00:00:00 ◼ ► We're getting close, we're getting close to WBC, I'm so excited. I'm getting excited. I'm getting excited.
00:00:05 ◼ ► Like, I've come full circle now with the headset. I've followed the complete Apple hype cycle.
00:00:11 ◼ ► First I was like, "They're doing what? What? That seems weird. Why are they doing that?"
00:00:18 ◼ ► Then I'm like, "What? This can't possibly be very good. Everything else on the market sucks. Why?
00:00:23 ◼ ► How is Apple going to make something good?" And then I'm like, "Well, if they're going to release
00:00:27 ◼ ► something, it's probably going to be pretty good." And then I start hearing reports and rumors,
00:00:32 ◼ ► it's actually really good. And now I'm like, "Oh my God, it's going to be here. It's going to be
00:00:36 ◼ ► really good. Oh my God." It's happening. This is just the cycle. I go through all their new
00:00:41 ◼ ► rumored launches and I think it's possible to be really good, but I still don't know quite what
00:00:47 ◼ ► that looks like. And I'm excited again. Kind of what I said last week, I'm excited because
00:00:59 ◼ ► And I still don't think I want to actually use this, but we'll see. And then in the mean,
00:01:07 ◼ ► I'm excited to see what it is and to see how it's going to change our lives forever or not.
00:01:13 ◼ ► Is it going to be the iPhone or is it going to be the Apple TV? I don't know. We'll find out.
00:01:20 ◼ ► Or the HomePod. Oh God, I hope not the HomePod. Yeah, I don't know. I think I am also going
00:01:28 ◼ ► through the standard Apple/Casey regarding Apple cycle. Right now, I'm just kind of confused by it
00:01:37 ◼ ► because I don't feel like it's filling a hole I have in my life. But typically when I say that,
00:01:47 ◼ ► for exactly that device in my life. I just didn't realize it at the time. So I'm optimistic though.
00:01:52 ◼ ► I have understood VR to be extremely cool. I've only very briefly tried like Oculus stuff,
00:01:59 ◼ ► extremely briefly. So I haven't had enough time with it to really understand what makes it so
00:02:04 ◼ ► special. But everyone I know who's tried it says it's amazing. And certainly the rumblings that
00:02:10 ◼ ► we're hearing, well, fair enough. But the rumblings that we're hearing is that the Apple stuff is
00:02:14 ◼ ► amazing. So yeah, I'm excited to see it. And I'm curious what the story will be around it. But
00:02:21 ◼ ► it'll be neat to see. I wonder, you know, you'd said earlier Marco that Apple's excited about it.
00:02:28 ◼ ► We heard, I think through Germin, I'm not going to be able to find a link for the show notes,
00:02:31 ◼ ► but I thought Germin had posted something last week or two that said like a lot of the Apple
00:02:36 ◼ ► executives are kind of pumping the brakes on this internally, which is interesting to me. That
00:02:41 ◼ ► doesn't necessarily mean it's not great. It doesn't necessarily mean it's garbage. We'll see what
00:02:46 ◼ ► happens. But I think on the macro level, I think you're right that Apple broadly does seem to be
00:02:52 ◼ ► excited about it. And it's certainly interesting. Like even if it's a disaster, I think it'll be
00:02:57 ◼ ► interesting. And like selfishly, it'll give us plenty of stuff to talk about, be it a disaster
00:03:01 ◼ ► or a winner. You know, I think there's going to be a lot to discuss and I'm super duper looking
00:03:06 ◼ ► forward to that. I'm excited about the boring WWDC stuff. Like, you know, setting aside the headset,
00:03:12 ◼ ► but it's probably not going to be for me, but it's exciting to talk about. But like, you know,
00:03:17 ◼ ► they have new versions of all the OSs, new versions of frameworks, new version of Xcode,
00:03:22 ◼ ► all that stuff that they always do. All the Swift stuff that I already know because Swift
00:03:26 ◼ ► is developed in public, like just all that good stuff. It's the sort of the refresh all your
00:03:31 ◼ ► things, period. And that's even in quote unquote boring years. That's exciting. It's exciting to me
00:03:37 ◼ ► as a user. It provides the dim hope of whatever things that I'm dealing with in my apps or in my
00:03:45 ◼ ► usage of these platforms might be fixed because, hey, it's the major next new version. So, you
00:03:50 ◼ ► know, as we sit here going through 13.1, 13.2, 13.3 of Mac OS and like things aren't fixed or
00:03:55 ◼ ► in changes, you're just like, well, it's too late in the cycle. You got to wait for 14. And so
00:04:06 ◼ ► accidentally in there. Like, who knows? And then all the new frameworks, all the new APIs,
00:04:11 ◼ ► and maybe I'll see something that'll be exciting. I'll be excited to add some feature to one of my
00:04:15 ◼ ► applications because of a new API they added or something like that. And, you know, user facing
00:04:19 ◼ ► features, stability, performance improvements, all that good stuff on all their platforms.
00:04:25 ◼ ► That happens every WWDC. That alone is enough for me personally to be excited about it. And it's not
00:04:30 ◼ ► enough for like WWDC to be a smash hit in the major media. For that you need a headset. But I like the
00:04:35 ◼ ► boring stuff. I'm excited to watch some WWDC sessions where they tell me about new APIs and
00:04:40 ◼ ► an obscure framework that no one else cares about. Let's start with some follow up. The Dell 6K
00:04:47 ◼ ► monitor that was a phantom and then got a price just a week or two ago, I think a week, it was
00:04:52 ◼ ► last week we were talking about it. Suddenly it's already in people's hands. And so Alex Stevenson
00:04:57 ◼ ► Price took the fall for all of us. And he bought the, what was it, $3200 something like that,
00:05:03 ◼ ► Dell 6K monitor. And because Alex is a gentleman, it works at Plex if memory serves. So double bonus
00:05:10 ◼ ► points there. Anyways, Alex has tweeted, tooted a thread with regard to what it's like to use this
00:05:18 ◼ ► thing with a Mac. And so I'm going to read most of that thread. There's not too much here. Alex writes,
00:05:27 ◼ ► installed, which is awesome. That means I don't have to install any Dell software or rely on them
00:05:31 ◼ ► keeping it updated. You can't control brightness or speaker volume with the system keys out of the
00:05:36 ◼ ► box. But I found that there's a popular open source app for third party monitors called
00:05:39 ◼ ► monitor control. And we'll put a link in the show notes. That makes it just work and uses the system
00:05:44 ◼ ► GUI and it makes it completely transparent. I don't know if that was two things, you know,
00:05:49 ◼ ► match up there. You don't have to install any drivers and everything works. Well, almost
00:05:54 ◼ ► everything, but no, but that's good to hear that basically like it works as a monitor and this
00:05:58 ◼ ► stuff on it seems to work. Like it just acts like a Thunderbolt hub, I guess, or however it's doing
00:06:02 ◼ ► its job. So, and then monitor control thing, I don't think is a driver. I think it's just an app
00:06:06 ◼ ► or whatever. So this is a pretty good story. Yep. Alex continues, I freaking love all the ports,
00:06:11 ◼ ► ethernet, USB-As, USB-Cs. It's so flexible. I can just plug in everything I had connected to my old
00:06:17 ◼ ► Intel iMac without needing a Thunderbolt hub or something else. And the pop-out front ports are
00:06:21 ◼ ► useful and totally hidden when you don't need them. I also like having an HDMI input for versatility.
00:06:26 ◼ ► It means I can easily plug in something like a console or an Apple TV for testing and it can do
00:06:30 ◼ ► picture-in-picture with the HDMI, which is neat. And then Ben Smith chimed in and wrote, I haven't
00:06:37 ◼ ► used this 6K monster yet, but about a year ago Dell released Dell Display Manager or DDM and for Mac,
00:06:44 ◼ ► which gives pretty complex software control of their displays. It worked well in my two 27 inch
00:06:48 ◼ ► 4Ks. It feels like a sign Dell is committed to supporting the Mac. DDM was Windows only for
00:06:53 ◼ ► eons before this. So we'll put a link to the Dell Display Manager as well. The picture-in-picture
00:06:58 ◼ ► HDMI sounds cool. Like that is super cool. That's the type of sort of, you know, hardware feature,
00:07:04 ◼ ► you know, the Mac has, does not have any idea that it's there, that it's existing. It's just
00:07:07 ◼ ► something that the monitor does for you. And for particular scenarios, like maybe someone who works,
00:07:13 ◼ ► you know, for Plex, that might be super handy as opposed to trying to do some software solution
00:07:17 ◼ ► and funneling it through a window that macOS is aware of. Super cool. All right. So we have some
00:07:21 ◼ ► Final Cut Pro follow-up. People have used it. I have not, but people have used it, including
00:07:27 ◼ ► Jason Snell over at Six Colors. And we'll put a link to his hands-on, which includes a couple of
00:07:32 ◼ ► videos. One, I didn't watch the 30-minute one. I didn't have the time, but there's a shorter one
00:07:42 ◼ ► media videos that they do. So Jason writes, "Unlike Final Cut, Logic offers round-trip support for
00:07:47 ◼ ► Logic projects." Sorry, I should have mentioned we're also talking about Logic here. "Round-trip
00:07:50 ◼ ► support for Logic projects between iPad and Mac. That's great, but be warned, your Mac project must
00:07:55 ◼ ► have saved as a package, if, or have been saved as a package or whatever. If it's not, you'll need to
00:08:00 ◼ ► use the save as command to make a project version." I'm assuming, Marco, you can translate this,
00:08:05 ◼ ► because I have no idea what any of this means. Anyway. "And must use the musical grid, not the
00:08:09 ◼ ► standard time format. That's a very strong hint to anyone who is not a musician that this is not the
00:08:14 ◼ ► tool for you." Marco, can you translate that into dumb-dumb for me, please? All right. So the first
00:08:18 ◼ ► part is package format versus whatever format. All of these, Logic and Final Cut, the file formats
00:08:26 ◼ ► that they save in are actually, as far as I know, in both cases, by default, are Mac OS packages,
00:08:32 ◼ ► which are basically directories, inside of which could be any number of files. That's kind of their
00:08:37 ◼ ► native format. And that works fine in most cases. It does cause some problems with, like, syncing
00:08:44 ◼ ► platforms sometimes, because it's kind of treated as a whole bunch of files inside of a special
00:08:47 ◼ ► directory. But anyway, that's just at the point. And that's, I don't know what they're doing there
00:08:50 ◼ ► with iOS and how that works there. The second part of it, though, about the changing the measures to
00:08:57 ◼ ► time, basically. So Logic is a music composition program. That is primarily what it is designed to
00:09:04 ◼ ► do. And so by default, Logic projects do not work in timestamps. They work in beats and measures,
00:09:11 ◼ ► because it's for music. When you are using Logic to edit podcasts, that super gets in the way,
00:09:17 ◼ ► because it'll try to snap any edit you make to the beat grid of whatever you told it the BPM of your
00:09:24 ◼ ► project song was. And so when you try to use Logic to edit podcasts, which again, it's really not
00:09:32 ◼ ► made to do, but it happens to be a really good podcast editor if you convince it to do it,
00:09:36 ◼ ► you can change the time scale that it's using from beats and measures to just a timestamp,
00:09:43 ◼ ► which is what you want when you're editing podcasts. And then you can drag stuff wherever
00:09:46 ◼ ► you want. And you're seeing things represented as time instead of beats. And that's what you want.
00:09:50 ◼ ► It seems like the iPad OS version of Logic Pro does not support that time-based measurement
00:09:59 ◼ ► at all. It is only beats and measures and stuff. So maybe they'll add that down the road,
00:10:14 ◼ ► That being said, as Jason Snell has pointed out, you have Ferrite on the iPad, which is a really
00:10:19 ◼ ► good app that edits podcasts in a Logic style, but it's made specifically for podcast editing on the
00:10:25 ◼ ► iPad. And that fills that role very well. It doesn't help you if you're a Logic person on
00:10:30 ◼ ► the Mac and you want to round trip stuff, that's not very good. But again, as I said last week,
00:10:35 ◼ ► when these were introduced, I don't think round tripping between the Mac and the iPad is going to
00:10:42 ◼ ► be a very common need for a lot of people using these programs. I have a feeling you're going to
00:10:47 ◼ ► use it either on the iPad or the Mac. And I don't think a lot of people are going to be trying to
00:10:52 ◼ ► edit the same projects on both platforms back and forth for lots of reasons, mostly practical and
00:10:59 ◼ ► technical. But also, I think if you're the kind of person who likes to and has the ability to
00:11:05 ◼ ► edit this kind of stuff on a Mac, you're probably going to want to use the Mac pretty much every
00:11:09 ◼ ► time. Whereas the iPad versions are going to largely appeal to people who either don't have
00:11:15 ◼ ► a Mac at all, or have a Mac but don't have the multi hundred dollar Mac versions of the software.
00:11:20 ◼ ► So I don't I think we're putting too much of a focus on the round tripping aspect here. But
00:11:26 ◼ ► that being said, you know, that the limitation of Logic on the iPad to not use time based measurement
00:11:34 ◼ ► is, is that's pretty fatal for podcast editing. So, you know, maybe but they'll probably get to
00:11:39 ◼ ► it in the future. Since they said it was round like logic is supposed to be the one that is
00:11:43 ◼ ► round trip all setting aside plugins, which we talked about last episode. This is not a plugin
00:11:49 ◼ ► issue. This is like, oh, it's round tripable. But there's this thing that we totally didn't mention,
00:11:53 ◼ ► and you only see it if you're doing podcasts, which again, is not what this program is designed
00:11:57 ◼ ► for. But it is kind of weird that there's these caveats. I feel like a big selling point for both
00:12:02 ◼ ► of these apps could have been this is not a toy version of insert app name here. It's the full
00:12:07 ◼ ► fledged thing. And you can do everything you can do on the Mac version. And that is absolutely not
00:12:11 ◼ ► true for these applications, at least in version 1.0. So they couldn't make that point. And they
00:12:16 ◼ ► didn't. But they did kind of say that logic Pro was round tripable. And as Dan Marm points out,
00:12:21 ◼ ► he couldn't even figure out how to switch like a podcast to be measure based, even though it
00:12:25 ◼ ► would surely be annoying, as you just said, Marco, like snapping to points that have no meaning in
00:12:29 ◼ ► your podcast, like just to get it over there, you know, just to have it to use probably just going
00:12:34 ◼ ► to try it out to review it or whatever. But yeah, we'll have to wait for future versions, see where
00:12:39 ◼ ► this goes. Like the fact that podcasters, some podcasters use this for as their audio editor,
00:12:46 ◼ ► makes it seem like kind of I mean, same thing with GarageBand. GarageBand used to have a podcast
00:12:50 ◼ ► template, I believe. And then they ditched that a while back. I think it's this is not the intended
00:12:57 ◼ ► use case of the programs. But certainly for GarageBand, it was at one time a supported use
00:13:03 ◼ ► case and logic, you could use it for podcasts and it wasn't awful. It seems kind of weird that Apple
00:13:09 ◼ ► doesn't even consider that case important enough to support like non measure and beat based
00:13:20 ◼ ► I don't know if this is a signal, this is just prioritization of 1.0 features or whatever. But
00:13:25 ◼ ► I do feel kind of like, yeah, it's not a big deal. But again, logic is for musicians, like you saw
00:13:29 ◼ ► the whole intro videos, all musicians, that's fine. But it kind of feels like Apple should
00:13:34 ◼ ► like somehow make it even worse for podcasters. So we wouldn't even try to give more to make more
00:13:39 ◼ ► of a market for like ferrite and other apps like that, because a lot of those apps have trouble.
00:13:44 ◼ ► Like ferrite is kind of amazing as you know, a passion project from a small dev team. Is it
00:13:48 ◼ ► only one developer? I don't even know. I think it is like that's amazing. But like, think of
00:13:53 ◼ ► on the on the Mac, the sort of Renaissance, I think of graphics applications, you know,
00:13:59 ◼ ► for a longest time, it was like Photoshop and Illustrator, and then maybe like freehand back
00:14:02 ◼ ► in the day. But they became old and creaky and new entrants came in, whether it's you know,
00:14:07 ◼ ► the the whole affinity suite or pixelmator or photo mater, or the renamed pixelmator photo thing.
00:14:14 ◼ ► Like there's there's a lot of stuff going on on the Mac for in a market that seemed to be closed
00:14:19 ◼ ► off. Apple has never really participated in this market. But with Apple having logic out there,
00:14:23 ◼ ► and it kind of being useful for podcasts, but not really, I don't know, it seemed like to be
00:14:29 ◼ ► an uncomfortable, weird place. I think Mark will be our canary in the coal mine here kind of like
00:14:34 ◼ ► he was for like switching to Swift. Right? Just when does Marco finally give up on logic pro
00:14:38 ◼ ► and try using something else slash try writing his own editor? Yeah, I don't. I don't know.
