that again I'm recommending this, it's a crazy practice or whatever, but how are

01:27:14   hacksies a thing for so long?

01:27:16   Unsanity this company, making these products that just like did terrible things to your

01:27:20   system, how did that work at all?

01:27:22   How did they ever become popular?

01:27:23   It's because the people who made them were able to find ways to do them that would actually

01:27:28   work for a large number of people, which is incredibly hard, it's not a scalable way to

01:27:31   do development, but it kind of weeds out all the people who wanted to find hacky ways to

01:27:35   who didn't know every little intricate detail,

01:27:37   'cause they would just crash your system

01:27:38   and you would never use them.

01:27:40   And so the people who did Dropbox,

01:27:41   I think there was a presentation on this,

01:27:43   went to heroic efforts to figure out

01:27:44   how to safely patch the Finder,

01:27:46   which is a terrible way to do this

01:27:47   and an official API is better,

01:27:48   but it was entirely in their hands

01:27:50   to figure out how to do this.

01:27:51   Whereas now you're cooperating with Apple

01:27:53   and Apple's Finder team on,

01:27:56   we'll make this API and you can use it

01:27:57   and you know what it's like with Apple APIs.

01:27:58   The first release that it's out in,

01:28:01   there are bugs, it doesn't work right or whatever.

01:28:03   You're hoping the next year it will fix the bugs

01:28:06   and like, you know, and El Capitan,

01:28:08   this new API will work better or whatever,

01:28:09   but maybe not, maybe it's not a big priority for them.

01:28:12   So I don't know what kind of hope there is

01:28:14   for this getting less buggy for you.

01:28:15   I haven't had as many problems as you described for it,

01:28:18   but I have seen situations where like,

01:28:20   what I get usually is like the badges don't appear.

01:28:22   I'm like, doesn't this have integration?

01:28:24   Is this supposed to be officially API?

01:28:25   Why do I, where do I see no badges?

01:28:28   Like, is it even working?

01:28:29   And then like the context menus, the same thing.

01:28:31   Like I think it was officially before.

01:28:34   Anyway, real time follow from the chat room,

01:28:36   Dropbox is not in the Mac App Store.

01:28:37   I did a search for Dropbox in the Mac App Store.

01:28:39   I get a screen full of results that say things like

01:28:41   app drive for Dropbox, app for Dropbox, app for Dropbox menu,

01:28:46   drop for Dropbox, drag share for Dropbox, app for Dropbox,

01:28:49   instant app for Dropbox, instant app for Dropbox,

01:28:51   plus Swift drop for Dropbox.

01:28:54   Anyway, search in the App Store and Apple's decision

01:28:58   to let everything in, but draw no distinction.

01:29:00   Like, I don't even know what these things are,

01:29:02   but I fear for someone saying they want Dropbox.

01:29:04   And these have prices, 299, 299, 499.

01:29:08   I don't think there's any free,

01:29:09   oh, there's a couple of free ones here and there.

01:29:10   Droplight for Dropbox, DVR Webcam Dropbox,

01:29:14   revisions for Dropbox.

01:29:15   I fear for someone thinking the Mac App Store

01:29:18   is where you get applications.

01:29:19   I've heard of this thing called Dropbox.

01:29:21   Let me go find it.

01:29:22   Faced with this screen, I don't know what they would do.

01:29:25   But they certainly wouldn't get Dropbox,

01:29:26   I can tell you that, 'cause it's not here.

01:29:28   - Right, well, and that's exactly the thing.

01:29:29   it only takes a couple of times of searching for something

01:29:32   that you know is out there and not finding it

01:29:35   in the Mac App Store before you just stop looking

01:29:37   in the Mac App Store.

01:29:38   - Or you download half of these,

01:29:39   'cause they all have, obviously they all have Dropbox icon.

01:29:41   Like they all have a little box that is either

01:29:43   an exact copy of the Dropbox icon

01:29:45   or someone trying to redraw the Dropbox.

01:29:47   Like, oh, it's so bad.

01:29:50   - Yeah, App Store searches all other can of worms.

01:29:53   So things are going really well in the Mac App Store then.

01:29:55   Oh my God.

01:29:56   Yeah, and we should mention Craig Hockenberry's

01:29:57   recent post too on this.

01:29:58   - Yeah, I was gonna say, just so we can put it in the show.

01:30:01   Someone mentioned it.

01:30:02   - Yeah, yeah, definitely read this,

01:30:04   'cause it's like, you know,

01:30:05   'cause one of the problems with the Mac App Store

01:30:07   and Mac development in general

01:30:08   is not only that there's all these policy issues

01:30:12   and ruling with the iron fist

01:30:14   and their floppy care and lack of stick,

01:30:16   but also it's like they're ruling

01:30:18   with a neglectful iron fist.

01:30:20   Like, they don't even care,

01:30:22   and so many luxuries that iOS developers get

01:30:25   or new features that iOS developers get

01:30:27   from things like iTunes connect iCloud API's. So many of them

01:30:32   don't come to the Mac at all or come very late to the Mac and

01:30:36   like Craig's, that's examples of like test flight builds and

01:30:39   something that where it's just like this stuff is like and

01:30:41   usually it's promised for Mac. It's like oh Mac will have it

01:30:43   soon and just hardly ever gets there gets there very late or

01:30:47   whatever and yeah, it just obviously the Mac API wise

01:30:52   development wise and Mac services for developers.

01:30:55   Obviously, these things are not incredibly high priorities

01:30:59   at Apple because if they were,

01:31:02   regardless of what Apple says

01:31:03   and regardless of what we hear from hardworking people

01:31:06   inside the company who are in the middle

01:31:08   of the hierarchy somewhere,

01:31:10   regardless of that, we can just tell by their actions,

01:31:12   you can tell by their results that this is not the priority.

