ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Last week in the pre-show I said I had stopped following the news very closely

00:00:04 ◼   ► The next morning Russia started a war so you know maybe poor timing on that

00:00:11 ◼   ► I shouldn't laugh, I laugh with respect. I laugh at you Marco because yeah, maybe not the best timing

00:00:18 ◼   ► I am not at all laughing about what's going on in Ukraine. It is truly terrible

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm pretty darn sure I speak for all three of us in saying we stand with Ukraine

00:00:26 ◼   ► We find this to be an absolutely disgusting act of war

00:00:29 ◼   ► And we are certainly, our hearts are with Ukraine.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I don't even know what to say right now.

00:00:37 ◼   ► It's just so stupefying that in 2022,

00:00:40 ◼   ► this is still a thing that's happening.

00:00:42 ◼   ► And I just don't even know what to make of it.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'll be the first to admit,

00:00:46 ◼   ► I know basically nothing about the politics of the region.

00:00:49 ◼   ► About, you know, I know there were a lot of things

00:00:51 ◼   ► leading up to this.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And I had the privilege/ignorance

00:00:56 ◼   ► of not really paying much attention,

00:00:58 ◼   ► 'cause there's a lot of stuff that happens in the world

00:01:00 ◼   ► and I don't have time to pay attention to most of it.

00:01:02 ◼   ► And I've never been much of a news junkie

00:01:05 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And so I have no idea all this stuff led up to this.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And I've been trying to educate myself in the meantime.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But war is awful.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And this is not going to be resolved

00:01:17 ◼   ► probably quickly or cleanly.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And lots of people around the world, including Putin,

00:01:23 ◼   ► have looked at the US and said,

00:01:24 ◼   ► well, look, you guys invade stuff all the time.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And yeah, we have done that.

00:01:28 ◼   ► and we shouldn't have done it either.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - In almost every case, I think that has proven

00:01:34 ◼   ► to have been the wrong move, and also has always proven

00:01:37 ◼   ► to be way more messy and lengthy and costly to human life

00:01:42 ◼   ► and everything else than we had initially expected it to be.

00:01:49 ◼   ► And I expect this to play out no differently.

00:01:52 ◼   ► I think this is going to be a mess for a long time,

00:01:56 ◼   ► And there is, you know, there's certainly large risks,

00:01:59 ◼   ► I think, of escalations.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And we'll talk about that a little bit.

00:02:03 ◼   ► But that's, you know, this is not gonna be, you know,

00:02:07 ◼   ► some quick thing that's out of the news in a few weeks

00:02:10 ◼   ► or even a few months.

00:02:11 ◼   ► I think this is gonna take years.

00:02:12 ◼   ► And it's, you know, I, yeah, it's awful.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Any kind of war is awful.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And it's not productive to try to like compete

00:02:23 ◼   ► and say like, oh, why didn't we care about X, Y, Z

00:02:25 ◼   ► happened in the past that was worse or happened to other people you know let's let's let's just get

00:02:31 ◼   ► that right out you know I think this is we can look at this in objective terms and say this is

00:02:35 ◼   ► this is awful and and we all hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later even though I know that's

00:02:41 ◼   ► you know unlikely but you know best wishes to the people of Ukraine and and I was wondering like

00:02:47 ◼   ► I mean maybe this is more of a topic once we get to that in a second but I was kind of wondering

00:02:52 ◼   ► like what like are we supposed to do much from here in terms of like you know not only

00:02:59 ◼   ► you know things like if there's good places we can send donations that might actually

00:03:03 ◼   ► have an impact but also stuff like you know obviously you know don't support Russia business

00:03:08 ◼   ► wise but like I was thinking like you know I run a podcast app that is server side based

00:03:15 ◼   ► like am I supposed to block Russia from accessing that like I don't even know like would that

00:03:19 ◼   ► that wouldn't that just hurt a lot of nerdy Russians

00:03:22 ◼   ► who probably don't have any say

00:03:23 ◼   ► over what their government's doing?

00:03:25 ◼   ► It's really messy to think about this stuff.

00:03:28 ◼   ► What kind of actions that are even within our control

00:03:32 ◼   ► that we even could take, first of all, that's a question,

00:03:36 ◼   ► and then among those that we could do,

00:03:38 ◼   ► what should we do that would actually have an impact

00:03:41 ◼   ► or have a chance of having an impact

00:03:43 ◼   ► without also hurting a bunch of people

00:03:45 ◼   ► who don't deserve to be hurt necessarily?

00:03:49 ◼   ► Like, you know, the US has done a whole bunch of crazy stuff

00:03:52 ◼   ► and it's had a whole bunch of terrible leaders over time

00:03:55 ◼   ► and, you know, not every American supported what they did.

00:03:59 ◼   ► You know, and like, so I don't know,

00:04:00 ◼   ► it's a hard thing to navigate.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - It is, it's so funny you bring this up

00:04:04 ◼   ► because, you know, I am releasing a new app tomorrow,

00:04:07 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about this later

00:04:08 ◼   ► and not to make this awful situation about me

00:04:11 ◼   ► but apparently here we go.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I was wondering, you know, like,

00:04:14 ◼   ► should I not make this available in Russia?

00:04:17 ◼   ► And for a couple of reasons that is not the choice I made.

00:04:22 ◼   ► First of all, I lived through the four years

00:04:26 ◼   ► that just ended a year ago.

00:04:28 ◼   ► So, 2016 through '20, I lived through it.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And suddenly, my government was doing a bunch of things

00:04:36 ◼   ► that I really didn't like.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And I'm sure that's been true most of my life,

00:04:40 ◼   ► if not all of it. - I was gonna say suddenly.

00:04:43 ◼   ► - It was abundantly obvious that my government

00:04:45 ◼   ► was going in a wildly different direction than I wanted.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And I was just along for the ride.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Like I did what I could to stop it and to prevent it,

00:04:54 ◼   ► but I was just along for the ride.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And I think if it wasn't for the 2016 through 2020 era,

00:05:01 ◼   ► I think I would have had a vastly different

00:05:03 ◼   ► and less sympathetic opinion about this.

00:05:08 ◼   ► But what I came down to is, first of all,

00:05:10 ◼   ► there are a lot of honest Russians

00:05:13 ◼   ► that are also deeply upset about this.

00:05:15 ◼   ► and are like, you know, going in the street and protesting

00:05:19 ◼   ► and doing things that I don't do in America,

00:05:23 ◼   ► generally speaking, and it's mostly safe to do that here.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Like, they're putting themselves at tremendous personal risk

00:05:28 ◼   ► to protest this grotesque war.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And so, and because my app could,

00:05:35 ◼   ► if you look at it in a certain angle,

00:05:37 ◼   ► my app could be used to kind of try to prevent them

00:05:39 ◼   ► from getting retaliated upon.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And so because of that, I thought, you know what,

00:05:43 ◼   ► I'm going to make it available in Russia,

00:05:45 ◼   ► But I had these same thoughts, and many people

00:05:48 ◼   ► that are doing independent app development, like you and me,

00:05:51 ◼   ► I've had these conversations with many of them,

00:05:54 ◼   ► and none of us have reached the same conclusion

00:05:57 ◼   ► or for the same reasons, but it is weird and wild

00:06:01 ◼   ► that you or I, Marco, could even have this discussion.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Like, it's kind of cool in a roundabout way

00:06:07 ◼   ► that you and I have at least enough reach

00:06:11 ◼   ► that this is a plausible conversation we had.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I'm not saying that there's more than six users

00:06:16 ◼   ► of my app ever, and certainly not in Russia,

00:06:18 ◼   ► but this is a conversation that is, on the surface,

00:06:21 ◼   ► a reasonable conversation to have,

00:06:22 ◼   ► which is really weird and kind of a cool thing about 2022.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Now, granted, the reason we're having this conversation

00:06:27 ◼   ► is, again, grotesque and awful,

00:06:29 ◼   ► but I don't know, it's wild, it's super weird.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Jon, you've been quiet, what are your thoughts?

00:06:33 ◼   ► - I mean, I think a good rule of thumb

00:06:35 ◼   ► for trying to figure out what we as individuals should do

00:06:37 ◼   ► is, I mean, obviously, we know we're not,

00:06:40 ◼   ► No individual is doing anything to affect this

00:06:44 ◼   ► on a geopolitical scale.

00:06:46 ◼   ► It's the government, the world governments

00:06:49 ◼   ► are doing the big moves.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But you're right that if it's weird that individual people

00:06:54 ◼   ► have international businesses.

00:06:57 ◼   ► In decades past, you'd be like, OK, well, I

00:06:59 ◼   ► run the corner store in my town, but this doesn't affect me.

00:07:02 ◼   ► But now, if you just make a dinky little app,

00:07:04 ◼   ► you put it on the app store, you realize,

00:07:06 ◼   ► I have customers in Russia, what?

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's kind of weird.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And so we do have some kind of decision to make.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And a good rule of thumb, I feel like, is for individuals--

00:07:14 ◼   ► this is helping me see people discuss this--

00:07:17 ◼   ► as an individual, you should try to do something

00:07:19 ◼   ► that you think will help.

00:07:20 ◼   ► So that would fall under the category of figuring out

00:07:23 ◼   ► how to send money or do like--

00:07:26 ◼   ► what do you have that can help?

00:07:28 ◼   ► You have time and you have money.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And you can do that on an individual basis.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And if a bunch of individuals do it, it can help.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So am I doing something to help?

00:07:34 ◼   ► If, on the other hand, you're looking

00:07:36 ◼   ► at trying to do something punitive--

00:07:38 ◼   ► I don't like Russia, therefore I want to do something punitive that will punish them for

00:07:42 ◼   ► their bad invasion.

00:07:44 ◼   ► That's not going to do anything at an individual level.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Punitive actions by individuals are probably going to be misguided, but that's just in

00:07:51 ◼   ► general.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I feel like that's not going to, you know, 300 million people doing an individualist

00:07:57 ◼   ► punitive thing by saying, "Well, I'm never buying anything from Russia again," or "I'm

00:08:01 ◼   ► going to remove all of my movies that feature Russia from my collection."

00:08:06 ◼   ► you can think of it to be like, I disagree with Russia,

00:08:09 ◼   ► therefore, like it's natural to feel like you want to do

00:08:11 ◼   ► something to like, fight back against it. But it's, I think

00:08:14 ◼   ► it's the wrong way to go. So I would say, you know, look at the

00:08:17 ◼   ► thing you're thinking of doing and saying, Am I trying to help

00:08:19 ◼   ► somebody? Or am I trying to do a thing that is punitive, because

00:08:22 ◼   ► I think the punitive thing for individuals is extremely

00:08:24 ◼   ► misguided. And for nation states, seeing how the world has

00:08:27 ◼   ► reacted. This is kind of interesting, because, you know,

00:08:30 ◼   ► for most of our lives, we've had these, we haven't had, you know,

00:08:34 ◼   ► Well, we have another World War III, obviously.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And during my whole childhood, World War III was a big thing

00:08:39 ◼   ► because the Cold War was a big thing.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And then the dissolution of the Soviet Union

00:08:43 ◼   ► kind of put that on the back burner for a while,

00:08:46 ◼   ► and we had all these smaller wars, quote unquote,

00:08:48 ◼   ► smaller wars.

00:08:49 ◼   ► It was like, oh, well, they don't have nuclear weapons,

00:08:51 ◼   ► so it's just a regular war.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Just people die the regular way, so it's OK.

00:08:54 ◼   ► But anyway, and now to see it like total destruction

00:08:58 ◼   ► of the planet is back on the table in a big way,

00:09:00 ◼   ► that's exciting for all us Gen X people.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But the way the world has reacted to it is,

00:09:06 ◼   ► we have such an interconnected world these days

00:09:10 ◼   ► that the whole world basically said,

00:09:12 ◼   ► well, we're not going to deal with you anymore.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I agree that I think it's silly for anyone

00:09:18 ◼   ► to withhold their apps or whatever, an individual developer,

00:09:21 ◼   ► but if the whole world says,

00:09:22 ◼   ► well, you can't use our banking system,

00:09:24 ◼   ► you can't fly your airplanes over our airspace,

00:09:29 ◼   ► we'll stop selling you parts for all your airplanes

00:09:31 ◼   ► 'cause all your airplanes are like Boeing and Airbus.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Apple stopped selling its products in the country,

00:09:38 ◼   ► probably mostly because the ruble was massively devalued.

00:09:40 ◼   ► But either way, it's basically saying,

00:09:43 ◼   ► Russia, you might not realize how much

00:09:46 ◼   ► the world is interconnected, and we'll show you that

00:09:48 ◼   ► by the whole world turning their back on Russia,

00:09:50 ◼   ► the whole world except for the six other dictatorships

00:09:53 ◼   ► that are buddy-buddy with them, and China,

00:09:55 ◼   ► which is another complicated situation.

00:09:58 ◼   ► But I don't think that we've ever had a situation like that,

00:10:03 ◼   ► and I'm not a historian, so I don't know,

00:10:04 ◼   ► but where so many other countries have so much power

00:10:08 ◼   ► over this country, like non-military power,

00:10:12 ◼   ► what can you do that will,

00:10:15 ◼   ► and part of it is you don't wanna isolate them or whatever

00:10:18 ◼   ► and have them sort of turn inward

00:10:20 ◼   ► and become even more dangerous.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I don't know what the right thing to do is,

00:10:22 ◼   ► but how quickly the international banking system

00:10:26 ◼   ► and all these large companies like Exxon.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Exxon pulled out of Russia and left behind

00:10:33 ◼   ► billions of dollars in assets.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Everybody just saying, "Nuh-uh, this is not okay."

00:10:38 ◼   ► Essentially, you're not allowed

00:10:40 ◼   ► to invade your neighboring countries.

00:10:43 ◼   ► That's it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Nevermind that Russia's done it multiple times before,

00:10:46 ◼   ► but apparently everyone has decided this is the line.

00:10:48 ◼   ► You wonder where the line was?

00:10:50 ◼   ► This is the line.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And so I don't know how Russia can continue

00:10:54 ◼   ► to sort of be a going concern in the long term

00:10:59 ◼   ► with the whole world turning its back on them like this.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And it's terrible because, as you pointed out,

00:11:03 ◼   ► the people who live in Russia,

00:11:05 ◼   ► they don't determine their government.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Putin is a dictator.

00:11:08 ◼   ► They don't get to vote for him every year.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Oh, you won again with 99% of the vote.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Well, that's funny. - Imagine that.

00:11:15 ◼   ► - So the people there, they don't want this,

00:11:16 ◼   ► but what choice do they have?

