ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, on the eve, right before the eve, where I go to the Phish concert, I decided to revisit

00:00:07 ◼   ► my AirPods Pro 3s, which I have really not been wearing much because even though I found

00:00:15 ◼   ► that when I, originally my comfort level with them was awful compared to the Pro 2s, a lot

00:00:21 ◼   ► of people have had similar issues.

00:00:23 ◼   ► A lot of people, they fit great.

00:00:25 ◼   ► The moral of the story is they fit differently from the 2s.

00:00:28 ◼   ► And so, you're kind of rolling the dice and they might be better on you, they might

00:00:31 ◼   ► be worse, they might be no different.

00:00:32 ◼   ► And I had found, and I mentioned on the show, based on a listener's tip, that if you actually

00:00:38 ◼   ► wear larger ear tips than you think you should, it makes them more comfortable.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Well, as is always the case, if you mention, you know, web browsers in the early 2000s and

00:00:53 ◼   ► some feature, you would inevitably hear from the two people who use Opera.

00:00:57 ◼   ► And they'd be like, you know, Opera does this really well, or Opera's had this feature

00:01:02 ◼   ► forever.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:03 ◼   ► What is the opera of noise-canceling earbuds?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, right?

00:01:06 ◼   ► The opera of noise-canceling earbuds, and in particular, how they fit, is people who use the Comply

00:01:13 ◼   ► Foam tips.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I think they are way more popular than Opera.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Probably.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But, whenever you mention however AirPods fit you, you will always hear from two or three

00:01:26 ◼   ► people saying, I only use the Comply tips.

00:01:29 ◼   ► They're the best.

00:01:30 ◼   ► You should just use those.

00:01:31 ◼   ► They fix all of my problems.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Well, this is the first time I've ever tried them.

00:01:35 ◼   ► They're the best.

00:01:37 ◼   ► They fixed all my problems.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Also, are we just like a history eraser buttoning the thing where you bought the AirPods 3, then

00:01:48 ◼   ► returned them, then bought them again?

00:01:49 ◼   ► Are we just pretending that didn't happen now?

00:01:50 ◼   ► Yes, we are.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Because Pepperidge Farm remembers.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Well done.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Reference acknowledged.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, so I got the Comply tips.

00:01:58 ◼   ► They came out, I think, a few weeks ago.

00:02:01 ◼   ► They came out fairly recently.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I've been wearing them all day, and they are, I think, great.

00:02:09 ◼   ► So, compared to just wearing a larger set of tips from Apple, they seem to be a little bit

00:02:16 ◼   ► softer.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Compliant, even.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Yes.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And they feel a little more secure.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Like, the main downside of upsizing the tips from Apple is that it makes them sit less

00:02:27 ◼   ► securely in my ears.

00:02:28 ◼   ► It does make them more comfortable, but it makes them sit less securely.

00:02:31 ◼   ► The Comply tips seem to have fixed that problem as well.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I'll report back if this changes over time.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I should also point out that they have a couple of different variants.

00:02:43 ◼   ► The one I have is the True Grip Max with smart skin technology, which sounds like a condom

00:02:50 ◼   ► but isn't.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It's this really nice, you know, foam finish.

00:02:55 ◼   ► It's a few bucks more than their, I guess, base model.

00:02:57 ◼   ► But it's good.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I enjoy it.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Give it a try.

00:03:02 ◼   ► If you have AirPods Pro 3s and they were uncomfortable for you and you upsized the tips or found some

00:03:07 ◼   ► other trick that is not quite 100% working for you, give the Comply tips with the True

00:03:14 ◼   ► Grip Max smart skin a try.

00:03:17 ◼   ► That does sound very naughty, but I'm glad that it's worked out for you.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So when we saw each other in October, if memory serves, you were rocking the AirPods Pro 2 at

00:03:27 ◼   ► that point.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So is your intention for future concert viewings to wear the 3 then, I assume?

00:03:34 ◼   ► So what I'm going to do is, so, you know, I'm going to the Phish concert for New Year's Eve tomorrow.

00:03:37 ◼   ► First time ever seeing a New Year's show live.

00:03:39 ◼   ► So that'll be really fun, I hope.

00:03:41 ◼   ► But what I'm going to do, I'm not so confident that I would bring only the AirPods Pro 3s.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So I'm just going to bring both.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I'm going to have one in each pocket and just, you know, I'm going to start with the 3s, see how far I get.

00:03:55 ◼   ► All right, let's do some follow-up and let's talk about contacts.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And I'm not talking about lenses.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I'm talking about people that you know in your phone.

00:04:01 ◼   ► So Dayton Lowell writes,

00:04:02 ◼   ► Regarding Marco's request for an archive contacts option,

00:04:05 ◼   ► although that feature doesn't exist, you can go the other way.

00:04:07 ◼   ► The contacts app supports lists.

00:04:09 ◼   ► I have a common contacts list that I always keep selected.

00:04:12 ◼   ► It remembers across app launches.

00:04:14 ◼   ► The only downside is that it's hard to build this list.

00:04:17 ◼   ► There's no mass select option within the full list.

00:04:19 ◼   ► You have to go into each contact individually and scroll to the bottom and select add to list.

00:04:23 ◼   ► That sounds freaking awful to do.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not saying the end state isn't worth it, but it sounds awful to do it.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I wonder, and I'm not going to try while we're live,

00:04:31 ◼   ► but I wonder if the Mac contacts app would allow for this and do a little better.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I see these questions and I'm immediately suspicious.

00:04:38 ◼   ► I'm like, that can't possibly be true of the Mac app.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Maybe on a Cordy phone app, but, you know, these days I wouldn't put anything past Mac apps

00:04:46 ◼   ► that, you know, have no support for multi-selection or whatever.

00:04:48 ◼   ► So I don't mean to doubt Dayton, but yeah, I would try the Mac app to see if it will let

00:04:53 ◼   ► you multi-select.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And, you know, the iOS app should let you multi-select and change things too, but I have an easier

00:04:58 ◼   ► time believing that that one won't.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But yeah, that's a possible option if you can keep things straight and if it really does

00:05:04 ◼   ► remember your selected list across all apps in the contact picker.

00:05:09 ◼   ► See, the downside of those, so we've had a few people write in with the solution and with

00:05:15 ◼   ► the solution to basically like make a list that is not everyone and have that list just

00:05:19 ◼   ► stay selected as the active list like in the navigation of the contacts app.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And that will do what we want for archived contacts when looking at that list, but it won't affect

00:05:30 ◼   ► any other part of the system.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So you'll still have contacts that you don't really want to see all the time.

00:05:36 ◼   ► You'll still, you'll still have them show up in search.

00:05:39 ◼   ► You'll still have Siri try to call them sometimes.

00:05:41 ◼   ► You'll still have like auto complete show, show them up in message composition windows and stuff

00:05:46 ◼   ► like that.

00:05:46 ◼   ► So like it, it achieves one part of the reduction in immediate visibility that I'm seeking with

00:05:54 ◼   ► an archive contact, but it does not achieve most of them.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And it still makes it way too easy to accidentally, you know, place a phone call to, you know, a

00:06:04 ◼   ► coworker from 10 years ago or an ex partner or somebody who has died.

00:06:10 ◼   ► And it's just like all these, these situations where again, like you don't really want to

00:06:13 ◼   ► necessarily delete the contact forever and never be able to contact them and, and have

00:06:17 ◼   ► all their past communication just turned to a phone number.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Like you don't necessarily want to do that, but you don't want it to be one tap away or one

00:06:25 ◼   ► misheard Siri command away from all of a sudden calling or messaging this person.

00:06:28 ◼   ► So there, I still think the need exists for archived contacts in some form.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And this is, this is a very small step towards that.

00:06:35 ◼   ► You can kind of hack it, but it doesn't go far enough for what I actually want.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Full-time follow-up, the Mac contacts app doesn't need that you'd make multiple

00:06:42 ◼   ► selections, then drag them into a list.

00:06:43 ◼   ► There you go.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Computer's always better.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Am I right?

00:06:46 ◼   ► Continuing with contacts related things, Paul writes, with regard to harmonizing contacts

00:06:52 ◼   ► between family members, there's also a deeper data privacy question that any such system would

00:06:56 ◼   ► have to manage.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Simple example is a family of four, a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter.

00:06:59 ◼   ► They share their contacts with each other.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Are they sharing their MyCard profile and whose nickname has primacy?

00:07:05 ◼   ► The mother usually isn't mom to the father, but the kids might have different nicknames for

00:07:08 ◼   ► nicknames for each other.

00:07:09 ◼   ► So is one kid kid one or snot nose?

00:07:12 ◼   ► One solution might be to allow each person to have their own versions of fields.

00:07:15 ◼   ► I do have some thoughts about contacts data management for single users.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Sometimes after, sometime after I got an iPhone, I started to archive expired contact info.

00:07:23 ◼   ► If someone including me moved, got a new email or a new phone number, I'd copy their old info

00:07:27 ◼   ► into the notes field and then update the appropriate field.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Were you and your partner or family member to apply this archival technique, you can immediately

00:07:35 ◼   ► tell who is up to date because the notes field will have the older address, email, or phone.

00:07:39 ◼   ► If no one else has the version you have, but they have a version that's in your notes, then

00:07:43 ◼   ► you have the most up to date version.

00:07:44 ◼   ► As a quick aside about this, I should have prefaced this and I forgot.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I really enjoy this feedback because this is a great example of, oh, surely that's easy,

00:07:52 ◼   ► isn't it?

00:07:53 ◼   ► And so much in computer programming is, well, you would think so, but, and this is a great

00:07:59 ◼   ► example.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And even something as simple as, what's my card?

00:08:03 ◼   ► Granted, that one's fairly simple to figure out.

00:08:06 ◼   ► But I think an even better example, perhaps, is the nicknames thing.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Like, do you carry the nickname across cards?

00:08:12 ◼   ► Maybe you do for some, maybe you don't for others.

00:08:14 ◼   ► How does the user indicate that?

00:08:16 ◼   ► These are solvable problems for sure, but, and I'm getting off on a tangent.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Hi, we're the Accidental Tech Podcast.

00:08:22 ◼   ► But anyways, I thought this was a fascinating case study and it's never as easy as you think

00:08:29 ◼   ► it is.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I'm going to make you put a quarter in a jar every time you put the in front of the name

00:08:32 ◼   ► of this podcast.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Also, the idea that, you know, other people in your life, whether it's your family or any,

00:08:41 ◼   ► you know, co-workers, whatever it is, the idea that you would trust them to manage and pollute

00:08:47 ◼   ► your contact database.

00:08:48 ◼   ► You're speaking my language.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I'm in good company here, both the two of you and our listeners.

00:08:55 ◼   ► We, I suspect, have better contact semantic discipline than many people out there.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Like, when you see someone else's phone and you see, like, you know, the names they've

00:09:10 ◼   ► given contacts.

00:09:11 ◼   ► First of all, no one has a last name or their last name is, like, Plummer.

00:09:14 ◼   ► You know, it's like, oh, it's Jim Plummer's calling.

00:09:17 ◼   ► They don't know how to use the company field at all, ever.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Like, it's ridiculous.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Like, no one has, it's like, it's like when we would, like, be really careful tagging our

00:09:26 ◼   ► MP3s back in the day, like, making sure we have, like, the track number, you know, all

00:09:30 ◼   ► these, like, have everything correct.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Like, no one exercises that discipline with contacts.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And, and if they, even if they know how to use these things, a lot of times they'll use

00:09:44 ◼   ► it as a form of, you know, poking fun at their siblings, you know, their, their, their sister

00:09:48 ◼   ► would be like, you know, butt face or whatever.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Like, it's.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I still would like a, a shared pool is I would trust my wife and I to, to share a pool of like

00:09:55 ◼   ► the people we know, like extended family, because it's just so frustrating for us to have double

00:09:58 ◼   ► the ones.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And Paul's suggestion of like essentially implementing your own revision control system by every time

00:10:05 ◼   ► a field changes, copying the field down to the notes field with like, you know, this used to be

00:10:09 ◼   ► the last name colon.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I mean, it just, I mean, that will work, but like, geez, like that's what we have computers for.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And to Casey's point, uh, implementing this is not hard on the backend, but making a UI for it that

00:10:20 ◼   ► is understandable to people, boy, that's the hard problem.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Like, that's very often the case, like, because contacts, as I've harped on many times before,

00:10:27 ◼   ► the volume of data is just ridiculously low by modern computer standards.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Like no matter how many contacts you have, it's just a bunch of text fields, maybe one photo for

00:10:37 ◼   ► each one.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Like it is nothing compared to like your photo library, even in these days, your messages library

00:10:41 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It's a small amount of data.

00:10:43 ◼   ► We can sync it and have it, you know, like we have the technology to do all that, but how do you

00:10:48 ◼   ► present the UI that lets you say, okay, well, uh, you know, mom's contact card is shared with the

00:10:53 ◼   ► whole family, but the kids call her mom, but dad doesn't call her mom.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So how do you like, how do you provide per field overriding in the UI on a phone in a

00:11:04 ◼   ► way that makes sense to people?

00:11:05 ◼   ► And to Marco's point, people can't even just use the straight up, like this is a bunch of

00:11:10 ◼   ► fields in your own context that aren't shared with anybody.

00:11:12 ◼   ► They don't even populate those.

00:11:13 ◼   ► The worst one is obviously two factor, which I think a lot of tech nerds have like a single

00:11:17 ◼   ► contact called like two factor authentication.

00:11:19 ◼   ► They add them all to that.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Versus just a million random phone numbers that are constantly sending you two factor

00:11:25 ◼   ► codes.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Hopefully this will go away someday if we all move to pass keys or whatever.

00:11:28 ◼   ► But like in the meantime, just scroll through somebody's messages list and look at how many

00:11:33 ◼   ► like completely unlisted, uh, two factor numbers are just in there junking up the list.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Whereas you combine them all into a single contact that becomes a one message thread.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Uh, again, if messages is able to merge things, I have never tried this.

00:11:45 ◼   ► This is a really good idea.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Oh, you got to do that.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I, I'm wondering, eventually I'm going to hit the limit iconics is to be like, sorry,

00:11:51 ◼   ► you can't add any more phone numbers to the contact, but so far I haven't hit it.

00:11:54 ◼   ► So I have a, I have a contact called two factor authentication or two factor verification.

00:11:58 ◼   ► I forget.

00:11:58 ◼   ► It's got like a lock icon and it's got a whole jillion telephone numbers associated with

00:12:02 ◼   ► it.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And anytime I get a two factor code, it goes into a single message thread in messages under

00:12:06 ◼   ► that contact.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And if I get one, that's a bare phone number add to existing contact.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Um, you'd be surprised how often they reuse numbers.

00:12:12 ◼   ► You might think, oh, it's a different number every time.

00:12:14 ◼   ► It's not.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I've had numbers in there for like the two factor authentication for some random thing

00:12:19 ◼   ► that's been there for years.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And they always, it always comes from the same apparent number.

00:12:22 ◼   ► That is really good.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I do feel like we talked about this before and then I forget about it by the time we're done

00:12:26 ◼   ► recording.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I tried to do it on my kids' contacts, but of course they rebelled and said, please don't

00:12:30 ◼   ► do that to my thing.

00:12:31 ◼   ► So, all right.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Uh, because you know, I'm their dad.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Pablo Rodrigo writes, you can display contacts from multiple accounts, iCloud, Gmail, IMAP, et cetera,

00:12:39 ◼   ► in the contacts app.

00:12:40 ◼   ► This creates multiple contacts for the, from the same person, but then you can link them

00:12:44 ◼   ► to appear as one.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And when you change some info in one of them, it updates every single link to count.

00:12:49 ◼   ► This solves John's iCloud, Gmail situation.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Also creating a linked intermediary shared account for you and your partner to sync selected contacts

00:12:57 ◼   ► can act as a way of keeping contact info in sync between two people's address books.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Finally, you can create an archived Gmail account exclusively for storing contacts.

00:13:05 ◼   ► you no longer want in your main iCloud contacts.

00:13:07 ◼   ► They will keep syncing to your devices, but if you select just your iCloud account in the

00:13:10 ◼   ► usually hidden left pane, they will remain out of sight and out of mind.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Except with Siri and autocomplete.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:15 ◼   ► One, uh, the, uh, uh, using like the Gmail, uh, Google contacts along with, uh, iCloud contacts

00:13:22 ◼   ► and stuff.

00:13:22 ◼   ► The reason I don't do that, uh, I think I did it way back in the day and decided to undo it,

00:13:27 ◼   ► uh, is because Google and in the Gmail app, uh, I believe it gets configured by default and

00:13:34 ◼   ► and I don't know if this is setting to change this will, um, add stuff to your contacts for

00:13:38 ◼   ► you based on whoever emails you.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And I like that feature.

00:13:42 ◼   ► I want that feature, but it also means my G, my Google contacts are a, just a giant cesspool

00:13:49 ◼   ► of like everyone who's ever emailed me.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:50 ◼   ► And again, I, I like that to be there because I like to have a list of essentially everyone

00:13:55 ◼   ► who ever emailed me.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So I can look up like, you know, like I don't want to disable that, but I would never allow

00:14:00 ◼   ► that to mix it with my iCloud stuff for that very reason, because it's just filled with

00:14:05 ◼   ► junk.

