ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I've been having a bit of a confusing couple of weeks with my eyes.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Oh no, oh no.

00:00:08 ◼   ► So it's nothing bad.

00:00:10 ◼   ► This is like, you know, compared to the reality that most people live with, with any kind

00:00:14 ◼   ► of eye correction, this is nothing.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Are we going to find some way to blame this on the Vision Pro?

00:00:18 ◼   ► No.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Give him time, Jon, give him time.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Took out of the drawer for one day, now look what happens.

00:00:27 ◼   ► No, I just, as I discussed, I think like a year ago, I said I was trying different reading

00:00:32 ◼   ► glasses and I had tried like some progressives from the internet.

00:00:36 ◼   ► My lack of close distance focus now with my, you know, 40s presbyopia, whatever that is

00:00:43 ◼   ► called, is annoying enough in my life now that whenever I am wearing reading glasses

00:00:49 ◼   ► and I see like my phone or my watch, I'm like, oh man, that's so good.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Why can't I look at that all the time?

00:00:55 ◼   ► So I've tried progressives, which for those that don't know, it's kind of doing what bifocals

00:01:02 ◼   ► used to do, but where you don't see the line that differentiates between the bottom part

00:01:07 ◼   ► that magnifies and the top part that doesn't, which is kind of a smooth transition, which

00:01:12 ◼   ► results in lots of oddities.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And so anyway, I decided, about a month ago, I decided let me actually, since it's annoying

00:01:20 ◼   ► enough now in my life not to be able to see sharp things up close, let me try to actually

00:01:25 ◼   ► give progressives a real shot.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Not get like internet ones where I measure my face with an app and hope for the best,

00:01:32 ◼   ► but actually go to a real eyeglasses place that sells the best progressives, which I

00:01:36 ◼   ► gathered through research are the Zeiss individual, whatever, whatever ones.

00:01:40 ◼   ► I was like a nice optician in the city that was like, you know, on Zeiss's like best recommended

00:01:46 ◼   ► list and, you know, got some really nice frames and talked to the experts there that work

00:01:50 ◼   ► with this stuff all the time.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Like, yeah, this is what you want.

00:01:53 ◼   ► So anyway, I've been trying to wear progressives for long spans, like not just while sitting

00:01:58 ◼   ► at my desk, but like while walking around, doing stuff around the house, walking around

00:02:03 ◼   ► the city, like doing stuff, like, you know, not, I'm not wearing them while driving or

00:02:07 ◼   ► using a computer because I don't need them for those distances, but kind of, you know,

00:02:12 ◼   ► while doing like general purpose stuff, you know, while eating dinner, it's so nice to

00:02:15 ◼   ► be able to see my food really sharply or like at restaurants to be able to read the menus

00:02:19 ◼   ► really sharply in low light.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Like that's all really nice.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And so I've been trying and you know what, you know what's great about progressives?

00:02:29 ◼   ► They let you see far and close in one.

00:02:32 ◼   ► You don't say.

00:02:33 ◼   ► You know what's not great about progressives?

00:02:35 ◼   ► Everything else.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Everything else.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Like, do you like seeing the world look like jello?

00:02:41 ◼   ► Progressives may be for you.

00:02:42 ◼   ► Well, tell me more about this because I, my eyes are such crap that I have to wear hard

00:02:45 ◼   ► contacts.

00:02:46 ◼   ► We've talked about this many times.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Have you ever looked in a funhouse mirror?

00:02:49 ◼   ► Is that what it's like?

00:02:50 ◼   ► No, it's not that.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It's not that.

00:02:52 ◼   ► The problem with progressives is that in order to have magnification at the bottom and in

00:02:56 ◼   ► my case, no correction at the top, but you know, whatever the, whatever your correction

00:02:59 ◼   ► is at the top in order to have that, you know, a transition between two different optical

00:03:04 ◼   ► characteristics, there has to be some like transitional zones where there is some degree

00:03:09 ◼   ► of warping of the image.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Now the really good progressives, like I can tell between, between like my internet ones

00:03:16 ◼   ► and my fancy Zeiss ones now, the Zeiss ones are better.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Like their, their blurry zones are much smaller.

00:03:22 ◼   ► There is much less distortion.

00:03:24 ◼   ► It is the best type of aggressive I've seen so far.

00:03:28 ◼   ► However, there is still some warping, especially like, like what they warned me was don't like

00:03:34 ◼   ► run upstairs really quickly.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I'm like, what does that mean?

00:03:36 ◼   ► And I found that immediately.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Why?

00:03:39 ◼   ► Because you know, the problem with, with reading glasses and you know, any kind of magnifier

00:03:42 ◼   ► is when you look at something through the magnification part, you can see close things

00:03:48 ◼   ► really sharply, but anything that's not close, it looks not only blurry, but it's also you're,

00:03:55 ◼   ► you're altering your perception of distance slightly because it's just magnifying.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So things that are far away appear at the wrong distance compared to where they actually

00:04:05 ◼   ► are.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And so the result of this is with progressives, since the bottom of the magnified stuff and

00:04:10 ◼   ► you look down at your own feet, they're in the magnification zone, not the nothing zone.

00:04:14 ◼   ► So you looked at it in your own feet and you and your feet are both blurry and they appear

00:04:20 ◼   ► like further away than they really are.

00:04:23 ◼   ► So the result is it's really easy to trip on stuff because you don't know where your

00:04:27 ◼   ► feet are.

00:04:28 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing to solve this problem.

00:04:32 ◼   ► If listeners, in order to solve needing a very, I have a plus one reading prescription

00:04:39 ◼   ► and no other optical correction needed.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Is there a better solution than progressive glasses?

00:04:44 ◼   ► Why don't you just use reading glasses?

00:04:46 ◼   ► I have them everywhere.

00:04:47 ◼   ► They're fine.

00:04:48 ◼   ► But like the problem with reading glasses is that you can't always have them on.

00:04:51 ◼   ► You get one of those things that puts them a little chain around your neck.

00:04:54 ◼   ► So they're always on you.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I still have two mongdini to wear one of those.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Like I'm just, I'm too, I can't, I can't do that.

00:05:00 ◼   ► I just, I can't.

00:05:01 ◼   ► You can do what I do.

00:05:02 ◼   ► So I hate progressive so much that I've been fighting against them until I can't anymore.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And right now I still can.

00:05:08 ◼   ► And I have two pairs of glasses.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I have what I call my driving glasses, which are even I remember.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And I have my around the house glasses, which I use for using the computer.

00:05:17 ◼   ► I'm lucky enough that I don't need any glasses to use my phone because my up close vision

00:05:21 ◼   ► is good.

00:05:22 ◼   ► But the point is I have two pairs of glasses and how do I handle it?

00:05:24 ◼   ► I just wear my non-driving glasses all the time around the house.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And anytime I leave the house, I wear my driving glasses and that's my solution.

00:05:31 ◼   ► They're literally always on my face.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Something is always on my face.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I don't mind it.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Like if there, if that's why I tried to progress.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Like if there was one kind of eyeglasses that I could just wear all the time and correct

00:05:42 ◼   ► close and far, I'm willing to do that.

00:05:44 ◼   ► The problem is that's not, apparently it's not really possible without them being progressive,

00:05:48 ◼   ► which has a bunch of other trade offs.

00:05:50 ◼   ► But that's what, that's not what I'm doing.

00:05:51 ◼   ► When I'm in the house and wearing my in the house glasses, I cannot see distance well.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I'm sad.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I'm making that sacrifice because most things aren't too far away from me in the house.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I might, and I wear my driving glasses when I watch TV.

00:06:03 ◼   ► The TV is too far away for me to see.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Although if it's a show that I don't care about, maybe I'll just sit closer or whatever.

00:06:08 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:06:09 ◼   ► So basically what you're deciding is what distances do I really need to see stuff at?

00:06:13 ◼   ► And for me, uh, I need to see my computer.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And when I walk around my house, I need to see stuff that's, you know, few feet in front

00:06:22 ◼   ► of me, but I know what's in my house.

00:06:24 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:26 ◼   ► So you should just get whatever glasses that you feel comfortable using your phone and

00:06:28 ◼   ► your computer with.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Get a, get a pair of glasses that does that and just wear them all day in the house.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And yeah, that means that stuff that's far away from you and your house will be blurry,

00:06:35 ◼   ► but so what?

00:06:36 ◼   ► I don't think that's possible.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I don't, I mean, so the problem with reading glasses is that the, the depth of field, so

00:06:46 ◼   ► to speak, like how much distance from you is in focus is not that much.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It's only maybe a few feet that's actually really in focus.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Your eyes aren't fixed focal length.

00:06:56 ◼   ► They squish and stretch to let you focus on things at different distances.

00:06:59 ◼   ► So it's just a question of as you get older, your eyes get, your lenses get stiffer and

00:07:02 ◼   ► less squishy and you can't squish them as much, but you've got some squish left in your

00:07:06 ◼   ► lenses there.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So you, you know, how much can you squish without feeling eye strain?

00:07:10 ◼   ► I bet you can squish from phone distance to computer screen distance with the correct

00:07:14 ◼   ► prescription.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And that's what you go to the eye doctor for.

00:07:16 ◼   ► You say, doctor, I want to be able to see my phone and my computer screen and my computer

00:07:20 ◼   ► screen is this far away from me and my phone is this far away from me and I want to be

00:07:24 ◼   ► able to do that comfortably with my current eye squishiness ability.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's so frustrating because like right now, like my computer screen is, you know, whatever,

00:07:32 ◼   ► you know, it was like two and a half feet in front of me.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Perfectly sharp.

00:07:36 ◼   ► So no, no glasses needed for me to see computers right now.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I mean, maybe in a few more years that might, that might change.

00:07:42 ◼   ► But like right now if I hold my arm out, everything more than like wrist distance away is perfectly

00:07:48 ◼   ► sharp.

00:07:49 ◼   ► It's just like, you know, when I'm holding my phone or looking at something closer, that

00:07:53 ◼   ► is not, and it's very, it's very frustrating that like there seems to be no correction.

00:07:57 ◼   ► My vision is basically the opposite of yours.

00:07:59 ◼   ► For me, everything from like the tip of my nose to about a foot and a half away is sharp

00:08:05 ◼   ► and then everything else is blurry.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Yep.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I'm basically the same without contacts.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Although I think my range is considerably less than yours, but same basic idea.

00:08:14 ◼   ► A genuine question, Marco.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I'm not trying to troll you.

00:08:16 ◼   ► What's wrong with bifocals?

00:08:17 ◼   ► I've never tried them.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Maybe they're garbage.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Would that not solve the like funhouse mirror problem?

