00:00:00 ◼ ► Federico. Hello. Good to hear your voice. 15 years of max stories. Thanks for having me.
00:00:09 ◼ ► Just for this anniversary! I guess. I saw you tweet that, and I'm sure you had the same.
00:00:32 ◼ ► as newer, like a different generation, and I'll bet you probably think of DarrenFirable
00:00:49 ◼ ► a pandemic related thing. It just, it literally to me, it feels like yesterday that we celebrated
00:00:54 ◼ ► the 10th anniversary. And so when it was coming up, John Voorhees was telling me, hey, the
00:01:00 ◼ ► 15th anniversary is coming up. And I'm like, really? Because we literally just celebrated
00:01:06 ◼ ► the 10th just a couple of years ago. And it was not a couple of years ago, it's five years
00:01:14 ◼ ► out time in a strange way. It really is, isn't it? It really is. It just, and not to delve
00:01:22 ◼ ► into politics, but it really feels like Joe Biden's fourth year. It's like, how is this
00:01:34 ◼ ► 20 years. It felt like it was two decades. And I feel like Joe Biden just got into office
00:01:45 ◼ ► or five years have been screwed up time-wise. Parts of it seems so long, parts of it seems
00:01:50 ◼ ► so short. Yeah, I do think of Mac stories as still like the young website. And I realized
00:01:59 ◼ ► that that's wrong because for a lot of people looking from the outside, looking at Mac stories,
00:02:04 ◼ ► they're like, well, those guys have been doing this for 15 years. They've been around forever.
00:02:08 ◼ ► They must know all the tricks of the business. And personally, I don't think I do. I don't
00:02:18 ◼ ► Mac rumors, like Mac rumors has been around longer than Daring Fireball, I think. Somewhere
00:02:38 ◼ ► generation. That's sort of what keeps me grounded is looking at all these new creators, doing
00:02:44 ◼ ► things that I don't know how to do and don't want to do. And I realize, yeah, 15 years,
00:02:51 ◼ ► I see the age now. It is weird to, for me, like I don't see Daring Fireball or me personally
00:03:03 ◼ ► as that different from when it was undeniably new and young. Let's say if I started in 2002,
00:03:14 ◼ ► let's say the years between 2002 when I started Daring Fireball and when the iPhone came out
00:03:21 ◼ ► in 2007, I would say like that five-year period would be the early days, pre-iPhone, which
00:03:26 ◼ ► is clearly a seminal moment covering Apple, covering the industry, covering just technology,
00:03:40 ◼ ► It's like there's a part of me, a little part of me, like 20% of me in the back of my mind
00:04:07 ◼ ► point somebody pointed out to me that somebody's name, when you just type their name, not like
00:04:14 ◼ ► Federico Viticci jackass, and then it comes up with the Daring Fireball post, just like
00:04:20 ◼ ► Federico Viticci. And then the first hit is my website calling you a jackass. And I thought,
00:04:27 ◼ ► oh, that's not that they, you know, and I remember looking back at them and I was like,
00:04:32 ◼ ► are there any of these that I really regret? And it was like, nope, nope, jackass, jackass,
00:04:36 ◼ ► jackass. But I thought it that's just the one example I can think of where I definitely
00:04:45 ◼ ► adjusted my personal editorial stance, because I thought, you know what, it is something,
00:04:51 ◼ ► something that Peter Parker with great power comes great responsibility. Okay, I, you know,
00:04:58 ◼ ► and just a couple weeks ago, I called somebody a jackass. But I was like, you to me, the
00:05:02 ◼ ► bar is way higher now, it has to be somebody who, who is writing at a publication of similar
00:05:31 ◼ ► well because I feel like the site still has the same flavor. And I see that at Mac stories
00:05:36 ◼ ► too. I don't think Mac stories is very different at 15 than it was at no five, right? No, right.
00:05:44 ◼ ► Yeah, no, it's true. This is something that I think about a lot like the idea of, of staying
00:05:49 ◼ ► true to yourself in terms of what you publish, what you write, what you're interested in,
00:05:54 ◼ ► but also being aware and conscious of the responsibility that you carry. And so something
00:06:08 ◼ ► a rumor. There's this new app. I'm going to write it up in, in, in a couple of hours and
00:06:13 ◼ ► publish. And I obviously like, I still love to write about apps and I still love to publish
00:06:18 ◼ ► frequently, but there's always that thought in the back of my mind that makes me go, okay,
00:06:25 ◼ ► you do need to think about this more carefully maybe. And I'm sure that's something that
00:06:29 ◼ ► also happens with age. Like you tend to be more, you tend to think about stuff for longer.
00:06:51 ◼ ► considering when I was getting started because I was hungry to publish all sorts of content
00:06:56 ◼ ► and to be found by as many people as possible. And so I think it's an interesting problem
00:07:02 ◼ ► from a creative perspective. How do you balance? Because I still have that hunger inside of
00:07:07 ◼ ► me. I still have that, that's, that spark isn't gone, but I need to be careful. I think
00:07:14 ◼ ► I need to, I need to remember, look, there's, there's thankfully a lot of people opening
00:07:32 ◼ ► the, it reminded me of this topic, the, the, the latest controversy, quote unquote controversy
00:07:44 ◼ ► still want to review products and obviously just like Marques and you want to review Apple
00:07:49 ◼ ► stuff in this case, but there's that little thought that's there and you need to remember
00:07:56 ◼ ► there's a big audience out there. And so as time has gone on over the past 15 years, that
00:08:01 ◼ ► is something that has changed, like thinking more deeply about the possible impact of something
00:08:08 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think what you're saying gets to the point I was trying to make
00:08:21 ◼ ► me. I can say from my perspective as a reader of Mac stories, it definitely applies to you
00:08:25 ◼ ► that it, in the whole site and John and anybody else who contributes that you guys still have
00:08:40 ◼ ► more influence while still being true to your readers, which is your first priority. And
00:08:50 ◼ ► that means not holding your punches when it's deserved. And to me with the MKBHD thing with
00:09:10 ◼ ► part that maybe has a little credence is the, was the title of the video deserved. Right.
00:09:15 ◼ ► And that gets to a point I've tried to make a daring fireball for a decade or more that
00:09:29 ◼ ► in terms of like, and it's like why tech meme years ago started rewriting headlines where
00:09:37 ◼ ► they see fit to be adjusted because so many people only see headlines and with the notifications
00:09:45 ◼ ► on the phone, it's even more, it's always been true that headlines are overly influential
00:09:52 ◼ ► compared to the body of the article, but with notifications it's even more so because I
00:10:03 ◼ ► me notifications. They're pretty good. And a lot of times they come in and I don't read
00:10:08 ◼ ► the story. I'm like, Oh, something, something Trump in New York. I just take the headline
00:10:12 ◼ ► for what it is and flick it away. So there's a point about that. But I actually think though
00:10:16 ◼ ► that he and he in, in his followup video, it's very clear that he thought long and hard
00:10:29 ◼ ► humane raised $270 million in venture capital. They have a petty. They're the first ones
00:10:44 ◼ ► you that they, their founders worked on major products at Apple and, and take a lot of credit
00:10:50 ◼ ► for the, their roles in those products. He's not punching down, right? That's, that's punching
00:11:06 ◼ ► generation right now, no doubt. He he's, he's taken the mantle from Walt Mossberg as the
00:11:13 ◼ ► top reviewer across the industry. And it makes sense that it's a YouTuber. I'm not, you know,
00:11:20 ◼ ► you're not a YouTuber, but you know, I, my eyes are wide open. I realized that it's probably
00:11:26 ◼ ► true that if I were getting started today, if I were in my twenties and getting started,
00:11:31 ◼ ► there's a good chance I'd be a YouTuber instead of a writer or the other way around. And I,
00:11:42 ◼ ► but it's maybe I would be because I'd practice at it. I don't know. It's just clearly video
00:11:47 ◼ ► first is, is and it happened in the 20th century going from earlier in the 20th century, being
00:11:56 ◼ ► a newspaper columnist would be much was, was by far and away the most influential somebody
00:12:01 ◼ ► could be. And then television took over and it's not that newspapers and newspaper columnists
00:12:11 ◼ ► Just much faster because that's the nature of computers and being a writer on the internet
00:12:18 ◼ ► very quickly in the grand scheme of things became eclipsed by being a video personality
00:12:24 ◼ ► on the internet. But there's no doubt that as influential as Marquez is, it's still punching
00:12:30 ◼ ► up to criticize a company that raised a quarter of a billion dollars to make their product
00:12:54 ◼ ► that that all controversy was kind of silly. And so many of these people that I think criticized
00:13:00 ◼ ► Marquez on Twitter or X, whatever, I do think that some of them did it for some sort of
00:13:05 ◼ ► clout like to get to publish the controversial opinion and to be noticed. And so there's
00:13:13 ◼ ► also that dynamic at play in this circumstance, which I think is kind of silly. But your point
00:13:27 ◼ ► what we saw with blogs and the written content to video, I think is a really interesting
00:13:39 ◼ ► consider video obviously, but I look at where I am now and I could not imagine doing any
00:13:54 ◼ ► like, man, I'm jealous. I should, I picked the wrong career. No, I don't feel like that
00:13:59 ◼ ► at all. And I think there is, in fact, I do think there is room for all kinds of different
00:14:07 ◼ ► types of editorial content, whether it's words on screen or footage on screen. And in fact,
00:14:15 ◼ ► I do think it's also interesting to keep an eye on thinking about the next 15 years, maybe.