00:11:19 ◼   ► And so it's terrible that the people

00:11:20 ◼   ► are going to be hurt by this.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And that's why I think it is the correct choice

00:11:24 ◼   ► for people like Apple to say,

00:11:26 ◼   ► well, we won't sell our products to you anymore,

00:11:28 ◼   ► but we will keep the app store open

00:11:30 ◼   ► because you might need apps on your phone

00:11:32 ◼   ► that lets you securely communicate with other people

00:11:35 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:11:36 ◼   ► You're trying to draw the line where,

00:11:37 ◼   ► well, we don't wanna hurt the Russian people,

00:11:39 ◼   ► but we do want Russia to clearly get the message

00:11:42 ◼   ► that this is not okay,

00:11:44 ◼   ► and also we don't want to all die

00:11:46 ◼   ► in a nuclear mushroom cloud.

00:11:49 ◼   ► So I don't know how to walk that line.

00:11:51 ◼   ► That's why I don't run this country or any other country.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I hope we do walk it correctly, but the reaction, the sort of international reaction of, you

00:11:58 ◼   ► know, I know this is such a stupid analogy, but I'm thinking of like, if you're ever in

00:12:02 ◼   ► kind of some kind of online community, and someone does something that's not okay for

00:12:06 ◼   ► that community, and the whole community lets them know that it's not okay, like that we

00:12:10 ◼   ► don't do that in this community, whatever it is, whatever they did, and whatever the

00:12:13 ◼   ► community is, that's happening in international level right now.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Whether or not Putin is open to the idea that what he's doing is not okay, or if he's just

00:12:22 ◼   ► completely off in his own world is you know thing that will keep you up at night but still it's

00:12:27 ◼   ► in some ways it is an interesting moment of unity among the slightly more civilized world that you

00:12:34 ◼   ► know the countries that ostensibly do not have dictators running them uh versus the ones that

00:12:39 ◼   ► definitely do um so i hope hope everything works out i hope we're all still here to keep doing this

00:12:44 ◼   ► podcast um and speaking of this podcast there is an apple angle on this um aside from apple just

00:12:50 ◼   ► like stopping selling stuff or whatever.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Jason Snell had a good article in Macworld today,

00:12:55 ◼   ► speculating about what would happen if China did something

00:12:58 ◼   ► like this.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Because what did Apple do?

00:13:00 ◼   ► Apple said, well, we're not going

00:13:01 ◼   ► to sell our products in your region anymore.

00:13:03 ◼   ► We'll keep the App Store open.

00:13:05 ◼   ► But we're basically-- this is not OK,

00:13:08 ◼   ► and this is how we're expressing that.

00:13:10 ◼   ► What if China invaded a neighboring country, which

00:13:12 ◼   ► is not too far-fetched, because there is a neighboring

00:13:14 ◼   ► country that China really, really wants to invade

00:13:16 ◼   ► and bring back into China.

00:13:18 ◼   ► And that's Taiwan.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And you know what else happens in Taiwan?

00:13:21 ◼   ► Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing company.

00:13:23 ◼   ► And you know what happens in China?

00:13:25 ◼   ► All of Apple's products are assembled

00:13:26 ◼   ► except for like a handful of other ones, right?

00:13:29 ◼   ► So if China did something terrible,

00:13:30 ◼   ► and the whole world said we're going to tell China

00:13:35 ◼   ► that it's not okay by kicking them out of the banking system

00:13:37 ◼   ► and doing X and doing Y and do Z,

00:13:38 ◼   ► nevermind that the entirety of the US economy

00:13:40 ◼   ► would be crippled because of so much stuff

00:13:42 ◼   ► that we have as a manufacturer in China.

00:13:44 ◼   ► But Apple specifically, if they said,

00:13:46 ◼   ► okay, well, we're not doing business with China anymore,

00:13:49 ◼   ► It's like, well, I guess there's no more iPhones this year

00:13:51 ◼   ► because where are you gonna build all those, right?

00:13:53 ◼   ► Where are you gonna build all your products, right?

00:13:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, not just iPhones, like Macs, everything.

00:13:57 ◼   ► - But you know, and setting aside,

00:13:59 ◼   ► as Jason starts the article, like, you know,

00:14:01 ◼   ► China is a market where Apple sells

00:14:03 ◼   ► like $72 billion worth of stuff,

00:14:04 ◼   ► but setting aside selling,

00:14:05 ◼   ► that's the country that makes all this stuff.

00:14:07 ◼   ► And that's why I said, you know,

00:14:09 ◼   ► these so many shows ago that Apple has a China problem

00:14:11 ◼   ► and the world has a China problem.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I'm not sure which one of those is the bigger problem,

00:14:15 ◼   ► but like, you know, Apple's China problem,

00:14:17 ◼   ► could be like existential like if if Apple can no longer do business with

00:14:22 ◼   ► China or does not want to do business of China because China did something

00:14:25 ◼   ► terrible does Apple like sort of burn cash for three years to rebuild

00:14:30 ◼   ► manufacturing somewhere like I don't know how they would even recover and

00:14:33 ◼   ► then obviously the world doesn't want China to be invading other countries

00:14:38 ◼   ► either so yeah this is a fun topic unfortunately there is an Apple angle

00:14:44 ◼   ► it but like this is this really highlights that this stuff isn't all necessarily just theoretical

00:14:50 ◼   ► like things like this still happen countries run by countries without even remotely democratically

00:14:59 ◼   ► elected elected leadership can do all sorts of things that don't make sense to us in the outside

00:15:03 ◼   ► world but nevertheless they still happen and we have to figure out how to deal with it yeah yep

00:15:09 ◼   ► So our thoughts, energy, everything is with Ukraine

00:15:13 ◼   ► and we hope that everything reaches a peaceful end

00:15:17 ◼   ► sooner rather than later.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - And this is why, you know, which I was saying about

00:15:22 ◼   ► Apple and China and everything,

00:15:23 ◼   ► this is why this stuff matters.

00:15:25 ◼   ► To have such a strong dependence on a country

00:15:31 ◼   ► whose relationship with the US is tense is not great.

00:15:37 ◼   ► This is why all the Trump stuff mattered a lot

00:15:39 ◼   ► with how cozy he was with Putin.

00:15:41 ◼   ► People out there were voting for Trump

00:15:44 ◼   ► for a variety of reasons, many of which were stupid,

00:15:48 ◼   ► and they didn't see stuff like this,

00:15:50 ◼   ► or they were and sometimes still are

00:15:53 ◼   ► excusing the Trump-Russia relationship.

00:15:57 ◼   ► This stuff matters.

00:15:58 ◼   ► This is why throwing away your vote

00:16:02 ◼   ► in a way that is flippant or as a joke or something

00:16:06 ◼   ► is, you know, that's a serious matter,

00:16:09 ◼   ► and this kind of stuff matters a lot.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And, you know, who we elect as world leaders

00:16:13 ◼   ► and the countries that we empower

00:16:15 ◼   ► or that we let have power over us over time,

00:16:18 ◼   ► this kind of stuff is all big stakes.

00:16:20 ◼   ► And I think we've gotten very comfortable

00:16:22 ◼   ► because most of us haven't been in a major war,

00:16:25 ◼   ► or we haven't been alive during times of major world wars.

00:16:29 ◼   ► But, you know, this is strategically very risky,

00:16:33 ◼   ► and this is, again, why, going back to our tech show,

00:16:35 ◼   ► oh yeah, it's a tech podcast.

00:16:37 ◼   ► This is why I really am uncomfortable

00:16:40 ◼   ► with the level of dependence that,

00:16:42 ◼   ► not only Apple, but as John said,

00:16:45 ◼   ► as many of us, the world that we have on China.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Because again, China is the Russia of this century,

00:16:54 ◼   ► basically, in a lot of ways.

00:16:57 ◼   ► I'm sorry if this is a terribly flawed analogy.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And also, by the way, the major risk to the world

00:17:05 ◼   ► here is like the pile on effect. China will probably consider invading Taiwan. This kind

00:17:13 ◼   ► of stuff, this is serious business. This is really dark, horrible stuff that could happen

00:17:19 ◼   ► here including if the Russia Ukraine invasion doesn't resolve itself in some way soon,

00:17:30 ◼   ► Well who else is going to join that fight? And then what will happen? And if anyone starts

00:17:35 ◼   ► joining that fight, China, if they get involved, is much more likely to be on the Russian side

00:17:43 ◼   ► than the everyone else side. And that's a big problem for lots of people, including

00:17:49 ◼   ► us. And this is, you know, this is a big, potentially, like, horrible mess and, you

00:17:56 ◼   ► You know, this could get very, very bad.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And this is why, again, this is serious business.

00:18:01 ◼   ► This is, you know, we all hope for a faster,

00:18:04 ◼   ► cleaner resolution than that.

00:18:06 ◼   ► But this is real risky stuff here.

00:18:08 ◼   ► - That's why we talked about China in the past.

00:18:10 ◼   ► The dichotomy was like, do you engage with them,

00:18:12 ◼   ► which has been the Apple, what the Apple's been doing,

00:18:15 ◼   ► and Tim Cook has said it explicitly,

00:18:16 ◼   ► we wanna engage with China, or do you isolate them, right?

00:18:20 ◼   ► Russia right now is being isolated,

00:18:22 ◼   ► because they've crossed the line, right?

00:18:24 ◼   ► But up until that point, we were engaged with China.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Exxon was there drilling for gas.

00:18:28 ◼   ► We were trading with them freely.

00:18:30 ◼   ► They were part of the international banking system,

00:18:32 ◼   ► despite the fact that they were run by a dictator who

00:18:35 ◼   ► poisoned his enemies and does all sorts

00:18:37 ◼   ► of terrible assassinations and invades other countries.

00:18:41 ◼   ► But eventually there was a line.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And China, the main thing that's protecting all of us

00:18:45 ◼   ► is that, yeah, we get all our stuff from China,

00:18:48 ◼   ► and China gets all our money.

00:18:50 ◼   ► And so there is this relationship

00:18:52 ◼   ► between the US and China and China and lots of other countries that goes both ways.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Apple would be destroyed without China.

00:19:00 ◼   ► China gets a lot of money from Apple.

00:19:02 ◼   ► The US would lose tons of products that are all manufactured in China and China would

00:19:06 ◼   ► lose all the money that we pay for those products.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Having an interdependent world where we all trade with each other, even when we're trading

00:19:13 ◼   ► in an uneasy way, we're like, "We don't really like your system of government and the way

00:19:16 ◼   ► you do things."

00:19:17 ◼   ► Honestly, they could say the same thing about us and I know it's not the same.

00:19:20 ◼   ► They always throw that back in our face,

00:19:22 ◼   ► well, you do bad things too.

00:19:23 ◼   ► We do, but there's a matter of degree here.

00:19:25 ◼   ► - And also, that's not a valid counterargument.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Like, the thing you do can be bad even if I do bad things.

00:19:32 ◼   ► That's not related.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - But they're like, you know,

00:19:36 ◼   ► it's an uneasy relationship in both directions,

00:19:39 ◼   ► but it is mutually beneficial for us

00:19:41 ◼   ► to continue to have this relationship,

00:19:42 ◼   ► and that is, I feel like, the main thing

00:19:44 ◼   ► protecting us all from annihilation is that,

00:19:47 ◼   ► You know, the leaders in China don't want to screw up their country by becoming isolated

00:19:57 ◼   ► from the rest of the world and vice versa.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So the policy of engaging with China and both of us trying to use our leverage to make the

00:20:04 ◼   ► other two more what we want them to do.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Ben Thompson's talked about this a lot where we always thought like by engaging with China

00:20:09 ◼   ► we would spread democratic ideals to China.

00:20:12 ◼   ► But rather instead of that by engaging with China looks like China is, you know, exporting

00:20:16 ◼   ► fascist ideas to us by making, you know, "Oh, Apple, if you want to work here, the government

00:20:20 ◼   ► has to have access to your data centers and stuff." And Apple's like, "Oh, I guess so."

00:20:25 ◼   ► I'm not sure how that balance is being met, but I do know that I actually feel a little

00:20:29 ◼   ► bit safer with the world entangled with China than if they were isolated. Because you don't

00:20:35 ◼   ► want a country to be isolated, run by dictators, and have nuclear weapons. Like, that's bad.

00:20:41 ◼   ► It's better to be engaged, run by dictators, and have nuclear weapons. So, you know, it's

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's not, you wouldn't want either one of them really, but the engagement I feel like

00:20:48 ◼   ► is a thing.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And that's why the world turning its back on Russia is effective.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Because if Russia was not part of the international community, then everyone turning their back

00:21:00 ◼   ► would be like, "So what?

00:21:01 ◼   ► You haven't been helping us already anyway."

00:21:02 ◼   ► But it's not true.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Their billionaires have apartments in New York City, their yachts are parked on the

00:21:09 ◼   ► shores of the French Riviera.

00:21:12 ◼   ► The people who run that, the oligarchs that run that country, you know, engage with the

00:21:18 ◼   ► rest of the world and are in the rest of the world.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And they don't want that world to become, you know, a cinder.

00:21:24 ◼   ► They don't want it to be irradiated either.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So I hope there's enough mutual interest in not, you know, just destroying the planet

00:21:31 ◼   ► because, you know, anyway, it's hard with Putin and people who seem disconnected from

00:21:37 ◼   ► reality, it's hard to know how things actually, what's actually going on in their head.

00:21:40 ◼   ► But I hope there's enough people who realize that none of this is worth destroying the

00:21:45 ◼   ► planet over and maybe we could just all go back into our corners and stop invading other

00:21:50 ◼   ► countries.

00:21:51 ◼   ► If only.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I hope so.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Now that America is done invading everybody, let's all stop.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:21:56 ◼   ► It's the obvious thing of life.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Oh, invading other countries and taking their territory.

00:21:58 ◼   ► That's how America was formed.

00:22:01 ◼   ► To Marco's point, it was wrong then, it's also wrong now.

00:22:04 ◼   ► It was wrong both times.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Right?

00:22:07 ◼   ► But we can't do anything else about the past.

00:22:09 ◼   ► trying to make progress and say, "Now we find it much less acceptable to invade the

00:22:14 ◼   ► neighboring country, kill the people, and take it over."

00:22:17 ◼   ► All right, so speaking of invading things, what's going on with your intestines, Marco?

00:22:23 ◼   ► Oh, well, nothing new to report. I've started the avocado testing, but it's too early to

00:22:29 ◼   ► say. Bananas continue to be a food in my lineup, and I'm very happy with them because it turns

00:22:36 ◼   ► out there delicious and pretty useful.

00:22:39 ◼   ► - And the funny thing is apparently they used to be

00:22:41 ◼   ► much, much, much more delicious and then like that species

00:22:44 ◼   ► died off and now we're stuck with the--

00:22:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, then we got the Cavendish and yeah,

00:22:47 ◼   ► 'cause they're all clones of each other

00:22:48 ◼   ► and the Cavendish might go extinct at some point too, yeah.

00:22:51 ◼   ► It's a whole thing.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, I did wanna quickly give some follow up.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I did it on Twitter in the show notes as well.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So I had mentioned with my like, you know,

00:23:01 ◼   ► hey, it turns out I took some colostrum

00:23:03 ◼   ► and it fixed my banna stomach intolerance thing.