01:31:16   iOS is the priority.

01:31:17   iOS has way more users, brings in way more money,

01:31:19   is way more high profile.

01:31:21   Obviously, that's the higher priority

01:31:22   and I can't really fault them for that

01:31:24   but it's unfortunate as Mac users,

01:31:25   and it's even more unfortunate if you're a Mac developer

01:31:28   that you're really on what used to be

01:31:31   the thing Apple cared so much about,

01:31:32   and now is clearly third or fourth priority these days.

01:31:37   - The one that hurts the most is where they did the thing

01:31:39   where they disabled app reviews from beta versions of iOS,

01:31:43   and they didn't do it on the Mac.

01:31:45   That's not a hard, I don't know how to say,

01:31:47   oh, that's so easy to do, but look,

01:31:49   they dedicated the resources to do it on iOS.

01:31:51   That feels like the type of thing,

01:31:52   just to save face, you would like,

01:31:54   can we do that for the Mac users too?

01:31:56   Is it that big a deal?

01:31:58   Maybe they will do it eventually.

01:31:59   Maybe it takes longer to patch the Mac App Store application.

01:32:01   Maybe there's no one working on the Mac App Store

01:32:03   application.

01:32:04   I don't know what the details are,

01:32:05   but that one really hurts.

01:32:06   'Cause like everyone's so excited.

01:32:08   Hey, people can't review.

01:32:09   Nevermind that it's kind of like a little too little,

01:32:11   little too late because already betas are in people's hands

01:32:13   and they were writing reviews, but they fixed it, right?

01:32:15   Not for Mac users.

01:32:16   Sorry, you don't even get that.

01:32:18   You don't even get what you think is probably like the

01:32:19   lowest effort type of, nope.

01:32:22   just not a priority at all.

01:32:24   And in some respects, like the Craig Hagenberry thing

01:32:26   is coming at it from the perspective of a Mac developer.

01:32:29   And as people have always said, Apple cares about--

01:32:31   Apple first, users second, developers third or later.

01:32:35   It's a reasonable prioritization.

01:32:37   So it's like a lot of times developers want things from

01:32:39   Apple that Apple doesn't give them because they think it's

01:32:42   more important for users to have something or for Apple to

01:32:44   have something.

01:32:45   But this is a case of developer versus developer.

01:32:47   It's comparing what is it like if you're developing for

01:32:49   Apple's most popular platform or developing for Apple's

01:32:52   second most popular platform and it's a hell of a drop-off going to the second

01:32:57   most popular and we'll see what happens if suddenly the watch becomes the second

01:32:59   most popular one then you're then you're developing for the third most popular

01:33:02   not good yeah I honestly yeah I'm not sure that'll happen but that's another

01:33:08   show and either way remember just a couple years ago years ago we came back

01:33:11   to the Mac so things are fine don't worry about it I mean I think they did

01:33:16   do are doing better with API parity because so many guys reappear in both

01:33:21   like extensions API that did come out at the same time in both.

01:33:24   But just kind of when that happens it's like it's like a boost to the Mac because like

01:33:28   oh I wouldn't expect that I would expect it to be iOS first and Mac second when it comes

01:33:32   out simultaneous you're like wow the Mac really got a boost there but that's a user

01:33:35   facing feature it's not a developer facing feature and so yeah the there is a priority

01:33:40   cascade and it does still affect things but yeah.

01:33:42   And I would not hold out any hope for improvements to the Mac App Store I mean like the beta

01:33:46   thing you said like you know like not allowing people to review from betas.

01:33:51   Just look at the state of the Mac App Store application itself.

01:33:56   Just try to use it for anything.

01:33:57   Try to do anything in it.

01:33:58   Try to browse anything.

01:34:00   Obviously doing anything to this app is, it must be extraordinarily difficult and impossible

01:34:06   inside Apple to get anything done inside this app because it doesn't happen.

01:34:09   - I just don't think there's a lot of people working on it though.

01:34:11   I think the underlying frameworks probably have people working on them.

01:34:14   Like the things that, again, was telling you you can run updates from the application and

01:34:18   and close the application entirely,

01:34:19   but the updates still run because there are like

01:34:22   processes and demons behind the scene

01:34:24   that manage software updates.

01:34:25   Those I think are being worked on because they, you know,

01:34:28   they do the OS updates and they do app updates.

01:34:31   I think there's people working on those,

01:34:33   but sort of the gooey skin that provides like the view

01:34:35   into the store and does all that, that seems like,

01:34:39   I don't think, I can't remember the last time

01:34:40   a new feature appeared in that.

01:34:41   Maybe they have someone fixing the most egregious bugs.

01:34:44   It just seems like no one's working on it.

01:34:45   I can honestly say it's worse than iTunes.

01:34:49   It has many of the same problems and challenges of iTunes

01:34:52   of having this giant web service rendering

01:34:56   what's basically a big web view in the app.

01:34:58   - Is it a web view or is it like XML

01:35:00   like the iTunes store used to be?

01:35:02   Remember when the iTunes store was like custom XML?

01:35:04   - Yeah, that's a good question.

01:35:05   It might be that.

01:35:06   It feels like a big web view.

01:35:07   It behaves like a big web view.

01:35:08   - It could be like, what is that thing

01:35:10   that they bought for iOS, like Chomp or whatever,

01:35:12   like the thing when they redid the regular app store?

01:35:15   Oh yeah, when they made the search suck even more by having those big cards they don't

01:35:18   let you see one app at a time on screen, that was great.