00:14:20 ◼ ► I think it's interesting that this resurgence of the indie web of sorts with this talking
00:14:36 ◼ ► was it. And so this new approach to the indie decentralized web, it makes me hopeful that
00:14:56 ◼ ► because I think it's almost undeniable. I don't think it's just because I'm older and I'm
00:15:10 ◼ ► newer sites in our sphere who would be, let's say, let's say hitting their five year anniversary
00:15:16 ◼ ► right now. Like, hey, congratulations to so and so for five years of something. Oh, yes,
00:15:21 ◼ ► and I looked up to Mac stories when I founded my site. There's very few. But I wonder, though,
00:15:27 ◼ ► if we're not, and I think you might be seeing the same thing, that maybe we're all having
00:15:43 ◼ ► I'm thinking of, in particular, like one example I can think of is Molly White, who writes,
00:16:01 ◼ ► also in addition to being a very, very astute pundit and observer and critic of crypto,
00:16:14 ◼ ► which I appreciate putting together her own site and has like a new just sort of a pure
00:16:25 ◼ ► and things that she thinks like the newsletters are sort of more one big 750,000 word sort
00:16:33 ◼ ► of essay. And for things, this is what blogs are perfect for things that are way too big
00:17:02 ◼ ► appropriate size. And in the pre internet era, the scarcity of being able to reach people
00:17:10 ◼ ► print is so expensive and so just labor intensive. It's just the, when you really think about
00:17:20 ◼ ► like even today, I mean, people's, there are still people who read print newspapers, but
00:17:24 ◼ ► like the hay day of newspapers where, where like major cities around the world, you know,
00:17:30 ◼ ► had million plus circulation printing an entire newspaper and a million million plus copies
00:17:37 ◼ ► a day. It's just an enormous amount of paper and just truck after truck after truck loaded
00:17:53 ◼ ► they would go with these huge sheets of broadsheet, it's almost mind boggling. I've told this
00:18:14 ◼ ► women like college age, maybe like early twenties and there was a copy of the New York times
00:18:19 ◼ ► and I swear to God, I'm not making this up. The one was like, like the one that had clearly
00:18:25 ◼ ► just never really thought about newspapers and they were, the one was saying to the other,
00:18:30 ◼ ► like, well, there's, there's the business and there's the sports and there's look, there's
00:18:33 ◼ ► different sections and, and, and then she said, and they print, they do this every day.
00:18:51 ◼ ► got it. But, but it was the nature when, when you had to spend all that money to print a
00:19:04 ◼ ► Yeah. So I really do feel like there's a few things that have happened over the past, over
00:19:10 ◼ ► the past decade for sure, that have led to that sort of scarcity of, of sites, of blogs.
00:19:23 ◼ ► saw a lot of, a lot of folks realize, well, why can I, why do I need to start a website
00:19:29 ◼ ► if I can just publish my own opinions on Twitter? And then it used to be Facebook video for
00:19:35 ◼ ► a while and then it became Instagram, but mostly on Twitter. And I have seen like, there's
00:19:40 ◼ ► a ton of folks from, from people who are you know, pundits or observers to this new generation
00:19:48 ◼ ► of leakers of Apple rumors specifically just on Twitter. And then I've started seeing a
00:19:55 ◼ ► lot of people who they should have just started blogs in my opinion, but folks who publish
00:20:10 ◼ ► And then came the newsletters, right? So there was that consolidation of sub stack and all
00:20:15 ◼ ► the newsletters and, and so many folks realizing, well, this is an easier way for me to publish
00:20:27 ◼ ► send it to an audience and I don't have to think about setting up a web server. I don't
00:20:31 ◼ ► have to think about RSS integration. I can just open a sub stack account and I can just
00:20:36 ◼ ► serve this small audience that I have there. And people still do it. Like I've seen, for
00:20:45 ◼ ► video game industry over the past few years, a lot of folks from, from websites like the
00:20:56 ◼ ► in the news today because they sold the onion again. Yeah. So a lot of those folks coming
00:21:02 ◼ ► out of those websites, they started sub stacks instead of starting websites. But over the
00:21:08 ◼ ► past year or so, I've seen the opposite started happening. There are some new video game websites,
00:21:15 ◼ ► for example, and there are folks realizing, well, maybe I can just open up a little blog
00:21:22 ◼ ► with all these tools that exist today to set up a little blog like we did 15 years ago.
00:21:41 ◼ ► approach to owning your opinions. And maybe this is an optimistic view that I have, but
00:21:47 ◼ ► I do think that what we didn't see, what we haven't seen over the past 10 years, the situation
00:21:54 ◼ ► may improve over the next five because I think people are, creators are a lot more aware
00:22:10 ◼ ► this silos and these platforms that promise you maximum reach, minimal effort, and then
00:22:20 ◼ ► Or they fundamentally change after a couple of years, which is, could be just as bad or
00:22:26 ◼ ► even worse than, and maybe Twitter falls under that category where it's maybe worse than
00:22:31 ◼ ► if it had shut down in some ways. Yeah. And Mac stories launched, so 15 years would mean
00:22:37 ◼ ► you launched in 2009 and that means Twitter, Twitter already existed and was sort of, I
00:22:44 ◼ ► would say it was sort of entering its heyday, right? I would peg Twitter's best years as
00:23:08 ◼ ► or Twitter X, whatever you want to call it, is not dead and maybe not dying and it sort
00:23:14 ◼ ► of seems to be stabilizing. I kind of feel like it's, personally, what I see on Twitter
00:23:25 ◼ ► is better now. I would say this year, like the calendar year 2024, like something happened
00:23:33 ◼ ► at Twitter where I'm not seeing stuff I don't want to see in my timeline. And it's not,
00:23:41 ◼ ► I'm not a delicate flower. It's not like stuff that offends me. It's just stuff that annoys
00:23:47 ◼ ► me or irritates me. Just like, why are you showing me this? This is nonsense. And I know
00:23:53 ◼ ► that there's, if you go looking for it, you're going to find people with political opinions
00:23:59 ◼ ► that are unpleasant no matter which side you are on Twitter. But it feels to me like they're
00:24:10 ◼ ► But there's no doubt. I saw somebody, I forget which publication, and I'm always the first
00:24:24 ◼ ► downloads an app is getting, take it with a huge grain of salt because they don't know.
00:24:29 ◼ ► They're estimating and they might be right, but look into their methodology and see how
00:24:46 ◼ ► that. And it's so hard to tell because I think Twitter is home to so many more bots and whether
00:24:53 ◼ ► they're not even scam bots, right? I mean, just like national weather service programs,
00:25:09 ◼ ► subscribe to one on Mastodon that I really like that just tells me the sunset and sunrise
00:25:14 ◼ ► times for Philadelphia every day. So every day in the evening, I have a little Mastodon
00:25:18 ◼ ► post from a, it's obviously automated, but there's so much more of that on Twitter that
00:25:23 ◼ ► it's hard to compare. But I find personally, I like the current state of things where there's
00:25:30 ◼ ► no one true Twitter like service, which was Twitter for over a decade. And now I've got
00:25:38 ◼ ► my feet in three or four different of them. I check Mastodon, I check threads. I do still
00:25:45 ◼ ► I'm and more and more, I'm a little bit more back on Twitter. I keep my eye on blue sky,
00:25:56 ◼ ► best balance between all of the things and it, but the content just isn't there for me.
00:26:14 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I do think that there's obviously a few communities that never left Twitter.
00:26:20 ◼ ► I see this with video games. I see this with, there's a lot of like startup, young developers
00:26:27 ◼ ► type creators that continuously post stuff to Twitter. I don't use Twitter, but occasionally
00:26:45 ◼ ► for many years, I cultivated this list on Twitter just about Pokemon news and specifically
00:26:51 ◼ ► competitive Pokemon players. And those people never left and Nintendo is still actively
00:26:59 ◼ ► posting on Twitter. So there are those pockets of communities that never left, but then you
00:27:11 ◼ ► coverage happening there. And then of course there's Mastodon where the core of the tech
00:27:24 ◼ ► projects being active on Mastodon. And then there's like the artistic community on Blue
00:27:36 ◼ ► I think it's fascinating that we are entering this era where there's no single and clear
00:27:42 ◼ ► winner of them all. There's different places for different communities. I don't know how
00:27:56 ◼ ► segments of online culture, if you will, like following different people in different places
00:28:03 ◼ ► where it makes the most sense for them to be in. But I think there's also a lesson here
00:28:09 ◼ ► for websites like ours, but for creators in general, I think, to like obviously Twitter
00:28:17 ◼ ► was incredible for me in 2009. I owe so much to Twitter. It was the golden era of Twitter
00:28:31 ◼ ► Twitter drove to Mac stories in the early days, I owe so much to them. But now I wouldn't
00:28:49 ◼ ► publish. Like I don't want to do that the same way I did in 2009, even though it worked.
00:29:00 ◼ ► I think it would almost I'd almost want to like, hey, Federico, you OK? Not because I'm
00:29:05 ◼ ► down on threads. I'm almost to the point of controversy from people who find metas past
00:29:13 ◼ ► transgressions unforgivable. I'd been going back and forth with people trying to explain
00:29:19 ◼ ► how I see it as consistent. My staunch criticism of Metta from three, four, five, six years
00:29:26 ◼ ► ago to less critical and an enthusiastic user of threads today. But I would say you're crazy
00:29:35 ◼ ► to go all in on one of the platforms. Right. Any of them. Right. And I think that's actually
00:29:40 ◼ ► a really good sign. And I always go back to video game consoles. I don't know what happened
00:29:45 ◼ ► there, but we've always been fortunate that there have been two or three. And it's really
00:29:59 ◼ ► And I think that's about as lucky as you're going to get. I wish, you know, we're lucky
00:30:05 ◼ ► in so many ways. We could get to this later in the show. And it's sometimes one of those
00:30:17 ◼ ► represented by one company, Apple, and how how that's one thread. You know, I wish that
00:30:26 ◼ ► like desktop computing and mobile phone computing was a three way race instead of a two way
00:30:39 ◼ ► out like like 15 percent market share or something like that, like something maybe more akin
00:30:45 ◼ ► to where the Mac was 20 years ago, strong enough to be a business like or like Nintendo.
