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The Talk Show

351: ‘Here You Go, Cheapskate’, With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► I still have lots of WWDC stuff to talk about.

00:00:02 ◼   ► And I was thinking one thing I didn't talk about

00:00:04 ◼   ► was what was the plan B if it had rained in Cupertino?

00:00:09 ◼   ► And I actually asked some people from Apple.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I got to speak to a couple of people

00:00:14 ◼   ► who were involved in setting up the big day

00:00:17 ◼   ► or whatever, the special day.

00:00:19 ◼   ► And what if it rained?

00:00:23 ◼   ► The plan was more or less a shrug.

00:00:25 ◼   ► It was, let's hope it doesn't rain.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And apparently it did rain just a couple of days

00:00:32 ◼   ► before the keynote.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - So there's a running joke that whenever I come

00:00:36 ◼   ► to Cupertino it rains, and they always say

00:00:38 ◼   ► it's because of the Canadian low pressure system

00:00:39 ◼   ► that I'm bringing with me.

00:00:41 ◼   ► But I woke up in Cupertino and it was raining that morning.

00:00:44 ◼   ► It had been raining.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, what day did you get there?

00:00:47 ◼   ► Was it Saturday?

00:00:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got there Saturday.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - See, I got there Saturday but very, very late

00:00:52 ◼   ► so I didn't see the remnants of it.

00:00:53 ◼   ► But yeah, that's what I heard, that it was,

00:00:55 ◼   ► within 48 hours it would have been blah.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I don't know if that would have been,

00:00:59 ◼   ► I guess that would have been worse,

00:01:00 ◼   ► but they would have made me leave.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - That's what would have happened.

00:01:02 ◼   ► - I did see you there and it was good to see you

00:01:04 ◼   ► and I'll say the same thing I said to Jason.

00:01:05 ◼   ► My God, it was good to see you.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Now, with you it is a little bit of a cheat move

00:01:09 ◼   ► because I did see you just a couple months ago

00:01:12 ◼   ► in New York briefly.

00:01:14 ◼   ► We had like what, a cup of coffee or something like that?

00:01:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, a cocktail or two.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - But still, good to see you.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Did you have a seat in the sun for that,

00:01:21 ◼   ► for the big show, for the keynote?

00:01:23 ◼   ► - No, so I'm usually very, again, Canadian, follow orders,

00:01:26 ◼   ► but I looked and I said, I just asked one of our

00:01:29 ◼   ► mutual friends, can I go sit in the back in the shade?

00:01:31 ◼   ► They said yes, and then I started moving

00:01:33 ◼   ► and then props to him, Neeley was like,

00:01:35 ◼   ► that's the pro move, and just like went right behind me

00:01:38 ◼   ► into the shade.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - We sat in the shade, Panzareno and Ben Thompson and I,

00:01:42 ◼   ► just because we were hot and it was 'cause we weren't late,

00:01:45 ◼   ► but we had to walk from, we took the visitor center tour

00:01:49 ◼   ► and it was across the street and it's, you know,

00:01:52 ◼   ► just a bit of walking in the sun and then we, you know,

00:01:55 ◼   ► we got some coffee and water and stuff,

00:01:58 ◼   ► and so we had just been walking for 15 minutes

00:02:01 ◼   ► in the hot sun, so we were a little hot,

00:02:02 ◼   ► and we're like, eh, let's sit in the shade, cool off,

00:02:04 ◼   ► and then we realized what a stroke of inadvertent genius

00:02:08 ◼   ► it was because it really wasn't about the temperature,

00:02:11 ◼   ► it was people, people actually took a bad sunburn.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - Sam, one of the YouTubers who was there,

00:02:16 ◼   ► very, very fair-skinned, looked fluorescent product red

00:02:19 ◼   ► at the end of that session.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - It was a nice day, I don't know what they could do about it

00:02:24 ◼   ► and it was unusually, the sun was unusually fierce

00:02:27 ◼   ► for Cupertino, I mean, it's, as everybody knows,

00:02:30 ◼   ► it is a running joke that as much as Apple's weather app

00:02:34 ◼   ► has always been interesting and overall very good,

00:02:38 ◼   ► anything weather-related from Apple tends to have

00:02:40 ◼   ► a severe Silicon Valley bias where the assumption is

00:02:45 ◼   ► it's probably, no matter what day of the calendar,

00:02:48 ◼   ► speaking of matching temperatures,

00:02:50 ◼   ► it's probably around 71 degrees and partly sunny.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, with a very close--

00:02:56 ◼   ► - To their credit though, they did put sunscreen

00:02:58 ◼   ► and a hat in every bag.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Keels! - So as not to use them.

00:03:01 ◼   ► - It was keels, which is very expensive premium sunscreen

00:03:04 ◼   ► and I was only packing a carry-on and it was big,

00:03:08 ◼   ► it was like, I don't know, like eight ounces,

00:03:11 ◼   ► so way too big to take in a carry-on,

00:03:12 ◼   ► so I had to give it away to a,

00:03:14 ◼   ► actually forget who I gave it to,

00:03:16 ◼   ► but I found a fair-skinned friend who was like,

00:03:17 ◼   ► yes, I will take it, and I was like, enjoy.

00:03:21 ◼   ► - Absolutely, at least they thought of it,

00:03:23 ◼   ► I thought that was nice.

00:03:25 ◼   ► - Anyway, we got lots to talk about still from WWDC.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - But the weirdest thing for me, if I could just interject,

00:03:30 ◼   ► the weirdest thing for me is that they said

00:03:32 ◼   ► that you had to test negative every day to get in,

00:03:35 ◼   ► but they didn't, like, I couldn't find

00:03:37 ◼   ► an established protocol, so I ended up just taking a selfie

00:03:39 ◼   ► of me with my negative test result

00:03:41 ◼   ► and then sending them all the information every morning,

00:03:45 ◼   ► so some poor jerk at Apple or Health had to look

00:03:49 ◼   ► at a dumb picture of me every morning with my desk.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - Didn't you have the, for the media pass,

00:03:53 ◼   ► didn't you have like a, it was like a portal

00:03:55 ◼   ► you had to go through. - Yes, yeah.

00:03:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, but that wasn't-- - I just uploaded that.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was flaky, though, it didn't work for me

00:04:02 ◼   ► on Sunday night, which worried me,

00:04:06 ◼   ► because the keynote was Monday morning,

00:04:08 ◼   ► and so what I did, I think I told you this

00:04:11 ◼   ► when we got into each other, I wasn't sure what to do,

00:04:15 ◼   ► it kept saying my picture, it was like,

00:04:18 ◼   ► Apple gave us in the media, like, here, click this link

00:04:21 ◼   ► and submit a photo of your test, and I think the,

00:04:26 ◼   ► it's a little bit more than the honor system, I guess,

00:04:29 ◼   ► I actually don't know how this portal works,

00:04:31 ◼   ► but if you ever take a COVID test, you'll notice,

00:04:35 ◼   ► I get, you know, just a consumer, buy it in the drug store,

00:04:38 ◼   ► take it at home COVID test, they all have little QR codes

00:04:41 ◼   ► on them, and so each test has a unique identifier,

00:04:44 ◼   ► so I, you know, I think it's some kind of checking,

00:04:47 ◼   ► like, hey, is this a test that has ever been entered

00:04:50 ◼   ► into one of these systems before, to prevent somebody

00:04:53 ◼   ► from just loading a rando negative test from the internet

00:04:58 ◼   ► or sharing it or reusing the same test from the day before

00:05:01 ◼   ► and uploading it, presumably they're actually looking

00:05:05 ◼   ► at the QR code and checking that it's a unique test

00:05:08 ◼   ► that's never been submitted as negative before, I don't know.

00:05:11 ◼   ► But whatever, mine was a unique test

00:05:14 ◼   ► that no one had ever used, it was a legit negative test

00:05:16 ◼   ► that I had a photo of, and the system just kept saying,

00:05:19 ◼   ► it's, the error message could not have been less helpful,

00:05:23 ◼   ► it was, it didn't say what was wrong with it,

00:05:26 ◼   ► it just said this can't be accepted.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So what I did on Monday morning to go to the keynote,

00:05:31 ◼   ► it actually, I tried it from my phone instead of my Mac,

00:05:34 ◼   ► number one, Monday morning, and it did go through,

00:05:37 ◼   ► but I didn't get a green check mark, I got a yellow one

00:05:40 ◼   ► that said, okay, we accepted your photo,

00:05:43 ◼   ► but it didn't mean that they put me in the green lights.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So what I did is I just took my test with me,

00:05:49 ◼   ► I put it in my laptop bag, and it's the, what's the brand?

00:05:53 ◼   ► Binax, I don't know, do you guys have

00:05:55 ◼   ► the same brand in Canada?

00:05:56 ◼   ► - No, I don't know what mine is.

00:05:59 ◼   ► - It's the one from Abbott's, people in the US know it,

00:06:02 ◼   ► it's like a purple box.

00:06:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, mine's the same.

00:06:05 ◼   ► - But the way that they work, and I bet a lot of people

00:06:08 ◼   ► listening have taken these, 'cause I mean,

00:06:09 ◼   ► it seems like that's part of our 2022 shared experience

00:06:13 ◼   ► is taking a lot of these COVID tests.

00:06:15 ◼   ► With the Binax one, you have this long swab

00:06:20 ◼   ► that you run around inside your nostrils.

00:06:22 ◼   ► All right, gross, right?

00:06:23 ◼   ► But then you put it in the cardboard test, fold it shut,

00:06:28 ◼   ► and there's a bit of adhesive, so the gross part

00:06:30 ◼   ► that's been up your nose is at least sort of

00:06:33 ◼   ► locked into a little cardboard thing.

00:06:35 ◼   ► So I didn't feel too gross about carrying around

00:06:38 ◼   ► a cotton swab that had been up both my nostrils

00:06:41 ◼   ► for 30 seconds, but it ended up not needing it.

00:06:44 ◼   ► My only issue is that you had to wait

00:06:46 ◼   ► till after 24 hours each time, so it got later in the day.

00:06:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - Every day, it was there.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it sounds to me, again, I don't blame Apple

00:06:55 ◼   ► at all for requiring a negative test and for partnering

00:06:58 ◼   ► with this, you know, somebody to do it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I think overall, everything they did to make it

00:07:04 ◼   ► as COVID safe as they could, you know, with as much stuff

00:07:09 ◼   ► being outside as possible, the whole cafeteria

00:07:11 ◼   ► having the doors open and the mask requirement.

00:07:15 ◼   ► I mean, I roll my eyes at the mask requirement, frankly,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but I realize, though, if they're gonna err

00:07:19 ◼   ► on one side or the other, I can't blame Apple for doing it,

00:07:22 ◼   ► especially outside with masks.

00:07:24 ◼   ► It's like, I'm like, what's the point?

00:07:28 ◼   ► But anyway, I don't blame 'em, but I know from talking

00:07:30 ◼   ► to people that Apple was not happy with the functionality

00:07:32 ◼   ► of the site, and the 24-hour thing was definitely weird.

00:07:35 ◼   ► I get it that you wanna take it once a day,

00:07:37 ◼   ► but if you submitted it at 8 a.m. the day before,

00:07:40 ◼   ► submitting it at 759 a.m. the next day should work.

00:07:44 ◼   ► - I mean, like, to their credit, I didn't see anyone

00:07:48 ◼   ► get sick at WWDC, and I saw everyone get sick at VidCon,

00:07:52 ◼   ► so Apple did something right.

00:07:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's interesting.

00:07:55 ◼   ► What I've noticed, and again, I just think it is such

00:07:58 ◼   ► a weird disease, and I know that these current variants

00:08:00 ◼   ► are super contagious, and luckily, everybody who's fully

00:08:03 ◼   ► vaxxed and boosted seems to just, you know, suffer like

00:08:06 ◼   ► a mid to, you know, low to mid cold symptoms for a couple

00:08:10 ◼   ► of days, but it doesn't, I don't know, I know a lot of people

00:08:15 ◼   ► who went to WWDC, I don't know anybody who got COVID there,

00:08:18 ◼   ► so that's great, but I do know lots of people,

00:08:22 ◼   ► especially like people over Twitter and stuff,

00:08:24 ◼   ► who've gotten COVID in the last 10 to 12 weeks,

00:08:28 ◼   ► and all the people I know who got it didn't do anything

00:08:32 ◼   ► risky, you know, they didn't, it wasn't like, oh, I went

00:08:34 ◼   ► to Vegas, or I went to, I don't know, a convention,

00:08:39 ◼   ► or something like that, it's all people who were like,

00:08:42 ◼   ► yeah, I was kind of mostly just staying home,

00:08:45 ◼   ► somehow I got it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - So for me, it's the people who went to like the YouTuber

00:08:48 ◼   ► boxing event in Florida, or now VidCon, so it's like,

00:08:51 ◼   ► just avoid groups of wild YouTubers, and you'll probably

00:08:54 ◼   ► be fine.

00:08:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, boxing, anything where people are screaming inside

00:08:58 ◼   ► seems like a bad, you know, from what I know about how

00:09:00 ◼   ► it spreads, I would say screaming or yelling indoors

00:09:03 ◼   ► would probably stay away.

00:09:05 ◼   ► - Yep, but anyway, I don't know, somehow I've avoided it,

00:09:07 ◼   ► I don't attribute this to anything other than really

00:09:11 ◼   ► dumb luck and whatever advantage being fully vaxed gets,

00:09:15 ◼   ► but--

00:09:15 ◼   ► - Same, but except the funny thing for me was that at VidCon

00:09:18 ◼   ► nobody wore a mask except for the Canadians,

00:09:19 ◼   ► whenever I was, like I was wearing one because,

00:09:22 ◼   ► like it's like Transport Canada still mandates them,

00:09:24 ◼   ► so the minute you get into the airport you're wearing

00:09:25 ◼   ► a mask, and then I just continued it through the indoor

00:09:27 ◼   ► activities and I saw someone else like, yep, Canadian, ha!

00:09:31 ◼   ► And we all left fine.

00:09:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's--

00:09:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:35 ◼   ► - What kind of a, VidCon's huge, right?

00:09:37 ◼   ► I mean, so it's like--

00:09:39 ◼   ► - The Anaheim Convention Center.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - And that's just like a typical big, super big--

00:09:43 ◼   ► - Like a Moscone event basically.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, like a Moscone type thing.

00:09:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and you know, there's, I'm sure, you know,

00:09:50 ◼   ► and again, I don't wanna--

00:09:51 ◼   ► - But with fans, like it's a fan event, so like,

00:09:52 ◼   ► maybe more like Macworld, like back in the day.

00:09:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably a good analogy, but you know,

00:09:57 ◼   ► not surprised that people got it, but it's, you know,

00:10:00 ◼   ► it's gonna happen, but yeah.

00:10:01 ◼   ► - I'm gonna go down swinging though, Jon.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna go down swinging.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - I would probably, I would wear a mask

00:10:06 ◼   ► in a convention center.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, with a, but yeah, well, it was just jam packed.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I was just, whatever, I'm happy, I'm safe,

00:10:13 ◼   ► and I'll just keep, I'll keep trying to stay that way.

00:10:16 ◼   ► - All right, let me just take a break

00:10:18 ◼   ► before we get into the show and I'll knock one

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00:12:08 ◼   ► Before we go back to WWDC, I've been writing about,

00:12:12 ◼   ► more or less prompted by last week's news

00:12:14 ◼   ► here in the United States

00:12:15 ◼   ► that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,

00:12:17 ◼   ► and as all of a sudden, in up to 26 states here,

00:12:21 ◼   ► abortion is criminalized or severely limited,

00:12:26 ◼   ► and a lot of women and other people are deeply concerned

00:12:30 ◼   ► about the sort of tracking that can happen

00:12:34 ◼   ► with their phones with regard to reproductive healthcare

00:12:37 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And it's just general, something good to know in general,

00:12:41 ◼   ► so I posted the other day,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I reiterated something I've posted before,

00:12:44 ◼   ► but never quite as the main thrust of a post to sort of,

00:12:49 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, I know SEO can be a dirty word,

00:12:52 ◼   ► but it's sort of my attempt at SEO at Daring Fireball,

00:12:54 ◼   ► like, let me write the post with the headline

00:12:58 ◼   ► that people can, if they're searching for it on Google

00:13:01 ◼   ► or DuckDuckGo or whatever else they search the web for,

00:13:04 ◼   ► we'll hopefully lead them there.

00:13:06 ◼   ► How to hard lock your iOS device,

00:13:10 ◼   ► meaning how to put your,

00:13:14 ◼   ► that's just, I'll just say iPhone,

00:13:16 ◼   ► but everything here definitely applies to iPad

00:13:18 ◼   ► and iPod touches, but that's a past tense product.

00:13:22 ◼   ► But how do you put your iPhone into a state

00:13:24 ◼   ► where Face ID or Touch ID no longer lets you into the phone

00:13:28 ◼   ► and you have to put your passcode in?

00:13:32 ◼   ► And one way everybody knows to do this

00:13:34 ◼   ► is if your device restarts,

00:13:35 ◼   ► like you turn it all the way off, turn it back on,

00:13:38 ◼   ► or a lot of people run into it,

00:13:41 ◼   ► maybe only run into it when they do a software update,

00:13:43 ◼   ► which of course necessitates a restart,

00:13:45 ◼   ► and everybody knows when you restart your phone,

00:13:48 ◼   ► you have to enter the code.

00:13:50 ◼   ► You can't just log in with Touch ID or Face ID.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Why would you wanna do this to secure your device?

00:13:55 ◼   ► Because, and bizarrely, coincidental with me writing this

00:14:00 ◼   ► in the light of people's concerns about privacy,

00:14:05 ◼   ► device privacy, health data privacy

00:14:08 ◼   ► regarding the abortion ruling here in the US,

00:14:11 ◼   ► in an unrelated thing, one of Trump's lawyers

00:14:16 ◼   ► was out to eat one of these inserts,

00:14:18 ◼   ► this John Eastman who promoted a bunch of, I think,

00:14:22 ◼   ► which is why the FBI greeted him after dinner,

00:14:26 ◼   ► a lot of illegal legal advice to Trump

00:14:29 ◼   ► about what he could do about the 2020 election.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And they took his phone from his belt holster

00:14:37 ◼   ► and required him, I guess, I think it was,

00:14:40 ◼   ► they said it was an iPhone 12,

00:14:42 ◼   ► so it would have been Face ID,

00:14:44 ◼   ► and then they used Face ID to get into his phone

00:14:46 ◼   ► and access his email.

00:14:47 ◼   ► For whatever reason, this is legal in the United States,

00:14:51 ◼   ► that law enforcement with a warrant or whatever,

00:14:54 ◼   ► I don't wanna get into the legal weeds on it,

00:14:56 ◼   ► but legally, law enforcement,

00:14:58 ◼   ► if they legally have the right to take your phone,

00:15:01 ◼   ► can legally require you to use Face ID

00:15:04 ◼   ► to unlock it biometrically,

00:15:06 ◼   ► and they can, if it's a Touch ID device,

00:15:10 ◼   ► can require you to provide your fingerprint.

00:15:13 ◼   ► - But even if they don't, like if you're incapacitated

00:15:15 ◼   ► or you're, people on airplanes are falling asleep

00:15:17 ◼   ► and other people have unlocked their phones

00:15:18 ◼   ► in with their fingers,

00:15:19 ◼   ► so it's always something to be careful about.

00:15:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've never, I've seen some stories about,

00:15:22 ◼   ► what I've seen is, one of those things,

00:15:25 ◼   ► like when they first announced Face ID

00:15:27 ◼   ► and people were like, "Well, what if blank blank?"

00:15:29 ◼   ► And one thing that, right as soon as they announced it,

00:15:32 ◼   ► where people were like, "What if you fall asleep

00:15:34 ◼   ► "and your kids know you have Face ID

00:15:36 ◼   ► "and they come up and try to unlock your phone

00:15:38 ◼   ► "while you're sleeping?"

00:15:39 ◼   ► And I've heard--

00:15:40 ◼   ► - It's harder 'cause you need your eyes,

00:15:41 ◼   ► but Touch ID works every time.

00:15:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, Touch ID works, but if you turn off attention,

00:15:47 ◼   ► I think it might work with your eyes closed.

00:15:49 ◼   ► So it's one reason that if,

00:15:52 ◼   ► unless you have some sort of accessibility need

00:15:55 ◼   ► to turn off the attention feature, you probably--

00:15:57 ◼   ► - Or those damn kids stick googly eyes on you

00:15:59 ◼   ► before they do it.

00:15:59 ◼   ► - I used to turn off the attention feature

00:16:01 ◼   ► 'cause for a while I had sunglasses that didn't work

00:16:04 ◼   ► Face ID and turning off the attention feature would do it,

00:16:06 ◼   ► and I only have one kid and I trust him.

00:16:09 ◼   ► But anyway, again, it is an interesting legal distinction,

00:16:12 ◼   ► but also though, they are not allowed to compel you

00:16:17 ◼   ► to provide a password or passcode or passphrase,

00:16:20 ◼   ► whatever you want to do, which would be tricky anyway,

00:16:24 ◼   ► because if you imagine it, let's say they take your phone

00:16:26 ◼   ► and you have Face ID and you don't wanna let them in,

00:16:31 ◼   ► you can sit there and struggle,

00:16:32 ◼   ► but they can physically hold you down

00:16:35 ◼   ► and hold the phone in front of you.