01:35:20   Yeah, anyway we shouldn't be trying to guess what the underlying technologies are. Who

01:35:23   cares, we just know the end result is an application that does weird things and sometimes the only

01:35:26   solution is to close it and relaunch it or to restart your Mac and that's not good.

01:35:31   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Igloo, Squarespace, and Need, and we will

01:35:35   see you next week.

01:35:37   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:35:44   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:35:49   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:35:55   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:36:00   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:36:06   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:36:10   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:36:15   So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:36:19   Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C

01:36:24   USA, Syracuse

01:36:26   It's accidental

01:36:30   They didn't mean to

01:36:32   Accidental

01:36:35   Tech Nitecast, so long

01:36:40   I joined a gym.

01:36:42   You joined a gym?

01:36:44   I joined a gym.

01:36:45   What are you going to do with the gym?

01:36:47   It's gonna lift heavy things.

01:36:49   I haven't done that yet.

01:36:50   I probably won't.

01:36:51   It's gonna run in place like a hamster in a wheel.

01:36:54   I haven't done that yet.

01:36:55   I have walked really fast in place though.

01:36:57   Does that count?

01:36:58   Like a hamster that's not in a hurry.

01:37:00   Yeah, yeah.

01:37:01   Like a hamster who's reading his iPhone.

01:37:03   How does that work with the official Marco wardrobe?

01:37:06   What do you mean?

01:37:07   I wear shirts there and then I wear them home.

01:37:09   t-shirt and he's got I'm sorry do you have shorts as part of the wardrobe in

01:37:14   the summertime yes I do wear shorts because it's just it's way too hot for

01:37:17   pants in the summertime and I don't like I really hate shorts honestly but but I

01:37:21   own shorts because I live somewhere with with summer that's a season you do have

01:37:25   Casey yep so you're doing this to fill your circles I am yeah I mean that you

01:37:30   know I would like to generally stay healthy you know but but yes it

01:37:33   essentially really is just for the circles so those of those circle filling

01:37:37   in the gym. Are you like dropping pounds? Some, yeah. I'm down, I don't know, like six

01:37:43   pounds and for like the two months or something. I don't know. I'm down some. It's not a dramatic

01:37:49   thing because I'm still eating ice cream, but it's the Apple. It's the Apple watch versus

01:37:54   Blue Apron. Blue Apron is fine. No, Blue Apron is actually great because it's pretty small

01:37:59   portions. It's ever since we started that it's been actually easier to be healthy and

01:38:05   lose weight because it is so, it's just, it's, you know, a dinner from Lou April.

01:38:10   And even if you add more oil than they tell you to, because you have to add more

01:38:14   oil than they tell you to, because the amount they tell you to is not nearly

01:38:16   enough to fry those vegetables, even if you add more oil than they tell you to,

01:38:19   you're still under a thousand calories for dinner. And that's pretty good. So,

01:38:22   anyway, yeah, I mean, I joined the gym because I live in an area with a great

01:38:29   great variety of weather and a good portion of that weather is not that pleasant to be

01:38:36   walking very quickly for three miles outside. So I joined earlier this week when it was

01:38:42   like ninety degrees one day and in a billion percent humidity and I joined during that

01:38:49   day and it's like ten bucks a month for what's basically the worst gym in the world, but

01:38:54   I don't care because it's ten bucks a month and that means I don't have to buy a treadmill

01:38:57   and put it in the house anywhere.

01:38:59   - So you're scoping out the gym people?

01:39:00   You're doing some people watching?

01:39:02   Seeing the varieties of people that show up at the gym?

01:39:04   - In my two visits to the gym so far,

01:39:07   I have not seen that many other people, honestly.

01:39:09   It's a pretty big gym, and I go at weird times

01:39:14   when everyone else is working.

01:39:15   So I go when it's almost empty.

01:39:17   So I've seen a handful of people,

01:39:20   and I just kinda look straight ahead

01:39:21   and look at, I watch my iPhone stuff.

01:39:24   - You're watching video on your iPod?

01:39:25   You're reading things?

01:39:26   You're listening to podcasts?

01:39:27   I haven't quite figured all this out yet. The first, again, I've only gone twice. This

01:39:31   was this week and it's been nice other days this week. So I've been doing, I've been walking

01:39:35   outside other days this week. But the first time I did podcasts and it was, it was kind

01:39:41   of boring because like I'm fine doing podcasts when I walk outside because like visually

01:39:45   I'm amused by the outside world. But when you're just like walking on a treadmill, staring

01:39:50   at bad cable TV that you're not listening to, you're listening to podcasts, it's kind

01:39:53   boring. So the last time I went, I did, I watched Nevins CocoConf talk. That was really good.

01:39:58   And I'll link to that in the show notes, I guess. So I was, and that was like, that was an hour long,

01:40:03   so that was perfect. So maybe this might actually be a good time to watch conference talks

01:40:07   and do other things that are, that have a visual component.

01:40:11   I need to get you some VR goggles.

01:40:12   I don't know about that. Hey, does, have you either of you guys ever used a treadmill before?

01:40:17   Yeah.

01:40:17   Does the thing where you have like vertigo after you get off, does that ever go away?

01:40:22   - What?

01:40:23   - I can't say that I got that one.

01:40:25   - Yeah.

01:40:25   - Maybe you're just getting lightheaded

01:40:26   because it's only your second day at the gym.

01:40:30   - No.

01:40:31   - No, maybe it's because you're looking at the screen

01:40:33   and not paying attention to what's going on around you.

01:40:35   - Yeah, maybe you're getting motion sick.

