00:00:12 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 366. Today's show is brought to you by Instabug,
00:00:20 ◼ ► Calm and Memerful. You may have forgotten, but it's still the Summer of Fun! And I'm one of your hosts,
00:00:27 ◼ ► Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hi, Myke Hurley. Did you know
00:00:31 ◼ ► that on a leap year, you can now listen to every single episode, an episode of Upgrade every day?
00:00:38 ◼ ► Every day. Do you know, I thought last week I was surprised you didn't mention anything about the
00:00:56 ◼ ► if there was a February 29, then you would listen to this on December 31st, and you would have
00:01:02 ◼ ► completed your daily Upgrade pilgrimage. And if it's not a leap year, then this would be the
00:01:09 ◼ ► January 1st of the next year. Happy you've been listening to an Upgrade episode a day for a year.
00:01:15 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. I have a #SnowTalk question that comes from Ryan, and this one feels like one of
00:01:21 ◼ ► those questions that's going to start a war. Ryan asks, "When writing in Markdown, do you use
00:01:34 ◼ ► people who don't know about Markdown. Let me, so Markdown, the idea is you just write it with
00:01:39 ◼ ► plain text, and the styles are implied, and I use Markdown for all my writing. I thought about this.
00:01:45 ◼ ► This is one of those things where, like, they say, "How do you tie your shoes?" and you have
00:01:48 ◼ ► to actually do it in order to be like, "Oh, that's how I do it," because you've internalized it.
00:01:54 ◼ ► The answer is I use underscores around italics. So the rule, by the way, in Markdown is if you use
00:02:03 ◼ ► one of underscores or asterisks, it's italic, and if you use two of underscores or asterisks,
00:02:11 ◼ ► it's bold. So what I do, and I've done this for years, my italics is one underscore around the
00:02:21 ◼ ► italicized phrase, and my bold is two asterisks around the bolded phrase. So that's my answer,
00:02:55 ◼ ► - Yes. - Again, this is one of those things where I know I have a system, I don't know what it is,
00:03:02 ◼ ► and also as well, because some apps interpret it differently anyway, which is just a whole other
00:03:06 ◼ ► annoying thing. I do think that it's a strange decision. To me, I think it would make more sense
00:03:11 ◼ ► to have one asterisk makes it bold, one underscore makes it underlined. I feel like that would be my
00:03:17 ◼ ► perfect-- - I mean, only John Gruber knows for sure, but I think that's the question. I think
00:03:22 ◼ ► what he's doing is, when he built Markdown, is he was recognizing that some people do asterisks,
00:03:28 ◼ ► and some people do underscores, and so he decided to sort of punt on that, and instead just say it's
00:03:33 ◼ ► one for italic and two for bold. But the way I do it is, I don't italicize things with asterisks,
00:03:41 ◼ ► right? It doesn't feel right to me to do it that way, so I do it the other way. And Markdown is
00:03:49 ◼ ► a thing that came out of plain text message board and use net group posting standards, right? When
00:03:59 ◼ ► all you had was plain text, people would use markup like asterisks to emphasize things. So
00:04:07 ◼ ► that's where it comes from, and in fact, I'm using it very much like I used it on message boards in
00:04:15 ◼ ► plain text before. It just feels comfortable to me, but that's how I do it. So I do differentiate,
00:04:20 ◼ ► because I don't like the idea of having it just be the number of them. I'm also differentiating by
00:04:25 ◼ ► using asterisks and underscores. This is like, apologies to people who don't care about Markdown,
00:04:30 ◼ ► this is like asking somebody what their favorite font is. Well, but only if there was two choices
00:04:36 ◼ ► of fonts. Right, Arial and Helvetica, right? They only two. It's my understanding. And if you use
00:04:43 ◼ ► all of those things at the same time, it's Comic Sans. Thank you so much for sending in this
00:04:48 ◼ ► question, Ryan. If you would like to be like Ryan, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or
00:04:52 ◼ ► use question marks SnowTalk in the relay FM members discord. I have some Apple TV+ content
00:04:58 ◼ ► follow up for you. Well, one thing, Merry Christmas to you, Jason. Oh, yes. Merry Christmas to all.
00:05:04 ◼ ► Merry Christmas. It's Ted Lasso-mas. Yeah. Interesting that they threw a Christmas episode
00:05:10 ◼ ► of Ted Lasso in August. It's weird. I don't know why they did this. My assumption is there's just
00:05:16 ◼ ► something about like time has been messed up and production was maybe stalled and maybe this was
00:05:20 ◼ ► supposed to be at this point in the timeline. I don't know. So what I know is that they ordered
00:05:25 ◼ ► 10 episodes. This is the first I had heard of this. They ordered 10 episodes and then Apple came
00:05:29 ◼ ► back to them and said, how about 12? Here's some more money. Make more Ted Lasso. Also, they were
00:05:34 ◼ ► under the assumption that they were going to premiere three episodes. Yeah. Like they did
00:05:37 ◼ ► last time. And so they built sort of a three episode arc that they planned out and they were
00:05:42 ◼ ► released in one week installment. So very clearly Apple, they assumed that they would be on for
00:05:49 ◼ ► seven weeks again with 10 episodes and Apple came to them and said, you're going to be on for 12
00:05:56 ◼ ► weeks. Here's some more money. Make more episodes. We're going to extend Ted Lasso and the time that
00:06:00 ◼ ► it's airing so that we can get the most out of it. And this, and they added two standalone episodes
00:06:06 ◼ ► that weren't connected to their story arc. This is one and there's another one later on. I don't
00:06:12 ◼ ► know about the timing. I don't know if they just decided they didn't care and they would release
00:06:15 ◼ ► a Christmas episode. I didn't know if they built the Christmas episode to sort of be loosely
00:06:20 ◼ ► connected so that it could get pulled out and run at Christmas time, or if they didn't care,
00:06:26 ◼ ► or if they thought that there was going to be some other schedule where they were going to be
00:06:30 ◼ ► premiering in December. I honestly don't know, but instead in August, we got the Christmas episode
00:06:35 ◼ ► of Ted Lasso, which does not push forward any of the plot lines from the season. I'll say I loved
00:06:42 ◼ ► this episode in the way that I have continued to love season two of Ted Lasso. I think some people
00:06:46 ◼ ► are falling off now, which is a shame to me. I personally don't really understand why you would
00:06:52 ◼ ► not like this when we'd like the first season, but nevertheless, people have different tastes.
00:07:00 ◼ ► Okay. I don't think that this episode hit as well as it would have for me if it was in December. I
00:07:08 ◼ ► Yeah, you can now. I mean, that's the beauty of streaming. But yeah, I actually was thinking,
00:07:13 ◼ ► why not make this even more standalone and just have it be a little surprise that there's a
00:07:19 ◼ ► Christmas special of Ted Lasso? Like the British television type of thing that they're going for
00:07:23 ◼ ► anyway. Because that's what it is, right? They're doing a Christmas- I watched enough Doctor Who
00:07:27 ◼ ► Christmas specials that I understand what a Christmas special is supposed to be. And so
00:07:31 ◼ ► people who are like, "Oh, it's so sentimental." And it's like, "Yeah, it's a Christmas special.
00:07:35 ◼ ► That's what they are." So here, I think the reason that some people are reacting badly to season two
00:07:41 ◼ ► of Ted Lasso in part is because they're trying to tell a story over the course of the season.
00:07:47 ◼ ► And probably most of the people who watch Ted Lasso did not watch it week by week. They've discovered
00:07:53 ◼ ► it since it was on. I think the challenge with anything like Ted Lasso is that they need to
00:07:58 ◼ ► create new conflict and then kind of go through it. And the beginning of season one is sort of
00:08:03 ◼ ► like set up for that. So we'll see. I mean, season two may end up being a disappointment.
00:08:08 ◼ ► I think it's unclear, but I think judging it based on the first part of it when they're trying to
00:08:14 ◼ ► tell a complete season of a story is not ideal. But I get it. I think also there's a lot of
00:08:22 ◼ ► scrutiny put to it. I had that moment myself in the first episode where I was watching it,
00:08:27 ◼ ► and I had put so much onto Ted Lasso because I was so enthralled with the first season.
00:08:33 ◼ ► And I'd watched all those episodes multiple times. And now there's a new episode. And it's like,
00:08:40 ◼ ► the pressure has really risen on it. I'm not going to have the same experience watching something for
00:08:46 ◼ ► the first time as something that I've sort of poured over the last year. And it's a sitcom.
00:08:53 ◼ ► That's the other part of it that I think people like, I've seen people are like, "Oh, all these
00:08:57 ◼ ► jokey kind of things." It's a sitcom. It's not a holy work of art. It is a sitcom and it's got
00:09:05 ◼ ► heart, but it's also kind of a joke factory with lots of dumb jokes. And that's part of it. And I
00:09:11 ◼ ► do wonder if maybe it got canonized a little bit too much in some people's minds. And I was able
00:09:17 ◼ ► to kind of accept that and that I needed to view it as what it is and not as a thing that maybe I
00:09:24 ◼ ► built it up to be a little bit in the intervening time where I was going over it a second and third
00:09:30 ◼ ► time and studying it and all of that. People don't like it and think it's bad. That's fine.
00:09:34 ◼ ► I think that that's a legitimate read if you want to have that. I'm not willing to put it that way.
00:09:38 ◼ ► I actually think that they're going somewhere and I think that the way they handle their
00:09:43 ◼ ► characters is really interesting. I could use with a few fewer Ted Lasso-isms. I think they're maybe
00:09:50 ◼ ► overdoing it on that a little bit. That was never the appeal to me was corny Ted Lasso sayings,
00:09:55 ◼ ► but I guess it was for some people. So I don't know. I'm enjoying it. I thought the Christmas
00:09:59 ◼ ► episode was a lot of fun. I also have friends who thought it was terrible. So, you know,
00:10:03 ◼ ► I don't know. I thought it was fun. I think it's going to be a Christmas classic. More to the point
00:10:08 ◼ ► is people are going to watch that episode at Christmas time. We will. Forever. Yeah. I loved
00:10:13 ◼ ► it. Like also is there anything Hannah Waddington cannot do? Oh my word. Yeah. Clearly they've
00:10:24 ◼ ► Yeah. Incredible. I want to give another full hearty recommendation for Shamika Doon. It's done
00:10:32 ◼ ► now. There was six episodes. Um, so I, I really recommend it. It was satisfying to me the whole
00:10:39 ◼ ► way through. So I've seen the first four and despite me not liking the title, I think it's
00:10:45 ◼ ► great. I think it's great. I think it's especially great if you know mid 20th century musicals
00:10:51 ◼ ► because a lot of the references are to those things. Knowing the format and knowing some of
00:10:58 ◼ ► the jokes and references that they're making can help as somebody who was brought up on,
00:11:02 ◼ ► especially The King and I. And I have some literacy of some of these other musicals. It is
00:11:09 ◼ ► not only is it very clever in that way, but because it's modern humans from our time being thrown into
00:11:17 ◼ ► the universe of the 50s musical, there are a lot of amazing commentaries about the divergence
00:11:30 ◼ ► And, uh, you know, in episode four, there's a whole musical number. That's basically the sound
00:11:35 ◼ ► of music. Um, uh, but about biology, I'll put it that way. That's amazing. Cecily strong does a
00:11:45 ◼ ► great job. I have to tell you episode five. It's so good. There is like a scene that for me makes
00:11:52 ◼ ► the entire show worth watching. So like, I cannot wait for you to see the next episode. Uh, this
00:11:58 ◼ ► rich, Schmigadoon for me feels like another, uh, example of this like new HBO that I think of.
