ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► The following is the complete list of sane states in these United States of America that require only a

00:00:07 ◼   ► rear license plate

00:00:09 ◼   ► Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma

00:00:15 ◼   ► Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. You'll notice that very nearby states North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, all

00:00:22 ◼   ► No front license plate. Friggin' Virginia.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Now out of curiosity, can you think of any other criterion for which those would be listed as the sane states?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Not off the top of my head

00:00:36 ◼   ► So we should do some follow-up and

00:00:39 ◼   ► You do I Scott I can't believe I just did that I swore I'd never do that on a podcast

00:00:45 ◼   ► I just just baited me into it. I hate everything. All right, I quit anyway

00:00:49 ◼   ► So we had some feedback about my iPad tale of woe

00:00:54 ◼   ► We had a lot of private feedback from Mike Hurley, the once iPad hater, now king iPad

00:00:59 ◼   ► evangelizer.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I would never say, I would never classify him as a hater.

00:01:03 ◼   ► He was more of an iPad indifferent here, if that's a word that I just made up.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe.

00:01:09 ◼   ► He was fairly anti-iPad for a while there.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But anyways, he gave me some feedback that basically said I didn't know what I was doing

00:01:17 ◼   ► and that's the problem, which I believe I admitted a lot of people basically said the

00:01:21 ◼   ► same thing and the point you know I was trying to make was hey you know all this

00:01:24 ◼   ► stuff comes right out of the box on OS X and it is not on the iPad except a lot

00:01:30 ◼   ► of people wrote in to say that you can in fact do a signature on a PDF on an

00:01:38 ◼   ► iOS device and apparently there's a toolbox which to me looked like a

00:01:42 ◼   ► briefcase icon and within there is the annotations and markup and whatnot and

00:01:48 ◼   ► And within there, you can do a signature.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I have not had the chance to try this myself,

00:01:52 ◼   ► but I had plenty of people tell me about this,

00:01:55 ◼   ► so I'm taking it as fact that that is the case.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So that is just a little bit of follow-up.

00:01:59 ◼   ► You can indeed do the signature on an iOS device.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Did you mistake the briefcase icon

00:02:05 ◼   ► for the Windows 95 My Briefcase?

00:02:08 ◼   ► - You say that jokingly,

00:02:09 ◼   ► but I was a heavy briefcase user way back in the day,

00:02:12 ◼   ► because that was about the best way in the Windows world

00:02:15 ◼   ► to do kind of like a poor man's R sync

00:02:17 ◼   ► between your laptop and your desktop,

00:02:19 ◼   ► which is what I was doing toward the end of college.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was kind of like the,

00:02:22 ◼   ► it was like the floppy disk stage of evolution

00:02:25 ◼   ► towards a Dropbox, right?

00:02:27 ◼   ► - That was also kind of the hangover

00:02:28 ◼   ► of the desktop metaphor.

00:02:31 ◼   ► The drunken orgy that was the desktop metaphor,

00:02:35 ◼   ► like, oh, folders, they're just like folders

00:02:37 ◼   ► that go in file cabinets, and there's a little trash can,

00:02:40 ◼   ► and so on and so forth,

00:02:41 ◼   ► and people would latch onto that idea.

00:02:43 ◼   ► That's why the Macintosh is easier to use,

00:02:46 ◼   ► because it has all these analogies to the real world.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And so people are like, what else is in an office?

00:02:51 ◼   ► It's like carpeting.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And it's like, it's like this windows,

00:02:54 ◼   ► but we already got those.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - My carpeting.

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Exactly, you know, and the recycler, recycle bin,

00:03:00 ◼   ► because it's not like trash,

00:03:01 ◼   ► 'cause we're trendy than that.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And I guess there's like a blotter maybe.

00:03:04 ◼   ► I mean, magic cap on whole hog.

00:03:06 ◼   ► They have like living rooms and dens and stuff.

00:03:07 ◼   ► But eventually it's like briefcase, briefcase,

00:03:08 ◼   ► I know briefcase.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And so you've got briefcase and windows.

00:03:11 ◼   ► - But what about Bob?

00:03:14 ◼   ► Bob is after you go nuts and is the visions you see in your head.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Bob was like the jumping over the shark and nuking the fridge of that metaphor.

00:03:24 ◼   ► It was magic cap.

00:03:25 ◼   ► You should look at what magic cap looked like.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It was very similar in terms of like making rooms of a house.

00:03:29 ◼   ► It became like Maniac Mansion.

00:03:30 ◼   ► It was like a Sierra adventure where you're going from room to room and you have these

00:03:34 ◼   ► little... anyway.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Briefcase was one of the... and Apple itself did the same type of thing where they got

00:03:40 ◼   ► distracted for a bit and thought that what made computers easy to use was specifically

00:03:45 ◼   ► the connections with real world things and not all the other stuff that goes along with

00:03:48 ◼   ► it. Now we have everything flat. Never would have

00:03:52 ◼   ► happened if Scott Forstall was still alive. Ain't that the truth.

00:03:55 ◼   ► We still don't have a good alternative save icon so.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Yeah, actually can I tell you guys a big secret? I've been holding this in all these years.

00:04:02 ◼   ► My computer at the time was not good enough to run it but there was one, because I basically

00:04:06 ◼   ► in my PC growing up era, I spent a lot more time

00:04:10 ◼   ► than everybody else did on Windows 3.1.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I did not go to 95.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I was using 3.1 until 1998, and I went straight to 98.

00:04:17 ◼   ► There was a brief time where I went to a friend's house,

00:04:20 ◼   ► and I saw Microsoft Bob on their Pentium computer,

00:04:22 ◼   ► 'cause it wouldn't run on mine,

00:04:24 ◼   ► and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - That is a bold, bold confession.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:31 ◼   ► - I don't really remember it.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I mean, I was around, I was all over Windows

00:04:34 ◼   ► during this time, but I don't really remember Bob

00:04:36 ◼   ► very well at all.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I don't know if I ever saw it

00:04:38 ◼   ► or maybe I just blocked it from my memory,

00:04:40 ◼   ► but I don't remember it.

00:04:43 ◼   ► - I mean, it was just like a shell

00:04:45 ◼   ► that you would launch from Windows.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It didn't replace the shell.

00:04:48 ◼   ► It was just like a giant app

00:04:50 ◼   ► and you would do things inside of Bob

00:04:52 ◼   ► and it was so incredibly slow.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And this was during the super dark era of computing

00:04:59 ◼   ► where the hard drives were all super slow

00:05:01 ◼   ► and grinding constantly

00:05:02 ◼   ► because there was not enough RAM to do anything.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And so this was like the dark, like mid to late 90s

00:05:09 ◼   ► in computing where just everything,

00:05:11 ◼   ► just the entire sound of computing for that entire era

00:05:14 ◼   ► was hard drive grinding noises.

00:05:16 ◼   ► - You guys both missed the floppy disk grinding era

00:05:18 ◼   ► of computers where you could tell what your computer

00:05:20 ◼   ► was doing by the particular tones your floppy drive made.

00:05:23 ◼   ► - Oh, you say that, but I was definitely rocking

00:05:26 ◼   ► both the actual floppy floppy, what is that,

00:05:29 ◼   ► five and a quarter, I always get this backwards.

00:05:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, five and a quarter.

00:05:32 ◼   ► - Five and a quarter, three and a half.

00:05:33 ◼   ► So yeah, so I had a five and a quarter floppy drive

00:05:37 ◼   ► in an 8088 that my dad had used years prior

00:05:42 ◼   ► that I'd set up in my room,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and I remember I thought I was awesome

00:05:45 ◼   ► 'cause it had a 10 meg hard drive in it.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And at the time, that was effectively infinite space.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Like, you couldn't fill it if you wanted to.

00:05:52 ◼   ► But yeah, I've definitely heard that

00:05:55 ◼   ► (imitates machine gun firing)

00:05:57 ◼   ► constantly.

00:05:58 ◼   ► - Oh now, all these kids these days,

00:06:00 ◼   ► with their Windows PCs, they have the drive letters

00:06:02 ◼   ► that start with C and they have no idea

00:06:03 ◼   ► why they don't have an A and B drive.

00:06:05 ◼   ► - But they should really be as weeping over the fact

00:06:07 ◼   ► that they still have drive letters.

00:06:09 ◼   ► - There's that. - Which is hilarious.

00:06:10 ◼   ► - You gotta grade on a curve with Windows.

00:06:13 ◼   ► - That's also true.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I believe this same 10 meg hard drive 8088

00:06:17 ◼   ► had the A drive I believe was the five and a quarter,

00:06:20 ◼   ► almost got that wrong, five and a quarter inch drive.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And I believe the B drive was a three and a half inch

00:06:26 ◼   ► low density floppy, so that was what,

00:06:27 ◼   ► like 750K or something like that?

00:06:29 ◼   ► - Something like that, yeah.

00:06:30 ◼   ► - And that was external, I should add,

00:06:31 ◼   ► which was really cool, probably Scuzzy.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But anyway, the only other thing I wanted

00:06:37 ◼   ► to bring this back around to say about the iPad

00:06:39 ◼   ► is a lot of people wrote to say,

00:06:41 ◼   ► "Hey, you idiot, the iPad has a camera,

00:06:43 ◼   ► "and yes, that's weird, but why didn't you just use

00:06:45 ◼   ► "the camera to take a picture of the documents

00:06:47 ◼   ► "and use any one of these 350 different apps

00:06:49 ◼   ► "that people recommended in order to scan,"

00:06:52 ◼   ► and I'm doing mega air quotes here, "scan the PDF?"

00:06:55 ◼   ► And that is a perfectly valid answer,

00:06:58 ◼   ► and I have one of those apps on my phone and on my iPad,

00:07:00 ◼   ► And it does work surprisingly well, but why on earth would I do that?

00:07:04 ◼   ► When I had a full-on, probably multi-thousand dollar scanning machine, you know, one of

00:07:10 ◼   ► those multi-function printers, in the office right there, ready and waiting.

00:07:14 ◼   ► The fidelity of that scan was going to be far superior to any, you know, software flattened

00:07:19 ◼   ► picture of a piece of paper.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Plus, there was quite a bit that I was scanning and I didn't want to spend all that time doing

00:07:23 ◼   ► all that.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Instead, I spent all that time trying to get it all into Dropbox, but that's neither here

00:07:27 ◼   ► nor there.

00:07:28 ◼   ► That's better.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that's totally better. So anyway, so I just wanted to follow up on that. The other thing I wanted to note is we were talking last week about

00:07:36 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones and

00:07:39 ◼   ► Bluetooth latency and some other miscellaneous things and by accident today

00:07:44 ◼   ► I noticed something completely striking and to back up just a half step

00:07:48 ◼   ► You've talked Marco and we've talked and I've talked in the past about how I don't really understand why everyone gets their

00:07:57 ◼   ► all up in arms about Bluetooth latency, especially when watching video, because I never see this.

00:08:02 ◼   ► And as we discussed last episode, I use these like fairly, well, really cheap and fairly crappy Bluetooth headphones

00:08:10 ◼   ► that I love, don't get me wrong, but they're unremarkable in every measurable way.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And I never get this video latency that everyone else seems to get.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Well, today, Jon tweeted a link to a video with one of the dudes from The Wire.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Bunk Wendell Pierce, so he tweeted a link John had tweeted a link that where it was Wendell Pierce

00:08:29 ◼   ► I believe you're right Marco talking about it was actually very interesting talking about being stopped in real life by a police officer and

00:08:35 ◼   ► I was on my work computer and I had clicked the link and on my work computer because we're all in on Google Apps

00:08:43 ◼   ► Chrome is my default browser, and this is the first time that's ever been the case

00:08:46 ◼   ► And so I started watching this video on Chrome, and I was like oh my goodness this latency is ridiculous

00:08:54 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:08:56 ◼   ► That's never, ever happened to me before, ever.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So I copied the link, dropped it in Safari.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:09:05 ◼   ► No problems whatsoever.

00:09:07 ◼   ► This is a YouTube video.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, but Miles M. wrote in when I tweeted about this and said, "Safari

00:09:15 ◼   ► uses system APIs to play video, but Chrome reimplements everything itself down to the

00:09:19 ◼   ► media decoders."

00:09:20 ◼   ► I have no idea if that's true or not, but I can tell you that anecdotally, based on

00:09:24 ◼   ► one video I watched during the day today, it certainly seemed like that very well may

00:09:29 ◼   ► be the case.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And I was stunned by, A, the fact that it happened, and B, how bad it was.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And so I wonder if all these people that are whining and moaning about this Bluetooth latency

00:09:38 ◼   ► are just Chrome users, and because of that, they see this terrible latency, and so they're

00:09:44 ◼   ► all thinking, "Man, I'm crazy.

00:09:45 ◼   ► How could I not see this?"

00:09:47 ◼   ► at the same time I'm thinking, man, they are crazy,

00:09:49 ◼   ► why are they seeing this?

00:09:50 ◼   ► And it turns out it's just another reason

00:09:52 ◼   ► why you shouldn't be using Chrome.

00:09:53 ◼   ► - Turns out everybody's crazy.

00:09:54 ◼   ► No, I mean, so you're exactly right that basically,

00:09:58 ◼   ► that there is Bluetooth latency on any Bluetooth device,

00:10:02 ◼   ► there is latency, not as bad as AirPlay.

00:10:03 ◼   ► AirPlay is fixed at two seconds regardless,

00:10:05 ◼   ► and that seems like forever

00:10:06 ◼   ► when you're trying to get something to happen.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Bluetooth is way shorter than that,

00:10:09 ◼   ► it can be substantially less than a second,

00:10:10 ◼   ► but there is still noticeable latency,

00:10:12 ◼   ► and humans can detect latency in video

00:10:15 ◼   ► where the audio isn't synced up properly

00:10:17 ◼   ► to like watching people's mouths move when they talk,

00:10:19 ◼   ► we can detect very, very small amounts of latency

00:10:21 ◼   ► and it just looks wrong to us.