01:40:37   - Well, yeah, it's like when I'm on it, I'm fine,

01:40:39   but then if I stop, and I've tried slowing it down gradually

01:40:43   but it doesn't really matter.

01:40:45   Whenever I stop, I feel like I've gotten off a boat.

01:40:48   You're like, whoa, you know, and I feel, yeah,

01:40:50   I don't feel great for a few minutes afterwards.

01:40:53   - You might be getting motion sick.

01:40:55   - I mean, it seems like it's a form of motion sickness

01:40:57   where it's, I don't know, people in the chat

01:40:58   are saying you get used to it.

01:41:00   - The times I've been in a treadmill

01:41:01   have been staring at an iPhone in front of me, right?

01:41:03   - Exactly. - So I don't know,

01:41:05   maybe that is a common thing if you're,

01:41:06   especially if you're like, the difference between

01:41:08   the iPhone in front of you and the TV across the room,

01:41:10   I think is a big difference in terms of

01:41:11   where you're focusing.

01:41:13   - Well, the problem is it's a TV on your treadmill

01:41:15   right in front of you.

01:41:17   And I've tried looking at the ceiling,

01:41:18   looking across the room, I've tried other things

01:41:20   bad. It doesn't really seem to make that big of a difference, like where I'm looking at

01:41:25   just like I'm running so my body thinks I'm moving forward, or my brain thinks I'm moving

01:41:29   forward. So it's probably compensating for that. And then when I stop walking in place,

01:41:36   then it has to switch back to the uncompensated mode, and I think that's what causes that.

01:41:40   But...

01:41:41   So if you had VR goggles as you walked, you'd be moving through a forest, a virtual forest,

01:41:46   while a virtual screen floats in front of you. So you can watch an Evans Conference

01:41:49   talk while walking through a virtual Yosemite.

01:41:53   I could do that or I could just like use the bikes and ellipticals instead. I don't know.

01:41:57   Or you just walk outside. I'm amazed that you hate humidity so much that you'd rather

01:42:00   walk in. Like people usually go to the gym like in the winter when you know it's freezing

01:42:03   outside.

01:42:04   Well, and that's I've I knew like you know I got the Apple Watch in late April when it

01:42:09   was really beautiful outside and it's been pretty beautiful since then. But I've known

01:42:12   like well winter is going to come eventually and I'm going to like I want to keep this

01:42:16   this up in the winter and winter here is pretty bad, not as bad as you, but but

01:42:20   pretty bad and and so I wanted to have some kind of option and I looked into

01:42:26   like you know should I get a treadmill in my house and there's it seemed like

01:42:30   there's almost no reason for a regular person to do that there's like that the

01:42:35   pros and cons you need some place to hang laundry yeah yeah well it ends up

01:42:39   they're huge like I know they're giant turns out oh my god like when you're

01:42:42   when they're in a gym you don't you really realize it but like when you when

01:42:45   like tape out measurements in your house or how big a treadmill actually is, oh my god

01:42:49   they're massive.

01:42:50   And not just how much room it takes up, but especially for the ones that like, if they're

01:42:53   like a stair thing or whatever, like how much room you need around them for swinging body

01:42:57   parts and getting on and getting off and then if the thing has moved, moving itself.

01:43:01   Yeah, for the winter activity maybe you have almost the makings, well maybe not for you,

01:43:06   maybe for Adam, if you could get hops and the other two dogs that your parents have,

01:43:11   you could have the makings of a kind of like a dog sled team.

01:43:13   You just need to be like maybe they could pull at them if you just get four of them instead of three

01:43:18   Then it would be even that would be adorable. Oh

01:43:20   My god, that's way better than buying a treadmill

01:43:23   Now that I put that idea into your head. I want to see some pictures of that. All right, well work it out

01:43:28   Because because there's one thing that breed of dog does well is pull in the same direction, right?

01:43:35   I'm just gonna run in five different directions. You'll bring

01:43:38   Yeah, yeah, that'll be interesting

01:43:41   Anyway, yeah, you can't exercise outside in the winter people do it

01:43:44   Speaking of rogue amoeba Paul kapas is out there with his bare feet in 20 degree below weather

01:43:49   That Paul kapas is is not a fair comparison

01:43:52   He's like a superhuman that it is not it is not fair to to hold me up to his standard at all not even close

01:43:56   I just I cannot believe like when you saw the watch announcement was the first thing that popped in your head

01:44:03   Darn it. I'm gonna join a gym not even close right like how did we get from a to B?

01:44:09   here doesn't have the antibodies it was infected you're right because even like

01:44:14   when when when we first started seeing good pictures of it I was concerned

01:44:18   seeing the sensor bubble on the bottom and I was concerned that would be

01:44:21   uncomfortable pressing into my skin so I even have said in the past like before

01:44:25   eight before I got it I was like you know if they just made a model that

01:44:28   lacked all the fitness features and lacked that big bubble on the bottom

01:44:31   I'd buy that instead so it'd be more comfortable and yeah now now that I

01:44:35   have it no I would never do that that that's stupid I'm depressed at how

01:44:38   strong my antibodies are and how little I care about the circles. I really wished I

01:44:41   was more like Marco. I was like, maybe it's got Marco's got into it. Maybe, you know,

01:44:46   I haven't done anything like this in a while. Maybe I'll still get back into it. God, I

01:44:50   just can't.

01:44:51   We can start competing with each other. Do you have those antibodies or whatever?

01:44:54   Maybe that would help. Like, Apple doesn't really have that integration. You have to

01:44:57   use like some third-party app that keeps track of it. That's a underscore should add that

01:45:01   to a pedometer plus plus if it's not already there, like a competition. Maybe that actually

01:45:04   would help, but I don't know.