00:14:05 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm currently happy with the separation that I have there.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Again, as I said, when we talked about this last episode, it doesn't actually bother me.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Um, as for creating the intermediary, intermediary shared account, I think Todd, our friend, Todd

00:14:16 ◼   ► Vaziri did this at one point.

00:14:17 ◼   ► If I remember correctly, like basically get a, like you have an Apple ID, your spouse has

00:14:21 ◼   ► an Apple ID.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Then you get a third Apple ID.

00:14:24 ◼   ► That's neither one of you.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And you put the shared contacts in that one.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Um, and similarly, like making like a Google account just for your archive contacts.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Like these are all hacks of various, uh, you know, ways around like it's, it's kind of like

00:14:38 ◼   ► the, uh, the, um, photos shared library thing.

00:14:41 ◼   ► There were ways to try to kind of try to hack around that as well.

00:14:44 ◼   ► But, uh, I'm perfectly happy having waited a decade for them to just implement it because

00:14:48 ◼   ► it's so much better when they just implemented themselves and it does more or less what I

00:14:52 ◼   ► want.

00:14:52 ◼   ► So hopefully someday they'll get to that with contacts.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I can't believe they did it for photos before contacts, but I guess maybe it's a bigger team

00:14:58 ◼   ► on photos.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Face ID and touch ID.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Harrison Krebs writes old people's touch ID issues are real.

00:15:04 ◼   ► My grandparents went through it with their iPhone SE third generation a week ago.

00:15:08 ◼   ► I had to help them go in and remove their fingerprints and re-add them because I stopped

00:15:11 ◼   ► working.

00:15:12 ◼   ► No idea if they could make it better.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Kurt Schwind writes, I can confirm that old people's fingerprints stop working.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I spent 40 minutes with my 80 year old mother trying to get her fingerprint login working

00:15:20 ◼   ► with her new phone.

00:15:21 ◼   ► She got a new one because the old one stopped working with her fingerprints.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Don't.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Uh, it didn't work on the new one either.

00:15:26 ◼   ► I tested her out on my iPad and it was the same thing.

00:15:28 ◼   ► You hit a certain age and these readers just don't work anymore.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Finally, Rob Sarah writes, I have to work.

00:15:34 ◼   ► I've had to work on stuff like face ID and touch ID before these things are likely using your

00:15:40 ◼   ► habits and purchase history to decide how strict to be face ID will accept basically anything

00:15:43 ◼   ► unshaven, sloppy, not myself.

00:15:45 ◼   ► If I've been to the place many times before, it's the same as what Stripe does for fraud

00:15:51 ◼   ► detection.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It makes sense if you treat the phone login data as part of a fraud detection ML strategy,

00:15:55 ◼   ► like what Stripe does online.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Surely not all face ID logins can have the same certainty score.

00:15:59 ◼   ► So it seems like they are looking for other signals as well, but they'll never talk about

00:16:02 ◼   ► how that works in public.

00:16:04 ◼   ► So it'll be interesting to hear whether other listeners report it.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I asked Rob about this.

00:16:08 ◼   ► It's like, do you, you're just speculating based on your past experience?

00:16:11 ◼   ► He said, yeah, it doesn't know for a fact that Apple does this, but that would be an interesting

00:16:14 ◼   ► strategy to essentially be looser on face ID.

00:16:16 ◼   ► If you're face ID in like a location or at a time or like, you know, there are lots of,

00:16:22 ◼   ► lots of other input into the system besides just your face scan.

00:16:25 ◼   ► My inclination is to think that Apple doesn't, uh, get any more lenient with face ID and

00:16:32 ◼   ► touch ID based on other factors, but I don't know for a fact either.

00:16:35 ◼   ► So anyone at Apple has any inside info to at least let us know whether, uh, whether they

00:16:40 ◼   ► do change the strictness of biometric authentication based on other factors.

00:16:44 ◼   ► You don't have to tell us the secret sauce or whatever, but I would love to know if that's

00:16:46 ◼   ► true.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Even stuff like, you know, Apple watch proximity, like, you know, that, that works in the

00:16:50 ◼   ► direction.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:16:51 ◼   ► You know, does it also work that way?

00:16:52 ◼   ► And, you know, probably the answer is like they tried it once and there's some reason

00:16:55 ◼   ► why, like, you know, anything involving the iPhone security model, it's super complicated.

00:17:02 ◼   ► There are super sophisticated attacks all the time, um, that, that people try and that

00:17:07 ◼   ► Apple has to protect against.

00:17:08 ◼   ► And so, you know, anything that we're thinking of like, Oh, maybe, what, maybe they just can,

00:17:13 ◼   ► can they just like reduce the security on this one case?

00:17:15 ◼   ► Like the answer probably is they can't because of, you know, vulnerability X, like, you know,

00:17:21 ◼   ► Oh, somebody could then do this, this, and this, and that would, you know, weaken your

00:17:25 ◼   ► security.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:25 ◼   ► GPS spoofing or whatever.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Like there's all like the iPhone threat landscape is vast.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And so Apple, you know, takes it extremely seriously.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And, and I think has a very good track record overall, um, you know, of keeping the iPhone

00:17:40 ◼   ► secure, but like a lot of this stuff is like, okay, the reason why it, you know, times out

00:17:44 ◼   ► after a certain amount of X is because if you didn't, then you could have this, you know,

00:17:48 ◼   ► police thing could break in.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Like there's, there's all these different, you know, attack vectors that Apple has to protect

00:17:54 ◼   ► against with the iPhone.

00:17:54 ◼   ► And, you know, the, the risk of getting it wrong for them is so high that they play it

00:18:01 ◼   ► pretty conservatively.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And that's probably the, that's probably the right move.

00:18:04 ◼   ► That being said, I still would love a phone that offered me touch ID and face ID and whichever

00:18:10 ◼   ► one succeeds first, I could configure it to let me in that way.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And even if I accept reduced security, that's probably still better than making it so difficult

00:18:20 ◼   ► that everybody makes the passcodes one, two, one, two.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Well, I hope you get that within the next 30 years, because this was just two of the many

00:18:26 ◼   ► pieces of pieces of feedback we got to saying, uh, old people not being able to use touch

00:18:30 ◼   ► ID is a hundred percent a real thing.

00:18:32 ◼   ► So it's not just my parents.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Many, many people were going to confirm this clock sticking on all of us and all of our

00:18:37 ◼   ► fingers and our saggy skin.

00:18:38 ◼   ► See in 30 years, I'll just, I'll move to a secluded Island where I can set my passcode

00:18:44 ◼   ► to one, two, one, two, and it won't be that big of a problem because nobody will ever see

00:18:47 ◼   ► me enter it.

00:18:48 ◼   ► You just disable your passcode if you're on a secluded Island.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:51 ◼   ► But with no passcode, a bunch of stuff doesn't work.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:18:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:18:54 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Guy Rambeau writes with regard to John's liquid glass bug in Mac OS 26.2.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Guy writes, I have a workaround for the liquid glass issue.

00:19:03 ◼   ► You mentioned an ATP, but involves overriding or swizzling a private method on NS window

00:19:07 ◼   ► with the melting emoji.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Maybe there's a way to do it without this hack.

00:19:10 ◼   ► The important thing to keep in mind is that this can be influenced by the configuration of

00:19:14 ◼   ► your window or panel, not just the, your Swift UI views or the system.

00:19:18 ◼   ► So, uh, John has provided for the show notes, a link to the PR that Guy opened.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Guy continues.

00:19:25 ◼   ► It looks to me like Apple changed the way Swift UI materials behave.

00:19:28 ◼   ► So they no longer render in an active state unless the app is active and the window is rendering

00:19:32 ◼   ► with an active appearance.

00:19:33 ◼   ► This is fine for most regular app windows, but it doesn't work for helper apps like switch

00:19:37 ◼   ► glass.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I tried Swift UI's material active appearance, appearance modifier with the active option,

00:19:42 ◼   ► but that didn't work.

00:19:43 ◼   ► And as I noted last time, it also doesn't work for things like the dialogue box that comes

00:19:47 ◼   ► up and says, are you sure you want to restart?

00:19:48 ◼   ► Because that has exactly the same properties of, you know, not being the active window because

00:19:52 ◼   ► it doesn't belong to any specific app, but it is translucent and you can't see things

00:19:56 ◼   ► behind it.

00:19:57 ◼   ► So anyway, this is just a bug.

00:19:58 ◼   ► They need to fix it.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Hopefully, uh, no movement on my feedback.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Um, uh, the pull request is to my sample project.

00:20:03 ◼   ► So I, I filed feedback and made a sample project and I, uh, asked, uh, Guy to provide a pull

00:20:08 ◼   ► request against that sample project that fixes it.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Uh, uh, and he did it.

00:20:12 ◼   ► That's great.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I did actually adapt the code that he provided to provide a more targeted fix for my actual

00:20:18 ◼   ► app.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And so now there is an updated version of switch glass that works around the bug in 26.2.

00:20:22 ◼   ► The glass is glassing again.

00:20:24 ◼   ► All right.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And then speaking of Guy, uh, he also provided some feedback with regard to the podcast app

00:20:30 ◼   ► and how it's like randomly loading stuff.

00:20:32 ◼   ► So Guy writes, there's definitely something weird with how Apple podcast does things in

00:20:36 ◼   ► the background and everybody three, which is currently in beta.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I use the private media remote API to be able to show now playing information in the app's

00:20:44 ◼   ► widgets.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I've had quite a few occurrences of the podcast app randomly popping up in the now playing

00:20:49 ◼   ► information coming from that API on my Mac, even though I pretty much never use Apple

00:20:53 ◼   ► podcast and had not used it recently before the incident.

00:20:56 ◼   ► It happens more often when I have had some other app like music playing than quit the

00:21:01 ◼   ► app.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Instead of going back to an empty state, the media remote API just decides that Apple

00:21:05 ◼   ► podcast is the new now playing app.

00:21:07 ◼   ► Cool.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:08 ◼   ► The whole audio now playing management stack is it's full of a bunch of exceptions to

00:21:18 ◼   ► things like the, you know, the, the system has all these different ways to manage different

00:21:23 ◼   ► apps and how they're visible and how they're running and, and what they have access to.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And, and you know, how, how do you show updates to what is playing?

00:21:31 ◼   ► And like, well, you have to update something in control center, like once a second and nothing

00:21:34 ◼   ► else can really do that.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And so they, you know, they, they have special functionality for audio apps that the now playing

00:21:39 ◼   ► app.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And so like there's all these different APIs around this and all this different system

00:21:43 ◼   ► functionality around it.

00:21:44 ◼   ► that is basically little exceptions to the way things usually work for everything else

00:21:48 ◼   ► to achieve, you know, common audio functionality that people want.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And so it wouldn't surprise me if there are little areas like this where there are some bug

00:22:02 ◼   ► possible because Apple made an exception for one of their apps at some point to, to achieve

00:22:06 ◼   ► this functionality.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Now, to Apple's credit, the vast majority of audio functionality that hooks into all this

00:22:14 ◼   ► stuff is actually public APIs.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Like that's why overcast and other audio apps can hook into that.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Like when, when overcast plays audio, it gets the same treatment and control center, uh, as the

00:22:26 ◼   ► Apple music app, um, and Apple podcasts and everything else.

00:22:29 ◼   ► There's not that many areas of those APIs that are still private to Apple.

00:22:35 ◼   ► There are some, but there's not many, but also all of those areas of code are really

00:22:43 ◼   ► old.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Yep.

00:22:45 ◼   ► They're all like super old, like, you know, objective C based, you know, dictionary based

00:22:50 ◼   ► APIs, you know, a lot of like, you know, casting things to NS number and stuff like that.

00:22:54 ◼   ► You know, like there are a lot of, a lot of that kind of stuff going on with those APIs.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Um, a lot of old C and C plus plus code that you might occasionally see in call stacks or

00:23:03 ◼   ► have to call into.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Um, it's a very old API and it, a lot of it dates back to like when springboard, the iOS,

00:23:12 ◼   ► like, you know, kind of window system base, um, whatever.

00:23:17 ◼   ► When springboard was like one giant monolith and like there, it's super complicated.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Like a lot of it dates back to those old days.

00:23:24 ◼   ► And so this is very old code that's full of special cases and exceptions and behaviors that

00:23:29 ◼   ► don't work the same way.

00:23:30 ◼   ► When you combine this with so many new APIs they've added over time, things like NS user

00:23:37 ◼   ► activity, um, or, you know, widget updates even, or things like universal links and how

00:23:42 ◼   ► those are handled.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I'm sure there's all sorts of potential for like, in some really rare case, this number

00:23:50 ◼   ► value can be stuck in this dictionary and can be interpreted by this demon in the system to

00:23:54 ◼   ► actually mean this.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure there's stuff like that.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Um, working in the audio app space, there's a lot of problems that audio apps don't have

00:24:05 ◼   ► to deal with.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Like for instance, most background execution, when, when your app is running, playing audio in

00:24:11 ◼   ► the background, you can just run in the background infinitely.

00:24:14 ◼   ► You can do whatever you want in the background there.

00:24:16 ◼   ► You don't have a lot of restrictions there.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So it's great.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Um, and you can do stuff like integrate with the system in these weird ways, like to show

00:24:22 ◼   ► up in control center and stuff.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Like some of that stuff is actually really nice as an audio app author.

00:24:26 ◼   ► The downside of being an audio app author is that the complexity of all those APIs and behaviors

00:24:33 ◼   ► of the system, all of that, all the problems created by that complexity become your problem,

00:24:39 ◼   ► even though they're not your fault.

00:24:41 ◼   ► And even though you often have no control over them, all that, and also for some, for

00:24:46 ◼   ► whatever reason, Apple changes the behaviors of those audio subsystems a lot.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Like almost every point update to the OS, there's some change to like, oh, now, you know, airplay

00:25:01 ◼   ► switching is slightly tweaked and now it breaks in this weird circumstance.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Or, you know, there's some weird bug in the control center audio player.

00:25:07 ◼   ► If you set this value to this, like the Apple tweaks that a lot.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Um, and it's like kind of at random with different OS versions and not like all just at once in

00:25:18 ◼   ► the summer version.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Um, and so you kind of are along for this wild ride that gives you some insight into the massive

00:25:27 ◼   ► complexity of how iOS integrates with audio apps.

00:25:32 ◼   ► So there's a lot there.

00:25:34 ◼   ► There's, there's a lot of weird complexity there.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And, uh, somehow the Apple podcast app is finding itself opening in weird ways at weird things

00:25:43 ◼   ► to weird time at weird times.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Like given that it operates in that environment, I'm not surprised at all.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I find that the picking what to play next, like, let's say you plug in your, or not plug

00:25:56 ◼   ► in, but do you put in your AirPods and you hit play?

00:25:59 ◼   ► And sometimes it'll be like, yes, I will go back to the thing that I, that you were just

00:26:03 ◼   ► doing and it's like magic and it works great.

00:26:05 ◼   ► But oftentimes it either straight up refuses or plays something that you haven't interacted

00:26:10 ◼   ► with in like a day.

00:26:11 ◼   ► I'm being hyperbolic, but you know what I'm saying?

00:26:13 ◼   ► Like it's just very, it's either perfect or the kookiest selection you can come up with.

00:26:20 ◼   ► It's very, very unusual.

00:26:21 ◼   ► That, that exact problem of like, I played overcast an hour ago.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Then I went and did other stuff.

00:26:27 ◼   ► Now I just put my head, I just put my AirPods back in and I clicked the stem to play.

00:26:31 ◼   ► What should play?

00:26:32 ◼   ► Overcast should play if it was your last played audio app.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Um, but okay.

00:26:37 ◼   ► That one thing, anybody at Apple, I, I would love any help with this.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Before the big overcast rewrite last summer, two, two summers ago now, before that big

00:26:49 ◼   ► rewrite overcast would be picked to play next in that context way more often than it is now.

00:26:57 ◼   ► I have combed over the code before and after the rewrite, trying to figure out what that could

00:27:06 ◼   ► be possibly have been relevant to that that has changed.

00:27:09 ◼   ► I've looked at the, you know, I in upcoming media API.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I've looked at the, the various like intent donation mechanisms.

00:27:17 ◼   ► I cannot figure out why overcast.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Now post rewrite gets way less invocation that way.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Like when you click, when you plug in your AirPods and you click play overcast is very unlikely

00:27:33 ◼   ► to be there after a few minutes.

00:27:36 ◼   ► The memory usage of the app is way lower than it used to be.

00:27:38 ◼   ► So I don't think it's being jettisoned from memory.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Again, I've gone over all the intent code.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I've gone over all of the media API code.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I cannot figure this out.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I cannot figure out what is different.

00:27:51 ◼   ► I, and believe me, I'm getting reviewed for it.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Like all of this is, I don't want to, I don't want to complain too much, but I will say this

00:28:02 ◼   ► is an area where it's hard being an audio app developer because again, you get blamed for

00:28:05 ◼   ► all these problems.

00:28:05 ◼   ► And a lot of these problems are just really difficult to work around or solve.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And you're kind of at the whims of the system.

