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00:00:00   I've had my AirPods Pro 2 now for, I mean,

00:00:03   how many weeks have they been shipping to people?

00:00:06   Like three or four weeks?

00:00:07   - Yeah, something like that.

00:00:08   - I learned yesterday how to do the volume gesture.

00:00:12   Have you done it?

00:00:13   - Don't you just swipe up and down?

00:00:14   - What do you mean learn?

00:00:15   The whole time, did you forget that the feature existed?

00:00:18   - No, so okay, here's what happened.

00:00:21   (laughing)

00:00:23   So I get them and I'm trying them out

00:00:26   and I couldn't get the volume gesture to work.

00:00:31   And one time I got it to work once,

00:00:34   and I just couldn't repeat it.

00:00:35   I'm like, are they broken?

00:00:37   Am I broken?

00:00:38   What's going on here?

00:00:40   But I had a lot of stuff going on,

00:00:43   and so I'm like, you know what,

00:00:44   at some point I'll be in an Apple store,

00:00:46   and I'll bring them in, I'll deal with it.

00:00:49   - I don't know why you're having trouble with this.

00:00:51   I'm sure there's clear markings on the outside

00:00:53   of the AirPods showing you exactly

00:00:54   to move your finger, right?

00:00:56   Or are they just white?

00:00:57   (laughing)

00:00:58   - It's probably just like dark white markings

00:01:01   on the white case.

00:01:01   - Yeah, no, there's actually two tiny arrows

00:01:04   and some words telling you start swiping here

00:01:06   and end swiping there, but they're a very, very,

00:01:10   very light gray and they're, you know, .025 point text.

00:01:15   - Yeah, so anyway, so I've been using them, you know,

00:01:19   just fine and I like them overall.

00:01:21   I think there's a little, there's a couple of bugs

00:01:22   with adaptive transparency, but overall I like them a lot.

00:01:25   The noise cancellation is amazingly better.

00:01:28   Like, and it was already pretty good before,

00:01:30   but it's really good now.

00:01:32   So anyway, I've been enjoying those,

00:01:34   but I just couldn't get the stupid volume gesture to work,

00:01:36   so I just thought like, maybe they're defective,

00:01:38   or maybe I'm, you know, I don't know what.

00:01:40   And then the other day, for some reason,

00:01:43   I decided to do it a little bit differently.

00:01:45   I don't even know why I tried this,

00:01:46   and then it started working, I'm like, oh my God.

00:01:49   All this time, like, now, so I've been doing it now

00:01:51   for like two days and it's perfect and flawless

00:01:54   and I was just doing it wrong.

00:01:55   So what I was doing was sliding both my thumb

00:02:00   and first finger up and down the stick,

00:02:05   almost to the point where you'd almost pull them out

00:02:07   and which at first I'm like,

00:02:09   this isn't a very useful gesture.

00:02:11   - Why were you doing that?

00:02:12   - I am not mature enough for this conversation.

00:02:15   - Yeah, I know, it's hard.

00:02:15   - Stay strong, stay strong.

00:02:17   No promises.

00:02:18   - But that just seemed logical.

00:02:20   Like, oh, you swipe, I don't know.

00:02:22   - But didn't you see the videos showing,

00:02:24   showing like the Apple marketing material

00:02:26   show people using this feature,

00:02:28   and they never grabbed the little stick

00:02:30   with their thumb and forefinger.

00:02:32   - Well, that was a long time ago,

00:02:34   and I haven't rewatched it, you know, so, anyway.

00:02:37   So that's what I was doing,

00:02:38   and I kept like almost pulling them out,

00:02:40   and I couldn't get it to work.

00:02:41   I'm like, this is just a stupid feature,

00:02:42   and it turns out what you're supposed to do is,

00:02:45   like leave your thumb,

00:02:46   like if you're using your right hand,

00:02:47   leave your thumb behind the stick to hold it in place

00:02:51   and swipe up and down like with your index finger

00:02:53   on the other side.

00:02:54   So like, so one finger's holding it

00:02:56   and only the other finger moves.

00:02:59   Oh my God, so much better.

00:03:01   - So which surface, to be clear,

00:03:02   which surface are you talking about?

00:03:03   Is it the surface that faces the way your eyeballs face?

00:03:05   Is it the surface that faces the way your ear holes face?

00:03:07   Which surface are you running your finger up and down?

00:03:09   - I am, the finger that is stationary is behind my ear

00:03:13   and this finger that is moving is the direction

00:03:15   that my eyeballs face.

00:03:16   It's like hitting that surface.

00:03:18   - Okay, so if I was looking straight at you

00:03:20   and if I was a product designer

00:03:21   that thought it might be important for the customer

00:03:23   to know where to move their finger,

00:03:24   they might put a black line such that when I was staring

00:03:27   at you head on, I would see two black lines coming down

00:03:29   the sides of your AirPods and those black lines

00:03:31   would be what you'd run your finger down.

00:03:33   - I think so.

00:03:34   - All right, so now you know.

00:03:35   - So anyway, that's how, for anyone else out there,

00:03:38   you know what, write in.

00:03:39   If you didn't know either, if you've been doing it wrong too,

00:03:41   I just wanna know if I'm the only one.

00:03:43   If you've been doing it right, I don't care.

00:03:44   I don't wanna hear from you.

00:03:45   probably everybody, but if for like the two people out there who have been doing it wrong

00:03:49   and who I just like, you know, blew your mind with how to do it correctly, please let me

00:03:52   know if there were any of you out there. There probably aren't.

00:03:56   Hey John, I hear something curious. It sounds... It sounded like a chicken, John.

00:04:05   Beautiful impression. Thank you. So, hey, it's that time of year again. The

00:04:09   ATP store is back, the ATP holiday season store, whatever you want to call it. And we

00:04:14   We have some exciting new merchandise for you this year.

00:04:17   As always, the URL is ATP.FM/store.

00:04:21   Run right there now and see what we've got.

00:04:24   And the most exciting thing we have for you

00:04:26   is a brand new product this year that started,

00:04:29   let me see, I wrote this down somewhere.

00:04:31   In November of 2021, we were contacted by Dan at Studio Neat

00:04:36   maker of many fine products that you may have heard of,

00:04:39   studioneat.com.

00:04:42   And he said, "Hey, I heard you talking about

00:04:44   your chicken hat on the episode."

00:04:46   This was a recent episode in 2021.

00:04:48   (laughing)

00:04:49   And I gave him an idea.

00:04:50   What do you think about the idea

00:04:52   of trying to replicate that chicken hat?

00:04:53   Studio Neat makes all sorts of products.

00:04:56   So they have expertise in this area.

00:04:57   And I said, "All right, sure, we could try that."

00:05:01   And it has more or less taken this long

00:05:03   to get everything together.

00:05:05   You know, obviously COVID supply chain, blah, blah, blah.

00:05:08   But we went through a process

00:05:10   over the course of several months,

00:05:11   I guess more than a year now of sourcing materials and comparing to my original one and only

00:05:18   chicken hat to try to make a reproduction of my personal chicken hat.

00:05:22   Now there are many caveats to this, okay?

00:05:24   Many things to consider.

00:05:25   For people who don't know the story, my chicken hat is a winter hat that I really like and

00:05:29   I was musing on a show apparently in 2021 that I just have this one hat and if I lose

00:05:33   this hat I can't buy another one like it and I never see anything like it in the store

00:05:37   anymore and there are multiple things that make this hat unique, not to rehash everything

00:05:41   I said there but it's kind of a weird shape. Dan has a post about it at student

00:05:44   meet we'll put a link to his blog post as well. You got to see a picture of me

00:05:47   wearing the hat. He says it's you can't find hats of this shape. You can find

00:05:51   hats of this shape but you can't find hats that are both this shape and also

00:05:54   this construction constructed in this way of this material right I just never

00:05:59   seen anything like it I'm always buying hats trying to be replacement for this hat

00:06:03   I can't do it so now he essentially made one of my own. Now my hat that's like

00:06:07   this my chicken hat is over 20 years old I can't put an exact date on it but I did

00:06:12   find photos showing it's at least 20 years old. It's been through the

00:06:15   wash many times. I'm sure it has changed size over the course of 20 years I'm

00:06:21   going through the wash how could it not right but that's where we're at right so

00:06:25   we made a chicken hat reproduction that exactly matches the size the current

00:06:30   size of my chicken hat. I have no idea how big this hat was when I started making it. 20 years of

00:06:36   being stretched out, basically.

00:06:38   - Or shrinking in the dryer, I don't know.

00:06:41   All right, second thing, that my chicken hat

00:06:44   is one size fits all.

00:06:45   It says it right on the tag inside the hat.

00:06:47   So I don't have a small hat, a medium hat, a large hat.

00:06:49   This hat was sold in whatever year I bought it

00:06:51   as one size fits all.

00:06:53   So the hat we made is one size fits all.

00:06:56   It is exactly the same size, like you could lay it,

00:06:59   'cause I went through several prototypes,

00:07:00   you can lay this hat down on top of my hat,

00:07:03   they are exactly the same size.

00:07:05   Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know.

00:07:08   Now, another thing. We went through materials.

00:07:11   And this unique folks sent me many, many stacks of, like,

00:07:14   Felty-type materials from the same company that makes it.

00:07:16   We figured that Polartec made the material for my hat,

00:07:19   so we were talking to Polartec to get their list of materials.

00:07:22   Nobody makes exactly the same materials this hat is made of,

00:07:25   which isn't surprising since it was made more than 20 years ago, right?

00:07:28   But we got as close as we could.

00:07:30   But as close as we could is different than this hat

00:07:33   than this hat in a couple of specific ways.

00:07:36   One, it is definitely thinner than my hat, which I think, for people who are considering

00:07:42   buying this, is a bonus because my hat is extremely thick and extremely hot and most

00:07:46   people would not want to wear it because on a day that's not, you know, negative 20 degrees,

00:07:51   you get hot and sweaty in it.

00:07:53   So this one is thinner, but I think that's an advantage.

00:07:55   And the second thing is, my hat, after 20 years of going through the dryer, feels a

00:07:59   little tight on my head.

00:08:01   This reproduction hat, which is exactly the same size

00:08:04   when you lay them on top of each other,

00:08:05   does not feel as tight because the material is not as thick

00:08:08   so it gives more.

00:08:09   So I'm hoping it will fit more people with big heads.

00:08:12   I don't know about people with small heads,

00:08:13   I don't know how much of this one's gonna shrink.

00:08:14   What will this hat look like in 20 years?

00:08:16   I don't know.

00:08:17   But we did the best we could with the material we have,

00:08:19   which is we've got the one hat

00:08:21   and we reproduced it as closely as possible.

00:08:23   I wish I had taken up some better photos

00:08:24   of like my hat and this hat laying on top of each other.

00:08:27   The seams line up, the construction is the same way,

00:08:29   Every dimension is identical,

00:08:31   and it is as close to the same material as we could get.

00:08:34   I spared the world the exact matching of the color

00:08:38   because my hat is kind of a forest green.

00:08:41   I don't know why it's that color.

00:08:42   I don't think I even picked this hat.

00:08:43   My dad might've originally bought it,

00:08:44   and I could have stolen it from him.

00:08:45   I don't know.

00:08:46   Why is my hat green?

00:08:47   I don't know.

00:08:48   We could have made this one green, but we didn't.

00:08:50   So we had mercy on people who might consider buying this

00:08:53   as a joke or whatever.

00:08:54   It is black.

00:08:55   The ATP Chicken Hat is black.

00:08:57   That goes with more stuff, and it also matches our logo.

00:08:59   We got a little tag on the side that has our logo on it.

00:09:01   So there you go.

00:09:04   We didn't know how many of these things we would sell

00:09:06   as a joke or whatever.

00:09:08   Does anyone wanna wear a chicken hat?

00:09:09   Does anyone wear winter hats at all?

00:09:11   Who knows?

00:09:12   But we had to guess at how many we might sell

00:09:15   and then we had to calculate how many we would have to sell

00:09:17   to make up, these are the type we buy ahead of time, right?

00:09:20   So we have to sell a certain number of these

00:09:21   even just to break even.

00:09:22   So please, if you're even remotely inclined to buy this hat,

00:09:25   please do so we don't lose money on them.

00:09:28   to find out that no one in the world wants chicken hats.

00:09:30   - Otherwise John will have to buy hundreds

00:09:32   and hundreds of chicken hats.

00:09:33   - Yeah, otherwise I'll, yeah, I've now made hundreds

00:09:35   of backup hats myself.

00:09:36   - Which itself might be a fun bit for the show.

00:09:38   (laughing)

00:09:39   - That's true.

00:09:40   On the flip side of that, if everybody wants to get this,

00:09:43   'cause it's a funny joke and you could say,

00:09:44   "Hey, look at my funny chicken hat,"

00:09:45   they could all sell out by tomorrow and then sorry,

00:09:48   'cause we're not, you know, probably,

00:09:49   we don't have the ability to make more

00:09:51   of these instantaneously.

00:09:51   If they do sell out and there seems to be more demand,

00:09:53   maybe we'll do it next year,

00:09:54   but probably this is a one-time thing.

00:09:56   So if you want an ATP chicken hat,

00:09:58   I think they're good hats.

00:09:59   I think the chicken shape is a valuable shape.

00:10:01   I think it's distinctive.

00:10:02   And I think this is a comfortable hat and it's nice.

00:10:04   And I think, again, the fact that it is thinner

00:10:06   than my really, really thick hat is an advantage,

00:10:09   not a disadvantage, because almost everybody

00:10:10   who has ever seen or tried on my hat says,

00:10:12   "I could never wear this, it would be too hot."

00:10:14   (laughing)

00:10:15   So that's the chicken hat.

00:10:17   - That is the chicken hat.

00:10:18   I am genuinely so glad and thankful

00:10:21   that Dan and the Studio&E team were able to,

00:10:23   were willing to reach out and deal with you,

00:10:26   who must be the world's worst client.

00:10:29   I say that with love, but nevertheless.

00:10:31   - I got many different samples,

00:10:32   but it was clear which direction we were going.

00:10:35   That's the other thing.

00:10:36   When you're comparing, like I get little fabric squares,

00:10:37   right, when you're comparing them,

00:10:39   I'm comparing them to a 20-year-old hat

00:10:40   that's been through the wash a million times.

00:10:42   It's not gonna be the same with a brand new fabric sample.

00:10:44   I don't know what these fabric samples

00:10:45   are gonna look like for 20 years in the wash,

00:10:47   so you just gotta do the best you can.

00:10:49   But there was some clear winners towards the end.

00:10:51   It was down to one or two options,

00:10:52   and I think we picked the right one.

00:10:54   So there you go, that's the chicken hat.

00:10:55   We also have an M2 shirt.

00:10:59   It's like the M1 shirt,

00:11:00   but it has one more number on the front.

00:11:02   The chip on the back is in fact the M2,

00:11:03   it is not the M1 chip on the back.

00:11:05   It's the same as we've always done.

00:11:06   We've got the horrendously expensive one

00:11:09   with the chip on the back and the rainbow colors

00:11:10   in the front that takes like eight printing passes to make.

00:11:13   And then we have the monochrome one that is less expensive.

00:11:15   And speaking of costs, last time we had a sale,

00:11:18   we said that our prices were going,

00:11:20   our cost to us was going up in all these things

00:11:22   because of, you know, who knows, whatever.

00:11:25   but we were keeping the prices the same,

00:11:26   but that probably wouldn't continue.

00:11:28   Well, this is the part where it doesn't continue

00:11:29   because we held the prices down on the last sale.

00:11:32   I hope you enjoyed them.

00:11:34   Now the price of pretty much everything is increased

00:11:36   because the cost to us is increased.

00:11:37   And we haven't passed on all of the cost to us.

00:11:39   We have passed on some of it though.

00:11:41   So we apologize for the high prices,

00:11:43   but if we had kept the prices the same,

00:11:45   there are some products in our lineup

00:11:46   that we would literally be losing money on

00:11:47   every one we sold.

00:11:48   So we actually had to increase the prices.

00:11:51   We know it sucks.

00:11:52   You know, what can I tell you?

00:11:54   It is what it is.

00:11:55   That's why we do things like the monochrome shirt,

00:11:57   because the monochrome shirt is less expensive

00:11:58   than the other one,

00:11:59   'cause we have to do fewer printing passes,

00:12:00   so consider that if you wanna save money.

00:12:02   And of course we have our regular ATP shirt

00:12:04   that we always have.

00:12:05   We have the ATP hoodie, which is still fantastic.

00:12:07   It's kind of like the chicken hat.

00:12:08   I kind of dread the day that the ATP hoodie goes away,

00:12:11   because I think they're great.

00:12:12   My kids really love them.

00:12:14   It's a great hoodie.

00:12:15   And of course we got the pint glass

00:12:16   that we're still selling through, believe it or not.

00:12:18   Still got some pint glasses left over.

00:12:20   - I don't understand how.

00:12:21   I love the pint glass.

00:12:23   It's like my only glass that I regularly use at home.

00:12:26   It's so good.

00:12:27   - My family loves them.

00:12:27   We ordered four more on the last sale, I think.

00:12:29   - Yeah, I think I have a total of like six or eight now

00:12:31   because I got like two the first time,

00:12:33   realized that was nowhere near enough,

00:12:35   and then ordered another like four or six

00:12:37   or something like that.

00:12:38   - Yep, and then finally, the most exciting thing,

00:12:40   the ATP mug with the red lining is back.

00:12:42   Last time we had to get it with the gray lining

00:12:44   'cause we literally couldn't get the one

00:12:45   with the red lining,

00:12:46   and I think the gray lining looks nice too,

00:12:48   and I hope everybody who wants to have a more chill mug

00:12:50   got the gray lining ones last time,

00:12:51   but the red ones, the red ones are back

00:12:54   and only the red ones.

00:12:55   And again, these are the type of,

00:12:57   the mugs are the type of thing where we have to guess

00:12:59   how many we're gonna sell and we buy them all ahead of time.

00:13:00   So fingers crossed on the mugs.

00:13:03   We've got mugs, we've got pint glasses, hoodies, t-shirts,

00:13:06   and of course the chicken hat.

00:13:07   So if you're, oh, this sale runs until Sunday, November 13th.

00:13:12   We try to do the sales early as possible

00:13:15   to have a hope of getting shipments out before the holidays.

00:13:19   Hopefully it will all work out.

00:13:21   no guarantees obviously, but we're gonna do our best there.

00:13:24   And if you are listening to the show

00:13:26   and you would like someone to buy you one of these things

00:13:29   as a holiday present, you have to send them the URL.

00:13:32   Like you can't be subtle about it.

00:13:34   The sale only runs until November 13th.

00:13:37   You have to send the link and say,

00:13:39   hey, you have three weeks to buy me something

00:13:41   from this store, here's what I want.

00:13:42   You can't be subtle about it.

00:13:43   Don't just hope your significant other

00:13:46   is going to hear you listening to the podcast

00:13:48   and say, oh, that's a great idea.

00:13:49   I should get one of those things.

00:13:50   just give them the link, right?

00:13:52   'Cause people wanna know what they wanted to buy for you.

00:13:53   And if you want some of this weird nerdy stuff,

00:13:55   they're not gonna guess,

00:13:56   they're not gonna find it on their own.

00:13:57   We have no SEO, our only SEO is you.

00:14:00   (laughing)

00:14:01   ATP.fm/store.

00:14:03   - Also, Jon, if you wanted to save a little money,

00:14:08   how would you go about doing that?

00:14:10   - Yes, that's right.

00:14:10   I almost forgot about that, thank you, Casey.

00:14:12   If you are an ATP member, as always,

00:14:14   you get 15% off everything in the store.

00:14:17   If you're not an ATP member, you can become an ATP member

00:14:20   and get that 50% off and it's pretty easy,

00:14:23   due to the high prices, everything in the stupid store,

00:14:25   to make up the cost of membership for one month

00:14:28   in the savings that you get.

00:14:29   So as always, you can do the thing

00:14:31   where you become a member for one month,

00:14:33   you get your 50% off, you buy a bunch of t-shirts,

00:14:36   and then when the month is over,

00:14:37   you cancel your membership.

00:14:38   We make it very easy to do that.

00:14:40   It's like the good services

00:14:42   that use the iCloud subscribe page.

00:14:43   It's really easy to sign up, watch Elasso,

00:14:45   and unsubscribe, and sign up again

00:14:46   and watch something and unsubscribe.

00:14:47   You can do that with ATP membership.

00:14:49   We don't start a mission with that, but it can be done.

00:14:52   It's really easy to do.

00:14:53   We know that people do it.

00:14:54   So there it is.

00:14:55   Don't, like, if you're, honestly,

00:14:57   if you're gonna buy literally anything in the store,

00:14:58   just become a member, get the discount.

