ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So John, I'm curious, do you realize how much of a Boston accent you have?

00:00:05 ◼   ► I do not have a Boston accent. You don't even know what a Boston accent is.

00:00:08 ◼   ► You've watched too many of the stupid, what's his name, Matt Damon's friend.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Ben Affleck?

00:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I know what a Boston accent is, and I know you don't have a standard one, but you do have some of one.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And I don't think you know this.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I know during this podcast I misspoke and said some word that sounded like it has a

00:00:27 ◼   ► Boston accent because I like bailed in the middle of a word and changed to a different

00:00:30 ◼   ► thing and it ended up coming out.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I recognize that I did that in this episode.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that was not me doing a Boston accent.

00:00:36 ◼   ► That was me totally misspeaking and like trying to rope it back in the middle of a word and

00:00:40 ◼   ► this weird sound coming out.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Rest assured I do not say that word that way.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I heard myself do it too.

00:00:45 ◼   ► But no, I have a New York accent for as far as I have any accent.

00:00:47 ◼   ► That's why people complain about how you say Mario.

00:00:50 ◼   ► That's not a Boston thing.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Look, you live there. You can't deny that it's going to have an effect on you.

00:00:56 ◼   ► No, it doesn't. I'm not one of those people.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I'm not one of those people who picks up the accents from my surrounding.

00:01:01 ◼   ► All my kids speak differently than me.

00:01:02 ◼   ► You don't pick it up like 100%, but like,

00:01:06 ◼   ► you definitely have some slight Boston influence in your speech.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I don't think I do.

00:01:12 ◼   ► At all. Zero amount.

00:01:13 ◼   ► You're so wrong.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Zero amount.

00:01:15 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:01:16 ◼   ► [Music]

00:01:18 ◼   ► I think some sort of weird access issue for the last two days trying to get to Daring

00:01:21 ◼   ► Fireball.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Like, it's not a DNS thing because I think it's going past the DNS stage, but it's

00:01:27 ◼   ► just taking forever to load.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Like, I started to load a page before I picked up your call.

00:01:32 ◼   ► It's still loading, the progress bar.

00:01:33 ◼   ► It still has a white screen in Safari.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Is it possible that it's because your computer is slower than, like, my phone from last year?

00:01:40 ◼   ► That's not it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I can't love that demanding site, Daring Fireball, with all its widgets and gigas.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Giggaw. How old are you? What is a Geegaw? It's a word. Are you sure? How the hell do

00:01:54 ◼   ► you spell that? I'm very sure. G-E-E-G-A-W. Geegaw. I think it was officially removed

00:02:01 ◼   ► from the dictionary 30 years ago. A showy thing, especially one that is useless or worthless.

00:02:08 ◼   ► And also it's usually G-E-W-G-A-W. A goo-gaw. That's what I said. I thought you said Geegaw.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - Oh, you're right, I did.

00:02:16 ◼   ► All right, well then maybe Geegaw isn't a word.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Is it an alternate spelling?

00:02:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so, 'cause I looked up Geegaw

00:02:23 ◼   ► and ended up with Goo-Gaw.

00:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - Oh, no, well, I guess it's just an autocorrect thing,

00:02:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's usually Goo-Gaws, apparently it's usually plural.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Wow, this is already taking a turn for the unexpected.

00:02:35 ◼   ► - It's important to get things like this right.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Oh, Merriam-Webster has it.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It's a less common variant of Goo-Gaw.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - I don't wanna do this first time in a follow-up,

00:02:42 ◼   ► 'cause I really don't wanna hear any more whining

00:02:43 ◼   ► the new MacBook Pros, gentlemen.

00:02:45 ◼   ► It'll be quick.

00:02:46 ◼   ► It's a quickie.

00:02:47 ◼   ► It's a quickie.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, I'm sure that once you bring up a complaint about the MacBook Pro, it's

00:02:51 ◼   ► totally going to be a three-second endeavor.

00:02:53 ◼   ► It is.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Bull.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I wanted to put the nose quick in there.

00:02:56 ◼   ► It will be quick, I promise.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I guarantee that it won't be.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Great, I'm already punchy.

00:03:02 ◼   ► You having a holiday party?

00:03:04 ◼   ► No, I'm not.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I should be.

00:03:06 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Especially given this first item of follow-up, I need a holiday party.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Look, until the laptops are fixed, we're going to keep talking about them.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Hey, you know what? They're not all bad.

00:03:16 ◼   ► That's true.

00:03:17 ◼   ► Anyway, alright.

00:03:18 ◼   ► 60% of them don't have keyboard failures apparently, or fine.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but they were all bad.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I don't know that reference, Jon. Don't care. I'm already punchy, so let's just get it out of the way.

00:03:27 ◼   ► We're starting with follow-up, ladies and gentlemen, and apparently Jon thinks that his complaint about a 2016 or '17 MacBook Pro will be,

00:03:34 ◼   ► and I'm quoting, very quick, I guarantee it.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So look at the timer, look at the elapsed time.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Let's go, buckle up kids.

00:03:43 ◼   ► What's going on, Jon?

00:03:44 ◼   ► - I've got one of these at work, remember?

00:03:45 ◼   ► So I use it every day.

00:03:46 ◼   ► So I have occasion to have complaints.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Anyway, I noticed this today.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I very rarely do anything with my laptop at work

00:03:52 ◼   ► except keep it closed and plug it in to other devices.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But I was in a lot of meetings today

00:03:56 ◼   ► and I had the laptop open and the lighting was just right.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And it occurred to me that still in 2017,

00:04:03 ◼   ► Apple is making keyboards where the keys touch the screen

00:04:06 ◼   ► when you close it.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And that's been true for years and years and years and years.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Has it ever not been true?

00:04:11 ◼   ► Has Apple ever made a keyboard where the keys don't touch the screen?

00:04:14 ◼   ► Well, guess what?

00:04:14 ◼   ► Finger grease is on the keys.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And now finger grease is on my screen in the shape of my keyboard.

00:04:20 ◼   ► In the long list of things that we want Apple to correct,

00:04:23 ◼   ► I believe that it is possible for Apple to make a laptop computer.

00:04:27 ◼   ► When you close it, the grease from your fingers on the keys

00:04:30 ◼   ► does not come off onto the screen.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And you don't get a greasy outline of all the keys

00:04:34 ◼   ► in the keyboard on your screen.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I believe that's possible.

00:04:36 ◼   ► they have very low profile keys,

00:04:38 ◼   ► they're all about thinness, that's it.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - Well I think they did.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I don't know if they still do.

00:04:45 ◼   ► On my original PowerBook G4, the aluminum PowerBook G4,

00:04:47 ◼   ► that was my first Mac, I had heard about this problem

00:04:51 ◼   ► about, and back then when you had the matte screen,

00:04:55 ◼   ► it was a lot easier for a permanent imprint to develop

00:04:58 ◼   ► 'cause you couldn't really wipe off

00:05:00 ◼   ► the screen coating very much, like to clean it.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And I had heard about this and so I decided as a policy,

00:05:05 ◼   ► that I would carry the laptop in the backpack

00:05:08 ◼   ► such that the screen lid was not facing my back.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It was facing the other way.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Carrying it this way every day

00:05:15 ◼   ► to and from work and everything,

00:05:16 ◼   ► I never had that problem.

00:05:18 ◼   ► That computer never developed the imprint

00:05:22 ◼   ► of the keyboard on the screen.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And my theory was that in a perfect layout

00:05:26 ◼   ► of the laptop like on a desk,

00:05:27 ◼   ► the screen and keyboard don't actually touch.

00:05:30 ◼   ► But if there's any flex that's squeezing the laptop

00:05:33 ◼   ► a little bit from the sides, like in a bag,

00:05:36 ◼   ► any flex is enough to push the screen

00:05:38 ◼   ► against the keyboard inside there,

00:05:40 ◼   ► because it's such a tiny little gap.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And I imagine over time that gap has only gotten smaller.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So it's possible that while sitting on a desk,

00:05:48 ◼   ► it doesn't press against it,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but that if you have it in a bag

00:05:51 ◼   ► or in a certain kind of stand that stands it up,

00:05:53 ◼   ► or anything that would possibly apply pressure

00:05:56 ◼   ► to the outside of it, like books next to it in a bag,

00:05:59 ◼   ► that might compress it just enough

00:06:01 ◼   ► to make that contact happen.

00:06:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm sure that's what's happening,

00:06:04 ◼   ► but I'm saying, you know, we got the butterfly keyboard.

00:06:06 ◼   ► How many years ago, Casey, we can make a keyboard

00:06:08 ◼   ► that like collapses into the case

00:06:09 ◼   ► and gets out of flex distance?

00:06:11 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm just saying it's an area

00:06:12 ◼   ► of potential improvement, not just for this laptop,

00:06:15 ◼   ► but you know, we do have very low profile keys.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I figure like just that gap should be getting bigger

00:06:20 ◼   ► and not smaller because nobody likes greasy keys

00:06:22 ◼   ► on their screen.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - No, no, you're asking them to make even lower profile keys

00:06:26 ◼   ► please for the love of God,

00:06:27 ◼   ► do not solve this problem in this way.

00:06:29 ◼   ► - The whole, just move the whole keyboard down.

00:06:31 ◼   ► You can make high keys but then have them sink into the keyboard magically.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:35 ◼   ► That one should use laptops.

00:06:36 ◼   ► They're bad.

00:06:37 ◼   ► They're not bad.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:06:39 ◼   ► The butterfly keyboard was 1995.

00:06:41 ◼   ► I'll put links in the show notes.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I actually noticed, it was either today or yesterday, that on my beloved MacBook Adorable,

00:06:48 ◼   ► which I wouldn't change in any way.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I actually would, but don't tell them.

00:06:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I noticed that on that machine.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I generally hold it, I don't know, by maybe the hinge or I don't even remember and it's

00:07:00 ◼   ► It's not sitting next to me, so I can't demonstrate to myself.

00:07:04 ◼   ► But I was holding it in such a way that I felt like it was giving a little bit, and

00:07:07 ◼   ► I think I was putting a little bit of pressure toward the center of the screen, which is

00:07:10 ◼   ► not something I normally do.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I don't like to mess with the LCD.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But it just so happened that I gripped it in such a way that I noticed that if I put

00:07:20 ◼   ► pressure on the center of the LCD, roughly where the Apple logo is, while it's closed,

00:07:27 ◼   ► I can feel it like give enough to come into contact with the bottom part of the case.

00:07:31 ◼   ► So it's just like you're describing, Jon, where clearly the screen is now impacting

00:07:35 ◼   ► the keys.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And I don't recall ever having a laptop that did that, and I'm probably wrong and I bet

00:07:40 ◼   ► all of them do it, but it was a very uncomfortable, very unnerving feeling that I did not like.

00:07:46 ◼   ► And that happened to me in the last 24 hours.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I will also note, to go back a step to Marco's strategies to avoid keyboard grease, I knew

00:07:56 ◼   ► for a long time several super nerds that used to keep, I don't even think they still come

00:08:02 ◼   ► in the in the MacBooks or MacBook Pros anymore, but it used to be when you bought an Apple

00:08:06 ◼   ► laptop, you know where this is going, right? So they used to have this sheet of like not

00:08:10 ◼   ► foam, but like some sort of foam like material that would be between the display and the

00:08:15 ◼   ► keyboard. And I knew a lot of people that would carry that with them and then put it

00:08:20 ◼   ► in their device before they close the lid in order to prevent any sort of scraping against

00:08:25 ◼   ► the screen and I always thought that was crazy until one day I noticed an outline of a keyboard

00:08:29 ◼   ► on my screen and thought well, okay, that's a little bit weird but maybe not so crazy

00:08:33 ◼   ► after all.

00:08:34 ◼   ► - No, and people still do that and there were third party cloths that would fit it perfectly

00:08:38 ◼   ► also that people would do.

00:08:40 ◼   ► That was a pretty widespread thing for a while and I think it is still done by about the

00:08:45 ◼   ► same number of people that ever did it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But to me that always felt too, it's like John having his phone in a pouch that has

00:08:53 ◼   ► is like take it out of this pouch before he uses it.

00:08:56 ◼   ► That's like a step too far for me.

00:08:57 ◼   ► And with a laptop that's like,

00:08:59 ◼   ► having a piece of cloth that I stick between

00:09:02 ◼   ► the laptop keyboard and the lib when I close it

00:09:04 ◼   ► and then have to open it up and take it off every time,

00:09:07 ◼   ► that's like too fiddly for me.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I would rather have the imprint of the keyboard

00:09:11 ◼   ► than have to do that every single time.

00:09:12 ◼   ► - All I hear is that you're too jealous

00:09:14 ◼   ► of my incredibly clean phone,

00:09:15 ◼   ► but this brings up Apple's actual solution to this problem

00:09:19 ◼   ► and the grand tradition of steganography.

00:09:22 ◼   ► if they just made their screens touch screens,

00:09:25 ◼   ► then the giant amount of finger grease

00:09:27 ◼   ► randomly placed all over the screen

00:09:28 ◼   ► would mask the shape of the keyboard,

00:09:30 ◼   ► which would still be there hidden in the information,

00:09:32 ◼   ► but you wouldn't be able to see it.

00:09:34 ◼   ► - Especially if they coded it with whatever's coding

00:09:36 ◼   ► the 10.5 inch iPad Pro screen, which is so,

00:09:40 ◼   ► this is the most fingerprinty iOS device

00:09:42 ◼   ► I think I've ever had.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I heard they had to change the coding for the Apple Pencil

00:09:46 ◼   ► to make that work well and not wear it weirdly,

00:09:48 ◼   ► but whatever is different, the 9.7 didn't seem this bad.

00:09:52 ◼   ► The 10.5 iPad Pro is, it just is a constant wall

00:09:57 ◼   ► of fingerprints, it is hideous.

00:09:58 ◼   ► I wish I knew any way to prevent that

00:10:01 ◼   ► besides using gloves or using one of Jon's pouches.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - Stop touching your screen.

00:10:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:06 ◼   ► - I could've used my phone.

00:10:07 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Just use mind control or keyboard shortcuts.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, speaking of phone cases,

00:10:14 ◼   ► I do have some follow up.

00:10:16 ◼   ► You are still caseless, but I am no longer caseless.

00:10:19 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

00:10:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so as winter is setting in here on the East Coast,

00:10:24 ◼   ► in these places that have winter, unlike you Casey,

00:10:27 ◼   ► cold, dry hands that I'm getting on some of these days

00:10:32 ◼   ► made me feel a lot less secure

00:10:34 ◼   ► about carrying the iPhone X caseless.

00:10:37 ◼   ► First, I tried, there's a vendor that I will put

00:10:41 ◼   ► in the show notes whose name I have forgotten again,

00:10:45 ◼   ► I keep forgetting this name, that it's basically,

00:10:49 ◼   ► I think it's one guy in Brooklyn who laser cuts

00:10:53 ◼   ► leather stick-on backings from real pieces of leather.

00:10:57 ◼   ► They're really nice and they're only 25 bucks,

00:10:59 ◼   ► so it's not like a crazy, crazy thing.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And I have one on my iPhone 4,

00:11:04 ◼   ► and I moved it to the iPhone 4S when I got that,

00:11:06 ◼   ► because having a flat piece of leather

00:11:09 ◼   ► on the back of the phone only,

00:11:10 ◼   ► it does not cover the sides,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and it has a cutout for the camera, that's it.