00:14:44 ◼ ► I think at that point, I would probably like I know, ferrite has kind of flirted with the idea
00:14:49 ◼ ► of a Mac app here and there. I think that's coming. Yeah, I don't follow it enough. But yeah,
00:14:53 ◼ ► I'm pretty sure that is coming in. And I think if logic were to become extremely hostile to
00:14:59 ◼ ► podcast production, even more so than it is now. I think ferrite would just step in and replace it
00:15:03 ◼ ► for for the, you know, people like like me and Jason Snell, who actually edit this way,
00:15:11 ◼ ► it feels weird. Look, I have Audition. I don't edit podcasts with Audition. It's so what the
00:15:17 ◼ ► way Jason and now I edit podcasts, I kind of ripped off his whole style. It involves having
00:15:23 ◼ ► all having the tracks split up into little blocks of non silent speaking. So, you know, right now,
00:15:31 ◼ ► as the two of you are not speaking, there is nothing on your tracks. And then, you know,
00:15:35 ◼ ► right now I'm speaking and there's there's a block of audio when when as soon as I stopped speaking,
00:15:39 ◼ ► and one of you jumps in and tells me how wrong I am, the there will be a second block now,
00:15:45 ◼ ► right now Casey just left, that will be its own block on his track. Now I can just really quickly
00:15:49 ◼ ► I can drag that left or right and move it forward or back in time or I can just click it and hit
00:15:54 ◼ ► delete. And it is perfectly easy and fast to do that kind of edit. And so that's the kind of edit
00:15:59 ◼ ► I'm doing is moving around the blocks deleting them if you know if somebody like coughs, I can
00:16:03 ◼ ► just click it hit delete that that that block is gone. If Casey left too, too slowly, and I want to
00:16:09 ◼ ► make my joke sound funnier. I'll screw it up half a second. It takes him a little bit longer to get
00:16:13 ◼ ► it. You can shrink up that delay. Yeah, this is a very complicated way of saying that you run strip
00:16:19 ◼ ► silence on everybody's tracks beforehand. Like, in case some people are wondering, the tracks come
00:16:23 ◼ ► as a big long continuous strip of audio. And then you do strip silence and it will strip out with
00:16:27 ◼ ► some tolerance all the parts where in the track where somebody's not talking. Right. And by the
00:16:31 ◼ ► way, and that feature doesn't exist in Logic for iPad. But like, but that style of editing,
00:16:37 ◼ ► I have found is much easier and faster and more efficient to do in Logic than it is to do in
00:16:44 ◼ ► Audition or any other program I've seen so far. Audacity is another popular one, I think. Yeah,
00:16:54 ◼ ► I wish Audition could do it because I'm already paying for a ridiculous Adobe Creative Suite
00:17:00 ◼ ► thing so I can get access mostly just to Audition. And I love Audition for lots of Audition is like
00:17:05 ◼ ► my audio toolbox like I do a lot of other stuff in it, but I just don't like the way it edits. And so
00:17:09 ◼ ► anyway, that style of editing Logic fits that style really well and it fits my brain and fits
00:17:15 ◼ ► my workflow and everything, even though it fights me at every single turn if I like slightly veer
00:17:20 ◼ ► off if I hit the wrong button, or like if I'm typing in a chapter title as a marker. And if I
00:17:26 ◼ ► left if I left the podcast playing while I'm typing in a chapter title, occasionally, something will
00:17:32 ◼ ► grab the keyboard focus back to the track as it's playing. And the word I'm typing, which will
00:17:38 ◼ ► contain a bunch of like regular letters not holding command or anything. Regular letters in Logic do
00:17:43 ◼ ► all sorts of stuff like you can just hit you know, a and that does something that you know, brings
00:17:47 ◼ ► up automation like so if you're typing a word with you know, a few regular letters in it, and the
00:17:51 ◼ ► focus gets out of that text field and goes back to the main window, which happens through some kind
00:17:56 ◼ ► of weird bug or behavior constantly. As you finish typing the word the window goes crazy with
00:18:01 ◼ ► everything you just accidentally invoked. And you're like, Oh, my God, what happened? How do I
00:18:06 ◼ ► get back? What do I how do I undo this? And a lot of times the answer is I have no idea how to undo
00:18:09 ◼ ► this, I just close it and reload my last save. So I save pretty frequently. So anyway, Logic fights
00:18:15 ◼ ► you a lot. But it is really good when it is like when you when you got it, when you're in when you
00:18:22 ◼ ► like when you're in it, when you're when you got it, and you're just getting through it. It's
00:18:26 ◼ ► really good for that style of editing. And I haven't found anything better than that. So I use
00:18:29 ◼ ► it for that. But you know, the reason why ferrite was able to come in as what I believe a single
00:18:35 ◼ ► person developer was able to do is because people who use podcast who use logic at podcasts like me
00:18:41 ◼ ► are using a fraction of the functionality logic offers because we're not doing music production.
00:18:46 ◼ ► If you actually focus on that, that little subset of abilities, you can make a really great editor
00:18:53 ◼ ► as a small team. You know, one of my ideas for a very long time has been, hey, if this podcast app
00:18:58 ◼ ► business thing doesn't work out, maybe I should go make an editor. I would love to make an editor.
00:19:02 ◼ ► But I've always thought like, I don't have time or the market's too small. Well, fortunately,
00:19:07 ◼ ► ferrite already now exists. And so I probably don't need to. So that's great. So anyway,
00:19:11 ◼ ► if logic ever blows up for podcast use any further, I think we all just switch to ferrite.
00:19:16 ◼ ► Benjamin Mayo writes, quote, keep Final Cut Pro open until the export is complete, quote,
00:19:25 ◼ ► foreground process bar, progress bar, excuse me, for minutes at a time, it feels like a
00:19:29 ◼ ► data restriction that iPad OS v next could remove in light of VRAM, etc. So in other words,
00:19:36 ◼ ► apparently, the official Apple instruction is you need to keep the app foregrounded as long as
00:19:41 ◼ ► export is happening, which makes sense given the restrictions within iOS and iPad OS. But
00:19:46 ◼ ► it's kind of janky. They should have put a breakout game in there. Yes. This is a great example of
00:19:50 ◼ ► like, what is it like to write pro apps for the iPad, the iPad, again, M2 iPad, you can get over
00:19:55 ◼ ► like 16 gigs of RAM and an M2 SoC, the same thing that's in the M2 MacBook Air, and it's just like,
00:20:01 ◼ ► there's, it's incredibly powerful. But of course, we if you want this export to complete,
00:20:08 ◼ ► keep the app open. Like that's, you know, and who if you're Apple writing a pro app, hey, Apple,
00:20:15 ◼ ► you're empowered to make this better. Well, but hold on, I feel like if it would be gross if they
00:20:21 ◼ ► cheated and allowed themselves to background like I know I'm saying by adding the OS level features
00:20:25 ◼ ► to be able to say you could do something in the background and you won't be killed, like,
00:20:30 ◼ ► especially on iPads that have swap as we discussed in past shows like there's what separates them
00:20:35 ◼ ► from Mac with a single user logged in their weird Mac with a single user logged in running a
00:20:39 ◼ ► slightly different OS with slightly different GUI toolkits that is way less resource constrained
00:20:45 ◼ ► than the Mac is because the Mac has all sorts of random stuff running out of multiple users logged
00:20:49 ◼ ► in at the same time, who knows what's taking up memory all over the place. The iPad is so locked
00:20:53 ◼ ► down so minimize every app on the iPad has been brought up and existed in an environment of like
00:20:59 ◼ ► start resource starvation, they're not allowed to do certain things in the background, they're not
00:21:03 ◼ ► allowed to hog the CPU is like so constrained. It's the quietest neighborhood of this sort of
00:21:08 ◼ ► hardware class and Apple's product line. And yet, if you want to export a video from Final Cut,
00:21:14 ◼ ► the only choice is just keep this app and you know, make sure it stays running, just keep staring at
00:21:18 ◼ ► it. It's like going back in time to when you couldn't switch to another application because
00:21:21 ◼ ► the previous one you're using would just disappear. They need to fix this like the hardware is so
00:21:27 ◼ ► powerful. And now they have powerful programs like Final Cut on them. That kind of dialog box is kind
00:21:32 ◼ ► of and you know, the Final Cut Pro team is not empowered to make that change. The iPad OS team
00:21:37 ◼ ► is empowered to make that change. A new set of API's or different set of restrictions for certain
00:21:42 ◼ ► applications in certain situations, yada yada yada. I have to imagine, like I said, the if you
00:21:49 ◼ ► were to, you know, hop on to an iPad and a terminal or you know, look at the equivalent of activity
00:21:53 ◼ ► monitor. It's such a quiet neighborhood on there. Everybody is welcome behaved and quiet because
00:21:57 ◼ ► they know if they act up the OS is going to kill them. Not so on the Mac and a Mac with the
00:22:03 ◼ ► equivalent power. You don't have any of these restrictions. You can launch Final Cut export,
00:22:08 ◼ ► go do something else, play a game while it's exporting. I mean, obviously, it'll slow down
00:22:11 ◼ ► your export or whatever, but you don't have to worry that, you know, the Mac OS is going to kill
00:22:15 ◼ ► Final Cut in the background because you open the game. Yeah, it really is unfortunate. And you know,
00:22:21 ◼ ► it's, I know that it snuck up on Apple that the hardware is more advanced than the software
00:22:27 ◼ ► because none of us have ever mentioned this before. I'm sure they've never thought about it
00:22:30 ◼ ► before, but what are you going to do? They didn't know four years ago that they were going to make
00:22:34 ◼ ► an M1 based iPad. So right, right. Chris Hawking writes that you can go from Final Cut Pro in the
00:22:40 ◼ ► Mac to Final Cut Pro on the iPad. John, tell me about how this is all held together. So this is
00:22:43 ◼ ► what it gets back to what Marco was referring to, you know, the bundle structure of quote unquote
00:22:49 ◼ ► documents and Mac OS. They're often directories with file name extensions on the directory name,
00:22:57 ◼ ► dot FCP bundle files and on the iPad it's dot FCP Proj short for project. And the dot FCP Proj
00:23:06 ◼ ► bundle inside that buried in a certain directory structure is the dot FCP bundle directory. So the
00:23:12 ◼ ► trick is you make the thing to make an FCP Proj and then you bring that over to the Mac. And then
00:23:18 ◼ ► on the Mac, you edit the dot FCP bundle that's inside there, because if you right click in the
00:23:22 ◼ ► finder, you can do show package contents and like dig the thing out. So you let the Mac version of
00:23:26 ◼ ► Final Cut edit the FCP bundle that's buried inside the bundle for the iPad version, and then you
00:23:31 ◼ ► bring it back. And, you know, it's a little bit janky and a bunch of stuff won't work. And you
00:23:36 ◼ ► can even you can even go the other direction. You can make this this file structure on your Mac
00:23:41 ◼ ► to sort of encase your Mac Final Cut project thing, as long as you make this metadata file
00:23:47 ◼ ► with the right data and all of that stuff, which is very tricky or whatever. But what it looks like
00:23:51 ◼ ► to me is that the iPad, quote unquote, file format for Final Cut Pro is just the Mac one wrapped in
00:24:00 ◼ ► more crap. And that that gives me you know, again, makes me optimistic that the Mac version will
00:24:05 ◼ ► eventually support this because it seems like just a superset of the Mac format that the Mac
00:24:10 ◼ ► file for file is inside this directory with other stuff. So I don't see how it couldn't support
00:24:15 ◼ ► everything. So I hopeful in a year or two as they revise these things, they'll sync up in a more
00:24:20 ◼ ► sane way and maybe be able to go back and forth. And then Steve Schraut and Smith has, I guess,
00:24:26 ◼ ► done a little bit of spelunking and has some notes. Steve writes Final Cut Pro looks to be using the
00:24:31 ◼ ► Swift UI app lifecycle. It uses a Swift UI app that is in the class app, you know, app and app
00:24:37 ◼ ► delegate adapter. Logic uses a traditional UI application main, if not merely an architectural
00:24:43 ◼ ► choice. It might suggest that Final Cut Pro app code base is a lot younger, which could explain
00:24:47 ◼ ► why it's less fully featured than Logic. I think that means that Final Cut Pro officially counts
00:24:52 ◼ ► as a Swift UI app using UIKit and not just a UIKit app using Swift UI. And finally, Steve writes,
00:24:58 ◼ ► "Baffling, the first run screen or welcome video that you see for 10 seconds on Final Cut Pro
00:25:04 ◼ ► is a whopping 180 megabytes of the 750 megabyte install size." That is, that's a bold choice.
00:25:12 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Once you get the apps to be that size, maybe it's not that big
00:25:17 ◼ ► of a deal, but it's kind of weird. Like, why do you need a welcome video at all? What year is this?
00:25:22 ◼ ► Have you gone back? Remember the welcome videos on Mac OS X? Those were cool and everything,
00:25:25 ◼ ► but even those weren't this big. They weren't this big proportionally to the size of Mac OS X,
00:25:31 ◼ ► my memory is. And anyway, you weren't, you know, downloading those from the app store, I suppose,
00:25:36 ◼ ► coming on plastic disks. Right. Then tangentially related, Ben Shireman pointed out to me something
00:25:42 ◼ ► that I've been waiting for in Final Cut Pro on the Mac. So oftentimes, well, I shouldn't say often,
00:25:48 ◼ ► occasionally myself and Erin will be at like a school function or something like that. And I will
00:25:54 ◼ ► often have my big camera with a zoom lens, sometimes using that for video, because it'll
00:25:59 ◼ ► record 4K video, and then she'll have her iPhone and she'll be recording video. And one of the
00:26:04 ◼ ► perks of having gotten used to Final Cut Pro and doing KC on cars is that I can, I know how to do
00:26:10 ◼ ► like multi-cam recordings and things like that within Final Cut Pro. However, my camera records
00:26:16 ◼ ► SDR and iPhones record HDR. And in order to get both of them in the same project and not have it
00:26:23 ◼ ► look completely weird and oftentimes way dimmer than it should, you had to do like a ton of work.
00:26:30 ◼ ► And I forget exactly how you do it, but it's a real pain in the pine quarters. And in 10.6.6,
00:26:40 ◼ ► one of the headline features on the little welcome screen is automatic color management,
00:26:44 ◼ ► easily edit HDR and SDR clips in the same project with intelligent tone mapping of video to match
00:26:49 ◼ ► your color space. And it is so easy, in fact, that in the preferences for Final Cut Pro,
00:26:55 ◼ ► at the bottom of the general tab, there's HDR colon check, automatic color conform. That's all
00:27:00 ◼ ► you have to do. And then magic happens, which is super cool. So now when we are at school functions,
00:27:05 ◼ ► recording our kids, doing kid things and trying to merge these together into one video,
00:27:18 ◼ ► super bright stuff and then you have the SDR ones that don't. Does it take away the HDR from
00:27:30 ◼ ► and we'll put it in the show notes, a YouTube video where they talk about this. And I can't
00:27:34 ◼ ► remember if they're pulling up SDR or bringing down HDR. That's probably a technically inaccurate way
00:27:39 ◼ ► of describing it, but you get the gist. I don't remember off the top of my head which way it's
00:27:46 ◼ ► Well, I mean, televisions do the same thing. Tone mapping isn't a term used in television settings
00:27:51 ◼ ► as well. The televisions have to do it because, as we've discussed in the past when talking about
00:27:54 ◼ ► TVs, you can master video content for television shows and movies up to a maximum brightness level
00:28:01 ◼ ► of like thousands and thousands of nits and there's no television that you can buy that can
00:28:06 ◼ ► achieve those values. So you always have to map from, "Oh, the signal says this should be 4,000
00:28:10 ◼ ► nits. Well, your TV maxes out at 1,600 nits, so we're going to have to take these brightness
00:28:16 ◼ ► values and map them using tone mapping down to fit on your TV screen." And there's tone mapping
00:28:23 ◼ ► on like a per frame basis, on a per scene. This tone mapping information that can come with the
00:28:28 ◼ ► content, video game consoles can provide tone mapping information to the television set based
00:28:33 ◼ ► on what they know of the content that they're generating. Lots of different ways you can do this.
00:28:37 ◼ ► Also, SDR is supposed to max out at some incredibly low value, like the actual official
00:28:42 ◼ ► television standard, I think is like, I don't know, someone's going to write and tell me I
00:28:47 ◼ ► get it wrong, it's like 300, 350 nits. It's way less bright than you would think. Most television
00:28:52 ◼ ► sets when showing "SDR" will show it brighter than the spec. They will show it at 500 or 600,
00:29:00 ◼ ► just because brighter looks better. So already, most of the time you see regular SDR in a
00:29:05 ◼ ► television set, and on a monitor for that matter, because the monitors go up to like 500 nits or
00:29:10 ◼ ► whatever, like the XDR I think is 500 or 600 nits for non-HDR content, you're already tone mapping
00:29:16 ◼ ► up to make it a little bit brighter, even though it's not technically correct. So it could be that
00:29:20 ◼ ► they actually do kind of meet somewhere in the middle, because I think if you tone map to SDR
00:29:24 ◼ ► up to HDR levels, it would look weird, but you don't want to kill all the HDR stuff. This topic
00:29:30 ◼ ► is way more complicated than my understanding of it, obviously, I'm just telling you the basics
00:29:33 ◼ ► of what televisions do with picture, but the whole world of color spaces and look-up tables and color
00:29:40 ◼ ► correction and tone mapping is probably way more complicated when you're in an app like Final Cut.
00:29:43 ◼ ► I kind of wish it did a bit like iMovie does, which is like, if you don't know what you're
00:29:47 ◼ ► doing, just throw the video in a big pile and it'll handle it. Well, I think that's what this is doing
00:29:51 ◼ ► now, it just wasn't doing that before. Yeah, it's got a checkbox that says "automatic color conform",
00:29:56 ◼ ► which mostly does it for you, as long as that checkbox is checked by default. But even iMovie
00:30:00 ◼ ► has some weird stuff, like in the tiny bit of video editing I do for my Destiny videos,
00:30:05 ◼ ► I had to Google to figure out, like I couldn't figure out why it wasn't, you know, my PlayStation
00:30:13 ◼ ► "Great, now I can make 60 FPS videos!" And I could not figure out why, no matter what I did in iMovie,
00:30:18 ◼ ► it was always 30 frames per second, and the secret is, the first clip that you put in, iMovie decides
00:30:24 ◼ ► maybe it's documented somewhere and I probably could have guessed it or figured it out, but I
00:30:28 ◼ ► had to Google to make sure, like, sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't, and I
00:30:32 ◼ ► couldn't figure it out, it's like, just make sure the first clip is 60, and then from that point on,
00:30:36 ◼ ► as you chuck clips in, the whole movie will be 60, even, you know, the 30s won't screw it up or
00:30:40 ◼ ► whatever. So, do what I mean, or, you know, Magic will do everything for me, can also be confusing,
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00:32:07 ◼ ► That's lickability.com/atp. Lickability makes amazing apps crafted with care. Thank you so much
00:32:15 ◼ ► to Lickability for sponsoring our show. Hey Marco, you stupid. Okay. What's 9 plus 10? Oh
00:32:28 ◼ ► god, this stupid. When you talked about this last show, Marco, I had no idea what you were talking
00:32:36 ◼ ► about. Same. But when I saw, because you got the number slightly wrong, but when I saw the correct
00:32:41 ◼ ► numbers, I vaguely recall seeing that somewhere. Oh, see, I don't think I'd ever seen this. It was
00:32:51 ◼ ► or entry if you will, for 9 plus 10 equals 21. Marco refused to play along with me. I'm very sad,
00:32:58 ◼ ► but I'm sure using the magic of logic, he will clean that up to make both of us sound smart.
00:33:02 ◼ ► There's only so much I can do. It's mostly made for editing music. That's true. But anyway,
00:33:11 ◼ ► the point is, this is far from music. Yeah. If you're interested in the history between 9 plus
00:33:17 ◼ ► 10 equals 21, it's a very short, I believe it was Vine originally. It's all of like 10 seconds and
00:33:23 ◼ ► maybe Marco will drop it in. Who knows? I did not think it was funny. I just thought it was mean
00:33:28 ◼ ► like to the kid. I don't. Yeah, see, that's me as well. No, I don't like this meme either. It's
00:33:34 ◼ ► vaguely upsetting to me. First of all, memes of little kids is not great because they don't,
00:33:38 ◼ ► no little kid should be in a meme and then it's like, it's mean spirited on top of that.
00:33:42 ◼ ► You're not a fan, but you know. Agreed. Like, yeah, I'm like, you know, I like memes where it's,
00:33:49 ◼ ► you know, like, like pretty much everywhere it's going to be hot. Like nice, simple, you know,
00:33:53 ◼ ► dumb, but, but like not punching down. I don't think at least. Yeah. A dog startled by a stuffed
00:34:00 ◼ ► animal, that kind of thing. Yeah. However, I am glad that I at least am now aware of what all of
00:34:06 ◼ ► the children here are, are talking about. Oh goodness. And then in the defense of John of
00:34:12 ◼ ► Bleecker Street, there was a comment on Reddit. The ex-lurker writes, I went here during my last
00:34:18 ◼ ► trip to New York on Casey's recommendation. It was incredible. The white pizza was probably the best
00:34:22 ◼ ► I've ever had. And apparently that was no secret. There was a lineup down the street, even at 8 PM.