00:12:06 ◼ ► Yeah. Because this show is like, why, who, why did they make this? I really love it. And also
00:12:16 ◼ ► it was very clearly an expensive television show to make and because of like, and they are doing
00:12:23 ◼ ► things in a way to me that feel like just for the art of it that I really appreciate. So like it is
00:12:30 ◼ ► a musical and the majority of the singing is recorded live in the show. So it's, you know,
00:12:39 ◼ ► typically the way that especially with television shows is you get a clean recording in a studio and
00:12:44 ◼ ► you clean it up and then you mime it. But they do that in case they need to patch anything in.
00:12:49 ◼ ► But the majority of the singing in the show is done by the characters in the scenes in that
00:12:55 ◼ ► moment. And I think that that is a really great thing and I think adds to the overall show itself,
00:13:01 ◼ ► but that is not, it is going to be an expensive thing to do to get right. So I really appreciate
00:13:08 ◼ ► the show. I really love it. It's a little one of those, like, I don't know. I feel like for me,
00:13:24 ◼ ► Yeah. I thought it was really, what I've seen of it so far, it's very good. It got over my
00:13:28 ◼ ► preconceptions of it as a kind of hacky title, but it, I think it actually, that title hits the
00:13:35 ◼ ► tone, which is, it is a level of the main characters are at a level of removed from it.
00:13:54 ◼ ► where music starts and one of the main characters basically is like, nope, nope. And they leave.
00:14:02 ◼ ► That's pretty good. I like it. I like that too. I refuse your musical number. I'm not going to do it.
00:14:06 ◼ ► I recommend it. I have some bad follow up for you too is bad news matter. The, the, uh,
00:14:13 ◼ ► interoperable smart home standard has been delayed to 2022. Uh, this is, I think the second delay of
00:14:19 ◼ ► the project now at this point, um, apparently the standards group have yet to complete their SDK
00:14:25 ◼ ► and certification process, which I don't know. It feels like all of it. It feels like you haven't
00:14:30 ◼ ► completed anything yet, which is, you know, um, but apparently first half of 2022, you know,
00:14:36 ◼ ► I was, I was reading article about this on the verge by Graham Gothenburg. And I kind of agree
00:14:41 ◼ ► that was something that he said, which is, this is surely a difficult thing to do with all of these
00:14:50 ◼ ► huge tech companies trying to come together. So yeah. And like on one level, it would be nice for
00:14:58 ◼ ► them to get there, but the point is that they're going there and that this is going to happen and
00:15:02 ◼ ► they're building a thing for the future so that we have a standard for smart home stuff. And that's
00:15:08 ◼ ► the most important thing. So what I'm saying is Myke, it doesn't really matter. Oh, that took a
00:15:14 ◼ ► second to yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. Does it matter? Does it not matter? It will matter
00:15:23 ◼ ► eventually, but not now. What's the matter, Myke? So I have a rumor roundup for you. Okay. I'm ready.
00:15:30 ◼ ► My body is ready. Let's do this in his power on newsletter. Mark Gurman reported that Apple
00:15:35 ◼ ► is planning to once again, have multiple events this fall. Once again, I would like to thank
00:15:39 ◼ ► Mark Gurman for mailing out his newsletter at the end of the week so that we get to tackle it on
00:15:43 ◼ ► Monday morning. Very good. Thank you. Friend of a friend of the podcast, Mark Gurman. Thank you very
00:15:47 ◼ ► much. It makes him an actually even more friend of the show. Yes. Benefactor of the podcast.
00:15:53 ◼ ► September for the iPhone 13, a new iPad mini, which we haven't spoken about yet, but we will
00:15:59 ◼ ► eventually. New AirPods. This is like the standard AirPod and Apple watch for September. And then the
00:16:08 ◼ ► MacBook pro refresh in a separate event in October or November. If it makes sense, right? Like,
00:16:18 ◼ ► makes sense that they would probably have a very similar, Hey, we're going to do these things
00:16:23 ◼ ► online. Potentially. We will just roll them all out one time, just like they did last year and
00:16:29 ◼ ► make our lives exciting and incredibly busy for a multiple month period. And well, this is,
00:16:35 ◼ ► this is very much the model they've been using for a while now, right? Which is that they, they,
00:16:39 ◼ ► if they've gotten max to introduce, they don't introduce them in September. They introduced them
00:16:44 ◼ ► in October or November. And if they had an iPad pro, which they don't, cause they just released
00:16:49 ◼ ► one, they would do that at that same time. They don't, that doesn't need to be in the iPhone event,
00:16:53 ◼ ► but they very much want to have the Apple watch and the iPhone in that September event. That's
00:16:58 ◼ ► their big, you know, big launch event for those products. And then they will occasionally sweep
00:17:03 ◼ ► something new in there. Having the iPad mini in there, I think is interesting. Um, it seems
00:17:09 ◼ ► unnecessary. They could probably do it later, but it is more of a, you know, it's not really a pro
00:17:14 ◼ ► product. So having it be then and having new AirPods then sure. That sounds fine, but this is
00:17:19 ◼ ► this is how they've been handling it for a while. Pre pandemic is, is like this. So it sounds,
00:17:35 ◼ ► for those of us who cover this and talk about it, it's rolling thunder from the beginning of
00:17:39 ◼ ► September through the holiday, basically. Uh, and digit times can similarly reported that the MacBook
00:17:48 ◼ ► Pro, the new ones, the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros, they've entered mass production now. Um,
00:17:54 ◼ ► which would again seem to indicate that we're looking at kind of like October, November for
00:17:59 ◼ ► shipping. And while we're talking about laptops, Bingchi Kuo reported that the next MacBook Air is
00:18:05 ◼ ► still set for mid 2022. It will feature a similar industrial design to the upcoming MacBook Pro
00:18:11 ◼ ► and will be available in a range of colors. I think what that tells me about the laptops though,
00:18:17 ◼ ► is like that the MacBook Pro is going to look like the iMac and then the MacBook Air is going to look
00:18:22 ◼ ► like the MacBook Pro, which also looks like the iMac, you know, like in it's like physical shapes
00:18:27 ◼ ► and lines and all that kind of stuff, right. Which all looks like the iPad pro. So, so we're just
00:18:33 ◼ ► going to look very similar. Uh, and then there'll be some different colors and stuff, I guess,
00:18:37 ◼ ► but that's cool. Cause I love the way does iMac looks. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. That
00:18:41 ◼ ► sounds, it's all happening later than we thought. And that may just be because of production issues.
00:18:47 ◼ ► Legacy nodes. Yep. Sure. Right. They're just out there doing their noting. They're just noting.
00:18:54 ◼ ► The legacy of the nodes is that we have to wait for some new products. And that sounds like part
00:19:02 ◼ ► of their legacy from now on. Lord of the rings or something like, or like Harry Potter and the
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00:20:44 ◼ ► and Relay FM. More on Apple and CSAM. This was never going to be a one week conversation
00:20:50 ◼ ► because there was just too much in the air after last week's episode. And there's still a lot going
00:21:04 ◼ ► - Yeah. And there's all kinds of reports about this, right? Obviously, as you would expect,
00:21:10 ◼ ► there are people inside of Apple that are upset about it. There are lines being drawn from things
00:21:55 ◼ ► - Yeah. Yeah. But Craig, I understand why they ruled out Craig here because what they really
00:22:00 ◼ ► wanted to do was get into the technical detail of how it works with Joanna. And Craig's their
00:22:11 ◼ ► - Right. So personally, I want to see Craig talk about this to Tim, right? Like, for those reasons.
00:22:18 ◼ ► One, I like the guy. And two, he knows. And also, as Craig does, gives a little bit more
00:22:26 ◼ ► information than Apple have given otherwise. Like, for example, Craig stated that the threshold for
00:22:31 ◼ ► alerting Apple, like the threshold of images or hashes found, is around 30 currently, which is
00:22:37 ◼ ► not a thing that has been published or written anywhere. But Craig just said it during the
00:22:42 ◼ ► interview. I've got some quotes that I will read and we can talk about them. It starts off,
00:22:48 ◼ ► with, "We wish this had come out a little bit more clearly. It was widely misunderstood.
00:22:58 ◼ ► I'm happy they said it because we all knew it. So I'm happy you said it because, really,
00:23:03 ◼ ► ultimately, this whole thing was a PR failure. That's what this ultimately was because Apple
00:23:10 ◼ ► were trying to show something good that they were doing, but instead undermined the entire thing.
00:23:22 ◼ ► part in the misconception. So I'm glad they admitted it. And again, Craig drops that number
00:23:29 ◼ ► of how many things cross the threshold. And then they later put out a white paper that goes into
00:23:34 ◼ ► detail about it, which is what I was saying earlier, that they keep explaining themselves.
00:23:48 ◼ ► Something went wrong and they continually are frequently answering them. And so there's an
00:23:53 ◼ ► admission here that they know that they blew the rule out here. And that's separate from what the
00:23:58 ◼ ► details are of the system. It could be a good system or a bad system, but I think we could
00:24:04 ◼ ► probably agree that the level of confusion that this generated and bad PR this generated suggests
00:24:11 ◼ ► that they made a mistake in how they rolled this stuff out. And I think clearly the iMessage stuff
00:24:17 ◼ ► should have not been rolled out at the same time as the CSAM detection. And then they threw in the
00:24:22 ◼ ► Siri stuff too. Also Siri, you can talk to Siri about this stuff now. Like really? Really?