00:11:13 ◼   ► But it's just like leather with a hole for the camera,

00:11:15 ◼   ► no logos, just blank leather,

00:11:18 ◼   ► and it's high quality, so it feels really soft and nice.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Having that on the back of the iPhone 4

00:11:23 ◼   ► with the glass back felt awesome.

00:11:26 ◼   ► It was fantastic, I was so glad to have it.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I figured, let me try that again for the iPhone X.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And I used it for a few days,

00:11:34 ◼   ► and it does indeed feel good most of the time,

00:11:37 ◼   ► but the iPhone X, because it doesn't have straight sides,

00:11:40 ◼   ► and the 4 also had a little tiny rubber gasket lip

00:11:43 ◼   ► that ran around the glass on the back,

00:11:45 ◼   ► so it kind of provided a little wall

00:11:48 ◼   ► to keep the border of whatever stick-on thing

00:11:52 ◼   ► you had on the back there clean and contained.

00:11:54 ◼   ► The new phones don't have that.

00:11:55 ◼   ► They're so curvy and rounded on the sides

00:11:58 ◼   ► that any kind of stick-on thing that only covers the back,

00:12:02 ◼   ► if it has any thickness at all,

00:12:03 ◼   ► if it's more than just a vinyl sticker kind of thing,

00:12:06 ◼   ► if it has any thickness at all,

00:12:08 ◼   ► it kind of has to create its own edge,

00:12:11 ◼   ► and that edge kept getting peeled up

00:12:12 ◼   ► as I would just handle the phone.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Clearly, this is not really made for this anymore,

00:12:17 ◼   ► And so, as much as I love the feel of that,

00:12:22 ◼   ► I decided I need something else that provides grip.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Went to the Apple Store and felt all the cases.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And I actually, like, they, props to the Apple Store.

00:12:32 ◼   ► It used to be impossible to try out a case

00:12:34 ◼   ► in the Apple Store.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Then the stores had these, like, some stores would have

00:12:37 ◼   ► like these tables in the middle somewhere

00:12:40 ◼   ► where they would have like a little box or rack

00:12:42 ◼   ► full of cases that you could try on,

00:12:45 ◼   ► like with an employee's help.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And now, they just have an example case on the little post

00:12:50 ◼   ► that the boxes for the cases are hanging on,

00:12:55 ◼   ► and you can just pick it up and stick it on the phone

00:12:57 ◼   ► that you have in your pocket.

00:12:58 ◼   ► You can even put it in your pocket and nobody arrests you.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And then you can go put it back

00:13:01 ◼   ► and decide whether to buy it or not or not.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And so, you can actually try out all the cases

00:13:06 ◼   ► on your phone, in your hand, and in your pocket

00:13:08 ◼   ► to see how they all feel, which is really nice.

00:13:11 ◼   ► I gotta give them credit for that.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I tried the silicone case

00:13:15 ◼   ► because that provides the best grip of all the cases.

00:13:18 ◼   ► But when it goes in and out of a pocket,

00:13:20 ◼   ► I have a serious problem with the amount of friction

00:13:22 ◼   ► that it has there.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I may eventually go to that anyway,

00:13:25 ◼   ► but I'm hoping I don't have to.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I tried the black leather case.

00:13:29 ◼   ► First I tried the red leather case.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I tried colors and everything.

00:13:32 ◼   ► The colors seemed way too aggressive to me

00:13:34 ◼   ► because they come up around the edge.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And so you're not just seeing the color

00:13:39 ◼   ► on the back of your phone,

00:13:40 ◼   ► you're seeing the color framing everything

00:13:43 ◼   ► on your phone all the time.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And that to me, it just looked,

00:13:46 ◼   ► maybe it was 'cause I had just done it for the first time,

00:13:48 ◼   ► but it looked a little garish.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I didn't want this bright red,

00:13:53 ◼   ► three quarters of a rectangle around my content

00:13:55 ◼   ► all the time.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So I went with just the Apple Black leather case,

00:14:00 ◼   ► the same one I had used for the 6 and 6S.

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I'm not incredibly happy with it, I gotta say,

00:14:07 ◼   ► just because it still has the same problem of like,

00:14:10 ◼   ► it collects dust around the rim between it

00:14:12 ◼   ► and the phone in the front.

00:14:13 ◼   ► It does cover up a lot of what makes this phone attractive,

00:14:16 ◼   ► like case design-wise.

00:14:19 ◼   ► It does smooth out the camera bump completely,

00:14:20 ◼   ► which is very nice, 'cause the iPhone X

00:14:22 ◼   ► has a very prominent camera bump,

00:14:24 ◼   ► even more so than the previous phones,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and it really stands up far off a desk

00:14:27 ◼   ► and makes it hard to lie flat.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So the Apple Other Case does fix that,

00:14:31 ◼   ► but ultimately, the one thing I'm kinda dissatisfied with

00:14:34 ◼   ► is just that it makes the phone a lot bigger in the hand.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And I know, Casey, you didn't,

00:14:39 ◼   ► did you ever use yours caseless?

00:14:42 ◼   ► I have very, very, very, very briefly,

00:14:45 ◼   ► but I am way too scared,

00:14:47 ◼   ► especially since I didn't pony up for AppleCare this time,

00:14:50 ◼   ► I am way too scared to do it with any sort of regularity.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And so it is almost exclusively lived in the weather case.

00:14:57 ◼   ► In the leather case.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And so I do quite like the leather case.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I've used leather cases on and off

00:15:04 ◼   ► for most of my history with iPhones.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I feel like this one, I am particularly,

00:15:12 ◼   ► know if I'm looking for what word I'm looking for frustrated annoyed displeased but one of those

00:15:16 ◼   ► negative adjectives because I feel like I'm getting way more pocket lint around the sides

00:15:22 ◼   ► than I've ever had before that's probably me being completely bananas but it just seems that way and

00:15:28 ◼   ► I think because the phone is a little bit thicker to begin with than the seven which in and of

00:15:34 ◼   ► itself fine but then add to your point the leather case on top of that which is not thin and by

00:15:41 ◼   ► by comparison to the 7, which I've been handling

00:15:45 ◼   ► once or twice a week for various reasons,

00:15:46 ◼   ► trying to get old data off my phone or whatever,

00:15:49 ◼   ► it feels way thicker than my 7 does.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And if you recall, my 7, I did not use a case on

00:15:55 ◼   ► for the first time in forever,

00:15:56 ◼   ► because I did get AppleCare and ended up breaking the screen.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And this, (laughing)

00:16:02 ◼   ► AppleCare or not, this one, I just don't trust myself,

00:16:06 ◼   ► because I think I will break it without question.

00:16:09 ◼   ► So that is many words to say.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I have the leather case.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I have often used the leather case.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And I feel like it's the best option I've seen,

00:16:17 ◼   ► but I don't really love it.

00:16:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was thinking about trying out

00:16:22 ◼   ► like one of those dbrand skins that MKBHD likes a lot.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I have one of those on my,

00:16:27 ◼   ► I tried one of those on my 6 and my 6 Plus

00:16:29 ◼   ► back when I was experimenting with those.

00:16:31 ◼   ► And they were decent.

00:16:33 ◼   ► They were especially good values

00:16:34 ◼   ► 'cause they were really cheap.

00:16:35 ◼   ► It was like 12 bucks for the whole phone

00:16:37 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:16:38 ◼   ► It's a very good price, very good value,

00:16:40 ◼   ► but I don't think they look particularly good.

00:16:42 ◼   ► I think they look a little bit cheesy and tacky.

00:16:44 ◼   ► And the main problem I had is that it just didn't provide

00:16:48 ◼   ► that much more grip than just the Bear phone.

00:16:51 ◼   ► So I think what I'm probably gonna do is

00:16:54 ◼   ► use the leather case on and off, like when it's cold

00:16:56 ◼   ► and my hands are all dry and slippery,

00:16:58 ◼   ► but then most of the time when I don't need it

00:17:01 ◼   ► for that reason, just use it Bear again,

00:17:03 ◼   ► because it's so much more pleasant

00:17:05 ◼   ► using it without a case.

00:17:07 ◼   ► - It definitely is, and remind me,

00:17:09 ◼   ► you do or do not have AppleCare on that?

00:17:11 ◼   ► - I do not.

00:17:12 ◼   ► - Oh, you are a brave soul.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - No, I mean, and look, I admit it's a risk,

00:17:18 ◼   ► but it's also $200 plus the fee to replace it if I drop it,

00:17:23 ◼   ► plus there's a limit on how many times you can drop it,

00:17:25 ◼   ► and it's like, okay, let me see if I ever actually drop it,

00:17:28 ◼   ► and if I start dropping it so much

00:17:30 ◼   ► that I think an extra $200 a year is a good deal,

00:17:34 ◼   ► then I will change my policy.

00:17:36 ◼   ► But again, right now, because I've never

00:17:38 ◼   ► dropped and broken a phone, so far,

00:17:40 ◼   ► it's not a good policy for me.

00:17:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:17:43 ◼   ► I mean, really the only clear, obvious answer

00:17:47 ◼   ► is to just put it in a little baggie

00:17:49 ◼   ► every time you're done using it.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I mean, why else, why would you do anything else?

00:17:53 ◼   ► It's the only logical conclusion.

00:17:54 ◼   ► - Keeps the screen clean.

00:17:55 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:17:56 ◼   ► - Don't have to worry about scratching on stuff

00:17:58 ◼   ► in my pockets, it's only when I'm outside the house.

00:18:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:02 ◼   ► Not when I'm in the house.

00:18:03 ◼   ► - See, to me, the screen would even,

00:18:05 ◼   ► or the little pouch that Jon has to drop his phone in

00:18:07 ◼   ► and out of, that to me would increase the risk

00:18:09 ◼   ► of dropping it, because that's one more thing

00:18:11 ◼   ► that you have to put it into,

00:18:14 ◼   ► and what if you slightly miss the edge of the pouch

00:18:17 ◼   ► and it falls off?

00:18:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, that could happen.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I've never dropped my phone,

00:18:21 ◼   ► but if you are prone to dropping,

00:18:23 ◼   ► this probably increases your chances of dropping.

00:18:25 ◼   ► - Right. - This is one more opportunity

00:18:26 ◼   ► to miss something.

00:18:27 ◼   ► - Right, and on the way out, too,

00:18:28 ◼   ► it's like here's one more thing you have to take

00:18:30 ◼   ► the phone out of, maybe if you reach into your pocket,

00:18:32 ◼   ► that you pull it out and maybe you forget

00:18:35 ◼   ► that it's in there and it accidentally slips

00:18:36 ◼   ► out the bottom of the pouch.

00:18:37 ◼   ► There's so many conditions where I think

00:18:39 ◼   ► that's actually increasing your risk of damage.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - It probably is, but like I said, it hasn't happened to me.

00:18:45 ◼   ► All of my phone drops are when I'm clumsily trying

00:18:48 ◼   ► to get it off of my nightstand and it's not in a pouch.

00:18:51 ◼   ► It's totally just because I'm not awake or it's dark

00:18:54 ◼   ► or I'm being careless.

00:18:56 ◼   ► That's the main place my phone falls is off of my nightstand

00:18:59 ◼   ► onto the rug or hardwood floor next to it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► So we were ostensibly doing follow-up at some point, right?

00:19:08 ◼   ► We got derailed with Marco's case, I suppose.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I think we were always ostensibly doing follow-up.

00:19:13 ◼   ► My MacBook Pro follow-up was quick.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Marco, I think you're right.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Are we ever really not in follow-up?

00:19:20 ◼   ► Oh, my word.

00:19:21 ◼   ► All right, so who added this glove thing?

00:19:24 ◼   ► I did, because remember we talked about the Kickstarter for those, like, touch ID fingerprint

00:19:29 ◼   ► sticker things that you can stick on your gloves.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Who knows if that's even a thing.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Well, we got a report that it actually is a thing,

00:19:35 ◼   ► of course, in Japan.

00:19:36 ◼   ► You can buy them for $7.

00:19:38 ◼   ► What do you mean, of course, in Japan?

00:19:39 ◼   ► What's that supposed to mean?

00:19:41 ◼   ► That's the old '80s or '90s stereotype

00:19:43 ◼   ► that Japan is living like 20 years in our future,

00:19:45 ◼   ► and everything is awesome there, which is not actually true.

00:19:48 ◼   ► But it's the old saw from back when I was a kid when Japan was

00:19:51 ◼   ► going to take over the world because they

00:19:52 ◼   ► could make better cars than us.

00:19:54 ◼   ► All right, good save.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Still can.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Not California.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Oh, god.

00:20:01 ◼   ► - You're the worst.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Oh wait, is this episode 250?

00:20:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

00:20:05 ◼   ► - Yay.

00:20:06 ◼   ► - Oh, this is our 250th spectacular.

00:20:08 ◼   ► What are we doing?

00:20:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, happy whatever this is.

00:20:10 ◼   ► - This is it.

00:20:11 ◼   ► We're doing a show.

00:20:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:14 ◼   ► - Oh my god, this is the most ATP moment

00:20:18 ◼   ► of any ATP moment.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - We're lucky we remembered it not too far into the show.

00:20:23 ◼   ► - I totally, I was not pretending not to remember it.

00:20:26 ◼   ► You did mention it like a week or two ago,

00:20:28 ◼   ► but I would not have thought.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I mean, Marco should think of it,

00:20:31 ◼   ► he sees the episode numbers when he does like the,

00:20:34 ◼   ► like writes out the files and stuff.

00:20:36 ◼   ► - Well, and I thought about it earlier this evening

00:20:38 ◼   ► when I recorded the ads,

00:20:40 ◼   ► but because I put them in a folder called ATP 250.

00:20:43 ◼   ► - There you go. - And I thought,

00:20:44 ◼   ► oh, it's this week, and then I promptly forgot

00:20:46 ◼   ► as soon as I stopped doing it.

00:20:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:22:46 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:22:49 ◼   ► - Aaron Leonard writes, "I agree with most of your points,"

00:22:52 ◼   ► oh God, "on the 2016 MacBook Pro 15-inch,

00:22:55 ◼   ► but will make one point of exception.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I would not want to live without Touch ID

00:22:59 ◼   ► that was introduced on this model.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I'm a consultant and have to use 1Password constantly.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Oh, I remember those days.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Throughout the day to access client systems,

00:23:06 ◼   ► I have some RSI issues from time to time

00:23:07 ◼   ► and using a fingerprint versus constantly typing

00:23:10 ◼   ► to have my very long and complex master password

00:23:13 ◼   ► is life-changing to my workflow and efficiency.

00:23:15 ◼   ► The one feature offset, this one feature offsets

00:23:17 ◼   ► much of the criticism that I share

00:23:19 ◼   ► regarding the other issues.

00:23:21 ◼   ► I think that makes sense.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I've never used a computer with Touch ID.

00:23:25 ◼   ► If you recall, the most modern laptop I have is my MacBook Adorable.

00:23:29 ◼   ► The one I use for work is that piece of garbage that some popular Apple blogger recommended

00:23:34 ◼   ► recently that's like 13 years old.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Oh, it was Marco!

