ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► All right, Marco, I have a question for you. This was posed to me in jest by my friend, our friend, Tyler, who went to Goose with us. And we were talking about Goose, because that's a lot of what I do these days with anyone who will listen. And Tyler asked, at what point does Goose replace, or at the very least, augment Phish as the pre-show music for live listeners of the show? And I would like to know the answer, please.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I don't know if it ever will, unless...

00:00:29 ◼   ► I thought not.

00:00:31 ◼   ► One of the reasons I play Phish on the live stream before the show is that I just have a ton of it. Now, I also have a ton of Goose. So that is an equal push there.

00:00:44 ◼   ► The biggest difference is, over the years, I have occasionally emailed somebody or had a conversation with somebody who's vaguely involved in the Phish organization here or there.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I've gotten the impression that this kind of stuff they really don't care about.

00:01:02 ◼   ► So, like, we're not going to get in trouble playing seven minutes of a live Phish recording that I bought on our live stream before we go live to a few people.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Like, it's not... I don't think anybody in the Phish organization would have a problem with that.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I don't know the Goose organization.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I don't, like, I don't really have an idea yet of whether they would have a problem with us doing that.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And it's not worth going through the, like, official channels of, like, music licensing for, you know, because it's, like, the tracks I'm playing aren't even in those channels.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Like, I'm just, I'm playing, like, purchase live recordings from, like, live Phish.

00:01:40 ◼   ► So, like, there's, like, so it kind of avoids that entire system, which avoids headaches.

00:01:47 ◼   ► That's an astonishingly and frustratingly reasonable answer, to be completely honest.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But I appreciate it, nevertheless.

00:01:53 ◼   ► That is actually fascinating.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So, yeah, if you're involved in the Goose organization, then you should let us know.

00:01:58 ◼   ► For lots of reasons.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I would love to know people involved in Goose like that.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Because I have a feeling I'm going to be a fan of this band for a very long time.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:06 ◼   ► You know, probably, if they stay together for the rest of my life, probably the rest of my life.

00:02:10 ◼   ► So, I would love to get to know anybody there who might, you know, who I'm, who might be able to work together in some capacity or just, you know, hey, I'd love to buy you a coffee if you're ever in New York.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Like, anything like that.

00:02:23 ◼   ► How would you work together with Phish in some capacity?

00:02:26 ◼   ► In what capacity would you work with Phish?

00:02:28 ◼   ► Please enlighten me about your speculation.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Well, if I ever make my Jams app.

00:02:32 ◼   ► So, that's my tentative name for the app that I would make that is the Jam Band specific music playback app that would have, you know, features in it that would, that like, you know, listening to my live Phish and Goose recordings in just the Apple music app.

00:02:49 ◼   ► It works, but there are like organizational and experiential features that I would much rather, like, I'd much rather it work a little bit differently in some of those areas or have certain features that Apple will never get around to adding.

00:03:03 ◼   ► It would never make sense for them.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And if you, if I made an app specifically for listening to these Jam Band recordings, like, I have a few good ideas around how I would do that.

00:03:12 ◼   ► But it would never make sense for me, first of all, really, to even make that app.

00:03:16 ◼   ► But if I did make that app, it would never make sense for me to try to release it to the public because the audience would be very, very, very small.

00:03:23 ◼   ► How many people have bought, you know, thousands of dollars worth of live recordings off of either, you know, Goose's Bandcamp page or Live Phish?

00:03:33 ◼   ► Like, I've literally, like, every, I buy every show for both bands.

00:03:37 ◼   ► They're like $10 to $15 each, and they play, like, you know, 30 shows a year or whatever.

00:03:42 ◼   ► No one else does this as far, like, you know, the number of people who buy all those tracks is probably very small.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And so if I'm going to make an app that requires those tracks to play to be useful, what's that audience size, really?

00:03:55 ◼   ► Like, and how many people would have so many of those tracks that it would be worth having a special app to help you catalog them and listen to them better or whatever?

00:04:02 ◼   ► I take your point.

00:04:05 ◼   ► I take your point, but I think there's more of an audience there than you would expect.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And I would also argue that if you did a good music playback app that takes into account, like, this version is good because of this thing or, you know, so-and-so had a really good run during this version, you know.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Sorry, Marco doesn't do apps with user-generated content.

00:04:25 ◼   ► No, I'm even, that's true.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Fair.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Lots of reasons.

00:04:28 ◼   ► But I was talking about even my own internal notes, you know, like, oh, I really like this version because something like that.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Yeah, internal, because, like, I have a whole system in iTunes slash music of, like, how I rate my Phish concerts and Goose concerts, how I, like, I have certain playlists that are, like, my favorite tracks, like, from each band.

00:04:45 ◼   ► You know, I have, like, a procedure that I go through when I have a new show I haven't heard yet, so I don't get spoiled.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Like, it's a whole thing.

00:04:51 ◼   ► I would love to make an app to help with this, but if anyone else would use it besides me to make that app good, you would need access to the catalog.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So, really, the only people who can make that app good are either the big music platforms, which won't ever make an app that's good for that because the genre is too small, and also, they don't even have access to all the recordings because the bands don't upload them to them.

00:05:13 ◼   ► The other source of that kind of music would be the bands themselves or a service they use, something like, you know, LivePhish, Nugs.net, or, in Goose's case, Bandcamp.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So, all of those people could make a good app, and LivePhish has an app.

00:05:28 ◼   ► It's not good.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I would love to make an app that would specialize in this, but it would really require the band's cooperation to make it releasable to the public because it would need access to the band's catalog.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And however that's monetized, I don't care.

00:05:41 ◼   ► So, I would have to work with them to really make that the app I would want it to be.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I hear you, and I do largely agree with you, but I think there's more of an audience and more ability for you to do this without band buy-in than you would expect.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But is that enough to take away from Overcast and ATP and whatever else?

00:05:58 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:05:59 ◼   ► God, no.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I mean, ultimately, like, if I look at, like, you know, just the dollars and cents, I shouldn't really do anything except Overcast and ATP.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Like, these two parts of my work life make the vast majority of the income.

00:06:17 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Don't worry, I'm not leaving the show.

00:06:20 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense for me to ever leave this show or to ever give up Overcast, like, unless some money backs up, but I don't see that happening.

00:06:27 ◼   ► So, those two are in my life.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And so, the question is, if I add anything else to my life, like we talked about in a recent member special, like, how would that look?

00:06:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:38 ◼   ► It depends.

00:06:38 ◼   ► One of the biggest things is, like, it depends, like, how much would it need from me?

00:06:42 ◼   ► You know, am I doing something that has no server component?

00:06:45 ◼   ► That helps.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Am I doing something that is, like, building on a part of iOS or whatever platform that changes a lot or that people expect a lot of?

00:06:55 ◼   ► Well, that depends on the app.

00:06:57 ◼   ► I know from Overcast, if I'm making an audio playing app, that goes a lot of places.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Like, that goes all over the system and all over people's lives, and people expect a lot from that.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So, that is actually a pretty high needs app.

00:07:12 ◼   ► So, anyway, it'll probably never happen, but if Overcast went away, by whatever means that would happen, I have two app ideas I want to work on, and that's one of them.

00:07:22 ◼   ► But we'll see if that ever actually happens.

00:07:24 ◼   ► We should – somebody needs to buy Overcast so you have the availability to work on this, and you and I can do it together.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Because surely that won't strain our friendship whatsoever, you and I working on this, bickering about Dave Matthews and Fish and whatever else.

00:07:39 ◼   ► The problem with that setup would be unless we also involved John, we – first of all, this show would become quite awkward.

00:07:47 ◼   ► But second of all, if it was just me and you and not John, we would never work.

00:07:52 ◼   ► That's true.

00:07:53 ◼   ► That is very true.

00:07:53 ◼   ► We would just, like, you know, play around, like, you know, we'd be like, oh, check out this clip.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Oh, my God, did you hear this performance of this?

00:07:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:00 ◼   ► You know, hey, you want a beer?

00:08:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And then, like, we would just – we would never get anything done.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Like, you and I – I don't think we are, like, high motivational working people.

00:08:09 ◼   ► I think we need external people to, like, be a little bit of a boost.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And I think John would be that person.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Like, I have occasionally wondered, like, what would it be like for the three of us to make an app together?

00:08:21 ◼   ► And I think we see with, like, our CMS – we see how that would be, which is –

00:08:26 ◼   ► Please don't use that as an example of anything.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Oh, my word.

00:08:32 ◼   ► With the CMS, like, you know, I wrote it at first.

00:08:34 ◼   ► John took it over and does everything better.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Like, just everything.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And now I don't even touch it.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Earlier in the week, there was a bug that was sending me a couple of crash logs in my email.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I went to Slack to be like, oh, hey, do you want me to fix this?

00:08:49 ◼   ► And John's like, I already did.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And sure enough, like, he'd already fixed a bug in my framework and already, like, you know, committed, documented everything.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Like, so anyway, I do wonder sometimes what that would be like.

00:09:02 ◼   ► But I think we already know what that would be like.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Well, what we need is we need you and me to develop, and John will be our certified Scrum Master.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Well, definitely not that.

00:09:11 ◼   ► John would fire both of us in a heartbeat.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:09:14 ◼   ► You're both starting on a pip.

00:09:15 ◼   ► If you're not familiar, performance improvement plan.

00:09:22 ◼   ► This is basically like the first step in firing a person.

00:09:25 ◼   ► This is day one.

00:09:26 ◼   ► You just start that way.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Keeps you on your toes.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Once a year, I like to give a special thanks to our ATP patrons.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Every episode, we give thanks to our members.

00:09:38 ◼   ► We say thanks to our members who support the show directly, yada, yada.

00:09:41 ◼   ► That's what Marco says in his little end thing.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And we do.

00:09:43 ◼   ► We love all our members.

00:09:44 ◼   ► They make the show possible.

00:09:45 ◼   ► We love you.

00:09:45 ◼   ► We thank you very much.

00:09:46 ◼   ► We thank you every single week.

00:09:47 ◼   ► But when do the patrons get thanked?

00:09:49 ◼   ► They get thanked once a year, usually in early January.

00:09:52 ◼   ► So here we are.

00:09:52 ◼   ► What is an ATP patron?

00:09:54 ◼   ► ATP patron is someone who's a member who pays for the show to get the member version of the show with the bootleg.

00:10:02 ◼   ► No ads and all the member specials like they're your member, but they pay more than the listed price for membership.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Why do they do that?

00:10:09 ◼   ► Why would you pay more than the thing costs?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Well, I have a fact item for that.

00:10:14 ◼   ► If you want to learn about ATP patrons, you can go to ATP.fm slash patron and learn how you can do that.

00:10:20 ◼   ► There's a tiny number of people who do this.

00:10:22 ◼   ► There's not a lot.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Why did we implement this?

00:10:24 ◼   ► Because people asked us to.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And so we did.

00:10:26 ◼   ► We implemented it and the patrons came and they pay us more than the listed price for ATP membership.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Because they love the show that much or because they have that much disposable income or both.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And so I just want to thank them because we don't have anything else for them.

00:10:38 ◼   ► They get a badge on their member page that says patron, right?

00:10:40 ◼   ► But other than that, we don't have anything for them.

00:10:43 ◼   ► The whole thing is like they're paying extra and they're not getting anything extra.

00:10:45 ◼   ► They're giving extra and they're getting the same thing as all the other members.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I wish there was something we could give them.

00:10:51 ◼   ► We haven't thought of anything good yet.

00:10:52 ◼   ► But what they get for now is once a year, I would like to thank them.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Again, I could read all their names, but that would be a privacy violation.

00:10:59 ◼   ► There's not a lot of them, but I just want to say you're out there.

00:11:02 ◼   ► You're an ATP patron.

00:11:03 ◼   ► You did that thing where you pay extra money voluntarily.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I want to say that we see you.

00:11:06 ◼   ► We noticed you.

00:11:07 ◼   ► We thank you.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Thank you, ATP patrons.

00:11:10 ◼   ► If you want to become a patron, even if you're already a member or if you're not a member,

00:11:12 ◼   ► ATP.fm slash patron will explain how to do it.

00:11:15 ◼   ► That's it.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Thank you so much, patrons.

00:11:17 ◼   ► We appreciate you.

00:11:18 ◼   ► All right.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Some quick follow up with regard to cutting the cord.

00:11:21 ◼   ► As I'm sitting here now, I have not yet recorded, but by the time you hear this, I will have

00:11:26 ◼   ► recorded an episode of downstream with Jason Snell, where we're going to talk about cord

00:11:30 ◼   ► cutting and kind of what the state of the world is.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And one of the things that we plan on talking about or that we have talked about, I don't

00:11:36 ◼   ► know what is time in this particular segment.

00:11:38 ◼   ► But anyway, one of the things that's being talked about is suppose.tv, which I'd never

00:11:42 ◼   ► heard of, but Jason pointed to me or pointed me to it.

00:11:45 ◼   ► English.

00:11:45 ◼   ► How does it work?

00:11:46 ◼   ► And what this lets you do is it lets you pick out like, oh, I really need HBO.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I really need CBS.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I really need ABC.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I really need Travel Channel.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And based on your particular needs, it will suggest what streaming service you should get,

00:12:02 ◼   ► like what is cheapest and what is the best fit and so on and so forth.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I presume this is just for America.

00:12:06 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

00:12:08 ◼   ► But it's worth checking out if you are American and are looking to cut the cord.

00:12:11 ◼   ► So I will put a link to me on downstream in the show notes.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It will 404 until the episode is up, and then it will not 404.

00:12:19 ◼   ► So check that out if you're interested, and check out suppose.tv if you're looking to cut

00:12:23 ◼   ► the cord.

00:12:23 ◼   ► All right.

00:12:24 ◼   ► With regard to adding contacts to a list one at a time in iOS, we were lamenting how long

00:12:29 ◼   ► that would take.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Simon Lungberg writes, the iOS 26 contacts app does indeed support multi-select using the

00:12:36 ◼   ► two-finger swipe gesture.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Selecting spread apart items works by doing another two-finger swipe at another place

00:12:42 ◼   ► in the list.

00:12:42 ◼   ► You can then initiate a drag by holding and dragging on one of the selected items.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Tap the back button and drop the contacts in the list of your choosing.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Is it intuitive?

00:12:51 ◼   ► No.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Is it better than painstakingly moving one at a time?

00:12:54 ◼   ► So Simon was not the only person to write this in.

00:13:00 ◼   ► A lot of people wrote in about this, but Simon was the one that best described it.

00:13:03 ◼   ► So thank you.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And there was also a second method to do it, which I thought I had saved, but I had not.

00:13:07 ◼   ► But suffice it to say that multi-select does work on iOS.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's just not as obvious or as easy, I would say.

00:13:12 ◼   ► It's physically easy as it is on the Mac, but it's there and it works.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Give me some context on this next piece, John.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Did one of us say that the studio display?

00:13:20 ◼   ► I did.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I kept, I was complaining about the state of displays and I kept saying, it's like, you

00:13:24 ◼   ► could do X or you could get the stupid studio display for $1,200.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And I believe I said it twice.

00:13:29 ◼   ► So I have been corrected.

00:13:30 ◼   ► All right, so Greg C.A. writes that the studio display is $1,600, not $1,200.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I might have bought one at $1,200.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Instead, I converted my 27-inch iMac into a display for less than $300, which I've seen

00:13:42 ◼   ► videos about this.

00:13:43 ◼   ► In fact, I think Quinn did a video on this, which I'll probably forget to put in the show

00:13:45 ◼   ► notes, but it is very involved, far beyond what I feel comfortable doing.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But man, if you want a nice 5K display on the cheap, that's the way to do it.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I just keep blocking out the studio display at $1,600.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I'm like, isn't it $1,200?

00:13:58 ◼   ► Then you add like a couple hundred for the adjustable stand.

00:14:00 ◼   ► No, it's $1,600, I believe, with the non-adjustable stand and then you add more.

00:14:05 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

00:14:06 ◼   ► I know it's on sale sometimes, so maybe that's why I was confused, but just FYI, $1,600, not

00:14:10 ◼   ► $1,200.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and we definitely do not have links for the show notes, but for what it's worth, David

00:14:16 ◼   ► Schaub in the chat has reminded me that there are a bunch of new monitors that have been

00:14:20 ◼   ► announced over the last couple of days at CES, and some of them are 5K, some of them are

00:14:25 ◼   ► 6K.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I have no judgments on these.

00:14:27 ◼   ► I barely know what any of them are about.

00:14:30 ◼   ► But it is worth looking into, especially once these are actually available for sale.

00:14:34 ◼   ► There might be some new 5K or 6K options that might fit your needs.