00:23:06 ◼   ► and I had mentioned that I'd heard of that from some quote "celiacs" in my life who had

00:23:10 ◼   ► taken it and it had fixed them. Well, we got a lot of feedback from people who know a lot

00:23:15 ◼   ► more about celiac disease and it turns out that celiac disease, like the actual celiac

00:23:21 ◼   ► disease with that name tested and verified that it is that thing, and apparently you

00:23:25 ◼   ► need like a blood test and a biopsy to even verify that it definitely is that thing, apparently

00:23:29 ◼   ► that cannot be cured. And so that, so basically the people in my life who describe themselves

00:23:34 ◼   ► as celiacs were probably just wheat intolerant in other ways, like there are other, there's

00:23:41 ◼   ► other situations that could be going on in your gut that could make you gluten intolerant

00:23:46 ◼   ► that aren't necessarily celiac disease. So, so if, and also if you have celiac disease,

00:23:51 ◼   ► you actually really should not try this because not only can it not be cured, apparently even

00:23:57 ◼   ► testing it by having a small amount of wheat is, is potentially harmful. So, please don't

00:24:02 ◼   ► do that and yeah sorry for the error and apparently these people who describe

00:24:06 ◼   ► themselves as celiacs they were really just describing gluten intolerances that

00:24:09 ◼   ► maybe they were not confirmed as exactly this particular thing so once again

00:24:15 ◼   ► doctors go talk to them not us talk to them before you buy pills on Amazon

00:24:20 ◼   ► moving right along we had an ask ATP question last week about shared contacts

00:24:25 ◼   ► and a handful of people wrote in to say well the obvious fix for this which

00:24:29 ◼   ► which maybe wasn't so obvious to us anyway,

00:24:32 ◼   ► is to make another iCloud account

00:24:35 ◼   ► that everyone in your family shares,

00:24:37 ◼   ► and the only thing you use that for is contacts.

00:24:39 ◼   ► So there's a six-year-old article by Lena Schor

00:24:42 ◼   ► that describes this approach in pretty significant detail

00:24:44 ◼   ► that we will link in the show notes.

00:24:46 ◼   ► But basically the idea is, let's say it's Erin and me,

00:24:48 ◼   ► so Erin has her iCloud account, I have my iCloud account,

00:24:50 ◼   ► then we both log into a shared iCloud account

00:24:54 ◼   ► whose purpose is simply to get contacts

00:24:57 ◼   ► between the two of us, and that's it.

00:24:59 ◼   ► I mean, we discussed this very solution

00:25:00 ◼   ► maybe it was six years ago.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I think Tavi Ziri was one of the people

00:25:03 ◼   ► who wrote it and to tell us the solution they did.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And it's not great, like for multiple reasons.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Obviously it's weird to do that,

00:25:10 ◼   ► but also if you ever have to deal with like Apple support

00:25:14 ◼   ► or dealing, you know, just like Apple doesn't,

00:25:16 ◼   ► Apple expects Apple IDs to be one person, one Apple ID,

00:25:20 ◼   ► or like, obviously you can have more than one Apple ID

00:25:22 ◼   ► or all of us do, right?

00:25:23 ◼   ► But Apple software and Apple support

00:25:26 ◼   ► and everything about Apple is kind of like,

00:25:28 ◼   ► oh, well, you are the owner of this Apple ID.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And the idea that you have an Apple ID that is shared

00:25:32 ◼   ► amongst people because you're using it as a back door

00:25:35 ◼   ► to share contacts is not going to be something that

00:25:39 ◼   ► is potentially well supported by other software,

00:25:43 ◼   ► or certainly not by Apple itself if you ever

00:25:45 ◼   ► have a problem with it.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And it's just a hassle.

00:25:47 ◼   ► What do you call the third Apple ID?

00:25:49 ◼   ► And eventually, if Apple adds this feature,

00:25:52 ◼   ► you've got to get rid of that Apple ID.

00:25:55 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:25:56 ◼   ► I would never suggest-- this is good for someone

00:25:57 ◼   ► or listens to a tech podcast, if you want to do this,

00:26:00 ◼   ► go for it, but I would never suggest this

00:26:02 ◼   ► to a regular person because it's just so weird.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Like, this is something that people

00:26:06 ◼   ► shouldn't have to deal with.

00:26:07 ◼   ► They shouldn't be like, oh, of course,

00:26:08 ◼   ► if you spend all this money on Apple devices,

00:26:11 ◼   ► you'll be so happy, everything will work great together,

00:26:13 ◼   ► but if you want to have a shared library,

00:26:15 ◼   ► now we're gonna make a fake Apple ID

00:26:17 ◼   ► and we have to give it an email address

00:26:19 ◼   ► and it has to be the contacts sharing for the family thing,

00:26:23 ◼   ► but no, don't send email to it, but it's just for,

00:26:25 ◼   ► I don't want to have to explain that to anybody.

00:26:28 ◼   ► It's just awkward and strange.

00:26:29 ◼   ► But if you want to do it, this is one way.

00:26:31 ◼   ► The other way is you could just use a different system

00:26:33 ◼   ► for your contacts.

00:26:34 ◼   ► People are all on board with Google or whatever.

00:26:35 ◼   ► I think there's some sharing thing for that.

00:26:37 ◼   ► But the real way to fix this is Apple

00:26:40 ◼   ► needs to implement this feature in their contacts database

00:26:44 ◼   ► and application and API.

00:26:45 ◼   ► And maybe we only have a decade or two left,

00:26:48 ◼   ► and they'll get it done.

00:26:50 ◼   ► We are brought to you this week by Linode, my favorite place

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00:28:50 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:28:53 ◼   ► - All right, we got a fair bit of feedback

00:28:57 ◼   ► that we will probably be reading for the most part

00:28:59 ◼   ► because it was all very interesting.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Last week, I made a somewhat offhanded comment

00:29:04 ◼   ► about how I didn't really hear much complaining or anything

00:29:08 ◼   ► about people who were kind of burned

00:29:10 ◼   ► by the Intel to Apple Silicon transition

00:29:12 ◼   ► and Andrus Kiss wrote in to say,

00:29:15 ◼   ► I was listening to this week's episode

00:29:17 ◼   ► and heard Casey say he hasn't heard of anyone

00:29:18 ◼   ► having issues with x86-64 to ARM transition

00:29:22 ◼   ► and the lack of ability to natively run Windows.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I will say that one group I know,

00:29:26 ◼   ► because I'm one of them,

00:29:27 ◼   ► is mechanical/electrical/aerospace engineers

00:29:29 ◼   ► or engineering students have to run CAD.

00:29:31 ◼   ► I'm always keeping my eyes out for reports

00:29:33 ◼   ► of how well our CAD software of choice,

00:29:34 ◼   ► which happens to be SolidWorks,

00:29:36 ◼   ► works using virtualization of ARM, Windows,

00:29:40 ◼   ► and Parallels desktop.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Unfortunately, thus far,

00:29:42 ◼   ► all the stories have essentially been,

00:29:43 ◼   ► quote, it doesn't work, quote.

00:29:45 ◼   ► If that continues to be the story,

00:29:46 ◼   ► In a few years when I may need to replace my work computer,

00:29:49 ◼   ► I might be facing no other choice

00:29:50 ◼   ► but a switch to PC for work.

00:29:53 ◼   ► If I were an engineering student starting today,

00:29:55 ◼   ► it would be a very tough choice

00:29:56 ◼   ► because while the Mac today can do 90%

00:29:57 ◼   ► of what I needed during my studies,

00:29:59 ◼   ► that last 10% is now impossible where it was once possible.

00:30:03 ◼   ► That really stinks.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I'm not sure this is a market

00:30:06 ◼   ► that Apple cares about, to be honest,

00:30:08 ◼   ► and I would hope that the people writing this software,

00:30:11 ◼   ► like SolidWorks, for example,

00:30:13 ◼   ► if they wanted to be cross-platform,

00:30:16 ◼   ► you know, than they would be,

00:30:17 ◼   ► or if their users want them to become cross-platform,

00:30:20 ◼   ► then you should tell them that, but it still stinks,

00:30:23 ◼   ► and it is an example of somebody really getting burned

00:30:25 ◼   ► by this transition.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Moving right along, we got a couple of pieces of feedback

00:30:28 ◼   ► with regard to accessibility.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Todd Shuresky wrote in with regard to the consequences

00:30:34 ◼   ► of iPadOS limitations.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Todd writes, "I agree iPadOS is lagging the hardware

00:30:38 ◼   ► it's running on.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It's not only affecting advanced users,

00:30:41 ◼   ► it's also affecting the physically disabled community

00:30:43 ◼   ► as well.

00:30:44 ◼   ► For example, because iPadOS doesn't allow

00:30:45 ◼   ► concurrent use of the microphone,

00:30:47 ◼   ► physically disabled users like myself,

00:30:48 ◼   ► who have no movement in their limbs

00:30:50 ◼   ► and operate their iPad solely by voice

00:30:52 ◼   ► using accessibility as voice control,

00:30:54 ◼   ► can't attend Zoom meetings

00:30:55 ◼   ► because after joining the meeting,

00:30:56 ◼   ► voice control no longer functions.

00:30:58 ◼   ► This prevents the user from unmuting the microphone

00:31:00 ◼   ► or even leaving the meeting early if they need to.

00:31:02 ◼   ► This is ridiculous.

00:31:03 ◼   ► A key accessibility component like voice control

00:31:05 ◼   ► should always work,

00:31:06 ◼   ► even if another application is using the microphone.

00:31:08 ◼   ► We don't have this issue on macOS,

00:31:09 ◼   ► we should not have this issue on iPadOS.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I am not 100% this is Casey Nail,

00:31:13 ◼   ► I'm not 100% sure this is a iPad OS issue

00:31:16 ◼   ► and rather a Zoom issue,

00:31:18 ◼   ► but no matter where the fault lies, that's really crummy.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm assuming that Todd is saying

00:31:23 ◼   ► that using Zoom on the Mac doesn't have this problem.

00:31:25 ◼   ► So it could just be that Zoom is,

00:31:28 ◼   ► their iPad version isn't as good as their Mac version

00:31:30 ◼   ► with regards to this, but it's,

00:31:32 ◼   ► maybe they'll say, well, it's harder to do that on the iPad,

00:31:36 ◼   ► so we did it on the Mac first or whatever,

00:31:38 ◼   ► but yeah, that's definitely a shame.

00:31:39 ◼   ► And it's adding to the impression that like,

00:31:42 ◼   ► there are things I can do on my Mac,

00:31:44 ◼   ► why can't I do them on my iPad

00:31:45 ◼   ► that have literally the same processor, right?

00:31:48 ◼   ► There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to do them.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Then the reason people can attribute it to the OS

00:31:52 ◼   ► or they could attribute it to the app APIs

00:31:55 ◼   ► or just the app developers paying less attention to the iPad

00:31:59 ◼   ► but it's just one more pebble on the pile

00:32:02 ◼   ► for the iPad feeling a bit like handcuffs sometimes.

00:32:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. - A bit.

00:32:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:08 ◼   ► - Fair.

00:32:09 ◼   ► Then we had some feedback

00:32:10 ◼   ► with regard to AirTags and accessibility.

00:32:11 ◼   ► So before I read this feedback, which is really fascinating, and I really think does a good

00:32:15 ◼   ► job of riding the line between, you know, I want this for me, but I understand it's

00:32:19 ◼   ► not for everyone.

00:32:22 ◼   ► This is one of those scenarios where, where any one of you, the listener can, what about

00:32:26 ◼   ► this whole conversation?

00:32:29 ◼   ► Please just understand.

00:32:30 ◼   ► We're trying to have a conversation here.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I'm not saying that, and Kai Russell, who wrote this feedback, isn't saying that any

00:32:35 ◼   ► of these ideas are the best idea.

00:32:37 ◼   ► They're just presenting an alternative point of view.

00:32:39 ◼   ► So please consider that.

00:32:41 ◼   ► This is all in the spirit of presenting

00:32:42 ◼   ► an alternative point of view.

00:32:43 ◼   ► So Kai writes, Kai Russell writes,

00:32:45 ◼   ► I'd like to highlight my experience

00:32:46 ◼   ► as someone that heavily uses AirTags

00:32:48 ◼   ► as an assistive technology.

00:32:49 ◼   ► I am legally blind.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I am not completely without sight.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Rather, my vision is severely limited.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I tend to lose things a lot.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And when I do, it's very hard for me to find them.

00:32:57 ◼   ► I bought heavily into the tile, et cetera,

00:32:59 ◼   ► category of products as soon as they came out.

00:33:01 ◼   ► They were a big help.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Eventually these products started getting unreliable

00:33:04 ◼   ► for reasons that I understand to be

00:33:05 ◼   ► at least partially Apple's quote unquote fault.

00:33:08 ◼   ► As you can imagine, I was very excited

00:33:09 ◼   ► when AirTags were announced.

00:33:10 ◼   ► AirTags are a game changer for me, just as tile was when it first came out.

00:33:14 ◼   ► The features that are unique to AirTags, like being shown the relative direction and distance

00:33:17 ◼   ► of any of your AirTags, and yes, the Find My Network, make AirTags an even more valuable

00:33:21 ◼   ► piece of assistive technology.

00:33:23 ◼   ► I say this all to make the point that AirTags are not a luxury or convenience item for all

00:33:27 ◼   ► of their users.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Not to sound too much like an Apple marketing video, but AirTags significantly improved my

00:33:31 ◼   ► life.

00:33:32 ◼   ► Unless you have experienced it firsthand, you cannot truly understand the severity of

00:33:36 ◼   ► the feelings of frustration, helplessness, and defeat.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Once one experiences when they cannot function independently, especially within their own

00:33:45 ◼   ► home with no end in sight.

00:33:47 ◼   ► For me, AirTags mitigate that.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I am not attempting to state that my use case negates or otherwise delegitimizes concerns

00:33:54 ◼   ► around personal safety.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Those concerns are certainly valid.

00:33:57 ◼   ► I am certainly not saying that my use case justifies the continued existence of AirTags

00:34:02 ◼   ► in the current form.

00:34:03 ◼   ► That is not for me to decide.

00:34:04 ◼   ► However, in the age of fast-paced internet PR storms, where people fixate on a single

00:34:09 ◼   ► issue at the expense of all others, I feel that it would be remiss of me not to provide

00:34:12 ◼   ► my experience for the other side of the scale."

00:34:15 ◼   ► I'm really impressed with how well-written this was, and I'm really glad that, Kai, you

00:34:20 ◼   ► wrote in to tell us about this, because this was something I did not consider and is utterly

00:34:23 ◼   ► fascinating.

00:34:24 ◼   ► That's just like the general accessibility angle of new tech.

00:34:26 ◼   ► If you have any accessibility needs, any time a new technology comes out, you're going to

00:34:30 ◼   ► look at it and say, "How can this help me?

