ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are you sad at all about the M5 leaving?

00:00:03 ◼   ► You should pull the engine noise MP3s off the computer so you can play them anytime

00:00:06 ◼   ► you want when you miss it.

00:00:11 ◼   ► So let's move on to something super exciting.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Let's talk about SQL Server on Linux.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I couldn't even get it out with a straight face.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I tried so hard I couldn't even do it.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Well, this is kind of interesting, right?

00:00:23 ◼   ► Because like, you know, Microsoft had their database SQL Server, which forever has required

00:00:28 ◼   ► Windows Server.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And I would imagine a lot of Windows Server licenses were exclusively to run Microsoft

00:00:36 ◼   ► SQL Server.

00:00:37 ◼   ► So them announcing that it will be available for Linux is interesting, you know, because

00:00:44 ◼   ► that means, again, like we brought up last week how them bringing .NET to Linux officially

00:00:50 ◼   ► would be, you know, interesting and might have a negative effect on their Windows Server

00:00:55 ◼   ► licenses.

00:00:56 ◼   ► will probably have an even bigger negative effect

00:00:58 ◼   ► on their Windows Server licenses.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So I think what this is showing is that Microsoft

00:01:02 ◼   ► would rather that you use .NET and use SQL Server

00:01:07 ◼   ► rather than necessarily be stuck to Windows Server.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And so all the reasons that people have for not

00:01:14 ◼   ► using Microsoft Server products,

00:01:16 ◼   ► now they have one big one less.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Fewer?

00:01:20 ◼   ► Didn't I bring this up last week?

00:01:21 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering,

00:01:22 ◼   ► I remember talking about the similar issues of like that Microsoft is becoming more friendly

00:01:30 ◼   ► to Linux and how people don't like to run Linux servers and Windows servers, the two kind of

00:01:33 ◼   ► separate domains of knowledge, they really just run all Linux servers, Linux is everywhere in

00:01:39 ◼   ► the enterprise, and so that Microsoft could sell you, I think I might have said exchange server for

00:01:45 ◼   ► Linux or something like that, but anyway, I also like that Microsoft could have its own Linux

00:01:48 ◼   ► distro eventually and it wasn't you know that was like last week and then this

00:01:52 ◼   ► announcement came I mean I'm sure this announcement was telegraphed for people

00:01:54 ◼   ► who pay more attention to Microsoft than I do but I had no awareness they were

00:01:58 ◼   ► even close to this but then you know there went right after last week's show

00:02:02 ◼   ► so it and I think Christina Warren was also joking about a Microsoft Linux

00:02:07 ◼   ► distro around the same time I don't see that as implausible although a couple

00:02:12 ◼   ► people from Microsoft tweeted oh you know we partner with Red Hat and so on

00:02:15 ◼   ► and so forth and we let them do what they do best which is do a Linux distro

00:02:18 ◼   ► we don't have one or whatever, but if Microsoft pursues this strategy to basically we will sell you

00:02:23 ◼   ► Enterprise software and we're not going to be super picky about where you run it

00:02:28 ◼   ► Like if a lot of customers want to run our software on Linux fine

00:02:32 ◼   ► We'll we'll sell them a version to run on Linux because they're not

00:02:35 ◼   ► Not the the everything Windows company anymore. I mean they haven't been

00:02:40 ◼   ► For a while now since Palmer left basically or maybe even before

00:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah fair enough. It's an interesting push for sure and I'm curious to see

00:02:48 ◼   ► where this all ends up

00:02:51 ◼   ► But I like it. I think this is Microsoft playing to their strengths

00:02:56 ◼   ► Which we've talked about you know several times on and off in the past so good on Microsoft. Moving on

00:03:01 ◼   ► We got a lot of people that wrote in to talk about TV mounting over a fireplace

00:03:08 ◼   ► because unsurprisingly a lot of people were perturbed at where I mount my TV. And we got two

00:03:14 ◼   ► recurring links, which we'll put in the show notes, and it was Neil Weinstock that I guess was the first one in with these links.

00:03:22 ◼   ► One of them is dynamic mounting, which

00:03:26 ◼   ► is very similar to the other which we received far more often, which is mantle mount. And

00:03:32 ◼   ► And the two of these things basically allow you to stuff the TV over the fireplace when

00:03:38 ◼   ► it's not in use, but then drop it down kind of in front of the fireplace when you are

00:03:42 ◼   ► using it.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And these are very clever and things that I would never ever bother with because I just

00:03:49 ◼   ► don't care that much.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I would be so nervous about this.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Like I mean, again, I know that you can make a mount that's super strong and everything,

00:03:57 ◼   ► But man, having it, having the TV on the wall is bad enough.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Having it like suspended on this arm that reaches like a couple of feet away from the

00:04:07 ◼   ► wall.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It's like thinking about like the stresses on that mount.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Oh my God, I do, I could not sleep at night with that above my TV or on my TV.

00:04:15 ◼   ► TVs are light, it would be fine.

00:04:16 ◼   ► But it is kind of weird though because your room looks weird with your TV kind of hanging

00:04:20 ◼   ► in front of the fireplace.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Like, I guess it's kind of a solution.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And the idea is you can push it back up when you want the room to look nicer or whatever,

00:04:27 ◼   ► But it still seems weird to me.

00:04:29 ◼   ► And then, a final piece of follow-up.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I had tweeted a challenge to you/our mutual follows that here's the PDF of my owner's

00:04:37 ◼   ► manual for my TV, make it work.

00:04:39 ◼   ► I got a plethora of suggestions, most of which were actually very helpful, which I do appreciate,

00:04:45 ◼   ► because oftentimes with Twitter that's not the case.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Tentatively, I think it may be fixed.

00:04:52 ◼   ► It's been very not reliable.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Sometimes it seems to be working right, sometimes not.

00:04:58 ◼   ► When I say working right, what I mean is that it doesn't overscan or anything like that.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It appears to be...

00:05:04 ◼   ► I changed a million things at once because I'm a terrible debugger, apparently, when

00:05:08 ◼   ► it comes to these sorts of things anyway.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I think it is basically the showroom mode or something like it, some sort of like, "Ooh,

00:05:15 ◼   ► let me do everything automatically" mode.

00:05:17 ◼   ► When I first changed that, it didn't seem to make a difference.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Then all of a sudden it seemed to be working, so gosh, it only knows.

00:05:23 ◼   ► But the positive sign so far.

00:05:25 ◼   ► So thank you to the people on Twitter that had sent in some tips, and in theory I think

00:05:30 ◼   ► it might be better now.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So I think both you and Marco have had people download PDFs of things that you own and read

00:05:36 ◼   ► them for you and tell you how to work them.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the common thread between us here is that we just don't care enough

00:05:42 ◼   ► about this particular thing.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Like Marco does not care enough about—

00:05:45 ◼   ► See?

00:05:46 ◼   ► Well, but you should care.

00:05:47 ◼   ► About finding the battery in his car?

00:05:48 ◼   ► He cares.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Ish.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And about knowing how to do shortcuts on the iDrive, for example.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Personally, I think that's a little weird that you didn't care that much, but, you know,

00:05:57 ◼   ► to each their own.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And for me, I could not have possibly cared less about reading the manual to fix this

00:06:03 ◼   ► problem.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I had lived with it for like six years at this point.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I can live with it some more.

00:06:07 ◼   ► However, now that it is fixed, I am quite—well, tentatively—I'm quite pleased that—yeah,

00:06:13 ◼   ► I was going to say I spent the time, but really that the internet spent the time to read the

00:06:16 ◼   ► PDF for me.

00:06:17 ◼   ► So thanks, internet.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Our first sponsor tonight is Fracture.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com and use code ATP10 to get 10% off your first purchase.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Fracture prints photos directly onto glass.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Colors pop like you won't believe and it even comes in a solid backing that's ready to mount

00:06:34 ◼   ► right out of the package.

00:06:36 ◼   ► All you have to do is stick it on the included screw and hang it up on the wall.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Done.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's all really affordable too.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Prices are just $15 for the small square size and are very reasonable after that.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Fracture prints look great.

00:06:48 ◼   ► They're all over my, they're all over our house now.

00:06:49 ◼   ► They just keep multiplying and they're everywhere.

00:06:52 ◼   ► We've given them as gifts.

00:06:53 ◼   ► People love these things.

00:06:54 ◼   ► They compliment them, they look great.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It is literally a photo printed on a piece of glass

00:07:00 ◼   ► and you stick it on the wall and that's it.

00:07:01 ◼   ► You don't have to frame it.

00:07:02 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about it like falling off

00:07:04 ◼   ► of some little weird hanger thing.

00:07:06 ◼   ► It just works and they're great.

00:07:08 ◼   ► They're big, they're beautiful, they're lightweight.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Again, no stress involved in hanging this thing on the wall.

00:07:13 ◼   ► The packaging has been wonderful.

00:07:15 ◼   ► We've never received one that was cracked

00:07:17 ◼   ► or broken or anything.

00:07:18 ◼   ► and you know you think sending a big piece of glass through the mail it'd be

00:07:21 ◼   ► risky but no they have to have that covered too it is great they make great

00:07:25 ◼   ► gifts they're great for yourself get your photos printed get them out of your

00:07:28 ◼   ► like weird Facebook and Instagram feeds where you see them for like a day then

00:07:32 ◼   ► they're gone forever you know bring them out put them on your wall it really

00:07:35 ◼   ► makes a difference they make fantastic gifts for family friends and loved ones

00:07:38 ◼   ► as well you can celebrate a shared memory with somebody if you go like you

00:07:41 ◼   ► know go on a trip with somebody or you like your kid has a birthday or whatever

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00:07:59 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com to see for yourself.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to fracture.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - So this past weekend we celebrated

00:08:05 ◼   ► my mother-in-law's birthday.

00:08:07 ◼   ► And we had gotten her a fracture print of a photo

00:08:10 ◼   ► that I had taken of Declan at a park nearby

00:08:13 ◼   ► that we really like.

00:08:15 ◼   ► That she had commented to me,

00:08:17 ◼   ► "Oh man, that's a really great picture. I really like it. Yada yada yada."

00:08:20 ◼   ► And that was like a month ago, and so we had pretty much instantly turned around, went to fracture,

00:08:26 ◼   ► knowing her birthday was coming, and had that printed, made, pressed, however you want to phrase it.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And she opened it up and instantly burst into tears because she was so overjoyed about how good it looked

00:08:37 ◼   ► and how awesome it was. And so, seriously kids, give it a shot. It's really good stuff.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So I actually have some surprise follow-up.

00:08:45 ◼   ► - Oh, I thought we were done.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - Nope, this is a surprise follow-up

00:08:49 ◼   ► because on my desk right now,

00:08:52 ◼   ► I have two of the Apple Smart Battery cases.

00:08:56 ◼   ► - Oh God, seriously?

00:08:58 ◼   ► - Seriously.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - We're back to this?

00:09:00 ◼   ► - We're gonna spend even more time

00:09:02 ◼   ► on the Apple Smart Battery case.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Just quick, just quick.

00:09:04 ◼   ► - You get one for the Plus and one for regular?

00:09:07 ◼   ► - They don't make it for the Plus.

00:09:08 ◼   ► No, one for me, one for TIFF.

00:09:09 ◼   ► - They only make it in the one size just for the 6S,

00:09:11 ◼   ► that's it?

00:09:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause the Plus already has enough battery life.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Anyway, I have my cheap Amazon One that I got,

00:09:18 ◼   ► and I expressed some concern about, you know,

00:09:20 ◼   ► being not MFI certified.

00:09:22 ◼   ► I'm a little worried about what am I doing to my phone,

00:09:24 ◼   ► but otherwise it seems all right.

00:09:25 ◼   ► But I decided for this trip, TIFF wanted one too,

00:09:27 ◼   ► and I decided, let's try these.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I'll give it a real shot, a real honest shot.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And honestly, it's pretty good.

00:09:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:37 ◼   ► - I feel like this is a common theme with you.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Oh, this is crap, fast forward.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Ah, you know, that's not so bad.

00:09:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're right.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And nobody else would ever do that, Casey.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Like Apple and BMWs and iPhones.

00:09:47 ◼   ► - Well, no, I'm not innocent on this one.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I'm not innocent.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I'm just bringing you down to my level.

00:09:53 ◼   ► - I understand the appeal of this case now.

00:09:55 ◼   ► So first of all, it is really easy to take on and off

00:09:58 ◼   ► because of the weird bendy top.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It does indeed look really stupid.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Holding it is actually not bad,

00:10:04 ◼   ► because the little ledge from the bottom edge of the bump,

00:10:08 ◼   ► you actually can rest it on your pinky

00:10:09 ◼   ► and have kind of a nice handhold there.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - Unless you're John.

00:10:12 ◼   ► unless you're Jon, but if you hold your phone normally,

00:10:15 ◼   ► you can do that.