00:14:38 ◼   ► You might hear about them later on this show or on a future show.

00:14:41 ◼   ► All right.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I love it.

00:14:43 ◼   ► With regard to other displays and flickering, or I guess some of the same display and display

00:14:47 ◼   ► flickering, Stephen Perilson writes, there have been issues with display support on M-Series

00:14:52 ◼   ► Macs since November 2020 with Big Sur.

00:14:55 ◼   ► My M1 Mac Mini on a generic Dell monitor would flicker under certain conditions.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I eventually found this forum thread, which we'll link in the show notes.

00:15:01 ◼   ► In there, I discovered a utility to disable temporal dithering, which solved the issue for

00:15:06 ◼   ► me.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So, John, what is temporal dithering anyway?

00:15:09 ◼   ► I didn't actually look this up, but I'm assuming it's the display.

00:15:13 ◼   ► It's kind of like what plasma displays would do.

00:15:14 ◼   ► If you ever see a slow-mo of a plasma TV, it shows a certain set of colored pixels and

00:15:20 ◼   ► then shows another set and then another set of colored pixels.

00:15:23 ◼   ► And they combine to form the final image.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And I'm assuming they're doing that to achieve colors temporarily, it means within time.

00:15:30 ◼   ► You know, like you're showing one thing, then another thing, then another thing.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And the combination of them smooshed together by your brain makes the final color.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And I guess that is maybe the only way they can make certain colors.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Did you really not know that?

00:15:41 ◼   ► Because you pretty much nailed it.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I'm a little annoyed.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I vaguely know what temporal dithering is.

00:15:46 ◼   ► That's my attempt at a definition.

00:15:47 ◼   ► If I was close, then I got lucky.

00:15:49 ◼   ► This is the reality of being friends with John.

00:15:51 ◼   ► You think he won't know something, and he frustratingly usually knows it already.

00:15:56 ◼   ► It's about monitor stuff.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Like, I do watch a lot of videos about this.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But, I mean, it's one of those things.

00:16:00 ◼   ► It's like test-taking skills.

00:16:01 ◼   ► It's like, well, I know what dithering it is, and I know what the word temporal means.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Anyway, go on.

00:16:05 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:05 ◼   ► So, yes.

00:16:06 ◼   ► In short, it's let's put two different colors on the screen and flash them back and forth

00:16:10 ◼   ► fast enough that your brain kind of receives the middle of the two colors, just like John said.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Anyway, continuing from Stephen.

00:16:17 ◼   ► In there, I discovered a utility to disable temporal dithering, which solved the issue for me.

00:16:20 ◼   ► We'll link it in the show notes.

00:16:21 ◼   ► It's called still color.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Also, better display is another one that will turn off GPU dithering.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Stephen continues, I suspect and hope that this is the same issue causing flickering with

00:16:30 ◼   ► Apple Studio displays.

00:16:31 ◼   ► I've waited five years for this problem to get media attention, and it would be nice if

00:16:34 ◼   ► Apple could improve their display support.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I don't know if it is the same problem.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I think this might be a separate problem, but there's I think there's enough display problems

00:16:41 ◼   ► to go around for everybody.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But it's good to know that if you're if you have this temporal dithering issue or if you're

00:16:46 ◼   ► sensitive to it, there are utilities that you can disable it.

00:16:48 ◼   ► I do wonder if disabling it would then like reduce the color accuracy or color gamut of

00:16:52 ◼   ► your monitor.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But, you know, pick your poison.

00:16:54 ◼   ► It's only $1,600.

00:16:55 ◼   ► What do you expect?

00:16:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:57 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Then many, many people wrote in to tell us that the PlayStation Portal, which is a little

00:17:02 ◼   ► handheld screen and controller that you were talking about last episode, can also stream

00:17:06 ◼   ► games with a PlayStation Plus premium membership.

00:17:08 ◼   ► So jump in when you're ready, John.

00:17:11 ◼   ► But my understanding is you were using it strictly to stream games from within the home.

00:17:14 ◼   ► The call is coming from inside the house, et cetera, et cetera.

00:17:17 ◼   ► But you could stream games from the cloud.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Is that what this is about?

00:17:20 ◼   ► I don't I don't have one of these, but I was saying it.

00:17:22 ◼   ► What I said about it was that it connects up to your PlayStation.

00:17:24 ◼   ► This is in the house.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I said, well, you can actually use it without a PlayStation.

00:17:27 ◼   ► It will stream from the Internet, which, in my opinion, would be even worse because obviously

00:17:30 ◼   ► the latency streaming from a console that's like two rooms over is going to be worse than

00:17:34 ◼   ► streaming from a data center many miles from your house.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Sure.

00:17:38 ◼   ► So apparently the official ruling on the PlayStation Plus premium membership PlayStation Portal combination

00:17:44 ◼   ► for streaming games, five megabits per second minimum to establish a session at all, seven

00:17:50 ◼   ► megabits per second minimum to stream at 720 and 13 megabits per second for 1080.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Matt Ripito writes, the PlayStation Portal is truly great.

00:17:58 ◼   ► John, you need to pick one of these up ASAP.

00:18:00 ◼   ► We saw a lot of people echoing that sentiment.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Jared Counts writes, I frequently tried to play a PS5 game via the remote play app on my

00:18:07 ◼   ► iPad with a PS5 controller wired to the iPad, and it works great until it doesn't.

00:18:11 ◼   ► I have an old Eero Pro in the living room that the PS5 is wired to and a beacon in our

00:18:16 ◼   ► bedroom, and the connection will be good for a while but will randomly degrade.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Not great when you're in the middle of a boss battle in a game that has timing-based

00:18:22 ◼   ► pairing, Expedition 33, or is purely rhythm-based like Hi-Fi Rush.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Christopher Masto writes, the PlayStation Portal doesn't even have Wi-Fi 6, which is kind of

00:18:32 ◼   ► sad.

00:18:32 ◼   ► It's got Wi-Fi 7.

00:18:33 ◼   ► We were talking about, would Wi-Fi 7 help the PlayStation Portal?

00:18:36 ◼   ► It doesn't even have 6.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Blake writes, keep in mind, the Portal requires wired headphones or PlayStation-branded Bluetooth

00:18:44 ◼   ► headphones.

00:18:45 ◼   ► This makes casual use in bed pretty annoying, and I haven't found a good Bluetooth workaround

00:18:49 ◼   ► that doesn't get in the way.

00:18:51 ◼   ► That's good to know, because I would be like, well, of course I can just use AirPods in Bluetooth

00:18:55 ◼   ► mode with them, can't I?

00:18:56 ◼   ► And it seems like, no.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Yeah, sad times.

00:18:58 ◼   ► With regard to the Ask ATP about window minimization in macOS, Chirag Desai writes, I have set double

00:19:05 ◼   ► tap on the title bar to fill, which maximizes a window the way Marco wants.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And there's a knowledge-based article that we will link.

00:19:11 ◼   ► You go into system settings, desktop and dock, window, title bar, double-click action, fill.

00:19:16 ◼   ► And the description from Apple is, expand a window to fill the space between the menu bar

00:19:20 ◼   ► and the dock.

00:19:20 ◼   ► If the dock is along the side of the screen, the window fills the entire space below the

00:19:23 ◼   ► menu bar and to the side of the dock.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd forgotten about, lots of people wrote in with a double tap shortcut, which

00:19:29 ◼   ► I didn't mention because we were talking specifically about the green button.

00:19:32 ◼   ► But if I had mentioned it, I would have been like, oh, and you can double-click the title

00:19:35 ◼   ► bar too to do what the green button does.

00:19:36 ◼   ► But you actually can configure what double tap does to not make it do the same thing as the

00:19:40 ◼   ► green button.

00:19:40 ◼   ► And one of the options is this fill option, which is what Marco was talking about.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Make the window really big, but don't enter macOS's full screen mode where it chops off

00:19:48 ◼   ► the title bar and stuff.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And then we have a lot of feedback with regard to Wi-Fi 7.

00:19:52 ◼   ► We'll start with Reed, who writes, I've upgraded Ubiquity APs through the last few revisions.

00:19:56 ◼   ► I cannot recommend wasting any effort on Wi-Fi 7 at this point.

00:19:59 ◼   ► It's been a rocky road with iPhone and Ubiquity bugs for at least the first six months, and

00:20:03 ◼   ► even now I think it's worse than just using Wi-Fi 6.

00:20:05 ◼   ► You're forced into WPA3, which means some devices aren't compatible, and you need to type in your

00:20:10 ◼   ► password again on every single device.

00:20:11 ◼   ► As a result, I've run a separate SSID for my seven devices that support Wi-Fi 7.

00:20:15 ◼   ► I've occasionally managed to break one gigabit per second, but honestly, I typically see

00:20:19 ◼   ► around 400 to 600 megabits per second, which is really no better than I saw with my old

00:20:23 ◼   ► Enterprise 6 APs anyway.

00:20:24 ◼   ► USB Type Steve, great name, writes, I remember trying to switch to WPA3 back in 2018 or 19 and

00:20:32 ◼   ► kicking half my devices off the network as a result.

00:20:33 ◼   ► That was the day I learned that very few of Nintendo's devices are WPA3 compatible.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Patch writes, instead of MLO, better speed gains can be had on Wi-Fi 7 by using band steering

00:20:44 ◼   ► to push more capable devices to the 6 gigahertz band, and then setting that band as wide as possible

00:20:48 ◼   ► for your environment.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I currently live in an apartment building where everyone else is using old ISP-provided

00:20:52 ◼   ► routers, so I'm the only one in the area currently broadcasting a 6 gigahertz band.

00:20:57 ◼   ► That means I can set it super wide.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I can almost saturate my internet connection from my iPhone over Wi-Fi.

00:21:02 ◼   ► That's key.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I don't think of this because I don't live in an apartment anymore, but I used to.

00:21:06 ◼   ► If you're the only tech nerd in your neighborhood, in your block, in your set of apartments, and

00:21:11 ◼   ► everyone else has old 2.4 gigahertz, ancient crappy Wi-Fi things, and you've got the whole

00:21:16 ◼   ► 6 gigahertz band to yourself.

00:21:17 ◼   ► And 6 gigahertz is also shorter distance.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Someone also wrote in to say it's good because people's stuff is less likely to interfere with

00:21:24 ◼   ► each other because 6 gigahertz doesn't go as far and penetrate as far, so you don't have

00:21:28 ◼   ► to worry about your neighbor's 6 gigahertz two doors down interfering with yours as much

00:21:31 ◼   ► as their 2.4 gigahertz.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So lots of folks tweaking their bands out there to get better bandwidth.

00:21:38 ◼   ► All right, and then Abraham Vey writes, shakes fist good-naturedly and professional Wi-Fi

00:21:42 ◼   ► guy.

00:21:43 ◼   ► My response to pretty much everything said on the previous episode of ATP was, yes, but

00:21:48 ◼   ► also no, but also yes.

00:21:49 ◼   ► This includes channel selection, channel size, cell size, and this is the tricky part, admittedly,

00:21:54 ◼   ► says Abraham.

00:21:55 ◼   ► In that order, it gets you most of the way there most of the time.

00:21:58 ◼   ► So let me repeat that.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Channel selection, channel size, and cell size, in that order, gets you most of the way there

00:22:03 ◼   ► most of the time.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Wi-Fi is science, not magic, but it's also bad science.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And I say this, says Abraham, to every customer.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It's funny because it's true.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Saul Sutherland writes, I'm a wireless network engineer for my day job, and I have my fingers

00:22:14 ◼   ► deep into the WLAN network engineering space.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Regarding MLO, there's one great example of how multiple aggregate wireless links can

00:22:21 ◼   ► improve the user experience, which exists with Eero's TrueMesh implementation.

00:22:24 ◼   ► In John's case, where he has TriRadio Eero Pro 6 nodes, 2.4, low 5, and high 5 gigahertz,

00:22:30 ◼   ► they actually mesh with each other wirelessly on all three bands at the same time.

00:22:34 ◼   ► This allows them to simultaneously transmit on more than one radio to another Eero across

00:22:38 ◼   ► two frequencies, or transmit and receive across two radios at the same time, even though Wi-Fi

00:22:43 ◼   ► is inherently half-duplex.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Unfortunately, this implementation sits behind a patent, but I view it as a lucky benefit.

00:22:49 ◼   ► It exists in the consumer market, not some enterprise gate-kept feature.

00:22:53 ◼   ► They effectively did MLO before the Wi-Fi Alliance made it a standard, even though it only exists

00:22:58 ◼   ► between Eeros on a network.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Speaking of Eero's, I have some exciting news.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Oh, do you?

00:23:03 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Yoni, heard our recent episode and had a bunch of Eero Max 7 stuff

00:23:09 ◼   ► that he didn't need, and he asked if I wanted it, and I said, sure.

00:23:13 ◼   ► So he sent it along.

00:23:15 ◼   ► I don't know if you know what the Eero Max 7 is.

00:23:17 ◼   ► We will link it in the show notes.

00:23:19 ◼   ► If you've ever seen those statues that are on Easter Island...

00:23:23 ◼   ► That is an annoyingly good analogy.

00:23:26 ◼   ► That is very well done, John.

00:23:28 ◼   ► That's what these things are like in your house, both in terms of their sort of bearing and vibe,

00:23:33 ◼   ► and also their size, because this is the biggest wireless access point I've ever owned.

00:23:37 ◼   ► It's not even close.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Like, they're huge.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Is it taller than the time capsules with the hard drives on them?

00:23:43 ◼   ► It's bigger, because it's wider and broader and also taller.

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's thinner, I guess, because they're kind of like flat, curved.

00:23:50 ◼   ► They're wide Easter Island statue type things, but they're way bigger than you think they are.

00:23:55 ◼   ► I mean, you can tell, but there's Ethernet jacks in the back.

00:23:57 ◼   ► It's a standard Ethernet jack.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Then use that banana for scale, RJ45 for scale.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Yes, I know it's not RJ45.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:24:07 ◼   ► There's so much nerdery in, like, three seconds there.

00:24:10 ◼   ► The old ones I had, the old Eros were, like, sort of low-slung,

00:24:14 ◼   ► and they've been getting bigger over the years, but these are bigger.

00:24:16 ◼   ► But anyway, I knew what I was getting.

00:24:17 ◼   ► But I want to try, because these, as the name implies, Ero Max 7, these support Wi-Fi 7.

00:24:22 ◼   ► I think this is, like, the fourth time I have changed from one set of Eros to another,

00:24:27 ◼   ► and every single time I do it, I am amazed at how well they do it.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Like, I used to say, like, if Apple made Wi-Fi routers in the modern era, they'd be like Eros.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Now I feel like Apple wouldn't do it as well.

00:24:37 ◼   ► As they do.

00:24:37 ◼   ► You know, it's funny, actually.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I was thinking to myself when you said that, oh, they wouldn't make Eros,

00:24:41 ◼   ► because Eros try to upsell you on, oh, no, you're right.

00:24:44 ◼   ► They would make Eros.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Services revenue.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:47 ◼   ► My second thought was, and if you're about to say, oh, but if Apple did it,

00:24:51 ◼   ► they wouldn't have that annoying Ero Plus upsell.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I think Apple would be more annoying than Ero Plus.

00:24:56 ◼   ► 100%.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it would be in the settings screen of your iPhone.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I have had Eros during the entire time that Ero Plus has been a thing,

00:25:02 ◼   ► since, like, Amazon bought them, and it never bothers me.

00:25:05 ◼   ► It is never in my face.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I never get nagged about it.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It doesn't appear in any settings screen.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Like, it's in the app.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It's there.

00:25:10 ◼   ► If I go to a feature that requires Ero Plus, it appears.

00:25:13 ◼   ► It's like, do you want to do Wi-Fi spectrum analysis?

00:25:15 ◼   ► Oh, that requires Ero Plus.

00:25:16 ◼   ► But, like, that's me scrolling through a bunch of features and seeing these are

00:25:19 ◼   ► the features you could get if you have Plus.

00:25:21 ◼   ► They don't throw it at me.

00:25:22 ◼   ► They don't email me.

00:25:23 ◼   ► It's not in unrelated screens.

00:25:24 ◼   ► I never even have to know it exists.

00:25:26 ◼   ► They're not crippling their things.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Anyway, setting that aside.

00:25:30 ◼   ► So, and I've never, never signed up for it.

00:25:32 ◼   ► So, again, you go to the Ero app and you're like, I want to replace device.

00:25:35 ◼   ► And it's like, the device you want to replace is your gateway router.

00:25:39 ◼   ► If you replace that, everything's going to be offline.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Like, it tells you, you know, stuff I already know.