00:15:00   Like it's almost not worth it to, you know, anyway.

00:15:03   At top of the page, it has links to do all that stuff.

00:15:06   15% off for all members.

00:15:07   And if you are a member, go to your member page,

00:15:09   grab your coupon code, and put it in the promo code field

00:15:12   during checkout at the Cotton Bureau site,

00:15:14   and you will get 15% off.

00:15:16   Please, I beg you, this is the time where I have to make the speech, and without fail,

00:15:22   every year somebody reaches out, "Oh, you were right, you were right."

00:15:26   So here's the thing, especially if you're looking for a chicken hat, a mug, or a glass,

00:15:31   because those things are, there are a limited amount of them.

00:15:35   But even for the shirts, you don't want to miss out.

00:15:37   For the hoodie, you don't want to miss out on the hoodie.

00:15:39   It's a freaking delightful hoodie.

00:15:40   So if you're not in a position to order right now at ATP.fm/store, think about the next

00:15:46   time you can.

00:15:47   Maybe it's at your desk at work, if you're going back to work.

00:15:50   Maybe it's your desk at home.

00:15:51   Maybe it's once you get to the place you're driving right now or walking or what have

00:15:56   you or bicycling.

00:15:58   Think and vision.

00:16:00   Put yourself in that place and think to yourself, "I need to treat myself and go to ATP.fm/store

00:16:06   when I get to that place."

00:16:08   You don't need to stop walking, particularly if you're in Manhattan.

00:16:11   Don't stop walking.

00:16:12   Just go where you're going.

00:16:13   You don't need to stop in the middle of the road.

00:16:14   You don't even need to pull over necessarily, but envision the place you're going and go

00:16:18   to ATP.fm/store and buy yourself a chicken hat or a mug or a glass or one of the shirts

00:16:25   or hoodies or what have you.

00:16:26   Do that.

00:16:27   Make everyone happy.

00:16:28   But also remember to go to ATP.fm/join and join if you haven't already.

00:16:32   And unlike what Jon says, you have mine and Marco's

00:16:36   full permission to forget to cancel your membership.

00:16:39   That is totally okay.

00:16:41   We are okay with that, Marco and I, maybe not Jon,

00:16:43   but Marco and I are okay with you forgetting to cancel.

00:16:45   - It's not about forgetting to cancel,

00:16:46   it's about once you have the membership

00:16:48   and you start listening to the show without ads,

00:16:49   or you enjoyed the bootleg or something like that,

00:16:51   or you hear the member special content

00:16:54   with our three ATP movie club things,

00:16:56   you're like, "Hey, membership is actually kinda good."

00:16:58   That's why you keep doing it,

00:16:59   because it provides value to you.

00:17:00   Because when you go back to the regular feed,

00:17:02   and it's not as good anymore.

00:17:03   So yeah, stay a member for that reason, I hope.

00:17:06   - Yeah, definitely.

00:17:07   All right, we will remind you just a couple more times

00:17:09   and that'll be that.

00:17:10   - Yeah, we do structure these sales

00:17:12   so we have three episodes where we can remind you.

00:17:14   That's how we arrange the dates, just FYI.

00:17:16   And speaking of like not missing out on things,

00:17:19   there's missing out on the sale, which is like,

00:17:20   oh, I forgot about the sale and now it's over

00:17:22   because you're like on November 15th,

00:17:23   you're like, oh no, I missed it, right?

00:17:25   But I can tell you inventory wise,

00:17:27   the thing we have the least number of is the pint glasses

00:17:29   and we are not ordering any more of them.

00:17:31   So if you really want a pint glass, get that ASAP.

00:17:34   The second least number of things we have

00:17:35   are mugs and chicken hats.

00:17:37   So if you were interested in mug, chicken hat,

00:17:39   or pint glasses, just order it now so you don't miss out.

00:17:42   I'm not sure that we're gonna sell out of all these things,

00:17:44   but better safe than sorry.

00:17:45   And the other ones are print on demand.

00:17:47   We see how many we buy and then we print that many of them.

00:17:49   So the only thing you have to worry about for the shirts

00:17:51   and the hoodie is buying before the sale ends on November 13th.

00:17:55   - Yep, please and thank you.

00:17:58   Let's do some follow up.

00:17:59   A couple episodes ago, I believe it was,

00:18:01   I was going and waxing poetic about how much I love my new Sonos setup, and I got a Costco

00:18:07   flyer in the physical snail mail, I think it was yesterday or the day before, where

00:18:12   I noticed that a couple of the items that I purchased are actually going to be on sale

00:18:16   at Costco right after our sale ends, coincidentally.

00:18:20   The Sonos Arc that I have, kind of, and I'll explain in a second, is going to be on sale

00:18:28   for $700, normally retails for $900.

00:18:30   There is a catch there, we'll come back to that in a sec.

00:18:33   The One SL, which is a speaker that you can use either singularly or in a stereo pair,

00:18:38   but what I did is, and this is what Sonos often recommends, is I used them as my rear

00:18:42   speakers.

00:18:43   Those are going down from $400 to $300.

00:18:46   Now, one catch, all of these, the ARC and the One SL, it's actually an ARC SL and a

00:18:52   One SL.

00:18:53   SL, I don't know what it actually stands for, but what it means in Sonos speak is it does

00:18:56   does not have any sort of microphone or voice recognition,

00:19:00   which in some ways is a feature, not a bug.

00:19:03   But I will say that Sonos's voice control

00:19:07   is really, really good, and I think we spoke briefly

00:19:09   about it an episode or two ago,

00:19:10   that it's actually Gus Spring, or whatever,

00:19:12   what's the guy's name, from Breaking Bad?

00:19:15   - Yeah, the actor who plays Gus Spring.

00:19:17   I forget the actor's name.

00:19:18   - Yeah, same, but anyway, he does the voice,

00:19:19   which is kind of funny, and it's actually really,

00:19:21   really good, because as far as I'm aware,

00:19:23   it's all local on device, so it doesn't do anything

00:19:26   complex, but in terms of like, you know, turn it up, turn it down, stop playback,

00:19:29   join, such and such, etc. It's really, really good. And I like having it on my

00:19:33   ARC, because I do not have the ARC SL, I have just the ARC. Again, SL means no

00:19:38   voice control. But for what it's worth, the ARC goes down 200 bucks, the ONE goes

00:19:42   down 100 bucks, and actually I believe that's for a pair of ONES. I'm sorry, I

00:19:47   didn't say that earlier. So it's two of the rear speakers goes from $400 to $300,

00:19:52   and one of the soundbars goes from 900 to 700

00:19:55   if you happen to be near an American Costco.

00:19:57   I just wanted you to be aware.

00:20:00   Then we got some fascinating feedback from Andrew Chase.

00:20:03   Andrew is a pilot for a major American airline

00:20:05   and he wanted to share some things.

00:20:07   So he said, "I wanna share with you

00:20:09   some things regarding personal electronic devices.

00:20:11   The FAA and airlines started really evaluating

00:20:14   the threat of battery fires once Samsung had their phone

00:20:16   that was routinely catching fire.

00:20:18   I don't know how many, but there were several incidents

00:20:20   as a result of defective Samsung devices.

00:20:22   There have been other issues where devices

00:20:23   have been either crushed by the seats

00:20:25   or in the overhead bins.

00:20:27   The pilots on this particular airline

00:20:29   each have an 11-inch iPad Pro,

00:20:31   and all of our flight attendants have large screen iPhones.

00:20:33   Andrew couldn't remember exactly which model.

00:20:35   The threat is so great that we have to carry

00:20:37   two thermal containment bags and fire-retardant gloves.

00:20:42   We have one bag large enough to fit our iPads

00:20:45   that we keep on the flight deck,

00:20:46   and there's another bag kept in the passenger cabin

00:20:48   that can hold up to a 17-inch laptop.

00:20:51   And there's a picture that has been attached

00:20:53   that hopefully will be the chapter art in the MP3.

00:20:57   I find this fascinating.

00:20:59   This is all, I'm sorry, I forgot to establish context.

00:21:01   This is all with regard to,

00:21:03   don't reach in between the seats to get your phone.

00:21:06   Step aside and let the flight attendant handle it for you.

00:21:10   Well, this is why, because these things,

00:21:12   apparently there's a real honest-to-goodness fear

00:21:14   that something will catch on fire.

00:21:15   I just found this absolutely fascinating.

00:21:17   - Yeah, I do wonder if people would be able

00:21:19   to get to those materials in time,

00:21:21   if there's a device that catches fire.

00:21:22   I don't know if you've ever seen those videos online

00:21:24   of what it looks like when a lithium-ion battery goes up.

00:21:27   It goes up fast, then it goes up big.

00:21:29   Of course you need the gloves,

00:21:30   'cause it's not like you can grab this thing

00:21:32   and put it in the fire bag or whatever.

00:21:34   So first you need the gloves, then you need the bag,

00:21:36   and then you need the wherewithal

00:21:37   to grab this thing with the gloves.

00:21:39   You think, "Oh, so what?

00:21:40   "I have the gloves on, they protect me from the fire."

00:21:42   Watch the videos.

00:21:43   You probably don't wanna come with an arm's length

00:21:44   of something that's going off like one of these things.

00:21:46   Then you put it in the bag, then presumably you seal up the bag, I guess, so the flames

00:21:50   don't shoot everywhere.

00:21:51   Anyway, firearm planes, no good.

00:21:53   Do not want.

00:21:55   Can you tell me about apple mouse shape history, please?

00:21:59   I can, but first some real-time follow-up from someone in the chat room was asking,

00:22:02   "It's hard to tell what the chicken hat might look like on someone's head.

00:22:04   In fact, if you've never experienced a hat like this, you might be wondering, 'How do

00:22:07   I even wear it?

00:22:08   Which direction does it face on my head?'"

00:22:10   So if you go to the show notes for this episode, you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

00:22:16   will see a link to the Studio Neat blog post about this collaboration and in the

00:22:21   Studio Neat blog post it's a picture of me wearing the hat at some point in the

00:22:24   fairly distant past and I'm not wearing this hat I'm wearing my original hat but

00:22:28   as I said this hat if you lay it down on top of my original hat exactly lines up

00:22:33   in every feature so the photo is accurate just imagine the hat being not

00:22:38   that color green and imagine you know me being a lot older than I am in that

00:22:43   picture. Tell me about mouse shapes. Yeah so this is about, Marco was talking about how he loves the

00:22:49   the current Apple Sushi mouse and you know it's a high quality mouse and he likes the shape of it

00:22:54   he likes the features and who I was listening back to the show as I do I was reminded of I thought I'd

00:22:59   even said this in the show but I guess I didn't I was reminded of my various Apple mouse loves

00:23:06   over the years right so the very first mouse I ever used was the mouse on the original Macintosh

00:23:11   in 1984, which was basically a box

00:23:13   with the corners knocked off the top edge.

00:23:17   Extremely, I'm extremely boxy.

00:23:19   It was a box, right?

00:23:20   And the contemporary mice on other systems

00:23:24   were also similar, like it was easier to make a box

00:23:27   with a mouse ball in it and a button on it or whatever,

00:23:29   but it had some style, it had some panache,

00:23:31   but I think that first mouse basically dictated

00:23:35   how I would use a mouse for the rest of my life.

00:23:38   because it was a box, it's got, you know, it's a rectangle,

00:23:41   it's got flat sides, right?

00:23:43   And that's why I grip the mouse with my thumb

00:23:47   and my like, pinky and ring finger

00:23:50   on opposing sides of the mouse

00:23:52   with two fingers on top of it, right?

00:23:54   Because the flat sides let you do that.

00:23:56   And so any mouse that does not have a flat side

00:23:58   for me to grip in that way feels weird to me

00:24:00   because that's what I'm always trying to do.

00:24:01   If you try to grab the sushi mouse from the sides

00:24:04   with your thumb on one side

00:24:06   and your pinky and ring finger on the other,

00:24:07   It doesn't work 'cause the sides aren't straight,

00:24:09   the sides are very small, and if you actually do squeeze it,

00:24:11   it like pushes the mouse upward.

00:24:13   It's not how you're supposed to use that mouse.

00:24:15   So that kind of cemented that.

00:24:17   But the reason I brought this up is

00:24:19   that was the mouse on the Mac 128

00:24:22   and the original Macintosh, the 512, the Plus.

00:24:26   But when the SE came out,

00:24:27   Apple changed the shape of the mouse,

00:24:29   drastically changed the shape of the mouse.

00:24:31   You look with the mouse and the SE look like

00:24:34   it was way lower profile.

00:24:36   It still had flat sides

00:24:37   and they're still higher than the Sushi mouse,

00:24:39   but the top of it was like angled like a little ramp

00:24:42   that leaned forward and it was a smaller ramp on the back.

00:24:45   I don't know, you can find some pictures of it online.

00:24:46   But anyway, and I was like, whoa, what are you doing, Apple?

00:24:50   I liked your old mouse, it fit my hand well,

00:24:52   and now you give me this really,

00:24:53   it was almost like the Sushi mouse.

00:24:55   It was like, yeah, it's so small and slight.

00:24:56   And in reality, it was huge compared to the Sushi mouse,

00:24:59   but it was a big change.

00:25:00   And over the years, Apple has always,

00:25:02   well, for the most part, has made mice for its computers

00:25:05   that are high quality.

00:25:06   There were some exceptions up there with like the,

00:25:08   what was that one with the little roller ball in it?

00:25:10   It was like, whatever it was that,

00:25:11   there was like the iMac G5 error maybe.

00:25:14   That was not a good one.

00:25:15   The original Mighty Mouse.

00:25:16   Anyway, over the years, Apple has made a bunch of mice,

00:25:18   but every, I don't know,

00:25:20   I was gonna say every decade or two,

00:25:21   every five, 10 years,

00:25:24   they would radically change their mouse.

00:25:26   So there was the mouse and the SE.

00:25:28   Then the next big one was the ADB mouse

00:25:31   that was very curved and everything.

00:25:32   That mouse was great, loved it.

00:25:34   It was still kind of low profile,

00:25:35   but the shape was very comfortable, it looked modern,

00:25:38   had a huge button on top of it,

00:25:39   it was the whole front half of it was a button.

00:25:42   There was the Puck Mouse, nobody likes that.

00:25:43   There was the Apology Mouse, which I kind of liked,

00:25:46   even though, again, it was still kind of low profile.

00:25:48   There's the Sushi Mouse,

00:25:49   like there was the Mighty Mouse mixed in there.

00:25:52   I bring this up because Marco loves the Sushi Mouse.

00:25:54   Someday, if Marco keeps on living,

00:25:57   Apple's gonna change the mouse,

00:25:58   and they're probably gonna change it

00:25:59   in a way that he doesn't like.

00:26:01   So I wanted to give some perspective

00:26:02   from my history with Apple,

00:26:03   that Apple makes high quality mice, but they don't make the same mouse forever.

00:26:08   And when they change it, they tend to leave behind all the people who love their previous

00:26:11   one because the new one reflects the new thinking.

00:26:13   And in the case of the hockey puck, they leave behind anyone because the hockey puck, I guess

00:26:17   some people still like the hockey puck, but it was fatally flawed, let's say.

00:26:21   Even when they put a divot in the button so you could tell which direction it was facing.

00:26:24   Nice job, Apple.

00:26:26   So be aware.

00:26:28   If you love your Apple mouse, maybe get as many of them as you can and hope they work

00:26:32   for your computers for a long time,

00:26:33   kind of like people did with the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.

00:26:36   - I mean, the funny thing is, well, first of all,

00:26:39   I don't think it's ever going to be difficult

00:26:40   to find these since everyone who's ever bought an iMac

00:26:44   probably has one in their closet unopened.

00:26:47   (laughing)

00:26:48   There's so many of these lying around

00:26:49   that people got as pack-ins for their desktops

00:26:52   that they never used.

00:26:54   - But eventually you'll need,

00:26:55   like we used to have the USB to ADB adapters

00:26:58   that people will use the Apple Extended.

00:27:00   Eventually you're gonna need some kind of adapter

00:27:02   to use these things with like,

00:27:03   especially since they're Bluetooth, right?

00:27:05   It's not gonna have to be some kind of like

00:27:06   software adapter or Bluetooth dongle once, you know,

00:27:09   the new version of Bluetooth comes out.

00:27:10   - Not only are they Bluetooth, they're lightning.

00:27:13   And this is where like,

00:27:15   if they're ever gonna kill off this mouse,

00:27:18   maybe it'll be during the USB-C transition.

00:27:20   Like that's, that I think like I'm afraid

00:27:22   because when they go to USB-C,

00:27:25   they are presumably going to,

00:27:26   at some point during that transition, update this mouse.

00:27:30   Now that being said,

00:27:31   I think it's probably gonna be one of the last things

00:27:33   they update.

00:27:34   I mean, they might never update it,

00:27:35   because I don't think the EU's gonna mandate that.

00:27:37   We'll get to that in a little bit.

00:27:38   But also, I can imagine them not wanting to really do much

00:27:43   to make this change, and possibly doing it

00:27:46   in the most half-assed way possible,

00:27:49   which would basically just be like,

00:27:50   just keep the entire existing design,

00:27:53   and just make the port USB-C, instead of like--

00:27:56   - I think they got Qi charging.

00:27:58   The mouse is definitely something

00:27:59   where you can do Qi charging,

00:28:00   and it makes way more sense to have a charging thing

00:28:02   on the bottom when it's Qi charging

00:28:03   than it does to have a thing on the bottom

00:28:05   when it's USB-C or lightning.

00:28:06   - But then there's no pairing story.

00:28:07   'Cause it also pair, you pair it with, by using the cable,

00:28:10   although I guess, I think there is like a thing

00:28:11   where you can like hold it down

00:28:12   and blink it into Bluetooth mode or whatever.

00:28:14   Like I think that there's probably

00:28:15   some kind of override for that.

00:28:16   But anyway, yeah.

00:28:18   I don't expect they're gonna be touching this

00:28:20   more than they have to.

00:28:21   But if they do, it is the wonderful combination

00:28:25   of being both extremely common and widely hated.

00:28:29   So there's gonna be a ton of them for sale forever

00:28:31   on eBay, totally unopened, so no problem there.

00:28:34   - I've got a bunch still in their original boxes

00:28:36   up in my attic, 'cause I never even take them out.

00:28:38   - Exactly, yeah.

00:28:39   There's so many people like you who buy desktop Macs

00:28:42   that come with these who don't ever use them,

00:28:45   'cause everyone except me hates them.

00:28:47   So don't worry, I got a huge supply.

00:28:51   - I mean, the other thing I have going for you

00:28:52   is that Apple doesn't pay much attention

00:28:55   to the desktop Macs.

00:28:57   witness our continued wait for the Mac Pro.

00:28:59   So they're not going to redesign the mouse

00:29:02   as often as they did in the past

00:29:03   because it used to be much more important

00:29:04   to their product line.

00:29:06   But now that they've gotten basically all laptop

00:29:08   and some of their desktop computers

00:29:10   don't even come with the mouse like the Mac mini,

00:29:12   it's pretty low down the list.

00:29:14   But I do think it will make a USB-C transition

00:29:15   or a Qi transition because once they go all USB-C,

00:29:19   they're just gonna start knocking out

00:29:20   the products one by one.

00:29:21   Eventually, as lightning phases out,

00:29:24   it will eventually be as hard to find as a 30-pin connector

00:29:27   and so they're not gonna wanna keep selling a product

00:29:29   with that in it.

00:29:30   - I think I might, like, assuming that at some point

00:29:33   in the future I can't use this mouse anymore

00:29:37   and there's no replacement that I like,

00:29:39   which those are two pretty big assumptions,

00:29:41   but assuming that happens, I might just go to Trackpad.

00:29:45   Like, 'cause I love having the, like,

00:29:47   the direct manipulation scrolling on the mouse so much.

00:29:52   I would imagine I would rather just go directly

00:29:54   to double Trackpad, like, 'cause I already have Trackpad

00:29:56   the left and I could just get a second one, it'd be more symmetric, but I miss all my

00:30:02   Teflon mousepads.

00:30:04   Steven Hackett predictably has a good post that shows all the mice that I was just talking

00:30:08   about, the original one, the one for the Apple 2C and the Lisa, which are kind of gross,

00:30:14   then there's the first ADB mouse and then there's the Apple desktop mouse 2, which I

00:30:18   incorrectly said was the first Apple desktop mouse, but the other one was ADB before that.

00:30:23   There's a cool black one that came with the Apple,

00:30:25   no the Apple, the Macintosh television.

00:30:28   Man, I would love to get one of those black mice.

00:30:30   Then there's the Puck, the Apology Mouse,

00:30:32   the Stupid Mighty Mouse, and the Sushi Mouse.