00:34:32 ◼   ► What can this do?

00:34:33 ◼   ► is now possible that wasn't before, even if it wasn't the intent of the person selling

00:34:38 ◼   ► the product.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Like I'm not sure air tags or like when their meetings are said, this will be great for

00:34:41 ◼   ► low vision people.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Like, but I don't think that was on their list because maybe they just don't even have

00:34:46 ◼   ► that, that, you know, understand where the person is coming from.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Like losing things inside your house, if you're like, ha, I can't find my keys or whatever,

00:34:53 ◼   ► like losing them because you literally can't see them well enough to find them and you

00:34:57 ◼   ► just had it five minutes ago and how frustrating that is.

00:34:59 ◼   ► It's, you know, and so it's like, like any of us with tech, we see new tech products,

00:35:03 ◼   ► product and we say, "Let me think of the ways that this can, you know, how can this

00:35:07 ◼   ► change my life or what could this do in my life that would be different?"

00:35:10 ◼   ► And everybody has a different point of view depending on what their life is and what their

00:35:14 ◼   ► needs are.

00:35:15 ◼   ► And any time there's a product that has some kind of problem like the safety issues

00:35:18 ◼   ► with air tags or has like a nefarious use and that the product designer has to deal

00:35:25 ◼   ► with that nefarious use, you're always going to end up hurting the legitimate users who

00:35:30 ◼   ► are helped by that technology.

00:35:32 ◼   ► It's a difficult balance to strike and you have to be open to the idea that maybe this

00:35:38 ◼   ► product has more downsides than upsides, but you also have to be open to the opposite.

00:35:42 ◼   ► All products have some way they can be misused, but maybe the upsides outweigh the down.

00:35:48 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Collide.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Collide is a new take on endpoint management that asks the question, "How can we get

00:35:55 ◼   ► end users more involved?"

00:35:57 ◼   ► This is in contrast to old school device management tools like MDM, which work more like locking

00:36:02 ◼   ► down your employees devices without really considering their needs or even attempting

00:36:06 ◼   ► to educate them about the security of their laptop.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Collide is built by like-minded security practitioners who in the past saw just how much MDM was disrupting

00:36:16 ◼   ► their end users, often frustrating them so much they would throw their hands up and just

00:36:19 ◼   ► switch to using their personal laptops without telling anyone.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And of course, then everyone loses.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Collide on the other hand is different.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Instead of locking down the device, Collide takes a user-focused approach.

00:36:31 ◼   ► They communicate security recommendations

00:36:33 ◼   ► to your employees directly on Slack.

00:36:36 ◼   ► After Collide, device security turns

00:36:38 ◼   ► from a black and white state into a dynamic conversation.

00:36:42 ◼   ► This starts with the end users installing the endpoint agent

00:36:44 ◼   ► on their own through a guided process that

00:36:47 ◼   ► happens right inside their first Slack message.

00:36:49 ◼   ► And from there, Collide regularly

00:36:51 ◼   ► sends employees recommendations when their device

00:36:54 ◼   ► is in an insecure state.

00:36:55 ◼   ► This can, of course, be simple problems,

00:36:57 ◼   ► like the screen lock not being set correctly,

00:36:59 ◼   ► up to hard to solve and nuanced issues,

00:37:01 ◼   ► like asking people to secure two-factor backup codes that

00:37:04 ◼   ► are just sitting in their downloads folder.

00:37:06 ◼   ► And because it's talking directly to employees,

00:37:08 ◼   ► Collide is educating them about the company's policies

00:37:11 ◼   ► and how to best keep their devices secure

00:37:13 ◼   ► using real, tangible examples, not theoretical scenarios.

00:37:16 ◼   ► So that's Collide, cross-platform endpoint management

00:37:20 ◼   ► for Linux, Mac, and Windows devices that puts end users

00:37:23 ◼   ► first for teams that slack.

00:37:25 ◼   ► So get endpoint management that puts the user first.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Visit collide.com/ATP to learn more

00:37:32 ◼   ► and activate a free 14-day trial today.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Enter your email when prompted

00:37:37 ◼   ► to receive your free Collide gift bundle

00:37:39 ◼   ► after trial activation with no credit card required.

00:37:42 ◼   ► Once again, that's Collide, K-O-L-I-D-E,

00:37:44 ◼   ► collide.com/ATP today.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

00:37:50 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:37:53 ◼   ► - We have something to discuss,

00:37:55 ◼   ► two somethings to discuss.

00:37:56 ◼   ► We have an Apple event that's coming up,

00:37:58 ◼   ► but we have a different event that's happening beforehand.

00:38:02 ◼   ► As you are listening to this,

00:38:03 ◼   ► I have a new app in the App Store, which is exciting.

00:38:07 ◼   ► That doesn't happen all that terribly often,

00:38:09 ◼   ► but starting at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning,

00:38:12 ◼   ► as we record this, so 10 o'clock Thursday morning,

00:38:15 ◼   ► Masquerade, my new iOS app, will be available.

00:38:19 ◼   ► And so, what's going on here?

00:38:22 ◼   ► So, as my kids got older, I felt less and less comfortable,

00:38:27 ◼   ► and this is just for me.

00:38:28 ◼   ► saying anyone else feels the same way. This is just for me. But I felt less and less comfortable

00:38:32 ◼   ► with splashing my kids' faces across the internet. And I do from time to time. It does happen

00:38:37 ◼   ► from time to time. But generally speaking, I try to avoid it. And what I've decided to

00:38:42 ◼   ► do and I decided to do a few years ago is, generally speaking, I will put an emoji on

00:38:47 ◼   ► top of like Declan or Michaela's head in a picture. So you can see their body, but you

00:38:51 ◼   ► can't see their face. And this is just my point of view. I'm not trying to say it's

00:38:55 ◼   ► right or wrong, but that's what I like to do. And I was doing this not often, but often

00:39:00 ◼   ► enough that I was like, "Man, this is kind of a pain in the ass, and there's got to be

00:39:03 ◼   ► a better way for this." And it occurred to me, kind of, I just had an epiphany all of

00:39:09 ◼   ► a sudden, that, "Wait, there's a way to do this. Apple has an API for this." And I don't

00:39:18 ◼   ► remember exactly when it was, but a few years ago Apple came out with VisionKit, and one

00:39:22 ◼   ► of the APIs, which I don't have the actual name in front of me, but one of the APIs is

00:39:25 ◼   ► basically give me a rectangle or a series of rectangles in an image for all the faces

00:39:30 ◼   ► in that image. And so I realized, well, holy crap, I can use that API to figure out where

00:39:38 ◼   ► faces are in an image because goodness knows I know almost nothing about machine learning

00:39:42 ◼   ► and me trying to like work this out would not end well. So I could use the Apple API

00:39:47 ◼   ► to do that and then I can just like, you know, like slap an emoji on top of, you know, put

00:39:51 ◼   ► emoji where the rectangles are easy peasy and that was in September and it's

00:39:55 ◼   ► now March and the app is out so six months later here we are but the idea

00:40:01 ◼   ► behind masquerade is to make all of this easier so the idea is when you load an

00:40:06 ◼   ► image into masquerade just by the way is a pun if you will it's maskereid

00:40:11 ◼   ► maskereid and that's because you're if you're being aided in masking your kids

00:40:17 ◼   ► or what have you. What was the original name? The original name, which was a Casey special and truly an utterly terrible,

00:40:24 ◼   ► which I'm going to regret saying out loud because now it'll be the feet from fast text

00:40:27 ◼   ► I'm never gonna hear the end of it

00:40:28 ◼   ► but the original name was face splash which the thought was and just hear me out for a second the thought was I had like

00:40:34 ◼   ► the the image of Splatoon in my head right where you know

00:40:37 ◼   ► There's those little like splats of of paint and you're sort of even though I was using emoji

00:40:41 ◼   ► It's sort of kind of in that spirit, right?

00:40:43 ◼   ► and you can just like splat or splash, you know, an emoji on somebody's face.

00:40:47 ◼   ► It was later that it was brought to my attention, I think by one of you actually potentially, it was brought to my attention that there are

00:40:54 ◼   ► other connotations that one could use for that, and especially when this is an app designed to hide children's faces.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Wait, that's where people went with that?

00:41:04 ◼   ► Eventually, I didn't go there at first. I mean people just thought it was a dumb name.

00:41:08 ◼   ► It wasn't me either. I'm trying to blame either one of us for this.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Well, my apologies, I don't remember who it was,

00:41:12 ◼   ► but I didn't go there.

00:41:14 ◼   ► - I would not have thought of that.

00:41:15 ◼   ► - I mean, I will say that Face Splash didn't make sense

00:41:18 ◼   ► to me with the purpose of the app, but go on.

00:41:21 ◼   ► - Well, and that's totally fair.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I mean, again, the name was terrible.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And I think you can see it peak out in like the,

00:41:27 ◼   ► some way, it might be the apps reverse domain thingamabob,

00:41:32 ◼   ► I'm drawing a blank on the name of that.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - The bundle ID.

00:41:34 ◼   ► - There, thank you.

00:41:36 ◼   ► But anyways, yeah, so Face Splash was a terrible name.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And my friend, Steve, who came up with the icon,

00:41:40 ◼   ► did the icons for all my apps so far. He came up with Masquerade and I freaking

00:41:43 ◼   ► love that name. So anyway, so the idea of Masquerade on the surface anyway is to

00:41:49 ◼   ► load an image. It'll put emoji on all of the faces it can detect or that really

00:41:54 ◼   ► Apple's code can detect in that image and then you can share it like Instagram

00:41:58 ◼   ► or what have you. But after a while it occurred to me and I think it was Mike

00:42:02 ◼   ► who said this first that wait a second this isn't really limited just to hiding

00:42:08 ◼   ► faces. I mean, that's what I wrote it for, but it's more than that. And what you can

00:42:12 ◼   ► really use it for is just annotating an image with an emoji. And suddenly that makes it

00:42:18 ◼   ► a much more useful tool for really anyone, whereas previously I was writing it basically

00:42:22 ◼   ► for the perspective of parents. And you can do all sorts of silly and ridiculous things,

00:42:28 ◼   ► and I think that that could be a very fun use of this very app. And in fact, I've recorded

00:42:33 ◼   ► an episode of analog that won't be out until Sunday where we discussed where we discussed

00:42:37 ◼   ► masquerade and watching the relay FM members discord going nuts trying to you know put

00:42:44 ◼   ► in ridiculous emoji annotations on things or stickers so to speak on things it was quite

00:42:49 ◼   ► funny so yeah but did the relay discord come up with facey lists as an alternate name like

00:42:56 ◼   ► the ATP chat room just did or faceless yeah faceless yeah faceless by corrupt pixel in

00:43:02 ◼   ► in the chat room, that's my winner for most,

00:43:06 ◼   ► best list pun name for this app.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And obviously--

00:43:09 ◼   ► - No, I'm going with Waft who said faceless.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Oh, actually no, ThomasB19 said it first.

00:43:15 ◼   ► - No, facey list, come on.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Anyway, these names you would never use,

00:43:20 ◼   ► for the chat room I know they're just coming up with names

00:43:22 ◼   ► or whatever, you never use these

00:43:23 ◼   ► because the people who buy this app

00:43:24 ◼   ► don't know who Casey List is.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - And that's actually one of the interesting things.

00:43:28 ◼   ► So I don't know where you guys wanna go with this.

00:43:30 ◼   ► We can talk about the development,

00:43:32 ◼   ► can talk about some interesting pieces behind it. But one of the--one of the very weird

00:43:35 ◼   ► things for me has been marketing this because I feel like I'm going to get some pretty good

00:43:41 ◼   ► coverage tomorrow within our little world. And I don't know if that's because I'm me

00:43:44 ◼   ► and I--that sounds so gross to say that. But obviously, you know, in our little world,

00:43:48 ◼   ► people tend to know who I am. But I don't know if it's because it's me. I don't know

00:43:53 ◼   ► if it's because the app is genuinely good or maybe it's a train wreck and I just don't

00:43:56 ◼   ► realize it. But what's really difficult about the app is I feel like this is a more

00:44:01 ◼   ► broadly appealing app, not unlike WidgetSmith, for example, no, I'm not saying to that level,

00:44:07 ◼   ► but like in a similar spirit of WidgetSmith where it's more than just, you know, my little

00:44:13 ◼   ► audience. Again, I feel kind of gross saying that, but you know what I mean. And what I've

00:44:17 ◼   ► been trying to struggle with, or what I've been struggling with and trying to do is figure

00:44:20 ◼   ► out how can I get this in front of like parent bloggers, for example. So like the Scary Mommies

00:44:26 ◼   ► of the World, which if you're not familiar, is a really, really clever like Twitter account

00:44:30 ◼   ► and blog where they kind of make fun of,

00:44:32 ◼   ► but also give funny tongue-in-cheek parenting advice.

00:44:35 ◼   ► And I've emailed their press catch-all link,

00:44:38 ◼   ► or email address, which I'm sure nothing will come of that,

00:44:41 ◼   ► but I'm not a marketer.

00:44:42 ◼   ► I don't know what else to do.

00:44:43 ◼   ► - You can buy an ad on their podcast.

00:44:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, that's a fair point.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And actually, the next question is,

00:44:47 ◼   ► how much money do I wanna throw at paid marketing for this?

00:44:50 ◼   ► And I've put it in front of a local mom

00:44:54 ◼   ► who's really awesome at sharing things

00:44:58 ◼   ► that you can do locally here in Richmond. I haven't heard anything from her one way or the other.

00:45:02 ◼   ► I've sent it to a couple of, I guess they're internet acquaintances at best, but there's a couple

00:45:09 ◼   ► who did a lot of home renovations here in Richmond.

00:45:13 ◼   ► They go by Young House Love and actually Erin knew the husband in the couple back in college.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And I put it in front of them and you know said, "Hey, you know,

00:45:21 ◼   ► I know you do something vaguely similar when you post pictures of your

00:45:23 ◼   ► children, so I thought this might be useful to you."

00:45:26 ◼   ► But I don't know if I don't know what to make of this app in a happy sense because I feel like if the stars align

00:45:32 ◼   ► Just right like they absolutely did with widgets myth. I think I could get some decent traction now

00:45:38 ◼   ► Which is with Jackson, but decent traction out of this

00:45:40 ◼   ► But if they don't align just perfectly then it's gonna be like any other app like peak of you

00:45:46 ◼   ► You know made it made okay money all told but it it makes gas money at best now

00:45:52 ◼   ► Which is you know, that's the way of the world this way the App Store

00:45:55 ◼   ► But I check gas prices lately because I might not be sure anymore. That's true. Actually, it's it's under four dollars here

00:46:00 ◼   ► And we're an all premium family, but it's under four dollars still but not by a whole heck of a lot

00:46:04 ◼   ► I know in California. It's like five plus which is just bananas

00:46:07 ◼   ► But anyways, I I don't I don't know

00:46:11 ◼   ► I don't know where this is gonna go and I don't know what I'm both the episode in the app

00:46:15 ◼   ► But I'm pretty proud of it. I feel like the app is pretty good and it's again

00:46:20 ◼   ► it's a KC app in that it does one thing and does it at least reasonably alright,

00:46:23 ◼   ► hopefully pretty well. But-- And there's a lot of apologetic text? Yeah, and a lot of

00:46:27 ◼   ► apologetic text, right? But no, it's a very KC app, but I'm pretty proud of it.