00:16:36 ◼   ► You can keep your eyes closed,

00:16:37 ◼   ► but eventually you're gonna open them.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It's whereas--

00:16:41 ◼   ► - Hashtag not legal advice,

00:16:42 ◼   ► but they have physical rights to you.

00:16:44 ◼   ► They can fingerprint you, they can photograph you,

00:16:46 ◼   ► but they can't, you have the right not,

00:16:48 ◼   ► again, self-incrimination,

00:16:49 ◼   ► so they can't force you to say anything.

00:16:50 ◼   ► - Right, stuff that's in your brain,

00:16:53 ◼   ► you have the right to keep,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and things on your physical body you don't.

00:16:56 ◼   ► I think that's, as a legal argument or a moral,

00:17:00 ◼   ► what should the law be?

00:17:01 ◼   ► I think that's a whole separate discussion,

00:17:02 ◼   ► and I'm such a civil libertarian

00:17:06 ◼   ► that I would come down on the side of

00:17:08 ◼   ► that your biometrics should be as protected

00:17:11 ◼   ► as your passwords.

00:17:13 ◼   ► - I believe your phone should have the same protection

00:17:14 ◼   ► as a spouse because they contain everything about you

00:17:17 ◼   ► at this point.

00:17:17 ◼   ► They should have full spousal non-incrimination protection,

00:17:19 ◼   ► but that's how I roll, John.

00:17:21 ◼   ► - But regardless, that is the way the law is here in the US,

00:17:26 ◼   ► so it's worth knowing,

00:17:27 ◼   ► and even if the law were different,

00:17:30 ◼   ► you could certainly argue that if you thought your phone

00:17:34 ◼   ► were going to be in the hands of someone

00:17:36 ◼   ► you don't want it to be in,

00:17:37 ◼   ► you still might want it,

00:17:38 ◼   ► even if the law protected your biometrics,

00:17:40 ◼   ► you still might want to put it in a hard lock situation

00:17:44 ◼   ► just to prevent somebody who, an adversary,

00:17:47 ◼   ► whether it's a police officer or whether it's--

00:17:50 ◼   ► - You're crossing a border.

00:17:51 ◼   ► - Right, or it could be a thief, you know,

00:17:54 ◼   ► could be anybody, but if you, in theory,

00:17:56 ◼   ► I think it makes sense that an iPhone that is in a state

00:18:00 ◼   ► that requires your passkey is more secure

00:18:04 ◼   ► than one that requires your passkey or face ID or touch ID.

00:18:08 ◼   ► So how do you do it?

00:18:09 ◼   ► It's really easy on a modern iPhone.

00:18:12 ◼   ► You just squeeze the power button,

00:18:14 ◼   ► they call it the side button,

00:18:16 ◼   ► with either of the volume buttons,

00:18:18 ◼   ► or I guess both if you squeeze all three.

00:18:21 ◼   ► I actually didn't try that.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Yep, that'll work too.

00:18:23 ◼   ► So just remember that.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Squeeze the phone, side button, either volume button,

00:18:31 ◼   ► hold it, it takes, I said two seconds,

00:18:33 ◼   ► I actually think it's a little less than two seconds,

00:18:35 ◼   ► but call it two seconds.

00:18:36 ◼   ► You get a little bit of haptic feedback.

00:18:39 ◼   ► If, this is a weird thing, I didn't note this,

00:18:41 ◼   ► I have a follow-up to write,

00:18:42 ◼   ► but you don't get, a couple of people have said,

00:18:45 ◼   ► I don't get any haptic feedback.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Did, have you, do you know about this?

00:18:49 ◼   ► - No, I get it all the time, I hadn't even thought about it.

00:18:51 ◼   ► - So the haptic feedback for when you hard lock your phone

00:18:55 ◼   ► only occurs if you have, in settings,

00:19:02 ◼   ► sound and haptics, here is where I'm going through this,

00:19:06 ◼   ► sound and haptics vibrate on ring.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Not the, the vibrate on silent doesn't,

00:19:14 ◼   ► switch doesn't matter, but it's the top thing.

00:19:17 ◼   ► I would have never guessed that vibrate on ring

00:19:21 ◼   ► would affect the haptic feedback for locking your phone.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Not in a million years, but it,

00:19:25 ◼   ► I tracked it down with a couple of readers who,

00:19:29 ◼   ► you know, were like, I don't know why I'm getting haptics.

00:19:31 ◼   ► - That seems very strange to me.

00:19:32 ◼   ► I think you should always get haptic feedback

00:19:34 ◼   ► for this, did this thing.

00:19:37 ◼   ► One of the things that is really neat about this feature,

00:19:39 ◼   ► and I know for a fact it is deliberately designed this way,

00:19:43 ◼   ► is that you can do it while your phone is in your pocket,

00:19:46 ◼   ► without looking at it or your purse and--

00:19:49 ◼   ► - Behind your back, any of those things.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - Any of those things, if it's just in your hand,

00:19:53 ◼   ► down by your leg, you can do it

00:19:56 ◼   ► without looking at the screen,

00:19:57 ◼   ► so you don't draw attention to it.

00:19:59 ◼   ► And any, let's just say, copper, TSA agent,

00:20:02 ◼   ► who might consider it suspicious

00:20:05 ◼   ► that you're doing something at your phone

00:20:07 ◼   ► right before you're supposed to hand it over

00:20:09 ◼   ► or something like that, you can do it very surreptitiously.

00:20:12 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:20:12 ◼   ► - And then at that point, it is in a state

00:20:14 ◼   ► where it requires your passcode.

00:20:16 ◼   ► - For the nerdy reference,

00:20:17 ◼   ► most of us exist in Springboard,

00:20:19 ◼   ► where it just has all of our normal applications,

00:20:21 ◼   ► and when you do that, when you squeeze it like that,

00:20:23 ◼   ► it basically throws away the hardware encryption keys

00:20:26 ◼   ► and puts you back into pre-board.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And there is literally, that's why phone numbers

00:20:29 ◼   ► won't show where the person calling is.

00:20:31 ◼   ► It has no access to any of your information

00:20:33 ◼   ► until you put in the passcode or password,

00:20:35 ◼   ► which gets you out of pre-board

00:20:38 ◼   ► and back into the springboard, the unlocked springboard world.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I know you had a video, like, two years ago,

00:20:44 ◼   ► something like that, where you--

00:20:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, the last time we went through this.

00:20:46 ◼   ► - So that's one of the reasons I'm so happy

00:20:48 ◼   ► to have you on the show, 'cause I know you know more

00:20:50 ◼   ► about this than I do, I think.

00:20:51 ◼   ► But every time I post about this,

00:20:53 ◼   ► I get lots and lots of comments like,

00:20:54 ◼   ► "Hey, I didn't know this, good to know."

00:20:56 ◼   ► And it's exactly why I've posted this multiple times,

00:21:00 ◼   ► why I'm talking about it now.

00:21:02 ◼   ► It is, like I wrote, I think I wrote the other day,

00:21:05 ◼   ► even if you're the sort of person who doesn't typically

00:21:08 ◼   ► share iPhone tips and tricks

00:21:11 ◼   ► with your extended friends and family,

00:21:12 ◼   ► this is one you should make an exception for.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And share it with your friends and family

00:21:18 ◼   ► as wide as you can.

00:21:20 ◼   ► A, the police can force you to use Face ID and Touch ID,

00:21:23 ◼   ► but cannot force you to reveal your passcode

00:21:25 ◼   ► and B, if you know this tip, you can very quickly,

00:21:29 ◼   ► surreptitiously put your iPhone

00:21:32 ◼   ► into a requires a passcode state.

00:21:34 ◼   ► - And even if it's not the police, if it's a bad actor

00:21:35 ◼   ► and you know they're gonna take your phone,

00:21:37 ◼   ► try to get into your accounts or something,

00:21:38 ◼   ► you can still lock it, like it's great.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Or you're going through a market, a public market

00:21:42 ◼   ► where you know there's a lot of pickpockets

00:21:44 ◼   ► and things around, it protects you everywhere.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - And I've heard stories about that too,

00:21:48 ◼   ► like where a pickpocket will take a phone

00:21:50 ◼   ► and then it's like you're in a moment,

00:21:51 ◼   ► you don't even know it happened

00:21:53 ◼   ► and they hold it up to your face or something like that.

00:21:55 ◼   ► I've heard about that, you know?

00:21:57 ◼   ► And it is, you know, it does seem,

00:21:58 ◼   ► and I don't know how apocryphal

00:22:00 ◼   ► some of those stories might be,

00:22:02 ◼   ► but it passes the sniff test, right?

00:22:05 ◼   ► Like it seems like something that could happen

00:22:07 ◼   ► and it would be easier than getting you to,

00:22:09 ◼   ► somehow getting your index finger on a Touch ID button.

00:22:12 ◼   ► So it's good to know.

00:22:13 ◼   ► - It's way easier than getting a long passcode

00:22:15 ◼   ► or like alphanumeric password put into the device.

00:22:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you have a Touch ID iPhone

00:22:20 ◼   ► and I think it's all a little different,

00:22:22 ◼   ► I think that you can, I think like with an iPhone SE,

00:22:25 ◼   ► the current SE, you could just hold the side button

00:22:28 ◼   ► for a couple seconds, that's all you have to do.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Anything, anything that brings up

00:22:32 ◼   ► the slide to power down screen will do it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► However you get to there on your iPhone,

00:22:38 ◼   ► I believe will do it.

00:22:40 ◼   ► There's also an older shortcut

00:22:41 ◼   ► where you quickly tap the side button five times.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - Which used to immediately, they've,

00:22:51 ◼   ► I know the word quietly gets overused,

00:22:54 ◼   ► not just in stories about Apple,

00:22:55 ◼   ► but in the media overall, right?

00:22:58 ◼   ► Anything that doesn't come with a press relief

00:23:00 ◼   ► can somehow get described as this company quietly did mic.

00:23:05 ◼   ► But it seems like Apple quietly changed

00:23:08 ◼   ► the way that feature worked,

00:23:09 ◼   ► where years ago at some point,

00:23:13 ◼   ► if you did the, quickly pressed the power button,

00:23:17 ◼   ► side button, whatever you wanna call it, five times,

00:23:20 ◼   ► it would immediately start playing like a,

00:23:22 ◼   ► for lack of a better term,

00:23:23 ◼   ► like a klaxon or a siren from your iPhone.

00:23:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, it goes into SOS mode.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - And within like three or four seconds

00:23:31 ◼   ► would place an emergency SOS phone call,

00:23:34 ◼   ► which in the US is 911.

00:23:36 ◼   ► What do you guys have in Canada?

00:23:37 ◼   ► What's-- - Same thing.

00:23:38 ◼   ► - 911, okay.

00:23:39 ◼   ► But I know around the world, the numbers are different,

00:23:40 ◼   ► but it'll, wherever you are, whatever locale you're in,

00:23:43 ◼   ► it will immediately do that.

00:23:45 ◼   ► It doesn't seem to do that anymore.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Like when I press mine five times,

00:23:48 ◼   ► it just does the same thing that holding the side button

00:23:53 ◼   ► and the volume button for a few seconds does.

00:23:55 ◼   ► It just puts me in to slide to power off.

00:23:57 ◼   ► - Now you just squeeze.

00:23:58 ◼   ► If you keep holding the squeeze down

00:24:00 ◼   ► for an extended period of time,

00:24:01 ◼   ► it'll do the alarm and then the 911.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it doesn't place the phone call automatically

00:24:06 ◼   ► and I just did it right here.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And as you can tell from my audio,

00:24:10 ◼   ► it does not play a siren sound.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I feel like maybe that was deemed too,

00:24:15 ◼   ► people did it accidentally and all of a sudden,

00:24:17 ◼   ► all of a sudden their phone is making a terrible siren noise

00:24:20 ◼   ► and they're talking to someone on 911

00:24:23 ◼   ► and they didn't mean to do it.

00:24:25 ◼   ► I think this is-- - I heard about people in cars

00:24:27 ◼   ► when they had it in the car holder and it would slip down

00:24:29 ◼   ► and it'd suddenly be pressing,

00:24:30 ◼   ► then they're in the car and it scares the hell out of them.

00:24:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it could like, if it jiggles five times,

00:24:35 ◼   ► if it's slightly loose enough to push the button.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But anyway, it is easy to make the emergency SOS.

00:24:40 ◼   ► The other good thing about knowing this tip,

00:24:41 ◼   ► I didn't write about this,

00:24:42 ◼   ► but the other good thing about knowing this tip

00:24:45 ◼   ► of how to put your phone into this, there's four options,

00:24:49 ◼   ► slide to power off, medical ID, emergency SOS,

00:24:53 ◼   ► and then cancel.

00:24:54 ◼   ► But it's also good to know if you ever encounter somebody

00:24:57 ◼   ► who passes out or takes a bad fall, needs help,

00:25:00 ◼   ► and they have an iPhone, do the same thing on their iPhone

00:25:05 ◼   ► and you will get to the screen

00:25:06 ◼   ► and you can slide the medical ID thing over.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And if they've set up a medical ID,

00:25:14 ◼   ► here's what mine says, says I'm 49 years old,

00:25:16 ◼   ► I'm an organ donor, I have some drug allergies,

00:25:19 ◼   ► my blood type, my height and weight,

00:25:20 ◼   ► I don't know why they'd need that, but you know, it's there.

00:25:23 ◼   ► And it has also-- - And it has medication

00:25:24 ◼   ► they wanna-- - But it also has

00:25:26 ◼   ► the emergency contact of my wife.

00:25:28 ◼   ► So it's a good thing to know if you ever encounter

00:25:31 ◼   ► a complete stranger or somebody who's not a stranger,

00:25:33 ◼   ► a friend or a family member and they're incapacitated,

00:25:37 ◼   ► they have an iPhone, do the same thing.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Press and hold the side button and a volume button

00:25:41 ◼   ► on their iPhone and you'll get access to their medical ID.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Everybody who works in emergency services,

00:25:48 ◼   ► of course, knows this, so like paramedics

00:25:51 ◼   ► who come from an ambulance will know to do this,

00:25:53 ◼   ► but before they get there, you could do it yourself,

00:25:56 ◼   ► so it's good to know.

00:25:57 ◼   ► All right, so far, so good.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Here's some questions that have come up since I wrote this.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Here's the first one, and it's a big one.

00:26:03 ◼   ► What's the equivalent for a MacBook?

00:26:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, you just hold down the power button

00:26:08 ◼   ► for five seconds and kill it, and then it has to,

00:26:09 ◼   ► it goes into its equivalent of safe mode or private mode.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Right, that's the short answer,

00:26:15 ◼   ► and the best thing I can come up with

00:26:17 ◼   ► is if you have a touch ID,

00:26:18 ◼   ► if your MacBook doesn't have touch ID, you're good,

00:26:22 ◼   ► because then if, as long as the lid is closed,

00:26:24 ◼   ► you're, it requires a password,

00:26:26 ◼   ► so you're in a, requires a password state.

00:26:29 ◼   ► But if your MacBook has touch ID, which at this point,

00:26:33 ◼   ► just about anybody who bought one

00:26:35 ◼   ► in the last couple of years does,

00:26:38 ◼   ► how do you put your Mac into a state

00:26:40 ◼   ► where it requires the password,

00:26:42 ◼   ► passphrase, whatever you wanna call it,

00:26:45 ◼   ► and doesn't unlock with touch ID?

00:26:48 ◼   ► If you press and hold that, the touch ID/power button,

00:26:52 ◼   ► for, I guess it is longer, 'cause it's so--

00:26:56 ◼   ► - I think it's five seconds.

00:26:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's so detrimental to the overall experience.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You definitely don't want it to happen by accident,

00:27:02 ◼   ► but it affects, it shuts down the whole system.

00:27:06 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:27:08 ◼   ► - Which is very disruptive, right?

00:27:10 ◼   ► So part of my advice is that you should do this

00:27:13 ◼   ► with your phone, like just going through airport security,

00:27:17 ◼   ► or like here in the US now, they,

00:27:20 ◼   ► I know Major League Baseball requires it,

00:27:23 ◼   ► I think football does too, but lots of sporting events

00:27:26 ◼   ► and concerts require you to go through a magnetometer,

00:27:30 ◼   ► and you have to take your keys

00:27:32 ◼   ► and anything metal out of your pockets,

00:27:34 ◼   ► you have to take your phone out.

00:27:35 ◼   ► When you get separated from your phone,

00:27:37 ◼   ► even if it's just the rent-a-cops at a stadium,

00:27:40 ◼   ► I do this with my phone, you should do it with your phone.

00:27:43 ◼   ► - Same.

00:27:44 ◼   ► - But if you're going through the airport,

00:27:46 ◼   ► and you wanna do this with all of your devices you've packed

00:27:50 ◼   ► shutting down your Mac completely is a pain in the ass.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And as fast as even the Apple Silicon MacBooks are now,

00:27:58 ◼   ► and they really are fast, and they do boot up quicker,

00:28:01 ◼   ► the part that isn't quick and can't be made quicker

00:28:04 ◼   ► is restoring all of the state, right?

00:28:08 ◼   ► I've got tons of browser tabs open,

00:28:10 ◼   ► I've got easily a dozen apps open at a time,

00:28:14 ◼   ► and anybody who's listening to the show

00:28:16 ◼   ► knows what I'm talking about.

00:28:17 ◼   ► If you have to restart your Mac,

00:28:18 ◼   ► like to install a software update or whatever reason,

00:28:22 ◼   ► it's great, it is one of the great additions to macOS

00:28:26 ◼   ► over the last decade, the way that state restoration

00:28:30 ◼   ► is so seamless system-wide, and it's,

00:28:34 ◼   ► 'cause I remember when it wasn't like this,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and it was such a, you had to manually restore everything.

00:28:40 ◼   ► If you wanted to shut down your Mac, you had to,

00:28:43 ◼   ► nothing came back, every time you logged back in,

00:28:46 ◼   ► you had nothing open, none of your documents,

00:28:48 ◼   ► none of your browser tabs, all of this stuff for me,

00:28:51 ◼   ► every app I use on a regular basis

00:28:52 ◼   ► just comes back to where it was,

00:28:54 ◼   ► even with untitled, unsaved changes to documents,

00:28:58 ◼   ► which is great, right?

00:29:00 ◼   ► Like the old way of doing it 10 or more years ago

00:29:03 ◼   ► was you'd go to restart and be like,

00:29:05 ◼   ► "Oh, do you wanna save the changes to this?"

00:29:07 ◼   ► "Save, don't save," whatever, and it's like, "Ah."

00:29:09 ◼   ► And then the other, every single app you have open,

00:29:12 ◼   ► anything unsaved is asking you,

00:29:13 ◼   ► "What do you wanna do with these unsaved changes?"

00:29:15 ◼   ► Took minutes.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Going through the airport, I don't want to go through

00:29:20 ◼   ► security with my Mac shut down,

00:29:22 ◼   ► and then if I have half an hour to burn

00:29:25 ◼   ► before boarding the flight,

00:29:27 ◼   ► and I wanna do something on my Mac,

00:29:28 ◼   ► I don't wanna wait five minutes for my Mac

00:29:31 ◼   ► to fully come back.

00:29:34 ◼   ► But I don't know what the better answer is.

00:29:36 ◼   ► - So I do it anyway, I put it in that state anyway,

00:29:38 ◼   ► and with Apple Silicon Macs, it comes back way faster.

00:29:41 ◼   ► I'm not like mutual friend Alex Lindsay level,

00:29:43 ◼   ► I don't do the kind of work he does,

00:29:44 ◼   ► so if his devices leave his physical eyeline,

00:29:48 ◼   ► he just abandons them and figures they're compromised.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Like someone has taken them to do something to them

00:29:52 ◼   ► and he can never touch them again.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I'm not that extreme, but I don't have the same clients,

00:29:56 ◼   ► so I don't have to be.

00:29:57 ◼   ► - Well, that is hardcore,

00:30:00 ◼   ► but I don't necessarily blame him, right?

00:30:02 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:30:03 ◼   ► Yes, well, 'cause you don't know what they put on it

00:30:06 ◼   ► or what they've done to it,

00:30:07 ◼   ► or if they've pulled everything off the phone at that point,

00:30:09 ◼   ► and you can't ever verify that it's safe again, so.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I get it, I'm just in the middle of paranoia.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - But what did, so what does he, I mean,

00:30:16 ◼   ► but to what degree does he mean lose sight?

00:30:19 ◼   ► The stuff does have to pass through the X-ray machine.

00:30:22 ◼   ► - Oh, if someone, if a state agent picks it up

00:30:24 ◼   ► and walks out of the room with it.

00:30:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, that's never happened to me,

00:30:28 ◼   ► but I would find it very suspicious if they did.

00:30:30 ◼   ► I do keep an eye on the conveyor belt

00:30:33 ◼   ► coming out of the X-ray machine.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And I'm not worried about the TSA agent so much

00:30:37 ◼   ► as somebody just in a, you know,

00:30:39 ◼   ► either a thief or somebody accidentally

00:30:41 ◼   ► just taking the wrong tray or whatever.

00:30:43 ◼   ► It always, it's always very, even with TSA pre-check,

00:30:47 ◼   ► it is so chaotic, and I'm always super stressed,

00:30:50 ◼   ► like, what do I need?

00:30:51 ◼   ► What do I, do I need my belt?