00:30:35   So I think there might have been another one

00:30:36   in between there, but we'll put that link in the show notes.

00:30:38   It's an excellent page with some good photos.

00:30:40   - We are brought to you this week by Backblaze.

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00:31:29   Both the web app for if you need to do web restores

00:31:32   for restoring files or accessing them,

00:31:33   maybe you left your computer at home and you went on a trip

00:31:36   and you gotta get a file off your computer,

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00:31:39   And their client app that runs on my Macs.

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00:31:55   So it's just a great app.

00:31:56   And cloud backup is amazing because there's so many hazards

00:32:00   that if your only backup is either nothing,

00:32:03   which is really terrible,

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00:32:06   or in your home,

00:32:08   so many risks can take out both your computer

00:32:10   and that external drive at the same time.

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00:32:36   Thank you so much to Backblaze

00:32:37   for backing up all my stuff and sponsoring our show.

00:32:40   (upbeat music)

00:32:43   - Let's talk about some stuff

00:32:45   that you've been up to recently, Mr. Syracuse.

00:32:48   Tell me about your app updates.

00:32:50   - Yeah, I didn't think I was gonna do this this year,

00:32:51   but I just, you know, the timing more or less worked out.

00:32:55   I had mentioned on the last show,

00:32:57   we were talking about like what we do

00:32:58   with the version control or whatever,

00:32:59   that I was adding a major feature to my app

00:33:01   and the branch I made for that feature

00:33:03   kind of morphed into the 2.0 branch

00:33:05   because I just kept adding stuff.

00:33:07   And so I was working on version two

00:33:09   of my little app switcher thing, Switch Glass,

00:33:11   and version two was kind of more or less ready

00:33:14   around the time of the Ventura launch.

00:33:16   In fact, I had to change a bunch of code in it

00:33:18   to deal with venture, which I might talk about it.

00:33:20   And well, I'll talk about it now briefly, I guess.

00:33:23   Anyway, the big feature that I added

00:33:25   was the number one requested feature was people wanted

00:33:27   to be able to reorder stuff in the app switcher.

00:33:31   They already had a bunch of different sort orders.

00:33:33   You could sort alphabetically in reverse and by launch order.

00:33:35   But they said, what if I just wanted to say,

00:33:37   I want Finder to be at the top.

00:33:38   I want this to be on the bottom, whatever.

00:33:40   So I added that feature.

00:33:42   Adding that feature, as I alluded to on past episodes

00:33:44   when we talked about our dev efforts required me to bump the minimum OS version to Monterey,

00:33:49   Mac OS 12 Monterey, because that app switch review is SwiftUI and the features for drag

00:33:55   and drop that I needed from SwiftUI only run on Monterey or later.

00:33:59   So it was a big bump in minimum system version, but honestly not that many people use my app

00:34:03   anyway, so whatever.

00:34:04   Who cares?

00:34:05   I wish I could have kept it lower, but I couldn't have and still actually had a reasonable drag

00:34:11   and drop interface.

00:34:12   And there's so many SwiftUI bugs in older OSs anyway,

00:34:14   I'm glad to be on something a little bit newer.

00:34:16   So I kind of did it, pulled an app,

00:34:19   and I was like, you know what,

00:34:20   Ventura's coming out soon, and if I just kind of say,

00:34:24   this is my underscore, no new features,

00:34:26   what is his little sign that he puts up?

00:34:28   No, Mark?

00:34:29   - I think it's no new features.

00:34:31   - I know it has a boat, because it represents shipping.

00:34:33   - Yeah, it's just like, this is the line,

00:34:35   I'm not doing any more features,

00:34:36   I'm just doing debugging from this point on.

00:34:39   Even though I had more features in the queue,

00:34:40   I said, this is it, let me just cut it off here.

00:34:43   I sent myself a pull request, Casey.

00:34:45   Nice.

00:34:46   It sounds like something you should do alone.

00:34:48   Yeah.

00:34:49   And push it out to the store.

00:34:50   And I didn't think App Review was going to get to it in time.

00:34:52   But lo and behold, on Ventura launch day,

00:34:54   both of my applications were ready with new versions.

00:34:57   Front and center, the only thing I changed in it

00:34:59   was a thing related to login items, which is--

00:35:02   I'll give a little summary here, but it turns out

00:35:04   to be a thing I'll talk about on another show.

00:35:05   But anyway, Ventura has a new API

00:35:07   for making applications register themselves

00:35:10   to launch on login.

00:35:11   There's been a surprisingly sorted history

00:35:14   of how apps do that on the Mac.

00:35:17   You would think it's such a simple feature,

00:35:18   it's just that one checkbox in the bottom

00:35:19   of a bunch of apps you use to say,

00:35:20   hey, do you want me to launch this app on login?

00:35:22   And you check it and you think that's all there is to it.

00:35:24   The way is they've done that, none of them are good.

00:35:26   There's a new way in Ventura,

00:35:27   which is better than the past ones,

00:35:30   but is buggy and has a bunch of caveats.

00:35:32   Anyway, I put a bunch of stuff in my FAQ about it

00:35:34   if you care, but.

00:35:35   - Oh, don't worry, because the second anybody updates

00:35:38   to Ventura, you will get, remember like,

00:35:41   I forget which version it was,

00:35:42   a couple of Mac OS versions ago when you had to like,

00:35:45   approve permissions for a whole bunch of new things.

00:35:47   The first launch experience of running that version

00:35:50   was just a wall of notifications from all your apps

00:35:53   that all of a sudden needed a new permission

00:35:55   that didn't exist before.

00:35:56   That's what it is for Ventura with these launch things.

00:35:58   Like the first time I launched, I have it on my laptop,

00:36:01   the very first time it launched with the final version,

00:36:04   the entire right side of the screen was just filled

00:36:07   with like 14 of these notifications

00:36:10   to approve these background items.

00:36:12   And it was all stuff I knew about

00:36:13   except for like one weird thing left over

00:36:15   by some driver installed forever ago.

00:36:17   But it was like, you know, shell scripts I have to run,

00:36:19   there's Backblaze, Dropbox, you know, all the stuff,

00:36:22   or not Dropbox, but Maestro, my Dropbox client,

00:36:25   like all the stuff that you want to run and expect to run,

00:36:29   but it was like, yeah, you have to basically like

00:36:31   be re-notified about everything.

00:36:34   The good thing is that the default seems to be

00:36:36   If it was running before, let it keep running.

00:36:39   So you don't have to actually do anything

00:36:41   besides maybe review them if there's

00:36:43   any you want to turn off and turn them off.

00:36:45   And it is nice that there is this new method to do that.

00:36:48   So I think it's a good feature overall, because before, there

00:36:51   were so many ways that things could be starting at startup

00:36:54   or behind the scenes that were not apparent to the user

00:36:58   and were very difficult for the user to ever remove.

00:37:01   Yeah, the problem with this briefly with respect to my app

00:37:04   is both of my apps have the option to launch on login

00:37:07   because they're the type of apps you run all the time.

00:37:08   Front and center changes your window layer

00:37:10   and you probably want that running all the time

00:37:11   if you can use it at all.

00:37:12   And switch glasses and app switcher,

00:37:13   you probably want that running all the time

00:37:14   just like the dock is running all the time.

00:37:15   So having them both launch on login makes tons of sense.

00:37:18   That's all they do.

00:37:19   They launch on login.

00:37:20   They're just regular apps

00:37:21   and instead of you having to double click them

00:37:22   or launch them from the dock or whatever,

00:37:24   you can get them to launch themselves.

00:37:25   That's it.

00:37:26   But because there is a new API to do that in Ventura,

00:37:30   There was a series of old APIs on pre-Ventura systems, right?

00:37:34   So I used the new API on Ventura,

00:37:36   but because my apps run on older OSes,

00:37:39   even, you know, even Switch class

00:37:40   that I had to bump up to Monterey, it runs on Monterey,

00:37:42   and the Ventura APIs don't exist on Monterey.

00:37:44   So my app has to support the APIs that exist on Monterey,

00:37:49   right?

00:37:49   If your app uses the Monterey or earlier APIs on Ventura,

00:37:54   when you use the new API to say,

00:37:56   hey, please launch me on login,

00:37:58   Ventura files your app under a section in system settings

00:38:02   that says, these apps run in the background.

00:38:05   My apps don't run in the background.

00:38:07   They have no way to run in the background.

00:38:09   There's nothing in them that runs in the background.

00:38:10   They don't have any kind of demons.

00:38:11   They only run in the foreground.

00:38:13   Like they're just apps.

00:38:13   You just double click them and they run.

00:38:15   They can't do anything when they're not running, right?

00:38:18   But because it uses an older API that it has to,

00:38:21   it doesn't use it, includes code for an older API,

00:38:23   because it does that on Ventura,

00:38:26   it's filed under this app runs in the background.

00:38:28   And so now I have to brace myself

00:38:30   for people sending me emails saying,

00:38:32   "Why does your app run in the background?

00:38:34   What kind of sneaky stuff is it doing?"

00:38:35   I have to say, "It doesn't run in the background."

00:38:37   They're gonna say, "But the OS says it runs in the background.

00:38:39   Look, let me send you a screenshot of system settings.

00:38:40   Here's your app listed in the apps that run in the background.

00:38:43   They may perform tasks when they're not open," right?

00:38:45   Like, I assure you, my app cannot do anything

00:38:48   when it is not running.

00:38:49   I installed no launch DEP list.

00:38:51   There's no daemon. There's no background server.

00:38:53   I am not, you know, run activity monitor, run PS,

00:38:57   satisfy yourself, but then why is it showing?

00:38:59   Ugh, so I filed the feedback on this,

00:39:02   and it's kind of frustrating,

00:39:03   and that gets to your wall of notifications.

00:39:05   Half of those notifications are going to say,

00:39:08   so-and-so application wants to run in the background.

00:39:10   Sometimes you will get a notification

00:39:12   that says something wants to run in the background

00:39:13   when all it wants to do is launch on login,

00:39:15   but sometimes it really does want to run something

00:39:17   in the background, so when you go into system settings

00:39:19   in, you know, whatever, general login items,

00:39:21   and you see the allow in background list or whatever,

00:39:25   you can't tell by looking at that list

00:39:27   which one of these things actually runs in the background

00:39:30   versus which one of these things is just an application

00:39:32   that supports a preventer OS

00:39:33   that just wants to launch itself on login.

00:39:35   There's no way to tell.

00:39:37   Most of them probably do run in the background,

00:39:38   but only if you have experience to know, like,

00:39:41   "Oh, I understand this is an updater daemon

00:39:42   that really does run in the background,"

00:39:44   or, "This thing does make a launch agent with launch D."

00:39:48   You're not going to end up by looking at this list.

00:39:50   So anyway, that's why I had to add a FAQ item

00:39:53   to both of my dinky little products that says,

00:39:55   hey, why is your app listed as running in the background?

00:39:58   Does it do anything in the background?

00:39:59   I have to say, no, it doesn't, I swear.

00:40:01   So that's frustrating.

00:40:02   And then the second frustrating thing is,

00:40:04   maybe this is only true for people running development

00:40:06   and test flight builds or whatever,

00:40:07   but the new API in Ventura,

00:40:08   when it gets added to launch on login,

00:40:11   it's very specific, as in this specific app

00:40:14   should launch on login, which I think is good.

00:40:16   But if you're doing development,

00:40:18   and like when you run Xcode

00:40:19   and it builds a version of your app

00:40:20   and whatever that folder is under hidden drive data?

00:40:23   Where does it put the temporary debug builds of your apps?

00:40:26   - Oh, God, it's somewhere very deep.

00:40:28   I never know.

00:40:31   I always have to debug print the path of the binary,

00:40:34   drag it out of the target area.

00:40:36   - Command click it on the dock, right?

00:40:38   - What?

00:40:38   - Oh, yeah, I guess.

00:40:39   - Oh, well, not for the simulator.

00:40:41   - Yeah, you're not using Mac apps, sorry.

00:40:43   - Yeah.

00:40:44   - It's Mac apps, you command click on the dock.

00:40:45   But yeah, when you're running Xcode,

00:40:47   it builds a copy of your app

00:40:48   and it puts it somewhere, but it's not like,

00:40:50   even if you're making a Mac app,

00:40:52   it doesn't put it in your applications folder.

00:40:53   So when you run the dev build

00:40:55   and you call the venture API to launch this on login,

00:40:57   I think what it's doing is saying,

00:40:58   okay, I'll launch the application located at library,

00:41:02   developer, Xcode, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:03   I'll launch that at login, right?

00:41:05   But you're the version of the application

00:41:07   sitting in your application folder

00:41:09   is also registered as launch and login.

00:41:10   So I got into a situation where I had like three copies

00:41:13   of switch class listed in my open at login list.

00:41:15   And by the way, the whole thing about allow in background,

00:41:17   your app will also show up in the open it login thing.

00:41:20   So it does correctly show up there,

00:41:22   but it also appears in the allow in the background list.

00:41:24   So anyway, I've been in situations

00:41:26   where there are multiple copies of my apps

00:41:29   listed in open it login.

00:41:31   And I think it's because there literally are

00:41:32   multiple copies of maps running around on the disc.

00:41:35   And unlike previous versions of macOS,

00:41:36   this one tracks all of them

00:41:38   and will send you a notification every time you do

00:41:40   a new build and you launch it, it's like,

00:41:41   oh, just so you know, this app that we've never seen before,

00:41:43   they just got built and run,

00:41:45   it just registers itself to launch on login.

00:41:47   and we wanted you to know about it with a notification.

00:41:49   - Fun, that's super crappy.

00:41:51   - So anyway, my apps are updated.

00:41:53   Twitch class two is a free update

00:41:54   for the five people who use it.

00:41:56   I'm still having fun developing it.

00:41:58   In fact, I just did a test flight build

00:41:59   with a bunch of fun new features

00:42:01   and people are finding fun new bugs.

00:42:02   I'm enjoying test flight.

00:42:04   It's way better than trying to send people betas.

00:42:05   Test flight on the Mac, when it's working

00:42:07   and when App Store Connect is working correctly

00:42:09   is a real godsend.

00:42:11   So I made a petition for new testers

00:42:14   in my blog post about it.

00:42:16   We'll put a link in the show notes to that post

00:42:18   so you can read it.

00:42:19   It's only a couple paragraphs.

00:42:19   If you want to be a tester, you can send me an email.

00:42:22   And I'll let you test it.

00:42:22   And you can find fun bugs, and I'll fix them.

00:42:24   That's the plan anyway.

00:42:26   Oh, one more thing related to the blog post.

00:42:29   I put a mailto link in the thing that

00:42:31   says, if you want to become a tester, let me know.

00:42:34   And the words "let me know" are a link,

00:42:35   and they're a mailto link.

00:42:37   I said, you know what?

00:42:38   Let me put a subject line on the mailto link.

00:42:40   I know there's a sort of convention for doing that.

00:42:42   I'm not sure if it's a real standard,

00:42:44   but I've seen it done many different times.

00:42:45   you know, whatever. So, you know, the URL of that link is mail, M-A-I-L-T-O colon, and then my email

00:42:51   address, and then question mark, subject equals, and then you type the subject line, right? And

00:42:56   the subject line is "Switch glass test flight membership" with spaces between the words, right?

00:43:01   When you put spaces in the, in the, you know, the href field of a link, you're supposed to URL

00:43:08   encode them, you know, with percent 20, or I think you can do pluses, that might only be for the

00:43:13   the address bar, but anyway, percent 20, right?

00:43:15   That's the hexadecimal, you know,

00:43:17   the way you put hexadecimal codes or ASCII code points,

00:43:20   you know, that's a space, right?

00:43:22   - Or you can use a plus and break half the clients out there.

00:43:25   - Right, so here's the thing.

00:43:26   I put percent 20s 'cause it's the right thing to do

00:43:28   and I make a valid markup when I can, right?

00:43:31   I immediately found out that every single person

00:43:34   who clicked that link was somehow using some kind

00:43:37   of browser or system that has no idea what that is

00:43:39   and I got a bunch of email with the subject line,

00:43:41   Switch glass percent 20, you know,

00:43:43   test flight percent 20, membership percent 20.

00:43:45   All right, so and like literally not a single one

00:43:49   was correct, I'm like, okay, I tested it myself,

00:43:51   by the way, Chrome on the Mac and Safari works fine.

00:43:54   You get spaces, right?

00:43:55   But whatever, maybe it's the email client.

00:43:58   I don't know where the problem lies,

00:43:59   but I was getting emails with percent 20s in subject line.

00:44:01   I changed it to pluses.

00:44:03   I just got emails with pluses in it.

00:44:05   Like, literally not a single email from any mail,

00:44:10   I think it's probably the mail client that's screwing it up,

00:44:12   because I think Safari and Chrome probably send it

00:44:14   correctly, but the mail clients don't know that it's-- anyway.

00:44:17   I had to change it to spaces, which is not valid,

00:44:20   but apparently it's the only way to get spaces.

00:44:21   So if you look at the markup, it says,

00:44:23   A, HREF, blah, blah, blah, question mark, subject,

00:44:26   equals, switch glass, space, test flight, space, membership.

00:44:30   And that works.

00:44:32   Now I'm getting really bad subject lines.

00:44:33   It's invalid.

00:44:34   It's invalid HTML.

00:44:35   You can put spaces--

00:44:36   just the web.

00:44:38   You just can't escape it.

00:44:39   It just amazes me that this is not a new convention.

00:44:41   The subject line in mail to links, what is that,

00:44:43   from the 90s?

00:44:44   And still somehow there's a broken link in this chain.

00:44:47   Again, I think it's the mail clients.

00:44:48   I think it's the mail clients are getting a URL

00:44:50   and they are not correctly parsing the query string

00:44:52   out of the URL part of it.

00:44:53   They're not, obviously not decoding the percent 20s

00:44:57   and not decoding the pluses.

00:44:59   Sad, sad state of affairs.

00:45:00   - This is, so I mean, I'll be the first one to admit

00:45:03   when email is bad because that's much of the time,

00:45:06   but I've never had this problem.

00:45:09   I use that convention frequently.

00:45:11   We even have it in our member panel, if you did that,

00:45:14   dot fm slash join.

00:45:16   If you go to your member panel at slash member,

00:45:19   at the bottom there's a link to contact us.

00:45:21   And it's a mailto link that includes not only spaces,

00:45:25   but escaped colons and parentheses, all percent encoded.

00:45:30   And I get a email from that maybe a couple times a week,

00:45:34   maybe three or four times a week.

00:45:36   None of them have ever had wrongly escaped things in them.

00:45:40   It's never happened.

00:45:41   - Maybe it's just small sample size,

00:45:43   'cause I think only 10 people email me,

00:45:44   but every single one of the 10 had percent store pluses.

00:45:47   I was shocked, I was shocked.

00:45:49   How could, in this day and age, how could something,

00:45:51   but there you have it.

00:45:52   So yeah, that's why the web is full of invalid things,

00:45:55   'cause people learn through trial and error

00:45:57   that if you want it to quote unquote work everywhere,

00:45:59   you have to use invalid markup in some cases.

00:46:02   (upbeat music)

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00:47:51   (upbeat music)

00:47:55   - All right, I got a new treat today.

00:47:57   - Ooh.

00:47:58   I went to Apple, the local Apple store in Short Pump,

00:48:03   and I got myself a picked up, yes,

00:48:06   everyone thinks it's so funny.

00:48:08   - That also sounds like something you do when you're alone.

00:48:10   (laughing)

00:48:12   - I've been married a long time, Marco.

00:48:13   Anyway, so I went to the store,

00:48:16   and I got complimented on my M2 shirt,

00:48:18   which just happened to be the top shirt in my pile

00:48:20   when I got dressed this morning, or excuse me, not M2,

00:48:23   I didn't get a pre-release M2 shirt, M1.

00:48:25   - I was gonna say, you don't have an early copy

00:48:26   of the M2 shirt.

00:48:27   - No, no, no, no, my apologies.

00:48:28   My M1 shirt, somebody commented on it and said, "Nice shirt,"

00:48:31   and I was very appreciative of that,

00:48:33   and the person helping me was very kind,

00:48:36   and they smiled and nodded very effectively

00:48:39   when I told them about my podcast,

00:48:41   which I'm sure they were so excited to hear about,

00:48:43   but they did a very good job of making me feel

00:48:45   like they actually gave a crap.

00:48:47   So anyway.

00:48:48   - You should listen to my podcast.

00:48:49   It's about computers.

00:48:50   You would like it.

00:48:50   - I was totally that guy.

00:48:52   I was wearing my own shirt.

00:48:53   It was so bad.

00:48:54   It was terrible.

00:48:55   - Oh, no.