00:10:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:17 ◼   ► And the smartness aspect of it is really nice,

00:10:20 ◼   ► where you never have to turn it on or off.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Like that to me, that is what really sets it apart

00:10:25 ◼   ► above all the other ones, is that it is always

00:10:28 ◼   ► just automatic, and you can see its status

00:10:31 ◼   ► in your today view in the batteries widget.

00:10:34 ◼   ► So, and when you first plug it in,

00:10:35 ◼   ► it shows both side by side,

00:10:36 ◼   ► it shows the case and your battery.

00:10:37 ◼   ► So overall, it's actually pretty nice.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It still looks stupid.

00:10:43 ◼   ► It's still big and clunky.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Not as big and clunky as some battery cases I've seen and used, but it's still big and

00:10:49 ◼   ► clunky.

00:10:50 ◼   ► The only major downside to it besides its stupid looks, I think, now having used it,

00:10:56 ◼   ► really the only major downside is that the amount of extra capacity that you get really

00:11:00 ◼   ► isn't that great.

00:11:02 ◼   ► It's something, I mean, I don't know, something like two-thirds of a charge or half a charge.

00:11:06 ◼   ► So it is enough if you need just a little boost.

00:11:09 ◼   ► But I feel like on the flight on the way out there,

00:11:12 ◼   ► we both drained our cases down to nothing

00:11:14 ◼   ► and drained our phones down partially.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Just like in the airports here and there,

00:11:19 ◼   ► going in and out of planes and everything.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And yes, you can plug it on the plane,

00:11:22 ◼   ► but then you have this cable running across your lap

00:11:24 ◼   ► and it's kind of inconvenient

00:11:26 ◼   ► and you gotta reach in the bag in and out.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So ideally you don't have to.

00:11:28 ◼   ► So ultimately it was, they did provide enough power,

00:11:32 ◼   ► but it would be nice if they provided more.

00:11:34 ◼   ► It's like if you're gonna have this big battery backpack

00:11:36 ◼   ► on your phone at all,

00:11:38 ◼   ► I would like a little more power than what this offers.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Other than that, pretty good.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it's a great value for the money,

00:11:45 ◼   ► but, 'cause they're 100 bucks,

00:11:46 ◼   ► and you can get other battery cases for like 50.

00:11:50 ◼   ► So, you know, not a great value,

00:11:51 ◼   ► but the fact that you never have to turn it on or off

00:11:55 ◼   ► and it just automatically charges your phone as necessary,

00:11:58 ◼   ► and it depletes itself first and charges you first,

00:12:01 ◼   ► all those things actually pretty nice.

00:12:04 ◼   ► So that's my abbreviated review

00:12:06 ◼   ► the Apple smart battery case after having mercilessly made fun of it for like three

00:12:10 ◼   ► episodes.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin Did you get a white one?

00:12:12 ◼   ► Tim Cynova I got one of each color. Tiff insisted on

00:12:15 ◼   ► the white, I insisted on the gray. Both colors are crappy colors. The white hasn't discolored

00:12:22 ◼   ► itself yet, but I'm sure it will soon. They both pick up tons of pocket lint because they

00:12:26 ◼   ► are the rubbery silicone material. Physical form wise, they're exactly as mediocre as

00:12:31 ◼   ► you expect. But they do work pretty well. I would just only wish for a little bit more

00:12:36 ◼   ► power. Overall though, you know, it is not terrible. I expected it to be terrible and

00:12:42 ◼   ► it's not terrible.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Cool. Well, that's surprising but I guess it's exciting. Yeah, I mean the one I have,

00:12:50 ◼   ► I have this battery case, I think it's by Lenmar and yeah, I mean it's okay. It's a

00:12:56 ◼   ► little bit clunky, but I think they have a newer one actually now that's thinner. This

00:13:01 ◼   ► one I got with my 6. I like it, it works fine, but it's definitely big and large and I don't

00:13:11 ◼   ► know if I'd say heavy, but certainly not light. So it's alright. And I don't know, maybe if

00:13:18 ◼   ► I were to do it again, maybe I'd get one of these like you have. To be honest, I did get

00:13:22 ◼   ► one of those battery packs that you had recommended. What did, who makes that again?

00:13:26 ◼   ► - Volt ready.

00:13:27 ◼   ► - Volt ready, that's right.

00:13:29 ◼   ► It's gotta be reliable.

00:13:30 ◼   ► How could it not be?

00:13:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, $25 from a company you've never heard of

00:13:34 ◼   ► that has all these little flimsy cables on it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► It works most of the time.

00:13:37 ◼   ► - Why not?

00:13:38 ◼   ► - It works exactly what you'd expect for a $25 battery.

00:13:40 ◼   ► - That's fair.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And I got one of those on your recommendation,

00:13:43 ◼   ► which I guess was on someone else's recommendation first.

00:13:46 ◼   ► The one I got is a truly hideous gold color

00:13:50 ◼   ► because that was the only one that was available at the time

00:13:52 ◼   ► I don't even see it on Amazon anymore,

00:13:54 ◼   ► so maybe that's been updated since then.

00:13:56 ◼   ► But--

00:13:57 ◼   ► It's too-- it's too tacky even for Amazon.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Seriously.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So yeah, so I haven't traveled with it yet,

00:14:05 ◼   ► but I am going on a trip soon with a plethora

00:14:08 ◼   ► of other people.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And I presume it will be a mixed crowd of iPhones and Android

00:14:13 ◼   ► phones.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And it was appealing to me that this

00:14:15 ◼   ► would have a connection for each,

00:14:18 ◼   ► because I'm a nice guy like that.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So we'll see how it goes.

00:14:20 ◼   ► If my phone melts, then you can laugh at me and say

00:14:24 ◼   ► I should have gotten the smart battery case.

00:14:26 ◼   ► - I'm not sure I would ever tell somebody

00:14:27 ◼   ► they should have gotten the smart battery case.

00:14:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:30 ◼   ► Like it's not that good and it is fairly expensive.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Again, it's expensive for the capacity that you get.

00:14:36 ◼   ► But, again, it is really nice not to have to manage it.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Like flip it on or flip it off.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Like that part is really nice.

00:14:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, that makes sense.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean ultimately this might be just convincing me

00:14:48 ◼   ► that I should probably just go with the 7 Plus

00:14:50 ◼   ► when the 7 comes out.

00:14:52 ◼   ► but we'll see what happens.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - Oh, don't do it, man.

00:14:54 ◼   ► - Mike might have been right.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - Ah, don't do it, man.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - Now, you know, what's pushing me more and more

00:15:00 ◼   ► towards that as time goes on,

00:15:01 ◼   ► not only my battery preferences,

00:15:05 ◼   ► but also I really don't use iPads.

00:15:08 ◼   ► I at least didn't get myself a Pro,

00:15:11 ◼   ► and I'm probably not gonna get myself the new Pro Mini,

00:15:15 ◼   ► whatever the heck they're gonna call the new iPad Air

00:15:19 ◼   ► with pencil support and Pro speakers

00:15:21 ◼   ► pro-like style, you know, whatever. The rumors from Germin is that they're going to call

00:15:26 ◼   ► it iPad Pro also, which my theory on that actually, now that we're talking about it,

00:15:32 ◼   ► my theory on that is I think it makes sense for Apple's current marketing goals to name

00:15:40 ◼   ► all the big iPads Pro because they want people to be thinking of the iPad as a machine that

00:15:46 ◼   ► you can do professional work on to help differentiate it, not only from, you know, big phones and

00:15:51 ◼   ► and everything, but also to help differentiate it

00:15:52 ◼   ► from Amazon's six-pack of cheap tablets.

00:15:55 ◼   ► You know, they want the iPad to be a premium product

00:15:59 ◼   ► that you can do pro work on if you need or want to.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So I think that's, I think that their goal here,

00:16:05 ◼   ► if they do indeed call it a pro of some form,

00:16:09 ◼   ► I think their goal here is for you to just think

00:16:11 ◼   ► of the iPads as the pro tablets.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And yeah, they'll still have the mini

00:16:15 ◼   ► that probably won't be called pro, but you know.

00:16:17 ◼   ► - So that'll be only non-pro iPad left will be the mini?

00:16:20 ◼   ► Do they still call that one mini?

00:16:21 ◼   ► there's no more just plain old iPad?

00:16:23 ◼   ► - Maybe, I mean, for much of the,

00:16:27 ◼   ► well not much, for some of the years

00:16:30 ◼   ► that MacBook has existed,

00:16:31 ◼   ► there was no just plain old MacBook.

00:16:33 ◼   ► And if you look at the laptop lineup,

00:16:37 ◼   ► which I think is a fair comparison here,

00:16:38 ◼   ► this was covered pretty well on upgrade

00:16:41 ◼   ► and connected the last couple of weeks,

00:16:42 ◼   ► but if you look at the Mac lineup,

00:16:45 ◼   ► you have some on the low end,

00:16:46 ◼   ► and then you have the entire middle and high end

00:16:48 ◼   ► is all called Pro, right?

00:16:50 ◼   ► And that's partially because these are higher end things,

00:16:53 ◼   ► partially because I think Apple realizes

00:16:55 ◼   ► these are, that gives the whole line

00:16:57 ◼   ► an air of professionalism, of premiumness, superiority.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And it kinda makes MacBook, you just follow it with pro.

00:17:06 ◼   ► It kinda makes the whole line seem prestigious

00:17:09 ◼   ► to have so many of them called pro,

00:17:11 ◼   ► especially so many of them people actually buy.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So to have most of the iPads that end up being sold

00:17:18 ◼   ► have pro in their name,

00:17:20 ◼   ► I think helps contribute to the perception Apple

00:17:22 ◼   ► wants to create that the iPad can be used for pro use.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Whether or not it can is a different story,

00:17:28 ◼   ► that's, you know, many people can,

00:17:30 ◼   ► and people can't, not gonna get to that on this episode,

00:17:32 ◼   ► but I feel like that is a plausible reason

00:17:35 ◼   ► why they would want to do this.

00:17:36 ◼   ► - I was on one of those episodes of Upgrade,

00:17:39 ◼   ► and what I said on that episode was I think

00:17:41 ◼   ► that the middle size, like the plain iPad size,

00:17:46 ◼   ► the original iPad size, I guess you would call it,

00:17:48 ◼   ► I think there's room to have a model that's that big with Pro in the name, and a model

00:17:53 ◼   ► that's also that big without Pro in the name.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Because at this point there are enough Pro features, the smart connector, the pen, the

00:18:00 ◼   ► high refresh rate screen, the speakers, that it's enough to differentiate it to say the

00:18:05 ◼   ► Pro one has all that stuff and is more expensive, and the non-Pro one that is the same size

00:18:10 ◼   ► is thinner, lighter, smaller, cheaper, and worse in all those other ways.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Doesn't have a smart connector, doesn't support the pen at all, maybe the camera's crappier,

00:18:17 ◼   ► has even the last year's CPU or whatever but it just seems silly to me to require

00:18:24 ◼   ► what I consider the regular iPad size to be encumbered by all the pro features. I

00:18:31 ◼   ► mean if I just think about what kind of iPads do rich people want to buy for

00:18:35 ◼   ► their toddlers? They don't want to buy them the pro but mini is not you know it's

00:18:39 ◼   ► it's more fun for a toddler to have the big screen to like finger paint on and

00:18:43 ◼   ► play little games and just do stuff like that so I really hope eventually maybe

00:18:46 ◼   ► Maybe for this first one they won't do it, but I really hope eventually there is a Pro

00:18:50 ◼   ► 9.7-inch one.

00:18:52 ◼   ► That's the regular size, right?

00:18:53 ◼   ► Yes.

00:18:54 ◼   ► 9.7-inch, yeah.

00:18:55 ◼   ► There's a Pro 9.7 and a non-Pro 9.7 because already, I mean, there aren't even that many

00:19:00 ◼   ► Pro features, but I think there are already enough features to clearly differentiate the

00:19:03 ◼   ► two lines, that there wouldn't be any confusion about it.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And they can hit more price points.

00:19:07 ◼   ► They could push the Pro one up in price, and they could push the non-Pro one down by using

00:19:11 ◼   ► cheaper stuff.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Eh, maybe.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:19:14 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Apple, there's probably gonna be like 17 different iPads.

00:19:18 ◼   ► - Goodness, alright.

00:19:19 ◼   ► So do we wanna actually get to what we were planning

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00:21:26 ◼   ► - All right, so there was a bit of a brouhaha

00:21:30 ◼   ► over the last week or two

00:21:32 ◼   ► about an OS X ransomware attack.

00:21:36 ◼   ► This is the one that was in the Transmit transmission,

00:21:39 ◼   ► which is a BitTorrent client and--

00:21:42 ◼   ► - No, it's a client for acquiring new home videos.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Home movies, what does the Apple TV call them?

00:21:48 ◼   ► Home videos or home movies?

00:21:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, home videos is a good call.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - So yeah, so transmission is a BitTorrent client

00:21:53 ◼   ► slash home movie acquirer.