00:34:27 ◼ ► Quick side note, I find an 8 PM dinner to be hilariously late, but I don't think that's really
00:34:31 ◼ ► true in Manhattan, but nevertheless, uh, the ex-lurker continues as a party of two. We got
00:34:35 ◼ ► patio seats within a few minutes. Thanks to the wonderful service and staff. I'd say they made the
00:34:39 ◼ ► experience just as much as the food itself. I also got a, uh, I got two to that, which is,
00:34:44 ◼ ► hmm, uh, and, uh, and some, I couldn't put my, my hand on it. I, I, I couldn't, I, it was weird to
00:34:52 ◼ ► sing Mastodon on ivory and on the website of memory serves, but definitely on ivory. I could
00:34:57 ◼ ► go back about a week in my mentions and then it jumped to like two months ago. I don't know what
00:35:02 ◼ ► the deal was, but it's fine. It's Federation. We're fine. Yeah. It's all fine. Uh, I apologize.
00:35:07 ◼ ► I can't cite the, uh, toots, uh, and I, and I don't know who tooted, but, uh, whoever's sponsored
00:35:12 ◼ ► Delta, right? Hey, but the point is, uh, somebody wrote to me and said, I went to John's years ago
00:35:18 ◼ ► with my wife and we are still talking about it to this day. So, uh, maybe not gold belly, maybe a
00:35:23 ◼ ► little exceedingly expensive, maybe it doesn't travel the best, but if you happen to be in
00:35:27 ◼ ► Manhattan, check it out. What's the follow-up to smelt the Delta? Is it a supply denied? It supplied
00:35:32 ◼ ► it. No, no, whoever, whoever smells it, Delta, whoever made the rhyme committed the crime is the
00:35:36 ◼ ► one I'm used to. I think whoever denied it supplied it. It's a slant rhyme, but you know,
00:35:45 ◼ ► there's, there's probably a Wikipedia page that lists them all. I guarantee there are more.
00:35:49 ◼ ► Okay. So we were talking earlier about how Marco likes edit podcasts and he likes to make it easy
00:35:59 ◼ ► to just clip out an entire thing that somebody said, um, Marco, I'm gonna make it easy on you.
00:36:05 ◼ ► You're just, you're going to have to cut the next five minutes of me saying what the f***,
00:36:10 ◼ ► Apple. What the f***? Why are you angry Casey? Let me save you from yourself. Why are you angry?
00:36:15 ◼ ► Because I don't need to be told how to report bugs effectively. I need them to respond to bugs
00:36:22 ◼ ► effectively. Oh yeah, this was bad. No, no, but they're not, they're not mutually exclusive. So
00:36:27 ◼ ► this, what he's talking about is Apple posted this document that, uh, it contains a bunch of
00:36:31 ◼ ► information about how to report bugs effectively. It's making Casey angry for reasons that are
00:36:37 ◼ ► explicable if you understand human nature and or no Casey, but, or have you ever filed an effective
00:37:04 ◼ ► for people who want to report a bug, here's our sort of best practices. These will help people
00:37:10 ◼ ► get their bugs fixed better because the more information you can supply, the better you can
00:37:15 ◼ ► supply it or whatever, if you were round trips, like this is all good. Even if it's not the part
00:37:21 ◼ ► of the system that we think needs the most work, it is a good thing. Apple should have this. This
00:37:26 ◼ ► documentation should exist. And the things that says, I mean, I just mostly just skimmed it,
00:37:35 ◼ ► So I'm not going to fault Apple for making this documentation. If anything, if you want to complain
00:37:40 ◼ ► about something, Casey, you can say, why didn't this documentation already exist? Cause it seems
00:37:43 ◼ ► like a basic essential thing that a big company like Apple should have. And who knows, maybe they
00:37:47 ◼ ► had an old version of it. And this is, this is the new version. It's just frustrating because
00:37:51 ◼ ► we think the problem is not on our end. It's not that we're not good at reporting bugs, Apple,
00:37:57 ◼ ► you're not good at responding to our bugs, but I think they are two separate things. So I pretty
00:38:03 ◼ ► much applaud the creation of this documentation. It doesn't really do much to help with the other
00:38:09 ◼ ► side of the equation is once we've given you a beautiful bug report that follows all your best
00:38:14 ◼ ► practices, what happens after that? And that's why we're still mad about, but I don't think you
00:38:18 ◼ ► should transfer the anger over that process to this documentation because this documentation
00:38:27 ◼ ► I understand everything you just said. I hear you and all of that right in the ear, right in the
00:38:35 ◼ ► ear, because this is so obnoxious. Are you kidding me with this? Like, yes, John, I do understand.
00:38:41 ◼ ► And I genuinely, I do agree with what you're saying. I honestly do, but this is so tone-deaf
00:38:46 ◼ ► and so obnoxious. I mean, I put it in the show notes when I worked. So in the mornings,
00:38:52 ◼ ► Wednesday mornings, I work on the show notes and I try to get most of it squared away then.
00:38:55 ◼ ► So I don't get distracted while we record. And what I put in the show notes is beatings will
00:38:59 ◼ ► continue until morale improves, because that's basically what they're saying here. Like,
00:39:03 ◼ ► no, no, no, we are flawless, perfect people that have no issues on our side, but all you fricking
00:39:09 ◼ ► idiots over there, let me help teach you how to make my job easier. Like, come on. Like, yes,
00:39:15 ◼ ► John, I agree with you. I get what you're saying. You are right. I'm not as much as I joke.
00:39:20 ◼ ► And even, or even organizationally, the people who are empowered to write this documentation
00:39:24 ◼ ► probably have no power over when and if bugs are responded to, you know what I mean? Like,
00:39:28 ◼ ► the documentation team is not the same team that like triages feedbacks, you know what I mean?
00:39:38 ◼ ► and as much as I'm giving you a hard time, like it is true, and I do agree with you. And this is
00:39:43 ◼ ► actually useful documentation. It's not too long. It's not too wordy. It's pretty good. And it's
00:39:47 ◼ ► aesthetically nice to look at. It has a pretty easy URL. I forget what it is off the top of my head,
00:39:51 ◼ ► but it's not a bad URL. But it seems like so unfair and so obnoxious that, first of all,
00:40:01 ◼ ► of all the things Apple's documenting, this is what you're choosing to document? How about you
00:40:08 ◼ ► They have, the other art documentation does appear. What was the, recently they redid a bunch
00:40:15 ◼ ► And they're getting better. They are getting better. I should give them credit in the sense
00:40:18 ◼ ► that they are getting better. I don't know if they're getting better, but all I'm saying is
00:40:21 ◼ ► they are doing other documentation. This is not the only documentation that they've done recently.
00:40:25 ◼ ► They have done a bunch of other documentation. No, it's not. But it's just, read the room,
00:40:35 ◼ ► Apple has a profound inability to read the room so often. And this is one of those times. And look,
00:40:44 ◼ ► I think both sides of this are true. I am sure Apple gets thousands and thousands of bug reports
00:40:52 ◼ ► that are totally non-actionable because they're badly written, because they're incomplete,
00:40:58 ◼ ► because they don't have required information. There are definitely people in Apple who have
00:41:03 ◼ ► a problem in their hands of these bug reports that are coming in, many of them are not good enough
00:41:09 ◼ ► that we can actually act upon them or give a useful response. And therefore we should tell
00:41:14 ◼ ► people, hey, maybe try to do it this way. So that is totally valid. But when good people file good
00:41:22 ◼ ► reports, they are so often either ignored or dismissed in a hurry without respect to the
00:41:29 ◼ ► person who wrote them or the time they took that it's a slap in the face to those of us who have
00:41:35 ◼ ► ever done that because it seems like they are failing to read the room. Yes, they get tons and
00:41:46 ◼ ► you constantly are reminded by Apple, either via inaction. And in most cases, you can file an
00:41:55 ◼ ► amazing bug report, give your sys diagnose, give your sample project that demonstrates the issue
00:42:00 ◼ ► every single time, give all the information you need. And as far as you can tell, no one has ever
00:42:07 ◼ ► even looked at it. No one has ever even run your sample project. No one ever responds, it stays
00:42:12 ◼ ► open forever. The vast majority of the bugs I file stay open forever with no commentary or response
00:42:17 ◼ ► ever coming back my way. Now, I am fully aware, Apple people, before you set me on fire, I am
00:42:22 ◼ ► fully aware that there can be internal discussion on the bug that I will never see. And for various
00:42:29 ◼ ► reasons involving, you know, security concerns, but mostly just Apple's culture, for various reasons,
00:42:34 ◼ ► the barriers are set up in place such that I will as the bug filer typically not see anything that's
00:42:40 ◼ ► being discussed behind the scenes about my bug. The problem is the processes that you have in
00:42:46 ◼ ► place, dear Apple bug people have two massive problems. Number one, your secrecy dial is set
00:42:53 ◼ ► too conservatively and rather than ever tell us that even you're looking into it, we see status
00:43:00 ◼ ► open, response none forever. That's problem number one. So we can't tell if you're looking at our
00:43:08 ◼ ► bugs. And frankly, it seems most of the time that you're not. Problem number two, I'm sure,
00:43:15 ◼ ► dear Apple person, that your team deals well with bugs. Your team takes them in and, you know,
00:43:22 ◼ ► they go through whatever the screener process is and when they get to your team, I am sure your
00:43:27 ◼ ► team runs those sample projects and actually reads the bugs and actually tries to act on them
00:43:34 ◼ ► and doesn't just have an autoresponder that says every time there's a new beta, please verify this
00:43:40 ◼ ► is still the case in the beta. And if you don't do it within like, you know, two days, it automatically
00:43:44 ◼ ► closes the bug. I'm sure your team doesn't do that. Unfortunately, many other teams do. And so,
00:43:53 ◼ ► that's the experience we get the vast majority of the time is either we get no response or we get a
00:44:00 ◼ ► response that suggests that the person who is making this response, if it's even a person and
00:44:05 ◼ ► not just a script, their goal is to close as many bugs as quickly as possible while doing as little
00:44:11 ◼ ► work as possible. And so they're trying, it's almost like, look, I have a child. That child
00:44:16 ◼ ► sometimes does not want to do something, say, you know, eat a new food or, you know, do homework,
00:44:22 ◼ ► you know, whatever the case, you know, something kids don't want to do. Kids that don't want to
00:44:25 ◼ ► do something will often try to find some little tiny technicality that they think will cancel
00:44:33 ◼ ► their ability to have to do the big thing they don't want to do, even if it's not really relevant
00:44:39 ◼ ► or even if it barely is relevant, it can be easily fixed. So, for instance, this piece of, you know,
00:44:45 ◼ ► broccoli, tux, this lentil over here, therefore, this invalidates my need to eat any of the rest
00:44:52 ◼ ► And of course, that's not valid. And this is why, like, you know, contracts that are written by
00:44:58 ◼ ► lawyers tend to have clauses that basically say something along the lines of like, if some part
00:45:02 ◼ ► of this contract is invalid or unenforceable, it doesn't make the rest of it invalid. Apple
00:45:07 ◼ ► bug reporting does not seem to have such a clause. And Apple bug reporting, it seems to be,
00:45:12 ◼ ► if we can find any reason to close this bug report, we are going to do that immediately and with
00:45:19 ◼ ► prejudice if we've looked at it. Now, if we haven't looked at it, as I said, most of my bug reports
00:45:23 ◼ ► just stay open forever. But if you do look at it, it seems like the most common response I get
00:45:29 ◼ ► is those kind of autoresponders, like, please verify this is still the case in the newest beta
00:45:33 ◼ ► of whatever, whatever. And then if I happen to be doing something else that week, and I happen to
00:45:40 ◼ ► miss the usually unspecified deadline of like, hey, I you know, I don't actually run the Mac OS
00:45:46 ◼ ► beta. So I don't actually know like if this is still happening on Mac OS or whatever. If I
00:45:51 ◼ ► happen to miss that few day period, they tend that they seem to give you my bug is just closed. That's
00:45:56 ◼ ► it. It seems like they are constantly rushing through large batches of bug reports to close
00:46:04 ◼ ► them. That's different from to fix the bugs. See, that's the problem here. Whatever the incentives
00:46:12 ◼ ► are, and the processes in Apple around bug reporting and bug filtering and bug processing or
00:46:19 ◼ ► whatever, the process seems to encourage mass closure and invalidation over actually reading
00:46:28 ◼ ► them and fixing the problem because oftentimes, the very, very, very few times I've actually
00:46:33 ◼ ► gotten like a real response to a bug. It's sometimes frequently rather seems that the person
00:46:42 ◼ ► does not want to fix anything. They really just want to find a reason why they can ignore my bug
00:46:48 ◼ ► report, or why the thing I'm asking for, which seems very reasonable to me like, hey, this API
00:46:53 ◼ ► should behave the way it seems like it should by its name. Oftentimes, the response is basically
00:47:00 ◼ ► you're holding it wrong, or we don't think it should behave that way because that would be
00:47:04 ◼ ► difficult. Or like, you know, they are like, oh, you don't use this API, go use this old deprecated
00:47:10 ◼ ► one instead. Well, that's that's not really a response that I can really use because it's
00:47:15 ◼ ► deprecated. Like there's so so often that's that's been the kind of responses I get. Usually nothing.
00:47:21 ◼ ► But when I do get responses, it's either been seemingly automated, or somewhat dismissive. And
00:47:28 ◼ ► trying to look for an excuse to not do work, and to close the bug as quickly as possible. And I can
00:47:34 ◼ ► totally see how a large engineering organization can create a system that has this dysfunction.
00:47:41 ◼ ► Because of course, you optimize for the metrics that you have to work with. So it is somebody's
00:47:45 ◼ ► job to go through bug reports. They develop an incentive, whether implied or not, that they
00:47:51 ◼ ► should go through as many as possible and try to close as many as possible. It is an engineering
00:47:56 ◼ ► team's job that when bugs get assigned to them, they should probably look at them and verify them.
00:48:01 ◼ ► And if they're real bugs to schedule it from some kind of priority to get fixed, and then actually
00:48:05 ◼ ► fix them. However, it sure is a lot easier, especially when you're under crunch time, which is
00:48:11 ◼ ► all the time, it seems a lot easier. If you can just find some reason why you don't have to fix
00:48:16 ◼ ► them, then we can just close that report and move on with the things we actually need to do to solve
00:48:20 ◼ ► this crunch time where the feature we actually thought was cool, or whatever feature our boss is
00:48:24 ◼ ► telling us has to be done by the end of the week. So it's not that our bug reports are all badly
00:48:29 ◼ ► written. I'm sure many of them are. And it's not that Apple never responds well to bug reports,
00:48:35 ◼ ► because they occasionally do. But it's that giant fat middle where the well written, well supported
00:48:42 ◼ ► bug reports are so often, as far as we can tell, either ignored or dismissed for reasons that seem
00:48:48 ◼ ► like crappy engineering management to us. There's some text that Casey pulled out of the thing here
00:48:54 ◼ ► that is actually vaguely relevant to that. It says, "Please note, as an issue is being worked on,
00:48:59 ◼ ► we can't provide status updates until a fix is available in a beta software update for everyone,
00:49:06 ◼ ► or a different resolution has been identified after completing the investigation of the issue."
00:49:09 ◼ ► So they're basically saying, "We can't tell you anything about it. Don't ask us when it's done."
00:49:17 ◼ ► And the thing that it says it can't be until we think we have fixed it, we put that fix in a beta
00:49:25 ◼ ► release, and that beta release is released to everybody who is on the beta program. And only
00:49:29 ◼ ► at that point can they provide an update to the feedback, which seems extremely, extremely bad.
00:49:35 ◼ ► We've all noted that happening. The only thing you hear from them most of the time is, "Check if this
00:49:41 ◼ ► is fixed in the beta." And Marco always thinks that means that someone's going through and just
00:49:45 ◼ ► closing all the bugs and asking if they're fixed. But it could also be that this process that they've
00:49:52 ◼ ► and they did implement a fix, and they did put that fix in the beta. And now the only thing
00:49:56 ◼ ► they're allowed to do is push whatever button that causes a boot to kick over a fishbowl that
00:50:01 ◼ ► pours water onto a cat that runs over a wire. It eventually causes someone to hit a text expander
00:50:08 ◼ ► macro that says, "Check if this is fixed in B287657432," which you just have to know is,
00:50:15 ◼ ► you know, Mac OS Ventura 13.4.1, because they won't say that. They'll just give you a build
00:50:20 ◼ ► number as if you have them all memorized and as if you're running Mac OS betas all the time.
00:50:33 ◼ ► And the bad process is we can't provide status updates. I mean, maybe you could say that means
00:50:38 ◼ ► we can't tell you how it's going, but it also kind of reads as what we experienced is you just won't
00:50:43 ◼ ► hear anything. And what you would like to happen is a back and forth with a human being who is
00:50:47 ◼ ► working on this problem clarifying, "You sure X, Y, Z? And did you think about blah, blah, blah?
00:50:52 ◼ ► And so you said you did that, but in your sample project, we did this, but does it work when you
00:50:55 ◼ ► do that? And what are you actually trying to do? And why do you need this feature? And why do you
00:50:58 ◼ ► think it should work that way?" Back and forth, back and forth. You know how bugs work in
00:51:02 ◼ ► functioning software projects, right? And that process can be the special public facing,
00:51:08 ◼ ► totally separate from the internal discussion, blah, blah, blah thing because of Apple's weird
00:51:13 ◼ ► secrecy thing. But if Apple wants to have the weird secrecy thing and the division between
00:51:16 ◼ ► radar and feedback and all that, fine, that's on them. But it doesn't mean, "Okay, but now we can
00:51:21 ◼ ► never communicate with you." No, now you have to have two separate areas of communication,
00:51:30 ◼ ► the person who reported and experiences the bug because it's important to communicate with them.