00:28:13 ◼   ► I have no idea what to do to improve that.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I just guess I current, I try things and I guess, and sometimes it works.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And then the next iOS point update, it changes and it breaks again.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And I have no idea why my code didn't change in that area.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Like I, it just, oh, it's, it's tough.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I wish I could solve that one problem.

00:28:34 ◼   ► That is my number one white whale, like wishlist item since the rewrite of like, I wish I could

00:28:41 ◼   ► achieve this with Overcast.

00:28:42 ◼   ► I wish I could get it back to when you plug in your headphones, it is the one recommended

00:28:47 ◼   ► to you.

00:28:48 ◼   ► And it is the one that you, if you click play, it plays.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I have no idea how to do that.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I've tried so many things.

00:28:52 ◼   ► If anybody knows, please let me know.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Oh, I'm sorry.

00:28:55 ◼   ► That is no fun.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Maybe I should use a DTS incident for the first time ever.

00:28:59 ◼   ► You know, we should talk about this at length another time, but I very, very much think you

00:29:04 ◼   ► should.

00:29:04 ◼   ► I don't think anything will come of it, but if you, like me, just let those go to waste

00:29:09 ◼   ► every year, you should absolutely do that.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Sorry for those that aren't familiar.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Uh, what is it?

00:29:13 ◼   ► Uh, something technical support, developer technical support.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Um, and basically, uh, at least as we sit here now, you get two of these a year where you

00:29:20 ◼   ► can basically sort of kind of cut to the front of the line and say, no, really, I really

00:29:25 ◼   ► need a human being to look at this, uh, this radar, this feedback.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And I've done this once or twice.

00:29:30 ◼   ► And one time, if I remember right, it worked really well.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure we talked about it on the show.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And one time it was like, well, that was a complete waste.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Um, generally speaking, anyone I've ever spoken to that has done this has positive

00:29:41 ◼   ► things to say for the most part.

00:29:43 ◼   ► So yeah, I think if nothing else, it'd make for great hashtag content if you give it a

00:29:47 ◼   ► shot.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Um, but no, you should, you should ask about it.

00:29:50 ◼   ► And I suspect they'll say tough noobs.

00:29:51 ◼   ► This is the way it is.

00:29:52 ◼   ► You know, there's nothing you can do about it, but can't hurt.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Because I've heard, I've heard good things about DTS.

00:29:57 ◼   ► So the, yeah, the idea is like you can actually, it's basically you're filing a tech support

00:30:01 ◼   ► ticket with Apple saying, I can't figure out why my code or your code is doing this.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Can you please look at this?

00:30:08 ◼   ► And a human will look at it.

00:30:10 ◼   ► And yeah, as he said, you get two per year in the developer program.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I think you can buy more, but it's like, because it's so limited and two per year sounds so incredibly

00:30:21 ◼   ► scarce to me.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I've never thought that any problem was worth using it on in part because look, I'm not good

00:30:27 ◼   ► at asking for help, I'll be honest.

00:30:29 ◼   ► But also the fact that it's so limited, it's like when you get like the really special sword

00:30:35 ◼   ► in the video game, I never use it because I'm like, I'm going to lose it.

00:30:40 ◼   ► If I use the really special sword and I go out there and do something stupid and die and lose

00:30:45 ◼   ► it, I'm going to be so upset that I'd rather just keep it in my storage crate back at my

00:30:49 ◼   ► base and I'll, I'll bring it out sometime, but then I never actually do.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Cause I'm always afraid of losing it.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Stealth arc Raiders content from Marco.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah, there you go.

00:30:58 ◼   ► So, uh, I was thinking more like Minecraft, but yeah, it's fine.

00:31:01 ◼   ► You can, it's the same thing.

00:31:03 ◼   ► I have so many good guns sitting in my vault.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I don't want to take them out because I know I'll die with them.

00:31:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Like that, like I never, when something is as limited as you get two of these per year, I'm

00:31:12 ◼   ► always like, well, this problem that I'm facing, what if, what if I use my DTS tickets and then

00:31:19 ◼   ► at later I need some really important help on something really urgent.

00:31:24 ◼   ► like it's always, it's that kind of psychology of, you know, loss aversion and limited capacity

00:31:28 ◼   ► of things.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Like, you know what?

00:31:29 ◼   ► I don't, I don't want to use a special sword.

00:31:31 ◼   ► I'm, I'm just going to build my base right on top of the end portal and just build a bunch

00:31:35 ◼   ► of stone swords and just fall into the end portal every single time and just keep dying until

00:31:38 ◼   ► I beat the boss.

00:31:40 ◼   ► My, my tip for this is, uh, I mean, I, yes, totally do use DTS for sure.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Like, I think you should use it.

00:31:46 ◼   ► This sounds like a perfect case.

00:31:47 ◼   ► I mean, my, my thought with the DTS always like, oh, they probably won't be able to help

00:31:50 ◼   ► me, but who knows?

00:31:51 ◼   ► Maybe they will.

00:31:51 ◼   ► And anyway, you should use it.

00:31:52 ◼   ► But if that doesn't work, if DTS is not able to figure it out or your, whatever advice you

00:31:57 ◼   ► get, doesn't change things.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Uh, there's another option that we have, uh, as a, because we know some people in this community

00:32:03 ◼   ► who have expertise in figuring out crap like this.

00:32:06 ◼   ► If you're willing to share enough of your source code for them to like literally debug it,

00:32:09 ◼   ► we know people who you can contract to say, Hey, I'll pay you some money.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Your debugging skills are better than mine.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Figure this out and they'll figure it out.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I mean, they just talked about Guy Rambeau, Daniel Jockett's amazing debugger who does contract

00:32:23 ◼   ► work.

00:32:23 ◼   ► There are other names that I could check into our Slack channel.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Certain people who like, this is one of their core skills.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Like they know all the tricks with the debugger.

00:32:31 ◼   ► They know how to do all this stuff that in theory you wouldn't be able to do.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Like they, you know, turn off, uh, system integrity protection and everything to just

00:32:38 ◼   ► get in there and figure out what the hell is going on on this phone.

00:32:41 ◼   ► That's not causing your app to be the next one that's played.

00:32:44 ◼   ► If anyone can figure out it's one of those people and, uh, they're out there and they'll

00:32:48 ◼   ► take your money.

00:32:49 ◼   ► So, uh, think about that as a backup strategy.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Honestly, I never considered that before.

00:32:53 ◼   ► That's, that's not a bad idea.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Well, I'll think about that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:56 ◼   ► See, the thing is though, then you're showing people your source code.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And if it's anything like me, that's like, you know, coming out, going to school in

00:33:02 ◼   ► your underwear or something like that, you know, but you're paying the money and you,

00:33:05 ◼   ► you know, you do it for people you, that you trust, like Jack, it's not going to leak your

00:33:09 ◼   ► source code and he doesn't care about your source code.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Like, you know, let's find someone you trust to do it.

00:33:14 ◼   ► And, you know, I think like that's, that's the advantage of us being in this community.

00:33:18 ◼   ► We know some people who are really good at this and this is a very specialized skill that

00:33:22 ◼   ► not every developer has or not every developer has to that degree.

00:33:26 ◼   ► So, I mean, again, DTS, first option for sure.

00:33:28 ◼   ► But if that doesn't work out.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:30 ◼   ► I will say it's terrifying having, having something like when I, so when, after I sold the magazine

00:33:35 ◼   ► at some point, a few, a few, a few months later, Glenn Fleischman had contracted our friend

00:33:43 ◼   ► Guy English to do some work on the code.

00:33:45 ◼   ► And so Guy English got to see my code.

00:33:48 ◼   ► That would be terrifying.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Guy English is a really good programmer.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And so I was mortified, like, oh no, you had him look at my code.

00:33:58 ◼   ► And like the, the greatest compliment I ever got was later on, Guy told me like, yeah, it

00:34:04 ◼   ► wasn't bad.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It's like, oh my God.

00:34:06 ◼   ► I would absolutely take a, it wasn't bad from Guy English and put that shit on the wall.

00:34:10 ◼   ► I'm kind of insulted that you weren't terrified to show me your PHP code for the back end of

00:34:15 ◼   ► ATPs.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Apparently you didn't care about that.

00:34:18 ◼   ► No, not at all.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Well, cause the good news is PHP code, it's almost like writing really good visual basic

00:34:23 ◼   ► code.

00:34:23 ◼   ► It's like, there's really no great way to do this.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Like you can write less bad PHP code, but it's all going to be like a little bit clumsy.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And so it's kind of like, you're just free, you know, it's like you're free to be, to run

00:34:36 ◼   ► around naked in your PHP code because what are you going to like, everyone's PHP code is a

00:34:41 ◼   ► little bit messed up.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Everything's crap everywhere.

00:34:43 ◼   ► And when everything's crap, nothing's crap.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:34:46 ◼   ► It's very freeing.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I agree with that philosophy, but anyway.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Gracious.

00:34:51 ◼   ► We are going so far off the rails.

00:34:52 ◼   ► All right.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Bringing it back.

00:34:53 ◼   ► An anonymous industry insider had thoughts about the RAM shortage.

00:34:57 ◼   ► The Verge article called RAM is ruining everything was not quite fair to the DRAM makers, implying

00:35:02 ◼   ► that we are artificially keeping supply low.

00:35:04 ◼   ► This is simply false.

00:35:05 ◼   ► We are in a pure demand overrun right now.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Our fabs are running at full max out mode currently, optimizing bit output over all else, even

00:35:14 ◼   ► shifting new product introduction in order to optimize output on the already high yielding

00:35:17 ◼   ► parts.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And why wouldn't we?

00:35:19 ◼   ► Every chip we make is making huge margins right now because demand is so high.

00:35:23 ◼   ► At the end of the article, they did mention that Micron and Hynix are in fact building new

00:35:27 ◼   ► fabs, but this understates what's actually happening.

00:35:29 ◼   ► After spending almost 20 years without building any new DRAM fabs in the world, the next 10 years

00:35:33 ◼   ► could nearly double the total DRAM wafer output, at which point the DRAM companies better hope

00:35:37 ◼   ► to God the AI bubble doesn't burst.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Some examples of this that were provided by the anonymous person.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Micron has six DRAM fabs on the roadmap, all in the U.S., three of which should be online

00:35:47 ◼   ► before 2030.

00:35:48 ◼   ► This will increase Micron wafer output by nearly 200%.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Hynix just doubled the size of their biggest fab.

00:35:53 ◼   ► And if OpenAI's order of 900,000 wafers a month goes through, Hynix is going to build

00:35:58 ◼   ► four more mega fabs, each of which is the size of four regular fabs.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Additionally, Samsung is converting NAND fabs into DRAM, which will hurt NAND pricing, but

00:36:07 ◼   ► help DRAM.

00:36:07 ◼   ► I don't want to hurt NAND pricing.

00:36:09 ◼   ► I need my ATAR minus C to be cheaper.

00:36:12 ◼   ► I guess cheaper RAM in 2030 is something to look forward to after the AI bubble burst.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Additionally, this doesn't help things in the next year, but these things take time to build.

00:36:23 ◼   ► One more final technical note, a major reason consumer in mobile DRAM is getting squeezed

00:36:28 ◼   ► so hard is because the AI companies are buying HBM, or high bandwidth memory, and a lot of

00:36:33 ◼   ► it.

00:36:33 ◼   ► HBM has a three plus to one trade ratio with normal DRAM.

00:36:37 ◼   ► That means to make 100 gigs of HBM, it takes three to four times more wafers than it does

00:36:43 ◼   ► to make 100 gigs of DDR whatever.

00:36:46 ◼   ► LPDDR whatever, or GDDR whatever.

00:36:48 ◼   ► The trade ratio is due to both technical reasons.

00:36:50 ◼   ► For example, the HBM dies are much larger per gigabyte than standard dies because they have

00:36:54 ◼   ► to allocate a ton of silicon floor space for the through silicon via technology used in

00:36:58 ◼   ► the chip stacking, as well as lower yields due to the very complex packaging.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Every gigabyte of HBM that's being made means three or four fewer gigabytes of regular

00:37:06 ◼   ► DRAM that can be made.

00:37:07 ◼   ► By the way, for whatever it's worth, I really enjoyed, last week, the Vergecast did a RAM

00:37:15 ◼   ► Holiday Spectacular episode, and it's a lot of fun, and also I learned a lot about the DRAM

00:37:23 ◼   ► shortage right now and what all these factors, how they all play into it and everything.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So I can strongly recommend the episode of the Vergecast from last week called Ram Holiday

00:37:31 ◼   ► Spectacular.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:37:32 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about Git portability.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Simon Jodet writes, Git is very portable, and that's why GitHub tries to keep you with

00:37:43 ◼   ► other proprietary features such as GitHub Actions.

00:37:45 ◼   ► They use their own syntax, and migrating can represent a significant investment.

00:37:50 ◼   ► It's no surprise Microsoft tried their crummiest changes on this aspect of their product.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Luckily, some open source projects like Gitea, G-I-T-E-A, use a compatible syntax.

00:37:59 ◼   ► For do-it-yourselfers, Gitea is really easy to set up with a Docker Compose file.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Now you're speaking my language.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't use any of those fancy features in GitHub, but yeah, they do provide value

00:38:08 ◼   ► add, as they would say in the business, by providing features above and beyond just what

00:38:13 ◼   ► Git provides.

00:38:14 ◼   ► But if you avoid them or are willing to, you know, port from those things, you know, GitHub

00:38:19 ◼   ► issues are similar.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I can use those, Casey.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Like, that's not strictly part of Git.

00:38:22 ◼   ► That's part of GitHub.

00:38:22 ◼   ► But most systems have some kind of issue tracking thing.

00:38:26 ◼   ► So yeah, migration gets more difficult the more you integrate with those platform-specific

00:38:30 ◼   ► features.

00:38:30 ◼   ► But those features are good.

00:38:32 ◼   ► So, you know, there's a reason they call it value add.

00:38:35 ◼   ► It's not entirely cynical.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Tom Hartnett writes, John gave me the impression he might be going to GitHub.com, creating the

00:38:41 ◼   ► remote repo, and then setting the upstream locally and pushing to it.

00:38:44 ◼   ► I wanted to mention that you can create a new remote on GitHub from within your Xcode project,

00:38:48 ◼   ► assuming you have your credentials wired up.

00:38:50 ◼   ► You can even add the repo's description and set its public or private visibility.

00:38:53 ◼   ► I was indeed doing it manually for two reasons.

00:38:56 ◼   ► One, I had no idea this feature exists, so there's that.

00:38:58 ◼   ► But two, some of the features like the Git integration that it provided in Xcode, I just

00:39:03 ◼   ► avoid because it's either been crashy or unreliable for me based on my experience from like years

00:39:09 ◼   ► ago.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Maybe it's gotten better now.

00:39:10 ◼   ► But for example, I never push from within Xcode because for a long time, every time I

00:39:15 ◼   ► pushed, it would like crash and lead stuff in a weird inconsistent state or it would say

00:39:19 ◼   ► Git push, but it wouldn't really.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So I always push from the command line.

00:39:22 ◼   ► I mostly do my Git stuff from the command line.

00:39:25 ◼   ► But yeah, Xcode does have this feature, and this is definitely easier than copying and pasting

00:39:29 ◼   ► the commands that GitHub puts up.

00:39:30 ◼   ► So the next time I have to do this, I'll try it.

00:39:32 ◼   ► We're not going to put these screenshots in because they're from Tom's actual thing and

00:39:35 ◼   ► have like his username and stuff in there or whatever.

00:39:37 ◼   ► But if you go to the little repo thing in the Xcode sidebar, right click on remotes and

00:39:42 ◼   ► say new, you can say new remote and it will prompt you and you'll be able to type

00:39:46 ◼   ► and you want it to go on GitHub and blah, blah, blah, and you don't have to be public

00:39:49 ◼   ► or private.

00:39:50 ◼   ► You can do that all from the GUI and Xcode without having to go to the command line.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So I will check that out next time.

00:39:55 ◼   ► In the future, switching between iPhone and Android will get easier with new Apple and Google

00:40:01 ◼   ► collaboration.

00:40:02 ◼   ► So reading from Mac rumors, Apple and Google are teaming up to make it easier for users to

00:40:05 ◼   ► switch between iPhone and Android smartphones, according to 9to5Google.

00:40:08 ◼   ► There's a new Android Canary build available today that simplifies data transfer between two

00:40:13 ◼   ► smartphones, and Apple is going to implement the functionality in an upcoming iOS 26 beta.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Apple already has a move to iOS app for transferring data from an Android device to an iPhone, while

00:40:22 ◼   ► Google has an Android Switch app that can migrate data from an iPhone to an Android smartphone.

00:40:25 ◼   ► The new method will apparently replace the existing apps.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Both Apple and Google are facing regulatory pressure around the world, with multiple countries

00:40:32 ◼   ► scrutinizing practices that might keep customers locked into a platform.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Making it simpler for users to transition from one platform to another would be beneficial to

00:40:39 ◼   ► both companies.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Get portability and data portability.

00:40:41 ◼   ► We talked about this before, about things that can increase competition and regulatory things

00:40:47 ◼   ► being passed that might force platform owners to make transitioning easier.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Again, Apple and Google had been doing something in this area.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I'm sure their efforts were not great.