00:25:43 ◼   ► But, like, it's so nice that it says, if you do this, here's the deal.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And then it says, here's the steps.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Do this.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Do that.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Unplug the thing.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Plug in the new thing.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Blah, blah, blah.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Wait for it to it.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And it just works.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And it gets, I have tons of settings.

00:25:54 ◼   ► I have, like, reserved IP addresses based on MAC addresses.

00:25:57 ◼   ► I have filters.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Like, all that is, like, it's just completely transparent.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Removing my main gateway router for the entire house, aside from everyone being offline for,

00:26:05 ◼   ► like, you know, five minutes or however long this takes, which, you know, people were home,

00:26:09 ◼   ► but they didn't even notice because they were probably on their phones and they just switched

00:26:12 ◼   ► to cellular anyway.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Totally transparent.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And then I replaced a couple other base stations.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Then I was like, okay.

00:26:19 ◼   ► I realized my mistake, that I hadn't done speed tests before I replaced all the routers.

00:26:23 ◼   ► So, my bad.

00:26:24 ◼   ► But I wasn't about to undo everything.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And I ended up going around and saying, okay, is this any faster?

00:26:30 ◼   ► Well, I did find the setting in the app that said multi-link operation.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And their description is, multi-link operation connects your wireless devices to multiple

00:26:40 ◼   ► Wi-Fi radios simultaneously, providing supported devices, faster speeds, and lower latencies.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Some devices may be incompatible with MLO networks.

00:26:46 ◼   ► It doesn't say anything about simultaneous as we're alternating MLO, but as we know from

00:26:50 ◼   ► the past episode, it's only alternating.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And even if that, it's questionable.

00:26:56 ◼   ► But anyway, when you go to enable it, it says, are you sure you want to enable multi-link

00:27:00 ◼   ► operation?

00:27:00 ◼   ► Your network will reboot and disconnect for about two minutes.

00:27:02 ◼   ► WPA3 will be enabled on participating bands.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Some devices may not be compatible with MLO networks.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And I found this a little scary.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Of course, by then, I'd read all the mail people like, oh, I tried MLO, but everything

00:27:15 ◼   ► had to be on WPA3 and it didn't work with my Nintendo stuff or whatever.

00:27:17 ◼   ► I'm like, well, like, what the hell?

00:27:19 ◼   ► I need to try this, right?

00:27:20 ◼   ► So, I turned it on.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I said, yes, continue.

00:27:23 ◼   ► The network was down and things rebooted for two minutes and it came back up.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Everything was fine.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Like when it says WPA3 will be enabled on participating bands.

00:27:33 ◼   ► I don't know what that means, but I can tell you what it doesn't mean is that my Nintendo

00:27:36 ◼   ► Switch 2 was knocked off.

00:27:37 ◼   ► My Nintendo Switch 2 is still using WPA2 to connect, but it's fine.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Like none of my devices got kicked off the network.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Everything worked fine.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Then I went around the house and did a bunch of speed tests and I was trying to figure out

00:27:47 ◼   ► how I can arrange my set of hardware because I still have my old Eero stuff and I have the

00:27:52 ◼   ► new ones.

00:27:52 ◼   ► It's like, well, now I have an excess of devices.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Can I add some more, you know, mesh nodes somewhere to help?

00:27:58 ◼   ► And in my testing, going around speed testing things on my phone, essentially, which is

00:28:02 ◼   ► the most advanced Wi-Fi device I have is my iPhone 16 Pro in terms of Wi-Fi standards.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I guess maybe my M4 iPad Pro, but I was using both of them.

00:28:09 ◼   ► I went around the house and seeing, trying to see what node are you connected to?

00:28:14 ◼   ► Both looking in the Eero app and looking at my thing and, you know, figuring out, okay,

00:28:18 ◼   ► well, it's connecting to the hallway one, but it's not choosing not to connect to that

00:28:21 ◼   ► one or whatever.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Anyway, here's what I ended up with.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Not only did I not use any of the hardware that I replaced, like I took out a bunch of

00:28:29 ◼   ► hardware and replaced it, I actually subtracted even more hardware by not replacing the mesh

00:28:34 ◼   ► node in my bedroom.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So now I just have one in the computer room with me here, which is the gateway one in the

00:28:39 ◼   ► basement next to my Synology, which is also wired in.

00:28:42 ◼   ► And my theory on the basement one is the basement one is dead center of the house, but in the basement

00:28:46 ◼   ► and it's wired in.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I want that one to project up through the floor to the one that's in my hallway in the

00:28:52 ◼   ► center of the house.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And that one is not wired in because there's no Ethernet there.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And then that one projects up into the second floor.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And what I found is that no place on my second floor where I put another Wi-Fi mesh node helps

00:29:03 ◼   ► things at all.

00:29:04 ◼   ► All it does is provide interference.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Devices refuse to connect to it because the one in the center is so much stronger.

00:29:08 ◼   ► So now I just have three Euromax 7 nodes.

00:29:12 ◼   ► No, I don't want to have one in the bedroom anymore.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Signal in every place in the house is stronger.

00:29:17 ◼   ► From my bed on my iPad, I get like 460 megabits per second down, which used to be that.

00:29:24 ◼   ► That's the bad signal place.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Like that's the that's the parts where I had to have the worst signal previously.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And I don't again, I didn't measure it before, but now it's over 400 gigabits, which is

00:29:34 ◼   ► great from the room where I'm sitting.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Well, I'm sorry.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Yes, right.

00:29:38 ◼   ► That would be really something.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that would be very impressive.

00:29:41 ◼   ► From the room where I'm sitting now, the computer room where, you know, I can I can't touch the

00:29:46 ◼   ► router, but it's like, you know, six feet away from me is the gateway router.

00:29:49 ◼   ► I can get 900 up and down.

00:29:51 ◼   ► So I am very happy with this new setup.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Thank you, Yoni.

00:29:55 ◼   ► And I'll let you know if anything bad happens.

00:29:57 ◼   ► But I'm just I'm just an Eero fanboy.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, I did.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I did pay for Eero Plus because I wanted to see the Wi-Fi spectrum analyzer.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I'm just going to cancel it after the first month.

00:30:06 ◼   ► But it didn't help.

00:30:08 ◼   ► All it did was show me that that it was confirmed to me that I don't want that other mesh node

00:30:13 ◼   ► in any of the upstairs bedroom because all I do is provide interference and no devices ever

00:30:16 ◼   ► choose to connect to them because the signal is stronger from the downstairs hallway.

00:30:20 ◼   ► That's very impressive.

00:30:21 ◼   ► That's very cool.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I didn't dislike Eero.

00:30:23 ◼   ► I felt like I wanted something different.

00:30:26 ◼   ► And I personally felt like the Eero Plus stuff was I wouldn't say it was naggy, but it was

00:30:32 ◼   ► it was gatekeeping some things I wanted to see.

00:30:34 ◼   ► I forget what.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Like, I think.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Yeah, there are some features that I can imagine you might want, but I don't want any of the

00:30:40 ◼   ► features it's gating.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And I just forget that it exists.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Like, I hadn't looked at it or thought about it until I swapped these Eeros, which is the

00:30:46 ◼   ► last time I looked at them was when I swapped in the sixes.

00:30:48 ◼   ► So yeah, but there are features behind it.

00:30:50 ◼   ► But I don't like I turn off.

00:30:52 ◼   ► I even turn off features that I get for free.

00:30:53 ◼   ► So I don't want anything.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I don't do local DNS.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Don't try to filter things that like I don't want any of that stuff.

00:30:59 ◼   ► For whatever it's worth.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I hate Eero Plus for reasons that only apply to me, basically.

00:31:04 ◼   ► So I've never had Eeros myself just because they they seem optimized for cases where you

00:31:11 ◼   ► can't run Ethernet to all the APs.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And I've been able to do that, fortunately.

00:31:15 ◼   ► So I haven't I haven't had that need.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I don't know if I would say that.

00:31:18 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, I mean, all these Eeros have Ethernet ports.

00:31:21 ◼   ► If I could have wired them all in, I would have two of my three Eeros are wired into

00:31:23 ◼   ► Ethernet.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:24 ◼   ► But like I feel like that like the main selling point of Eero has usually been like if you

00:31:30 ◼   ► can't run Ethernet to all the APs, they have the fastest back calls we were just talking

00:31:34 ◼   ► about.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:35 ◼   ► But that is an advantage.

00:31:36 ◼   ► But like it depends on which ones you buy because they do sell sets where only one of

00:31:40 ◼   ► them or I don't know if only one of them has.

00:31:42 ◼   ► So they used to sell sets where only one of them has Ethernet ports.

00:31:44 ◼   ► The other ones don't.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Maybe they all do now.

00:31:46 ◼   ► But yeah, you're right.

00:31:47 ◼   ► The mesh network part of it is for like, hey, you live somewhere.

00:31:49 ◼   ► You're not going to run Ethernet.

00:31:50 ◼   ► You want better Wi-Fi.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Eero is an easy solution.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:53 ◼   ► The other reason I hate Eero and in particular Eero Plus is that I cannot tell you how many

00:32:01 ◼   ► problems that causes me for Overcast support.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Oh, because of the blocking of things that look like ads.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Every so often, one of the podcast stats tracking redirect services will be blocked by Eero Plus

00:32:15 ◼   ► and everyone on Eero with who has that service, which includes a lot of people who are like

00:32:20 ◼   ► not super technical.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Everyone who has that service will all of a sudden be unable to download like the New York

00:32:27 ◼   ► Times podcast, like some really big shows and the downloads will just fail.

00:32:32 ◼   ► And if you look at Overcast's one star reviews, a very common theme really up to a few months

00:32:40 ◼   ► ago was about download failures.

00:32:43 ◼   ► And some of that was my fault, but a huge amount of it were basically people who have either

00:32:50 ◼   ► Eero Plus or somebody, they live with a nerd who's running PyHole or something, you know,

00:32:54 ◼   ► some kind of blocking at the network level.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And they're blocking some podcast download service.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And it is such a pain in the butt because of course, like, you know, anything that happens

00:33:06 ◼   ► in Overcast, no matter how the UI messages it, like no matter, and I've tried, like I built

00:33:12 ◼   ► the whole feature to like detect whether something's being blocked by DNS and show an alert in the

00:33:17 ◼   ► home screen of the app showing like, hey, I think your network is blocking, you know, Magellan.ai

00:33:22 ◼   ► or whatever, you know, and here's what that means.

00:33:25 ◼   ► And here's how to maybe go fix it, like check on these things.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Even then, I get emails almost every day saying like, I didn't block this, what?

00:33:34 ◼   ► You know, even though like, and you know, you dig in and it turns out, yes, you know, somebody

00:33:38 ◼   ► did like, yeah, I have to say, like, I don't make a podcast app.

00:33:40 ◼   ► I've gotten these support requests too, for my apps.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And you're like, what?

00:33:43 ◼   ► Your net apps don't do anything network.

00:33:45 ◼   ► How could you possibly have this complaint?

00:33:47 ◼   ► I'll tell you why I get complaints.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I can't update to the new version of switch glass.

00:33:51 ◼   ► I think something is broken.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And obviously, we all know, well, that's the Mac app store.

00:33:55 ◼   ► That's not you.

00:33:56 ◼   ► But users don't know that.

00:33:57 ◼   ► They just know that there's a new version of my app and they can't get it and they don't

00:34:00 ◼   ► understand why.

00:34:01 ◼   ► And every single time, it's some kind of ad blocking thing that is somehow blocking something

00:34:05 ◼   ► having to do with the Mac app store.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Oh, it's it's like it is such a pain.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Like, it's like back in the day, like when when I used to work on web apps and you'd get

00:34:14 ◼   ► so many support requests from people who it was breaking for.

00:34:18 ◼   ► And you dig in.

00:34:19 ◼   ► And the reason why I was breaking is they have some kind of browser extension that's interfering

00:34:22 ◼   ► with something going on on the page.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Like that was such a common thing in, you know, you know, the two decades and one decade

00:34:28 ◼   ► ago.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Now, I feel like anything that accesses the network, anything that fetches anything from

00:34:35 ◼   ► a remote server or site or anything we like everyone running all the network interference

00:34:41 ◼   ► thing, VPNs, ad blockers, custom DNS.

00:34:44 ◼   ► These are all just making it a minefield of support out there.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Anybody whose app at all uses the Internet because so like in the same way that like, you

00:34:55 ◼   ► know, you get the email from like the Firefox person 15 years ago and you'd be like, oh,

00:34:59 ◼   ► God, what are you running?

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like what you have no script and all these other things that are blocking my page.

00:35:03 ◼   ► And that's why it's broken.

00:35:04 ◼   ► But now it's like everyone is running something and they're getting they're getting harder

00:35:09 ◼   ► for a lot of people to even know about or find because it's bundled in as some kind

00:35:12 ◼   ► of like, oh, we're we're it's a safety service on your router.

00:35:14 ◼   ► That you pay us six bucks a month for or whatever.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Or it comes from the ISP like ISP sell for these as value adds as well.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And cellular ISP is now to like every it's just it's such a minefield out there.

00:35:24 ◼   ► It's it's such a pain in the butt for all of us who have to support these things.

00:35:27 ◼   ► But it's just part of the landscape, I guess.

00:35:30 ◼   ► But like that's part of why like I would never like if every app I've ever made has dealt

00:35:35 ◼   ► with third party content in some form.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I think I have made my last app that deals with third party content.

00:35:41 ◼   ► I'll say that.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Like I said, my app doesn't deal with third party content and I still get the support

00:35:46 ◼   ► complaints like you're right.

00:35:47 ◼   ► They're just part of the landscape.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And to be clear, I don't I don't I'm not actually against these services.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I actually think they're good for most people because they they exist for a reason.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Like because people do want ad blocking and the internet is junked up with a bunch of stuff.

00:35:57 ◼   ► It's just it's impossibly perfect.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I use ad blockers in my browser and a lot of stuff breaks.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I have to occasionally go to the other browser to do something like there's no there is no blocking

00:36:07 ◼   ► service that gets it right all the time.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And so it essentially requires everyone to eventually become knowledgeable enough to know

00:36:13 ◼   ► a no or remember that thing exists to your point of like, I'm not blocking anything.

00:36:17 ◼   ► It's like they don't realize what they're blocking or whatever.

00:36:19 ◼   ► And B, once they do know that it exists, now it's another thing that you have to deal with

00:36:23 ◼   ► in your house.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Like another another thing that you have to troubleshoot or whatever.

00:36:27 ◼   ► But the alternative is often worse.

00:36:28 ◼   ► So I'm I'm not against these services and I don't begrudge people using them, but they

00:36:32 ◼   ► do make things harder for everybody.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And it's essentially it's an externality of the, you know, surveillance ad industry that's

00:36:39 ◼   ► out there.

00:36:39 ◼   ► It's like another bad effect of that that we have to deal with so they can make money.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:36:44 ◼   ► And it's and like, you know, with Overcast, it's also especially difficult because there

00:36:48 ◼   ► is no such thing as blocking only ads on podcast and having the rest of the podcast download

00:36:53 ◼   ► because the way they they do their ad tracking stuff is they just redirect the download through

00:36:58 ◼   ► a bunch of third party services and stuff.

00:37:00 ◼   ► So if one of those domains is blocked, the redirect just doesn't proceed.

00:37:04 ◼   ► So the download just fails like there's no it isn't like on a web page.

00:37:09 ◼   ► If you have ad blockers installed, but you load a web page, odds are the rest of the page

00:37:12 ◼   ► will load.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Odds are the page will show a thing that says it looks like you're blocking our ads.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Sure.

00:37:17 ◼   ► But like, you know, in the ideal case, like some of the page can load while you're blocking

00:37:22 ◼   ► the JavaScript includes or whatever.

00:37:23 ◼   ► But that's not how podcasts work.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And as we have all this like network level stuff that breaks a lot of apps in a lot of weird

00:37:30 ◼   ► ways because there it isn't a web browser and it doesn't work the same way.

00:37:34 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Guru.

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00:38:47 ◼   ► That's getguru, G-U-R-U, .com.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Guru for sponsoring our show.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Let's talk thread and matter.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I brought this up, I believe it was the post-show last episode, and I asked, what's the deal with

00:39:04 ◼   ► thread and matter?

00:39:06 ◼   ► And I'm going to try to summarize, a bunch of people wrote in, which is very helpful.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I'm going to try to summarize very quickly.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Derek Seaman wrote a series of posts about this a year or two ago, which he reached out

00:39:17 ◼   ► and pointed me to, and according to him, and I think he's right, almost all of those posts,

00:39:21 ◼   ► despite being a couple years old, still are applicable.