00:21:55 ◼   ► And apparently, if I understood what happened correctly,

00:21:59 ◼   ► the website had been screwed with, hijacked, et cetera,

00:22:05 ◼   ► And somebody re-signed transmission with a valid Apple cert, although not the original transmission cert, I believe,

00:22:12 ◼   ► that also had ransomware stuffed within it.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And so a bunch of people downloaded from the website and got an infected version of transmission.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Now, Sparkle, which is the auto-updater that many, many, many apps outside of the App Store use,

00:22:24 ◼   ► that I believe was written by Andy Matuszak originally,

00:22:28 ◼   ► anyway, that, I guess, was not affected, but downloads from the website were.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And there was a ransomware virus thing in there that basically said, "Hey, we've encrypted your entire hard drive, pay us money, or you can never get any of your files back."

00:22:44 ◼   ► I thought it encrypted individual files, not the whole drive. It's not whole disk encryption. It would just find your files and encrypt them.

00:22:50 ◼   ► encrypt them. Yeah, you are correct. So this was a bit of an issue and the biggest issue

00:22:55 ◼   ► is it was signed. I mean it was a valid Mac app, not for the App Store of course, but

00:23:04 ◼   ► it was a valid Mac app as far as your installation of OS X was concerned because it was signed

00:23:09 ◼   ► with a valid development certificate. Shady perhaps because it was coming from a very

00:23:13 ◼   ► different place than the normal transmission cert, geographically speaking, but it was

00:23:18 ◼   ► still a valid cert, so it was a bit of a cluster to say the least. What do we think about this?

00:23:25 ◼   ► Well, the big angle that a lot of people started going for was, "Hey, if this was on the Mac App

00:23:31 ◼   ► Store, this would never have happened." And that maybe is true, because what you're relying on on

00:23:36 ◼   ► the App Store is, I guess, app review to realize that this supposed BitTorrent client, if you wait

00:23:45 ◼   ► a couple days and it starts encrypting your files, maybe they wouldn't have noticed that

00:23:49 ◼   ► because again it does wait a couple days, maybe they're trying to wait out app review,

00:23:52 ◼   ► like if the app reviewer launched this app and tried using it, it would work as expected.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Does app review like leave it on the system running for a couple days or leave it around?

00:24:03 ◼   ► Like maybe it would have got past app review as well.

00:24:07 ◼   ► But that's one angle on it.

00:24:08 ◼   ► The other one is that the developer ID signing thing that Apple created with Gatekeeper means

00:24:16 ◼   ► that you download applications and they come in three forms.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Totally unsigned, you know, pre-Gatekeeper applications, which is how every single Mac

00:24:26 ◼   ► app was in all the years before Gatekeeper was created.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Applications that are signed with a developer ID but don't come from the Mac App Store,

00:24:34 ◼   ► and then Mac App Store applications.

00:24:35 ◼   ► And that's sort of like three levels of, I guess, trust.

00:24:38 ◼   ► The totally untrusted one doesn't require any secretary.

00:24:41 ◼   ► You download a binary, you run it, it runs.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And that's the way Mac apps were for most

00:24:46 ◼   ► of the life of the Mac.

00:24:47 ◼   ► The developer ID ones, all that does

00:24:49 ◼   ► is tie it back to an Apple developer account, which

00:24:54 ◼   ► presumably ties back to a person or institution or somebody

00:24:57 ◼   ► that you can hold responsible or whatever.

00:24:59 ◼   ► That's kind of relying on Apple's sign-up process

00:25:02 ◼   ► to correctly identify somebody.

00:25:05 ◼   ► So like, can you go through,

00:25:07 ◼   ► can you get an Apple developer certificate

00:25:09 ◼   ► putting in totally fake information?

00:25:10 ◼   ► Probably.

00:25:12 ◼   ► But that's the only thing that developer ID is giving you.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Well, two things.

00:25:16 ◼   ► One, that your application hasn't been modified in any way,

00:25:19 ◼   ► which is kind of weird.

00:25:20 ◼   ► It's like, well, wasn't transmission modified?

00:25:22 ◼   ► Well, they didn't just modify it, they resigned it.

00:25:26 ◼   ► So after they modified it,

00:25:27 ◼   ► they signed it with their developer certificate

00:25:29 ◼   ► and that certificate authenticated the fact

00:25:32 ◼   ► that yes, this thing, if someone modifies this thing

00:25:35 ◼   ► after you download it, you'll know about it

00:25:36 ◼   ► because the signature won't match.

00:25:38 ◼   ► But what you're worried about is someone modified it

00:25:40 ◼   ► and then signed it and it is, you know,

00:25:44 ◼   ► a valid container for their malware.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So if anyone tried to mess with their malware,

00:25:48 ◼   ► signing would have caught it.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And then the Mac App Store, like it's the next leg up

00:25:52 ◼   ► where there's actual human beings

00:25:53 ◼   ► looking at your application and making sure it's okay.

00:25:55 ◼   ► So why wasn't this application on the Mac App Store?

00:25:57 ◼   ► My understanding is the Mac App Store

00:25:58 ◼   ► does not allow but torrent clients at all.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Do you guys know if that's the case?

00:26:01 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:26:02 ◼   ► - I believe that to be true.

00:26:03 ◼   ► And a quick real-time follow-up,

00:26:04 ◼   ► this encryption would never have worked in sandboxing.

00:26:07 ◼   ► So even if it made it through app review,

00:26:09 ◼   ► it wouldn't have been able to touch the rest of the--

00:26:11 ◼   ► - Oh, 'cause it can't get through,

00:26:12 ◼   ► it can't get to the other files.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, in reality, this is a bit torrent client.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So it needs to be able to write torrent downloads

00:26:21 ◼   ► to a directory.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And so what would probably happen is,

00:26:23 ◼   ► yes, you could use sandboxing to have it pop up the dialog

00:26:28 ◼   ► and have you choose a directory where it can write.

00:26:30 ◼   ► much more likely would be that even if it was sandboxed

00:26:33 ◼   ► outside of the Mac App Store, even if it was sandboxed,

00:26:37 ◼   ► there would probably just be some option

00:26:38 ◼   ► where they'd be like, all right, well, just,

00:26:39 ◼   ► we need to write your whole drive to make some feature easier

00:26:42 ◼   ► or to make this flow better, and most people would say, okay.

00:26:45 ◼   ► - You can't even get that, you can't even get that,

00:26:47 ◼   ► what do you call it, entitlement anymore, I think.

00:26:49 ◼   ► - I think you're right, well, so then it just wouldn't

00:26:51 ◼   ► be sandboxed and nobody would care.

00:26:53 ◼   ► So yeah, what would make it useful in the App Store

00:26:57 ◼   ► is the sandboxing requirement of the App Store,

00:26:59 ◼   ► which is problematic in so many other ways,

00:27:02 ◼   ► but in this particular case, that would have helped.

00:27:06 ◼   ► However, the reality is, as long as there is a way

00:27:09 ◼   ► to download apps that aren't in the App Store on the Mac,

00:27:13 ◼   ► something like a BitTorrent client is almost certainly

00:27:16 ◼   ► going to be downloaded outside of the App Store

00:27:17 ◼   ► by almost all of its users, just because dealing

00:27:19 ◼   ► with the App Store kinda sucks even as a user these days,

00:27:22 ◼   ► and you can make a better BitTorrent app without sandboxing.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So where the developer ID thing really came in here is,

00:27:30 ◼   ► like this transmission could have been the third kind

00:27:33 ◼   ► of application that I said.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Not signed with any stuff, it's just a binary

00:27:36 ◼   ► that you download, sort of an old style Mac app.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And if that had been the case, and tons of people

00:27:41 ◼   ► had downloaded it, and it started encrypting their drives,

00:27:44 ◼   ► there would be no real way to help them

00:27:46 ◼   ► other than education, saying hey,

00:27:48 ◼   ► if you accidentally downloaded this from this website

00:27:50 ◼   ► during this time, you probably got an infected version,

00:27:52 ◼   ► you should delete it and do this and do that,

00:27:54 ◼   ► and here's how to disinfect your system

00:27:55 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:27:57 ◼   ► But because it was signed with a developer ID,

00:27:59 ◼   ► Apple could revoke the certificate of that developer ID

00:28:02 ◼   ► through the little sneaky update thing

00:28:04 ◼   ► that we just described,

00:28:05 ◼   ► the checkbox that we didn't think was there.

00:28:06 ◼   ► The reason regular users should keep that checkbox checked

00:28:10 ◼   ► is that the Apple has central control

00:28:12 ◼   ► to make it so that this thing doesn't launch anymore.

00:28:15 ◼   ► - We actually are getting real-time follow-up

00:28:16 ◼   ► from Tifter in the chat saying that Apple can blacklist

00:28:19 ◼   ► any binary through that system, including unsigned ones.

00:28:22 ◼   ► - Oh, well then developer IDs wasn't helping at all.

00:28:25 ◼   ► That's a shame.

00:28:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:27 ◼   ► So what were the makers of transmission getting

00:28:32 ◼   ► out of using developer ID?

00:28:34 ◼   ► I suppose they make people not have to go

00:28:36 ◼   ► to their gatekeeper settings

00:28:37 ◼   ► and put it in the most insecure mode.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - Well, no, you can also, what is it?

00:28:42 ◼   ► Right click and select open, and then it'll say,

00:28:46 ◼   ► "Oh my God, are you really sure?"

00:28:48 ◼   ► And then you can say, "Yes, yes, I'm really sure."

00:28:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, that's what I'm saying.

00:28:51 ◼   ► What do you get out of the developer ID thing?

00:28:53 ◼   ► as a developer, I guess you get less scary experience

00:28:56 ◼   ► for users because you don't require them to go

00:28:59 ◼   ► to a setting that they don't understand

00:29:00 ◼   ► and change it in a way that pops up

00:29:02 ◼   ► while warning dialog boxes or whatever.

00:29:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't require them

00:29:06 ◼   ► to right-click and select open the first time

00:29:09 ◼   ► they run the app and then go through the extra scary.

00:29:11 ◼   ► They still have these scary, this is an application

00:29:14 ◼   ► you download from the internet dialog,

00:29:16 ◼   ► but if they just double-click on an app

00:29:18 ◼   ► under default settings that is unsigned,

00:29:21 ◼   ► it doesn't let them run it.

00:29:22 ◼   ► It says, "Oh, sorry, this is on-site."

00:29:24 ◼   ► And then you have to right-click and say open.

00:29:26 ◼   ► So it lets them bypass all of that.

00:29:28 ◼   ► If you're distributing Mac apps in this day and age,

00:29:33 ◼   ► you should almost always have at least developer ID,

00:29:36 ◼   ► if not the app store.

00:29:38 ◼   ► - And of course, in theory, you can track it back

00:29:40 ◼   ► to whatever Apple developer account signed the bad piece.

00:29:45 ◼   ► And again, that just gets back to the tech of work.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Can you find someone who you wanna hold responsible?

00:29:50 ◼   ► Do they put valid information?

00:29:52 ◼   ► Are they in a country that has a legal system that lets you find them or help them accountable

00:29:57 ◼   ► in some way?

00:29:59 ◼   ► I'm assuming not.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I mean, the other alternative suggested in the chat room is that maybe it was just a

00:30:03 ◼   ► legitimate developer that got a developer account hacked.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Someone got into their developer account, either were getting their password, doing

00:30:09 ◼   ► some other way to get into their developer account.

00:30:10 ◼   ► There's also been a couple of bugs around that make it seem like you could exploit Gatekeeper

00:30:15 ◼   ► to execute arbitrary software as if it's trusted.

00:30:19 ◼   ► have been surmised in years past.

00:30:24 ◼   ► But there's so many ways you can hide from the consequences of doing this bad thing.

00:30:30 ◼   ► That's like, the maker of this ransomware, they're a bad actor here.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Are they going to be caught and punished?

00:30:36 ◼   ► Do we have the tools to do that?

00:30:38 ◼   ► Maybe?

00:30:39 ◼   ► Maybe not?

00:30:40 ◼   ► Probably not?

00:30:41 ◼   ► I mean, not everyone is somewhere where you can get at them.