00:08:22 ◼   ► I don't, honestly, I haven't tried them yet.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I just kind of assumed that I am too young to be seen wearing bifocals.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Well, that's fair.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:31 ◼   ► So maybe the social angle is enough to dissuade you from them, which I'm with you.

00:08:35 ◼   ► I get it.

00:08:36 ◼   ► But I wonder if maybe that would be a better solution and maybe you'd end up enjoying them

00:08:42 ◼   ► more.

00:08:43 ◼   ► He doesn't need bifocals.

00:08:44 ◼   ► He needs those ones that are like the bottom part of bifocals only.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:47 ◼   ► They, yeah, like those like half readers, like, yeah, I've seen those.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:08:50 ◼   ► So then you like Benjamin Franklin or whatever.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I think I'm also, I think I'm, I'm both too young for those and also, yeah, I live 200

00:08:57 ◼   ► years too far in the future for the same thing.

00:08:59 ◼   ► You just, you know, the whole clear part of the lens is doing nothing for you.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Just eliminate that part.

00:09:03 ◼   ► So you've got your little reader, your Benjamin Franklin reader, half moons hanging off the

00:09:08 ◼   ► end of your nose and everything else is straight through.

00:09:12 ◼   ► We are all waiting for more football, football followups, especially Marco.

00:09:16 ◼   ► You know, I saw a football game.

00:09:19 ◼   ► You did?

00:09:20 ◼   ► I did.

00:09:21 ◼   ► I hope for your sake it wasn't the Giants because holy crap, are we terrible?

00:09:23 ◼   ► No, it was the Texas versus other Texas college game.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Oh, you watched college football?

00:09:29 ◼   ► Why?

00:09:30 ◼   ► Because they are visiting friends and they are, they are from one of the Texas and wanted

00:09:33 ◼   ► to see it beat the other Texas.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Were they A&M or were they University of Texas Longhorns fans?

00:09:41 ◼   ► Our friends are the Longhorns fans.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I don't actually have a horse in this race, but having lived in Austin for a couple of

00:09:48 ◼   ► years as a, sorry, it took me a second.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Joke was better than I gave you credit for.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Anyways, I don't have a cow nor horse in this race, but I spent a couple of years in Austin

00:09:58 ◼   ► as a middle schooler and I did not understand really what college was at that point, but

00:10:03 ◼   ► I knew more than anything in the world that the Aggies sucked and the Longhorns were the

00:10:08 ◼   ► only team that mattered.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Didn't know what that meant, but I knew it.

00:10:11 ◼   ► It took me halfway through the game before I finally asked my friend, why is that team

00:10:14 ◼   ► called the Yankees?

00:10:15 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And then I was mishearing them say Aggies the whole time.

00:10:20 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, that's, that makes way more sense for a team from Texas.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Okay.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Well, I'm very proud of you for watching some college football.

00:10:26 ◼   ► That makes me very happy because I enjoy me some college football and if you don't, that's

00:10:30 ◼   ► fine, but I enjoy me some college football.

00:10:32 ◼   ► What I don't enjoy these days though is New York football giants because God, they suck

00:10:35 ◼   ► so bad.

00:10:36 ◼   ► They played on Thanksgiving and, and it was God, it was terrible.

00:10:39 ◼   ► They lost the Cowboys who was Gruber's team.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I feel like America wins when the Cowboys lose, but America did not win on Thanksgiving

00:10:48 ◼   ► because Cowboys won.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It's sad times, but here we are.

00:10:51 ◼   ► But the problem with the other problem with the Giants playing on Thanksgiving is that

00:10:55 ◼   ► it was nationally televised.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So all my whole big contraption that I've set up for myself, um, it didn't do me any

00:11:01 ◼   ► good because the game was televised literally the entire nation.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Uh, but this coming Sunday, I believe they play on Fox at one o'clock if I'm not mistaken.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And uh, and so hopefully I will put my apparatus to use, which are the reason I'm bringing

00:11:14 ◼   ► all this up is because I was reminded by John Fischetti about a checkbox, a very important

00:11:20 ◼   ► checkbox in the channels DVR server app that I completely forgot about.

00:11:25 ◼   ► So I told you where we, where we left our hero last week was that I attempted to get,

00:11:30 ◼   ► um, TV everywhere logged in through my friend's spectrum account.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I don't have his credentials.

00:11:36 ◼   ► He just logged into it, um, on my server and I didn't get any of the local channels.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I was really bummed about that because that was the whole point of this was, you know,

00:11:44 ◼   ► that we started with an antenna specifically because all I want is local channels.

00:11:47 ◼   ► I don't want, I don't think he gets HBO or anything like that.

00:11:49 ◼   ► I'm not looking to get HBO or anything like that.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I just want the local channels and tried to suck it in via TV everywhere and it didn't

00:11:56 ◼   ► work.

00:11:57 ◼   ► And I was very sad.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And then John wrote to say, wait a second, did you check the following checkbox local

00:12:03 ◼   ► networks via TV everywhere?

00:12:05 ◼   ► Some major metropolitan areas offer access to ABC, CBS and Fox stations via TV everywhere.

00:12:09 ◼   ► And it was unchecked.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And then I checked it and guess what came in local networks via TV everywhere.

00:12:15 ◼   ► So I now have hypothetical and theoretical access to all of these via channels via TV

00:12:22 ◼   ► everywhere.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So I'm very much looking forward to giving this a shot on Sunday.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I will report in which with what will hopefully be the final bit of football related followup

00:12:29 ◼   ► next week.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Is this still the device that's in your friend's house in Connecticut that is running channels.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And that's why when you check this checkbox in his house, then he can get ABC, CBS and

00:12:39 ◼   ► Fox from Connecticut.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And if he were willing to password share, which I didn't ask him to do, to give him,

00:12:47 ◼   ► give me a password or anything like that.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I literally told him, look, the computer's sitting in your network, just logging, you

00:12:52 ◼   ► know, go onto this URL and just, you know, and log into your it's basically like an OAuth

00:12:57 ◼   ► dance and you'll log into your cable provider if you don't mind.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And then I'll be able to slurp down stuff via TV everywhere on occasion.

00:13:04 ◼   ► But again, like, I mean, hypothetically I could just cancel my cable subscription, but

00:13:08 ◼   ► I'm not, I'm genuinely not looking to do that.

00:13:10 ◼   ► This isn't about, you know, about saving money by, by, well, it's kind of saving money by

00:13:15 ◼   ► cheating the system, but I'm not trying to cheat.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Let's be honest, but that's definitely what it's about.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I'm not trying to cheat like Verizon or anything like that.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I just want to be able to see things that I can't see locally.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And so, yeah, so he logged into Chan- he got on the channels web, you know, configurator,

00:13:30 ◼   ► if you will, logged into spectrum using his credentials.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I never saw them.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I'm, I don't think channels strictly speaking ever saw them.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And then that now it's all enabled on the server in his house.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And then my server will, through some channels magic, will talk to his server.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Well, it's really both of them are mine servers, but for the sake of discussion, my server

00:13:48 ◼   ► will talk to the remote server.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Maybe that's a better way of phrasing it.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And that when they they'll cascade those channels down or those, those, the programming down

00:13:56 ◼   ► to me.

00:13:57 ◼   ► Unrelated to all that.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Now, we talked last week about, well, we've been talking regularly about Apple vision

00:14:02 ◼   ► pro immersive content.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And I was very sad that I couldn't come up with some sort of BS homework assignment for

00:14:08 ◼   ► Marco to have to apply to this week.

00:14:11 ◼   ► So my apologies to you, Marco.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I'm sure you're just devastated that you didn't have any vision pro homework this week.

00:14:15 ◼   ► I'll survive.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It was an Apple PR email about a bunch of vision pro stuff.

00:14:20 ◼   ► We did.

00:14:21 ◼   ► And I was genuinely happy to see it.

00:14:22 ◼   ► I hope that they send more of those emails.

00:14:23 ◼   ► But Marco doesn't read those.

00:14:24 ◼   ► No, I did read it.

00:14:26 ◼   ► I would love more vision pro content.

00:14:28 ◼   ► If we're to the point now where they can start, where they have so much that they can send

00:14:32 ◼   ► us emails containing lots of new vision pro content.

00:14:35 ◼   ► That's a great problem to have.

00:14:36 ◼   ► I look forward to there being so much content that that's really a thing that we need.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Um, but a friend of the show underscore David Smith wrote after listening to your discussion

00:14:46 ◼   ► last night, you know, obviously this was last week about the latest vision pro thing.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I made a little spreadsheet of all the vision pro immersive content, adding up the cumulative

00:14:54 ◼   ► runtime that they just passed a meaningful milestone.

00:14:57 ◼   ► There is now slightly longer immersive content at 131 minutes than the 2023 WWDC keynote,

00:15:03 ◼   ► which included its introduction at 126 minutes.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So let me re let me say that again, rephrase it slightly the entire WWDC keynote, which

00:15:12 ◼   ► of which a part of it, a large part of it was the vision pro that was 126 minutes.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And as of last week, there is 131 minutes of immersive content.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So we did it, Joe, we passed, we passed the threshold.

00:15:24 ◼   ► We'll put a, we'll put a little graph that underscore put together in the show notes,

00:15:27 ◼   ► and perhaps we'll be the chapter art for this little section.

00:15:30 ◼   ► It made me laugh quite a bit.

00:15:32 ◼   ► That underscore is a very, very underscore thing to do to put this together.

00:15:36 ◼   ► He continues on average, they have released three minutes and seven seconds of immersive

00:15:40 ◼   ► content per week since launch.

00:15:42 ◼   ► If you include the launch content, if you take the launch content out and just look

00:15:45 ◼   ► at new content launched since February 2nd, the average new release rate is 17 seconds

00:15:50 ◼   ► per day or about two minutes per week.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I love this, this so much made me so happy.

00:15:57 ◼   ► All right.

00:15:58 ◼   ► We got some feedback a little while ago from Paradise Pete on Mastodon, I believe, who

00:16:02 ◼   ► writes, I tried cleaning my keyboard using the screensaver method, but I also had unlock

00:16:07 ◼   ► with Apple watch enabled.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And now all of my devices are conspiring against me.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Apple just makes it too easy to unlock your computer.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I can't get near it with my wrist to clean it because as soon as I go near it and it

00:16:17 ◼   ► opens up with my watch.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Imagine if Apple's laptops also had face ID, then you'd be trying to clean it and it would

00:16:21 ◼   ► unlock because you'd be facing it.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So you'd have to look away, take off your Apple watch and then look away, don't look

00:16:26 ◼   ► at it and then you can clean the keyboard.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Anyway, once again, we'll link to Clean Up Buddy, an application that will help you lock

00:16:32 ◼   ► your screen.