00:10:23 ◼   ► So it has to be perfect,

00:10:24 ◼   ► like when you're watching people speak,

00:10:26 ◼   ► there can't be any weird latency

00:10:28 ◼   ► between the audio and the video.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Apple knows this, so they're in their system frameworks

00:10:32 ◼   ► for iOS and OS X, most Bluetooth headphones,

00:10:35 ◼   ► they have some way, and I don't know the details

00:10:37 ◼   ► of how it works, but they have some way

00:10:39 ◼   ► of establishing with the headset what the latency is

00:10:42 ◼   ► and then compensating for it.

00:10:43 ◼   ► The downside of this, first of all, you just found one,

00:10:46 ◼   ► which is that it only works in things

00:10:47 ◼   ► that use the AV frameworks.

00:10:49 ◼   ► The other downside is that not every headphone supports this

00:10:51 ◼   ► and so I've tested probably five or six sets

00:10:54 ◼   ► of Bluetooth headphones now and only I think two of them

00:10:58 ◼   ► actually properly didn't have any latency

00:11:01 ◼   ► and the rest all had unacceptable latency

00:11:03 ◼   ► even when using the system video player,

00:11:06 ◼   ► even on iOS where you would think

00:11:07 ◼   ► that would be most commonly tested.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And the other problem is games.

00:11:13 ◼   ► You know, video can account for this.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Games almost always can't and don't.

00:11:18 ◼   ► And so it works fine if you are using your headphones

00:11:22 ◼   ► to watch a video in the built-in system API player

00:11:26 ◼   ► in something.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That works fine.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That's probably all you've ever done, right?

00:11:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think so.

00:11:31 ◼   ► I can't imagine a time other than when I was in Chrome

00:11:34 ◼   ► that I wasn't using just the system frameworks.

00:11:36 ◼   ► - Right.

00:11:37 ◼   ► But it's especially a problem if you're trying

00:11:39 ◼   ► to play games with Bluetooth headphones.

00:11:42 ◼   ► It's basically impossible.

00:11:43 ◼   ► basically can't unless you are just not listening to the game audio and only listening to music

00:11:46 ◼   ► or something.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I just thought it was crazy.

00:11:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Jon, do you have any thoughts on this?

00:11:50 ◼   ► I just think that I hope that in the future they will keep improving these wireless audio

00:11:56 ◼   ► APIs to eliminate these problems because it's kind of a shame that it requires the deep

00:12:01 ◼   ► integration of the system APIs with all this compensation and getting everything.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Chrome should be able to do it correctly.

00:12:06 ◼   ► In other words, it shouldn't be such a problem.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So I don't know what the limitations are

00:12:13 ◼   ► that are requiring this,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but I know Bluetooth continues to evolve,

00:12:15 ◼   ► and I think it needs to continue to evolve

00:12:17 ◼   ► because it's obviously not quite good enough yet.

00:12:20 ◼   ► - Well, and there's, to some degree,

00:12:22 ◼   ► there's always going to be some latency inherent

00:12:25 ◼   ► in a digital signal being transmitted,

00:12:28 ◼   ► being accepted over wireless network,

00:12:30 ◼   ► being decoded from digital to analog

00:12:32 ◼   ► in certain chunks of blocks.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And there's always, with audio latency,

00:12:37 ◼   ► you're always having this trade-off.

00:12:39 ◼   ► if you make the latency really short,

00:12:40 ◼   ► that means you have really short buffers on all the sides,

00:12:43 ◼   ► which means that it becomes extremely sensitive

00:12:45 ◼   ► to cutting out with any kind of reception drop

00:12:48 ◼   ► or flaky signal or anything.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So if you have very, very low latency, it is very fragile.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Or if you increase the latency,

00:12:56 ◼   ► then you have more tolerance for weirdness in the signal.

00:12:59 ◼   ► You can back off a little bit

00:13:00 ◼   ► and then burst the data that you missed

00:13:02 ◼   ► before the latency has caught up,

00:13:03 ◼   ► just like the old anti-skip things in Discman,

00:13:07 ◼   ► if you ever had one of those.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Same thing, there's all these trade-offs

00:13:11 ◼   ► and it just might not be worth it

00:13:13 ◼   ► if most people are fine most of the time.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Or if, which often happens in the case

00:13:19 ◼   ► with technological progress,

00:13:21 ◼   ► if the new way of doing things

00:13:23 ◼   ► does have shortcomings and downsides

00:13:25 ◼   ► that people are just okay with

00:13:27 ◼   ► because the upsides make it worth it.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Like everyone might just decide, you know what,

00:13:30 ◼   ► I'm fine with just not having synced up audio

00:13:34 ◼   ► when I'm playing games while wearing headphones.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Like people might just decide that

00:13:37 ◼   ► because it's worth it to have all the other benefits

00:13:38 ◼   ► wireless headphones. So I wouldn't necessarily consider this problem something that will

00:13:42 ◼   ► be solved and will be solved anytime soon.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Yeah, don't have to worry because Apple's hard real-time operating system they're

00:13:49 ◼   ► working on for the car will solve all these problems because then you won't have any

00:13:51 ◼   ► underflow problems on your buffers because you've got time slice guarantees and that'll

00:13:55 ◼   ► solve all these problems. I'm saying this as a joke by the way, but people do talk a

00:14:00 ◼   ► lot about the theoretical, the real-time requirements of any sort of software that Apple might be

00:14:08 ◼   ► doing in the car. And I have a hard time believing that any software part of the car system,

00:14:16 ◼   ► like in other words I imagine that Apple's going to do the part of the car that you would, you know,

00:14:22 ◼   ► the software that you see on the screens in the car that you interact with, but I always imagine

00:14:25 ◼   ► that the internal things that deal with like engine control computers will have absolutely no

00:14:31 ◼   ► lineage or connection to any existing Apple software code base. Like that it'll just be

00:14:35 ◼   ► be an embedded system, that it won't be related to iOS, that none of that stuff will come

00:14:40 ◼   ► to iOS, and none of the stuff from iOS will go to it. There'll be an iOS-like thing for

00:14:44 ◼   ► a front end, assuming they ever make a car, you know, the thing that runs all the dashboard

00:14:47 ◼   ► and all that other stuff, but the part that runs the engine computer and any other stuff?

00:14:51 ◼   ► I can't imagine that having any connection with the existing, basically with Darwin,

00:14:57 ◼   ► with the existing codebase.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Well, and we've heard very early and very unreliable, but still rumblings that indicate

00:15:06 ◼   ► that that's exactly what they're doing. That they are working on a new kernel and

00:15:10 ◼   ► a new OS that might possibly use Swift for everything because that's kind of one of

00:15:16 ◼   ► the reasons why Swift is so safe and everything.

00:15:18 ◼   ► But that could still be for the dashboard control. Like I'm saying for the things

00:15:23 ◼   ► that have to be real-time.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Because they don't, you know, the Darwin kernel is not a real-time kernel where you can guarantee,

00:15:29 ◼   ► I mean, they have the stuff for trying to guarantee time slices for audio and video

00:15:33 ◼   ► or whatever, but it's not like hard real-time, like things you put on like spacecraft that

00:15:37 ◼   ► go to Mars where this absolutely positively has to happen.

00:15:40 ◼   ► It's just, it's a very tightly constrained, you know, embedded operating system environment.

00:15:44 ◼   ► What is that, the one really popular one, Wind River Systems or something?

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't know, the one that's on all the spacecrafts and satellites and other stuff like that.

00:15:51 ◼   ► That is a different problem domain.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And I see no reason that Apple would need to make a single OS that spans up, because

00:15:56 ◼   ► you never see the real-time operating system, it just runs the machinery under the covers,

00:15:59 ◼   ► and then Apple is free to make a Swift from top to bottom cool UI thing for all of the,

00:16:05 ◼   ► you know, climate control, dashboard applications, audio system, all that other stuff.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Which could still also be entirely new codebase, but I still feel like that doesn't even need

00:16:14 ◼   ► to be real-time, because it just controls these sort of inessential functions.

00:16:17 ◼   ► If it's self-driving, then I don't really know what the hell's going on.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Backblaze.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Go to backblaze.com/atp for the best online backup

00:16:29 ◼   ► I've ever seen.

00:16:30 ◼   ► I've been a Backblaze customer for, I don't know,

00:16:33 ◼   ► three or four years now?

00:16:35 ◼   ► It's been a while, since before they sponsored our shows.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Because I did the research, I tried a few online

00:16:41 ◼   ► backup services out there, and Backblaze was my favorite

00:16:44 ◼   ► by far, simple as that.

00:16:46 ◼   ► So they have over 150 petabytes of data backed up.

00:16:50 ◼   ► This isn't all from me, although a lot of it is.

00:16:51 ◼   ► but not all 150 petabytes of our mind.

00:16:54 ◼   ► They had, you know, anybody can do this.

00:16:57 ◼   ► They have over 10 billion files

00:16:59 ◼   ► that have been restored to their customers.

00:17:01 ◼   ► So like, they've backed up way more than 10 billion files.

00:17:03 ◼   ► They've restored 10 billion files for their customers.

00:17:06 ◼   ► All this data that they keep up in their cloud

00:17:09 ◼   ► is not in your office, not in your home,

00:17:12 ◼   ► so that any kind of environmental problem

00:17:14 ◼   ► that affects all the computers in your office

00:17:16 ◼   ► or all the computers in your home,

00:17:18 ◼   ► things like, you know, electrical problems,

00:17:20 ◼   ► fires, floods, thefts.

00:17:22 ◼   ► If you are a Backblaze customer,

00:17:23 ◼   ► you know that your data is still there,

00:17:26 ◼   ► 'cause Backblaze still has your data,

00:17:28 ◼   ► and you can get it back.

00:17:28 ◼   ► It's a level of peace of mind.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Backblaze saves your butt in that case, it really does.

00:17:33 ◼   ► It is great, it is founded by ex-Apple engineers,

00:17:36 ◼   ► they respect the Mac, plus they work on Windows too,

00:17:38 ◼   ► as far as I know, I don't know, I've never tried,

00:17:39 ◼   ► but I'm sure, yeah, it runs native on your Mac and PC,

00:17:42 ◼   ► so they have a Windows app too, if you run that way.

00:17:45 ◼   ► You can put it on your C drive,

00:17:47 ◼   ► but not your A or B drive,

00:17:48 ◼   ► 'cause you don't have those anymore.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Backblaze is really easy, no add-ons, no gimmicks,

00:17:52 ◼   ► no additional charges, five bucks per month

00:17:54 ◼   ► for unlimited space, unthrottled speeds,

00:17:58 ◼   ► everything you need, no add-ons, no gimmicks,

00:18:00 ◼   ► five bucks a month per computer at Backblaze.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Backblaze.com/ATP, you need online backup,

00:18:07 ◼   ► and if you're going to get online backup,

00:18:08 ◼   ► this is the one I recommend.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.

00:18:11 ◼   ► - So Backblaze has been in the news lately,

00:18:13 ◼   ► and not just because they sponsor this awesome program,

00:18:16 ◼   ► but because they had a run-in with Adobe.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Yes, this is…

00:18:21 ◼   ► We all had a run-in with Adobe.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Sometimes that happens.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Whoops.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So I do not have Creative Cloud, so does one of you want to fill me and fill everyone in

00:18:31 ◼   ► on what happened?

00:18:33 ◼   ► This didn't happen to me either, thankfully, but I do have…

00:18:35 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing.

00:18:37 ◼   ► I have Photoshop CS6, which is the last pre-Creative Cloud version, but for reasons…

00:18:44 ◼   ► Oh, I know why.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I was saying, why does this not own my systems?

00:18:47 ◼   ► Anyway, even though I have CS6, I still

00:18:49 ◼   ► have the Creative Cloud icon in the menu bar,

00:18:52 ◼   ► because I think I downloaded a trial of Illustrator.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I might have paid for Illustrator for a month,

00:18:56 ◼   ► like Illustrator CC, like the first version.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Anyway, once Adobe gets on your system,

00:19:00 ◼   ► it has this Creative Cloud menu thing, which

00:19:02 ◼   ► tries to update your applications for you

00:19:04 ◼   ► and do other crap like that.

00:19:05 ◼   ► It's the worst.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and it launches on login, and you try to get rid of it,

00:19:09 ◼   ► and it comes back, and you just want to quit it.

00:19:11 ◼   ► Like Steam.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Yeah, but Steam does it through the system login items.

00:19:15 ◼   ► you turn off it stays off creative cloud just keeps coming back like an undead zombie anyway

00:19:19 ◼   ► adobe has a history of having let's say challenges related to software installation

00:19:27 ◼   ► and management of installations on the mac there are i have at various times

00:19:32 ◼   ► search for solutions to seemingly intractable adobe application installation problems and

00:19:36 ◼   ► found instructions on adobe's own website not in the forums but like literal official

00:19:40 ◼   ► Adobe instructions that contain terrifying sets of steps that you have to follow to get

00:19:46 ◼   ► yourself out of a situation in which your legitimately purchased Adobe application won't

00:19:50 ◼   ► update or something and they have you running commands from the shell prompt, you know,

00:19:54 ◼   ► sudo rm blah blah blah and it's like, seriously?

00:19:57 ◼   ► This is, anyway.

00:19:59 ◼   ► They have serious challenges.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And this is another one of their challenges.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Apparently they released some software and this is all kind of experimentally determined

00:20:06 ◼   ► by Backplace, and you'll understand why Backplace is involved at all in this in a moment.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Some piece of software that would effectively list the folders, the directories at the top

00:20:17 ◼   ► level of your volume, and sort them, I'm assuming, asciiabetically, as in like capital letters

00:20:23 ◼   ► first or whatever, but at any rate, periods and spaces and stuff first, pick the first

00:20:27 ◼   ► one and delete its contents.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And it was hoping that first one would be like a dot adobe something, but depending

00:20:35 ◼   ► Depending on whether you had a previous installation, it could be something other than .adobe or

00:20:40 ◼   ► space adobe or whatever the hell it was.

00:20:42 ◼   ► It could in fact be something called .bzvol, which is a backblaze hidden directory where

00:20:47 ◼   ► it stores a bunch of crap that has to do with the operation of backblaze.

00:20:49 ◼   ► So people were messing with this adobe creative cloud update, which I'm sure they were all

00:20:54 ◼   ► prompted to install by the little menu item that always runs on people's systems, and

00:20:57 ◼   ► they would install it, and that installer would delete the contents of backblaze's little

00:21:02 ◼   ► directory where it stores information about your backups.