00:30:53 ◼   ► What the hell's missing?

00:30:54 ◼   ► What am I missing?

00:30:55 ◼   ► I find it very stressful, but.

00:30:56 ◼   ► - And like, we're not the kind of people

00:30:58 ◼   ► that a state agent would burn a million dollar undisclosed

00:31:00 ◼   ► zero-day vulnerability on, so I don't worry that much.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - The other thing I can think of for a MacBook is,

00:31:07 ◼   ► with Touch ID, is if you use the wrong finger,

00:31:12 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm not quite sure how many times,

00:31:14 ◼   ► I think it's like three or four.

00:31:16 ◼   ► If you do three or four fingerprints that don't take,

00:31:19 ◼   ► it puts it in that state.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:31:22 ◼   ► - And I think that's, I have never done this,

00:31:25 ◼   ► but I think that's what I'm going to do henceforth,

00:31:27 ◼   ► but that's the sort of thing that, unlike the phone,

00:31:31 ◼   ► you can't do it at the last second, right?

00:31:34 ◼   ► Like, you're in the TSA security line,

00:31:37 ◼   ► you're snaking through it, you've got a laptop bag

00:31:41 ◼   ► on your shoulder or your backpack,

00:31:43 ◼   ► you've got a carry-on, you're hauling behind you,

00:31:46 ◼   ► you've got your wallet and keys and your phone

00:31:50 ◼   ► in your pocket, and you've got to do something with them,

00:31:53 ◼   ► and for me, it's always like,

00:31:54 ◼   ► as I'm snaking through the line, it's like,

00:31:56 ◼   ► well, I don't want to put all this stuff

00:31:57 ◼   ► into one of their little trays.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I take my wallet and stuff out of my pockets,

00:32:03 ◼   ► put them in my laptop bag into little pockets inside the bag

00:32:07 ◼   ► so that all I have to do is remember to take the bag

00:32:10 ◼   ► and all my pocket stuff is in the bag.

00:32:12 ◼   ► That's a good time to squeeze your phone,

00:32:14 ◼   ► to put it in a locked state, put the phone somewhere

00:32:17 ◼   ► where, you know, I like to put it in my bag again

00:32:19 ◼   ► so that it's not just sitting out in a tray.

00:32:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do the same thing.

00:32:22 ◼   ► - One last thing that I have to remember is a separate,

00:32:25 ◼   ► pick it up on the other side of the X-ray machine,

00:32:27 ◼   ► but doing it with your Mac seems inconvenient, right?

00:32:30 ◼   ► What are you going to do?

00:32:31 ◼   ► Just take your entire MacBook out of your bag,

00:32:34 ◼   ► in line, open it, and start squeezing the power button?

00:32:38 ◼   ► I mean, you could do it.

00:32:39 ◼   ► It's not that, it just--

00:32:41 ◼   ► - Just before I leave, 'cause I'm not going to use,

00:32:42 ◼   ► from the time I leave my home to the time I go

00:32:44 ◼   ► through security, I'm not going to use it.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And also, ever since 2016, when they got the T2 chip,

00:32:49 ◼   ► which was just an S, an Apple, sorry, the T1 chip,

00:32:51 ◼   ► that's an Apple S2 watch chip,

00:32:53 ◼   ► and then the later version, the T2 chip, was an A10.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Now they have, whatever they like,

00:32:58 ◼   ► the M1 is the equivalent to the secure enclave on the A14,

00:33:01 ◼   ► and M2 is the one on the A15.

00:33:02 ◼   ► They work the same way as iOS devices.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So as long as you can get them

00:33:06 ◼   ► to throw out those hardware keys,

00:33:07 ◼   ► like your idea is even better.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Just do the touch ID wrong.

00:33:10 ◼   ► It's much less destructive.

00:33:11 ◼   ► You're safe.

00:33:12 ◼   ► There's no way to get into that.

00:33:13 ◼   ► - Right, that's what I think I'm going to do.

00:33:15 ◼   ► But what you said is what I'm going to add it to my,

00:33:19 ◼   ► before I leave home, checklist.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I keep, I just call it my pack list in Apple Notes

00:33:24 ◼   ► with everything I want to pack for any trip.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And then at the bottom is my things to remember

00:33:31 ◼   ► right as I go out the door.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And I'm going to add that to it,

00:33:35 ◼   ► which is to put my MacBook into this state.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And I think that's what I'm going to start doing

00:33:40 ◼   ► until further notice, is just use a pinky finger

00:33:44 ◼   ► that I know-- - Just give it the finger.

00:33:45 ◼   ► The wrong finger. - Yeah, give it the finger.

00:33:47 ◼   ► I think it's three or four times,

00:33:49 ◼   ► and then it requires a passcode.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Shut the lid, put it in my backpack,

00:33:53 ◼   ► and then don't enter the passcode

00:33:56 ◼   ► until I'm through security and back to that state.

00:33:59 ◼   ► But then I don't have to worry about

00:34:01 ◼   ► rebooting the entire machine and restoring the whole state.

00:34:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's way better.

00:34:05 ◼   ► - But it does, unlike the phone,

00:34:06 ◼   ► it is something I think is best done

00:34:08 ◼   ► before you leave for the airport

00:34:10 ◼   ► rather than doing it right as you approach

00:34:12 ◼   ► the magnetometer in the security line.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I do think Apple should consider this and come,

00:34:17 ◼   ► I don't know what the solution would be,

00:34:19 ◼   ► 'cause I know that it seems like that touch ID/power button

00:34:24 ◼   ► is really the only button that could be used.

00:34:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no external button.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Like, once it's shut, you can't do anything.

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Right, and I get it that the,

00:34:34 ◼   ► just press and hold it for five seconds, and it will,

00:34:38 ◼   ► I forget what happens.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Does it restart automatically or just shut down?

00:34:42 ◼   ► I think it just shuts down. - It just shuts down.

00:34:43 ◼   ► - Right, and then you-- - Maybe when you do it

00:34:44 ◼   ► on your iPhone, they should propagate that

00:34:45 ◼   ► to all your iCloud devices.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - That's an idea that people have had,

00:34:49 ◼   ► and that sounds like a great idea.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I suspect that if you start war gaming it,

00:34:57 ◼   ► there might be some either technical issues

00:35:00 ◼   ► that would keep it from working or downsides,

00:35:04 ◼   ► but as a general spitball idea, it's worth considering.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Should, when you do this to one of your devices,

00:35:13 ◼   ► should all of the devices on the same iCloud account

00:35:16 ◼   ► go to the same state where touch ID and face ID are disabled

00:35:20 ◼   ► and every device needs a passcode?

00:35:23 ◼   ► Maybe? - Or at least,

00:35:24 ◼   ► maybe it's just proximity.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Maybe it's, like, continuity is really good.

00:35:26 ◼   ► One of the ways that you use Bluetooth

00:35:28 ◼   ► is to determine how close you are to your stuff,

00:35:30 ◼   ► so maybe it's just the stuff in your vicinity.

00:35:31 ◼   ► - Right, but would a closed MacBook that's on your person

00:35:36 ◼   ► but in a bag, does continuity work?

00:35:38 ◼   ► I don't know that it does, right?

00:35:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, you'd probably have to leave a signal

00:35:42 ◼   ► that says when it's open.

00:35:44 ◼   ► - Right. - When you do,

00:35:45 ◼   ► remember the Power Nap thing

00:35:46 ◼   ► where it starts doing something when it's closed?

00:35:48 ◼   ► - And that's what I mean about that this is surely

00:35:50 ◼   ► more complicated than the spitball idea

00:35:53 ◼   ► sounds at first thought, but it still, it seems pretty,

00:35:56 ◼   ► seems like some-- - That's the rule, right?

00:35:57 ◼   ► Like, anything you're not personally in charge

00:35:59 ◼   ► of implementing, shipping, and supporting

00:36:00 ◼   ► is trivial by nature, by definition.

00:36:03 ◼   ► - Oh, the other, I wanted to mention this,

00:36:04 ◼   ► the other downside that I can imagine,

00:36:07 ◼   ► while I was playing around pretending to do this,

00:36:14 ◼   ► the other problem with just using on your MacBook

00:36:18 ◼   ► a couple times is you have to be conscious of

00:36:23 ◼   ► are you wearing your Apple Watch

00:36:24 ◼   ► and do you have the unlock, you know,

00:36:28 ◼   ► log in with Apple Watch feature on your MacBook?

00:36:31 ◼   ► And I do, it's one of my very favorite Apple Watch features,

00:36:34 ◼   ► but that could defeat the point too,

00:36:36 ◼   ► where you think, okay, I've put the wrong finger

00:36:38 ◼   ► in four times, it's asking me for a passcode,

00:36:40 ◼   ► I close the lid, you go to the airport and TSA guy opens it

00:36:45 ◼   ► and your Apple Watch is right there,

00:36:46 ◼   ► and then your Apple Watch taps and says,

00:36:49 ◼   ► unlocked your MacBook with your Apple Watch,

00:36:51 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, well, shit, I didn't mean that tap.

00:36:53 ◼   ► - You have to put your Apple Watch into secure mode too,

00:36:55 ◼   ► like the whole thing just keeps tumbling.

00:36:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's one that I think definitely

00:37:00 ◼   ► should work with continuity, right?

00:37:02 ◼   ► Where if you put your, squeeze your phone

00:37:05 ◼   ► to put it in lock mode, I think your watch

00:37:07 ◼   ► should go into it, if you're wearing your Apple Watch,

00:37:09 ◼   ► it should go in the same mode at the same time.

00:37:12 ◼   ► So I'm gonna do a follow-up article,

00:37:15 ◼   ► but I wanted to talk it through with you.

00:37:17 ◼   ► That's one of my ideas that I think your watch

00:37:19 ◼   ► should automatically go into that mode too.

00:37:21 ◼   ► 'Cause it's, I don't really, I laugh.

00:37:25 ◼   ► I'm sure some people use it and it's very useful.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Every once in a while I'll get an email notification

00:37:31 ◼   ► on my watch and I will tap it and look at it

00:37:34 ◼   ► right on the watch 'cause I'm at dinner or something.

00:37:36 ◼   ► But for the most part, I don't read my email

00:37:38 ◼   ► on my Apple Watch, but your email is there,

00:37:42 ◼   ► for most of us, your messages are there.

00:37:44 ◼   ► So your watch is another device to think about.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So it's another thing to put on the checklist.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - And just depending again on what your threat model is,

00:37:51 ◼   ► a lot of, like your phone and your watch

00:37:53 ◼   ► also sometimes have your location history

00:37:56 ◼   ► from a running app or from a game or something.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And someone can very quickly look and see

00:38:01 ◼   ► where you were for the last two hours.

00:38:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so something to think about.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I mean, one thing I'm, and I don't wear

00:38:07 ◼   ► my Apple Watch all the time, I have actual

00:38:09 ◼   ► mechanical watches and I'm thinking, you know,

00:38:11 ◼   ► should I make up my policy that every time I fly,

00:38:13 ◼   ► I'm not wearing my Apple Watch, you know,

00:38:15 ◼   ► just to take it out of the, you know,

00:38:17 ◼   ► make sure my Apple Watch is packed rather than on my wrist

00:38:20 ◼   ► for travel for that reason, maybe?

00:38:22 ◼   ► - Because it's so convenient, like you go in,

00:38:24 ◼   ► I remember when the Apple Watch first came out,

00:38:26 ◼   ► it took about a year and then I went through the airport

00:38:28 ◼   ► without anything else, like I tapped for my coffee,

00:38:31 ◼   ► for my ticket, for everything with my Apple Watch,

00:38:34 ◼   ► including the hotel door, and it was just wild.

00:38:36 ◼   ► But then you realize that the convenience

00:38:38 ◼   ► comes with a security penalty.

00:38:39 ◼   ► - Right, that's one of the reasons I often, you know,

00:38:41 ◼   ► even though I do mix and match my watches a lot,

00:38:43 ◼   ► I generally travel, do the actual traveling part

00:38:46 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch on because it is convenient, right?

00:38:49 ◼   ► You can put your boarding pass on it or,

00:38:51 ◼   ► but again, something to think about.

00:38:52 ◼   ► It's a, once you start peeling the onion,

00:38:55 ◼   ► it's like you get past the basic idea of are you aware

00:38:58 ◼   ► that you squeezed these two buttons on your phone

00:39:00 ◼   ► to hard lock it? - Yes.

00:39:01 ◼   ► - And everybody's like, yes, this is great.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And now you're 85% of the way there,

00:39:05 ◼   ► and the other 15% of the story is a lot of nuance, right?

00:39:09 ◼   ► Apple Watch, something to think about.

00:39:10 ◼   ► - If it wasn't for humans, all this stuff would be fantastic,

00:39:12 ◼   ► but humans keep making, ruining all the good internet fun.

00:39:15 ◼   ► - Your Touch ID MacBook, I think that the no questions

00:39:20 ◼   ► asked solution is to shut it down

00:39:21 ◼   ► before you go through a checkpoint.

00:39:24 ◼   ► In an emergency situation, if you're unexpectedly pulled over

00:39:29 ◼   ► or something like that and you have your MacBook

00:39:31 ◼   ► and you can access it, you can still do that, right?

00:39:35 ◼   ► The safest thing to do is just squeeze the button

00:39:38 ◼   ► for five seconds and just shut it down.

00:39:40 ◼   ► I wouldn't wanna, if I felt like time was of the essence

00:39:43 ◼   ► and I was under duress, jerking around with my pinky finger

00:39:48 ◼   ► a couple of times doesn't seem like a good idea.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Just squeeze the button. - And the watch can't unlock

00:39:52 ◼   ► it in that state anyway. - Right.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So just squeeze the button until the screen goes off,

00:39:56 ◼   ► and that's the best thing to remember.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Just turn it off.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Oh, and then the other topic on this thing,

00:40:03 ◼   ► I'm so glad I remember it.

00:40:04 ◼   ► I'm looking at, I'm so glad I have notes.

00:40:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Using Siri to do it.

00:40:08 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:40:09 ◼   ► - So you can tell Siri, and I hope that,

00:40:14 ◼   ► I'll switch the call on a dingus soon

00:40:17 ◼   ► without using the hey word,

00:40:18 ◼   ► but to avoid triggering people's actual devices,

00:40:21 ◼   ► but you can use Siri to lock your iPhone.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Like if you say, hey, dingus, lock this device,

00:40:29 ◼   ► it does turn the screen off and lock it,

00:40:31 ◼   ► but it's not a hard lock, it's a soft lock.

00:40:34 ◼   ► So I'm not quite sure why Siri even lets you do it.

00:40:36 ◼   ► So touch ID and face ID still work in that state.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And as far as I was aware, there's no way to say,

00:40:45 ◼   ► like I call this hard locking, that's not an Apple term.

00:40:49 ◼   ► They don't really talk about that,

00:40:51 ◼   ► but I feel like it's useful to have a term

00:40:53 ◼   ► and hard locking describes it as well.

00:40:57 ◼   ► I can't think of a better term.

00:40:58 ◼   ► - Putting it into pre-board makes no sense to anybody.

00:41:00 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Well, it makes sense, it makes a lot of sense to some people.

00:41:04 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - And no sense at all to 99.99% of people.

00:41:09 ◼   ► But for one out of every-- - The nerds.

00:41:12 ◼   ► - One out of the nerds and certainly some engineers

00:41:15 ◼   ► who work in the Cupertino area, it makes a lot of sense.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But yeah, putting it into pre-board

00:41:20 ◼   ► is definitely not going to do it.

00:41:22 ◼   ► But anyway, what I did find via a tweet is if you say,

00:41:27 ◼   ► hey Dingus, who do you belong to?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Or hey Dingus, who does this device belong to?

00:41:34 ◼   ► Or who does this iPhone belong to?

00:41:36 ◼   ► And thankfully, unsurprisingly,

00:41:38 ◼   ► this seems like something Siri can handle.

00:41:40 ◼   ► You could use the more grammatically pedantic formulation

00:41:45 ◼   ► of to whom do you belong?

00:41:48 ◼   ► But if you more or less ask any sort of plain English,

00:41:52 ◼   ► who or whom do you or does this device belong to?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Siri will answer, I believe I belong to John,

00:42:01 ◼   ► or I believe I belong to Renee.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And they just, Siri just uses your first name,

00:42:07 ◼   ► 'cause there's, if you think about it,

00:42:09 ◼   ► there's a lot of privacy angles on this.

00:42:12 ◼   ► It's just your first name.

00:42:13 ◼   ► But at that point, the device is hard-locked.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Once you've asked Siri who the device

00:42:22 ◼   ► Siri is running on belongs to,

00:42:25 ◼   ► you need to enter your passcode to unlock the phone.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Now, this only works if the phone is already locked.

00:42:31 ◼   ► So if you're playing at home and you're paused this podcast

00:42:35 ◼   ► and you look at your phone and your phone is unlocked

00:42:38 ◼   ► and you ask Siri that question,

00:42:40 ◼   ► it will not lock the phone.

00:42:43 ◼   ► And you'll be like, oh, the group is wrong.

00:42:45 ◼   ► No, no, lock the phone and ask Siri

00:42:48 ◼   ► while the phone is locked who the device belongs to.

00:42:51 ◼   ► It will hard-lock the phone.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I would have never figured this out in a million years.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I just would not have guessed that that would happen.

00:42:58 ◼   ► It's a nice feature, it's good to know,

00:43:00 ◼   ► and that's why I'm sharing it.

00:43:02 ◼   ► But I feel like there should be a better way

00:43:05 ◼   ► to do it with Siri, right?

00:43:07 ◼   ► And it's truly one of those examples

00:43:10 ◼   ► of accessibility helping everybody, right?

00:43:13 ◼   ► Literally going back to the example

00:43:17 ◼   ► of Trump's criminal lawyer, John Eastman,

00:43:20 ◼   ► who had his phone cap taken over the weekend,

00:43:22 ◼   ► I guess it was his wife, somebody who was with for dinner,

00:43:26 ◼   ► videotaped a lot of, or at least the tail end

00:43:29 ◼   ► of his confrontation with the FBI agents.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And they had told him,

00:43:33 ◼   ► it starts with him with his hands on his head.

00:43:37 ◼   ► I presume his hands are on his head

00:43:39 ◼   ► because the FBI agents who were confronting him

00:43:42 ◼   ► in the parking lot told him to put his hands on the head,

00:43:46 ◼   ► although perhaps he did it preemptively, I don't know.

00:43:49 ◼   ► But if somebody tells you to put your hands on your head

00:43:52 ◼   ► and they're in a position of authority and you do it,

00:43:55 ◼   ► and they take your phone out of your pocket,

00:43:57 ◼   ► if you could direct a Siri command to the phone,

00:44:00 ◼   ► that would be helpful.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So it is good to know that you could do that,

00:44:06 ◼   ► and if you're in a position where your hands are

00:44:09 ◼   ► on your head and somebody takes your phone

00:44:11 ◼   ► out of your pocket, you might be able to get it to work

00:44:14 ◼   ► by saying, hey, dingus, who do you belong to?

00:44:19 ◼   ► And that should hard lock your phone.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Again, that is such a weird formulation.

00:44:26 ◼   ► I get it, why asking that hard locks the phone,

00:44:29 ◼   ► but if your goal is to hard lock the phone,

00:44:31 ◼   ► I don't think anybody would come up with that, right?

00:44:34 ◼   ► I feel like there should be a way to do it with Siri.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And also, to go back to what we were talking

00:44:41 ◼   ► about five minutes ago, to lock all of your devices,

00:44:44 ◼   ► wouldn't it be a neat feature if you could say,

00:44:46 ◼   ► hey, dingus, lock all my devices,

00:44:49 ◼   ► and just saying lock all my devices would send a signal

00:44:53 ◼   ► to iCloud that any device, Mac, iPad, watch, whatever,

00:44:58 ◼   ► would go into a require the passcode state

00:45:01 ◼   ► as soon as it connects to iCloud again.

00:45:03 ◼   ► - It's funny because I've set up HomeKit

00:45:06 ◼   ► to where if I say crash the West Wing,

00:45:07 ◼   ► it just turns everything off,

00:45:09 ◼   ► and I would love that similar feature.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - So anyway, I would love to have a better solution,

00:45:13 ◼   ► but there is a way to do it with Siri.

00:45:15 ◼   ► It is nonintuitive, and I feel like Apple

00:45:19 ◼   ► has the potential here to improve that greatly, right?

00:45:23 ◼   ► And then you don't have to, if you could do that,

00:45:26 ◼   ► and I think that if you just ask Siri to lock your device,

00:45:31 ◼   ► it should lock all of them,

00:45:33 ◼   ► because it's not really locking you out.

00:45:35 ◼   ► All it does is it's just making you enter your password

00:45:37 ◼   ► on all of them.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Just say lock my device or devices,

00:45:41 ◼   ► and it should somehow trigger a thing

00:45:44 ◼   ► through continuity and/or iCloud

00:45:46 ◼   ► to lock as many of them as it can,

00:45:48 ◼   ► or lock them when they next wake up.

00:45:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I think that's brilliant.

00:45:54 ◼   ► That would be, that's fantastic.