00:16:33 ◼   ► And of course, a couple episodes ago, we had that weird key combo that you can do to shut

00:16:37 ◼   ► your thing down and make it so it doesn't wake up and you hit the keyboard.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Struggle is real.

00:16:42 ◼   ► People want to clean their keyboards.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Imagine if laptops were waterproof, then it would be a lot easier to do this.

00:16:47 ◼   ► We are brought to you this episode by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs

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00:18:45 ◼   ► Alex wrote in with regard to app sizes, "I think another big contributor to app size

00:18:52 ◼   ► is that companies don't split out their apps based on their offerings either.

00:18:55 ◼   ► It's 'one app per company.'

00:18:57 ◼   ► Tesla has a whole suite of functionality for their battery and solar offerings that somebody

00:19:00 ◼   ► with just the car will never see.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Software as a service companies with business to consumer and business to business offerings

00:19:07 ◼   ► also frequently use the same app for both.

00:19:09 ◼   ► The B2C customers get a lot less functionality, but both groups have to download the same

00:19:13 ◼   ► app."

00:19:14 ◼   ► This does contribute to the app size in the sense that you think about all the different

00:19:19 ◼   ► screens in the example here, like in the Tesla app, you have all the different graphics that

00:19:23 ◼   ► represent the power walls or the different things versus all the different cars.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Yes, that is true.

00:19:30 ◼   ► However, the problem is still that they don't really care to minimize such things.

00:19:35 ◼   ► There are ways to have an app that has images and various assets and has lots of different

00:19:43 ◼   ► functionality that is not 400 megabytes.

00:19:48 ◼   ► The thing is, again, like we were saying last time, there really is not much of a culture

00:19:53 ◼   ► in modern software development around minimizing the size or even, frankly, resource usage

00:20:01 ◼   ► of apps.

00:20:02 ◼   ► That's why you have apps that are RAM hogs, too, because modern computer hardware is so

00:20:07 ◼   ► vast and fast that, for the most part, no one's really picking apps based on their efficiency.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And then when it comes to something like a company app, like the Tesla example here,

00:20:20 ◼   ► if you have a Tesla vehicle or a power wall or multiple things, you don't have any choice

00:20:26 ◼   ► but to use their app.

00:20:27 ◼   ► That's how you get the function.

00:20:29 ◼   ► It isn't like you have five different apps you can use and you might pick one that takes

00:20:32 ◼   ► up less space on your computer.

00:20:34 ◼   ► No, you don't have the choice.

00:20:36 ◼   ► When you're dealing with these corporate apps, usually it's their app or you don't use the

00:20:40 ◼   ► product.

00:20:41 ◼   ► So that's yet another reason why they have no incentive to use resources efficiently

00:20:45 ◼   ► because where else are you going to go?

00:20:47 ◼   ► You're going to make all the Tesla people send you links to third-party apps they use

00:20:50 ◼   ► to control their cars.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Fun fact, Underscore and I almost wrote one back a long time ago.

00:20:56 ◼   ► I know.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I was going to say, you should know that they exist.

00:20:58 ◼   ► I'm going to have to preamp this.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Yes, we know third-party apps exist for control.

00:21:00 ◼   ► By the way, I just looked at the app that I used.

00:21:03 ◼   ► The app for my washing machine, 500 megabytes.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Oh my word.

00:21:10 ◼   ► So how much functionality is in that?

00:21:12 ◼   ► It sends me notification when the wash is done.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Horacious.

00:21:16 ◼   ► 500 megabytes, it can be replaced by a speaker.

00:21:19 ◼   ► It also sings a little song.

00:21:22 ◼   ► You can also upload named wash cycles.

00:21:25 ◼   ► You can pick any combination of the various features and then give it a name and then

00:21:28 ◼   ► upload it.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Please wash these sweaters on Bob.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:21:33 ◼   ► To Alex's point, I think this app works with every LG appliance that has any smart functionalities.

00:21:38 ◼   ► If you get a refrigerator or a dryer or a washing machine or any model, this one 500

00:21:44 ◼   ► megabyte app is for all of them.

00:21:45 ◼   ► If you'll permit me a tangent, gentlemen, which again, I know this never happens on

00:21:49 ◼   ► the show, I've become one of those home assistant people and I feel like I'm doing

00:21:56 ◼   ► a good job of not being a crossfitter or a home assistant person where all I ever talk

00:22:01 ◼   ► about is home assistant.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Give me time, I'm sure I'll get there.

00:22:05 ◼   ► But I bring this up because a Christmas gift that I've asked for and I happen to know

00:22:10 ◼   ► will be arriving on Christmas.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Spoiler alert.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Did Santa tell you?

00:22:15 ◼   ► Santa told me today, actually.

00:22:17 ◼   ► He told Santa.

00:22:18 ◼   ► He went to the mall and told him.

00:22:20 ◼   ► That's exactly it.

00:22:21 ◼   ► That's why he was 10 minutes late today.

00:22:23 ◼   ► That's why I was late to the recording.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I needed to explain to Santa what home assistant was.

00:22:27 ◼   ► In any case, after hearing John talk about his, what was it, Yolink thing for the refrigerator,

00:22:34 ◼   ► I decided I would like to do something similar and over automate and over complicate something

00:22:39 ◼   ► that really has no business being this complicated nor this automated.

00:22:43 ◼   ► And I thought I could get, I forget the term for it, but proximity sensors for the mailbox.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And then hopefully, and then hopefully send myself a push notification when the mail gets

00:22:55 ◼   ► here.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I'm very excited about this.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Don't yuck my yum.

00:22:58 ◼   ► But the reason I bring all this up, the reason I bring all this up is because the other thing

00:23:01 ◼   ► I really, really want to do, and I haven't figured out the right way to do it, but I've

00:23:05 ◼   ► been contemplating like, is there like an accelerometer version of the Yolink sensors

00:23:09 ◼   ► or whatever?

00:23:10 ◼   ► I want to know when the washing machine and the dryer are done.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And I don't want to do that via like intercepting and doing like intercepting the power and

00:23:18 ◼   ► like reading the voltage or amperage or whatever that's, or wattage that's being used.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I feel like there's a way to sense this using some sort of crappy Yolink sensor.

00:23:27 ◼   ► And I haven't put too much thought into this, but it's on my list of things that I don't

00:23:31 ◼   ► need to automate or whatever, but I want to do it anyway as a fun project.

00:23:36 ◼   ► So.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Do you own still from having young children a video baby monitor?

00:23:40 ◼   ► No, actually we don't.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I was going to say you could like just point that at the washing machine and then carry

00:23:45 ◼   ► the screen somewhere and then that's solved.

00:23:47 ◼   ► You know, yeah, that's an old, old iPad or an old iPhone.

00:23:51 ◼   ► You could Shazam the song that it sings when the load is done.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Shortcut that says when Shazam recognizes the song, send a push notification.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I don't think you can actually do that.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I don't think it's constantly listening.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Well, you just leave it at, leave it in the Shazam app running constantly.

00:24:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:08 ◼   ► There's probably some shortcut way because they say the whole point is that they make,

00:24:10 ◼   ► I mean, they make some kind of noise when, when the cycle is done.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:14 ◼   ► So you're just going to listen for that noise.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:24:16 ◼   ► I mean, there, there are other ways to solve this problem.

00:24:18 ◼   ► How big or, and or well-insulated is your house that you can't hear that?

00:24:21 ◼   ► I think we can hear our laundry machines no matter where we are in our house.

00:24:24 ◼   ► We can hear it generally speaking.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I mean, our house is a little over 2000 square feet.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It's really not that big at all.

00:24:29 ◼   ► I mean, it's bigger than John's, but not that big.

00:24:32 ◼   ► Um, and so anyways, uh, when the kids are really, you know, I was going to say getting

00:24:36 ◼   ► into it, but that implies bad.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But then again, if the kids are really getting into it or just really playing, you know,

00:24:41 ◼   ► it's oftentimes we can't hear it.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Um, but again, this is a problem that I don't really need to solve.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Same thing with the mailbox.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Does it really matter?

00:24:48 ◼   ► No.

00:24:49 ◼   ► But would it be a fun thing to fix or I shouldn't even say fix a fun thing to do?

00:24:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So I think it is somewhat, I mean, before I had my washing machine that sends me notifications,

00:24:59 ◼   ► my normal thing is you put the stuff in the laundry, you put it in and then you take out

00:25:03 ◼   ► your phone, which you always have with you and you say, remind me to change the laundry

00:25:06 ◼   ► in 35 minutes or whatever the cycle says it's going to take because you don't want to leave

00:25:10 ◼   ► the wet clothes, especially in the summer.

00:25:11 ◼   ► You don't leave the wet clothes sitting in the washing room.

00:25:13 ◼   ► I know they've been spun, but they're still damp.

00:25:15 ◼   ► So you can be like, you know, doing stuff and you get lost in work and then you're like,

00:25:18 ◼   ► oh, it's 5pm and there's been wet laundry sitting in there for three hours.

00:25:21 ◼   ► So just give yourself a reminder.

00:25:23 ◼   ► You don't have to hear anything and your phone will just boop until you change the laundry.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:27 ◼   ► But the problem is washing machine time estimates are kind of like football time.

00:25:30 ◼   ► There's nine minutes left in the quarter.

00:25:32 ◼   ► All right, I'll see you in an hour.

00:25:34 ◼   ► You just got to know how long loads actually take.

00:25:36 ◼   ► If you, if your numbers on your thing lie, you still kind of know like how long is this

00:25:39 ◼   ► really going to take and then just set the timer for that or set a timer for like give

00:25:42 ◼   ► yourself some margin of error, like set it for like 15 minutes past.

00:25:44 ◼   ► You're just trying to not leave damp stuff in the washing machine for several hours.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Oh, that's fair.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if I'll ever do this for the laundry machine.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And obviously Santa has committed to bringing me the proximity sensor.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's not proximity sensor.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I forget what it's called, but you know what I'm talking about.

00:26:00 ◼   ► For the mailbox.

00:26:01 ◼   ► It is a little door thing.

00:26:02 ◼   ► It's got two little contacts in there together.

00:26:03 ◼   ► You know?

00:26:04 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I think there's a better name for it.

00:26:06 ◼   ► I can't place it right now.

00:26:07 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:26:08 ◼   ► We get the contact sensor maybe.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Yes, actually.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I think that is it.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:26:12 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Anyways, why don't you tell me about what Jonathan Dietz Jr friend of the show, Jonathan

00:26:15 ◼   ► Dietz Jr has to say about Mac SSDs please.