00:21:05 ◼   ► And that's pretty antisocial behavior.

00:21:08 ◼   ► When an application not made by you goes and deletes all your crap out from under it.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Now, to backplace this credit, they figured out this problem pretty quickly.

00:21:18 ◼   ► They posted a thing on their site that explains how to solve the situation.

00:21:21 ◼   ► They reported it to Adobe, and then to Adobe's credit, Adobe fixed it and pulled the update

00:21:24 ◼   ► and did all that other stuff.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And we'll link to a blog post in the show notes from Backplace explaining the situation.

00:21:32 ◼   ► And again, we don't have the particular details.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Backblaze just has like experimentally,

00:21:36 ◼   ► we experimentally determined this, that and the other thing.

00:21:38 ◼   ► What people were doing in the meantime before these updates

00:21:40 ◼   ► was they would make a bunch of,

00:21:41 ◼   ► a series of sacrificial folders

00:21:42 ◼   ► at the top level of their directory,

00:21:44 ◼   ► like called .aaaa

00:21:45 ◼   ► to make the Adobe thing nuke that one

00:21:48 ◼   ► and not the BZ vol one.

00:21:50 ◼   ► But as Backblaze points out,

00:21:52 ◼   ► even if you had this thing happen to you

00:21:54 ◼   ► at no time were your actual backups in jeopardy

00:21:58 ◼   ► because the backups are all server-side at Backblaze,

00:22:00 ◼   ► this was merely setting back the client-side installation

00:22:03 ◼   ► of your backup thing by deleting all of the information

00:22:06 ◼   ► needs to keep track of stuff.

00:22:07 ◼   ► So backblaze would automatically recreate it

00:22:09 ◼   ► and I'm assuming it would have to grind your disc

00:22:10 ◼   ► for a while to figure out what the hell is what

00:22:12 ◼   ► and recreate that directory.

00:22:14 ◼   ► But it's good to know that despite another application

00:22:16 ◼   ► coming and recursively deleting the contents

00:22:18 ◼   ► of one of its directories, your actual backups,

00:22:21 ◼   ► meaning like the data that is stored in backblaze's server,

00:22:23 ◼   ► were always safe during this time.

00:22:26 ◼   ► - We give Apple a hard time for software quality issues

00:22:29 ◼   ► that we think they have, but we had a couple of people

00:22:32 ◼   ► write in to say, why don't you complain about Adobe

00:22:34 ◼   ► just as much?

00:22:36 ◼   ► And the truth is that Adobe software is typically

00:22:39 ◼   ► far worse than Apple software,

00:22:40 ◼   ► especially the non-core things.

00:22:42 ◼   ► So if you think about like Photoshop, Illustrator,

00:22:45 ◼   ► these are like the core Adobe apps.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Like their core apps, as much as they can be weird

00:22:50 ◼   ► and flaky and as much as people can love and hate them

00:22:52 ◼   ► so much at the same time, they don't usually have

00:22:56 ◼   ► stability issues or data loss issues.

00:22:58 ◼   ► They have many other issues, but those are not

00:23:01 ◼   ► usually among them, so it's not like,

00:23:03 ◼   ► you know, like the main core apps tend to work

00:23:05 ◼   ► decently well most of the time.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Although I can say the same thing about Apple,

00:23:09 ◼   ► but the problem that Adobe has is all the other

00:23:12 ◼   ► like supporting crap around them.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Also anything related to Acrobat,

00:23:16 ◼   ► but you know, all the supporting crap around them,

00:23:18 ◼   ► like the installers, the cloud services that they use,

00:23:22 ◼   ► like the Behance plugins and all this crazy stuff,

00:23:25 ◼   ► those things tend to work very poorly

00:23:28 ◼   ► and be very inconsistent.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And the reason why we don't usually criticize Adobe

00:23:32 ◼   ► on this show is simply because Adobe has been making

00:23:35 ◼   ► mediocre software for so long that we have no expectations

00:23:37 ◼   ► of quality from Adobe, as sad as that is.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And I say this as a long time Adobe customer and user

00:23:44 ◼   ► of multiple products by them, but the fact is that

00:23:47 ◼   ► Adobe just has a really, really bad reputation

00:23:49 ◼   ► for this stuff and has for years.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So yeah, we just don't expect much from them.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And when things like this happen,

00:23:55 ◼   ► it's barely even worth mentioning because it's just,

00:23:58 ◼   ► it happened, like crap with Adobe happens all the time.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Usually not this bad, but like it's just, you know,

00:24:03 ◼   ► it's just one more day of using Adobe stuff

00:24:05 ◼   ► where the software's doing weird stuff

00:24:06 ◼   ► and not quite installing right,

00:24:08 ◼   ► or Creative Cloud is doing weird things in the menu bar.

00:24:10 ◼   ► That's just typical Adobe behavior.

00:24:13 ◼   ► - And as big as Adobe is obviously,

00:24:14 ◼   ► like most people don't use Adobe software.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Like especially now that, you know, OS X PDF rendering

00:24:19 ◼   ► built in everything, people no longer have a reason

00:24:22 ◼   ► to download Acrobat just to look at PDFs.

00:24:24 ◼   ► If you're not a designer or not using one of, you know,

00:24:27 ◼   ► you don't use Adobe products that much,

00:24:29 ◼   ► whereas everybody's using the operating system

00:24:31 ◼   ► and a lot of the built-in apps that ship with Apple things.

00:24:33 ◼   ► So it's just a much bigger surface area for people

00:24:37 ◼   ► to encounter problems with Apple stuff.

00:24:40 ◼   ► The reason I wanted to talk about this, aside

00:24:42 ◼   ► from the backblaze angle-- and it's just coincidence

00:24:44 ◼   ► that we happen to have backblaze sponsoring this episode--

00:24:47 ◼   ► is the sandboxing angle.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Because a lot of the discussion I saw about this issue was,

00:24:52 ◼   ► see, this is why Apple wants Mac applications to be sandboxed.

00:24:57 ◼   ► and quick sandboxing refresher.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Sandboxing is basically a way to limit the ability

00:25:04 ◼   ► of applications to do things.

00:25:06 ◼   ► So a typical general purpose PC or Mac,

00:25:09 ◼   ► when you're running an application,

00:25:10 ◼   ► that application can do anything that you could do

00:25:13 ◼   ► as a user, as in you could delete all the files

00:25:16 ◼   ► in your home directory and soak in any program that you run.

00:25:19 ◼   ► You could rename things, remove things,

00:25:23 ◼   ► like just transmit data over the network,

00:25:27 ◼   ► pull data down from somewhere, anything that basically you

00:25:30 ◼   ► could do as a user or in a program that you wrote,

00:25:32 ◼   ► any program that you run can do.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And what sandboxing does is it says

00:25:36 ◼   ► that each individual application has

00:25:38 ◼   ► to declare what kinds of things it wants to do.

00:25:41 ◼   ► So an application might say, I need to access the network.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Or maybe I need to access the network

00:25:47 ◼   ► and just go to certain sites.

00:25:48 ◼   ► I need to access the camera or the microphone.

00:25:51 ◼   ► I need access to the file system.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I need access to just these two folders in the file system.

00:25:56 ◼   ► You know, like, and you can have these sort of permissions

00:25:59 ◼   ► all the way up to the level of like,

00:26:00 ◼   ► hey, I need access to the complete file system.

00:26:03 ◼   ► And historically, Apple has been trying to

00:26:05 ◼   ► slowly close that door to say, you know what?

00:26:07 ◼   ► No application should really have access

00:26:09 ◼   ► to the entire file system.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And if you do, there should be a good reason.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And that's the whole negotiation with the Mac App Store

00:26:15 ◼   ► and sandboxing Mac applications to try to,

00:26:18 ◼   ► this negotiation backwards between Apple

00:26:19 ◼   ► and the applications of what, they call them title ones.

00:26:22 ◼   ► What entitlements does your application actually need

00:26:24 ◼   ► to do its job versus which ones do you just want to have.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So why is your application that you use for email

00:26:30 ◼   ► accessing the camera?

00:26:32 ◼   ► And maybe you have a good reason for that.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Oh, if you don't have an avatar,

00:26:34 ◼   ► we will take a picture of you

00:26:36 ◼   ► and then use that as your avatar.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Okay, well that's an okay reason.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Why is your email application you need to access

00:26:41 ◼   ► the entire file system?

00:26:42 ◼   ► Well, we don't really know where we're gonna edit files,

00:26:45 ◼   ► so we just want access to the whole file system.

00:26:46 ◼   ► No, sorry, we really want you to pick

00:26:48 ◼   ► where you're gonna put the files.

00:26:49 ◼   ► You can put a dialog box up and the user can pick

00:26:51 ◼   ► and then you get permission for that directory

00:26:52 ◼   ► or that directory tree,

00:26:53 ◼   ► but you don't have access everywhere.

00:26:56 ◼   ► And as we just discussed with Adobe stuff,

00:26:58 ◼   ► as you might imagine, Adobe is not in the Mac App Store.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Adobe sells its own software,

00:27:03 ◼   ► has its own subscription service to create a cloud thing

00:27:05 ◼   ► where you can sort of rent your software

00:27:07 ◼   ► and they'll give you updates for a certain amount of time.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And they're not in the Mac App Store,

00:27:11 ◼   ► not just because they don't want to share 30%

00:27:13 ◼   ► of their money with Apple,

00:27:14 ◼   ► but also because none of their applications would function

00:27:16 ◼   ► if sandboxed.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And so that's why sandboxing is related to this

00:27:21 ◼   ► because if their application was sandboxed,

00:27:23 ◼   ► Surely their updater wouldn't have the entitlement

00:27:26 ◼   ► that allows, that gives it access to the entire file system.

00:27:29 ◼   ► The updater would instead like maybe prompt you

00:27:30 ◼   ► to find your application or something

00:27:32 ◼   ► and then the user would give a permission to update.

00:27:34 ◼   ► All right, you know, if it was in the Mac App Store,

00:27:35 ◼   ► updates would work entirely differently anyway,

00:27:37 ◼   ► 'cause it would just be able to update the individual apps

00:27:38 ◼   ► and their bundles.

00:27:39 ◼   ► But the real issue is, all right,

00:27:42 ◼   ► so sandboxing would have saved this, but it's not sandboxed.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So what is sandboxing actually buying us?

00:27:47 ◼   ► Because if you can have non-sandboxed,

00:27:51 ◼   ► non-Mac App Store applications, doesn't that defeat the purpose of sandboxing? In other

00:27:56 ◼   ► words, if you can't get everybody to be sandboxed, it doesn't matter how great sandboxing is,

00:27:59 ◼   ► because it just takes one un-sandboxed application to ruin your day. So what do you guys think

00:28:03 ◼   ► about the sandboxing yay or nay angle on this whole disaster?

00:28:09 ◼   ► I think it's a reasonable angle, but part of the reason that the Mac is so great, and

00:28:15 ◼   ► part of the reason I've been talking the last couple of episodes about things that bother

00:28:19 ◼   ► me about iOS is that you can take things into your own hands in a way that you can't with

00:28:24 ◼   ► iOS.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And that's very freeing.

00:28:27 ◼   ► And so I wouldn't, I would be very upset if all software had to go through the Mac App

00:28:33 ◼   ► Store or somehow in another way all software was sandboxed.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I don't see that as feasible.

00:28:41 ◼   ► I do think though that software developers

00:28:45 ◼   ► should be better systems of the ecosystem

00:28:49 ◼   ► and allow their software to be sandboxed wherever possible.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Now, I'm not clear, can you sandbox

00:28:56 ◼   ► without being in the App Store?

00:28:58 ◼   ► So like could Creative Cloud still be a third party,

00:29:01 ◼   ► or not a third party, an outside of the App Store thing

00:29:05 ◼   ► and also be sandboxed?

00:29:06 ◼   ► - Yep, definitely, you can do that.

00:29:07 ◼   ► And some people do do that.

00:29:08 ◼   ► That was one of the discussions.

00:29:09 ◼   ► like why would anyone voluntarily subject their application to the sandbox if you're

00:29:14 ◼   ► not in the Mac App Store? Say you're selling an application directly, why would you go

00:29:18 ◼   ► through the trouble of sandboxing? And part of the reason is to protect yourself from

00:29:22 ◼   ► your own bugs. Say you have some sort of silly bug or not so silly bug. I see this. This

00:29:27 ◼   ► was an iTunes bug way back in the day. This is a very common bug for the mindset of the

00:29:33 ◼   ► people that tend to write things like installers and uninstallers. This mindset is the assumption

00:29:38 ◼   ► that no Mac user, no really old school Mac user would ever make, but that basically everyone

00:29:42 ◼   ► else in the entire computing universe except old school Mac user makes. And that assumption

00:29:45 ◼   ► is, for example, file names do not contain spaces. Because who would put a space in their

00:29:50 ◼   ► file name? That's madness. You can't have spaces in file names. The iTunes bug was if

00:29:56 ◼   ► you had a space in your file name, there was like a shell script that was just blindly

00:29:59 ◼   ► taking a string, building a path out of that string, and then running a command on it without

00:30:03 ◼   ► quoting the string. Because hey, what if there's a quote in the string? Who would put a quote

00:30:06 ◼   ► in their file names?" Mac users would. That's who, right? Okay, well, I'll use single quotes.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Who would put a single quote in their file names? Mac users. That's who. You know, Mac

00:30:14 ◼   ► users were trained for a decade and a half that the file name is the user's domain. You

00:30:20 ◼   ► can type whatever the hell you want there.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Well, except what is it, a colon or a comma? Which one was the one that you can't use?

00:30:24 ◼   ► You can get a colon in, too. You can get something that appears as a colon.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Oh, okay, yeah.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Or, you know, a colon, a slash. There are limitations. So basically, if I can type it,

00:30:33 ◼   ► Like you're prevented from typing those things essentially, or you're prevented from really

00:30:37 ◼   ► getting those into the file name.

00:30:38 ◼   ► But the bottom line is, you would never think that because I put a space in my file name,

00:30:41 ◼   ► this would mean, like the iTunes one I think was, if you had a volume called "foo bar"

00:30:46 ◼   ► and you had a volume called "foo" and then you had a volume called "foo bar", the thing

00:30:52 ◼   ► would try to delete "foo bar", but after the first space, the "rm" command would say "oh,

00:30:57 ◼   ► you want me to delete volumes foo?