00:30:45 ◼   ► So anyway, XProtect, the thing that downloads little updates in the background and disables

00:30:50 ◼   ► things.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Like your Ethernet driver.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:54 ◼   ► It may have disabled your Ethernet driver one week, but the next week it may have saved

00:30:58 ◼   ► you from getting your files encrypted by ransomware.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:02 ◼   ► I mean, this is one of those cases where most of the time, one of the angles that big business

00:31:10 ◼   ► tries to scare people with, to scare them away from piracy is, "Well, you know, if

00:31:16 ◼   ► you pirate stuff, you never know what you're getting. It could be dangerous. You could

00:31:20 ◼   ► get hacked. You could get malware." And most of the time, that doesn't happen with

00:31:25 ◼   ► piracy. Most of the time, it's fine, and that's one of the reasons so many people

00:31:29 ◼   ► do it. But this is like the one time where they were actually right. You know, you really

00:31:37 ◼   ► need protections from Gatekeeper and from sandboxing and you shouldn't pirate things

00:31:42 ◼   ► because you're putting yourself at risk downloading random software from random places. Like,

00:31:45 ◼   ► this is the one time where that was actually true. But that being said, I think this made

00:31:50 ◼   ► for interesting news and it could prompt some interesting discussions for these few days,

00:31:56 ◼   ► but I don't think this is going to meaningfully change anything for anybody. It's estimated

00:32:01 ◼   ► that, I think somebody said that the total number of downloads with the malware included

00:32:06 ◼   ► was only something like 6,000, which for something like this, that's not that giant of a number.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And then, you know, Apple fairly quickly blacklisted the binary, so it probably didn't even trigger

00:32:19 ◼   ► the malware, like the encryption step of the malware for most of those people. So I don't

00:32:24 ◼   ► -- this doesn't seem like it's that big of an event. It's more about, you know, what

00:32:29 ◼   ► it -- how we're all talking about, like, you know, does this change our opinions of what

00:32:35 ◼   ► the Mac should be, where it should go, security on the Mac.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And that, I think, is a conversation worth having.

00:32:41 ◼   ► But this particular malware, I think, is mostly a non-event.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And interestingly, it wasn't like pirated software that was infected.

00:32:48 ◼   ► It was the software you used to get the pirated software.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Which is slightly different, but...

00:32:53 ◼   ► And home movies, don't forget.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And this is kind of a shame, because developers like this, whose applications basically can't

00:33:00 ◼   ► be on the Mac App Store for a policy reason, setting aside all the things that you talked

00:33:04 ◼   ► about Marco about like, well, the good ones would want full access to your drive and it's

00:33:07 ◼   ► less annoying to users, but even just like if they're categorically denied, because we

00:33:11 ◼   ► think BitTorrent clients are just as a category a thing that we don't want in the Mac App

00:33:16 ◼   ► Store for whatever reason.

00:33:17 ◼   ► If you're a developer who makes a BitTorrent client and you're trying to like do as good

00:33:23 ◼   ► a job as you can do not being in the Mac App Store, you would get a developer ID and you

00:33:28 ◼   ► would sign your application and you would do all these things, but you know, everybody,

00:33:32 ◼   ► You know, everyone gets bored at some time.

00:33:36 ◼   ► You could end up getting hacked.

00:33:37 ◼   ► They could hack your website.

00:33:38 ◼   ► They could shove a little thing inside your downloadable application bundle and your reputation

00:33:45 ◼   ► is smeared because everyone thinks that whether you knew about it or not, it's like, "Oh,

00:33:51 ◼   ► transmission isn't that thing that encrypts your drive?"

00:33:55 ◼   ► I feel like they're doing everything they could within the bounds of the technology

00:34:00 ◼   ► and the rules of the system they're operating in, and I feel bad that they had a bad result

00:34:08 ◼   ► from that.

00:34:09 ◼   ► I don't blame the developers, and I do give credit to Apple for putting in the system

00:34:17 ◼   ► that they put in so many years ago to give them the ability to deal with this, but it

00:34:22 ◼   ► does make me feel a little bit less safe about downloading applications on the Mac.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Because I've downloaded plenty of applications not from the Mac App Store, or from the Mac

00:34:31 ◼   ► App Store for that matter.

00:34:32 ◼   ► And every single one of those is exploitable through a non-technological means, like for

00:34:37 ◼   ► example Mac App Store application.

00:34:39 ◼   ► I don't have any faith that App Review would correctly detect some sort of clever sleeping,

00:34:45 ◼   ► it waits a week and then it wakes up and does something bad to your thing.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And all that it takes for that to happen is for someone to get some poor legitimate developer

00:34:55 ◼   ► account password and, you know, muck up one of their builds or submit a build while they're

00:35:01 ◼   ► away on vacation or do something else.

00:35:03 ◼   ► That's just like a social engineering hack.

00:35:04 ◼   ► It's nothing to do with technology.

00:35:05 ◼   ► As far as the entire tech stack is concerned, this would be a completely validated, approved

00:35:10 ◼   ► Mac application.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And there would be sandbox and everything like that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And I have, you know, is there a way to get out of the sandbox?

00:35:17 ◼   ► Within the bounds of the sandbox, can you do all sorts of damage?

00:35:20 ◼   ► Probably.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Like, you could turn on the camera.

00:35:22 ◼   ► you could capture keystrokes typed into that application,

00:35:25 ◼   ► who knows what you could do.

00:35:26 ◼   ► So like there is no truly safe scenario.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And I wonder exactly how much safer users are overall

00:35:36 ◼   ► if applications, if we assume that the Mac App Store

00:35:40 ◼   ► is a superior level of security to just the developer ID,

00:35:44 ◼   ► it seems to me that every category of application

00:35:46 ◼   ► that is just not allowed on the Mac App Store

00:35:48 ◼   ► for some reason is potentially decreasing the security

00:35:52 ◼   ► of users over what they could be if the Mac App Store was more permissive in terms of,

00:35:56 ◼   ► sure, you could have a BitTorrent client.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, we don't say those things are, you know, no matter what, we don't say

00:36:04 ◼   ► those things are just evil.

00:36:05 ◼   ► We don't care how you use them because there are legitimate uses for them.

00:36:07 ◼   ► There's plenty of Linux distros and stuff that are distributed via BitTorrent because

00:36:10 ◼   ► it's a fast way to download stuff.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Anyway, software is dangerous.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Be careful out there.

00:36:17 ◼   ► - No man, this is like, that's the argument,

00:36:20 ◼   ► one of the strongest arguments for Apple

00:36:22 ◼   ► to actually improve the Mac App Store and sandboxing.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Because right now they have a situation

00:36:28 ◼   ► where the Mac App Store is just beyond disrepair.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I mean, it's seemingly totally unstaffed.

00:36:36 ◼   ► There's the app itself that is,

00:36:39 ◼   ► the store app that runs is horrible.

00:36:42 ◼   ► It's buggy, it's messy, it's inconsistent, it's outdated.

00:36:46 ◼   ► I mean, it's just, I'd say it's one of the worst apps

00:36:49 ◼   ► Apple ships right now, is the Mac App Store app.

00:36:51 ◼   ► The service behind it is spotty at best.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Review times for developers are lengthy and inconsistent,

00:36:59 ◼   ► way worse than iOS.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And you have this technical requirement of sandboxing

00:37:04 ◼   ► that, while great in theory, is a huge pain for developers

00:37:08 ◼   ► because it has also been kinda half-baked

00:37:11 ◼   ► in its implementation and also effectively unmaintained.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So, you know, and I wanna maybe get to

00:37:19 ◼   ► Steve Trout and Smith's post about his W2C predictions

00:37:22 ◼   ► that came up a couple weeks ago,

00:37:23 ◼   ► and his statement that Mac OS X is a dead platform.

00:37:28 ◼   ► I wanna maybe get to that, but,

00:37:29 ◼   ► and maybe this might lead us into that a little bit,

00:37:31 ◼   ► but it just seems like, you know,

00:37:33 ◼   ► Apple started Dennis Path with the App Store,

00:37:36 ◼   ► I mean, sandboxing, they kind of,

00:37:38 ◼   ► they said, "All right, here's the future,

00:37:39 ◼   ► "here's how we're gonna do this,

00:37:40 ◼   ► "this is gonna be great."

00:37:41 ◼   ► They started, and then it seems like nothing has changed

00:37:45 ◼   ► the Mac App Store launched, except the introduction

00:37:48 ◼   ► to sandboxing, which came shortly after that,

00:37:50 ◼   ► and then it seemed like nothing has changed

00:37:52 ◼   ► with sandboxing since then either.

00:37:54 ◼   ► So we have the situation now where we have

00:37:57 ◼   ► what is in theory a great system that could in theory

00:38:00 ◼   ► protect people's Macs better and have more secure software

00:38:03 ◼   ► and have easier distribution, but in practice

00:38:06 ◼   ► the implementation of that system has been

00:38:09 ◼   ► fairly mediocre and it's been almost untouched for years.

00:38:14 ◼   ► So if Apple really wants to improve the security of the Mac,

00:38:18 ◼   ► what they have to do is make these things better.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Make the App Store and sandboxing able to support more apps

00:38:25 ◼   ► so that more apps can do it, and make them good enough

00:38:30 ◼   ► that the developers are incentivized,

00:38:32 ◼   ► that they actually want to be in the App Store,

00:38:34 ◼   ► and they actually want to adopt sandboxing.

00:38:37 ◼   ► But it just seems like there's nobody

00:38:40 ◼   ► driving the ship or whatever.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - If you had been looking at the show notes,

00:38:43 ◼   ► would have seen when we pushed that down for next week.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And if you had not been on vacation,

00:38:46 ◼   ► you would have heard me talk about that exact question

00:38:49 ◼   ► on upgrade.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Jason stole that one.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - I did.

00:38:51 ◼   ► - Oh, spoiler alert, I haven't listened yet.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I was saving it for my car ride coming up tomorrow.

00:38:54 ◼   ► - All right.

00:38:55 ◼   ► But I did reject one of the topics that Jason suggested

00:38:58 ◼   ► because I wanted to save it for this show.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - Oh, thanks buddy.

00:39:01 ◼   ► - And it was not that one.

00:39:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:03 ◼   ► - I mean, I think there's some ground to cover here

00:39:05 ◼   ► that you guys didn't cover on upgrade.

00:39:07 ◼   ► Because you made a good case for what the Mac is

00:39:12 ◼   ► and what it should be, which I can summarize

00:39:15 ◼   ► if you'll permit, is basically like,

00:39:17 ◼   ► the Mac should be like the rock,

00:39:19 ◼   ► like the stable, reliable platform

00:39:23 ◼   ► that's kind of boring, doesn't get a lot of updates,

00:39:25 ◼   ► but is stable and reliable.

00:39:26 ◼   ► And I agree.

00:39:28 ◼   ► - That was one option.

00:39:28 ◼   ► The other option was you do another OS X type transition.

00:39:32 ◼   ► - Right, sure.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Honestly though, I don't really see Apple doing that.

00:39:37 ◼   ► I mean, I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong,

00:39:39 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like they devote enough resources

00:39:43 ◼   ► to the Mac anymore to really do any more big transitions.

00:39:47 ◼   ► I think the era of big Mac transitions is over.

00:39:50 ◼   ► And that might be good, it's probably not,

00:39:53 ◼   ► but ultimately it seems like modern day Apple

00:39:57 ◼   ► seems to have this severe problem of basically just,

00:40:02 ◼   ► like as I mentioned before, like the drive-by updates,

00:40:05 ◼   ► 'cause they don't really have enough people

00:40:07 ◼   ► that are permanently staffed on major parts

00:40:10 ◼   ► of their engineering stuff anymore.

00:40:13 ◼   ► It seems like so much of Apple's engineering resources

00:40:18 ◼   ► are being devoted to other things.

00:40:21 ◼   ► iOS, TV, watch, a car most likely, other things like that.

00:40:26 ◼   ► It seems like they keep moving the talent around so much

00:40:31 ◼   ► that there's just nobody left working

00:40:34 ◼   ► on boring old things like the Mac.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And we haven't even seen how they can do

00:40:39 ◼   ► their current platforms yet.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Like we haven't even seen what happens

00:40:43 ◼   ► with watchOS and tvOS this year.

00:40:46 ◼   ► They're each less than a year old.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Does Apple have the engineering capacity

00:40:53 ◼   ► to keep Mac OS, iOS on the iPhone and the iPad,

00:40:58 ◼   ► which are actually quite different these days,

00:41:00 ◼   ► tvOS, watchOS, and the future Car OS?

00:41:04 ◼   ► Do they have the capacity to maintain all of those

00:41:06 ◼   ► to a healthy level. From what we've seen so far, I think the answer is probably not.

00:41:10 ◼   ► So the question is, what gets back-burned? What gets put in Casey's parking lot full

00:41:14 ◼   ► of white cars? What gets ignored? And I think usually it's been the Mac and the iPad. That's

00:41:20 ◼   ► usually what gets ignored. This year, the iPad got some attention. We'll see what

00:41:25 ◼   ► happens as time goes on, but they probably are not in the position where they're going

00:41:31 ◼   ► to devote tons of engineering talent to the Mac. And that's unfortunate. And it is a

00:41:36 ◼   ► mature platform that doesn't need a lot of attention. But I, again, I'm concerned whether

00:41:41 ◼   ► they'll be able to do any kind of big changes in the future. So I think it's more likely

00:41:45 ◼   ► that we'll keep it on its current path of basically being the nice boring thing that

00:41:51 ◼   ► most of us use and depend on very heavily for our work. But it doesn't really get a

00:41:57 ◼   ► lot of attention from Apple.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I don't know if it's so much about their capacity to do it as like that they're going to put

00:42:04 ◼   ► resources towards things with growth potential and regardless of the size of the Mac and

00:42:09 ◼   ► how it may be growing I think the company feels that the potential growth that is does

00:42:15 ◼   ► not warrant putting lots of resources behind it versus say the watch where it's conceivable

00:42:21 ◼   ► that they could believe that the watch is like the start of a whole wearables thing

00:42:25 ◼   ► and that the potential upside is huge.