00:23:37 ◼   ► That's right.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So anyway, so I have a 2015 MacBook Pro.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I have only ever used Touch bars for like 30 seconds at a time in the Apple Store.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I don't know what this amazing future is where you can use Touch ID, but it sounds pretty

00:23:53 ◼   ► good.

00:23:54 ◼   ► But you know what sounds even better?

00:23:56 ◼   ► Face ID.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I want that in my life.

00:23:58 ◼   ► That's exactly why I put this in here.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It's like, yes, Touch ID is great, but really what you really want is Face ID.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Because then you don't even have to put your finger up and your face is always right there

00:24:07 ◼   ► in view of the camera and Touch ID on laptops will be so much better.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Or Face ID on laptops will be so much better than Touch ID.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And as someone who has touch ID, you know, obviously I don't use it because it's in clamshell

00:24:18 ◼   ► most of the time, but even when it's not in clamshell, like when I'm carrying it around

00:24:21 ◼   ► for meetings and have to unlock it, because, you know, I like all work laptops, it locks

00:24:24 ◼   ► instantly if you glance away from it for two seconds.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It is, and I don't know if this is the fault of touch ID, I don't think this is the fault

00:24:31 ◼   ► of touch ID, I think it's the fault of all the evil software that enterprises make you

00:24:34 ◼   ► put on your computer to make them crappier.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But god, you open that thing up, and I put my finger on that touch pad, and it's like

00:24:42 ◼   ► a long time before that computer does anything. Why? Probably has something to do with Active

00:24:45 ◼   ► Directory or Wi-Fi certificates or God knows what it's doing, but all I know is it's not

00:24:52 ◼   ► reading my fingerprint and unlocking the computer. Same thing when I disconnected and connected

00:24:56 ◼   ► from my really awesome super duper thunderbolt dock thingy that lets me have one cable that

00:25:01 ◼   ► plugs in to power this whole thing of peripherals. That's great. The part that's not great is

00:25:05 ◼   ► I plug or unplug that cable. I might as well go for a drink while my computer does something.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I don't know what it's doing.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Sometimes I get a beach ball, sometimes I don't get a beach ball.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Sometimes it remembers my clicks and replays them a minute later, sometimes it doesn't

00:25:19 ◼   ► remember my clicks and replays them later.

00:25:21 ◼   ► It just, it's like it says to me, "You're not going to use me for a while because I'm

00:25:26 ◼   ► doing something."

00:25:27 ◼   ► And maybe it's wrong for me to always play in my Active Directory, but I do pretty much

00:25:31 ◼   ► always play in my Active Directory because I was not formerly on the Active Directory

00:25:35 ◼   ► network with my old computer, and now I am and everything is worse.

00:25:39 ◼   ► One thing I've found which probably is not gonna be

00:25:43 ◼   ► helping your issues here unfortunately,

00:25:44 ◼   ► but when I first got my wonderful but used 2015,

00:25:48 ◼   ► it would occasionally fail to wake up from sleep.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And I thought this was a High Sierra bug.

00:25:55 ◼   ► But it turns out that it's just a 15 inch

00:25:57 ◼   ► MacBook Pro 2015 bug that seemed to exist before High Sierra

00:26:01 ◼   ► and it has to do apparently with Power Nap.

00:26:05 ◼   ► If you disable Power Nap, it completely stops.

00:26:08 ◼   ► that this problem just goes away completely.

00:26:11 ◼   ► I also notice sometimes that it would seem to be

00:26:15 ◼   ► running and warm while in my bag charging.

00:26:18 ◼   ► So very obviously a power nap related problem.

00:26:22 ◼   ► But I also, as part of the attempts to diagnose this problem,

00:26:27 ◼   ► disabled hibernation.

00:26:28 ◼   ► Because what every MacBook Pro does since the 2012 model,

00:26:33 ◼   ► is the 2012 retina model, not the 2012 non-retina.

00:26:37 ◼   ► because back then, when they introduced a radical new design

00:26:40 ◼   ► they also updated the previous design

00:26:42 ◼   ► with the new components.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Anyway, since 2012, Retina, Mappa Pro, and forward,

00:26:47 ◼   ► one of the reasons why they now get such better

00:26:49 ◼   ► standby battery life is that after a few hours

00:26:52 ◼   ► of not being woken up, if they're not plugged in,

00:26:55 ◼   ► they go into full hibernation,

00:26:56 ◼   ► which PC users have been familiar with for a long time,

00:26:58 ◼   ► which basically means they write the contents of RAM

00:27:00 ◼   ► to a file on disk and fully turn off.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Then when you boot it up it has to like,

00:27:04 ◼   ► kind of wake up from that deep hibernation

00:27:06 ◼   ► by reading that hyperfile back into RAM

00:27:09 ◼   ► and that's why it takes a little bit longer.

00:27:10 ◼   ► You might see a little bit different progress bar

00:27:11 ◼   ► when it boots up.

00:27:13 ◼   ► This is slow and crappy and if you are leaving

00:27:16 ◼   ► your computer unplugged from battery for two weeks,

00:27:20 ◼   ► it's very helpful.

00:27:21 ◼   ► But if you plug it in like every day

00:27:24 ◼   ► and you're just leaving it closed for a few hours,

00:27:27 ◼   ► then this is very annoying.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And so I disabled that, and by the way,

00:27:31 ◼   ► once you disable it, you can also delete

00:27:32 ◼   ► the hibernation file which can get you back

00:27:35 ◼   ► in disk space the amount of RAM you have, which is nice.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Look up on every Mac forum since 2012 on how to do this.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Since I disabled both Power Nap for the weird bugs

00:27:44 ◼   ► and the hibernation with whatever

00:27:47 ◼   ► like the pseudo PM set command is to do it,

00:27:49 ◼   ► it wakes up way faster from sleep.

00:27:52 ◼   ► 'Cause what you're describing, John,

00:27:54 ◼   ► that's happened to every MacBook Pro for quite a while.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I did notice in my time using the touch bar versions,

00:28:02 ◼   ► that was always way worse on the touch bars.

00:28:04 ◼   ► So whatever it's doing, waking up from sleep or hibernation

00:28:07 ◼   ► or whatever it is, something seems to be extra long

00:28:11 ◼   ► or delayed or blocking or waiting for something

00:28:14 ◼   ► on TouchBar models.

00:28:15 ◼   ► That was worse when they first came out.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Subsequent software improvements have dropped

00:28:19 ◼   ► that delay somewhat, but they still do it.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Are you on High Sierra yet?

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Just gonna let Subsequent fly by, huh?

00:28:25 ◼   ► Okay, I guess it's only bezels.

00:28:27 ◼   ► - Subsequent, whatever, yeah, I know.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I don't think it's hibernation or PowerNap,

00:28:33 ◼   ► Although I routinely disable those as well, usually for disk space reasons.

00:28:36 ◼   ► I've been doing that ever since the RAM got so big that it started to eat a chunk of it.

00:28:41 ◼   ► But come to think of it, maybe I didn't do that on my work Mac.

00:28:43 ◼   ► But I'm sure it's not hibernating.

00:28:44 ◼   ► This is me.

00:28:45 ◼   ► I close it, and then 30 seconds later I open it.

00:28:47 ◼   ► It hasn't gone into hibernation at that point.

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's not like the screen is inert when it's coming out of hibernation.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Some things work, and sometimes I can click and bring an application to the front before

00:28:56 ◼   ► the beach ball appears, but then eventually it stops responding.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Power nap I haven't looked into.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Because again, like, you know, Power Nap should only happen like, "Oh, your computer's been

00:29:03 ◼   ► asleep for a while, now it's going to check email or some crap or do local time machine

00:29:06 ◼   ► snapshots."

00:29:07 ◼   ► And I haven't disabled that and I'm sure my computer is doing that if it would ever go

00:29:12 ◼   ► to sleep.

00:29:13 ◼   ► I think I have it set never to sleep because it's plugged in in battery power.

00:29:16 ◼   ► But maybe there's some other weird interaction where if Power Nap is enabled at all, it does

00:29:19 ◼   ► some weird thing and you just wake it up.

00:29:20 ◼   ► So I'll try both those things and get back to you.

00:29:22 ◼   ► But I don't like having to do this voodoo.

00:29:23 ◼   ► I like to just open the computer up and I mean the screen turns on immediately and it

00:29:28 ◼   ► It seems like it's ready to go in terms of like the mouse cursor moves.

00:29:36 ◼   ► It's like golf is a good walk spoiled.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Laptops are a good computer spoiled.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Like just desktops, they work fine.

00:29:43 ◼   ► You walk up to them, you wiggle the mouse, you hit the keyboard, you're there.

00:29:47 ◼   ► You just go and the computer's like, "Yes, I'm here.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Use me now."

00:29:50 ◼   ► And the laptop's like, "I don't know.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I don't know about that."

00:29:52 ◼   ► And that's what makes Touch ID worse is because your finger's there and it's like, "Can I

00:29:56 ◼   ► lift my finger?

00:29:57 ◼   ► And should I put my finger down?

00:29:58 ◼   ► Should I wait for the little animation on the touch bar saying Touch ID here?

00:30:01 ◼   ► Has it already authenticated me and I'm just waiting?

00:30:03 ◼   ► That's often the case.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Sometimes it's already authenticated.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I give up, I take my finger off and I'm like, "Come on, computer, what are you doing?"

00:30:08 ◼   ► And then it unlocks, like based on a finger that was laid on there like 15 seconds ago.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I don't like laptops.

00:30:14 ◼   ► You know, you're right.

00:30:17 ◼   ► When I am in a car in the passenger seat and I need to do a little bit of work, I like

00:30:21 ◼   ► bringing my iMac and my inverter.

00:30:25 ◼   ► You have nothing to be ashamed of.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - Nothing to apologize for, sorry I blew it,

00:30:29 ◼   ► oh my God I'm getting too old.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - When I'm on an airplane, you know what the best way

00:30:33 ◼   ► to use a computer on an airplane is?

00:30:35 ◼   ► 27 inch iMac, hell yeah.

00:30:38 ◼   ► That's where I like to use my desktops.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - What I'm learning over time as I get old

00:30:42 ◼   ► and more like Jon is that I would rather just not

00:30:46 ◼   ► use a computer in a car and just wait

00:30:49 ◼   ► to get back to my 27 inch iMac.

00:30:51 ◼   ► - Oh my God, listeners, I hope somebody out there

00:30:56 ◼   ► is face--I literally just face-palmed. I hope somebody else out there is face-palming as

00:31:01 ◼   ► bad as I am because you guys, man, the combined age of the two of you is approximately 134

00:31:07 ◼   ► years old.

00:31:08 ◼   ► No, no, actually, the real answer, I mean, the thing that both Marco and I think everyone

00:31:11 ◼   ► would agree on, iOS devices. Like, they--you don't have problems with iOS devices. Imagine

00:31:15 ◼   ► if you took out your iOS device, like your iPad, and hit the power switch and had to

00:31:18 ◼   ► wait the amount of time I have to wait to use my laptop. It would be like, "Is this

00:31:20 ◼   ► thing broken?" Right? It instantly, like, face ID, touch ID, it's like ready to go,

00:31:26 ◼   ► instantly, immediately. None of this whole like, "Let me wake up and do whatever I'm

00:31:30 ◼   ► doing and put a beach ball" there's no place to put a beach ball anywhere. If an iOS device

00:31:34 ◼   ► does that it seems broken. And it made more sense like, "Well, iOS devices, you can only

00:31:40 ◼   ► run one application at a time and they're highly optimized." But at this point iOS devices

00:31:44 ◼   ► have faster CPUs than Macs, are multitasking, they're still RAM starved, but they're full

00:31:50 ◼   ► fledged machines and it's just something something in the the remember when there

00:31:55 ◼   ► was an effort a while back to this was a public marketing effort or just

00:32:00 ◼   ► something that people would say behind closed doors or whatever that trying to

00:32:03 ◼   ► make the Mac experience like the iOS experience like when you just open it up

00:32:07 ◼   ► and it's ready to go actually that was on stage wasn't it didn't Steve Jobs say

00:32:10 ◼   ► that at one point like the MacBook Air is like no effort it was based it was a

00:32:14 ◼   ► it was a story that that had gotten out of Apple that apparently Steve there

00:32:18 ◼   ► There was a famous meeting where Steve walked in

00:32:20 ◼   ► and dropped a MacBook Air on the table

00:32:22 ◼   ► and had an iPad and turned the iPad on from sleep

00:32:26 ◼   ► and just comes on and he's,

00:32:27 ◼   ► what's the MacBook Air, like why can't this do that?

00:32:29 ◼   ► Something like that. - There you go.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so who knows if it was real or not,

00:32:32 ◼   ► but anyway, I endorse that idea.

00:32:34 ◼   ► The iOS devices feel so much better

00:32:37 ◼   ► because there's so much crap that it's just unacceptable

00:32:39 ◼   ► on an iOS device and on the Mac we're still suffering

00:32:42 ◼   ► under the burden of this older behavior

00:32:45 ◼   ► that I guess laptop users just live with

00:32:47 ◼   ► and just think it's the price of using a laptop,

00:32:49 ◼   ► and I don't like it.

00:32:51 ◼   ► - Well, the job that a laptop has to do

00:32:55 ◼   ► is way more complicated.

00:32:56 ◼   ► A lot of that waking up from sleep delay

00:32:58 ◼   ► is stuff like checking USB peripherals

00:33:01 ◼   ► and stuff like that that iPads don't have to worry about.

00:33:03 ◼   ► But a lot of it is just legacy stuff

00:33:04 ◼   ► they could get rid of if they really tried.

00:33:07 ◼   ► But the Mac is not in a position

00:33:10 ◼   ► where it's getting a lot of effort

00:33:11 ◼   ► for the most part, it seems.

00:33:13 ◼   ► - I thought that Macs hibernated

00:33:15 ◼   ► every time they went to sleep.

00:33:17 ◼   ► they just kept the memory powered on until the battery had dropped quite a bit or was

00:33:22 ◼   ► at a dangerous level or something like that. I thought they always wrote the contents of

00:33:26 ◼   ► RAM to disk every single time.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I hope that's not true. Again, I routinely disable it on the laptops that are in my house

00:33:34 ◼   ► just to save the disk space, but if that's also a benefit, I'll look into it. I'll make

00:33:38 ◼   ► sure it's off on my work phone and see how it goes.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Last bit of follow-up. Dan Lear writes in, this is with regard to our Thanksgiving list

00:33:45 ◼   ► from last episode. Nobody's thankful for the Switch. I'm surprised the Switch didn't make

00:33:49 ◼   ► anyone's list, despite how much time you've talked about Zelda, Mario Kart, Stardew Valley,

00:33:53 ◼   ► and playing with friends and family, etc. For me, it was both an omission by accident

00:34:00 ◼   ► and somewhat deliberately. I still do use my Switch from time to time. I still... Well,

00:34:05 ◼   ► so some... I think Jon put this in the show notes and he cut the key piece that which

00:34:09 ◼   ► was, I believe Dan had said, basically, is this because it was a fad or because you just

00:34:15 ◼   ► don't or you just didn't think of it and for me it's kind of both right like I

00:34:19 ◼   ► didn't think of it at the time but even if I had I don't know that I would have

00:34:22 ◼   ► said it because I don't use my switch near as much as I did when I first got

00:34:27 ◼   ► it and I do still like it and I'm glad I spent the money on it but it's very rare

00:34:32 ◼   ► I find myself picking that up in the evenings but I've also been just super

00:34:35 ◼   ► super busy for quite a long time now but you know when my my family gets together

00:34:40 ◼   ► you know, like well really Aaron's family a couple of my

00:34:43 ◼   ► in-laws have

00:34:45 ◼   ► Have switches and so we've been you know

00:34:48 ◼   ► Generally speaking bringing them with us when we have a family function and we'll play like a couple rounds of Mario Kart or something like that

00:34:53 ◼   ► So I am thankful for it. I definitely like it. But that is what is the top four etiquette?