00:26:18 ◼   ► They're in the news and we'll talk more about them in a little bit, but here we go.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Jonathan Dietz Jr always lots of technical info for us.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So he says Apple SSDs utilize multi chip packages, each of which contains a single MSP or memory

00:26:29 ◼   ► signal processing die along with two to 16 and flash memory dies.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And while the NAND dies Apple uses are bog standard.

00:26:36 ◼   ► The MSP is proprietary is a proprietary special sauce.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Apple developed their proprietary MSP in house using IP and engineering talent gained through

00:26:44 ◼   ► the acquisition of AnnoBit in 2011.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Apple's MSP technology delivers what AnnoBit claimed prior to the acquisition is a 20 X

00:26:51 ◼   ► increase in NAND endurance, meaning like how long it takes before it wears out.

00:26:55 ◼   ► The NAND packages for some Apple M series SSDs found in desktop Macs are located on

00:26:58 ◼   ► proprietary removable modules.

00:27:00 ◼   ► We talked about them in the last episode.

00:27:02 ◼   ► These modules are not SSDs.

00:27:03 ◼   ► They're merely part of an SSD.

00:27:05 ◼   ► It is trivial for third parties to reproduce the printed circuit boards for these modules,

00:27:09 ◼   ► which again, we talked about a company that did that last episode and populate them with

00:27:12 ◼   ► the necessary passive components.

00:27:14 ◼   ► However, the NAND modules with Apple's proprietary MSPs are not available through any legitimate

00:27:20 ◼   ► channels making third party upgrades and nonstarter.

00:27:23 ◼   ► That's what I was wondering about because all these videos are like, look, we made the

00:27:25 ◼   ► printed circuit board for the little module and you just take these NAND chips and you

00:27:29 ◼   ► put them there.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, where did you get those NAND chips from?

00:27:33 ◼   ► Nothing is saying there is no way to get them because those, those individual, like those

00:27:37 ◼   ► NAND dies on there is NAND, but also Apple's memory signal processor, which needs to be

00:27:42 ◼   ► on there.

00:27:43 ◼   ► It's on a single die.

00:27:44 ◼   ► It's not a separate thing or it's not a single little rectangle.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I don't know if it's single die inside there.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Um, anyway, continuing the videos of people upgrading the storage on M series Macs are

00:27:52 ◼   ► using NAND packages pulled from other devices, which is often why they include a reballing

00:27:56 ◼   ► step.

00:27:57 ◼   ► There'll always be a small supply of legitimate parts available to the repair community that

00:28:00 ◼   ► are pulled from nonfunctioning devices or new machines that have been parted out.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Then again, there will also be parts illegally diverted from the supply chain or coming from

00:28:08 ◼   ► chop shops that break down stolen devices.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Swapping NAND modules or packages with pulls from other M series Macs will only work if

00:28:14 ◼   ► the NAND configuration you present to the controller is one that Apple has implemented

00:28:18 ◼   ► and provides firmware for.

00:28:19 ◼   ► If you have one of the packages with an extra NAND die, it needs to be in MSP zero position.

00:28:25 ◼   ► That means even when swapping two modules of a four terabyte SSD in an M1 generation

00:28:29 ◼   ► Mac studio won't work.

00:28:30 ◼   ► So like the Mac studio had two modules in it.

00:28:33 ◼   ► It does the same.

00:28:34 ◼   ► If you just take those two modules that came from Apple and you swap their positions, you

00:28:37 ◼   ► know, in the different slots, even that won't work because one of them with MSP position

00:28:42 ◼   ► zero has to, you know, one of the one with the extra NAND die has to be in position zero.

00:28:46 ◼   ► If you try to plug a module that supports four PCI lanes into a two slot or vice versa,

00:28:51 ◼   ► it's not going to work.

00:28:52 ◼   ► For example, the modules from the M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis are neither electrically nor

00:28:57 ◼   ► mechanically compatible.

00:28:58 ◼   ► I mean, mechanically they can go in the slots.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I know what he's saying like that there, you can't swap these things because the number

00:29:05 ◼   ► of PCI lanes on the M4 versus the M4 Pro SOCs are different.

00:29:11 ◼   ► There's also a good chance that swapping SSD components between M series Macs of different

00:29:14 ◼   ► generations won't work.

00:29:15 ◼   ► If you move the man to NAND to another Mac, the data will not be readable.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Even if file vault isn't enabled for any of the volumes on the disk, the disk itself is

00:29:22 ◼   ► encrypted with AES/XTS and the encryption keys are stored in this by the secure enclave

00:29:26 ◼   ► integrated into the M series SOC.

00:29:28 ◼   ► This is why swapping SSD components, even the official Apple SSD upgrades for the Mac

00:29:33 ◼   ► Pro requires performing a DFU reset from another Mac connected via USB type C cable.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I'm curious why Dostdude1, that was the person who did the upgrade in the video we talked

00:29:42 ◼   ► about, I'm curious why Dostdude1 thought you needed to use blank NAND modules because it

00:29:46 ◼   ► should matter in the slightest.

00:29:47 ◼   ► That's the whole point of the DFU restore.

00:29:49 ◼   ► So yeah, the important bits of information here are those little NAND modules that they

00:29:54 ◼   ► always say, "Oh, you just take these and you solder them right on?"

00:29:57 ◼   ► You can't get those.

00:29:58 ◼   ► That was my question.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Where do those come from?

00:30:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:30:01 ◼   ► Like I know this company, we're going to talk about in a second, this French company is

00:30:03 ◼   ► making the printed circuit boards, but you need the actual flash memory chips to go on

00:30:08 ◼   ► them and those chips have an Apple proprietary thing inside them.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Apparently there are sources from them.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I mean, Jonathan Dietz talks about a whole bunch here.

00:30:16 ◼   ► You know, sometimes you can get them from old Macs.

00:30:19 ◼   ► You can get stuff that's been illegally diverted from the supply chain.

00:30:22 ◼   ► You can get used things, right?

00:30:23 ◼   ► There's ways to get them, but they're not readily available.

00:30:27 ◼   ► The other thing is that because these are just part of an SSD, you really have to match

00:30:32 ◼   ► the board and the chips with the Mac and the SOC that know how to read them because it's

00:30:40 ◼   ► not like an interface standard like the M2 things or whatever where there's NVMe standard

00:30:46 ◼   ► where it's like, "Oh, if you just comply to the standard, this will work in any machine

00:30:48 ◼   ► that can understand this thing."

00:30:50 ◼   ► It's like Apple just tailor makes them.

00:30:52 ◼   ► "Okay, the M4 Pro has this many PCI lanes.

00:30:54 ◼   ► We're going to make this kind of slot with this voltages or make this printed circuit

00:30:58 ◼   ► board to go along with it.

00:30:59 ◼   ► We're going to put these NANs on it."

00:31:00 ◼   ► It's very, very custom.

00:31:03 ◼   ► When you're buying a memory expansion, you're buying it for a particular Mac, sometimes

00:31:07 ◼   ► with a particular SOC in it.

00:31:09 ◼   ► I think this just shows the idea of, "All right, we have all of these custom Mac models

00:31:19 ◼   ► now that have some kind of proprietary or permanent or soldered on in some cases, storage

00:31:26 ◼   ► and memory and everything else."

00:31:28 ◼   ► Apple is selling them saying, "This is not upgradeable really."

00:31:31 ◼   ► Or in the case of the Mac Pro, "It's upgradeable only from us."

00:31:36 ◼   ► That's Apple's position and you see there are certain technical reasons for that as

00:31:39 ◼   ► well or physical reasons for that as well.

00:31:42 ◼   ► We have this recent spate of people who are coming up saying, "We're going to sell cheaper

00:31:47 ◼   ► modules for this, just back our Kickstarter or whatever."

00:31:53 ◼   ► If somebody can get off the ground and somehow do that and somehow survive with that as a

00:31:57 ◼   ► business both legally and supply chain wise, good for them.

00:32:01 ◼   ► As a buyer, as a customer, I would strongly advise that you don't throw your money at

00:32:07 ◼   ► these people until those businesses are established.

00:32:11 ◼   ► That may never happen because what it looks like is, "This is a hard problem.

00:32:16 ◼   ► We don't know what Apple's going to do in reaction yet."

00:32:19 ◼   ► If they're depending on Apple for supply of certain proprietary chips or things like that

00:32:25 ◼   ► in some way, that could be a problem.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Well, they're not depending on Apple because Apple won't give them these things.

00:32:31 ◼   ► It's not actually a complicated problem.

00:32:32 ◼   ► It's complicated basically essentially legally.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Where can you legally ... Apparently, you can't legitimately get those little memory

00:32:38 ◼   ► chips.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Everything else about it, like it's a printed circuit board, those components you can get.

00:32:42 ◼   ► We'll talk about it in this next item.

00:32:44 ◼   ► In fact, the third parties who are doing this say they're actually improving on Apple's design

00:32:47 ◼   ► by adding some protections that Apple doesn't include.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Those memory chips, those little squares that you see them soldering onto there, there's

00:32:54 ◼   ► no legitimate place to get them apparently.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Apple won't sell them to you.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Apple suppliers are not supposed to sell them to you.

00:33:00 ◼   ► You could get them from old Macs that are broken but the SSD is fine but then it's basically

00:33:04 ◼   ► a used chip.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Maybe they're " diverted" illegally in the supply chain where the company that is making

00:33:11 ◼   ► and selling these to Apple on the side will sell some out the back door to some other

00:33:16 ◼   ► people or whatever.

00:33:18 ◼   ► All the difficulties in this procedure are not technical, are merely business related.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Apple doesn't want there to be a market for a third party upgrade to these computers despite

00:33:30 ◼   ► the fact that the SSDs are removable.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I think we discussed this last episode that one of the obvious reasons Apple would want

00:33:36 ◼   ► to make them removable is because it makes their repairs cheaper.

00:33:38 ◼   ► If the SSD goes bad, they don't have to throw out the whole logic board.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Obviously on laptops they've been soldering them down because it's a very small area and

00:33:44 ◼   ► size is a constraint but on their desktop Macs, even the Mac Mini, there's enough room

00:33:49 ◼   ► in there that you can make it removable.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Arguably you could still make it removable on laptops but for whatever reason Apple has

00:33:54 ◼   ► been soldering down the SSD chips.

00:33:56 ◼   ► But that makes any kind of repair, like if one of those SSD chips goes bad or something,

00:34:00 ◼   ► so expensive because you have to chuck the whole thing out and give an entirely new logic

00:34:03 ◼   ► board.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Now on their desktop Macs, you don't have to do that.

00:34:06 ◼   ► If the SSD goes bad, Apple can just replace it under warranty with one of those little

00:34:10 ◼   ► modules that cost them a price that is much lower than what we would pay for it.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And speaking of third-party storage upgrades, reported on MacRumors, French company Polysoft

00:34:22 ◼   ► has successfully reverse engineered Apple's proprietary storage modules for the Mac Studio

00:34:26 ◼   ► and plans to offer more affordable upgrade options starting in January 2025 following

00:34:30 ◼   ► a successful Kickstarter campaign.