00:42:27 ◼   ► So we're going to put lots of time and effort into the watch, and then we'll see if the

00:42:30 ◼   ► growth potential is there.

00:42:31 ◼   ► But the Mac, I think the company feels like, and most customers and observers of the industry

00:42:36 ◼   ► feel like, there is not a tremendous growth potential in traditional personal computers

00:42:42 ◼   ► anymore.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So when it comes time to allocate Apple's billions of dollars, it's easier to make the

00:42:49 ◼   ► argument for the car or the watch or even the TV, because they're all so small or so

00:42:54 ◼   ► so new or so non-existent that it's very easy to spin out a tail of potential huge growth.

00:43:00 ◼   ► That we will start down here and the graph will go way up there, whereas the Mac, if

00:43:04 ◼   ► it has to argue for its resources, it can show what its revenue is and how it's growing

00:43:09 ◼   ► faster than the industry and how it's taking its share from Windows PCs. But if they say,

00:43:13 ◼   ► "Okay, is the Mac going to be four times the size it is in a couple years?" they have to

00:43:19 ◼   ► say, "Well, no, probably not." And so maybe they just don't get the resources.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Hold on, before we go too far deeper on this,

00:43:26 ◼   ► 'cause I think this might take a while,

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00:45:48 ◼   ► So I think with the Mac, what's important about it

00:45:52 ◼   ► is that they just maintain what they've started here.

00:45:56 ◼   ► You know, the Mac is the pinnacle of personal computing.

00:46:00 ◼   ► It really is the best personal computer out there.

00:46:03 ◼   ► And whether or not personal computing

00:46:05 ◼   ► has a huge growth potential in front of it,

00:46:07 ◼   ► I think you're right, it probably doesn't.

00:46:09 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean it's going away.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And that doesn't mean it isn't already big and important.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And yeah, it isn't as important as the iPhone.

00:46:17 ◼   ► but it is still really important to a lot of people.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And it is also the area in which I would say

00:46:23 ◼   ► Apple has the worst and least threatening competition.

00:46:28 ◼   ► You know, that Apple has tons of competition,

00:46:30 ◼   ► you know, very strong competition in phones,

00:46:33 ◼   ► in tablets, in watches, in TV boxes,

00:46:36 ◼   ► and they will have tons of competition in cars

00:46:38 ◼   ► if they're doing that, which it sure sounds like they are.

00:46:41 ◼   ► In the Mac, for personal computing,

00:46:44 ◼   ► I don't know a lot of Mac users who are like,

00:46:46 ◼   ► "You know what, I'm tempted to go try Windows."

00:46:48 ◼   ► Like, that never happens.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Like, yeah, they don't have, you know,

00:46:52 ◼   ► Windows is still the majority market shareholder.

00:46:54 ◼   ► But, first of all, that says something about growth, I think.

00:46:56 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:46:57 ◼   ► But, you know, Windows is still, you know,

00:46:59 ◼   ► the majority holder here, but the Mac is so good.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And so many of us rely on it.

00:47:06 ◼   ► And I feel like it's Apple's responsibility

00:47:09 ◼   ► to keep it decent, to keep it good.

00:47:12 ◼   ► You know, Apple needs the Mac also.

00:47:14 ◼   ► I mean, what are they writing these iOS apps on?

00:47:16 ◼   ► I guess we can get to Xcode on the iPad

00:47:18 ◼   ► as a potential future thing, but.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - Xcode for iOS, it's coming.

00:47:22 ◼   ► - Is it?

00:47:23 ◼   ► - Someday.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Remember the Swift announcement?

00:47:26 ◼   ► I totally thought that was going to be,

00:47:28 ◼   ► I tried to, I did tweet about it a while back.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I pinpointed the exact second in the video

00:47:31 ◼   ► when they were leading up to the Swift announcement.

00:47:33 ◼   ► They said a bunch of, a couple sentences,

00:47:36 ◼   ► and I thought the sentences were like, this is it.

00:47:37 ◼   ► It's Xcode for iOS.

00:47:39 ◼   ► It wasn't.

00:47:40 ◼   ► But the fact that I was,

00:47:42 ◼   ► The fact that I was so willing to believe that that's what they were announcing based

00:47:45 ◼   ► on like their vague introductory statements, it just seems inevitable to me someday.

00:47:50 ◼   ► But yeah, like the Mac is not, you're talking about the weak competitors to the Mac, like

00:47:56 ◼   ► you know, no one wants a Dell running Windows or whatever.

00:47:58 ◼   ► You know, as we all know, the real competitor to the Mac is things that are not personal

00:48:02 ◼   ► computers.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Apple knows that, everybody knows that.

00:48:04 ◼   ► The maintenance argument is like, right, well, so until something, until and unless something

00:48:08 ◼   ► comes along that can do everything, the Mac does better, right?

00:48:11 ◼   ► the iPad Pro grows into that role or whatever the heck grows into that role, like maybe

00:48:15 ◼   ► we're all into VR by then, who knows.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Until that happens, we've still got Macs, it's still a big business, you have to put

00:48:20 ◼   ► a certain amount of effort into it just to keep that business going.

00:48:24 ◼   ► And that argues for the suggestion you mentioned from Upgrade, my one of two paths for the

00:48:30 ◼   ► Mac, which is the stability path, which is not just like, do what it takes to keep the

00:48:37 ◼   ► sort of humming along the way it is but like you know I basically have two

00:48:42 ◼   ► strengths of the Mac one strength of the Mac is that it is the platform that you

00:48:47 ◼   ► expect not to change and grow that much like it's not in the the market that's

00:48:51 ◼   ► taking off like a rocket ship or whatever so how can you turn that into a

00:48:54 ◼   ► strength you could turn that into a strength by saying okay what we're gonna

00:48:57 ◼   ► do with the Mac year after year after year it's all we're gonna do is find

00:49:00 ◼   ► every single thing that doesn't work on it and make it work like that's all

00:49:03 ◼   ► we're gonna do we're not gonna care how many bullet points or features that we

00:49:06 ◼   ► have like, you know, like you're not going to add features, but every single

00:49:09 ◼   ► big release, all you want to do is brag about how much better the thing, you

00:49:14 ◼   ► know, how much more it does, what it was always supposed to do in the first

00:49:18 ◼   ► place, how much more stable it is, you know, how, how many bugs you squashed,

00:49:23 ◼   ► uh, any part of it, you know, security would be a great area to go into on the

00:49:27 ◼   ► Mac, because that's kind of a stability thing.

00:49:29 ◼   ► It's not like a feature.

00:49:29 ◼   ► Like we're really nailing down security even more and more closing more security

00:49:32 ◼   ► holes being, you know, that's one way to go.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And so that would make an experience as a Mac user.

00:49:37 ◼   ► It's like, well, every year there's not a million new features, but every year the

00:49:41 ◼   ► Mac gets better and better.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like it gets better for the purpose that we're using it.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And that would be, and you would sell it based on that.

00:49:47 ◼   ► You would say like, you can start saying the world's most reliable operating

00:49:51 ◼   ► system or Bulletproof or, you know, whatever, however you want to spin it.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Like you can sell stability because if you told any Mac user right now that we

00:50:00 ◼   ► have a new version of the Mac operating system that, you know, snow leopard style

00:50:04 ◼   ► has no new features.

00:50:05 ◼   ► And not only that, but also, like,

00:50:07 ◼   ► we didn't rip out any subsystems and change them or anything.

00:50:09 ◼   ► We just, like, we said, what it does now,

00:50:11 ◼   ► we're going to make it do that better.

00:50:12 ◼   ► People were like, yeah, sure, sign me up.

00:50:14 ◼   ► If you heard from friends that, hey, I installed the new Mac

00:50:18 ◼   ► operating system and everything was exactly the same,

00:50:20 ◼   ► except for whatever problem I used to have is gone now,

00:50:23 ◼   ► they would love that, right?

00:50:25 ◼   ► And the other option to go on the Mac

00:50:27 ◼   ► is what is the other strength of the Mac?

00:50:30 ◼   ► It's not-- you have-- I'm not going to say it's not battery

00:50:33 ◼   ► powered because laptops are the majority of the Mac sold but you have a higher power envelope

00:50:37 ◼   ► than you do on iPads and phones and stuff like that.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Right now you can put more powerful stuff inside a Mac, even a laptop, than you can

00:50:46 ◼   ► inside a phone or tablet because iPads or because Macs and even the thinnest laptop

00:50:53 ◼   ► Macs and everything, they have a higher overhead.

00:50:56 ◼   ► You can fit more stuff in there, you can put a bigger battery in, you can put a higher

00:50:59 ◼   ► CPU.

00:51:00 ◼   ► that much hotter in the case of the MacBook One, but certainly much hotter in the case

00:51:04 ◼   ► of the iMac which is plugged into the wall or the Mac Pro or the 15 inch or whatever.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Take advantage of that.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Pursue the high end there.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Try to install the fastest of the fast stuff.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Cater to the idea that if you have minimal computing needs, get the MacBook One or an

00:51:23 ◼   ► iOS device, but if you really want a big strong Mac, we'll make you the biggest strongest

00:51:26 ◼   ► Mac that you can have.

00:51:27 ◼   ► what you would do with the software is say every year is going to get faster and more

00:51:31 ◼   ► powerful and we're going to have the fanciest features and the best GPUs and the best CPUs

00:51:37 ◼   ► and the fastest SSDs and stuff like that really make it like a pro product that takes advantage

00:51:42 ◼   ► of the Mac.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And so far Apple seems to be doing neither one of those things.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Instead they're kind of like limping along every year they feel like they need to do

00:51:50 ◼   ► a release where they have some features to tout and they're kind of monkeying around

00:51:54 ◼   ► inside there and they do fix the bugs.

00:51:56 ◼   ► don't make it super-duper fast, but on the other hand, they don't do nothing year after

00:52:02 ◼   ► year and make it boring. And that strategy of maintenance-level investment with an outward

00:52:10 ◼   ► appearance of every year there's an amazing new OS just doesn't seem to be striking

00:52:14 ◼   ► a good balance for customers.

00:52:17 ◼   ► One thing I would say, too, and Steve Tratt and Smith covered this in his blog post also,

00:52:23 ◼   ► I really think that development of apps for the Mac is really seemingly at a standstill.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Even Apple can barely keep their own apps developed for the Mac. And certainly third-party

00:52:35 ◼   ► development for the Mac seems to be almost non-existent. There's just very little action

00:52:40 ◼   ► happening there, all the actions on iOS. And obviously a big part of that is that developing

00:52:47 ◼   ► apps on iOS has a bigger market. You can sell to more people, there's more people shopping

00:52:52 ◼   ► in the app store, so the chances of you making a ton of money by being on a top chart is

00:52:57 ◼   ► higher on iOS probably. But there is a big part of this too on the Mac where the Mac

00:53:04 ◼   ► does not run UIKit. The Mac runs AppKit, its own older framework that is kind of like UIKit,

00:53:11 ◼   ► but when you write apps for iOS, you're running against this newer, cleaner, more modern framework,

00:53:17 ◼   ► and when you write apps for the Mac, you're running against this crustier, older framework

00:53:20 ◼   ► that has a lot more baggage and legacy in it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► UIKit for iOS was kind of like the new version

00:53:27 ◼   ► of the UI framework with all the lessons they've learned

00:53:29 ◼   ► from AppKit over the years.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And the Mac has gotten some of those lessons

00:53:34 ◼   ► ported back to it from iOS for developers

00:53:37 ◼   ► to make their lives easier,

00:53:38 ◼   ► but I think still not most of them.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And I think as a developer who came here

00:53:46 ◼   ► kind of through iOS and I currently am not,

00:53:51 ◼   ► I don't have any Mac apps that I've released.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Or that I'm working on really, don't get crazy.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:54:01 ◼   ► So you know, I would be so much more likely

00:54:05 ◼   ► to put effort into Mac apps if they used

00:54:09 ◼   ► a version of UIKit.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And I've tried AppKit, I've tried making Mac apps before

00:54:15 ◼   ► and I'm sure if I was entirely motivated to do it,

00:54:20 ◼   ► I'd plow through and I'd learn and it would be fine.

00:54:23 ◼   ► I'd learn AppKit, I'd tolerate the inconsistencies

00:54:24 ◼   ► and it would be fine.

00:54:25 ◼   ► But the fact is right now,

00:54:27 ◼   ► the fact that I have to learn this similar

00:54:31 ◼   ► but still fairly different UI framework on the Mac

00:54:35 ◼   ► to make Mac apps, that is a big barrier

00:54:38 ◼   ► that is discouraging me from doing it.