00:24:27 ◼ ► We'd all forgotten about that. And again, for right now, we are mostly just talking about the
00:24:32 ◼ ► CSAM stuff because the iMessage detection thing, whilst not perfect, I think, is still just like
00:24:44 ◼ ► And I stated last week, like, do children have privacy, etc, etc. But we're not talking about
00:24:50 ◼ ► that today because this is the thing which is still causing the most issue. So one of the
00:24:54 ◼ ► things that Craig really doubles down on and keeps coming back to is this idea that Apple is saying
00:25:00 ◼ ► that they are trying to find photos in iCloud without looking in iCloud. This only makes it
00:25:12 ◼ ► we were talking about it and saying like, the iPhone is like, you know, they're using the iPhone
00:25:19 ◼ ► to look, but they're saying, oh, it's only on upload as if again, you make that choice somehow,
00:25:24 ◼ ► which you don't. Like, you know, they're saying we look on your phone for something in the cloud,
00:25:32 ◼ ► but it's only for the cloud and only an upload point. But it's still happening on the phone.
00:25:46 ◼ ► Cote- So I found this interview and this part of this interview incredibly clarifying for me,
00:25:58 ◼ ► which is I feel like Apple, okay, a few things. One is Apple takes pride in being more concerned
00:26:23 ◼ ► it seems to me that at some point, and there are a lot of theories still flying out there that
00:26:29 ◼ ► they're going to encrypt iCloud photos at some point and they have to do this as a prelude to
00:26:34 ◼ ► that. I'm not sure that that's actually true. There's no evidence to suggest that they're
00:26:37 ◼ ► actually going to do that, but people are trying to understand why they did this this way. And
00:26:42 ◼ ► that's an answer that answers that question. David Tompa- Well, just if I can just say something
00:26:47 ◼ ► on that exact point and then we can not have to talk about it again. If that was the case,
00:27:00 ◼ ► encrypt iCloud photos. I don't know, but I'm going to give you an alternative explanation, which is
00:27:05 ◼ ► Apple looked at how all of their colleagues, competitors, whatever you want to call it in
00:27:12 ◼ ► Silicon Valley who have cloud storage handle CSAM media, which is that they just build an algorithm
00:27:18 ◼ ► that scans it all in the cloud. And then if they find ones, they forward those to NCMEC
00:27:25 ◼ ► or whatever at some point and the authorities. And that's what happens. Right. And I think Apple
00:27:32 ◼ ► said, we can do better than this. We're Apple. We're the privacy company. We can use our
00:27:38 ◼ ► incredibly bright minds to build a more pure, more privacy protecting algorithm and system and
00:27:49 ◼ ► whole cryptographic approach that will, when we put it out, will show that we're not like the
00:27:55 ◼ ► other guys and we care more. And so they built this and I, I got to say, I think that's true,
00:28:03 ◼ ► regardless of whether it's the thing that pushed it over the edge or not. I think that's clearly
00:28:07 ◼ ► what they did. You can see it in the way Craig Federighi describes this is they decided to solve
00:28:12 ◼ ► the problem of scanning your photos in the cloud on their servers by building this thing. And I
00:28:20 ◼ ► think it's worth at least pausing for a moment and saying, is that a problem? I get that Apple thinks
00:28:26 ◼ ► it's a problem or at least a place where Apple can kind of put it over on the other competitors
00:28:32 ◼ ► by doing them one better and showing off how they're doing it better. Apple's argument is once
00:28:36 ◼ ► you're scanning photos in the cloud, you can just scan for anything. And we didn't want to build
00:28:41 ◼ ► that tool that way. And I can appreciate that. That does have some legitimate privacy benefits,
00:28:46 ◼ ► but I do wonder if it really was more motivated by the fact that, well, we're Apple, we can build
00:28:52 ◼ ► something better than this. And I think that, again, all that is true, but I think it leads
00:28:56 ◼ ► them to a point where they've caused their own problem here. And the reason that I say that is
00:29:05 ◼ ► about how Apple feels about this feature and felt about it when they built it is he has to
00:29:10 ◼ ► explain to Joanna, who's a very smart person, but still you get a moment, you get the sense
00:29:15 ◼ ► from the whole interview where you can see that she basically has to pause Craig and then explain
00:29:18 ◼ ► what he just said to the audience because he kind of zips through it. What they're doing is in their
00:29:27 ◼ ► mind okay because it's a part of the software flow that is the pipeline, I believe he calls it,
00:29:36 ◼ ► for iCloud uploads. So from Apple's perspective, there isn't a spy on your phone that's looking
00:29:43 ◼ ► at all your photos. There's a scanner in your iCloud upload pipeline. So from Apple's perspective,
00:29:54 ◼ ► it's still fundamentally an iCloud feature because it only is touching images that are headed for
00:30:03 ◼ ► iCloud. And if you get to that level of detail, it actually makes a lot of sense and you understand
00:30:09 ◼ ► why they feel that way. I think the problem and where this is sort of like their hubris at
00:30:14 ◼ ► building this brilliant privacy-protecting feature is that the way it gets boiled down in public
00:30:21 ◼ ► perception is Apple, the iPhone is scanning all your photos, which is not what's happening,
00:30:26 ◼ ► but it is an on-device thing and once you cross the on-device threshold, I think it makes everybody
00:30:31 ◼ ► really nervous. But like I get it from his perspective, which is literally the argument is,
00:30:37 ◼ ► but it's in the pipeline. It's in the pipeline. It's not on your phone. And I think if you extend
00:30:42 ◼ ► that out, if somebody came to us and wanted to do an all images on your phone scanning thing,
00:30:47 ◼ ► we can't do that because we didn't build that feature. We built this feature that's sequestered
00:30:52 ◼ ► in the cloud upload pipeline. Again, like technically valid, but I also think maybe they
00:30:59 ◼ ► missed or ignored the how that would get simplified into something that would upset people.
00:31:08 ◼ ► This is too much of a nerd on a forum argument for me, right? It is scanning all my photos.
00:31:18 ◼ ► It's just doing them at a different point because I use iCloud photo. Like I use iCloud photos.
00:31:27 ◼ ► Like I'm supposed to because if I want to back up my photos automatically, it's the only way I can
00:31:34 ◼ ► do that with my iPhone because Apple does not provide a tool to allow anybody else to do it
00:31:41 ◼ ► in the background. Whenever photos are just taken, I have to open applications on a system to have
00:31:46 ◼ ► them upload. So I'm supposed to do that. It's like this is too much of a technicality for me.
00:31:51 ◼ ► We're not scanning all your photos. We're just scanning all your photos that upload to iCloud,
00:32:03 ◼ ► it does scan all my photos. It's just scanning them when they upload, which is also on a timeline
00:32:09 ◼ ► that Apple defines. I don't ever say scan now. All I can do is stop it from scanning, right? Or I can
00:32:17 ◼ ► like what put it in my phone in low power mode, which is like, I don't like it. It frustrates me.
00:32:22 ◼ ► I don't like these very particular arguments. I don't like what I consider to be a straw man
00:32:29 ◼ ► argument of like, we'll just turn off iCloud photo backup. So that's not a solution to this problem,
00:32:35 ◼ ► if people consider it a problem because like what now? Now what? I can't back up my photos anymore.
00:32:42 ◼ ► And also it's a thing I pay for. So if I, so what you're saying is practically it essentially,
00:32:48 ◼ ► it's an all photos scanner because it's wedged in the place where you back up your photos,
00:32:53 ◼ ► which is automatic and outside of my control. Right? So like, I also just don't like the,
00:33:01 ◼ ► you know, I think a lot of people that are defending Apple's stance on this are saying like,
00:33:05 ◼ ► oh, we just turn off iCloud. Like, as I said last week, I actually don't even like that as a thing
00:33:13 ◼ ► because it's allowing people that want to hide this stuff from Apple and from authorities,
00:33:20 ◼ ► giving them an easy way to do that. Right. And I'm sure you'd still catch, you still can. And
00:33:24 ◼ ► I've seen lots of reports. I've seen the reports that, you know, you will catch people anyway.
00:33:29 ◼ ► Right. But you can do it. Uh, it actually also makes it feel for me that Apple cares more
00:33:35 ◼ ► about the, them having to store the images and actually find them. Right. There's that argument
00:33:41 ◼ ► to which I don't like, which is they only don't want them on iCloud. Right. So, but, so if you
00:33:47 ◼ ► turn off iCloud, they're not even going to look anymore. It's like, well, what is this for then?
00:33:52 ◼ ► Like, is it just because you don't want to store the images as opposed to like actually trying to
00:33:57 ◼ ► like save the children? Well, I, I, again, I think that their idea here is that they want,
00:34:03 ◼ ► they do bear responsibility for what gets loaded onto their cloud. And also they want to balance.
00:34:08 ◼ ► And this has been the story we talked about last week too. They want to balance the, we're going
00:34:14 ◼ ► to look at everything on our, on our customers phones with, we're going to ignore everything on
00:34:21 ◼ ► our customers, phones and our cloud service and allow this sort of stuff to happen. And they're
00:34:25 ◼ ► trying to strike a balance here, which honestly I think is part of the, part of the problem with
00:34:30 ◼ ► how it's perceived is, um, they're trying to hit a very particular balance and that gives you, um,
00:34:39 ◼ ► you know, a lot of people an opportunity to attack them from, from either side about this.
00:34:44 ◼ ► Yeah. And that gets you, you know, people can probably say I'm a little bit all over the place.
00:34:47 ◼ ► I'm very conflicted about this. Right. I think it's both good and bad. And I hold those, uh,
00:34:52 ◼ ► two things equally for me. Like I just have lots of issues with the, honestly, more of the way it
00:34:59 ◼ ► is being described than what they are doing. Right. Because like this other thing, this thing
00:35:05 ◼ ► that they're now kind of pivoting to, right. Which we've been talking about of like where the scanning
00:35:09 ◼ ► is occurring, it's still on my phone. Like it's not being scanned in the air, right? Like it's not
00:35:15 ◼ ► like it's scanned in the, like on the way to the cloud. It's still occurring on my device. And so
00:35:21 ◼ ► I still have to have an intrinsic, um, belief that the system is okay. Like I still have to believe
00:35:29 ◼ ► that the hashing is correct. And we're going to get to that in a minute because I was reading
00:35:33 ◼ ► another document that they published and it still doesn't make any sense to me. So like, you know,
00:35:38 ◼ ► Craig says, uh, well, Joanna says something which I like, like what's on my device is mine. It's
00:35:42 ◼ ► private. And you've taught us to believe that you've had ads that believe Craig says that it's
00:35:47 ◼ ► a misunderstanding as it's only being applied to, as you said, the pipeline, right. But I wanted
00:35:52 ◼ ► to get it because I liked it. She said it because it was a good challenge. Cause, and I still don't
00:35:55 ◼ ► think that it's, it's, I mean, accurately met by Apple, no matter where they say it's happening.