00:40:58 ◼   ► This seems to be an improvement on both of those.

00:41:02 ◼   ► We'll see when it ships, and I'm kind of assuming they're doing it in response to regulatory pressure,

00:41:06 ◼   ► or it just makes their life easier for them to both work.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Here's the thing about this.

00:41:11 ◼   ► It is actually to both their advantages to have a...

00:41:14 ◼   ► Because everybody wants switching to be easier.

00:41:15 ◼   ► They just all want the switching to go in their direction, and it's very difficult to make

00:41:19 ◼   ► it so that switching is only easy in your direction and hard in the other, because that's also

00:41:23 ◼   ► extremely anti-competitive, and we'll probably run afoul of all the people currently suing

00:41:26 ◼   ► Apple and Google.

00:41:28 ◼   ► So, fingers crossed that this helps a little bit, but yeah, this is something we don't

00:41:31 ◼   ► really talk about much in the show, because we're not really, we're not recruiting people

00:41:36 ◼   ► switching to Apple platforms from other platforms, nor are we frequently switching from Apple

00:41:41 ◼   ► platforms to Google platforms, but people do.

00:41:44 ◼   ► It's a thing that happens.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Everyone doesn't stay on the same platform forever.

00:41:47 ◼   ► People switch in both directions, and anything that makes that easier is welcome.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Can confirm.

00:41:52 ◼   ► All right.

00:41:53 ◼   ► With regard to Display Flicker in Tahoe, Daniel writes, the annoying thing about Display Flickers

00:41:58 ◼   ► is that it can mean about a thousand different things to different people.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Full screen, or just some content.

00:42:02 ◼   ► Did the screen get all the way to full black, or did the brightness level just not change

00:42:05 ◼   ► smoothly?

00:42:05 ◼   ► Or was it the amount of HDR headroom, etc.?

00:42:08 ◼   ► The public comments are sort of all over the place on how to reproduce it.

00:42:11 ◼   ► First-party displays only, or third-party as well?

00:42:13 ◼   ► Only HDR content, or SDR as well?

00:42:15 ◼   ► Do people realize some UI is now HDR?

00:42:17 ◼   ► Do people realize the studio display does some fake HDR tricks?

00:42:20 ◼   ► If nobody who can fix the issue is able to reproduce it, and there's no existing radar that seems

00:42:25 ◼   ► to correlate, then there's not a lot that can be done, unless somebody can get an iPhone

00:42:30 ◼   ► or whatever video of the issue and post it online.

00:42:31 ◼   ► That would be super helpful, theoretically.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Taking video of Screen Flicker is going to run afoul of a whole host of problems.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I mean, just taking video in the presence of certain LED lights can cause weird strobing

00:42:43 ◼   ► stuff, and you're going to try to catch Flicker on another display by taking video of it?

00:42:47 ◼   ► It's tricky.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But here's the thing about these kind of bugs.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Like, I get that, you know, there's a lot of ones that we just avoid filing a feedback

00:42:54 ◼   ► on, because it's like, it happens intermittently, I don't know how to reproduce it, it's hard

00:42:58 ◼   ► to see, blah, blah, blah.

00:42:59 ◼   ► But when something like this is just, it's so widespread, like, I've seen enough of these

00:43:03 ◼   ► stories all over the internet, that it's not an epidemic, it's not crippling everybody's

00:43:07 ◼   ► computers, but it's also not extremely rare.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Like, I would say it is more common than the podcast app opening stuff up.

00:43:14 ◼   ► This is a thing, and people have said that there's been Screen Flicker issues for the

00:43:18 ◼   ► studio display and other displays, even before Tahoe, but everyone agrees that it's gotten

00:43:21 ◼   ► much worse with Tahoe.

00:43:22 ◼   ► I kind of feel like this is on Apple, like, everyone at that company is using Macs to do

00:43:27 ◼   ► their dev work, right?

00:43:28 ◼   ► They're running Tahoe, presumably.

00:43:31 ◼   ► They've got to be seeing, they probably have studio displays, if anyone's going to have

00:43:34 ◼   ► studio displays, it's going to be people at Apple, right?

00:43:36 ◼   ► They're probably seeing this, right?

00:43:37 ◼   ► So are they, is the whole company going, well, I just assume someone else is taking care of

00:43:42 ◼   ► this, like, eventually they should be just as annoyed as we are.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Oh, hey, we all upgraded to Tahoe, and now this stupid flickering is happening in all our

00:43:48 ◼   ► studio displays.

00:43:48 ◼   ► It's not my department, because I work on the whatever app, but somebody should be fixing

00:43:52 ◼   ► this, right?

00:43:53 ◼   ► Please, Apple.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Like, it's an institutional competency to be able to have your internal user base, like

00:44:01 ◼   ► all the people who are Apple employees who use Macs all day, if they're all seeing, or

00:44:06 ◼   ► some significant portion of them are seeing a bug like this flickering Tahoe thing, find

00:44:10 ◼   ► it and fix it.

00:44:11 ◼   ► It's not going to be any, you know, some person who's working on the notes app, it's

00:44:14 ◼   ► not their responsibility to fix this, but they should be able to raise their hand internally

00:44:18 ◼   ► and say, this is the thing, somebody fix this, because we on the outside can't, like, if we

00:44:23 ◼   ► file a feedback just to go into a black hole, like, show me the reproduction, like, show

00:44:27 ◼   ► me the video, or like, how do you even capture this?

00:44:29 ◼   ► But it's a thing that you can see with your eyes.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So I really hope that there are folks working on this already, and I hope they do address

00:44:35 ◼   ► it.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I'm thankful that I haven't seen it on my studio display, but the Mac it is attached

00:44:40 ◼   ► to is not running Tahoe.

00:44:41 ◼   ► I mean, I'm on Tahoe on this MacBook Pro, and I don't recall having ever seen this, or if

00:44:47 ◼   ► I have, I explained it away internally as something else, because I've never noticed this, that

00:44:52 ◼   ► I can tell.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Sean Santry writes, along the same topic, the studio display flickering introduced in

00:44:57 ◼   ► Tahoe happens with my M2 Ultramax Studio, so it's not just laptops.

00:45:00 ◼   ► For me, it seems to happen pretty reliably when visiting YouTube and Safari, and there's an

00:45:04 ◼   ► auto-preview of an HDR video, even though the studio display doesn't support HDR.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Philip Hofstadter writes, the flickering of the studio display happens whenever any HDR content

00:45:13 ◼   ► appears on screen.

00:45:14 ◼   ► It happened in previous Mac OS versions, too, but HDR was much more sparingly used in the system

00:45:18 ◼   ► UI.

00:45:18 ◼   ► So, in our own follow-up, we've gotten that it's only for HDR, and it's only in Tahoe,

00:45:25 ◼   ► except it's not only in Tahoe, and it's sometimes HDR.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Like, it's all over the place.

00:45:29 ◼   ► So, I know HDR is used more in the iOS interface.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Like, it started with the new Siri surround thing, and then Tahoe does it even more, and

00:45:39 ◼   ► any of the ML stuff, right?

00:45:41 ◼   ► But, not Tahoe, iOS 26 does it even more with all the machine learning and the AI.

00:45:48 ◼   ► stuff that everything being bright, like CleanUp and Photos does HDR, right?

00:45:52 ◼   ► But, does Tahoe's interface use HDR a lot?

00:45:58 ◼   ► Like, I don't...

00:45:59 ◼   ► I'm sure it uses it somewhere.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Again, CleanUp on Tahoe will use HDR, because it does everywhere, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► In the Photos app or whatever.

00:46:04 ◼   ► But, just for, like, menus, windows, sidebars, toolbars, buttons, I don't think any of that

00:46:11 ◼   ► is HDR in Tahoe.

00:46:13 ◼   ► So, I'm not sure about the idea that, oh, it's worse in Tahoe because the UI uses more

00:46:19 ◼   ► HDR.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I mean, I'm willing to believe it uses slightly more, but most of the UI you're seeing is not

00:46:26 ◼   ► HDR, even in Tahoe.

00:46:27 ◼   ► So, I'm not sure about this.

00:46:28 ◼   ► But, I'm willing to believe that the Flickr could be triggered by having HDR content somewhere.

00:46:32 ◼   ► And, the thing that Daniel was referencing of, like, the studio display is not HDR.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't get that bright.

00:46:39 ◼   ► But, it does, you know, I think it does, like, reserve some portion of it to, if you have the

00:46:45 ◼   ► screen brightness down, to go higher than your brightness setting to do sort of fake HDR.

00:46:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure how that works.

00:46:50 ◼   ► But, I think that's what he was alluding to.

00:46:51 ◼   ► So, anyway, this is Apple's bug.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Marco's got his weird bug to fix that he doesn't quite know how to fix.

00:46:57 ◼   ► This is Apple's weird bug that hopefully someone there knows how to fix.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Maybe they should file a DTS incident and see what happens.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Or, just drive their computer over to Craig's house.

00:47:06 ◼   ► All right.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Let's do topics.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And, we might only get to one today.

00:47:11 ◼   ► And, that is the disappointing truth about Wi-Fi 7.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So, John, you've brought this to the table.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And, there's a post by Michael John Wood at Ratings, Rtings, or whatever it's called.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And, Michael writes, Wi-Fi 7, IEEE 802.11BE, extremely high throughput, is billed as the

00:47:31 ◼   ► next major leap in wireless performance.

00:47:32 ◼   ► At the center of these claims sits one headline feature, Multi-Link Operation, or MLO, a core

00:47:37 ◼   ► capability of Wi-Fi 7, and a required feature for Wi-Fi certified 7 devices, intended to allow

00:47:43 ◼   ► simultaneous use of the 2.45 and 6 gigahertz bands for faster, smoother, and more resilient

00:47:48 ◼   ► connections.

00:47:49 ◼   ► The problem is that the 802.11BE specification defines MLO broadly, permitting implementations

00:47:55 ◼   ► that technically satisfy the requirement while delivering only limited real-world benefit.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Existing Wi-Fi implementations treat 2.4 gigahertz, 5 gigahertz, and 6 gigahertz as separate, mutually

00:48:05 ◼   ► exclusive pipes.

00:48:06 ◼   ► MLO is supposed to let a client device use multiple bands simultaneously.

00:48:10 ◼   ► The 802.11BE specification actually defines two very different modes of multi-link operation.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Simultaneous MLO, which enables multiple bands to operate as a single unified connection.

00:48:19 ◼   ► This requires precise coordination across radios, keeping them time aligned so that they can

00:48:23 ◼   ► transmit and receive concurrently with microsecond level switching across all links.

00:48:27 ◼   ► There's also alternating MLO, which is designed for hardware that cannot keep multiple radios

00:48:32 ◼   ► synchronized.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Instead of true concurrency, a single radio rapidly time slices across different bands with predictable

00:48:38 ◼   ► padding and transition delays.

00:48:40 ◼   ► None of the routers we tested support simultaneous MLO.

00:48:43 ◼   ► This gap likely reflects the limitations of current hardware, which is not yet capable of

00:48:47 ◼   ► achieving the sub-microsecond timing alignment required between different independent radios.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Instead of implementing true simultaneous MLO, most routers fall back on the simpler single

00:48:57 ◼   ► radio alternating mode.

00:48:59 ◼   ► As shown in the results table on their website, 21 of the routers we tested advertised some

00:49:04 ◼   ► level of alternating MLO support.

00:49:06 ◼   ► However, nearly all of them report non-physical timing values, specifically 0 millisecond transition

00:49:11 ◼   ► and padding delays.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Such values are not feasible in real operations, strongly suggest placeholder or incomplete implementations.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Only one product, the Euromax 7, advertises realistic, physically plausible timing parameters

00:49:22 ◼   ► that indicate a correctly implemented alternating mode protocol.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Because alternating MLO still serializes traffic through a single radio, it provides little

00:49:29 ◼   ► of the latency benefit that MLO is marketed to deliver.

00:49:32 ◼   ► And without proper timing and padding, even the theoretical advantages of alternating MLO cannot

00:49:36 ◼   ► materialize in practice.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Our results highlight how wireless networking terminology and even informal certification can

00:49:42 ◼   ► obscure meaningful technical differences.

00:49:43 ◼   ► In current product marketing, three similar sounding terms are often conflated, despite having

00:49:48 ◼   ► very different implications.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Wi-Fi 7, that's Pascal case, right?

00:49:52 ◼   ► Wi-Fi space 7.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Vendor defined marketing label with no formal standing in the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification programs.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Wi-Fi 7 is an informal reference to the IEEE 802.11BE generation of Wi-Fi technology, while

00:50:08 ◼   ► Wi-Fi itself is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Use of this term alone does not imply certification.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So let me repeat that.

00:50:16 ◼   ► The difference between the first thing I read and the second thing is a hyphen.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Then finally, Wi-Fi certified 7 is a designation used exclusively on products that have passed

00:50:26 ◼   ► the Wi-Fi Alliance's official certification process and appear in its certified product database.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Of the 25 routers evaluated in the study, only three are currently Wi-Fi certified 7.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Certification establishes a baseline for standards, compliance, and interoperability, but our results

00:50:41 ◼   ► show that it is neither a guarantee of a complete MLO implementation nor a reliable predictor of real-world behavior.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Notably, the only router in our testing that advertises a technically coherent implementation of alternating MLO,

00:50:51 ◼   ► Eero Max 7 is not Wi-Fi certified 7.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:50:56 ◼   ► This is our thing at its best.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Like, it's just, you know, they're digging deeper into a topic, you know,

00:51:02 ◼   ► instead of just saying we tested a bunch of routers and here are the good ones,

00:51:05 ◼   ► they're like, Wi-Fi 7, it's a new thing.

00:51:07 ◼   ► It promises a bunch of stuff.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Let's test these to see if any of them are using the big fancy new features,

00:51:15 ◼   ► and in particular, they'd be able to use three radios at once,

00:51:17 ◼   ► which has lots of advantages that are mostly snipped out of the summary.

00:51:20 ◼   ► It's like, obviously, using three radios at once,

00:51:22 ◼   ► you have the advantage of, you know, potentially more bandwidth.

00:51:25 ◼   ► If you have any kind of interference on one of the channels,

00:51:29 ◼   ► the other channels might still be good.

00:51:31 ◼   ► You know, it's, and obviously, you can see why it would be better,

00:51:36 ◼   ► and you'd get more bandwidth and lower latency or whatever,

00:51:38 ◼   ► and be more resilient to interference because you're using, you know,

00:51:41 ◼   ► 2.4 gigahertz, 5 gigahertz, and 6 gigahertz all at the same time.

00:51:44 ◼   ► But apparently, nobody does that.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I mean, they only trust, they didn't test, they tested 25 routers.

00:51:50 ◼   ► That's not all the routers in the world.

00:51:51 ◼   ► But one of these routers was like a $1,000 router, like ASUS,

00:51:54 ◼   ► like a $1,000 wireless access point.

00:51:57 ◼   ► So they didn't shy away from testing the high-end stuff.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Ubiquity is in there as well,

00:52:01 ◼   ► and literally nobody is doing simultaneous multi-link operations,

00:52:05 ◼   ► simultaneous envelope.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And only some of them are apparently doing alternating.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Alternating is you use one connection,

00:52:11 ◼   ► and you switch from 2.4 to 5 to 6 or whatever as you need very quickly, right?

00:52:15 ◼   ► Which is still good and interesting and a kind of MLO,

00:52:19 ◼   ► but it's not the simultaneous kind of MLO.

00:52:21 ◼   ► So even the fancy Ubiquity routers weren't doing that,

00:52:24 ◼   ► although they were not the most expensive in the test.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And the certification thing is just ridiculous.

00:52:28 ◼   ► So we'll link to the article, obviously.

00:52:30 ◼   ► The table they're referring to is like a table that shows a bunch of features

00:52:34 ◼   ► along the top, and then along the left side are all the different routers.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And you either get like a green checkmark, a red X,

00:52:41 ◼   ► or like a yellow half-filled circle to see whether you implement it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► And simultaneous MLO, red X is for everybody.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And then alternating MLO, red X is for almost everybody,

00:52:52 ◼   ► including all the Euro routers except for one.

00:52:55 ◼   ► So it's not looking great for this standard.

00:52:58 ◼   ► And I saw this article.

00:52:59 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, well, like, but why, like, I like that they dug into this.

00:53:02 ◼   ► And again, read the article to see how they did it.

00:53:04 ◼   ► They had like a Linux computer set up analyzing the traffic to like,

00:53:07 ◼   ► they were trying, they weren't just testing like,

00:53:09 ◼   ► well, if it goes faster, it must be using simultaneous MLO.

00:53:11 ◼   ► They were trying to detect the actual protocol differences

00:53:15 ◼   ► and the use of the different spectrum or whatever.

00:53:17 ◼   ► And I'm assuming they did a pretty good job.

00:53:19 ◼   ► But it's like, all right, well, you did this article,

00:53:21 ◼   ► but like, is this, is this actionable?