00:30:52 ◼ ► Right. I don't know. It would have been great. But it's always lucky when you have at least
00:30:58 ◼ ► three competitors. And I think that it really shows for social media. I think it's better
00:31:04 ◼ ► now. And personally, it's just so much less of a gravitational black hole that when Twitter
00:31:16 ◼ ► that it was there was so much and everything was concentrated there that you'd go check
00:31:21 ◼ ► Twitter and then three hours goes by and it's like, oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Twitter on Apple event
00:31:27 ◼ ► days was impossible to use. And we still did. And that's the thing we still did. We still
00:31:33 ◼ ► did it because it was the only place and everybody was there. And so I do think we are much better
00:31:46 ◼ ► video game console analogy is a really good one because we've had options for twenty five
00:31:51 ◼ ► for twenty five years at this point. And there's always also been like PC gaming also always
00:31:57 ◼ ► right. Right. So never, never went away. Yeah. I would say that's call it for I would say
00:32:03 ◼ ► that I often think of it as three. But I think PC gaming should count as the fourth pillar
00:32:08 ◼ ► of of the video, the serious video game industry. Yeah. Especially not especially now that the
00:32:14 ◼ ► PC manufacturers figured out, I guess, starting with the steam deck, but they figured out,
00:32:19 ◼ ► hey, we can actually make these things portable. And so we've been fine as as as as people
00:32:25 ◼ ► with with different consoles and platforms and picking your preferences and maybe owning
00:32:32 ◼ ► multiple consoles like I do. And it's fine. And so I think using different social networks
00:32:39 ◼ ► and something that I do, for example, I post different types of content or maybe the same
00:32:44 ◼ ► content but presented in a slightly different format on Mastodon and Threads, because I
00:32:50 ◼ ► know that folks on Threads, I think, like certain types of of posts and folks on Mastodon
00:32:58 ◼ ► like other types of content. And so I think these are these can only serve me well, especially
00:33:05 ◼ ► when you have different audiences coming from different places. It can only be good for
00:33:17 ◼ ► that whole Twitter saga was unfolding a couple of years ago. I thought, well, now we're done,
00:33:28 ◼ ► YouTube. And so I really thought, well, unless there's a better hope that those RSS subscribers,
00:33:35 ◼ ► they stay subscribed, because otherwise, like, we're gone from social media. And then, of
00:33:40 ◼ ► course, Mastodon started taking off and then Threads came around. So multiple options is
00:33:50 ◼ ► To me, at its best, what these social media platforms, the Twitter like ones are, is it
00:33:58 ◼ ► really is a great way to have a back and forth with the readers. And one of the differences
00:34:09 ◼ ► between when I started Daring Fireball and Mac Stories, like earlier in the show, I said,
00:34:15 ◼ ► we're the same, we're roughly the same generation now website wise, but there's one difference
00:34:20 ◼ ► from the 2000s that you more or less started at the end of was when I started, it was universal
00:34:35 ◼ ► be it was almost a gag, where over and over again, people would say, you know, and again,
00:34:46 ◼ ► like email, but people I would get email over and over and over again, I swear, where they
00:34:52 ◼ ► would they'd be like, Hey, this was a good article, blah, blah, blah. But then they would
00:34:55 ◼ ► say, they'd be irritated that they were emailing me rather than leaving a comment. And the
00:35:04 ◼ ► be called a blog, if it doesn't have comments. And then I would write back to them, I say,
00:35:09 ◼ ► thank you, you know, and I'd respond to their comments. And then I'd quote that part. And
00:35:22 ◼ ► they were the cons outweighed the pros. There are pros, right? And and an astute comment
00:35:31 ◼ ► is an astute comment. But I always thought once Twitter became a thing, I was like, Ah,
00:35:35 ◼ ► here's the solution. And I think it's better that it's on neutral territory, rather than
00:35:41 ◼ ► being on my site under my post with me, with the admins ability to delete the ones I don't
00:35:49 ◼ ► want or whatever. And the responsibility of deleting the spam ones and whatever, not just
00:36:04 ◼ ► thought Twitter was and still is. And I think that's where all of these platforms still
00:36:10 ◼ ► are, like, and that's why I love to engage in them in have a public back and forth. And
00:36:20 ◼ ► it. I know that it's just one of those things where people have been more drawn to like
00:36:27 ◼ ► minded content, like, I only want to read things I agree with, I think is a little more
00:36:34 ◼ ► of a common mindset now. And I don't understand that I feel like I want to read things I disagree
00:36:49 ◼ ► back and forth on the social media is still great. And I think it's better now that it's
00:37:23 ◼ ► Exactly. It's already there in the name, like, and the way I see it, you read Mac stories,
00:37:27 ◼ ► or you read during fireball, what you see on the screen is my opinion or John's opinion,
00:37:33 ◼ ► that is the content. The comments, especially for, there was a time a few years ago when
00:38:03 ◼ ► websites. But if you want to comment, that's not part of the original story that you're
00:38:09 ◼ ► reading. And I think it was the right decision. And it doesn't seem like anybody cares that
00:38:17 ◼ ► much about comments on blogs anymore. The one maybe asterisk here is comments on YouTube.
00:38:29 ◼ ► That is still very much part of the YouTube. I say way of doing things. Everybody, like
00:38:34 ◼ ► everybody says, let me know down in the comments below, for example, you're watching a video
00:38:38 ◼ ► and everybody's just asking people to leave a comment. So YouTube is maybe the one outlier
00:38:52 ◼ ► And I think, I think part of the reason why they are occasionally useful is the fact that
00:38:57 ◼ ► you can timestamp a video and point to like, if you want to issue a correction or something,
00:39:03 ◼ ► you can just have a little link that points to that point in the video and say, hey, here,
00:39:07 ◼ ► by the way, it's such and such. So maybe that's why. But by and large, they are filled by
00:39:33 ◼ ► some often interesting conversations surrounding an article can happen on Reddit. And that's,
00:39:48 ◼ ► It's another one too, where almost admitting that they're copying Twitter with the, okay,
00:40:02 ◼ ► controlling the first party interface, making sure everybody goes through the first party
00:40:06 ◼ ► interface to the site for better or for worse. And you understand business wise, why they
00:40:10 ◼ ► want to do that. But as somebody who enjoys nice native software, you know, it's not as,
00:40:19 ◼ ► it's not as nice, but you know, it has stabilized, right? There was the, they did this, there
00:40:24 ◼ ► was an uproar. There was sort of a revolt. There were protests on very popular subreddits
00:40:37 ◼ ► My wife is a much more dedicated Reddit user than me or reader and it is, it is a great
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00:41:07 ◼ ► staples like specialty flowers, things for baking and cooking, stuff like that and more.
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00:41:22 ◼ ► things that you're like, Oh, I would like that in, I don't even know if you eat really,
00:41:27 ◼ ► really a great one stop place to buy all sorts of stuff. And number one, their top priority
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00:42:43 ◼ ► at home because I love it so much. It's exactly what you think. I don't know why this isn't
00:42:49 ◼ ► like a universal snack item that you can buy everywhere because it is so good, but it's
00:42:54 ◼ ► half pop popcorn is like halfway between like roasted corn nuts and popcorn. It is so good.
00:43:11 ◼ ► milk chocolate M&Ms. I find milk chocolate M&Ms to have like no chocolate taste at all.
00:43:16 ◼ ► It's like just like sugar. Whereas dark chocolate M&Ms are like really, really good chocolatey
00:43:27 ◼ ► even know they existed until I found them in nuts.com. And ever since I've been calling
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00:44:34 ◼ ► Yes, I would say, Hey, there is an online event that they, it unusually they've announced
00:44:45 ◼ ► two weeks in advance. It's going to be Tuesday, May 7th. And I would say more than any event
00:45:09 ◼ ► I would say that's even more of a clear than what did Jaws tweet about WWDC. It was something
00:45:59 ◼ ► Right. And it's exciting because I feel like it's quite possibly going to be the biggest
00:46:09 ◼ ► iPad. I mean this with no hyperbole. The biggest iPad event since the first one in 2010.
00:46:28 ◼ ► signals here and there that it's not just going to be, they obviously wanted to do more
00:46:46 ◼ ► recall when they did the events at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, they used to
00:46:51 ◼ ► do these product events there. Now they obviously do them at Apple Park. So it's not that
00:46:55 ◼ ► type of event, but still it's not just a press release. And the iPad Pro has been effectively
00:47:10 ◼ ► 2018. And the iPad Air is a couple of years old now. And so I do feel like both in terms
00:47:17 ◼ ► of hardware, but really also in terms of software, there is a lot to be done still. And I feel
00:47:33 ◼ ► much potential, but they don't pay attention to it. And so we continue having this conversation,
00:47:40 ◼ ► but now it's been six years since the 2018 iPad Pro. And so it does feel like something's
00:48:03 ◼ ► iPhone most. I mean, and the Mac is different enough that I think the Mac comes second and
00:48:11 ◼ ► the iPad just falls in third place in terms of interest. And that it's sort of, it always
00:48:36 ◼ ► OS, instead of saying that iOS is the operating system for iPod touches at the time, iPhones
00:48:52 ◼ ► features a year ahead of the iPad, right? Like the widget stuff, the lock screen customization,
00:48:58 ◼ ► just in the last couple of years, the iPhone has been a year ahead of the iPad. And I sort
00:49:25 ◼ ► stage manager doesn't make any sense on the iPhone. It's screens too small, I think. But
00:49:32 ◼ ► there's just also at a, not that the software level with what features are in the operating
00:49:45 ◼ ► there's, you know, like, can you even explain the pencil compatibility story? I get so confused.
00:49:55 ◼ ► It doesn't really make a lot of sense. Like honestly, like the confusion that they have
00:49:59 ◼ ► created over the years and the pencil compatibility is one of them. The keyboard story is also
00:50:06 ◼ ► not like so all over the map, especially when you look at the base model iPad, the base
00:50:11 ◼ ► model iPad, arguably for a lot of people would make for a better laptop like iPad than the
00:50:22 ◼ ► iPad pro you have the more flexible keyboard with the kickstand that can be detached. And
00:50:28 ◼ ► you have the, the, you have the front facing camera on the landscape side. Right. And I
00:50:40 ◼ ► would actually make, will actually allow for more flexibility than the expensive iPad pro.
00:50:46 ◼ ► And so it's clear you're, you're talking about the 10th generation one. I know you, I know
00:50:52 ◼ ► you are, they still sell the ninth generation, which has the, the touch ID button at the
00:50:59 ◼ ► bottom, you know, and, but you, you know, you, you mentioned putting the front facing camera
00:51:04 ◼ ► on the landscape side. Yeah. It's, you can kind of see how it happened, but it's always
00:51:11 ◼ ► been true. I think that the, as a, as an entire lineup, it's always felt like the iPad lineup,
00:51:21 ◼ ► the family is always sort of out of sync in some way. Right. Like maybe in 2018 when the
00:51:34 ◼ ► using, I've got it right here in my hand for the show notes is my 2018 11 inch iPad pro,
00:51:39 ◼ ► which is still a great device. But form factor wise, it fits into the exact same keyboard
00:51:47 ◼ ► cases as a brand new, well, two years old at this point, but the, the latest generation
00:52:06 ◼ ► made the iPad errors better, but now the iPad pros seem dated. It seems like six years is
00:52:25 ◼ ► I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, a little sarcastic and I kind of feel like on May 7th,
00:52:30 ◼ ► it's like the, the godfather reference. They're going to settle all family business and get
00:52:34 ◼ ► the whole, get the whole platform from top to bottom into a logical sense. I, the reason
00:53:07 ◼ ► iPad air, which is compatible with the pencil, with the magic keyboard as USB-C, it does
00:53:13 ◼ ► feel like that is the iPad and has been for a while, but even more so with a bigger model
00:53:37 ◼ ► I'm going to say something that maybe you're not going to like, Jon. I created my own hybrid.