00:45:56 ◼   ► I think just like for operational security point of view,

00:45:59 ◼   ► I turn on, I disable Siri whenever I'm in anywhere

00:46:03 ◼   ► approaching an uncontrolled environment

00:46:04 ◼   ► just because Siri can leak a ton of information,

00:46:07 ◼   ► so I never want them asking Siri about contact questions

00:46:09 ◼   ► or call people or stuff like that,

00:46:11 ◼   ► which would make this harder, but I think that's--

00:46:13 ◼   ► - How do you do that? - A very good solution.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I just go in and turn off,

00:46:15 ◼   ► I turn off access to everything on the lock screen,

00:46:17 ◼   ► notifications, Siri, everything that's,

00:46:20 ◼   ► like I'm gonna say leaks through the lock screen.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Usually it's really convenient,

00:46:23 ◼   ► but again, when I'm in an uncontrolled environment,

00:46:25 ◼   ► I don't want any of that stuff on,

00:46:28 ◼   ► like I don't want them to pick up my phone

00:46:29 ◼   ► and just see a bunch of notifications, anything like that.

00:46:31 ◼   ► - So you go to settings and--

00:46:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a lock screen section of settings,

00:46:36 ◼   ► and there's a Siri section of the settings.

00:46:38 ◼   ► - So you have to go to both?

00:46:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, to get everything,

00:46:41 ◼   ► to turn everything off on the lock screen.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I believe you still have to go to both.

00:46:44 ◼   ► - I wonder if you could do it with a shortcut.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Probably.

00:46:48 ◼   ► I don't know if they got rid of the lock screen section.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Maybe it's just all in-- - Yeah, yeah.

00:46:52 ◼   ► I'm looking, I'm on iPad OS 16 on this iPad,

00:46:55 ◼   ► and I'm looking, and I don't see the lock screen thing.

00:46:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, me too, but I turn off the Hey Dingus thing,

00:47:02 ◼   ► and I turn off all of that kind of stuff.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I just have a little routine.

00:47:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's worth thinking about.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you could turn off Listen for Hey Dingus,

00:47:09 ◼   ► and you could turn off Allow Dingus When Locked.

00:47:11 ◼   ► - Right, so that's sort of--

00:47:14 ◼   ► - Again, it depends on what your threat model is,

00:47:17 ◼   ► and what your paranoia level is.

00:47:19 ◼   ► - Right, on the one hand, I'm thinking about ways

00:47:22 ◼   ► that Siri could help you in this situation,

00:47:24 ◼   ► but on the other hand, I don't disagree with you

00:47:26 ◼   ► that maybe the best thing is to just turn it off completely.

00:47:29 ◼   ► And it's funny too, 'cause I don't really know how,

00:47:34 ◼   ► 'cause again, I'm doing this all

00:47:36 ◼   ► from a hypothetical situation,

00:47:38 ◼   ► where I don't recall ever having personally been

00:47:40 ◼   ► in a situation where I needed this to happen,

00:47:43 ◼   ► but you wanna be prepared for it before you do, obviously.

00:47:47 ◼   ► I don't know how well Siri actually is these days

00:47:51 ◼   ► at knowing my voice from others.

00:47:54 ◼   ► What's the likelihood that a random police officer

00:47:59 ◼   ► or security agent at the TSA could talk to my phone

00:48:03 ◼   ► and get information out of it?

00:48:04 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's probably a degree of differentiation

00:48:10 ◼   ► in the voice, is that it needs to be able to,

00:48:12 ◼   ► like if your voice is slightly coughy,

00:48:14 ◼   ► or if your voice is in the morning, come here tonight,

00:48:16 ◼   ► it probably has to cover a range.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - But anyway, things to think about,

00:48:19 ◼   ► and I do think in general, regardless of what

00:48:22 ◼   ► anybody listening's personal concerns are,

00:48:24 ◼   ► it's all good to know, and at the very least,

00:48:26 ◼   ► that squeeze your phone to lock the passcode

00:48:29 ◼   ► is something you should share with others.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Anything else you wanna add before we move on?

00:48:34 ◼   ► - No, just to your point,

00:48:35 ◼   ► make yourself a little personal safety list.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And you may never need it, but if you do travel,

00:48:40 ◼   ► if you do go to protests or anything like that,

00:48:41 ◼   ► just make sure you go through it.

00:48:42 ◼   ► - Right, I forget his name, but he's a medical doctor

00:48:45 ◼   ► at The New Yorker, but he's even,

00:48:47 ◼   ► I think he even has a book, The Checklist Manifesto,

00:48:50 ◼   ► and that making a checklist and having a check,

00:48:54 ◼   ► you know, like speaking of airlines,

00:48:55 ◼   ► pilots go through this, they have an actual checklist

00:48:58 ◼   ► that they go through every time they get into cockpit,

00:49:01 ◼   ► and they go through every single item

00:49:02 ◼   ► on the checklist every time, and it doesn't matter

00:49:05 ◼   ► if they do it twice a day, every day,

00:49:06 ◼   ► five days a week for 20 years,

00:49:08 ◼   ► they still use the actual checklist,

00:49:10 ◼   ► as opposed to just doing it from memory,

00:49:13 ◼   ► because it actually helps to avoid ever forgetting a step.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And the, the anecdotal data about it,

00:49:20 ◼   ► we're not, not even anecdotal, like actual data,

00:49:23 ◼   ► is that in surgical situations in hospitals,

00:49:26 ◼   ► having an actual checklist to go through

00:49:29 ◼   ► for every single procedure actually reduces mistakes,

00:49:32 ◼   ► it, to a statistically significant degree.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I'll try to find that and put it in the show notes.

00:49:38 ◼   ► But anyway, you should have one for travel,

00:49:40 ◼   ► I recommend it wholeheartedly,

00:49:41 ◼   ► because the only things you forget

00:49:43 ◼   ► are the things you forget, and if you have a checklist,

00:49:45 ◼   ► you won't forget 'em.

00:49:46 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - Let me thank our next sponsor, oh, I love this company,

00:49:50 ◼   ► this is great, Collide.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Collide is the new take on endpoint management,

00:49:55 ◼   ► and they ask a simple question,

00:49:57 ◼   ► how can we get end users more involved?

00:50:00 ◼   ► Collide, the whole system is in direct contrast

00:50:04 ◼   ► to old school device management tools like MDM.

00:50:07 ◼   ► MDM typically locks down your employees' devices

00:50:11 ◼   ► without considering their needs,

00:50:13 ◼   ► or even attempting to educate them

00:50:15 ◼   ► about the security issues on their laptops,

00:50:18 ◼   ► why, you know, what are the reasons why

00:50:21 ◼   ► you're installing some kind of security management

00:50:23 ◼   ► on their laptops?

00:50:24 ◼   ► MDM doesn't even consider that.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Collide is built by like-minded security practitioners

00:50:28 ◼   ► who saw all the flaws in traditional MDM structures,

00:50:32 ◼   ► and how disruptive it was to end users,

00:50:34 ◼   ► and often how it frustrated them so badly

00:50:37 ◼   ► that they would just take their work laptops,

00:50:39 ◼   ► keep 'em aside, and just do their work

00:50:41 ◼   ► on their personal laptops

00:50:42 ◼   ► with no security software on it whatsoever,

00:50:45 ◼   ► which defeats the whole point,

00:50:46 ◼   ► but they did it just to get work done,

00:50:47 ◼   ► because the tools that were being used

00:50:50 ◼   ► were so disruptive to actually just, you know,

00:50:52 ◼   ► doing their work.

00:50:53 ◼   ► In that scenario, everyone loses.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Collide, K-O-L-I-D-E, Collide with a K,

00:50:59 ◼   ► on the other hand, is different.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Instead of locking down a device,

00:51:01 ◼   ► they take a user-focused approach

00:51:03 ◼   ► that communicates security recommendations

00:51:05 ◼   ► directly to employees on Slack.

00:51:08 ◼   ► If you're already on Slack,

00:51:10 ◼   ► you're not even asking them to turn on something else

00:51:13 ◼   ► to get notifications and messages about new changes,

00:51:16 ◼   ► or recommendations, or notices about something

00:51:19 ◼   ► that's misconfigured on their system.

00:51:21 ◼   ► They get it all, they do it all directly through Slack,

00:51:24 ◼   ► which you're already using.

00:51:25 ◼   ► You're not even asking your employees

00:51:27 ◼   ► to use another communication tool.

00:51:30 ◼   ► It's Slack, which you're already using.

00:51:32 ◼   ► It'll educate your employees about the company's policies,

00:51:35 ◼   ► and give them recommendations and direct steps

00:51:38 ◼   ► to keep their devices secure using real tangible examples,

00:51:42 ◼   ► not theoretical scenarios.

00:51:44 ◼   ► That's Collide, cross-platform endpoint management

00:51:47 ◼   ► for Linux, Mac, and Windows devices

00:51:50 ◼   ► that puts end users first for teams that Slack.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Visit Collide.com, K-O-L-I-D-E, Collide.com/the-talk-show

00:51:58 ◼   ► to learn more.

00:52:01 ◼   ► You get, with that URL, you get a free 14-day trial.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Enter your email when prompted,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and you'll receive a free Collide GIF bundle

00:52:08 ◼   ► after your trial activation with no credit card required.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Once again, that's Collide.com/the-talk-show.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Speaking of security, Rene, I was,

00:52:20 ◼   ► have you heard of Instagram?

00:52:22 ◼   ► It's, it used to be like a photo sharing app.

00:52:26 ◼   ► It was pretty cool and really simple,

00:52:29 ◼   ► and they've added-

00:52:29 ◼   ► - For like phones, right?

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like that's all you wanted to post was like your phone stuff.

00:52:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, they've added some features in recent years.

00:52:36 ◼   ► I was flipping through the Instagram yesterday,

00:52:40 ◼   ► and I came across a reel from a guy named Rene Ritchie

00:52:44 ◼   ► explaining the new PassKey feature in iOS,

00:52:48 ◼   ► or all of Apple's, it was talked about at WWDC,

00:52:52 ◼   ► coming to all their platforms.

00:52:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:52:54 ◼   ► - I, this is,

00:52:55 ◼   ► let's explain PassKey.

00:53:01 ◼   ► - Okay, so like in a traditional world,

00:53:03 ◼   ► you would go to create an account for like Megacorp,

00:53:06 ◼   ► and you'd give them an email address,

00:53:08 ◼   ► and you'd create a password,

00:53:09 ◼   ► and the password would be stored on your machine,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and then a hashed and salted version of it

00:53:13 ◼   ► would be stored on the server.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And when you go to log in, they would compare the two,

00:53:17 ◼   ► and if they matched, they would let you in.

00:53:19 ◼   ► But the downside to that is that

00:53:21 ◼   ► because you have a copy of your password,

00:53:23 ◼   ► and you probably know it,

00:53:24 ◼   ► and, or at least, you know, in the early days,

00:53:26 ◼   ► everybody knew their passwords,

00:53:27 ◼   ► and often used the same passwords,

00:53:28 ◼   ► and the server had a copy,

00:53:30 ◼   ► even though it was hashed and salted,

00:53:31 ◼   ► that made two targets that people could get to.

00:53:34 ◼   ► They could hack them, they could crack them,

00:53:36 ◼   ► they could shoulder surf you typing it in,

00:53:38 ◼   ► they could call up and pretend to be tech support,

00:53:40 ◼   ► and ask you for the password.

00:53:41 ◼   ► There's just so many ways that it could be exploited.

00:53:44 ◼   ► So what, the way PassKeys work is,

00:53:46 ◼   ► there's no more passwords in that sense.

00:53:49 ◼   ► When you create an account,

00:53:50 ◼   ► it creates a public and a private key,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and people will know this formula from SSH.

00:53:55 ◼   ► It's not a new formula, it's just a new implementation.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And then the private key is stored on your device,

00:54:00 ◼   ► only in your device, locked down behind biometrics,

00:54:03 ◼   ► or a password, or a passcode,

00:54:05 ◼   ► and the public key is stored on the server.

00:54:07 ◼   ► And because a public key has no special information,

00:54:10 ◼   ► it's no better than a username,

00:54:12 ◼   ► if somebody goes and steals it, it doesn't matter.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Again, it's public information.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And because your private key is only on your device,

00:54:18 ◼   ► you don't know what it is,

00:54:19 ◼   ► so it's much harder to socially engineer it from you.

00:54:22 ◼   ► When you go to log in, the server issues a challenge,

00:54:26 ◼   ► and it sends that to your device,

00:54:28 ◼   ► and then your private key is used to generate a response,

00:54:32 ◼   ► a solution to that challenge, in the form of a signature,

00:54:35 ◼   ► and then that signature is sent back to the server.

00:54:37 ◼   ► So at no point does your private key ever leave your device.

00:54:41 ◼   ► It's never in transit, and it's never on the other server,

00:54:44 ◼   ► and that makes it really, really hard

00:54:46 ◼   ► for any of the traditional, you know,

00:54:48 ◼   ► phaser set to kill style attacks to work on you.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - So there's a lot to unpack there.

00:54:54 ◼   ► That was wonderful, though,

00:54:55 ◼   ► especially since I sort of sprung it on you.

00:54:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:58 ◼   ► - That was a wonderful synopsis.

00:54:59 ◼   ► There's a couple of things about it

00:55:01 ◼   ► that I think is hard to get one's head wrapped around.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So part of it is that,

00:55:09 ◼   ► and let's go back to the way passwords traditionally work.

00:55:12 ◼   ► If you go back far enough, and this was actually was,

00:55:18 ◼   ► I would say it was never a best practice,

00:55:20 ◼   ► but it was just the way things always were done,

00:55:23 ◼   ► is that passwords were just stored as plain text passwords

00:55:28 ◼   ► on the system that you were logging into.

00:55:30 ◼   ► You'd have to go back a long time before, you know,

00:55:32 ◼   ► but we're talking, you know,

00:55:33 ◼   ► people have been using passwords

00:55:34 ◼   ► in network situations for decades.

00:55:37 ◼   ► You know, you go back to the '80s or '90s,

00:55:40 ◼   ► this was common, and people just didn't, you know,

00:55:43 ◼   ► the advice was basically pick a good password

00:55:46 ◼   ► and a unique password for every account you create.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So never reuse a password and pick a good one,

00:55:55 ◼   ► you know, with lots of letters and punctuation, whatever.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And if the server or the service,

00:56:02 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call it, just stored it as plain text,

00:56:06 ◼   ► so your password is password, right?

00:56:09 ◼   ► It's just the dumbest password of all time.

00:56:12 ◼   ► And it would just be in a file,

00:56:15 ◼   ► and it would say the account name is Gruber,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and the password is password,

00:56:20 ◼   ► and then you would log in and say,

00:56:21 ◼   ► my account name is Gruber, and my password is password,

00:56:25 ◼   ► and then it would check those two things

00:56:27 ◼   ► and say, okay, you're in.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Now, the security downside of this is obvious,

00:56:31 ◼   ► which is that anybody with access to the server

00:56:34 ◼   ► could just see everybody's passwords.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And whether that's a rogue employee

00:56:41 ◼   ► or just a hack, right,

00:56:46 ◼   ► somebody who breaks into the server

00:56:48 ◼   ► and steals the password file, it's all just there.

00:56:53 ◼   ► Obviously, bad news.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Everybody's known for quite a long time.

00:56:56 ◼   ► This is a terrible practice.

00:56:59 ◼   ► It seems like we're at a point in 2022

00:57:02 ◼   ► where I don't see very many stories anymore

00:57:05 ◼   ► about such and such service got hacked

00:57:08 ◼   ► and they stored the passwords as plain text.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's one of those things

00:57:13 ◼   ► where it takes years and years to shake out

00:57:15 ◼   ► all the legacy systems that were never updated,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but that doesn't seem to happen anymore.

00:57:23 ◼   ► What you described as salted passwords

00:57:27 ◼   ► is typically the way it works.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And without turning this into a programming podcast,

00:57:33 ◼   ► the way that typically works is at some point

00:57:38 ◼   ► you have to send the service your password, right,

00:57:42 ◼   ► and you send it, but what the service would do

00:57:45 ◼   ► is they have a secret string.

00:57:48 ◼   ► That's the salt.

00:57:49 ◼   ► And you don't know it.

00:57:50 ◼   ► Like, you're logging into example.com.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Example.com has a salt, and the salt might be

00:57:58 ◼   ► just a 32-character string of random letters, totally random.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Every single password, it takes your password,

00:58:10 ◼   ► password, combines it with the salt,

00:58:12 ◼   ► which is a secret to the server,

00:58:15 ◼   ► and then gives it to a function

00:58:18 ◼   ► that creates a hash key out of it.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And without going into those functions,

00:58:24 ◼   ► there's lots of them, you know,

00:58:26 ◼   ► but it's like SSH, S-H-A is one of them.

00:58:31 ◼   ► MD5 is an old one that is more or less frowned upon

00:58:35 ◼   ► at this point because it's not quite

00:58:37 ◼   ► as cryptographically secure.

00:58:38 ◼   ► But basically these are functions

00:58:40 ◼   ► that you can give any string of characters to,

00:58:43 ◼   ► give it to the function, and it'll create a new string

00:58:46 ◼   ► that looks totally random, and you can't take backwards

00:58:51 ◼   ► to produce the password and the salt.

00:58:56 ◼   ► You take two strings, it could just be Renee and Richie,

00:59:00 ◼   ► and you give them to this function,

00:59:02 ◼   ► and if you give it to the same function on any system,

00:59:05 ◼   ► you'll get the same random string

00:59:07 ◼   ► of, let's say, 64 characters out.

00:59:10 ◼   ► That's what gets stored, and then every time you log in,

00:59:13 ◼   ► you give it your password,

00:59:15 ◼   ► they combine it with the secret salt,

00:59:18 ◼   ► pass it to the function, and then see if that product

00:59:22 ◼   ► of that matches what's stored.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Far more secure, but one of the reasons it's more secure

00:59:29 ◼   ► is anybody who captures the list on the server

00:59:34 ◼   ► just has those hash values, and those can't be,

00:59:37 ◼   ► literally cannot be backwards engineered

00:59:40 ◼   ► to get the passwords out of them.

00:59:41 ◼   ► But one of the weaknesses is that the salt somewhere

00:59:47 ◼   ► has to be readable, right?

00:59:49 ◼   ► And so if somebody gets the source code

00:59:51 ◼   ► that contains the salt, you still can't get the passwords,

00:59:58 ◼   ► knowing only half, right?

01:00:00 ◼   ► You still don't know the passwords.

01:00:01 ◼   ► It's the password plus the salt

01:00:03 ◼   ► plus the cryptographic function equals the hash key.

01:00:07 ◼   ► But at that point, you can start brute forcing

01:00:10 ◼   ► with a common list of passwords, right?

01:00:14 ◼   ► And there are lots and lots of these lists everywhere,

01:00:16 ◼   ► where it's like, and with how fast computers are today,

01:00:20 ◼   ► it doesn't have to be like the top 100 common passwords.

01:00:23 ◼   ► It could be the top 50,000 common passwords that people use,

01:00:28 ◼   ► and you can mow through those relatively quickly,

01:00:32 ◼   ► and all of a sudden, you're getting,

01:00:34 ◼   ► then you can start getting passwords out of it

01:00:37 ◼   ► by guessing 50,000 common passwords

01:00:40 ◼   ► against the known salt that you've stolen

01:00:43 ◼   ► from the source code,

01:00:46 ◼   ► and knowing which cryptographic function they use,

01:00:48 ◼   ► now all of a sudden, your password is out in the open.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And that has happened.

01:00:52 ◼   ► That does not-

01:00:53 ◼   ► - You'll see like the Home Depot was compromised,

01:00:55 ◼   ► and suddenly the dark web has like a list of passwords

01:00:57 ◼   ► and user accounts.

01:00:58 ◼   ► - That is not a hypothetical scenario.

01:01:00 ◼   ► That is an actual weakness.

01:01:02 ◼   ► The other weakness is just passwords themselves, right?

01:01:05 ◼   ► The fact that human beings typically just reuse passwords

01:01:10 ◼   ► as opposed to creating unique ones for each account.

01:01:12 ◼   ► They often have picked,

01:01:15 ◼   ► especially for accounts that have been around

01:01:17 ◼   ► for a longer time before more modern systems have started,

01:01:22 ◼   ► like Safari, et cetera,

01:01:24 ◼   ► offering very secure passwords for you

01:01:27 ◼   ► that they will store for you in your key chain,

01:01:29 ◼   ► or if you use one password, it will do the same thing,

01:01:32 ◼   ► suggest a unique, secure, strong password.

01:01:36 ◼   ► And if you accept it,

01:01:37 ◼   ► immediately store it in your password manager

01:01:42 ◼   ► so that you don't have to take a manual step afterwards

01:01:45 ◼   ► of writing it down, storing it somewhere.

01:01:47 ◼   ► It still isn't great because anybody who gets,

01:01:50 ◼   ► you have passwords that can be stolen,

01:01:53 ◼   ► and that's an intractable problem and cannot be solved.

01:01:57 ◼   ► Whereas with these pass keys, there is no password.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And I know that's hard to understand,

01:02:03 ◼   ► but basically it's because these keys

01:02:06 ◼   ► never leave your device.

01:02:07 ◼   ► So they're never, for lack of a better way of putting it,

01:02:10 ◼   ► they're never in your brain.

01:02:12 ◼   ► There is nothing for you to memorize.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Even if you could,

01:02:15 ◼   ► if you're so good at memorizing random strings

01:02:17 ◼   ► of characters and letters,

01:02:19 ◼   ► that you could memorize a 32 character

01:02:22 ◼   ► or 64 character string of random letters and numbers.