00:51:34 ◼ ► It's important to, you know, like talk about the bug maybe before you even try to fix it,
00:51:40 ◼ ► because maybe like you're thinking about a way that you think it should be fixed or you think
00:51:44 ◼ ► it might be fixed by this other change or whatever, but that's the time to communicate with the
00:51:48 ◼ ► reporter. And I have seen that happen occasionally where they will communicate and say, "Well,
00:51:52 ◼ ► why is it that you want to do this?" or whatever. But this document makes it seem like actually that
00:51:56 ◼ ► should never happen. You just report a beautifully formatted bug report and then you hear nothing
00:52:00 ◼ ► until we say, "Test this in the latest beta." And that's not a good process because skipping that
00:52:05 ◼ ► whole middle portion where you discuss the bug may mean that you like maybe again, maybe the bug
00:52:12 ◼ ► wasn't written clearly enough. Maybe you wrote it with some context that is that was in your brain,
00:52:16 ◼ ► but it's not in their brain. And maybe even though you had a sample project, they think they
00:52:19 ◼ ► understood how you wanted it to work, but you weren't entirely clear how you wanted it to work
00:52:22 ◼ ► in the sample project. So they quote unquote fixed it according to what they thought the bug was
00:52:27 ◼ ► saying. That can happen even in really well-written bug reports with really well-created sample
00:52:32 ◼ ► projects that are very clear. Sometimes, you know, software is complicated and sometimes it's just a
00:52:36 ◼ ► misunderstanding. That's why you have to have communication, ideally, before you dive in and
00:52:42 ◼ ► say, "I know how I'm going to fix this typey, typey, typey." Like before you do that, make sure
00:52:47 ◼ ► you understand the bug and the only way you can do that is talk to the person who's reporting it or
00:52:51 ◼ ► the multiple people who are reporting it. Are these people all reporting the same bug? Maybe this
00:52:55 ◼ ► person thinks the API should behave this way, this person thinks it should behave that way, and then
00:52:59 ◼ ► internally you think it should behave a different way. It's just exhausting and how much more
00:53:05 ◼ ► difficult it makes everybody's lives. Obviously, it makes our lives difficult because we're
00:53:07 ◼ ► frustrated because the bugs aren't fixed, but I think it makes lives more difficult for the
00:53:10 ◼ ► people writing the software as well because they are cut off from us just as we are cut off from
00:53:16 ◼ ► them. They can't reply to us. Apparently, they're not empowered to do that. They can reply on the
00:53:20 ◼ ► internal thread and they can all discuss it, but it's like they're all discussing a bug that you
00:53:24 ◼ ► reported, but you're not allowed to be in the room. I wonder if they talked to each other. I was like,
00:53:28 ◼ ► "Man, if only the person who reported this bug could tell us what they meant instead of us arguing
00:53:32 ◼ ► back and forth about it. I think they meant this and I think they meant that, but why do they think
00:53:35 ◼ ► they want this? Do they have discussion threads internally where they're debating what the founding
00:53:40 ◼ ► fathers thought or something when George Washington is standing just outside a glass window saying,
00:53:44 ◼ ► "I'm out here, but you can't hear him because it's soundproof glass. I'm out here. Just ask me. I'm
00:53:48 ◼ ► right here." Never mind that doesn't freaking matter what the founding fathers thought because
00:53:51 ◼ ► that's stupid. Anyway, that's the analogy I came up with. I'm sorry. We're here. You're there.
00:53:57 ◼ ► We should communicate and if it has to be in some weird regimented secrecy preserving way,
00:54:04 ◼ ► so be it, but that just means you need more staff and more people to do that type of thing. "Oh,
00:54:08 ◼ ► that's too cumbersome for you?" Well, then get rid of that and just trust your engineers to be able to
00:54:12 ◼ ► hold their tongues when discussing things. I don't know. Whatever the solution is, this isn't it,
00:54:17 ◼ ► but this documentation like this is good because if you ever encounter an Apple person and discuss
00:54:25 ◼ ► this, it's difficult to pin this down because we don't know what's really going on and they always
00:54:30 ◼ ► think they know what's really going on, but they really don't because as we've talked about in the
00:54:33 ◼ ► past, people within Apple don't have a full view of Apple either. They have a bigger view than we
00:54:37 ◼ ► do on the outside for sure, but they can only see their portion of the company, their portion of the
00:54:44 ◼ ► project or whatever, and we can only see the tiny portion of the bugs that we throw over the wall,
00:54:48 ◼ ► but something like this where some group is empowered to write documentation that describes
00:54:59 ◼ ► framework for SwiftUI. This is not API platform anything specific. This is whole company.
00:55:07 ◼ ► So whoever wrote this, the responsibility was describe what good feedback is supposed to be
00:55:11 ◼ ► like for developers, and in that documentation they said we can't provide status update until
00:55:15 ◼ ► it fixes available in a beta software update. So now you've got sort of like hard evidence proof,
00:55:20 ◼ ► it says well, and the official Apple documentation on the process that they follow, this is what it
00:55:24 ◼ ► says, and we think this is bad, and it's harder for them to say, oh that's not how it works in
00:55:28 ◼ ► my group. I'm like, look, I'm just going to buy what Apple's own documentation said. It's easier
00:55:33 ◼ ► to argue against this because otherwise we're just saying, well, I tried a thing and here was my
00:55:36 ◼ ► personal experience, and it's like, ah, it's just an anecdote. On average, it would do a really good
00:55:40 ◼ ► job. Or in my group it's good. And by the way, on the whole, like, oh, within my group we do good
00:55:44 ◼ ► on feedback. The problem is, obviously, we don't get to pick as developers which bugs we encounter.
00:55:51 ◼ ► Like we don't get to say, I want to make sure I encounter bugs in the group that's really
00:55:54 ◼ ► responsive. We don't get to pick. Maybe I'm not even using that framework. Maybe that framework
00:55:58 ◼ ► doesn't have any bugs. Maybe I don't encounter any. Well, it has bugs. It doesn't have any bugs
00:56:01 ◼ ► that I encounter, right? When you're a developer, you can't choose which API will do something
00:56:09 ◼ ► unexpected based on how responsive you think the group is inside Apple. And again, when you're
00:56:14 ◼ ► inside Apple, all you can do is be responsive in your group. You can't, as a rank and file developer,
00:56:19 ◼ ► somehow fix this feedback system internally. But somewhere in Apple's org chart, there are people
00:56:25 ◼ ► who do have the power and responsibility to oversee this process. And if I met one of those
00:56:31 ◼ ► people, I would have a little note card with this thing on it and say, see this highlighted passage
00:56:34 ◼ ► here? This doesn't work for me for the following reasons. And if they say, oh, that highlighted
00:56:38 ◼ ► passage is not actually how it works, I'll say, well, maybe you should find the person who wrote
00:56:42 ◼ ► this documentation that's supposed to apply to the whole company because apparently it's not true.
00:56:45 ◼ ► Something is wrong here. Either this documentation is incorrect or you are incorrect about the policy
00:56:51 ◼ ► that your company follows. Or the third thing is you can say, this is how it works and we think
00:56:55 ◼ ► this is the best way it works. And then we'll just kind of, you know, we are a great impasse there,
00:57:00 ◼ ► because if they really think this is the best way it should work, I think they should talk to more
00:57:04 ◼ ► developers. That's what Marco keeps saying when he does read the room. He's basically like,
00:57:09 ◼ ► you know, have you talked to enough developers to understand how we feel about the process? Is it
00:57:15 ◼ ► working for us as developers? So separate from is it working for you, Apple, as a company and as,
00:57:26 ◼ ► if you had as many developers as possible in the room at the same time and you actually talked to
00:57:30 ◼ ► them about how the feedback process is working, I think what you would get is a net negative sentiment.
00:57:43 ◼ ► We can't provide status updates. You choose not to, but you could. That is something you are
00:57:52 ◼ ► capable of doing. And the other thing that drives me nuts is I know a lot of people at Apple that
00:58:02 ◼ ► truly understood what it was like to be on the outside, but then they get inside and they see
00:58:07 ◼ ► how the sausage is made and suddenly excuses are made for this. I don't care. I am not on the
00:58:13 ◼ ► inside. I understand. And I think it was Marco going on about this earlier and he's, he's exactly
00:58:17 ◼ ► right. I understand that they get an unfathomable amount of feedback more than I could possibly
00:58:24 ◼ ► imagine. And I understand that that is a very big burden, but I don't care. Yeah, that's not
00:58:32 ◼ ► on, that's not on us. That's on them. That's not my problem. It's like, geez, it's so hard to make
00:58:38 ◼ ► all this money all the time selling all these iPhones. Like, yeah, I'm sure there are challenges
00:58:41 ◼ ► there. That's not our problem. Right, exactly. And part of being a platform vendor is vending
00:58:48 ◼ ► the platform, including making a platform, not a pile of shit. And if you want us to help you not
00:58:53 ◼ ► make it a pile of garbage, then you, we need to be able to do that. And it's just so obnoxious for
00:59:00 ◼ ► them to say, Oh, excuse me. We would like it if you did your free labor in a way that was better
00:59:06 ◼ ► for us, please. And thank you. We're not paying you for this time. I think the last time we spoke
00:59:10 ◼ ► about this just a few weeks ago, a couple months ago, you know, I feel like I should bill Apple
00:59:13 ◼ ► at whatever the going rate for an iOS contractor is, which years ago was like $150 an hour. I have
00:59:18 ◼ ► no idea what it is now, but I should build them for the time I write filling out actually decent
00:59:24 ◼ ► feedbacks. And then that's not how anything ever works. I know you're frustrated, but that makes
00:59:30 ◼ ► no sense. No, but like, I think it's frustrating that like, you know, even if you read this
00:59:36 ◼ ► document and even if you give it the most charitable interpretation of like, okay, sure.
00:59:40 ◼ ► If Apple insists that they can't tell me what's going on with my bug until a beta version has
00:59:45 ◼ ► been released that might fix it, that's totally understandable. It's not. And they can change
00:59:51 ◼ ► that on any time to a large degree if they choose not to. But let's set that aside for now.
00:59:56 ◼ ► Even that process does not happen consistently. I have so many bugs that go back years that actually
01:00:06 ◼ ► were eventually fixed that actually did eventually the problem I was reporting did get fixed status
01:00:13 ◼ ► open, no response. So it's so yes, some bugs make it into the system and, and do get those,
01:00:22 ◼ ► like, please verify if it's fixed in this version of whatever they, some bugs do get that. Most of
01:00:28 ◼ ► them still don't, most of them still just stay open forever. So yes, part of the process works that
01:00:36 ◼ ► way, but there are still substantially broken parts of the process that make it so that our view from
01:00:45 ◼ ► the outside is so often that filing bugs is a waste of our time. And it's not because we're trying to
01:00:51 ◼ ► be lazy and it's not because we're trying to be negative and it's not because we're attacking your
01:00:56 ◼ ► work personally, dear Apple engineer hearing me say this right now, we'll get to that in a second.
01:01:00 ◼ ► It's that the process has shown us actions speak louder than words and Apple's actions as a whole
01:01:09 ◼ ► towards the developers in this area have been largely failing us, largely dismissing us,
01:01:14 ◼ ► and largely telling us that we are wasting our time. Now I know you, you individual Apple
01:01:21 ◼ ► engineer listening to this, you probably are very angry hearing this. Now some of you will be like,
01:01:26 ◼ ► yeah, you know, that's yeah, they're right. I, you know, I wish we could fix it or I'm trying to fix
01:01:30 ◼ ► it or whatever, but many of you Apple engineers listening to this right now are going to be angry
01:01:35 ◼ ► at us. Now I've been feeling for a while, actually, we have a larger cultural problem. You know, us
01:01:42 ◼ ► podcasters and the commentary and the public versus you, the individual Apple engineer,
01:01:50 ◼ ► you get mad at us a lot because you feel like we're attacking your work. And I want to be very,
01:02:02 ◼ ► attack something that you work on, we are attacking the output of the company. And that is maybe
01:02:09 ◼ ► partially your responsibility, but on the whole, that's not on you. And we're not attacking you
01:02:15 ◼ ► because your work is being shown through the context of a giant multinational corporation
01:02:21 ◼ ► that we don't have, you know, good access into. We're not, we're not talking to you. You're not
01:02:26 ◼ ► talking to us. There's all this context around this. I want to be very clear that I don't want
01:02:32 ◼ ► to attack individual engineers. You're working within a system and that system occasionally
01:02:38 ◼ ► fails you. And it occasionally fails me. Our job on the outside is to comment on the work as a whole,
01:02:44 ◼ ► as we see it, as it gets out of the company in the context of the company. You, dear engineer,
01:02:52 ◼ ► or bug screener at Apple who's here in the show, this isn't your problem. This is the problem of
01:02:57 ◼ ► the system that is much larger than you within the company that you work for and the processes
01:03:03 ◼ ► and incentives and realities of that system. So you, dear engineer, please don't be mad at us.
01:03:09 ◼ ► We're not attacking you directly. Rather, we're trying to empower you. When we criticize the work
01:03:16 ◼ ► of Apple or something about Apple, we are trying to empower the individual people inside the company
01:03:24 ◼ ► to be able to do their best work and get their best work out to us. And we're doing that by
01:03:30 ◼ ► making a stink in public so the higher ups might feel some kind of heat on this issue and that
01:03:36 ◼ ► might help them decide, hey, this is worth looking into or changing some policy or making some
01:03:43 ◼ ► decision differently or allocating resources differently. That's what we're doing here on
01:03:48 ◼ ► the outside. So again, I want you individual Apple engineers, not just on this topic, but on lots of
01:03:52 ◼ ► topics, we hear about this here and there. We hear some really hurt feelings. And I understand
01:03:58 ◼ ► it hurts when people tell me my software sucks. I get it. And I really want to be clear here that
01:04:03 ◼ ► we're talking about the company's processes and the company in general. The way to use us is to
01:04:15 ◼ ► maybe you shouldn't be raising these concerns internally. I get that. There's a reason why
01:04:21 ◼ ► I don't work in big companies. I wouldn't last very long. But chances are we can say things that
01:04:28 ◼ ► you can't. We can reach people that you can't. So use us. Use these arguments to help make your
01:04:34 ◼ ► department or your division or your project better and help convince the higher ups with all of our
01:04:41 ◼ ► rage and especially Casey's rage, of which there is much. Use this to make things better for everyone
01:04:49 ◼ ► rather than taking it as a personal attack. Because I swear we don't mean it as a personal attack on
01:04:58 ◼ ► it's not meant to be like, "Oh my God, that was my project and you're directly insulting me."
01:05:06 ◼ ► And sometimes the best way to do that is for podcasters on the outside to make a big stink.
01:05:19 ◼ ► especially if you work anywhere near the pro Mac hardware division. Just put that into your wardrobe
01:05:24 ◼ ► rotation. I'm just saying. **Tristan O'Brien** Do you know, because you presumably have shipment
01:05:28 ◼ ► information forthcoming for the Ternus shirt, right? You haven't seen if that's shipped,
01:05:32 ◼ ► have you? **Matt Stauffer** I'm assuming that. I just got my son's Mac Pro Believe shirt came
01:05:37 ◼ ► today. I know a bunch of people who've gotten them. I didn't actually look at the shipping.
01:05:46 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** I was actually going to WWDC. I might deliver it in person, but you know.
01:05:55 ◼ ► are they going to place it in the middle of the ring? Just like, here Apple Park, boop.
01:06:01 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** I'm assuming executives have people screening their mail. So like people don't
01:06:10 ◼ ► oh mail to Tim Cook. If you have a picture on the leadership page, I'm assuming someone is going
01:06:14 ◼ ► through the mail. And so it's like sending something to just like the president of the White
01:06:18 ◼ ► House. It'll get to him. I mean, in a functioning mail organization, not that we care at all about
01:06:25 ◼ ► this, but hey, if you know how the mail process works inside Apple, feel free to send us some
01:06:30 ◼ ► anonymous people. Like when people send you mail, can you just send it to Tim Cook Apple Park? I'm
01:06:34 ◼ ► almost certain if you sent an actual piece of snail mail to Tim Cook at Apple Park, the main
01:06:38 ◼ ► Apple Park address, it would make its way into the giant hopper that contains Tim Cook stuff. Would
01:06:43 ◼ ► Tim Cook ever look at it? I don't know, but it's not like they'd be like, Tim Cook, I don't know
01:06:47 ◼ ► who this is. The goat in the garbage, it doesn't have an office number on it. We can't deliver this,
01:06:51 ◼ ► return to sender. No, they're going to figure it out. And so I figured John Turness is similar.
01:06:55 ◼ ► But no, I would like to, I think we need to move on because it just makes me ragey. I don't know
01:07:01 ◼ ► if you noticed, but I do want to echo what Marco said. Like this is, I think, maybe I'm using the
01:07:08 ◼ ► word wrong, but I think it's a political problem. You know, and I think both Marco and John have
01:07:12 ◼ ► pointed out that clearly Apple is not incentivized to fix this in a way that's compatible with third
01:07:17 ◼ ► parties. And that doesn't mean it's any one individual contributor's fault. While I take
01:07:23 ◼ ► a lot of fault, or I have a lot of complaints with this whole thing, I don't mean to complain
01:07:31 ◼ ► about any one individual person. And I know because I've exchanged emails with people on
01:07:36 ◼ ► the inside that are desperately trying to change this and make it better. But unfortunately,
01:07:40 ◼ ► rank and file can't really turn a ship this big. And arguably, even the Federiges of the world,
01:07:46 ◼ ► it's hard for them to turn a ship this big. So I get it. It's hard. I also get that I don't get
01:07:59 ◼ ► It hurts because without third party developers, this platform is not what it is. I mean, yes,
01:08:05 ◼ ► it is an amazing platform. iOS, iPadOS, MacOS are amazing platforms. But without third party
01:08:11 ◼ ► software, they ain't that great. And so I feel like, you know, it's just we keep turning another
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01:10:05 ◼ ► Jon, turn my frown upside down even though I really don't care about video games very much.
01:10:12 ◼ ► Tell me about the new developments and make me care. Ah, so, video games. This was an announcement
01:10:20 ◼ ► that probably came as a surprise to people who aren't obsessively following the company Bungie
01:10:24 ◼ ► but I am obsessively following the company Bungie because they're the makers of Destiny,
01:10:31 ◼ ► They have announced a new game. The new game is Marathon, which is a name that may be vaguely
01:10:39 ◼ ► familiar to you if you are an old school Mac gamer. I guess I have to start by explaining...
01:10:56 ◼ ► shareware Mac stuff? Anyway, there's a lot of them. Surprising number, but it's a very small
01:11:05 ◼ ► that Marco just did that happened all the time. PC users would be like, "Oh, Macs don't have any
01:11:08 ◼ ► games," or whatever. That wasn't actually true. There was a lot of really cool games on Macs.
01:11:13 ◼ ► It was a very small and weird community, but the thing that was true was, "Hey, you know that big
01:11:18 ◼ ► new game that you heard of?" Almost all the time, that big new game that everyone is talking about
01:11:22 ◼ ► would not be available on the Mac. There were exceptions, and Marathon was one of them, and so
01:11:25 ◼ ► was Myst, for example, which is made on the Mac for the Mac, but also shipped on other platforms.