00:34:59 ◼   ► That's my number five or tied for number four or is this my like my seventh place tie for number one

00:35:04 ◼   ► I saw one of your 17 honorable mentions. That's what it is. Yeah, it's one of my 17 honorable mentions

00:35:08 ◼   ► That's right. But what about the two of you guys?

00:35:11 ◼   ► - I mean, for me, I should have put the Switch on my list,

00:35:16 ◼   ► and I simply forgot about it while making that list,

00:35:18 ◼   ► which is funny because I played it like an hour before

00:35:21 ◼   ► and played it again the next day. (laughs)

00:35:24 ◼   ► So yeah, the Switch has been fantastic for me.

00:35:27 ◼   ► And as the audience knows,

00:35:29 ◼   ► I am not much of a gamer at all most of the time.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I usually get into one game a year, maybe.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I'll be into it for like a week or two,

00:35:38 ◼   ► and then I'll stop, and then that'll be it.

00:35:41 ◼   ► And because Tiff, my wife, is a gamer,

00:35:44 ◼   ► we usually have all or some

00:35:47 ◼   ► of the current generation game consoles

00:35:50 ◼   ► in the house, ready to go.

00:35:51 ◼   ► And I hardly ever touch them,

00:35:53 ◼   ► because I just don't care that much.

00:35:56 ◼   ► The Switch has changed that.

00:35:58 ◼   ► It's really good.

00:36:00 ◼   ► And this isn't about a console, this is about the games.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And Nintendo was in such a bad place with the Wii U,

00:36:06 ◼   ► they were in such a rush to get this out

00:36:09 ◼   ► that they didn't have time to mess it up

00:36:10 ◼   ► with getting too far up their own butts

00:36:12 ◼   ► about what they were gonna do

00:36:13 ◼   ► about some gimmicky hardware thing.

00:36:15 ◼   ► They just made really great games

00:36:16 ◼   ► for a really convenient system,

00:36:18 ◼   ► and there's no other gimmicks about it, and it's great.

00:36:20 ◼   ► It's just so, so great.

00:36:23 ◼   ► And in particular, like, you know,

00:36:26 ◼   ► Tiff and Adam really enjoyed Zelda together.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I really enjoyed Mario Kart and Sonic Mania.

00:36:33 ◼   ► We all have been really enjoying Stardew Valley.

00:36:36 ◼   ► And there's so many more games.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Like, I've bought games on it that I haven't even run yet.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Just because I heard they were so great,

00:36:43 ◼   ► I bought them thinking I'd play them

00:36:44 ◼   ► and I haven't even had time,

00:36:45 ◼   ► I haven't been too busy playing all the other great games.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Like, there's a surplus of amazing games for it

00:36:51 ◼   ► that we haven't even had a chance to play all of yet.

00:36:53 ◼   ► That's how many great games there are.

00:36:55 ◼   ► And so, to have all this in a mid-priced system

00:36:59 ◼   ► that's very practical to have in your life,

00:37:02 ◼   ► because it can be both portable and stationary,

00:37:04 ◼   ► although honestly I don't like the portable version of it

00:37:06 ◼   ► the screen's too small and the controllers are too skinny and they give my--

00:37:09 ◼   ► You have problems with the portable thing, you don't say?

00:37:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and the input device is surprising.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Marco the jokes right themselves, my friend.

00:37:21 ◼   ► I know. I also, I honestly, I do wish I had an HDMI port.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Oh god. Good grief.

00:37:29 ◼   ► I need to start a holiday party.

00:37:34 ◼   ► But just playing it as a home console for me,

00:37:38 ◼   ► it's just great, it's such a great system

00:37:41 ◼   ► with such great games.

00:37:43 ◼   ► The Switch, I am happier with the Switch

00:37:46 ◼   ► than any video game or video game system

00:37:50 ◼   ► at least in the last decade.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - Did you like your Sega consoles more?

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, but those were more than,

00:37:56 ◼   ► my one Sega console, my Genesis. (laughs)

00:37:59 ◼   ► But that was a long time ago when the Genesis was current,

00:38:02 ◼   ► was in like 1993. So...

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally. No, no, I'm not trying to mess with you.

00:38:07 ◼   ► I'm saying, you know, to the best that you can remember

00:38:09 ◼   ► how you felt when you were 11,

00:38:11 ◼   ► do you feel like the Genesis provided you more joy

00:38:14 ◼   ► than the Switch does?

00:38:15 ◼   ► And obviously that's a tough question

00:38:16 ◼   ► 'cause you're a very different person now,

00:38:17 ◼   ► but if you had to choose only one, you know,

00:38:22 ◼   ► in their current time,

00:38:23 ◼   ► so I'm not asking you to choose the Genesis

00:38:25 ◼   ► over the Switch today, you know,

00:38:26 ◼   ► what do you think you would do?

00:38:29 ◼   ► I need another year with the Switch to really know.

00:38:32 ◼   ► It's a little too early.

00:38:33 ◼   ► So far, I think they're probably pretty close to each other

00:38:36 ◼   ► in that way.

00:38:38 ◼   ► It's just so damn good.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And honestly, I've had an Xbox, like the first one,

00:38:43 ◼   ► I was gonna say an Xbox One, but that's something else now.

00:38:46 ◼   ► So I had the first Xbox, which I got pre-modded

00:38:49 ◼   ► with a mod chip so I could rip games onto the hard drive

00:38:52 ◼   ► and install XBMC, which is now Plex, basically.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:38:57 ◼   ► That's kind of where it all started.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And so I had that, I had a Wii,

00:39:04 ◼   ► the first Wii, not the stupid you, sorry, John.

00:39:06 ◼   ► I had the PS3 and 4 and a 360.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And I had a lot of fun with some of those.

00:39:14 ◼   ► But none of them were as good as the Switch,

00:39:16 ◼   ► just game library-wise.

00:39:18 ◼   ► So I'm very much enjoying this.

00:39:21 ◼   ► And anybody who used to have fun with games,

00:39:25 ◼   ► it has maybe fallen out of it like I did, give the Switch a try. It's really fun.

00:39:30 ◼   ► Jon?

00:39:31 ◼   ► Well, I totally forgot about the Switch, but if I had remembered it, I wouldn't have

00:39:35 ◼   ► listed the Switch for actually for a lot of the same reasons Marco mentioned, because

00:39:39 ◼   ► I never used it in Portal mode, if I can help it, because it's not ergonomically, it

00:39:43 ◼   ► just doesn't fit me ergonomically. I never take the little Joy-Cons off of it, I just

00:39:47 ◼   ► leave it on there. I only use the Pro Controller with it, I only hook it up to the TV. And

00:39:53 ◼   ► In that way, as a console, I don't think it's a...

00:39:56 ◼   ► It's not my favorite...

00:39:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't have listed it as a thing that I'm thankful for, because I think the Pro

00:40:02 ◼   ► Controller is not as good as the GameCube controller, or maybe not even as good as the

00:40:07 ◼   ► Wii U Pro Controller.

00:40:09 ◼   ► And the fact that it's this weird portable thing that I have to put into a dock and hook

00:40:13 ◼   ► up to my TV, and it just doesn't...

00:40:15 ◼   ► It's compromised by the fact that it needs to be portable.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I wish it was more powerful, blah, blah, blah.

00:40:19 ◼   ► All my typical complaints about Nintendo consoles.

00:40:21 ◼   ► So if I listed something, what I would have listed is the games.

00:40:24 ◼   ► And specifically I would have listed Zelda, which for me is head and shoulders.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Like the other games are great, like I love them, but Zelda is the most important Nintendo

00:40:31 ◼   ► franchise for me.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And this was a very significant Zelda game breaking with the past in lots of very interesting

00:40:37 ◼   ► ways.

00:40:38 ◼   ► And I just thought it was an amazing game.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Probably still not my favorite Zelda, but a lot of people ask me that.

00:40:42 ◼   ► You know, as much as I love it and it does so many things so much better than every other

00:40:47 ◼   ► Zelda has ever done them, it falls down in a couple areas.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But that's what I would have listed.

00:40:50 ◼   ► I will have said Breath of the Wild as the thing that I should have been thankful for.

00:40:54 ◼   ► It just slipped my mind.

00:40:56 ◼   ► It's funny to me that you guys are lamenting the portability of it because, holy smokes,

00:41:04 ◼   ► some of the—almost all of the fun I've had with the Switch is because I've been

00:41:10 ◼   ► in some sort of group setting.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Some of the most fun times I've had with the Switch has been the handful of times that

00:41:15 ◼   ► we played Mario Kart together at work and we'd all gather around a few tables or some

00:41:20 ◼   ► something, and sit there and play Mario Kart against each other. And it's like, you know,

00:41:25 ◼   ► all the great parts about a LAN party back in the day, where you can shout and yell at

00:41:29 ◼   ► your friends and, you know, and call them terrible names and whatnot, because they're

00:41:36 ◼   ► sitting right next to you. And you can do all of that without having to—and here I'm

00:41:40 ◼   ► telling you how old I am—without having to lug like a 50-pound CRT to your friend's

00:41:44 ◼   ► house. You know, so I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I'm really honestly not. I'm

00:41:50 ◼   ► I'm just saying I'm surprised that you guys don't really favor the portability at all,

00:41:57 ◼   ► because that is, like I said to you about my family, and certainly at work from time

00:42:01 ◼   ► to time, that is—and even at WWDC, I organized on Beacon, I think it was.

00:42:06 ◼   ► I organized a little get-together for playing Mario Kart.

00:42:10 ◼   ► And to me, those are such fun times, and they really define the Switch to me in a way that

00:42:17 ◼   ► no other console I've had has really worked.

00:42:20 ◼   ► And everyone's allowed their own experience,

00:42:22 ◼   ► I'm just super surprised.

00:42:24 ◼   ► - I mean, I would love the portability

00:42:25 ◼   ► to work out better and more often for me.

00:42:28 ◼   ► And I occasionally will, I'll take it to like,

00:42:30 ◼   ► if I know I'm gonna be sitting in a doctor's office

00:42:32 ◼   ► waiting room for a little while, I'll take it sometimes.

00:42:34 ◼   ► But it's just, using the Joy-Cons

00:42:37 ◼   ► is just very uncomfortable for me.

00:42:39 ◼   ► They're clearly made for much smaller hands.

00:42:41 ◼   ► It's probably made for children and teenagers

00:42:43 ◼   ► to be able to comfortably use.

00:42:45 ◼   ► and I just, I can't, it hurts my hands to use it

00:42:48 ◼   ► for more than a few minutes.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Because I'm also accustomed to playing on a giant,

00:42:53 ◼   ► nice OLED TV, with speakers and everything,

00:42:58 ◼   ► sitting on the couch with the Pro Controller,

00:43:00 ◼   ► the portable experience, the screen is noticeably crappier.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I don't get my wonderful OLED black levels.

00:43:07 ◼   ► It's a very, very small screen for old people like me

00:43:10 ◼   ► and Jon, and people with broken eyes like you.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Like it's a really small screen compared to

00:43:15 ◼   ► most modern TVs and so to me it just doesn't work as well

00:43:19 ◼   ► in portable mode and I'm probably the only person

00:43:24 ◼   ► in the world, like normally Nintendo's portable consoles,

00:43:28 ◼   ► they eventually get like mini versions or new versions.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I'm the only person I think in the world wanting

00:43:33 ◼   ► the Switch XL to actually basically get really fat.

00:43:36 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:43:37 ◼   ► Like I want a Switch that doesn't have detachable controllers

00:43:41 ◼   ► that basically has controller wings

00:43:44 ◼   ► that are approximately the shape of a pro controller.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And the whole thing gets bigger to accommodate a screen

00:43:50 ◼   ► closer to maybe an iPad mini size.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Like that's what I would like.

00:43:54 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to make that

00:43:55 ◼   ► because no one else wants that except me and maybe Jon.

00:43:59 ◼   ► But ultimately the portability,

00:44:01 ◼   ► it's too small to be comfortable for me.

00:44:04 ◼   ► - I don't want it to be thicker,

00:44:05 ◼   ► I want it to be a GameCube.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I want it to be a non-portable console without a screen on it that's like four times as powerful.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But again, that's not what people want.

00:44:16 ◼   ► The main appeal of the Switch, to be clear, for most people is exactly what you said,

00:44:20 ◼   ► Casey.

00:44:21 ◼   ► Hey, it's the same game, portable and on your TV, and it works great in both places.

00:44:24 ◼   ► That is the main appeal.

00:44:25 ◼   ► But Marco and I just happen to be oddballs both in the camp where we want to play it

00:44:29 ◼   ► sitting on our couches and that's that.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And we're happy with it there.

00:44:31 ◼   ► Like it's not like I have, you know, my complaint is that it's not powerful enough and it's

00:44:35 ◼   ► compromised by that.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I enjoy the games.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Breath of the Wild was an amazing game, especially given the power of the console.

00:44:43 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Eero.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Finally, Wi-Fi that works.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Go to Eero.com and use promo code ATP at checkout to make overnight shipping free to the US

00:44:53 ◼   ► and Canada.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Wi-Fi has always had two problems for most people.

00:44:57 ◼   ► One, it doesn't reach your whole house.

00:44:58 ◼   ► There's always weak zones or dead zones or it doesn't reach the back room.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And two, it's usually really hard to set up,

00:45:04 ◼   ► especially for non-technical people.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Eero solves both of these problems.

00:45:09 ◼   ► So number one, they know, as we do,

00:45:11 ◼   ► that no matter how many antennas you stick on top

00:45:13 ◼   ► of a router, it's never gonna cover

00:45:15 ◼   ► your entire house perfectly.

00:45:17 ◼   ► You need multiple access points.

00:45:19 ◼   ► You need to be broadcasting that signal

00:45:20 ◼   ► from multiple different little boxes around your house,

00:45:22 ◼   ► not just one somewhere, like in the basement

00:45:24 ◼   ► or in the middle somewhere.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Eero solves that problem perfectly

00:45:27 ◼   ► by having multiple radios.

00:45:29 ◼   ► So they have two different models.

00:45:30 ◼   ► they have the standard Eero base station.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And this is now the second generation one

00:45:34 ◼   ► that has a much faster radio, much faster throughput,

00:45:37 ◼   ► and they also now have these little beacons

00:45:39 ◼   ► that you can plug in at different points around the house

00:45:42 ◼   ► to help broadcast more WiFi signal.

00:45:44 ◼   ► The beacons are these little flush things,

00:45:46 ◼   ► they sit flush against the wall just in an outlet.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It looks kinda like a big nightlight,

00:45:50 ◼   ► and in fact they even built in a nightlight

00:45:51 ◼   ► just to help you make it a little more useful.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And you can plug 'em in anywhere.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Everything is now faster, longer range, better performance.