00:39:24 ◼   ► Derek, from I think his first post, writes,

00:39:27 ◼   ► Matter is a software control plane protocol, not a networking protocol for your smart home.

00:39:33 ◼   ► It's built on IPv6 and is independent of your underlying network protocols, like Thread or

00:39:38 ◼   ► Wi-Fi.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Matter devices must support multiple simultaneous controllers.

00:39:42 ◼   ► So, for example, Home Assistant and Apple Home can both directly control a matter device,

00:39:46 ◼   ► and the device's status reflected in real time to both controllers.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So that's matter.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Matter is how you control things.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Thread is an IPv6-based, low-power, secure, and interoperable radiofrequency mesh networking

00:39:57 ◼   ► technology specifically designed for communicating with and among devices within a smart home environment.

00:40:02 ◼   ► So let me rephrase what Derek wrote.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Basically, Thread is how all these devices talk.

00:40:07 ◼   ► It's super similar to Zigbee, if that means anything to you.

00:40:10 ◼   ► It's okay if it doesn't.

00:40:11 ◼   ► But it is IP addressable, which Zigbee is not.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Matter is, like I said, how you actually control the devices.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And local control is actually a core tenet of matter, which the Home Assistant dweebs,

00:40:21 ◼   ► of which I'm one of them, all of them get real antsy about anything that's like cloud-controlled.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I actually don't really mind that much.

00:40:30 ◼   ► But most Home Assistant people get real grumpy when you have to go to the cloud to control things.

00:40:35 ◼   ► They want that local control.

00:40:36 ◼   ► It has to have local control.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And again, I'm not that way.

00:40:38 ◼   ► But one of the nice things about Matter is it has to have local control.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And then the other piece is that Thread border routers are things that are a bridge between traditional networks and the Thread network.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And for example, I believe HomePods can act as a border router, and I know that Apple TVs can.

00:40:54 ◼   ► And speaking of, look who's back, back again.

00:40:58 ◼   ► This is reading again from Derek's series.

00:41:01 ◼   ► MDNS Publisher.

00:41:02 ◼   ► A Thread border router uses multicast DNS or MDNS to publish MDNS DNS SD discovery packets on behalf of the Thread nodes

00:41:09 ◼   ► so that they can be discovered on adjacent networks.

00:41:11 ◼   ► MDNS is back, baby.

00:41:13 ◼   ► Who'd have thunk it?

00:41:14 ◼   ► We're back and better than ever.

00:41:15 ◼   ► I know it never really left, but you know what I'm saying.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Then with regard to Home Assistant specifically, Michael writes,

00:41:20 ◼   ► to make Matters worse, the software Home Assistant uses is the Open Home Foundation Matter server, which is written in Python.

00:41:27 ◼   ► But that software has been moved to maintenance mode as they rewrite the entire thing in TypeScript.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And that implementation isn't even certified yet.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Cool.

00:41:34 ◼   ► So that's the summary of Thread versus Matter, which I will probably forget in about an hour.

00:41:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:41:41 ◼   ► With regard to Apple Fitness Plus, we talked about this off and on over the last year or two.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Apple had a newsroom post, which we'll put in the show notes, about this and about Quitter's Day.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Reading from Apple's newsroom post,

00:41:57 ◼   ► Many people give up their New Year's fitness resolutions by the second Friday, excuse me, in January, also known as Quitter's Day.

00:42:02 ◼   ► A new analysis of data over four years identified participants with Apple Watch consistently keep up their exercise levels through Quitter's Day and beyond.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Notably, many Apple Watch users kept up New Year's resolution exercise levels through Quitter's Day and into the following months.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Nearly 80% of those who increased their exercise minutes maintained those increased exercise levels through the second half of January, with 90% of that group also maintaining elevated levels through February and March.

00:42:25 ◼   ► So I think that's kind of neat.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I mean, granted, this is self-fulfilling or, you know, they're self-congratulatory.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Look at us.

00:42:34 ◼   ► If you wear an Apple Watch, magically you'll be good at exercise, which I get that.

00:42:38 ◼   ► But, I mean, if the data is to be believed, and I don't think Apple's in the habit of completely skipping over, you know, or fabricating this data, I think that's pretty cool.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they probably have cause and effect reversed, obviously.

00:42:51 ◼   ► It could be.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Because, like, the people who are more into fitness are willing to spend lots of money on an Apple Watch.

00:42:56 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:42:57 ◼   ► That's true.

00:42:57 ◼   ► That is true.

00:42:58 ◼   ► But another thing, part of the reason I wanted to call this out is also in the same post, they talk about programs.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And I'd like to come back to what Apple's announcing, but one of the things that I've noticed as someone who occasionally uses Fitness Plus, I do really genuinely like it.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I think the coaches are generally very good.

00:43:15 ◼   ► I think the workouts are fun.

00:43:16 ◼   ► They have really great music.

00:43:17 ◼   ► The on-screen integration is super great.

00:43:19 ◼   ► You can watch your rings close in real time on your TV or on your iPad or whatever the case may be.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I really like it.

00:43:25 ◼   ► But one of the things that bums me out about Fitness Plus is that they've never, I think there's been a couple exceptions here and there, but by and large, all of the workouts are one-offs.

00:43:34 ◼   ► You know, here's 30 minutes of strength training.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Here's 20 minutes of high-intensity interval training.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Here's 10 minutes of yoga, five minutes of core, whatever the case may be.

00:43:42 ◼   ► And there's no continuity between them.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:43:45 ◼   ► But I have cut my teeth on something that we've talked about many times.

00:43:50 ◼   ► It used to be called Beachbody.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Now it's Body, B-O-D-I.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And there was a whole gross MLM side of it.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I'm not talking about that.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I'm talking about the video side of it, which I always thought was very good.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And they've actually sunset the MLM stuff in the last like six months to a year, which I think is a very good idea.

00:44:07 ◼   ► But what makes Body different than Fitness Plus is that almost all of their stuff is a full program.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Like, let's do eight weeks together.

00:44:15 ◼   ► You know, you and the coach, you have one workout either every day or every other day or whatever the case may be.

00:44:20 ◼   ► You have eight weeks together or six weeks together.

00:44:23 ◼   ► And you're following a program and this, you know, day one is upper body, day two is lower body, day three is core, day four is, I don't know, aerobics or whatever the case may be.

00:44:32 ◼   ► But it's a continuous, it's a continuity that Fitness Plus has never had with that in mind.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Going back to this newsroom post, starting January 5, Apple Fitness Plus introduces four brand new workout programs that offer users weekly training plans to help take the guesswork out of how to reach their goals.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Those programs include, for users looking to return to working out, the Make Your Fitness Comeback program features three popular workout types, strength, HIIT, and yoga.

00:44:56 ◼   ► The four-week plan features three workouts per week, one of each type, for just 10 minutes.

00:45:00 ◼   ► The Build a Yoga Habit in Four Weeks program is designed to help users add yoga into their fitness routine.

00:45:05 ◼   ► These workouts are designed to increase flexibility, cut down on stress, and build strength and stability.

00:45:09 ◼   ► Every week, users will get two 10-minute flows, one slow and one energetic, that complement their existing workout routines and help build a habit.

00:45:15 ◼   ► That is freaking cool, and I think I'll probably try that.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And then finally, the Back-to-Back Strength and HIIT program provides three 20-minute workouts, pairing these two popular workout types in Fitness Plus, 10 minutes of strength and 10 minutes of HIIT, again, high-intensity interval training, three times per week over the course of three weeks.

00:45:31 ◼   ► The workouts are designed to be done one right after the other with no break in between.

00:45:34 ◼   ► The program launches, I think it's just this program, that launches January 12 and consists of three workouts per week, each focusing on a different body area to learn and practice common strength moves to build confidence and improve users' technique.

00:45:45 ◼   ► I haven't tried these yet, but I think this is freaking great.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I really, genuinely do.

00:45:48 ◼   ► And I'm really into the idea of Apple kind of stretching a little bit, you know, and expanding and trying out different things.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And I will absolutely try at least one of these.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I'll probably start with the yoga habit thing and pair it with my existing body workouts.

00:46:02 ◼   ► But I might do the Back-to-Back Strength thing, because why not?

00:46:05 ◼   ► And generally speaking, after I do like one of these eight-week programs on body, I will typically do like a couple of weeks of Fitness Plus as like a palate cleanser.

00:46:15 ◼   ► It's the ginger of the sushi meal, if you will.

00:46:18 ◼   ► And so maybe that's when I'll do the Back-to-Back Strength and HIIT, for example.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So if this isn't your cup of tea, that's totally fine.

00:46:26 ◼   ► But I wanted to call attention to it, because I think it's really, really great.

00:46:31 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Factor.

00:46:33 ◼   ► It's the new year.

00:46:34 ◼   ► We all have New Year's goals.

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00:48:07 ◼   ► All right, let's do some topics.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Let's talk about ASML and TSMC.

00:48:11 ◼   ► ASML Holding NV, commonly shortened to ASML, originally standing for Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography,

00:48:19 ◼   ► is a Dutch multinational corporation and semiconductor company that specializes in the development and manufacturing of photolithography machines,

00:48:26 ◼   ► which are used to produce integrated circuits.

00:48:28 ◼   ► It is the largest supplier for the semiconductor industry, as well as the most advanced producer of extreme ultraviolet lithography,

00:48:35 ◼   ► or EUVL, photolithography machines that are required to manufacture the most advanced chips.

00:48:40 ◼   ► This is relevant because the very popular YouTube channel, Veritasium, just did a, I think it was roughly an hour-long video,

00:48:46 ◼   ► on the ridiculous engineering of the world's most important machine.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I watched it this morning.

00:48:51 ◼   ► It is unbelievable.

00:48:53 ◼   ► If you like science at all, leaving aside computing, if you like science at all, this is incredible.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And within the first, like, five or ten minutes, the following quote happens, which blew my effing mind.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Somebody said, and I think it was one of the employees of ASML,

00:49:09 ◼   ► but as you try to print smaller and smaller features, the gaps in the mask,

00:49:14 ◼   ► so the mask is the thing they make in order to, you know, make these chips,

00:49:17 ◼   ► the gaps in the mask start to approach the wavelength of the light that they're using.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Like, this is unreal.

00:49:24 ◼   ► How are human beings accomplishing this?

00:49:26 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I do understand because I watched the video, but I don't understand how humans are doing this.

00:49:31 ◼   ► That's why this makes such a great video, because the fact that Casey, who's on a tech podcast,

00:49:34 ◼   ► this is all news to him, is like, this is something you usually don't have to think about,

00:49:38 ◼   ► because, like, I know we talk about chips and stuff, but we're like, oh, how big are they?

00:49:41 ◼   ► What are the performance numbers?

00:49:42 ◼   ► And we talk about TSMC and how many transistors and, you know, how many cores and stuff like that.

00:49:46 ◼   ► But we don't talk about the lithography stuff.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And we've talked about TSMC a lot and Intel and their woes and the problems of having, you know,

00:49:55 ◼   ► just TSMC is the only company in the world capable of making the world's best chips and how that's a problem.

00:50:02 ◼   ► And every time we talked about that, I had in the back of my mind,

00:50:05 ◼   ► and I should have kept putting in here as maybe an overtime target to talk about ASML.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Occasionally, people would give us feedback about it, and they would say, what about ASML?

00:50:12 ◼   ► And I'd be like, yeah, I got to remember to talk about that some future time.

00:50:14 ◼   ► And I just never did.

00:50:14 ◼   ► So this very tasking video was a great kick in the pants to me to say, just, it's time to talk about ASML.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Here's the deal with ASML.

00:50:21 ◼   ► TSMC, you know, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, they make these great chips.

00:50:25 ◼   ► To make the chips, they buy machines from ASML.

00:50:29 ◼   ► And the ASML machines are the machines that actually do the photolithography,

00:50:34 ◼   ► which is like, we design what the layout of the chip is going to be like,

00:50:38 ◼   ► and we essentially project it.

00:50:39 ◼   ► We take it from this big thing, like, you know, it's, I don't know how big that,

00:50:42 ◼   ► I think they show the reticles of being like a couple inches bigger or whatever.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And we project it down to be very, very tiny.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And we expose, you know, silicon photolithography, so on and so forth,

00:50:51 ◼   ► which is like, you put a photoresist on certain areas, and you shine light on it,

00:50:55 ◼   ► and the part that doesn't have the photoresist gets like eaten away,

00:50:58 ◼   ► and then you wash it away, and like, that's how you make these tiny little features.

00:51:01 ◼   ► You basically etch them in it, the same way you like etch something into glass or whatever,

00:51:04 ◼   ► they'd etched into the silicon.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And as Casey was just pointing out, okay, well, so you got a mask, you got a thing,

00:51:09 ◼   ► you got photoresist, you got light, you shine it, fine.

00:51:11 ◼   ► But you want to make things smaller and smaller and smaller.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And as you do that, you're like, but now the wavelength of light is too big.

00:51:17 ◼   ► It's like, I know how to fix that.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I went to school.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I learned about RGBIV and the rainbow and everything.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I know the long wavelengths are red.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And as you go shift down the rainbow and you go over to the blue side,

00:51:26 ◼   ► the wavelengths get shorter.

00:51:27 ◼   ► So instead of using red light, let's use blue light.

00:51:29 ◼   ► It's like, great.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Okay, but now we're making it so small that the blue wavelength is too long.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Is there anything left of blue?

00:51:34 ◼   ► And you're like, I've learned about the electromagnetic spectrum.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Can we go like even darker blue or whatever?

00:51:40 ◼   ► And eventually you get out of the realm of visible light.

00:51:42 ◼   ► And they call EUV what is called extreme ultraviolet lithography.

00:51:47 ◼   ► It sounds like it's really, really purple.

00:51:48 ◼   ► But I forget from the details from the video, but like essentially like you're out of the visible

00:51:53 ◼   ► spectrum because you're going, you know, you've seen the electromagnetic spectrum with like red

00:51:57 ◼   ► off to one side and then, and then, you know, but you get like the electromagnetic spectrum

00:52:00 ◼   ► is huge.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Visible light is a tiny portion of it.

00:52:03 ◼   ► We're off the realm of visible light now.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And the difficulty, one of the, one of the many difficulties of doing this is how do

00:52:10 ◼   ► you produce the light?

00:52:11 ◼   ► Like half of this giant machine, half of this $400 million machine that ASML makes is the

00:52:15 ◼   ► light source, which, you know, when it was just visible light, it was pretty easy to make

00:52:19 ◼   ► a light source.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Now it's not, it is more difficult if I'm not going to spoil it, but if you have, if you

00:52:24 ◼   ► don't already know this, uh, you will not predict how the light is created in the light

00:52:30 ◼   ► source for the ASML machine.

00:52:31 ◼   ► I don't want to spoil it.

00:52:32 ◼   ► Um, the reason I want to talk about it is, and this is, this is a debate in another video

00:52:37 ◼   ► we'll link in the show notes from the, uh, the great Asianometry channel, which is a, it's

00:52:41 ◼   ► an older one from like, it's a video from 2021 of like, who's more important TSMC or ASML?

00:52:46 ◼   ► Because here's the thing, ASML for reasons that will be explained in the video is the only

00:52:52 ◼   ► company in the world that makes these machines.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like, Oh, this is the whole freaking industry.

00:52:55 ◼   ► TSMC is the only company in the world that can make the best chips and they get their machines

00:53:00 ◼   ► to do it from the only company in the world that makes them.

00:53:02 ◼   ► This doesn't seem like a great idea.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And one of the reasons that never came up in all my past discussions, uh, as I said, Taiwan

00:53:10 ◼   ► is, uh, politically precarious because of its relationship with China.

00:53:14 ◼   ► The U S is politically precarious because we're dumb.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Um, but, uh, ASML is in the Netherlands and the EU is significantly less politically precarious

00:53:28 ◼   ► than either Taiwan or the United States.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I don't think that's arguable at this point.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So one of the reasons it doesn't come up is yes, there's only one company in the world,

00:53:34 ◼   ► ASML that does this, but they're not in peril like Taiwan and America are currently.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Not that it's great to have one, but still.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And as you watch in the video, you'll see why is there only, why is only ASML the only company

00:53:49 ◼   ► in the world that does this?

00:53:50 ◼   ► Part of it is Americans being dumb because we started the program to do, the U S started the

00:53:54 ◼   ► program to do extreme ultraviolet lithography and then bowed out and said, Oh, it seems too

00:53:58 ◼   ► horrible.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Let somebody else do it.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And so they did.

00:54:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:54:01 ◼   ► We put a lot of money into it.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And Intel is actually a partial investor in this.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And, you know, it's this whole big international entanglement.