00:30:58 ◼   ► Okay, I'll go that, I'll delete that.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Okay, and you also wanted me to delete "bar?

00:31:02 ◼   ► no such file. And you were sad because it just nuked your entire directory. Anyway, dealing with

00:31:07 ◼   ► paths as strings and dealing with paths as strings in a sloppy way is an epidemic in the computing

00:31:14 ◼   ► world. So it's actually very difficult to get that part of the system right. And so you sandbox

00:31:22 ◼   ► yourself to say, what if I make one of those mistakes? What if I'm deep in Objective-C code

00:31:26 ◼   ► and I'm building... Anytime you're shelling out or doing something that you think like,

00:31:31 ◼   ► like, oh, I've built a string, and this is some NSString that

00:31:33 ◼   ► has a file path.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And then instead of feeding it to an Objective-C framework

00:31:37 ◼   ► that would presumably do the right thing,

00:31:39 ◼   ► instead you say, I'm just going to run this external command.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Even if it's like, oh, I'm just going

00:31:43 ◼   ► to run this external command that converts Markdown

00:31:44 ◼   ► into HTML.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And I'll just feed it this path, and everything will be fine.

00:31:47 ◼   ► In that case, you're probably not going to nuke the world.

00:31:49 ◼   ► It'll probably just break when someone

00:31:50 ◼   ► puts a space or an exclamation point or a single quote

00:31:54 ◼   ► or a double quote, depending on how silly you're

00:31:56 ◼   ► being about going through the shell

00:31:57 ◼   ► to do these type of things.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I can tell you, as someone who writes in a language that's actually very close to shell scripting,

00:32:04 ◼   ► even in languages like that, where, you know, isn't it the whole purpose of the language just to make it easy to run shell commands, right?

00:32:12 ◼   ► To run things that you would type in the terminal? Don't those languages have facilities for doing all this?

00:32:16 ◼   ► Even in those languages, people just ignore the facilities that allow you to essentially pass a list,

00:32:20 ◼   ► so it'll be passed directly to the exec cvpe function or whatever, where you bypass the shell entirely.

00:32:26 ◼   ► you know what the components of the command are.

00:32:28 ◼   ► You know this is the command, you know this is the path,

00:32:30 ◼   ► you know this is the whatever.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Never go through the shell and let it try to figure out

00:32:33 ◼   ► where the boundaries are because you will just,

00:32:35 ◼   ► it'll be sad and it will end in tears.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So if you can sandbox your application and say,

00:32:39 ◼   ► I'm only gonna ever edit,

00:32:40 ◼   ► my application will only ever modify files

00:32:43 ◼   ► in these two directories plus ones

00:32:44 ◼   ► that the user picks themselves

00:32:45 ◼   ► with the open save dialog box.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Then when you have this bug,

00:32:48 ◼   ► your application won't function directly,

00:32:50 ◼   ► but you will not accidentally recursively delete

00:32:52 ◼   ► their home directory, their volume,

00:32:54 ◼   ► their entire documents folder or whatever else.

00:32:56 ◼   ► So yeah, Marco would sandbox his own application

00:32:59 ◼   ► and I think I would too.

00:33:00 ◼   ► Even though it'd probably be a giant pain

00:33:02 ◼   ► because I think there are a lot of entitlements

00:33:04 ◼   ► that just don't exist anymore

00:33:05 ◼   ► because they think nobody in the Mac App Store

00:33:06 ◼   ► should have them, therefore people on the outside

00:33:08 ◼   ► shouldn't either.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - Right, I mean that's the main problem with sandboxing

00:33:11 ◼   ► is really not the concept.

00:33:13 ◼   ► There's two main problems with sandboxing on the Mac.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Number one is that it wasn't always there.

00:33:17 ◼   ► So we have this entire ecosystem of software

00:33:20 ◼   ► that's been built up over decades

00:33:21 ◼   ► that it was originally built without the concept

00:33:24 ◼   ► of sandboxing and then now it has to be bolted on

00:33:26 ◼   ► and for a lot of apps that is either impossible

00:33:29 ◼   ► or very difficult.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And then secondly, the other problem is that Apple

00:33:33 ◼   ► just hasn't really been a very good steward

00:33:35 ◼   ► of taking sandboxing and moving it forward

00:33:38 ◼   ► and adding entitlements for things that really

00:33:40 ◼   ► are necessary in the real world.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And as a result, the kind of policy by action

00:33:46 ◼   ► at least that Apple's been doing so far is,

00:33:48 ◼   ► well, if you don't wanna fit into what we want

00:33:50 ◼   ► for the Mac App Store, we don't want you there at all.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Like we don't even want you to use any of this technology.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And I'm sure that's not what Craig Federighi

00:33:58 ◼   ► wants to be the case, but that's what's happening so far.

00:34:01 ◼   ► So hopefully they remember that the Mac exists

00:34:03 ◼   ► just long enough to update sandboxing

00:34:05 ◼   ► and make it more useful, because I,

00:34:08 ◼   ► as both a developer and a user,

00:34:09 ◼   ► I mean I'm not a Mac developer, at least not yet,

00:34:11 ◼   ► but as a user, I would love for more

00:34:14 ◼   ► of my apps to be sandboxed.

00:34:16 ◼   ► If Apple wants to advance this system

00:34:19 ◼   ► in this practice of being, of sandbox apps,

00:34:21 ◼   ► which I think they should, they need to make more apps

00:34:23 ◼   ► able to be sandboxed in a reasonable way.

00:34:26 ◼   ► And so I hope there's enough people at Apple

00:34:28 ◼   ► who agree with that, that that gets done at some point.

00:34:31 ◼   ► But as a developer, as you know, not only for protecting

00:34:35 ◼   ► all of your data from my accidental bugs and stuff

00:34:38 ◼   ► that go into it, I would, if I was making,

00:34:41 ◼   ► let's suppose I was making a Mac version of Overcast.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I'm not, but suppose I was.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Please don't get excited, I'm not.

00:34:46 ◼   ► - You should. - Sorry Casey, I know.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - You should.

00:34:48 ◼   ► I had like forever ago, I had like a branch

00:34:51 ◼   ► that I could compile like the data layer to Mac,

00:34:53 ◼   ► but not in UI or anything.

00:34:55 ◼   ► That's the kind of app that doesn't really need

00:34:58 ◼   ► deep system access to really anything.

00:35:01 ◼   ► I mean, I would need access to play audio,

00:35:04 ◼   ► and download stuff from the network.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Like that's about it.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So I would totally accept sandboxing.

00:35:11 ◼   ► I wouldn't want the responsibility

00:35:13 ◼   ► of messing with your system

00:35:14 ◼   ► or messing with other apps accidentally,

00:35:16 ◼   ► or having my app be able to be hacked

00:35:18 ◼   ► and have some kind of remote injection if you view a web page,

00:35:20 ◼   ► you know, weird stuff like that.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Like, I know we're beyond most of that

00:35:23 ◼   ► with web stuff these days, but still, you know,

00:35:26 ◼   ► it would be nice to just like eliminate sources of bugs.

00:35:29 ◼   ► To me, it's like, as a developer,

00:35:31 ◼   ► would I opt into memory protection?

00:35:33 ◼   ► Of course I would.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Like, it's one of those things where,

00:35:36 ◼   ► if what you're doing can fit within those restrictions,

00:35:40 ◼   ► you should adopt them, just because it will help you

00:35:42 ◼   ► not only make better software,

00:35:44 ◼   ► but ensure more secure software as time goes on,

00:35:47 ◼   ► as people try to hack it or as you make mistakes.

00:35:50 ◼   ► So of course I would opt into that.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And on iOS, I'm very glad it's there

00:35:53 ◼   ► because there's these whole classes of things

00:35:56 ◼   ► where if I get a support thing that says,

00:35:59 ◼   ► oh, whenever I launch Overcast, Facebook crashes.

00:36:03 ◼   ► That's not my problem.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I can't do anything about that.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And in a way, that's kind of frustrating for me

00:36:07 ◼   ► to have to tell people, sorry, I can't really help.

00:36:10 ◼   ► But also I can say, well, sorry, it's out of my control

00:36:14 ◼   ► and it's probably not anything I'm doing.

00:36:16 ◼   ► So there are lots of advantages to sandboxing

00:36:18 ◼   ► for developers and users.

00:36:20 ◼   ► As long as the system, either in the case of iOS

00:36:23 ◼   ► that it's always been there, or in the case of the Mac,

00:36:25 ◼   ► hopefully it gets better enough that more apps can adopt it.

00:36:30 ◼   ► - So that leads me to question,

00:36:31 ◼   ► like this whole sandboxing and Adobe bug thing,

00:36:35 ◼   ► of Apple's responsibility as the platform,

00:36:37 ◼   ► or not responsibility, Apple's goals as the platform owner,

00:36:41 ◼   ► is to, I think it should be,

00:36:44 ◼   ► to try to get as many people into the sandbox on the Mac as possible.

00:36:49 ◼   ► And they've been trying to do that.

00:36:50 ◼   ► Like they did, the important first step was they themselves sandboxed a ton of the background

00:36:54 ◼   ► demons that run on your Mac so that like the thing that does like name lookups and stuff

00:36:58 ◼   ► doesn't have complete access to the file system.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Just to make them less of a vector for exploitation in terms of if malware can do a buffer overflow

00:37:05 ◼   ► in like the name lookup system.

00:37:08 ◼   ► It can't write an arbitrary file to anywhere in the file system because that thing is still

00:37:12 ◼   ► in a sandbox.

00:37:13 ◼   ► a lot of their own things, they sandboxed a lot of the OS, they tried to sandbox some

00:37:17 ◼   ► of their applications, and of course they eventually restricted the Mac App Store to

00:37:21 ◼   ► it, which hurt a lot of applications, but at this point, the other area of trying to

00:37:26 ◼   ► get more things in the sandbox is saying, "Are you an important popular application

00:37:30 ◼   ► that a lot of people use, and you're not using the sandbox?" And they're like, "That should

00:37:35 ◼   ► be the focus of all their efforts now. Why are you not using the sandbox? What can we

00:37:39 ◼   ► do to help you get in the sandbox?" Yes, even for companies like Adobe, they will probably

00:37:42 ◼   ► never be in the Mac App Store for financial reasons in terms of profit sharing with Apple,

00:37:47 ◼   ► they should still be saying, "Adobe, we understand you're never going to give us 30%. We understand

00:37:50 ◼   ► you have your own subscription service and your own weird thing going on there. That's

00:37:53 ◼   ► fine. But we would still like all of your applications, including your installers and

00:37:58 ◼   ► everything, to be in the sandbox. What do we have to do to get you into the sandbox

00:38:03 ◼   ► today?" Like, car dealership, you know, they need to be out there trying to get butts in

00:38:10 ◼   ► the seats, I'm just mixing my analogies now, on the sandbox. And if that means making variants

00:38:16 ◼   ► of the sandbox that are entirely different than would ever be allowed in the Mac App

00:38:20 ◼   ► Store, that would still be a benefit to both Apple and users, right? So that, you know,

00:38:24 ◼   ► trying to be ideologically pure and say, if you can't fit within the sandbox as we define

00:38:30 ◼   ► it, like ideally for these isolated applications like they are on iOS, then tough luck, you

00:38:34 ◼   ► can't use it at all, you know. Or if we say, you know, Adobe could be, maybe Apple's telling

00:38:38 ◼   ► "You could be in the sandbox now, but you're not."

00:38:40 ◼   ► And nobody's like, "Yeah, we see kind of what the upside

00:38:43 ◼   ► might be for you, Apple, and for users,

00:38:45 ◼   ► but it just seems like a lot of work.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And even there's no real technical limitations.

00:38:48 ◼   ► We could do it today.

00:38:50 ◼   ► We don't want to."

00:38:51 ◼   ► And that's kind of what Apple's job is,

00:38:53 ◼   ► to try to convince Adobe to essentially spend money,

00:38:57 ◼   ► time, and effort to get into the sandbox.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So if I was Apple, A, I would have had these efforts ongoing.

00:39:04 ◼   ► And B, when this bug hit, I would be like,

00:39:06 ◼   ► trying to nicely say to Adobe, you know, depending on what the current situation is, I don't

00:39:10 ◼   ► know. It could be that Adobe can't get in the sandbox right now at all, but if they

00:39:14 ◼   ► can begin, they just refuse to because it takes too much effort, I would be gently pressing

00:39:18 ◼   ► them to say, "See, if you had sandboxed your applications, you could have avoided this

00:39:23 ◼   ► bug that was embarrassing for you and bad for our users. What can we do to help? Can

00:39:27 ◼   ► we send engineers out there? Can we help you?" And not everyone gets this treatment, but

00:39:31 ◼   ► Adobe, even though a lot of people don't use it, enough people use it. And if Apple still

00:39:34 ◼   ► thinks creative professionals are an important market for them.

00:39:37 ◼   ► You know, anyway, that's my hope for the future for sandboxing, that it actually becomes more

00:39:42 ◼   ► broadly useful because it's unrealistic, like Casey pointed out, and counterproductive to

00:39:48 ◼   ► try to get every single application into the narrow sandbox as defined in the Mac App Store,

00:39:52 ◼   ► but it is good for everybody involved if the sandbox can expand and get more participants

00:39:58 ◼   ► in it.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Just as I become an older and older developer and person,

00:40:04 ◼   ► I feel like I've learned more and more,

00:40:08 ◼   ► usually the hard way, to protect against myself.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And this is the same thing you guys were saying earlier.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And so as you get older, you go even further

00:40:17 ◼   ► than you think necessary to prevent yourself

00:40:20 ◼   ► from being an idiot, or at least that's the way I am.

00:40:24 ◼   ► And I just, it seems the responsible thing to do

00:40:29 ◼   ► App Store or not to sandbox your app if at all possible.

00:40:32 ◼   ► And yeah, sometimes it's a friggin' nightmare,

00:40:35 ◼   ► I am quite sure, but it's a responsible thing to do.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And it's really unfortunate that Adobe didn't

00:40:41 ◼   ► and hasn't done that yet.