00:34:32 ◼   ► It raised a little under $100,000 from 144 backers.

00:34:36 ◼   ► They plan to offer 2TB for $420, which is about 30% less than Apple's $600.

00:34:42 ◼   ► They plan to offer 4TB for about $850, which is again about 30% less than Apple's $1200.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And 8TB for a little less than $1200, which is over 50% less than Apple's $2,400.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Great.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And remember, those prices for Apple are not the price that they will sell you that module

00:35:03 ◼   ► for because they won't sell you those modules.

00:35:05 ◼   ► That's the price for upgrading from $512 to that amount.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So from $512 to 2TB, you're paying for 1.5TB for $600.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So if they were to sell you these individually like they do on the Mac Pro, the 8TB one would

00:35:18 ◼   ► probably be $2800 or something like that, right?

00:35:22 ◼   ► But yeah, for the 8TB one, they're undercutting Apple.

00:35:25 ◼   ► They're saying, "Well, for half price, you can get 8TB in your Mac Studio for half price."

00:35:29 ◼   ► And note that what they're selling here is third-party SSD upgrades for the Mac Studio.

00:35:35 ◼   ► You can't just buy these and stick them in your Mac Pro or in another computer.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Like they're just very specific because they have to be matched to the SoC and the whole

00:35:43 ◼   ► motherboard and all that other stuff, right?

00:35:45 ◼   ► But I see this and I think, "Wow, look, storage competition."

00:35:50 ◼   ► It kind of opens my...

00:35:51 ◼   ► Like if they're successful, and Marco listed many reasons why they might not be and we'll

00:35:54 ◼   ► get to more in a little bit.

00:35:56 ◼   ► But if they are successful, this would actually put some competitive pressure on Apple and

00:36:01 ◼   ► it might bring us back to the days where we say, "Oh, if you're going to get a Mac, get

00:36:03 ◼   ► it with the smallest amount of storage available and then just chuck that out and buy one of

00:36:08 ◼   ► these upgrades from a third party because it's the exact same part.

00:36:10 ◼   ► In fact, it might even be better, but it can be as cheap as half price.

00:36:14 ◼   ► So apparently, Luke Miani, tried it.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I didn't get a chance to watch this video before we recorded.

00:36:22 ◼   ► So what's going on here?

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yeah, he bought one of these things and installed it in his Mac Studio.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And in fact, he installed it backwards for the first time.

00:36:30 ◼   ► He didn't realize that one's got to go in one slot and one's got to go in the other

00:36:33 ◼   ► slot and it didn't work, right?

00:36:35 ◼   ► But he eventually figured it out.

00:36:36 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a lot easier than soldering.

00:36:38 ◼   ► You just buy this thing from somebody, it comes in the mail, you open up your Mac Studio,

00:36:41 ◼   ► which is annoying because there's this stupid circular foam thing you have to cut off with.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Anyway, Apple could really make these Macs easier to open.

00:36:49 ◼   ► But anyway, you open it up and stick the things in and you got eight terabytes in his Mac

00:36:53 ◼   ► Studio for half the price that he would have if he bought it from Apple.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And you can check out the video, but mostly I put it in there to show that this is, I

00:37:01 ◼   ► mean, I guess he's kind of an Apple centric type thing, but seeing videos about upgrading

00:37:06 ◼   ► Mac storage, this is the topic of the day for these desktop Macs.

00:37:10 ◼   ► I mean, obviously this is about the Mac Studio, but also the Mac Mini.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Like if Apple's going to put these in modules, people are going to look at that and say,

00:37:16 ◼   ► I should be able to upgrade that.

00:37:19 ◼   ► And Apple will say, but you shouldn't, but yeah, I should be able to.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Like I can physically remove it.

00:37:25 ◼   ► It's here in my hand.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Can I get another one of these, but not buy it from you?

00:37:28 ◼   ► It's kind of like the App Store stuff where it's like, everyone's like, yeah, we want

00:37:31 ◼   ► to sell things to customers, but we don't want to give Apple 30%.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Is there a way we can do that?

00:37:36 ◼   ► Once you, you know, if you conceive of the possibility, can you imagine selling software

00:37:40 ◼   ► without Apple getting 30%?

00:37:41 ◼   ► Well, anyway, people have that conception in their mind because this thing that used

00:37:45 ◼   ► to happen all the time and people don't forget, or even the people who aren't alive then,

00:37:50 ◼   ► the old people can say, kids, we used to sell software through the web and Apple wouldn't

00:37:55 ◼   ► get any percentage of it.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Can you imagine that?

00:37:57 ◼   ► But yeah, how did things work then?

00:38:00 ◼   ► We used to be able to upgrade storage.

00:38:02 ◼   ► How did Apple not go bankrupt?

00:38:04 ◼   ► Right?

00:38:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:06 ◼   ► We used to be able to upgrade, well, they almost went bankrupt.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Anyway, we used to be able to upgrade storage and now here it is again, these new Macs,

00:38:13 ◼   ► their storage.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It comes right out.

00:38:16 ◼   ► This is interesting.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And so I'm, I'm, you know, we'll see how this goes.

00:38:19 ◼   ► It's a Kickstarter.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Um, you know, anyway, so we should read Jonathan Dietz's analysis of how he thinks this is

00:38:24 ◼   ► going to go.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:38:26 ◼   ► So Jonathan writes, I stand by what I said in my previous email.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I don't see how they can legitimately gain access to a sufficient supply of NAND packages

00:38:33 ◼   ► with Apple's proprietary MSPs.

00:38:35 ◼   ► I'm also not sure they sufficiently differentiated their design so as to avoid legal action from

00:38:39 ◼   ► Apple.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Polysoft does say that quote, the main risks are the supply of certain specific components,

00:38:45 ◼   ► which is why we have set up an extensive inventory quote.

00:38:47 ◼   ► However, it concerns me that Polysoft hasn't come out and address the MSP issue head on.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I'd love to hear their take.

00:38:53 ◼   ► The legal thing makes me think, Oh, that's the way Apple will go.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Like because the printed circuit board, like, so they reverse engineered Apple's printed

00:38:59 ◼   ► circuit board by basically sanding off the layers.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Like the, the Luke Miani video shows some pictures from that.

00:39:06 ◼   ► That's how they figured out how the circuit board works.

00:39:07 ◼   ► Are they, we have a legit one that works.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Still how do we reproduce this slowly sand off the layers of the printed circuit boards.

00:39:14 ◼   ► You can see what each layer does and look at all the surface mount components and maybe

00:39:18 ◼   ► upgrade a couple of components.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And then you just got to get those NAND chips.

00:39:21 ◼   ► So, you know, um, they're, they're worried about the supply of certain specific components,

00:39:25 ◼   ► which has gotta be those proprietary NANDs.

00:39:27 ◼   ► And I have no idea they're getting them.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And I imagine they don't want to say anything about the MSP cause why would they, why would

00:39:33 ◼   ► they say that they're doing something illegal?

00:39:35 ◼   ► Like someone's selling them these things on the sly who shouldn't be.

00:39:39 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Um, I mean, I, and I assume most of them are new, but again, they could be from like Macs

00:39:44 ◼   ► that are, you know, old or broken in some other way, but the SSDs are fine.

00:39:48 ◼   ► So we'll see how this goes.

00:39:49 ◼   ► But uh, if I was looking to save money on storage on a Mac, I'd be willing to at least

00:39:55 ◼   ► try this, uh, just because storage price on whatever my next Mac is, is going to kill

00:40:00 ◼   ► me because I'm pressing up against my four terabyte.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I really pressed to get the four terabyte in my Mac pro in 2019.

00:40:06 ◼   ► It was like the most expensive upgrade that I applied to this machine, I think was just

00:40:12 ◼   ► increasing the storage.

00:40:13 ◼   ► And um, you know, the only other choice I have that's bigger than four from Apple is

00:40:17 ◼   ► eight and that's going to like double the price of whatever the next computer I get.

00:40:22 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm watching with interest how this goes.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I think a lot of other people are too.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And like, I like to see this, I want Apple to feel, feel competitive pressure.

00:40:32 ◼   ► If you make a removable component and someone could figure out how to make that same removal

00:40:36 ◼   ► component and sell it for what must be still, and Jonathan said this in his email, but I

00:40:40 ◼   ► didn't quote it, must still be really healthy margins for polysoft.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Just not Apple healthy, just not 6.5 times market rate.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Maybe it's only three times market rate, but it's still a good business to be in.

00:40:51 ◼   ► You could undercut Apple, you know, sell the eight terabytes for half the price that Apple

00:40:56 ◼   ► sells it less than half the price.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Because again, that's the price of just the upgrade from five to 12 sell for half price,

00:41:02 ◼   ► still make a healthy profit.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Maybe that'll put some pressure on Apple.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Maybe people will, if this becomes a legit business, people will stop paying the giant

00:41:11 ◼   ► Apple prices and just go back to the conventional wisdom of, oh yeah, get the desktop Mac with

00:41:15 ◼   ► the lowest amount of storage and upgrade it from a third party later.

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00:43:23 ◼   ► Let's do some topics.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Let's start with threads.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Maybe we should, before we get into the topic, can we do a quick temperature check on how

00:43:35 ◼   ► much all of us are using threads?

00:43:38 ◼   ► For me, I feel like I started using it a fair bit, three-ish months ago, something like

00:43:44 ◼   ► that.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And I was starting to really like it.

00:43:47 ◼   ► And then I don't know if I was feeding the algorithm poorly or if the algorithm changed

00:43:52 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:43:53 ◼   ► But I started falling kind of out of love with it maybe a month or two ago.

00:43:57 ◼   ► So it was only like a month or two that I was really kind of into it.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And then Blue Sky kind of found the juice after the election.

00:44:04 ◼   ► And I've been paying more attention to Blue Sky than Threads recently and generally enjoying

00:44:08 ◼   ► it more.

00:44:10 ◼   ► But that's where I am.

00:44:11 ◼   ► Marco, where are you on Threads and Blue Sky?

00:44:14 ◼   ► I'm really not there.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I have accounts on both of those services for both me and Overcast.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And we maintain ATP accounts, that's a separate thing.

00:44:23 ◼   ► John does that, I think, entirely.

00:44:26 ◼   ► But anyway, so for my stuff, I have my personal account and I have Overcast accounts on Threads

00:44:33 ◼   ► and Blue Sky and Mastodon.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I only use Mastodon regularly of those three.