00:53:43 ◼ ► I want to talk about it. So yeah, I created my own hybrid Mac iPad device. I've been using
00:53:52 ◼ ► it for two months. Like it is my main computer. And I do wonder if maybe the opportunity that
00:53:59 ◼ ► Apple has to start telling a new story for the iPad pro is we have this device that can
00:54:08 ◼ ► be an iPad, but when you dock it into a keyboard, it can also be a Mac. And now I know that
00:54:32 ◼ ► tablet that can be great in equal measure as a tablet and as a laptop. And I speak from
00:54:41 ◼ ► experience. Last year I used for six months without telling anybody a Microsoft Surface
00:54:47 ◼ ► because I felt like I was going crazy with the limitations of iPadOS and I thought, well,
00:54:52 ◼ ► maybe I need to clear my head. I need to take a look at what it's like on the other side.
00:55:03 ◼ ► does Windows suck on a tablet. It's horrible. And you look at the iPad and you realize,
00:55:12 ◼ ► well, here's this one company, literally the only company in the world right now that can
00:55:18 ◼ ► potentially make a hybrid laptop/tablet that makes sense and is actually nice to use. And
00:55:26 ◼ ► I know that Jason Snell also talks about this idea a lot. It doesn't have to be a convertible
00:55:32 ◼ ► all the time. It doesn't have to exclusively run MacOS when you dock it. But as an option,
00:55:39 ◼ ► I don't think there's anybody out there, except for Apple, that can say we can do this. Not
00:55:44 ◼ ► Microsoft, not Microsoft, third-party Windows manufacturers, not Google with the Pixel tablet,
00:55:56 ◼ ► I think Microsoft tried it. And it's interesting. I just saw, speaking of Twitter, he's a great
00:56:09 ◼ ► of wish he had just had a blog. But Steven Sinofsky, who used to be in charge of Windows
00:56:14 ◼ ► for a long time at Microsoft and spearheaded the Surface tablet thing in 2012, was it RT?
00:56:22 ◼ ► I forget what they called it. But the ones that they had that ran on ARM, what they tried
00:56:33 ◼ ► only had a modern API set of APIs and only bring those forward to ARM. And for whatever
00:56:42 ◼ ► reason it didn't stick, and they abandoned it. And now they've just sort of said, "Okay,
00:56:47 ◼ ► Windows is Windows and we're going forward." And his recent post, I'll put it in the show
00:56:51 ◼ ► notes I swear, but his post either yesterday or the day before was talking about that old
00:56:55 ◼ ► effort. And he's not throwing his former colleagues under the bus, but like he said, this is with
00:57:01 ◼ ► the upcoming Snapdragon chips that Microsoft is... And Qualcomm has been saying for two
00:57:08 ◼ ► years that they think they're going to achieve parity with at least the non-pro, max and
00:57:26 ◼ ► and I have no doubt at a technical level, this is the sort of thing Microsoft engineers
00:57:29 ◼ ► are great at, as great as Rosetta is, right? And Rosetta was great a generation ago going
00:57:36 ◼ ► from PowerPC to Intel. It was absolutely seamless from a consumer's perspective, and it's been
00:57:54 ◼ ► everybody, even when they're running Intel compiled Mac apps, is getting faster performance
00:58:05 ◼ ► examples for Intel-based Mac Pros with parallel computing, where you really want as many cores
00:58:10 ◼ ► as possible, where you can say no, but still better to run it on Intel. But for the most
00:58:19 ◼ ► ARM is that the nature of Windows is that Windows still runs like DOS compatible software
00:58:33 ◼ ► off, but it is Apple that's a very big philosophical difference between what Mac OS is and, you
00:58:41 ◼ ► know, and Apple's been even more aggressive about keeping iOS culling old APIs and keeping
00:58:57 ◼ ► even more so than Mac. Whereas Windows, that's the nature of it. For some people, that's
00:59:02 ◼ ► the appeal of Windows is that compatibility is something Microsoft takes seriously, but
00:59:06 ◼ ► now they've got to emulate all of that. So we'll see. Tell people about the hybrid device
00:59:17 ◼ ► Okay. Okay. So it all started because of Sage manager. It all goes back to that. I've always
00:59:25 ◼ ► loved working on the iPad, but I was reaching a point where I kept running into these limitations.
00:59:32 ◼ ► Right? We've spoken about this before with multitasking, just the fact that, for example,
00:59:38 ◼ ► I couldn't record my own podcasts on an iPad because it doesn't have the audio APIs that
00:59:52 ◼ ► I started thinking about this and having conversations privately with Jason about this. Hey, wouldn't
01:00:19 ◼ ► ago, "Hey, maybe the best keyboard for the Vision Pro is a headless Mac laptop." The best
01:00:31 ◼ ► a screen, but it's still a Mac. It's got a large trackpad with palm rejection built-in.
01:00:45 ◼ ► thanks to universal control. And so I went ahead and I did it. I removed the screen from
01:00:52 ◼ ► my MacBook Air, from the M2 MacBook Air that I have. I decapitated the MacBook Air. And
01:01:01 ◼ ► it was working perfectly. And then I was done with the experiment and I looked at it and
01:01:05 ◼ ► I was like, "Well, now I have this thing that doesn't have a display anymore." And then
01:01:11 ◼ ► I don't know how it happened, but I thought, "Well, but wouldn't it be nice if for those
01:01:18 ◼ ► times when I don't want to use a Vision Pro with virtual Mac desktop, wouldn't it be nice
01:01:25 ◼ ► if I could use an iPad as a display for this headless MacBook Air?" And that's when all
01:01:31 ◼ ► the pieces started coming together. So the setup that I have, and I'm using it on a daily
01:01:36 ◼ ► basis, I carry it with me all the time. It's always with me. It's the computer. I'm using
01:01:41 ◼ ► it right now. It's a MacBook Air. I attached three magnetic kickstands to the keyboard,
01:01:49 ◼ ► essentially, of the MacBook Air. Three magnets to the back of an iPad cover. And I'm using
01:01:56 ◼ ► the iPad as a display for this computer. And the funny thing is I'm not using any weird
01:02:01 ◼ ► third-party hack or anything. I'm just using Sidecar, the built-in Apple-provided technology
01:02:15 ◼ ► display. In this case, it's the primary display for the Mac. And the beautiful part of all
01:02:21 ◼ ► of this is that at any point I can just grab the iPad. So I grab the display and it's an
01:02:38 ◼ ► And the magnets connect to the natural spots on the iPad where there are magnetic connectors?
01:02:54 ◼ ► Nobody should do this. I want to say nobody should do this. And I saw a bunch of people
01:03:04 ◼ ► us or he's looking for attention." And I mean, it turned out to be a really fun, really popular
01:03:12 ◼ ► story also. But this is actually my computer now. It was not like a joke thing. It is what
01:03:21 ◼ ► I'm using. And if anything, I think it's been a useful experiment to try to inform this
01:03:46 ◼ ► been a dream for me. I would pay serious money for Apple to make this an official, much better
01:04:06 ◼ ► again, I'll date myself here, but in the late '90s or early 2000s, there was a two-year
01:04:12 ◼ ► stretch where I worked at Barebones Software, the BB Edit maker. But at the time, the second
01:04:17 ◼ ► product that Barebones had was an email client called MailSmith, which was based on the text
01:04:23 ◼ ► engine of BB Edit and didn't make it and never... It didn't support IMAP, and that's sort of
01:04:35 ◼ ► most people used email on the Mac anyway. That's how Eudora worked. And POP, for people
01:04:40 ◼ ► who don't remember if you're too young, instead of the server being the truth and you just
01:04:53 ◼ ► mail server just sort of holds your new mail temporarily, and then your POP client would
01:04:59 ◼ ► download your mail. And I would have it delete it from the server once I downloaded it locally.
01:05:06 ◼ ► And we had really, really strict... No matter who gave you your email in the '90s, your
01:05:18 ◼ ► then it raised the question, if once you downloaded it to a Mac, how would you access your email
01:05:27 ◼ ► I would store my mail on an external FireWire drive. And when I would go to work, I would
01:05:41 ◼ ► me and then plug that into my machine at Barebone's office, and then there's my email. And I would
01:05:47 ◼ ► have it just... I had other things that I would tote back and forth on that same portable
01:05:58 ◼ ► mentality. I mean, that's an old example where it's just data, but there is sort of like,
01:06:02 ◼ ► "Hey, if you could just sort of plug things apart and have this be that and that be this,
01:06:08 ◼ ► like, hey, the Mac lives in just this bottom case with a keyboard and a trackpad, and it
01:06:13 ◼ ► has no display, and you could..." And to me, the fascinating part of your little Frankenstein
01:06:20 ◼ ► project is that you can still use that Mac with your Vision Pro. It's the same Mac, right?
01:06:25 ◼ ► And that means all the stuff you've configured, the apps you've installed, whatever else you
01:06:43 ◼ ► like, "Oh, if you could only just have one device and then it would be everything, everywhere."
01:06:48 ◼ ► And Samsung has this thing, what do they call it? Dex, D-E-X. And the idea is, okay, what
01:07:03 ◼ ► into a big display. I don't know if Dex supports multiple displays. I wouldn't be surprised.
01:07:08 ◼ ► Modern high-end phones are so powerful. Maybe there's enough video power to drive two displays,
01:07:22 ◼ ► since 2010 when it first came out. Like, wouldn't it be great if you could just, instead of
01:07:26 ◼ ► booting into iPad OS, boot into Mac OS? And I think that's fundamentally, it sounds good
01:07:45 ◼ ► Because it just behaves differently. And there's things like, yes, you could fix it by just
01:07:50 ◼ ► adding APIs to Mac OS to say, "Hey, apps, you should be ready for the display to rotate
01:07:57 ◼ ► at any moment from vertical to horizontal." Because right now Mac apps don't expect that.