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00:42:32 ◼   ► - All right, so there was a very interesting episode

00:42:35 ◼   ► of the talk show this past week.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Eddie Q. and Craig Federighi were on the talk show.

00:42:41 ◼   ► And this is the third incarnation of an Apple executive

00:42:46 ◼   ► on the talk show, is that correct?

00:42:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, Federighi's second appearance.

00:42:48 ◼   ► He's already had, the group's already getting

00:42:50 ◼   ► multiple appearances of Apple execs on the shows.

00:42:53 ◼   ► - You see the new molds?

00:42:54 ◼   ► You never know.

00:42:55 ◼   ► when he can't get anybody else, he calls CFED an EQ to come down.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's easy.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Totally.

00:43:02 ◼   ► So anyway, so they got on the talk show.

00:43:06 ◼   ► It was a great episode, which is unsurprising.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Why?

00:43:10 ◼   ► Why do it?

00:43:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's my first question, is why are-- because, you know,

00:43:15 ◼   ► as we made a joke that Gru calls them off and brings them on,

00:43:18 ◼   ► sometimes that happens.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't-- you know, I'm not privy to any inside information

00:43:21 ◼   ► about who calls who.

00:43:22 ◼   ► But the question is, regardless of who asks who to be on when, why do Apple executives

00:43:30 ◼   ► agree to come on a podcast at this particular time?

00:43:35 ◼   ► When Craig Federighi came on, on an episode that I was actually on, the sort of commentary

00:43:40 ◼   ► portion afterwards, clearly he was there to talk about Swift open source projects, because

00:43:44 ◼   ► that's what he came on the show to do, that's what he talked about that had just happened,

00:43:48 ◼   ► right?

00:43:49 ◼   ► When Swift went open source, we talked about it on this show, they talked about it on the

00:43:51 ◼   ► talk show.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And so that was clear.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And in this case, there's no—as far as I'm aware, there's not really any big Apple announcement.

00:43:58 ◼   ► I mean, I guess there's a 9.3 beta, but that is not particularly fresh news.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And so my assumption going in when I saw that these were the guests was that they were going

00:44:07 ◼   ► to talk about the Walt Mossberg article, because that's, I guess, big news.

00:44:12 ◼   ► But I mean, that's the real question.

00:44:15 ◼   ► Not why is Apple having executives talk to websites as they did about the Swift open

00:44:20 ◼   ► source thing or go on podcasts and stuff like that because that's all about the whole new

00:44:23 ◼   ► open Apple thing.

00:44:24 ◼   ► But it still seems like there has to be a reason.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And having listened to the show, it's still not entirely clear to me what they were there

00:44:34 ◼   ► to do.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Like when a celebrity's on a television talk show, they're there to promote the movie that's

00:44:39 ◼   ► opening this weekend that they're in, right, or whatever.

00:44:42 ◼   ► And the same thing with the Swiss open source.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like if you're there to promote something your company's doing, and then at the same

00:44:46 ◼   ► time a good host will of course ask them other questions as well.

00:44:48 ◼   ► but I'm assuming, even after listening to the episode,

00:44:52 ◼   ► that probably the reason they were there

00:44:53 ◼   ► was to talk about the Walt Marsberg article,

00:44:55 ◼   ► but I'm not entirely sure.

00:44:57 ◼   ► What was your sense from listening to the episode?

00:45:00 ◼   ► - Basically that same thing.

00:45:01 ◼   ► I mean, it was, you know, I also assumed

00:45:04 ◼   ► that there would be more kind of like

00:45:05 ◼   ► direct addressing of that, but you know,

00:45:08 ◼   ► you have like, I mean, as we know,

00:45:10 ◼   ► you have three people talking,

00:45:12 ◼   ► and you know, it's only a 45 minute interview.

00:45:15 ◼   ► You know, once you rule out the formalities,

00:45:17 ◼   ► like there's not a whole lot of time

00:45:18 ◼   ► for actual in-depth discussion when you have three people

00:45:21 ◼   ► who wanna talk, as we know, 'cause that's why our show

00:45:22 ◼   ► is never 45 minutes long.

00:45:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:25 ◼   ► We're lucky to have one segment be 45 minutes long

00:45:27 ◼   ► on one topic.

00:45:28 ◼   ► - That's our show's logo, is it never 45 minutes?

00:45:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, so let's get started.

00:45:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:33 ◼   ► So, you know, I think a lot of it was just time,

00:45:36 ◼   ► but I also think, you know, this is Apple PR

00:45:38 ◼   ► we're talking about, and even though these are executives

00:45:40 ◼   ► coming on a talk show with our friend John,

00:45:42 ◼   ► and in a more casual environment,

00:45:45 ◼   ► this is still high-power executives

00:45:47 ◼   ► from the biggest technology company in the universe,

00:45:50 ◼   ► et cetera, with very strong PR strategy and PR control.

00:45:55 ◼   ► You know, these aren't people who are gonna go off,

00:45:58 ◼   ► just go off the deep end and have a couple drinks

00:46:00 ◼   ► on the show and then tell us all the secrets.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Like, that isn't what this is, you know.

00:46:03 ◼   ► This is, in part, it's probably to help humanize

00:46:07 ◼   ► that there are people at this company,

00:46:08 ◼   ► not just robots and a brick wall,

00:46:10 ◼   ► like it's actually humans doing the best they can.

00:46:12 ◼   ► It's to humanize them and also,

00:46:14 ◼   ► I think it was really about this discussion of software and service quality. It was very

00:46:21 ◼   ► obvious that they were prepared with stats and various authorized figures they were able

00:46:28 ◼   ► to give out about how well they're doing, how well their quality is going, the crash

00:46:32 ◼   ► rates, the number of Apple Music subscribers, how well the websites and the web services

00:46:37 ◼   ► hold up under all these loads. They were very clearly prepared with PR-approved stats they

00:46:44 ◼   ► they could share to demonstrate that we don't really have these big quality problems/we

00:46:50 ◼   ► have good reasons to have quality problems. It was kind of like this slightly defensive

00:46:55 ◼   ► but not in a really aggressive way. It read to me or it listened to me. It listened a

00:47:07 ◼   ► little defensive.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - The blue is red, look it up, it's an altered definition.

00:47:10 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

00:47:11 ◼   ► But yeah, it seemed slightly defensive,

00:47:14 ◼   ► but mostly just like, almost in denial

00:47:19 ◼   ► that there are any real downward slopes going on here.

00:47:24 ◼   ► And that might be true from a lot of things

00:47:26 ◼   ► they talked about.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I mean, their web services are at ridiculous scale,

00:47:30 ◼   ► and they are mostly working most of the time.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And they do have tons of people using it,

00:47:36 ◼   ► But the only nitpicks I had with it really,

00:47:39 ◼   ► besides that I wish it could be longer,

00:47:41 ◼   ► but I understand why it probably couldn't be,

00:47:43 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think you can get

00:47:44 ◼   ► two high-power Apple executives

00:47:46 ◼   ► to give you like three hours on a podcast

00:47:50 ◼   ► as much as we would like them to.

00:47:51 ◼   ► But my main nitpicks with it were basically

00:47:55 ◼   ► that there really wasn't enough time

00:47:58 ◼   ► to kind of fight back a little bit

00:48:01 ◼   ► or to ask, a lot of the things,

00:48:03 ◼   ► a lot of their defenses were using excuses

00:48:06 ◼   ► that are totally within Apple's control to change.

00:48:09 ◼   ► So for instance, the biggest one stuck out to me

00:48:11 ◼   ► was when Craig Federighi was,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and overall I thought both Craig and Andy

00:48:18 ◼   ► came off very well.

00:48:19 ◼   ► But Craig, during one part he was saying

00:48:22 ◼   ► how people liked Snow Leopard back in the day,

00:48:25 ◼   ► but nobody ever really installed Snow Leopard 10.6.0,

00:48:29 ◼   ► and most of the time people were spending

00:48:31 ◼   ► on like 10.6.4, 10.6.5, et cetera.

00:48:34 ◼   ► And so he was basically saying like, you know,

00:48:37 ◼   ► back then they had way fewer total users

00:48:39 ◼   ► and also people would wait longer before

00:48:41 ◼   ► upgrading to the newest stuff.

00:48:43 ◼   ► Well, very heavily promoted, very heavily pushed,

00:48:47 ◼   ► often automatic software updates

00:48:49 ◼   ► are within Apple's control.

00:48:50 ◼   ► Apple has themselves very aggressively pushed OS updates

00:48:55 ◼   ► every release since then.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And they used to even be paid.

00:48:58 ◼   ► That was I think the first one that was,

00:49:00 ◼   ► was that 30 bucks?

00:49:01 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - And they might have been free after that.

00:49:03 ◼   ► But like, so back then they were paid

00:49:05 ◼   ► and they were a bigger deal.

00:49:06 ◼   ► And also, most critically, they didn't come out every year.

00:49:10 ◼   ► You know, back then the release cycle

00:49:12 ◼   ► was more like every two years.

00:49:13 ◼   ► I don't know, John, you probably know the exact average

00:49:15 ◼   ► 'cause you had to write reviews of all of them.

00:49:17 ◼   ► But you know, back then we had these longer cycles.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And of course, you know, the products were simpler

00:49:24 ◼   ► because they were doing less.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And there is a valid point to be made

00:49:27 ◼   ► that we now live in a way more complicated

00:49:30 ◼   ► the computing environment because we have so many more devices that are doing so many

00:49:32 ◼   ► more things, interacting with so many more services. But the argument that Apple is somehow

00:49:39 ◼   ► or rather the argument that you can excuse more flaws today because everyone upgrades

00:49:44 ◼   ► really fast to the latest OS today I don't think is a valid defense because Apple is

00:49:50 ◼   ► the one pushing the updates that frequently and also Apple is the one who nowadays the

00:49:55 ◼   ► OS's never even get to like a .5 or .6 release anymore.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Like the OS's now, they're changed every year

00:50:02 ◼   ► with major releases and a major release

00:50:04 ◼   ► has kind of allowed to be a little bit less stable.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And so now it feels like we are not reaching the states

00:50:10 ◼   ► that we used to reach for half the release cycle

00:50:12 ◼   ► where things were pretty stable and you could update

00:50:15 ◼   ► from like, you know, Leopard to 10.6.4

00:50:18 ◼   ► and be relatively assured that,

00:50:20 ◼   ► oh, they worked it all out by now.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Now it seems like they don't have time

00:50:23 ◼   ► to work it all out anymore.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And that is entirely an Apple-created construct.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Apple has created these conditions.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Apple is the one pushing these conditions.

00:50:31 ◼   ► It's totally within Apple's control

00:50:33 ◼   ► to not heavily push the updates when it's still at a .0,

00:50:37 ◼   ► to not do updates every year if they don't want to

00:50:40 ◼   ► for something like the Mac, which is not even high profile.

00:50:44 ◼   ► This is totally within Apple's control to fix

00:50:47 ◼   ► or to make better, to improve.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And so that is not a valid defense.

00:50:52 ◼   ► - Before, I wanna pick at some of the things

00:50:54 ◼   ► said as well and the format, but I also want to hear—I'm going somewhere with this

00:50:58 ◼   ► "why were they on the show" thing, and I want to hear if Casey has the same impression

00:51:02 ◼   ► that they were on to talk about software quality, or if you thought they were on for some other

00:51:05 ◼   ► reason or if they were on for no reason.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I think most simply it was about software quality, but I agree that it was a more meandering,

00:51:15 ◼   ► less focused appearance than I would have expected if they were doing damage control.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And I'm not sure if that's deliberate, if this meandering and this kind of casual conversation

00:51:27 ◼   ► was to lead us to believe that it wasn't damage control, that it was just because, and they

00:51:34 ◼   ► just felt like talking to Gruber.

00:51:36 ◼   ► But I would say that were it not for Walt's article, and clearly this podcast, I don't

00:51:42 ◼   ► think that, I don't see why they would have felt the need to go on Jon's show.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And I don't mean that as a slight to Gruber at all.

00:51:49 ◼   ► I just, it's not a normal thing for one, let alone two executives to just decide to go on a podcast.

00:51:57 ◼   ► So I think it was about damage control, but I think whether or not it was deliberate,

00:52:03 ◼   ► it was loose enough so that you couldn't say it was explicitly about damage control.

00:52:09 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** And I am leading up to Marco's points here, so bear with me. But my

00:52:13 ◼   ► related question to this is

00:52:15 ◼   ► What is the job of insert whatever Craig's title is her insert?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Whatever Eddie's title is like senior vice president software or whatever like what is their job?

00:52:24 ◼   ► What if you were to look at their job description if they were hiring a new one if you know?

00:52:27 ◼   ► Craig retires and they want to hire a replacement and they don't want to permit from within whatever like what?

00:52:32 ◼   ► What is the job description of those executives and I can tell you in the Steve Jobs era?

00:52:37 ◼   ► The job description for all those super important guys, you know head of all of os10

00:52:42 ◼   ► you know Bertrand Cerlet or whatever or like gonna spearhead of the iOS team or whatever,

00:52:47 ◼   ► that nowhere in that job description was be the mouthpiece for Apple. Talk to the public

00:52:55 ◼   ► in a way that moves public opinion in the direction that Apple wants to move. It was just

00:53:01 ◼   ► absolutely not in any of their job descriptions because they never talked to the press. They

00:53:05 ◼   ► weren't allowed to talk to the press. They barely talked to developers. Like, that there was not,

00:53:10 ◼   ► and it's different than many other companies. Lots of other companies you could say, "Oh, well,

00:53:14 ◼   ► once you reach a certain level on the executive ladder, part of your job is to talk to the public

00:53:19 ◼   ► in some way." Right? Now, mediated by the PR department, so on and so forth, but you become

00:53:24 ◼   ► a public figure that occasionally says things with the blessing of the corporation in an effort to

00:53:31 ◼   ► change public opinion or to get your message out there or whatever. There's not a lot of those

00:53:38 ◼   ► people. It's not like everybody in the company is the voice of the company. But now, in the

00:53:42 ◼   ► post-jobs era and the more open Apple, which we all like, clearly some of these people

00:53:47 ◼   ► at a high enough level are now tasked with essentially, or tasking themselves with it.