00:44:40 ◼   ► As I pulled away from Twitter over the years, I learned that I didn't really need Twitter

00:44:49 ◼   ► for my business.

00:44:50 ◼   ► It was really just a place I enjoyed hanging out personally sometimes.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Sometimes it was not enjoyable.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And it was a huge time sink for me.

00:45:00 ◼   ► The whole reason I made an app called Quitter was that I was having trouble not spending

00:45:04 ◼   ► all day on Twitter when I was supposed to be working.

00:45:07 ◼   ► But I was spending all that time on Twitter because I thought it was necessary for me

00:45:12 ◼   ► to reach customers and my audience and things.

00:45:15 ◼   ► So it was necessary for business reasons.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And what I have found out, when I left Twitter and only really started spending time on Mastodon,

00:45:26 ◼   ► I have a way smaller audience there, not even close to the size that Twitter was.

00:45:32 ◼   ► And yet, my business metrics didn't go down at all.

00:45:37 ◼   ► In fact, nothing went down.

00:45:40 ◼   ► And what's interesting too is that over the last year or so, I've also really pulled back

00:45:45 ◼   ► a lot from just social media in general.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I pulled back a lot.

00:45:49 ◼   ► I hardly ever post on Instagram anymore.

00:45:51 ◼   ► I don't post that much on Mastodon.

00:45:55 ◼   ► And it's mostly just dropping in here and there.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And also, my numbers didn't really go down.

00:46:04 ◼   ► With Overcast stuff, building an announcement mechanism in the app to reach my customers

00:46:09 ◼   ► in the app was way more effective and benefited way more people than using the social media

00:46:15 ◼   ► channels for that purpose.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And so what I'm finding is I don't really have much of a business need to maintain a

00:46:23 ◼   ► strong presence socially.

00:46:25 ◼   ► So it's really just, what do I like to do personally?

00:46:28 ◼   ► And what I like to do personally is more and more, as I get older, I want to just hang

00:46:34 ◼   ► out with my friends.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And that's different from broadcasting publicly into a room full of strangers, most of whom

00:46:40 ◼   ► want to yell at me that I didn't broadcast publicly correctly.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Social media has gotten so much less fun over the years as everyone's gotten angrier.

00:46:52 ◼   ► The recent election did not help at all.

00:46:56 ◼   ► But even before the election, everyone has been getting angrier for so long that what's

00:47:02 ◼   ► left on social media is a bunch of stuff to make me angry about things I mostly can't

00:47:08 ◼   ► control that are going on in the world, and a bunch of people who have been made angry.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So when I come and try to post about programming, I'm mostly posting in front of all those

00:47:19 ◼   ► people who are angry about other stuff, and then sometimes that blows back on me, and

00:47:24 ◼   ► I'm just like, what am I doing this for?

00:47:26 ◼   ► I just want to hang out with my friends.

00:47:28 ◼   ► I'm no longer interested in sharing what's going on in my life just for the sake of sharing.

00:47:35 ◼   ► That's a big reason why I pulled back so much on Instagram.

00:47:38 ◼   ► If I take some picture of me and my new glasses, who cares?

00:47:44 ◼   ► The people close to me care about it.

00:47:45 ◼   ► The people who see me every day, they care about it.

00:47:48 ◼   ► No one else needs to care about that.

00:47:50 ◼   ► What about when I take a trip somewhere?

00:47:51 ◼   ► I find this new restaurant in the city.

00:47:53 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:47:55 ◼   ► No one's following me for that.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So what I'm learning is I don't want to just be performing my life on social media

00:48:05 ◼   ► to try to gain followers.

00:48:08 ◼   ► That's not really what I'm there for.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I don't mind sharing my life, but I'd rather do it with people I actually know, like my

00:48:15 ◼   ► actual friends and family.

00:48:17 ◼   ► And so I have found relatively little place in my life now for social media besides casual

00:48:26 ◼   ► browsing and sharing for professional or business reasons.

00:48:32 ◼   ► So if I want to talk about Swift or some kind of app technical thing, Mastodon's great for

00:48:39 ◼   ► that.

00:48:40 ◼   ► I go there for that.

00:48:41 ◼   ► If I want to ask a question about code, yeah, Mastodon, perfect for that.

00:48:45 ◼   ► If I want to read, like just catch up on what my friends are up to, Instagram is good for

00:48:53 ◼   ► that, but I consume mostly and don't post much.

00:48:56 ◼   ► So it's becoming primarily a read-only medium for me.

00:49:01 ◼   ► So what am I going to use Threads and Blue Sky for?

00:49:04 ◼   ► Well, it seems like Threads and Blue Sky are mostly successful for people who want to be

00:49:12 ◼   ► really jacked in to social media.

00:49:14 ◼   ► This is like journalists, people who were like information junkies, people in certain

00:49:19 ◼   ► verticals that those are maybe strong in, like I know sports is kind of gaining traction

00:49:23 ◼   ► over on Blue Sky from all the Twitter refugees and stuff.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And politics are obviously a huge part of all that.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And so when I dip into these services, what I mostly see is a bunch of people who are

00:49:36 ◼   ► probably just going to make me upset or angry based on what they're talking about or what's

00:49:40 ◼   ► going on that day and what are we all mad about today, join the pile on.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I don't want that anymore.

00:49:47 ◼   ► I don't have a place in my life for that anymore.

00:49:50 ◼   ► I have other things that I want to spend my time and attention on.

00:49:52 ◼   ► So all that is, to answer your question in the longest way possible, no, I don't really

00:49:57 ◼   ► use Threads or Blue Sky very much.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Thank you for that succinct reply.

00:50:02 ◼   ► John?

00:50:03 ◼   ► When I left Twitter, I went to Mastodon and the critical mass of the people that I care

00:50:07 ◼   ► about hearing from are also on Mastodon.

00:50:09 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm there and my people are there.

00:50:11 ◼   ► That's my main place where I am and have been for a while now.

00:50:17 ◼   ► I was excited about Blue Sky back when it was announced way back in the day as a spinoff

00:50:22 ◼   ► project from Twitter and I signed up for a Blue Sky account on day one and I've had it

00:50:25 ◼   ► forever but I haven't really used it that much.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Threads I also signed up on day one just to see what that was like.

00:50:32 ◼   ► For Threads and Blue Sky, one of the things that annoys me about both services is their

00:50:38 ◼   ► third-party client ecosystem is poor.

00:50:42 ◼   ► I don't think there's any third-party clients for Threads and there's some for Blue Sky

00:50:46 ◼   ► but none of the clients work the way I want them to and there's just not as many as there

00:50:52 ◼   ► are Mastodon clients.

00:50:53 ◼   ► There are so many Mastodon clients to choose from.

00:50:55 ◼   ► There's some really, really good ones and that makes a difference to me.

00:50:58 ◼   ► It makes a big difference in how I use them.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I do check Threads and Blue Sky every single day.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I recently promoted those two apps out of a folder on one of my other screens up to

00:51:10 ◼   ► page two of my home screens.

00:51:15 ◼   ► So the second home screen, not in a folder because I'm checking them every single day,

00:51:21 ◼   ► usually multiple times a day.

00:51:23 ◼   ► But what I'm doing there is I'm essentially monitoring people who are trying to communicate

00:51:27 ◼   ► with me there.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Because I do have accounts there and I manage the ATP accounts that are there as well.

00:51:34 ◼   ► If people who are there are trying to communicate with me or with ATP or with rectifs or with

00:51:40 ◼   ► my hypercritical account, I actually have a bunch of accounts on all those things, that's

00:51:43 ◼   ► what I'm doing.

00:51:44 ◼   ► I'm not reading the timelines on Threads or Blue Sky much.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Occasionally I peek but it just confirms that there's not much there for me.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And we'll get to that in a second when we talk about what this actual topic is about.

00:51:58 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm looking at them all the time to see who's mentioning any of those four

00:52:02 ◼   ► accounts that I have in all the systems.

00:52:04 ◼   ► And having to deal with either the first party clients or the not so great third party clients

00:52:08 ◼   ► -- not so great.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Third party clients for Blue Sky, a lot of them are really good.

00:52:12 ◼   ► They're just not suited to what I'm doing, which is shuffling through four different

00:52:17 ◼   ► accounts checking for mentions.

00:52:19 ◼   ► That's not a normal pattern for most users.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Most users are reading their timelines and replying to people and stuff.

00:52:26 ◼   ► I am basically using it as a customer support type of thing.

00:52:31 ◼   ► In terms of reading, I'm looking at Mastodon mostly.

00:52:35 ◼   ► I follow a list of people on Mastodon that gives me things that end up in this show.

00:52:40 ◼   ► I'm also looking on Threads and Blue Sky for things that end up in this show.

00:52:43 ◼   ► They're just harder to find because people are talking about different stuff.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Most of the tech people I have found to follow are on Mastodon and there's fewer of them

00:52:51 ◼   ► elsewhere.

00:52:52 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm using all those apps every single day.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I'm checking them diligently, but I don't like the clients and I don't spend any personal

00:53:01 ◼   ► time there.

00:53:02 ◼   ► All my personal time, if I'm spending any personal time or following people who are

00:53:05 ◼   ► just like friends or post interests or anything, that's all on Mastodon.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and just to build on that for a moment, the client thing really heavily affects me

00:53:13 ◼   ► as well.

00:53:14 ◼   ► The reason why I got so into Mastodon was that I learned what I really liked about Twitter

00:53:21 ◼   ► was the experience provided to me by Tweetbot, both on the phone but also more often on the

00:53:27 ◼   ► Mac.

00:53:29 ◼   ► What Tapbots did, when Mastodon became big and Twitter shut down their API to third-party

00:53:32 ◼   ► clients, they basically adapted the code base that they had for Tweetbot and made the app

00:53:38 ◼   ► Ivory, which is basically Tweetbot for Mastodon.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Because Mastodon is a very Twitter-like service, what that ended up doing was it let me not

00:53:48 ◼   ► really change any of my habits or workflows.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I just changed the app name that I was using from Tweetbot to Ivory and I was able to move

00:53:57 ◼   ► my habit into that and I just kind of fit right in and didn't have to think about it

00:54:00 ◼   ► and could keep working the way I always did.

00:54:03 ◼   ► That is not, at least at the moment, as far as I know, they don't have anything like that

00:54:07 ◼   ► for Blue Sky, which at least has an API.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Threads doesn't even have the right API for that as far as I know.

00:54:14 ◼   ► >> Threads probably never will, but Blue Sky does have a bunch of pretty good third-party

00:54:17 ◼   ► clients.

00:54:18 ◼   ► >> Yeah, like knowing Facebook, they're never going to have a client read and write kind

00:54:22 ◼   ► of API.