00:54:40 ◼   ► So you have a combination of no UI kit on the Mac

00:54:44 ◼   ► plus the crappy app store situation,

00:54:47 ◼   ► plus the fact that it's a smaller market to begin with,

00:54:50 ◼   ► I feel like something there has to change

00:54:53 ◼   ► for developers to be interested in making Mac apps.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And right now, it seems like nothing is on the horizon

00:54:59 ◼   ► for any of those few things to change.

00:55:02 ◼   ► You know, AppKit proponents or experts

00:55:05 ◼   ► can make all the same arguments that that shouldn't matter

00:55:08 ◼   ► that people like me make about Swift not being necessary.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Like, you can look at that and you can say,

00:55:15 ◼   ► "Well, I could learn Objective-C,

00:55:18 ◼   ► "but it has all these ugly brackets, I don't want to."

00:55:20 ◼   ► And Swift comes along eventually,

00:55:21 ◼   ► and Swift is getting a lot of people

00:55:23 ◼   ► into iOS and Mac development who weren't there before,

00:55:27 ◼   ► because they just didn't want to learn Objective-C.

00:55:31 ◼   ► A similar kind of effect could happen on the Mac

00:55:33 ◼   ► with UIKit, if they brought UIKit in some form,

00:55:37 ◼   ► obviously it couldn't be identical,

00:55:39 ◼   ► but if they brought it in some form to the Mac,

00:55:42 ◼   ► I think that would really bring in a lot of developer interest and really help reignite

00:55:47 ◼   ► third-party interest in the Mac as an application platform.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So, I hear us, and we're not the only ones, talk about, well, the Mac App Store is a dumpster

00:56:01 ◼   ► fire, which, to be frank, it kind of is.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Nobody's doing much for the iPad these days, by and large.

00:56:10 ◼   ► Federico amongst others would disagree, but certainly there's a lot of people that aren't

00:56:16 ◼   ► paying a lot of attention to the iPad. You're not paying much attention to the iPad, Marco,

00:56:20 ◼   ► for example. And, oh, pay up front apps are a dumpster fire. Maybe that's a poor way of

00:56:28 ◼   ► phrasing it, but they don't really work. The only thing that's even slightly working seems

00:56:32 ◼   ► to be free within app purchase. So I feel like the three of us, and again, we're not

00:56:39 ◼   ► the only ones. Say the Mac App Store sucks. iPad App Store sucks. The iPhone App Store

00:56:46 ◼   ► has a lot of great options, but it sucks to make money in. Are we crazy? Like, there's a lot of apps

00:56:53 ◼   ► in the App Store, and there's a lot of stuff getting made every single day. So why? Like,

00:56:57 ◼   ► either we're a little bit crazy, or it's just not as dire as we think it is. Does that make sense?

00:57:04 ◼   ► like it just the situation cannot be as bad as we're painting it.

00:57:09 ◼   ► I think you're confusing different kinds of badness.

00:57:12 ◼   ► So one kind of badness is the fact that it doesn't seem to be a lot of people making

00:57:18 ◼   ► new Mac applications.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Every week there aren't thousands of new Mac applications, most of which may be crap, but

00:57:23 ◼   ► every once in a while there's a good one.

00:57:25 ◼   ► There's not a lot of activity, not a lot of churn, not a lot of like, there's not a growing

00:57:29 ◼   ► base of customers to sell to, that base is small and there's not tons and tons of developers

00:57:33 ◼   ► knocking on the door to make tons of new Mac apps. So that's one kind of ailment. Because

00:57:37 ◼   ► if you have a software market and not many people are making new applications for that

00:57:42 ◼   ► platform, the platform feels kind of crappy. The iPhone has the opposite problem. Everybody

00:57:46 ◼   ► wants to make an app. Everybody's making an app and they're just all climbing all over

00:57:49 ◼   ► each other to get the last scraps and figuring out how to exploit people, how to extract

00:57:52 ◼   ► money from people. There's so many apps. There's too many apps in the app store. It's not because

00:57:56 ◼   ► people don't care about the iPhone. People care about the iPhone a lot. Like there's

00:57:59 ◼   ► There's tons of developers, there's tons of apps.

00:58:01 ◼   ► And all the things you described about there, about how you can't have paid upfront apps

00:58:05 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah, that's a symptom of an entirely opposite problem, which is too

00:58:10 ◼   ► much activity, lots of competition, lots of people trying to figure out how to get money.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And plenty of people are getting rich on the app store, like enough people that it attracts

00:58:20 ◼   ► other people, right?

00:58:21 ◼   ► From the outside, it looks like all you hear about are the stories of the five developers

00:58:24 ◼   ► who are getting rich and you don't realize that there were 10,000 apps submitted that

00:58:27 ◼   ► week, right?

00:58:28 ◼   ► none of those people are gonna get rich.

00:58:30 ◼   ► But there's enough people getting rich

00:58:31 ◼   ► that it seems like that's the place to go.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Everyone has phones, it's a huge market,

00:58:35 ◼   ► even if that market isn't growing, it's still tremendous.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So there's just two ends of the spectrum,

00:58:40 ◼   ► the phone and the Mac, both of which have problems,

00:58:42 ◼   ► but they're totally opposite problems.

00:58:44 ◼   ► I mean, you would kill to get a little bit

00:58:46 ◼   ► of that iOS App Store problem on the Mac

00:58:48 ◼   ► where, oh, we can't handle the overflow.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Every time I look at the Mac App Store,

00:58:52 ◼   ► there's 10,000 new applications, I can't handle it.

00:58:54 ◼   ► That just doesn't happen, right?

00:58:56 ◼   ► So, and then in the middle, the iPad,

00:58:59 ◼   ► I think it has more of the Mac's problem where it's like,

00:59:01 ◼   ► yeah, there's lots of applications

00:59:03 ◼   ► that you can run on the iPad,

00:59:04 ◼   ► but not a lot of them really take advantage

00:59:06 ◼   ► of what's different about the iPad.

00:59:08 ◼   ► You know, the big complaint now is that people are,

00:59:10 ◼   ► iOS applications that already run on the iPad,

00:59:12 ◼   ► but don't take advantage of split screen

00:59:14 ◼   ► or don't support the iPad Pro's display or both.

00:59:18 ◼   ► And why don't they all update them?

00:59:19 ◼   ► Well, it turns out that they're,

00:59:21 ◼   ► even though the iOS platform has tons of customers,

00:59:23 ◼   ► the iPad subset is much smaller.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And so it's more like the Mac where you're like,

00:59:28 ◼   ► if I have to spend some time,

00:59:29 ◼   ► I'm gonna make sure that my iOS application

00:59:31 ◼   ► is updated for the iPhone 7

00:59:33 ◼   ► or whatever new features that has.

00:59:34 ◼   ► And then maybe when I have time, I'll update the,

00:59:37 ◼   ► if I get around to it,

00:59:38 ◼   ► I'll update the iPad version of my iOS application

00:59:40 ◼   ► to take advantage of something that only works

00:59:43 ◼   ► on the big iPads like split screen or whatever.

00:59:45 ◼   ► So you're right that there's something

00:59:47 ◼   ► to complain about everywhere,

00:59:48 ◼   ► but I don't think it's,

00:59:50 ◼   ► I don't think it's as if we're saying

00:59:52 ◼   ► that they all have the same problem.

00:59:54 ◼   ► They have very different problems

00:59:56 ◼   ► with very different causes and very different solutions.

00:59:59 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem to be a contradiction to me.

01:00:02 ◼   ► - I guess that's fair.

01:00:03 ◼   ► I don't know, it just seems weird

01:00:06 ◼   ► that all three platforms seem to have

01:00:09 ◼   ► some really, really systemic issues.

01:00:12 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that those issues aren't real.

01:00:16 ◼   ► I'm not saying that they're not extremely important,

01:00:19 ◼   ► but I don't know.

01:00:22 ◼   ► How does Apple not either not care or not fix this or we crazy and it's not as bad as

01:00:28 ◼   ► we think it is?

01:00:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:00:30 ◼   ► It just seems weird to me that we feel, and again, it's not just us.

01:00:35 ◼   ► So many people feel like this is broken and there seems to be not a lot of care given

01:00:42 ◼   ► to it from Apple.

01:00:43 ◼   ► And I presume that there is care, but as usual, it's all happening internally and we're none

01:00:47 ◼   ► the wiser.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Golly, it's just, it seems weird to me that there's no action on this.

01:00:54 ◼   ► Well, you haven't listed like the pros of, for example, the Mac side, where something

01:00:58 ◼   ► that we all hear from our developer friends and is probably true is that it's easier to

01:01:04 ◼   ► make money with a really good application on the Mac than it is on iOS.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Because if you have a really good application on iOS, guess what?

01:01:09 ◼   ► There are thousands of really good applications on iOS.

01:01:12 ◼   ► If you have a really good application on the Mac, there are not thousands of really good

01:01:16 ◼   ► applications on the Mac, especially not thousands in your category, whatever kind of application

01:01:19 ◼   ► that you made, and for whatever reason, again it may just have to do with physical size

01:01:23 ◼   ► or whatever, you can tend to charge more for the Mac versions.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Not tremendously more these days, but still more.

01:01:28 ◼   ► So if you are a super talented developer, and you can make a really good application

01:01:34 ◼   ► in a category that is not overcrowded on any platform, if you make it a Mac application,

01:01:40 ◼   ► $9.99 for it. Even though you will sell far fewer copies, you will make up for it for

01:01:46 ◼   ► the fact that you'll make more money on the Mac. And again, it's hard to go apples

01:01:54 ◼   ► and tarranges there. It's like, well, you can't make the same application that you can

01:01:56 ◼   ► make on iOS. And who knows, maybe it'll take you longer to make it on the Mac because,

01:02:00 ◼   ► like Marco, you don't know the Mac and you have to learn it or whatever. There are lots

01:02:02 ◼   ► of variables in the mix here, but I would imagine sort of the average price of applications

01:02:09 ◼   ► sold on the Mac, the ones that are not free, is higher than an iOS, and Mac users are still

01:02:14 ◼   ► willing to pay money for good applications.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And your application really will stand out because you don't have to compete with the

01:02:19 ◼   ► thousands and thousands of other really talented developers who may have the same idea for

01:02:23 ◼   ► an application in the same category as you.

01:02:26 ◼   ► And that's, again, it's the opposite type of problem.

01:02:29 ◼   ► If you look at someone like Omni who does both things, they have great Mac applications

01:02:35 ◼   ► that they charge real money for, not 99 cents.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And they also have companion iOS applications.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And I think they're finding a way

01:02:42 ◼   ► to play to the strengths of each platform.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Like we should make a Mac application

01:02:48 ◼   ► because our applications are complicated and sophisticated

01:02:51 ◼   ► and we can charge high prices for them

01:02:52 ◼   ► and Mac users will pay it.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Whereas if we have sophisticated, complicated applications

01:02:56 ◼   ► that either won't work on iOS

01:02:58 ◼   ► because it's just not a platform that supports this complexity

01:03:01 ◼   ► and if it does work, we have to charge less money.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And on the other hand, people want to have access to their data on the go and so on and

01:03:07 ◼   ► so forth, so it will make a series of iOS applications, which will be high priced for

01:03:11 ◼   ► iOS applications, but still lower priced than like a $99 Mac app or whatever, and it'll

01:03:15 ◼   ► be a virtuous cycle and you'll be able to use your Mac and your iOS applications together.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It is possible to take advantage of the ecosystems as they exist and make money off of it and

01:03:26 ◼   ► do a good job.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But Omni, I feel like, is kind of grandfathered in in that they have the expertise and talent

01:03:33 ◼   ► and experience on the Mac platform and have expanded out into iOS. If I think of like,

01:03:37 ◼   ► where is the next omni coming from? Is there going to be a company that starts up now that

01:03:42 ◼   ► has that deep expertise on the Mac and is able to make amazing Mac applications and

01:03:47 ◼   ► charge reasonable prices for them and also make companion iOS applications? I don't know

01:03:52 ◼   ► how many of those are popping up. Whereas on iOS, like I said, since there are so many

01:03:57 ◼   ► people, since the numbers are so big, even if a fraction of a fraction of a percent of

01:04:00 ◼   ► them end up striking it rich. It's enough that you -- I just saw a story the other day,

01:04:04 ◼   ► like some story about the people who make Clash of Clans, how many millions and millions

01:04:08 ◼   ► of dollars they're making off of that stuff. There's just so much activity in so many customers

01:04:13 ◼   ► happening at iOS that it is attracting people, whereas the Mac, I don't see it attracting

01:04:20 ◼   ► people. Even I felt even better in the days of TextMate, where it's like, "What's this?

01:04:23 ◼   ► A text editor coming in? I never heard of this TextMate text editor. How dare he try

01:04:27 ◼   ► to make a text editor. Everyone knows a text editor on Market is all sewn up by a certain

01:04:30 ◼   ► name of other competitors here. But TextMate was very popular. And it could have been a

01:04:37 ◼   ► going concern if the Mac market had been enough to make the maker of TextMate as much money

01:04:45 ◼   ► as Clash of Clans got. You can be sure he'd still be making that and Marko wouldn't be

01:04:51 ◼   ► using TextMate 2 or whatever old version he's using now. He is still making it. 2 is in

01:04:55 ◼   ► in beta with constant updates?