00:53:53 ◼   ► We don't know how it's motivating or whatever, but they are being allowed. The company, Apple

00:53:57 ◼   ► as a company, has decided, we're going to send Craig Federighi to 17 different websites

00:54:03 ◼   ► and the talk show to tell them about the Swift open source project. We're not just going

00:54:07 ◼   ► have a press release, we're not just going to have someone say something in a keynote,

00:54:10 ◼   ► we're not just going to issue official statements through PR channels, we're going to send this

00:54:15 ◼   ► person, whose job up to this point did not really involve a lot of public statements about things,

00:54:21 ◼   ► he's going to go out there and promote the Swift open source project and try to hit the points that

00:54:26 ◼   ► we've all agreed that are the bullet points. And like Mark was saying, the little sheet of whatever

00:54:30 ◼   ► stats you want to say, whatever facts you want to get out there, like basically doing the job of PR,

00:54:34 ◼   ► but now there's a human doing it. And so now you have these two guys, Eddie and Craig, coming on

00:54:40 ◼   ► a very casual type of situation where they are talking unfiltered. It's not real time,

00:54:46 ◼   ► it's not live, but it's very, you know, it's just kind of like, we're going to talk and we're going

00:54:50 ◼   ► to discuss things. And the reason I ask about this is, as in what their job is, is like,

00:54:58 ◼   ► that skill, being able to go somewhere in an atmosphere like that and hit the points that you

00:55:05 ◼   ► want to hit and not sound defensive and move public opinion and not make any missteps, that's

00:55:14 ◼   ► not an easy thing to do. Not that I'm saying either one of them are bad at it, they're much

00:55:17 ◼   ► better than I would ever be. They're very skilled at their jobs, but their job historically has not

00:55:21 ◼   ► included this. And when I listen to that episode, I'm thinking some of these things, as Marco

00:55:26 ◼   ► were clearly written down.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Like that these are the points that we're going to hit

00:55:30 ◼   ► about reliability and blah, blah, blah.

00:55:32 ◼   ► You might think that Apple is like,

00:55:35 ◼   ► oh, Apple knows all and controls all.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So every single thing that was said in that program

00:55:38 ◼   ► was clearly planned ahead of time.

00:55:39 ◼   ► When EdiQ said that there's going to be a new version

00:55:42 ◼   ► of the Apple TV remote app for the iPhone

00:55:44 ◼   ► that includes all the functionality of the remote

00:55:46 ◼   ► and you'll be able to play games with that.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Either that information was already out there

00:55:49 ◼   ► and Gruber just didn't happen to know about it,

00:55:51 ◼   ► or it was intentionally broken on the talk show

00:55:53 ◼   ► that they said, "You're allowed to discuss this."

00:55:55 ◼   ► But I think there's also a possibility

00:55:57 ◼   ► that EdiQ had just forgotten which things were public

00:56:00 ◼   ► and which things were not,

00:56:02 ◼   ► and had accidentally officially confirmed

00:56:05 ◼   ► the updated version of the Apple remote application

00:56:07 ◼   ► that maybe every developer knew.

00:56:08 ◼   ► I mean, I don't keep up with this,

00:56:09 ◼   ► who cares, it's not a story or whatever.

00:56:11 ◼   ► - That was public, by the way.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - All right, well anyway, that type of thing.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Where are all Apple executives so well trained at PR,

00:56:20 ◼   ► despite having never done it

00:56:22 ◼   ► as part of their job description,

00:56:24 ◼   ► that it is impossible for them to make a mistake.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And I think it is possible for them to make a mistake.

00:56:29 ◼   ► And I think every time that Apple executives

00:56:31 ◼   ► go into an atmosphere like this,

00:56:33 ◼   ► it is a risk from the old world perspective of Apple of like,

00:56:36 ◼   ► but what if they accidentally say something

00:56:38 ◼   ► they're not supposed to say?

00:56:39 ◼   ► I mean, again, a PR person is probably involved,

00:56:41 ◼   ► the show could be edited, it's not live, so on and so forth,

00:56:43 ◼   ► it's not that big of a risk.

00:56:44 ◼   ► But it is entirely different.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Like if I was in these jobs, I'd be like,

00:56:49 ◼   ► I've been working here for X number of years

00:56:50 ◼   ► and I never had to do this as part of my job.

00:56:52 ◼   ► But now it's like a high pressure situation where you are supposed to speak for the company,

00:56:58 ◼   ► don't make any mistakes, and by the way, this is part of your job now, and anytime something

00:57:01 ◼   ► goes wrong, we send you out to do it.

00:57:03 ◼   ► And even if they technically don't say anything they're not supposed to say or whatever, as

00:57:08 ◼   ► Marco pointed out, it doesn't mean that they're going to be able to present the information

00:57:12 ◼   ► in a way that moves public opinion in the direction that they want.

00:57:15 ◼   ► So for example, if they sound very defensive and don't give convincing reasons, that may

00:57:20 ◼   ► make things worse instead of better, reinforcing our worst notions or whatever about what's

00:57:25 ◼   ► going on inside Apple. Or if they pointedly don't address particular points. Say it

00:57:31 ◼   ► had been an aggressive interview and they were being pressed they could have looked

00:57:33 ◼   ► bad. There's so many dangers and it's weird for me to think about this ever being part

00:57:40 ◼   ► of the job of someone who started their career as a programmer and who was a very technical

00:57:44 ◼   ► person and is now asked to do this thing.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and I think part of the risk evaluation here

00:57:51 ◼   ► is that they aren't sending pretty much anybody ever,

00:57:55 ◼   ► and if they do send somebody, it's like Tim Cook,

00:57:58 ◼   ► to general purpose interviewers out in the regular media.

00:58:03 ◼   ► They're sending these people to John Gruber.

00:58:05 ◼   ► They know that he's a respectable guy

00:58:08 ◼   ► who gets Apple very well,

00:58:10 ◼   ► and who has a good relationship with Apple.

00:58:12 ◼   ► That's not an accident that they're giving him this access

00:58:16 ◼   ► that nobody else really gets or that very few people get

00:58:19 ◼   ► because they know that he's not gonna be all sensational

00:58:22 ◼   ► on them and be super aggressive or just spend

00:58:25 ◼   ► the whole 45 minutes asking them about future iPhones,

00:58:27 ◼   ► which they will never talk about.

00:58:30 ◼   ► Certainly, it is still a risk to go,

00:58:33 ◼   ► at least mostly unscripted.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I mean, even when he had Phil at WBC live,

00:58:36 ◼   ► that was even more of a risk 'cause that was live.

00:58:38 ◼   ► That was live in front of a few hundred people

00:58:40 ◼   ► and broadcast the internet to a few thousand more at least.

00:58:44 ◼   ► - I feel like Phil is actually good at that.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I feel like that's always, he's been in marketing,

00:58:47 ◼   ► so I feel like that has been part of his job description.

00:58:49 ◼   ► Even if he's not speaking for the company,

00:58:51 ◼   ► he essentially was telling people what to say

00:58:53 ◼   ► on behalf of the company as part of his role

00:58:55 ◼   ► as the chief of marketing.

00:58:57 ◼   ► So yeah, you're right, it's much harder

00:58:59 ◼   ► like in front of a live audience

00:59:01 ◼   ► where you can't take back anything

00:59:02 ◼   ► and there's no editing or anything like that.

00:59:04 ◼   ► But Phil, I feel like is an old hand at this

00:59:07 ◼   ► and has no problem.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Whereas particularly Craig always strikes me

00:59:10 ◼   ► as a technical person who has had this role

00:59:13 ◼   ► thrust upon him.

00:59:14 ◼   ► He's been thrust onto the stage at Keynotes,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and he's gotten really good at that.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And now he's just going off the cuff.

00:59:19 ◼   ► And kind of the same thing with Eddie,

00:59:21 ◼   ► where you didn't see a lot of him on stage

00:59:23 ◼   ► until recent years, right?

00:59:25 ◼   ► And maybe that's just part of his ascent in the organization.

00:59:28 ◼   ► But having that be part of your job,

00:59:29 ◼   ► and I'm saying that not as if I think it's a bad thing,

00:59:33 ◼   ► that like, oh, well, this is a danger,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and Apple should cut it out.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Merely that this new open Apple that we all like,

00:59:41 ◼   ► this is part of what comes with it.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Part of what comes with it is understanding

00:59:44 ◼   ► on both sides of the fence that being more open means that human beings are going to

00:59:47 ◼   ► come out and be open. And if they say things wrong or whatever, you can't hold them to

00:59:52 ◼   ► the same standards as we held the carefully controlled manicured PR presence of the old

00:59:58 ◼   ► Apple. Because you can't have it both ways. We're like, we want you to be more open, but

01:00:02 ◼   ► we want every single thing out of every person's mouth to be perfect all the time. Right? You

01:00:05 ◼   ► have to, the more you're open, the more we all in this sort of dialogue is, you know,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and company have to become comfortable with the idea that in an open dialogue, it's

01:00:17 ◼   ► not as clean and shiny and perfect.

01:00:18 ◼   ► And so if they sound a little bit defensive, it's because they're human beings and

01:00:21 ◼   ► they're being asked questions that they might feel defensive about, and you can't

01:00:25 ◼   ► excoriate them for being the humans that we always wish they were.

01:00:28 ◼   ► So I want to be clear that what I'm trying to do is I want to encourage more of this.

01:00:33 ◼   ► And I'm almost kind of sad that they didn't make any big blunders, because I think if

01:00:37 ◼   ► they did, I think it would be fine.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Well, but I think you're right that it would be fine

01:00:42 ◼   ► However, Apple wouldn't think it would be fine

01:00:44 ◼   ► And so if they if they had made any big blunders

01:00:47 ◼   ► It would greatly reduce the chances of us getting more access to them in the future like this what I'm trying to say to encourage Apple

01:00:53 ◼   ► basically say

01:00:55 ◼   ► At least I am and I think we all should be just more forgiving so that they can they can feel safe

01:01:00 ◼   ► Doing this because we want a more open dialogue and I think

01:01:05 ◼   ► If anyone in sort of the Apple tech press decides to jump on these type, it's just gonna scare them back into their hole

01:01:10 ◼   ► So let's let's let's be nice

01:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah, but but you know we can be nice and we can be civil and we can still disagree with things

01:01:18 ◼   ► They say or we can criticize, you know things they say in normal civil ways, you know

01:01:22 ◼   ► And so I don't think I'm not saying like and I don't think you're saying that we should take it easy on them necessarily

01:01:28 ◼   ► just that we should you know be civil and reasonable and not not like

01:01:33 ◼   ► You know kind of give them the benefit of the doubt if they like misspeak slightly or something is that is roughly what you're saying

01:01:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and as for like your specific points about I mean you're right

01:01:43 ◼   ► It was a short interview there wasn't a lot of time to get into things and as I said when Craig was on

01:01:47 ◼   ► They're not going to go into the level of detail that we go into about these things. That's not the forum for it

01:01:52 ◼   ► It's not as if like that's part of all you know

01:01:55 ◼   ► What is their job and also what is the purpose of a podcast like this when you have these executives there?

01:02:00 ◼   ► that is not the time to

01:02:03 ◼   ► harangue them about whatever your pet problem is.

01:02:07 ◼   ► You are not going to affect the, you know,

01:02:10 ◼   ► the design, Apple's Macintosh application design philosophy

01:02:14 ◼   ► that leaves a big empty tool bar, right?

01:02:15 ◼   ► You are not going to change that philosophy

01:02:17 ◼   ► by arguing with Greg Federighi about it on a podcast, right?

01:02:21 ◼   ► - Right, and you're not gonna get him to say,

01:02:22 ◼   ► "Yeah, you're right, it sucks."

01:02:23 ◼   ► Like, you aren't gonna get ADQ to say,

01:02:26 ◼   ► "Yeah, iTunes is horrible,

01:02:27 ◼   ► "and the iTunes store infrastructure is just the worst."

01:02:30 ◼   ► - Eh, but hold on.

01:02:31 ◼   ► I mean, he did admit that iTunes has challenges or whatever,

01:02:33 ◼   ► but the whole point is you're not going to--

01:02:36 ◼   ► there's a time and place for that in the writ small

01:02:39 ◼   ► that I think we're all at this point familiar with,

01:02:41 ◼   ► is that if you go to WWDC and you find the one guy who

01:02:44 ◼   ► writes the obscure framework that your application is using,

01:02:47 ◼   ► you could possibly convince him one on one

01:02:50 ◼   ► to change this parameter in this API

01:02:52 ◼   ► to do this thing in the next major version.

01:02:53 ◼   ► That can actually happen, right?

01:02:56 ◼   ► That is the level of individuals' ability

01:02:59 ◼   ► to talk to other individuals as humans.

01:03:02 ◼   ► But it's not in public.

01:03:04 ◼   ► That person who you convince will never

01:03:05 ◼   ► admit that they talked to you.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And it's like a parameter on an API call, right?

01:03:09 ◼   ► It's very different than trying to convince-- flying out

01:03:15 ◼   ► to Cupertino and sitting down at a giant table

01:03:17 ◼   ► with the entire executive team at Apple

01:03:20 ◼   ► and say, in this 10-minute presentation,

01:03:22 ◼   ► I'm going to convince you that you need to redesign photos

01:03:25 ◼   ► in this particular way.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And then they will dismiss you.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And then they will realize they've

01:03:29 ◼   ► working on a new version of photos for like three years, a new version of iTunes for 12

01:03:32 ◼   ► years, or a new file system for X number of years.

01:03:34 ◼   ► And you don't have enough information, put it another way, you don't have enough information

01:03:38 ◼   ► to be compelling to them.

01:03:39 ◼   ► So I think all we can do as the sort of the public out here is merely explain things from

01:03:45 ◼   ► our perspective.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Because we just simply don't have enough information to convince Apple to do anything.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Because you have no idea, we still have no idea what they're actually doing.

01:03:56 ◼   ► What we can do is say, "Here's how we feel as users," and hope that gets through to them.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And if we feel like there's a communication barrier, then that's what them coming on podcast

01:04:05 ◼   ► is about, is saying, "We hear you.

01:04:06 ◼   ► We understand your concerns, and you can go back and forth on them and try to clarify

01:04:10 ◼   ► them or whatever."