00:48:56   wear the shirts out in public just in case I don't want to be that guy.

00:49:01   No, I don't care. I have no shame. I'm 40 now, man. I mean, so are you, but I'm 40 now. I don't care.

00:49:06   But anyway, so I picked up my iPad Pro. I gotta say, in general, if you live in a place that is not

00:49:14   like Boston or New York City and you have one of the slower Apple stores like the one in

00:49:21   short pump. It is pretty delightful going in and picking up your devices because you get them first

00:49:27   thing in the morning. You don't have to stock the UPS truck. It's wonderful and there's almost never

00:49:34   any big line like even on iPhone day because if you recall I did pick up for the first time in years

00:49:38   for these iPhones a couple of what last month and even then I waited like I don't know 10 minutes

00:49:44   maybe maybe and I was in and out and five after I tried to get upsell upsold on AppleCare and

00:49:50   screen protectors and all the other very sundry things Apple wants to make money off of, but

00:49:53   that's neither here nor there.

00:49:54   For whatever it's worth, by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt here, I've had great experiences

00:50:00   with the Long Island Apple stores. Like, you know, the Westchester ones are pretty decent.

00:50:04   The ones in the city are, you know, very crowded, very dense, you know, you have to wait on

00:50:08   lines, it's a little chaotic. The ones in Westchester are much nicer. The ones on Long

00:50:13   Island have been, honestly, even better. Like, I'm really surprised. And I think it's mostly

00:50:18   because like not a lot of there's not a lot of nerds on Long Island like that I

00:50:24   don't know where they are I have I haven't located them what are you

00:50:26   talking about oh John's upset John's upset not a lot of nerds on Long Island

00:50:31   nerd said where do they where do they keep them where they're all they're all

00:50:36   too busy doing extra credit activity so they look good in their college

00:50:39   applications well they're not in the Apple Store and so therefore they're

00:50:42   never crowded but they're but they're probably working at the Apple Store well

00:50:45   - Well, yeah, that's true, because the staff has been great.

00:50:48   I'm actually, there's two stores I go to

00:50:50   that are close to me on Long Island here,

00:50:52   and they're both, so far, fantastic.

00:50:55   And because there are no more nerds on Long Island

00:50:58   who don't already work at the Apple stores,

00:51:00   there's almost no one ever in there.

00:51:02   And so you get, there's tons of staff,

00:51:04   very few customers, instant service.

00:51:06   Like, it's been fantastic.

00:51:08   - And also you're going there when people are at work.

00:51:10   It occurs to me that I have no idea

00:51:12   where any Apple stores are on Long Island,

00:51:13   because I didn't live there when Apple stores became a thing.

00:51:15   So what stores are you going to?

00:51:17   - My primary one is the Walt Whitman Mall one.

00:51:19   - I was gonna say, like, Walt Whitman would be my first guess

00:51:22   where one would be, although I, I mean,

00:51:24   I don't really relish going there,

00:51:25   but I haven't been in ages.

00:51:26   But yeah, that's, you know,

00:51:28   ones in malls have the advantage that malls are dying,

00:51:31   so there's probably not a lot there except for, like,

00:51:33   you know, the Orange Julius in the Apple Store.

00:51:36   - Oh, Orange Julius, yes!

00:51:39   Oh, I love being Orange Julius.

00:51:41   - Are they still in business?

00:51:41   I don't know.

00:51:42   It's weird walking through malls these days though,

00:51:44   'cause you walk past, there's, you know,

00:51:46   most of the stores, well, there's different kinds of malls.

00:51:51   - Spirit Halloween is in most of the places, right?

00:51:53   (laughing)

00:51:54   - What?

00:51:55   - Because they always go and swoop in the defunct stores

00:51:58   and take over around Halloween time.

00:51:59   - Yeah, you don't know about Spirit Halloween?

00:52:01   - Oh, yeah, there's cheap seasonal stores.

00:52:04   - Yep.

00:52:05   - Yeah, but anyway, no, there's, let me see,

00:52:07   where's the other one that I went to?

00:52:09   The other one was in Smith Haven, yeah, that's the other one.

00:52:12   That mall is not in as good a shape,

00:52:15   but Walt Whitman's in really good shape.

00:52:18   And it's all like, it's internet brands.

00:52:21   It's like Casper and Warby Parker.

00:52:24   Like it's all like the podcast ad brands that you hear.

00:52:28   They now have stores in upscale malls

00:52:31   and that's what's taking all the mall stuff now.

00:52:33   Anyway, it is weird though, walking through a mall

00:52:36   'cause even the good malls are a shadow

00:52:40   of what they once were and are largely empty.

00:52:44   It's very strange.

00:52:46   - I brought my wedding ring at a jewelry store

00:52:47   in Smith Haven Mall.

00:52:49   - Aww.

00:52:49   - I used to ride my bike there.

00:52:51   - Wow.

00:52:53   - You were very close.

00:52:55   So yeah, so I picked up my iPad Pro.

00:52:57   I did not get any accessories because my hope, in theory,

00:52:59   was I could repurpose all the accessories

00:53:01   for my 2018 iPad Pro, which is going to be retired.

00:53:05   I had spoken briefly about, oh, maybe I'll just cancel this,

00:53:07   but because I'm a big liar,

00:53:11   I did not cancel this obviously.

00:53:13   But I did get it.

00:53:14   I have not had a lot of time to play with it,

00:53:17   but you know what, it's like a much better battery,

00:53:21   much faster, I guess,

00:53:24   much less scratch screen version of my 2018 iPad Pro.

00:53:29   I put it in the 2018, or no, I guess it was 2020,

00:53:33   Magic Keyboard case, and it fit no problem.

00:53:36   In fact, if I recall correctly,

00:53:37   when they came out with last year's iPad Pro,

00:53:41   they said, "Oh, it's not gonna fit

00:53:42   "in the 2020 edition case.

00:53:43   "It's not gonna fit right."

00:53:44   And then they came out a few days later, a week later,

00:53:46   and was like, "Well, it'll fit,

00:53:48   "but it's gonna be not 100% perfect.

00:53:51   "Maybe I just don't have the eye for it,

00:53:53   "but it seems like it fits perfectly," which is great.

00:53:56   So I'm using Magic Keyboard, which I love.

00:54:00   The pencil synced, no problem.

00:54:02   - Wait, what about the camera hole?

00:54:05   - Oh, or did the Magic Keyboard come out late enough

00:54:07   so that it had the larger camera plateau of the M1 iPad?

00:54:10   - Correct, well I don't think it was an M1 at the time,

00:54:12   but it was, the spirit of what you're saying is correct,

00:54:15   that it had the big square hole.

00:54:19   - Oh, the A12Z iPad, the one that added the LiDAR sensor,

00:54:23   right, that's what--

00:54:24   - Yeah, I think that's right. - Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

00:54:27   - So yeah, that fit, no problem, all good.

00:54:29   Pencil obviously works, no problem, all good.

00:54:31   And so I've dug out my old, what is it,

00:54:34   the keyboard, not folio, the thing

00:54:37   that's not a kickstandy one, not the new kickstandy one,

00:54:40   but like the--

00:54:40   - It's the Magic Folio keyboard.

00:54:42   - Oh, it is, okay, thank you.

00:54:43   - The Smart Keyboard Folio, that's the one I use.

00:54:45   - The Smart, yeah, the Smart Magic Folio Keyboard Folio.

00:54:48   - Yeah. - Oh, God, it's so bad.

00:54:49   Anyway, but yes, that thing, so I busted that back out.

00:54:52   - I like what Gruber clarified.

00:54:54   Magic means it has a trackpad, right?

00:54:56   So that clarifies one whole section of it.

00:55:00   - It's so clear, I don't know why it's not obvious.

00:55:02   - Right, yeah.

00:55:03   - Track pads are magic.

00:55:04   - Right, oh man.

00:55:05   You know, I was just thinking earlier

00:55:07   as I was washing dishes, 'cause that's when I do my thinking,

00:55:10   wouldn't it be amazing if Apple just had like

00:55:14   one iPad keyboard and one iPad cover

00:55:19   that you could use on all of their 11-ish-inch iPads?

00:55:24   And I instantly knew why they don't do that.

00:55:28   'Cause even after all this time,

00:55:30   the iPad is still not designed for covers or keyboards

00:55:35   to attach to them very well.

00:55:38   If they were, they would have to make sacrifices

00:55:41   on the physical shape in some way.

00:55:43   Maybe having an attachment slot,

00:55:46   kinda like the way the Apple Watch straps

00:55:49   slide into a groove in the case.

00:55:51   If there was something like that,

00:55:54   or some way for things to physically attach securely

00:55:58   to an iPad without just magnetically sticking to the back?

00:56:01   - I mean the magnets are pretty good though.

00:56:03   I think they do, I like the magnets.

00:56:05   I think they do a good job with getting the cases.

00:56:07   I didn't think I would like them 'cause I used to have

00:56:08   like on my original 9.7 inch Pro.

00:56:10   Do you remember the cases that came,

00:56:11   the Apple cases for the 9.7 inch Pro?

00:56:13   They actually like wrapped around the edges

00:56:15   and hooked over the front.

00:56:16   Those were great, very secure.

00:56:18   I really loved that.

00:56:19   My son's got that iPad now,

00:56:20   although it's kind of fun, it's last legs.

00:56:22   But the flat ones, the sort of ice cream sandwich ones

00:56:25   that go on the flat ones now,

00:56:27   It doesn't look like it should work,

00:56:28   but they work pretty well.

00:56:30   I think where things start to fall apart

00:56:31   is the keyboard stuff,

00:56:32   'cause I'm just talking about the flat cases or whatever,

00:56:34   but once you start putting in more heavyweight things

00:56:37   in there or trying to construct a little precarious laptop

00:56:40   out of it, that's where you need like the

00:56:43   apparently extremely expensive technology in the,

00:56:46   well, you should finish telling me the adjective things.

00:56:48   Magic means it has a track lab.

00:56:49   What does it mean when it costs 300 something dollars

00:56:51   and had like this weird armature inside it?

00:56:53   - Oh, that just means iPad keyboard.

00:56:55   - No, you know what I'm talking about?

00:56:56   It's Casey's one.

00:56:57   that holds the thing up.

00:56:58   Is there a word in the product name

00:56:59   that lets me know it's that one,

00:57:00   or is it just the price?

00:57:01   - No, the price tells you very clearly, yeah.

00:57:03   Yeah, no, it's just, and so, as far as I can tell,

00:57:06   is magic ever used with folio,

00:57:11   or are those mutually exclusive?

00:57:12   'Cause I think folio means the old kind

00:57:15   where it's just like two flat things

00:57:17   that sandwich together, right?

00:57:19   And there's usually--

00:57:20   - Yeah, folio is actually a word that means something,

00:57:21   so I give them some leeway on that one,

00:57:23   like it makes some sense.

00:57:24   - Yeah, and there's no trackpad with Folio,

00:57:27   as far as I'm aware.

00:57:28   - Well, slow down so we can get this all wrong.

00:57:29   The Magic Keyboard Folio is a $250 thing--

00:57:32   - That has a trackpad, yeah.

00:57:33   - That has a trackpad that is for the iPad,

00:57:35   which by the way, I did play with in store very briefly.

00:57:38   It was good.

00:57:39   - Oh, smart is what's mutually exclusive from Magic.

00:57:42   All right, so it can either be smart or magic,

00:57:45   and smart means it does not have a trackpad.

00:57:49   Magic means it does and costs a bajillion dollars.

00:57:52   Not that the smart ones are particularly inexpensive,

00:57:54   they're just less insanely expensive.

00:57:57   - And that again makes no sense.

00:57:59   Because magic is not the opposite of smart

00:58:00   and neither one says anything about track pants.

00:58:02   - Yeah, I know.

00:58:03   But anyway, it is, I would love to someday get to a point

00:58:06   in Apple's iPad lineup, and obviously it's all jumbled up

00:58:08   right now and we discussed possibly why

00:58:10   with supply chain and whatever,

00:58:11   but I would love to get to a point in Apple's lineup

00:58:14   where every new iPad doesn't have its own

00:58:18   completely different and incompatible set of accessories.

00:58:21   'Cause if they're gonna have this lineup

00:58:22   that has many different models in it.

00:58:25   Obviously, between the 11-ish inch size class

00:58:28   and the 12.9 inch, yeah, you gotta have

00:58:30   a different keyboard for that

00:58:32   because it's a very different size.

00:58:33   But there are so many iPads now in the 11-ish inch range

00:58:37   that are all almost the same size.

00:58:39   Like if they just made them all the same size

00:58:43   and made them all use the same frickin' pencil

00:58:45   and the same two or three keyboard options,

00:58:48   different price and complexity categories,

00:58:50   that would be so nice.

00:58:52   'Cause as it is right now, it's so absurdly,

00:58:56   I mean, it's expensive for one,

00:58:58   but I don't think they would see that as a bad thing.

00:59:00   But it's also just incredibly wasteful.

00:59:02   Like there's all the, you know,

00:59:04   when I upgraded from my old A12X 2018 iPad

00:59:09   that Casey just updated away from,

00:59:10   to the M1 this past summer,

00:59:13   I had to get a new keyboard cover

00:59:14   because the old one didn't,

00:59:16   it wouldn't fit the camera plateau of the new one.

00:59:18   - Oh yeah, that's a bummer.

00:59:20   - It felt dumb.

00:59:21   Like why am I, like there goes 180 bucks or whatever

00:59:24   that I didn't have to spend,

00:59:25   and then what do I do with this keyboard?

00:59:27   Like I tried to give it away to family members

00:59:29   who still had the old iPad, they didn't need it.

00:59:31   I ended up, it's in a closet somewhere,

00:59:33   I've forgotten exactly where,

00:59:35   and you know, probably in two or three years

00:59:37   I'll find it and throw it away.

00:59:38   That's a waste, you know?

00:59:39   And there's so many situations like that

00:59:41   where like if they would stop changing the accessories

00:59:44   like every year for these iPads

00:59:45   that change a few millimeters here and there,

00:59:48   and you know, the camera bump gets a little bit bigger,

00:59:50   moves around, if they could design them in a more

00:59:53   holistic and forward looking way so that both the iPads

00:59:56   and the accessories, design them both together

00:59:58   to create a world where there's just like,

01:00:02   there's an iPad keyboard and there's an iPad keyboard

01:00:04   with a trackpad and those come in two sizes and that's it.

01:00:07   Like that would be amazing.

01:00:09   - Now those keyboards and covers that attach though

01:00:12   are in many respects wear items for iPads.

01:00:15   Like that they're not, they are the outside of the thing.

01:00:18   They are going to wear down.

01:00:20   They are going to degrade just like the brakes on your car

01:00:23   and the oil in your engine, or not your engine, Marco,

01:00:25   well, one of your engines, anyway.

01:00:27   And so I think their useful lifetime is not great,

01:00:30   which really argues on not being $300 items,

01:00:34   because by the time you're done with that iPad,

01:00:36   if it has a nice long life,

01:00:37   those accessories, if you actually use them,

01:00:39   are pretty beat up.

01:00:40   I think what they've currently done,

01:00:42   like with the Pro lines, the flat-sided iPad Pros,

01:00:46   they've had some amount of accessory continuity,

01:00:49   But I don't think you can hope for accessory continuity

01:00:52   anymore for any longer stretches than you get

01:00:55   on the laptops, right?

01:00:57   Not that laptops have many accessories,

01:00:58   but there are generational form factor changes

01:01:01   and there's no way that Apple is going to make an accessory

01:01:04   or a form factor change with an eye towards making

01:01:08   the same accessory work across generations like that.

01:01:10   They just won't.

01:01:11   The cameras will change and move.

01:01:13   They will decide it's a different size,

01:01:14   a different shape, has different accessories,

01:01:16   different ports, different attachment things

01:01:17   for the pencil.

01:01:19   there's no way that they're going to have that continuity.

01:01:22   And on the phone, occasionally they've had multiple years

01:01:26   in a row where you could share accessories,

01:01:27   but that's about it.

01:01:29   And the phone is probably the closest analog,

01:01:31   because why do they keep changing size and shape?

01:01:33   Well, arguably the phone has even less reason

01:01:35   to change size and shape, because the possible forms,

01:01:38   the possible sizes for phones are much more narrow

01:01:41   than an iPad, which goes from the mini to the 12.9 inch

01:01:45   and could go even bigger than that.

01:01:46   There's plenty of room for a bigger iPad

01:01:48   we talked about all the time,

01:01:49   and the cameras move around, all the buttons move around,

01:01:53   I don't think you're ever gonna see continuity in that area.

01:01:56   It would be nice if they could at least have continuity

01:01:58   of attachment point and then just have

01:02:01   the cutouts be different or whatever.

01:02:03   But I mean, if you think of it,

01:02:07   you don't have continuity of keyboards across laptops

01:02:09   'cause when you buy a new laptop,

01:02:10   it comes with its own new keyboard

01:02:11   that exactly fits that laptop 'cause they don't detach.

01:02:13   They're not detachable.

01:02:14   but because the iPad is a floppy keyboard sold a la carte,

01:02:19   you have to end up buying the accessories

01:02:22   and you should count yourself lucky

01:02:23   if like Casey your accessory actually lasts

01:02:25   through more than one device.

01:02:26   But I don't think,

01:02:28   you know, we're not like we're gonna reach a point

01:02:29   where they say, well, we're done with the cameras,

01:02:30   we're not gonna improve them anymore.

01:02:32   And I also don't think Apple's gonna do the thing

01:02:33   where they say, let's make a camera race that's massive

01:02:36   that will hold us for the next 10 years

01:02:37   'cause that's just not the Apple way.

01:02:39   - To that end though, the Magic Keyboard, right?

01:02:43   not the folio, but the magic keyboard,

01:02:45   the cantilever thing.

01:02:46   Mine is definitely showing its age

01:02:48   after just a couple of years.

01:02:49   And I don't travel with my iPad,

01:02:52   I shouldn't say travel.

01:02:53   I don't bring my iPad everywhere.

01:02:55   I use it probably daily,

01:02:58   and I will often bring it in the car or something

01:03:01   if I'm gonna be a passenger for a while.

01:03:03   But it is definitely showing its age.

01:03:05   Like some of the outer,

01:03:07   I don't know how to describe this,

01:03:08   but like the outer thin layers kind of peeling away

01:03:11   to show the interior layer on some of the edges

01:03:14   and in some spots.

01:03:15   And yeah, it is a wear item at, what is this,

01:03:18   like 350 bucks that I paid for this,

01:03:20   or something like that, whatever scene amount of money is.

01:03:22   - Yeah, 300, I think it's like 300 and 350

01:03:24   for the two sizes.

01:03:25   - Wait 'til you find out how much brake pads cost.

01:03:27   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:03:28   - A lot of that's labor though, so still.

01:03:30   - Especially if you drive a German car, let me tell you.

01:03:33   But anyway, yeah, it's 300 bucks,

01:03:35   I think you are right, Marco.

01:03:36   - Does the car's nationality make it drive faster

01:03:39   and need more braking?

01:03:40   - And it does make the parts more expensive.

01:03:42   - It makes the parts more expensive.

01:03:44   But I did play very briefly with Magic Keyboard Folio

01:03:47   in the new iPad 10th generation.

01:03:50   I only spent just 30, 45 seconds with it,

01:03:53   but I mean, it was nice.

01:03:54   I liked it, I don't have too much to say about it.

01:03:56   I agree that kickstands are not really my jam

01:03:59   'cause I do use my iPad on my lap,

01:04:01   especially in the car, but not exclusively in the car,

01:04:03   kind of a lot, and kickstands are not a great fit for that.

01:04:06   I do like the kind of tearability of this new Magic Keyboard Folio where you can just

01:04:12   kind of like tear the iPad off of it and the keyboard is kind of left behind and you still

01:04:17   have the kickstand attached.

01:04:18   But honestly it's not particularly hard to get the iPad out of the Magic Keyboard, the

01:04:23   cantilevered Magic Keyboard.

01:04:25   So I don't think this is for me, obviously, but if you're a folio kickstandy kind of person

01:04:32   then it's nice.

01:04:33   But yeah, my new iPad, I like it.

01:04:37   It is not a revolutionary change from the 2018 model, which I knew.

01:04:43   One of the things I like about it is that it does have 5G and much faster cellular,

01:04:48   because I am a huge fan, as I think we covered last week, huge fan of cellular iPads.

01:04:53   And so I am looking forward to being able to use this on my beloved "Don't Call It a

01:04:56   Park Bench but Picnic" table and get my, hypothetically, get my ridiculously fast speeds.

01:05:02   I was very flummoxed for a moment as I was doing the transfer from one iPad to the other

01:05:07   because it wouldn't let me just port the cellular account.