00:45:58 ◼   ► So they solved the coverage problem

00:46:00 ◼   ► better than anything else I've seen.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And then they also solve the ease of use problem,

00:46:04 ◼   ► also better than anything else I've ever seen.

00:46:06 ◼   ► This is one area, you know, if you're a nerd

00:46:08 ◼   ► and you've used multiple access point Wi-Fi systems before,

00:46:10 ◼   ► like I have, you will be shocked how easy Eero is to set up.

00:46:14 ◼   ► It is really quite something else to see.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And it's so easy, I can easily recommend it

00:46:19 ◼   ► to any kind of non-technical friends or family

00:46:21 ◼   ► you might have if you need to help them

00:46:23 ◼   ► with their Wi-Fi this year.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Check out Eero, you will be shocked how easy it is,

00:46:27 ◼   ► and the performance is wonderful,

00:46:29 ◼   ► especially with this new second generation hardware.

00:46:32 ◼   ► The new beacons are small, discreet,

00:46:35 ◼   ► and very, very flexible.

00:46:36 ◼   ► You can put them pretty much anywhere,

00:46:37 ◼   ► and they have the nightlight built in.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Check it out today.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Go to Eero.com, that's E-E-R-O.com,

00:46:42 ◼   ► and use promo code ATP at checkout

00:46:44 ◼   ► to get free overnight shipping to the US and Canada.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.

00:46:49 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:46:52 ◼   ► - So we should move on to Ask ATP,

00:46:54 ◼   ► and conveniently we have a Switch related question.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Star Susumi writes,

00:46:58 ◼   ► Have you guys played Super Mario Odyssey?

00:47:01 ◼   ► How do you think about it?

00:47:02 ◼   ► What do you think of it?

00:47:03 ◼   ► And I have not, and that's in no small part

00:47:06 ◼   ► because I haven't really touched my Switch

00:47:07 ◼   ► very much recently, but let's start with Marco.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Marco, have you played Super Mario Odyssey?

00:47:11 ◼   ► - Not yet, I'm still spending all my Switch time

00:47:14 ◼   ► in Stardew Valley, and behind that I also have

00:47:16 ◼   ► the Mario Rabbids game, and I still have to finish

00:47:20 ◼   ► the last few zones of Sonic Mania,

00:47:22 ◼   ► and there's so many games, I can't keep up.

00:47:26 ◼   ► But I'm also, I'm a little bit concerned

00:47:28 ◼   ► that it might not like Mario Odyssey

00:47:29 ◼   ► because people are saying it's almost like a cross

00:47:32 ◼   ► between Mario 64 and Zelda.

00:47:35 ◼   ► - That is not true.

00:47:36 ◼   ► - Okay, 'cause I didn't,

00:47:38 ◼   ► I never liked the way the Mario series went 3D very much.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like it was really cool at the time,

00:47:43 ◼   ► like for Mario 64, but like,

00:47:45 ◼   ► I always liked the 2D ones a lot better.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And Zelda's not really my kind of game,

00:47:48 ◼   ► like the kind of big adventure RPG kind of thing.

00:47:51 ◼   ► So Jon, should I be playing Mario Odyssey?

00:47:53 ◼   ► - If you don't like 3D Marios,

00:47:55 ◼   ► Super Mario Odyssey is a 3D Mario.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I like 3D Mario, so I like Super Mario Odyssey, and in the pantheon of 3D Marios, I don't

00:48:02 ◼   ► know where I'd put it.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I really liked Galaxy as well.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Galaxy was very different and had, I think, more of a twist on the typical Mario formula,

00:48:12 ◼   ► even if it was more constrained by being on little planets and doing stuff.

00:48:16 ◼   ► And Mario Odyssey is a little bit more of a return to conventions of, well, it's just

00:48:21 ◼   ► regular 3D Mario with a little bit more open world,

00:48:24 ◼   ► but Mario Odyssey is so unashamedly wacky.

00:48:28 ◼   ► In some ways, I feel like it's sillier than I want it to be.

00:48:32 ◼   ► Like, I take Mario more seriously than this game does.

00:48:35 ◼   ► But in other ways, it's highlighted to me

00:48:37 ◼   ► exactly how much more I like some of the other franchises.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Like, Zelda is my number one,

00:48:42 ◼   ► and I think even Metroid has been elevated

00:48:44 ◼   ► to potentially the other franchise

00:48:45 ◼   ► that I'm more excited about.

00:48:47 ◼   ► But as far as Mario games go,

00:48:50 ◼   ► if you like 3D Mario games, you'll like this.

00:48:51 ◼   ► For Marco, maybe something that will keep him interested in

00:48:54 ◼   ► is they do have tons of nostalgic pandering

00:48:58 ◼   ► to the people who are fans of 2D Mario,

00:49:01 ◼   ► but I don't, if you really don't like 3D Mario,

00:49:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure that'll be enough to keep you interesting.

00:49:05 ◼   ► But I would say just like, honestly, play it,

00:49:07 ◼   ► like, and let, you know, let Adam play it and just watch.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Like, it's just such a fun game.

00:49:13 ◼   ► It's so unashamed to say,

00:49:16 ◼   ► there is no rhyme or reason why this is here.

00:49:18 ◼   ► It's just because it's fun.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And there's lots of fun things to do and explore and play with.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And you can kind of go at your own pace.

00:49:24 ◼   ► And it's very, very gentle.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And it's not particularly punishing,

00:49:28 ◼   ► except for a couple of checkpoints

00:49:29 ◼   ► that are a little farther back than I would want them to be.

00:49:33 ◼   ► So I say you should definitely get it,

00:49:35 ◼   ► because I think your family as a whole will have fun with it.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Whether you will spend more than a little time with it,

00:49:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:49:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:49:41 ◼   ► MZ writes, do you use robotic vacuum cleaners?

00:49:44 ◼   ► If yes, what brands and use cases work for you?

00:49:47 ◼   ► And if not, why?

00:49:48 ◼   ► I have never owned a Roomba or anything like it.

00:49:51 ◼   ► I would guess that if I were to get one,

00:49:53 ◼   ► I would get a Roomba because marketing.

00:49:56 ◼   ► But I've never used one and have never

00:49:59 ◼   ► really felt a need for it.

00:50:01 ◼   ► - I have experience with Roombas here and there,

00:50:03 ◼   ► but not a lot of experience, and none of it that was

00:50:07 ◼   ► so compelling that I thought I must have one of these.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I don't know if they've gotten better

00:50:13 ◼   ► meaningfully since then, but the limitations

00:50:15 ◼   ► they had back then were basically like,

00:50:18 ◼   ► You know, they couldn't, they wouldn't really get

00:50:20 ◼   ► everywhere, they wouldn't really be able to go

00:50:21 ◼   ► on all surfaces and rugs and everything.

00:50:24 ◼   ► They would occasionally get stuck and complain

00:50:25 ◼   ► in some kind of happy song.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I know at least the newer ones will like go back

00:50:29 ◼   ► to their base and charge themselves, which is nice.

00:50:32 ◼   ► But it just seems like a lot of trouble and noise

00:50:36 ◼   ► and expense and hassle and one more electronic thing

00:50:40 ◼   ► to manage to solve a problem part way.

00:50:43 ◼   ► And it's like, well, you still have to vacuum.

00:50:46 ◼   ► if it can't do the whole house effectively.

00:50:49 ◼   ► So I'm not, maybe these things are better

00:50:52 ◼   ► than I remember them, or maybe they've gotten better,

00:50:54 ◼   ► but my limited experience with them is not compelling.

00:50:58 ◼   ► - I've never had one, and I've never thought

00:51:00 ◼   ► about buying one, just because it just doesn't seem

00:51:02 ◼   ► like it can do the job.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I mean, you can see how big they are,

00:51:04 ◼   ► like these little pucks.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I've got more crap in my house than fits in there.

00:51:08 ◼   ► I see how much is in the clear bagless container

00:51:12 ◼   ► of my thing when I actually vacuum the entire

00:51:14 ◼   ► first floor of the house, that's not gonna fit in a Roomba. Roomba can't empty itself,

00:51:18 ◼   ► and so yeah, it just seems like, I mean it looks like a fun novelty, and if you have

00:51:21 ◼   ► them just sort of let you go longer between actually vacuuming, I can see that. Or if

00:51:27 ◼   ► you have a house where you don't have pets that are going to attack it and/or feel attacked

00:51:31 ◼   ► by it, which is another factor in having an autonomous thing wandering around your house,

00:51:35 ◼   ► but nope, never tried it. I put this question in there just because I thought maybe Marco

00:51:38 ◼   ► might have it now that he's got all his little like uh, light switch clappers and all his

00:51:41 ◼   ► other home automation stuff, but I guess clappers still, yeah, you're still resisting the, uh,

00:51:47 ◼   ► the, the robot invasion of our homes.

00:51:49 ◼   ► [Clapper Music]

00:51:56 ◼   ► All right. And finally, this is for Marco. Eric New writes, "What fraction of total audio

00:52:00 ◼   ► gets cut by Marco for the finished podcast?" So I will say to set you up, Marco, that we record at

00:52:06 ◼   ► about nine o'clock in the evening our time and typically end between 11 45 and midnight and and

00:52:13 ◼   ► we are recording pretty much that entire time now that may or may not be us acting like we're

00:52:18 ◼   ► recording if that makes any sense like we may be kind of a little more casual and not really expect

00:52:22 ◼   ► some of that to go on the show but you know i give marco an mp3 each and every week that's roughly

00:52:28 ◼   ► two and a half to three hours long and you know the released episodes are anywhere from an hour

00:52:34 ◼   ► hour and a half to like two hours usually.

00:52:38 ◼   ► - Eh, it's more like 145 to 215.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's the simple answer.

00:52:43 ◼   ► So Marco, what's the real answer?

00:52:45 ◼   ► - I mean, it's, you know, basically if you figure out

00:52:46 ◼   ► from what you said, like, you know, we do usually record

00:52:48 ◼   ► for about two and a half hours.

00:52:50 ◼   ► The finished episode has six minutes of ads,

00:52:54 ◼   ► plus the theme song, which is about a minute long.

00:52:56 ◼   ► So you figure I have about seven minutes of added content

00:52:59 ◼   ► that isn't part of the live recording.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And a two and a half hour show, so that's about

00:53:03 ◼   ► two hours and 37 minutes of total content before cutting,

00:53:07 ◼   ► and then the show is about 1.45 to 2.15,

00:53:10 ◼   ► so you figure I'm cutting maybe 20 minutes.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Now, that's not like an even 20 or 30 minutes

00:53:16 ◼   ► throughout the show that I'm cutting.

00:53:18 ◼   ► It's mostly like cutting the first two or three minutes

00:53:20 ◼   ► of the call, where we're just setting up,

00:53:23 ◼   ► hey, is Jon here, is Casey here,

00:53:25 ◼   ► setting up this crap that nobody ever wants to hear about.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And then after we have decided we're done recording,

00:53:31 ◼   ► talking about, oh, let's pick some titles,

00:53:34 ◼   ► and then maybe tell the live listeners,

00:53:35 ◼   ► oh, next week we're gonna be recording on Tuesday

00:53:38 ◼   ► instead of Wednesday.

00:53:39 ◼   ► So like, you know, bookkeeping at the end of the show

00:53:41 ◼   ► or just kind of like, you know,

00:53:43 ◼   ► kind of like casual talking at the end,

00:53:44 ◼   ► but it's not good enough to be in the show.

00:53:46 ◼   ► That's what most of the cutting actually is,

00:53:48 ◼   ► is the beginning and the end.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And don't worry, you're not missing much.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I cut it because it isn't very interesting.

00:53:54 ◼   ► So, you know, the release version of the show

00:53:57 ◼   ► contains almost everything that we actually say

00:54:00 ◼   ► that is actually part of the show as we hear it live.

00:54:05 ◼   ► - Almost everything that's in the show is in the show,

00:54:08 ◼   ► is what he's trying to say.

00:54:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:10 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And if it's a show where Jon talks a lot,

00:54:13 ◼   ► a lot less is cut.

00:54:14 ◼   ► If it's a show where I talk a lot, a lot more is cut.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can always fix it in the post, right?

00:54:19 ◼   ► - And I do.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Moving on.

00:54:22 ◼   ► So there's a little bit of a kerfuffle earlier this week.

00:54:24 ◼   ► We're recording this on Wednesday evening,

00:54:26 ◼   ► and there has just been released.

00:54:30 ◼   ► a patch for a rather unique bug that has sprung up in High Sierra.

00:54:37 ◼   ► And I never actually tried it, but my understanding is if you go into System Preferences, and

00:54:44 ◼   ► I think into Security, and then you click the lock and hit Enter, and then enter the

00:54:50 ◼   ► username root and an empty password and try that, and you might have to do the stance

00:54:55 ◼   ► a little bit, but eventually you will get to the point that suddenly you have set the

00:55:01 ◼   ► root password on that High Sierra installed for Macintosh.

00:55:06 ◼   ► And that is a problem, because if you're not familiar, root is basically the god account

00:55:11 ◼   ► on any Unix-based system.

00:55:14 ◼   ► And so if you can finagle root access to a computer, well a Mac I should say, then you

00:55:23 ◼   ► You basically can do anything you want.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And this is a bit of an issue.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And there are a little bit, you know, I think most people have a little bit of a problem

00:55:33 ◼   ► with the way in which it was publicized, which was via a tweet, which is not terribly responsible.

00:55:38 ◼   ► But we don't know what happened before then.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Maybe it was responsibly disclosed.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Somebody then eventually had discovered that about two weeks ago, this was posted in Apple's

00:55:47 ◼   ► own developer forums, which is kind of amusing.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And Patrick Wardle has done a deep dive into why they think this happened, but that's kind

00:55:58 ◼   ► of the setup.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Jon, I presume you particularly have many thoughts on this, so do you want to kind of

00:56:03 ◼   ► fill in some of the blanks here?

00:56:04 ◼   ► By the time you hear this, this will have all been solved for everybody because, you

00:56:09 ◼   ► know, there was about, what, like a day, day and a half between when this was widely publicized

00:56:16 ◼   ► on Twitter and when Apple put out the fix for it.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And not only has Apple put out the fix, like if you have High Sierra and you go to software

00:56:24 ◼   ► update you can get the fix, but they will start, they say starting later today in their

00:56:28 ◼   ► message which means they probably already have done this.

00:56:31 ◼   ► They're going to forcibly push this fix out to everybody running High Sierra.

00:56:34 ◼   ► You won't have to run software update, you won't have to check for updates, you won't

00:56:37 ◼   ► have to click a button, it will just go out on, and you don't need to reboot either, it

00:56:41 ◼   ► will just go out onto your computer.

00:56:44 ◼   ► And that's a mechanism Apple has used a couple times in the past.

00:56:46 ◼   ► I think the only one that I could remember and I think the one that Jason Snell could

00:56:51 ◼   ► remember as well is the NTP bug with the time server thing that they also pushed out.