00:54:06 ◼   ► The bottom line is one company in the world makes the machines that TSMC needs to make the

00:54:12 ◼   ► chips.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And only TSMC knows how to use those machines to make them.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Like in the asinometry video at the end, he's like, he has this analogy of like a chef and

00:54:19 ◼   ► everything.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, anyone can buy those machines.

00:54:22 ◼   ► If you have $400 million, you can buy one.

00:54:24 ◼   ► It's about the size of like a small, you know, mobile home.

00:54:28 ◼   ► And I forget what the shipping costs are, but if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And I believe it comes in 250 separate packages.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Anyway, if you can get one of those and then hire whatever people that needs to run them,

00:54:40 ◼   ► still, that's not enough for you to be TSMC because you don't just say, okay, now we've

00:54:44 ◼   ► got the machines because they will just, they're lithography machines.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Now, what are you going to print?

00:54:49 ◼   ► And that's all about the, you know, the gate all around transistors and how you like this.

00:54:52 ◼   ► There's lots of, you know, just having a KitchenAid mixer does not make you a Michelin star chef.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Let's put it that way.

00:54:58 ◼   ► So who's more important, ASML or TSMC?

00:55:01 ◼   ► They're both pretty important.

00:55:02 ◼   ► But in the end, ASML just has to make the machine and they can sell it to somebody.

00:55:06 ◼   ► And as far as they're concerned, they don't care what you do with the machine.

00:55:08 ◼   ► Whereas TSMC has to produce the finished product, which is the chips that are all in all

00:55:11 ◼   ► our phones and everything like that.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So I would say TSMC is more important, but ASML is definitely necessary because without it,

00:55:16 ◼   ► TSMC can't do anything.

00:55:17 ◼   ► So this is just a catch up essentially to say, if you're kept hearing us talk about this and

00:55:23 ◼   ► say, I can't believe they never talked about ASML.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Now we have.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And if you've never heard of them, now, you know, there is literally one company in the

00:55:30 ◼   ► world in the Netherlands that makes the chips that make, that makes the machines that can

00:55:34 ◼   ► make the best chips.

00:55:35 ◼   ► There are, you know, companies in the world that makes machines that can make not as good

00:55:39 ◼   ► chips because that's easier.

00:55:40 ◼   ► But right now, ASML is the only company that does this.

00:55:43 ◼   ► And TSMC is the only company that can make the very best chips with Intel possibly pulling

00:55:48 ◼   ► up alongside, of course, Intel will be using ASML machines as well.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And then finally, in the Asianometry channel, there is a TSMC analysis playlist that has a

00:55:57 ◼   ► bunch of stuff about TSMC.

00:55:58 ◼   ► If you just haven't heard enough about them, lots of these things like Veritasium does a

00:56:02 ◼   ► great job with the channels, like turning everything to kind of like the human story of like, how

00:56:06 ◼   ► did this happen?

00:56:07 ◼   ► It's not just like these things spring into existence.

00:56:09 ◼   ► People have to really believe in something and have to make sacrifices to try to do things

00:56:14 ◼   ► that seem impossible.

00:56:14 ◼   ► And you get that in the Veritasium video.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And same thing with the Asianometry channel to learn about the history of TSMC and why they

00:56:21 ◼   ► are in the position they're in.

00:56:22 ◼   ► It is fascinating and inspiring.

00:56:25 ◼   ► And even if you just watch the Veritasium video, it is just like mind boggling to think

00:56:30 ◼   ► about.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And it really makes you appreciate the, uh, all the little chips that are in our computers.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I, I, I feel like this is very much like the, um, four hour galactic star cruiser

00:56:41 ◼   ► video, which I just finished watching.

00:56:43 ◼   ► It's not four hours long.

00:56:44 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:56:45 ◼   ► What I mean by that is, yeah, no, it's, I think it's a little under an hour, but the thing

00:56:50 ◼   ► with the four hour galactic star cruiser video is that about a year ago when it came out, everyone

00:56:53 ◼   ► was like, Oh my God, you have to watch this.

00:56:55 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:56:55 ◼   ► And I didn't for the longest time because it's four hours long.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Similar to that video though.

00:57:01 ◼   ► It, the four hour video is incredible.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And this one hour video is absolutely incredible.

00:57:05 ◼   ► And if you have even the vaguest interest in their most vague interest in science, you will

00:57:10 ◼   ► enjoy this video because basically they had to do like six impossible things back to back

00:57:16 ◼   ► to back to back in order to make these machines.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And eventually through a lot of hard work and a pile of money, humans figured it out.

00:57:24 ◼   ► It's, I mean, I wasn't alive during the space race, but it has a similar vibe from the understanding

00:57:28 ◼   ► I get at the space race.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Like, Oh, we're just going to go to the moon and puts a human so they can walk on it.

00:57:32 ◼   ► Oh, um, how people figured it out.

00:57:38 ◼   ► It's just truly incredible.

00:57:40 ◼   ► If you have an hour to give, I cannot stress enough.

00:57:42 ◼   ► This is a truly worthwhile video.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And like John said, it really, really helps you appreciate the absolutely bananas amount of

00:57:50 ◼   ► technology that you carry around in your pocket or on your wrist.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Uh, I guess the one thing I'll pull, again, I'm not going to spoil how they do the light

00:57:56 ◼   ► source, but the one, this, this one, uh, resonated the most with me.

00:57:59 ◼   ► The example that one of the ASML engineers gave to try to explain to you, like they could

00:58:04 ◼   ► just rattle off statistics, but they don't mean anything because you don't think about these

00:58:06 ◼   ► numbers often.

00:58:07 ◼   ► They gave, he gave an analogy that really resonated with me, maybe because of how I think about

00:58:12 ◼   ► things, but I'll try to try to describe it in a way that will hopefully resonate with

00:58:16 ◼   ► the audience.

00:58:17 ◼   ► So they have mirrors in these things and they spend a lot of time talking about the mirrors.

00:58:20 ◼   ► That's not what we're going to talk about.

00:58:21 ◼   ► They've got the big mirrors, but they have to aim them really carefully to say the least.

00:58:25 ◼   ► And the way they described, the way they described how, uh, carefully they aim the mirror is like,

00:58:30 ◼   ► I give this analogy.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Like if you have, um, if you have like a stick, uh, Oh, let's put it this way.

00:58:36 ◼   ► Let's say you have a mirror and you attach a stick to the middle of the mirror.

00:58:39 ◼   ► So it's poking out of the mirror.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:58:41 ◼   ► Um, as you turn the mirror, the end of the stick moves, right?

00:58:45 ◼   ► If you make the stick like a foot long and you twist the mirror back and forth, the, the,

00:58:50 ◼   ► the end of the stick moves a little bit.

00:58:51 ◼   ► If you make the stick like 20 feet long, when you twist the mirror, the end of that stick

00:58:55 ◼   ► moves a lot.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Because when you took, you point it to the left and then you point it to the right, the

00:58:59 ◼   ► end of the stick that's 20 feet away is sweeping across a huge distance.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like we all kind of intuitively understand this.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Like you're still twisting the mirror the same amount.

00:59:05 ◼   ► You're like, but the longer you make the stick that is sticking out of the mirror, the more

00:59:11 ◼   ► the end of that stick moves.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So let's say you make the stick a mile long and you twist the mirror, boy, that stick

00:59:16 ◼   ► moves across a huge distance when you twist the mirror the same amount, right?

00:59:19 ◼   ► That's just sort of the, sort of the expansion of like, how far does the tip of the stick

00:59:24 ◼   ► move based on how far you move the mirror?

00:59:27 ◼   ► I hope I'm drawing a word picture here and you can picture how the longer you make the

00:59:30 ◼   ► stick, the, the farther the tip moves.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Um, so here's the analogy they do.

00:59:34 ◼   ► We've got the mirror, pretend there's a stick on it, pretend the stick touches the moon.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Uh, and by the way, the moon is much farther away than you think it is.

00:59:45 ◼   ► This is a fun science exercise.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Go to anybody in your life, give them a sheet of paper and say, draw the earth and the moon

00:59:50 ◼   ► to scale with their distance to scale and see what they draw.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Nobody will draw it accurately unless they're like a science nerd.

00:59:55 ◼   ► Um, the moon's really far away.

00:59:57 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:58 ◼   ► That's how long the stick is.

01:00:00 ◼   ► It's on the mirror and the stick is on the moon.

01:00:02 ◼   ► All right.

01:00:03 ◼   ► How, uh, precisely does the, uh, ASML lithography machine adjust the angle of its mirrors?

01:00:12 ◼   ► It adjusts them enough such that the smallest adjustment it can make the tip of the stick

01:00:18 ◼   ► that's on the moon connected to the mirror that's on earth.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It can move the mirror just enough so that the stick moves from one side of a dime on

01:00:25 ◼   ► the moon to the other, a dime on the moon, because again, absolutely incredible.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Maybe like a 20 foot stick and you move that, try to move it with your hands, move the mirror

01:00:34 ◼   ► a little bit.

01:00:35 ◼   ► So, so that this 20 foot stick only moves across the width of a dime.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Try it with a stick.

01:00:39 ◼   ► That's a mile long.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Try it with the stick.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It's on the moon.

01:00:41 ◼   ► That's how precise they control this mirror such that they can move a stick on the moon.

01:00:46 ◼   ► It's this, that analogy, it was just like, that is a way to visualize, I think it was a

01:00:51 ◼   ► pico radian or something like that.

01:00:53 ◼   ► That is just mind boggling.

01:00:55 ◼   ► That is just like, how, how could you ever move anything that precisely?

01:00:59 ◼   ► That's the analogy they gave.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I kind of mangled a little bit.

01:01:01 ◼   ► They do it in the video as well, but I feel like people will just go past it and like,

01:01:04 ◼   ► oh, I guess it's pretty precise.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But like the physical manifestation of like the stick coming out of the mirror is just very

01:01:10 ◼   ► compelling to me.

01:01:11 ◼   ► For non-Americans, the diameter of a dime, the diameter of a dime is, well, the width of a

01:01:19 ◼   ► dime is, or the, yeah, is something like a centimeter.

01:01:21 ◼   ► It's according to Wikipedia, the diameter is 17.91 millimeters.

01:01:25 ◼   ► I love that you gave it a metric for all the non-US people.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Well, hey, but no, this, this is really incredible.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I cannot stress enough.

01:01:32 ◼   ► You should watch this video.

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01:03:42 ◼   ► John, you had a very cool topic that you brought to us that Marco and I were supposed to do homework about.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And based on the show notes, only I did homework on.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And I'm not sure.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I did it.

01:03:50 ◼   ► You're the only one who wrote it in there.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I think Marco and I would both like to not spoil it.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I always keep my own notes for stuff like this.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I know you do.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I know you do.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And so do I.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And it's totally a case of move to write it into the document.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Well, because otherwise I don't know where to put it.

01:04:02 ◼   ► It was sniped into because I made little bullet points.

01:04:04 ◼   ► There's nowhere else to write content on a computer.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Yep.

01:04:07 ◼   ► That's the only spot.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Or in the world.

01:04:08 ◼   ► All right.

01:04:08 ◼   ► So, John, can you tell us what we're doing here, please?

01:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:11 ◼   ► So here we are on the first show of the year.

01:04:13 ◼   ► We already thanked our patrons.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I like to talk about like what we're looking forward to.

01:04:20 ◼   ► What are you most excited about in 2026?

01:04:22 ◼   ► Obviously, we're talking mostly about tech things here.

01:04:24 ◼   ► So what tech things are you excited about in 2026?

01:04:25 ◼   ► And the only ground rules I wanted to put out there is I wanted to say, try to make your

01:04:30 ◼   ► things as plausible as possible, which is like there's all sorts of fantasies we can come

01:04:35 ◼   ► on with the things we would love to happen or the things we would love to see.

01:04:38 ◼   ► But obviously, we don't know what will happen.

01:04:40 ◼   ► And so I can say, well, it has to be something that could happen, like just try to make them

01:04:43 ◼   ► as plausible as possible to constrain us to not be too fantastical.

01:04:48 ◼   ► So when we present our list of things, tech things we are excited about in 2026, you can

01:04:54 ◼   ► also make the argument of why you think it is reasonably plausible that this could happen.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Who's starting?

01:04:59 ◼   ► But doing the order we have.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Marco first.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Okay.

01:05:02 ◼   ► So what I'm excited about that is reasonably plausible, but not necessarily guaranteed.

01:05:07 ◼   ► My own software.

01:05:08 ◼   ► So I have three areas.

01:05:12 ◼   ► This is one.

01:05:12 ◼   ► I think it's going to be, I've been working on some stuff for Overcast that I think is

01:05:18 ◼   ► pretty cool.

01:05:18 ◼   ► And I think I will be able to get it out this year.

01:05:21 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to that.

01:05:23 ◼   ► So we can probably take that item from the show notes and hoist it up.

01:05:25 ◼   ► We have an item in the show notes, which is future things Marco does.

01:05:28 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, I don't want to talk about it until I do it.

01:05:30 ◼   ► So we're just waiting for him to do it.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So there's some of that.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Also, you know, if I ever do make the app I talked about in the member special, probably

01:05:41 ◼   ► that would probably happen.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Not the Jam Music app, Casey.

01:05:44 ◼   ► The other app.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I was so excited for that.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Marco has a lot of things that he's potentially doing.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:49 ◼   ► So we'll see if any of them happen.

01:05:50 ◼   ► But I think this is a good year for at least one of these things to happen.

01:05:54 ◼   ► You know, maybe more.

01:05:56 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:05:56 ◼   ► All right.

01:05:57 ◼   ► So then also, I'm also looking forward to and we'll get to a little bit of this, I think, in overtime.

01:06:03 ◼   ► I'm also looking forward to the foldable iPhone.

01:06:07 ◼   ► I don't know how that's going to go.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Having both printed out the 3D model of that one mock-up.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Like I did the 3D printed, you know, size accurate or, you know.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Spoil us for overtime.

01:06:20 ◼   ► We will discuss this then.

01:06:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So anyway, so we'll talk about it more in overtime.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But I did print myself one of those and I've been kind of noodling with it, just playing

01:06:29 ◼   ► with the size.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And I think it's really interesting.

01:06:32 ◼   ► It's either going to be some like ridiculous high-end thing that goes nowhere except a few

01:06:38 ◼   ► power users.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Or it's going to be huge, not physically.

01:06:42 ◼   ► I mean, that too.

01:06:42 ◼   ► But or it's going to be a huge transformational thing that's going to become a very big part

01:06:49 ◼   ► of the high-end iPhone market for the foreseeable future.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And on that topic, by the way, do you think if you, so let's say you weren't interested in

01:06:55 ◼   ► it.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Let's say you weren't.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It wasn't on your things you're looking forward to to 2026.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Do you think that you would actually need to buy one of these to test Overcast?

01:07:04 ◼   ► Or did you just assume that like, well, my app is already like, like adjust to any size

01:07:09 ◼   ► and the size of it doesn't look that far out of bounds.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Like it's not that, it's not a different one.

01:07:13 ◼   ► I may like, do you, not that would you buy one?

01:07:15 ◼   ► Cause we know you would buy one, but like, of course, do you think this is the type of

01:07:18 ◼   ► thing that you would have to buy to like, just make sure your app works right on it?

01:07:21 ◼   ► My app in particular, probably not, but it's so mechanically different.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Like the way you handle it is so different.

01:07:31 ◼   ► I think most people who like, where like your app, like it, where like you care about the

01:07:37 ◼   ► design and interaction of your app, probably you'll have to buy it just because it's going

01:07:41 ◼   ► to, it's such a different form factor to see how the UI feels.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Even stuff like just where do you put controls in the interface?

01:07:49 ◼   ► Like how, like the reachability of things is radically different.

01:07:52 ◼   ► The, the aspect ratio of the, of the front screen, if the rumors are true is radically

01:07:58 ◼   ► different.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Like there's so many things about it.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Like the handling of it is very different.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And so I think if you have an iPhone app and it also runs on the iPad and you never bought

01:08:06 ◼   ► an iPad to test it out, you could get away with that.

01:08:09 ◼   ► It's probably, you can probably make something that's fine, but to really make something that's

01:08:12 ◼   ► good, you kind of need an iPad to test that on.

01:08:15 ◼   ► But at the same time, like, you know, the world of iOS devices is very big.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I don't buy every iPhone.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I don't buy every iPad.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I used to like back a long time ago, I used to have like one of every size screen.

01:08:25 ◼   ► That's when there were far fewer devices to buy to.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:28 ◼   ► There was like one to two in each family.

01:08:30 ◼   ► Now there's a million different sizes.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Every generation of phone and iPad seems to change the screen size slightly.

01:08:37 ◼   ► So there's, there's a bunch of like minor variations of screen sizes.