01:45:06   Well, one of the problems also is that even in WatchKit 2, a lot of the data for the circles,

01:45:13   I don't think apps have access to all that.

01:45:16   You have access to the step count for the orange circle, but I don't think you have

01:45:19   access to the green or blue.

01:45:21   Yeah, the step count is enough, though.

01:45:22   You can see Amy Jane and Montero competing for their, just with their Fitbit step counts.

01:45:28   I think that all is in the Fitbit, is just step count, you know, how many steps.

01:45:32   That does motivate a lot of people.

01:45:34   Maybe that would help.

01:45:35   terrible with the circles when it tells me to get up I do feel a little bit of guilt

01:45:38   like oh I should probably get up and go for a walk now or whatever but the bottom line

01:45:41   is I'm not feeling them like and my whatever value of all my circles are at it's low. I

01:45:47   was filling them all at WWDC like I know what it takes to fill them but my daily schedule

01:45:52   just does not do enough to fill them at least when my watch is on because I tend to find

01:45:56   when I come home from work I want to take my watch off just because I just want to get

01:46:01   stuff off my body and then--

01:46:03   - Trying to get totally naked, just.

01:46:05   (laughing)

01:46:06   - You know, like my house doesn't have air conditioning

01:46:07   so I'm certainly changing into shorts

01:46:10   and yeah, getting into home mode

01:46:13   and that involves taking the watch off.

01:46:15   And so that means anything I do after that

01:46:17   like walking around with the kids or whatever

01:46:18   is going to not count.

01:46:20   But I don't care, I don't care, whatever.

01:46:22   - You do, you care just enough to be annoying to yourself

01:46:26   but not enough to actually do it.

01:46:28   - Yeah, to feel like a little twinge of guilt

01:46:30   when I don't fill them.

01:46:31   - But I don't know how to actually.

01:46:32   - Yeah, you're just gonna be perpetually,

01:46:34   mildly annoyed by this.

01:46:36   - It doesn't bother me that much.

01:46:38   - I tell you what, I am a blue ring stud,

01:46:42   but the green and red, not so much.

01:46:45   - The green is the hardest one.

01:46:46   I think, basically, I think I filled the other ones,

01:46:48   but the exercise one, because I don't quite know,

01:46:51   I never, I have never actually initiated

01:46:53   like a workout workout, so all of my green filling

01:46:55   is I guess incidental from heart rate stuff,

01:46:57   and I don't even know how that works, like whatever.

01:47:00   but I'm just never filling it, except for WWDC.

01:47:03   - To completely change pace, how's potty training going?

01:47:09   - It's going actually.

01:47:10   - Oh good.

01:47:11   - Yeah, it's not complete, but it's going.

01:47:14   - Are they, is he afraid of going to daycare,

01:47:16   what are his, are they reinforcing it there?

01:47:18   - Yeah, so he goes to preschool,

01:47:20   and he's going now to summer camp,

01:47:22   which is just school in the summertime.

01:47:24   We were able to do this transition with their support,

01:47:26   and they do it all the time,

01:47:27   because they have school for two and three year olds,

01:47:29   So they have seen lots of potty training in their time

01:47:34   and they're experts at it.

01:47:34   So they support it and they do it while he's there.

01:47:39   So it's good, we're all good.

01:47:40   - Are they doing any positive feedback stuff

01:47:42   like sticker charts or anything like that?

01:47:43   Like either at home or at school to try to like reward

01:47:46   for compliance basically?

01:47:49   - Sticker, I had not thought of a sticker chart.

01:47:51   That's a good one.

01:47:52   - That's one of the things that our kids are doing.

01:47:54   They recommended it at home.

01:47:55   It doesn't work in some kids or whatever,

01:47:57   but like you just have a piece of paper

01:47:58   And it's like every time you do it, you get a sticker on the chart and some kids are motivated

01:48:02   by it and some kids aren't.

01:48:03   I just didn't know if that was one of the things that you were doing.

01:48:07   No, we've just been doing like food motivation, basically like candy and cookies and stuff.

01:48:13   We very quickly learned that you can't reward going to the bathroom.

01:48:18   You have to reward like time spans in which you have had no accidents.

01:48:22   Because if you reward going to the bathroom, then he just wants to go every five minutes.

01:48:27   (laughing)

01:48:29   Yeah, so that's no good.

01:48:30   - So, to go back a step, you've basically outsourced

01:48:32   potty training to the summer camp, is what I'm hearing?

01:48:36   - Well, he's there for like two and a half hours a day.

01:48:38   I mean, it's not like--

01:48:39   - Just giving you a hard time.

01:48:40   - Camp is a very, you know, it's technically called camp.

01:48:44   That's a very generous word for what it really is.

01:48:47   It's just preschool in the summertime,

01:48:48   and it's mostly outside, and that's basically it.

01:48:52   And preschool, as you will learn soon, Casey,

01:48:55   really short every day. Like, that's—it goes—that two and a half hours goes by very

01:49:00   quickly.

01:49:01   Oh, I don't doubt it. Yeah, it's been a wild couple of weeks at the Liss household,

01:49:06   because Declan has gone from sort of kind of able to crawl-ish to pretty adept at crawling,

01:49:15   and he used to, up until this point, barrel roll pretty effectively.

01:49:21   That's awesome.