00:56:57 ◼   ► But I'm assuming it's either the same exact or very similar to the mechanism they have

00:57:02 ◼   ► for pushing out updates to malware, which they also do without you having to do anything

00:57:07 ◼   ► behind the scenes without any other updates.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Like they'll push the malware updates.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And I have no idea when those are happening because who would know?

00:57:13 ◼   ► I guess you could just diff the malware definition file and see when it changes.

00:57:17 ◼   ► But anyway, if you're listening to this now and you're using a Mac with High Sierra and

00:57:22 ◼   ► you're connected to the network, this problem should be solved for you.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Unless of course the fix causes problems, which for some people it has.

00:57:28 ◼   ► Apparently it's possible for the fix itself, which was rolled out in a day, to cause problems

00:57:33 ◼   ► with doing file sharing.

00:57:35 ◼   ► And there's a fix for the fix, which Apple also has a tech note for that you can run

00:57:38 ◼   ► some other command and that will fix their fix.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Which is why usually fixes don't come out 24 hours after a problem was discovered.

00:57:47 ◼   ► The root cause stuff is interesting.

00:57:48 ◼   ► It's difficult.

00:57:50 ◼   ► The thing that Patrick Wardwell wrote up, because he doesn't have the source code to

00:57:54 ◼   ► all parts of the operating system, so he's disassembling it, which is a heroic effort

00:57:58 ◼   ► to disassemble, often without any symbols, to try to figure out what the heck is going

00:58:01 ◼   ► on.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Has he updated that thread?

00:58:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:05 ◼   ► But anyway, what it looked like when I read this post earlier today was that the programmer

00:58:10 ◼   ► Making the classic mistake of getting confused about what the return value means from a function,

00:58:16 ◼   ► there's multiple schools of thought and multiple cultures on what return values mean in terms of

00:58:22 ◼   ► what indicates success or failure. The sort of Unix system call kind of way is zero indicate

00:58:28 ◼   ► success and anything that's not zero indicate some form of failure, but there are also whole

00:58:32 ◼   ► other SWASP, whole other APIs in other domains where a true value or one or a Boolean or something

00:58:39 ◼   ► Something like that indicates success and a false value or zero or undefined or whatever

00:58:46 ◼   ► means failure.

00:58:47 ◼   ► And those conventions are opposite of each other and it can be very easy when you're

00:58:50 ◼   ► programming to get confused about which is which, especially if you're in some kind of

00:58:55 ◼   ► domain of like your own code that you wrote where you're not sure what convention it's

00:58:58 ◼   ► following or whatever.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And if you get that return value wrong then you may proceed as if something has failed

00:59:03 ◼   ► when it succeeded or vice versa.

00:59:06 ◼   ► you can read the root cause.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It's a series of things that stem from that,

00:59:11 ◼   ► where Macs come by default with the root account disabled,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and this thing accidentally enables it,

00:59:17 ◼   ► and it enables it and sets the password

00:59:19 ◼   ► to whatever you wrote in the text box,

00:59:20 ◼   ► which is an empty string.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And then from that point on,

00:59:22 ◼   ► if you try to log in again with the empty string,

00:59:24 ◼   ► it succeeds the second time,

00:59:25 ◼   ► because the first time it enabled both enabled the account

00:59:27 ◼   ► and set it to empty string.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It's just typical with these type of bugs,

00:59:32 ◼   ► lots of things have to go wrong for it to fall down.

00:59:35 ◼   ► but I'm assuming the fix was fairly straightforward,

00:59:38 ◼   ► but apparently not,

00:59:38 ◼   ► 'cause it borked everyone's file sharing, who knows?

00:59:41 ◼   ► Maybe it had to do with applying the fix without restarting,

00:59:43 ◼   ► which is not something that normally happens

00:59:45 ◼   ► with security updates.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Or maybe it does, I don't know.

00:59:49 ◼   ► I don't keep track of like when you get a security update

00:59:50 ◼   ► and a software update, does it require restart all the time?

00:59:53 ◼   ► - Not all the time.

00:59:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe not for all of them.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I guess it depends on what it's patching,

00:59:56 ◼   ► if it can just patch a daemon and then kill it

00:59:58 ◼   ► and it'll auto restart itself.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Anyway, this is a bad one.

01:00:02 ◼   ► This is pretty much as bad as a local exploit can get.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And it was a local exploit that was remotable

01:00:08 ◼   ► because if you have screen sharing enabled,

01:00:12 ◼   ► the local exploit suddenly becomes a remote

01:00:14 ◼   ► because the exploit itself is that it allows you to log in

01:00:17 ◼   ► as root with no password if the root account is disabled.

01:00:21 ◼   ► I also believe that the fix they push out

01:00:24 ◼   ► disables the root account again.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And maybe they had to do that

01:00:28 ◼   ► just because they're afraid everyone enabled it.

01:00:30 ◼   ► By the way, the workaround for this was,

01:00:31 ◼   ► Oh, enable the root account and actually set a legit password?

01:00:35 ◼   ► Which is why I thought I'm totally invulnerable, not the least of which because I'm running

01:00:37 ◼   ► El Capitan.

01:00:38 ◼   ► But anyway, I always enable the root account on all my Macs, and I always set a password

01:00:43 ◼   ► on it, you know, because I use the root account to do UNICCE stuff.

01:00:46 ◼   ► So even though Macs ship with the root account disabled, one of the first things I do is

01:00:49 ◼   ► enable it and set a password and do all that stuff.

01:00:53 ◼   ► So I thought I didn't have to worry about it, but I actually checked my wife's computer,

01:00:56 ◼   ► and for whatever reason, I guess it's because when we got it as a new computer, I never

01:00:59 ◼   ► did any of the UNICCE stuff over on it.

01:01:01 ◼   ► did have the root account disabled.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Anyway, this update, the fix, will re-disable the root account.

01:01:06 ◼   ► So if you don't want the root account disabled, re-enable it, set a strong password on it,

01:01:11 ◼   ► and you'll be back.

01:01:12 ◼   ► So yeah, this is a bad one.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And because this is a fairly terrible error and a one-day, 24-hour turnaround time on

01:01:23 ◼   ► the fix and all sorts of other things, lots of people are attaching various levels of

01:01:27 ◼   ► significance to this.

01:01:28 ◼   ► There's a lot of threads going around revisiting, you know, Apple's quality control.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Is it going downhill?

01:01:35 ◼   ► This never would have happened if Steve was alive, blah, blah, blah.

01:01:37 ◼   ► I guess we can talk about that in a little bit, but the one thing that's brought to mind

01:01:42 ◼   ► immediately and I didn't spend much time Googling this, so maybe I'm misremembering it, but

01:01:46 ◼   ► almost this exact same bug was on the Mac back in the days when Steve was running the

01:01:52 ◼   ► show.

01:01:53 ◼   ► And I believe it was like on the lock screen, like on your laptop or your desktop, where

01:01:57 ◼   ► You get the screen lock and it says enter your password to unlock the screen.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And all you need to do is type a whole bunch of characters in the password field until

01:02:07 ◼   ► it overflows some buffer and causes the screensaver to crash and unlock the screen for you.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And I think you could even hold down the return key and it would still do the same thing.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I forget.

01:02:17 ◼   ► I may be misremembering, maybe people can tell me if I'm misremembering.

01:02:19 ◼   ► But that's the thing with security.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how silly the mistake is, silly the programming mistake is.

01:02:27 ◼   ► If it's in just the wrong place, your whole security edifice falls down.

01:02:33 ◼   ► So I actually don't think this security error is indicative of any larger problem.

01:02:41 ◼   ► It is just one more, like this specific one, I think it is just one more pebble on the

01:02:47 ◼   ► pile and what we should be doing is counting the pebbles, not saying this one pebble.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Because this one pebble exists, it means therefore this is the world's biggest problem.

01:02:54 ◼   ► The real problem is how many pebbles are there and is the pile getting smaller or bigger

01:02:57 ◼   ► over time.

01:02:58 ◼   ► That's what people need to talk about.

01:02:59 ◼   ► And I suppose this pebble is a little bit bigger than normal, but it was also fixed

01:03:03 ◼   ► much quicker than normal and it's kind of understandable.

01:03:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Anyway, the question that most piqued my interest that I saw come up about this, I forget if

01:03:12 ◼   ► it was in a Slack or on Twitter or whatever, but I want to ask you two to see what you

01:03:15 ◼   ► think is, someone was asking, "Is this a fireable offense?

01:03:20 ◼   ► And if so, who should be fired?"

01:03:21 ◼   ► - I don't, I mean, if it was put there intentionally, sure.

01:03:26 ◼   ► If it was like, you know, the NSA paid some engineer

01:03:28 ◼   ► to go inject a weakness, sure.

01:03:31 ◼   ► But that was probably not what happened here,

01:03:34 ◼   ► like the nature of this bug, from little we know about it,

01:03:38 ◼   ► from mostly from that disassembly,

01:03:39 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's that kind of bug.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Unless it was intentionally done, I would say no,

01:03:47 ◼   ► this is not a fireable offense.

01:03:50 ◼   ► This is software, people make mistakes all the time.

01:03:54 ◼   ► This really honestly could have been

01:03:56 ◼   ► a single line of code mistake.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And if that's all it was,

01:04:02 ◼   ► then it's just part of doing the job.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And for the record, Jon, I'm with you.

01:04:06 ◼   ► People look at me to amplify a lot of Apple rage these days

01:04:12 ◼   ► because I do that sometimes,

01:04:13 ◼   ► but I don't think this is alone in isolation.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I'm not freaked out about this.

01:04:19 ◼   ► yeah, it's a bad security bug, it got fixed,

01:04:22 ◼   ► that's what's supposed to happen.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Any OS, even iOS, where Apple puts all their resources,

01:04:28 ◼   ► you know, any OS has occasional security bugs

01:04:31 ◼   ► of this magnitude, and if it's being properly cared for,

01:04:35 ◼   ► they get fixed, simple as that.

01:04:38 ◼   ► That's the nature of very, very complex modern software.

01:04:43 ◼   ► You're gonna have problems.

01:04:44 ◼   ► As long as they get fixed, everything's working

01:04:47 ◼   ► as it always does.

01:04:49 ◼   ► So this particular bug, I don't think is a sign

01:04:52 ◼   ► of anything big.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I think it was handled as well as it could have been handled

01:04:55 ◼   ► although it is a little worrying how long ago

01:04:57 ◼   ► people were talking about it on the forums

01:04:59 ◼   ► and nobody seemed to notice.

01:05:00 ◼   ► But security bugs like that,

01:05:03 ◼   ► who knows if the right people saw that either.

01:05:07 ◼   ► People report random bugs all the time

01:05:10 ◼   ► and random odd behavior on forums all the time

01:05:13 ◼   ► but people also report so much garbage on forums

01:05:15 ◼   ► that nobody can keep up with everything that's posted.

01:05:17 ◼   ► And who knows, if somebody's describing,

01:05:20 ◼   ► like on the forums, if you read the posts

01:05:22 ◼   ► that were allegedly describing this problem,

01:05:23 ◼   ► if you're some Apple employee who's just skimming

01:05:26 ◼   ► through these posts, you don't know what the conditions

01:05:28 ◼   ► were on that person's machine.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Maybe something weird was going on with their software

01:05:32 ◼   ► and some other way.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Maybe it wasn't your bug necessarily.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So it's hard to know when you're skimming

01:05:36 ◼   ► through forum posts what people are actually talking about.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And if this is a real issue that you need to worry about,

01:05:42 ◼   ► if it's your bug, or if it's just some weird thing

01:05:44 ◼   ► that they did or that they're recalling badly

01:05:47 ◼   ► or describing badly, you know, so like,

01:05:50 ◼   ► I don't see anything about this bug

01:05:52 ◼   ► that is cause for massive concern

01:05:54 ◼   ► on any kind of real scale.

01:05:56 ◼   ► I see lots of other ways for concern for Apple,

01:05:58 ◼   ► but this is not one of those things.

01:06:00 ◼   ► And to go back to the actual question you asked,

01:06:02 ◼   ► once again, to summarize, no, this would not be,

01:06:04 ◼   ► as long as this was done unintentionally,

01:06:05 ◼   ► this is not a fireable offense,

01:06:06 ◼   ► this is just developing software.

01:06:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I agree, I don't think this is fireable

01:06:11 ◼   ► unless it was a deliberate backdoor,

01:06:12 ◼   ► and I don't think that it was.

01:06:16 ◼   ► And I've seen some people that are really up in arms

01:06:20 ◼   ► about the fact that on Apple's own dev forums,

01:06:23 ◼   ► this was reported and nobody noticed.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I was cracking wise about it earlier,

01:06:28 ◼   ► but the reality of the situation is, like, look at radar.

01:06:31 ◼   ► So as much as I also crack wise and lament radar,

01:06:34 ◼   ► that is a never-ending just tidal wave of new information

01:06:41 ◼   ► that Apple as a company needs to sort through.

01:06:45 ◼   ► And if you look at radar, which has a fairly high, in my opinion, cost of entry in terms

01:06:52 ◼   ► of like, who's really going to file a radar?

01:06:54 ◼   ► Not any normal schmo.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It's going to be a super nerd developer who actually is silly enough to spend the time

01:07:00 ◼   ► doing it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► So think about this insert, just insurmountable wave of information coming off radar, which

01:07:07 ◼   ► is Apple's internal bug, well, internal slash external bug reporting tool, and then amplify

01:07:12 ◼   ► that by several orders of magnitude, and that's a forum. So there is no way that anyone, I can't

01:07:20 ◼   ► imagine anyone's cruising the forums looking for reports of security vulnerabilities. That's just

01:07:24 ◼   ► not a thing. So as much as I joke about how it was reported on Apple's own forums and they should

01:07:30 ◼   ► have noticed, no, they shouldn't have. And they've turned around a fix as quickly as possible. I wish

01:07:35 ◼   ► they QA'd the fix a little better, because up until a few minutes ago when one of you mentioned

01:07:39 ◼   ► I didn't even realize the fix needed a fix, but you know, they're trying to do right by everyone

01:07:44 ◼   ► and trying to get this right as quickly as possible. And I think to my eyes, and maybe

01:07:52 ◼   ► it's easy for me to say this because I'm hugely biased as a developer, but I feel like, yes,

01:07:56 ◼   ► the root cause of this was a developer making an oops, but this to me is more, I'm more alarmed by

01:08:02 ◼   ► the QA process than I am the developer that made the oops, because this seems like the

01:08:09 ◼   ► sort of thing that I feel like it should have been caught in quality assurance, and clearly

01:08:15 ◼   ► it wasn't. And that's the thing that scares me a little bit. But somewhere, I guess they

01:08:21 ◼   ► made a statement to several outlets, including iMore, and I don't have it in front of me,

01:08:25 ◼   ► but they basically said that they're going to provide a write-up of what happened. Is

01:08:29 ◼   ► Is that right?

01:08:30 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

01:08:32 ◼   ► They said they were gonna do basically a post-mortem

01:08:33 ◼   ► and talk about it, if I'm not mistaken.

01:08:36 ◼   ► - I have the Apple statement in the notes,

01:08:37 ◼   ► but it doesn't say anything about that.

01:08:39 ◼   ► - We are auditing our development process

01:08:41 ◼   ► to help prevent this from happening ever again.

01:08:43 ◼   ► I could've sworn they said

01:08:44 ◼   ► they were gonna talk about it publicly, but I guess not.