01:08:41 ◼   ► It's just to keep devs on their toes so they don't start making fixed layouts anymore.

01:08:44 ◼   ► It's like, oh, we're going to shave off three pixels next year.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:46 ◼   ► That's what happens.

01:08:47 ◼   ► And so anyway, so I, I don't buy every one of those, but I think the foldable, if it's,

01:08:52 ◼   ► if it's real and if it's rumored to be, if the rumors are accurate about like the rough

01:08:56 ◼   ► screen dimensions and everything, it's so different from the iPhone and the iPad.

01:09:02 ◼   ► I think most developers who are responsible for laying out an interface are probably going

01:09:07 ◼   ► to want to have one.

01:09:08 ◼   ► I recall you said the same thing about the Apple Watch Ultra, just to give people an idea of

01:09:12 ◼   ► like, oh, but you can just run in the simulator.

01:09:13 ◼   ► It's probably the same thing, right?

01:09:15 ◼   ► Like you, didn't you like say that when you did, or maybe it was underscore, it was one

01:09:18 ◼   ► of you two was talking about.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It was me.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Apple Watch Ultra is like, okay, well, yeah, I mean, I have a watch app and this is a watch

01:09:23 ◼   ► and how different could it be?

01:09:24 ◼   ► And I have it running the simulator and it works fine and it looks fine.

01:09:27 ◼   ► But having on an actual Apple Watch Ultra still provides insight that not having it would

01:09:32 ◼   ► leave you without.

01:09:33 ◼   ► That is the justification I use to buy the Apple Watch Ultra.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I mean, that might've been a flimsy excuse you tell me, but.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Well, the reason why I'm glad I did it is because the Apple Watch Ultra, not only at the time it

01:09:45 ◼   ► came out, not only was it significantly bigger screen than the series large model was, that's

01:09:51 ◼   ► no longer the case, but it was significantly bigger when it came out.

01:09:54 ◼   ► But also because it's a totally flat from edge to edge screen on the Ultra, there is

01:09:59 ◼   ► no like curve around the edges the way it is on the series watches.

01:10:03 ◼   ► And that radically changes the interaction and look of elements around the edge of the screen.

01:10:09 ◼   ► So when I got it, I was instantly like, oh God, this, this is very different.

01:10:13 ◼   ► So I need to really consider this with my watch app interface.

01:10:16 ◼   ► But that was early on in the overcast rewrite.

01:10:18 ◼   ► And I ended up not touching the watch app for like two years after that.

01:10:22 ◼   ► So my plan was sound.

01:10:24 ◼   ► My actions did not back it up.

01:10:26 ◼   ► All right.

01:10:26 ◼   ► So getting back to what I'm excited about.

01:10:29 ◼   ► So I got my software, hopefully the foldable iPhone, one more than a subsection.

01:10:34 ◼   ► The broad part of the section is I want to see Apple's 27 OSs.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Now, specifically, this will be the first time we see the liquid glass design get its first

01:10:47 ◼   ► like big tweaks.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Now, I'm not expecting the entire interface to be radically different in one year, in part

01:10:54 ◼   ► because that's just really aggressive.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Apple has done it before, but that is a very aggressive thing to do.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And in part because there's still so many bugs from liquid glass and this redesign that I don't

01:11:08 ◼   ► think Apple would have the bandwidth to do two sweeping redesigns in a row.

01:11:11 ◼   ► But I do think since we've had that leadership change, there is probably a good chance for

01:11:17 ◼   ► some course correction, you know, not major sweeping differences, but tweaks, you know,

01:11:23 ◼   ► maybe more.

01:11:23 ◼   ► We're going to see a lot more frosting of the glass.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I think in a lot more places, we're going to probably see like some of the more ridiculous

01:11:30 ◼   ► things like with the, if I'm honest, I think the worst two things about liquid glass, in

01:11:38 ◼   ► my opinion, are blurs that content has to scroll under.

01:11:42 ◼   ► So you get blurry content under unreadable text.

01:11:46 ◼   ► So like the whole like blurred bar edges thing, that and the thing where you make up a fake

01:11:53 ◼   ► background reflection of the content to slip under bars on sidebars and stuff.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Those two are both so comically hostile to so much of user interface design and just honesty

01:12:05 ◼   ► that I can see, I can see the new leadership maybe having those on their hit list pretty high

01:12:10 ◼   ► up on the list.

01:12:11 ◼   ► So on this topic, I was thinking about this same thing when I was filling out the six

01:12:16 ◼   ► college Apple report card today.

01:12:17 ◼   ► You cited a bunch of reasons why Apple's obviously the 27 OS's are not going to be some radical

01:12:23 ◼   ► redesign.

01:12:23 ◼   ► They just did a redesign.

01:12:24 ◼   ► You said they're fixing bugs and, you know, they don't have the bandwidth to change it all

01:12:29 ◼   ► that significantly.

01:12:30 ◼   ► The other factor and why when I talked about the 26 OS's when the first came out, I was just

01:12:36 ◼   ► sort of resigned to having to deal with these for the next several years is essentially just

01:12:41 ◼   ► like pride and saving face.

01:12:42 ◼   ► If there had been like massive public outcry to the 26 OS's, then yeah, maybe Apple could

01:12:47 ◼   ► justify like we got to do a big hard course correction here.

01:12:50 ◼   ► But there hasn't been.

01:12:51 ◼   ► I mean, I know people are grumbly about it or whatever, but bottom line is like there's

01:12:54 ◼   ► no, you know, comedians making jokes about it is not terrible in pop culture.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Like they didn't they didn't they didn't do a bad enough job to justify it.

01:13:01 ◼   ► And so Apple, like even if it's new leadership, they're not going to come out and say, hey, everything

01:13:05 ◼   ► we just described, all those tours we had, a developer evangelist telling you how to use

01:13:09 ◼   ► liquid glass, all those WWDC sessions, all our documentation, forget it all.

01:13:13 ◼   ► It was a terrible idea.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And we're going to fix it.

01:13:14 ◼   ► They wouldn't do that for all the reasons you cited, but also because it would reveal

01:13:19 ◼   ► a mistake.

01:13:20 ◼   ► It's like admitting that you did something terribly wrong.

01:13:22 ◼   ► We spent an entire year pretending we didn't do something wrong.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And now we're going to say that we did, even if they don't admit it, which they never would,

01:13:29 ◼   ► they would say, we have a new design and we think it's even better.

01:13:31 ◼   ► And everyone would be like, didn't you just have a new design?

01:13:34 ◼   ► I guess you're admitting that the old design was banned.

01:13:36 ◼   ► It's like, no, we just think those ones even like they do the typical Apple stuff, but they

01:13:39 ◼   ► would never do that.

01:13:40 ◼   ► So it's like, you know, again, like the practical reasons are the real reasons.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Like they just literally can't because they're barely holding on to getting their feet under

01:13:47 ◼   ► them with 26 OSs.

01:13:49 ◼   ► But also, even if they had a magic wand, from a corporate perspective, especially under

01:13:53 ◼   ► current leadership and sort of the Apple IMO for the past several decades is, you know,

01:13:58 ◼   ► if you're going to eventually contradict yourself and correct some mistake, do it far enough

01:14:02 ◼   ► in the future.

01:14:02 ◼   ► This is just like, well, this is just our next revision of the thing anyway.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Like they never fix their problem immediately unless the world is on fire and the world is

01:14:11 ◼   ► not on fire when it comes to 26 OSs.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I think it should be, but it's not because it's too like they're not bad enough.

01:14:17 ◼   ► They don't, they don't do enough things wrong in an egregious enough ways for Apple to correct

01:14:21 ◼   ► this.

01:14:21 ◼   ► So we, I, I totally agree with what you said.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Like we are any, if there's something in particular you don't like about iOS 26, if it can't be

01:14:30 ◼   ► fixed with like a reasonable appearance tweak, you're going to be stuck with it for a long

01:14:34 ◼   ► time.

01:14:34 ◼   ► And on that front with the blurs that you were talking about, one of the complaints I've

01:14:37 ◼   ► seen from people who are like a super duper against like the 26 OS is they're like, oh,

01:14:41 ◼   ► I turned on reduced transparency or whatever.

01:14:42 ◼   ► If you turn on anything that essentially disables the blurs, you see just how much space gets

01:14:48 ◼   ► wasted because when the blurs are there, you, you can sort of like, well, where is the top

01:14:52 ◼   ► of the scrolling region?

01:14:53 ◼   ► But like, practically speaking, the scrolling region ends once something starts screwing

01:14:58 ◼   ► with the content.

01:14:58 ◼   ► So when you turn on like the reduced transparency or whatever, you're like, holy cow, there's

01:15:03 ◼   ► like a one inch opaque bar at the top of the scrolling region.

01:15:05 ◼   ► That's all just wasted space.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, before that one inch bar was your gradient fade blur crap thing.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And so it made you think your content went all the way up.

01:15:13 ◼   ► But practically speaking, as soon as the text goes under the blur area, it makes you feel

01:15:17 ◼   ► like your vision is failing you.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And so you see just how space inefficient liquid glass is setting aside the floating bars, which

01:15:23 ◼   ► is the other thing I was harping on.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I'm like, you've made rounded corners, which pushes everything in.

01:15:27 ◼   ► You've made a floating bar.

01:15:28 ◼   ► So now there's margins and it's just basically there's less room for stuff.

01:15:31 ◼   ► And the more you tweak the appearance to get rid of like the blurs and the transparency,

01:15:35 ◼   ► the more it reveals how space inefficient it is.

01:15:38 ◼   ► So I wish them luck in tweaking it, but I really hope they tweak it as hard as they possibly

01:15:42 ◼   ► can in 27.

01:15:43 ◼   ► But I totally agree.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Like they've got to at least just get the bugs worked out, get everything working, get

01:15:49 ◼   ► it functional again.

01:15:50 ◼   ► 27 OSes were not on my list, but I see where you're coming from.

01:15:54 ◼   ► There is a lot of low hanging fruit to tweak these designs into something not only less

01:16:00 ◼   ► bad, but actually possibly good.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like there is like not everything about liquid glass and these readers and not everything about

01:16:07 ◼   ► it is bad.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Just there's some really egregious stuff about it that I think can be tweaked into something

01:16:13 ◼   ► significantly better.

01:16:14 ◼   ► And not all OSes have been equally afflicted.

01:16:17 ◼   ► No, like I think it's by far the worst on the Mac.

01:16:21 ◼   ► The Mac really hurts with liquid glass.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And probably the best on TV OS since it's barely there on TV OS.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:16:29 ◼   ► So, all right.

01:16:30 ◼   ► So the finally, so kind of under the category of Apple's 27 OSes, but kind of a separate thing.

01:16:36 ◼   ► One thing I'm really excited for in 2026, and believe I'm not, this is not sarcastic.

01:16:42 ◼   ► I'm really excited for it.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Apple intelligence.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Because think about it.

01:16:47 ◼   ► It's already here, Mark.

01:16:48 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Yes.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Image generation is here.

01:16:51 ◼   ► I've got it on my Mac right now.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:52 ◼   ► iOS 27 and, you know, 27 OSes broadly.

01:16:56 ◼   ► This is where we should start seeing the first significant results from all the different

01:17:03 ◼   ► restarts and leadership and team changes and the deal with Gemini.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Everything we've seen so far from Apple intelligence has basically been like the version one beta

01:17:12 ◼   ► that didn't work or never shipped.

01:17:13 ◼   ► And they've made a bunch of changes over the last year.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Obviously, they replaced the leadership of it.

01:17:19 ◼   ► They moved the division around.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And they made that deal with Google to have a white label Gemini, allegedly, for some of

01:17:25 ◼   ► the back end stuff.

01:17:26 ◼   ► So I think these OSes that, you know, beta in the summer and chip in the fall this year are

01:17:33 ◼   ► most likely where we're going to start seeing real progress there.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Now, I don't necessarily expect the world here.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Again, it's only been one year since, you know, everything else we've had so far in 26.

01:17:45 ◼   ► So, you know, we have to kind of, you know, keep our expectations reasonable for what they

01:17:49 ◼   ► get, what they can accomplish in one year.

01:17:51 ◼   ► But this is when we should start seeing actual shifts and changes and results from those fairly

01:18:00 ◼   ► large shifts and changes they've made over the last couple of years to try to get this out

01:18:04 ◼   ► the door.

01:18:05 ◼   ► So I really want to see where this goes.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Broadly speaking, 2026 is going to be a really defining year for AI in general in the whole

01:18:16 ◼   ► industry.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And it can go a lot of different ways.

01:18:18 ◼   ► It can be amazing.

01:18:19 ◼   ► It could crash hard.

01:18:21 ◼   ► We don't really know what's going to happen yet.

01:18:23 ◼   ► If AI does crash hard, that has a lot of ramifications for not only the industry, but the economy.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And so that like this could go a very large range of outcomes here and whatever the rest

01:18:38 ◼   ► of the AI world is going to do outside of Apple's OSes, it can go all over the place.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I don't even want to speculate because the range of outcomes is so broad.

01:18:47 ◼   ► It can be amazing or it can tank the whole economy.

01:18:51 ◼   ► And everything in between could happen also.

01:18:53 ◼   ► So who knows?

01:18:55 ◼   ► But with Apple's platform specifically, I think they will be largely isolated from whatever

01:19:01 ◼   ► is going on there in both directions.

01:19:04 ◼   ► Like if the AI world crashes, I don't think Apple is going to be that affected.

01:19:07 ◼   ► This is not investment advice.

01:19:09 ◼   ► If the AI world does amazingly, I don't think Apple will do amazingly with AI.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Like I think Apple is going to be right in the middle and kind of doing their own thing

01:19:18 ◼   ► in their own pond here.

01:19:20 ◼   ► What they are doing is probably going to get noticeably better and going to start, we're

01:19:28 ◼   ► going to start seeing what Apple actually can do with AI with the right kind of setup.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I still don't think they're going to be a leader in AI, possibly forever, but certainly not soon.

01:19:41 ◼   ► We're not going to see them competing with OpenAI, Gemini, Claude.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Like we're not going to see them competing with the big models in most of the things that people use the big models for.

01:19:52 ◼   ► But we are going to see like what's Apple's take on local AI on device models with some use of servers using Gemini, but like, you know, mostly on device still.

01:20:05 ◼   ► What does this end up looking like?

01:20:07 ◼   ► All the magical fairy tales that they spewed over at WBC two years ago that caused us something as rotten post that Gruber wrote, like all of that stuff.

01:20:16 ◼   ► That's all BS.

01:20:17 ◼   ► That never came to pass.

01:20:19 ◼   ► It probably never will come to pass.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And Apple's probably going to keep trying to memory hold as much as possible because they don't want us talking about it because it's fake and it was always fake.

01:20:27 ◼   ► OK, but this year we're going to start seeing what can they actually do so far?

01:20:33 ◼   ► They've done very little, but I think, again, this is the year we're going to start seeing the changes they've made start to have shipping results in some form.

01:20:43 ◼   ► And it'll probably start small, but it'll be something.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And I think that that can really be exciting.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And maybe I'm wrong.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Maybe it'll just fizzle out and be nothing.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Maybe we're going to get another image playgrounds are here and we're going to get another nothing year.

01:20:55 ◼   ► But I don't think so.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I think this is the year where we're going to start seeing Apple ship something good with AI, you know, kind of for the first time.

01:21:04 ◼   ► My turn.

01:21:06 ◼   ► All right.

01:21:08 ◼   ► So I know that in our internal show notes, it says ground rules.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Try to make them as plausible as possible.

01:21:13 ◼   ► I'm going to start with one that I will concede is not necessarily that plausible, but I really honestly think.

01:21:20 ◼   ► John gets a Mac Pro.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

01:21:22 ◼   ► I really honestly think that there's a chance.

01:21:25 ◼   ► So you're saying there's a chance.

01:21:27 ◼   ► I think that there's a chance this will happen.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And that is that Apple turns the policy corner.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is they start to read the frigging room and realize.

01:21:37 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I know.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I know.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And realize that it's time to maybe consider that they need to change their approach.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Maybe a lot.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Maybe a little.

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I feel like maybe it's time that Apple starts to really change their approach.

01:21:53 ◼   ► And actually, I could even broaden this beyond just policy, tech policy, and say maybe they change their approach about other things, too.