00:35:59 ◼ ► They have those billboards and that they had it like the, was it at the, uh, at CES or whatever,
00:36:05 ◼ ► whatever happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone, like, you know, Vegas. And, um, you know,
00:36:17 ◼ ► literally these images are being scanned on their way out the door. And so I guess they would argue
00:36:26 ◼ ► that they're not, it's not happening on your iPhone anymore. Once they're in the pipeline,
00:36:30 ◼ ► like what happens on the airplane that's flying from Vegas to somewhere else doesn't stay in Vegas.
00:36:38 ◼ ► It is happening on device. Yes. This is, this is what, this is my point about how Apple I see,
00:36:49 ◼ ► about whether saying it misunderstanding what Apple is doing is Apple's problem or not,
00:36:57 ◼ ► or fault or not. And I would say that it is their problem. Uh, and the way that they built this
00:37:03 ◼ ► feature, I think they built it. Um, again, some of these Apple statements about this seem kind of
00:37:11 ◼ ► self-congratulatory like look at this brilliant thing. We, we devised here without thinking about
00:37:16 ◼ ► the fact that other people might view the border between their phone and the outside world
00:37:20 ◼ ► differently. Clearly Craig Federighi believes that once it's in the upload pipeline, it's not
00:37:28 ◼ ► really on your device anymore. It's the stuff that's exiting your device. And you have said,
00:37:36 ◼ ► right, you know, right now, but it's still on your device. Like it's, it's still literally on your
00:37:42 ◼ ► device. And I think that again, we can debate whether this is the right way to build this,
00:37:46 ◼ ► what we can debate all of that, but I think it's instructive to see that this is how Apple has
00:37:51 ◼ ► defined this and how Apple built this feature. And I think it comes all the way back to Apple
00:37:56 ◼ ► deciding, cause let's be honest here. If Apple just started scanning for CSAM on iCloud, uh,
00:38:02 ◼ ► just like every other online provider does and didn't say anything about it, or made it a
00:38:07 ◼ ► footnote somewhere that there would not be a hubbub like this about it because it would be
00:38:18 ◼ ► but in doing it and decided to build it in a privacy enhancing way. I completely agree with
00:38:26 ◼ ► that. They absolutely made a huge effort to have this thing do right by its customers. And yet you
00:38:35 ◼ ► can see a little bit of a disconnect between Apple saying, well, it's in the pipeline, don't worry
00:38:40 ◼ ► about it. And other people saying, yeah, but it's still on my device. Like you, you guys don't think
00:38:46 ◼ ► of this as belonging to me because it's headed out the door into iCloud, but you, you know, so they
00:38:52 ◼ ► may have, they may have miscalibrated in their enthusiasm for this technology, I guess is what
00:38:57 ◼ ► I'm saying. And now they're feeling the blowback for that. I said this many times and I'll continue
00:39:00 ◼ ► to say it. If you talk so strongly about things like privacy, you create a huge magnifying glass
00:39:11 ◼ ► for yourself. You open yourself up to scrutiny. If you want to try and sell your products based
00:39:17 ◼ ► on this, then whenever you do anything, this is what you get. Like, so you get to sell products
00:39:22 ◼ ► like that, but you will also get more heavily scrutinized. That's just the way it goes. I'm
00:39:26 ◼ ► sorry. Like, but this is, this is like, you make this for yourself. Right? So one of the things
00:39:34 ◼ ► that, uh, Craig Federighi says is that there will be multiple levels of auditability, right? Which
00:39:39 ◼ ► is not a thing we've heard about before. Then Apple published another document. They continue
00:39:45 ◼ ► to publish these documents. This one is called security threat model review of Apple's child
00:39:50 ◼ ► safety features. So a couple of things from this one, uh, is that Apple will publish a root hash
00:39:57 ◼ ► of the encrypted database in a knowledge base article, which can be matched against what's on
00:40:02 ◼ ► your device. So you will be able to on your device, like bring up the hashes that are stored
00:40:09 ◼ ► on devices doing the matching and compare it to, or at somebody can you wouldn't, but somebody can
00:40:15 ◼ ► right. Compare it to what Apple says they are searching for. So you can, you know, research as
00:40:21 ◼ ► anybody can look at these two. I'm just going to say, I bet this wasn't in the original plan,
00:40:30 ◼ ► Or it would have appeared later or, you know, whatever, but yeah, you're right. I think
00:40:34 ◼ ► this seems like a thing that they have done. I think so. I mean, I like the idea again,
00:40:38 ◼ ► what you're trying to do is provide, it's almost like a canary in the coal mine, right? It's the,
00:40:43 ◼ ► it's the public post of what the hashes are. So if they were forced to change the hash,
00:40:48 ◼ ► somewhere for some reason and not say anything about it, you would be able to compare and
00:40:53 ◼ ► somebody would be able to write it up and say, oh, they changed the hash. But, so yes, sure. I
00:40:58 ◼ ► don't think part of the original plan. That's right. And this is a thing that's going to be
00:41:02 ◼ ► tricky. Look, we may get follow up for this and I'll welcome it. I read this document, this part
00:41:06 ◼ ► of the document five times, right? I read it five times today to try and get my head around this.
00:41:11 ◼ ► So they stated, Apple stated that they will work with two organizations in separate sovereign
00:41:16 ◼ ► jurisdictions to match the hashes together. So they get two databases and they match them
00:41:21 ◼ ► together. If an image does not appear in both hash lists, they won't scan for it, right? So that's
00:41:27 ◼ ► another way of what they're saying here is if some government tries to sneak something in,
00:41:31 ◼ ► if it doesn't appear somewhere else, they're not going to search for it. I don't want to get into
00:41:36 ◼ ► the weeds on that, but earlier they say, basically in the paragraph before, they say in this
00:41:41 ◼ ► report that Nicmec is the only US source. So the system is supposed to work with two, but in the
00:41:48 ◼ ► US they're only going to use one. So if they're talking about adding future databases, right?
00:41:56 ◼ ► Let's imagine here that what they're saying is this is a future database is that if they get
00:42:01 ◼ ► something say from the United Kingdom, it has to somehow, I don't know how, match Nicmecs, right?
00:42:10 ◼ ► Nicmec, my understanding is like, there is a whole international community of groups that are
00:42:16 ◼ ► fighting this stuff and that I think Apple has decided and experts can write in and tell us if
00:42:22 ◼ ► they want to, but like, I think Apple has decided that this is a canonical list and that this
00:42:28 ◼ ► organization has generated a canonical list. It's been part of the larger international discussion
00:42:34 ◼ ► about CSAM and that they're going to use this as the canonical list and then they can start doing
00:42:40 ◼ ► comparisons. And basically what they're saying is if the global international anti-CSAM community
00:42:49 ◼ ► doesn't agree that an image is CSAM content, then it doesn't go in the hash. That's sort of what
00:42:58 ◼ ► they're saying is that this is their database and we think it's pretty canonical and that if
00:43:04 ◼ ► some other organization wants you to use their list, what they're really going to take is the
00:43:09 ◼ ► ones that are agreed to. So I think that, I think that's what they're getting at here in, in, in a
00:43:14 ◼ ► simplified way is essentially if one country adds a bunch of things surreptitiously and the other
00:43:20 ◼ ► organizations don't add those, they're not going to count them because that means there isn't a
00:43:34 ◼ ► It still just is this thing of like, I'm not American, right? And there's just like American
00:43:42 ◼ ► companies blindly trusting American organizations. Every other country has to match the American
00:43:46 ◼ ► organization. I get it. I mean, Apple is an American company, so I get that this is where
00:43:52 ◼ ► they would start. But like I said, my, my impression is that this is a, uh, an international,
00:43:59 ◼ ► uh, process and that the database is worked on with different groups around the world. And if
00:44:07 ◼ ► that's not true and there's a great disagreement about what CSAM content is between the US and the
00:44:11 ◼ ► UK, I guess somebody let us know, but I don't think that's the case. I think that, I think that all
00:44:17 ◼ ► sorts of global governments are united in trying to identify this material and stop it and share
00:44:23 ◼ ► information. And I think what Apple is really trying to do here is not some sort of US-centric,
00:44:29 ◼ ► uh, thing where, where it could be subverted by NCMEC. In fact, I guess you could argue that if
00:44:33 ◼ ► NCMEC were to add images that weren't in another nation's database at that point, they'd be like,
00:44:38 ◼ ► hmm, maybe not. Uh, but I don't think that practically that's the case. So anyway, that's it.
00:44:44 ◼ ► Well, but like right now they're only using NCMEC. There's no secondary source, but if they bring
00:44:50 ◼ ► other countries in, then they will do that. Which I guess is like, I suppose is maybe like a thinly
00:44:57 ◼ ► veiled argument to the China issue that was being raised, right? I guess that's kind of what they're
00:45:03 ◼ ► saying here more of like, if we have a country that, you know, people don't trust, it will be
00:45:09 ◼ ► run against this one, which we have decided to trust. And, and, and NCMEC actually is also
00:45:15 ◼ ► connected to the international center for missing and exploited children. They're sister organizations.
00:45:20 ◼ ► So, you know, what you're basically saying is you may view NCMEC as an American enterprise,
00:45:25 ◼ ► but it sounds to me like the NCMEC database is an internationally agreed upon database.
00:45:32 ◼ ► No, I think, I think your read, um, about what this is really about is important, which is what
00:45:38 ◼ ► they're really saying is if some country decides we're going to put all of these images that are,
00:45:45 ◼ ► let's say, uh, LGBTQ plus imagery, and they consider that illegal media, that the, you compare
00:45:54 ◼ ► that to the international database and say, nope. Yeah. And it doesn't go in. And that's what they're
00:46:06 ◼ ► M stands for media, CSAM as CSAM for their own purposes. Yes, indeed. That's right. So,
00:46:14 ◼ ► so, uh, USA America. So anyway, that I think that's, what's going on here, which is they're
00:46:19 ◼ ► reassuring is what they're doing. They're saying, no, no, no. And this is visible. You'll be able
00:46:23 ◼ ► to see it. Uh, it's in the OS image, which is the other thing about this. It's like, it's not a file
00:46:27 ◼ ► that can get like surreptitiously updated later. It's literally part of the OS image. So, which
00:46:33 ◼ ► they ship everywhere in the world. So again, they're, they're frequently answering a lot of
00:46:37 ◼ ► frequently asked questions here, but you can see, this is what I said last week. You can see that
00:46:42 ◼ ► they took a lot of care to build this feature the way it is, which is why it's kind of a shame that
00:46:47 ◼ ► they roll, roll, rolled it out in such a way, uh, that they, I mean, it was going to be controversial
00:46:54 ◼ ► regardless, but they, they definitely brought more controversial, uh, takes on themselves by
00:46:59 ◼ ► the way they did it. I hope this is the last time we need to talk about this. I hope so. It probably
00:47:04 ◼ ► won't be, but I hope so. At least I hope that we don't have to talk about it again next week.