01:04:11 ◼   ► And when it feels like there's a gap, like in this case where Marco was saying, "Well,

01:04:15 ◼   ► you don't understand.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Here's all the things we have to deal with," where you start sounding defensive and you

01:04:20 ◼   ► could come back with snappy answers like, "Well, Google has to deal with this kind of

01:04:22 ◼   ► volume too," and they do it better.

01:04:24 ◼   ► So what's the deal there?

01:04:25 ◼   ► "Well, iTunes has been big and bloated for years and everybody agrees on this, so where's

01:04:27 ◼   ► the new version?"

01:04:28 ◼   ► And you say you agree, but where is it?

01:04:30 ◼   ► They're not going to tell you, "Oh, well, the new version, we've been working on that

01:04:33 ◼   ► for a while now.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's going to come out and it's going to be split into this number of applications and

01:04:35 ◼   ► blah blah blah, and it didn't make this really..."

01:04:37 ◼   ► They're not going to tell you that.

01:04:38 ◼   ► So all they can do is give their perspective in a sanitized way.

01:04:42 ◼   ► So it's a little bit like boys and girls at the dance at opposite sides of the gym and

01:04:47 ◼   ► no one going into the middle to dance.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And it has to be that way because at the very least, Apple is not going to reveal itself

01:04:57 ◼   ► in the public forum.

01:04:59 ◼   ► We have the advantage of being able to reveal all of our frustrations and put them out there

01:05:02 ◼   ► and then have Apple hear them in whatever way they want to hear them.

01:05:05 ◼   ► But Apple is not going to be that forthcoming.

01:05:07 ◼   ► So it is still a strange relationship, but I like the fact that there is any kind of

01:05:12 ◼   ► communication going in both directions these days.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been really impressed by Apple's willingness to communicate, and I agree with

01:05:20 ◼   ► you, I would really hate to see that stopped.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I've really enjoyed these episodes of the talk show, and if they ever decided to branch

01:05:28 ◼   ► out into other podcasts, I'm sure that it could be accommodated.

01:05:33 ◼   ► With that said, I was reflecting on my memory of the episode, and I listened to it pretty

01:05:38 ◼   ► much immediately once it was out, so this was almost a week ago now.

01:05:41 ◼   ► But there was a bit of a theme.

01:05:44 ◼   ► You keep saying, Jon, being defensive, and I think that's a fair characterization.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But reflecting on it, the pieces that struck me the most was a little bit of playing the

01:05:55 ◼   ► victim.

01:05:56 ◼   ► iTunes is really old, and we have to support devices that go back to the beginning of time.

01:06:02 ◼   ► You know, what do you expect us to do?

01:06:04 ◼   ► We have a lot of users, guys.

01:06:07 ◼   ► You don't get it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► We have a lot of users.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Jon Streeter Let me tell you all the things we do well.

01:06:10 ◼   ► look at all these transactions we process. You know, EdiQ is ready with big numbers for

01:06:15 ◼   ► presentations. We do a lot of these things. And you have to acknowledge, yes, they do do those

01:06:20 ◼   ► things. But the communication barrier is like, we understand what you're doing is difficult.

01:06:24 ◼   ► It's like playing the victim is one way to say it. But the other way is like,

01:06:27 ◼   ► it's like being in operations or whatever you want to call it at any big company where you're

01:06:33 ◼   ► the one responsible for servers and stuff working. Nobody cares about your job when everything goes

01:06:37 ◼   ► well. They only care about it when something breaks. You get no credit, practically, for

01:06:43 ◼   ► "Hey, did you guys realize that for the past X number of hours or days or whatever,

01:06:47 ◼   ► this service was perfectly fine?" No. They just expected it. It's like the power company

01:06:51 ◼   ► that Marco was just talking about. Nobody cares about the power company when the power

01:06:53 ◼   ► is on. You only care about the power company in the one day a year it's off, and then

01:06:57 ◼   ► you're super pissed off at them. So in some ways, it's a thankless job. But that is

01:07:01 ◼   ► the job. If you work at the power company, you understand that's the job. When the

01:07:04 ◼   ► power goes out because of something, you don't say, "Look, you don't understand how many

01:07:08 ◼   ► miles of lines we have, and there's ice all over them, and tree branches leaning on them,

01:07:13 ◼   ► and birds pecking at them, and we don't have enough tax money to fund it."

01:07:16 ◼   ► The power company can make all those same exact complaints, and they should to the parties

01:07:19 ◼   ► that can change things.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But when your power goes out, you don't want to hear it.

01:07:22 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:07:23 ◼   ► And this victim sort of card got played a couple more times.

01:07:28 ◼   ► "Oh, yes, we have a lot of users, and yes, we are decent at serving a lot of users,"

01:07:33 ◼   ► say with iMessage, but you have to understand that we scale exponentially, which all of

01:07:39 ◼   ► these things, to be clear, are fair observations. But still, it's, "Oh, you guys don't get it.

01:07:45 ◼   ► You don't get it."

01:07:46 ◼   ► But the one that we haven't talked about that I thought was most fascinating was a pretty

01:07:50 ◼   ► clear—I'm going to use the word "admission," but that's not really what I'm looking for—but

01:07:55 ◼   ► acknowledgement maybe? A pretty clear acknowledgement from Craig that radar is kind of fundamentally

01:08:01 ◼   ► broken for serving the public.

01:08:06 ◼   ► That's like acknowledging that it's dark at night.

01:08:08 ◼   ► I mean, there's some things you just can't, like, yeah.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Some things are undeniable.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Even Eddie admitted iTunes was bloated, but radar, yeah.

01:08:16 ◼   ► No one is going to be—I don't think it's possible to send anyone from Apple to come

01:08:19 ◼   ► out to defend RadarWeb.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And I think you're right, but nevertheless, I thought it was an important step for it

01:08:27 ◼   ► to be said in public that, "Hey, this is broken."

01:08:30 ◼   ► And there was a little bit of victim playing here too.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Well, you don't understand.

01:08:33 ◼   ► That's super important for us internally.

01:08:35 ◼   ► This serves a really, really big purpose for us.

01:08:38 ◼   ► We can't just throw out the baby with the bathwater.

01:08:41 ◼   ► We really need it internally, but we probably have some room to grow externally.

01:08:48 ◼   ► And I thought that victim playing, all of which to some degree was fair, was interesting.

01:08:54 ◼   ► It was very subtle.

01:08:56 ◼   ► But most of all, I just thought it was fascinating to see some admissions of infallibility coming

01:09:02 ◼   ► from the two of them.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think someone with more PR training, more formal PR training, would know that those

01:09:07 ◼   ► are not winning angles.

01:09:08 ◼   ► As Marco pointed out in the episode that we almost titled "E for Effort," like, that

01:09:13 ◼   ► if you work really hard on something, you can't come to the public with that.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Like that's what you tell yourself internally, right?

01:09:18 ◼   ► You can have these discussions internally about, here's why it's really hard to do

01:09:22 ◼   ► whatever, to deal with iTunes because it's really popular, to deal with updates.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Everything they're saying is true.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But when you go to the public, part of PR training is to know what can we say to the

01:09:32 ◼   ► public that is going to move their opinion in the way that we want to move it.

01:09:37 ◼   ► That's the problem with having engineers talk to anybody.

01:09:39 ◼   ► They will just tell you the truth, and they will explain the real situations.

01:09:43 ◼   ► And if your job is PR, it's not to simply tell the truth about the situation, and not

01:09:49 ◼   ► even to tell a limited version of the truth. It's to figure out what can I say that will

01:09:53 ◼   ► make people change their mind slightly about issue X or Y or... It doesn't mean you have

01:09:58 ◼   ► to lie or be manipulative or whatever, but it is a skill. There's a reason that PR is

01:10:03 ◼   ► a profession and not like, "Oh, the engineers want us to do PR on the side." It is an actual

01:10:07 ◼   ► real skill, and it takes a while. Same thing with presenting on stage. It takes a while

01:10:12 ◼   ► to get good at, and there is training involved and everything like that. I think both of

01:10:16 ◼   ► guys on the show showed a slight lack of PR training in terms of there are things that

01:10:24 ◼   ► they said that they either shouldn't have said or should have said in a different way

01:10:27 ◼   ► to move the needle in the direction it seemed to me that they wanted to move it.

01:10:32 ◼   ► And you know, I like them more for it, like in terms of it seems more human, and I do

01:10:36 ◼   ► want to hear the inside scoop and I do want to hear what they're thinking about these

01:10:39 ◼   ► things, but PR-wise, it may not have been effective as another angle on the same information.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I think if they were more strictly PR trained

01:10:50 ◼   ► or were adhering more strictly to PR styles

01:10:52 ◼   ► of speaking and responding,

01:10:55 ◼   ► I think it would have been far less interesting.

01:10:57 ◼   ► - So here's my perfect example of the opposite of that.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was, as far as I know, not PR trained,

01:11:04 ◼   ► super interesting, but he knew what to say

01:11:06 ◼   ► to move things in the direction he wanted to move them.

01:11:08 ◼   ► - Oh sure, yeah, but I would say,

01:11:10 ◼   ► when Tim Cook gave these interviews

01:11:14 ◼   ► to like 60 Minutes or whatever,

01:11:15 ◼   ► I've stopped even watching them.

01:11:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, those are boring.

01:11:18 ◼   ► - He's so controlled and so trained

01:11:20 ◼   ► and just his personality is,

01:11:22 ◼   ► he keeps things so close to the vest,

01:11:24 ◼   ► like I get nothing out of them.

01:11:26 ◼   ► - Also, he's like a genuinely nice guy, it seems like.

01:11:29 ◼   ► So it's like, oh, you mean he's nice,

01:11:31 ◼   ► whereas Steve Jobs always had an edge.

01:11:33 ◼   ► - Right, like Steve Jobs, you knew if Steve Jobs

01:11:35 ◼   ► was gonna give some dig at AT&T,

01:11:37 ◼   ► you knew he'd do it in public.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I feel like Tim Cook speaks the way

01:11:43 ◼   ► I would expect most CEOs to speak.

01:11:45 ◼   ► I mean, he's better than the average, certainly,

01:11:47 ◼   ► but it's not in the way that it's a major event

01:11:50 ◼   ► when he talks to a network news show for 20 minutes

01:11:54 ◼   ► about what they're doing.

01:11:55 ◼   ► It's not--

01:11:56 ◼   ► - I mean, we're taking Tim Cook for granted, though,

01:11:57 ◼   ► because I feel like when Tim Cook talks about

01:12:00 ◼   ► the environment or labor practices or human rights

01:12:04 ◼   ► and stuff, I genuinely believe that Tim Cook

01:12:06 ◼   ► really believes those things.

01:12:07 ◼   ► It's not some smarmy kind of,

01:12:10 ◼   ► I'm saying this to make our company.

01:12:12 ◼   ► He seems genuine.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And he seems like a genuine, friendly person

01:12:17 ◼   ► who cares about the world and wants to make it better

01:12:19 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And that can be boring when you're looking for blood

01:12:23 ◼   ► in the water or something like that.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Steve Jobs is the example of like,

01:12:28 ◼   ► I think he was just instinctive.

01:12:30 ◼   ► He was a natural at knowing how to talk,

01:12:33 ◼   ► eventually was a natural.

01:12:34 ◼   ► When he was young, he wasn't great at it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► But the latter day Steve Jobs,

01:12:38 ◼   ► knowing how to talk to the press,

01:12:41 ◼   ► to move the discussion or the issue or public opinion or whatever in the direction he wanted

01:12:46 ◼   ► to use, wanted to go in, while still sounding entirely genuine, human, and interesting.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Because he was willing to say the thing that, you know, take a dig at some other vendor

01:13:00 ◼   ► or say something is crap or something is great or whatever, or make blanket denials that

01:13:06 ◼   ► he goes back on later or whatever.

01:13:07 ◼   ► He was able to do that just instinctively, and that is, I think, a rare skill that, again,

01:13:12 ◼   ► even Steve Jobs didn't have in his early days when he was young and would say terrible things

01:13:15 ◼   ► to the press and regret them later.

01:13:18 ◼   ► And I don't think Craig and Eddie quite have that yet.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But what I'm saying is I think you can be, if not PR trained, better at moving the discussion

01:13:30 ◼   ► while still being both seeming and being entirely human.

01:13:34 ◼   ► I think that the Swift open source thing was a better example of that because there was

01:13:37 ◼   ► wasn't a real like, it wasn't like defensive or trying to change public opinion. It was

01:13:43 ◼   ► merely promoting something that Craig really believed in that actually was a really good

01:13:46 ◼   ► thing. And so he could be very detailed and human and funny and interesting and also promote

01:13:51 ◼   ► the idea that Swift is awesome, that open source is awesome, that Apple is awesome for

01:13:54 ◼   ► doing Swift open source and all that other stuff. All of which he agreed with and was

01:13:58 ◼   ► able to promote in a way that was interesting and engaging. And in this situation, it seems

01:14:04 ◼   ► kind of like these two were thrown to the wolves.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And again, I don't, you know, this is based on no information.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I don't know, did they volunteer for this?

01:14:11 ◼   ► Were they told they should do this?

01:14:13 ◼   ► Did Jon ask them to be on?

01:14:15 ◼   ► You know, who knows what the situation was, but it almost seemed like they found themselves

01:14:19 ◼   ► in a situation where, you know, it's up to you to try to move the needle on this issue

01:14:27 ◼   ► of public opinion about this Walt Bosberg thing.

01:14:29 ◼   ► So here you go.

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01:16:30 ◼   ► - All right, what else are you talking about tonight, John?

01:16:31 ◼   ► - This item's been in the notes for a little bit.

01:16:33 ◼   ► I think I've seen some links to it

01:16:35 ◼   ► 'cause it went around the web a couple weeks ago.

01:16:37 ◼   ► I thought it was worth keeping because, well, anyway,

01:16:40 ◼   ► have you seen the thing I'm about to link to here,

01:16:42 ◼   ► the thing about vector networks from this company Figma?

01:16:45 ◼   ► - No.