01:08:03 ◼ ► Touch is obviously, that's the big one, right? You should be ready for touch input. You should
01:08:09 ◼ ► possibly consider spacing your, sizing your controls for touch as opposed to the precision
01:08:15 ◼ ► of a mouse pointer, et cetera. But the big thing is just an iPad is expected to be used
01:08:21 ◼ ► in the context that a Mac is not. And if it's booted into Mac OS X, it's just very different.
01:08:45 ◼ ► or when the iPad is connected over with a USB cable from the base computer to the iPad.
01:08:54 ◼ ► It's that, and obviously it only makes sense if you're using a keyboard and a trackpad,
01:08:59 ◼ ► right? And it's that sort of idea that fascinates me in a potential future iPad Pro. If Apple
01:09:05 ◼ ► ever does it, I don't think they will do it in two weeks. But this idea of, well, we can,
01:09:17 ◼ ► reasons. It wouldn't be a pleasant experience. But what if you limit that possibility to
01:09:23 ◼ ► just, well, if you have the Pro Magic Keyboard or whatever it's called, and so the iPad is
01:09:56 ◼ ► with Sidecar on an iPad Pro, you can have some basic touch gestures that work in Sidecar
01:10:10 ◼ ► Mac OS window. And it's not nice because your fingers are covering tiny, even just the basic
01:10:36 ◼ ► accessory? Now that's something that, I don't know, intrigues me. And I mean, worst case
01:10:46 ◼ ► going to have my own OLED MacBook years before an OLED MacBook because I'm just switching
01:11:10 ◼ ► Yeah, I forget what it's called. But the fact that it's there right in the 1.0 product is
01:11:19 ◼ ► to me super duper interesting. And I don't want to fork this podcast on a tangent about
01:11:27 ◼ ► the Vision Pro, but it works incredibly well. And really would be, especially for tasks,
01:11:41 ◼ ► there are certain, the nature of my work on the Mac is I don't really need a big display.
01:11:54 ◼ ► was 2019 into 2020. And I know this because they finished up just by happenstance right
01:12:01 ◼ ► before the COVID lockdowns. We just lucked into. And I had some eye problems at the time
01:12:09 ◼ ► too, where I kind of needed to be close to the screen. But there was over a year, maybe
01:12:14 ◼ ► close to two years, where because my office was being renovated, I put my iMac in a box
01:12:18 ◼ ► and I just lived on a 13-inch MacBook Pro. It was my only display. And it was fine. Because
01:12:35 ◼ ► I'm happy now. I'm happier now with one studio display on my desk. I like having a big display,
01:12:40 ◼ ► but it worked all right. But if I wanted, like if I did video editing or something like
01:12:46 ◼ ► that, I can see for some people who, or photos, you know, something where you just want a
01:12:57 ◼ ► use a Vision Pro, even if it's like your primary reason to have the Vision Pro, to have a big
01:13:04 ◼ ► virtual Mac display for Mac software to do Mac work, but being able to make it big wherever
01:13:12 ◼ ► you go just by, and you can take a 13-inch instead of a 16-inch MacBook Pro or a MacBook
01:13:46 ◼ ► sort of, "Hey, we can work alongside the Mac." Right? It was for a number of years, the iPad
01:13:51 ◼ ► was just its own thing and there was no way to use it as like a Mac display or something
01:14:03 ◼ ► a, not two weeks from now what they're going to announce, but long-term, where does the
01:14:09 ◼ ► Mac go? I could kind of see the Mac becoming software only, ultimately. This would be like
01:14:17 ◼ ► 10 years, 20 years down the road, but I don't know that I'd lose anything, right? I can
01:14:29 ◼ ► I want to do Mac type things, I can just bring it up in an app and it's just completely virtualized.
01:14:35 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, I can tell you, I'm basically using like my Mac is a, my Mac is a keyboard
01:14:42 ◼ ► at this point. Like my Mac is a keyboard case with a track pad. And the way I use Mac OS
01:14:51 ◼ ► is a projection of Mac OS to other displays. Like for example, now the base keyboard is
01:14:57 ◼ ► plugged into an external monitor and I'm at my desk and Thunderbolt cable, and I'm looking
01:15:09 ◼ ► And then I use the vision pro and I look at Mac OS inside the vision pro. So yeah, I totally
01:15:29 ◼ ► of Daring Fireball about RAM. And it's just an idea, you know, it's the iPad event just
01:15:35 ◼ ► sort of put it in my head that CPU wise, performance wise, if the device had the RAM, it would
01:15:43 ◼ ► be trivial for Apple Silicon to run Mac at a totally respectable speed that yes, at the
01:15:51 ◼ ► highest end of performance. If you're really like, if you have a big complex Xcode project
01:15:56 ◼ ► or a big 4k video, 20 minute 4k video project that you want to export, it would be slower,
01:16:26 ◼ ► constrained, but you know, the most RAM you can get in any iPad is what, eight gigabytes,
01:16:34 ◼ ► But it's nowhere near the upper limits of Macs, which go up to what, 192 at this point.
01:16:49 ◼ ► go up to like 96. There's a lot more headroom for RAM in high end Mac Pro hardware than
01:16:56 ◼ ► iPad and you'd want to have at least, I don't know, 1632 something more. But if they did,
01:17:07 ◼ ► CPU is, the performance would be fine. It just suddenly gets you into the uncomfortable
01:17:39 ◼ ► I mean, beautiful in theory, right? Beautiful as a concept, but maybe not so beautiful from
01:17:48 ◼ ► Yeah, but I mean, it is technically, I think, totally doable. Like I said, here I am looking
01:17:56 ◼ ► at a keyboard. It's effectively like a keyboard with an M2 inside and it doesn't have a fan.
01:18:07 ◼ ► a, by and large, it's an ugly sort of way of doing things, you know, detaching the display,
01:18:29 ◼ ► Pro as it stands is one of my favorite things about the product. And I'm glad they did it.
01:18:36 ◼ ► sort of nerdy slash modular feature, especially for 1.0, but I'm so glad they did it. I think
01:18:42 ◼ ► it's so super useful, but it also instantly made me think, wouldn't it be great if I could
01:18:52 ◼ ► And it's a $3,500 to $4,000 product. So it's not like, oh, I'm cheating Apple out of some
01:18:58 ◼ ► money. Like I think for $4,000, it's not that unreasonable to think that it could run macOS
01:19:04 ◼ ► virtualized right there within Vision. And I think that would be, you know, I think that's
01:19:16 ◼ ► Yeah, maybe not. All right, let me take another break here and then we'll go on to what we
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01:22:28 ◼ ► So I feel like the one thing we've been dancing around is with the iPad and what I really
01:22:50 ◼ ► Right? Because I feel like what's happened over the years because they've, like I said,
01:22:53 ◼ ► they've always been out of sync. It's like, oh, 2018 the iPad Pros took this great leap
01:22:58 ◼ ► forward and there was clarity for a while. Like the iPad Pros really stood head and shoulders
01:23:12 ◼ ► between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro. I personally think Face ID is a single, is a $200 feature.
01:23:27 ◼ ► Probably not the four speaker audio system. I mean, it's nice, but is that enough to say,
01:23:37 ◼ ► And I have to say from my personal iPad use, I don't use the speakers that much. It's a
01:23:42 ◼ ► lot more AirPods than speakers. Just and maybe somebody else's scenario is different and
01:23:47 ◼ ► they are playing music through their iPad speakers. So there are differences like that,
01:24:00 ◼ ► to an iPad, but then you go back to that idea of, have you tried connecting multiple displays
01:24:05 ◼ ► to an iPad and using stage manager on multiple external displays? It's not nice. So are there
01:24:27 ◼ ► Yeah. It just feels like there's more, way more clarity in the non-pro iPhones and more
01:24:34 ◼ ► clarity on between MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros on the Mac side. I feel like with desktops,
01:24:42 ◼ ► it's almost self-defining. The new 24-inch Apple Silicon iMacs are clearly consumer products.
01:24:50 ◼ ► They don't come with M series Pro chips. The Mac Pro and Mac Studio are clearly pro products.
01:25:04 ◼ ► and butter of the Mac lineup, there's just so much more, "Oh yeah, this is why the 16-inch
01:25:10 ◼ ► MacBook Pro starts at $2,500," which is way out of the budget for most people for a laptop.
01:25:26 ◼ ► screen that you can get one without spending $2,500. I mean, the biggest missing Mac for
01:25:36 ◼ ► almost the dawn of calling them MacBooks was a big MacBook Air, and now we have one. And
01:25:43 ◼ ► it's great. And what's missing on the iPad? For everybody who would like a 13-inch iPad
01:26:13 ◼ ► like they make the most sense on the iPad Air side. Right, it makes total sense to have
01:26:27 ◼ ► on an iPad Pro but still want to use an iPad. Where the rumors give me pause is the idea
01:26:33 ◼ ► of, well, on the iPad Pro side, you're going to have an OLED display. And that's it, at
01:26:47 ◼ ► version of a TV or a video game console, I'm going to get the OLED version. But would I
01:26:54 ◼ ► say that OLED in itself would justify calling an iPad Pro a Pro machine? Probably not. And
01:27:03 ◼ ► so I kind of feel like there must be, and maybe this is the wishful thinking right now,
01:27:19 ◼ ► Don't you kind of think, though, that I expect a new Magic Keyboard case, but I would expect
01:27:24 ◼ ► that it's going to work with all of the new iPads, or at least the iPad Airs and the iPad
01:27:28 ◼ ► Pro. One Magic Keyboard for all of the iPads. One that's 11-inch, one that's 13-inch. And
01:27:40 ◼ ► Yeah, so I am more convinced that the pencil is going to be cross-platform, if you will,
01:27:55 ◼ ► the Magic Keyboard that almost makes me wonder, are they going to keep the Magic Keyboard,
01:28:01 ◼ ► the current one, around? And they're going to make an additional version. Call it Magic
01:28:20 ◼ ► one for 13-inch. And it doesn't matter if it's an iPad Air or iPad Pro. But then I realize,
01:28:36 ◼ ► Exactly. Exactly. I've been thinking about this. All right, so how can they differentiate
01:28:43 ◼ ► this product from the iPad Air? Because an iPad Air, you get it with decent storage size,
01:28:50 ◼ ► and you get an accessory, and you get an Apple Pencil 2. It is, by and large, the same experience
01:29:08 ◼ ► the mini LED on the iPad Pro. But the screen of the iPad Air, it's a pretty good display.