00:47:08 ◼ ► Okay. Well, I'm sure we won't. That's my hope. All right. This episode is brought to you by our
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00:48:55 ◼ ► It could be the start of something exciting. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show
00:48:59 ◼ ► and Relay FM. Agile Bits have produced a beta program for their upcoming version eight of
00:49:05 ◼ ► 1Password, and they have chosen to build it using Electron. In case you are unaware, Electron is an
00:49:12 ◼ ► open source framework that allows for developers to more easily create apps for multiple platforms
00:49:17 ◼ ► because it utilizes web technologies. This means that developers need to do less to make, in theory,
00:49:23 ◼ ► to make their apps compatible with various operating systems, right? Because you can build
00:49:27 ◼ ► it using web technologies. All platforms understand web technologies, and you need to do less to kind
00:49:32 ◼ ► of make it settle into the operating system itself, rather than building a dedicated Windows app,
00:49:37 ◼ ► a dedicated Mac app, a dedicated Linux app, and so on. However, Electron apps are heavily criticized
00:49:44 ◼ ► for RAM and storage usage issues. They use too much of both. And because they're web-based,
00:49:51 ◼ ► not feeling as native or responsive as the other apps that run on the platforms that are built with
00:49:57 ◼ ► the standard tools. When Agile Bits announced this last week, they were pretty quickly faced with a
00:50:03 ◼ ► wave of criticism from Mac customers, especially who have been previously big supporters of what
00:50:08 ◼ ► has been for some time a very well-made and good-feeling Mac app. Bit more context for you.
00:50:15 ◼ ► Over the last few years, Agile Bits has started to change as a company. So they moved from a kind
00:50:21 ◼ ► of "hey, buy our software" to "subscribe to a service that we provide model" and they offer
00:50:26 ◼ ► multiple subscription options for individuals and businesses and teams, etc. And it seems like,
00:50:33 ◼ ► I don't know if this has been completely confirmed yet, but it seems like that the new version of
00:50:52 ◼ ► Right. The writing on the wall was sort of the last version where they introduced their service,
00:50:57 ◼ ► and although Local Vaults remained a feature, it was very clearly something that was going to go
00:51:01 ◼ ► away. So you need to subscribe and you need to sync your stuff with their online service that
00:51:09 ◼ ► they've built for syncing. Agile Bits have also been more focused on cross-platform over the last
00:51:14 ◼ ► few years, which makes sense, you know, if you're a software company and you're just working on the
00:51:19 ◼ ► Mac and iOS, what is all of Android and Windows for you as well if you want to get out there
00:51:24 ◼ ► or build a web version too. And the last thing is they've also taken large amounts of venture
00:51:31 ◼ ► capital funding to expand their business and focus on enterprise as a future for the company.
00:51:36 ◼ ► So you wrote a great article, which was a very interesting article in its framing because it
00:51:44 ◼ ► was different to what a lot of people were talking about, because you actually also as well focused
00:51:49 ◼ ► on kind of Apple's role in all of this in an interesting way. So I want to kind of talk about
00:51:55 ◼ ► this a little bit with you. What does it mean for 1Password to go to Electron, do you think?
00:52:02 ◼ ► Like what does that mean? What does it say? Well, there's a lot going on here. We should also
00:52:10 ◼ ► mention the Windows version is going to be Electron. In their blog post about their engineering
00:52:15 ◼ ► decisions, they gave it very little time. They were like, "Well, yeah, we're going to use Electron
00:52:21 ◼ ► for Windows." And the idea here is, you know, they're going to use... That's a big computing
00:52:25 ◼ ► platform and they're like, "It's fine." For me, the big issue is that this is a company that was
00:52:31 ◼ ► sort of a Mac-focused company and that has expanded. And they were one of the good ones
00:52:36 ◼ ► in the sense of supporting the Mac and building a Mac native app. And my piece is very much about
00:52:43 ◼ ► their development priorities. And a lot of people wanted me to be like rageful at AgileBits for doing
00:52:50 ◼ ► this and for daring to do a subscription model and all those things. And that's not what I wrote.
00:52:54 ◼ ► What I wrote is that this is really instructive about where we are right now in computing
00:53:01 ◼ ► platforms, that a company that was previously very pro Mac and Mac-focused has essentially decided to
00:53:08 ◼ ► dump the same cross-platform app that they built for Windows and Linux on the Mac rather than
00:53:16 ◼ ► building something using the tools that Apple provides, whether it's the old tool of AppKit,
00:53:22 ◼ ► which is what we think of as sort of standard Mac app of the past anyway, or something like UIKit
00:53:30 ◼ ► and Catalyst, which would be sort of taking their iOS app and moving it to the Mac, or something
00:53:35 ◼ ► very forward-looking where Apple wants to go, which would be SwiftUI, where you could take it
00:53:41 ◼ ► across all of Apple's platforms. So it's sad, first off, and that was sort of a point I wanted
00:53:53 ◼ ► basically throw their Mac app in the trash and replace it with Electron, which is essentially
00:53:59 ◼ ► the same thing on Windows and Linux. I think it says something about the state of desktop
00:54:06 ◼ ► versus mobile, that they are building native interfaces for iOS and Android, and the desktop
00:54:13 ◼ ► OSs are just getting Electron. I think that shows you what the priority is. Also, though,
00:54:19 ◼ ► Apple has a role to play here, AgileBits has a role to play here. AgileBits made a very interesting
00:54:26 ◼ ► engineering decision. They decided to write a brand new version of 1Password 8 for Apple platforms.
00:54:33 ◼ ► Now, we should also say they've been working in the background on a unified backend, basically
00:54:39 ◼ ► a unified code base for 1Password using the Rust language, and all of their versions are based on
00:54:48 ◼ ► that with a UI layer on top of it. The idea there is they're writing for a lot of platforms, and
00:54:55 ◼ ► they don't have the money. Maybe they do. They have chosen not to spend the money to engineer
00:55:04 ◼ ► a bunch of different platforms with different code bases because it causes inconsistencies and
00:55:09 ◼ ► because it costs a lot of money. You know, they're a company, I'm sure, that's very focused, because
00:55:14 ◼ ► it's their business, on security. You take that level of funding too, and I think there's an
00:55:19 ◼ ► implication there that you want to grow. Oh, you have to grow. Maintaining, you can grow and build
00:55:24 ◼ ► features a lot faster when you're not maintaining five different apps. Okay, so I get it. I get it.
00:55:29 ◼ ► What happened is, and I think, I think, I'm not a developer here, but just looking at this as
00:55:35 ◼ ► an observer of this stuff, I think they made a huge mistake, which was they decided to build
00:55:43 ◼ ► their next generation iOS platform app on SwiftUI. And I can't believe they made that decision.
00:55:54 ◼ ► Well, this is the thing, is in hindsight, they should have stuck with UIKit, built a catalyst
00:56:01 ◼ ► version for the Mac, and waited SwiftUI out a little bit. Couple more years, I think. But
00:56:06 ◼ ► instead they decided they were just going to just go into it. There are issues with going into it
00:56:11 ◼ ► with SwiftUI on the Mac anyway, because it's not supported on older versions of macOS. So they were
00:56:15 ◼ ► going to have to do the Electron app or keep their Mac app alive, which they never even considered,
00:56:20 ◼ ► which is one of the things that I said was sad, is they never considered it. If you read the blog
00:56:25 ◼ ► post, it's implicit in the blog post that they're not going to update their Mac app as it was.
00:56:37 ◼ ► one of their lead engineers said, "Yes, we're not going to maintain the extra Mac-only code base."
00:56:44 ◼ ► Which, again, I understand why they make that decision, but let's be clear, it was never even
00:56:50 ◼ ► considered. Just like Electron was always going to be the answer for Windows, it was never really
00:56:55 ◼ ► considered. Well, I imagine one of the reasons it was never considered and they've moved to Electron
00:57:00 ◼ ► is they didn't want to keep doing it. It was not a consideration because it started from the point of
00:57:04 ◼ ► we don't want to keep dragging the whole thing as an app. Yes, exactly. So what they wanted to do
00:57:10 ◼ ► was, and I think this is a case where they really did value Apple platforms and they wanted to do
00:57:15 ◼ ► the right thing. They wanted to build a new version using Apple's cross-platform interface
00:57:22 ◼ ► language, interface system, so that they could deploy one interface with some modifications
00:57:28 ◼ ► across all of Apple's platforms. So that they would have Electron for Windows and Linux,
00:57:35 ◼ ► and it would solve everything. And what they said was, "We did this for a while and we realized we
00:57:39 ◼ ► were going to have to repeat a lot of work to get it to work on the Mac because it's not really all
00:57:43 ◼ ► there on the Mac, plus it's not backward compatible, so we'd have to do Electron on the Mac anyway,
00:57:47 ◼ ► and we decided we were just going to do Electron on the Mac and have that be the Mac product."
00:57:51 ◼ ► Now, a couple of things here. One is, if we take them at their word, they made a mistake because
00:57:59 ◼ ► they thought that SwiftUI was further along on the Mac than it was. And I think that that does
00:58:03 ◼ ► say something, what they went through, because they did press ahead with SwiftUI for a while
00:58:08 ◼ ► on the Mac too, along with iOS, and they said, they imply anyway, that it's just not far enough,
00:58:15 ◼ ► and that maybe Apple has oversold it a little bit and it's more of a future technology.
00:58:19 ◼ ► I've heard from several developers who said that this is kind of unbelievable that they would make
00:58:25 ◼ ► a decision like this because Apple stuff is never as good as Apple claims it is, and that SwiftUI
00:58:33 ◼ ► is just not there yet for a lot of things, and that to take your whole app and put it in SwiftUI
00:58:38 ◼ ► right now and expect it to work and expect it to work on the Mac is not really realistic.