01:04:57 ◼   ► - I know, it's the open source thing.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - Welcome to the end of Build and Analyze

01:05:02 ◼   ► like five years ago or whatever that was.

01:05:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

01:05:05 ◼   ► But not that text editors are an exciting field,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but text editing is something that people do on the Mac.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And it's not as if there are 17 really good

01:05:15 ◼   ► high quality text editors that come out

01:05:17 ◼   ► for the Mac every week.

01:05:18 ◼   ► There's maybe like one or two a year, right?

01:05:21 ◼   ► And they usually have to have an iOS counterpart

01:05:22 ◼   ► or no one's interested in them.

01:05:24 ◼   ► So another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is, am I an old man?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Bear with me here.

01:05:31 ◼   ► But I think it is really silly, the hoops that someone like Federico jumps through.

01:05:42 ◼   ► And I have deep respect for Federico, but it seems silly to me, the hoops that Federico

01:05:47 ◼   ► jumps through in order to accomplish things that are very quite, really quite simple on

01:05:52 ◼   ► the Mac.

01:05:53 ◼   ► a few weeks ago when I was talking about signing a PDF from my iPad and in

01:05:58 ◼   ► dealing with scans and things like that and how for me it was very very difficult

01:06:02 ◼   ► to do that. And I talked with a handful of people like Mike Hurley about that

01:06:10 ◼   ► segment because Mike used to be very anti-iPad and then now is like almost as

01:06:18 ◼   ► big an iPad fan is, Federico is. And I don't know, it just seems to me like they feel like

01:06:25 ◼   ► I'm missing the point. And in Federico's case, it is deeply important to him to be able to

01:06:30 ◼   ► work from anywhere. And that's semi-true with the Mac-ish, or maybe it's true with a Mac

01:06:40 ◼   ► and a tethered phone, but it's not as true as an iPad Pro. You can take an iPad Pro anywhere,

01:06:48 ◼   ► It has its own internet connection, and you can work anywhere.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And it just, it still seems to me to be a bit crazy.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And I can't help but wonder, are the three of us just too old to understand the purpose

01:07:01 ◼   ► of the iPad?

01:07:03 ◼   ► And is, and to bring this back to what Steven was saying on his post, is OS X really kind

01:07:09 ◼   ► of dead?

01:07:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, it just seems like maybe we're the ones that are missing the boat.

01:07:14 ◼   ► What do you mean you're lumping me in with you?

01:07:16 ◼   ► I'm the one who wanted an iPad Pro. I'm the actual iPad user. I'm the one sitting next to my bed.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Well, I use my iPad daily. So I am also a very, maybe not devout, but a very frequent iPad user.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I love my iPad. I love it. But I would never in a million years look to my iPad to get something done

01:07:36 ◼   ► over looking at my Mac. Even to some degree, the typical things like consumption.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Maybe if I'm just cruising Twitter, I would probably choose my iPad over my Mac, but damn

01:07:47 ◼   ► near anything else, man.

01:07:48 ◼   ► I'm going to go to my Mac first, because I just feel faster, quicker, better with it.

01:07:53 ◼   ► And I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is, is that because it's what I'm used

01:07:55 ◼   ► to?

01:07:56 ◼   ► And it's not that the Mac is faster and quicker and better.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Sure, empirically it is, but you know what I mean?

01:08:02 ◼   ► Like, is it just because that's what I'm used to and I have severely OS X colored glasses?

01:08:07 ◼   ► Let me settle this for you.

01:08:09 ◼   ► We are all old men.

01:08:11 ◼   ► I am, in this way, the oldest.

01:08:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:15 ◼   ► I am the least flexible, most skeptical of new things,

01:08:20 ◼   ► most defensive of my old ways of the three of us.

01:08:25 ◼   ► I also like the iPad the least out of the three of us,

01:08:28 ◼   ► I think.

01:08:29 ◼   ► That being said, I have no problem with people

01:08:32 ◼   ► who can do tons of their work or all their work on the iPad.

01:08:35 ◼   ► - Oh, sure, sure. - I wish I could, honestly,

01:08:37 ◼   ► because there's a number of advantages

01:08:39 ◼   ► to going all iPad, obviously there's the physical advantages

01:08:44 ◼   ► that iPads are smaller and lighter

01:08:47 ◼   ► and have better battery life usually

01:08:49 ◼   ► than most Mac laptops.

01:08:52 ◼   ► But also that's kind of where Apple's attention is.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Now again, that being said, I wouldn't necessarily assume

01:08:59 ◼   ► that the iPad version of iOS is going to keep

01:09:03 ◼   ► Apple's attention for very long.

01:09:04 ◼   ► It has it now, but it didn't have much attention for years.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And as we see Apple getting pulled

01:09:11 ◼   ► in all these different directions,

01:09:12 ◼   ► as they try to tackle everything all at once

01:09:15 ◼   ► with limited engineering resources

01:09:17 ◼   ► and a few ways that they're unwilling to budge

01:09:20 ◼   ► that will make it hard for them

01:09:23 ◼   ► to attract more engineering talent

01:09:25 ◼   ► to get as much as they need.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Things like remote workers, salaries,

01:09:30 ◼   ► terms of employment, stuff like that,

01:09:31 ◼   ► that just make it hard for them to attract certain talent.

01:09:37 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time before the iPad

01:09:40 ◼   ► falls out of the spotlight for Apple.

01:09:44 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time before the resources

01:09:46 ◼   ► that were devoted to making iOS 9 really great on the iPad

01:09:50 ◼   ► and getting the iPad Pro out the door

01:09:52 ◼   ► and getting the multitasking and stuff like that,

01:09:55 ◼   ► getting the special things for the iPad that are in iOS.

01:09:58 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time before those resources

01:10:00 ◼   ► are put somewhere else, before the attention

01:10:02 ◼   ► is directed somewhere else in Apple.

01:10:03 ◼   ► So I don't necessarily expect the iPad

01:10:07 ◼   ► to be Apple's star platform for long,

01:10:11 ◼   ► but right this second it is.

01:10:13 ◼   ► So right this second, if you are a person

01:10:16 ◼   ► who gets all your work done,

01:10:17 ◼   ► or a lot of your work done on an iPad,

01:10:18 ◼   ► this is a great time to be one of those people,

01:10:20 ◼   ► because you're getting cool new stuff from Apple recently,

01:10:24 ◼   ► and seemingly you might get a little bit more soon.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:10:28 ◼   ► We'll see what iOS 10 does.

01:10:29 ◼   ► But it's kinda nice to be in Apple's sweet spot,

01:10:33 ◼   ► like where they're putting their attention,

01:10:34 ◼   ► where they're putting their resources,

01:10:37 ◼   ► and what they're likely to do in the future.

01:10:39 ◼   ► So that's nice.

01:10:40 ◼   ► But I don't, to me, it just doesn't stick, right?

01:10:46 ◼   ► The iPad, to me it does feel like

01:10:49 ◼   ► jumping through tons of hoops,

01:10:51 ◼   ► but that's just the work I do,

01:10:52 ◼   ► and it's the kind of use that I do,

01:10:54 ◼   ► it's the kind of user I am, it's what I'm used to.

01:10:57 ◼   ► I think personal computers with keyboard,

01:11:01 ◼   ► mouse, big monitor, at a desk a lot of the time. I think that world is going to stay

01:11:07 ◼   ► for a long time. I don't think it is as dire as a lot of people have said. But I also,

01:11:13 ◼   ► I totally don't begrudge anybody else for using whatever they think is better and whatever

01:11:19 ◼   ► they're most comfortable with because for them it's iPads and phones maybe, for me

01:11:23 ◼   ► it's Macs. That's fine, you know. And the only problem is that it is pulling Apple and

01:11:31 ◼   ► in all these different directions.

01:11:32 ◼   ► It is pulling their resources

01:11:33 ◼   ► in all these different directions.

01:11:34 ◼   ► And I think that could be a bit of a problem.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And we've seen it become a little bit of a problem so far

01:11:39 ◼   ► with just things that get ignored

01:11:42 ◼   ► and things that get neglected

01:11:43 ◼   ► and things that get these drive-by updates.

01:11:45 ◼   ► I hope they can find a way to resolve this,

01:11:49 ◼   ► but I'm not hopeful about the chance

01:11:53 ◼   ► of that actually happening.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:55 ◼   ► I really hope I'm wrong about all this

01:11:57 ◼   ► and that over the next couple of years,

01:11:59 ◼   ► prove us wrong and we see major significant changes to the app stores and Mac OS gets

01:12:07 ◼   ► notable updates and they keep updating all their new product lines and not just neglect

01:12:12 ◼   ► the ones that aren't getting them a lot of attention forever. But I don't see any evidence

01:12:16 ◼   ► that we're heading in that kind of direction and that's my concern.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't mean to begrudge those that prefer to use an iPad. It's just it's hard

01:12:25 ◼   ► for me to understand why that's better.

01:12:29 ◼   ► I mean, other than the mobility, which is pretty much unequivocal, I just don't get

01:12:34 ◼   ► why that's better.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And I think what I really should be saying is that for me, it's not better.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And I don't mean to begrudge that it is better for Mike or Federico or anyone else.

01:12:45 ◼   ► I'm just saying for me, it's hard for me to wrap my head around why that would be better.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And I think, Marco, you made a great point that a lot of that relates to the fact that

01:12:52 ◼   ► now I'm living in Xcode.

01:12:53 ◼   ► previously I was living in VMware Fusion,

01:12:55 ◼   ► that's my day-to-day job, whereas for a lot of these people

01:12:58 ◼   ► that's not their job.

01:12:59 ◼   ► - Well also, what I said earlier,

01:13:01 ◼   ► all the action in the App Store,

01:13:03 ◼   ► like all the action in apps is happening on iOS right now.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Like, if you make use of cool new modern apps

01:13:11 ◼   ► to do pretty much anything, to do different workflows,

01:13:15 ◼   ► maybe you're doing like photo editing,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and you wanna use like cool plugins

01:13:18 ◼   ► and effects and everything,

01:13:20 ◼   ► all of that action is happening on iOS.

01:13:22 ◼   ► iOS, if you wanna play games ever,

01:13:24 ◼   ► games on the Mac are kinda miserable most of the time.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Like, all of the action for cool new apps

01:13:31 ◼   ► that are being developed, cool new workflows,

01:13:33 ◼   ► cool new things you can do with your computer,

01:13:35 ◼   ► most of that is happening on iOS.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Most of it's on the iPhone in particular,

01:13:40 ◼   ► but some of that's also getting to the iPad.

01:13:44 ◼   ► On the Mac, there's no action to be had.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Mac apps are seemingly either in stasis

01:13:51 ◼   ► or dying, like you have like, you know, aperture gone,

01:13:55 ◼   ► you know, logic and Final Cut are like barely supported,

01:13:59 ◼   ► you have third party apps that are kind of

01:14:01 ◼   ► withering on the vine a lot of the times,

01:14:03 ◼   ► it's tough, it's a little scary to be a Mac user right now

01:14:08 ◼   ► as we see kind of a big part of the world moving on,

01:14:12 ◼   ► you know, a big part of Apple's and third party developers'

01:14:15 ◼   ► efforts moving to other places.

01:14:17 ◼   ► - What you said before about the iPad,

01:14:20 ◼   ► like you'd think that eventually their attention will go elsewhere like it's in the sun now

01:14:24 ◼   ► with like the iPad Pro but that eventually they'll lose interest again because you know

01:14:29 ◼   ► the early in the iPad's life it was basically like a less important version of iOS that

01:14:36 ◼   ► didn't have many iPad specific features for several years.

01:14:41 ◼   ► And that may be the case but I have to think that Apple overall as a company has one of

01:14:47 ◼   ► its goals that it has to have somewhere on its big list of like multi-year goals is to

01:14:54 ◼   ► do what it normally does and be the company that cannibalizes the Mac. So they see the

01:14:58 ◼   ► Mac with no big growth potential. They see it as another market that could potentially

01:15:04 ◼   ► be cannibalized by other markets. Like it's small, these other markets are growing. Apple's

01:15:09 ◼   ► whole thing is, "We want to be the ones to cannibalize the Mac. We want to be the ones

01:15:13 ◼   ► to cannibalize the iPod by replacing it with the iPhone.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Because if we don't do it, someone else will eventually.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Because if whatever thing that we're talking about being cannibalized does not have a very

01:15:22 ◼   ► big growth trajectory, eventually, whatever size it is, will be dwarfed by whatever the

01:15:28 ◼   ► next big thing is.

01:15:29 ◼   ► So Apple is kind of in the business of, "Well, okay, well, let's figure out what that next

01:15:34 ◼   ► big thing is, because if we just do nothing, someone else will do it for us."