01:02:25 ◼   ► - It's a random blob.

01:02:27 ◼   ► - Right.

01:02:29 ◼   ► You never see it.

01:02:30 ◼   ► You can't see it.

01:02:31 ◼   ► It never leaves, in Apple's world,

01:02:33 ◼   ► never leaves the secure enclave of your devices, I believe.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - You can airdrop it to a loved one,

01:02:39 ◼   ► and conceivably somebody could trick you

01:02:40 ◼   ► into airdropping it to them,

01:02:41 ◼   ► but that's an incredibly specific use case.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - Right, so yeah, you can obviously get them out

01:02:46 ◼   ► of the secure storage because they have to be used,

01:02:50 ◼   ► but it's, you know.

01:02:51 ◼   ► - They never leave the secure storage,

01:02:52 ◼   ► but like, for example, if Amy Jane was like,

01:02:55 ◼   ► she's on a different device, like a different account,

01:02:57 ◼   ► but you wanna use the same, a different device,

01:02:58 ◼   ► she's on a different device

01:02:59 ◼   ► and wants to use the same service

01:03:00 ◼   ► that you subscribe to, you can airdrop her the key for it.

01:03:04 ◼   ► - Right, like something, you know,

01:03:05 ◼   ► which is not even wink, wink, nudge, nudge,

01:03:08 ◼   ► you're allowed to do like a shared Netflix account

01:03:10 ◼   ► for a family or something like that.

01:03:12 ◼   ► - The other thing that's really cool,

01:03:13 ◼   ► just in general about this,

01:03:14 ◼   ► is it removes the need for two-factor,

01:03:16 ◼   ► which we've seen can also be a weakness,

01:03:18 ◼   ► not just because people can do a SIM swap attack,

01:03:20 ◼   ► like they can call up your cell company and say,

01:03:23 ◼   ► "Oh, I lost my phone, this is my new number,

01:03:25 ◼   ► my new SIM card, can you sign the number to that SIM card?"

01:03:27 ◼   ► And then they get your token that,

01:03:29 ◼   ► 'cause so many companies still either use or fall back on SMS

01:03:33 ◼   ► as a way to deliver tokens.

01:03:35 ◼   ► You don't need the token, so this totally eliminates that.

01:03:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, good point.

01:03:39 ◼   ► I guess, and the other thing to remember

01:03:42 ◼   ► is this is not a Apple invention,

01:03:45 ◼   ► this is a industry-wide consortium,

01:03:49 ◼   ► and as far, I can't think of a big company

01:03:52 ◼   ► who you'd wish would be involved who isn't, right?

01:03:55 ◼   ► Google and Microsoft and, you know,

01:03:58 ◼   ► 'cause this is one of those areas

01:03:59 ◼   ► where there's really no,

01:04:00 ◼   ► you're not even depending on the goodwill of these companies,

01:04:05 ◼   ► there is no downside to them collaborating

01:04:08 ◼   ► to make this work, right?

01:04:09 ◼   ► None of these major companies have any interest whatsoever

01:04:13 ◼   ► in anybody, I mean, I guess the hypothetical scenario

01:04:18 ◼   ► would be if, let's say, company A,

01:04:23 ◼   ► let's say Apple and Google,

01:04:25 ◼   ► and Apple thinks they've invented this thing

01:04:27 ◼   ► that's more secure, would they like to be able

01:04:30 ◼   ► to use it as a competitive advantage

01:04:32 ◼   ► in marketing against Google and Android?

01:04:36 ◼   ► That's, you know, you can construe a scenario

01:04:40 ◼   ► where they'd want to do it on their own,

01:04:41 ◼   ► but working together is clearly in the interest

01:04:44 ◼   ► of all these companies.

01:04:46 ◼   ► And what it means is that you can use this passkey system

01:04:50 ◼   ► that Apple's announced is gonna be built

01:04:51 ◼   ► into all their systems.

01:04:53 ◼   ► It's not just for stuff within the Apple ecosystem

01:04:58 ◼   ► of apps on your iOS and Macs that come through the App Store

01:05:03 ◼   ► and use Apple's APIs, it will be able to be used

01:05:08 ◼   ► for stuff over the web that has nothing to do

01:05:11 ◼   ► with Apple in particular.

01:05:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the exciting thing is like 1Password,

01:05:15 ◼   ► LastPass, Dashlane, they've all announced support

01:05:17 ◼   ► for it as well, so theoretically,

01:05:19 ◼   ► if you don't wanna tie your keys to an iPhone

01:05:22 ◼   ► or to a Windows machine or to an Android phone,

01:05:24 ◼   ► you'd be able to tie them to a 1Password

01:05:27 ◼   ► or LastPass account, and then you can choose horizontal

01:05:31 ◼   ► or vertical lock-in, you don't have to use one or the other.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - Right, which is a great, it's key.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I know that there are people who listen to my show

01:05:40 ◼   ► and watch your YouTube channel and love Apple stuff the best

01:05:43 ◼   ► but who live in a cross-platform world professionally

01:05:47 ◼   ► or by choice, because they have a gaming PC or whatever,

01:05:50 ◼   ► whether it's for work or for gaming or for whatever,

01:05:54 ◼   ► they need cross-platform solutions to something like this

01:05:57 ◼   ► and PassKey absolutely is as cross-platform as it could be.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Just one example from history, it's not like Steve Jobs'

01:06:10 ◼   ► promise that FaceTime would become an open standard.

01:06:13 ◼   ► No, this really is an open standard

01:06:14 ◼   ► and that's where this work has come from.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - There is a bit of a downside, like some people will say

01:06:18 ◼   ► they like simple passwords they can remember

01:06:21 ◼   ► because if anything ever happens,

01:06:22 ◼   ► they can go to their friend's computer

01:06:23 ◼   ► and just type in the word password and log in,

01:06:26 ◼   ► and as scary as that is for us, it's comforting to them

01:06:29 ◼   ► and this does remove that because you don't know

01:06:31 ◼   ► what the PassKey is, so if you lose your phone,

01:06:33 ◼   ► you can't just go to your friend's computer and type it in.

01:06:35 ◼   ► It's basically like if you lost your phone

01:06:37 ◼   ► that has your two-factor authentication on it now.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Like you should make sure, Apple is letting you set up,

01:06:43 ◼   ► like I could set you up as my friend contact

01:06:46 ◼   ► and then you'd get a code and you could send it to me

01:06:48 ◼   ► or also you might have a recovery account

01:06:50 ◼   ► as a separate email account with a random name

01:06:52 ◼   ► that nobody knows that's authorized to,

01:06:55 ◼   ► that stores this kind of stuff for you.

01:06:57 ◼   ► So recovery is gonna be a little more complicated.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Everyone is making much better systems to handle it

01:07:02 ◼   ► but it's no more complicated than recovery

01:07:04 ◼   ► if you had two-factor going anyway.

01:07:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's basically, that's where I was going

01:07:08 ◼   ► is the okay, this sounds great but what's the catch?

01:07:11 ◼   ► There has to be a catch and that sort of is the catch

01:07:15 ◼   ► where, and I've mentioned this before

01:07:19 ◼   ► and I know Bruce Schneier himself

01:07:21 ◼   ► who's a terrific security expert

01:07:24 ◼   ► has said this before too that a lot of people frown

01:07:29 ◼   ► upon the idea that some people just keep their passwords

01:07:32 ◼   ► in like a notebook, like a paper and pen notebook.

01:07:35 ◼   ► My parents do this with some of their stuff

01:07:37 ◼   ► and they're like oh my God,

01:07:39 ◼   ► 'cause there's no encryption obviously

01:07:41 ◼   ► and it's totally insecure

01:07:44 ◼   ► and I'm totally stealing this from Bruce Schneier

01:07:47 ◼   ► but human beings are actually very good

01:07:49 ◼   ► at keeping physical things secret.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Obviously somebody who breaks into your home,

01:07:55 ◼   ► you're in a lot of trouble already

01:07:56 ◼   ► if a thief is broken into your home.

01:07:59 ◼   ► - Right, like what's in your desk,

01:08:00 ◼   ► what's in your bedroom?

01:08:02 ◼   ► - Right, but so yes, there is a theoretical risk

01:08:06 ◼   ► to just writing down stuff on paper

01:08:08 ◼   ► and keeping it in a known secure location

01:08:11 ◼   ► or not even secure, just a known,

01:08:13 ◼   ► I know that I keep it in this drawer

01:08:15 ◼   ► and this desk where my iMac is set up.

01:08:19 ◼   ► That's actually very secure and it can't leak online.

01:08:23 ◼   ► There's all sorts of things that have happened

01:08:24 ◼   ► that happened to digital stuff

01:08:26 ◼   ► and you don't, people are good at that.

01:08:28 ◼   ► That's not as insecure as you think.

01:08:31 ◼   ► - There's a mutual friend, Dave Nainian,

01:08:33 ◼   ► who does SuperDuper. - SuperDuper.

01:08:35 ◼   ► - Amazing, amazing app.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I was doing a story on encryption and security

01:08:41 ◼   ► and I talked to Will Chronic on Twitter,

01:08:44 ◼   ► brilliant info sec guy, talked to a bunch of them

01:08:46 ◼   ► and everyone was telling me how to lock down everything.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Then I talked to Dave and he's like,

01:08:49 ◼   ► "Yes, but you have to remember that most people,

01:08:53 ◼   ► "their biggest threat isn't someone stealing their stuff,

01:08:56 ◼   ► "it's them losing access to their stuff."

01:08:58 ◼   ► And that's why a lot of fail-safe

01:09:00 ◼   ► has to be balanced with fail-secure.

01:09:02 ◼   ► We see now, we're in a world

01:09:04 ◼   ► where we want to lock down everything,

01:09:06 ◼   ► but still to your point about that list of passwords,

01:09:08 ◼   ► if anything is more important to you

01:09:11 ◼   ► or so important to you that it is better

01:09:12 ◼   ► that it is stolen than it is lost,

01:09:15 ◼   ► like for example, for some people it's baby pictures.

01:09:17 ◼   ► They have very little value to anybody else.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Wedding pictures, some documents

01:09:21 ◼   ► that have no financial or health thing,

01:09:23 ◼   ► but they're just family memories or artifacts.

01:09:25 ◼   ► Any of that stuff, it is far less likely

01:09:28 ◼   ► that they'll be stolen and far more likely

01:09:30 ◼   ► that you'll lose access to them.

01:09:31 ◼   ► So that's the kind of stuff

01:09:32 ◼   ► that you don't need to be so security paranoid about.

01:09:35 ◼   ► You just want to have,

01:09:36 ◼   ► make sure that you never lose the access to them.

01:09:38 ◼   ► So it's better to have a balanced approach.

01:09:40 ◼   ► - Right, and that sort of seems to be the weakness here,

01:09:43 ◼   ► is what happens, and a house fire

01:09:47 ◼   ► or other natural disaster is the,

01:09:51 ◼   ► obviously and thankfully rare,

01:09:54 ◼   ► but it certainly happens, right?

01:09:57 ◼   ► There's now annual wildfires in California.

01:10:01 ◼   ► A lot of people around the world

01:10:02 ◼   ► live places where hurricanes hit every decade

01:10:06 ◼   ► and tornadoes might hit or something like that.

01:10:08 ◼   ► It is possible for something to happen

01:10:13 ◼   ► and every device in your house is destroyed.

01:10:17 ◼   ► What happens, like if you just,

01:10:18 ◼   ► you have one Mac, one iPad, one iPhone,

01:10:21 ◼   ► and they're all destroyed, how do you get back in?

01:10:25 ◼   ► And the answer is it's complicated, right?

01:10:30 ◼   ► Now of course, if all your passwords

01:10:32 ◼   ► were written in a paper notebook and your house burns down,

01:10:35 ◼   ► that notebook is probably gone too.

01:10:37 ◼   ► So it's not like the password world was a panacea

01:10:41 ◼   ► for what happens if a tornado destroys your house.

01:10:45 ◼   ► - But I put a copy in my safety deposit box,

01:10:48 ◼   ► oh, but the key was in the house and it melted,

01:10:49 ◼   ► like you can just drive yourself nuts on all this stuff.

01:10:51 ◼   ► - Right, but there is,

01:10:53 ◼   ► so one of the answers to this is that you can set up,

01:10:58 ◼   ► what does Apple call them?

01:10:59 ◼   ► Not necessarily emergency contacts, but like--

01:11:02 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I just mentioned it

01:11:04 ◼   ► and now it's gone out of my head again.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Is a legacy contact then does something contact?

01:11:09 ◼   ► - Right, and the legacy contact thing too,

01:11:12 ◼   ► and again, we as human beings tend to--

01:11:15 ◼   ► - Recovery contact.

01:11:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, recovery contact.

01:11:17 ◼   ► So you can set that up.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Now, it doesn't help if your recovery contact

01:11:22 ◼   ► is your spouse or somebody else who lives with you

01:11:26 ◼   ► and all of their stuff gets destroyed in the same disaster,

01:11:30 ◼   ► but it is something that could happen.

01:11:32 ◼   ► So for example, if you're traveling

01:11:34 ◼   ► and all of your devices are in one bag

01:11:37 ◼   ► and the bag gets stolen, a recovery contact

01:11:40 ◼   ► whose devices are still in their possession

01:11:44 ◼   ► could definitely help you.

01:11:45 ◼   ► What else?

01:11:46 ◼   ► What else can you do for the situation of,

01:11:48 ◼   ► okay, I'm all in on PassKey,

01:11:50 ◼   ► I'm gonna move as many of my accounts to this as possible,

01:11:53 ◼   ► and I'm in the Apple ecosystem,

01:11:56 ◼   ► I'll do it through the keychain and iCloud.

01:11:59 ◼   ► What happens if you lose all your devices?

01:12:00 ◼   ► I mean, what else is there?

01:12:03 ◼   ► - You can still go to, like right now,

01:12:04 ◼   ► if you lose your two-factor for your Apple account,

01:12:06 ◼   ► you can go, and as long as you can prove ownership,

01:12:08 ◼   ► it's a long and laborious process because it has to be,

01:12:11 ◼   ► because the chance of social engineering is so high,

01:12:13 ◼   ► but you can go to AppleCare, an Apple store,

01:12:16 ◼   ► a place like that, prove ownership,

01:12:18 ◼   ► and then they'll do account recovery for you.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - So there's that.

01:12:21 ◼   ► So there are, and I think if you balance this all out,

01:12:25 ◼   ► it's worth being aware of what happens

01:12:29 ◼   ► in the worst-case scenario or a near worst-case scenario,

01:12:33 ◼   ► and being aware of what you should do.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It's like figuring out, hey, you should know what to do

01:12:39 ◼   ► with your homeowner's insurance before you need it,

01:12:42 ◼   ► and have an idea--

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Oh, and by the way, this is the reason Apple moved

01:12:44 ◼   ► to the new forum, like before everything was completely

01:12:46 ◼   ► locked and you got a recovery key for your iCloud account,

01:12:49 ◼   ► but people just lost those all the time.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Apple literally could not get their,

01:12:53 ◼   ► they don't know people complain that iCloud backups

01:12:54 ◼   ► aren't as secure as they want them to be,

01:12:56 ◼   ► like they're not zero-knowledge, Apple can unlock them,

01:12:59 ◼   ► but that's the reason, is that when Apple looked

01:13:00 ◼   ► at the support requests they were getting in,

01:13:02 ◼   ► the harm wasn't subpoenas, the harm was people losing access

01:13:06 ◼   ► by like exponentially more people just lost

01:13:09 ◼   ► their recovery keys and they never had legal demands

01:13:12 ◼   ► on that stuff and it just wasn't worth it for them.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - So they created the new system where they could help

01:13:15 ◼   ► you recover.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - Right, and this is a recurring topic between me and you.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Either both on the show and in our personal iChat,

01:13:24 ◼   ► or I call it iChat, iMessage, over the years,

01:13:27 ◼   ► but something that you and I have talked about

01:13:30 ◼   ► at great length is this topic of, you know,

01:13:35 ◼   ► and again, it circles back to the law enforcement angle

01:13:38 ◼   ► we talked about earlier in the show of your iCloud backup

01:13:43 ◼   ► is not end-to-end encrypted.

01:13:48 ◼   ► - It's encrypted, but Apple has the key.

01:13:50 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:50 ◼   ► - I think people get upset when they think it's not end-to-end.

01:13:51 ◼   ► It is encrypted, it's just Apple can unencrypt it.

01:13:54 ◼   ► - Right, it is, for lack of a better analogy,

01:14:00 ◼   ► if you can imagine a secure envelope and in transit

01:14:05 ◼   ► from your device to iCloud, it is in a secure envelope

01:14:10 ◼   ► that is cryptographically secure.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Almost everything we do on the internet these days

01:14:14 ◼   ► is encrypted over the wire.

01:14:17 ◼   ► You know, there are very few websites I visit anymore

01:14:20 ◼   ► that are HTTP without the S, and our email,

01:14:24 ◼   ► when your mail client talks to your IMAP server,

01:14:29 ◼   ► that's all over SSL in almost all cases these days.

01:14:32 ◼   ► So everything over the wire tends to be encrypted.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It's in a secure envelope, but in most cases,

01:14:38 ◼   ► if it's not end-to-end encrypted, it gets to the server.

01:14:41 ◼   ► The server can obviously decrypt it to be useful.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Now it's not encrypted anymore, and then--

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, like to show you your photos

01:14:48 ◼   ► on a web browser, for example.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - But when they write whatever it is to disk,

01:14:52 ◼   ► now email's different, so let's forget about email,

01:14:54 ◼   ► but your iCloud backup, your iCloud backup goes

01:14:58 ◼   ► from your device to iCloud encrypted,

01:15:01 ◼   ► the server gets it, decrypts it, and then writes it

01:15:05 ◼   ► to their disks in the cloud in an encrypted format.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:15:10 ◼   ► - But they obviously can decrypt it,

01:15:13 ◼   ► because when the backup comes back to you,

01:15:16 ◼   ► you're like, I would like to restore this device

01:15:18 ◼   ► to a backup.

01:15:19 ◼   ► They take the backup, they decrypt it,

01:15:22 ◼   ► then they send it, you know.

01:15:24 ◼   ► - Well, I think that one, technically,

01:15:26 ◼   ► that's using your key to decrypt it,

01:15:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's coming to your device,

01:15:28 ◼   ► and you've logged into that device,

01:15:29 ◼   ► and I think that's using your key.

01:15:30 ◼   ► - Oh, maybe.

01:15:31 ◼   ► - But they have, like, the way my understanding is,

01:15:33 ◼   ► it's almost like you live in a secure building

01:15:34 ◼   ► in New York City, or you're in a hotel,

01:15:36 ◼   ► and if you lose your door dingus,

01:15:39 ◼   ► they can come and unlock it for you,

01:15:41 ◼   ► but then also, like, the cops can force them to unlock it.

01:15:44 ◼   ► But they don't get your current activity,

01:15:46 ◼   ► like, they don't get anything that is dynamic,

01:15:48 ◼   ► they only get what's at rest,

01:15:49 ◼   ► they only guess what's in the room at that time.

01:15:51 ◼   ► - Right, encrypted in transit and encrypted in storage

01:15:55 ◼   ► is good, but that's not end-to-end encrypted.

01:15:58 ◼   ► End-to-end encrypted, E2E, is a way of talking

01:16:01 ◼   ► about something where the only keys that can decrypt it

01:16:06 ◼   ► are at the endpoints, meaning your devices,

01:16:10 ◼   ► and there's literally nothing that can be done

01:16:13 ◼   ► in the middle to decrypt it, other than the brute force

01:16:16 ◼   ► and the mathematics behind the brute force of decrypting it,

01:16:20 ◼   ► and the current state of computing is, you know,

01:16:24 ◼   ► thousands to millions or longer of years

01:16:27 ◼   ► of compute time to do it, so effectively,

01:16:30 ◼   ► un-decryptable.

01:16:34 ◼   ► That's end-to-end encryption, and iCloud backups

01:16:37 ◼   ► are not end-to-end decrypted, and there's a lot of people

01:16:41 ◼   ► who think that's solely because of pressure

01:16:43 ◼   ► from law enforcement, and law enforcement, to be clear,

01:16:46 ◼   ► is very happy about the current state of affairs.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Maybe they'd, you know, like, even easier access,

01:16:52 ◼   ► but the fact that they can go to Apple

01:16:55 ◼   ► or all sorts of other providers with a warrant

01:16:58 ◼   ► and have it looked at and say, okay, yes,

01:17:00 ◼   ► this is a legit law enforcement request,

01:17:03 ◼   ► and they can turn over the contents of your iCloud backup

01:17:07 ◼   ► to law enforcement, because they also do have keys.