01:16:46 ◼   ► - I saw it, but I don't understand it,

01:16:49 ◼   ► but it sounds cool because as somebody,

01:16:52 ◼   ► so the idea of this is a new way

01:16:54 ◼   ► to draw vector art, basically,

01:16:55 ◼   ► and basically a new data structure for vector art.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And I have always been baffled by the few attempts I've made doing vector art, like

01:17:06 ◼   ► as, you know, from my very, very light and very occasional needs to do it. These programs

01:17:11 ◼   ► have always been very hard for me to understand, and it's been very hard for me to achieve

01:17:16 ◼   ► the result I want that seems very obvious, like, "Oh, I just want this line to go from

01:17:19 ◼   ► here to here and be perfectly smooth." And, like, it's so hard to do some of those things

01:17:23 ◼   ► if you aren't familiar with, like, the tools of Bezier curves, basically, and weird stuff

01:17:28 ◼   ► like that.

01:17:29 ◼   ► So do I understand correctly that this is kind of like an alternative to that whole

01:17:32 ◼   ► system that makes more sense?

01:17:33 ◼   ► >> Yeah, so since this, as far as I can tell, is not a piece of software you can download

01:17:37 ◼   ► to try at this point, I'm just going by the various animations and then the description

01:17:42 ◼   ► on their website.

01:17:45 ◼   ► And I don't know if it'll be any good or will do what they say it will do, but I'm most

01:17:49 ◼   ► interested in it because very often I see in discussions about software for any platform,

01:17:55 ◼   ► iOS or the Mac or whatever.

01:17:57 ◼   ► A lot of people, myself included, fall into the fatalistic notion sometimes that there's

01:18:05 ◼   ► no point in making an application that does X because that's a solved problem and you

01:18:10 ◼   ► don't need another one and the market's all tied up and you don't want to go red ocean,

01:18:14 ◼   ► you want to go blue ocean.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Go where nobody else is and find a market that is unserved and serve that one.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Aren't most oceans blue?

01:18:21 ◼   ► It's just an analogy.

01:18:23 ◼   ► It's the Nintendo Wii thing.

01:18:24 ◼   ► You know about this, right?

01:18:25 ◼   ► Just seems like a poor color choice.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Red ocean is because there's blood in the water from the competitors eating each other.

01:18:32 ◼   ► But doesn't blue ocean mean there's no customers because it's just empty?

01:18:34 ◼   ► Yes, that's right.

01:18:35 ◼   ► You want to go where no one is serving the customers.

01:18:38 ◼   ► There are no competitors.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Like the other competitors are the things that are changing the color of the water.

01:18:42 ◼   ► No competitors are there eating each other.

01:18:44 ◼   ► You'll just be the only one there and no one is eating you so there's no blood in the ocean.

01:18:47 ◼   ► But you have no better to eat either because there's no customers.

01:18:49 ◼   ► The water is your customers.

01:18:50 ◼   ► It's not a perfect analogy.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I didn't make it up.

01:18:52 ◼   ► It's Japanese, I think.

01:18:53 ◼   ► think. Anyway, I first started it for the Wii. Go reference old hyper-creative episodes,

01:18:58 ◼   ► as always. The answer key is there. It's like the Rosetta Stone. Just go back.

01:19:01 ◼   ► We should totally review business books on this show.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Oh, God. You thought you were escaped, Casey.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously. Yeah. So anyway, with the vector drawing apps, I had the same experience.

01:19:10 ◼   ► Like, I used Illustrator 88 and learned how to use vector tools in the various applications.

01:19:15 ◼   ► It seemed to be more variety back then with, like, MacDraw and all the other applications

01:19:18 ◼   ► you guys have never heard of or used. But these days, it has settled down, and most

01:19:22 ◼   ► vector drawing applications, now that Illustrator has wiped them all from the face of the planet,

01:19:27 ◼   ► Freehand isn't even around the name or whatever, follow a similar theme in terms of the controls.

01:19:33 ◼   ► A lot of it is just because of, historically speaking, that once you establish the sort

01:19:36 ◼   ► of keyboard modifiers that everyone is used to and everything, that it's like, "Oh, well,

01:19:41 ◼   ► drawing vectors in this particular way."

01:19:42 ◼   ► And at this point, if you're not someone who uses a vector drawing app all the time, you

01:19:47 ◼   ► will find it weird, and you, like Marco, will not be able to do what you wanted to do, because

01:19:51 ◼   ► it will seem like I just want to connect this line to that line to that line and why doesn't

01:19:54 ◼   ► it let me connect here and oh this is actually connected to that line it's actually disconnected

01:19:58 ◼   ► and there's a little end cap sticking out and why can't this curve go the way I want and

01:20:02 ◼   ► you know what is the winding number and why when I try to fill this region does it leak out because

01:20:06 ◼   ► it looks like it's an entirely closed circle and all this other crap and at the same time

01:20:10 ◼   ► a software developer would say well I'm not going to do a vector drawing application that

01:20:15 ◼   ► market is sewn up like there are so many strong competitors in there there's great applications

01:20:18 ◼   ► What, who am I even serving with like,

01:20:22 ◼   ► say I make a vector-adurring application

01:20:24 ◼   ► that's really good.

01:20:25 ◼   ► I say it's just, you know, just as good

01:20:27 ◼   ► as one of the strong market leaders.

01:20:29 ◼   ► So what, who's gonna buy mine?

01:20:31 ◼   ► There's already an application that does that

01:20:32 ◼   ► by a vendor that's been around longer,

01:20:34 ◼   ► that has more support, that has, you know,

01:20:35 ◼   ► they have such a head start on me, it's no point.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And I like the idea of this vector networks thing of,

01:20:41 ◼   ► I think in every application domain,

01:20:43 ◼   ► there is the possibility of saying, yeah,

01:20:46 ◼   ► If there's a market that is heavily saturated

01:20:49 ◼   ► with lots of very strong competitors,

01:20:51 ◼   ► that's probably hard to break into.

01:20:53 ◼   ► But if you look at the market and say,

01:20:54 ◼   ► but you know what, they all suck in this one particular way

01:20:57 ◼   ► and their users either don't realize it sucks in that way

01:21:00 ◼   ► or don't care because they've learned the old system.

01:21:02 ◼   ► And there could be people out there

01:21:03 ◼   ► who are not buying vector drawing applications

01:21:05 ◼   ► because these existing ones,

01:21:06 ◼   ► they can't figure out how to use them.

01:21:07 ◼   ► So if I can make a better way to draw vectors,

01:21:10 ◼   ► I can A, get customers that don't buy

01:21:12 ◼   ► these other applications or aren't satisfied with them,

01:21:14 ◼   ► and B, possibly become the new great vector application,

01:21:18 ◼   ► because maybe even designers want to do it this way

01:21:20 ◼   ► and not deal with those frustrations or whatever.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Or you could just fail miserably and realize

01:21:25 ◼   ► that there's no competing with Illustrator and too bad.

01:21:28 ◼   ► But I'm heartened by efforts like this

01:21:32 ◼   ► because it reminds me that there is no problem

01:21:35 ◼   ► that is so well solved that it can't be solved better

01:21:38 ◼   ► by someone else with a better idea.

01:21:40 ◼   ► And so I am looking forward to trying this application,

01:21:43 ◼   ► And if it doesn't work out or is actually worse than the old one, oh well.

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I really like seeing stories like this.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And I really want people to do more things like this.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Because as you can imagine, there is not a single application I use every day that I

01:21:54 ◼   ► don't think could be better in some fundamental way.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Nothing is so perfect.

01:21:58 ◼   ► That's right.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Hey, you did listen to that show.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Good job.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Once or twice.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:03 ◼   ► That is, just glancing at these graphics, yeah, I haven't read the article.

01:22:06 ◼   ► Looks very cool.

01:22:08 ◼   ► My only foray into vector drawing was the world's best app icon with feet.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And so I am not the one to talk about this.

01:22:18 ◼   ► But it looks neat for sure.

01:22:20 ◼   ► I miss what I miss.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Because I'm not good at using the current crop of vector tools.

01:22:24 ◼   ► But what I miss a lot is briefly, I believe, in college.

01:22:29 ◼   ► God, it's so long ago that I can't remember what it was.

01:22:30 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it was AutoCAD.

01:22:32 ◼   ► Everyone will email and tell me what application it was.

01:22:35 ◼   ► But it's the one where you can draw things with the command line in addition to using

01:22:38 ◼   ► the mouse and stuff, it's probably AutoCAD. And for a brief moment, I got pretty good at doing that,

01:22:44 ◼   ► and I could do things with that command line in what I think was AutoCAD that I still can't do

01:22:50 ◼   ► with Illustrator in terms of connect this line to there perpendicular to that, intersect that with

01:22:55 ◼   ► this. Like, I always have such difficulty of like, I just want this point to be on that line, and I

01:23:00 ◼   ► want the angle between the two to be this, and I don't care if it's not on a grid line, and I don't

01:23:04 ◼   ► care like just I can describe to you what I want like in you know in this command line parlance

01:23:09 ◼   ► why stupid pen tool will you refuse to do that why do I have to click option click shift click no

01:23:14 ◼   ► don't start making a curve no don't connect to that line no no you know in AutoCAD I could

01:23:19 ◼   ► always get what I wanted and in form z the only other thing that comes close to that form z is an

01:23:24 ◼   ► old 3d program maybe it's still out there whatever I remember the same thing remember eventually

01:23:29 ◼   ► being able to do pretty much everything that I wanted in that program despite it being incredibly

01:23:33 ◼   ► complicated and yet to this day vector drawing tools defeat me because they

01:23:37 ◼   ► follow a set of rules that I guess I just disagree with and that's all and

01:23:41 ◼   ► refuse to internalize. Fair enough.

01:23:44 ◼   ► All right thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week

01:23:46 ◼   ► Backblaze, Hover, and Harry's and we will see you next week.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:24:00 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:24:04 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:24:14 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:24:20 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

01:24:28 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:24:33 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C,

01:24:38 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse, it's accidental.

01:24:43 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Tech podcast, so long.

01:24:54 ◼   ► So my sandbox title here, I'm thinking

01:24:56 ◼   ► of jumping the possible over. As many people as possible in the sandbox, or as many people

01:25:01 ◼   ► in the sandbox as possible?

01:25:02 ◼   ► Leave it as is.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Leave it as is.

01:25:04 ◼   ► It's already in Squarespace. It's done.

01:25:05 ◼   ► But I don't know if the title is an accurate representation of what we said. I'm just saying,

01:25:09 ◼   ► which one sounds better?

01:25:11 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that was the accurate representation of what you said, and I think it sounds better

01:25:15 ◼   ► as is.

01:25:16 ◼   ► Yeah, agreed.

01:25:17 ◼   ► I think it's—if I was writing it, I would put the possible first.

01:25:19 ◼   ► But this is a podcast, and that's how people speak.

01:25:22 ◼   ► I know. I'm just looking at it and thinking about it. It's a long title. It's got things

01:25:25 ◼   ► you move around. Nothing that is so perfect. No. You mangled that too, good job. Yeah,

01:25:34 ◼   ► oh yeah. It's another meta troll. Yeah, whatever. Nothing that is so imperfect. Whatever.

01:25:39 ◼   ► You get the idea. Whee! How am I this tired? Is that even that late? We've discovered

01:25:44 ◼   ► a new trolling method, slightly misquoting Jon back to himself. That's not new. I do

01:25:49 ◼   ► - I do it to myself, what are you talking about?

01:25:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:54 ◼   ► Every time I listen to myself on a podcast, it happens.

01:25:57 ◼   ► - Wait, can you explain that?

01:25:59 ◼   ► - When I listen to myself, I hear all the things I say wrong

01:26:02 ◼   ► and I'm effectively trolling myself.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, so but it's not like,

01:26:06 ◼   ► you're not like saying as you listen along,

01:26:10 ◼   ► saying in your head what you said differently,

01:26:13 ◼   ► you're just, you're mad that you said something

01:26:15 ◼   ► that was not what you think then is accurate.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I can always hear it.

01:26:18 ◼   ► When I'm the listener, I hear all my mistakes.

01:26:21 ◼   ► - Oh, you should try editing the show.

01:26:23 ◼   ► It's rough, it's brutal.

01:26:24 ◼   ► - Well, at least you get to fix them.

01:26:25 ◼   ► I have no control.

01:26:26 ◼   ► - Well, I can fix some of them.

01:26:28 ◼   ► I mean, like-- - Yeah, but you fixed yours

01:26:29 ◼   ► way better than you fixed mine.

01:26:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, 'cause I'm more critical of myself.

01:26:33 ◼   ► - Would you say you're hypercritical?

01:26:35 ◼   ► - If you edited the show, we would never publish a show.

01:26:38 ◼   ► - That's true. - Oh, you don't know that.

01:26:39 ◼   ► - I've never edited anything.

01:26:41 ◼   ► I have no idea what kind of editor I would be.

01:26:42 ◼   ► - A critical one.

01:26:43 ◼   ► - I would probably do the same thing.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I would fix everything that I said

01:26:45 ◼   ► and leave everyone else's sound down.

01:26:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:49 ◼   ► - No, for me, your part of the show is the easiest to edit

01:26:54 ◼   ► because you talk for long spans, mostly uninterrupted,

01:26:58 ◼   ► and they very rarely require any alterations.

01:27:01 ◼   ► So, most of what you say, I just skip over.

01:27:04 ◼   ► Like, I just skim it for like wider than usual gaps

01:27:07 ◼   ► and shrink those, but for the most part,

01:27:09 ◼   ► I don't even listen to what you say on the edit

01:27:12 ◼   ► 'cause I heard it during the show and I know it was fine.

01:27:13 ◼   ► - All right, well, I listen to it

01:27:14 ◼   ► make mistakes anyway it's fine part of the process you getting you getting the

01:27:20 ◼   ► real John and the edit the raw raw uncut Syracuse sorry Syracuse

01:27:25 ◼   ► oh man you're fine you managed to be fine and now you're just getting inside

01:27:30 ◼   ► your own head about rated a Q sir I don't know Syracuse sir you're fine yeah

01:27:37 ◼   ► it's fine I know you're talking about refer back to the hypercritical episode

01:27:43 ◼   ► where I discuss the primary purpose of speech or writing is to communicate an idea, and

01:27:49 ◼   ► basically if I know you're talking about you've successfully communicated that idea.

01:27:52 ◼   ► See ya.

01:27:53 ◼   ► [BEEP]