00:53:24 ◼   ► It's, it may be interesting from a technical perspective,

00:53:26 ◼   ► but if, if like, again, they only tested 25 routers,

00:53:29 ◼   ► but if you can't buy a quote unquote good one,

00:53:32 ◼   ► like then this article is basically like, they're all, they're all not good.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Like there's no, like avoid these ones, but get these ones

00:53:38 ◼   ► because these ones say Wi-Fi 7,

00:53:39 ◼   ► but it doesn't do the cool things that these do,

00:53:43 ◼   ► even though they also say Wi-Fi 7.

00:53:44 ◼   ► But this is like, nope, nobody does it.

00:53:46 ◼   ► So I was like, this is very unsatisfying.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Like what, what is the deal here?

00:53:51 ◼   ► I did some brief searches of my own to try to figure out what I could find here

00:53:55 ◼   ► and where I ended up, where you always end up when you Google for things,

00:53:58 ◼   ► Reddit.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And it was a Reddit discussion of this very post

00:54:03 ◼   ► and the top rated comment on the Reddit thing.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Again, it's a person on Reddit.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Take for, take it for what you want.

00:54:10 ◼   ► But I think what they had to say rings true for me.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I'm going to find out in the next episode,

00:54:14 ◼   ► they're going to say, oh, this person works on the IEEE,

00:54:17 ◼   ► 802.11BE standard, where it was like the last time.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It was the person who worked on the USB standard.

00:54:21 ◼   ► But yeah, I thought this was interesting.

00:54:24 ◼   ► So Protons and Neutrons on Reddit writes,

00:54:28 ◼   ► the Wi-Fi Alliance and IEEE are two independent bodies.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Wi-Fi 7 certified is not the same as the complete IEEE 802.11BE specification.

00:54:35 ◼   ► In fact, the Wi-Fi Alliance picks and chooses what it wants from the IEEE drafts.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Yes, drafts before they are released.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Wi-Fi Alliance traditionally rejects some of the features from IEEE,

00:54:46 ◼   ► especially in the first release.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Wait, first release?

00:54:48 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:48 ◼   ► For the past three generations,

00:54:49 ◼   ► the Wi-Fi Alliance has split every Wi-Fi release into a release one and release two.

00:54:53 ◼   ► We had Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 5 wave two.

00:54:56 ◼   ► We had Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6 release two.

00:54:59 ◼   ► We have Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 7 release two is due in less than a quarter in late 2025,

00:55:04 ◼   ► which is over now or early 2026.

00:55:07 ◼   ► These are hardware releases.

00:55:10 ◼   ► It is unlikely your Wi-Fi 6 release one access point or client will ever get uplinked M-U-M-I-M-O,

00:55:15 ◼   ► even though that was heavily marketed for Wi-Fi 6.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Wi-Fi Alliance decided that features needed more time for implementation and pushed it to Wi-Fi 6 release two.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Wi-Fi Certified 7 was announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance in January 2024,

00:55:30 ◼   ► but IEEE was still tweaking until August 2024.

00:55:34 ◼   ► So the Wi-Fi Alliance jumped the gun by around eight months.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Why?

00:55:38 ◼   ► IEEE is, as you expect, just an engineering body, but Wi-Fi Alliance is a marketing and standards body.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Some optional features basically never get implemented by some routers and clients because they are too complex, too expensive, not reliable enough, too power hungry, etc.

00:55:51 ◼   ► It's usually the same reason why we don't have 4x4 laptops or 3x3 smartphones.

00:55:54 ◼   ► It costs more, it consumes more power, and the performance difference is marginal.

00:55:58 ◼   ► For example, I would not be surprised if simultaneous MLO is never widely implemented in consumer mobile devices, with some high-end exceptions, of course.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Why?

00:56:05 ◼   ► It consumes more power to transmit on two or three bands at once.

00:56:08 ◼   ► We do not get one and a half gigabits per second transfer rates for free, unfortunately.

00:56:12 ◼   ► The general advice I give to people, if you buy a release one device, don't expect most of the marketing for that generation to be true.

00:56:17 ◼   ► The Wi-Fi Alliance has ensured you will not get all of the marketing features that news articles actually take from IEEE months or years earlier for that generation.

00:56:27 ◼   ► But you should get most, if not all, released two features of the previous generation.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So a Wi-Fi 7 Release 1 access point or client should confidently get you Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 features.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And then Mr. Heo Super replied, this is somehow even more messy than Bluetooth and USB.

00:56:43 ◼   ► I mean, at least it maybe works better than Bluetooth.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I do think that USB still probably takes the cake for hardware confusion, but this is quite a mess.

00:56:53 ◼   ► I mean, I think we've all been aware of Wi-Fi, and I guess even before Wi-Fi modems, like analog modems back in the day, hardware being released before the standard that they're based on has been ratified or finalized.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Do you remember that with like 56K modems and stuff?

00:57:10 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Because people want to get the hardware out there.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And like people that, you know, these standards bodies are working on standards for some faster way to transmit data over some medium, right?

00:57:19 ◼   ► And they're almost done, but they haven't really like ratified it and now done all the details.

00:57:22 ◼   ► But hardware makers like, no, we're making hardware based on your draft specification and we're going to sell it.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And people will buy it because it is faster than what was out there.

00:57:31 ◼   ► But then they say, okay, well, when they ratify the standard, like you'll be able to firmware update your modem or whatever, your access point, and it'll become compliant with the standard.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Sometimes that's true.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Sometimes it's not.

00:57:42 ◼   ► But here, in the case of like these standards that have lots of different features, some of which apparently are way more expensive or complicated to implement.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I mean, it happened with Wi-Fi 6.

00:57:50 ◼   ► It is happening again with Wi-Fi 7.

00:57:53 ◼   ► If, like, the standard is out and, you know, again, the difference between IEEE, which makes the standard, and then the Wi-Fi Alliance, which, like, certifies, them being two separate bodies that seem to only coordinate a little bit means that, like, the Wi-Fi Alliance is saying, okay, well, there's the standard, but nobody makes anything that complies with the whole standard.

00:58:13 ◼   ► So we're going to make a certification thing that says, here's the Wave 1 certification.

00:58:17 ◼   ► If you do these things from the standard, we'll give you our stamp that says you are Wi-Fi certified 7, release 1, whatever, like, tag they want to put on it.

00:58:28 ◼   ► And then later, if people figure out how to implement more features, we'll say, okay, you can be released 2.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And as this person points out, apparently, they may not ever have a Wi-Fi Alliance certification that covers all the features in 802.11 BE, right?

00:58:44 ◼   ► And I'm so glad we moved away from those.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I remember how I used to know all those initials and everything, and they changed, I guess they changed with Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 5 or 6.

00:58:51 ◼   ► They started using the big number instead of the 802.11, a bunch of letters.

00:58:55 ◼   ► That's an improvement, at least.

00:58:57 ◼   ► But, yeah, it's confusing, because do you have Wi-Fi 7?

00:59:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I have Wi-Fi 7.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Oh, well, is it Wi-Fi certified?

00:59:04 ◼   ► If it is, which release is certified, too?

00:59:07 ◼   ► If it's not, what the heck features does it support?

00:59:10 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I thought this was interesting is because I was reflecting on my Wi-Fi 7 situation, which is I ain't got it.

00:59:19 ◼   ► I mean, I have Wi-Fi 7.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Like, I think my iPhone 16 Pro has it.

00:59:26 ◼   ► My wife has an iPhone 17 Pro that I believe has it.

00:59:29 ◼   ► As I've complained about in past episodes, I think Apple's Macs still do not support Wi-Fi 7, which is crappy.

00:59:36 ◼   ► But the bottom line is, in my house, my Wi-Fi setup was purchased before Wi-Fi 7 existed.

00:59:43 ◼   ► So it's Wi-Fi 6.

00:59:44 ◼   ► I forget which variant of Wi-Fi 6, but it doesn't, it's not Wi-Fi 7 at all.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And I've been thinking about, like, well, you know, Kieran Healy just posted about this.

00:59:53 ◼   ► I'm asked it on.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Like, everything in my house, networking-wise, works fine.

00:59:58 ◼   ► No one complains that they're not getting enough bandwidth.

01:00:00 ◼   ► No one complains they're not getting enough signal.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Everything I do on my network works.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Video never stutters.

01:00:05 ◼   ► My downloads go fast.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Like, I don't have any complaints.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And yet, the number 7 is, in fact, one bigger than the number 6.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And so I find myself thinking, when is the right time for me to, for example, replace my Eero with an Eero that supports Wi-Fi 7?

01:00:26 ◼   ► And after reading this article, I think the conclusion I've come to is not quite yet.

01:00:31 ◼   ► But I thought, you know, I didn't know any of this simultaneous MLO versus alternate MLO stuff.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And reading that one random person on Reddit makes me think, I kind of believe that no one will implement that.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Because if no one's implemented it so far, and it does take more power and everything, like, who's going to do it?

01:00:47 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:00:48 ◼   ► But anyway, what are your situations like in your house in terms of Wi-Fi 7?

01:00:53 ◼   ► Do you have it?

01:00:54 ◼   ► Do you want it?

01:00:55 ◼   ► Are you going to get it?

01:00:57 ◼   ► I mean, for me, I am starting my Unify journey mostly by bequeathed or, you know, secondhand hardware.

01:01:04 ◼   ► And no, none of my stuff is Wi-Fi 7 compatible.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And I don't expect to go down that road anytime soon.

01:01:11 ◼   ► I mean, anything that I feel like needs a whole bunch of bandwidth, I have wired.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And, you know, I even have 10 gigabit Ethernet between my Synology and my MacBook Pro, which is really freaking great.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And so for me, I don't think I'm going to be jumping on this bandwagon anytime soon.

01:01:30 ◼   ► If it becomes real, like everyone keeps saying, or I feel like the nerds keep saying, oh, no, Wi-Fi 7 will make Ethernet obsolete.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And leaving aside latency, which I know this is supposed to help with, but even leaving aside latency, I'll believe it when I see it.

01:01:47 ◼   ► And nothing that I've read today has made me think it's closer.

01:01:51 ◼   ► In fact, this makes me think it's a long way out.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I thought you had 2.5 gigabits between your Mac and your Synology because of the Thunderbolt thing.

01:02:00 ◼   ► No, the CalDigit TS5 has onboard 10 gigabit Ethernet.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And that, I think there's some things I lose out on by not having Thunderbolt 5, but I can, I have definitely pushed like hundreds of megabytes per second between my Synology and my MacBook Pro.

01:02:19 ◼   ► Unfortunately, because it's all, you know, spinning rust in the Synology, it usually will peak for, you know, 5, 6, 700 megs for a few seconds.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Then it will drop down to like 200 or 300 megs a second.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But it's still pretty freaking great, nonetheless.

01:02:31 ◼   ► And to be clear, what you're referring to is the Ubiquiti brand of networking hardware.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Again, it was some Ubiquiti stuff was in this test.

01:02:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:40 ◼   ► I'm sure they didn't test every possible thing Ubiquiti offers.

01:02:43 ◼   ► It was only 25 routers, but yeah, buying a fancy, expensive brand is not a guarantee to lose.

01:02:49 ◼   ► In my Googling, I also found a bunch of Cisco presentations and they were talking about their Wi-Fi 7 hardware rollout and whatever year they started it.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And they had specific slides that said basically, yeah, we're not doing simultaneous MLO because it's too hard and too expensive.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Maybe we'll have it in the future, right?

01:03:05 ◼   ► So the sort of high-end fancy enterprise-y or like prosumery things like Ubiquiti are not usually the first ones to jump on the bandwagon of a new thing and take the more cautious approach because it's more important, especially for like enterprise stuff.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It's more important for the stuff to work reliably than for it to get just a little tiny bit faster or whatever because being flaky is worse than going a little bit slower.

01:03:29 ◼   ► But yeah, I do think like for especially for home Wi-Fi, like I'm trying to think of a scenario where it depends on what the power like this, this thing is saying, oh, it takes more power.

01:03:40 ◼   ► It takes more power to run radios at the same time.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Is there a scenario where I would make that trade off where I would say, OK, well, obviously, it doesn't matter for the access point.

01:03:47 ◼   ► The access point is plugged into the wall.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I can use as much power as it wants as long as it doesn't have obnoxious fans.

01:03:51 ◼   ► But are there any devices that use Wi-Fi that I would be willing to make that trade off to get the increased bandwidth that I'm not entirely sure?

01:04:00 ◼   ► Again, everything in my house is not Wi-Fi 7 now, and I don't have any bandwidth complaints, which every time I think about upgrading stuff, I think, what are you doing?

01:04:08 ◼   ► Everything works.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Don't touch anything.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Just leave it alone.

01:04:11 ◼   ► But speaking of that, Marco, how's Wi-Fi 7 going in your house?

01:04:16 ◼   ► My policy for my Wi-Fi gear is when I am setting up a home network, I buy whatever is pretty good at that time from Ubiquity, then I just leave it.

01:04:28 ◼   ► Because I don't know if I'm unusual here.

01:04:31 ◼   ► I don't think I am in this case.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Wi-Fi speeds are not my limiting factor to almost anything.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Now, I think it's very important for people to realize also that whenever there's some new Wi-Fi standard, they always brag about a certain speed capability that, in practice, no one ever gets.

01:04:52 ◼   ► Like, in practice, you would have to be, like, standing next to the router in an environment with perfect conditions and no interference to get most of the speeds that are advertised by the Wi-Fi specs.

01:05:04 ◼   ► These are, like, speeds in ideal cases, not speeds that you will get when the router is, you know, in your living room and you're upstairs or, you know, not speeds that you're going to get if there's, like, a wall anywhere in your house or if there's anyone else using the Wi-Fi at the same time.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And so what I usually, you know, experience with Wi-Fi is am I using my phone or laptop and does it seem to work?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Yes or no?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Like, it's more of a Boolean.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It's like, does it work or not?

01:05:32 ◼   ► Does the Wi-Fi connect?

01:05:34 ◼   ► And if the Wi-Fi is connecting, odds are it is going to offer enough throughput that I'm not going to notice the Wi-Fi being a problem.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Now, you know, my internet in each place is gigabit ethernet, which is, you know, wonderful.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I love gigabit Fios.

01:05:52 ◼   ► Thank you so much, Fios, for existing.

01:05:54 ◼   ► All the wiring, all the hubs and switches I use everywhere, those are all gigabit too.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I've been at gigabit speeds for my internal and external networking for many years now, and I've never really felt that was a problem either.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Everything is fast enough for my purposes of, like, do I notice the networking?

01:06:14 ◼   ► I am not doing frequent, large, multi-gigabyte file transfers between my computers and my synologies or whatever, different storages.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But if I were doing those things, it would be over wires.

01:06:26 ◼   ► I wouldn't really be subject to the whims of Wi-Fi.

01:06:30 ◼   ► But the Wi-Fi in my house, so at the beach, I have, I think, a mix of Wi-Fi 5 and 6.

01:06:36 ◼   ► That's the oldest equipment I currently run.

01:06:38 ◼   ► At the restaurant, it's all 6 because when I was setting up the restaurant, everyone was saying, like, eh, it's a little bit shaky, maybe.

01:06:45 ◼   ► And then here on Long Island, it's a mix of Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 6 gear because it's just whatever I bought.

01:06:52 ◼   ► You know, it's like I bought a few and I'm like, oh, I need one or two more, you know, like that kind of thing.

01:06:57 ◼   ► But it doesn't really matter.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Like, nothing I do with Wi-Fi, nothing ever matters.

01:07:03 ◼   ► I never look like, am I connected to Wi-Fi 7 or Wi-Fi 6?

01:07:07 ◼   ► Am I on the right frequencies?

01:07:09 ◼   ► Am I using all the channels I can use?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Like, I never look.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I let Ubiquity auto-manage the channel spreads and everything for me.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And all I care about really is do I have signal in this room or not?

01:07:23 ◼   ► And that's much more to do with the placement of the Wi-Fi APs and how many of them there are and what they're going through to get to you.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And every new Wi-Fi standard that comes out doesn't do anything to meaningfully make that more robust.

01:07:38 ◼   ► It's more like if you have great conditions, this is what we'll be able to do for you.

01:07:44 ◼   ► But what most of us are battling with our Wi-Fi issues is like, yeah, this bedroom over here is getting 15 megabits because it's like a little bit weak on the signal and it's a little bit far from the thing because it's going through two walls instead of one wall or whatever it is.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Like, that's real Wi-Fi problems that real people have.

01:08:02 ◼   ► No one is actually going to notice if their Wi-Fi goes from 600 megabits to 800 megabits or a gigabit.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Like, that's so far beyond what anyone's actually getting in real life and what they would actually notice in almost any usage.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Well, the new standards do have things for battling interference, one of the advertised features of simultaneous MLO.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they all say that, but that one bedroom, you still can't get that good of a signal unless you put an access point nearby.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Right, but I'm saying, like, I do think that if you upgrade your Wi-Fi, in particular, if you upgrade your access point hardware, even if you leave it all in the same place and the new hardware is both newer and also uses a new standard, you do have a chance of potentially getting slightly better signal.

01:08:43 ◼   ► It's not going to make the room that's really far from an access point suddenly be perfect, but it could improve matters.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I saw that when I upgraded whatever my current one is, like Wi-Fi 6E or whatever, whatever old ERO I had before, the access points are in exactly the same place.