01:17:10 ◼   ► It's a point of contention, it's something to be aware of,

01:17:12 ◼   ► right, and, but my understanding,

01:17:15 ◼   ► and I think your understanding from informed little birdies,

01:17:20 ◼   ► for lack of a better word, is that this is not as much about,

01:17:25 ◼   ► yes, law enforcement does like the way things are

01:17:28 ◼   ► and would not like Apple to switch to end-to-end

01:17:31 ◼   ► encrypted iCloud backups that cannot be unlocked by Apple

01:17:36 ◼   ► for law enforcement purposes, where, you know,

01:17:40 ◼   ► the only thing that Apple could turn over

01:17:41 ◼   ► is an encrypted blob that they do not have the key to,

01:17:44 ◼   ► not that by policy they refuse to use the key,

01:17:47 ◼   ► but they literally don't have it.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Law enforcement would not like that,

01:17:51 ◼   ► but it's worth mentioning, it is a reason,

01:17:55 ◼   ► but that the primary reason iCloud backups

01:17:58 ◼   ► are not end-to-end encrypted is that they,

01:18:01 ◼   ► yes, exactly what you said a couple minutes ago,

01:18:02 ◼   ► that Apple looked at the actual support load

01:18:05 ◼   ► that their tech support, AppleCare and stores face,

01:18:09 ◼   ► and it is just, every single day,

01:18:13 ◼   ► thousands and thousands of Apple customers come in

01:18:16 ◼   ► and say, I'm locked out of my stuff,

01:18:18 ◼   ► I cannot get in, what do I do?

01:18:20 ◼   ► We've talked about this, I know, on the show before.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:18:23 ◼   ► - I, what I would like to see, I guess, is,

01:18:27 ◼   ► but I also realize the downside of this,

01:18:29 ◼   ► it's complexity, where all of a sudden,

01:18:32 ◼   ► everybody's iCloud backup is the same,

01:18:34 ◼   ► has weaknesses in the current world

01:18:37 ◼   ► because it's not end-to-end encrypted,

01:18:39 ◼   ► but at least it's a simple story,

01:18:41 ◼   ► whereas making it optional to make your iCloud backup

01:18:45 ◼   ► end-to-end encrypted so that Apple cannot decrypt it,

01:18:50 ◼   ► it cannot turn it over to law enforcement,

01:18:52 ◼   ► even in the face of a warrant, has nothing to do it,

01:18:55 ◼   ► but also, therefore, inherently cannot help you

01:18:59 ◼   ► if you lock yourself out and forget

01:19:02 ◼   ► all of the ways to get in.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - You know, they literally can't.

01:19:06 ◼   ► You just gotta, like, by pressing that button,

01:19:08 ◼   ► you say, I'm a grown-ass adult,

01:19:09 ◼   ► and I value encryption over recoverability,

01:19:12 ◼   ► and I'm doing this to myself.

01:19:14 ◼   ► - Right, you know, that scenario would have to have

01:19:18 ◼   ► some outs in some way, right?

01:19:20 ◼   ► Like, you know, would it be that your recovery contact

01:19:24 ◼   ► could do it?

01:19:25 ◼   ► But then that opens up the scenario where law enforcement

01:19:29 ◼   ► could go to your recovery contact and say,

01:19:32 ◼   ► okay, here's our warrant, please, you know,

01:19:35 ◼   ► use your recovery contact powers to give us access

01:19:39 ◼   ► to, you know, this criminal suspect,

01:19:41 ◼   ► Renee Ritchie's iCloud account.

01:19:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:19:44 ◼   ► The whole thing is, like, it really depends,

01:19:46 ◼   ► again, it depends on your threat model.

01:19:47 ◼   ► For the vast majority of people,

01:19:49 ◼   ► it's not even a consideration.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Like, the chance of loss is just so much more massive

01:19:53 ◼   ► than the chance of subpoena, or even, like, of hacking,

01:19:56 ◼   ► or, like, criminal activity.

01:19:57 ◼   ► It's the reason why, like, my laptops are,

01:19:59 ◼   ► like, I encrypt the drive, I use FileVault on my laptops,

01:20:02 ◼   ► just because it's a laptop and it could get stolen

01:20:04 ◼   ► or it could leave.

01:20:05 ◼   ► But anything that I have, like, my family photos,

01:20:07 ◼   ► they're on a drive that's not encrypted at all,

01:20:09 ◼   ► because, you know, drives fail,

01:20:11 ◼   ► and if a drive is encrypted and it fails,

01:20:13 ◼   ► you can't even pay those exorbitant recovery companies

01:20:15 ◼   ► to get them back for you.

01:20:16 ◼   ► That stuff is just gone.

01:20:17 ◼   ► - Well, they could get back the ones and zeros

01:20:20 ◼   ► of the encrypted blob.

01:20:22 ◼   ► - But it would be, yeah, it would be useless.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Right, it just--

01:20:24 ◼   ► - So, like, yeah, you have to, like,

01:20:27 ◼   ► part of this is, like, I think that people fetishized

01:20:29 ◼   ► encryption and fetishized security,

01:20:31 ◼   ► and because we live in a world that has a bunch

01:20:32 ◼   ► of terrible stories in the media,

01:20:34 ◼   ► that everybody thought everything,

01:20:35 ◼   ► and infosec people really do believe

01:20:37 ◼   ► everything should be encrypted all the time,

01:20:38 ◼   ► and backup people think that you're out of your mind

01:20:41 ◼   ► if you encrypt anything important to you at all, ever,

01:20:43 ◼   ► and I think there's, like, a middle ground,

01:20:44 ◼   ► and maybe Apple can find that.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Like, PassKey works great.

01:20:47 ◼   ► PGP never took off for email,

01:20:49 ◼   ► because it was just too damn hard

01:20:50 ◼   ► for anybody to manage a system very similar to this,

01:20:53 ◼   ► and they figured out a way to make, basically,

01:20:55 ◼   ► SSH-style private public key system easy to work,

01:20:59 ◼   ► and I'm hoping they can figure out a way

01:21:01 ◼   ► where you can classify things as, like,

01:21:03 ◼   ► please encrypt this, and please make this recoverable.

01:21:06 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:21:07 ◼   ► I somehow managed to graduate from a reputable university

01:21:12 ◼   ► with a computer science degree,

01:21:13 ◼   ► and was, I think, one course short

01:21:17 ◼   ► of graduating with a math minor.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I think it was, I used to have it memorized.

01:21:22 ◼   ► It was probability and statistic two,

01:21:25 ◼   ► and there was another, I think there were two classes,

01:21:27 ◼   ► but ProbStat one was so hard for me

01:21:30 ◼   ► that I was like, forget it, I don't need a math minor.

01:21:32 ◼   ► I don't care if it's one class.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I'm never taking this again.

01:21:35 ◼   ► And I care about privacy and security,

01:21:39 ◼   ► and I did have and use PGP for my email for a while.

01:21:43 ◼   ► I never encrypted every message,

01:21:45 ◼   ► 'cause it never was necessary,

01:21:46 ◼   ► but even with that background of somewhat technical

01:21:50 ◼   ► expertise, it was still so convoluted and confusing

01:21:53 ◼   ► that I'd go so far between actually using it

01:21:56 ◼   ► where somebody would then send me an encrypted email,

01:21:59 ◼   ► and it would be like starting all over from scratch.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Like, how the hell do I decrypt this?

01:22:03 ◼   ► What do I do?

01:22:04 ◼   ► It's just not a good match.

01:22:06 ◼   ► It's better to just treat,

01:22:07 ◼   ► better to treat email like postcards.

01:22:11 ◼   ► They're not even in an envelope.

01:22:13 ◼   ► There's no envelope to steam open.

01:22:15 ◼   ► Just assume every email you send and receive

01:22:19 ◼   ► is like a postcard going through the mail

01:22:22 ◼   ► where the message is just written on the back of the card

01:22:24 ◼   ► and any, you know, you can use it.

01:22:27 ◼   ► I use email every day, thousands of messages,

01:22:30 ◼   ► every month probably.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Just assume it has the security of a postcard

01:22:34 ◼   ► and be done with it.

01:22:35 ◼   ► - Let's go and be like Panzorino

01:22:36 ◼   ► and post your damn PGP key in all your social bodies.

01:22:40 ◼   ► - I do not use it anymore.

01:22:42 ◼   ► I used to publicly advertise my PGP key

01:22:45 ◼   ► for daring Fireball readers to contact me securely.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And now what I tell them to do is use Signal.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And it's a much better, 'cause Signal,

01:22:52 ◼   ► it's like the opposite of email,

01:22:54 ◼   ► where Signal is only and can only be cryptographically secure.

01:22:59 ◼   ► On this point though, this is great,

01:23:01 ◼   ► it leads to another point that I wrote about

01:23:04 ◼   ► just the other day is your health data, right?

01:23:07 ◼   ► Where again, circling back to this Supreme Court decision

01:23:10 ◼   ► in the United States that removes,

01:23:13 ◼   ► overturns the Roe v. Wade that considered

01:23:16 ◼   ► reproductive rights and abortion

01:23:18 ◼   ► a constitutional right in the United States.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And now it's literally overnight.

01:23:22 ◼   ► There were states here that had laws set up

01:23:24 ◼   ► to take up trigger laws that took effect

01:23:27 ◼   ► as soon as it was overturned to criminalize abortion.

01:23:31 ◼   ► Now people are worried, and this is again,

01:23:33 ◼   ► not a hypothetical scenario, the state of Texas,

01:23:36 ◼   ► which my understanding from having spoken to people

01:23:39 ◼   ► in Texas is it's a large state,

01:23:41 ◼   ► has a law that it allows people to collect $10,000 bounties

01:23:46 ◼   ► for reporting people they know of to get abortions

01:23:50 ◼   ► that are now illegal in the state.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's very serious, high stakes.

01:23:54 ◼   ► People are concerned about their,

01:23:55 ◼   ► women are concerned about period tracking

01:23:58 ◼   ► menstrual cycle data that they store

01:24:01 ◼   ► in their computer devices for very good reason.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Again, anybody who was concerned about this a year ago,

01:24:08 ◼   ► two years ago before this decision in the United States

01:24:12 ◼   ► maybe was more on the hypothetical side,

01:24:14 ◼   ► but the way that state laws have been going here,

01:24:17 ◼   ► it's not, it hasn't been hypothetical for a while.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Now it is, it's the law of the land.

01:24:24 ◼   ► People, women are rightly concerned.

01:24:26 ◼   ► What do you do?

01:24:27 ◼   ► What do you worry about?

01:24:28 ◼   ► And one of the things I mentioned,

01:24:30 ◼   ► and I think, I really think it's worth mentioning

01:24:32 ◼   ► in articles that bring this up is that your health data

01:24:36 ◼   ► from Apple, your iCloud health data,

01:24:38 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call it,

01:24:39 ◼   ► but using the health app on your iPhone is,

01:24:43 ◼   ► if the apps you use or that,

01:24:46 ◼   ► menstrual cycle tracking is now a built-in feature of health

01:24:49 ◼   ► you can do it just using the health app.

01:24:52 ◼   ► You don't need a third party app,

01:24:53 ◼   ► but if the app only stores the data in health,

01:24:56 ◼   ► your data is end-to-end encrypted,

01:25:00 ◼   ► but here's the important clause

01:25:02 ◼   ► that I had to add to my article after posting it.

01:25:05 ◼   ► If your iCloud account

01:25:08 ◼   ► has two-factor authentication turned on.

01:25:11 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:25:12 ◼   ► - So if your iCloud account is two-factor authentication,

01:25:16 ◼   ► which it should be, in my opinion,

01:25:18 ◼   ► I don't think there's anybody who shouldn't be using

01:25:19 ◼   ► two-factor authentication for their iCloud account,

01:25:22 ◼   ► but it's not mandatory yet.

01:25:25 ◼   ► I don't know what, I'd love to know the percentage

01:25:27 ◼   ► because there's so many features now

01:25:29 ◼   ► and Apple is very gently steering everybody

01:25:32 ◼   ► who doesn't have it on to enable it,

01:25:35 ◼   ► but it is important to mention it.

01:25:37 ◼   ► If you have two-factor on your iCloud,

01:25:39 ◼   ► your health data is only decrypted on your devices

01:25:44 ◼   ► and yes, it does go through iCloud

01:25:47 ◼   ► to sync to your other devices,

01:25:50 ◼   ► but that data on iCloud in Apple servers

01:25:55 ◼   ► is end-to-end encrypted and Apple itself cannot see it,

01:25:59 ◼   ► could never turn it over at the request of law enforcement,

01:26:03 ◼   ► but only if your iCloud account

01:26:04 ◼   ► is using two-factor authentication.

01:26:06 ◼   ► If your iCloud account is not using two-factor authentication

01:26:09 ◼   ► your health data still syncs,

01:26:11 ◼   ► but it's part of your regular iCloud backup,

01:26:14 ◼   ► which we just got done saying is not end-to-end encrypted

01:26:17 ◼   ► and therefore could be turned over to law enforcement

01:26:21 ◼   ► and a faceable warrant.

01:26:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think for a while

01:26:24 ◼   ► you couldn't sync health data at all.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Apple just left it on device and people would get angry

01:26:28 ◼   ► 'cause they'd get a new watch or they'd get a new phone

01:26:29 ◼   ► and they wouldn't bring their health data with them

01:26:31 ◼   ► and they ended up building,

01:26:32 ◼   ► the same thing for a lot of the other more personal data,

01:26:34 ◼   ► they built that whole secure cloud kit system

01:26:37 ◼   ► to move it in a way that was more locked down

01:26:40 ◼   ► than all of your standard data

01:26:42 ◼   ► and they've been slowly building out that process as well

01:26:44 ◼   ► 'til they felt comfortable not only syncing it,

01:26:46 ◼   ► providing new features like share your health data

01:26:48 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:26:50 ◼   ► - Right, but that stuff is from the ground up

01:26:54 ◼   ► designed to be secure in this way.

01:26:57 ◼   ► - And it has to be 'cause there's all sorts

01:26:59 ◼   ► of HIPAA requirements around a lot of it as well.

01:27:01 ◼   ► - There are period tracking apps that don't use health

01:27:05 ◼   ► whether because they're web-based or they're cross-platform

01:27:08 ◼   ► and you have Android components or siblings,

01:27:11 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call them too,

01:27:12 ◼   ► or just for the way the developer chose to do it,

01:27:15 ◼   ► store the information on their own

01:27:17 ◼   ► and you should, like anything health related,

01:27:20 ◼   ► you should make yourself as aware as possible

01:27:22 ◼   ► of the company or provider's privacy policies

01:27:26 ◼   ► regarding that data.

01:27:27 ◼   ► But if the answer is they're doing it

01:27:30 ◼   ► through the health app on iOS,

01:27:33 ◼   ► it is secure if your account uses two-factor authentication.

01:27:37 ◼   ► I would like to see,

01:27:39 ◼   ► if Apple never makes all of iCloud backups

01:27:44 ◼   ► two-factor or end-to-end encrypted as an option,

01:27:48 ◼   ► if they start moving other things,

01:27:52 ◼   ► I would like to see them do with iMessage

01:27:56 ◼   ► what they've done with health,

01:27:57 ◼   ► where, okay, take iMessage out of your regular iCloud backup

01:28:02 ◼   ► and only sync to iCloud through iMessage in the cloud

01:28:08 ◼   ► as a separate feature and make all of that two-factor

01:28:12 ◼   ► or end-to-end encrypted so that everything in iCloud

01:28:16 ◼   ► that's related to iMessage is only decryptable

01:28:21 ◼   ► on the device.

01:28:23 ◼   ► And the downside to that would be somebody

01:28:27 ◼   ► who needs Apple's help to recover their stuff

01:28:29 ◼   ► would not recover their iMessage history.

01:28:31 ◼   ► To me, that's a trade-off that would be worth making.

01:28:35 ◼   ► - So again, I used to have to deal with that

01:28:38 ◼   ► a long time ago at iMore because people

01:28:39 ◼   ► would always be writing in saying they lost access

01:28:41 ◼   ► to their text.

01:28:43 ◼   ► So for a lot of people, it is secure communication,

01:28:45 ◼   ► but for a lot of other people,

01:28:46 ◼   ► it's all the text they sent in a relationship,

01:28:49 ◼   ► you know, when they got engaged,

01:28:50 ◼   ► when they were talking about their kids,

01:28:52 ◼   ► their history with people.

01:28:53 ◼   ► And for a lot of people, that's the same as a photograph

01:28:56 ◼   ► where it has almost no value to somebody else

01:28:59 ◼   ► but has tremendous sentimental value to them.

01:29:01 ◼   ► And they used to have to get,

01:29:02 ◼   ► like Ecamm used to make a utility

01:29:03 ◼   ► where you could go and copy it off one phone

01:29:05 ◼   ► and transfer it to another phone.

01:29:07 ◼   ► So it's one of those things where they weigh it

01:29:08 ◼   ► and they still see, like, yes, for the nerdy people

01:29:11 ◼   ► on Twitter and people who have threat levels,

01:29:14 ◼   ► totally make it encrypted all the time.

01:29:17 ◼   ► But for the vast majority of people,

01:29:18 ◼   ► they are far more concerned about losing their messages

01:29:21 ◼   ► than somebody else seeing them.

01:29:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I don't know.

01:29:24 ◼   ► So you'd think, you know, I--

01:29:27 ◼   ► - I would like the option for all of it.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Like, I would turn it on in an instant

01:29:29 ◼   ► and people would tell me I'm dumb for doing it

01:29:30 ◼   ► 'cause I would lose stuff, and I know I would,

01:29:32 ◼   ► but I just have, I'm paranoid, so I would do it.

01:29:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like to turn it on

01:29:36 ◼   ► for all of iCloud backup, but--

01:29:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, same.

01:29:39 ◼   ► If not that, I would like to do it

01:29:41 ◼   ► for iMessage specifically.

01:29:43 ◼   ► But the downside of, the thing about iMessage

01:29:46 ◼   ► is it's not just your data.

01:29:47 ◼   ► It matters who you're communicating with, right?

01:29:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, same with Gmail.

01:29:52 ◼   ► Like, people are like, I would never use Gmail,

01:29:53 ◼   ► but half the people you email on the internet

01:29:55 ◼   ► are using Gmail.

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Right, so let's just say you and I get involved

01:29:59 ◼   ► in a criminal conspiracy or a suspected criminal conspiracy,

01:30:04 ◼   ► and I turn on, or let's just say you turn it on

01:30:09 ◼   ► 'cause you're more security conscious than me,

01:30:11 ◼   ► and you turn on, only store all of my iMessage history

01:30:15 ◼   ► using end-to-end encryption and take it out

01:30:17 ◼   ► of my regular iCloud backup.

01:30:19 ◼   ► If I don't have that turned on,

01:30:21 ◼   ► or I'm using an old version of iOS,

01:30:24 ◼   ► where this feature that's, at the moment,

01:30:26 ◼   ► as I discussed it, hypothetical,

01:30:28 ◼   ► my device isn't even on it,

01:30:29 ◼   ► so I don't even have the option,

01:30:31 ◼   ► and it's, you're in my conspiracy,

01:30:33 ◼   ► even if law enforcement, even with a warrant,

01:30:36 ◼   ► cannot access any of your iMessage data,

01:30:38 ◼   ► they can just come to me and get my iCloud backup,

01:30:41 ◼   ► and then here's the whole iMessage history

01:30:43 ◼   ► between me and you.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Basically--

01:30:45 ◼   ► - It's not that, like, I don't wanna be one of those people,

01:30:46 ◼   ► but it goes back to the need for fundamental regulation

01:30:49 ◼   ► and legislation around this,

01:30:50 ◼   ► and unfortunately, almost every government

01:30:51 ◼   ► is on the wrong side of it,

01:30:53 ◼   ► but there's longstanding policies about, like,

01:30:55 ◼   ► law enforcement would love to be able to get

01:30:57 ◼   ► everybody's DNA and fingerprints at birth,

01:30:59 ◼   ► and we chose, as a society, not to allow that.

01:31:01 ◼   ► They would love unfettered access

01:31:02 ◼   ► to all of our data and communications,

01:31:04 ◼   ► but we have to choose, as a society,

01:31:05 ◼   ► to understand that these devices hold so much of our life

01:31:08 ◼   ► that they're essentially external cybernetics at this point,

01:31:11 ◼   ► and they'll be internal one day,

01:31:12 ◼   ► and does the chip in your head have a right

01:31:15 ◼   ► to not, like, be forced to testify against you?

01:31:17 ◼   ► And we're gonna have to wrestle, as a society,

01:31:20 ◼   ► with these laws, and it would be great

01:31:21 ◼   ► if more forward-thinking, less dinosaur-like politicians

01:31:25 ◼   ► came to realize that a lot of this stuff

01:31:27 ◼   ► shouldn't have to be our burden.

01:31:28 ◼   ► They should make laws that are as respectful of our privacy

01:31:32 ◼   ► as fingerprint and DNA laws have been historically.

01:31:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, and a lot of this really comes down

01:31:37 ◼   ► to the, how, because people don't understand

01:31:42 ◼   ► how the technology works, and they shouldn't,

01:31:45 ◼   ► it's not that everybody should have a computer science

01:31:48 ◼   ► degree, it's obviously never going to be the case,

01:31:50 ◼   ► and there's no reason to argue that they should,

01:31:52 ◼   ► but it means that common sense understanding

01:31:55 ◼   ► of the matter just isn't there.

01:31:57 ◼   ► So if anybody proposed that everybody in the US

01:32:02 ◼   ► or Canada, Mexico, wherever you live, right,

01:32:05 ◼   ► doesn't matter, but everybody in the country

01:32:07 ◼   ► should make a copy of their house key

01:32:09 ◼   ► and mail it to the FBI so that if ever needed,

01:32:12 ◼   ► the FBI has a key to your house.

01:32:15 ◼   ► That wouldn't go anywhere.