01:05:11   And I was like, "What?"

01:05:13   And it said that it was there, but it was like grayed out.

01:05:15   Like I couldn't port it from the old iPad.

01:05:17   And I was like, "What?

01:05:18   Oh, oh right, this has an actual physical SIM.

01:05:20   How quickly we forget what physical SIMs are?"

01:05:23   So I just had a brain fart and I didn't even remember it.

01:05:28   It is a little weird though that this M2 equipped iPad Pro is on paper kind of sort of more

01:05:35   powerful than the MacBook Pro I'm talking to you on right now.

01:05:38   I looked up Geekbench scores.

01:05:40   I only spent a moment on this, but I found a Geekbench score that I think is for an equivalent

01:05:44   of my M1 Max MacBook Pro.

01:05:47   Single core score 1337, lite.

01:05:50   Multi core 10, 155.

01:05:52   So 1337, 10,155.

01:05:55   On the M2 MacBook Air, because I couldn't find one on the iPad Pro, M2 MacBook Air,

01:06:00   which hypothetically should be the same, single core is 1930, so a change of about 44% if

01:06:06   I did that math right, so it's 1930 instead of 1337.

01:06:10   Multi-core score is down a bit though, 8926 instead of 10155.

01:06:15   So in single core anyway, this iPad is faster than my computer, even though iPadOS is crippling

01:06:22   it in every measurable way, but that's neither here nor there.

01:06:25   It's a weird feeling.

01:06:26   I'm not sure how I feel about that, but nevertheless, it's fast.

01:06:30   I like it.

01:06:31   The transfer process was a little bit wonky, but all in all, it worked mostly okay.

01:06:38   One of the things that I really love about Apple, I just love this, is that there are

01:06:42   times when there's a spinner and that's it.

01:06:47   It's just spinning.

01:06:48   I don't have a progress bar.

01:06:50   I don't have any feedback.

01:06:52   No sort of log or anything I can look at.

01:06:54   Nope, just spinning.

01:06:56   You should count yourself lucky to have a spinner,

01:06:58   because the ailment that I see in a lot of Apple's UIs,

01:07:01   they do this thing that I've been conditioned by years

01:07:03   as a web developer never to do, which is you do something

01:07:07   to go to the next step in a process, click a button,

01:07:10   tap a link, enter something in a field or whatever.

01:07:13   And before you get to the point where it shows a spinner

01:07:16   or any kind of progress, there is this long period of time

01:07:19   where all of the controls on the screen that you're on

01:07:22   are still perfectly active, still sitting there.

01:07:24   that button that you pressed,

01:07:25   it may have even highlighted when you pressed it.

01:07:27   It could be a button that says next, continue, save, update,

01:07:30   whatever it is that you think you did.

01:07:32   You pressed it, maybe if you're lucky,

01:07:34   you saw it highlight when you pressed it.

01:07:36   And there's this period of time

01:07:38   where the page is just staring at you going like,

01:07:40   yeah, here I am on the screen

01:07:42   that you just thought you interacted with, right?

01:07:44   Nothing on the screen, absolutely nothing.

01:07:46   And then six seconds later, oh, a spinner appears.

01:07:50   It's like, that is the worst, because I understand,

01:07:54   Maybe it's like there's a lag or a server thing or whatever,

01:07:56   but because on the web you're accustomed to the idea

01:07:59   that you are distant from your user,

01:08:01   you must provide immediate feedback that says,

01:08:04   disable the Submit button,

01:08:08   cover the screen with something immediately.

01:08:11   Client-side, let them know that you have successfully

01:08:13   performed an operation that we are then going

01:08:16   to do something about.

01:08:17   You don't have to click anymore.

01:08:19   Don't try to interact with the screen anymore.

01:08:21   You're done with the screen.

01:08:22   You have to communicate that immediately,

01:08:24   not in a way that requires you to get a response

01:08:26   from a server before you do that.

01:08:28   I cannot count the number of things I've done with Apple,

01:08:30   including things like buying stuff or whatever,

01:08:32   where you interact with the screen,

01:08:34   and then it just sits there staring at you,

01:08:36   looking exactly like it did before you interacted with it,

01:08:38   and you're like, okay, did that work?

01:08:42   Should I press it?

01:08:45   Oh, a spinner, okay.

01:08:46   The worst, the worst Apple.

01:08:48   Apple University, there should be,

01:08:50   I know that's not what Apple University is about,

01:08:51   but there should be an Apple University

01:08:53   that reminds people of the basic rules of user interface.

01:08:56   Let the user know immediately

01:08:57   that they have successfully done the thing

01:08:59   and do not let them attempt to do anything else.

01:09:01   I'm smart enough not to go back

01:09:03   and start stabbing at the screen,

01:09:04   but how many people are just like,

01:09:05   "Oh, did that work?

01:09:06   "Let me press it again, let me press it again."

01:09:08   Disable the buttons, cover the screen,

01:09:10   put something up immediately.

01:09:11   Anyway, rant over.

01:09:12   - Well, so I was at the stage, enter iPad passcode,

01:09:16   you know, and it says,

01:09:17   "The passcode you used to unlock this iPad

01:09:18   "will also be used to access safe passwords

01:09:19   and other sensitive data you store in iCloud. So I entered it and the next or

01:09:24   continue or done whatever button in the upper right hand corner of this like

01:09:27   window turned into a spinner and I waited and I waited and I waited. I have

01:09:34   no idea what's happening. It would be super cool Apple if you could give me

01:09:38   any amount of feedback as to whether or not this is progressing. So eventually I

01:09:44   mashed down on the lock button and it puts puts up a little like alert saying

01:09:47   "Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

01:09:48   you haven't done setting up.

01:09:50   You haven't finished setting up.

01:09:51   What do you wanna do here?"

01:09:52   - How long was eventually?

01:09:53   - I don't know, I think I had like five minutes, maybe.

01:09:56   And maybe it was spinning, who knows?

01:09:58   Who knows?

01:09:59   - I feel like the amount of time

01:10:00   that you wait in an indeterminate spinner

01:10:02   is sort of like, it's always based on your estimation

01:10:05   of how long you think this should take,

01:10:07   and also your estimation of the,

01:10:09   what are the consequences

01:10:11   if I interrupt this in the middle and it screws stuff up.

01:10:13   Setting up an iPad, consequences don't seem that bad.

01:10:15   You haven't actually done anything yet,

01:10:16   It's not filled with your stuff yet, or even if it is,

01:10:18   you can always redo it.

01:10:19   So you might have not much patience there,

01:10:21   but there are other operations where you're like,

01:10:22   I'm literally gonna let this sit overnight

01:10:24   because if it screws up, I'm gonna have a real problem.

01:10:27   - Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.

01:10:28   But please, Apple, I know you're allergic

01:10:31   to providing any sort of, I don't know,

01:10:33   useful friggin' feedback about what's going on,

01:10:35   but it would be nice if, hey, I don't know,

01:10:38   maybe you could give us a little bit of feedback

01:10:41   other than it's spinning.

01:10:43   It's spinning.

01:10:45   It's spinning, like come on, please.

01:10:48   Please. - At least you got

01:10:49   the spinner. - That's true.

01:10:50   So anyway, so what I ended up doing was shutting it down,

01:10:52   restarting it, and to Apple's credit,

01:10:54   like, you know, everything came up,

01:10:55   and when I went to settings, it was like,

01:10:57   oh, you're not finished setting up your iPad.

01:10:58   Let's continue where you left off.

01:10:59   - And by not finished setting up,

01:11:00   it means you haven't signed up for Apple Arcade yet.

01:11:03   - Yeah, yeah, true. (laughing)

01:11:05   But the most annoying thing, and it actually did--

01:11:06   - More ads, just more ads.

01:11:09   - So the most annoying thing about it, though,

01:11:10   in my personal opinion, is test flight apps,

01:11:14   which maybe this is like a, this is a,

01:11:16   it's fine for Marco Merlin, whatever sort of thing,

01:11:18   but TestFlight apps don't do any sort of auto downloading,

01:11:21   like TestFlight itself auto downloads,

01:11:22   but then you have to go in and like download them all.

01:11:24   And on the iPad anyway,

01:11:26   it didn't put them back in the location,

01:11:27   the icons back in locations I wanted the icons,

01:11:30   you know, from the last iPad.

01:11:31   I think it might've done that properly on the phone,

01:11:33   I don't recall, but that was really frustrating.

01:11:35   I'd really like it if Apple could fix that.

01:11:37   The time estimate it gave for the transfer

01:11:39   was under promised and over delivered,

01:11:41   so I was happy about that.

01:11:42   It took me about an hour and change, I think,

01:11:45   something along those lines.

01:11:46   But all in all, it's nice.

01:11:47   The hover thing is cool.

01:11:50   I mean, I don't know if it's really doing much for me,

01:11:52   but it's neat that it works in that it, you know,

01:11:54   when you're using the pencil as kind of like a pointer,

01:11:58   it feels very similar to basically the same, in fact,

01:12:01   as having the point, you know, the mouse pointer

01:12:03   or cursor or whatever, the mouse pointer, you know,

01:12:06   jiggling around the screen, which is neat.

01:12:08   I like it when you're writing a note,

01:12:09   you can see a little dot for where you're about

01:12:11   start writing in Notes. Yeah, I like it. There's nothing about this that has revolutionized my world

01:12:17   yet, but I am happy to have a four-year newer battery. I'm happy to have a four-year less

01:12:22   damaged screen. Not that I dropped it or anything, just the other one has a lot of scratches.

01:12:26   I'm happy to have 5G. So far so good. And I'm genuinely very, very happy that the old accessories

01:12:33   do indeed, though they're the ones I care about anyway, do indeed still work with this, which was

01:12:38   a welcome chain. I mean I knew that was supposed to be the case but it's not the

01:12:43   way it often is so I'm pretty happy about that. So far I would say if

01:12:47   you're coming off a 2018 or newer model, yeah, I mean do you want to spend a whole

01:12:51   bunch of money or do you not? But if you're coming off of something older or

01:12:54   perhaps not an iPad Pro, heck yeah man, go for it. It's good stuff.

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01:14:49   - All right, let's talk about Ventura 16.1,

01:14:54   and iPadOS 16.1 and so on.

01:14:57   I really, really, really wanna talk about stage manager,

01:15:00   but let's save that for a moment.

01:15:02   Did you know system preferences on Ventura

01:15:05   is a hot friggin' mess?

01:15:07   Oh my God, why didn't anyone say anything about this?

01:15:10   It's terrible!

01:15:11   - I think you mean system settings.

01:15:14   - Oh yeah, whatever.

01:15:16   No, it is bad.

01:15:17   It doesn't look good.

01:15:20   I don't think it functions well.

01:15:22   I think there are decent bones here

01:15:24   and I think it could get better,

01:15:25   but ooh, it is not good right now.

01:15:28   Do not want.

01:15:29   - Yeah, I've only used it briefly.

01:15:32   So we were saying earlier about how

01:15:35   the login items thing has changed.

01:15:37   There are areas of it that are better.

01:15:40   There is new functionality.

01:15:42   There is old functionality that has been improved,

01:15:45   like some of the ways that you had to give permissions

01:15:47   for certain things earlier or approve kernel extensions

01:15:50   and stuff like that.

01:15:51   the way in the old System Preferences app was a disaster.

01:15:55   Anything that had the lock on the bottom of the screen,

01:15:57   you had to first notice that, unlock it.

01:16:00   - Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.

01:16:02   - There were so many things about the old Settings app,

01:16:04   the System Preferences app, rather,

01:16:06   that were terrible and that needed to be improved.

01:16:10   And so this is not to say that we should necessarily

01:16:14   keep it the same forever the way it used to be.

01:16:16   However, the new settings app is just a really cheap

01:16:21   and crappy feeling.

01:16:23   Like it feels like a web view.

01:16:26   It feels like a non-native app.

01:16:29   It feels like something that we would make fun of.

01:16:32   - Web views are resizable.

01:16:33   - Oh yeah.

01:16:35   Yeah, like it just, it does not feel like

01:16:38   a high quality app.

01:16:39   It does not fit in with the system at all.

01:16:42   It is, like all the little dumb little like iOS switches

01:16:45   that I have to now control with a mouse awkwardly.

01:16:48   Apple has been arguing for years,

01:16:51   touch interfaces and computer,

01:16:54   like desktop, laptop interfaces are different.

01:16:57   And it's best to design them differently

01:17:00   and optimize for their respective inputs and input methods.

01:17:05   I guess all that logic went out the window

01:17:07   because now they've brought over

01:17:08   like iOS switch controls and stuff

01:17:10   that make no sense on the Mac

01:17:13   in the name of, I guess, consistency,

01:17:15   but I think it's more like they don't have

01:17:17   any more engineers working inside of Apple

01:17:19   who know AppKit, and so they're forced

01:17:22   to use all of this, like, SwiftUI.

01:17:24   I don't know, but whatever it is,

01:17:27   they've changed this major part of the Mac.

01:17:30   The settings app is a major part of the Mac.

01:17:33   Alongside some of the good they have done

01:17:35   with the additional functionality

01:17:36   and the rethinking of some of the crappier areas

01:17:38   of the old system preferences app,

01:17:40   alongside of that, they've wrapped this all

01:17:42   in this pretty terrible UI.

01:17:46   Both the technical bones of it, I think,

01:17:48   are really kind of sloppy, and more importantly,

01:17:51   like the UI design of it.

01:17:53   Technical bugs you could improve over time.

01:17:56   The whole UI paradigm and the UI design of it

01:18:00   are just terrible, and they just feel crappy.

01:18:03   They don't feel like you're using a Mac.

01:18:05   It feels like you're using a Samsung-made web app

01:18:09   that's made to look, or like, remember like when

01:18:11   the iPhone first came out and it was the hot thing.

01:18:14   People made these WordPress themes

01:18:15   that would make your WordPress blog appear

01:18:18   like an iPhone app when viewed in Mobile Safari.

01:18:20   Remember those?

01:18:22   And they were horrible.

01:18:23   Like you'd let--

01:18:23   - Fake table views and the whole rigmarole.

01:18:25   - Yeah, and like fake navigation bars.

01:18:29   So it would be like skinned like an iOS app

01:18:32   in your WordPress blog when viewed in Mobile Safari

01:18:34   back forever ago, right?

01:18:36   But you'd use it as the user

01:18:37   and it just felt like a crappy web page version

01:18:42   of an iOS interface, not like the real thing.

01:18:45   - I feel like that's insulting to web pages

01:18:47   because if I had given this job,

01:18:49   hey, we have system preferences,

01:18:51   it's a mess, we need it to be redesigned.

01:18:53   - Give that to any web designer.

01:18:55   They will design something better than this

01:18:57   because they'll understand the job.

01:18:59   They'll know they have to make it responsive,

01:19:02   they'll make it work well in the allotted space,

01:19:04   maybe if you make the window wider,

01:19:06   it will expand into that place.

01:19:09   The state of the art of web design

01:19:11   could tackle this problem.

01:19:12   It is basically an information architecture problem,

01:19:15   which is a discipline that maybe you buy a different name,

01:19:18   maybe they call it, it's under the umbrella of UX these days,

01:19:20   but IA used to be a big thing

01:19:22   back in the early days of the web.

01:19:23   And the problem was, oh, we've got this big company,

01:19:25   we gotta make a website.

01:19:26   How do we make that, how do we organize that

01:19:28   and make it tractable and able to serve the user's needs?

01:19:32   Because when someone comes to our website,

01:19:33   they probably want to accomplish something.

01:19:35   Do they want to find out what the hours of a restaurant is?

01:19:37   Do they want to download the menu?

01:19:38   Do they want to find out where the locations

01:19:40   of our stores are?

01:19:41   Do they want to shop for something and buy it?

01:19:43   Do they want to find out information about our products?

01:19:45   Like, do they want to find a contact address?

01:19:47   Like, that's just information architecture.

01:19:48   I mean, faced with an entire website for like a big company,

01:19:51   web designers would come in and they would figure out

01:19:54   how do we organize this information,

01:19:56   how do we present it to people in a way

01:19:57   that they can navigate it,

01:19:59   that they understand where they are,

01:20:01   that they can find what they want and accomplish their task.

01:20:03   And that is a, you know, I mean, it's not,

01:20:06   the web is not the place where all its disciplines came out,

01:20:08   but it is the most recent and most closely analogous problem

01:20:11   to organizing system settings.

01:20:13   When I look at this, I say,

01:20:14   any half-decent web designer would have done better at this.

01:20:17   Forget about the technologies behind it,

01:20:18   although I think if you did it as a web view,

01:20:19   it would still be nicer than this.

01:20:21   But what they wouldn't do is make it a fixed-size,

01:20:24   two-pane master detail thing

01:20:25   with multiple levels of hidden hierarchy

01:20:27   that within each thing pops up additional windows

01:20:31   on top of everything that look incredibly janky,

01:20:34   there are places in this thing where there's like,

01:20:35   you have to know that the little I in a circle

01:20:37   next to something is actually a button

01:20:39   that leads you to more settings in a pop-up window

01:20:41   that displays over the top of things,

01:20:43   and there's also a button called options,

01:20:45   and there's also a little button with three dots on it

01:20:47   and a downward-facing arrow all on the same screen.

01:20:50   What is this?

01:20:51   Have they ever seen a computer before?

01:20:53   No one on the web would do that.

01:20:54   No one would ever put those controls on the web

01:20:56   because nobody has any idea what they are.

01:20:58   It is such a mess, it makes me so angry,

01:21:01   and this is setting aside any bugs of like,

01:21:03   oh, it doesn't display properly

01:21:05   and something is truncated or whatever.

01:21:06   This just, I mean, I'm getting angry about this

01:21:09   because like during the whole time it's like,

01:21:11   oh, it's just a baby, it'll get better,

01:21:12   you'll see, whatever.

01:21:13   And I held my tongue 'cause let's see what it looks like.

01:21:15   But in the end, like you said, Marco,

01:21:18   the bones of this thing, they're wrong, they're bad.

01:21:21   And comparing it to the web, it's like, seriously,

01:21:24   this is a web design task, it's not that tricky,

01:21:26   it's not as big as a big corporate website,

01:21:28   but it should have been tackled in that way.

01:21:30   And when I look at this, I think about Windows,

01:21:33   which I have limited experience with,

01:21:34   but you know, anyone who's used Windows

01:21:36   had seen the various runs that Microsoft has taken

01:21:38   at reimagining and reorganizing their system settings

01:21:42   from Windows 7 to Windows 8 to Windows 10.

01:21:46   I'm not gonna particularly endorse

01:21:48   the approaches that they've taken,

01:21:50   but every single one of those approaches

01:21:52   to redesigning settings in Windows

01:21:54   is more thoughtful and better executed

01:21:58   than system settings in Ventura.

01:21:59   And when I'm saying something in Windows was not,

01:22:02   not necessarily better,

01:22:03   but more thoughtful and better executed.

01:22:05   When I look at settings in Windows 10,

01:22:07   I can understand how they arrived at this,

01:22:11   how they put their minds together,

01:22:12   the meetings they had, they said,

01:22:13   "Here's what we have to organize.

01:22:14   "Here's the things that most people do.

01:22:15   "How can we put that in a UI?"

01:22:17   And I know it's working,

01:22:18   because I have no idea where anything is in Windows,

01:22:19   and I can navigate it to get my job set.

01:22:22   It annoys me, because I think it is a wrapper

01:22:24   over the real settings that are underneath,

01:22:25   and you gotta click properties

01:22:27   to get to the thing you really want

01:22:28   down in some UI from 1995,

01:22:30   like I'm not endorsing the Windows approach,

01:22:32   but it's clear that it was better thought out than this.

01:22:35   'Cause this is like, this strikes me as something

01:22:37   where they had too small of a team

01:22:39   and not the right people on this team.

01:22:41   Because what you needed, not that you needed web designers,

01:22:43   but you needed information architects and UI designers.

01:22:48   And then secondarily, a very good tech team

01:22:51   to actually do the hard work,

01:22:52   and I don't wanna describe the tech,

01:22:53   but the hard work of actually making a new UI

01:22:56   and all these very technical things under the covers,

01:22:58   'cause they didn't change all the underlying stuff,

01:23:00   but they have to put a new UI on all of it,

01:23:01   that's a huge task.

01:23:03   They accomplished that task,

01:23:04   but the UI they put on top looks like an afterthought

01:23:07   and it makes me angry.

01:23:08   - Yeah, it looks bad, it feels bad,

01:23:12   it does not look or feel anything

01:23:15   like anything else on the Mac, nor should it.

01:23:18   Like nothing else on the Mac should look like that.

01:23:21   - Don't copy this in your app.

01:23:23   - Yeah, please don't.