01:29:22 ◼ ► Right. And which still isn't that bad, right? Compared to the industry as a whole, it's
01:29:41 ◼ ► But part of the corner Apple's painted itself in, and we're complaining, we mentioned it
01:29:45 ◼ ► before that all the, except for the low end, just plain no adjective iPad, the front-facing
01:30:10 ◼ ► brand and a household name. And Apple has a variety of these, use your iPad in a laptop
01:30:35 ◼ ► lowered it even three inches. It's off to the side. So if you are looking at the center
01:30:40 ◼ ► of your display to make eye contact with the people you're having the Zoom call with, you
01:30:53 ◼ ► But, but here's the big but. The but is where the camera would naturally go to put it at
01:31:06 ◼ ► Pencil, right? It's that Apple Pencil 2 is such a clever upgrade over the original Pencil,
01:31:12 ◼ ► right? The original Pencil was a great product. It made Apple break through this sort of...
01:31:20 ◼ ► They hadn't had anything with the stylus since the Newton and there was the whole, "Hey,
01:31:47 ◼ ► screen that goes at the top. And so I'm curious, I don't know, what do you think they're going
01:31:54 ◼ ► So I mean, obviously there's the optimistic scenario in which Apple almost magically figured
01:32:00 ◼ ► out how to put both the camera and the charging on the same side. I don't know how, I don't
01:32:06 ◼ ► know why, but hey, if there's a company that can figure this out, it's them, right? I guess.
01:32:11 ◼ ► There's the idea of maybe you put it on the shorter side. Now that would potentially look
01:32:21 ◼ ► It would be too long for the Mini if the Mini eventually gets updated to get it and it would
01:32:56 ◼ ► Pencil. I've seen some third-party cases that do that. They don't do the charging, but they
01:33:21 ◼ ► of people who don't want a $330 keyboard. All they want is the Pencil because they want
01:33:25 ◼ ► to do drawing on their iPad. So why in the world would you make them carry a $330 keyboard?
01:33:30 ◼ ► My idea, my guess, and I have no inside info, I have no idea. It seems like Apple's... Part
01:33:36 ◼ ► of the excitement about this is it seems like a lot of this is really kept under wraps,
01:33:41 ◼ ► right? I mean, the OLED stuff has just leaked through the supply chain, right? And it's
01:33:46 ◼ ► the sort of, I don't know, for whatever reason, the whole display industry seems to be the
01:33:53 ◼ ► leakiest of leaky supply chain industries. Everything related to Apple's displays seems
01:34:02 ◼ ► to leak and the leaks seem to be pretty accurate. My guess would be that the Pencil 3 will be
01:34:12 ◼ ► a lot like the Pencil 2 as a user, that it'll magnetically snap into place on the long side,
01:34:32 ◼ ► to be in there to charge the Pencil and to pair it, put them off center. And so the Pencil
01:34:43 ◼ ► middle anymore. And it's just move it to move the magnet to the side, down towards the bottom
01:34:48 ◼ ► or up towards the top or something like that. And so super familiar to users who already
01:35:03 ◼ ► you have a way to have all components on the same side of the device without sacrificing
01:35:11 ◼ ► the... I mean, let's face it, even from an accessibility perspective, from a user experience
01:35:17 ◼ ► perspective, it's such a win, right? The Apple Pencil 2, it charges, it pairs, it serves
01:35:33 ◼ ► Yeah. Apple tries to do such a good job with pairing in general and they tend to... It's
01:35:45 ◼ ► as easy as the Pencil. And if I want to hand my Pencil to my wife, all she has to do is
01:35:59 ◼ ► it being more seamless or more easy to understand. Just snap it into place on the side of the
01:36:12 ◼ ► Otherwise, we're looking at OLED, new Pencil, possibly Pencil with some kind of gesture
01:36:22 ◼ ► A button. There was the other rumor that mentioned the squeeze gesture, sort of like you squeeze
01:36:28 ◼ ► Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the same rumor too, right? The way that it's like
01:36:39 ◼ ► I think it's a tree. I think it's a rope because one guy's got his hand on the tail." It's
01:36:44 ◼ ► like maybe the button is like a capacitive squeeze thing, like the stem on AirPods. And
01:36:51 ◼ ► one person thinks it's a button because they know the feature and one person thinks it's
01:37:01 ◼ ► The keyboard, I think that's the interesting story in terms of my own usage of the iPad
01:37:06 ◼ ► Pro. There are so many things that they could do compared to the original version of the
01:37:16 ◼ ► design. Obviously, the rumor is pointing to a more laptop-like, sort of made of aluminum,
01:37:39 ◼ ► keyboard still doesn't have a function row on iPadOS or on these iPad Pros. And I think
01:37:47 ◼ ► judging from what it seems that Apple is doing, they are going to potentially drop that floating
01:37:54 ◼ ► design and they're maybe going to use a different hinge mechanism or a different attachment
01:38:03 ◼ ► But delightfully so. We don't, I mean, we've heard this rumor that it'll be aluminum instead
01:38:09 ◼ ► of, I don't know what you would call, I've got my Magic Keyboard, my four-year-old Magic
01:38:18 ◼ ► But I've posted to Mastodon, and I don't take mine out of the house very often. I don't
01:38:34 ◼ ► it's always great because people who follow me will post theirs. And so many other people's
01:38:39 ◼ ► are so much more worn. And the truth is, a well-worn MacBook Air just doesn't wear like,
01:38:47 ◼ ► aluminum just doesn't wear like rubber. It doesn't fall apart. And it's like, a well-used
01:38:55 ◼ ► five-year-old MacBook just looks good, right? Like in the way the kit-bashed props from Star
01:39:18 ◼ ► That thing is, I had one of those. And for all the care that I put into, you know, every
01:39:29 ◼ ► gets dirty and it starts turning this yellowish sort of color. It's not good. It doesn't look
01:39:50 ◼ ► good care. He's a sophomore in college. He takes really good care of his products. It's
01:40:04 ◼ ► trusted him with expensive devices maybe earlier than some parents would with kids who are
01:40:11 ◼ ► reckless with their stuff. But man, oh man, I know how much care he takes of his stuff.
01:40:24 ◼ ► Yeah. And this happens to everybody. There's no way around it. That material that maybe
01:40:35 ◼ ► for many years because they're so durable. And I mean, you're still using the 2018 iPad
01:40:43 ◼ ► And the Magic Keyboard was not meant to, especially in the white color, was not meant to last
01:41:01 ◼ ► 2020 Magic Keyboard. My Magic Keyboard looks worn to hell in between my most used keys.
01:41:07 ◼ ► My iPad is like near mint. I mean, there are, there are a couple of dings on the edges of
01:41:14 ◼ ► the aluminum, but they're not, you know, you could just see where, I don't know, I must've
01:41:18 ◼ ► dropped it or something here or there. There's, you know, you could tell that it's been used,
01:41:23 ◼ ► but overall it's in very good condition. Like if I sold it, I, you know, I wouldn't call
01:41:28 ◼ ► it mint or near mint, but it's in good condition and it's six years old and it's obviously
01:41:34 ◼ ► been used more than my Magic Keyboard, right? Because every, every moment I've used the
01:41:40 ◼ ► Magic Keyboard has been with this iPad. Aluminum just is, surprise, surprise, way more durable
01:41:46 ◼ ► than a rubber coating. So here, let me, let me throw this idea at you. And it, when the
01:41:52 ◼ ► M3 iMac came out in November, one of the minor disappointments, minor surprises was that
01:42:02 ◼ ► they still are shipping a keyboard and trackpad and mouse that use lightning instead of USB-C.
01:42:15 ◼ ► to USB-C. And one explanation would be, well, the, they just, the iMac is just not that
01:42:21 ◼ ► important a product anymore. And so they weren't going to sync up the USB-C update to the keyboard
01:42:30 ◼ ► and trackpad for that device. But Vision Pro came out too. Vision Pro pairs with a keyboard
01:42:38 ◼ ► and trackpad. And for whatever reason, I don't know. I mean, do you have a theory as a side
01:42:43 ◼ ► note? Do you have a theory? Like you can pair any Bluetooth 5 keyboard with a Vision Pro,
01:43:27 ◼ ► and, and, and I'll also add that I think it's, it's, it's long due for Apple to figure out
01:43:36 ◼ ► for a better story for their accessories in terms of, because this is a company that cares
01:43:42 ◼ ► so much about, about their, about the environment and about e-waste. This idea of having to
01:43:49 ◼ ► buy multiple sets of keyboards for the different Apple computers that you have. And I think,
01:43:56 ◼ ► imagine if the same were true with your AirPods, right? Imagine if you had to buy AirPods for
01:44:05 ◼ ► No, it's not the case because they so cleverly figured out a system to so seamlessly pair
01:44:19 ◼ ► when you look, when you look, when you take a peek in Bluetooth land with standard Bluetooth
01:44:24 ◼ ► earbuds land, it's still not the case. Bluetooth multi-point, not only does it, by and large,
01:44:35 ◼ ► it's been, the AirPods are what, eight years old at this point? I think it's time for Apple
01:44:40 ◼ ► to figure out a similar system for their accessories, where just like AirPods, you buy the one keyboard
01:44:58 ◼ ► to do this sort of technology that they did with the AirPods for their input accessories.