01:08:57 ◼   ► I just removed the old access points and put in the new ones from the same company, and I did get better signal everywhere.

01:09:03 ◼   ► It's not as measured by, like, bandwidth.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Like, I'm not doing, like, speed tests or trying to download huge files, but the signal strength is better.

01:09:11 ◼   ► And thinking of applications where it would make a difference for me, I'm also not transferring huge files and the video stuff that I have.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I mean, I get, one thing I don't do because I don't have disk space.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Someday when I, when my Synology finally dies, knock on wood, and I upgrade to, like, modern storage and I have much more space, maybe I will revisit the idea of putting Blu-ray rips on it.

01:09:33 ◼   ► I experimented that when I first got my Synology, but Blu-ray rips are huge.

01:09:37 ◼   ► And I believe I would run into Wi-Fi bandwidth problems trying to play, essentially, like, you know, the original quality in Plex or whatever, like, you know, playing a Blu-ray rip directly from my Synology in a distant bedroom that has bad signal.

01:09:52 ◼   ► Like, onto an iPad?

01:09:53 ◼   ► Like, what's the device here?

01:09:55 ◼   ► Yeah, an iPad or anything like that.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Like, you wouldn't be wired, you know what I'm saying?

01:09:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, wired, iPad television watching in bed.

01:10:02 ◼   ► And I do it all the time and it's fine, but all my, I'm not watching 50 gig Blu-ray rips.

01:10:06 ◼   ► I'm watching, you know, much more compressed content.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it's fine for the lower bitrate compressed content.

01:10:11 ◼   ► But I did experiment with doing Blu-ray rips and everyone's like, oh, you got to do that.

01:10:14 ◼   ► I have all these Blu-rays.

01:10:16 ◼   ► I would love to rip them at original quality, like, no recompression at all.

01:10:20 ◼   ► But that might stress my current Wi-Fi.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Now, would a new Wi-Fi thing help with that?

01:10:25 ◼   ► Or to Marco's point, what would really help with that is better access point locations.

01:10:29 ◼   ► But part of the problem is part of the dream of a new Wi-Fi hardware for me is, like, it's not that easy for me to add new Wi-Fi access point locations.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Like, I don't have, my house is not plumbed for any kind of wiring and the places where I can put access points are pretty limited.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And then the places where I would want to put an access point, like in terms of not being an eyesore, is also very limited.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And, you know, my house is filled with a hundred-year-old plaster and lead in the walls or whatever the hell stuff I've got going on.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's like, it's a challenging situation.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Another scenario that I thought of, again, reading this, reading this, uh, artings or ratings.com article about, about the promises and dreams of the Wi-Fi 7 thing.

01:11:11 ◼   ► One of them is about, um, with the simultaneous, uh, multi-link operation, which nobody has, was about latency.

01:11:17 ◼   ► And I was just mentioning this to my wife the other day.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Uh, we were in Costco and I was, uh, looked at this, I look at it occasionally when I go by.

01:11:25 ◼   ► There is a extremely stupid Sony device that they sell that looks like, uh, like a Nintendo Switch, but by, uh, by Sony that plays PlayStation games.

01:11:34 ◼   ► But it's not.

01:11:35 ◼   ► What it is, is a PlayStation 5 controller cracked in half with the screen stuck in the middle.

01:11:40 ◼   ► But it doesn't have any, like, you can't play games on it.

01:11:45 ◼   ► All it is, is a remote viewer for your actual PlayStation 5 console in your house.

01:11:50 ◼   ► So that's basically, it's a, I'll, I'll put a link to it in the, uh, the chat room.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Um, it's called the PlayStation portal remote player and you need a PlayStation and this wirelessly connects to your PlayStation and lets you play it like a Nintendo Switch.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Now I like it because I think the PlayStation 5 controller handles are much more comfortable than the Switch.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Like I don't do any handheld games because of RSI issues, but I do use my PlayStation 5 controller all the time.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And I find it ergonomically way better than holding a Switch.

01:12:21 ◼   ► And also I find it better than the Switch Pro controller, both the original and two.

01:12:24 ◼   ► But anyway, uh, and it's got a, uh, not very good screen in there.

01:12:29 ◼   ► I do occasionally on my iPad launch the PlayStation remote play app.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Cause there's an app for iPadOS that lets you wake up your PlayStation and then just use it from your iPad with like onscreen controls.

01:12:39 ◼   ► I do it when I like forgot to do something in one of my games or something.

01:12:42 ◼   ► And so from bed with my iPad, with, with terrible onscreen controls, I will fumble my way through doing some kind of chore in Destiny or Arc Raiders or something and then turn the thing off.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Uh, but I could fully play my PlayStation in bed with this thing, except do I want to be playing a real time, like sort of, you know, reaction time is a factor.

01:13:05 ◼   ► Kind of action game like Destiny or Arc Raiders over my current Wi-Fi setup from my bedroom, which doesn't have the best signal.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Maybe Wi-Fi 7 would help.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Like I've resisted buying this thing cause it's $200 for like a controller and a screen.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Although I think you can buy an individual controller with no screen for $200 from Sony as well.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Um, and also because I think my wife would not tolerate me using this thing in bed next to her because, uh, the, whether you know it or not, using controls makes noise.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Like the buttons and the joysticks actually make noise.

01:13:36 ◼   ► You don't notice when you're playing, but certainly if someone was trying to sleep next to you, it makes noise.

01:13:39 ◼   ► What doesn't make noise is me watching video with my AirPods in, uh, on my iPad because I'm not doing anything with my hands.

01:13:45 ◼   ► But, um, I think she would be annoyed by this, but I, this is the one application I could think of.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Uh, maybe Casey's case would be like, I don't know, like transferring to Synology without wires from somewhere if you ever need to do that.

01:13:55 ◼   ► But mine would be, could I play the hypothetical PlayStation portal remote player?

01:14:02 ◼   ► Um, let's say from my couch or something because my, my PlayStation is, is not, uh, it, not on the, it's connected to the television.

01:14:08 ◼   ► It's got to do a gaming monitor.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Could I do handheld gaming within my house with my current wifi setup?

01:14:13 ◼   ► And would that be improved by a theoretical, uh, simultaneous MLO wifi seven setup?

01:14:19 ◼   ► I guess stay tuned because I mean, our tanks usually does a good job of following up on this.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Um, if hardware ever is released that supports the simultaneous MLO, I'm sure they'll do a follow-up story on it and we'll try to cover it here as well.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Um, it does seem like wifi seven, it's not brand new.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Like there's plenty of hardware out there.

01:14:36 ◼   ► Apple is shipping in and a lot of their devices.

01:14:38 ◼   ► That's the other part of this that I didn't mention.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Like it doesn't matter if you buy an access point, like say they found an access point.

01:14:43 ◼   ► This one supports simultaneous MLO.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Great.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Do you have any client devices that support simultaneous MLO?

01:14:49 ◼   ► Because I'm assuming nothing Apple sells does support wifi seven.

01:14:53 ◼   ► The phones almost certainly don't for power reasons.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Like, you know, the, the iPad doesn't, does the PlayStation portal remote player support it?

01:15:01 ◼   ► Probably not like you need, it takes two to tango here.

01:15:04 ◼   ► So it just seems like this is a standard that's like ahead of its time.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And like the, the advice at the end of, uh, the Reddit posters thing is saying basically like, maybe when you get your wifi eight release, one thing, it will support all the features from wifi seven release one and two.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Uh, kind of depressing, but it does have some historical precedent.

01:15:24 ◼   ► So I guess the moral of the story is that networking is always complicated.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And if it works, don't touch it.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Although I'm kind of shocked that Marco does that, honestly.

01:15:32 ◼   ► No, because, because again, it's like my wifi is fine.

01:15:35 ◼   ► So for whatever it's worth, um, I, I looked up, what is the bit rate of like the highest UHD 4k Blu-rays?

01:15:44 ◼   ► And the answer seems to be somewhere around 130, peaking at 150 megabits per second.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Um, so, but it's around 130 megabits per second, uh, you know, sustained.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Um, and, and I opened up the ubiquity, uh, wifi man app on my phone to just like, what's, how, how fast is my phone currently, you know, connecting to the access point that is maybe 10 feet away in my office closet.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And it, it's telling me that it's connected via wifi six mode, even though it is a U seven access point, but whatever.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Um, cause I don't think the phones are wifi seven, right?

01:16:16 ◼   ► So no, the phones are wifi seven now.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Oh, well, it's not using it for some reason.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I don't care why.

01:16:21 ◼   ► So anyway, my phone's connected to via wifi six, um, currently sustaining a transfer rate of approximately 460 megabits per second.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Um, so that's, you know, almost four times the data rate of a 4k UHD Blu-ray.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So to give you some idea, like if that is like your, your stress test for like, how can wifi handle this?

01:16:43 ◼   ► Like my, you know, pretty good modern wifi setup handles it just fine when the access point is close.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I said, but my bedroom is not, is one of the worst case scenarios for access point locality.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Like, obviously if I did it from the room with the access point, I would have no problem.

01:16:59 ◼   ► But if I get distant in my, in my very, uh, wireless unfriendly house, uh, that's where it gets harder.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And that's like, I did see an improvement in terms of data rates when I upgraded to the, from whatever I had before.

01:17:11 ◼   ► I think I had a wifi five thing before I upgraded to six C.

01:17:14 ◼   ► I did see an improvement in the bedroom in terms of, oh, it sounds bad.

01:17:17 ◼   ► I saw an improvement in the bedroom when I upgraded to wifi six C, um, where you're using a true

01:17:22 ◼   ► grip Mac, the smart skin technology.

01:17:23 ◼   ► These are the comply tips.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Um, uh, and so I have hope that like a place, because, you know, I can play Blu-ray rips,

01:17:32 ◼   ► but they would occasionally stutter.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Right.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And I'll be like, oh, just, you know, whatever the, the, the rats are moving the lead inside

01:17:39 ◼   ► of the walls, like, you know, I just, it's such a bad, I would hope that it would get

01:17:43 ◼   ► better.

01:17:43 ◼   ► And the same thing with the PlayStation portal, like that's not a bandwidth thing.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It's because the bandwidth, I'm sure massively compresses the signal.

01:17:49 ◼   ► It's all about latency.

01:17:50 ◼   ► You want to be the lowest possible latency.

01:17:51 ◼   ► And again, that's one of the advertised features of the fancy wifi seven is they can reduce latency

01:17:56 ◼   ► by essentially routing around any, uh, weaknesses in the signal by using three radios at the

01:18:03 ◼   ► same time, instead of switching between them.

01:18:05 ◼   ► By the way, um, six milliseconds, the answer of the current latency of that same connection

01:18:09 ◼   ► I was just talking about.

01:18:10 ◼   ► So it's really not like, this is wifi six.

01:18:13 ◼   ► It's just with good reception, like being close to the access point matters so much more than

01:18:20 ◼   ► what protocol the access point is speaking.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:22 ◼   ► I just need to run an ethernet wire up to my bedroom, but just, there's a lot of walls between

01:18:26 ◼   ► me and that.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I just, just run it out the window and pop it back in.

01:18:30 ◼   ► But so the people who had this house before us, they like their coax for like their

01:18:34 ◼   ► cable television.

01:18:36 ◼   ► They had cable television in many rooms because, you know, I don't know, they did it in the

01:18:39 ◼   ► nineties or the eighties or whenever it was the style at the time.

01:18:41 ◼   ► And how did they get into all the rooms?

01:18:43 ◼   ► They ran it.

01:18:44 ◼   ► They drilled a hole through the house to the outdoors.

01:18:47 ◼   ► They ran the coax outside the house, up the outside of the house, and then drilled another

01:18:52 ◼   ► hole into the room they wanted to go to.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And they did that in every room in the house.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:18:55 ◼   ► So why don't you get mini splits?

01:18:57 ◼   ► What are you waiting for?

01:18:58 ◼   ► Well, when I got the house recited, all that crap went away and there were no longer 500 holes

01:19:03 ◼   ► drilled through my house with coax stuck to the outside of it.

01:19:06 ◼   ► You didn't just fish some cat six through there instead?

01:19:08 ◼   ► Or use mocha bridges.

01:19:10 ◼   ► It's all gone now.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It's all gone now.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Well, unfortunately, when I did, when I got new side of my house, I also filled the walls

01:19:15 ◼   ► with insulation, which was a massive improvement in the comfort of the house, but also made

01:19:20 ◼   ► it one more extra difficulty to try to route wire.

01:19:23 ◼   ► I'm sure an electrician could do it, but like, I mean, with plaster walls, it's always just

01:19:27 ◼   ► such a mess.

01:19:28 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know.

01:19:32 ◼   ► I'll see if I can figure it out.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I do have, if people are going to say you should have a mesh network, I do.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Eero is a mesh network, but mesh networks are no match for running Ethernet wires to your

01:19:42 ◼   ► wireless access points.

01:19:43 ◼   ► That is just so much better than mesh networking if you can do it.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Yeah, in both latency and throughput, it's no contest.

01:19:49 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Quince.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the new year.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Well, it's a new year everywhere.

01:19:56 ◼   ► But here in the Northern Hemisphere, it's also winter where it's really cold, even way down

01:20:01 ◼   ► here in the deep, deep, deep south, if you believe John Syracuse.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing.

01:20:05 ◼   ► You probably want your winter wardrobe to be just locked in.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And if you're ready for a winter reset, or if you just want to add a couple of things,

01:20:12 ◼   ► you can start with pieces truly made to last season after season.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Quince brings together premium materials, thoughtful design, and enduring quality so

01:20:18 ◼   ► you can stay warm, look sharp, and feel your best all season long.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Quince has everything you need.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that actually hold

01:20:26 ◼   ► up to daily wear and still look good.

01:20:27 ◼   ► And each piece is made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards

01:20:31 ◼   ► for craftsmanship and ethical production, which I love.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Also, I'm talking a bunch about men's stuff because that's the stuff I'm most familiar with.

01:20:40 ◼   ► But Quince also does children's and women's things as well.

01:20:43 ◼   ► So they sent me a couple of pieces at my request.

01:20:46 ◼   ► And one of the things they sent is an organic cotton long sleeve fit and flare pocket dress

01:20:51 ◼   ► for Michaela.

01:20:52 ◼   ► And this thing is adorable.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Not only does it have pockets, but it has these like orange and pink and blue hearts all over

01:20:58 ◼   ► it.

01:20:59 ◼   ► It's super duper cute.

01:21:00 ◼   ► For me, I chose a comfort stretch traveler five pocket pants, which is, it presents as

01:21:06 ◼   ► like a semi-formal pant, you know, something you could wear for business casual situations

01:21:11 ◼   ► or meeting or whatever.

01:21:12 ◼   ► But it feels more like jeans.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And I mean that in a complimentary way because jeans are typically, well, for guys anyway,

01:21:17 ◼   ► really, really comfortable.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And I want to focus on something silly here.

01:21:20 ◼   ► The button at the top of the fly, it's flat.

01:21:23 ◼   ► It's a very tasteful silvery color and it's flat.

01:21:26 ◼   ► It doesn't say quince all over it.

01:21:27 ◼   ► It's not advertising or anything like that.

01:21:29 ◼   ► It's just a button, a well-made button, which I love.

01:21:32 ◼   ► So if this sounds good to you and it should, you can refresh your winter wardrobe with quince.

01:21:37 ◼   ► Go to quince.com slash ATP for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Now it's available in Canada as well.

01:21:44 ◼   ► So go to quince.com slash ATP.

01:21:47 ◼   ► You can get free shipping and 365 day returns.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Quince.com slash ATP.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Thank you to Quince for sponsoring the show.

01:21:53 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And Michael Crewson writes, what is the distinction between minimizing versus hiding windows and

01:22:03 ◼   ► macOS?

01:22:03 ◼   ► As somebody who uses command tab to jump between my applications, I pretty much just hide my

01:22:07 ◼   ► windows using command H, but find it confusing that the two are very similar UI concepts with

01:22:11 ◼   ► different consequences.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Why doesn't Apple merge this concept into one?

01:22:15 ◼   ► Not a fan of windows, but they at least have a single concept of minimizing application windows.

01:22:20 ◼   ► In your opinion, should macOS be updated to have the same behavior?

01:22:22 ◼   ► No.

01:22:23 ◼   ► John, thoughts?

01:22:24 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I don't know how windowing works exactly on windows.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I am familiar with minimizing with a little like underscore minus whatever button thing.

01:22:32 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

01:22:32 ◼   ► macOS 10 introduced this distinction between hiding windows, which existed for, I guess, the

01:22:39 ◼   ► entire history of the Mac.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I don't know where it was added, but ever since multitasking has been around, it existed

01:22:44 ◼   ► in classic macOS.

01:22:45 ◼   ► Let's say that hiding windows that existed in classic macOS and continued on in macOS 10.

01:22:49 ◼   ► MacOS 10 added minimizing windows and minimizing means hitting the little yellow widget.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And that means the window leaves where it was and goes down into your dock.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Now, how it manifests in your dock is modifiable.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Like, I think there's a setting where you can have your minified windows sort of tuck into

01:23:09 ◼   ► the application that they came from.

01:23:10 ◼   ► You can also have them as separate items on your dock.