00:46:31 ◼   ► I think it looks better than any other app I've written so far, which is a low

00:46:35 ◼   ► bar if I'm honest, but it looks really good, all told, and I'm pretty proud of it. I

00:46:40 ◼   ► think it works pretty well. So we can take this wherever you want, gentlemen,

00:46:43 ◼   ► and we can just move on, or we can talk about how it was developed, or we can tear

00:46:47 ◼   ► tear it apart and tell me everything I've done wrong. Pick your poison.

00:46:50 ◼   ► First of all, on the tearing apart front, I would like to apologize as your friend for

00:46:54 ◼   ► giving almost no feedback and doing almost no testing during this process.

00:46:58 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Because that's the tradition, is we wait until on the podcast and then we give our

00:47:02 ◼   ► suggestions because it's much easier just to give it in person than to try to file a

00:47:07 ◼   ► Casey radar or something.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Title.

00:47:09 ◼   ► There you go. No, but I mean, there are obviously, I mean I would have tons of suggestions on

00:47:15 ◼   ► if you actually want them, but it's kind of late now.

00:47:18 ◼   ► I could go through every screen and be like,

00:47:19 ◼   ► all right, I would change this, this, and this.

00:47:21 ◼   ► I would make this work this way.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I would change this wording to this wording.

00:47:25 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:47:25 ◼   ► You didn't do your patented cut every,

00:47:29 ◼   ► two out of every three words of the entire app.

00:47:32 ◼   ► 'Cause you did a really good job of that with,

00:47:33 ◼   ► I think it was, he was in the app,

00:47:35 ◼   ► but I thought it was Peak of View,

00:47:36 ◼   ► where you found ways that, Captain Verbose over here,

00:47:39 ◼   ► just I could not fathom how to cut text out of the app.

00:47:42 ◼   ► and you have a genuine talent for figuring out

00:47:45 ◼   ► how to use two words when it comes to app development anyway,

00:47:48 ◼   ► how to use two words when I would normally turn to 10.

00:47:52 ◼   ► So yeah, maybe you and I can do a pass on that another time.

00:47:56 ◼   ► - But anyway, I also just want to apologize

00:47:58 ◼   ► for not having done that because I have been so underwater

00:48:03 ◼   ► with my own stuff that I would get the TestFlight email

00:48:06 ◼   ► every time you did a new build, I'd be like,

00:48:07 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, I gotta check that out, I gotta check that out."

00:48:09 ◼   ► And then I would instantly move on

00:48:12 ◼   ► to other stuff.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And so I'm sorry, I've been a bad developer

00:48:15 ◼   ► friend for this app.

00:48:17 ◼   ► But yeah, so overall, I think you've done a pretty good job.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I think marketing-wise, the challenge you're going to have

00:48:26 ◼   ► is that this is an app that even though you did broaden it

00:48:30 ◼   ► to be more about just put emoji over any photo,

00:48:34 ◼   ► this is an app that has a narrow appeal in the sense

00:48:37 ◼   ► that it's very specialized for the people who

00:48:41 ◼   ► want to perform these tasks, you did a good job.

00:48:45 ◼   ► But how you find those people, that's,

00:48:49 ◼   ► as you mentioned, that's tricky,

00:48:50 ◼   ► 'cause it's not gonna be that broad of an audience.

00:48:54 ◼   ► It's not gonna be something that,

00:48:57 ◼   ► you know, when you see it on your phone,

00:48:58 ◼   ► you show all your friends, "Hey, look at what I can do."

00:49:00 ◼   ► It's not gonna be that broad.

00:49:03 ◼   ► You know, it's gonna have to be much more specialized.

00:49:06 ◼   ► And I think, to some degree,

00:49:08 ◼   ► you're gonna have social benefits here.

00:49:11 ◼   ► in the sense that many people might not want to show

00:49:14 ◼   ► their kids' faces in photos, but might not have thought

00:49:18 ◼   ► to put emoji on top of them.

00:49:20 ◼   ► And so maybe, this is the kind of thing where like,

00:49:23 ◼   ► you see someone else's photo that has an emoji

00:49:26 ◼   ► on their kid's face, and you're like,

00:49:28 ◼   ► "Hey, how'd you make that?

00:49:29 ◼   ► "Is there like, you got a quick app to do that?"

00:49:32 ◼   ► And the other, I guess, competition you have

00:49:37 ◼   ► is using no apps to do this, and either just

00:49:41 ◼   ► not caring about posting photos of your kid,

00:49:43 ◼   ► which is gonna be a lot of people,

00:49:44 ◼   ► or people who use the built-in image editor on Instagram

00:49:48 ◼   ► to automatically, or to just type an emoji as text

00:49:52 ◼   ► and stick that over whatever they wanna block out.

00:49:55 ◼   ► So that's your main competition,

00:49:57 ◼   ► and that's gonna be your main marketing challenge.

00:49:58 ◼   ► It's like you did a good job with the task that you solved,

00:50:03 ◼   ► but you have to find people who want that task solved

00:50:06 ◼   ► and/or find people who might have a need

00:50:10 ◼   ► but might not have thought to look for this particular

00:50:13 ◼   ► solution to that need.

00:50:15 ◼   ► That is a challenge and unfortunately I don't have

00:50:18 ◼   ► a lot of advice on how exactly you find these people

00:50:21 ◼   ► other than just hope for some social recognition

00:50:24 ◼   ► and word of mouth there.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And I don't know, you mentioned like buying ads.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I wonder how, I wonder if search ads would actually

00:50:31 ◼   ► be useful for this.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I think one of the challenges you'd have is like

00:50:36 ◼   ► what are people searching for that might be relevant

00:50:39 ◼   ► search terms to this.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, I don't know.

00:50:42 ◼   ► There's so much I don't know. - Like photo redaction?

00:50:44 ◼   ► I don't, do people use these words?

00:50:46 ◼   ► Like probably not, like hide faces in photos,

00:50:48 ◼   ► you know, that kind of stuff.

00:50:50 ◼   ► - When you hear people talking about software of like,

00:50:51 ◼   ► you know, I wanna make an app, what should I do?

00:50:53 ◼   ► And we do it ourselves, talk about like,

00:50:56 ◼   ► oh, make an app to scratch your own itch.

00:50:57 ◼   ► This is the other side of making an app

00:50:59 ◼   ► to scratch your own itch that people don't talk about

00:51:01 ◼   ► as much, which is if you make an app to scratch

00:51:03 ◼   ► your own itch, what if no one else really has an itch?

00:51:07 ◼   ► Right? (laughing)

00:51:08 ◼   ► The reason we say to do it is you'll be enthusiastic about it, you're a subject matter expert,

00:51:12 ◼   ► because Casey's doing this manually all the time, so he has the need for it or whatever.

00:51:17 ◼   ► It's a great idea, it has lots of upsides.

00:51:19 ◼   ► The downsides are, not that you're going to be the only one, because you're going to introduce

00:51:24 ◼   ► people to the concept of it, and if you start seeing these around, maybe you'll catch on,

00:51:27 ◼   ► but if it really is just you're rich and there's just dozens of you, that's the downside.

00:51:33 ◼   ► And sometimes the downside doesn't matter, because maybe I'm just doing this because

00:51:36 ◼   ► I wanted to learn how to program, so I made an app to scratch my own itch or whatever.

00:51:40 ◼   ► But if you're trying to do it as a commercial venture, you might have to make whatever underscore

00:51:45 ◼   ► thing 63 apps that, well, his apps don't all scratch his own itches.

00:51:48 ◼   ► He's scratching everybody.

00:51:49 ◼   ► He's looking for any itch that he can possibly scratch.

00:51:51 ◼   ► But...

00:51:52 ◼   ► I think at this point he's scratching far more people than we can ever hope to.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But the one that did it, though, like what about the 62 other ones?

00:52:01 ◼   ► Like they weren't...

00:52:02 ◼   ► Were those garbage?

00:52:03 ◼   ► No.

00:52:04 ◼   ► You never know what's going to actually have mass appeal versus what's not going to.

00:52:09 ◼   ► So this is kind of like a single-server app does one job, does it well.

00:52:12 ◼   ► The question is, does anyone else want to do this job or is it just Casey?

00:52:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't have a good read on that.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Oh my god, there's so much text in this app.

00:52:21 ◼   ► I like the text.

00:52:22 ◼   ► See, Mark, you want to make it an app like how you would make it, but I look at this

00:52:26 ◼   ► app and I see Casey, for better or for worse, right?

00:52:30 ◼   ► I do, yeah.

00:52:31 ◼   ► there's so many, there's so many caseisms in this app,

00:52:33 ◼   ► and I mean this in the warmest way possible.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Like, it's almost apologetic about its own existence.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - It's very helpful, it's very helpful,

00:52:42 ◼   ► it tells you how to do stuff.

00:52:43 ◼   ► - Big Casey energy there.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - It's very apologetic that like, you know,

00:52:47 ◼   ► hey, sometime you might have to pay me money for something.

00:52:50 ◼   ► - The request or refund thing in settings

00:52:52 ◼   ► is the caseiest part of this app.

00:52:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, you gotta be. - I love it.

00:52:57 ◼   ► - You gotta be kidding me with this.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - But then he does advertise his other app,

00:53:00 ◼   ► so it balances out.

00:53:02 ◼   ► - Yes, I've also, I've never seen an app

00:53:04 ◼   ► use its own name so much in its text.

00:53:08 ◼   ► - And do it with different capitalizations each time.

00:53:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:12 ◼   ► - Almost every label includes the word masquerade somewhere.

00:53:16 ◼   ► - Why does the watermark not have a capital M?

00:53:18 ◼   ► I don't understand that.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - I don't know, I just like the look of it all lowercase.

00:53:21 ◼   ► - Why is it in mono space?

00:53:23 ◼   ► - It's like Mac OS, TV OS, iOS.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:53:27 ◼   ► For the watermark, I just like the look of it all lowercase.

00:53:31 ◼   ► I felt like it was less, you know, it's, here again,

00:53:33 ◼   ► it's Huge Casey Energy, right?

00:53:34 ◼   ► It was less shouty about what it was, you know?

00:53:37 ◼   ► - Huge Casey Energy being completely inexplicable

00:53:39 ◼   ► and indefensible, but nevertheless, it's your app,

00:53:41 ◼   ► so you get to do what you want.

00:53:43 ◼   ► - Aw, sorry, Dad.

00:53:45 ◼   ► - No, I mean, like, there are, yeah,

00:53:47 ◼   ► there are definitely things about this that I would say,

00:53:49 ◼   ► like, hey, tweet this, tweet this, tweet this,

00:53:51 ◼   ► but ultimately, I am a little bit concerned

00:53:55 ◼   ► that this took you, like, six months.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Well, that's fair, that's absolutely fair.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Now, consider the holidays were in the midst of that.

00:54:01 ◼   ► But--

00:54:02 ◼   ► - I mean, the functionality worked in the first beta

00:54:04 ◼   ► when it was called Face Splash.

00:54:05 ◼   ► It's like, done, ship it, but you can't ship it

00:54:07 ◼   ► because he wasn't happy with the UI.

00:54:08 ◼   ► And he did a lot of iteration on the two or three screens

00:54:11 ◼   ► that are here, which I can relate to,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but it's not like it took him six months

00:54:14 ◼   ► to implement the app.

00:54:15 ◼   ► It took him six months to make 75 passes over the UI.

00:54:19 ◼   ► - Right, which, and admittedly, that does take a ton of time

00:54:22 ◼   ► and I know from experience.

00:54:24 ◼   ► But this is going to be a pretty specialized app.

00:54:28 ◼   ► If you're looking at it as a business venture,

00:54:31 ◼   ► as John was saying, the difference between

00:54:33 ◼   ► writing it for lots of other reasons

00:54:34 ◼   ► versus writing it to make money,

00:54:36 ◼   ► I think you're gonna have a hard time

00:54:37 ◼   ► making six months worth of app income from this app

00:54:39 ◼   ► because it's too narrow of an appeal.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And so that's certainly worth,

00:54:45 ◼   ► if you wanna have that discussion of prioritizing

00:54:49 ◼   ► different developing needs and having something

00:54:52 ◼   ► that doesn't justify a super long amount of time,

00:54:55 ◼   ► then how do you kind of rein yourself in

00:54:57 ◼   ► and set limits and everything,

00:54:58 ◼   ► 'cause that's a very hard problem

00:55:00 ◼   ► that most people, myself included, are not very good at.

00:55:03 ◼   ► But it is, again, it does actually serve the job very well.

00:55:07 ◼   ► - And it's a lot better than it was.

00:55:09 ◼   ► It's a vast improvement over the original beta.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Every pass did actually improve this,

00:55:13 ◼   ► and it depends on what you wanna use the app for, right?

00:55:16 ◼   ► So if this was an app to like,

00:55:17 ◼   ► I'm going to hone my app development skills

00:55:19 ◼   ► by learning how to really polish a UI

00:55:21 ◼   ► to get it to the point that it's way better

00:55:23 ◼   ► than where it started, success, you did that, right?

00:55:25 ◼   ► But if it was gonna try to be a business venture for you,

00:55:30 ◼   ► your hourly rate for making this app

00:55:32 ◼   ► is not gonna look good.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Yes, but I don't know.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I take a little bit of issue with what you guys are saying

00:55:41 ◼   ► for a couple of very unique to Casey reasons.

00:55:43 ◼   ► First of all, to be completely frank,

00:55:46 ◼   ► like if this doesn't make money, that would be unfortunate,

00:55:49 ◼   ► but it's okay because this is not the way

00:55:53 ◼   ► in which I make money for the family, you know what I mean?

00:55:55 ◼   ► So I have-- - Yeah, that's what I was

00:55:56 ◼   ► saying, like maybe the purpose of the app was,

00:55:58 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like you've improved your app development

00:56:01 ◼   ► skills during the course of making this

00:56:02 ◼   ► and you learn new APIs and stuff

00:56:04 ◼   ► that you hadn't used before, right?

00:56:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think in that sense,

00:56:08 ◼   ► in keeping that set of my skills sharp

00:56:10 ◼   ► and not having them completely atrophy,

00:56:12 ◼   ► I think is also very, very important

00:56:15 ◼   ► because if suddenly Spotify gets its way

00:56:18 ◼   ► and podcasting's ruined forever.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Like I need to have a backup plan.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And the best backup plan that I can think of right now anyway

00:56:26 ◼   ► is to-- - Please say Bitcoin.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Please say Bitcoin.