00:54:23 ◼   ► They want you to add value to them by posting to them.

00:54:26 ◼   ► They have an API for posting, but I don't think they're ever going to give you an API

00:54:29 ◼   ► that will let you build a reading client.

00:54:33 ◼   ► That's not really going to happen for Threads, which is where most of the people are.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Blue Sky, I mean look, if Blue Sky ends up continuing its growth and sustaining all the

00:54:42 ◼   ► people, which is hard and not super likely, I'm glad they're having a moment.

00:54:48 ◼   ► They're having strong growth right now, but a lot of people love kicking the tires on

00:54:54 ◼   ► a new social app that they hear is where "everyone is going."

00:54:58 ◼   ► Keeping them there after a little while, that's hard.

00:55:01 ◼   ► That doesn't often happen.

00:55:02 ◼   ► We've seen that before.

00:55:03 ◼   ► I mean, look, we even got people to go try out App.net for a little while, and everyone

00:55:09 ◼   ► left.

00:55:10 ◼   ► >> That's the throwback.

00:55:11 ◼   ► And that's why Ivory was as possible as it was, because they adapted Tweetbot to App.net

00:55:16 ◼   ► so they had to generalize it.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And once they did that generalization, even when App.net went away, when Mastodon came

00:55:20 ◼   ► along, they said that we've already done the work to generalize our Twitter-like client

00:55:24 ◼   ► app, and so it was easier, from what I heard, to slot Mastodon in.

00:55:28 ◼   ► >> Yeah, we can actually somewhat thank the success of Mastodon among our community of

00:55:33 ◼   ► Apple nerds to Netbot, which none of them would remember.

00:55:36 ◼   ► >> No, I don't remember, but yeah, I'm with you.

00:55:38 ◼   ► >> And by the way, for anyone who's making a Blue Sky client or whatever, Ivory, I also

00:55:43 ◼   ► use Ivory, even though Twitter was my first and biggest love on iOS, Tweetbot is also

00:55:49 ◼   ► very good.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And if you're wondering what kind of features are useful for people like me who are monitoring

00:55:56 ◼   ► lots of accounts, just copy everything that Ivory does.

00:55:59 ◼   ► They make it easy to switch between accounts with a small number of taps and gestures.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I think I counted it the other day, I think Threads requires three times the number of

00:56:08 ◼   ► actions to do anything that I do on a regular basis.

00:56:12 ◼   ► It's maddening.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and everything is very compact, and they have really good multiple account support,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and when you're replying, you can choose which account you want to reply from, and just at

00:56:21 ◼   ► the last moment, it's...

00:56:24 ◼   ► And that's not why most people are using Ivory, they're just using it because it's a really

00:56:27 ◼   ► good client, but it's a really good client for a single person reading a single account,

00:56:31 ◼   ► it's also a really good client for someone monitoring "brand accounts" or doing customer

00:56:37 ◼   ► service or whatever.

00:56:38 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and that's, what I'm doing is monitoring three different accounts, two of which mostly

00:56:45 ◼   ► just for replies, and then my personal one, I'm kind of posting and replying here and

00:56:49 ◼   ► there, but I'm monitoring three different accounts.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Even if, suppose, I don't know if Tapots is planning on making a Blue Sky client or not,

00:56:59 ◼   ► or adapting it into Ivory, I don't know that, but suppose they did what I think would be

00:57:04 ◼   ► the best thing for my personal preferences, which would be modify Ivory to also support

00:57:10 ◼   ► Blue Sky in one unified app, that would be great, I think, maybe, that would be great,

00:57:17 ◼   ► but then what?

00:57:19 ◼   ► Then I have two different personalities and two different services that I'm kind of cross-posting

00:57:24 ◼   ► to and that's always difficult and there's always little gotchas and little crappinesses

00:57:30 ◼   ► that go along with you trying to use cross-posting and trying to appear that you're really there

00:57:34 ◼   ► in two different services.

00:57:36 ◼   ► So that's difficult, that's a difficult problem to solve.

00:57:40 ◼   ► You still wouldn't have threads, which is where by far the most people are and will

00:57:44 ◼   ► probably continue to be.

00:57:46 ◼   ► So you have all those logistical and mechanical problems of trying to juggle multiple services.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Ultimately Twitter, back in the day, for all of its faults, was overall better for most

00:58:01 ◼   ► people because it was one place that you could be pretty sure, like anybody who you would

00:58:06 ◼   ► want to reach that way was probably there.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Anything that you wanted to follow, any kind of informational feed from government agencies

00:58:15 ◼   ► or businesses or scientific agencies or whatever, it was probably on Twitter.

00:58:20 ◼   ► It was great having it all in one place.

00:58:22 ◼   ► As much as Twitter, the company, was always a train wreck even long before Elon bought

00:58:26 ◼   ► it.

00:58:27 ◼   ► They've always been a train wreck as a company.

00:58:29 ◼   ► They were just train wrecks in different ways than they are now and maybe overall less of

00:58:33 ◼   ► a train wreck.

00:58:35 ◼   ► It was good back in the day when it was one place where everybody was.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Now when there's all these different places that everyone has split up to, I don't really

00:58:44 ◼   ► have any of these services enough to really use them heavily the way I used to use Twitter,

00:58:50 ◼   ► which honestly has been a huge benefit to my life to not have that anymore.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Having to go to multiple apps to monitor these things though is annoying.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And not that this would go into this too deeply, but just to let people know and preempt some

00:59:05 ◼   ► feedback, there are apps that let you read multiple services at once.

00:59:09 ◼   ► The latest version of the Reader app, R-E-E-D-E-R, is multi-service.

00:59:14 ◼   ► You can do RSS feeds, Blue Sky, Threads, Twitter, you can do multiple stuff.

00:59:21 ◼   ► At least Mastodon and Bluestay.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Icon Factory has an app that they're working on that lets you have a single timeline with

00:59:31 ◼   ► multiple different services mixed into them.

00:59:35 ◼   ► Like Margaret was saying, for reading, treating it as an RSS reader, but you can also read

00:59:42 ◼   ► social services with it as well.

00:59:45 ◼   ► That's cool, but it's not quite the same thing as participating in the timeline where you're

00:59:51 ◼   ► conversing because it would be like if every one of your messages threads in the messages

00:59:56 ◼   ► app was in a single conversation view.

00:59:59 ◼   ► Now you can see everything that everyone's saying to you, but when you reply to one person,

01:00:04 ◼   ► like you reply to someone who posted something on Blue Sky, but then another person replies

01:00:07 ◼   ► to something and they're on Mastodon and they didn't see either of those two that were on

01:00:10 ◼   ► Blue Sky, but you think they did based on what they say and you reply to them as if

01:00:14 ◼   ► they saw those, but you gotta scroll up and look, there was a little tag that said that

01:00:16 ◼   ► one was from Blue Sky.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Keeping track of an interleaved chronological timeline of seven services and trying to have

01:00:22 ◼   ► conversations with the people on those services, I don't think is a good experience.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Which is why a lot of those reader apps like R-E-D-E-R and the Icon Factory app are focused

01:00:33 ◼   ► on reading primarily.

01:00:34 ◼   ► They're not there for you to have conversations, but it is there for you to have a single timeline

01:00:38 ◼   ► that you can catch up on, kind of like an RSS reader, you're just reading different

01:00:43 ◼   ► websites, right?

01:00:44 ◼   ► That's there and of course there's the federation aspect, Mastodon is federated and in theory

01:00:49 ◼   ► independent of any single company.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Blue Sky wants to be federated but is not.

01:00:56 ◼   ► It's centralized but they're working on it, they've been working on it for years, wake

01:01:00 ◼   ► me up when they get somewhere.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Threads of course says, "Oh yeah, no, we're totally gonna federate a proprietary service

01:01:06 ◼   ► with ActivityPub and Mastodon and they've been doing it in bits and pieces but they're

01:01:09 ◼   ► doing it so slowly and so piecemeal, I can follow the president, I'll soon unfollow,

01:01:16 ◼   ► anyway, you can follow big accounts that are on Threads, I can follow them from Mastodon

01:01:21 ◼   ► but you can't really have a two-way conversation.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Now finally they can follow you but only if you've replied from them and it's confusing

01:01:27 ◼   ► because someone looking for me will find that I do have an account on Threads, if that's

01:01:30 ◼   ► not the one that I use, I use the one on Mastodon so someone on Threads will probably follow

01:01:34 ◼   ► me on Threads, they wouldn't follow me on Mastodon and it's, you know, maybe someday

01:01:38 ◼   ► the federation will actually work and then I could have an account on Mastodon and not

01:01:42 ◼   ► feel like I'm missing anything happening on Threads but today is not that day, they're

01:01:46 ◼   ► just taking baby steps in that direction.

01:01:48 ◼   ► So the bottom line is I am now checking at least three different social services, I mean

01:01:54 ◼   ► there's, I have accounts on Instagram as well for some things but mainly those three services

01:01:59 ◼   ► were once I had to only check one of them and that is not as pleasing and more annoying

01:02:04 ◼   ► but that's the reality we're in, you just, you gotta do what you got, you gotta go where

01:02:07 ◼   ► the people are, there's nothing I can say or do that's going to make everybody go to

01:02:10 ◼   ► Mastodon or everybody go to Blue Sky or everyone go to Threads, people are going where they're

01:02:14 ◼   ► going, maybe they'll settle in some position, you know, and the people, when I say everybody

01:02:19 ◼   ► I'm talking about like listeners to this show which are not representative of the general

01:02:22 ◼   ► population which is why so many of them are on Mastodon but in the general population

01:02:27 ◼   ► mostly people are on Threads because they leverage the Instagram social graph and blah

01:02:30 ◼   ► blah blah and then Blue Sky is, you know, is big now, right, but those people who are

01:02:35 ◼   ► going to Blue Sky are probably not as many ATP listeners as we're already on Mastodon.

01:02:41 ◼   ► So anyway, that's the situation we're in.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Now we can finally get to what I thought was going to be a short topic on Threads.

01:02:47 ◼   ► You thought wrong.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Threads is testing the option to choose your own default feed reading from the Verge.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Threads will now let users decide what feed they want as their default when opening the

01:02:56 ◼   ► app.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news in a post saying you'll be able to choose

01:03:00 ◼   ► between the For You, Following, or any custom feed you've set up.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Zuckerberg's post notes that Threads is "testing" this option and will also offer different

01:03:08 ◼   ► feeds more visibly within the app.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah, so speaking of Threads, one of the things that has been true of the Threads app from

01:03:16 ◼   ► day one is that when you launch the app it puts you into the algorithmic timeline which

01:03:21 ◼   ► is the right default for most people because most people don't do what I do which is carefully

01:03:24 ◼   ► follow a list of people and then read everything that they post.