01:08:46 ◼   ► - I think they just did.

01:08:47 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:08:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair enough.

01:08:49 ◼   ► - That's probably the extent

01:08:50 ◼   ► that we were going to hear about it.

01:08:51 ◼   ► But honestly, again, unless it was intentional sabotage,

01:08:56 ◼   ► I don't think the cause for this

01:08:58 ◼   ► is going to be very interesting.

01:09:00 ◼   ► It's just, yeah, somebody messed up.

01:09:01 ◼   ► It could, like, you know, like the go-to fail bug

01:09:04 ◼   ► from a couple years back, that was most likely

01:09:07 ◼   ► a random copy and paste, or like, you know, a bad merge.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Like, it's possible that somebody, you know,

01:09:13 ◼   ► maliciously put that there to, you know,

01:09:15 ◼   ► for NSA purposes, to make it look like an accidental bug.

01:09:19 ◼   ► That's possible, but that's a lot less likely

01:09:22 ◼   ► than just somebody messed up.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Because it's software, people mess up all the time.

01:09:27 ◼   ► That's why you have to have systems in place

01:09:29 ◼   ► to be able to update things and patch things.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Because you know it's gonna happen.

01:09:33 ◼   ► And no matter how many tests Casey writes for you,

01:09:36 ◼   ► it's still gonna be, you're still gonna have bugs.

01:09:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:41 ◼   ► - Well done.

01:09:43 ◼   ► - Well done.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - So I asked about the firing thing

01:09:46 ◼   ► just because it was a sentiment that I saw

01:09:49 ◼   ► for a lot of people discussing.

01:09:50 ◼   ► And it seemed to me that a lot of the discussion

01:09:53 ◼   ► centered around people arguing about who should be fired.

01:09:56 ◼   ► "Oh, the programmer who made the mistake should be fired."

01:09:58 ◼   ► And "No, the quality assurance should be fired."

01:09:59 ◼   ► "No, actually neither one of those people should be fired.

01:10:01 ◼   ► It should be their manager."

01:10:02 ◼   ► "No, it should be Tim Cook."

01:10:03 ◼   ► Like, you know, who is ultimately responsible and how do we make people accountable?

01:10:08 ◼   ► And it was, you know, kind of a test/strick question for you two, but you both got what

01:10:12 ◼   ► I think is the right answer.

01:10:14 ◼   ► But you both write software, so I think that's why.

01:10:16 ◼   ► But like, when people are angry about something, like, you don't have to be particularly technically

01:10:22 ◼   ► savvy or into the details of computers or a program or anything to understand how bad

01:10:26 ◼   ► this bug is, you know, because it's just, it seems like one of those bugs that if we

01:10:29 ◼   ► saw it in a movie, we'd be like, that's ridiculous.

01:10:32 ◼   ► That's so fake.

01:10:33 ◼   ► Couldn't they come up with a better looking bug?

01:10:36 ◼   ► It's just comically, you know, just like, just hit return a second time and now you're

01:10:40 ◼   ► in.

01:10:41 ◼   ► It's almost as bad as when Windows 98 would have a login password up on screen, you could

01:10:45 ◼   ► just hit cancel and just proceed with the login.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah, there's something that showed the old video of the Windows 95 one where you could

01:10:51 ◼   ► hit the question mark to get the help screen and eventually navigate your way to like a,

01:10:55 ◼   ► to the open save dialog box and just open my computer

01:10:57 ◼   ► with like a right click.

01:10:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:00 ◼   ► There's lots of things like,

01:11:00 ◼   ► at least that one was a little bit complicated,

01:11:02 ◼   ► but yeah, this one is ridiculous.

01:11:03 ◼   ► But for all situations, again,

01:11:05 ◼   ► excluding intentional sabotage,

01:11:07 ◼   ► which is I think the only reason that anybody anywhere

01:11:10 ◼   ► in Apple should be fired for this is intentional sabotage.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - Or gross negligence.

01:11:16 ◼   ► - I think intentional, basically what I want to see

01:11:18 ◼   ► in this specific bug of like what it looks like

01:11:20 ◼   ► from the disassembly of the code,

01:11:21 ◼   ► it's not gross negligence.

01:11:22 ◼   ► It's a common, looks like a common mistake, easy to get.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Even the QA people shouldn't be fired.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Craig Federighi shouldn't be fired.

01:11:31 ◼   ► No one should be fired for this.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And the reason no one should be fired for this

01:11:33 ◼   ► is like, it's not just about software.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I mean, it's something you experience in software

01:11:36 ◼   ► just because software is a realm

01:11:38 ◼   ► where even the very best practitioners

01:11:40 ◼   ► make mistakes all the time.

01:11:41 ◼   ► That is the nature of the work, right?

01:11:43 ◼   ► Which is often the source of ridicule,

01:11:44 ◼   ► but if you're an actual programmer, you understand why.

01:11:46 ◼   ► But put programming aside, in any sort of group effort,

01:11:51 ◼   ► Any environment where someone would be fired for an honest mistake like this, regardless

01:11:55 ◼   ► of the impact, is not an environment that—it's not a safe environment for people to grow

01:12:01 ◼   ► and improve their skills.

01:12:04 ◼   ► It is a hostile organization.

01:12:06 ◼   ► You should never want to work for some place that would fire you because you made an honest

01:12:10 ◼   ► mistake in a book.

01:12:11 ◼   ► That's not your fault, and it's not like the quality assurance people's fault.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Now if you make a series of these errors, eventually, yes, executives should be fired

01:12:19 ◼   ► or changed or whatever, but an individual contributor in any part of the organization

01:12:24 ◼   ► who makes an honest mistake shouldn't be fired for that honest mistake just because that

01:12:28 ◼   ► one happened to be in just the wrong place. That's not an environment that makes people

01:12:32 ◼   ► feel safe to learn and grow. And it's the organization's job to make sure people in

01:12:37 ◼   ► roles that are suited to their skills and that they're supported and that they have

01:12:42 ◼   ► the correct training and knowledge to get up to the next level, do the next thing. That's

01:12:46 ◼   ► That's the organization problem, that's not the individual's problem.

01:12:48 ◼   ► So in any group of people, if you're in an environment where you're like, "We're going

01:12:51 ◼   ► to be the best because if anybody makes any mistake, they're going to immediately be fired,"

01:12:54 ◼   ► your team, you will fire everyone on your team and you will only have the worst, meanest

01:12:58 ◼   ► employees who are only good at carefully not making mistakes and you will have crap people.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So I don't think it entered anyone's mind at Apple that someone was going to get fired

01:13:07 ◼   ► over this, even in the worst moments of anger, again, unless it was sabotage and unless it

01:13:12 ◼   ► was like, "This is the fifth one of these."

01:13:15 ◼   ► And even then, like if it's the fifth one, like you should have rotated the person out

01:13:17 ◼   ► of that position after the first or second one instead of leaving them there.

01:13:21 ◼   ► So then maybe some manager should get fired.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But this is not a long series of these terrible security errors or anything like that.

01:13:31 ◼   ► So no, I don't think anyone should be fired for this.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And yeah, I skipped over the developer forum thing.

01:13:38 ◼   ► That's kind of a fun one because Apple's developer forums, if you don't hang out there, you might

01:13:44 ◼   ► most likely hit the developer forums when you do a Google search for something and you

01:13:48 ◼   ► find all the other poor souls posting to the developer forums for the exact same problem

01:13:52 ◼   ► that you have.

01:13:54 ◼   ► But my understanding of the developer forums, which may be outdated but I think it's still

01:13:57 ◼   ► current, is that it's a place for Apple's customers to go and talk to each other about

01:14:03 ◼   ► their stuff.

01:14:04 ◼   ► It's not the genius bar on the web.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Like it's not a place where you go to ask Apple for help, although Apple people are

01:14:08 ◼   ► sometimes there and may sometimes be helpful.

01:14:11 ◼   ► It's not like a support channel for you to get your thing fixed by Apple.

01:14:15 ◼   ► It's for Apple's customers to talk to each other.

01:14:18 ◼   ► So it's not like, someone from Apple, it's not their job to read every single post there.

01:14:25 ◼   ► And what it also means is that, my impression is a lot of the people who are posting there

01:14:29 ◼   ► are people who are not that into computers as a hobby.

01:14:33 ◼   ► They just want their damn computer to work.

01:14:35 ◼   ► And they end up going to Google and trying to say, "I can't get my computer to work.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Where is someplace I can talk about this?"

01:14:39 ◼   ► And they end up landing at the Apple developer forums.

01:14:41 ◼   ► You can go there from the Apple website, find your way there, or whatever.

01:14:45 ◼   ► It's a venue for people of all kinds to talk about their computers.

01:14:49 ◼   ► It is not a super nerd hangout, right?

01:14:51 ◼   ► Which means that you get a lot of people with very basic problems and other people trying

01:14:55 ◼   ► to help them who may not know all the intricate details.

01:14:58 ◼   ► And I have to admit, if I had read that thread and saw someone suggesting, "Here's what you

01:15:03 ◼   ► can do to fix it."

01:15:04 ◼   ► You know, someone was locked out of their computer.

01:15:05 ◼   ► "I'm locked myself out of my computer.

01:15:08 ◼   ► How do I get in and fix it?"

01:15:09 ◼   ► And like, you'd see a whole bunch of people suggesting things and like one of them would

01:15:11 ◼   ► be like the correct solution of like, if you really have forgotten your password, you can

01:15:14 ◼   ► reset it in single user mode and blah, blah, blah.

01:15:16 ◼   ► But there'll be a bunch of other people suggesting other things.

01:15:19 ◼   ► And if I had read that thing of like, Oh, just go here, this thing at the lock icon,

01:15:23 ◼   ► type root and hit return.

01:15:24 ◼   ► You get written.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I would have thought that's not going to work.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Like it may be it worked for you because you have some weird, but like it just, it's obviously

01:15:30 ◼   ► someone who's confused and they're trying to be helpful, but I would honestly, I wouldn't

01:15:33 ◼   ► take it seriously because there's so much crap.

01:15:35 ◼   ► many people other like you know they're not they're just being nice people like here's

01:15:39 ◼   ► something try this have you tried that this worked for me once right and I if I had read

01:15:44 ◼   ► that I would never in a million years have thought that's actually legit like that will

01:15:48 ◼   ► actually work I wouldn't even have tried it I wouldn't even thought about trying it and

01:15:52 ◼   ► I bet if an Apple employee read it they'd be like haha yeah if only that worked like

01:15:56 ◼   ► you just have written it returned with no password yeah nice try turns out in this one

01:16:00 ◼   ► case that actually did work and that's terrifying slightly. And the real scary thing is the

01:16:06 ◼   ► person who wrote that up, Gruber just posted a thing about it because the thread continued

01:16:10 ◼   ► from there saying, "Where did you hear about this?" He's like, "Oh, I heard it in some

01:16:13 ◼   ► other forum." So who knows how long this exploit has been out there in whatever dark corners

01:16:17 ◼   ► of the internet that people have known that you could do this in High Sierra. And it's

01:16:23 ◼   ► only because certainly weeks later, but possibly even longer, who knows, maybe this has been

01:16:27 ◼   ► there since the original release of High Sierra. Maybe it's been there since the betas and

01:16:30 ◼   ► people have known about it. Only because it got Twitter publicity like a day or two ago

01:16:35 ◼   ► did Apple rush to fix it. And, you know, I don't really blame Apple for that because

01:16:40 ◼   ► like I said, if I had read this in the forums, I wouldn't have believed either. It just

01:16:43 ◼   ► sounds ridiculous.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah. And to add to your discrediting of needing to take forum seriously, whenever I search

01:16:55 ◼   ► for a problem with my Apple products or software. I almost always come across a forum link or

01:17:02 ◼   ► two to Apple support forums. And I don't think I can come up with any better example

01:17:08 ◼   ► of a worse ratio of usefulness to times I see the page that is non-zero. Like, it is

01:17:18 ◼   ► is the results are usually so useless and terrible

01:17:22 ◼   ► because it is just random, semi-lost, under-informed people

01:17:27 ◼   ► trying to help each other without any help from Apple.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I think Yahoo Answers has a higher hit rate for me

01:17:34 ◼   ► than Apple support forums.

01:17:35 ◼   ► - Oh, that's not fair.

01:17:37 ◼   ► It's not as bad as Yahoo Answers.

01:17:38 ◼   ► - No, it really is. - I've come up with

01:17:39 ◼   ► Apple support forum things,

01:17:40 ◼   ► and here's what I get from Apple support forums.

01:17:42 ◼   ► One, I find out if my problem is common

01:17:45 ◼   ► because if there are a million repeated threads

01:17:47 ◼   ► people having the same exact problem, I am reassured in some way, right? They're like,

01:17:51 ◼   ► "Okay, now I know. If I don't find any matches in the Apple support forums, I'm like, "Oh,

01:17:55 ◼   ► I probably have bad hardware," or something like that, right? But if a million people

01:17:58 ◼   ► say that they have this problem, that tells me something. And two, I get to see the weeks

01:18:03 ◼   ► or months of people suggesting basically everything under the sun. Have you tried resetting your

01:18:07 ◼   ► PRAM? Have you tried resetting your desktop? Have you tried hopping on one foot, right?

01:18:11 ◼   ► Every solution that has ever worked for any problem gets suggested for all problems.

01:18:16 ◼   ► right. And people reply, "I tried that and it didn't help me. I tried that and it didn't

01:18:19 ◼   ► help me." And very often there is one that says, "I did that and it finally worked!"

01:18:24 ◼   ► And at least that gives me, it lets me eliminate stuff that I know won't work, because I see

01:18:27 ◼   ► everyone keep trying this and they're not working. And then if something does work for

01:18:31 ◼   ► one person, sometimes I can back-solve to figure out what really solved their problem,

01:18:35 ◼   ► because obviously that thing didn't, because someone would be like, "Well, I did that exact

01:18:37 ◼   ► same thing and I didn't solve it." Like, it is super noisy. But here's the thing that

01:18:41 ◼   ► has over yahoo answers fewer trolls right and much more specifically relevant to my needs

01:18:50 ◼   ► so i think there is the signal to noise is not great but there is value to be had there

01:18:56 ◼   ► now granted if you find yourself in the apple support forums you are probably desperate like

01:19:01 ◼   ► you're probably that's kind of the bottom of the barrel but i thank all those people who spend all

01:19:06 ◼   ► that time talking back to it and forth to each other to try to solve problems because every once

01:19:09 ◼   ► in a while, just looking at the shape that they've traced around this problem of all

01:19:14 ◼   ► the things they've tried, I can find my way to a solution that actually works for me.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So user Raxelbrof in the chat said, "Apple support forums. The problem you are experiencing

01:19:24 ◼   ► doesn't exist/that's the way it's supposed to work/here's a copy-pasted solution that

01:19:29 ◼   ► indicates I didn't read your problem." That is a fantastic summary.

01:19:34 ◼   ► That is true. And Apple people do occasionally post there.

01:19:38 ◼   ► One more thing before we leave this topic about what Apple could do to fix this.

01:19:43 ◼   ► In the grand scheme of things, any solution that takes the form "program better" or "let's

01:19:52 ◼   ► be smarter" or "let's write fewer bugs" is not a solution.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Because if you do a postmortem in any sort of bug or problem, it's like, in the future

01:20:02 ◼   ► we should be better programmers, then we won't make mistakes like this.