00:58:43 ◼ ► So what they didn't do, again, is just decide to keep their iOS app and update that and use
00:58:51 ◼ ► Catalyst on the Mac. And I think maybe that was a... I would be interested to hear why they chose
00:58:58 ◼ ► that decision, because it seems like they really were shooting for the future, and it wasn't a
00:59:04 ◼ ► realistic decision for the present. Can I give a conspiracy? Like I just completely found it
00:59:10 ◼ ► on nothing, but I stab in the dark I take on this. There were people within the development
00:59:16 ◼ ► organization that love their Apple products because that's kind of the company that they
00:59:22 ◼ ► came from. They were told, "You cannot have a standalone Mac app anymore. We will not support
00:59:28 ◼ ► it. It's financially not going to work for us." So they jumped to SwiftUI because then in theory,
00:59:34 ◼ ► they could develop for the iOS platform, and hopefully they'll be able to make a good Mac app
00:59:39 ◼ ► out of it. Except they could have used Catalyst. Catalyst, although it has issues, would allow them
00:59:46 ◼ ► to build on top of their iPad and iPhone app with a Mac version, and they chose not to do that and
00:59:54 ◼ ► instead kind of bought into the hype. Well, that may have just been the wrong choice. They might.
00:59:58 ◼ ► Well, that's the thing is I think they made a mistake there. They do say, though, and again,
01:00:04 ◼ ► I want to just call this out because we should be clear, they're soft-peddling it because it's PR,
01:00:08 ◼ ► but let's be clear here. What they discovered was that it would take more work to make the Mac
01:00:13 ◼ ► version work, so they gave up. And again, like fair enough, I get the idea. The idea here is that
01:00:22 ◼ ► you've got to reduce the number of platforms you're supporting. That was the idea, and they
01:00:28 ◼ ► were going to have to do Electron on Mac. And so I can hear the conversation, which is, why are we
01:00:32 ◼ ► spending, like, we don't, we are not going to spend these extra cycles making the SwiftUI version work
01:00:36 ◼ ► on the Mac when we're already having to deploy an Electron version for old versions of macOS. So just
01:00:42 ◼ ► do the Electron version and not worry about it. I suspect keeping in mind that maybe down the road
01:00:47 ◼ ► when SwiftUI is a little bit better, that they might bring the Mac version for SwiftUI back
01:00:55 ◼ ► down the road, but not yet. So these are decisions that they made. The net result is they're taking
01:01:00 ◼ ► the native Mac app, tossing it in the trash, replacing it with Electron. A lot of people
01:01:04 ◼ ► are up in arms because Electron uses lots of RAM and stuff like that. It's not very efficient.
01:01:10 ◼ ► There are a lot of Electron apps out there now, you know, Slack, Discord, Skype, there are lots
01:01:15 ◼ ► of them. I think, though, that the really important thing about this is it is what Apple's
01:01:26 ◼ ► developer tool strategy is. And I actually think, despite what happened here, that this paints a
01:01:34 ◼ ► really clear picture of what Apple's trying to do, with the Mac especially, right? So Apple has
01:01:39 ◼ ► leverage because Apple has mobile. Apple has the iPhone. People want to develop apps for the iPhone.
01:01:44 ◼ ► And they do develop apps for the iPhone. Then Apple's got the Mac. Desktop is not a priority.
01:01:56 ◼ ► sticking their Windows version in an Electron wrapper. Like, they're fine with it. It doesn't
01:02:01 ◼ ► matter. It's good enough. It works. It's consistent. It's fine. And Apple wants the Mac to have,
01:02:07 ◼ ► you know, be able to take advantage of the fact that there is all this great iPhone and iPad
01:02:13 ◼ ► software. And that's why they built Catalyst. And that's why the ultimate goal for Apple is SwiftUI.
01:02:17 ◼ ► Because in a world where a lot of companies are not going to build custom versions of apps for
01:02:23 ◼ ► Windows and Mac and Android and iOS and the web, they're going to make tough decisions. The Mac
01:02:30 ◼ ► is never going to come out on top, right? Because first off, it's desktop and not mobile.
01:02:35 ◼ ► And secondly, it's the Mac and not Windows. So it's never going to win there. So Apple's playing
01:02:39 ◼ ► a different game. The game Apple is playing is, oh, what you do is you go from iPad and iPhone to
01:02:46 ◼ ► Mac. You go from your iOS app to the Mac. And we built Catalyst to have you do that. And we're
01:02:51 ◼ ► building SwiftUI so that you can do that. And that's Apple's whole game here, which when you
01:02:58 ◼ ► look at what 1Password went through, it actually makes a lot of sense, right? This is Apple's gambit
01:03:05 ◼ ► to get Mac software to be relevant is essentially it's part of the iPhone/iPad universe.
01:03:13 ◼ ► So what they want is people to develop for, you know, we can only develop two apps. What are we
01:03:19 ◼ ► going to do? It's going to be Android and Apple platforms and the web, let's say. Throw that in
01:03:24 ◼ ► as a third platform. Like that's what they want is they want people to start developing for Apple
01:03:27 ◼ ► platforms, which means, well, as long as you're doing your iPhone app, you should get that on the
01:03:32 ◼ ► Mac too. And we've got the tools that let you do it. And so you're just building another instance.
01:03:35 ◼ ► It's a little bit extra work, but it's not a lot. And you pick up what we're now defining as a
01:03:40 ◼ ► native Mac app, which by the way, there are, what's a native Mac app. Is it AppKit? Is it
01:03:45 ◼ ► Catalyst? Is it UIKit? I think Apple's saying yes and yes, and yeah, pretty soon because, but that's
01:03:53 ◼ ► what Apple's trying to do is Apple wants to make it so a developer like Agilebits looks at Apple's
01:04:06 ◼ ► And the problem right now is that Agilebits jumped a little bit too soon to the next generation tools
01:04:13 ◼ ► when they probably, if they had, I mean, in the end, it may work out for them because in the end,
01:04:18 ◼ ► a year or two down the road, they may actually have a native, you know, Swift UI Mac app and
01:04:24 ◼ ► iPhone and iPad app, and they're all working together and it's great, but it's a little too
01:04:28 ◼ ► early for that. And if they wanted to be like solid out the door this fall, they probably would
01:04:33 ◼ ► have been better off updating their iOS app and choosing Catalyst. Now, it may also be that there's
01:04:39 ◼ ► some legacy stuff in the code of the iOS app that they look at and they say, why are we going to put
01:04:43 ◼ ► money into updating this thing when we should be looking at it? We're going to need to rebuild it,
01:04:49 ◼ ► and then Apple is going to be going to Swift UI. So maybe we just need to go there now. Like,
01:04:54 ◼ ► that may be going on in the background too. Anyway, it's a difficult situation for everybody,
01:04:59 ◼ ► and I think that there's blame to go around, but it's also just about reality, which is if you're
01:05:04 ◼ ► a developer who is not super focused on the Mac as a platform and you need to make some decisions,
01:05:11 ◼ ► you're going to say, well, I can build one thing and deploy it everywhere. And so they do, and you
01:05:16 ◼ ► get a cross-platform app using Electron. And is it an efficient app? No. Does it have a lot of
01:05:22 ◼ ► overhead? Yes. Did you have to spend extra money to make it work on other platforms? No. And you
01:05:29 ◼ ► know what? It's always been the case that the Mac has been a platform that is, a lot of the apps on
01:05:38 ◼ ► it are not the best effort of the developers because it's an afterthought. However, the
01:05:45 ◼ ► challenge is like, you don't have much of a platform if everything is an afterthought. And when
01:05:52 ◼ ► you have a developer who used to treat the Mac as a priority and now has treated it as an afterthought,
01:05:58 ◼ ► and it's part of a trend, as a Mac user, it troubles me. As an Apple observer, I think it's
01:06:07 ◼ ► interesting because it's a case where Swift UI is supposed to be Apple's answer here. And at least
01:06:12 ◼ ► in this case, for whatever one password's reasons are, it failed because they tried to use it as
01:06:20 ◼ ► their Apple platforms approach. And in the end, they pulled the plug on the Mac version. And that's
01:06:27 ◼ ► not great. What is a Mac app? You know, what is a good Mac app today? We said this before. Behind
01:06:33 ◼ ► door number one, behind door number two, behind door number three. But what if I reveal that a
01:06:38 ◼ ► Mac app, I mean, and we can throw in the other, what's not behind a door, like Electron,
01:06:43 ◼ ► but there's also UIKit and AppKit and Swift UI, right? So like, and I think the answer is,
01:06:52 ◼ ► because a lot of people on Twitter, I've seen people saying like, there's no such thing as a
01:06:56 ◼ ► native Mac app anymore. It's all a mess. And it's like, I would say what is a native Mac app is in
01:07:02 ◼ ► transition and Apple is trying to take it from point A to point B or C maybe, but they're not
01:07:09 ◼ ► there and we're not there. So we're in this weird transition. I think ultimately Apple thinks a
01:07:14 ◼ ► native Mac app is not a thing. And it's mostly a native Apple platforms app written with Swift UI.
01:07:21 ◼ ► - Yeah, that's their plan. We're just still, I think, a couple of years away from it. I mean,
01:07:27 ◼ ► one part has sort of proven it. - Right. And there'll always be stuff that was written for
01:07:30 ◼ ► AppKit that's still gonna run for years and will be fine, right? These apps that are only written
01:07:35 ◼ ► on the Mac, like BB Edit, right? They're only written on the Mac. They're only gonna be on the
01:07:38 ◼ ► Mac. It's fine. But like what Apple wants to do is lead everybody down the path and Catalyst is
01:07:44 ◼ ► actually great for today. And I think Catalyst gets a lot of, it's not perfect, but like,
01:07:51 ◼ ► if you were to do it today, if you wanted to make a Mac app today and you had an iOS app,
01:07:56 ◼ ► you should use Catalyst, right? You shouldn't throw it away and use Swift UI. You should use
01:07:59 ◼ ► Catalyst. But Swift UI is where it's going. And they said, as Agilbit said, they're trying to
01:08:03 ◼ ► skate where the puck is going to be. And I get it. Like that's what Apple wants everybody. That's
01:08:08 ◼ ► Apple's dream is that instead of ignoring the Mac or only shipping like an Electron app or some
01:08:14 ◼ ► other kind of lowest common denominator app, what you're gonna do is you're going to spiff up your
01:08:19 ◼ ► Swift UI app that you're also writing for iPhone. And you'll put it on the iPad and the Mac too.
01:08:25 ◼ ► That's the whole plan. Me personally, I haven't run and nor will I run a beta version of 1Password.
01:08:31 ◼ ► Like that's an application that I would never run a beta of because that I don't want anything
01:08:36 ◼ ► going wrong in there. So I haven't used it. Right. I've seen a lot of people using it. I've seen a
01:08:40 ◼ ► lot of people complaining about it, et cetera, et cetera. It's a beta. Yeah, it may get better.