01:23:23   And I hope this isn't the direction Apple's bringing

01:23:25   their other apps, but that's an interesting question.

01:23:30   All the Apple apps on the platform,

01:23:32   their preferences windows look like the old system

01:23:37   preferences, are they going to go through all of their apps

01:23:39   and redo all their preferences to look like system settings

01:23:42   now, I hope not, but it's also weird that they're different

01:23:45   now, like it just, Apple is so rapidly losing the ability

01:23:52   to make Mac software.

01:23:55   And it's very concerning for the company

01:23:57   that makes the most and the most important Mac software.

01:24:00   Like, it's been a long time since they made a great Mac app,

01:24:02   let's be honest, but I mean, this is another level

01:24:06   of willfully throwing away the things that make a Mac good.

01:24:11   And it's not to say that you can never update those things

01:24:14   and change those things with changing times.

01:24:16   You can and you should and they should and they have.

01:24:19   And not all the changes have been good,

01:24:21   but at least they have moved the Mac forward over time.

01:24:24   But I don't know how anybody can look at this

01:24:27   and say this is good.

01:24:29   The only defenses I've ever heard about it

01:24:32   were people who play What Aboutism

01:24:34   by pointing out flaws in the old System Preferences app,

01:24:37   which again, those are valid.

01:24:39   There are tons of flaws in the old System Preferences app

01:24:42   that could be made better and should be made better.

01:24:44   - Yeah, and it could use an overhaul.

01:24:45   It needed an overhaul.

01:24:46   I'm not saying it's not an overhaul.

01:24:47   It absolutely needs to be overhauled.

01:24:48   And all of the things that,

01:24:50   any complaint that you hear is like,

01:24:51   oh, I can't find anything.

01:24:52   Like there's always gonna be unfamiliarity

01:24:54   when you have an overhaul,

01:24:54   but the old one needed an overhaul.

01:24:56   It's just not this overhaul.

01:24:58   It needed a better overhaul.

01:24:59   An overhaul that was better thought out.

01:25:02   In some ways, this constrained itself too much

01:25:06   to the old style, in particular, the fixed size window.

01:25:09   And just like that, that seems to dictate the whole,

01:25:11   like I can picture in my head the designer-y,

01:25:14   dribble-style mock-up of like,

01:25:16   what a real modern system preferences would be like.

01:25:18   Jason Snell talked about it in a few of his articles.

01:25:20   we'll put links in the show notes of like,

01:25:22   imagine if this had been like,

01:25:24   even if it had just been as good as a decent iPad port

01:25:27   of a phone app, where it becomes a three column view,

01:25:29   or you have an actual hierarchy

01:25:30   where things are organized better,

01:25:32   where when you get to the leaf nodes,

01:25:33   they look reasonably well thought out

01:25:35   instead of the weirdest jumble of controls

01:25:37   you've ever seen in your entire life.

01:25:39   I wish I should find the ones with the little I

01:25:41   and the like the I and the options button,

01:25:43   all the other things like,

01:25:44   you look at this and as a Mac user,

01:25:46   as a web user, as an iOS user,

01:25:48   you have no idea what to control where it might lead to.

01:25:51   Just cause it to crash by clicking around in it.

01:25:54   There are some bugs too, but whatever.

01:25:55   It's baffling to me that the things

01:25:59   that are in the detail pane,

01:26:01   that they think that is a Mac UI.

01:26:03   I don't know what it is, it's not even a good webpage.

01:26:05   - Yeah, you're right.

01:26:07   I guess comparing it to a webpage earlier,

01:26:10   and what I was really saying was it's like those old

01:26:12   iOS themes of WordPress, which were terrible,

01:26:16   but it's like the Mac UI version of that.

01:26:19   Like it's trying to look like a Mac UI, sort of,

01:26:23   and also trying to look like an iPad UI, sort of,

01:26:26   and it's doing a terrible job at both of those things,

01:26:30   and it ends up looking and feeling and working horribly.

01:26:35   And it feels like, again, it's like those

01:26:38   whole WordPress themes, it feels like,

01:26:41   or like, you ever have some crappy Linux

01:26:45   window manager thing that tries to theme itself

01:26:47   to look like a Mac, it's not even that good.

01:26:50   It's worse than those.

01:26:52   It is a terrible imitation UI.

01:26:56   Samsung makes better UIs now than that.

01:26:59   And Samsung rips off Apple's style better than that.

01:27:03   Why, like how,

01:27:04   how this shipped, who approved this?

01:27:10   Like how, okay, have a project in the company

01:27:14   to redo the system preferences app.

01:27:16   Yeah, it was getting old.

01:27:17   But who approved this design direction?

01:27:21   And who made the call, presumably maybe this spring

01:27:25   sometime, to say, we're gonna get this shipped

01:27:27   in this release?

01:27:28   Because neither of those things should have happened.

01:27:31   This design should never have gotten past initial review,

01:27:35   and whoever's above that, maybe it's Federighi,

01:27:38   should never have said, this is ready to ship

01:27:40   in this version of the OS.

01:27:42   Neither of those, like those are two massive failures

01:27:45   at probably pretty high levels in the company.

01:27:49   Again, this keeps happening.

01:27:51   Like I, oh, what's going on over there?

01:27:54   Like, you know, I try to cut them slack

01:27:57   and I try to make sure we always celebrate

01:28:00   all the good stuff that's going out of the company

01:28:02   because there's a lot of it.

01:28:03   But man, the same problems keep happening.

01:28:06   Like what's going on and is anything,

01:28:09   are they learning?

01:28:11   Are they trying to get better?

01:28:12   Do they even think it's a problem?

01:28:14   I don't know the answer to any of those is yes.

01:28:17   - I just put the little screenshot of my little friend

01:28:20   that I was describing in our Slack channel

01:28:23   if you wanna take a look at it.

01:28:24   For those at home, if you wanna take a look at it,

01:28:26   if you have Ventura, go to the network thing.

01:28:29   It's the third item down on the sidebar.

01:28:32   And then scroll to the bottom

01:28:33   and you get this friendly fellow

01:28:34   just peeking at you over there.

01:28:36   - It's a three dot drop down?

01:28:38   What?

01:28:40   - The iOS and the web convention is three dots

01:28:43   means like a menu with more stuff.

01:28:45   And that kind of came from the phone

01:28:46   where there's not a lot of room on the phone.

01:28:47   And if you want to indicate

01:28:48   like there was the hamburger thing with three lines

01:28:51   and variations on that to say there's a menu

01:28:52   but also the three dots.

01:28:53   It's a convention we're familiar with from the phones

01:28:55   where space is constrained.

01:28:56   I am on a 6K display

01:28:59   and this window can't get any bigger than it is.

01:29:01   And at the very bottom, there is three dots

01:29:03   and also a downward facing Chevron.

01:29:05   And that is not a Mac control.

01:29:07   I don't know what the thing is.

01:29:09   - It is now.

01:29:10   - Can you guess what's under that without clicking on it?

01:29:12   It's the network thing, and you see network,

01:29:14   and it shows, it's just a linear list of items

01:29:16   that are making very poor use of the space,

01:29:18   each of which has a chevron on the right,

01:29:19   because of course there's multiple layers of hierarchy

01:29:21   in this window that can't get any wider, right?

01:29:24   With no animations between them.

01:29:26   And then at the very, very bottom,

01:29:27   next to the help question mark,

01:29:28   there is three buttons and a chevron.

01:29:31   A lot of things in this, like,

01:29:32   you're helped by knowledge of the old system preferences,

01:29:35   because basically, look, if you knew something

01:29:37   exists in the old system preferences,

01:29:39   and you're pretty sure it still exists here,

01:29:40   but you don't see it where you expect,

01:29:42   try clicking all the secret buttons.

01:29:44   Click all the little eyes, click all the little chevrons,

01:29:46   and maybe at the very bottom there's a thing lurking

01:29:48   that has three dots and a downward facing arrow.

01:29:50   Or maybe there's an advanced button,

01:29:53   or maybe there's an option button.

01:29:55   Or maybe there's all three of those in a single pane.

01:29:57   It's not good.

01:29:58   - Cool.

01:30:00   Yeah, so system preferences, it's bad.

01:30:02   - System settings, not preferences.

01:30:04   - Whatever, often costs. - It's really annoying

01:30:05   because as we've been complaining in Slack

01:30:07   and everything about this,

01:30:08   used to writing sys prefs.

01:30:09   It's the shorter way, you know, it's S-Y-S space P-R-E-F-S.

01:30:13   But I can't say sys sets.

01:30:14   - P-R-E-F-S.

01:30:15   - Sys settings, and it's like, when I complained about it,

01:30:18   it makes me type more, just yeah, I'm not enjoying it.

01:30:21   By the way, that's one of the most important updates

01:30:23   and when you're updating a Mac app for Ventura,

01:30:25   you gotta change all your preferences menu items

01:30:27   to say settings, which I did.

01:30:29   They say preferences when you run it

01:30:32   on pre-Ventura systems, which is another, you know,

01:30:34   you have to be careful to do that.

01:30:35   And so you have to change all your help text.

01:30:37   It's great writing the help text that says,

01:30:39   go to the menu and select settings or preferences,

01:30:41   and you have to explain which OSes those apply to.

01:30:42   Every time you mention in help text

01:30:44   what menu item people have to go to,

01:30:46   you gotta do this little dance.

01:30:47   Lots of fun.

01:30:49   - Cool.

01:30:49   You know what else is lots of fun?

01:30:51   Watching the spectacular ways in which Stage Manager breaks

01:30:54   on both iPad and on macOS.

01:30:56   Again, did anyone, why didn't anyone say that this is a mess?

01:31:01   Because holy frickin' crap, this is a mess.

01:31:05   I feel like it's way more stable on Mac OS.

01:31:09   I think it's more interesting and useful for me anyway

01:31:13   on iPad OS, but it is unusable on iPad OS.

01:31:17   It is so, so bad.

01:31:20   It's so bad on iPad.

01:31:22   And on the Mac, I don't care for it, but it mostly works.

01:31:27   I don't, I don't know.

01:31:30   It's like, so I think part of the problem is

01:31:32   I'm a devout Spaces user,

01:31:33   as we've talked about a few times recently.

01:31:35   I really like using spaces.

01:31:36   I think spaces are great.

01:31:38   I like having different spaces.

01:31:40   And even in some cases,

01:31:42   like having one or two full screen apps in a space.

01:31:45   I am a heavy, heavy spaces user.

01:31:47   This is why I couldn't ever get away

01:31:50   from the Magic Mouse or now the Magic Trackpad

01:31:52   because I need those gestures,

01:31:53   two finger swipe and the Magic Mouse,

01:31:55   three fingers on the trackpad,

01:31:57   in order to go between spaces.

01:31:58   It's just part of how I work.

01:32:01   I feel like Stage Manager is like a crappy version of Spaces, and that's probably unfair

01:32:07   because maybe it's just Spaces for a different purpose, but from my point of view, it's like

01:32:12   a crappy version of Spaces.

01:32:14   On the Mac, I tend to have one space on the Ultrafine, so on my accessory monitor, I have

01:32:21   one space that's maybe two-thirds Slack and one-third Messages, and Tiled, so they're

01:32:26   both, you know, they're not literally full screen, but you know, they're in full screen

01:32:29   mode, tiled two thirds and one third. And when I have stage manager turned on, when

01:32:34   I would swipe to that space, messages, the first party app would be black for a beat,

01:32:42   and then the UI would show up. Swipe away, come back, black, oh there it is. Which was

01:32:47   not annoying at all. And then the multi-monitor support in general on Mac OS seemed really

01:32:53   really wonky. I don't know, it didn't seem right to me. Things that were happening on

01:32:58   The left hand monitor would occasionally affect the right hand monitor, but then occasionally

01:33:02   they wouldn't.

01:33:03   It was super weird.

01:33:04   On iPadOS, I forget specifically what I was doing, but I think I was trying to share something

01:33:10   in a share sheet and then send it as a text message or an iMessage and type an aim into

01:33:17   that iMessage and the keyboard was not within the window of the message window or something

01:33:23   like that.

01:33:24   The onscreen keyboard was totally out of whack.

01:33:27   There's a bunch of on-screen keyboard bugs in iPad OS 16.1.

01:33:32   I thought it was just the betas, but now I'm pretty sure I'm on the release.

01:33:35   I removed the beta profile and it says there's no new updates or whatever.

01:33:40   Lots of people have been reporting situations where they're on their iPad and they're supposed

01:33:43   to be able to use the keyboard to enter text in the thing and it doesn't work.

01:33:47   Some people were saying they would see a flash or it would appear and disappear.

01:33:51   My bug is you put the insertion point in a text field and no keyboard appears in any

01:33:56   Orientation just none. There's no way out of it

01:33:59   The only way out of it is to you, you know, leave the app or restart the iPad and that's not great

01:34:03   That's like it's like trying to use your Mac and all of a sudden someone steals your keyboard

01:34:06   I won't give you another one because you know

01:34:08   I suppose I could try to find a Bluetooth keyboard to connect to my iPad to enter text

01:34:12   But if I'm in the middle of doing something and the keyboard literally won't come up. That's a pretty frustrating bug in a shipping OS

01:34:16   So stage manager all the rumors were true. It's a mess system settings all the rumors were true

01:34:25   It's a mess. I haven't yet tried

01:34:27   the shared photos library thing. I am very keen to try it

01:34:35   but I haven't gotten around to updating Aaron's stuff yet

01:34:38   and that's the whole purpose of this is for Aaron to finally get to see

01:34:42   all of the family's photos in the same way you John would finally get to see all the family's photos because I and Tina

01:34:48   or Tina and myself are the keepers of the official family photo albums or photo libraries.

01:34:53   So have you been playing with the shared library stuff yet? I

01:34:56   certainly have so first of all, they didn't mention this but on

01:35:00   Ventura like the word on the street is that it seems pretty good for an initial release and as

01:35:06   predicted on a past show

01:35:07   I knew I would not be able to like wait the appropriate amount of time to

01:35:12   install this OS and start using because I want I've been waited for whatever is a decade and you know, 12 years whatever for the

01:35:18   shared library feature

01:35:20   So I installed Ventura on every single Mac in the house on day one and I updated all the phones 16.1

01:35:27   I just went all in I did massive amounts of backups first

01:35:30   But I went all in because I just I want this feature and to get the benefit of this feature

01:35:35   you kind of have to update everybody because it's I didn't want to like mix and match and you know, so

01:35:39   My experience so far having it's Wednesday. I installed I've been her and everything on Monday

01:35:45   Everything's been fine in terms of OS stability compatibility or whatever all the complaints about system settings are like it's annoying but like

01:35:52   Things aren't crashing didn't break a bunch of my software. It's been very stable for me for whatever that's worth

01:35:58   Three days experience on like five different max

01:36:00   I give it a thumbs up and I did this because I wanted to use the photo shared library

01:36:06   and

01:36:07   I I tried to be cautious about it like

01:36:11   So the first thing is, now that it's really real installed,

01:36:14   like the first time I ever used my real Apple IDs

01:36:15   and this, whatever, my first decision I had to make was,

01:36:19   who will create the shared library?

01:36:22   Will it be my wife who owns the current real family library,

01:36:26   or would it be me?

01:36:27   I'm not sure what the correct move to do there is,

01:36:30   but it's kind of important 'cause it's difficult

01:36:32   to change your mind on that in the future.

01:36:35   Either way, we're on like an iCloud family plan,

01:36:37   we all share like the family,

01:36:39   it's not like a storage thing,

01:36:40   We don't have individual store.

01:36:41   I think it's like all big one family, whatever,

01:36:43   it's the Apple one giant pool of storage thing.

01:36:45   So that's fine.

01:36:47   I kind of regret having my wife's Apple ID

01:36:52   on the family library,

01:36:54   'cause that means as we discussed in the past episodes,

01:36:57   I still have to log in as her on my Mac to do stuff

01:37:00   because shared photo library does not share albums

01:37:03   or book projects or slideshows

01:37:05   or any of the other stuff that I work on.

01:37:06   So I have to be in her library to mess with those things

01:37:09   'cause I've had years worth of those things in there

01:37:10   and I make new ones in there.

01:37:12   So it's not like I can be logged into myself like,

01:37:15   well, maybe if I own the shared library

01:37:18   for whatever that's worth,

01:37:19   whatever quote unquote owning the shared library even means,

01:37:23   maybe I can slowly transition the library to me.

01:37:25   But in the end I wimped out and I said,

01:37:27   she's gonna own the shared library.

01:37:28   Again, I'm not sure what owning means.

01:37:30   Something I read probably on Six Colors from Snell

01:37:33   said basically like the storage for photos

01:37:36   in a shared library, like the iCloud storage,

01:37:38   is attributed to whoever created the shared library.

01:37:42   And again, not that it matters storage-wise,

01:37:44   but I'll just have her own itself.

01:37:46   I created the shared library from her account.

01:37:49   And then as I was gonna start cautiously

01:37:52   playing with this feature, now that everybody's updated,

01:37:54   and it occurred to me something

01:37:56   I hadn't really thought about before.

01:37:58   So my photo library is pushing a terabyte these days.

01:38:02   It used to be on a 500 gig drive, it outgrew that,

01:38:04   now it's pushing a terabyte.

01:38:06   And both I and my wife's Mac,

01:38:08   we have four terabyte boot drives.

01:38:10   And our four terabyte boot drives pretty much hold

01:38:14   all of our stuff plus a complete copy of our photo library,

01:38:18   right, and then with some room to spare, right?

01:38:20   And I figured, okay, if I go through this in my head

01:38:24   and I make this shared photo library

01:38:26   and I start moving essentially all of the photos

01:38:30   from my wife's photo library into the shared library,

01:38:33   'cause that's the family thing,

01:38:36   and I have photos set to download originals,

01:38:40   that will mean that on my Mac,

01:38:44   where currently if I log in as my wife,

01:38:45   she's got the full photo library

01:38:47   with download original set,

01:38:49   I'll have a second copy of every single one of those photos

01:38:54   in my photo library.

01:38:55   Because even though they're the same photos

01:38:57   on the cloud side, as far as my Mac is concerned,

01:39:00   there are two users, me and my wife,

01:39:02   who both have iCloud photo library turned on,

01:39:04   who both have the option check to download originals.

01:39:07   And it fits when it's one terabyte of photos

01:39:09   in my wife's account.

01:39:10   But when I, because on my Mac,

01:39:12   I have a download originals from my photo library too.

01:39:15   I think that counts for the shared photo library as well.

01:39:18   So I'm like, I can't actually fit two copies

01:39:21   of my photo library on my Mac, on my boot drive.

01:39:26   So I wasn't sure what to do about that,

01:39:28   but I figured, well, I mean,

01:39:30   my photo library is not really used,

01:39:32   like the only thing that's in my photo library

01:39:34   is not in the family library, or things

01:39:36   like when I take pictures of receipts or random,

01:39:39   you know, things that I'm not going to keep, right?

01:39:42   And there's a lot of those, but pretty much everything else

01:39:45   there's a copy of in the big library.

01:39:46   So I decided the only way I could deal with this

01:39:48   is to change the option in photos on my account

01:39:52   to be optimized storage instead of download originals.

01:39:56   And I was hoping that would allow me not

01:39:57   to blow through my storage.

01:39:59   So that's what I did.

01:40:00   And then I started moving photos into it.

01:40:02   So I went to her computer, you know,

01:40:03   because I figured why not, instead of pushing back and forth

01:40:05   in accounts on my computer, I went to her computer

01:40:07   and I dragged, you know, the recent five or 10 photos

01:40:11   into the shared library.

01:40:13   And then I looked over at my computer

01:40:14   and I saw them appear, I'm like, cool.

01:40:17   Then I selected a hundred of them.

01:40:19   And I said, you know, move to shared photo library.

01:40:22   I got a message about like,

01:40:23   some of these photos haven't been saved.

01:40:25   They have to be saved first

01:40:26   before you can move into the shared photo library.

01:40:27   I'm like, what?

01:40:28   Saved?

01:40:30   They're saving in the photos app on the Mac?

01:40:31   What does that mean?

01:40:32   The dialogue had a button that said save.

01:40:34   I'm like, I guess save?

01:40:36   I had never seen that before.

01:40:37   I'm testing with the betas.

01:40:39   I hit save.

01:40:40   - Does it mean download?

01:40:41   - Her library has always been set to download originals.

01:40:45   It has never not been set to that.

01:40:46   Everything is downloaded.

01:40:48   I don't know what, you know, anyway.

01:40:50   So I hit save and then, you know,

01:40:52   so the magic of photos on the Mac is,

01:40:55   when you do anything,

01:40:56   if there is any kind of product or syndication,

01:41:00   if you're lucky, there will be one.