01:49:22   "Do a barrel roll!" That's a reference, Jon. Anyway, so he would barrel roll pretty effectively,

01:49:29   and then he'd figured out how to crawl, and now our world is upside down because he doesn't

01:49:32   just stay still anymore. And that's kind of petrifying. And additionally, he's also starting

01:49:38   to pull up onto his feet, which is adorable to watch and wonderful, except that he's also

01:49:45   doing that in the crib, which is not as good because then he gets himself all woken up

01:49:50   and doesn't want to sleep as long and we have to lower the crib again and blah blah blah. So

01:49:54   a wild couple of weeks at the Liz household. My favorite picture of Declan recently was showing

01:50:00   him next to your computer with the note that he'd already pulled off a key cap. Yeah,

01:50:06   genuinely it had been like 15 seconds and he crawled over there, ripped off a key.

01:50:12   It's the great dawning realization that like the idea like, "Oh, we have a kid, he won't destroy

01:50:19   our crap like the second that kid can move it's like I'm gonna destroy your

01:50:22   crap. yep that's pretty much how it went. I can seek out the most expensive item and say I

01:50:27   can get my little baby fingernails underneath this keycap look it comes off

01:50:30   this is awesome it's like I looked away for two seconds yeah that's pretty much

01:50:33   were you there that's exactly how it went. I know I know how kids work I just you to

01:50:37   your credit you're not one of the people who I who looked down on the other

01:50:41   people and said well my child won't destroy my stuff I'll just make sure

01:50:44   they don't touch my things. I was like there's a reason babyproofing is a word

01:50:48   - Well, so I'm not like that about most things.

01:50:52   However, I have been very smug about my car.

01:50:56   Never will, my car will not get ruined.

01:50:58   I will not allow my car to get ruined.

01:51:00   If that means no food in the car, screw it.

01:51:01   No food in the car.

01:51:02   - Is there a car seat installed in your car now?

01:51:04   - Yes, oh, there's been for a while.

01:51:06   - So isn't it destroying your seats as we speak?

01:51:08   - No, I have a cover.

01:51:09   - A cover, yeah.

01:51:11   - Yeah, I've had similar good luck.

01:51:12   I mean, you know, we also, like,

01:51:15   just by policy, there's no food in the car.

01:51:17   and that's been fine.

01:51:19   You know, we also have a policy that you don't kick my seat.

01:51:22   And so far, I mean, he sometimes forgets

01:51:26   and kicks my seat anyway, and we have to yell at him,

01:51:27   but so far, overall, it's pretty good.

01:51:31   - You know what I did with the seat kicking?

01:51:33   It really depends on your kid.

01:51:34   I think you could pull off the seat kicking thing.

01:51:36   My kids, not really.

01:51:37   But the thing I did with them,

01:51:38   it lasted a pretty long time.

01:51:40   I knew it wouldn't last forever,

01:51:41   is that I told them that the seats have airbags in them,

01:51:44   which is true, and that airbags contain explosives,

01:51:47   Which is true.

01:51:47   And then if you kick the seats, you could cause them to explode.

01:51:49   Which is not true, but they don't know that.

01:51:52   Nice.

01:51:53   That's amazing.

01:51:53   Actually, I don't think I ever actually told them

01:51:56   that they caused-- I would say, the seats have airbags,

01:51:58   and then the airbags have explosives.

01:51:59   I think that's all I would say, and I would say it

01:52:01   in an alarmed voice.

01:52:02   And they would stop kicking it.

01:52:03   That was awesome.

01:52:03   That worked for so long until they were like, you know what?

01:52:06   These things are never exploding.

01:52:07   Kick, kick, kick.

01:52:08   That's so amazing.

01:52:11   Good grief.

01:52:11   Adam's a good boy.

01:52:12   You won't need to do that with-- definitely not.

01:52:13   I don't know.

01:52:14   He looks like a scamp.

01:52:15   I can't tell.

01:52:15   I think we can trouble Casey. I can't wait to see Casey just go through all

01:52:19   this because it's like it's not like I'm any expert on it, but just just by being

01:52:22   like two years ahead of him based like that's like that's amazing to me like

01:52:27   like seeing like seeing now Casey like you now you're going through like the

01:52:31   beginning of mobility which is as you said terrifying for the parents oh yeah

01:52:37   and yeah what's what's great about parenting is that every time you think

01:52:43   you have the current stage down pat. Oh, yeah, everything then changes with the

01:52:47   next stage. It's like so like yeah, you know, we finally got him to, you know,

01:52:52   eat and sleep. Oh my God, now he's moving. Oh my God, now he can hurt himself on

01:52:56   every possible thing. Yeah, and then, you know, once you get that down, then he's

01:53:02   gonna start learning how to open doors and go outside. So then he'll get some

01:53:07   attitude. Yeah, then he's gonna get some attitude. Then, you know, then eventually, you know, you

01:53:11   and you have everything down and then, oh, delete the diapers.

01:53:15   Yeah, it's just, oh my god, like everything is,

01:53:18   like, you know, it's hard, and then you figure it out,

01:53:22   and then everything changes.

01:53:23   - Yeah, I've asked a lot of parents,

01:53:26   most of whom are, you know, roughly my age,

01:53:30   you know, what, is there a secret, what have you learned,

01:53:32   what should I know, and the single most consistent answer

01:53:37   I've gotten almost every time is don't get used to anything

01:53:40   because the moment you do it all changes.

01:53:42   - That's good, yeah.

01:53:45   - Jon, how's your front door?

01:53:46   - Do you have a front door yet?

01:53:48   - They are ordering a new one.

01:53:50   - So you'll have a front door in like three more months,

01:53:52   maybe?

01:53:53   - Two to three weeks or whatever.

01:53:55   Hopefully it'll happen between the vacation

01:53:58   I'm leaving on now and the vacation I'm leaving on after.