01:08:47 ◼ ► I have run it just really to take a screenshot of it from my article on my 24 inch iMac running
01:09:01 ◼ ► And if I had a prediction, I really do think that in the end, and they haven't said this, but I
01:09:08 ◼ ► would be surprised if AgileBits doesn't at some point here commit to bringing the Swift UI version
01:09:16 ◼ ► from iOS to Mac at some point in the future when they can. Their blog post stops just short of
01:09:40 ◼ ► It's like, how long could it possibly be? Could it be six months? Could it be 10 years?
01:09:44 ◼ ► Okay. So the other thing that I wonder in the background, a lot of conspiracy theories that
01:09:53 ◼ ► And I wonder if there's been a conversation now between AgileBits and Apple about Swift UI,
01:09:58 ◼ ► right? Where Apple, where somebody who's in charge of Swift UI comes to AgileBits and says,
01:10:11 ◼ ► walked at them, tried to get them back in. What I'll say, for me personally, as a one password
01:10:16 ◼ ► user, I already use tons of apps on the Mac that aren't quote unquote good Mac apps. They are just,
01:10:24 ◼ ► this is a web version, right? I could just list them, right? Or a bunch of applications that
01:10:30 ◼ ► they're not web versions, but they don't look like Mac apps either. They're built with native stuff,
01:10:35 ◼ ► but they're like, quote unquote, they're built to the technology, but the UI is designed in such
01:10:41 ◼ ► a way that it's meant to be like our UI, you know, like it doesn't look like an Apple app.
01:10:46 ◼ ► All I want is what an app can give me rather than caring so much about how it's made, right?
01:10:55 ◼ ► So like I use Slack because I like what Slack does, even if it frustrates me sometimes,
01:11:02 ◼ ► the tool itself is good, you know, like, and so I'm going to, it's really the same for me
01:11:07 ◼ ► with one password, right? Like I'm going to keep using it because I really like what one password
01:11:13 ◼ ► does for me. Like I'm not going to abandon it now. So something I want to say here too is this fall,
01:11:20 ◼ ► Apple's new password stuff is so good in the new versions of the OSs that I think for a lot of
01:11:27 ◼ ► regular people who only use Apple platforms and don't need to share passwords and stuff,
01:11:31 ◼ ► there's no reason to keep using something like one password. I feel like Apple's password management
01:11:35 ◼ ► stuff is going to elevate to a point where it's going to be irrelevant to use something like one
01:11:41 ◼ ► password for a whole class of people. By the way, I think this is why one password is doing what
01:11:45 ◼ ► it's doing, right? In terms of it's pivoting to, you know, sharing an online services and enterprise
01:11:50 ◼ ► and things like that is because they know, I think at least one person who works there has actually
01:11:55 ◼ ► tweeted about this. It's like, they know where this is going. They know where the puck is going,
01:12:00 ◼ ► right? And they know that basic password management, which for years has been a niche for
01:12:04 ◼ ► them to fill is becoming an OS feature and they got to go somewhere else. So for me, I do use it
01:12:10 ◼ ► for other stuff and we do have some shared volts. So I will probably stick with it, but I have to
01:12:14 ◼ ► be honest. I am seriously considering moving most of my stuff into Apple's password managers this
01:12:21 ◼ ► fall and using it instead because quite frankly, Apple does a shocker, does a better job of
01:12:26 ◼ ► integrating its own stuff than third parties do with integrating or how third parties are allowed
01:12:32 ◼ ► to integrate their stuff. And so Apple's password manager has some advantages over one password.
01:12:37 ◼ ► I have some like issues with apples, right? Like for example, with credit cards, like it doesn't
01:12:41 ◼ ► save the numbers on the back of the card, right? Oh yeah. You know, that's a great issue. Also,
01:12:51 ◼ ► So stuff like that, you know, like one password is really good at what it does because that's what
01:12:57 ◼ ► they do, right? Like they think about all of that stuff and Apple and the passwords team,
01:13:04 ◼ ► who I think are kind of part of the Safari team, I think, or like it's anyway, like they're doing
01:13:09 ◼ ► a great job like that. The two factor auto-fill thing is one of the greatest things added to iOS
01:13:26 ◼ ► Yeah. So I think there are going to be people who say the era of native apps on Mac and even Windows
01:13:34 ◼ ► are at an end. I don't believe that, but I believe that technology like Electron is going to do even
01:13:43 ◼ ► more than what like Java did back in the day, which is allow the Mac to be supported when it
01:13:48 ◼ ► wouldn't be before, but not by apps that are great. And this is already the case. And as a Mac user,
01:13:53 ◼ ► I feel like you learn to be grateful when a tool that you really want to use comes to the Mac,
01:13:59 ◼ ► even if it's bad, because at least it's there and you can use it while still being a little bit
01:14:13 ◼ ► I do have a level extra level of offense for apps that aren't interfaces to online services,
01:14:18 ◼ ► like Slack and Discord and Skype. They're web apps, but they're tied to an online service.
01:14:29 ◼ ► why is this an Electron app when it's just sitting here on my desktop that extra offends me? But the
01:14:36 ◼ ► point is I would rather have that than they not be present on my computer. And for people who didn't
01:14:42 ◼ ► live through the nineties when being a Mac user meant that there was just huge numbers of apps
01:14:48 ◼ ► that you couldn't run on the Mac at all, it's better that they're there, even if they're bad.
01:14:53 ◼ ► That said, I hope there continues to be a thriving set of apps that run better and work better because
01:15:07 ◼ ► I don't like Electron because it uses a lot of RAM. And it's like, well, your computer has a lot
01:15:10 ◼ ► of RAM and maybe it doesn't matter. And your computer has a lot of disk space. So it doesn't
01:15:13 ◼ ► matter that it takes up a lot of disk space. I am more sympathetic to the people who say things like,
01:15:19 ◼ ► it doesn't do accessibility right. Or when I open the preferences window, it doesn't open a window.
01:15:24 ◼ ► It opens this fake pane that I can't move around and that I have to dismiss. And it doesn't follow
01:15:30 ◼ ► any of these keyboard shortcut conventions. Or I can't automate it in some ways because it's very
01:15:36 ◼ ► weird because it's really all fake and it's just loading a webpage. Those I'm more sympathetic for,
01:15:41 ◼ ► because those are ways where it's actually worse to use. And I think there are better Electron apps
01:15:46 ◼ ► and there are worse Electron apps. And in the end, if somebody could build an Electron app that felt
01:15:52 ◼ ► absolutely like a native app in the sense that it sort of does all the things and isn't ignoring
01:15:57 ◼ ► platform conventions, I would be okay with it. And I hope there's still a market for apps that
01:16:02 ◼ ► do that going forward. And that's why I'm at least encouraged by the fact that Apple has made
01:16:07 ◼ ► such an effort to get the Mac involved in the strength of the iPhone as an app platform
01:16:21 ◼ ► Because Apple is making a great effort to make it that real Mac apps that only run on the Mac
01:16:28 ◼ ► are probably not going to be very common. But if you can get a real Apple platform app that's
01:16:35 ◼ ► optimized for the Mac and the iPhone and that the OS knows what to do on those different platforms,
01:16:40 ◼ ► that's better than the alternative. As we were recording, Apple have released iCloud for Windows
01:16:46 ◼ ► version 12.5 and includes a new password manager app. Of course it does. Of course it does.
01:16:53 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by Calm. Business leaders know that healthy, happy employees can
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01:19:16 ◼ ► Apple's going to want to do an in-person event again. Now the iPhone event is very important,
01:19:24 ◼ ► but it's also a packed event. Traditionally, it's got lots of overseas media that come to it
01:19:32 ◼ ► that won't be able to probably get in a lot of them to the US. There's that other event that may
01:19:48 ◼ ► It could be this fall. My guess is that it probably won't be, but if Apple wanted to do it,
01:20:06 ◼ ► They have a stage outside. They could do it. Well, they could, but my guess is they probably
01:20:09 ◼ ► just require proof of vaccination from everybody who they invite. They could do that. They could
01:20:14 ◼ ► set up a thing where you have to upload your vaccine status or have your barcode scanned
01:20:18 ◼ ► or whatever it is, and that they verify you and then they let you come. Because it's a controlled
01:20:23 ◼ ► event. They can completely control who goes in that building. So at some point, they're going
01:20:28 ◼ ► to do that. I don't know about an outside event. I mean, that would be fun, but I think the problem
01:20:32 ◼ ► with the fall in the Bay Area, the reality of it is we have smoke days now, right? We have periods
01:20:38 ◼ ► where there's a wildfire somewhere and the wind shifts and it blows over the Bay Area and then you
01:20:42 ◼ ► don't want to be outside. So anyway, I think it's going to happen. It may not be till next year.
01:20:49 ◼ ► So do I expect the fall event to be virtually or fully virtually? Yes. But at some point,
01:20:56 ◼ ► they're going to surprise us and they're going to go back and they're going to have some other
01:20:59 ◼ ► system because, again, this is a very controlled guest list. They can put lots of requirements on
01:21:07 ◼ ► it and verify everything and do all of that if they want to let members of the media back into
01:21:13 ◼ ► their facility again. Maybe too soon, but it's going to happen at some point. So we may be a
01:21:20 ◼ ► little surprised whenever that happens. I thought this would be. I don't think it will be now,
01:21:27 ◼ ► right? Yeah, things have slid backward to a point where it seems a lot less likely now.
01:21:33 ◼ ► There are more indoor mask mandates and things like that in California. And so it would be a
01:21:39 ◼ ► harder sell. They delayed their own return to work, right? This is going to be my next point. I don't
01:21:45 ◼ ► think they have an event until they've had their return to work. I think that's probably true. I
01:21:50 ◼ ► don't think that those things can match up in my mind. How do you let people from the outside in
01:21:55 ◼ ► when you don't even let your people back? Exactly. It's like, we're not going to let our employees
01:21:59 ◼ ► come back, but we'll let you rando in. Thanks. Hey everybody. Where is everybody? Yeah, I don't know.
01:22:06 ◼ ► There's something about it that I don't know if it fits because it's like, how will they staff
01:22:11 ◼ ► the place if there's nobody there? Yeah, I do wonder what conditions will apply when they
01:22:18 ◼ ► open the doors, right? Are they going to not open the doors until everybody can come in or are they
01:22:22 ◼ ► going to do like positive tests within 72 hours or negative tests within 72 hours or a vaccine?
01:22:34 ◼ ► Negative tests sound bad, but it's good. It's very confusing. Myke asks, not me, what are your
01:22:40 ◼ ► must bring devices when you start traveling again? I actually have twisted this question and you can
01:22:45 ◼ ► choose which one of them you want to answer. We've also both started traveling again, so. Yeah, a little bit.