01:23:13 ◼   ► This is all new to macOS 10 because the dock didn't exist before macOS 10 in macOS.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Classic macOS did not have a dock.

01:23:19 ◼   ► MacOS 10 did have a dock.

01:23:21 ◼   ► It's still there.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Minimizing windows are still there.

01:23:23 ◼   ► It's totally different than hiding.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Hiding means leave the window where it is.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Just make it invisible.

01:23:29 ◼   ► And you can hide and show with all the various windowing commands.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And there are other ways you can do it.

01:23:33 ◼   ► But anyway, the window hasn't moved.

01:23:35 ◼   ► It's just either it's visible or it's not.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Minimizing says take it from where it was and put it into the dock somewhere.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Somehow, if you have minimized windows, I believe this is the default, visible in the dock as

01:23:47 ◼   ► separate items, you will see a tiny little version of your window with a little badge for

01:23:52 ◼   ► the app icon and current version of macOS.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Like you can recognize your window from its tiny, tiny thumbnail in the dock.

01:23:58 ◼   ► And so then you can visually scan and say, where was that window?

01:24:01 ◼   ► It's not you don't have to wonder where it is and go to the app where it is and do show

01:24:05 ◼   ► all or anything like that.

01:24:06 ◼   ► You can see it in your dock.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Click on it.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And then the little genie effect will go woo or the scale effect or whatever you picked

01:24:11 ◼   ► will make it leave the dock and go back to where it was.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I don't know how you could confuse these two things because they're just so incredibly different.

01:24:19 ◼   ► But that's why they're both there.

01:24:22 ◼   ► One of them lets you optionally continue to see tiny thumbnails of your windows while taking

01:24:28 ◼   ► them off your screen.

01:24:29 ◼   ► And the other one does not and just hides them in place where they are.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And I wouldn't like them to replace either one of them because people like both of them

01:24:38 ◼   ► and you can mix and match them.

01:24:39 ◼   ► If you like I have a window minimized right now, but just one, but I have a thousand hidden

01:24:43 ◼   ► windows, right?

01:24:44 ◼   ► Why did I minimize that one window?

01:24:46 ◼   ► Because I wanted to remind myself it was a window I had open, but it was like really big

01:24:49 ◼   ► and I didn't want it to like cluttering up my stuff.

01:24:51 ◼   ► I'm like, I got it.

01:24:51 ◼   ► I got to remember to get back to that.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And if I just hit it, I know I would just forget that I was in the middle of that big

01:24:56 ◼   ► thing.

01:24:56 ◼   ► So I minimized it before this podcast.

01:24:58 ◼   ► So now I see it sitting in my dock there and it's going to remind me, oh yeah, I was in the

01:25:03 ◼   ► middle of that thing and I will unminimize it because I'll see it in my dock.

01:25:06 ◼   ► That's just one example of me using minimization.

01:25:08 ◼   ► I use minimization very rarely, but I do use it for that one purpose and I use hiding all

01:25:13 ◼   ► the time.

01:25:13 ◼   ► So again, I don't know how windows works, but I think having both of those concepts in

01:25:18 ◼   ► macOS is an advantage and they should keep them.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:21 ◼   ► As far as I know, the windows model is there's just minimizing.

01:25:24 ◼   ► But the, what, what makes the Mac model powerful, which is also makes it confusing for a lot of

01:25:31 ◼   ► people, especially, you know, newbies to it.

01:25:32 ◼   ► But what makes it powerful is that you don't hide windows, you hide entire apps and you don't

01:25:40 ◼   ► minimize entire apps.

01:25:42 ◼   ► You minimize single windows.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And so you actually have those, those different layers of management.

01:25:48 ◼   ► You can hide individual windows.

01:25:50 ◼   ► You can?

01:25:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Option click away from it, right?

01:25:53 ◼   ► What?

01:25:54 ◼   ► Really?

01:25:54 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever done that in my life.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Oh no, that, that hides everything.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Let me see.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Let me see if I can find an example.

01:26:01 ◼   ► I believe you can with certain arrangements that just hide one window, but leave the other

01:26:05 ◼   ► is visible.

01:26:06 ◼   ► I got a, I got a front and center is thwarting me here.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:26:09 ◼   ► All right.

01:26:09 ◼   ► So while John does that, so basically like to me, when I hide an app, it's like I am

01:26:15 ◼   ► done with this entire app right now.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I don't need to see this entire app right now.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Minimizing, I very rarely use minimizing.

01:26:21 ◼   ► The only thing I use it for is Safari.

01:26:24 ◼   ► The idea basically is Safari.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I tend to have not a John level of windows, but not, not a small number.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Like right now I have, oh geez.

01:26:35 ◼   ► One, two, three, four, seven, I have about, looks like about 12 Safari windows.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I got a lot of stuff going on.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Gracious.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:41 ◼   ► You got more than me.

01:26:43 ◼   ► I have one, two, three, four, five, six.

01:26:46 ◼   ► I have six.

01:26:46 ◼   ► You have double the number of Safari windows.

01:26:48 ◼   ► I have a lot of tabs on those windows.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I mean, so do I.

01:26:50 ◼   ► But so for, but for whatever it's worth, like six of those windows are minimized and have

01:26:55 ◼   ► been minimized for months.

01:26:57 ◼   ► I think.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

01:26:59 ◼   ► You're killing me, you two.

01:27:00 ◼   ► But it's like, here's something, because Safari is like, there's so many times that

01:27:06 ◼   ► I have to open something up in Safari and like, oh, I want to deal with this.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I can't deal with this right now.

01:27:11 ◼   ► I should make an app that deals with this problem for me.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Oh gosh.

01:27:14 ◼   ► But it's like, I should, I want to deal with this thing in this window.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I can't deal with it right now or I'm not ready to yet.

01:27:20 ◼   ► I'll come back to this.

01:27:21 ◼   ► And then at some point.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Clearly that's working well.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:24 ◼   ► It's like the badge on your mail that says 10,000 unread messages.

01:27:27 ◼   ► It is exactly like that.

01:27:28 ◼   ► I am equally bad at doing this for all of my applications.

01:27:32 ◼   ► But the way I do it with Safari is like, if there's some like project or something that

01:27:37 ◼   ► like, oh, I'm not ready for this right now.

01:27:39 ◼   ► I don't want to lose these tabs.

01:27:40 ◼   ► I can't deal with it yet.

01:27:41 ◼   ► But also every time I open Safari, I don't want all of these windows popping back into view

01:27:48 ◼   ► and crowding my entire screen.

01:27:49 ◼   ► That's a good case for, I'm going to minimize this window.

01:27:53 ◼   ► Also, all the clutter near my dock should remind me of it, you know, over time.

01:27:57 ◼   ► Like the badge on your mail will remind you.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:28:00 ◼   ► I think, I think the thing I was thinking of a single windows is option double clicking

01:28:03 ◼   ► a folder and finder window and it will open the new folder window, but it'll close the

01:28:06 ◼   ► one behind it.

01:28:07 ◼   ► So it's not actually hiding.

01:28:08 ◼   ► It's closing.

01:28:08 ◼   ► So anyway, so to answer Michael's question back from a thousand years ago, why hasn't Apple

01:28:14 ◼   ► merged these concepts into one?

01:28:16 ◼   ► Well, honestly, they're different concepts.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Um, but that being said, this is the kind of thing that like today's Apple, if you look

01:28:21 ◼   ► at like, you know, what do we have like on the iPad, like the newest windowing system that

01:28:25 ◼   ► Apple has made granted, that's still very much in flux and that's, you know, that's fine.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Uh, I think they're, they're making progress overall, but modern Apple, I don't think would

01:28:35 ◼   ► ever have created this system from scratch this way.

01:28:38 ◼   ► But this is something that came from legacy and I think we're better off for it because

01:28:42 ◼   ► the idea of the Mac in today's computing ecosystem is like, yes, this is the computer that like

01:28:49 ◼   ► everyone can use asterisk, but like, this is the power users platform.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Like if you are a, a desktop computer or, you know, laptop, if you're like a PC or Mac

01:28:59 ◼   ► power user, like chances are you're probably a Mac user in a lot of cases.

01:29:05 ◼   ► And if you are a power user on the Mac, it rewards you in a lot of different ways.

01:29:09 ◼   ► You can manage things, uh, including all these, all these different window management styles

01:29:14 ◼   ► and techniques and different options.

01:29:15 ◼   ► You have regular people who are not expert users never hide anything.

01:29:20 ◼   ► They quit apps or they minimize things.

01:29:23 ◼   ► That's it.

01:29:23 ◼   ► And that's why regular people have way more minimized windows usually than I have my Safari

01:29:28 ◼   ► windows in my little minimized dock area.

01:29:30 ◼   ► Um, or they just close apps with the red button.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Cause they just, they just want it to go away.

01:29:35 ◼   ► And like, once they learn that yellow button makes it go away to the dock, they just do

01:29:39 ◼   ► that.

01:29:39 ◼   ► That's why you see so many people with their docks that are just filled with just a huge

01:29:43 ◼   ► amount of stuff.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So you can't even tell what anything is anymore.

01:29:45 ◼   ► Like a thousand minimized windows or a million application icons.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Cause they find that one system.

01:29:50 ◼   ► They're like, Oh, every window has these red, yellow, and green buttons.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And I kind of recognize them and I learned what they do.

01:29:56 ◼   ► And I learned the yellow one makes the window small and go away.

01:29:58 ◼   ► And that's the tool I'm going to use to manage my windows.

01:30:01 ◼   ► And you know, if it works for them, it works for them.

01:30:03 ◼   ► But there are many more tools at your disposal besides just that.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And just using that yellow button can overwhelm things very quickly, especially if you don't

01:30:09 ◼   ► understand the concept of like, you know, that app is still running.

01:30:12 ◼   ► And unlike iOS, it's not going to quit it for you because so many people didn't adopt

01:30:16 ◼   ► auto termination anyway.

01:30:18 ◼   ► So that leads me to my next point, which is I think there's actually two things Apple

01:30:22 ◼   ► should steal from windows in this area.

01:30:24 ◼   ► Number one is auto termination.

01:30:27 ◼   ► I think number one that they tried when, when the last window of an app is closed, the app

01:30:35 ◼   ► should terminate.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Oh, I just mad.

01:30:37 ◼   ► I strongly disagree.

01:30:38 ◼   ► That is optional.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I disagree.

01:30:39 ◼   ► That is optional in Mac apps and Mac.

01:30:41 ◼   ► If you're writing a Mac app, you can choose whether you want your Mac app to do that.

01:30:45 ◼   ► And I'm glad that's a choice because some apps like say calculator, you do want that

01:30:49 ◼   ► or dictionary.

01:30:50 ◼   ► You do want that to happen.

01:30:51 ◼   ► But other apps, you absolutely do not.

01:30:53 ◼   ► So the Apple way is better.

01:30:54 ◼   ► It should be a developer choice.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Developers, unlike automatic termination, develop.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I thought you were talking about something else, which I'll get to in a second.

01:31:01 ◼   ► But this thing, I believe most Mac developers, including Apple, make the right choice for when

01:31:07 ◼   ► they do this.

01:31:07 ◼   ► Again, this is a developer choice.

01:31:09 ◼   ► You can decide how you want your app to behave.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Apple has guidelines on it.

01:31:13 ◼   ► They had guidelines back in the day.

01:31:14 ◼   ► They still are basically the same.

01:31:15 ◼   ► This should definitely be a developer choice because both modes of operation are important.

01:31:20 ◼   ► And you don't even think about it.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I bet you don't.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Like Casey, you were like, I disagree.

01:31:22 ◼   ► I don't like that or whatever.

01:31:23 ◼   ► But I bet you never even thought about the fact that when you open dictionary and close

01:31:26 ◼   ► the window, the app quits.

01:31:27 ◼   ► No.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:28 ◼   ► I was.

01:31:29 ◼   ► It just works the way you expect if what you expect is sanity.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Wow.

01:31:34 ◼   ► So I think it breaks enough people's expectations that that's why it is the wrong behavior.

01:31:41 ◼   ► And by the way, the other one, the auto termination that I'm referring to is there is there's an

01:31:46 ◼   ► API that a developer that was introduced years ago, back when I was reviewing Mac OS 10.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Apple introduced an API that said, hey, Mac developers, you know how iOS, if your app is not being

01:31:57 ◼   ► actively used and we feel memory pressure or whatever, like we just kill your app and then

01:32:03 ◼   ► like we'll relaunch it and it has to resume and restore its state.

01:32:06 ◼   ► You know how that works on iOS and everybody loves it?

01:32:08 ◼   ► Why don't we do that on the Mac?

01:32:09 ◼   ► And they introduced a suite of APIs that you can opt into that say, hey, Mac OS, you can

01:32:15 ◼   ► kill my app if you need memory or whatever.

01:32:16 ◼   ► And when I relaunch, I'll restore my state.

01:32:19 ◼   ► So people won't even just like iOS.

01:32:21 ◼   ► And Mac developers mostly did not adopt those APIs.

01:32:24 ◼   ► Is it because it's not the Mac way?

01:32:28 ◼   ► Is it because Mac users didn't want it?

01:32:30 ◼   ► They still exist.

01:32:31 ◼   ► You can still implement them.

01:32:32 ◼   ► And I feel like good Mac apps should relaunch to their previous state.

01:32:36 ◼   ► But very few Mac apps have opted into allowing Mac OS to kill them when it feels like it.

01:32:43 ◼   ► And I kind of don't, as a developer of a Mac app, I kind of don't blame them.

01:32:47 ◼   ► I know that's just the way things are on iOS and it always has been that way on iOS.

01:32:51 ◼   ► So it's like the culture there.

01:32:53 ◼   ► But the culture on Mac OS is, no, Mac OS, don't kill me.

01:32:56 ◼   ► Don't kill my app.

01:32:57 ◼   ► I could opt into it, but I'm not gonna.

01:33:00 ◼   ► I think that's very different, though, because that's like the user still has content in a window

01:33:05 ◼   ► open of that app.

01:33:07 ◼   ► So that makes sense.

01:33:08 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I know.

01:33:08 ◼   ► But it is called automatic termination.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Yes.

01:33:11 ◼   ► Anyway, okay.

01:33:11 ◼   ► So we disagree on that, but hey.

01:33:14 ◼   ► And I, as a power user, I appreciate the fact that I have command W and command Q doing different

01:33:21 ◼   ► things.

01:33:21 ◼   ► But I also know that no one else who's not power users ever manages that correctly.

01:33:25 ◼   ► So I think termination after the last window is closed, which is something Windows does,

01:33:31 ◼   ► I think that is the right move for Apple to do if they ever want to.

01:33:34 ◼   ► I think you should be cursed, Marco, to have your Mac suddenly enable that feature for every

01:33:38 ◼   ► app and it will drive you insane.

01:33:39 ◼   ► All right.

01:33:40 ◼   ► All right.

01:33:41 ◼   ► And then secondly, the second thing Apple should borrow from Windows, John's going to kill me,

01:33:44 ◼   ► the green button should maximize the window to the entire screen bounce.

01:33:47 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:33:48 ◼   ► I mean, everybody wants that.

01:33:49 ◼   ► An option green button will almost always do that.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Here's what I want the green button to do.

01:33:54 ◼   ► I don't remember if it ever did this, but like there was a button in classic Mac OS that

01:33:59 ◼   ► it was kind of the natural analog to the green button.

01:34:01 ◼   ► They didn't have stoplights.

01:34:02 ◼   ► It was on the right side of the window or whatever, but it was a wind.

01:34:04 ◼   ► The button looked like a small square inside a big square, like there was a square and then

01:34:09 ◼   ► there was a square in the upper left corner.

01:34:10 ◼   ► So it was like little square, big square.

01:34:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:12 ◼   ► It was basically like minimize, maximize.

01:34:14 ◼   ► And here's what that button did in classic Mac OS.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And it is the thing that I wish buttons, one of the window control buttons did on Mac OS

01:34:22 ◼   ► 10 and modern Mac OS, but it doesn't and never really did, which is automatically size this

01:34:28 ◼   ► window to be appropriately sized for the content that's in it.

01:34:31 ◼   ► So, for example, if you're in the finder and it's an icon view window and you have a bunch

01:34:36 ◼   ► of icons and you're like, I just want this window to be big enough to show all the icons.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Right now there's a bunch of empty space all around them.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Just shrink, shrink to fit, just shrink it.

01:34:45 ◼   ► So it fits all the things without scroll bars.

01:34:47 ◼   ► That's useful in lots of apps, like an image editing app or whatever, like, or a preview.

01:34:53 ◼   ► And, you know, and you want, I just want to see this window at one X.

01:34:55 ◼   ► I just did a crop or whatever, but now there's a bunch of gray empty area around it.

01:34:59 ◼   ► Just shrink this window to be just big enough to show all the content without scroll bars.

01:35:05 ◼   ► None of the, like apps can implement that.

01:35:08 ◼   ► You can do anything you want in response to the window widgets, but that is not a

01:35:10 ◼   ► standard feature of the window widgets in Mac OS.

01:35:14 ◼   ► And that's what I miss.

01:35:15 ◼   ► I do get what you're saying.

01:35:16 ◼   ► I don't, I don't mind the green thing, go full screen all the time.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Most apps do that.