01:20:05 ◼   ► That's not a solution.

01:20:07 ◼   ► Much to Marko's chagrin, the solution to all these things involves process and testing

01:20:11 ◼   ► and quality assurance and systems.

01:20:13 ◼   ► And you can't have too many of those because then you paralyze your entire organization

01:20:17 ◼   ► with a spiderweb of bureaucracy, but you've got to have a certain amount.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And bugs like this where there's, not that I'm saying this is a GUI bug, but there is

01:20:26 ◼   ► a, the way this is exploited is through GUI, even if the problem was actually in a library

01:20:31 ◼   ► somewhere, very often go through, you know, don't get tested well because the underlying

01:20:37 ◼   ► libraries are tested to show they do everything they want, but this glue code that calls into

01:20:40 ◼   ► the libraries and checks the return value. That code path may only be exercised by someone

01:20:45 ◼   ► using the GUI, and writing good tests that automate the use of the GUI, there are tons

01:20:50 ◼   ► of tools that do it, but it is the hardest kind of testing to do. And I'm sure Apple

01:20:54 ◼   ► does a ton of it. Like, they have to. They have to do a ton of it. But if there's going

01:20:57 ◼   ► to be one area of testing that is very difficult to be comprehensive in and to keep up to date

01:21:02 ◼   ► And to not even have a good concept of like coverage for,

01:21:06 ◼   ► it's GUI testing.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And I'm not saying they don't have to do it,

01:21:12 ◼   ► but like what would have fixed this problem

01:21:15 ◼   ► if they had an automated fuzz testing on this exact sort

01:21:19 ◼   ► of flow of like you click the lock icon

01:21:21 ◼   ► in any system preference and you try to get in.

01:21:24 ◼   ► If they had something that was fuzz testing that flow,

01:21:26 ◼   ► one of the things in the fuzz test

01:21:27 ◼   ► would have been root empty password.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And hopefully the fuzz test would have done

01:21:30 ◼   ► that multiple times or something like that,

01:21:31 ◼   ► or any other sort of like triggers on the code path

01:21:33 ◼   ► to make sure you're along the right lines

01:21:35 ◼   ► and to do preconditions and post-condition,

01:21:37 ◼   ► root account is disabled,

01:21:38 ◼   ► fuzz test login, root account is still disabled.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Like there's so many tests you can see

01:21:43 ◼   ► that would have caught this.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And again, if the post-mortem says,

01:21:45 ◼   ► I know exactly the tests we can write right now,

01:21:46 ◼   ► they'll prevent this exact bug from ever happening again.

01:21:49 ◼   ► That doesn't solve the problem either.

01:21:50 ◼   ► You gotta go much deeper than that and to say,

01:21:52 ◼   ► how do we prevent problems of this kind from happening?

01:21:55 ◼   ► I would imagine that the,

01:21:57 ◼   ► because the functional surface area

01:21:59 ◼   ► of the Mac operating system is so incredibly vast.

01:22:02 ◼   ► If you were to put a percentage number

01:22:03 ◼   ► on how many code paths are executed

01:22:07 ◼   ► as part of the surely massive amount of automated testing

01:22:11 ◼   ► that Apple does in the Mac operating system,

01:22:13 ◼   ► the percentage would be terrifyingly small,

01:22:15 ◼   ► especially when compared to the incredible coverage numbers

01:22:17 ◼   ► that people who get to write like faceless libraries do.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Like what does the coverage estimate look like

01:22:22 ◼   ► on a small, tight, well-maintained,

01:22:25 ◼   ► really important library,

01:22:26 ◼   ► especially involving the kernel or security?

01:22:29 ◼   ► You can test that thing to death.

01:22:30 ◼   ► Like you can just put it in a little black box

01:22:33 ◼   ► and torture it for like the file system.

01:22:35 ◼   ► The amount of testing they did on APFS,

01:22:37 ◼   ► I'm sure was astronomical,

01:22:39 ◼   ► where you could just have that thing grinding hour and hour,

01:22:42 ◼   ► day after day, random IOs,

01:22:44 ◼   ► just and then like stop it every 300 hours

01:22:47 ◼   ► to see if the file system is hosed in any way

01:22:49 ◼   ► and like put auditing and tracing

01:22:51 ◼   ► in every single step of the process

01:22:52 ◼   ► and just run that for months and months and years and years.

01:22:55 ◼   ► That's how you update a billion phones

01:22:56 ◼   ► without anybody noticing

01:22:57 ◼   ► you change their file system, right?

01:23:00 ◼   ► Doing that same kind of testing for the entirety of an operating system, especially exercising

01:23:05 ◼   ► the GUI, the GUI that changes a lot, is really, really hard.

01:23:09 ◼   ► And I think that's, you know, what's going to – the actual solution to this, if you

01:23:14 ◼   ► keep like, not 5y-ing it, but 17y-ing it, is more money.

01:23:19 ◼   ► More time and more money into macOS.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Because any solution you come up with about like, let's change our procedures in some

01:23:24 ◼   ► subtle way, it's not as if they're not doing the testing because they're lazy or don't

01:23:28 ◼   ► feel like it.

01:23:30 ◼   ► All these things tape people, and people cost money, and it's time.

01:23:34 ◼   ► And so I hope that the outcome of this is to dedicate more resources towards automated

01:23:42 ◼   ► and manual testing of the Mac operating system, because that's the only way you're going to

01:23:46 ◼   ► catch more bugs.

01:23:47 ◼   ► You're not going to write fewer bugs by everyone suddenly becoming a better programmer.

01:23:53 ◼   ► You just have to catch more bugs, and I hope that's a solution here.

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01:25:50 ◼   ► I think also the general bugginess in many ways

01:25:55 ◼   ► of High Sierra, which was ostensibly a bug fixing release, or a refinement release of

01:26:00 ◼   ► the OS, I think more clearly than ever shows that the annual release cycle that Apple has

01:26:09 ◼   ► pushed for all their platforms for the last few years, that this is as inappropriate as

01:26:15 ◼   ► ever for Mac OS. That the annual release cycle makes tons of sense for iOS where it's in

01:26:21 ◼   ► hyper-competitive space and it's moving quickly

01:26:23 ◼   ► and it's still a relatively younger,

01:26:25 ◼   ► although not by much now, operating system.

01:26:28 ◼   ► But on Mac OS, it seems like the faster they go on Mac OS,

01:26:33 ◼   ► the worse the quality problems get.

01:26:36 ◼   ► And no one on the Mac is clamoring

01:26:38 ◼   ► for this to be updated every year.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Like, no one.

01:26:41 ◼   ► On the Mac, if anything, people are like,

01:26:43 ◼   ► "Please stop touching this because you keep breaking it."

01:26:47 ◼   ► So I really, I hope that at some,

01:26:50 ◼   ► You know, I know what I ask for with the Mac

01:26:53 ◼   ► is often unrealistic and unlikely to happen

01:26:56 ◼   ► with modern day Apple.

01:26:59 ◼   ► But I really think the annual release cycle,

01:27:01 ◼   ► if it even makes sense for iOS, which it probably does,

01:27:04 ◼   ► it definitely does not make sense for Mac OS.

01:27:06 ◼   ► And also, it's making Mac OS worse.

01:27:09 ◼   ► The Mac is so deprioritized in the company now,

01:27:13 ◼   ► and I'm not even gonna argue right now

01:27:17 ◼   ► whether that should or shouldn't be the case.

01:27:18 ◼   ► if not for this episode.

01:27:20 ◼   ► But it is so deprioritized and seemingly de-resourced

01:27:24 ◼   ► in the company these days that by having it on

01:27:28 ◼   ► a very aggressive release cycle to keep up, I guess,

01:27:32 ◼   ► with marketing features for everything else they're doing,

01:27:34 ◼   ► you're dooming it to being more buggy over time.

01:27:37 ◼   ► You're dooming it to having rush jobs done.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Even this ostensibly bug fix release of High Sierra,

01:27:44 ◼   ► they did major changes.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Like the new Windows Server is a huge thing.

01:27:48 ◼   ► I think my LCD font rendering disabling checkbox

01:27:51 ◼   ► is still broken, even in 10 dot whatever dot one.

01:27:54 ◼   ► I am hoping they fix it in dot two,

01:27:56 ◼   ► but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

01:27:58 ◼   ► Like, there's so much about High Sierra that has been broken,

01:28:02 ◼   ► and Sierra honestly wasn't that much better before that.

01:28:06 ◼   ► It wasn't that long before that that we had Discovery Day.

01:28:08 ◼   ► What was that, was that LCAP or whatever came after that?

01:28:11 ◼   ► It was somebody, yeah, I don't know.

01:28:12 ◼   ► I lost track of all these mountains.

01:28:13 ◼   ► But you can't have a very aggressive

01:28:16 ◼   ► software release schedule,

01:28:18 ◼   ► and also have it be like a low priority

01:28:20 ◼   ► that you're gonna not give it a whole lot of staff and time

01:28:23 ◼   ► to develop things well on it.

01:28:25 ◼   ► The amount of resources that Apple is devoting to Mac OS

01:28:30 ◼   ► can't keep up with a one-year release cycle

01:28:32 ◼   ► and maintain quality.

01:28:33 ◼   ► They have to either dramatically increase

01:28:35 ◼   ► the priority of Mac OS and the company,

01:28:37 ◼   ► which I think is very unlikely,

01:28:38 ◼   ► or slow it down and only do it every two years

01:28:42 ◼   ► like they used to.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Because what they are doing right now

01:28:45 ◼   ► resulting in more bad software.

01:28:49 ◼   ► I was just thinking that if they actually did go to a two-year schedule, they'd be like,

01:28:51 ◼   ► "They don't even care enough about the Mac to update it every year," which is, you know,

01:28:55 ◼   ► it's double-edged sword and I kind of understand why they do yearly one.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I continue to believe that they can successfully do yearly releases if they scope them right

01:29:02 ◼   ► and, you know, and like I said, I feel like they do have to put more resources towards

01:29:06 ◼   ► it.

01:29:08 ◼   ► But if they went to two years, I'd be fine.

01:29:10 ◼   ► And in the past, they weren't at two years.

01:29:12 ◼   ► They were accidentally at 18 months in this bumpy schedule.

01:29:15 ◼   ► Whenever they got around to it, they kind of spread out.

01:29:17 ◼   ► I did a graph in one of my old reviews of the time between releases, but this year cadence

01:29:22 ◼   ► has been their decision.

01:29:25 ◼   ► They're going to meet the yearly schedule and their tool for meeting the yearly schedule

01:29:28 ◼   ► to adjust scope, and I think they have been adjusting scope, pushing things out of releases,

01:29:32 ◼   ► but I think there's always the temptation to put things in releases that are just barely

01:29:37 ◼   ► like, "Do you think it's ready to be in the release, or do we have to boot it out?"

01:29:41 ◼   ► You have to make that decision months ahead of time, and you have to kind of make a call,

01:29:44 ◼   ► and human nature is to say, "I think the team can make it if they work really hard, and

01:29:49 ◼   ► I think it's going to be in, so let's leave the new Windows Server in."

01:29:53 ◼   ► It only crashes on a few GPUs, and I'm sure they'll have that worked out by the time it

01:29:56 ◼   ► releases.

01:29:57 ◼   ► And it turns out they don't have it worked out by the time it releases, and it's like,

01:30:00 ◼   ► "Maybe we should have kicked that out."

01:30:02 ◼   ► But on the other hand, you can say, "Look, if you keep kicking it out like this, it'll

01:30:06 ◼   ► never be so ready to go that you feel like you have to do it, and if you never updated

01:30:10 ◼   ► you're going to be in an HFS+ situation.

01:30:11 ◼   ► So at some point, you have to actually ship.

01:30:13 ◼   ► And the only way to find all the real bugs

01:30:15 ◼   ► is to put it out into the real world.

01:30:16 ◼   ► And that's the nature of software and management.

01:30:19 ◼   ► That's the job Apple has before it.

01:30:21 ◼   ► But I do think that High Sierra does not

01:30:24 ◼   ► live up to its billing as a Snow Leopard type release,

01:30:29 ◼   ► even though Snow Leopard had more bugs

01:30:31 ◼   ► than people think it did.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Their memories are fuzzy on that.

01:30:33 ◼   ► But it doesn't live up to the memories

01:30:35 ◼   ► of Snow Leopard type release,

01:30:36 ◼   ► where it is a refinement of Sierra

01:30:39 ◼   ► that just makes everything better and faster.

01:30:42 ◼   ► It was a refinement of Sierra

01:30:43 ◼   ► and it did make things better and faster,

01:30:45 ◼   ► but the small number of things they changed,

01:30:48 ◼   ► like they had some bugs of their own

01:30:52 ◼   ► and lots of longstanding bugs didn't get fixed.

01:30:54 ◼   ► It's just tech debt, that's what it boils down to.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Like this is the thing a lot of people are pointing out

01:30:57 ◼   ► in all their complaints about bugs.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And that's why I pointed the pile of pebbles

01:31:00 ◼   ► and the pile of pebbles getting bigger.

01:31:02 ◼   ► You have to pay down your tech debt.

01:31:04 ◼   ► You have to address it and say,

01:31:07 ◼   ► that bug that Marco's been having for two releases about his Bluetooth randomly disconnecting.

01:31:12 ◼   ► I know it's a pain in the ass to figure it out and it's unreproducible and he's not filing bug

01:31:17 ◼   ► reports, but you just got to figure that out because if you don't, it will just linger there

01:31:20 ◼   ► forever. And it will linger there forever alongside the new bug that you added as part of whatever new

01:31:25 ◼   ► feature you added and the pile of pebbles gets bigger. You got to at least keep the pile of

01:31:29 ◼   ► pebbles at a manageable size. We're not saying you have to drive it down to zero, it's software,

01:31:34 ◼   ► You're never going to drive down to zero.

01:31:35 ◼   ► But if you allow them to accumulate and that pile gets bigger every release, people become

01:31:39 ◼   ► disillusioned.

01:31:40 ◼   ► Because there's always new bugs and your old ones never get fixed and it's like, "Why are

01:31:43 ◼   ► you even releasing new operating systems?"

01:31:45 ◼   ► That's when people say, "Let's go to every two years," or whatever.

01:31:47 ◼   ► So I think it is possible to do an every year release, but if it is easier for Apple to

01:31:53 ◼   ► go to every two year release, then they should do that.

01:31:57 ◼   ► The way I look at it is, imagine on a smaller scale, imagine me as a single developer.

01:32:03 ◼   ► of all year, I didn't really touch Overcast.

01:32:06 ◼   ► I was doing other things, I was too busy

01:32:08 ◼   ► to work on Overcast.

01:32:09 ◼   ► And every summer, I gave myself one week

01:32:12 ◼   ► to make a new big point version of it.

01:32:15 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:32:16 ◼   ► And then I could release it, fix bugs for two days,

01:32:19 ◼   ► and then I wouldn't be able to work on it anymore

01:32:20 ◼   ► until the next summer.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Of course the quality would go down.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Of course I'd have to rush to get things in there,

01:32:26 ◼   ► and everything I did would be half-baked,