01:11:30 ◼ ► But most of the time, you couldn't play the big new game. Nowhere was that felt more than in the
01:11:35 ◼ ► early days of PC first-person gaming when Doom came out. Wolfenstein and then Doom. If you were
01:11:43 ◼ ► the right age, teen, pre-teen, around the time that Doom was coming out, and you were a Mac user,
01:11:49 ◼ ► you knew that Doom existed. You wanted to play it. You couldn't play it because you had a Mac,
01:11:59 ◼ ► It was a genre-defining set of games from id Software, and there's a reason that that genre
01:12:06 ◼ ► still exists. Destiny is a first-person shooter, so it's still going strong. It is a very appealing,
01:12:11 ◼ ► popular genre for a reason, and that was the beginning of it. And you felt left out of it
01:12:15 ◼ ► as a Mac user because all your friends had Doom, and you didn't. Part of that was, "Oh,
01:12:20 ◼ ► color on the Macs was not as common as color on PCs because they could have disgusting EGA
01:12:26 ◼ ► screens with rectangular pixels." Well, CGA had rectangular pixels. I forget which one. Anyway,
01:12:30 ◼ ► the pixels are really big. I joined at VGA. Yeah, CGA was all purple and green. EGA looked
01:12:37 ◼ ► a little better. VGA had a reasonable number of colors, but still. Anyway, so the lack of
01:12:42 ◼ ► color was one problem. But the other one is that the Mac was an entirely different API for doing
01:12:48 ◼ ► stuff, and there were very few Macs, and very few people had them. They were really expensive,
01:12:51 ◼ ► so no, there was no Doom available for the Mac until much, much later, and it was a bad port.
01:12:55 ◼ ► But what the Macs did have a little bit later was a game called Marathon, which was a first-person
01:13:02 ◼ ► shooter that was only available on the Mac, made by a company called Bungie, that was filled with
01:13:09 ◼ ► Mac nerds that made games for the Mac. And they were not very well known. They had made a couple
01:13:14 ◼ ► of games before that that were also kind of first-person-y, but with a bunch of other stuff
01:13:19 ◼ ► around there. Even Marathon was not really the full Doom experience. I remember one of the
01:13:24 ◼ ► things that Marathon did is because it had to run on a Mac which had pixels that were not the size
01:13:28 ◼ ► of boulders, if you just made like, what was Doom's resolution? It was like 300 bytes, whatever.
01:13:40 ◼ ► No Mac screen ran at that resolution. So if you tried to make something fill the smallest color
01:13:46 ◼ ► screen available for the average Mac, which probably ran 640 before, although there was a
01:13:50 ◼ ► little bit smaller one for the LC, you would be slinging more pixels than Doom was. And of course,
01:13:54 ◼ ► that would destroy your performance. This is before, you know, GPU acceleration. It was all CPU
01:13:58 ◼ ► stuff. So what Marathon did was shoved the viewport of the first-person game into a sub-window
01:14:06 ◼ ► surrounded by a bunch of Chrome and crap that was cool and gamey-looking Chrome. But the bottom line
01:14:10 ◼ ► was like, look, we can't do 30 frames per second at 640 by 480. We don't have the computing power.
01:14:16 ◼ ► Neither can Doom on most machines when the game first came out. So we're just going to make a
01:14:21 ◼ ► smaller window. But the things that had it going for it was, it did have small pixels, you know,
01:14:27 ◼ ► ran it in quote-unquote full color. It had really cool, you know, artwork and enemy design and gun
01:14:35 ◼ ► design, all the things that Bungie is known for today for all of its games, the Halo series,
01:14:38 ◼ ► Destiny, all that stuff, that started back then. So it was a cool game. It had an interesting and
01:14:44 ◼ ► deep story, which Doom did not have. And you'd run around and shoot things. Oh, and it also had
01:14:49 ◼ ► a physics engine, which was incredible fun for the PVP experience when you're playing, like,
01:14:54 ◼ ► on a land against other people. It had rockets and other things with physics that could, you know,
01:14:59 ◼ ► shoot and explosions would push things around. You know, the PC didn't get that until Quake,
01:15:03 ◼ ► when you could do rocket jumping and stuff like that. So Marathon was ahead of its time.
01:15:13 ◼ ► higher frame rates. It had that whole moving and shooting thing was better than Doom. Oh,
01:15:17 ◼ ► and by the way, you could look up and down at Marathon as well. And of course, every Mac had
01:15:21 ◼ ► a mouse, so you could use what they called mouse look, which also didn't become particularly popular
01:15:25 ◼ ► until Quake, right? Marathon way ahead of its time. Mac exclusive. That's why Marathon is
01:15:31 ◼ ► loom so large in the memory of Mac users, because it was a time when the Mac was really getting
01:15:37 ◼ ► it rubbed in its face that it didn't have a lot of good games. All your friends are playing Doom.
01:15:41 ◼ ► You can't play it. You had to say, yeah, but we have Marathon. Eventually, we have Marathon.
01:15:46 ◼ ► And even though you had that time in the sun with Doom, now Marathon is the best first person
01:15:51 ◼ ► shooter. It is better than Doom in all the possible ways and, you know, even better than
01:15:54 ◼ ► Quake because Quake still has no story and it's all brown and, you know. I'm just trying to really,
01:15:58 ◼ ► at the time, like I was in the PC side of that gaming space. It's kind of like, you know,
01:16:04 ◼ ► the madman, like, I don't think about you at all. Like there's, there is this big perceived war
01:16:09 ◼ ► going on by the Mac people with this game. As a PC person, I don't think I noticed at all because
01:16:14 ◼ ► we just had all the other games and we were fine. We had GamesCam out of our butts. We had too many.
01:16:19 ◼ ► - But that's why Mac users love this game all the more because they could know their secret little
01:16:25 ◼ ► treasure. It's like, well, you may not know. You may think we have no games or whatever,
01:16:28 ◼ ► but actually we have Marathon and actually Marathon is amazing and actually Bungie is amazing and they
01:16:32 ◼ ► made a sequel and then a third one. I think Bungie was the first one to do this. So the second one
01:16:39 ◼ ► was called Marathon 2 and the third one was called Marathon Infinity, which was the company's way of
01:16:43 ◼ ► saying we're not making any more Marathons, right? We're just going to increment the number to
01:16:48 ◼ ► infinity to say, can we be any more clear? This is the last Marathon game. Yeah, like it's, it didn't,
01:16:56 ◼ ► it's not as if that changed anything about the gaming market, but it was, it was a great thing.
01:17:00 ◼ ► It was kind of in line with the whole thing that Mac had always had. Mac had always had,
01:17:04 ◼ ► the games that were exclusive to Mac were always weird and special in a particular way.
01:17:08 ◼ ► Marathon was sort of the second generation of those. The first generation of those was way
01:17:12 ◼ ► more numerous and that's what the book I was talking about. I can't remember the title of it,
01:17:15 ◼ ► but it's like this guy who writes a bunch of books by interviewing authors of old classic software in
01:17:21 ◼ ► narrow genres. And so he did a whole book on classic Mac games. They were amazing. I would
01:17:27 ◼ ► always, whenever someone came over to my house and they were a console gamer or a PC gamer,
01:17:32 ◼ ► I would show them my weird black and white Mac games and they would be blown away because they
01:17:36 ◼ ► had never seen games like this because they were so weird and so distinctive and so interesting in
01:17:45 ◼ ► who makes games for the Mac type of person who is a Mac programmer is just a little bit different or
01:17:50 ◼ ► weird. And so were the games. It's not like they were saying, I'm going to give up my PC.
01:17:56 ◼ ► Yeah, no, but like even, even the fact that they were black and white, they were just, you know,
01:18:04 ◼ ► DOS days, like how good the sound was, because if they didn't have a sound card on their PC,
01:18:07 ◼ ► they just had the bleeps and boops or the big staticky text in that Lynx game where they tried
01:18:11 ◼ ► to make people talk. It was, you know, it was impressive, but it was also a weird little sub
01:18:18 ◼ ► genre. So that's why Marathon looms large in the minds of Mac users. And of course, Bungie would
01:18:23 ◼ ► eventually go on to make Halo, which was debuted at Mac world and then Microsoft bought Bungie.
01:18:32 ◼ ► going, going on through that. Eventually Bungie broke away from Microsoft and the Halo IP stayed
01:18:38 ◼ ► with Microsoft and then another developer was it three, four, three industries. I'm sorry. I'm not
01:18:45 ◼ ► remembering the top of my head. Some other company developed the next two Halo games. And then Bungie,
01:18:49 ◼ ► of course, went on to make destiny, which I love. But Bungie retained the Marathon IP and a bunch of
01:18:55 ◼ ► other IP, I believe. I can't keep track of where all of it is. I don't think they have myth anymore.
01:18:59 ◼ ► I think Take-Two has that. I don't think they have Oni or maybe they do. Anyway, they had the
01:19:04 ◼ ► Marathon IP and destiny actually has references to Marathon stuff buried in it as like Easter eggs
01:19:11 ◼ ► and a little bit of the story continuity or whatever. So today as part of the PlayStation
01:19:19 ◼ ► recently. So Bungie has been passed around. So far, Apple has never bought them and I hope they
01:19:22 ◼ ► never do because Apple has no idea what to do with Bungie, but Microsoft was a pretty good steward to
01:19:26 ◼ ► Bungie and Sony, I think, will be a pretty good steward to Bungie because they're good with their
01:19:31 ◼ ► game developers as well. Anyway, Bungie just announced Marathon. No, not the original Marathon
01:19:37 ◼ ► game remade or something like that. They are making a new game. Destiny fans have known that
01:19:42 ◼ ► Bungie has been making this new game for years. And in fact, what kind of game it was was also known.
01:19:48 ◼ ► And also the rumor was that they were going to reuse the Marathon IP. But it's not the same as
01:19:54 ◼ ► the first Marathon game. The first Marathon game was a first person shooter with the story. It was
01:19:57 ◼ ► a single player and had a multiplayer component. And it is set in a particular universe. Halo,
01:20:02 ◼ ► by the way, also connects in that universe and has tons of references to Marathon inside it or
01:20:06 ◼ ► whatever. This is what's known as an extraction shooter, which I think is a phrase that both of
01:20:12 ◼ ► you have probably never heard before. Nope. Never. I have never played one. The most popular one,
01:20:17 ◼ ► sort of the standard bearer for the genre is Escape from Tarkov, which I've never played
01:20:26 ◼ ► both of you, right? Nope. I know of it, but I've never played it. I think it's some kind of dancing
01:20:31 ◼ ► game, right? Fortnite is what they call a battle royale thing. Neither one of you have seen battle
01:20:36 ◼ ► royale, so that doesn't help you. Correct. But it's like an open world multiplayer game where
01:20:41 ◼ ► you have a big map, you chuck a bunch of human players into it, and they have some kind of thing.
01:20:44 ◼ ► And the battle royale ones, they all fight each other until there's one person left. In an
01:20:48 ◼ ► extraction type game, you have a goal to get to some point for extraction. There's other players
01:20:54 ◼ ► there. If you kill someone, they drop their stuff. If you die, you drop your stuff and lose it
01:20:59 ◼ ► potentially permanently. It's just twists on that type of genre. That does not sound like a first
01:21:06 ◼ ► person game where there's a story where you go through this sci-fi story and that's not like
01:21:10 ◼ ► that at all. Halo was like that. Halo and Marathon were very similar. If you don't know what I'm
01:21:13 ◼ ► talking about with Marathon, have you played Halo, the first person campaign? Marathon was like that.
01:21:23 ◼ ► lots of crossover there. So they're taking the Marathon IP and the universe, the enemies. If you
01:21:29 ◼ ► look at the teaser trailer that we'll link in the thing, if you know Marathon, you see some enemies,
01:21:33 ◼ ► you see some text that you'll recognize from Marathon. They're taking that world and that
01:21:42 ◼ ► little bit more of a story type of experience to it than the average one, and I'm sure they'll have
01:21:46 ◼ ► the bungee twist on it or whatever. But yeah, when will it be ready? There's no date. There's
01:21:51 ◼ ► just a teaser. The teaser doesn't even show any gameplay. The rumor was 2025. Maybe they'll hit
01:21:56 ◼ ► 2024. The game is coming out for PS5, the Xbox series X and S, and for PC, no Mac version.
01:22:03 ◼ ► Wait, are you serious? This thing that was the king of Mac gaming isn't going to be on the Mac?
01:22:12 ◼ ► Well, after Microsoft bought them, the door kind of closed on bungee really being a Mac game
01:22:19 ◼ ► developer in any way, shape or form. Halo was eventually released for the Mac, but it was a
01:22:25 ◼ ► port by a third party company, not by bungee, and it wasn't a particularly good port. Doom also came
01:22:32 ◼ ► to the Mac, but it was not by id Software and it wasn't a particularly good port. They haven't been
01:22:38 ◼ ► a Mac gaming company ages, despite the fact that some of the people, including one of the founders,
01:22:43 ◼ ► at least one of the founders who were there making Marathon and it was four people in a little room
01:22:49 ◼ ► on a bunch of Macs, are still at bungee and are still essentially running the company. But the
01:22:54 ◼ ► world moves on. I think when they were owned by Microsoft, them not making Mac games makes perfect
01:23:01 ◼ ► sense. When they're independent, still makes sense because nobody plays games on Macs. When they're
01:23:05 ◼ ► owned by Sony, still makes sense because they're owned by Sony and why would you make a Mac version?
01:23:09 ◼ ► The only reason they're making this on Xbox and PC or whatever is the same reason everybody does,
01:23:14 ◼ ► because you want to hit most of the market. And if you hit those platforms, that's most of the
01:23:19 ◼ ► market. If Apple was in any way competent at understanding the gaming market, they would be
01:23:26 ◼ ► spending money, throwing money at companies like bungee, at companies like Sony, whoever to say,
01:23:34 ◼ ► "Hey, you're going to make a game that everyone's going to hear about and everyone's going to be
01:23:38 ◼ ► playing. I know we don't have a lot of Macs, but we do have reasonable GPUs. Could you make that
01:23:44 ◼ ► game for the Mac?" And they're going to say, "No." And you say, "What if we give you this many
01:23:48 ◼ ► millions of dollars?" And then they'll say, "Yes." That's what it takes Apple, but of course Apple
01:23:52 ◼ ► doesn't care about that, so that's not going to happen. But that was the announcement today and
01:23:57 ◼ ► I'm excited by it. I don't particularly care about extraction shooters, but I do trust bungee
01:24:02 ◼ ► to make a good one and I do like marathon. So I will absolutely try this game. Destiny is not dead,
01:24:08 ◼ ► destiny is continuing. I continue to play destiny, I'll get back to it when I'm done with Zelda,
01:24:13 ◼ ► I suppose. But I will give bungee the benefit of the doubt and try this game. The trailer itself
01:24:24 ◼ ► original marathon, but there is enough goodwill and memories of the old folks in the Mac community
01:24:30 ◼ ► to make us interested enough to fire up our Xboxes or PlayStations or gaming PCs that we might have
01:24:36 ◼ ► and try this game out. I don't think any of us are going to be particularly surprised or
01:24:40 ◼ ► disappointed that it's not available on the Mac because honestly most people's Macs don't have
01:24:45 ◼ ► enough GPU grunt. Mine does, haha. Don't have enough GPU grunt to play this game in even the
01:24:50 ◼ ► lowest settings, but that's just the way the world has gone in recent years with the Mac. So
01:24:58 ◼ ► I'm excited by this. I'm ready to play the game, but I'm also excited for the next Destiny
01:25:01 ◼ ► expansion. And I'm also excited to continue playing Zelda. I guess I should finish Breath
01:25:05 ◼ ► of the Wild at some point, huh? I mean, you don't have to finish it, but you could, you know.
01:25:10 ◼ ► I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild, but I just put it down at some point. I think Mikaela was
01:25:17 ◼ ► a baby at this point, and so I was just completely overwhelmed and I just never really picked it back
01:25:22 ◼ ► up. And I would like to finish it at some point. Have Declan eventually pick it up and then
01:25:28 ◼ ► you can play together with him. That's true. Once he gets old enough to be interested and
01:25:33 ◼ ► coordinated enough to do it, then you can be, you know, and if he's not interested, away from Mikaela
01:25:37 ◼ ► to get old enough and coordinated enough to, you know. Oh no, he is interested, but we try to,
01:25:41 ◼ ► you know, not park them in front of screens for hours a day. We're still in that stage of
01:25:44 ◼ ► parenting. It's a little bit, and it's also a little bit of a complicated game for every kid,
01:25:49 ◼ ► to not just play with it as a sandbox, but to actually like do things in it. But it's fine to
01:25:54 ◼ ► play with just as a sandbox as well. Yeah. Sony had one more announcement. This is like some Sony,
01:26:00 ◼ ► a bunch of Sony news, and because Bungie is a Sony company, that's why it was tied up in it.
01:26:03 ◼ ► They kind of pre-announced, which is weird, this thing they're calling PlayStation Q, which is not
01:26:09 ◼ ► going to be the real name, which is a handheld device for streaming PS5 games. Everyone's into
01:26:14 ◼ ► like the Steam Deck. Not Steam Deck. Yeah, I got it right. Steam Deck. Yeah, not the Stream Deck,
01:26:20 ◼ ► the Steam Deck. There's one from Asus as well. They're basically like handheld PCs for playing
01:26:25 ◼ ► PC games on the go, and they're really cool and interesting. Sony said, "Hey, we went on in on
01:26:31 ◼ ► that." But what they're putting out is basically like a PlayStation 5 controller cracked in half
01:26:39 ◼ ► the PS5 controller, but it's not a game player. All it is is a way to stream games from your PS5.
01:26:46 ◼ ► I occasionally do this for my bed on my phone or my iPad when I forgot to get something in Destiny,
01:26:50 ◼ ► just do the remote play thing because it's like a PS app on an iOS. It will turn on your PS5
01:26:56 ◼ ► remotely, start it up, and then you get little on-screen controls. I just swipe little on-screen
01:27:03 ◼ ► This is like that, but it's not an iPad or a phone. It has no smarts in it other than the
01:27:08 ◼ ► networking and stuff like that. You can only do it, you can't do it to stream it. I don't think
01:27:12 ◼ ► it streams over the internet or anything, but we wouldn't actually know because it's not a real
01:27:15 ◼ ► product yet. But I think it's really interesting that the Switch and the Steam Deck and whatever
01:27:21 ◼ ► that Asus thing are have made this a big enough market that Sony says we should have something in
01:27:27 ◼ ► that space. And you know what? Sony did lay all the groundwork for it with the streaming stuff,
01:27:30 ◼ ► and they should have something in this market. And I'm vaguely interested in this if it works
01:27:35 ◼ ► over the internet. If it doesn't, I probably am not interested in it, but I just thought it was
01:27:38 ◼ ► curious that Sony feels so much pressure in this area that they pre-announced a product,
01:27:44 ◼ ► but they don't even have a name for it, let alone a price or a date. Just to say, "Hey,
01:27:47 ◼ ► we're doing this too, so don't spend all your time on your Switch playing Zelda because we're
01:27:51 ◼ ► going to have a way for you to play stuff in your bed too." Awesome. All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
01:27:59 ◼ ► It has been a while, I'm sorry for that. But Jesse Stiller writes, "If someone was looking
01:28:04 ◼ ► over your shoulder and says to you, 'Scroll down,' what direction do you assume the person means?