01:32:17 ◼   ► Immediately, whoever, before they even finished

01:32:19 ◼   ► making the proposal, they'd be laughed off the podium,

01:32:21 ◼   ► right, 'cause people are like--

01:32:22 ◼   ► - They're even doing that with face ID,

01:32:23 ◼   ► like they're starting to pass laws about how face ID,

01:32:25 ◼   ► like facial recognition, I should say, sorry,

01:32:27 ◼   ► like random cameras and who's allowed to track us

01:32:30 ◼   ► and who's not and where they can be used.

01:32:31 ◼   ► But for some reason, it's like open season

01:32:33 ◼   ► on phones all the time.

01:32:35 ◼   ► - People understand, you know, intuitively understand

01:32:38 ◼   ► that a physical key that goes in a physical lock

01:32:40 ◼   ► is not something that you should be sending copies of

01:32:43 ◼   ► to the government or, you know, you shouldn't do it

01:32:45 ◼   ► willfully and you certainly shouldn't be required to.

01:32:47 ◼   ► But once it comes down to this stuff that's all just

01:32:50 ◼   ► ones and zeros and stuff like that, it's a lot easier

01:32:53 ◼   ► to conflate the arguments, right, and yeah,

01:32:56 ◼   ► and the law enforcement people are like,

01:32:59 ◼   ► this is all about fighting child pornography, you know.

01:33:02 ◼   ► - And terrorism, that's the two things

01:33:03 ◼   ► that every time. - Terrorism.

01:33:04 ◼   ► - And, you know, they're not lying that it has relationship

01:33:09 ◼   ► to those cases and would make it easier to pursue

01:33:12 ◼   ► those cases, you know, which in and of itself is good,

01:33:16 ◼   ► but on the whole, considering all of the balances,

01:33:21 ◼   ► it is not worth it, but they make those arguments.

01:33:23 ◼   ► Whereas when you're talking about actual physical stuff,

01:33:26 ◼   ► like giving, keeping a key on file with your local police

01:33:31 ◼   ► of, to your house, people just know, no, that's,

01:33:33 ◼   ► I don't need that, you need to get in my house,

01:33:35 ◼   ► break the door down, you know.

01:33:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, again, like law enforcement is doing their job.

01:33:40 ◼   ► Their job is to want to do this stuff as quickly

01:33:42 ◼   ► and easily as possible and it would absolutely help them.

01:33:45 ◼   ► So would enhanced interrogation, so would like,

01:33:47 ◼   ► lack of a fifth amendment, so would all of these things.

01:33:50 ◼   ► But again, as a society, as a civilization,

01:33:52 ◼   ► we've decided that their job should be hard,

01:33:54 ◼   ► that it is the benefit of society, that one in,

01:33:57 ◼   ► like, what is the saying, you know, five guilty people

01:33:59 ◼   ► should go free rather than one innocent person go to jail.

01:34:01 ◼   ► We've made those decisions, we just haven't taken them

01:34:03 ◼   ► to their logical conclusion with digital devices.

01:34:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's a lot more than five, I would think.

01:34:09 ◼   ► I don't know, but, you know, at some point,

01:34:10 ◼   ► there is a number, right?

01:34:11 ◼   ► What is the number of how many guilty people

01:34:13 ◼   ► should go free before one innocent person?

01:34:15 ◼   ► You know, there is, there's some number, right?

01:34:18 ◼   ► I don't know. - Yeah.

01:34:19 ◼   ► - But it's obviously the, you know, it requires nuance

01:34:24 ◼   ► and we as a civilization and society still, you know,

01:34:29 ◼   ► have some work to do on nuanced arguments.

01:34:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:34:32 ◼   ► - All across the world. - People who are so performative,

01:34:34 ◼   ► they just want their soundbite,

01:34:35 ◼   ► they don't care about the actual job anymore.

01:34:37 ◼   ► - All right, let me take a break here.

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01:36:53 ◼   ► What's left?

01:36:54 ◼   ► I think we had something else, right?

01:36:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, the controversy, maybe controversy about

01:36:58 ◼   ► the single NAND flash version of the--

01:37:00 ◼   ► - Ah, yes, yes, this is great.

01:37:04 ◼   ► The M2 13-inch MacBook Pros are out.

01:37:09 ◼   ► You can order them, the reviews are out,

01:37:12 ◼   ► they're in people's hands.

01:37:14 ◼   ► We're waiting, it's still, as we record,

01:37:16 ◼   ► this is still technically June and Apple did promise us,

01:37:19 ◼   ► quote, next month for the M2 MacBook Airs,

01:37:22 ◼   ► so we don't have them.

01:37:23 ◼   ► But people with the new 13-inch MacBook Pros with the M2

01:37:27 ◼   ► have seen that, well, you summarized the situation.

01:37:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I didn't know this because the editorial loans

01:37:33 ◼   ► this time were the one terabyte models.

01:37:36 ◼   ► Apple doesn't always give you the maxed out version,

01:37:38 ◼   ► but they usually give you more than the baseline.

01:37:40 ◼   ► But no, I should clarify that.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Previous administration at Apple used to love to give me

01:37:44 ◼   ► the lowest version of a product just so I could show,

01:37:46 ◼   ► 'cause they thought that I was good at showing

01:37:47 ◼   ► what you could still do on the lowest version,

01:37:49 ◼   ► but I usually get the middle level products now.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Marques will get the highest end

01:37:53 ◼   ► because 8K, six, whatever, 8K 30 video.

01:37:55 ◼   ► So I got the one terabyte model and it turned out

01:37:59 ◼   ► when people started getting the 256 gigabyte model

01:38:02 ◼   ► that Apple had switched from using two 128 gigabyte chips

01:38:05 ◼   ► for the NAND flash, 'cause it's not drives anymore

01:38:07 ◼   ► in these devices, they're just raw chips on the board,

01:38:11 ◼   ► to using a single 256 gigabyte chip.

01:38:14 ◼   ► And what that did is it means the chips

01:38:16 ◼   ► are no longer working in parallel.

01:38:18 ◼   ► So the higher models are because they have multiple 256

01:38:21 ◼   ► or 512 or whatever chips, but the single 256 gigabyte chip

01:38:26 ◼   ► is working serially now, so if you plug it in

01:38:29 ◼   ► to do a file transfer or if you're writing to drive,

01:38:32 ◼   ► it's getting about half the performance of the previous M1,

01:38:35 ◼   ► which had two 128 gigabyte chips in it.

01:38:38 ◼   ► And the reason for that is just it's manufacturing

01:38:40 ◼   ► at a certain point, companies stop making smaller stuff,

01:38:43 ◼   ► that's why Apple has to move up the memory

01:38:45 ◼   ► and move up the storage on devices over time,

01:38:47 ◼   ► because whatever the most mainstream version of the chip is,

01:38:51 ◼   ► not only does there much more volume about it,

01:38:53 ◼   ► but the prices go down because of the economies of scale.

01:38:56 ◼   ► So my guess is, because of a combination of 2020

01:38:58 ◼   ► and just the progress in fabrication,

01:39:02 ◼   ► that this is the most common module now,

01:39:04 ◼   ► so Apple went to the 256, and I should digress for a minute,

01:39:08 ◼   ► the way Apple handles a lot of this stuff

01:39:09 ◼   ► is that they have a minimum spec

01:39:11 ◼   ► to deliver the experience they want for a device.

01:39:13 ◼   ► And a good way of thinking about it is like,

01:39:15 ◼   ► if you have to make the Olympic team,

01:39:17 ◼   ► and making the Olympic team means you've gotta run

01:39:19 ◼   ► 100 meters in under 10 seconds,

01:39:21 ◼   ► that's all you need to make the Olympic team.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Like Apple will say what the spec the supplier has to meet,

01:39:26 ◼   ► and if they over-perform, Apple doesn't care.

01:39:28 ◼   ► If they under-perform, they're finished,

01:39:30 ◼   ► but if they over-perform, Apple doesn't care.

01:39:31 ◼   ► So if it's 9.9 seconds, 9.8 seconds, 9.7, they don't care.

01:39:36 ◼   ► And that's resulted in some controversies,

01:39:38 ◼   ► like when the A9 was dual-sourced between Samsung and TSMC,

01:39:42 ◼   ► and TSMC's process was better,

01:39:44 ◼   ► so you got longer battery life on that model,

01:39:47 ◼   ► or like the LG versus the Samsung display on some MacBooks,

01:39:50 ◼   ► the Samsung one was better,

01:39:51 ◼   ► or the LG one, I think, back then was better,

01:39:53 ◼   ► so people tried to figure out which one they were buying.

01:39:55 ◼   ► Even more recently, like, you know,

01:39:57 ◼   ► sometimes there have been like models of iPads

01:39:58 ◼   ► that have had more RAM in them

01:39:59 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't talk about.

01:40:01 ◼   ► There's always been cases like this,

01:40:03 ◼   ► and mutual friends of ours have gone nuts

01:40:05 ◼   ► trying to find the versions that have the better stuff in it.

01:40:07 ◼   ► This isn't exactly that, it's just,

01:40:09 ◼   ► this was the component that Apple could fit

01:40:11 ◼   ► within getting enough supply to release it,

01:40:13 ◼   ► and within the budget for the product,

01:40:15 ◼   ► and it meets their minimum spec for the product.

01:40:18 ◼   ► So yes, the old version was twice as fast,

01:40:20 ◼   ► and that has like some benefit

01:40:22 ◼   ► for people who really care about transfer speed,

01:40:24 ◼   ► like if you're doing file transfers.

01:40:26 ◼   ► It shouldn't be a huge impediment

01:40:27 ◼   ► if you're doing anything else,

01:40:28 ◼   ► because that's sort of written into

01:40:31 ◼   ► to what they designed the product for.

01:40:32 ◼   ► But people on YouTube do a ton of tests now,

01:40:34 ◼   ► and they find the stuff, and more power to them,

01:40:36 ◼   ► because I don't think that pros

01:40:38 ◼   ► would really get the 256 version.

01:40:39 ◼   ► I would argue Apple shouldn't even make it anymore.

01:40:41 ◼   ► I think it's far too small,

01:40:43 ◼   ► and I think they hint they can't get those,

01:40:45 ◼   ► they can't get those chips in parallel anymore to do it

01:40:47 ◼   ► was probably a big indicator they shouldn't have done it.

01:40:49 ◼   ► But that's basically what's happening right now.

01:40:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the disingenuous thing that I've seen,

01:40:55 ◼   ► and I don't have anybody to throw into the bus handy,

01:40:58 ◼   ► but I saw headlines when this came out,

01:41:00 ◼   ► that in the headline, and headlines matter so much,

01:41:04 ◼   ► it is impossible to overstate,

01:41:06 ◼   ► because so many people only read the headline.

01:41:09 ◼   ► But if the headline and the subhead,

01:41:11 ◼   ► more or less saying the M2 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:41:15 ◼   ► gets half the IO performance of the M1,

01:41:19 ◼   ► and end of headline, end of summary,

01:41:22 ◼   ► and then you'd have to read the story

01:41:24 ◼   ► to see that it only applies to the 256 configuration,

01:41:29 ◼   ► and that it's not true for the 512 or one terabyte.

01:41:33 ◼   ► Does it max out at one terabyte?

01:41:35 ◼   ► I don't even know.

01:41:36 ◼   ► - Two terabytes, two terabytes.

01:41:37 ◼   ► - Or there's a two terabyte.

01:41:38 ◼   ► So you can get 256, 512, one terabyte, or two terabytes.

01:41:43 ◼   ► Only the 256 terabyte, or gigabyte version

01:41:46 ◼   ► has this decreased IO, and it is exactly

01:41:50 ◼   ► for the reason you said, where with all of the M1 systems,

01:41:53 ◼   ► no matter what level of storage,

01:41:56 ◼   ► underneath the hood, literally, literally underneath

01:41:59 ◼   ► the hood, the storage, the built-in storage on the M1 chip

01:42:06 ◼   ► consisted of two SSD components.

01:42:09 ◼   ► No matter if it was the lowest end or the highest end,

01:42:12 ◼   ► there were two, and so even the lowest end configuration

01:42:15 ◼   ► got the benefits of parallel read/write to the storage.

01:42:20 ◼   ► You never see it as a user.

01:42:22 ◼   ► Like, there's no reason for you to.

01:42:24 ◼   ► This is completely an implementation detail

01:42:26 ◼   ► of Apple's systems on a chip.

01:42:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:42:29 ◼   ► - It's, you know, you open up your brand new MacBook,

01:42:32 ◼   ► and it's a 256 gigabyte configuration,

01:42:35 ◼   ► and you see a startup disk, a Macintosh HD,

01:42:40 ◼   ► with the system, so you know, you don't have all 256

01:42:43 ◼   ► available, 'cause the system is there,

01:42:44 ◼   ► but it looks like one 256 gigabyte drive, you know,

01:42:49 ◼   ► for, I don't know, what do we call 'em?

01:42:51 ◼   ► SSDs, the D still stands for drive, right?

01:42:54 ◼   ► It's not a spinning, it's not a disk.

01:42:57 ◼   ► - Colloquially, you can still call it an SSD.

01:42:58 ◼   ► It's like, it's just a NAND flash chip,

01:43:00 ◼   ► but that sounds dumb.

01:43:01 ◼   ► - Right, but it's, you know, this flash,

01:43:03 ◼   ► the long-term storage in the device

01:43:05 ◼   ► technically consisted on all configurations

01:43:09 ◼   ► of two, or at least two, I don't even know.

01:43:11 ◼   ► I don't even know if the two terabyte was more than two,

01:43:15 ◼   ► but whatever the thing, you didn't have to worry about it,

01:43:18 ◼   ► and now with the M2, the low-end one

01:43:20 ◼   ► is a single 256 gigabyte chip on the system on a chip,

01:43:25 ◼   ► and therefore performance, now,

01:43:27 ◼   ► is read/write performance slow?

01:43:31 ◼   ► No, it still is very fast in the grand scheme of things.

01:43:35 ◼   ► Is it worth knowing?

01:43:36 ◼   ► - It's just not ridiculously fast.

01:43:37 ◼   ► - It is absolutely an interesting thing to know,

01:43:40 ◼   ► and if you were tempted to buy the 256 gigabyte one,

01:43:45 ◼   ► you should definitely know about it.

01:43:47 ◼   ► Is it a controversy?

01:43:48 ◼   ► I don't think so, and again--

01:43:50 ◼   ► - I would just maintain that if, like,

01:43:52 ◼   ► it is, 256 gigabytes is not usable

01:43:55 ◼   ► for anybody who is doing any work

01:43:57 ◼   ► that they would see the difference

01:43:58 ◼   ► in the read/write speeds.

01:43:59 ◼   ► - Right.

01:44:00 ◼   ► - You're gonna be doing a lot of heavy rendering

01:44:02 ◼   ► and a lot of other things.

01:44:03 ◼   ► If you're using an external drive,

01:44:05 ◼   ► the external drive is never as fast

01:44:06 ◼   ► as internal storage anyway.

01:44:07 ◼   ► - Right.

01:44:08 ◼   ► - Because it's going through the Thunderbolt bus.

01:44:09 ◼   ► It's, yeah.

01:44:10 ◼   ► In my comments, the thing is exactly what you said.

01:44:12 ◼   ► My comments, I did a review on the product,

01:44:14 ◼   ► and I didn't know about this

01:44:15 ◼   ► because I had the one terabyte version,

01:44:17 ◼   ► so I tested the SSD, it was roughly the same for me,

01:44:20 ◼   ► but my comments are now filled with people

01:44:22 ◼   ► who are saying this machine is DOA,

01:44:24 ◼   ► that the whole thing is broken,

01:44:26 ◼   ► and they believe it's every model.

01:44:27 ◼   ► They have no idea that it's just one,

01:44:29 ◼   ► and that is, I have this issue at large,

01:44:32 ◼   ► is that a lot of the tech coverage

01:44:34 ◼   ► has become so cynical and so sensational and so gotcha,

01:44:37 ◼   ► and I understand everybody needs page views,

01:44:38 ◼   ► everybody needs headlines, everybody wants attention,

01:44:42 ◼   ► but the two costs of that are, one, it's a sliding scale,

01:44:46 ◼   ► so what got you attention last time,

01:44:47 ◼   ► you gotta escalate over that every time,

01:44:49 ◼   ► but two, at a certain point,

01:44:50 ◼   ► it becomes malware for the readers,

01:44:52 ◼   ► and it becomes bad for the customers

01:44:54 ◼   ► because they don't get that context.

01:44:56 ◼   ► They only get the gotcha conversation around it.

01:44:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally, and that's what I mean

01:44:59 ◼   ► about the headline mattering, right?

01:45:01 ◼   ► And you start looking at these headlines

01:45:03 ◼   ► floating around Twitter and wherever else

01:45:05 ◼   ► you're just browsing the news,

01:45:07 ◼   ► and that's the way it was posed,

01:45:09 ◼   ► that the M2 MacBooks have half the storage I/O speed

01:45:14 ◼   ► as the M1 versions, which sounds terrible and inexplicable,

01:45:19 ◼   ► and if it were true across the board,

01:45:23 ◼   ► would definitely be cause for, if not outrage,

01:45:26 ◼   ► at least genuine concern for

01:45:29 ◼   ► what the hell is Apple thinking, right?

01:45:31 ◼   ► It would be calamitous.

01:45:33 ◼   ► This is not the way things should work,

01:45:35 ◼   ► but when the entire reason

01:45:37 ◼   ► that the 256 gigabyte configuration exists

01:45:41 ◼   ► is for price-conscious buyers,

01:45:44 ◼   ► I don't think it's controversial at all.

01:45:49 ◼   ► - It's mostly institutional buyers

01:45:50 ◼   ► who wanna use them as thin clients

01:45:52 ◼   ► for web apps and custom apps.

01:45:53 ◼   ► - And the reduction in I/O performance is fine.

01:45:58 ◼   ► It is still so much faster

01:46:00 ◼   ► than just about anything else on the market

01:46:02 ◼   ► in that price range, it's fine.

01:46:05 ◼   ► It does, unless I'm missing something

01:46:07 ◼   ► looking at the pricing, the 13-inch starts at,

01:46:12 ◼   ► I'm gonna go with $1,300.

01:46:14 ◼   ► It's technically $1,299, but the 99 pricing always,

01:46:18 ◼   ► to me it's a little disingenuous.

01:46:20 ◼   ► It's $1,300 to get the exact same configuration,

01:46:25 ◼   ► but only upgrade to 512.

01:46:28 ◼   ► And if you're concerned about I/O speed,

01:46:30 ◼   ► you don't need the actual extra 256 gigabytes.

01:46:34 ◼   ► 256 gigabytes is all you think you'll need,

01:46:37 ◼   ► but you want the performance.

01:46:39 ◼   ► It is a $200 upgrade.

01:46:41 ◼   ► It goes to $1,500.

01:46:42 ◼   ► So I can see why if,

01:46:45 ◼   ► I would, it would be shocking if Apple didn't think,

01:46:48 ◼   ► if the matrix of decisions came down

01:46:52 ◼   ► of either we can't get the 128 chips

01:46:56 ◼   ► to make a 256-gigabyte combined storage out of--

01:47:01 ◼   ► - Enough of them, yeah.

01:47:02 ◼   ► - Or-- - And a cheap enough price.

01:47:03 ◼   ► - Or would be more expensive

01:47:05 ◼   ► or otherwise wouldn't fit in the design,

01:47:08 ◼   ► you know, at a silicon level in the M2.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Who knows what, you know, but let's just say,

01:47:14 ◼   ► let's just give them the benefit of the doubt

01:47:16 ◼   ► and assume it's good reasons,

01:47:17 ◼   ► whether those reasons are cost, whether they're technical,

01:47:20 ◼   ► whether they're actual, just pure availability,

01:47:23 ◼   ► or a combination of all three.

01:47:25 ◼   ► Let's just assume that they made a rational decision

01:47:28 ◼   ► that for a two, if we do a 256-gigabyte config

01:47:32 ◼   ► of these machines, it would have to be one 256-gigabyte chip

01:47:36 ◼   ► and therefore I/O will be slower compared to the M1.

01:47:40 ◼   ► Should we still make this 256-gigabyte configuration?

01:47:46 ◼   ► - I'm with you, especially for the 13-inch Pro,

01:47:51 ◼   ► which it has the word Pro in the name.

01:47:54 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:47:54 ◼   ► - Would it be disastrous if it started at $1,500?

01:47:58 ◼   ► I mean, but I also see the counterargument on Apple's point,

01:48:02 ◼   ► which might be that they know the sales data

01:48:04 ◼   ► and know that the lots and lots of people coming in

01:48:07 ◼   ► by the $1,300 version with the M1,

01:48:11 ◼   ► and therefore if they got rid

01:48:12 ◼   ► of the 256-gigabyte configuration, effectively,

01:48:16 ◼   ► it would be a $200 increase in price

01:48:18 ◼   ► for the low-end model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:48:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, it's the institutional buyers

01:48:24 ◼   ► who buy like 1,000, 2,000, 8,000 of them at a time

01:48:27 ◼   ► and really don't care about the storage.

01:48:29 ◼   ► - Right.