01:54:02   There's some time between there,

01:54:04   but anyway, people have been painting.

01:54:06   - How's that going?

01:54:07   - Hmm.

01:54:08   (laughing)

01:54:08   - That well?

01:54:09   (laughing)

01:54:10   - I don't know what, I have yet to find someone who does

01:54:13   what I think is a good job of painting anything.

01:54:16   'Cause it's all about surface prep.

01:54:17   Like, you know, they just, they just,

01:54:19   they just want to get to the point

01:54:20   where they can start slapping on the paint.

01:54:22   It's like, I want the surface to be smoothed out

01:54:25   before you start slapping on the paint.

01:54:27   I want you to think about how it's gonna look

01:54:28   when it's finished painting.

01:54:30   If it's not gonna look good, like, well, whatever.

01:54:32   - What we learned when we've only done both renovations,

01:54:36   you know, Tiff actually, Tiff can paint her,

01:54:38   and she and her parents can paint the whole room

01:54:42   no time at all.

01:54:43   It turns out professional painters are really no better

01:54:47   than good home-taught painters.

01:54:50   Just, you don't have to do it.

01:54:51   That's the big thing.

01:54:52   It's like, you're not paying them to do a better job

01:54:54   than you could do.

01:54:55   You're paying them so that you don't have to do it.

01:54:57   That's it.

01:54:58   - I continue to believe there must be contractors out there,

01:55:01   like the ones on CNTV, that do do a good job.

01:55:04   And especially for things like surface prep,

01:55:06   sometimes you can't do what they do

01:55:07   'cause you don't have the tools.

01:55:08   depends on the servers. Like if you're painting a room, like big walls are big and flat, fine.

01:55:12   But if you're painting like the trim around a window where you just pulled off storm windows

01:55:15   from the 50s, they're a wreck. You have to spend a lot of time on service prep, pulling

01:55:18   off old caked on paint, filling in voids, sanding everything down so it's smooth. And

01:55:25   I don't know that I could do a better job of that than a professional. It was mostly

01:55:28   because I didn't even have all the tools, all the little like just a plain old random

01:55:31   orbit sander, but a little tiny Sanders to get into the corners and all the experience

01:55:35   filling things and like just that just takes a long time but like they don't

01:55:39   the reality I mean you could buy the tool at Home Depot for like 30 bucks if

01:55:42   you needed to if given the limited time yes I could but I would take the amount

01:55:45   of time they took to do all my trim I wouldn't get one window done I had a

01:55:48   better job than they do on that one window but I wouldn't get one window

01:55:51   done because I'd be there like and instead they're just like you know what

01:55:53   good enough you're not gonna be able to see it from the street and paint paint

01:55:56   paint well exactly that's the thing they like you're not paying for them to be

01:56:00   do for them to do a better job than you could do you're paying for them to do it

01:56:03   so that you don't have to do it and they can do it faster.

01:56:05   - Anyway, almost done, almost done.

01:56:09   Front door, I think the front door

01:56:10   is gonna be the worst part though,

01:56:11   because there's a bunch of carpentry stuff around there

01:56:13   and it's just like, it's been hand-waved over

01:56:15   and we just say like, "See how our front door looks now?

01:56:17   We want it to look like that, but with a new door."

01:56:20   (laughing)

01:56:21   And they're like, "Oh yeah, sure, no problem."

01:56:22   I'm like, I keep asking them,

01:56:23   "So what part are you gonna remove

01:56:25   and what are you gonna put back above?

01:56:26   Is it gonna look like this?"

01:56:27   "Well, not exactly like, what do you mean by no?"

01:56:29   Oh, it's gonna be bad.

01:56:30   But anyway, yeah.

01:56:32   If there was ever a time that any human being should periscope anything, it's the conversations

01:56:39   that you have with your contractors, because they've got to be just amazing.

01:56:42   They're very one-sided and involve a lot of nodding and smiling from the other end of

01:56:46   the conversation and then me going, "Oh, yeah, just…"

01:56:50   They hate you so much, don't they?

01:56:51   I don't know.

01:56:52   I don't know if they hate me.

01:56:53   I just…

01:56:54   I don't know.

01:56:55   Do you tip them?

01:56:56   No.

01:56:57   Wait, you're supposed to tip contractors?

01:56:59   That's what I thought.

01:57:01   The amount I'm paying these people?

01:57:02   I I we didn't tip any of our contractors ever

01:57:05   Hmm, we like we'd occasionally buy bagels and stuff for the guys that were working but like we wouldn't I mean, yeah

01:57:11   You're paying a lot for this. It's like I don't think it's a tipping thing. Yeah, seriously, this is a tremendous amount of money

01:57:16   They can take their tip out of the tremendous amount of money and paying for this project

01:57:20   Yeah, I don't like you don't you don't tip like when you buy a car

01:57:22   I don't think that's really an apples to apples comparison, but it's about the same amount of money

01:57:27   I don't I I fully confess that I have no idea when is appropriate to tip

01:57:31   But I also hate tipping as a concept and so I am I'm probably a bad person

01:57:35   I I've been the places what I'm supposed to tip I do but I literally have no idea when I'm supposed to tip other than

01:57:41   Like eating at restaurants, that's it and staying at hotels

01:57:43   I know you're supposed to do that there but only because I googled it. Wait what I never tip in a hotel ever

01:57:47   That's keeping tip. That's a thing. How much is that?