00:56:28 ◼   ► - No, God, no.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Goodness, no. (laughing)

00:56:30 ◼   ► The best backup plan that I can think of right now

00:56:32 ◼   ► is to be like a Marco or an underscore

00:56:35 ◼   ► where I have one or more independently written apps

00:56:39 ◼   ► that can sustain the family.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And that's the best possible backup.

00:56:44 ◼   ► But the second best possible backup

00:56:46 ◼   ► is being able to say to a potential employer,

00:56:49 ◼   ► "Yes, I would like this job as an iOS developer, please.

00:56:51 ◼   ► Here's my work."

00:56:52 ◼   ► And you can see in the app store right now.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And I was writing this not two, three, four, five,

00:56:57 ◼   ► seven years ago.

00:56:57 ◼   ► I was writing this two, three, four, five, seven months ago.

00:57:01 ◼   ► This is all still current.

00:57:02 ◼   ► My muscles have not atrophied.

00:57:03 ◼   ► But also, I think, although I certainly was pretty focused

00:57:09 ◼   ► on one particular use case for the app,

00:57:12 ◼   ► I really do think if there was ever a time

00:57:15 ◼   ► that any person would desire to put an emoji in an image

00:57:20 ◼   ► and then share that image with someone.

00:57:23 ◼   ► You know, this app does that very well.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Now, granted, it starts from the perspective of hiding faces.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And I think I might actually, in a future version,

00:57:29 ◼   ► like flip that, or have a setting to flip that off.

00:57:32 ◼   ► So it won't automatically detect faces.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And it'll just let you add emoji as you see fit.

00:57:37 ◼   ► But I feel like this could be broadly appealing.

00:57:40 ◼   ► I mean, how funny would it be to take a picture

00:57:43 ◼   ► of somebody's profile and put the little,

00:57:45 ◼   ► I forget the actual term for the emoji,

00:57:46 ◼   ► but basically the little fart emoji behind them, you know?

00:57:49 ◼   ► Like you can use it for silly things like that.

00:57:51 ◼   ► If you're at a protest,

00:57:52 ◼   ► and this is what I was alluding to earlier.

00:57:53 ◼   ► - Oh my God, do they have butt detection?

00:57:55 ◼   ► - No, but that would be very cool.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But they do have body detection, I think.

00:57:59 ◼   ► - You can train a model to get butt detection.

00:58:01 ◼   ► It's a good WWDC session.

00:58:02 ◼   ► You just need a corpus of butt images,

00:58:04 ◼   ► which I'm sure you can find on the internet,

00:58:06 ◼   ► and then you just train that model

00:58:07 ◼   ► and you embed it in your app.

00:58:08 ◼   ► - And then you could make like, you know,

00:58:10 ◼   ► Fart Array that would just automatically

00:58:11 ◼   ► put the little fart thing on people's butts.

00:58:14 ◼   ► They did hot dog detection, but you know, butts.

00:58:16 ◼   ► It's all in the same area.

00:58:18 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Anyway, focus gentlemen.

00:58:20 ◼   ► So, but another use case,

00:58:21 ◼   ► and this is what I was alluding to really

00:58:22 ◼   ► in the beginning of the show is, you know,

00:58:24 ◼   ► what if you take a picture of a protest

00:58:26 ◼   ► and you want to not let, you know,

00:58:29 ◼   ► to obscure all these faces?

00:58:30 ◼   ► You know, that does involve face detection,

00:58:32 ◼   ► but this would be a really great and easy way to do that.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And maybe that's a dumb idea, but I don't know.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I'm just trying to think of, you know,

00:58:39 ◼   ► ways in which this could be useful

00:58:41 ◼   ► beyond just hiding pictures of your kids.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And I feel like it's possible that it could be.

00:58:46 ◼   ► But the problem is, you know, how do I convince people

00:58:48 ◼   ► that this is a problem that they need solving?

00:58:49 ◼   ► And I think you said that earlier, Marco,

00:58:51 ◼   ► and how do I convince them that my app is the way to do it?

00:58:54 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:58:55 ◼   ► But I think, and part of the reason that it took six months,

00:58:58 ◼   ► other than me just iterating,

00:59:00 ◼   ► is that even for a admittedly fairly simple app like this,

00:59:04 ◼   ► there is a lot, a lot, that goes around it

00:59:09 ◼   ► in modern app development.

00:59:10 ◼   ► There's the whole in-app purchase flow,

00:59:12 ◼   ► which Apple just released a new UI,

00:59:15 ◼   ► I almost said new UI, a new API for that.

00:59:18 ◼   ► There's everything in settings,

00:59:19 ◼   ► there's how do you manage things in settings.

00:59:21 ◼   ► If you're doing any sort of analytics,

00:59:23 ◼   ► just usage tracking,

00:59:24 ◼   ► you have to think about a way to do that.

00:59:26 ◼   ► One of the very interesting things that I tried to solve for

00:59:29 ◼   ► and I like to think I've successfully solved for,

00:59:31 ◼   ► we'll see in a week or two,

00:59:33 ◼   ► is what happens when there's a new batch of emoji

00:59:36 ◼   ► that comes out?

00:59:37 ◼   ► How do I handle that?

00:59:37 ◼   ► Do I need to release a new binary?

00:59:39 ◼   ► And sitting here today,

00:59:42 ◼   ► I think, and I've tested as best I can,

00:59:44 ◼   ► I think I do not have to release new binary.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And what I'm actually doing is using a tip from Gee Rambo,

00:59:50 ◼   ► where you can make a shared iCloud database

00:59:53 ◼   ► that everyone in the app,

00:59:54 ◼   ► everyone that has the app is using a shared database

00:59:57 ◼   ► that only has literally like one or two rows in it.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And that's where it will check for new emoji and see,

01:00:03 ◼   ► okay, do I have a new batch that I should suck in?

01:00:05 ◼   ► And then obviously whenever I update the binary,

01:00:07 ◼   ► then it will update the list of emoji that's caked into it.

01:00:11 ◼   ► But that was a whole rigamarole.

01:00:13 ◼   ► And so there's all these little things that, yes,

01:00:15 ◼   ► like John's right, in the span,

01:00:17 ◼   ► it took me from late September to late February, really,

01:00:20 ◼   ► to get this shipped.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And it wasn't in the first 24 to 48 hours

01:00:26 ◼   ► that I had a working version

01:00:28 ◼   ► that showed rectangles on faces.

01:00:30 ◼   ► But there's so much more than just that.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Like even something as silly as the drawer,

01:00:35 ◼   ► so when you tap on an emoji,

01:00:38 ◼   ► there's like a little single row of face emoji

01:00:41 ◼   ► that you can use to swap what emoji you would like

01:00:45 ◼   ► in the image, but then you can drag that up,

01:00:48 ◼   ► kind of like in Maps, you can drag that up

01:00:50 ◼   ► and then you get like this multi row,

01:00:52 ◼   ► something vaguely more vaguely similar to the stock picker.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And that drawer took me a couple of days to write.

01:01:00 ◼   ► Now, part of that is because I'm not great at SwiftUI,

01:01:02 ◼   ► this was new to me, but part of that is because

01:01:04 ◼   ► there's no out of the box drawer for SwiftUI.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And so it continues to surprise me, even if someone who thinks he does this for a living,

01:01:14 ◼   ► how much just administrvia and other stuff is necessary, even for a fairly simple iOS

01:01:21 ◼   ► app, much less something that's as involved as Overcast, for example.

01:01:25 ◼   ► So yeah, I agree with you, it probably shouldn't have taken me six months.

01:01:28 ◼   ► And part of that is because I'm slow, and part of that is because I'm not working eight

01:01:32 ◼   ► hours a day every single day.

01:01:34 ◼   ► But nevertheless, there is more to even the most simple app you can imagine than meets

01:01:41 ◼   ► the eye.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And I don't need to tell you that Marco, but you know, for people listening, even a simple

01:01:46 ◼   ► app, you'd be surprised how much work has to go into that.

01:01:48 ◼   ► No, that, believe me, that I definitely understand.

01:01:53 ◼   ► By the way, I'm going to send you a quick little Swift function here that dumps all

01:01:57 ◼   ► emoji from the Apple core emoji color emoji font in the system.

01:02:01 ◼   ► I had to write this for, here, I'll paste it in our Slack.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I don't know if it's shareable to everyone else,

01:02:07 ◼   ► but here, that's how to dump every emoji symbol and name.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Anyway, so, (laughs)

01:02:14 ◼   ► this is part of my crazy exploration

01:02:16 ◼   ► for things that take way too long that it shouldn't.

01:02:19 ◼   ► - Well, and actually, you bring up a great example,

01:02:21 ◼   ► like, how do I get access to all the emoji?

01:02:24 ◼   ► 'Cause I can't just throw out, hmm,

01:02:26 ◼   ► it's not easy to just throw up the stock system emoji,

01:02:31 ◼   ► emoji picker because basically you need a place where you're entering text to do that.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And that's not really what I wanted for this app.

01:02:36 ◼   ► So then I've got to figure out, okay, how do I get all of the emoji?

01:02:39 ◼   ► And I have a mechanism for doing that and I'll check out, absolutely check out what

01:02:42 ◼   ► you just sent.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:02:44 ◼   ► But I have a mechanism for doing that.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And then, okay, well, what do you, you know, so I got to figure out what are all the emoji

01:02:49 ◼   ► and then I got to figure out, well, some of them are represented in odd ways on Apple.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Like if you look at the actual Unicode list of emoji, which is what I was working from,

01:02:56 ◼   ► a lot of them are represented in kind of odd ways on Apple platforms, at least right now.

01:03:01 ◼   ► and you've got to like cull that list, and how do you present that list? And if there

01:03:05 ◼   ► was a simple API where Apple said, "Okay, we'll throw up, you know, a, like basically

01:03:10 ◼   ► a keyboard, we'll throw up an emoji picker for you," like that would have saved quite

01:03:13 ◼   ► a lot of time, but that doesn't exist, so now I've got to reinvent the wheel. And it's

01:03:18 ◼   ► silly stuff like that. As you're working on an entire app, it adds up. It adds up surprisingly

01:03:24 ◼   ► quickly.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Oh, believe me, I know. I mean, so I'll tell you, you know, I haven't, I don't think I've

01:03:29 ◼   ► I've shared much of this publicly yet, but it's in beta, so anyone in the beta can see.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So one of the features of the Overcast update that's currently in beta is that I allow you

01:03:39 ◼   ► to choose icons for playlists to show on the list screen. This is why I wrote this emoji

01:03:46 ◼   ► dumper, because first of all, I'm like, well, what if I want people to be able to choose

01:03:48 ◼   ► emoji to be the icon? How do I get a list of all emojis so that they could search for

01:03:54 ◼   ► them by keywords? So I'm like, how do I get all these Unicode descriptions of, like, you

01:03:57 ◼   ► know, person with hair, like, you know, how do I, how is there a list of those? How can

01:04:01 ◼   ► I get an API with that? And I had the same concern. What if they add to emoji, if there's

01:04:06 ◼   ► some way I can dump this from the system dynamically, rather than like hard coding a list somewhere,

01:04:10 ◼   ► or having a list on my server that to keep updated, like that's obviously better. So

01:04:14 ◼   ► I went through all that. And then I realized, actually, what would look better is SF symbols.

01:04:20 ◼   ► And for those of you who don't know, this is like Apple's standard icon set. They launched

01:04:25 ◼   ► a few years ago and they've been adding to it every year

01:04:27 ◼   ► and there's a huge library of I think about 3,800

01:04:31 ◼   ► of them right now of like basically stock icons

01:04:35 ◼   ► that there's a lot of good reasons to use them

01:04:37 ◼   ► and there's actually a whole Under the Radar episode

01:04:39 ◼   ► that we talked about, we'll link to that in the show notes.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Anyway, I decided let me see if I can make

01:04:44 ◼   ► an SF Symbol picker in the app.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Now, there is an app called SF Symbols that Apple makes,

01:04:52 ◼   ► But there's no API to do what SF Symbols does for like,

01:04:55 ◼   ► 'cause it's not made for users to choose their own icons,

01:04:58 ◼   ► it's made for developers to choose icons

01:05:00 ◼   ► and then hard code the values that we're using.

01:05:02 ◼   ► So there is no index on iOS

01:05:06 ◼   ► that is like a list of all SF Symbols.

01:05:08 ◼   ► So I had to build that.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And that took a stupidly long time.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I probably spent two weeks on that.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Like just the index of SF Symbols.

01:05:18 ◼   ► Because not only do I wanna be able to know

01:05:21 ◼   ► that I can list them all and actually know that I have them all. But also I want to have

01:05:26 ◼   ► like, well, how do you search for them? You have to type in keywords. Well, where do those

01:05:30 ◼   ► keywords come from? How do you know what keywords associate with which symbols? And then do

01:05:34 ◼   ► you do things like synonyms or dictionary lookups to like, you know, if there's a symbol

01:05:38 ◼   ► called computer, do you also want to match PC and Mac? And like, how do you get these

01:05:44 ◼   ► these lists, and how do you, like, and I even,

01:05:47 ◼   ► I looked up dictionary, like, there's a dictionary API

01:05:50 ◼   ► on Mac OS, but not on iOS, and so I was like,

01:05:53 ◼   ► okay, what if I build the index statically

01:05:56 ◼   ► and build it into the binary, and use,

01:05:57 ◼   ► so I'll use the Mac API, dump the dictionary,

01:06:00 ◼   ► and then I did that, I tried, I actually built that,

01:06:02 ◼   ► realized the dictionary was cluttering it up

01:06:05 ◼   ► with way too many words that were not relevant

01:06:07 ◼   ► as part of the definitions and everything.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I tried thesaurus, that didn't work very well either,

01:06:11 ◼   ► like, I built all of that, I tried using different

01:06:14 ◼   ► linguistic stemmers to build the search index.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Then I'm like, well, you know how much I'm a stickler

01:06:19 ◼   ► for file size in my app.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So I'm like, I'm not gonna embed this like 400 kilobyte

01:06:25 ◼   ► index, how do I make this smaller?

01:06:28 ◼   ► And I started playing with schemes like that.

01:06:30 ◼   ► I think I--

01:06:31 ◼   ► - This is why you need someone helping you develop art.

01:06:33 ◼   ► 'Cause when you say, I'm not gonna embed 400 kilobytes,

01:06:37 ◼   ► what decade is this?

01:06:38 ◼   ► Just standing, it's fine.

01:06:40 ◼   ► - No, and I think I ended up getting it down to like 30K.

01:06:43 ◼   ► - 30K? - Write your own

01:06:44 ◼   ► compression algorithm?

01:06:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:46 ◼   ► - That would be, speaking of huge casing energy,

01:06:48 ◼   ► that's huge Marco energy.

01:06:49 ◼   ► - I could just use zip, but I don't want.