01:28:08 ◼ ► Are they asking to continue further down the page, perhaps reaching the bottom if you were
01:28:16 ◼ ► meaning you're now seeing content that lies closer to the top of the page?" I don't think this is up
01:28:20 ◼ ► for grabs. This is 100% move the contents of what you're looking at upward so you are approaching
01:28:28 ◼ ► the bottom of the contents, right? I think that's the common answer, but the problem is context.
01:28:37 ◼ ► If someone is looking over your shoulder and says to you, "What if you're on an iPad? And what if
01:28:44 ◼ ► something is barely visible on the top of the screen, but part of it is cut off by the top
01:28:52 ◼ ► and they say, "Scroll down," then they want you to pull down on the screen. What makes the
01:28:57 ◼ ► context different there? Because it's a touch device, because there is something that is cut
01:29:01 ◼ ► off at the top of the screen, because you know in the context of the conversation that that's
01:29:04 ◼ ► probably the thing they want to see, because whatever you said before that makes you understand,
01:29:08 ◼ ► "Oh, they probably want to see the thing that they can't see all of," right? And because they reached
01:29:12 ◼ ► out to the screen, maybe with their finger extended, all that would combine to let you,
01:29:16 ◼ ► as a regular human, know without thinking what they mean is put your finger on the screen and
01:29:20 ◼ ► slide it downward, revealing more of the top of the document. But in the absence of all that
01:29:25 ◼ ► context, yeah, when someone says, "Scroll down," and you're not on a touch device, and they're not,
01:29:32 ◼ ► they mean, "I want to see more of the document that's lower down," eventually getting to the
01:29:36 ◼ ► bottom up. StraysNod00 writes, "Why is it received wisdom in the Apple opinion space that it makes
01:29:44 ◼ ► sense for Apple to skip a generation of Apple Silicon in desktop Macs to save on the cost of
01:29:49 ◼ ► re-engineering the internals on lower volume products? Why is putting an M2 where the M1
01:29:54 ◼ ► used to be on an iMac any more complicated than a teenager slotting in a different CPU in a PC tower?
01:30:05 ◼ ► presupposes a reality of the old slotting a new CPU into a PC tower game. That was never really
01:30:12 ◼ ► actually the case. See, you could swap CPUs in a self-built PC, you still can. However,
01:30:22 ◼ ► at least in the days that I was doing this, the socket would change, and what a motherboard,
01:30:29 ◼ ► what processors a motherboard could support would change every so often. And so generally speaking,
01:30:36 ◼ ► you could generally swap in any processor you wanted from a given family that was available
01:30:43 ◼ ► at one time. So for instance, when the Pentium 7 comes out and it has four different clock speeds,
01:30:54 ◼ ► support the Pentium 7 or whatever. But when the Pentium 8 or the Pentium 9 would come out,
01:30:59 ◼ ► oftentimes those same motherboards would not support those new chips. And there were lots of
01:31:05 ◼ ► reasons for this, you know, simple physical stuff like the socket would change, or the thermal
01:31:09 ◼ ► requirements or the power needs would change. But one of the key things that would change oftentimes
01:31:16 ◼ ► is what used to be called the Northbridge. The Northbridge was the chip on the motherboard back
01:31:22 ◼ ► forever ago. I know things are different now, but they're not that different. The Northbridge was
01:31:27 ◼ ► the chip on the motherboard forever ago that would include a lot of the high speed interconnect
01:31:32 ◼ ► components. So things like the AGP or graphics slot interface, oftentimes the memory controller,
01:31:41 ◼ ► you know, any kind of like, you know, high bandwidth stuff, stuff that was faster than like USB or,
01:31:46 ◼ ► you know, old slow ports, like faster stuff than that. And over time, the way computer design went
01:31:52 ◼ ► was we started more and more integrating that kind of functionality into the chip. And so the chip
01:32:04 ◼ ► like Thunderbolt interfaces, you know, stuff like that PCI Express, you put more and more of that
01:32:09 ◼ ► stuff on the chip over time. So what ends up happening is, as you know, back then even a
01:32:16 ◼ ► motherboard would only last maybe one or two generations of processors. Now, so much of that
01:32:21 ◼ ► stuff is on the chip itself, that we've gone even further in that direction. So when you talk about
01:32:27 ◼ ► like, you know, the the M1 or M2, whatever chips, so much is on that chip, that if you update the
01:32:37 ◼ ► chip, you do actually often need to do a decent amount of reengineering of the surrounding board,
01:32:44 ◼ ► the surrounding IO ports, the components, this maybe the display driver, if it's a laptop,
01:32:49 ◼ ► like there are actually significant differences that come along with whatever new generation of,
01:32:56 ◼ ► you know, memory controller, IO controllers, display controller, like whatever, whatever
01:33:00 ◼ ► new combination of all that stuff exist, that actually changes a decent amount, the thermal
01:33:05 ◼ ► characteristics will change, the power characteristic will change, then maybe the number
01:33:09 ◼ ► of ports it can support will change, or the abilities of those ports will change, the displays
01:33:14 ◼ ► it can support the, you know, how fast it can drive those displays over what interfaces it can
01:33:18 ◼ ► drive those displays. So much of that actually does change when they when they do a new SOC. So
01:33:30 ◼ ► advantage of all that. Now, if you want, they could just slow down a lot of those advancements,
01:33:36 ◼ ► they could just say, all right, you know what, we're gonna have, you know, the M1 supports
01:33:40 ◼ ► X displays and X amount of RAM and all that stuff. And the M2 is going to support the exact same
01:33:46 ◼ ► thing. And it'll just be 5% faster. We could do that. But stuff moves faster these days. And
01:33:53 ◼ ► people that people's expectations are high. And whenever there's a new version of HDMI, you know,
01:33:58 ◼ ► 17 point whatever, N, Q, that you will never use, and that will only support half of what it claims
01:34:04 ◼ ► to support anyway, whatever, whenever there's a new version of all these standards, we expect Apple
01:34:08 ◼ ► to be there on day one with support, or to be competitive, at least with the market as soon as
01:34:12 ◼ ► they can be. So all that stuff like they're, they're building on quicksand here, just like
01:34:17 ◼ ► software, like, everything around them is changing, all the requirements are changing, they always want
01:34:22 ◼ ► to try to try to deliver the highest end stuff they can. Meanwhile, the both physical reality and
01:34:30 ◼ ► largely the market for upgradeable components and more modular stuff like motherboards that you
01:34:36 ◼ ► could just drop in a new chip in that market is mostly gone. You know, there is still some of it
01:34:42 ◼ ► in like, you know, a little bit of server not even barely even there a little bit in like the desktop
01:34:47 ◼ ► enthusiasts and gaming gamer spaces. But like most computers sold these days, our phones, tablets and
01:34:52 ◼ ► laptops, none of which are upgradeable, none of which the market really demands to be very
01:34:56 ◼ ► upgradeable. So it's that kind of is, it's it's largely a thing of the past where you could update
01:35:04 ◼ ► just the processor and change nothing else around it. And it's we're better off this way overall,
01:35:10 ◼ ► because things move a lot faster now, things are a lot faster now. And our hardware is generally
01:35:15 ◼ ► better this way. Apple's actually pretty awful about doing the things you described, not so
01:35:19 ◼ ► awful that they don't do it at all. But like, what ideally what you hope is if you're going from M1 to
01:35:25 ◼ ► M2, even if everything about the SOC was identical, would be like, well, the but the M1 had supported
01:35:32 ◼ ► this standard of Wi Fi and that was a new version. So the whatever machine we put the M2 in should
01:35:36 ◼ ► support the new version of Wi Fi machines, the new chip from Broadcom, which means new antenna
01:35:40 ◼ ► machine, blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know, the new version of USB, a new version of Thunderbolt,
01:35:44 ◼ ► like you said, new version of HDMI. And when we say new version, Apple was shipping HDMI 2.0 for
01:35:49 ◼ ► years and years and years after 2.1 was out. So every time they put out a new Mac, we're like,
01:35:53 ◼ ► you know, if you're updating the SSC, don't you want to update all the parts to be the newer
01:35:57 ◼ ► version of the stuff and Apple would say nope, we're gonna ship HDMI 2.0 again. So Apple is slow
01:36:03 ◼ ► about doing that. But eventually they do it. They're not still shipping USB 1.0. Like even
01:36:08 ◼ ► Apple has always lagged like how how soon do they get USB 2.0? How soon do they get USB 3.3, Super
01:36:14 ◼ ► Speed, whatever, but you know, we do want we wish Apple would be even better about that. But they do
01:36:20 ◼ ► upgrade those components eventually. So every time there's a new one, we want them to upgrade.
01:36:28 ◼ ► they're such a small market. When it comes time to do this, again, if the M2 was a drop in
01:36:33 ◼ ► replacement, and they didn't want to change anything else. The first question you have is,
01:36:36 ◼ ► okay, it's drop in replacement, but we're not changing anything else. So we can do it real
01:36:41 ◼ ► quick. Like anytime you put out any new product, there is a minimum amount of overhead that you
01:36:46 ◼ ► have to do with like certifying with the FCC certifying that your cooling solution still
01:36:55 ◼ ► even if it is exactly the same quote unquote, drop in replacement, you know, making the new product,
01:37:01 ◼ ► new skew, all the things that support it, any new parts you might need, you know, like just,
01:37:06 ◼ ► there's a minimum amount of that goes with every product. And then you have to say, okay,
01:37:11 ◼ ► if we just don't only change the SLC, don't change anything else. How compelling of a product is this
01:37:16 ◼ ► versus the M1 one that we're selling? Alright, so it's five to 10% faster and has like, you know,
01:37:26 ◼ ► we're ever going to make back the money that we spend this like the minimum overhead it requires
01:37:31 ◼ ► to make a sort of a no op new product that has no changes in it, right? Like, say you just wanted
01:37:36 ◼ ► to make the M1 and change literally nothing about it, but you change the name and it's an all new
01:37:40 ◼ ► product and you get a need to get it recertified with the FCC or something like, can we make that
01:37:44 ◼ ► money back? Is someone going to see this and say, oh, I now I want that one either I was I skipped
01:37:50 ◼ ► the M1 and now with the M2 comes out a real one or is it going to make M1 people upgrade?
01:37:53 ◼ ► An upgrade like that is so minimal, it's not particularly compelling, it may not be able to
01:37:59 ◼ ► make out a make back enough profit for Apple to pay for the overhead required to make the new
01:38:06 ◼ ► product, which is why Apple tends not to do things like that. Sometimes they do, especially if a
01:38:10 ◼ ► product has been like languishing on the M1 for ages and ages and ages and like, oh, we should
01:38:14 ◼ ► eventually make an M2 version of this. But the reason we think they're not in a big hurry to do
01:38:19 ◼ ► it with like, say the Mac Studio or something is if it's a newish machine, and it has a processor
01:38:24 ◼ ► in it that is currently actually pretty good, and there isn't like, you know, we look at the the new
01:38:29 ◼ ► one that would replace it just came out, you can squint and say, what would it be like to have,
01:38:34 ◼ ► you know, M2 Macs, Mac Studio? Would it be that compelling of a product over this one? And would
01:38:40 ◼ ► it be compelling enough to sell enough units to make up for its costs? And we on the outside,
01:38:43 ◼ ► look at that and say, I can understand why financially within Apple, they may do the math
01:38:48 ◼ ► and say, this doesn't actually make financial sense. And the customers for this product can
01:38:55 ◼ ► wait for the M3 version or something like that. We don't like it, we wish they would, you know,
01:38:59 ◼ ► essentially, even if it loses money, you just got to do it. Because when you, my argument has been,
01:39:04 ◼ ► if you're going to make pro products, you just you have to keep up with the times you have to
01:39:08 ◼ ► actually update to the new version HTML, you actually have to put a faster SD card slot in
01:39:12 ◼ ► there. You can't just keep using the old standards forever and ever and ever, especially on the pro
01:39:16 ◼ ► lines, because the pros care about that. But Apple does the math on that and says, I'm sorry, but the
01:39:20 ◼ ► market is just so small, so, so small compared to our other products that we cannot justify
01:39:26 ◼ ► the expenses. Even on the iPad, we talked about it. Why didn't the iPads get updated to have like,
01:39:31 ◼ ► the camera in the new place and stuff like that? Oh, the pencils in the way, why didn't they
01:39:34 ◼ ► re-engineer the iPad Pro? Even the iPad Pro, the volumes are not enough for them to do a
01:39:39 ◼ ► quote unquote, total redesign of internals. And you know, this really would be redesigned,
01:39:43 ◼ ► because you got to move the stuff all around and do all like, even that product could not
01:39:47 ◼ ► justify the redesign cost. And so the the lesser iPad got a bunch of new stuff that the iPad Pros
01:39:53 ◼ ► didn't. The Mac Studio sells way fewer units, I imagine, than the iPad Pros do. So yeah, that's
01:40:01 ◼ ► why that's why we think that it is why we understand why Apple does it, even if we disagree
01:40:07 ◼ ► with it. And even if it was a drop-in replacement, which it almost certainly isn't, because getting
01:40:11 ◼ ► back to reality here, the M2 is not the same as the M1. It does not have the same criminal
01:40:16 ◼ ► characteristics. And we do want them to fix all the stuff, fix the stupid fan that's noisy,
01:40:24 ◼ ► then we wait to see what they actually do. And they do like 50% of that. Well, you know,
01:40:32 ◼ ► the SD card is the same, the SSD is a little bit faster. What do you think? I'm like, I will take
01:40:36 ◼ ► it. Indeed. Soreb writes, "How often do you reboot your Macs? Also, given John's exotic window
01:40:46 ◼ ► arrangement, how does he maintain window arrangement continuity after a reboot?" I would
01:40:52 ◼ ► guess I reboot mine every two to four weeks, generally speaking, but there's no hard and fast
01:40:57 ◼ ► rule. We'll come back to John to talk about his window arrangements. Marco, how often do you
01:41:01 ◼ ► reboot your stuff? Whenever either there's a software update that requires it, or if Xcode
01:41:09 ◼ ► really gets wedged in a really weird way. Sometimes, like, there are some problems with like,
01:41:15 ◼ ► you know, like launching stuff in the simulator or just debugging or just, you know, source kit or
01:41:21 ◼ ► whatever in the background. Like there are some problems that just seem to require a reboot. So
01:41:26 ◼ ► typically it'll be maybe every few weeks. All right, John, what's your story? So I'm not
01:41:33 ◼ ► rebooting without any reason. And the reason usually doesn't have anything to do with stability.
01:41:38 ◼ ► To give an example of a time when I'm rebooting a lot frequently is when I was trying to debug that
01:41:44 ◼ ► weird bug I have with the window moving around and stuff. Every time I would like hunt down a
01:41:47 ◼ ► piece of third-party software and remove it, I would reboot for a good measure. If I'm about to
01:41:51 ◼ ► reproduce it and do another sample or spin dump or a sysdiagnose, like when I made two test accounts
01:41:57 ◼ ► that are just fresh accounts to try to reproduce the bug, I would reboot after I did that. Like,
01:42:00 ◼ ► I want it to be fresh. That's obviously not a normal scenario. I'm rebooting there for the
01:42:06 ◼ ► purpose of rebooting because I want to say, "I made a change to the system that will only take
01:42:10 ◼ ► effect on reboots, so time to reboot." And I want a clean slate and I want to just, you know, reboot,
01:42:14 ◼ ► like tons and tons of reboots to try to reproduce this bug that Apple's never going to fix.
01:42:20 ◼ ► But that is an anomaly. But that's an example of like, I reboot with reason. I don't reboot on a
01:42:25 ◼ ► regular schedule. I don't reboot for the hell of it. It's only software updates or things that
01:42:31 ◼ ► require reboot. Like, hey, I just removed some third-party extensions or something. I want to
01:42:35 ◼ ► be sure they're not loaded. I want to reboot and have a clean system. I can't remember the last
01:42:41 ◼ ► time I rebooted for any kind of software problem. Back when I didn't know what caused my weird
01:42:45 ◼ ► window thing, I would reboot to get rid of that. And of course, that would work because when I log
01:42:50 ◼ ► back in, there'd be only one user logged in. I didn't know that at the time, but that was the
01:42:53 ◼ ► last example I can think of when I reboot to avoid a situation that, you know, a bug that I was
01:42:59 ◼ ► encountering that I found annoying and I knew rebooting would "fix it." As for Windows, any
01:43:05 ◼ ► well-behaved Mac app should respect your window arrangement. Most of the apps I use on a daily
01:43:11 ◼ ► basis do that. Some of them, by using the official Apple APIs, all of Apple's frameworks have some
01:43:17 ◼ ► way for you to, on the Mac, have some way for you to restore state. So you can, you know, when
01:43:23 ◼ ► someone selects "shut down" or "restart" and the app is told to quit, it can save the state of all
01:43:27 ◼ ► the windows and where they are. And when you log back in, Mac OS itself, there's even a checkbox
01:43:32 ◼ ► you can check that says, "Hey, when I log back in, I want you to reopen all the applications I had
01:43:37 ◼ ► running before." And then each of those applications, the responsibility for restoring state is
01:43:42 ◼ ► delegated to them. So Mac OS just said, "Okay, I know you're running apps A, B, C, and D."
01:43:46 ◼ ► And it launches apps A, B, C, and D. And then each of those apps, when it's launched, is responsible
01:43:51 ◼ ► for restoring its state, such that you can restart and come back to your computer and the screen
01:43:57 ◼ ► should look exactly the same, everything goes well. Obviously, that can't always be the case,
01:44:00 ◼ ► because say you had a web page loaded, like the front page of the New York Times, and when you
01:44:04 ◼ ► come back in, the new front page of the New York Times will be there. It doesn't remember the old
01:44:07 ◼ ► front page because it reloaded the page, right? Even apps like Chrome, which I'm assuming do not
01:44:12 ◼ ► use Apple's APIs to do this, have a thing that says, "Hey, Chrome, on startup, what do you want
01:44:16 ◼ ► me to do?" And my answer is, "I want you to restore all the windows the same way they were before." So
01:44:20 ◼ ► if any app has an option to do that, that's the option I pick. And that's how I do my window
01:44:25 ◼ ► rendering. And if an app doesn't do that, I tend not to use it or not to like it or seek out an
01:44:30 ◼ ► alternative that does support it. My text editor supports it. TextEdit, the default text editor,
01:44:35 ◼ ► supports that. BbEdit supports that. All the other apps, like the IRC app that I'm in to be
01:44:40 ◼ ► in the chat room. It remembers its window position. It remembers what channel. And then when I launch
01:44:44 ◼ ► the app, it goes back to right where it was. And I don't actually have the checkbox check to relaunch
01:44:48 ◼ ► all the apps because if I reboot, I don't want it to do that. I can launch them myself when I
01:44:52 ◼ ► rather have a clean slate, but that's just a choice. If I had that checkbox check and I rebooted
01:44:56 ◼ ► right now, everything would come back exactly where it is, except for audio hijack would not be
01:45:01 ◼ ► recording. And I think Zoom would not restore state. I think every other app I'm running would.