01:45:05 ◼ ► I think it's a bug in Mac OS 14.4, because if not, it's something's weird with my personal
01:45:14 ◼ ► MacBook Pro. But in, I'd say for like the last month, maybe six weeks, I've had an intermittent
01:45:20 ◼ ► problem where my AirPods always want to pair with my MacBook. Even my home office is on
01:45:27 ◼ ► the ground floor of our house and our living area is on the second floor. And so it's like,
01:45:38 ◼ ► using, I'm listening to podcasts or music on my phone. And as I leave the house, I have
01:45:44 ◼ ► to walk by my office and then the audio just stops on my, in my ears because it's jumped
01:45:58 ◼ ► problem and once I restart, then it's fine for like a week and then it starts happening
01:46:02 ◼ ► again. But it's all it's done is emphasized to me how awesome the automatic pairing with
01:46:09 ◼ ► AirPods is when it, when it's working as intended. Right. And it's exactly what you said. It's
01:46:13 ◼ ► great. And it would be crazy if it would seem crazy now that we're used to, Hey, I just
01:46:22 ◼ ► right thing. They do what I mean when I switch devices, which feels magical. It does. It
01:46:28 ◼ ► would be great to have that with a keyboard and it would really be a sign to me that Apple
01:46:33 ◼ ► has getting its overall cross device story together. If they made an aluminum base, sort
01:46:58 ◼ ► both a vision pro and any iPad, and I don't know what the connectors for the iPad would
01:47:04 ◼ ► look like. I don't know if there's a slot that you'd slotted into. I don't know. I leave
01:47:15 ◼ ► How weird. It's very clever, but the way that, like you said, like the magic keyboard that
01:47:21 ◼ ► we have for the last four years, the way that it sort of lets the bottom third of the iPad
01:47:26 ◼ ► hover over the keyboard. I leave that to Apple's designers to come up with the clever connecting
01:47:45 ◼ ► $350. If it's aluminum, more durable, and it pairs with both the vision pro and an iPad,
01:47:52 ◼ ► and presumably you could also pair with like a Mac mini or a Mac studio. Right? Yeah. Now
01:47:58 ◼ ► that would be a much better deal. I mean, it would also be a way for people to buy that
01:48:01 ◼ ► accessory even if they're not iPad users. Right. Even if you don't want to buy an iPad,
01:48:11 ◼ ► mini or whatever. And yeah, I do think that some of Apple's most fascinating work lately,
01:48:17 ◼ ► I mean, besides obviously vision-wise, I think it is coming from those teams that have been
01:48:21 ◼ ► working on like those cross-platform integrations, like the folks behind, I mean, obviously Sidecar,
01:48:29 ◼ ► but even Universal Control. I think it's such, once you get used to it, the magic of Universal
01:48:42 ◼ ► or even with VisionOS, like you're using the Mac virtual display mode, and then you look
01:48:47 ◼ ► at a VisionOS window and the pointer is there, the work that Apple has been doing there.
01:48:54 ◼ ► And then of course the AirPods. I would love to see Apple apply their knowledge actually
01:49:01 ◼ ► to two products in this case, the keyboard that we just mentioned, but boy, would I also
01:49:19 ◼ ► Yeah. I kind of feel like the best we can hope for is what we've got where they've thoroughly
01:49:35 ◼ ► Because I don't know, like when you get review units, do they send you game controllers sometimes?
01:49:40 ◼ ► Oh, they've sent, I've been sent a couple of game controllers with various things to...
01:49:53 ◼ ► controllers I need to send back. I have a whole bunch of queued up review units to send
01:49:57 ◼ ► back, but they'll send me like a PlayStation one one time. And then I think with the M3
01:50:03 ◼ ► MacBook Pro, they sent me an Xbox controller, but it works great with both. And I think
01:50:09 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine with third-party controllers. I am not fine with third-party keyboards.
01:50:18 ◼ ► But boy, that would be such a great story. And it would give them a reason to talk about
01:50:29 ◼ ► in the app store like, "Hey, why don't you buy a Vision Pro?" Like, I think they recognize
01:50:35 ◼ ► that the enthusiasm around Vision Pro's launch has dissipated. I was going to say it's not
01:50:42 ◼ ► just decreased, but it's sort of disappeared. And I think leading up to WWDC where surely
01:50:50 ◼ ► they're going to have a lot of Vision OS 2.0 features that they are going to want to tell
01:50:54 ◼ ► us about. But up to that, any kind of... If they could just work the Vision Pro into this
01:51:00 ◼ ► iPad event on May 7th with the keyboard, it would be great. And personally, at my desk,
01:51:21 ◼ ► for my thumb underneath the space bar as opposed to a magic trackpad off to the side. I doubt
01:51:29 ◼ ► that me, that I would abandon my beloved 30-year-old Apple Extended Keyboard 2 for a new peripheral.
01:51:38 ◼ ► But if an integrated device that put the trackpad under the keyboard, under the space bar, would
01:51:46 ◼ ► be more tempting than anything Apple's made peripheral-wise for a while, for me, for the
01:52:04 ◼ ► Yeah, that would be another point of... Yeah, that would definitely be a thing to announce
01:52:09 ◼ ► on May 7th, yeah. Where is Vision Pro? It's still officially only in North America? Yeah,
01:52:28 ◼ ► So yeah, that would be nice if they expanded that. And why not, right? I mean, it's not
01:52:32 ◼ ► setting the world on fire sales-wise. And I know Ming-Chi Kuo just came out with a story
01:52:44 ◼ ► link in the show notes, but Neil Seibart called him out, Ming-Chi Kuo, for like two months
01:52:49 ◼ ► ago. The same guy said they expect to sell 150,000 in the US, and now he's like, "They've
01:52:56 ◼ ► cut the orders from 450,000." And it's like, "Well, wait, which is it?" Yeah, that would
01:53:13 ◼ ► and realistically we are going to get hardware. And software is... WWDC is usually the place
01:53:19 ◼ ► for software, right? And it's literally like a month after. But my concern is that just
01:53:27 ◼ ► hardware would still not fix that story of the iPad Pro, right? And so maybe there will
01:53:35 ◼ ► need to be an addendum of sorts at WWDC for iPadOS. But then again, I'm skeptical given
01:53:51 ◼ ► just here's an accessory, here's OLED, here's new hardware for you. I would love to see
01:54:12 ◼ ► Apple, to my memory, has never done a hardware launch in May. And presumably it's just because
01:54:33 ◼ ► Air model that's bigger, all new iPad Pros, new pencil, new keyboard and trackpad, magic
01:54:39 ◼ ► keyboard thing, who knows what other keyboard case things they might have. All of that,
01:54:45 ◼ ► any one of them might have been delayed and held up the whole thing, we don't know. But
01:54:50 ◼ ► maybe software-wise they'll have an app or apps, like an upgrade to Final Cut and Logic
01:55:10 ◼ ► something, something they could show off and say, "Look, when you run Final Cut on these
01:55:15 ◼ ► new iPad Pros, you can export at MacBook Pro speeds." And it's totally suitable for a truly
01:55:28 ◼ ► May makes me wonder what in the world they are going to show off software-wise. Because
01:55:40 ◼ ► without software, right? It is very strange. All right, let me take a break here and thank
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01:59:39 ◼ ► very, I am, I still largely against the DMA. I think it's poorly considered legislation
01:59:46 ◼ ► overall, but in a way that two opposing things can be true. I also am jealous because as
01:59:54 ◼ ► a nerd/power user, there's no better place to be an iOS user than the EU right now. And
02:00:04 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. That's sort of my take. And obviously we've been writing about the DMA at Max
02:00:17 ◼ ► Trust me, as somebody married to somebody who used to, there's no such thing as a former
02:00:21 ◼ ► lawyer. You're always a lawyer. You're just no longer practicing lawyer. Trust me. I guess
02:00:38 ◼ ► So I think there are so many parts of the DMA that either don't make sense or are poorly
02:01:03 ◼ ► on like what it means for Apple as a company, you're just a user and you're like, well,
02:01:25 ◼ ► unfortunate that we've ended up in this situation where regulation had to happen for certain
02:01:56 ◼ ► do no wrong. And in fact, in most circumstances, it does harm, especially when it's created
02:02:03 ◼ ► by people who maybe are not so technically knowledgeable. And at the same time, I wonder
02:02:23 ◼ ► It's undeniable. Right now, globally, this is a change that Apple has instituted in the
02:02:37 ◼ ► classic game emulators famously. And not only, I'm sure this isn't news to anybody who's
02:03:09 ◼ ► it wouldn't have happened without regulatory pressure. And I've always said like, piracy
02:03:17 ◼ ► is a form of negotiation. And go back 20 years before the iTunes Music Store, when the iTunes
02:03:33 ◼ ► right now the only way to really do it easily is to pirate them. Here, we're going to make
02:03:44 ◼ ► don't have to worry about quality, we're going to make sure everything's encoded right,
02:04:02 ◼ ► you guys only want to sell us music on complete album CDs, and you're going to up the price
02:04:07 ◼ ► to like 20 bucks a CD, and I really only want one song from the CD. Well, I'll just kind
02:04:14 ◼ ► of download the song." Right? It's a form of negotiation. And regulatory pressure works
02:04:32 ◼ ► company or the product or whatever it is that you're attempting to regulate. And in some
02:04:37 ◼ ► ways, the emulation restriction in the App Store rules, I think, is an example of that.
02:04:49 ◼ ► says that Apple has to allow 20-year-old Nintendo platforms to be emulated on the phone, but
02:05:17 ◼ ► a good idea, will acknowledge that yes, there's some technical clunkers in here, aspects of
02:05:29 ◼ ► because they don't understand the things that they're mandating. But it's, I'm really, really
02:05:34 ◼ ► interested to see what the next couple of marketplaces that open in the EU. And I think
02:05:40 ◼ ► it's so cool that the first one is Riley's. I really do. It's such a great little independent
02:05:58 ◼ ► I kind of feel like, obviously, having lived in Italy my entire life, and we've been part
02:06:11 ◼ ► If the way the European Union operates historically is of any indication, it seems to me that
02:06:19 ◼ ► with all kinds of regulations that they have passed over the past decades, usually they
02:06:41 ◼ ► of course, during the lockdown and the pandemic. It applies to immigration. It applies to funds
02:06:48 ◼ ► that they give to different governments to redo their infrastructures, for example. That's
02:06:56 ◼ ► been using European funds to redo very basic things like our streets and bike lanes, that
02:07:04 ◼ ► sort of stuff. Usually, the European Union seems to be interested in setting a baseline.