01:41:02   And if it is there, it is cleverly hidden

01:41:05   at the bottom of a large scrolling region.

01:41:08   So the sort of detail view on photos is usually scrollable.

01:41:11   If you scroll to the very, very bottom of that thing,

01:41:14   if you're lucky, you will see some

01:41:15   completely inaccurate progress description there, right?

01:41:18   So it's the most well-hidden progress indication,

01:41:21   and it lies, and it doesn't make any sense.

01:41:22   And I spend a lot of time with FSU usage

01:41:25   and OSOF trying to figure out,

01:41:26   is anything literally doing anything?

01:41:28   - Oh my gosh.

01:41:29   I wanna see file system, system calls flying by

01:41:33   and the photo library de-processed

01:41:35   to let me know something is happening

01:41:37   because that progress bar has not moved in hours.

01:41:38   Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

01:41:40   So eventually it let me put like 100 photos in there.

01:41:43   Then I went over and looked at my Mac

01:41:44   and I saw the 100 photos appear.

01:41:45   I'm like, hmm, all right.

01:41:46   And so over the course of a few days,

01:41:48   I got bolder and bolder and started selecting larger

01:41:52   and larger collections of photos from her library.

01:41:56   I had her set to show me just her personal library.

01:41:58   I would select photos and I would either right click

01:42:00   or click on the image menu.

01:42:02   And from the other right click context menu

01:42:04   or the image menu in Mac photos,

01:42:06   I would say move end photos to shared photo library, right?

01:42:10   As I kept doing that, I eventually got to the point

01:42:14   where I was selecting thousands of photos.

01:42:16   And once you select thousands of photos,

01:42:19   whether you right click or you click the image menu

01:42:22   in the menu bar, you get a beach ball.

01:42:24   You just gotta power through that beach ball.

01:42:27   You just have to let it spin for a little while

01:42:29   because what it's basically doing is figuring out,

01:42:32   I guess, how many photos you've selected

01:42:34   and maybe preflighting them to say there's unsaved changes.

01:42:39   Honestly, I don't know what it's doing, but it blocks.

01:42:42   It blocks hard, it beach balls.

01:42:44   Does not mean that it's broken, but you do have to wait.

01:42:48   And then after you wait, be careful that you don't

01:42:51   mouse off of that menu accidentally

01:42:53   because you gotta do the beach ball all over again

01:42:55   once that thing disappears.

01:42:56   - Oh no.

01:42:57   - It doesn't re-display, yeah.

01:43:00   And so I kept doing it in batches,

01:43:01   and what you'll see when I do it in batches is

01:43:04   it will show the hidden progress bar,

01:43:06   the progress at the bottom,

01:43:07   kind of like fruit on the bottom yogurt from Dannon.

01:43:09   The progress at the bottom,

01:43:11   you scroll all the way down there,

01:43:12   and what it'll say is eventually,

01:43:14   like five or 10 seconds after you perform the command,

01:43:18   you'll see a thing that says,

01:43:20   moving 10 photos to shared library,

01:43:24   moving 20 photos to shared library,

01:43:25   Moving 30, it's a number that counts up.

01:43:28   It counts up and then eventually it starts counting down.

01:43:31   So it's going to count up to a number

01:43:32   that is close to the number of photos you selected

01:43:34   and then it will count down.

01:43:35   The interesting thing is when you do the move command

01:43:37   from the menu, about three seconds later,

01:43:40   all the pictures that you told to move

01:43:42   disappear from your view.

01:43:44   - Oh, cool.

01:43:45   - They all disappear.

01:43:46   You said to move them, right?

01:43:48   I think they instantly appear in the shared view,

01:43:51   but if you're just looking at the three views you have,

01:43:55   is show me my personal library,

01:43:56   show me my shared library, show me both.

01:43:58   And I'm just in personal library

01:43:59   'cause I'm winnowing down the personal library

01:44:02   and it will tell you how many photos

01:44:03   are in your personal library.

01:44:04   I'm trying to drain that pool, right?

01:44:06   So they disappear immediately.

01:44:07   After they disappear, at the bottom will be a progress thing

01:44:10   that counts up and then counts back down.

01:44:13   It's pretty fast.

01:44:15   The number tends to go and I think it increments

01:44:17   with like 100 or so every few seconds.

01:44:20   So it's like just go someplace else,

01:44:21   do something and come back.

01:44:23   While I was doing this, I had photos running on my Mac

01:44:25   and I would see how long does it take

01:44:27   between the time they disappear there

01:44:28   and the time they appear on my computer

01:44:29   and that was pretty fast.

01:44:30   It was actually shockingly fast.

01:44:32   Maybe it was just the thumbnails or whatever,

01:44:33   but I had it set to download original.

01:44:34   So I did that over the course of the past few days.

01:44:39   If you look in the Slack channel,

01:44:40   you'll see my end result here,

01:44:43   the graphic that I just put in.

01:44:44   This is the message that appears

01:44:45   on my wife's photos application now

01:44:48   when you launch it and switch to personal library.

01:44:52   Personal library is empty. There are no photos or videos in your personal library

01:44:56   From the little person button in the toolbar change your library view to the shared library to move photos and videos to the personal library

01:45:03   I drained a hundred and fifty five thousand photos and videos out of her personal library and put them into the shared library

01:45:10   And the reason I did this is because as I thought about it

01:45:14   Like I was I did it cautiously in small batches

01:45:17   The biggest batch I did was 30,000 photos.

01:45:19   And honestly, I didn't see much of a difference

01:45:21   between using 30,000 and 10,000.

01:45:23   I didn't have the guts to do any more than that.

01:45:24   I tried to do 50,000 at one point

01:45:26   and told me they were unsaved ones,

01:45:27   and I backed away and went for smaller batches.

01:45:31   The reason I went all in on this

01:45:32   is because I have about 17 complete backups

01:45:35   of this photo library before Ventura

01:45:37   that are all fresh and sitting in drawers and on drives

01:45:40   and in synologies in various places.

01:45:41   And if this hoses my library,

01:45:44   I want to be able to restore from one of those

01:45:47   and not lose anything.

01:45:48   So I need to go all in fast.

01:45:49   I need to fail fast.

01:45:50   'Cause I don't wanna,

01:45:51   if I did it slowly over the course of months

01:45:53   and slowly move stuff in there,

01:45:54   what I did wanna find out was three months from now,

01:45:56   oh, the library's completely hosed and corrupted,

01:45:58   and you have to restore it from a backup

01:46:00   that's like three months old, right?

01:46:01   Or you've overwritten that backup

01:46:03   with the corrupt venture or backup, you know,

01:46:04   in some cases.

01:46:06   So I'm all in.

01:46:08   I, in my library with the both view,

01:46:10   it says 185,000 photos and videos.

01:46:13   - That's awesome. - And I have to say

01:46:14   that despite the beach balling and everything,

01:46:18   shockingly fast if you count like the amount of minutes

01:46:21   it took to move 155,000 things.

01:46:23   Obviously it's not moving the data.

01:46:25   I know that because for one thing,

01:46:27   I have Google Drive running on my wife's computer

01:46:29   that is uploading images or whatever.

01:46:31   Google Drive didn't make a peep during this.

01:46:33   It did not see any new, any action going on

01:46:36   in the photo library in terms of in the file system.

01:46:39   So this process of moving them as you would expect

01:46:41   is probably just doing a series of update statements

01:46:44   on a SQLite database somewhere, right?

01:46:46   It is not actually moving any photos.

01:46:48   It's probably not moving them in the cloud

01:46:49   on their cloud storage,

01:46:52   and it doesn't seem like it's moving them

01:46:53   on my local disk either.

01:46:54   If it was touching those photos at all in any way,

01:46:58   this would have taken forever.

01:46:59   But I moved the entire library in like probably 24 hours-ish

01:47:04   like casually doing batches of five, 10,

01:47:07   and eventually 20,000,

01:47:08   and they appeared on my computer in my library so fast

01:47:12   it was shocking.

01:47:13   even know how it's doing it.

01:47:14   I don't know if it's downloaded them all yet.

01:47:16   They appear on my phone as well.

01:47:17   So I'm gonna give this feature,

01:47:20   again despite the beach balls and the terrible progress,

01:47:22   all of which are pre-existing conditions,

01:47:24   as they say in the insurance business,

01:47:26   I'm gonna give this a thumbs up.

01:47:27   I think it actually works.

01:47:28   It didn't hose my libraries.

01:47:29   I never got any errors.

01:47:31   There were various points where I had to be very patient,

01:47:33   Casey, and wait much more than five seconds

01:47:36   or five minutes to see anything.

01:47:38   But sometimes it says like saving or whatever

01:47:40   and it would say like uploading 20 photos to iCloud.

01:47:42   It's like, what are you uploading to iCloud?

01:47:44   Just let it be like that.

01:47:46   If you come back 15 minutes later

01:47:47   and it still says uploading 20 photos to iCloud,

01:47:50   just let it sit.

01:47:51   Come back in a half an hour, that message will be gone

01:47:53   and it will say moving 10,957 photos to shared library.

01:47:57   It will eventually, hopefully get the job done.

01:48:00   I have to say, I was surprised at how fast it was.

01:48:02   All the testing that I had done with Ventura

01:48:03   was with toy libraries with like 100 or so photos in it

01:48:06   with fake Apple IDs.

01:48:08   This is my real photo library with my real stuff in it

01:48:11   and it went pretty fast.

01:48:12   And then one of the weird sort of side effects

01:48:16   of having this situation is,

01:48:17   if I switch my wife's view to her personal library,

01:48:21   it has no photos in it.

01:48:22   And because of the way the Photos app works,

01:48:24   like all the albums in the sidebar,

01:48:27   they show you a little thumbnail.

01:48:29   I don't know, like I say,

01:48:30   you have an album with 50 pictures in it.

01:48:32   It picks one of the pictures from the album

01:48:33   and makes that the thumbnail.

01:48:34   I don't know why it does that.

01:48:35   They're so small, you can't see them anyway, right?

01:48:37   But when you switch to personal library

01:48:39   and there's nothing in the personal library,

01:48:41   all of those thumbnails disappear.

01:48:43   And we're like, oh my God, did it erase all my albums?

01:48:46   No, but when you're in personal library view,

01:48:47   if you click on that album, there's nothing in it,

01:48:49   because your view is my personal library only,

01:48:52   and there's nothing in the personal library.

01:48:54   So when you click on any of your albums,

01:48:55   like, oh my God, my albums, they're all empty,

01:48:57   there's nothing in them, it's all gone.

01:48:58   You just switch to show either shared library or both,

01:49:01   and they come back.

01:49:03   And doing that, switching those modes, is very fast,

01:49:06   but it also affects the sidebar,

01:49:09   which I think is super weird.

01:49:11   I know I switched to personal view,

01:49:13   but the fact that it makes the whole sidebar flicker

01:49:15   and change the icons, like,

01:49:16   don't make me think all the photos are gone

01:49:18   just because the right-hand side view is filtered.

01:49:22   You can leave the thumbnails on, everything's fine.

01:49:24   Like, it freaked me out in the beginning.

01:49:26   I actually took screenshots of it.

01:49:27   I'm like, oh, is it changing something?

01:49:28   It's not changing anything, it's just your view of the system.

01:49:30   So again, this is in my wife's library.

01:49:32   The albums are not shared as part of the shared library,

01:49:34   but when logged in as my wife,

01:49:36   I'm just gonna keep it on the both of you, I suppose.

01:49:38   Oh, and the final thing is you have the option of like,

01:49:41   Should it suggest to you when you should add stuff?

01:49:43   You know, if you add things, if you're with somebody else

01:49:46   or if you're at your home, there's a bunch of these options.

01:49:48   Surprisingly, one of the options is not,

01:49:51   as far as I can tell, the option to say,

01:49:53   "Hey, everything I take a picture of with my phone,

01:49:56   "put it in the shared library."

01:49:57   That is not one of the options.

01:49:58   I don't think there's any way to do that,

01:49:59   which is kind of disappointing

01:50:00   'cause that would be a nice option to have.

01:50:02   But either way, once I found out that wasn't an option,

01:50:04   I said, "I'll just put it on manual."

01:50:05   'Cause now, what I'll do instead of connecting my phone

01:50:09   on my wife's computer using image capture

01:50:11   to take things off of it

01:50:12   because the photos application cannot handle

01:50:14   how many photos are on my phone.

01:50:15   I have to use image capture like Casey, like an animal.

01:50:18   - Well, slow down, slow down.

01:50:20   That's not what I do.

01:50:21   I used to do that like a year or two ago.

01:50:23   What I do now is I make a temporary bespoke photos library.

01:50:28   You know, I do the like, what is it?

01:50:29   Hold option and double click on the photos icon.

01:50:32   Make a new library, do the import there

01:50:35   and then immediately export to disk.

01:50:39   And then I use image capture just for deletions purposes.

01:50:41   Oh my God.

01:50:42   The only reason I'm using image capture is because the photo has lost the ability

01:50:46   to correctly show the photos on my phone for whatever reason.

01:50:49   So use image capture to pull them.

01:50:50   And the tricky part is knowing I have a smart folder that says like John's phone,

01:50:55   uh, that lets me know what is the last photo I imported from my camera.

01:50:59   Cause that lets me know which ones I have to pull now, right?

01:51:03   Like based on the timestamp and everything, it's not to do any of that anymore.

01:51:06   Now I just go look at my personal library,

01:51:08   and if there's anything in my personal library

01:51:10   that's not in the shared library,

01:51:11   it's just in the personal library view,

01:51:13   I just select the images that I want

01:51:14   and I right click them and say move.

01:51:16   And doing that for batches that are not 10,000

01:51:18   or 30,000 photos is actually pretty fast.

01:51:20   And so that will be my new workflow.

01:51:22   I'll just manually move them over when I need to.

01:51:23   Same thing with my wife's thing.

01:51:24   She has an empty personal library.

01:51:26   As she fills that up,

01:51:27   it's real easy to go to personal library,

01:51:28   select all, right click, move to shared photo library.

01:51:31   Again, doing with sane numbers of photos, really fast.

01:51:35   not, you know, it's hopefully not gonna be a problem.

01:51:38   So that's my plan for the workflow.

01:51:40   I don't have a solution to the deduping situation.

01:51:43   Ideally, you'd be able to do what I used to do with iTunes,

01:51:47   which was never recommended,

01:51:48   but I did it for years and it was fun.

01:51:50   I used to have my iTunes music library

01:51:52   in users shared music, users/shared/music,

01:51:56   'cause the user shared directory on macOS,

01:51:58   people don't know, is a directory

01:52:00   that comes with default permissions

01:52:01   such that more than one user on the system

01:52:02   can read from it, right?

01:52:04   You have to mess with the permissions to actually make it read-writable by multiple people,

01:52:08   but you can.

01:52:09   You can use group permissions, blah, blah, blah.

01:52:11   And I'd have my whole iTunes library there.

01:52:13   So I could have multiple accounts pointing to the same iTunes library with only one copy

01:52:16   of the music on the disk.

01:52:17   This is back when my music collection was one of the bigger things on my disk, the good

01:52:19   old days.

01:52:20   Probably still true of Marco.

01:52:23   But it would be nice if you could do that with photos, because if I wanted my photo

01:52:27   library to not be optimized storage, but to be downloaded originals, I would have two

01:52:31   copies of every single photo.

01:52:33   and that would be two terabytes of photos instead of one,

01:52:35   and that is not insignificant.

01:52:36   I would love it to be able to tell photos,

01:52:38   "Hey, you know how these photos are the same

01:52:40   in the storage backend, like in the cloud?"

01:52:43   You can make them the same iMac too,

01:52:45   but the permissions model really does not lend itself

01:52:48   a lot of that, and it would be additional complexity,

01:52:49   and I kinda understand why they didn't do it,

01:52:51   especially into version one.

01:52:52   So I'm gonna be all off to my storage over here,

01:52:55   and my wife's count, as always, will be download originals.

01:52:58   - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:53:00   Memberful, Collide, and Backblaze,

01:53:03   and thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:53:05   You can join at atp.fm/join,

01:53:08   and don't forget if you join,

01:53:09   you get a 15% off code for our ATP store right now,

01:53:12   so don't forget all that,

01:53:14   and do forget to cancel at the end of it.

01:53:16   Thank you everybody for listening,

01:53:18   and we will talk to you next week.

01:53:20   (upbeat music)

01:53:23   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:53:25   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:53:27   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:53:29   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:53:30   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:53:32   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:53:38   'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental

01:53:43   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:53:48   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:53:53   M A R C O A R M

01:54:02   N T Marko R M N S I R

01:54:06   A C U S A Syracuse

01:54:09   It's accidental They didn't mean to

01:54:15   Accidental Tech podcast so long

01:54:22   - All right, we are not going to have the time

01:54:25   to talk about all this ad-related kerfuffle

01:54:27   in the App Store, which we will probably get to next week,

01:54:30   but I did want to briefly talk about--

01:54:32   - The good news, by the way, is that the ad thing

01:54:34   is like on fire right now, and Apple's like issuing

01:54:38   statements and pausing things and everything,

01:54:39   so like, it's good that we're gonna save it for next week,

01:54:42   because by the time next week comes,

01:54:43   it will probably be pretty different,

01:54:45   and until then, you know, we can just kinda

01:54:48   watch the fire burn.

01:54:50   - Yeah, by next week, Elon Musk will own Apple.

01:54:52   Oh God. Can we not? Oh, we're never doing that. Anyway,

01:54:57   uh, join a stern who, whose coverage I really, really tend to like,

01:55:01   uh, did an interview with, uh, Federiki and Joswiak, uh,

01:55:06   I guess in the last 48 ish hours. Um,

01:55:09   and this was posted over at the wall street journal. Uh,

01:55:12   and we'll put a link in the show notes.

01:55:14   The video is something like 35 minutes. Uh,

01:55:16   and other than being extremely quiet, I don't know if you guys noticed that,

01:55:20   but the audio mix is very, very quiet,

01:55:22   which was a little annoying.

01:55:23   - I use voice boost.

01:55:24   - Yeah, imagine that.

01:55:25   No, I thought the interview was okay.

01:55:29   I don't know, even though I really, really like

01:55:32   Joanna Stern a lot, but I don't think she set herself up

01:55:35   for success with some of the things she asked,

01:55:37   because they could clearly be interpreted as,

01:55:41   tell me about what you're gonna do in the future.

01:55:43   Even if that's not what she meant,

01:55:45   it could have been interpreted that way.

01:55:46   And you know, if an Apple executive

01:55:48   could interpret a question as,

01:55:50   "Tell me what you're doing in the future."

01:55:51   They're gonna clam up immediately,

01:55:53   which is exactly what Jaws and Federiki did.

01:55:56   Sometimes I felt like they dodged questions,

01:55:58   actually, oftentimes I felt like they dodged questions

01:56:00   that they really didn't need to dodge.

01:56:02   Like at the end, I think it was the end,

01:56:05   she said something like, "What do you wish,"

01:56:07   I forget exactly what it was,

01:56:07   "but like, what do you wish computers did that they don't?"

01:56:10   And they were like, "Well, that's telling you

01:56:13   about our future plans, me, me, me."

01:56:15   And it was, I don't know, they were kind of being jerks,

01:56:17   I thought. - I think they should have

01:56:17   that one because there's no way they can give an honest answer to that and not reveal future

01:56:22   Apple plans, which I think was the point of the question. I disagree. I think if you look 10, 20,

01:56:27   30, 40 years out, you can talk about plenty of things that you might want a computer to do.

01:56:31   That is not even a fart in the wind right now. When you're talking to big, big Apple people,

01:56:38   part of it is the experience with these specific big, big Apple people to know what things they'll

01:56:45   answer and what things they want and what things not to waste your time on.

01:56:48   And that only comes from just seeing a million of these interviews, right?

01:56:52   It's still difficult to know on the day.

01:56:54   But the other thing is, talking to these people about anything, literally anything they say

01:56:59   is going to end up in some click-bait-y headline.

01:57:01   I feel for them.

01:57:02   Just look at the headlines that came out of this story.

01:57:04   It is basically impossible for them to, again, an honest answer about 50 years in the future,

01:57:11   I wish my computer would do this fantastical thing that Apple really isn't actually working

01:57:15   on it's not a glimmer in anyone's eye an apple but this is an idea and the stories the next day would

01:57:19   be apple planning on you know holographic cube or like whatever the hell they talk about like

01:57:23   there is no like there is no way to give an honest answer and not get destroyed when with the

01:57:29   ridiculous headlights because they're apple so that's why they're so cagey and cranky because

01:57:34   it's just you know it's kind of like they've just been burned so many times and i think if you look

01:57:39   at what they did in this in this interview the the main complaint that i think you've had case

01:57:42   and other people had is like,

01:57:43   that they didn't seem to answer a lot of questions,

01:57:44   they dodged stuff.