01:35:22 ◼   ► If you option green click thing and the app doesn't do that, the option click will usually

01:35:26 ◼   ► make it do that.

01:35:27 ◼   ► But yeah, there's a lot of confusion with the green thing because some apps will size to

01:35:32 ◼   ► fit and people don't want that.

01:35:34 ◼   ► They want it to go full screen.

01:35:35 ◼   ► I don't actually object to that too much because I do feel like most people see the green

01:35:39 ◼   ► thing and they just expect it to do full screen all the time.

01:35:41 ◼   ► And I think the culture in Mac OS these days is most apps.

01:35:45 ◼   ► Can you think of an app to use frequently that doesn't do that?

01:35:47 ◼   ► No, I've never used like the option thing to make it.

01:35:53 ◼   ► Back when, back when the recommendation was slightly different, the option thing was like,

01:35:56 ◼   ► okay, and that will force it.

01:35:57 ◼   ► But again, you could programmatically, you can, you know, as a Mac developer, you can make

01:36:01 ◼   ► the button do whatever you want, which is insanity coming from iOS, but you can make it do whatever

01:36:05 ◼   ► you want.

01:36:05 ◼   ► But the defaults and the recommended approaches usually to do full screen.

01:36:11 ◼   ► But you said what you want is for it to do full screen all the time.

01:36:13 ◼   ► That's what I'm asking.

01:36:14 ◼   ► Is there some app that doesn't do full screen with the green widget by default that you use

01:36:18 ◼   ► frequently?

01:36:18 ◼   ► Let me see.

01:36:19 ◼   ► Hold on.

01:36:20 ◼   ► Let me see what Safari does.

01:36:22 ◼   ► See, what I don't want is for it to go into full screen mode.

01:36:27 ◼   ► That's different.

01:36:27 ◼   ► Oh, you just want it to make it the size of the, I get what you're saying.

01:36:29 ◼   ► All right.

01:36:30 ◼   ► You want it to just make the window big enough to fill the whole screen.

01:36:32 ◼   ► You don't want it to go to full screen.

01:36:33 ◼   ► But on Windows, it goes to full screen mode.

01:36:35 ◼   ► Because full screen, well, sort of, yes.

01:36:36 ◼   ► There's no menu bar, so it's harder to tell, but it does.

01:36:38 ◼   ► But full screen mode on Windows, by maximizing a window on Windows, full screen mode, we

01:36:44 ◼   ► can call it that.

01:36:44 ◼   ► But on Windows, it's just, okay, now you have one big window.

01:36:48 ◼   ► On the Mac, it's a whole show.

01:36:51 ◼   ► It's like, you maximize, you go, it's like, woo, here we go.

01:36:55 ◼   ► But it does the same thing on Windows in that it doesn't leave any gaps or seams.

01:37:00 ◼   ► It gets rid of the window chrome at the edges.

01:37:02 ◼   ► It just pushes it off.

01:37:04 ◼   ► It's full bleed in the print sense, where it's as if you had printed it and then cut.

01:37:08 ◼   ► Windows does the same thing, and so does Mac OS.

01:37:10 ◼   ► But you're right, the animations in Mac OS and the whole flashing and everything like that.

01:37:14 ◼   ► And, of course, on Mac OS, it hides the menu bar as well, which is not a thing on Windows in the same way.

01:37:19 ◼   ► So, yeah, like, it's much more disruptive to the Mac experience to go in and out of full screen mode.

01:37:25 ◼   ► And, yes, and it is slower because of all the woo animations.

01:37:27 ◼   ► So it's like you're getting sent along for a ride.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Like, oh, no, I accidentally am in this ride now.

01:37:33 ◼   ► And then, oh, let me get out.

01:37:34 ◼   ► Woo, all the way back.

01:37:35 ◼   ► Like, it's just, it's such a, it's such a heavy operation.

01:37:38 ◼   ► Yeah, try the option, try option click in Safari, by the way.

01:37:41 ◼   ► All right, hold on.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Although, you will ruin your window when you do this because I don't know how to undo it.

01:37:45 ◼   ► Let me see, option shift click.

01:37:46 ◼   ► Nope, there's no way.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Oh, no, I just got a, well, I, option click just give me, like, the move and resize menu now.

01:37:51 ◼   ► No, option click the green widget.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

01:37:54 ◼   ► When you're not in full screen mode, get out of full screen mode.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Get a Safari window and option click the green widget.

01:38:00 ◼   ► Nothing happens.

01:38:01 ◼   ► What are you talking about nothing happens?

01:38:02 ◼   ► I just did it.

01:38:03 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not on Tahoe.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Are you on Tahoe?

01:38:05 ◼   ► No.

01:38:05 ◼   ► Why would I be on Tahoe?

01:38:07 ◼   ► That's great.

01:38:08 ◼   ► It's hideous.

01:38:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:38:09 ◼   ► I'm saying, I'm, Casey, can you confirm?

01:38:11 ◼   ► Go to Safari window and option click the green widget.

01:38:13 ◼   ► I just did it.

01:38:13 ◼   ► It, it expands vertically to fill the space.

01:38:16 ◼   ► It does not expand horizontally.

01:38:18 ◼   ► Oh, it was already vertically filling it.

01:38:19 ◼   ► Mine expands horizontally and vertically.

01:38:22 ◼   ► Yeah, mine is only doing.

01:38:23 ◼   ► No, I'm sorry, you're right.

01:38:24 ◼   ► It could, it could depend on what web page you're on.

01:38:26 ◼   ► Like if you're on a web page.

01:38:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's right.

01:38:27 ◼   ► Try ATP.fm.

01:38:28 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:38:29 ◼   ► All right.

01:38:29 ◼   ► This is great programming, John.

01:38:31 ◼   ► Great programming.

01:38:32 ◼   ► It's a website that we may be familiar with.

01:38:33 ◼   ► I'm going to.

01:38:33 ◼   ► It only is adjusting the height.

01:38:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:35 ◼   ► It expands horizontally and vertically.

01:38:37 ◼   ► Not mine.

01:38:37 ◼   ► Mine does horizontal, but only the teeniest a little bit.

01:38:40 ◼   ► Anyway, see, this is the problem though.

01:38:42 ◼   ► Like the button like that should do the same thing every time to every window.

01:38:46 ◼   ► Like the, the red button does the yellow button does the green button is like, I'm going to

01:38:51 ◼   ► randomly make this larger, but not probably what you expect.

01:38:53 ◼   ► They're there.

01:38:54 ◼   ► Like I said, there's developer control over all these things.

01:38:56 ◼   ► Most developers don't mess with the, the close button or the minimize button, but the,

01:39:01 ◼   ► the green button is, as you noted, it's got a menu.

01:39:03 ◼   ► This comes from it.

01:39:04 ◼   ► The option click thing far predates the menu and the option thing I used to, in most apps

01:39:09 ◼   ► do what you want it, which is make this window big enough to fill the whole screen,

01:39:13 ◼   ► but don't enter full screen mode because that, that existed before full screen mode was a

01:39:17 ◼   ► thing on Mac OS because Mac OS X didn't always have full screen mode.

01:39:21 ◼   ► And that's, that's what I, that's what I, I'm saying.

01:39:23 ◼   ► That's what it should do every time.

01:39:25 ◼   ► Like it should make the window, the full bounds of the screen minus the menu bar and the dock.

01:39:29 ◼   ► But I, I think a lot of Mac users really love full screen mode though.

01:39:33 ◼   ► So I think the current default is probably right.

01:39:35 ◼   ► I don't mind what you're saying.

01:39:37 ◼   ► Like I, I, I don't, I'm not a fan of full screen mode and I would be just as happy to

01:39:42 ◼   ► have it like make the window big enough to fill the whole screen with an option or something.

01:39:46 ◼   ► But I mean, I, I've always said, and this is my complaint forever, there should be public

01:39:50 ◼   ► APIs for the windowing system and things like stage manage should have been a possible as

01:39:54 ◼   ► a third party app.

01:39:55 ◼   ► That's absolutely not the case now.

01:39:57 ◼   ► And it's even less the case than it used to be because Mac OS X used to have all sorts

01:40:00 ◼   ► of like hacks and everything, but you know, system integrity protection, everything stopped

01:40:03 ◼   ► all that.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:04 ◼   ► But there should be public APIs for the windowing system.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Kind of like there was back in X window system.

01:40:08 ◼   ► I got, I'm sure the links people are, you know, if you want a configurable window manager,

01:40:12 ◼   ► X 11 is sitting right there.

01:40:14 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, it is in Wayland or whatever.

01:40:16 ◼   ► But, um, and there's lots of cool utilities for the Mac, like hammer spoon and stuff where

01:40:20 ◼   ► you can hack together stuff that does this, but there should be public APIs from Apple with

01:40:24 ◼   ► full access to the windowing system above the layer of an application.

01:40:27 ◼   ► So you can, if you want a tiling window manager, some third party should be able to implement

01:40:31 ◼   ► one.

01:40:31 ◼   ► If someone has an idea that's like stage manager, third party should be able to implement it.

01:40:35 ◼   ► If someone wants to do what to make a window manager that behaves the way Marco described,

01:40:38 ◼   ► third party should be able to do that.

01:40:40 ◼   ► The wrinkle is that Mac apps can override some of this stuff, but again, that would have to

01:40:46 ◼   ► be part of the public API, the public API set up for this.

01:40:49 ◼   ► That is a super duper power user feature though.

01:40:51 ◼   ► Like on an X 11 back in college, I had my window manager configured.

01:40:56 ◼   ► I think I've described before in very on Mac like ways.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Cause I had just, I had come up with a workflow that worked for me and X windows on the X terms.

01:41:03 ◼   ► It was very different than the way I worked on Macs, like doing, you know, like a focus

01:41:07 ◼   ► falls mouse, but without auto raise.

01:41:09 ◼   ► So I could be like, move my cursor into a background window and not have it come to the front, but

01:41:13 ◼   ► have the input focus be there and stuff.

01:41:15 ◼   ► Like I was doing really weird on Mac like stuff, you know, experimental time in college.

01:41:19 ◼   ► I didn't prefer it all the time, but it was great to be able to configure all of that

01:41:24 ◼   ► and use different window managers and stuff.

01:41:25 ◼   ► And the Mac, a lot of that experimentation has gone away and iPad and iOS, it never existed

01:41:30 ◼   ► to begin with.

01:41:31 ◼   ► Although there was a little bit of experimentation back in the jailbreak days.

01:41:35 ◼   ► But that is definitely, you know, someday when we do the, you know, John Ternis' to-do list or

01:41:40 ◼   ► insert Apple new CEO here to-do list, adding power user features like this to the Mac specifically

01:41:47 ◼   ► does make a lot of sense after they shore up all the crappy stuff that's broken with the

01:41:52 ◼   ► existing functionality.

01:41:53 ◼   ► But yeah, maybe that'll be their new Apple 2030 plan.

01:41:56 ◼   ► All right.

01:41:57 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsor, this episode, Quince, and thank you to our members who support us

01:42:01 ◼   ► directly.

01:42:01 ◼   ► You can join us at ATP.fm slash join.

01:42:04 ◼   ► One of the perks of membership is exclusive bonus content.

01:42:07 ◼   ► We do an exclusive content topic every single week called ATP Overtime.

01:42:12 ◼   ► This week, we're going to be talking about the rumor that Apple is making a iMac Pro again

01:42:18 ◼   ► with an M5 Max chip sometime soon.

01:42:20 ◼   ► We're going to talk about that.

01:42:21 ◼   ► And over time, you can join the list at ATP.fm slash join.

01:42:24 ◼   ► Thank you so much, everybody.

01:42:25 ◼   ► And we'll talk to you next week.

01:42:42 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment.

01:43:12 ◼   ► S-I-R-A-C-O-S-A-R-A-C-O-S-A-R-A-C-O-S-A-R-A-C-O-S-A.

01:43:17 ◼   ► It's accidental.

01:43:18 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:43:20 ◼   ► They didn't mean to.

01:43:22 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:43:24 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:43:25 ◼   ► Tech podcast.

01:43:27 ◼   ► So long.

01:43:28 ◼   ► All right.

01:43:30 ◼   ► I have a question.

01:43:32 ◼   ► What the hell is the story with thread and matter?

01:43:37 ◼   ► I feel like an idiot.

01:43:38 ◼   ► I feel like I am capable of understanding what all this is and means and does, but I don't

01:43:46 ◼   ► get it.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And I need someone to write up like the idiot's got or what was that?

01:43:51 ◼   ► A thread and matter for dummies.

01:43:53 ◼   ► I need somebody to write this post and send it my way, please.

01:43:56 ◼   ► It might already exist for all I know.

01:43:58 ◼   ► But this is all brought on because a year ago now, I bought a, I believe it's nano leaf

01:44:05 ◼   ► set of Christmas lights, of LED Christmas lights.

01:44:08 ◼   ► So you can program them and you can make them dance and react to music and do all sorts of

01:44:13 ◼   ► stuff.

01:44:13 ◼   ► Most of which we don't bother with, but they were incredibly on sale after Christmas last

01:44:18 ◼   ► year.

01:44:18 ◼   ► And so I thought, you know what?

01:44:19 ◼   ► I'm going to get these.

01:44:20 ◼   ► I think they were at, um, James Thompson's recommendation.

01:44:23 ◼   ► I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think that's true.

01:44:25 ◼   ► And so I got this set and I'm mostly happy with it.

01:44:29 ◼   ► And it said that it works with HomeKit.

01:44:31 ◼   ► And so I was like, oh, great.

01:44:32 ◼   ► Okay, perfect.

01:44:33 ◼   ► That's all I really need.

01:44:34 ◼   ► Then this year, when I went to put it on the tree, I realized, oh no, I have now somehow

01:44:40 ◼   ► joined the thread matter, you know, thread slash matter ecosystem.

01:44:44 ◼   ► I don't think I really wanted to be here quite yet.

01:44:46 ◼   ► And so, uh, I did eventually get it on Apple home, but that meant I couldn't get it into home

01:44:54 ◼   ► assistant, uh, which may be user error, or at least not at first anyway.

01:44:58 ◼   ► And then I found a, a home assistant add on plugin, whatever that, um, that would work

01:45:05 ◼   ► with it.

01:45:05 ◼   ► And so I did get them eventually into home assistant, which is good.

01:45:09 ◼   ► So I can automate stuff and whatever.

01:45:10 ◼   ► But, uh, when looking at how to get something over, I think it's matter over thread or thread.

01:45:17 ◼   ► I think that's right.

01:45:18 ◼   ► I don't think it's thread over matter, but it's something like that.

01:45:20 ◼   ► Mind over matter, Casey.

01:45:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:45:22 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:45:22 ◼   ► Um, but when I went looking at, okay, how can I get this connected directly to home?

01:45:28 ◼   ► Home assistant and then bridge from home assistant into home kit, like I do with so many other

01:45:32 ◼   ► things.

01:45:33 ◼   ► And one of the things I discovered really quickly was that apparently either thread or matter,

01:45:39 ◼   ► one of them requires IPv6, which is all well and good on my physical network, but is a freaking

01:45:46 ◼   ► nightmare to get working in a Docker container on a Synology.

01:45:50 ◼   ► And so now I'm wondering if maybe I need to get like physical hardware for home assistant.

01:45:54 ◼   ► So I don't need to bother with that whole dance.

01:45:55 ◼   ► It's all a mess, y'all.

01:45:57 ◼   ► It's all a mess.

01:45:57 ◼   ► And most of the reason it's a mess is because I have no frigging idea what I'm doing.

01:46:01 ◼   ► And so I would love it if someone could point me to the idiot's guide to thread slash matter

01:46:08 ◼   ► and help me figure this out.

01:46:10 ◼   ► And I'm assuming that you two are also clueless.

01:46:12 ◼   ► I mean, it sounds to me like what you need is a guide for getting IPv6 networking, working

01:46:16 ◼   ► in Docker containers.

01:46:17 ◼   ► Well, that would also work specifically in on a Synology because my limited understanding

01:46:22 ◼   ► after having looked at this very briefly is that doing it on the Synology is uniquely

01:46:27 ◼   ► crappy.

01:46:28 ◼   ► Whereas in general, it's not, I don't think it's ever great, I don't think, but it's

01:46:34 ◼   ► apparently particularly crummy to do it on a Synology.

01:46:38 ◼   ► But that would also be an acceptable answer.

01:46:40 ◼   ► Yeah, this is, you engage in smart home stuff a lot more than I do because your tolerance for

01:46:49 ◼   ► futzing with it when things are not easy or break over time is way higher than my tolerance

01:46:55 ◼   ► for it.

01:46:56 ◼   ► The extent of my smart home stuff is actually, I believe it's gotten smaller over time.

01:47:01 ◼   ► That's because you're a smart person.

01:47:04 ◼   ► I, however, am an idiot.

01:47:05 ◼   ► Like, literally all I have now is Lutron Caseta switch, like light switches.

01:47:11 ◼   ► And even then, like, I only command them via push button switches on the wall or on my desk.

01:47:18 ◼   ► I don't even use voice control with any smart assistants anymore.

01:47:22 ◼   ► I have some very basic routines, like for the outdoor lights, turn them on after sun.