01:06:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:53 ◼   ► That's so true.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - It didn't quite get that bad,

01:06:55 ◼   ► but certainly it's pretty,

01:06:59 ◼   ► like I spent, again, I spent two weeks on this.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Like just making a searchable index of SF symbols.

01:07:05 ◼   ► And then I spent another two weeks trying to get SwiftUI

01:07:08 ◼   ► to render them in a useful way on the screen

01:07:10 ◼   ► that wasn't loading all 3,000 at once.

01:07:13 ◼   ► - There's that too, but this is such a great example

01:07:15 ◼   ► of some little thing that doesn't seem that complicated.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Like there's a list of something that exists

01:07:21 ◼   ► somewhere on your iPhone, 'cause all these--

01:07:23 ◼   ► - 44K, that's what the final size, 44K, sorry.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh. - Go on.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - So there's a list of all these SF symbols

01:07:29 ◼   ► that exist somewhere, but you didn't have access to it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And what's also interesting with SF symbols

01:07:33 ◼   ► is certain symbols are, there's like a,

01:07:37 ◼   ► I don't know, what's the less gross way

01:07:39 ◼   ► of saying gentleman's agreement,

01:07:40 ◼   ► but there's like a person's agreement

01:07:43 ◼   ► that you can't use like the iMessage looking symbol

01:07:46 ◼   ► for anything except the iMessage related stuff.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So even though it's like just a speech bubble,

01:07:51 ◼   ► you're not allowed to use that for anything

01:07:53 ◼   ► except iMessage specific related things.

01:07:56 ◼   ► And so then you've got--

01:07:56 ◼   ► - Not allowed as an app review will reject you

01:07:58 ◼   ► if you try to?

01:07:59 ◼   ► - Correct.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously, I'm really serious.

01:08:01 ◼   ► - I remember seeing stories about this

01:08:03 ◼   ► and it just didn't make any sense to me.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Remember when Apple used to reject you

01:08:07 ◼   ► if you put like a rounded rectangle

01:08:08 ◼   ► that had the same dimensions as an iPhone

01:08:10 ◼   ► - In your app, I sure do. - I sure do.

01:08:12 ◼   ► - It looks like a phone.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Like it looks too much like an iPhone.

01:08:14 ◼   ► Well, what do you mean?

01:08:15 ◼   ► Well, the proportions are exactly that

01:08:18 ◼   ► of one particular iPhone we made.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Or like, well, is it dot--

01:08:20 ◼   ► - I'm pretty sure I actually got that on Instapaper,

01:08:23 ◼   ► 'cause I tried-- - I know it.

01:08:24 ◼   ► - My tilt scrolling icon, I tried using like a phone.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I got rejected for that.

01:08:28 ◼   ► - So yeah, but the point I'm driving at is,

01:08:30 ◼   ► you know, this data seems to exist somewhere,

01:08:33 ◼   ► and you should-- - It sure does.

01:08:34 ◼   ► - In a perfect world.

01:08:35 ◼   ► You should, in a perfect world, be able to just say,

01:08:37 ◼   ► I would like that list, please.

01:08:38 ◼   ► But because it isn't accessible to you,

01:08:41 ◼   ► you spent two weeks going through,

01:08:43 ◼   ► now maybe some of that was getting a little crazy

01:08:46 ◼   ► about the compression stuff, but nevertheless,

01:08:48 ◼   ► you spent a long time just getting the actual stuff,

01:08:53 ◼   ► the effort squared away such that it was functional.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And that, it seems so dumb and it seems like,

01:08:59 ◼   ► why would that take so long, Marco?

01:09:01 ◼   ► What's wrong with you?

01:09:02 ◼   ► But this is just the way app development works.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I don't say that to necessarily complain,

01:09:06 ◼   ► even though I think that's how it's coming across,

01:09:08 ◼   ► But just to say, there's so much here.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Like, FastText, which admittedly was a garbage app,

01:09:13 ◼   ► but it was an entire app, and it was, I don't know,

01:09:16 ◼   ► like a couple hundred lines of code or something like that.

01:09:19 ◼   ► I haven't done a clock on masquerade,

01:09:21 ◼   ► maybe I can do that while we're talking,

01:09:22 ◼   ► but it is not just a couple hundred lines of code.

01:09:25 ◼   ► Like, it is more than that.

01:09:26 ◼   ► And granted, you know, it perhaps shouldn't have taken me

01:09:30 ◼   ► as long as it did, but this is app development these days.

01:09:33 ◼   ► This is just how it works, is that it takes a while

01:09:37 ◼   ► to make something that's decent.

01:09:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, I can't even tell you

01:09:42 ◼   ► how many of these dumb little things I've run into.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I mean, this is just, you're right,

01:09:48 ◼   ► this isn't just any one particular app or project

01:09:51 ◼   ► or task in an app, this is just the job.

01:09:54 ◼   ► I run into this dumb stuff almost every day

01:09:57 ◼   ► where I will, I'll have some days

01:09:59 ◼   ► where I just have amazing productivity

01:10:02 ◼   ► in getting stuff done.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I'll be able to check off a bunch of stuff off my list

01:10:06 ◼   ► and I'll be able to ship out a new build

01:10:07 ◼   ► and everyone's like, well, I can't believe

01:10:08 ◼   ► you filled this in here.

01:10:09 ◼   ► And then I'll have other days where I spend the entire day,

01:10:13 ◼   ► like I start out doing some checklist item

01:10:15 ◼   ► that I wanted to get done and then I realize, oh no,

01:10:19 ◼   ► this is not working the way I expected it to work.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Or to do this, I need to do something else

01:10:25 ◼   ► which needs to do something else

01:10:25 ◼   ► which needs to do something else like, oh, wait a minute,

01:10:27 ◼   ► now this whole thing is expanding in scope

01:10:30 ◼   ► because to actually achieve this.

01:10:32 ◼   ► And some of it was stupid stuff.

01:10:34 ◼   ► like for instance, that list of restricted symbols

01:10:38 ◼   ► and SF symbols, that is gettable information.

01:10:42 ◼   ► The first way I found to do it,

01:10:44 ◼   ► I have since found a simpler way,

01:10:45 ◼   ► but the first way I found to do it was,

01:10:48 ◼   ► I noticed that like if you open up Fontbook,

01:10:51 ◼   ► if you load the SF Pro fonts in Fontbook,

01:10:54 ◼   ► they have as part of their license text,

01:10:57 ◼   ► a list in the license of the symbol name

01:11:01 ◼   ► and then it says this symbol may not be modified,

01:11:03 ◼   ► you know, blah, blah, blah.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And so I figured out what the heck is the CT,

01:11:09 ◼   ► the core text API call to try to get that license

01:11:14 ◼   ► from the font file and then parse that text for the stream.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And I did eventually figure that out

01:11:21 ◼   ► and that probably took me two hours.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Like, there was so much like little stuff like that

01:11:27 ◼   ► that I run into all the time.

01:11:29 ◼   ► You know, just yesterday I'm like,

01:11:30 ◼   ► I wanted to get, I'm moving my notification type

01:11:34 ◼   ► from background update pushes to actual live alerts

01:11:39 ◼   ► for many reasons.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Basically background pushes are much less reliable

01:11:42 ◼   ► than I would like them to be

01:11:43 ◼   ► and people keep complaining

01:11:45 ◼   ► that they're missing the notifications

01:11:46 ◼   ► and so I'm just moving to live alerts

01:11:48 ◼   ► when the upside will be that they are much, much,

01:11:51 ◼   ► much more reliable.

01:11:53 ◼   ► The downside will be that the app will no longer

01:11:56 ◼   ► necessarily wake up every single time in the background

01:11:58 ◼   ► to start the download.

01:12:00 ◼   ► So starting the download is gonna be more dependent

01:12:03 ◼   ► on background refresh intervals or actions

01:12:05 ◼   ► that you take as the user rather than me being able

01:12:08 ◼   ► to tell the system, hey, there's content available.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Hey, there's content available.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Hey, it's content available.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So anyway, but to do that, I had to change

01:12:17 ◼   ► the way notifications are generated.

01:12:19 ◼   ► 'Cause before, my servers, when a new episode would come out,

01:12:22 ◼   ► my servers would send a content available push notification

01:12:25 ◼   ► to the phone, the phone would download the data

01:12:28 ◼   ► for the new episode from the server in response

01:12:30 ◼   ► in a background task and then would post

01:12:33 ◼   ► a local notification with the episode info

01:12:36 ◼   ► once it got that info from the server.

01:12:38 ◼   ► So it was this multi-step thing.

01:12:39 ◼   ► But the key thing was the server was triggering

01:12:42 ◼   ► the app to background launch.

01:12:45 ◼   ► But again, the problem with that is that iOS

01:12:47 ◼   ► will often just say, nope, don't wanna do that

01:12:50 ◼   ► for whatever reason.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Maybe I'm low on power or my internet connection

01:12:54 ◼   ► isn't very good or the user has put me in low power mode

01:12:58 ◼   ► or you've been force quit quote out of the app launcher

01:13:02 ◼   ► and that used to prevent those.

01:13:03 ◼   ► So there's all sorts of things that prevent those

01:13:06 ◼   ► and so anyway, now I had to switch to the live push

01:13:09 ◼   ► that you get when somebody messages you or something

01:13:11 ◼   ► like you get the alert push that they are pretty much

01:13:14 ◼   ► always sent through, up to user settings of course,

01:13:17 ◼   ► but they're pretty much always sent and delivered,

01:13:20 ◼   ► but you can't include things like the artwork image in them

01:13:25 ◼   ► And the limit for how much text can go in there is 4K.

01:13:28 ◼   ► So you can't even like really cram it in.

01:13:29 ◼   ► And so I had to change my server side support for things.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Like first I had to build a system

01:13:35 ◼   ► where all these APNs tokens that I store,

01:13:38 ◼   ► well now I have to store an app build version with those.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Because I'm gonna communicate with the app

01:13:42 ◼   ► in two different ways,

01:13:43 ◼   ► depending on which version of the app it is.

01:13:44 ◼   ► If it's a version before this build,

01:13:46 ◼   ► I have to use the old way.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And if it's a version after this build,

01:13:48 ◼   ► then I get to use the new way.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So first I have to alter the server stuff

01:13:51 ◼   ► to support all this like distinction

01:13:54 ◼   ► on the APNs sending side, add new support

01:13:58 ◼   ► for the new types of pushes I'm trying to send,

01:14:00 ◼   ► then go back to the app side of things,

01:14:03 ◼   ► add a notification service extension

01:14:06 ◼   ► so that it can intercept the alert notification

01:14:08 ◼   ► on the way in, download the image it needs to download,

01:14:12 ◼   ► then modify the notification payload

01:14:16 ◼   ► for then further display in the other notification

01:14:19 ◼   ► extension, the notification content extension.

01:14:21 ◼   ► So like there's, and that was all to, you know,

01:14:25 ◼   ► to quote, make notifications more reliable.

01:14:27 ◼   ► But that was, the check mark item was basically like,

01:14:30 ◼   ► you know, fixed notifications.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And that like, it involved this whole day

01:14:34 ◼   ► of jumping between server stuff and app stuff

01:14:37 ◼   ► and making a whole new extension and all this other,

01:14:39 ◼   ► and you know, and any one of those steps,

01:14:41 ◼   ► if I temporarily screwed it up, that add another hour,

01:14:43 ◼   ► wait, why is this not working?

01:14:44 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't change this key over here.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's, and that's, yeah, that's just the job.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And so I totally get why this took six months.

01:14:53 ◼   ► That makes total sense to me,

01:14:55 ◼   ► and especially all of the UI iteration that you did.

01:15:00 ◼   ► That's the worst, because UI stuff,

01:15:03 ◼   ► not only does it take a surprisingly long amount of time

01:15:06 ◼   ► to build a UI because you run into weird things

01:15:08 ◼   ► with SwiftUI or UIKit or your own ineptitude

01:15:11 ◼   ► and stuff like that, so not only does that take a long time,

01:15:14 ◼   ► but then, usually you have to build something

01:15:16 ◼   ► to see if it really works.

01:15:18 ◼   ► and oftentimes get it out there to people,

01:15:21 ◼   ► and then fix the bugs that they report,

01:15:22 ◼   ► and then, oh, by the way, this whole UI, this doesn't work.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Oh, throw it all away, start again,

01:15:26 ◼   ► or change this whole screen around,

01:15:27 ◼   ► rebuild, tear out half of this, move it around,

01:15:30 ◼   ► and that is incredibly time consuming.

01:15:33 ◼   ► I mean, this is why I've been working on,

01:15:36 ◼   ► basically what in Overcast is basically one screen.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Like this first version of my redesign,

01:15:43 ◼   ► there's some stuff, like font and spacing changes

01:15:46 ◼   ► that are kind of, impact every screen,

01:15:48 ◼   ► and that's a large amount of work,

01:15:49 ◼   ► but mostly I'm redesigning like one to one and a half screens

01:15:53 ◼   ► in this build and that's taken me six months.

01:15:56 ◼   ► So I totally get it, I totally understand.

01:16:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't say it to complain, it's just that goodness.

01:16:03 ◼   ► I mean, if you had told me after day one or two

01:16:05 ◼   ► where I had a very, very basic proof of concept

01:16:10 ◼   ► that it would still take me many, many months

01:16:12 ◼   ► until it was released, I would have been like,

01:16:13 ◼   ► "Really, there's not that much here, come on."

01:16:17 ◼   ► But no, there's a lot here.

01:16:17 ◼   ► And I used clock on Masquerade,

01:16:21 ◼   ► and it's a little bit less than 5,000 lines of code.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Couple of quick fun facts,

01:16:25 ◼   ► just because we're, you know, a lot of developers listen.

01:16:28 ◼   ► There are 29 closed pull requests, all from me to me,

01:16:33 ◼   ► which I think is kind of funny.

01:16:35 ◼   ► - You make pull requests to yourself?

01:16:36 ◼   ► - Sometimes, sometimes.

01:16:37 ◼   ► - Oh, that's so cute.

01:16:39 ◼   ► - So if I'm doing like a major feature,

01:16:41 ◼   ► like the drawer, for example,

01:16:43 ◼   ► then I'll branch, I'll do all of that stuff in that branch

01:16:47 ◼   ► so I can kind of do whatever

01:16:48 ◼   ► and not have to worry about mucking things up.

01:16:51 ◼   ► And then as a final step

01:16:53 ◼   ► before that gets merged back into main,

01:16:56 ◼   ► I'll actually issue a pull request

01:16:57 ◼   ► 'cause I love, I really do love GitHub in so many ways,

01:17:00 ◼   ► but I love that GitHub's pull request UI

01:17:03 ◼   ► does a really good job of showing diffs.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And I know there are other ways to do this.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Like I know I could do this with Kaleidoscope

01:17:08 ◼   ► or any number of other tools,

01:17:09 ◼   ► but I really like doing it on GitHub

01:17:11 ◼   ► 'cause it lets me walk through all the files

01:17:13 ◼   ► and see these diffs and almost every time,

01:17:15 ◼   ► almost every single time I catch something.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And now mind you, before I check in,

01:17:20 ◼   ► I always look at it in tower and look at the diffs in tower

01:17:23 ◼   ► and make sure everything looks good.