01:57:45   And despite that, there are still ridiculous stories today

01:57:49   that make huge logical leaps

01:57:51   and mischaracterize what was said by the people.

01:57:53   So it's a rough situation for everybody.

01:57:55   It's a rough situation for the interviewer,

01:57:57   and as the interviewee, it's hard to be a good interviewee

01:58:00   when you know, no matter how little you say,

01:58:03   it's gonna get misinterpreted.

01:58:06   - I agree with all of that, but I don't know.

01:58:08   I think if you look at the Gruber interviews,

01:58:12   oftentimes with these same two men,

01:58:14   I think John does a far better job of riding the line

01:58:18   of what are they willing or perhaps even excited to answer,

01:58:22   and what are they just gonna clam up and say, uh-uh.

01:58:24   And I don't think Joanna Stern did

01:58:26   a particularly good job with that.

01:58:27   - Yeah, he's better at it because he has

01:58:28   much more experience, and he knows Apple more,

01:58:31   and has been on the beat for longer.

01:58:33   Like, it's kind of not a fair comparison,

01:58:35   but I think Joanna--

01:58:36   - Well, I would also say that they have very different goals

01:58:39   and very different audiences too.

01:58:40   I mean, it's not like, you know,

01:58:42   Joanna Stern wasn't doing an interview

01:58:44   for Daring Fireball, readers and listeners.

01:58:45   Like, she was doing it for her audience,

01:58:48   which is extremely different over at The Wall Street Journal

01:58:51   compared to our little nerd sphere here.

01:58:52   And I think she has quite a lot of experience in this area,

01:58:56   and I think she knew exactly what she was doing,

01:58:59   but that's the kind of question

01:59:01   that her audience wants her to ask.

01:59:04   - Maybe.

01:59:04   People think they want you to ask that,

01:59:06   but when you see the non-answers that they give,

01:59:08   it's like, was that a constructive use of time?

01:59:09   Like, I think the audience that wants it

01:59:11   is also not satisfied because they didn't get the answers.

01:59:13   Lots of, you know, anytime you watch an interview,

01:59:15   the easiest thing to do as an audience member,

01:59:17   and I do it all the time, especially on subjects

01:59:19   I know a lot about, like Apple, is say,

01:59:20   here's the follow-up question I would have asked

01:59:22   and why didn't you ask it, right?

01:59:24   And there are many instances where that happened.

01:59:27   Like, the one that rang out the strongest for me

01:59:29   was when Avayga was asking Federighi

01:59:32   about app tracking transparency

01:59:34   and how you've hurt your competitors

01:59:36   and now you're doing advertising and whatever.

01:59:39   And Federi gave this long answer that was like,

01:59:42   the reason we do all this privacy stuff,

01:59:45   when my team gets together,

01:59:47   it's the privacy team that is rolling this out.

01:59:50   We're not doing this so we can make more service revenue.

01:59:54   It's a technology team and we are focused on privacy

01:59:57   for its own merits and we have been for years and years.

02:00:00   This is not a new thing.

02:00:03   in this specific project you're talking about,

02:00:05   was run by, initiated by, and brought to completion

02:00:08   by the privacy team that is interested in privacy

02:00:11   for all the altruistic privacy reasons.

02:00:13   So when I, Craig Federighi, read stories at Apple,

02:00:16   the only reason Apple did to up-track in transparency

02:00:18   is to screw Facebook in,

02:00:19   so they can make the money on advertising.

02:00:20   It's ridiculous, 'cause I know that's not true,

02:00:22   'cause I'm in charge of the software org,

02:00:24   and I know exactly how this feature came to be.

02:00:26   And it sounds like a convincing answer.

02:00:28   You can see his passion saying,

02:00:30   I'm not twisting my mustache,

02:00:32   and saying we're gonna be super evil

02:00:33   and we're gonna go as ad revenue.

02:00:34   This is driven by the privacy team

02:00:36   and we care about privacy.

02:00:37   I 100% believe that, right?

02:00:40   The follow-up question is,

02:00:42   you're the head of software though.

02:00:44   Apple is a big company.

02:00:46   There's a team that's responsible

02:00:48   for running an ad business.

02:00:50   They don't work for you,

02:00:51   but they are in the same company.

02:00:53   And when that part of the company looks at the big picture,

02:00:56   they say, we're doing all this privacy stuff.

02:00:59   You know what?

02:01:00   gives us an advantage in advertising.

02:01:02   You didn't do it to help the advertising people,

02:01:05   but they're part of the same company,

02:01:06   and they sure as heck know what the consequences

02:01:09   are going to be of app tracking transparency,

02:01:12   because it's their job to make money from ads.

02:01:14   And they are also part of Apple.

02:01:17   So when someone says Apple is rubbing their hands together

02:01:20   at Facebook getting screwed,

02:01:21   'cause now they can make more ad revenue,

02:01:23   no, Craig Federighi and the privacy team,

02:01:25   that's not your motivation,

02:01:26   but there's a whole other part of the company

02:01:28   whose job it is to make money from ads.

02:01:30   And they know and understand

02:01:32   and take advantage of all of this.

02:01:33   So when Federighi gets indignant,

02:01:36   he can get indignant for himself and say,

02:01:38   "Don't blame me, Craig Federighi, for this

02:01:40   "'cause I didn't do a nasty thing."

02:01:42   But it sounds like he's defending Apple

02:01:43   and it's like Apple writ large sure as heck knows

02:01:47   how this is going to impact Facebook

02:01:49   and is capitalizing on it.

02:01:51   And you can't wash your hands of it departmentally

02:01:55   and therefore say, you know,

02:01:57   Again, the follow-up would be more concisely phrased

02:02:01   than that, it was like, okay, that's you,

02:02:02   but what about the advertising team?

02:02:03   What would they say if they were here?

02:02:05   And then you would have said, well, they're not here,

02:02:07   I'm here, and I'm telling you what I think about it.

02:02:09   Then I would say, well, Apple's bigger than just you.

02:02:11   And then we move on to the next question,

02:02:12   which is why interviews are hard.

02:02:13   But anyway, it's very easy to second guess

02:02:16   what people say and what follow-ups they do

02:02:18   and don't provide, but that's just the nature

02:02:20   of armchair quarterbacking.

02:02:21   You're like, I wouldn't have thrown that pass,

02:02:23   or I would have not done a running play in that scenario.

02:02:26   it's easy to say while you sit on the couch eating your chips.

02:02:28   That is true. But in, and I think I'm, um,

02:02:31   I'm selling Joanna short here.

02:02:35   I think her choices of questions were not stellar,

02:02:38   but I still think that, uh,

02:02:40   Federighi and Joswiak stonewalled in at times where I really don't think it was

02:02:45   necessary. And that's just my opinion. But nevertheless,

02:02:48   one of the few times that we actually got something interesting out of them was,

02:02:52   uh, a discussion with regard to, you know,

02:02:55   lightning versus USB-C and in so many words, why are you still bothering?

02:02:59   Why are you still clinging to lightning? Why is this still a thing?

02:03:02   And it was an interesting conversation that lasted, you know,

02:03:06   a couple of minutes long, particularly JAWS doing most of the talking.

02:03:09   And there were a couple of quotes that I wanted to call out from that.

02:03:12   First of all, he said,

02:03:14   the approach would have been better environmentally,

02:03:16   like if we had stuck with lightning or if we can stick with lightning,

02:03:19   and it would be better for our governments not to be so prescriptive,

02:03:22   which I think both of those things are actually true.

02:03:25   Even as someone who would like USB-C on his iPhone,

02:03:28   I think it is probably environmentally better,

02:03:31   potentially environmentally better,

02:03:32   not to have a gazillion billions of lightning cables

02:03:35   suddenly become obsolete.

02:03:37   - But debatable because the environmental advantage

02:03:40   of USB-C is the sharing of infrastructure

02:03:42   between devices that are not Apple devices

02:03:44   and all of the other devices in the world

02:03:46   that are going to USB-C.

02:03:47   So he has some point, but I really don't think

02:03:52   of the environmental angle is why they have stuck

02:03:54   with lightning cables. - Oh, certainly not.

02:03:55   - No, I think that's an excuse, not the reason.

02:03:57   I mean, 'cause the environmental argument,

02:04:00   while there is some merit that like, okay, well,

02:04:03   if they do change over to USB-C,

02:04:05   a whole bunch of lightning cables over the next few years

02:04:07   will go into the trash, that's true.

02:04:09   However, first of all, a large number of them

02:04:11   would have gone to the trash room

02:04:12   at the same time period anyway,

02:04:13   because they are, as Jon said earlier, wear items.

02:04:16   But also, if we project outwards, like, okay,

02:04:19   Well in the next X years, if we don't switch,

02:04:22   that's just more and more and more lightning cables

02:04:25   that are gonna keep being produced, keep being bought,

02:04:28   keep being potentially lost or wasted or whatever.

02:04:31   Whereas if we switch now, then yeah,

02:04:34   it's temporarily painful, but over the long term,

02:04:38   I think it's clearly better to reduce e-waste

02:04:40   and better for the environment to not have

02:04:43   these two ongoing standards go indefinitely into the future.

02:04:46   It's way better and cleaner and more efficient

02:04:49   and lots of different mechanisms to have one type of cable

02:04:52   that you can use for everything,

02:04:54   and ignoring USB-C's many asterisks on that,

02:04:58   but there's one type of cable you can pretty much use

02:05:01   for charging anything at least. (laughs)

02:05:04   Although, you ever have one of those devices

02:05:06   that it has a USB-C hole to accept power,

02:05:10   but it doesn't support USB PD?

02:05:13   And so, it's oftentimes like little cheap things,

02:05:16   And so you have to use one of those like USB A to C cables

02:05:21   and plug it into a USB A charger.

02:05:22   But anyway, of course that exists, right?

02:05:26   But anyway, the environmental angle here

02:05:28   is a good talking point, but it doesn't hold up

02:05:32   to much critical thought and scrutiny.

02:05:34   And I think, again, they are correct.

02:05:36   This is a large installed base,

02:05:39   and those cables are gonna be thrown away in a few years,

02:05:43   but that was gonna happen anyway for most of them,

02:05:46   and also going forward, it's better to rip the bandaid off

02:05:51   now, have that short-term pain now,

02:05:53   because it will make a better future.

02:05:55   - Yeah, I mean, the shared infrastructure argument,

02:05:57   like, I think you'd have to do the math on that

02:05:59   to figure out how long it would take to make up

02:06:00   for the sudden burst of tractor lightning stuff.

02:06:03   But I mean, to be fair to Joss,

02:06:05   he didn't lean on that too much.

02:06:06   He threw it in as the talking point,

02:06:08   but it's not like he was using that as an excuse.

02:06:09   I mean, he basically made the same arguments

02:06:11   that we made when we've talked about this,

02:06:12   which I still believe is like,

02:06:14   having governments prescribe

02:06:15   the specific technical solution is not something

02:06:17   that has a good history of fostering innovation, let's say.

02:06:21   And in this case, it's kind of Apple's own fault

02:06:24   for coming to this because I still truly believe

02:06:27   that Apple would eventually have either gone to USB-C

02:06:29   or gone to no wires at all on their own,

02:06:33   but the timeline they were doing it on

02:06:35   was not fast enough for the rest of the world.

02:06:36   And so it's, like so many things with Apple,

02:06:39   they were stubborn and took a little bit too long

02:06:42   and ended up triggering an even worse government action

02:06:44   that I don't particularly agree with,

02:06:45   for reasons we discussed on the last show,

02:06:47   but in the end, the world will be a better place

02:06:49   when Apple goes to USB-C and everything,

02:06:51   and Apple, it's your own stupid fault for forcing it.

02:06:53   So, JAWS gave the exact same arguments

02:06:55   that I think we all gave about,

02:06:56   it's not great for the government

02:06:57   to dictate the technical specifics,

02:06:59   and it's clear that Apple does not want

02:07:01   to be told to do this,

02:07:03   and I think one of the most common clickbait headlines

02:07:06   in this is, you know, JAWS,

02:07:09   JAWS says that Apple is going to USB-C,

02:07:12   He confirmed the next iPhone will have USB-C.

02:07:14   He didn't say that at all.

02:07:16   - Nope.

02:07:18   - You don't listen to Apple people.

02:07:19   He said, "Of course we will have to comply."

02:07:21   As we've discussed, there are many ways

02:07:23   that you can comply with that law.

02:07:25   First of all, it doesn't go into effect until 2024

02:07:27   or whatever someone was saying in the chat room

02:07:28   that it went through the final hurdle

02:07:30   so it is really the law of the land.

02:07:32   But as we discussed on a past show,

02:07:34   with the timelines the way they are,

02:07:36   it might be the 2024 iPhone that has these changes in it.

02:07:39   And second of all, you can comply

02:07:41   by just getting rid of lightning

02:07:42   and not replacing it with anything, that's also compliant.

02:07:44   So headlines that confidently declare

02:07:47   that Apple has confirmed that the next iPhone

02:07:50   will have USB-C, assumes facts not in evidence

02:07:54   as they say in court, right?

02:07:56   And I think it probably will have USB-C,

02:07:58   like the timelines look like the iPhone 15-ish or whatever.

02:08:01   Again, thumbs up, USB-C iPhones, we're all for it,

02:08:04   it's good or whatever,

02:08:05   but Apple doesn't like to be forced to do things.

02:08:07   And I don't think either one of them gave up

02:08:10   any information that you know didn't already exist like what are they gonna

02:08:13   say Apple plans to break the law I mean you know that's a common approach in

02:08:18   these days but that's not still not the move that Apple goes to so yeah they're

02:08:23   gonna comply well but I also thought it was interesting Jaws his response which

02:08:28   was in full or I'm sorry with the later on I think she was talking about or

02:08:33   Joanna was asking well when and Jaws said the Europeans are dictating timing

02:08:38   four European customers.

02:08:43   I'm emphasizing this, not he, but there is a reading

02:08:48   of what he said that yes, Europeans will get SIM trays

02:08:53   and USBC, where Americans or other areas of the world

02:08:57   will stick with lightning because tough noogies.

02:09:00   I'm not saying that is what's gonna happen,

02:09:01   but that is a way you could read this conversation.

02:09:04   - There are many ways to comply that do not conform

02:09:08   to the fantastical headline that next year's iPhone

02:09:10   is gonna be USB-C for the entire world.

02:09:12   - Exactly.

02:09:13   I just thought that was fascinating.

02:09:15   The rest of the talk was fine.

02:09:17   - Yeah, I mean, for the record,

02:09:18   I think something like that,

02:09:20   they probably wouldn't do an EU version of the iPhone

02:09:25   that had USB-C maybe, or as discussed in a previous episode,

02:09:30   just somehow gets rid of or disables the Lightning port.

02:09:34   (laughing)

02:09:35   I don't think they would do that.

02:09:37   Like I think they would, I think, you know,

02:09:40   Jaws was reflecting the correct attitude

02:09:45   for Apple's thought on this, which is very clearly like

02:09:49   they really don't like being told what to do

02:09:51   by a government with their products.

02:09:53   Like they really don't like that,

02:09:55   and the combination of Apple kind of spitefully,

02:10:00   you know, responding to that kind of thing,

02:10:02   and also Jaws' just personality,

02:10:04   like his built in like attitude,

02:10:06   which I think many people find quite a bit more off-putting

02:10:10   than he would probably like or than Apple would probably

02:10:14   like, but anyway, I think that's just JODs.

02:10:17   And it's also just Apple.

02:10:19   Their attitude towards this is basically screw you.

02:10:24   The same way their attitude towards all the various

02:10:26   app store regulations are going on in different countries

02:10:28   and everything, they don't want to be told what to do

02:10:32   and they're gonna be quite spiteful about it

02:10:35   even if, the whole thing about cutting off your nose,

02:10:38   spite your face, whatever, it's like when a kid

02:10:40   gets mad at you and does something totally against

02:10:43   their own self-interest just because they're mad at you.

02:10:46   That's how Apple responds to being told what to do

02:10:51   in ways they don't appreciate, right?

02:10:53   - I mean, Apple's not being spiteful, though.

02:10:55   They're grumbling about it,

02:10:56   but they are going to do the thing.

02:10:58   And I think, honestly, I think they'll do the simpler thing,

02:11:01   which is just USB-C everywhere.

02:11:02   - Probably.

02:11:03   - If they were doing the spiteful thing,

02:11:05   what they would do is make their phones,

02:11:06   they would do the thing with like leave lightning port

02:11:08   but put a sticker over it.

02:11:09   Like make their phones awkward and worse for everybody

02:11:11   and confusing for the whole world.

02:11:12   Like that would be the spiteful one

02:11:13   'cause that would hurt Apple, right?

02:11:14   They would be cutting off their iPhone nose

02:11:17   to spite their face, right?

02:11:17   But they are annoyed about it.

02:11:19   And speaking of attitude, Federighi had a,

02:11:22   this is one of my favorite parts that Joanna read

02:11:26   one of the emails that was part of one of the,

02:11:30   probably the Epic case or whatever.

02:11:31   And it was a Federighi email.

02:11:33   It was the email thread where they were discussing

02:11:35   if iMessage and Android made sense.

02:11:37   And Federighi had said something to the effect that,

02:11:39   he said, "I'm worried that if we put iMessage on Android,

02:11:44   "all that's gonna do is remove one more barrier

02:11:47   "to parents getting their kids cheap Android phones."

02:11:51   Right?

02:11:52   That essentially, like we have some amount

02:11:54   of market lock-in with iMessage

02:11:56   because if a family wants to be able to message each other

02:11:58   with a uniform interface with blue bubbles everywhere,

02:12:00   they gotta get their kids iPhones.

02:12:01   If we put iMessage on Android,

02:12:03   isn't that gonna knock that thing down?

02:12:05   And Joanna asked him about that.

02:12:08   And you could see like the,

02:12:11   one of the rare times that you see

02:12:13   the permeable barrier between public C-Fed

02:12:19   and inside Apple C-Fed.

02:12:21   If you look at the emails,

02:12:22   inside Apple C-Fed and inside Apple other people,

02:12:24   they say all the things that we say on these podcasts.

02:12:27   They don't say it in public,

02:12:27   but they say it in their internal emails,

02:12:29   'cause they're not dumb.

02:12:30   We all know the discussions you have about the pros and cons of iMessage and Android.

02:12:33   What are they?

02:12:34   We'll just say them out loud on a podcast because we don't work for Apple.

02:12:37   But Apple executives never say it in public, but when they talk about it themselves, they

02:12:41   do say it.

02:12:42   So here's an obvious point made by executive inside, but because this is outside CFET and

02:12:45   he is in a public interview, he didn't really address the substance of that thing.

02:12:51   Like hey, here's an email that shows that you know that iMessage is a lock-in and that

02:12:55   you're saying one of the cons for us

02:12:58   putting iMessage on Android is that it'll reduce that lock-in.

02:13:01   Instead, he just had a question that was like,

02:13:02   oh, we didn't feel like Apple could do anything great

02:13:04   in the Android space, basically saying that we were,

02:13:05   we didn't think we could, we're in a position

02:13:08   to be as big as WhatsApp, and if we can't do that,

02:13:10   there's only really downsides.

02:13:11   But he never really addressed this specific point

02:13:14   of part of the reason Apple does what it does

02:13:17   is because iMessage is a form of lock-in.

02:13:19   Everybody knows that.

02:13:20   It's an obvious thing.

02:13:20   It's not like, oh, Apple admits.

02:13:22   Like, everybody knows it's lock-in.

02:13:24   It's obvious to anybody who knows anything about technology market, but still Apple executives with their friendly face on will not acknowledge

02:13:31   The obvious truth that we all know because they know we know and I know they know and it's like it's you know

02:13:35   It's the unspoken thing

02:13:37   Joanna tried to make him speak it and he wouldn't he would just say

02:13:40   We didn't feel like we could and he said it in a roundabout way

02:13:43   We didn't feel like we could essentially become the dominant messaging platform in any market

02:13:47   And so therefore that upside didn't exist and then there are all these downsides one of which you read

02:13:52   He didn't even really say that so I give her kudos for

02:13:56   Trying to get him to address that because most of the time she fed will be honest and give his real opinion

02:14:01   But here you could totally see him cordoning off the part of his brain that he employs to do basic

02:14:06   Strategic analysis of the competitive landscape inside Apple that part is not allowed out when he's doing a public interview for the Wall Street Journal

02:14:13   It's worth it's probably worth half an hour of your time, but I wish I wish it was different

02:14:20   But what are you gonna do?

02:14:21   -I think Craig needs a haircut too.

02:14:23   -Don't we all?

02:14:25   [BEEPING]