01:15:39 ◼   ► And the iPad, and the emphasis on the iPad Pro, is one effort to do that.

01:15:43 ◼   ► "Hey, if the Mac's gonna be cannibalized, let us do it."

01:15:46 ◼   ► I've always said that the iPad has the potential

01:15:49 ◼   ► to be the thing that replaces the Mac

01:15:51 ◼   ► if given enough attention

01:15:52 ◼   ► and if its capabilities are extended

01:15:54 ◼   ► and the iPad Pro could be like the very, very beginning

01:15:56 ◼   ► of that process, but say it doesn't work out.

01:15:57 ◼   ► So they try to cannibalize the Mac with the iPad Pro

01:16:00 ◼   ► and it doesn't work.

01:16:01 ◼   ► If the iPad loses Apple's attention,

01:16:05 ◼   ► I think it will be because they have another idea

01:16:08 ◼   ► of a thing that's gonna cannibalize the Mac.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And they only have a certain number of shots of this idea

01:16:12 ◼   ► what's going to cannibalize the Mac before someone else does it for them.

01:16:15 ◼   ► But I think that Apple as a company does not want some other thing made by some other non-Apple

01:16:21 ◼   ► company to be the thing that finally makes the Mac irrelevant.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I think Apple wants to make the Mac irrelevant, and right now the iPad is the thing that's

01:16:27 ◼   ► doing that.

01:16:28 ◼   ► So I have to think that attention is going to be paid to the iPad until either something

01:16:33 ◼   ► else makes the Mac irrelevant as not an Apple product, or until Apple gives up on the iPad

01:16:37 ◼   ► doing that and decides that it needs another solution.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I don't think there is any long term where 60 years from now the Mac soldiers on pretty

01:16:46 ◼   ► much exactly as it is.

01:16:47 ◼   ► I just don't see that happening.

01:16:49 ◼   ► So my hope is that Apple figures out what to replace the Mac with.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And I think the iPad line has the potential to do that if enhanced in all the ways that

01:17:00 ◼   ► we've discussed in past shows in terms of larger screens, iPads that aren't really particularly

01:17:05 ◼   ► way more capabilities in iOS, figuring out the whole file situation, so on and so forth.

01:17:11 ◼   ► - I think you're probably right long term on an infinite time scale thing. You're probably right.

01:17:18 ◼   ► But I have a hard time seeing how iOS gets from here to there. And technically, you know,

01:17:27 ◼   ► like on a low level, like on an API level, on a kernel level and everything, you're probably

01:17:31 ◼   ► right that the next version, the next major version

01:17:36 ◼   ► of Mac OS is probably an iOS derivative.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And I don't know when that's coming out

01:17:41 ◼   ► and whether that'll be good, but I think what replaces

01:17:46 ◼   ► Mac OS eventually will indeed be a version of iOS.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And we will just have large iOS devices

01:17:54 ◼   ► with keyboards and mice, I guess, I don't know.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I mean, probably, you know, but,

01:18:00 ◼   ► and that would also solve my UI kit problem,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you know, UI kit versus app kit kind of thing.

01:18:06 ◼   ► But I don't know, there's so much distance

01:18:10 ◼   ► between iOS today and what it would have to be

01:18:15 ◼   ► to be even a basic Mac OS replacement

01:18:18 ◼   ► that I have a hard time seeing that happening,

01:18:23 ◼   ► just because the distance is so great.

01:18:24 ◼   ► And maybe that's a short sighted of me, I don't know.

01:18:27 ◼   ► I mean it may not have to be an equivalent for you, but like when you're retired or dead

01:18:32 ◼   ► it just needs to have the capabilities of the people who grew up in the generation that

01:18:36 ◼   ► grew up with iOS devices find acceptable to do.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Like the same kind of things you're doing now, developing software, like I don't know,

01:18:43 ◼   ► whatever it is that you're doing with your Mac that you feel like you can only do on

01:18:46 ◼   ► your Mac, all that needs to happen is there needs to be a generation of customers who

01:18:50 ◼   ► feel like they can best do that on some tablet type device.

01:18:56 ◼   ► or not you can best do that on a tablet-type device doesn't really matter.

01:19:00 ◼   ► You just need -- the capabilities need to be there.

01:19:02 ◼   ► It's like Casey was saying about the mic.

01:19:04 ◼   ► Well, the mic finds the iPad experience superior in ways that Casey doesn't understand.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I can understand some of them in terms of just the simplicity, and there's fewer things

01:19:12 ◼   ► that can go wrong on an iOS device, and there's fewer things to worry about or whatever, and

01:19:16 ◼   ► also that things feel better sometimes in terms of just like body gesture or touching

01:19:20 ◼   ► the screen or using a pen or whatever.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And those can go a long way towards covering up the fact that you're actually -- it takes

01:19:27 ◼   ► more steps or it's less efficient or it's, you know, it's not as straightforward as it

01:19:32 ◼   ► would be on the Mac or whatever.

01:19:34 ◼   ► But I'm totally willing to give the iPad Pro and that type of thing a shot.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Because like Apple has just barely scratched the surface.

01:19:41 ◼   ► They just now divided the screen up into two pieces.

01:19:44 ◼   ► Like that's the level they're at, right?

01:19:46 ◼   ► They've just now offered you an actual keyboard that you can attach to the thing.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Like this is the babiest of baby steps.

01:19:51 ◼   ► They just now gave you a stylus which is a thing that has not really taken off on the Mac

01:19:56 ◼   ► But it offers you know a new angle, so I'm willing to give that a few years

01:20:01 ◼   ► I'm not it's not a slam dunk

01:20:02 ◼   ► But I think there is a fruitful Avenue of pursuit there and what they're pursuing again is not the phone obviously what they're pursuing is

01:20:09 ◼   ► If the Mac is gonna go away, I'll be replaced with something

01:20:13 ◼   ► We think it might be this and then we would benefit because it's like well fine Mac shrinks iPad Pro grows

01:20:19 ◼   ► All that money goes to Apple the iPad is gets on a better growth trajectory or whatever

01:20:24 ◼   ► If that turns out not to be the case at least have it be from you know that that

01:20:29 ◼   ► Not because you didn't put money into it because like for the first several years of the iPad

01:20:33 ◼   ► It was if Apple almost as like they thought if we make a tablet device

01:20:36 ◼   ► That's all we have to do and then instantly it will become the new future personal computer

01:20:40 ◼   ► It's like no you gotta actually put more effort into it than that otherwise people are gonna keep using Macs, so

01:20:45 ◼   ► I feel like the Mac is safe for a long time just because even if Apple is 100% right,

01:20:50 ◼   ► it will take them a long time to figure out all the ins and outs, and probably the Mac

01:20:54 ◼   ► will last for all of our active careers or whatever, but when we're in our dotage and

01:20:58 ◼   ► retired, don't be surprised if we're looking at grandkids on a big iPad Pro screen.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Squarespace, and Hover.

01:21:09 ◼   ► And we will see you next week.

01:21:11 ◼   ► [MUSIC]

01:21:21 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:21:24 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:21:26 ◼   ► Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:21:29 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental.

01:21:31 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:21:32 ◼   ► It was accidental.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

01:21:45 ◼   ► C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:21:53 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA, Syracuse.

01:22:01 ◼   ► It's accidental.

01:22:04 ◼   ► They didn't mean to.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - So John, let me ask you something.

01:22:16 ◼   ► Have you ever been to Las Vegas,

01:22:18 ◼   ► and if not, how badly do you wanna go?

01:22:20 ◼   ► - You know the answers to both of those questions.

01:22:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:24 ◼   ► - I did that more for my own laughter.

01:22:26 ◼   ► - So as I was in Vegas last weekend,

01:22:30 ◼   ► and Casey, as you are headed to Vegas in a few days,

01:22:33 ◼   ► I hope that you consider while you're there,

01:22:38 ◼   ► as I did while I was there,

01:22:40 ◼   ► what it would be like to see John Siracusa in Vegas,

01:22:43 ◼   ► and the state of mind he would be in to be sitting there.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I felt so bad for him even not being there.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Like, just I felt so bad for theoretical

01:22:53 ◼   ► Syracuse in Vegas, like that.

01:22:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:56 ◼   ► Oh my God, he would be so miserable.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Not to mention the flight on the way there,

01:23:01 ◼   ► but you know, any, I mean, my God.

01:23:03 ◼   ► To see him in any part of Las Vegas

01:23:05 ◼   ► would be both sad and incredible.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - It's not my cup of tea, but I'm not a miserable person.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Like I would find, like they have food there, right?

01:23:13 ◼   ► At the very least, I would find some kind of food that I could eat that I would like.

01:23:19 ◼   ► You know, how could you not?

01:23:20 ◼   ► There's got to be a million different restaurants there that make some kind of hopefully good

01:23:24 ◼   ► food.

01:23:25 ◼   ► I wouldn't be interested in gambling.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Smoking is disgusting.

01:23:28 ◼   ► I don't like lots of people.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Like yeah, there's not a lot there for me, but if I was stuck there, there are a lot

01:23:33 ◼   ► of restaurants, right?

01:23:35 ◼   ► So I could find something.

01:23:37 ◼   ► There are excellent restaurants, however, many of them require walking through a smoky

01:23:42 ◼   ► casino to get to.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty gross.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Delightful.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Did you end up up or down against the house?

01:23:50 ◼   ► Down by roughly a hundred bucks.

01:23:54 ◼   ► That's not bad.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Not only is that not bad, but that was after three nights, and a lot of that was given

01:23:58 ◼   ► out as tips to the dealers.

01:24:00 ◼   ► You were up 50% the last time I heard, and you were like, "Maybe I can just stop now,"

01:24:04 ◼   ► but apparently you didn't.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I was up 40% after the first night,

01:24:08 ◼   ► but then the second night was way down,

01:24:10 ◼   ► and then the third night was kind of even.

01:24:12 ◼   ► - Right, but you said after the night that you were up,

01:24:15 ◼   ► you mused to yourself, I believe, in Slack,

01:24:17 ◼   ► "Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead," he said.

01:24:20 ◼   ► And then didn't.

01:24:22 ◼   ► - Yes, I mean, gambling is always,

01:24:23 ◼   ► in hindsight, gambling is very easy.

01:24:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:28 ◼   ► - No, it wasn't hindsight, it was current, right, then,

01:24:30 ◼   ► site, you had that insight immediately, at the time,

01:24:34 ◼   ► Not later, not the next day you didn't say,

01:24:36 ◼   ► "Boy, I really should have quit when I was up 40%."

01:24:38 ◼   ► When you were up, when you were up you said,

01:24:40 ◼   ► "Maybe I should quit now."

01:24:42 ◼   ► - I did say that, but then I wouldn't have had

01:24:44 ◼   ► as much fun the next two nights,

01:24:45 ◼   ► 'cause I wouldn't have had that activity.

01:24:47 ◼   ► So it's like, I paid that money for an activity.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Most of the games that you can gamble on in Vegas,

01:24:55 ◼   ► the odds are always in favor of the house,

01:24:58 ◼   ► but the percentage that they're in favor of the house by

01:25:01 ◼   ► is usually not that big.

01:25:02 ◼   ► And so if you kind of bet responsibly,

01:25:05 ◼   ► you don't make really huge bets

01:25:07 ◼   ► or make accelerating bets,

01:25:09 ◼   ► try to win back your money.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Like my strategy was very simple.

01:25:12 ◼   ► I bet the same amount of money on every bet I took.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I was playing to play, not to win a bunch of money,

01:25:17 ◼   ► because I know that the chances of winning

01:25:19 ◼   ► a bunch of money were very, very low.

01:25:21 ◼   ► So simple as that, you know?

01:25:23 ◼   ► It was a fun activity and it served its purpose.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And I paid about 100 bucks for three nights.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And that includes tips,

01:25:28 ◼   ► and that includes all the free drinks I got at the time.

01:25:30 ◼   ► So I think that's actually pretty good

01:25:33 ◼   ► for my first gambling experience.

01:25:35 ◼   ► - Not bad.

01:25:35 ◼   ► - Actually, that was my second gambling experience.

01:25:37 ◼   ► My first gambling experience was in college

01:25:40 ◼   ► when I discovered that online blackjack existed.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And I put 20 bucks of real money

01:25:47 ◼   ► into online blackjack in college,

01:25:49 ◼   ► lost it in about 10 minutes,

01:25:51 ◼   ► and was like, "Well, I'm an idiot, that was dumb."

01:25:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:54 ◼   ► I didn't do it again.

01:25:55 ◼   ► - Never again.

01:25:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:25:57 ◼   ► 'Cause that's not really a lot of fun.

01:26:00 ◼   ► That's a very short time to lose all your money.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And it just, yeah, it wasn't.

01:26:03 ◼   ► That one was, it didn't have the same feel.

01:26:06 ◼   ► - It would have been better if someone smoked a cigarette

01:26:07 ◼   ► next to you while you did it.

01:26:09 ◼   ► (beep)