01:45:08 ◼ ► Fair enough. And then finally for tonight, Brian Coffey writes, "I just went on a Disney cruise
01:45:13 ◼ ► and took hundreds of pictures and many videos and want to share with my tech-lazy family.
01:45:18 ◼ ► iOS shared albums are too many steps for them to do. How can I send hundreds of photos to them
01:45:22 ◼ ► privately over iCloud where all they need to do is click one link in an iMessage? Create iCloud link
01:45:28 ◼ ► appears to have a limit." I have no idea what the answer to this question is. iOS shared albums are
01:45:34 ◼ ► the easiest. It seems like the problem is not that they have a bunch of Android users. If everyone
01:45:38 ◼ ► has iPhones, iOS shared albums are the easiest way for people to see pictures that you want to share
01:45:44 ◼ ► with them. They don't have to do anything. They just magically appear on their phones. Usually
01:45:49 ◼ ► there's a notification. They tap the notification and they can see the pictures. That's it.
01:45:52 ◼ ► That is the best way for tech-lazy people to just deal with photos. But if you're trying to
01:46:00 ◼ ► send them photos, how can I send hundreds of photos to them privately, so on and so forth?
01:46:05 ◼ ► It sounds kind of like you want them to have the photos and not just like the reduced resolution
01:46:09 ◼ ► iOS shared albums thing. And by the way, iOS shared albums do have a limit. And I think it's
01:46:13 ◼ ► like 5,000 photos, so you'd have to make a new shared album every once in a while. But if your
01:46:18 ◼ ► family doesn't like iOS shared albums because it's too complicated, I don't know what to say.
01:46:23 ◼ ► That's the simplest solution I've ever found. If the problem is that iOS shared albums don't
01:46:28 ◼ ► work because you want to give them the photos, like they have copies of the files, I'm like,
01:46:32 ◼ ► "Well, how tech-lazy could they be that they're willing to accept 500 full resolution photos from
01:46:37 ◼ ► you?" But the answer to that is look outside of Apple. There are tons of services that do this in
01:46:42 ◼ ► a cross-platform way. I don't use any of them, but I have relatives who do. What are some of them like
01:46:54 ◼ ► like websites essentially, where you upload your pictures to the website and then you can click a
01:46:58 ◼ ► button and it'll send out an email to a bunch of people. And no matter what platform they're on,
01:47:02 ◼ ► they'll be able to click that link in the email, it'll open a web browser where they'll be able to
01:47:06 ◼ ► see all your photos and download the whole resolution ones if they want to in a web browser
01:47:10 ◼ ► on any platform, on any device, on a phone, on a tablet, on a PC, on a Mac. Most of those services
01:47:15 ◼ ► you have to pay for, but that will solve your problem. But within the Apple ecosystem, if
01:47:21 ◼ ► you're just trying to let people see stuff, get them signed up for iOS shared albums. And if the
01:47:24 ◼ ► problem is they can't figure out how to sort of subscribe to your shared album, because that can
01:47:28 ◼ ► be weird, just grab their devices. Like send the invitation, they grab their devices and say,
01:47:32 ◼ ► "Accept, accept, accept, accept, accept," and then you're done. This is the ultimate side of parent,
01:47:36 ◼ ► grandparent type thing for like pictures of kids and stuff. You just chuck them in the album,
01:47:40 ◼ ► and then grandma gets a notification on her phone and she taps it and she sees baby pictures. It's
01:47:45 ◼ ► the best system. Sorted. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Rocket Money and Lickability. And
01:47:53 ◼ ► thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm/join. And we will talk to
01:47:59 ◼ ► you next week. Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. 'Cause it was accidental.
01:48:18 ◼ ► 'Cause it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
01:48:39 ◼ ► Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T, Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A-C, R-A-C-U-S-A, it's accidental.
01:49:05 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't know. You have analysis paralysis. You have too many different people
01:49:12 ◼ ► with too many different opinions and you just can't decide. Honestly, that is 100% accurate.
01:49:16 ◼ ► My current theory, which I don't want to go on for another 20 minutes discussing this. We can talk
01:49:24 ◼ ► about it next week if we're still interested. My current theory, which I would like you guys to
01:49:44 ◼ ► When I spend money on things, I am most happy to do that when I am being met where I am. So
01:49:54 ◼ ► if I wanted to, I don't know, get takeout, it is easy to do so. It is easy and not hilariously
01:50:02 ◼ ► overpriced to do so. DoorDash makes it reasonably easy to have food magically appear at my house,
01:50:14 ◼ ► debate whether or not DoorDash is good or bad, but it's all right. If I want to buy a piece of media,
01:50:21 ◼ ► I don't have to think about how I get it, how do I watch it, where does it arrive, am I renting it,
01:50:27 ◼ ► am I buying it, I want to be met where I am. And with that in mind, there are people who would
01:50:35 ◼ ► have no problem paying a subscription and would like to. And certainly, selfishly, I would like
01:50:41 ◼ ► people to pay for a subscription to CallSheet. But there are people that maybe don't want a
01:50:47 ◼ ► subscription, are quote-unquote allergic to subscriptions, or understandably have fatigue
01:50:53 ◼ ► with subscriptions. And so, as we discussed with last week, there's an argument to be made,
01:51:00 ◼ ► and don't jump on me yet, just hold on, there's an argument to be made for something that's a
01:51:04 ◼ ► one-time purchase. Maybe I can phrase it as, this is not a lifetime unlock, there's no guarantee
01:51:10 ◼ ► here. I'm offering this to you only because you might want it, but there is no implied guarantee,
01:51:15 ◼ ► or there's no explicit or implied guarantee that this will last for any amount of time. But if
01:51:19 ◼ ► you're really that allergic to subscriptions, fine, power to you. But the other thing I got
01:51:23 ◼ ► thinking about was, all right, if I'm going to offer that one-time thing, which I'm not sure I
01:51:28 ◼ ► will, but let's suppose for the sake of conversation, I will offer subscription for probably
01:51:33 ◼ ► monthly and yearly, let's suppose for the sake of discussion, I offer a hilariously expensive
01:51:38 ◼ ► one-time thing. Would it make sense, and my current thinking is yes, but I am, this is a weak
01:51:45 ◼ ► opinion held loosely, would it make sense to do consumables as well? So you can buy a 10-pack of
01:51:50 ◼ ► searches, or maybe a hundred-pack, I don't know what the number is, I don't know how much it would
01:51:53 ◼ ► cost. You're gradually approaching the casino games for children business model, and I know how
01:51:58 ◼ ► you're getting there, but I feel like every time you go up, people are used to it and they
01:52:02 ◼ ► understand it, but it's like, really? Consumables for an app? Like, what kind of app do you want to
01:52:08 ◼ ► be vending out there in the world? Do you want people to feel like they're putting quarters into
01:52:11 ◼ ► your thing to look up where an actor is from? I give that a big thumbs down. I agree with you,
01:52:17 ◼ ► I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if you are not the kind of person that watches stuff often,
01:52:25 ◼ ► but you want to be able to use a nicely made app to occasionally do that, do you really want a
01:52:30 ◼ ► subscription or are you going to want to pay? And I genuinely don't know what I would do.
01:52:34 ◼ ► You're not going to get all the customers, like, you know what I mean? You're not going to have a
01:52:40 ◼ ► business model that is going to appeal to everybody who sees your app and finds it useful. That's just
01:52:44 ◼ ► impossible, right? You can't cover all the bases. You have to just decide which are the customers
01:52:50 ◼ ► that you want to get. Hopefully you pick the group that has the most people in it, right?
01:52:54 ◼ ► But I don't think you can get all of them. So if you're fretting over what people are allergic to
01:52:59 ◼ ► subscriptions. If you think you have to have a subscription app because you're using a third
01:53:03 ◼ ► party API with unknown financial things, which as we've discussed in the past thing, then anyone who
01:53:09 ◼ ► doesn't like subscription is out of your market. And I don't think there's anything you can do for
01:53:13 ◼ ► those people. You want to revisit that decision and say, well, really? Do I really need a subscription?
01:53:17 ◼ ► Because right now it's free and I want to take the risk. Then you can revisit. And, but that changes
01:53:20 ◼ ► everything. But if you're deciding you want a subscription, don't spend a second worrying
01:53:24 ◼ ► about the people who don't want to pay for subscriptions because they're not in your market
01:53:27 ◼ ► anymore. Yeah, I would even go further than that. I don't want to pay a subscription is really code
01:53:33 ◼ ► for, I don't want to pay. That's interesting. Well, yeah. Now, yes, you, you listen to her out there
01:53:39 ◼ ► who were screaming, but, but, but I will pay money, but I don't like subscriptions. In today's modern
01:53:46 ◼ ► software world. That really just means I don't want to pay. It's simple as that because look,
01:53:50 ◼ ► there is an alternative here. You're not going to like it. There is an alternative here. However,
01:53:57 ◼ ► software that is on modern platforms that is expected and required to have some kind of regular
01:54:04 ◼ ► maintenance updates at least needs recurring revenue to do it. That's why most apps are moving
01:54:12 ◼ ► to this kind of model. There's other factors too, like the app stores, you know, non-existent
01:54:17 ◼ ► handling of upgrade pricing and stuff like that. If you were doing things that way, but really
01:54:22 ◼ ► subscription pricing is a very clean, clear, mostly consumer friendly option of pricing software. Now,
01:54:31 ◼ ► there are apps that do it badly. There are apps that charge significantly more with subscription
01:54:37 ◼ ► pricing that then, then what might be warranted for what they're doing. There are apps that use
01:54:43 ◼ ► deceptive techniques to trick people into paying more than they might think they're paying or more
01:54:48 ◼ ► than they might expect to pay or take advantage of the fact that they're going to forget to cancel or
01:54:52 ◼ ► whatever else. But the concept of a subscription payment for an app that has ongoing use that will
01:54:59 ◼ ► require ongoing maintenance is not only sound, but is fair. And it's actually consumer friendly
01:55:08 ◼ ► when done right. When you think about all the dysfunction of the old model of like, well,
01:55:13 ◼ ► I'm going to pay this one time chunk and then it turns out next week I don't use this app anymore,
01:55:19 ◼ ► or I buy it and it's not really what I wanted it to be. You know, a lot of times customers just get
01:55:26 ◼ ► screwed or you, you know, you buy some giant app and then like three months later they unveil the
01:55:32 ◼ ► next big version and you got to pay an upgrade fee that was way bigger than if you would have been
01:55:36 ◼ ► paying like five bucks a month for the whole time. So the old model has its dysfunctions. The new
01:55:41 ◼ ► model has its potential abuses. However, this model of subscription priced software, this is just
01:55:47 ◼ ► paid software. This is just how paid software is paid these days because the entire ecosystem of
01:55:54 ◼ ► software development has shifted over time to A make this easier and actually make this the
01:55:59 ◼ ► easiest option. But B, as I mentioned before, like customer customer expectations and the ecosystem
01:56:07 ◼ ► environments are moving so much. Customers expect so much ongoing now and I can't blame them that
01:56:15 ◼ ► you need a way to fund it. You need ongoing revenue for each customer. So there's two options for that.
01:56:22 ◼ ► You can either have subscriptions in some form and the details we can talk about, but subscriptions
01:56:27 ◼ ► in some form or ads. Those are your options. So if you really want there to, if you really want
01:56:36 ◼ ► to satisfy the, I don't want to pay a subscription, but I would pay you for a lifetime unlock. Okay,
01:56:45 ◼ ► I get emails like this and you know, it'll be like, I don't want to pay your $10 a month or
01:56:51 ◼ ► $10 a year subscription, which is comically cheap for what I'm offering, but fine. I don't want to
01:57:02 ◼ ► Like if you actually like the prices they have in mind when they say, I don't want to pay your
01:57:07 ◼ ► subscription, it's not, it's never that long of a time span worth of the subscription price.
01:57:17 ◼ ► I guess the model, the third model that you didn't mention, speaking of lifetime not being that long,
01:57:21 ◼ ► the third model is the one that people hate even more, but it all adds up to the same thing,
01:57:27 ◼ ► which is, okay, I'll give you a lifetime unlock for $15. But every 18 months I come up with a
01:57:33 ◼ ► new version of my program and I abandon the old one. Right. Right. And then you can lifetime unlock
01:57:37 ◼ ► that one for $15. Right. So you just go every 18 months. And by the way, and next time you update
01:57:42 ◼ ► your iPhone and you're required to update the OS with the new phone, that old version of the app
01:57:47 ◼ ► might break. And then you're out of luck. Exactly. No, you totally abandoned it. Pull it from the
01:57:51 ◼ ► store. And just like when that breaks, it's like, well, there's no, in every 18 months you come up
01:57:55 ◼ ► with a brand new version, there's no upgrade pricing in the app store and that's on Apple,
01:57:58 ◼ ► but every is a brand new version. And then you get to pay for it and own it for the lifetime of that
01:58:02 ◼ ► program. But every 18 months you come up with version two, version three, version four, that is
01:58:06 ◼ ► it also a model that works and it is not subscription and you won't get recurring bills
01:58:10 ◼ ► that you don't understand where they come from, but you're still paying $15 every 18 months. Right.
01:58:15 ◼ ► It doesn't matter how we break it up. Like it's the same amount of money. And by the way, the
01:58:18 ◼ ► people like bone, the good old days, there was those Christians in the good old days, Casey's app
01:58:21 ◼ ► would cost an inflation adjusted $80. And it would only work for three years before we came out with
01:58:26 ◼ ► the next major version that you'd have to charge a $40 upgrade fee for like, people don't understand
01:58:30 ◼ ► how expensive software was like, go look at how much like the original version of like, you know,
01:58:36 ◼ ► Mac, right. Version 2.0 costs like, and inflation and do the inflation adjustment calculation. It
01:58:41 ◼ ► will make your eyes bleed. Software used to be so expensive. You'd buy some weird thing like now
01:58:46 ◼ ► menus or something that would make like an icon in your menu bar and like inflation adjusted. It's
01:58:50 ◼ ► like $120 right for a little utility that appears in your menu bar. I'm not trying to $120 for my
01:59:03 ◼ ► And the major new versions maybe would have a good pricing, but maybe they'd want another $120 from
01:59:08 ◼ ► you. It was so much more expensive. So in absolute real dollars, like inflation adjusted dollars,
01:59:14 ◼ ► it was so much more expensive to do that thing. So it's like, if you, do you want to just be
01:59:19 ◼ ► a, you know, a now utilities user for the entire life of that product, you're going to pay way more
01:59:27 ◼ ► Yep. And I mean, to be clear, I haven't come up with an answer if I do offer not a like,
01:59:39 ◼ ► like if I were to offer it, it would be like a lot of money. I'm thinking like somewhere in the order
01:59:45 ◼ ► of 50 ish dollars to really make it like, look, I don't want to do this and you probably don't want
01:59:52 ◼ ► to do this, but if you are really that allergic to subscriptions, fine. Okay, sure. Yeah. But see,
01:59:58 ◼ ► but see, then you have a problem. Anybody who actually does buy that you have 50 of their
02:00:04 ◼ ► dollars, asterisk apples cut, but whatever, you know, in their mind, you have, I gave you $50
02:00:13 ◼ ► and then you have the nerve in three years to discontinue the product because the API got
02:00:18 ◼ ► shut down. You don't want someone to have 50 of their like your dollar. Like you don't want that.
02:00:25 ◼ ► You don't want anyone to have that over you because they will abuse it. It's you're much
02:00:31 ◼ ► better off. Let's keep this very, very simple. This app exists now. It for the time period that
02:00:38 ◼ ► exists, you pay me X dollars per month or year to use it. And at some point in the future,
02:00:43 ◼ ► this arrangement may change in some way. And that's cool because you're, you didn't pay for
02:00:47 ◼ ► the future. You paid for now. That's the model that is the healthiest model for everyone involved.
02:00:53 ◼ ► There is nothing wrong with that model. If you ship with that model and only that model,
02:01:00 ◼ ► you will have a good business as long as you don't screw up the pricing, but you won't because we'll
02:01:04 ◼ ► guide you, you know, but like you will have a good business and yes, there will be people who say,
02:01:11 ◼ ► I don't, I just don't like subscriptions on principle, but you know what? There's also way
02:01:16 ◼ ► more people who say, I just don't like paying for any apps on principle. It's the same thing.
02:01:23 ◼ ► it's like when we, it's like, you know, like it's the same flag. When you see that flag that just
02:01:27 ◼ ► has like the police blue stripe and it's like, it's the same flag from a few flags we've had before.
02:01:34 ◼ ► Yeah, this, it's the same argument. What they're saying is, I don't wanna pay. That's what they're
02:01:41 ◼ ► saying or hey, could I maybe pay a lot less? I don't wanna pay you over and over again for this
02:01:48 ◼ ► thing I'm gonna use all the time. Like that's what they're saying. You gotta translate. Anything that
02:01:53 ◼ ► says, I don't wanna pay you your 10 bucks a year is really saying, I don't wanna pay you. And that's
02:01:59 ◼ ► fine if you had something like ads where you could monetize non-paying users, but you don't. And you
02:02:05 ◼ ► don't want that. So you have to be okay losing those people. You're never gonna satisfy them
02:02:10 ◼ ► with any purchase option you create that is fair to you. So don't even bother, have a subscription
02:02:23 ◼ ► - Yeah. So with that in mind, and I'm still kicking all this around and I think it was Marco
02:02:29 ◼ ► that said earlier, I am getting feedback from everyone. And while I do appreciate and enjoy that,
02:02:36 ◼ ► every single person is 100% devoutly convinced that they are the most correct and not a single
02:02:42 ◼ ► one of them agrees with anyone else. So ultimately I'm gonna have to make, I'm just gonna have to put
02:02:47 ◼ ► a line in the sand and say, this is the way. And additionally, a lot of people are saying,
02:02:58 ◼ ► like I'm really worried. So I think if I were to start with just one approach, it would be what
02:03:04 ◼ ► you're describing, what both of you are describing, which is subscription, probably monthly and yearly.
02:03:09 ◼ ► That is my approach that I think that's my bare minimum. I'm going to do that no matter what.
02:03:21 ◼ ► but they see the subscription and they don't want to pay it and they bounce. How can I get to them
02:03:27 ◼ ► again if I change the model or if I lower the price or whatever? - You're discovering the world
02:03:33 ◼ ► of marketing. How do you find customers? - How about a push notification for marketing spam?