01:22:50 ◼ ► Right, but that was like, you know, I can now say like, what were, but my, I have a secondary question
01:22:55 ◼ ► based on my trip, right? Which was inspired by Myke's question. At this point, which device are we more
01:23:03 ◼ ► likely to take out of either the iPad Pro or a MacBook Air or Pro and why? And are there any shifts
01:23:11 ◼ ► that we would like to see in either product to make this an easier choice to pick just one?
01:23:15 ◼ ► So I, I'm not going to answer your question the way you want because, and you already know this
01:23:25 ◼ ► about me, my iPad Pro is coming with me 100% of the time. I do, the reason that I have written and talked
01:23:33 ◼ ► so much about traveling with just an iPad is because I started out thinking, can I leave my MacBook
01:23:40 ◼ ► behind? Because I'm, the iPad is always going to come with me. I am never traveling without an iPad
01:23:46 ◼ ► ever, ever, ever. I use it. It's the one that I would, I would feel lost if I didn't have it with me.
01:23:53 ◼ ► I just, I love it. And I use it all the time. And it is my primary computing device when I'm not
01:23:58 ◼ ► sitting at my desk. That said, when I was traveling a lot before the pandemic, I had, the laptop I had
01:24:08 ◼ ► was an, it was my laptop from, from Macworld. So it was a 2014 MacBook Air. I have an M1 MacBook Air
01:24:16 ◼ ► now. So really powerful, great battery life. And you know, it's small. So my story is that I'm more
01:24:27 ◼ ► likely to also bring the MacBook Air than I used to be when I was traveling before. And that's
01:24:32 ◼ ► mostly because it's just easier to do some stuff on the MacBook Air. Honestly, right now, what I
01:24:40 ◼ ► have, the line I've drawn is, am I expected to record a podcast? Cause I went to Denver last
01:24:46 ◼ ► weekend, weekend before last now, with just an iPad and people sent me files and I posted, I edited
01:25:01 ◼ ► Using fair, right. And I used, I used a separate app to do some denoising on, on the, the one
01:25:07 ◼ ► podcast that I posted from there. That was where people sent me the files. I got them in my Dropbox
01:25:12 ◼ ► moving to fair, right. It's all fine. Recording is a lot harder because there's no, you know,
01:25:16 ◼ ► audio hijack makes things so much easier and you get back backup files and it's just, you know,
01:25:22 ◼ ► I have to bring like other hardware with me if I travel with the iPad. So I have to bring extra
01:25:28 ◼ ► boxes anyway. So for me, that's what the line is. It's like, if I'm really expecting to do a
01:25:34 ◼ ► podcast while I'm traveling somewhere, I'll just bring the laptop. So I didn't bring it to Hawaii.
01:25:39 ◼ ► I didn't bring it to Denver. But when I visited my mom in Phoenix and had several podcasts to
01:25:45 ◼ ► record from there, I brought the MacBook Air. So for me, that's, that's basically the dividing
01:25:50 ◼ ► line now. But the iPad it's a hundred percent of the time. See, I've already struggled too, right?
01:25:55 ◼ ► So I'm like, I, if I'm, I always want to have both of them. If I'm going to be working or if there's
01:26:02 ◼ ► like a possibility of work, I need a laptop. I need a Mac. It's how I know how to record and edit.
01:26:09 ◼ ► I'm not going to learn a whole new system for a trip, right. Or like on the trip. Uh, I want
01:26:16 ◼ ► reliability because if I'm traveling, if I'm on vacation or I'm traveling, seeing family,
01:26:21 ◼ ► what I don't want to do is like spend hours and hours trying to fix an issue that's come up
01:26:26 ◼ ► because I've tried to record with an iPad or whatever. So like, I think like, what would the
01:26:33 ◼ ► Mac have to do for me to not want to take my iPad? And I don't know. So this is a question I had. I
01:26:40 ◼ ► don't really have an answer for myself. I know I don't want to be taking both of them because it's
01:26:45 ◼ ► a lot of weight and a lot of bulk and you know, you just take in all this stuff, but I don't
01:26:50 ◼ ► really know what exactly I would want to happen to one or the other to make like what, honestly,
01:26:56 ◼ ► what I want is an iPad that can boot into Mac OS. That's what I want. Right. It would be awfully
01:27:03 ◼ ► convenient if I could reboot my M1 iPad running with the smart keyboard into Mac OS for podcast
01:27:09 ◼ ► purposes and then reboot it back into the iPad. That would be nice. I've just worked it out.
01:27:13 ◼ ► That's what I want. I'm never going to get it, but that's what I want. And the reason is because like,
01:27:17 ◼ ► I know I could in theory just take the Mac, but like if I'm going to watch like a movie on a
01:27:22 ◼ ► plane, I don't want to get a Mac for that. Right. Like I got the keyboard and it's like big and
01:27:26 ◼ ► there's a whole thing. Right. And so I don't want to do it. And plus it's like, it's, it's
01:27:31 ◼ ► way harder to preload the video. Like, Oh yeah. For me anyway. Nobody wants to let you save video
01:27:37 ◼ ► on my daughter. When we went to Hawaii, she borrowed one of my iPads to preload movies on,
01:27:43 ◼ ► to watch on the plane because she just has her MacBook air and you know, they don't want to let
01:27:47 ◼ ► you download stuff on videos on a Mac. They only want to, cause it's less secure or something,
01:27:53 ◼ ► even though it's probably not actually less secure. So yes, I agree. For me, I draw the
01:27:59 ◼ ► line at recording a podcast cause I can edit podcasts and prefer it. And in fact, I prefer
01:28:04 ◼ ► writing articles on my iPad too, honestly. If I was going, I could like generate my financial charts
01:28:11 ◼ ► and stuff on an iPad. I have built the automation to do that. And I did that at your bachelor party.
01:28:16 ◼ ► Actually I had to do that there. That was the one time that I've used those scripts actually.
01:28:22 ◼ ► But at this point, again, I would just bring the Mac book air cause like, I'm not trying to
01:28:27 ◼ ► pull a stunt here. Right. I'm trying to just get work done. And the iPad is my preferred
01:28:33 ◼ ► tool for most of what I do, um, when I'm out and about. But that M1 air changes the equation a
01:28:40 ◼ ► little cause it's so good that it's just kind of, and also I've been broken down by the fact that
01:28:46 ◼ ► Apple's never going to provide apparently proper audio access support in iPadOS. And so I just
01:28:52 ◼ ► sort of given up and it's like, if I need to record something, I'll bring the Mac book air
01:28:55 ◼ ► and it's good. And that's good enough. And last question comes from Brants. It seems that every
01:29:02 ◼ ► year brings a new report about how the latest iPhone will have limited availability at launch.
01:29:08 ◼ ► Do you think that this production, that this prediction will actually come true as Apple
01:29:12 ◼ ► and many other manufacturers are still dealing with global chip component shortages? I think
01:29:18 ◼ ► one key difference here, right. Is this report came from Tim, which is not who usually reports this.
01:29:26 ◼ ► I think Apple will do what it does to disguise availability issues. I think it does that by
01:29:33 ◼ ► staggering release time. Sometimes it also has you pre-order, but it ships it later, allows it to
01:29:40 ◼ ► allows them to open the pre-order period where you'll get it on release day. And then it's all
01:29:47 ◼ ► just a function of how few they have, how quickly that slips into the past. And then they often get
01:29:53 ◼ ► up to speed and those dates move back forward again. And you think you're not getting it for
01:29:57 ◼ ► two months and you get it in a month, but like Apple will disguise it. Apple's not going to be
01:30:01 ◼ ► like, Oh, you can't get it. Instead, Apple's just going to open it for pre-orders and, you know,
01:30:07 ◼ ► will it be a month out after five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes? That's going to be the
01:30:14 ◼ ► thing. But I think Apple tries very hard to disguise it so that you don't think about it
01:30:19 ◼ ► that way. This is also a way that I think Apple's approach is superior to like the games console
01:30:24 ◼ ► people, for example. And forgive me for going there again, but it just drives me crazy. Like
01:30:28 ◼ ► with Apple, you give them your credit card and stuff and you say, I want an iPhone. And they say,
01:30:32 ◼ ► great, it's going to come in a month. It's going to come in six weeks, whatever the wait is,
01:30:36 ◼ ► you will get it then. And we'll let you know if you'll get it earlier. Or just like, it will come,
01:30:42 ◼ ► right? Like you give me the money and it will come. Right. Whereas some of these, especially
01:30:46 ◼ ► like the game consoles, it's like, sorry, we're out, come back later and get your bots ready and
01:30:51 ◼ ► try to order it. And it's like, Apple just doesn't play that game. Apple wants to take your money.
01:30:54 ◼ ► They want to take as much of your money as possible and they'll get you a phone when they
01:30:58 ◼ ► can. Also, I'm just going to say it again, because we say it here, people need to listen. Also,
01:31:04 ◼ ► they ship a bunch to the Apple stores and you can, if you've got an Apple store near you,
01:31:10 ◼ ► you can almost certainly get one faster if your thing is really ordered, you know, a month back
01:31:19 ◼ ► ordered or something. You got to like try to do that order that gets you one that's in your store
01:31:24 ◼ ► supply because the stores get supply. They don't just put them all toward the back order. So that's
01:31:28 ◼ ► something to look for. But anyway, I think, will it be slower? Maybe. But when Tim Cook says they're
01:31:36 ◼ ► not going to have as many available, some of that is also about when they, right? The announcement
01:31:43 ◼ ► happens right before the end of their fiscal quarter. So some of it may be, well, yeah,
01:31:46 ◼ ► they're really going to ship mostly in October. And they might ship a lot of them in October and
01:31:53 ◼ ► not in late September. And that actually is a function of that too. So I don't know. I mean,
01:31:59 ◼ ► we'll see. There could be an amazing iPhone shortage and everybody's like, oh, it's immediately
01:32:03 ◼ ► three months back ordered. This is ridiculous. But my guess is that Apple plays it's when do I
01:32:09 ◼ ► announce it? When do I announce pre-orders are available and what is the actual release date
01:32:13 ◼ ► after that? They set those dates and they can change those dates and they try to play it so
01:32:22 ◼ ► Because that's what they did last time, right? Like if they felt like it was going to be
01:32:26 ◼ ► immediately like nobody's going to get until late October, well, they won't announce it until October.
01:32:31 ◼ ► I agree with you. There'll be some available in September, but most in October. But that means
01:32:36 ◼ ► they think that that's fine. If it was going to be, as you say, like a three month wait,
01:32:40 ◼ ► well, they would just wait. Like they've already done. They could just wait. It's fine.
01:32:45 ◼ ► If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with
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01:33:14 ◼ ► upgradeians who subscribe to upgrade plus go to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to everybody who
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