01:48:30 ◼   ► - And it does get to a point,

01:48:31 ◼   ► like a lot of people would just say Apple should eat it,

01:48:32 ◼   ► and we're all very good at spending Tim Cook's money

01:48:34 ◼   ► on everything all at once, always,

01:48:36 ◼   ► and they do sometimes,

01:48:37 ◼   ► like sometimes the Mac announcements are only,

01:48:39 ◼   ► it's got a new processor

01:48:40 ◼   ► and double the storage at the same price,

01:48:41 ◼   ► and that's when it's cost-effective enough

01:48:43 ◼   ► for them to do that.

01:48:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and presumably it's not actually,

01:48:47 ◼   ► the $200 is not entirely component cost.

01:48:51 ◼   ► There's some sort of profit margin built into that,

01:48:55 ◼   ► but at a percentage level, $100 out of $1,300 is still 7.7%,

01:49:00 ◼   ► or no, about 8%, rounding up.

01:49:07 ◼   ► - The only other thing I think is important to add here

01:49:09 ◼   ► is that I don't think anybody should go easy on Apple.

01:49:11 ◼   ► I love that people do these testing,

01:49:12 ◼   ► I love that we get these stories,

01:49:13 ◼   ► I wish the context was better,

01:49:15 ◼   ► but one of the things that I think is bad

01:49:17 ◼   ► is that they're not often done

01:49:18 ◼   ► for other companies besides Apple,

01:49:20 ◼   ► and I get that Apple is like a huge headline,

01:49:22 ◼   ► it gets a lot of attention,

01:49:24 ◼   ► but it creates two problems.

01:49:25 ◼   ► One is that people who don't like Apple

01:49:27 ◼   ► and are buying other stuff

01:49:28 ◼   ► don't have the same amount of information

01:49:30 ◼   ► about what they're buying,

01:49:32 ◼   ► but two, it also makes Apple seem abnormal.

01:49:34 ◼   ► Like if you go and look at a bunch of HP and Dell

01:49:36 ◼   ► and other laptops, you will find incredible disparity

01:49:40 ◼   ► in all of the components in those,

01:49:41 ◼   ► but no one even looks for it.

01:49:43 ◼   ► Even reporters at the same big tech publications

01:49:46 ◼   ► don't do the same kinds of tests on other products

01:49:49 ◼   ► that they do on Apple products, not all the time,

01:49:51 ◼   ► not always, and certainly YouTubers

01:49:54 ◼   ► don't often look for the same kind of things

01:49:55 ◼   ► that we see on Apple review days,

01:49:57 ◼   ► and they should.

01:49:59 ◼   ► I'm saying don't go easy on Apple,

01:50:00 ◼   ► go just as hard on everybody,

01:50:01 ◼   ► like Pixel phones, Samsung phones, Dell laptops, HP, whatever,

01:50:06 ◼   ► one, so that those customers,

01:50:08 ◼   ► with people who are interested in buying it,

01:50:09 ◼   ► benefit from the same type of deep testing,

01:50:12 ◼   ► but especially now that AnandTech

01:50:13 ◼   ► has been basically defunded,

01:50:15 ◼   ► but also because then you would see,

01:50:16 ◼   ► like, is Apple normal here or abnormal here,

01:50:19 ◼   ► and if they're doing something abnormal,

01:50:20 ◼   ► that's an even bigger story.

01:50:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's true.

01:50:24 ◼   ► I like to call those sort of,

01:50:27 ◼   ► what do I like to call it, grading on a curve.

01:50:29 ◼   ► - Grading on a curve, yeah.

01:50:30 ◼   ► - Where Apple is held accountable for not just A, B, and C,

01:50:35 ◼   ► but down the list X, Y, and Z,

01:50:37 ◼   ► and other companies are only held accountable for A, B, and C,

01:50:40 ◼   ► and they never look at X, Y, and Z,

01:50:42 ◼   ► and part of it is Apple is Apple,

01:50:44 ◼   ► and Apple in the headline gets attention,

01:50:48 ◼   ► that Dell or whoever else who wants to HP,

01:50:51 ◼   ► or whoever else does not,

01:50:52 ◼   ► and that's the nature of being on top,

01:50:53 ◼   ► and it's like the Jean-Louis Gasset saying

01:50:57 ◼   ► that it's the monkey who's climbed highest up the pole,

01:50:59 ◼   ► who everybody else gets to see their asshole.

01:51:02 ◼   ► I'm sure it sounds better in French,

01:51:04 ◼   ► but you get the point,

01:51:06 ◼   ► that when you're on top, you get more attention

01:51:08 ◼   ► than when you're not.

01:51:10 ◼   ► But it's exacerbating, though,

01:51:13 ◼   ► that now it's just out in the air,

01:51:15 ◼   ► and people quote, unquote, know that the M2 Macs

01:51:20 ◼   ► are slower at disk I/O than the M1 Macs

01:51:23 ◼   ► by a significant factor, which is not true,

01:51:26 ◼   ► and it's not that hard to explain it.

01:51:28 ◼   ► It's the lowest end model,

01:51:29 ◼   ► and it's for a very good technical reason

01:51:34 ◼   ► that it only has one chip,

01:51:35 ◼   ► and so it can't read, write, and parallel.

01:51:37 ◼   ► Presumably--

01:51:40 ◼   ► - And it's totally fair to dig 'em for that.

01:51:41 ◼   ► Just make sure you give the context.

01:51:42 ◼   ► - Right, you have to give the context,

01:51:44 ◼   ► and the context, it's not like you're asking

01:51:45 ◼   ► for a book-length footnote.

01:51:47 ◼   ► It's very easy to explain.

01:51:49 ◼   ► The MacBook Airs are not available for purchase yet,

01:51:52 ◼   ► and I can say, it's like a canary test,

01:51:55 ◼   ► I don't, review units are not in my hand yet,

01:52:00 ◼   ► so I don't know.

01:52:01 ◼   ► We don't know if this is true for the MacBook Air,

01:52:04 ◼   ► but it almost certainly will be,

01:52:06 ◼   ► because it is the M2, right?

01:52:09 ◼   ► And so when they make an M2 with 256 gigabytes of storage,

01:52:14 ◼   ► it's almost certainly the exact same,

01:52:17 ◼   ► or with an exception I'll mention in a second,

01:52:20 ◼   ► it's the same chip that's going to be in the MacBook Air,

01:52:24 ◼   ► so it's almost certainly going to have

01:52:26 ◼   ► the exact same performance characteristics,

01:52:28 ◼   ► where the 256 gigabyte SSD one

01:52:31 ◼   ► is going to have the same performance characteristics

01:52:34 ◼   ► as the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:52:35 ◼   ► Now the difference, I think,

01:52:37 ◼   ► I'm only looking at the MacBook Air page right now,

01:52:41 ◼   ► the MacBook Air, the new one with the M2,

01:52:43 ◼   ► starts at $1200, and you have to go to the exact same price,

01:52:48 ◼   ► $1500 to upgrade to one with 512 SSD,

01:52:52 ◼   ► which will have the two 256 gigabyte chips, presumably,

01:52:57 ◼   ► and will have the faster I/O than the M1 models.

01:53:00 ◼   ► The difference is, with the MacBook Air,

01:53:04 ◼   ► they're binning the GPUs,

01:53:07 ◼   ► and you only get an eight-core GPU

01:53:11 ◼   ► on that $1200 MacBook Air config,

01:53:14 ◼   ► whereas I believe all of the 13-inch MacBook Pros,

01:53:18 ◼   ► including the $1300 model with 256 gigs of storage,

01:53:22 ◼   ► still has a 10-core GPU.

01:53:25 ◼   ► Let me double-check that before I...

01:53:27 ◼   ► But I think that's true.

01:53:30 ◼   ► So there is--

01:53:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I believe there's just no binned-down MacBook Air

01:53:33 ◼   ► is what it comes down to.

01:53:34 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, I mean, I'm sorry.

01:53:35 ◼   ► - MacBook Pro.

01:53:35 ◼   ► So there is some aspect of the 13-inch new MacBook Pro

01:53:38 ◼   ► that is Pro.

01:53:40 ◼   ► It doesn't, yes, it's still, all the MacBook Pros,

01:53:43 ◼   ► the 13-inch, all have 10-core GPUs.

01:53:46 ◼   ► I just checked, so I was correct.

01:53:48 ◼   ► Again, if you're thinking,

01:53:51 ◼   ► if you're looking at this as a consumer,

01:53:53 ◼   ► and you're looking at the actual storage,

01:53:56 ◼   ► your current laptop, whether it's a Mac or whatever,

01:53:59 ◼   ► if you're moving from Windows,

01:54:01 ◼   ► and you know that you don't need more than 256 gigabytes

01:54:05 ◼   ► of storage, and so you're looking at this $1200 new MacBook

01:54:09 ◼   ► Air with the M2 and thinking,

01:54:12 ◼   ► I don't see why I would spend an extra $200

01:54:15 ◼   ► for 512 gigabytes of storage.

01:54:17 ◼   ► I don't need it.

01:54:18 ◼   ► Will this disk I/O ruin your experience?

01:54:21 ◼   ► No, you will not notice.

01:54:22 ◼   ► I guarantee it.

01:54:25 ◼   ► Is it possible that there's somebody

01:54:26 ◼   ► whose budget is constrained,

01:54:28 ◼   ► and they want to do things where disk I/O matters,

01:54:32 ◼   ► but they don't have the $200?

01:54:35 ◼   ► Yes, in theory, but even then,

01:54:37 ◼   ► the performance is not going to be so much slower

01:54:41 ◼   ► that you're really going to adversely affect your life.

01:54:44 ◼   ► There's also, if the $200 is so meaningful

01:54:47 ◼   ► to you budget-wise, I've been there when I was younger,

01:54:50 ◼   ► trust me, the disk I/O is the least of your problems.

01:54:53 ◼   ► - And it's like, again, I'm not taking it,

01:54:55 ◼   ► like I know some people are gonna be bothered,

01:54:57 ◼   ► some people will be hurt by this,

01:54:58 ◼   ► but if you can afford the kind of storage

01:54:59 ◼   ► where you'd notice the file transfer speeds anyway,

01:55:02 ◼   ► you could probably afford the higher,

01:55:04 ◼   ► like the fast NVMe storage,

01:55:06 ◼   ► like whether it's a thumb drive or an SSD drive

01:55:08 ◼   ► or whatever is expensive.

01:55:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's best in general.

01:55:13 ◼   ► I mean, I don't blame Apple.

01:55:14 ◼   ► I'm sure that they look at the sales

01:55:18 ◼   ► and they know that these low-end configurations,

01:55:22 ◼   ► the $1,200 MacBook Air and the $1,300 13-inch

01:55:26 ◼   ► new MacBook Pro sell in quantities

01:55:30 ◼   ► that is worth keeping them in the lineup,

01:55:32 ◼   ► and slash or the fact that they can say

01:55:36 ◼   ► this is the price they start at gets people in the door,

01:55:40 ◼   ► even if they wind up buying the $1,500 configurations

01:55:45 ◼   ► with 512, it is a psychological thing with pricing

01:55:49 ◼   ► that knowing that you're buying

01:55:51 ◼   ► as not the bottom-of-the-line model, it matters.

01:55:56 ◼   ► I don't blame Apple for offering these configurations.

01:55:58 ◼   ► I think for people who are buying this $1,200 MacBook Air

01:56:02 ◼   ► coming out next month, quote, unquote,

01:56:04 ◼   ► they're getting a great, I think it'll be a great computer.

01:56:08 ◼   ► Again, I haven't tested it yet.

01:56:09 ◼   ► I don't have it in hand, but knowing what we know

01:56:11 ◼   ► about Apple Silicon Macs, and it'll be fine,

01:56:14 ◼   ► but you are getting the bottom-of-the-line new MacBook Air.

01:56:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the new MacBook Air, I mean,

01:56:23 ◼   ► just beyond that, it doesn't have active cooling,

01:56:26 ◼   ► and we don't know how the new chassis profiles,

01:56:28 ◼   ► so we don't know what the saturation point is yet,

01:56:30 ◼   ► so it's gonna have, it's not gonna sustain performance

01:56:33 ◼   ► as long as the MacBook Pro either way,

01:56:35 ◼   ► so it's gonna be an interesting thing to look at.

01:56:36 ◼   ► - You know what's one of the interesting things

01:56:38 ◼   ► is I look at the MacBook Air side by side

01:56:40 ◼   ► with the $1,200 base config, and it's, again,

01:56:44 ◼   ► it's a $300 upgrade to go to the next one up,

01:56:48 ◼   ► which gets you two more GPU cores

01:56:51 ◼   ► and 512 gigabytes of storage instead of 256.

01:56:56 ◼   ► The other little difference that you get

01:56:59 ◼   ► is the $1,200 config ships with Apple's,

01:57:02 ◼   ► I believe, existing 30-watt USB-C power adapter.

01:57:06 ◼   ► When you upgrade to the $1,500 version,

01:57:09 ◼   ► you get the new 35-watt dual-port USB compact power adapter,

01:57:14 ◼   ► and I don't think that was clear in the keynote at all.

01:57:18 ◼   ► I'm sure they said something or put a footnote or something,

01:57:21 ◼   ► but it sounded to me watching the keynote live

01:57:24 ◼   ► that this is the new 30-ish-watt power adapter

01:57:28 ◼   ► Apple is shipping.

01:57:29 ◼   ► That, to me, is a little bit of a nickel and dime move.

01:57:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:57:32 ◼   ► And again, again, it's spending Tim Cook's money.

01:57:36 ◼   ► - But it's such a weird company.

01:57:38 ◼   ► They'll spend billions of dollars

01:57:39 ◼   ► to chamfer the edge on the phone,

01:57:40 ◼   ► and maybe that does sell enough units

01:57:42 ◼   ► that it makes up for it, but then they'll not include

01:57:45 ◼   ► the better cable or the better charger.

01:57:47 ◼   ► - I think that having a dual-port charger,

01:57:50 ◼   ► a 35-watt, and again, that's not the fastest,

01:57:53 ◼   ► but most people don't need to fast-charge their MacBooks.

01:57:55 ◼   ► It's nice, it's small, it'll fit into open,

01:57:59 ◼   ► if you plug it in the top of the thing in the wall,

01:58:02 ◼   ► it won't cover the bottom one, so it fits places.

01:58:04 ◼   ► Having two USB-C ports on that charger is so nice,

01:58:09 ◼   ► because then you can just plug another thing in,

01:58:11 ◼   ► and it's a really convenient way to have two charging cables

01:58:17 ◼   ► from one power adapter that fits in the wall,

01:58:20 ◼   ► and third parties like Anker and all sorts of other companies

01:58:23 ◼   ► have been selling multiple-port,

01:58:26 ◼   ► small wall chargers for years.

01:58:29 ◼   ► It's great that Apple is making one now, too.

01:58:31 ◼   ► It really seems nickel and dimey

01:58:33 ◼   ► that they're not supplying it with the $1,200 MacBook Air.

01:58:37 ◼   ► That just--

01:58:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, their margins, of course,

01:58:41 ◼   ► they have a fiduciary duty to provide value

01:58:43 ◼   ► to their shareholders and make as much money as possible.

01:58:45 ◼   ► All of those things understood.

01:58:47 ◼   ► They spend so much money for things that are experiential,

01:58:51 ◼   ► that don't make a huge difference

01:58:52 ◼   ► in the functionality of the product,

01:58:53 ◼   ► that make it look nicer, or the unboxing experiences,

01:58:56 ◼   ► they could throw it in a dumb box

01:58:57 ◼   ► like every other manufacturer,

01:58:58 ◼   ► but a lot of the boxes they make,

01:59:00 ◼   ► especially in the higher-end products,

01:59:01 ◼   ► are ludicrously origami-designed,

01:59:04 ◼   ► and then to have these little things,

01:59:06 ◼   ► like you call nickel and dime things,

01:59:07 ◼   ► ruin the overall experience,

01:59:09 ◼   ► because they stand out so much as an Apple-like.

01:59:12 ◼   ► I just don't understand that.

01:59:14 ◼   ► - It would be, I mean, there's all sorts of things

01:59:16 ◼   ► that would be funny, and you'd know they wouldn't do it,

01:59:19 ◼   ► but if you bought the $1,200 MacBook Air,

01:59:22 ◼   ► they don't put it in lesser packaging, right?

01:59:25 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, like I'm getting in her brown bag.

01:59:28 ◼   ► - You know how when you send something to a friend,

01:59:30 ◼   ► I just sent, or our mutual friend, Guy English, a thing?

01:59:33 ◼   ► Long story short, I wound up with two play dates,

01:59:36 ◼   ► and I'd sent him one of them,

01:59:38 ◼   ► and I just, when you send something to a friend,

01:59:39 ◼   ► you just pick up, what I do is I just find an Amazon box

01:59:44 ◼   ► that I just got something from the last day,

01:59:46 ◼   ► scratch off all the stuff that was sent to me,

01:59:48 ◼   ► and put a new sticker on top with the address of the person,

01:59:51 ◼   ► and wrap up some used bubble,

01:59:54 ◼   ► imagine if that's how you got your $1,200 MacBook Air,

01:59:57 ◼   ► just from the shit that--

01:59:58 ◼   ► - Like your peasant packaging.

02:00:00 ◼   ► - Boxes that were in the back of the Apple store

02:00:02 ◼   ► from their delivery of paper towels or something like that

02:00:05 ◼   ► for the restroom, and they just stick your MacBook Air

02:00:07 ◼   ► in that with some craft paper,

02:00:09 ◼   ► and say, "Here you go, cheapskate."

02:00:11 ◼   ► No, they don't do that, they give you a box

02:00:13 ◼   ► that looks every bit as nice

02:00:14 ◼   ► as the highest end configuration MacBook Air.

02:00:16 ◼   ► Not giving you the new charger, it just seems, argh.

02:00:22 ◼   ► It really, I don't know.

02:00:24 ◼   ► I would like to think that that was a very close decision

02:00:26 ◼   ► within Apple, and that somebody

02:00:28 ◼   ► is being appropriately shamed for it.

02:00:31 ◼   ► - They're like, $5 a unit over a million units,

02:00:34 ◼   ► $5 million.

02:00:35 ◼   ► - It can't be $5, I refuse to believe.

02:00:38 ◼   ► - No, it's probably, yeah, it's probably pennies.

02:00:40 ◼   ► - I refuse, you know, maybe, I don't know,

02:00:42 ◼   ► but even if it is $5, for God's sake, it's a $1200 computer,

02:00:45 ◼   ► and you're so proud of this new charger

02:00:48 ◼   ► that you put it in the keynote, you know?

02:00:51 ◼   ► If it's nice enough to be in the keynote,

02:00:52 ◼   ► it's nice enough to give to everybody

02:00:53 ◼   ► who buys the new machine.

02:00:54 ◼   ► - It's like putting an ugly staircase in an Apple store,

02:00:56 ◼   ► to get that point why.

02:00:57 ◼   ► - Anyway, that's all I've got, thank you.

02:01:00 ◼   ► It's always good to talk to you, it was so good to see you.

02:01:02 ◼   ► - You too, you too.

02:01:03 ◼   ► - Thank you, and everybody, of course,

02:01:05 ◼   ► should be checking out your YouTube channel

02:01:06 ◼   ► at youtube.com/reneritchie.

02:01:09 ◼   ► You're also doing lots of work.

02:01:10 ◼   ► I actually watch most of your videos on Nebula these days.

02:01:14 ◼   ► - Oh, thank you.

02:01:15 ◼   ► - So where, tell me about Nebula real quick.

02:01:18 ◼   ► - Nebula, again, mutual friend Dave Whiskus and I--

02:01:21 ◼   ► - Never heard of him. - And a bunch of other.

02:01:22 ◼   ► - Never heard of him. - Never heard of him, yeah.

02:01:23 ◼   ► He's the guy with the fancy Tony Stark sunglasses.

02:01:25 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

02:01:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, so a bunch of educational,

02:01:28 ◼   ► mostly educational creators got together

02:01:29 ◼   ► and made a platform for streaming video

02:01:31 ◼   ► for stuff that wasn't always the best fit for YouTube,

02:01:34 ◼   ► but also no ads, no sponsors,

02:01:37 ◼   ► and it lets us fund a lot of amazing originals,

02:01:40 ◼   ► like Patrick Williams just did Night of the Coconut,

02:01:42 ◼   ► an original movie, like a 90-minute long movie

02:01:44 ◼   ► about an extra-dimensional coconut

02:01:46 ◼   ► who wanted to destroy humanity

02:01:47 ◼   ► through the attainment of clout, and it's hilarious.

02:01:51 ◼   ► So I'm always startled and surprised

02:01:53 ◼   ► by the creativity of the people there.

02:01:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a great service, and it's, again,

02:01:57 ◼   ► it is just, you subscribe, and it goes,

02:02:00 ◼   ► the money goes to the actual creators making the thing,

02:02:03 ◼   ► and there's no ads, and it's really

02:02:06 ◼   ► just a pleasant viewing experience.

02:02:07 ◼   ► You can see Renee's stuff there.

02:02:09 ◼   ► I will also thank our sponsors for the show.

02:02:12 ◼   ► In reverse order, we had Memberful,

02:02:15 ◼   ► and we had, that's where you go

02:02:16 ◼   ► to monetize your membership, and Collide,

02:02:18 ◼   ► where you can do endpoint security

02:02:20 ◼   ► for your Mac, Windows, and Linux laptops in a better way,

02:02:24 ◼   ► and Squarespace, where you can build a website.

02:02:26 ◼   ► My thanks to them.

02:02:27 ◼   ► Thanks, Renee.