01:22:00 ◼   ► For example, maybe they start rolling out bits and pieces of Apple intelligence more than two times in the year.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I know they've started doing this, but maybe they really embrace this.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And the kind of unsaid, which now I'll say out loud, corollary to this is maybe if we get some new faces at the top of the food chain, maybe we'll see a slightly different Apple that maybe, maybe will make us a little bit happier.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Because there's a lot of the current Apple, particularly around policy, that does not make basically anyone but Apple happy.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And I'm really, really hopeful.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And I really, based on just my thumb in the wind, I really think that there's a prayer, even without a regime change, but especially with a regime change, maybe Apple starts to find a little bit of sanity.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I think that's the only reason I'm giving you the pass on this one for the plausibility is because you're tying it to leadership change.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Because I think there's no plausibility without a leadership change.

01:22:57 ◼   ► That's my opinion.

01:22:58 ◼   ► But because there have been rumors that we've discussed in the show about an imminent leadership change, which plausibly could happen within the next year, I think this one clearly is in the as plausible as possible.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Although you are kind of like Marco with his Apple intelligence things, you are being very optimistic.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Yeah, but I think, too, like, you know, we have, yeah, the rumors of a leadership change and I think the evidence that, you know, of all the different scheduled retirements and everything.

01:23:22 ◼   ► It's just a question of whether it comes in the calendar year or not.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's and I think, you know, there's there's a couple different ways this can go.

01:23:29 ◼   ► It is looking apparent that most likely there will be Tim Cook will most likely become chair of the board.

01:23:39 ◼   ► Now, there's a lot of different versions of how that story can go.

01:23:42 ◼   ► He could remain CEO for another year or whatever, or, you know, a few whatever he wants to do.

01:23:48 ◼   ► But it's what's very clear is that Apple is a company is very patient.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Tim Cook as a leader is very patient.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And the transition plan that whatever transition plan they're executing on, they're going to do it at the pace they want to do it.

01:24:04 ◼   ► It is pretty clear that this plan has started moving.

01:24:07 ◼   ► But I don't know on what timeline like he Tim Cook could still be CEO for another two or three years if he want.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Like it could be it could be much faster than we think.

01:24:19 ◼   ► He could be out next month or he could be, you know, still CEO two or three years from now and just also be chair of the board maybe or what like there's so many ways this can go.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And again, Apple's very slow and very patient and Tim Cook is very slow and very patient.

01:24:32 ◼   ► So I do think this change is pretty clearly happening, but I wouldn't expect anything about it to move quickly.

01:24:42 ◼   ► My second one, which is, I think, moving slightly more realistic, but maybe not, is I wrote it in our internal show notes, AI getting a grip.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is I think it's clear that AI has promised us the entire world.

01:24:57 ◼   ► The universe has been promised to us.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And as yet, I would not say it's been delivered.

01:25:02 ◼   ► I think that there are times when, you know, LLMs and AI, as it's commonly described, are incredibly impressive, incredibly powerful.

01:25:10 ◼   ► I mean, again, I vibe coded most of CallSheetApp.com with, I think it was ChatGPT, might have been Claude, I don't remember, probably a combination of both.

01:25:17 ◼   ► It can be really incredible, but I don't think it's solved all problems.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Certainly the absolute embarrassing disaster, the disgusting things that are happening with Grok right now are inexcusable.

01:25:29 ◼   ► And I really hope that we start to get a grip as a society, as a people on AI.

01:25:36 ◼   ► And maybe that means the bubble's going to burst.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to go quite that far.

01:25:41 ◼   ► But I hope and I think that maybe we'll start to get a grip.

01:25:47 ◼   ► And maybe we'll start to treat it as being – we'll try to understand and appreciate that there are limits to what AI can bring us and do for us.

01:25:56 ◼   ► And that's okay.

01:25:57 ◼   ► That's not a bad thing.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Speaking of vibes-based, I feel like your first two items are very vibes-based.

01:26:02 ◼   ► It's Apple turns a policy corner and AI gets a grip.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Very vibey.

01:26:05 ◼   ► It is.

01:26:06 ◼   ► It is.

01:26:06 ◼   ► I started with trying to come up with specific things.

01:26:10 ◼   ► Like, I'm excited for such-and-such or so-and-so and such-and-such device or whatever the case may be.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm sure there will be a device I'm excited for.

01:26:19 ◼   ► I mean, Marco's example –

01:26:20 ◼   ► Or is that something like the Apple's new F1 service or something like that?

01:26:23 ◼   ► Oh, actually, that is a great one.

01:26:24 ◼   ► I am really excited for that, actually.

01:26:25 ◼   ► I'm helping you out with your list.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:27 ◼   ► See, I appreciate it, John.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Thanks for the help, Dad.

01:26:29 ◼   ► But no, that is true.

01:26:30 ◼   ► I very much am looking forward to F1 as covered by Apple – or not covered by, you know, like handled by Apple.

01:26:37 ◼   ► As paid for by Apple, so you don't have to – because you already paid for the thing that it's going to come up with.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So it's saving you money and potentially they might do new or interesting things.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I'm not so confident they'll do new and interesting things.

01:26:47 ◼   ► But as we discussed, the way I read the announcements was that at the very worst, they will not take away the new and interesting things that F1 themselves are doing, or at least not for me.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So I'm really excited about that.

01:26:58 ◼   ► That's a great one.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Thank you, John.

01:26:59 ◼   ► And then the final one that I had, which is probably a little vibes-y for John's taste, is tech experimentation.

01:27:05 ◼   ► And the foldable iPhone, I think, fits into this.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Yes, there have been foldable phones for a while, but there's never been a foldable iPhone.

01:27:11 ◼   ► And I'm excited to see a foldable iPhone.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Based on the photos that I've seen, and again, we'll talk about it in overtime, I'm not sure this is something I want, but I'm pretty sure this is something I will get and at worst return if I don't like it.

01:27:24 ◼   ► I wouldn't have called this.

01:27:26 ◼   ► I knew – I was just called Marco my son's name.

01:27:29 ◼   ► I knew Marco was going to get one of these.

01:27:30 ◼   ► I did not predict that you would expect to go out and buy one.

01:27:34 ◼   ► I'm sure you'd be interested in it.

01:27:36 ◼   ► It's cool.

01:27:36 ◼   ► He's going to buy it, love it, and break it in a week.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I think that is one of two likely options.

01:27:42 ◼   ► Casey hasn't yet seen the price.

01:27:43 ◼   ► And unlike Marco.

01:27:45 ◼   ► He can be scared away because if the thing is, it's $2,500.

01:27:48 ◼   ► He bought a Vision Pro.

01:27:50 ◼   ► I was about to say.

01:27:51 ◼   ► I know, but that's what I'm saying.

01:27:52 ◼   ► He's been burned.

01:27:53 ◼   ► He's like, I bought this $3,500 Vision Pro.

01:27:55 ◼   ► I'm not buying a $2,500 stupid phone.

01:27:57 ◼   ► No, prices just delay, Casey.

01:27:59 ◼   ► They don't prevent him from buying it.

01:28:00 ◼   ► That's true.

01:28:01 ◼   ► It gets worn down eventually.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I am so angry at you because that is so accurate.

01:28:05 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:28:06 ◼   ► But anyway, so what were you saying?

01:28:08 ◼   ► So you're looking forward because you think it's cool because you think you would use it?

01:28:11 ◼   ► You already said half-jokingly that you think you'd get it and then return it.

01:28:15 ◼   ► But what's your motivation here?

01:28:16 ◼   ► So all snark and joking aside, my motivation is I think it makes for a better program if all three of us, or at least some of us, have experience with the device.

01:28:25 ◼   ► Tech gadget of obligation.

01:28:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:28 ◼   ► No, I really mean it.

01:28:29 ◼   ► And that's why I justified and how I justified the Vision Pro.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Now, granted, I wanted a Vision Pro because it's freaking cool.

01:28:34 ◼   ► But the way I justified it to myself and to a lesser degree, Aaron, was this is something that I think genuinely improves the content of the show because I can speak.

01:28:42 ◼   ► I need this for my work.

01:28:43 ◼   ► I was going to say intelligently about it, but at least I can speak from experience with it.

01:28:48 ◼   ► And yes, I need it for my work.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And so anyway, I think I will at the very least buy one and try it.

01:28:56 ◼   ► I don't feel like this is a need I have in my life, but every other time Apple has come out with some other thing like an Apple Watch or, hell, the iPhone to begin with, I've always started, well, I don't think this is a need I have in my life.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And then I've decided, oh, my God, I need it so badly.

01:29:09 ◼   ► So I am finally becoming self-aware enough to expect that not only will, as Marco said, I want it, not only will I choke, as Marco said, over the price,

01:29:20 ◼   ► but I do consider it, I really, truly consider it an obligation for the show to pick one of these up and give it a shot and see what I think.

01:29:27 ◼   ► And if I do return it, then, oh, well, at least I've tried it.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And I'm excited for that.

01:29:32 ◼   ► A lot of this, like, push into the home that everyone keeps saying Apple is doing but we haven't really seen yet, I'm excited for that.

01:29:39 ◼   ► And I feel like just generally, and again, this is, I guess it is kind of vibesy, John, and I'm sorry, but I get this vibe, this feeling that tech is starting to experiment a little bit more.

01:29:50 ◼   ► They're either all in on AI, and that's the only thing that matters, or they're doing really loopy stuff.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Like, I'm watching The Verge's coverage of CES, and granted, CES is always loopy and weird, but I feel like we're starting to get a little bit of fun back in tech.

01:30:03 ◼   ► And maybe I'm just trying desperately to find anything to be happy about right now.

01:30:07 ◼   ► But I'm getting the feeling like there's going to be some experimentation this year, and I'm really hopeful and excited about that.

01:30:14 ◼   ► So I apologize, John.

01:30:15 ◼   ► It is very vibes-y.

01:30:16 ◼   ► You're right.

01:30:16 ◼   ► But it's a bunch of vibes in F1.

01:30:18 ◼   ► So how about that?

01:30:19 ◼   ► Maybe you just specifically pick that robot vacuum that climbs stairs?

01:30:23 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:30:24 ◼   ► We actually talked about that on Clockwise earlier today.

01:30:26 ◼   ► The pool vacuum that lifts itself out to go into its charging cradle?

01:30:29 ◼   ► No.

01:30:29 ◼   ► I mean, I do think that's fun experimentation.

01:30:31 ◼   ► I do think that is in the context of tech experimentation, but that's not for me specifically.

01:30:35 ◼   ► The LG robot that folds your laundry?

01:30:36 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:30:37 ◼   ► I mean, like, CES is always like a fever dream of products that never really work or ship.

01:30:41 ◼   ► But I think you're right.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I think you're hitting on something, Casey.

01:30:45 ◼   ► Like, there is kind of, like, this pent-up demand for fun, and I think a lot of experimentation is happening.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And a lot of that, like, a lot of that, I think, is the phase that we're in with AI, which is, like, the current next big thing.

01:31:01 ◼   ► It's a weird phrase, but it makes sense in my mind.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

01:31:05 ◼   ► Tech goes through the next big thing phases, and when you look around, like, what they've been recently, like, you know, for a while back, it was self-driving.

01:31:15 ◼   ► It is happening very, very, very slowly in ways that most people don't have a lot of access to, but, like, that was the big thing.

01:31:23 ◼   ► And it didn't really result in a lot of, like, immediate fun or impact to tech products, you know, during the hype cycle.

01:31:30 ◼   ► Then after that, we had cryptocurrency, which was not fun at all.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Nope.

01:31:36 ◼   ► People made money with it, but it was just kind of, like, that was one of the biggest moments where, like, finance bros replaced tech bros, and now there's no more distinction.

01:31:47 ◼   ► Now, like, you know, the nerds are all pushed out of most of tech now, and it's all just run by finance tech bros now.

01:31:54 ◼   ► So, like, that was not really fun either.

01:31:57 ◼   ► And then we went from crypto to a brief diversion into the metaverse, which kind of sucked.

01:32:05 ◼   ► And I wouldn't describe any part of that as particularly fun either.

01:32:09 ◼   ► But then we went to AI.

01:32:11 ◼   ► And AI, it is not perfect.

01:32:15 ◼   ► You know, it has a lot of challenges.

01:32:17 ◼   ► It has a lot of limitations.

01:32:19 ◼   ► You know, again, as I was just saying, like, 2026 could be a year where we have a serious correction with AI, but AI is fundamentally opening up new doors and creating new value in tech products that people can actually use and see today right now.

01:32:34 ◼   ► And it's actually affecting our lives right now.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I ask ChatGPT questions almost every day about something.

01:32:40 ◼   ► It has really, like, replaced a lot of web searching for me, and it has augmented what I'm doing in a lot of different ways.

01:32:47 ◼   ► And, yeah, it's not perfect.

01:32:48 ◼   ► It makes up APIs that don't exist.

01:32:50 ◼   ► It makes up facts that don't exist.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's not perfect, but it immediately today has value.

01:32:56 ◼   ► And even if it never has any more value than it has today, it still has a lot of value, which is why I think, you know, if there is an AI crash or correction, it's not going to be because AI is a stupid idea, like crypto.

01:33:11 ◼   ► Like, that's not going to – remember NFTs?

01:33:14 ◼   ► Remember when everything was going to move to blockchain?

01:33:18 ◼   ► Not the blockchain, not a blockchain, but blockchain.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Anyway, you know, it's not like that.

01:33:22 ◼   ► There's actual value not only being created and not only promised of maybe being created, but that has already been created.

01:33:29 ◼   ► We already today have amazing value and uses for the AI that we have already today.

01:33:37 ◼   ► If there is some kind of big crash or correction, it's going to be more about the expectations being even more inflated than it could do and or all the ridiculous finance tricks that are being played to try to finance this build-outs.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And, you know, that's going to – who knows how that can blow everything up.

01:33:54 ◼   ► But the actual core of the technology is valuable and it's already here and we're already using it.

01:34:01 ◼   ► And I think that is driving a lot of fun.

01:34:04 ◼   ► And if we look at it as like the Gartner hype cycle, you know, the famous thing of like – I think 2025 was the peak of inflated expectations in the Gartner hype cycle.

01:34:14 ◼   ► I think 2026 will bring on the trial of disillusionment.

01:34:18 ◼   ► But I don't think it's going to go that low because, again, like ultimately it has those fundamental values established.

01:34:26 ◼   ► So whatever the heck happens with like OpenAI's giant build-out and then taking all the RAM and whatever and NVIDIA's valuations and all these big like, you know, financial and market moving and supply moving things that are happening in that part of that world, regardless of all that – and this is part of why I'm excited about Apple Intelligence.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Regardless of all that, this industry has created a whole bunch of value already that we're already using to make products today and that we're already using as consumers today.

01:34:55 ◼   ► That is bringing a lot of the fun into this.

01:34:57 ◼   ► It's opening up new possibilities.

01:34:59 ◼   ► It's making things very easy that used to be very hard.

01:35:02 ◼   ► It's saving people time and that changes the viability of certain tasks.

01:35:06 ◼   ► So like that's a whole bunch of the good kind of disruption.

01:35:10 ◼   ► It isn't just a whole bunch of people, you know, burning GPUs to maybe make some money to buy some heroin.

01:35:14 ◼   ► Like it's real value being created here and people are using it today to improve their lives today already.

01:35:22 ◼   ► So I think that's driving a lot of the fun.

01:35:24 ◼   ► And I'm pretty – if I go back to the Gartner hype cycle thing, like I think we're going to reach the plateau of productivity very quickly with AI.

01:35:32 ◼   ► Like if there is a trial of disillusionment, like if we do have like a brief correction or crash, I think it's not going to be that bad.

01:35:39 ◼   ► And people who are hoping AI will just go away, I think that's an increasingly kooky position to take.

01:35:47 ◼   ► I don't think that's ever going to happen.

01:35:49 ◼   ► That's like saying I wish we could get rid of the internet or cryptography.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Like it's just – it's never – like that's impossible.

01:35:54 ◼   ► It's not going to go away.

01:35:55 ◼   ► It's here and it's good.

01:35:57 ◼   ► And it's not good at everything, but it's good at a lot.

01:36:00 ◼   ► And so we're using it and it's fun.

01:36:03 ◼   ► And I think also like what that is doing to the rest of the industry is pushing so hard on hardware, capacity, and energy that we are getting amazing computational power.

01:36:23 ◼   ► We are getting amazing computational resources.

01:36:26 ◼   ► Now, granted, we can't buy any of them because OpenAI is buying them all.

01:36:29 ◼   ► But if there is any kind of correction or whenever things catch up to this demand, we are going to have a huge glut of computing power, of probably energy.

01:36:43 ◼   ► Let's hope they build those RAM fabs before the crash.

01:36:46 ◼   ► Right?

01:36:47 ◼   ► That also is, I think, already contributing to the feeling of fun and promise.