02:07:09 ◼ ► And this is such a European thing, but most things are always up for debate. And there's
02:07:33 ◼ ► mandates, just like in the DMA, so many aspects are sort of vague. It's not clear exactly
02:07:57 ◼ ► end." And I think this initial moment is the most awkward one. And that is my interpretation
02:08:05 ◼ ► of things, that there are some good aspects, I think, in theory, that can be salvaged in
02:08:15 ◼ ► the DMA. It's like, on paper, the idea of, "Hey, should users have options when it comes
02:08:22 ◼ ► to installing software on their phones?" And Apple saying, "Okay, but maybe we'll let them
02:08:28 ◼ ► do it in a secure way that we still control." That sort of back and forth, I think, this
02:08:35 ◼ ► is just my personal theory, is what we will continue to see. And it's why now the European
02:08:41 ◼ ► Union needs to get back to Apple in terms of how they've implemented the core technology
02:09:01 ◼ ► kinds of regulations that, coming from Brussels to the individual governments, and it starts
02:09:08 ◼ ► this conversation between them that eventually ends up with, "Okay, the original regulation
02:09:28 ◼ ► think, and I hope, it goes like other regulations before, where it was mostly about setting
02:09:37 ◼ ► a baseline, but the details were intentionally kept vague because they needed to be figured
02:09:44 ◼ ► And it's just the EU way of doing it, really. I mean, it's different to not delineate things
02:09:54 ◼ ► really where we are, is what are they going to choose to enforce? I think, for example,
02:10:00 ◼ ► I think the mandatory browser choice screen is a bad idea. I don't think it's horrible,
02:10:06 ◼ ► and the people who are fans of it are like, "Why are you objecting to it?" I just think
02:10:11 ◼ ► it's the sort of thing that I just think most typical users don't understand. And I've shown
02:10:18 ◼ ► the screenshots of the browser choice screen to my mom and my mother-in-law, who are very
02:10:24 ◼ ► typical iPhone users, non-technical. Neither of them, they're both bright. They're bright
02:10:36 ◼ ► do with this screen?" And they say, "No, I don't know what it is." And I think my mom knew
02:10:41 ◼ ► that her browser is Safari, but my mother-in-law didn't even know Safari is named Safari. But
02:10:49 ◼ ► it's just one thing, and I do recognize that from the European Commission's perspective,
02:10:54 ◼ ► I think that they naturally see the web as their platform, that what the web, the World
02:11:01 ◼ ► Wide Web of browsers is, is sort of the computing equivalent of the European Union, right? The
02:11:13 ◼ ► European Union is not a federal single entity. There's no European Union army, right? It's
02:11:20 ◼ ► not like the United States. Yeah, you even laugh because you're intimately familiar with
02:11:23 ◼ ► it, and you know how ludicrous that is. But it is. It's like the web, and the web doesn't
02:11:29 ◼ ► have an owner, right? The European Union doesn't really have an owner, right? Germany doesn't
02:11:39 ◼ ► of like the web, and so they have an affinity for the web, and they've given special attention
02:11:46 ◼ ► to it with this browser choice screen. I think that the sort of murmuring that maybe they
02:11:58 ◼ ► It is not... So I think stopping with the browser is one thing. I think if they continued
02:12:05 ◼ ► to push and ended at what? You're going to have an email client choice screen, a calendar
02:12:09 ◼ ► choice screen, a photo storage choice screen, and the photo choice screen in particular
02:12:23 ◼ ► terms of the photo picker and stuff like that. I mean, it's all typing. Anything could happen.
02:12:37 ◼ ► pointless and detrimental and doesn't deserve to be mandated. And maybe that's just something
02:12:45 ◼ ► Yeah, they say many things. I think they could have probably just mandated that users should
02:12:53 ◼ ► be able to install different browsers without the screen. If anything, because like Google,
02:13:06 ◼ ► same elsewhere in Europe, and I have to believe that it was in preparation of this, but they
02:13:11 ◼ ► have been running TV commercials so aggressively for Google Chrome on iPhone over the past
02:13:31 ◼ ► arguing in their commercials, that you don't have to worry about passwords because Google
02:13:41 ◼ ► see the Google ones, and when you get that screen and you see Google Chrome, maybe some
02:13:46 ◼ ► people would say, "Yeah, I hear that's secure," even though they have a perfectly fine and
02:13:52 ◼ ► maybe even more secure browser already on their phone. So I would have personally preferred
02:14:03 ◼ ► was a little unnecessary. For sure, I wouldn't like to get more screens. Even if it's a
02:14:17 ◼ ► me or anything, but like you mentioned, my mom would see that screen and I am convinced
02:14:33 ◼ ► Google on TV. I want to choose that because it seems to be better." And so I am a little
02:14:48 ◼ ► And they don't recognize things, and I don't think the DMA acknowledges. I think that the
02:15:09 ◼ ► technocrats who see computing devices as sort of blank slates, and that the ideal is cross-platform
02:15:21 ◼ ► software, and that it doesn't matter which brand phone you have, and that write-once-run-everywhere
02:15:27 ◼ ► web apps for everything would be all pros, no cons, and just not only doesn't acknowledge,
02:15:36 ◼ ► but is actually completely ignoring the advantages of integration and how that's actually the
02:15:42 ◼ ► appeal of Apple, right? The appeal of Apple is, "Okay, especially for typical consumers,
02:16:07 ◼ ► and you've signed into your iCloud account, and you've got shared history. Your history
02:16:21 ◼ ► get the same thing with Chrome or with Brave, that if you use the same browser on your phone,
02:16:27 ◼ ► your iPhone, and your Mac, you can get shared history and shared bookmarks and stuff like
02:16:31 ◼ ► that. But the people like my mom and my mother-in-law, it's not just because of me, because I'm
02:16:38 ◼ ► my mom's son and my mother-in-law's son-in-law, that they've bought Apple products, that
02:17:01 ◼ ► up the interface with stuff that I don't want," or something like that. And I do think,
02:17:12 ◼ ► once this browser choice screen went into place in iOS 17.4 in the EU, because of course
02:17:20 ◼ ► more people are downloading these third-party browsers than before. But are they all doing
02:17:52 ◼ ► were choosing and picked something and now they've got a default browser that is unfamiliar
02:18:00 ◼ ► Yeah, and I do think that there are aspects that I appreciate. There are installing software
02:18:14 ◼ ► from third-party marketplace while still knowing that it's being notarized by Apple. And
02:18:21 ◼ ► so I can rest assured that I'm not installing some scammy malware coming from who knows
02:18:35 ◼ ► thing and I think it's showing how my concluding thought would be that it's a shame that
02:18:47 ◼ ► it had to come down to this, to what's happening now. But I do think that a little bit of pressure
02:19:08 ◼ ► Now they didn't have to, but they felt like maybe they had to show that they're listening
02:19:23 ◼ ► of regulation can push things in the right direction. If anything, from the perspective
02:19:37 ◼ ► those opportunities before. Like, for example, Riley and Delta, if it were not for what's
02:19:46 ◼ ► happening now, not only is now Delta providing a hopefully sustainable business for the two
02:20:01 ◼ ► like, sales of third party game controllers are up, way up, because of what's happening
02:20:12 ◼ ► they're spending their money elsewhere. So I think it's important to consider not just,
02:20:26 ◼ ► have an effect on the economy and what's possible now that wasn't possible until a week ago.
02:20:48 ◼ ► I think some of Apple's mentality and their obstinance at changing and adapting and opening
02:21:02 ◼ ► just pure greed and that it's all about the 30 to 15% cut from the App Store and everything
02:21:14 ◼ ► revenue from the App Store. I mean, it's a lot of money, it's the services has been their
02:21:20 ◼ ► growth engine and the growth is an important, it's from an investor standpoint, traditionally,
02:21:37 ◼ ► course that's an A factor, but I do think that Apple without Steve Jobs has lost a little
02:21:45 ◼ ► bit of the, okay, fuck it, let's just do a new thing, right? Like there's the whole story
02:21:57 ◼ ► of the iPod as a Mac peripheral to help bolster the Mac and keep the software Mac only. And
02:22:10 ◼ ► think we should put this on Windows and sell. Not only will we make a lot of money selling
02:22:15 ◼ ► iPods to Windows users, it's a way to give people who've never tasted the Apple experience
02:22:25 ◼ ► their case a couple of times and then he was like, okay, screw it, but it's your problem.
02:22:35 ◼ ► there's, it's not just greed for the app store revenue. There's a bit of, if it ain't broke,
02:22:41 ◼ ► don't fix it. Let's not screw anything up. And I know that the critics of Apple's compliance
02:22:54 ◼ ► that, okay, they fought against it. They did not want the DMA to be passed at all. They
02:22:59 ◼ ► did not want sideloading. Craig Federighi went to, it wasn't Barcelona, was it Portugal?
02:23:05 ◼ ► There was some conference in Europe. I mean, somebody, Apple executive flying all the way
02:23:09 ◼ ► from California to Europe to speak at a conference, it shows you how important they took it. And
02:23:15 ◼ ► the whole point of his keynote two or three years ago was to make the case against sideloading
02:23:20 ◼ ► as a mandated feature. They clearly, but they, they, they lost the argument. The mandate
02:23:32 ◼ ► is. This is the law. How do we do the best job of complying with this? To me, malicious
02:23:52 ◼ ► put it on the web and download it and it installs on your home screen and there it is. And if
02:23:57 ◼ ► it uses private APIs and runs in the background or tries to install stuff outside the sandbox
02:24:02 ◼ ► or whatever, anything goes, just let it happen. That's malicious compliance where, and surely
02:24:20 ◼ ► the battery life being hours shorter on their phone than before. I think they've right.
02:24:32 ◼ ► trying to comply with all these things in ways that maintain the experience. And I really
02:24:37 ◼ ► do think that Apple's looking at it as, okay, we're, we have to do this. What can we do
02:24:56 ◼ ► want to monetize third party software development on this platform. That's the nature of this.
02:25:03 ◼ ► This is not an open platform where developers can just freely install whatever they want.
02:25:10 ◼ ► What if instead of taking a cut of sales, we just took a cut, a 50 cent or 50 Euro cent,
02:25:22 ◼ ► fee over a million. Cause it fills in. I've, I've mentioned this, but you know, I don't
02:25:26 ◼ ► think in 2008 when they launched the app store, they foresaw things like TikTok and Facebook
02:25:40 ◼ ► billion dollar companies that Apple's mindset was surely the successful companies that build
02:25:48 ◼ ► apps will be selling their apps. Right. And it's turns out that's not true. So what would
02:25:53 ◼ ► they do to adjust? I honestly see a lot of almost almost everything in their compliance
02:26:04 ◼ ► EU that they might open up worldwide without any kind of mandate by the law. I really do
02:26:10 ◼ ► think so. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, and that's why I think the things like people
02:26:15 ◼ ► are complaining about, Hey, you have to agree. You know, it's not just tap a link on the
02:26:20 ◼ ► website and you get an app on your home screen. It's you have to go into settings and say,
02:26:31 ◼ ► to discourage people. It's to strike the right balance between making sure the experience
02:26:43 ◼ ► I think it's, it's, it's, it takes 30 seconds. It's not a big deal really. Yeah. Anyway.
02:26:55 ◼ ► Watch you again. Lots to look forward to in the coming weeks. Are you coming? Do you know,
02:27:17 ◼ ► max stories.net because we're using our domain. You've got your own domain. How's that working