01:57:49   When I googled for it, they were like a couple bucks a day and that's what I've been sticking to

01:57:54   Yeah, and then the problem is then you'd like you need small bills. Yeah, that's you know the little envelopes on the desk

01:57:59   It's that's that's for housekeeping tips like the most hotel rooms

01:58:02   There's like there's a small envelope what that says some kind of passive-aggressive thing on it

01:58:05   And that is that is for you to put the housekeeping tip in because if you just leave cash around

01:58:10   Then they might assume it's your cash you can leave it

01:58:13   You can you want to leave it and even if you don't use the envelope you just want to leave it with a note

01:58:17   You know for housekeeping or thank you or something in a way that they know that you didn't accidentally leave it because housekeeping people don't want

01:58:23   To take random cash laying around because then you'd be like hey housekeeping stole from me

01:58:26   but when you're checking out, take the wad of cash,

01:58:29   couple bucks a day or whatever,

01:58:31   put it somewhere with a note that makes it clear

01:58:33   this is for housekeeping and then you go.

01:58:35   - Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that in my entire life.

01:58:37   - Yeah, it's a big pain 'cause you either have to have,

01:58:40   let's say you're doing a few bucks a day or five bucks a day,

01:58:42   then you either have to have a whole bunch of fives

01:58:44   when you get there or you have to tip a 20 at the end,

01:58:47   but then that could be a different person

01:58:49   than who worked the last few days.

01:58:51   - Yeah, I just do it all at the end.

01:58:52   I don't do it every day

01:58:53   'cause that's just too much of a hassle.

01:58:55   - In my Googling, what I discovered,

01:58:57   it's like that if you do it all in one day,

01:59:00   it evens out in the end for the people who work there.

01:59:02   Like you're right, it might not be the same person

01:59:03   or whatever, but it's not as if one person has a line on

01:59:06   when everybody's checking out and gets all the money.

01:59:07   Like it evens out across the whole staff.

01:59:11   - That's good, 'cause it's usually I'll just like

01:59:12   put a 20 in there on the last day

01:59:14   and then they call it a day, but.

01:59:16   - This is lunacy to me, I've never heard this before.

01:59:18   - See, tipping is crazy.

01:59:20   I hate it with a passion.

01:59:21   I think they should just raise the prices for everything

01:59:23   and pay people living wages and so on and so forth.

01:59:26   - Do you tip barbers?

01:59:27   - Yes.

01:59:28   - I do, yeah.

01:59:29   - Yeah, I do too.

01:59:30   So it was actually a dilemma.

01:59:31   So my barber, usually I only have 20s

01:59:34   because that's what ATMs give out

01:59:36   and whenever I have small bills,

01:59:39   when I empty my pockets at night,

01:59:40   they collect somewhere on my desk

01:59:42   and I forget to put them back in the next morning.

01:59:43   - You should really only have 50s in your wallet.

01:59:45   I feel like Marco with your M5 and your lifestyle,

01:59:48   you should be a type of person who only has 50s,

01:59:50   like a grandpa.

01:59:52   So with the barber, the barber I've been going to for years,

01:59:54   these four Italian guys, they're amazing,

01:59:57   they used to charge $16 for a haircut,

01:59:58   so I'd give them 20, they'd keep the extra four, perfect.

02:00:01   Then they raised the price to $17.

02:00:03   Now I don't wanna just give them 20 again,

02:00:05   because now it's like, I'm just--

02:00:07   - You give them 21, right?

02:00:08   - Right, so now I have to remember

02:00:10   to bring a single now every time, so I--

02:00:12   - They'll give you change, if you give them two 20s,

02:00:14   they'll give you change.

02:00:15   - That's such a hassle, I'm not gonna--

02:00:17   - $3 on 17, that's a sufficient tip.

02:00:20   - But it's like they took a pay cut.

02:00:23   - Well, it's not your fault.

02:00:24   - It is kind of his fault,

02:00:25   'cause he doesn't want to have a single with him.

02:00:27   Like, just give him two 20s, they'll give you change,

02:00:29   it's fine.

02:00:30   - No, I now, I just bring a single whenever I remember to,

02:00:32   because it's so much,

02:00:33   like, 'cause I don't want to give them

02:00:34   a less tip than before.

02:00:36   - Why don't you give them a $20 bill

02:00:39   and one silver dollar, like a grandpa?

02:00:42   - That would be a grandpa.

02:00:43   - Do those still exist?

02:00:44   Can you still get those?

02:00:44   - Someone's got 'em.

02:00:45   They're still in circulation somewhere.

02:00:47   (laughing)

02:00:48   - Give 'em a $2 bill?

02:00:49   All right, let's do titles.

02:00:53   Floppy Carrot and Lack of Stick is amazing.

02:00:57   Wasn't there a better one?

02:00:58   I think I remember seeing a better one somewhere.

02:00:59   Blue Ring Stud, that was my other favorite.

02:01:02   That is really good, actually.

02:01:03   That's probably better than Floppy Carrot.

02:01:05   Even though that is not really related to anything, I think it's a good title.

02:01:10   I just want people to listen to the episode, waiting for, like, "What the hell is Blue

02:01:14   Ring Stud?"

02:01:15   And it's all the way at the end, and it has, like, nothing to do with, like, Reddit or

02:01:18   the Mac Appstar or anything.

02:01:20   So it's me saying that Casey knows how to stand up.

02:01:22   Hey guys.

02:01:25   I know how to stand.

02:01:26   Now your son knows how to stand.

02:01:28   Where did he learn that from?

02:01:29   He got those standing jeans from me.

02:01:30   I know how to stand.

02:01:32   Yeah.

02:01:33   Declan stands up saying, "You go.

02:01:36   Just like dad."

02:01:37   Just like your dad.

02:01:38   Oh goodness.

02:01:39   [beep]

02:01:39   Goodness.

02:01:41   (beep)