02:03:39 ◼ ► - Yeah, I mean, I could do push notification marketing spam, but you know what I mean? Like,
02:03:43 ◼ ► I feel like, yes, I can. - They will have deleted your app. You're not even gonna send a push
02:03:47 ◼ ► notification. You actually have to, yeah, you have to acquire customers, Casey. And how much do you
02:03:51 ◼ ► pay to acquire them? - Deleting apps is hard now because now they go directly to the app library.
02:03:56 ◼ ► So they will abandon your app very quickly and easily. Even if they like it, they'll abandon it
02:04:00 ◼ ► because they just lose it, but they won't delete it. - Is that the default? Is that the default?
02:04:04 ◼ ► - I think it gives you a prompt that says go to the library, which is considered to be the default,
02:04:09 ◼ ► or they give the destructive, you know, or delete if that's in red or what have you. - Oh no, not
02:04:14 ◼ ► when you delete. I get it where you say, yeah, yeah. I was saying like, if you don't, if you
02:04:17 ◼ ► got a fresh iPhone out of the box and you buy an app from the app store, it doesn't go to the
02:04:19 ◼ ► library, right? - Oh no, I don't think so. No, no, no. I don't believe. Hold on, I got more right here.
02:04:24 ◼ ► Keep talking, I'll tell you in a minute. So in any case, so I think I will do, you know, a trickle,
02:04:33 ◼ ► I will probably do a trickle out like we had discussed last week, a trickle out of free searches.
02:04:38 ◼ ► A lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot, a handful of people have written me on Mastodon being like,
02:04:43 ◼ ► no, no, no, no, no, just do the free trial. Screw the free, screw the, you know, the trickle out of
02:04:48 ◼ ► searches, just do a free trial, which I get. I really do, but I don't feel like it's a good first
02:04:54 ◼ ► run experience to say, hi, here's this app, you must sign up for a free trial that will obligate you to,
02:05:02 ◼ ► I mean, yes, you can cancel it, but will obligate you to pay me soon before you can really do
02:05:06 ◼ ► anything. You know what I mean? Like it just seems very off-putting to me for basically the onboarding
02:05:11 ◼ ► screen to be, hey, screw you, pay me. Like, you know, I don't even know what this thing does. This might be
02:05:17 ◼ ► garbage, you know. I'm not in a position that I want to pay you, I don't even want to sign up for the
02:05:20 ◼ ► possibility of paying you yet. And that's why I think that that's not the right approach.
02:05:25 ◼ ► But I understand, like in a perfect world, yes, I would do that, but I just don't think that that's realistic.
02:05:31 ◼ ► By the way, real-time follow-up, it does not go directly to the App Library by default. I just
02:05:35 ◼ ► test it on my test phone. That's what I thought. I looked up what MacWrite, and MacWrite shipped
02:05:40 ◼ ► free with the Mac for a while, but eventually Claris got it and it became a commercial product.
02:05:43 ◼ ► That's why I was thinking of it, because my parents did buy like a boxed copy of MacWrite from
02:05:47 ◼ ► Claris or whatever. In this MacWorld 1994 review, the inflation-adjusted price of MacWrite Pro 1.5,
02:05:56 ◼ ► if you bought it as a separate product from Claris, was, drum roll, anybody? A thousand bucks?
02:06:02 ◼ ► 150 bucks. Remember, this is not like Microsoft Word, it's MacWrite. It's fairly simple text
02:06:08 ◼ ► editors from Claris. Actually, maybe Marco's more right than I gave him credit for. I would say
02:06:14 ◼ ► between $1 and $300, but I'm worried that Marco is much closer to correct than I realize. $498.67.
02:06:29 ◼ ► word processor. TextEdit that comes free with your Mac does substantially more than its program.
02:06:36 ◼ ► Substantially more and way faster. It's free with your Mac. Software used to go a lot more.
02:06:42 ◼ ► "I want a subscription." Great. By the way, when the next version of MacWrite comes out,
02:06:48 ◼ ► there may be upgrade pricing, but you're not going to get it for free. You're going to have to pay
02:06:53 ◼ ► some amount of money, probably some substantial portion of that $498 for the next version.
02:06:59 ◼ ► Software used to be way more expensive. Like Marco said, people never talk about the bad sides of pay
02:07:06 ◼ ► up front, where you buy it and it turns out you don't like the program. You've spent all that
02:07:12 ◼ ► money and now you basically have to use it for some period of time to make it worthwhile.
02:07:16 ◼ ► If you don't and you can't return it, then you're stuck with it. Or if you buy it and a new version
02:07:21 ◼ ► comes out and the upgrade pricing is $200 for upgrading users, you're like, "Aah!" There's
02:07:27 ◼ ► downsides to every pricing model. The current pricing model is actually pretty good for
02:07:30 ◼ ► consumers minus the part where they don't realize money is slowly draining out of their bank account,
02:07:37 ◼ ► "I don't want to forget about it. It's a way for you to sneakily drain money out of my bank account
02:07:44 ◼ ► And to those people, I say, "I know this is annoying, but you can get into the habit of
02:07:55 ◼ ► but when it's over, it just basically won't renew." It's annoying that Apple doesn't make that easier,
02:07:59 ◼ ► and you can complain to Apple and try to make that easier. It would be nice if Apple said,
02:08:03 ◼ ► "Oh, by default, when I subscribe, I basically never do auto-renewing. Always immediately cancel
02:08:07 ◼ ► the subscription." But people do do that manually, but it's kind of annoying that Apple doesn't let
02:08:11 ◼ ► you do that. But that would save you the mental anguish of not understanding. That's why people
02:08:16 ◼ ► keep suggesting, "Can I buy buckets of things? Can I buy a one-time thing for 100 searches or
02:08:23 ◼ ► remember to do. Otherwise, money will slowly drain from me." That's what they want, and Apple
02:08:27 ◼ ► could help fix that. And so I feel like a lot of the time, they're not saying, "I don't want to pay,"
02:08:32 ◼ ► they're saying is, "I don't want to..." Some people are saying, "I don't want to have to remember
02:08:36 ◼ ► to unsubscribe from a thing because I know I'll forget, and then you'll be secretly getting money
02:08:40 ◼ ► from me, and that feels bad." Well, and this is... And first of all, by the way, we do have
02:08:43 ◼ ► literally a sponsor of this episode that addresses this, Rocket Money. But also, this is part of the
02:08:50 ◼ ► niceness of being in Apple's in-app purchase system, is that the customers know how easy it is
02:08:57 ◼ ► to cancel an in-app purchase subscription, and we know how they work. So there are some services...
02:09:05 ◼ ► Well, I'm not sure how many do know, because I think most customers feel menaced by the
02:09:08 ◼ ► subscription system, and they can't find the place where they look at their subscriptions
02:09:11 ◼ ► on their phone. Well, I mean, yes, that is true, and Apple has... That used to be horrendous,
02:09:16 ◼ ► now it is a little bit less horrendous. It should be way easier, and it should be more user surfaced.
02:09:22 ◼ ► However, people learn pretty quickly about that trick of canceling immediately, and that you still
02:09:28 ◼ ► get your free month or whatever. People learn that, and not everything on the web and everything
02:09:39 ◼ ► do get a server-side callback if you turn off auto-renewing, so apps can tell if they want to,
02:09:47 ◼ ► and maybe they'll do annoying things if you do that. I'm not sure, it's probably against Apple's
02:09:51 ◼ ► policies, but I'm sure people do it anyway, just like the push notifications, where they just
02:09:55 ◼ ► create new categories, notifications that have you automatically subscribed to, that you definitely
02:10:00 ◼ ► did not opt into. Even Apple does this with their own stuff, because their own services team just
02:10:07 ◼ ► throws away any possible goodwill that people have with user experience on their platforms.
02:10:12 ◼ ► Anyway, back to the topic at hand. So, number two, I would... So, the one thing that I think
02:10:18 ◼ ► that the feedback has convinced me of is that I do think a free trial is a good idea, because
02:10:24 ◼ ► it does seem like they do convert a lot better to real purchases than something without a free
02:10:30 ◼ ► trial. So, here's what I'm going to propose. Last week, we didn't really come to a consensus,
02:10:43 ◼ ► - Hold on, hold on, hold on. So, it was some generously-sized bucket of searches, say 20,
02:10:50 ◼ ► that you would get, and then after that, you would only get one per day unless you subscribed.
02:10:57 ◼ ► - Now, I'm going to say, based on the feedback and kind of a week of thinking about it,
02:11:02 ◼ ► I'm going to suggest something even simpler. You get your bucket of 20 searches or whatever,
02:11:19 ◼ ► just leave it at that and just implement that, and then you can just ship this goddamn app and
02:11:24 ◼ ► get it out there in the store and stop spending so much time on the business model. Because
02:11:29 ◼ ► while the business model is important, the product is more important, and getting it out the door
02:11:35 ◼ ► before our audience is tired of hearing about it is even more important. So, that, I think,
02:11:40 ◼ ► figure out something, stop the waffling, and I think that's a pretty good, pretty simple system
02:11:48 ◼ ► that pleases me and probably, to whatever extent possible, a little bit of John. And, you know.
02:11:58 ◼ ► - My thinking on pricing, when I've been thinking about it since, is yes, I still think free trials
02:12:01 ◼ ► are the way you should go. But I was thinking about the total opposite end of this rectum. I
02:12:06 ◼ ► talked last time about pricing it for listeners of the show versus pricing it for people who have
02:12:09 ◼ ► no idea who you are. If you really wanted to go totally on the pricing it for the mass market,
02:12:14 ◼ ► people who have no idea who you are, A, you might have to do a little bit of marketing to sort of
02:12:19 ◼ ► get traction going. But the pricing, the business model that would work best, I think, if we told
02:12:25 ◼ ► you, "Hey, guess what, Casey? You're gonna have lots of people who are going to at least give
02:12:29 ◼ ► this app a shot." Which is hard to do, but if you could somehow make that happen, the pricing model
02:12:34 ◼ ► that would convert those people the most is the pricing model you see everybody else has,
02:12:37 ◼ ► and it's gonna make you cry. And it's, I think, probably not the right pricing model for you,
02:12:42 ◼ ► specifically, Casey List, because you are not the average consumer, the average developer,
02:12:46 ◼ ► that nobody has any idea who they are. But if you were, free trial for seven days, annual subscription
02:12:53 ◼ ► for three bucks, and you're like, "What? That's not enough money. That's not enough money to cover
02:12:56 ◼ ► my API costs. That'll never work, blah, blah, blah. And a free trial on top of that, blah, blah."
02:13:00 ◼ ► That stuff like that is what you see on the App Store, and that converts like crazy. Why? Because
02:13:04 ◼ ► it seems cheap. It seems like a cup of coffee for a whole year, $3, and it has a free trial.
02:13:10 ◼ ► That converts people. But to actually make money with that kind of model, you need a lot of people
02:13:14 ◼ ► to download your app, and that's the tricky part. I've never seen a yearly subscription that low.
02:13:19 ◼ ► I've seen like, you know, $3 a week. No, I see it all the time. I get lowballed all the time on
02:13:23 ◼ ► these apps. They're like, "You're like, 'Sure, why not? Five bucks for a year, why not?'" I mean,
02:13:27 ◼ ► think of, what's the, what's Jelly's app called? Gifwrapped. Right. How much is that? $3.50 if
02:13:33 ◼ ► memory serves. A year. A year. That's way too cheap. It is. I know, but it converts like crazy.
02:13:38 ◼ ► I don't even use that app, and I pay for it. Like, just, why? Because like, "Ah, three bucks a year,
02:13:45 ◼ ► I'll try it." And I see when it renews, I'm like, "Ah, three bucks for another year, I'll try it."
02:13:48 ◼ ► I mean, I know Jelly, and I'm paying for his app to, because, whatever. But it's just like,
02:13:59 ◼ ► if your volumes are really big. The trick is you don't know if your volumes are going to be really
02:14:03 ◼ ► big. So I don't, to be clear, I don't think that's the model for you, but if you were looking for a
02:14:07 ◼ ► simple pricing model that everybody understands that converts like crazy and is vaguely
02:14:11 ◼ ► sustainable, that's it. Like, single annual, there's just annual, it's such a low price that
02:14:17 ◼ ► it's not a barrier, and there's a free trial, so people are like, "Ah, I can always cancel if I
02:14:21 ◼ ► forget the free trial." And then they forget, and they pay $3 a year, and when it renews,
02:14:24 ◼ ► they see the $3, like, "Ah, it was three bucks, whatever, I'll remember to cancel it next year."
02:14:35 ◼ ► with a large number of customers. Yeah, but that's predicated on a large number of customers.
02:14:46 ◼ ► and you abandon the app after two years, that probably maximizes your money, but people do this.
02:14:54 ◼ ► now I'm prolonging it, story of my life. I have an opinion about this, but I'd be curious to revisit
02:15:10 ◼ ► what ads? Like, are you just gonna throw, like, a Google ad box in there? Because that's garbage.
02:15:16 ◼ ► Those are garbage ads, they pay garbage prices, and they make your app look like garbage.
02:15:20 ◼ ► No argument, which is why I don't want to do it, because I agree with everything you just said.
02:15:30 ◼ ► I think the overcast ads are just fine for Mark Ostenström, and I don't mean that to be a turd.
02:15:34 ◼ ► I would love to do that sort of thing, but I don't think it'll, I don't think that would work for me.
02:15:38 ◼ ► No, it's not like an easily replicable system to any problem domain. Like, you know, it works in
02:15:42 ◼ ► a podcast app for an app that has a good-sized audience, you know, it's very, that's a very,
02:15:47 ◼ ► those are two very big ifs, you know. No, I, here's the thing, your competitor is IMDb. Like,
02:16:00 ◼ ► not fewer ads, they come to you to have no ads. And so, obviously, you know, if you're going for
02:16:08 ◼ ► big mass market, there has to be a free plan to use it in some way, and so that will probably be ads.
02:16:15 ◼ ► But you see in the App Store what that means. You can try to have, like, a little tasteful ad banner.
02:16:22 ◼ ► I have, I've done that. It pays nothing. You will make nothing from a tasteful ad implementation.
02:16:30 ◼ ► The way to make money with generic, like, you know, Google or whatever ads on iOS is you load
02:16:37 ◼ ► in as many ad SDKs as you can into the app, which, by the way, say goodbye to your nice privacy label.
02:16:42 ◼ ► So you have tons of ad SDKs because you have to, you have to bundle multiple SDKs so that if one
02:16:49 ◼ ► ad network doesn't have a good fill for you for that inventory, some other one will fill in.
02:16:53 ◼ ► And you gotta, like, so you gotta bundle a bunch of SDKs. You gotta take, you know, the worst privacy,
02:16:58 ◼ ► you know, approach you can because you won't make any money if you keep things private.
02:17:04 ◼ ► And then what you end up getting is a crapped up app that pays you surprisingly little money
02:17:11 ◼ ► for each use. And also, keep in mind, the usage pattern of your app really matters. In this case,
02:17:18 ◼ ► your app is not something people are spending tons of time in. It's something they're consulting
02:17:22 ◼ ► quickly and then leaving. So, again, you're not gonna make a ton of money from ads unless you
02:17:29 ◼ ► really crap up the experience. Then, if you can make it so that people are constantly having to
02:17:35 ◼ ► view, like, interstitial video ads or if you can arrange them in such a way that you generate a lot
02:17:40 ◼ ► of accidental input and make people click on them, you know, you're basically committing fraud,
02:17:44 ◼ ► but you will make a few more pennies. But that's a terrible way to make a living. And ideally,
02:17:50 ◼ ► you don't do any of those things. Ideally, you can be comfortable with the fact that you're gonna
02:17:55 ◼ ► have a, you know, subscription priced app only, you know, with a generous free trial situation,
02:18:01 ◼ ► but, you know, it will be a subscription priced app only after that. And you're gonna get the
02:18:07 ◼ ► people who are not gonna pay. There will be lots of them. And yes, if you had a totally free usage
02:18:12 ◼ ► pattern, you could get way more people, but you also would make way less money. And, you know,
02:18:18 ◼ ► so I think it's fine to be in this category of I'm just basically paid only because the alternative
02:18:26 ◼ ► would be pretty crappy, I think. - Jon, any other thoughts? - Yeah, no, your whole selling proposition
02:18:33 ◼ ► is supposed to be like IMD but not sucky and filled with ads. So, like, what's the hell is
02:18:36 ◼ ► the point of throwing ads in there? - Yeah. - Yeah. - The only way you could actually make money on ads
02:18:40 ◼ ► and not crap it up entirely is step one, get VC money and fund the development of this app to make
02:18:46 ◼ ► the best movie look up app that is for free and has no business plan whatsoever that is free to
02:18:52 ◼ ► everybody and develop it so it is amazing and do that for two years. And when you have literally
02:18:57 ◼ ► millions of users and everybody knows the name of this app and every celebrity mentions it when
02:19:00 ◼ ► they're on their, you know, talk show if they even still do that, talking to people and they say,
02:19:05 ◼ ► oh, I was looking up in call sheet and blah, blah, blah. Then you roll out one tasteful little ad and
02:19:09 ◼ ► you hire a company to sell that one tasteful ad slot to your millions of people and now you have
02:19:13 ◼ ► an app that is funded by one tasteful ad but that is a long road to go with a lot of things that can
02:19:18 ◼ ► happen in between. It's probably not gonna happen for you so I would say stick to your original plan
02:19:23 ◼ ► which is let's make a version of IMDB that doesn't suck and doesn't have ads all over. - And also, and
02:19:27 ◼ ► you're gonna be offering a premium experience in other ways. So, for instance, you can do things
02:19:33 ◼ ► that most apps can't or won't do because they are less motivated or they don't know the platform as
02:19:38 ◼ ► well or they don't have the discipline or they hire consultants to make the app and they don't
02:19:41 ◼ ► want to bring them back because it's too expensive. So when there's a new iOS 17 feature that your app
02:19:46 ◼ ► could take advantage of, you can be there with it. You can be there like at release in September
02:19:50 ◼ ► with support for that feature. If they launch new Siri abilities, God help them, if they launch a
02:19:55 ◼ ► series of Siri abilities, you can be there integrating with it on day one. They launch some
02:20:00 ◼ ► kind of cool widget thing that might make sense for you, some kind of search integration maybe,
02:20:04 ◼ ► you can be there on day one. Like those are things that your premium app can do because you're an
02:20:10 ◼ ► enthusiast in this area and you care about stuff that power users care about and people will pay
02:20:14 ◼ ► for that. That's a premium thing. Whereas the rest of the market, like the mass market, they're just
02:20:20 ◼ ► gonna use IMDB and have their wall of ads. And if you provide your own wall of ads trying to attract
02:20:26 ◼ ► them, not only does it dilute the value of your app to the people who want the premium experience
02:20:30 ◼ ► but it also, you're gonna lose that battle. They're not gonna find your app. - You don't have the
02:20:36 ◼ ► brand recognition of IMDB. - Yeah, they're not gonna find your app and if they do, they're gonna
02:20:40 ◼ ► be like, why am I doing this instead of IMDB? So your app should be only premium. It should be like,