01:17:24 ◼   ► But almost every time I wanna issue a pull request

01:17:26 ◼   ► from me to me, I have almost every time I find something

01:17:30 ◼   ► that I'm like, oh crap, left in a print statement

01:17:32 ◼   ► I didn't want to, or oh crap,

01:17:34 ◼   ► I hard coded something I didn't want to.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And so I go back and have to change something

01:17:36 ◼   ► before I accept the pull request.

01:17:38 ◼   ► So yeah, 29 pull requests, 64 closed GitHub issues

01:17:41 ◼   ► and 12 open ones, some of which are kind of

01:17:44 ◼   ► administrative stuff.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It is using async await in a handful of places.

01:17:49 ◼   ► It does use combine here and there,

01:17:51 ◼   ► but more async await when possible.

01:17:52 ◼   ► It is almost exclusively Swift UI.

01:17:55 ◼   ► It is exclusively Swift.

01:17:57 ◼   ► First commit was 21 December, 2021.

01:17:59 ◼   ► And the build that went to the App Store,

01:18:02 ◼   ► that is, as you hear this released,

01:18:05 ◼   ► that was built this past Friday.

01:18:07 ◼   ► So at the very, very end of February.

01:18:09 ◼   ► But yeah, go check it out.

01:18:11 ◼   ► I'd love it if you take a look.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Oh, I don't think I actually talked about the revenue model.

01:18:15 ◼   ► So you can use the very, very basic smiley face for free.

01:18:20 ◼   ► If you would like to use any other emoji under the sun,

01:18:23 ◼   ► then you need to pay a one time

01:18:25 ◼   ► as we record this $3 in-app purchase,

01:18:27 ◼   ► which will give you access to basically all the other emoji.

01:18:31 ◼   ► I haven't conquered skin tone.

01:18:35 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm gonna offer that or not

01:18:36 ◼   ► because it's a very difficult UI problem to solve,

01:18:38 ◼   ► but you get basically all the other emoji for one time,

01:18:41 ◼   ► $3.

01:18:43 ◼   ► So yeah, even if you're listening to this

01:18:45 ◼   ► and you think I'm all right,

01:18:46 ◼   ► just go download it and buy the in-app purchase

01:18:49 ◼   ► just to be nice, consider it a tip.

01:18:50 ◼   ► But tell your friends, tell your family,

01:18:53 ◼   ► tell parents, tell people who wanna put fart clouds on butts,

01:18:58 ◼   ► whatever you wanna do, tell people,

01:19:02 ◼   ► and check it out, I'd really appreciate it.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - My favorite thing about this app is that

01:19:06 ◼   ► the title bar of the in-app purchase screen

01:19:08 ◼   ► is titled in-app purchase.

01:19:11 ◼   ► - Wow, yeah, that's fair.

01:19:13 ◼   ► They could use the word Smith here or there.

01:19:14 ◼   ► I didn't get the Marco treatment

01:19:15 ◼   ► like I did with Peekaview, I think it was.

01:19:18 ◼   ► - Did you do lines of code?

01:19:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a little under 5,000.

01:19:22 ◼   ► - All right, 5,000?

01:19:24 ◼   ► - A little under.

01:19:25 ◼   ► - Smaller than Switch class.

01:19:27 ◼   ► - Oh, see.

01:19:28 ◼   ► - 'Cause I was just running the same thing.

01:19:29 ◼   ► That's why I must have missed the number, yeah.

01:19:32 ◼   ► - Yep, there you go.

01:19:32 ◼   ► - Switch class has no windows.

01:19:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:36 ◼   ► - That's a surprising amount of code.

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01:21:42 ◼   ► We have an Apple ad breaking news,

01:21:44 ◼   ► doo doo doo doo doo doo doo,

01:21:45 ◼   ► Apple event on Tuesday the 8th, it is Tuesday, right?

01:21:48 ◼   ► I'm not making that up.

01:21:49 ◼   ► It is March 8th, one way or the other,

01:21:51 ◼   ► or 8th of March as I should probably say,

01:21:53 ◼   ► peak performance, and it's spelled like peak of you,

01:21:56 ◼   ► thank you very much, P-E-E-K, peak performance.

01:21:59 ◼   ► So-- - Are you getting Sherlocked?

01:22:01 ◼   ► Apparently that's so I got to get a new app out there quick because the old ones getting Sherlock's apparently

01:22:06 ◼   ► So yeah, so peak performance. What are we getting a peek at we getting your beloved Mac Pro?

01:22:10 ◼   ► Are we getting something else? It's weird that they put peak in there

01:22:13 ◼   ► I mean, I guess they give you a peek at and some things you can't order immediately

01:22:17 ◼   ► So technically it's not you know

01:22:19 ◼   ► But like a lot of people are seeing the word peak and saying oh, maybe they're gonna show us the Mac Pro

01:22:24 ◼   ► But even though the Mac Pro won't be ready, they'll show us just how amazing it is

01:22:27 ◼   ► and they're like, and this will be ready later this year.

01:22:30 ◼   ► I suppose they could do that.

01:22:31 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's like, it actually is ready,

01:22:33 ◼   ► but supply chain stuff make it

01:22:35 ◼   ► so they can't ship it for a long time

01:22:36 ◼   ► and they just want to brag,

01:22:37 ◼   ► but that's not an Apple thing to do.

01:22:38 ◼   ► It's like they'll show it to us.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Not that they wait until you can buy the day out,

01:22:43 ◼   ► but they wait until it's closer, for sure.

01:22:45 ◼   ► So if this is something that's supposed to ship in December,

01:22:47 ◼   ► I don't think we're gonna be seeing it now.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Like, what would be the point of that?

01:22:50 ◼   ► But-- - Well, also,

01:22:51 ◼   ► that's more of a WWDC kind of announcement.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Like, if, think about the audience of the event.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Like typically the spring event does not contain

01:23:00 ◼   ► a lot of pro hardware.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Now things might be different this time

01:23:02 ◼   ► in you know with the on the max side at least.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Yeah well first of all yeah everything's pro.

01:23:06 ◼   ► But like on the max side it does seem like we are likely

01:23:10 ◼   ► to see any remaining products that use the M1 Pro

01:23:14 ◼   ► and Max chips.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And the biggest holes in the lineup

01:23:17 ◼   ► that will most likely use those are a larger iMac

01:23:20 ◼   ► and a higher end Mac Mini.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And so you know it wouldn't surprise us

01:23:23 ◼   ► if we see those at this event.

01:23:26 ◼   ► that would be nice.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Those are two, especially the large iMac,

01:23:29 ◼   ► that's a pretty big hole in the lineup.

01:23:31 ◼   ► - If it was any other normal time,

01:23:32 ◼   ► I would say that, yeah, this will be the, you know,

01:23:35 ◼   ► the remaining M1, M1 Pro, or Max machines.

01:23:38 ◼   ► But because everything is weird with supply chain stuff,

01:23:43 ◼   ► it could be that if they had access to all the parts

01:23:46 ◼   ► that they expect to have access to,

01:23:48 ◼   ► that this would be the time,

01:23:49 ◼   ► but it could be they have to make some hard choices

01:23:50 ◼   ► about which one of these products is more important

01:23:52 ◼   ► 'cause we only have enough like power inverters

01:23:55 ◼   ► to make either the iMac or the Mac mini.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And so we can only announce one of them.

01:23:59 ◼   ► That would be a shame,

01:23:59 ◼   ► but that's just par for the course now.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Lots of times you just, you know, the limiting factors,

01:24:04 ◼   ► we can't get enough of some part that's essential

01:24:07 ◼   ► for all the computers that we essentially have finished.

01:24:09 ◼   ► We're like, we're done, they're designed,

01:24:11 ◼   ► they're, everything is ready about them.

01:24:12 ◼   ► The packaging is ready to go, they're tested.

01:24:15 ◼   ► We just can't put this product up for sale

01:24:18 ◼   ► because if more than 10 people buy it,

01:24:19 ◼   ► we run out of this one part.

01:24:21 ◼   ► I hope that's not the case, but we never know.

01:24:24 ◼   ► So yeah, Mac Mini and Big iMac for sure are on the table,

01:24:29 ◼   ► and it would make sense for them to be released.

01:24:31 ◼   ► But this is like a new factor in our whole,

01:24:33 ◼   ► like what is Apple going to announce?

01:24:35 ◼   ► There's so many factors that go into it already.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Now all of a sudden is what if Apple would like

01:24:39 ◼   ► to announce this, but can't.

01:24:40 ◼   ► And that hasn't been a thing for,

01:24:42 ◼   ► basically since the Tim Cook era,

01:24:43 ◼   ► not when he was CEO, but when he was a COO,

01:24:46 ◼   ► when he was doing inventory management.

01:24:48 ◼   ► It used to be that Apple was not particularly good

01:24:50 ◼   ► at manufacturing and had a long lead time

01:24:53 ◼   ► between when something was made

01:24:54 ◼   ► and when someone actually bought it.

01:24:55 ◼   ► And Tim Cook added, you know,

01:24:57 ◼   ► more modern discipline to that

01:24:59 ◼   ► and not having tons of channel inventory

01:25:01 ◼   ► and not stuffing the channel to boost sales numbers.

01:25:03 ◼   ► You guys missed this era in Apple's history,

01:25:04 ◼   ► but one of the things they used to do is,

01:25:06 ◼   ► you know, it was called stuffing the channel,

01:25:07 ◼   ► where if the quarter is ending

01:25:10 ◼   ► and Apple wants to say, "We sold X number of Macs,"

01:25:13 ◼   ► they would say how many they sold, quote unquote,

01:25:15 ◼   ► into the channel, like into the place

01:25:17 ◼   ► where distributors get them from.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And so they would just sell them into the distributors

01:25:21 ◼   ► that would distribute them to the physical stores

01:25:23 ◼   ► and count those as sales.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Even though no person bought those Macs,

01:25:27 ◼   ► and then those things would just sit

01:25:29 ◼   ► in the distribution channel for months,

01:25:32 ◼   ► slowly draining out into like,

01:25:34 ◼   ► I don't know what it was like,

01:25:35 ◼   ► Egghead or Best Buy or independent Mac sellers.

01:25:38 ◼   ► And during that time,

01:25:39 ◼   ► Apple can't sell anything more into the channel

01:25:41 ◼   ► 'cause it was full and it was just,

01:25:43 ◼   ► it was a nightmare, right?

01:25:45 ◼   ► So, but those days are long gone.

01:25:46 ◼   ► And now we think, okay, well, this Apple,

01:25:48 ◼   ► they're great at manufacturing things

01:25:50 ◼   ► and they can get the best, they get the best parts,

01:25:52 ◼   ► they get the best chips,

01:25:53 ◼   ► they get the best manufacturing stuff,

01:25:55 ◼   ► they paid all this money for these amazing factories,

01:25:58 ◼   ► but that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

01:25:59 ◼   ► But then COVID and now nobody can get anything.

01:26:02 ◼   ► So I really hope that doesn't squash

01:26:05 ◼   ► any of these computers, but if all the parts are available,

01:26:09 ◼   ► this would be the time for the Mac mini

01:26:10 ◼   ► and the quote unquote big iMac to make the debut.

01:26:14 ◼   ► - Well, and I gotta say like, you know,

01:26:16 ◼   ► throughout all of COVID and the, you know,

01:26:19 ◼   ► the subsequent supply chain problems that we've had.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Apple has done a very good job of hiding us

01:26:26 ◼   ► from any problems that they might be having,

01:26:29 ◼   ► getting supply or getting things made,

01:26:31 ◼   ► or getting things shipped.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Almost everyone else around the world

01:26:34 ◼   ► who makes or sells things has made those problems

01:26:38 ◼   ► very noticeable to their customers,

01:26:39 ◼   ► because they had to.

01:26:41 ◼   ► Apple, through logistical magic and expertise

01:26:45 ◼   ► and good deals and priority and good planning

01:26:48 ◼   ► or whatever it is, maybe just not talking about it too much.

01:26:51 ◼   ► Apple has really kept a lot of this out of public view.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And to be an Apple customer right now

01:26:58 ◼   ► and to be able to just, for the most part,

01:27:01 ◼   ► go to Apple and just order what you need

01:27:03 ◼   ► or buy what you need and be able to get it

01:27:05 ◼   ► in a pretty reasonable amount of time

01:27:07 ◼   ► for almost this entire pandemic,

01:27:09 ◼   ► that's really saying something.

01:27:11 ◼   ► - Apple's style of communication,

01:27:12 ◼   ► where they don't tell you about things ahead of time,

01:27:15 ◼   ► really helps here, because like, for example,

01:27:16 ◼   ► the Big I Mac that was actually rumored for 2021.

01:27:19 ◼   ► And then the rumors were, it got delayed because supply chain stuff,

01:27:22 ◼   ► but we don't like that. Apple never said anything about that.

01:27:24 ◼   ► There's no reason we should have expected it in 2021 except that we saw a rumor

01:27:28 ◼   ► about it. But Apple's is like, why would you know,

01:27:30 ◼   ► it's not late because we never told you when it was coming. Right.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And so any delays are completely hidden from us, you know, in that respect,

01:27:36 ◼   ► which is an advantage of their, you know, communication strategy. Um,

01:27:41 ◼   ► but I would hope that the way they build things also, you know,

01:27:46 ◼   ► factors into this, like you said,

01:27:47 ◼   ► having preferential treatment that we paid for your factory,

01:27:49 ◼   ► we get first choice on all of these things.

01:27:52 ◼   ► We're putting the same chip in a lot of our computers,

01:27:54 ◼   ► which helps so we don't have to have 17 different chips

01:27:56 ◼   ► being made and deal with the inventory.

01:27:58 ◼   ► Just make as many M1s as you can,

01:28:00 ◼   ► 'cause we're gonna ship a whole line of computers

01:28:02 ◼   ► that have M1s in them, and now with the M1 Pro Max,

01:28:05 ◼   ► make as many of those as you can,

01:28:06 ◼   ► 'cause we got like three or four different computers

01:28:08 ◼   ► that are gonna use them, and the fact that the M chips work

01:28:11 ◼   ► in all these different contexts,

01:28:13 ◼   ► that it's not shoehorning that chip

01:28:15 ◼   ► into a computer that shouldn't have it,

01:28:17 ◼   ► it's great in all those contexts,

01:28:18 ◼   ► that certainly helps as well.

01:28:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, but yeah, so as for what we're likely to see,

01:28:23 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, as part of the same reason

01:28:26 ◼   ► why I haven't looked much at Masquerade, sorry again,