01:36:51 ◼   ► But then we'll contribute even more in the future once the supply and demand kind of balance each other out here.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Computers are just getting so good and so fast and they will eventually become so cheap again that that's going to help everything we do.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Even the stuff that doesn't use AI, everything just keeps getting better and faster.

01:37:10 ◼   ► So that's also a pretty good reason to be optimistic.

01:37:14 ◼   ► If you watch that ASML video, try not to think too hard about, okay, but what's the next thing after EUV?

01:37:20 ◼   ► And who's making that and how long is that going to take after you see the timeline of what it took to make EUV here?

01:37:24 ◼   ► Things get harder.

01:37:26 ◼   ► And as I think we said years and years ago when we first talked about the end of Moore's Law, Moore's Law will end.

01:37:30 ◼   ► You can't make things smaller forever.

01:37:32 ◼   ► Take a physics class.

01:37:34 ◼   ► All right, John, your turn.

01:37:38 ◼   ► All right.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Let's see here.

01:37:40 ◼   ► My first item, the thing I'm looking forward to in 2026, I hope this is extremely plausible, is the M5 Ultra.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Not looking forward to the Mac Pro because I don't think that's plausible.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you're right.

01:37:54 ◼   ► Right?

01:37:54 ◼   ► I'm not looking forward to the M5 Extreme or anything that's like a quad or whatever because that's not going to happen.

01:37:59 ◼   ► There's no rumors of that.

01:38:01 ◼   ► It's just that Apple has given up on that.

01:38:03 ◼   ► But the M5 Ultra is in fact rumored.

01:38:05 ◼   ► We just talked about it in the previous show.

01:38:06 ◼   ► It seems eminently plausible.

01:38:08 ◼   ► They did make an Ultra of the M1, M2, and M3.

01:38:13 ◼   ► They basically said they're not making one for the M4.

01:38:15 ◼   ► I would like to see one for the M5.

01:38:18 ◼   ► I'd be most excited if it's not two M5 Maxes stuck together.

01:38:21 ◼   ► But even if it is two M5 Maxes stuck together, that'd still be a pretty cool chip.

01:38:25 ◼   ► I just want to see it.

01:38:26 ◼   ► I'm excited for the M5 Ultra.

01:38:28 ◼   ► It's been a rough time for me on the M chips.

01:38:31 ◼   ► Yeah, they're great and everything, but I'm always looking for the super high-end one.

01:38:34 ◼   ► And they just have been dropping the ball on it.

01:38:36 ◼   ► Like, they've either just been not making them or making them real late.

01:38:39 ◼   ► Setting aside the Mac Pro, just like, it's been harder.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Lately, to be a fan of high-end desktop Macs.

01:38:46 ◼   ► And it's difficult because everyone else is happy.

01:38:49 ◼   ► Because all the other chips are so amazing.

01:38:50 ◼   ► It's like, well, but the high-end desktops.

01:38:53 ◼   ► It's like, ah, no one cares about that.

01:38:55 ◼   ► Like, it's all about the laptops.

01:38:56 ◼   ► It's all about the phones.

01:38:56 ◼   ► You're right, it is.

01:38:57 ◼   ► But like, here I am.

01:38:59 ◼   ► I like high-end desktops.

01:39:00 ◼   ► Apple's been dropping the ball.

01:39:01 ◼   ► M5 Ultra is rumored.

01:39:02 ◼   ► I would love it if they just at least, like, caught up to where they were.

01:39:05 ◼   ► This is like the bargaining stage that I'm in.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Can we just go back to when you did Ultras that have the same number as the non-Ultra chips?

01:39:11 ◼   ► That would be great.

01:39:12 ◼   ► M5 Ultra, looking forward to it.

01:39:14 ◼   ► And if it's not two M5 Macs stuck together, I'll be super excited just to see, like,

01:39:17 ◼   ► what is their fallback strategy of, like, what we, you know, their original strategy is

01:39:22 ◼   ► we're going to take two Macs and stick them together, and we're going to make this quad

01:39:25 ◼   ► thing, and it's going to be amazing.

01:39:26 ◼   ► They couldn't do the quad thing.

01:39:27 ◼   ► And then the two Macs stuck together, like, eh, that actually, that was like a money-saving

01:39:32 ◼   ► idea, and it kind of makes sense, and it's cool and everything, but it's like, it does

01:39:35 ◼   ► have drawbacks.

01:39:36 ◼   ► And it's not as easy as we thought it would be, because, you know, see how long it took

01:39:40 ◼   ► to get the M3 Ultra out the door.

01:39:43 ◼   ► And it doesn't give us the clean wind that we thought it would in terms of scaling.

01:39:47 ◼   ► So maybe we should just make a chip that is bigger than the Macs that is its own chip.

01:39:53 ◼   ► I would love to see that.

01:39:55 ◼   ► I've heard no rumors to that effect, but that is M5 Ultra.

01:39:58 ◼   ► In whatever form it takes, that's my number one item I'm looking forward to in 2026.

01:40:01 ◼   ► Number two, I'm surprised you two didn't say this, OLED MacBook Pros.

01:40:06 ◼   ► I don't even like laptop.

01:40:07 ◼   ► I think it's too soon, too soon, honestly.

01:40:09 ◼   ► Isn't this, I think this is the year for the OLED MacBook Pros, isn't it?

01:40:13 ◼   ► No, I thought we were getting the M5 MacBook Pros, like, sometime soon.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Yes, but also the OLED ones.

01:40:19 ◼   ► No, I think those are M6.

01:40:20 ◼   ► I think those are the year after.

01:40:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, but I'm saying, I think both of those are happening in 2026.

01:40:25 ◼   ► It could be, you know, spring and fall.

01:40:26 ◼   ► Like, they could do that.

01:40:27 ◼   ► Like, that was, anyway, if I'm wrong about the, like, you're right that the M5 ones are

01:40:31 ◼   ► not going to be OLED.

01:40:31 ◼   ► So, like, if you're thinking that March is going to come, we're going to have OLED MacBook Pros

01:40:34 ◼   ► with M5s, we're not, okay?

01:40:35 ◼   ► That's not the rumor anyway, right?

01:40:37 ◼   ► The OLED ones are supposed to come after that, and it is plausible, I think, that those OLED

01:40:43 ◼   ► ones could ship within calendar year 2026.

01:40:45 ◼   ► If they don't and they end up in spring next year, oh well, then, you know, but I think

01:40:50 ◼   ► it's plausible.

01:40:50 ◼   ► It's not unrealistic, because you know what?

01:40:52 ◼   ► OLED screens do exist.

01:40:53 ◼   ► Apple ships them in some of their products.

01:40:55 ◼   ► They're really good.

01:40:56 ◼   ► You could put them in a MacBook Pro.

01:40:57 ◼   ► That's what I'm looking for.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Now, the M5 ones will be fine, but I'm, you know, like, because the OLED M6 ones are going

01:41:05 ◼   ► to be, the rumors have it, to be redesigned.

01:41:07 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to seeing that, and I'm looking forward to them getting OLEDs, because

01:41:10 ◼   ► I feel like they deserve it.

01:41:11 ◼   ► They're the most popular Mac products.

01:41:12 ◼   ► Their current screens are actually really good.

01:41:13 ◼   ► Like, it's not like they have terrible screens.

01:41:15 ◼   ► They have better screens than any desktop Mac, I'll tell you that.

01:41:18 ◼   ► But I am actually looking forward to the OLED ones, if only to see, like, what Apple chooses,

01:41:22 ◼   ► because I alluded to in some past episodes, and we'll talk about maybe more CS stuff in the

01:41:26 ◼   ► future.

01:41:27 ◼   ► The variety of screen technology available, mostly in the TV world, but also in the monitor

01:41:33 ◼   ► world, it's really diversifying.

01:41:35 ◼   ► Like, it used to just be, there's, like, LCD and OLEDs, and then there's, like, two varieties

01:41:39 ◼   ► of OLEDs, and then there's a couple of LCDs.

01:41:40 ◼   ► Like, there's a million different varieties now.

01:41:42 ◼   ► Apple's got a couple different ones, too.

01:41:44 ◼   ► Like, their phone ones with the pen-tile subpixels sharing thing at, like, 3X, which is totally

01:41:50 ◼   ► different from the tandem OLED that is on the M4 iPad, which is totally different from the

01:41:54 ◼   ► mini-LED thing that's on the MacBook Pros, and so, like, what are they going to pick for

01:41:57 ◼   ► the MacBook Pros?

01:41:58 ◼   ► And I'm excited to see, like, a new design for the MacBook Pros, even though I think the current

01:42:01 ◼   ► design is great, and we all love it because it fixed so many mistakes of the

01:42:04 ◼   ► past, the new one could make more new mistakes in the future, but it's still exciting.

01:42:09 ◼   ► I'm still looking forward to it.

01:42:10 ◼   ► I want to see what those are like.

01:42:11 ◼   ► If they happen in spring of 2027, oh, well, they didn't make my list, but I think it's

01:42:15 ◼   ► plausible.

01:42:15 ◼   ► And on that front, and speaking of CES, I'm actually looking forward to new OLED gaming

01:42:22 ◼   ► monitors.

01:42:23 ◼   ► In particular, for my PlayStation 5, I have a 4K 27-inch monitor hooked up to it, and I've

01:42:30 ◼   ► been holding off replacing it.

01:42:31 ◼   ► It's just, like, a really old IPS LCD 4K non-HDR 27-inch LCD monitor, and it's fine.

01:42:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:42:40 ◼   ► I think it's LG.

01:42:41 ◼   ► Like, it's nothing wrong with it, but it's old.

01:42:43 ◼   ► Like, it's not HDR, and my console is capable of HDR, and it's not OLED, so the black levels

01:42:48 ◼   ► are garbage.

01:42:50 ◼   ► And, you know, there's no dynamic backlight at all.

01:42:53 ◼   ► It's just a constant backlight.

01:42:54 ◼   ► And the reason I haven't bought one is I look at them, and I'm like, they're either really

01:42:58 ◼   ► expensive, or they have some compromises or whatever.

01:43:01 ◼   ► And this year, like, at CES, their various manufacturers are showing 4K 27-inch OLEDs with

01:43:08 ◼   ► RGB stripe with no white subpixel, which is, like, basically everything that I wanted.

01:43:13 ◼   ► Like, whether it's QD OLED or not, there's, you know, no white subpixel, a normal subpixel

01:43:18 ◼   ► structure.

01:43:18 ◼   ► So three vertical stripes, R, G, and B.

01:43:20 ◼   ► Not that I'm going to use it as a desktop monitor, but I occasionally do.

01:43:23 ◼   ► I'll hook up my laptop to it or whatever, and it's nice to have that, right?

01:43:26 ◼   ► If I'm going to spend all this money, I want it to be a plausible monitor.

01:43:29 ◼   ► And in particular, I don't want 32-inch 4K, not because I'm going to use it as a Mac display,

01:43:34 ◼   ► because already 4K 27-inch is not the right retina resolution for a Mac, but it's tolerable.

01:43:39 ◼   ► But for gaming, which is what I use it for most of the time, I think, I feel like 32-inch,

01:43:44 ◼   ► because my wife has a 32-inch 4K-ish monitor in the basement for work, I feel like 32 inches

01:43:49 ◼   ► is too big for 4K, even for video games.

01:43:52 ◼   ► So I actually prefer, like, space-wise and, like, field-of-view-wise, when I'm, you know,

01:43:56 ◼   ► the distance I sit from it when I'm playing with my controller, I want 4K 27-inch OLED,

01:44:00 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of those are coming out.

01:44:02 ◼   ► I've seen a bunch of them at CES, so I can't wait for my favorite YouTubers to get them into

01:44:06 ◼   ► their little hands and test them and tell me which one is the best one and me figure out

01:44:11 ◼   ► which one I can tolerate.

01:44:11 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'll buy one this year, because, like, I can't tolerate the gaming ones, like,

01:44:16 ◼   ► project light on the ground and do all this stupid crap.

01:44:18 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'll buy one.

01:44:19 ◼   ► I've always said by the time I get my PS6, whenever the heck that comes, I will definitely

01:44:23 ◼   ► get one.

01:44:23 ◼   ► But I'm not opposed to getting one now, if I feel like it's finally arrived, the price

01:44:27 ◼   ► is right, it's HDR enough, it's OLED enough, I have some faith that it won't, the image retention

01:44:32 ◼   ► won't be that bad.

01:44:33 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's per-pixel lighting control or bust, it's the only, the only thing I would

01:44:37 ◼   ► tolerate, no mini LED, no strobing 1,000 hertz backlights.

01:44:41 ◼   ► Nvidia had some monitor that strobes the backlight to give, like, an apparent 1,000 hertz or something.

01:44:47 ◼   ► It's just, no, they don't want that.

01:44:49 ◼   ► Per-pixel lighting control, RGB sub-pixel, no white sub-pixel.

01:44:53 ◼   ► Seems like I might get that this year, so I'm excited for that.

01:44:56 ◼   ► And related to that, and maybe pressing against my plausibility things, Apple monitors?

01:45:03 ◼   ► Eh?

01:45:03 ◼   ► Eh?

01:45:04 ◼   ► Amen to that, brother.

01:45:06 ◼   ► Like, there are rumors, there are persistent rumors, of course, there have been persistent

01:45:11 ◼   ► rumors from, like, the day after the studio display was released, where they were like,

01:45:15 ◼   ► oh, there's actually a successor coming real soon.

01:45:17 ◼   ► No, there wasn't, absolutely not.

01:45:18 ◼   ► But, we have model numbers, we know they're out there, they're potentially a successor to

01:45:24 ◼   ► the XDR, potentially a successor to the studio, like, those rumors exist, those products exist,

01:45:29 ◼   ► I think it is plausible that they could come in 2026, and if they don't, it will further

01:45:34 ◼   ► cement Apple's terrible drought on monitors, what else is new?

01:45:38 ◼   ► But, I am actually looking forward to that.

01:45:40 ◼   ► Not because I'm, like, I'm not going to replace my XDR, I'm fine with it, I'm not going to replace

01:45:44 ◼   ► my wife's studio display, it's fine.

01:45:46 ◼   ► I'm just, I'll just be excited for that turnover to happen.

01:45:49 ◼   ► And I also don't think I would buy one as my gaming monitor, because it'd be way too expensive

01:45:52 ◼   ► or whatever, but, I'm excited for Apple to get back on the horse when it comes to monitors.

01:45:57 ◼   ► And I want them to do it mostly because, like, kind of like the Vision Pro, where it's like,

01:46:01 ◼   ► they didn't really do any update to it, but I am excited they did something, which shows

01:46:05 ◼   ► that, like, they're still, it's still a product in their lineup, right?

01:46:07 ◼   ► Like, they did put an M5 in it, which is more than they did for the Mac Pro.

01:46:09 ◼   ► The longer, the more years pass with them touching the monitors, it's like, are monitors

01:46:14 ◼   ► the new Wi-Fi base stations?

01:46:15 ◼   ► Are they just not going to do them anymore?

01:46:16 ◼   ► Like, I just, I get the fear.

01:46:18 ◼   ► So, Apple monitors, something I'm looking forward to.

01:46:22 ◼   ► And my final item is actually one that's already been listed.

01:46:25 ◼   ► I described it as LLM-powered Siri, but it's basically Apple intelligence.

01:46:29 ◼   ► I think it's plausible that the stuff that they announced in 2024 and could not do, they

01:46:35 ◼   ► make a second or third or fourth or whatever number they are internally run at this problem.

01:46:39 ◼   ► And I agree with Marco, like, leadership changes, the deals they've been making, the technology

01:46:44 ◼   ► they've been doing is absolutely plausible that they could actually release something that

01:46:49 ◼   ► makes Siri better.

01:46:51 ◼   ► I don't expect the world.

01:46:51 ◼   ► I don't want it to be perfect.

01:46:53 ◼   ► I, but like, as you were saying, Marco, like, the whole rest of the industry is doing stuff

01:46:59 ◼   ► that Siri, that makes Siri look even dumber than it already was.

01:47:02 ◼   ► Siri was already the laughingstock of the whole industry.

01:47:04 ◼   ► And now, like, literally everything that has anything to do with LLM is so much better at

01:47:10 ◼   ► Siri in so many ways.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Not that they're perfect or whatever, but Siri is just so dumb.

01:47:14 ◼   ► It feels like, it feels like a previous generation technology because it is a previous generation

01:47:18 ◼   ► technology, especially now that I've got like the LLM-powered, like, Google Home replacement

01:47:23 ◼   ► for Home Assistant thing or whatever.

01:47:24 ◼   ► Talking to that thing, it was already way better than talking to Siri.

01:47:28 ◼   ► But now it's like, I just say whatever I want.

01:47:31 ◼   ► Confident that my intention will get through.