01:03:27 ◼   ► No they chuck you into the algorithmic timeline and you can have your complaints about the

01:03:30 ◼   ► Threads algorithm.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It is what it is but that's where it chucks you when you launch the app.

01:03:34 ◼   ► But if you pull down on the screen and go up to the top or whatever you'll see that

01:03:38 ◼   ► there's the whatever it's called For You and there's the following one.

01:03:43 ◼   ► There's another tab at the top of the screen that brings you to essentially a chronological

01:03:46 ◼   ► timeline of the people you follow.

01:03:48 ◼   ► And remember when Threads launch, they'll be an algorithmic timeline and there will

01:03:51 ◼   ► also be a chronological one.

01:03:52 ◼   ► So it's whatever you want, if you want the algorithmic one, you got it.

01:03:55 ◼   ► The Threads will try to show you the post that it thinks you're interested in and mix

01:03:58 ◼   ► them with the people you follow.

01:04:00 ◼   ► But do you want it to be like old school for the weird fuddy duddies like me who want to

01:04:04 ◼   ► read a chronological timeline of the post from the people they follow?

01:04:07 ◼   ► It's right next to it.

01:04:08 ◼   ► You just tap that and now you're reading a chronological timeline.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Well guess what?

01:04:11 ◼   ► From day one, the Threads app lets you do that and click on the following tab and get

01:04:16 ◼   ► a chronological timeline.

01:04:18 ◼   ► But every single time you relaunch the app, it says, "Oh, here's the algorithmic timeline.

01:04:25 ◼   ► You can go to the chronological one if you want."

01:04:27 ◼   ► It never remembers intentionally.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It always wants you to go to the algorithm.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It could remember.

01:04:33 ◼   ► It's just a simple preference.

01:04:34 ◼   ► They could save the fact that I went there.

01:04:36 ◼   ► They could save the fact that I always wanted to go to the chronological one.

01:04:39 ◼   ► They could save the fact that literally the first thing I do every single time I launch

01:04:42 ◼   ► the app is go to that one.

01:04:43 ◼   ► But no, they won't save it.

01:04:45 ◼   ► It's one of the most user-hostile things a piece of software can ever do is intentionally

01:04:50 ◼   ► ignore what they know you want because it's not what they want.

01:04:54 ◼   ► They want you to see the algorithmic timeline because they think they know better.

01:04:58 ◼   ► They think we get more engagement when we force people to see our algorithmic timeline.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Doesn't matter what they want because our testing has shown if we let people make that

01:05:09 ◼   ► preference sticky, if we remember that they went to the chronological timeline and we

01:05:12 ◼   ► keep it there, we get less engagement from that person.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It doesn't matter what they want.

01:05:17 ◼   ► It only matters what we want, what metrics that we care about.

01:05:21 ◼   ► From day zero, the Threads app has been doing this.

01:05:24 ◼   ► I've hated them for it.

01:05:25 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, it's Facebook.

01:05:26 ◼   ► What do you expect?"

01:05:27 ◼   ► Here's this story.

01:05:29 ◼   ► This is from November 25th, this story.

01:05:32 ◼   ► "Oh, Mark Zuckerberg, the big CEO, says, 'Hey, guess what?'"

01:05:35 ◼   ► This was around the time Blue Sky was getting popular because of the election or whatever.

01:05:39 ◼   ► "Oh, competition.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Threads is feeling the heat.

01:05:41 ◼   ► People are going to Blue Sky.

01:05:42 ◼   ► They've got to do something."

01:05:44 ◼   ► Even just the slightest bit of competition, the slightest idea that anyone might know

01:05:47 ◼   ► Blue Sky exists makes the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, come out and say, "Oh, yeah.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Now we're working on the secret technology that will allow you to see the chronological

01:05:59 ◼   ► timeline.

01:06:00 ◼   ► We finally figured out how to save a Boolean and a preference.

01:06:02 ◼   ► We did it.

01:06:03 ◼   ► We finally figured it out."

01:06:04 ◼   ► How did they figure it out?

01:06:05 ◼   ► "Nothing to do with Blue Sky.

01:06:07 ◼   ► We just thought this would be a cool feature that you might like, so we decided to roll

01:06:11 ◼   ► this out for no reason, and it's being announced by the CEO of the company."

01:06:15 ◼   ► So incredibly use a hostile feature that only gets reversed when there's even the hint of

01:06:22 ◼   ► competition.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

01:06:24 ◼   ► As they say, they are testing this option.

01:06:27 ◼   ► "I still don't have it.

01:06:30 ◼   ► Every day I go to Threads and every day I check, 'Do I have it?

01:06:33 ◼   ► Am I being A/B tested?

01:06:35 ◼   ► Have they done the update?'

01:06:36 ◼   ► No, they haven't.

01:06:37 ◼   ► That was November 25th, and I'm still waiting to be able to get this stupid app to remember

01:06:43 ◼   ► that I always want the chronological timeline every single time."

01:06:47 ◼   ► Instead, it's kind of like the crop format, original, or whatever, or the crop aspect

01:06:54 ◼   ► original thing that for every time I went to photos and resized an image 65,000 times

01:06:59 ◼   ► or whatever it was I came up with.

01:07:01 ◼   ► That was just an oversight.

01:07:02 ◼   ► This is them legitimately doing a thing that I don't want them to do because it's better

01:07:06 ◼   ► for them, and they finally say that they're not going to do it in November, and here we

01:07:10 ◼   ► are December 5th, still not out.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So I'll keep you updated on this, but I want this option because I never want to see the

01:07:17 ◼   ► algorithmic timeline ever, ever.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Please.

01:07:21 ◼   ► It's almost like they got the PR boost of saying, "Hey, the CEO said we're going to

01:07:26 ◼   ► stop doing this incredibly evil thing we've been doing because of the slight hint of competition

01:07:30 ◼   ► in Blue Sky," but then they don't actually do it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Did they just take the PR window announcing that they're thinking about doing it?

01:07:36 ◼   ► Yes.

01:07:37 ◼   ► So I know it might take them a while to figure out how to implement that.

01:07:39 ◼   ► They really have to test this feature, really, really test them, and I don't want to screw

01:07:43 ◼   ► up the whole application, but saving this preference off.

01:07:45 ◼   ► It's just driving me nuts.

01:07:47 ◼   ► If you're out there and you have this feature, and by the way, the way they implement it

01:07:49 ◼   ► is insane.

01:07:50 ◼   ► You have to go to...

01:07:51 ◼   ► Let me just pull up the app to figure out what you have to do.

01:07:54 ◼   ► You have to go to...

01:07:55 ◼   ► Well, again, you have to go to following, just hold down on following and say edit feeds,

01:08:01 ◼   ► and then you have create new feed, and then you see for you and following.

01:08:04 ◼   ► If you have the feature, there will be little reorder grippers in for you and following,

01:08:08 ◼   ► and you change it so that following is on the top, and whatever's on the top will be

01:08:11 ◼   ► the default.

01:08:12 ◼   ► That's how they implemented it.

01:08:13 ◼   ► I had to look this up to say, "Do I have this feature?

01:08:16 ◼   ► What is...

01:08:17 ◼   ► It's just...

01:08:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have it yet.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I have no grippers.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I can't reorder them.

01:08:21 ◼   ► I'll keep you posted.

01:08:22 ◼   ► But anyway, Mark Zuckerberg is terrible.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Facebook is terrible.

01:08:25 ◼   ► I don't like threads.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Wait, so what do you do?

01:08:28 ◼   ► You say that again?

01:08:30 ◼   ► You...

01:08:31 ◼   ► I want to see if I have it because it'll make you so upset.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Go to the threads app, see the little at sign at the top where it says for you and following?

01:08:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Hold down on following.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Oh, on following.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Edit feeds.

01:08:41 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And then you see create new feed for you and following.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't have little grippers?

01:08:45 ◼   ► You don't see the reorder grippers on for you or following.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Oh, I absolutely do.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Well, you've got it, but I don't.

01:08:49 ◼   ► I'm just messing with you.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I'm just messing with you.

01:08:51 ◼   ► I don't have any grippers.

01:08:52 ◼   ► No.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Someday, Mark said in November, they're testing this option.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Maybe they're going to test and say, "You know, it'll be less engagement, so forget it.

01:09:00 ◼   ► We're not doing it."

01:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, what do you expect?

01:09:02 ◼   ► It's Facebook.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Okay, so breaking news as of a couple of days ago.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel, is out reading from The Verge.

01:09:10 ◼   ► On Monday, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger abruptly decided to retire after less than four years

01:09:14 ◼   ► on the job.

01:09:15 ◼   ► That was the official story anyhow.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Within hours, Reuters, Bloomberg, and The New York Times had a different one.

01:09:20 ◼   ► The board of directors pushed him out.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Three and a half years ago, Gelsinger announced an ambitious plan to turn around the troubled

01:09:25 ◼   ► chipmaker within four years.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Now he's reportedly been kicked out of the company before he could see it through.

01:09:30 ◼   ► It happened so abruptly that Intel doesn't have a planned successor in mind.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Cool.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And so completely that Gelsinger won't even stick around as an advisor.

01:09:37 ◼   ► He's gone.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Intel's been in a tailspin for years.

01:09:40 ◼   ► It missed the smartphone revolution.

01:09:41 ◼   ► It has been plagued by quality control issues with its chips, lost customers like Apple

01:09:45 ◼   ► to alternative processors, and is now at risk of missing out on AI, too.

01:09:50 ◼   ► If Intel is falling apart, this isn't just a business story.

01:09:52 ◼   ► The United States government has called it a national security story, too.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Intel isn't just the world's former leading maker of computer chips.

01:09:59 ◼   ► It's one of the last companies to do both design and manufacture of them in itself instead

01:10:04 ◼   ► of outsourcing the latter part of the manufacturing to Asia.

01:10:07 ◼   ► It's one of the only levers the US can pull to reduce dependence on Taiwan for chips should

01:10:12 ◼   ► China decide to exert control.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Some of that might be in jeopardy because of what Intel's management has or hasn't done,

01:10:18 ◼   ► or might newly be in jeopardy now that the board has kicked Gelsinger out.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Now, with regard to splitting Intel into a chip designer as one standalone business and

01:10:28 ◼   ► as a fab business as another, Intel can't spin off its own foundries very easily, particularly

01:10:33 ◼   ► now that it's receiving nearly $8 billion in chips and science act funding from the

01:10:37 ◼   ► US government.

01:10:38 ◼   ► That money not only keeps Intel from engaging in stock buybacks for the next five years,

01:10:41 ◼   ► but also specifically gives the US Department of Commerce oversight over any change of control.

01:10:48 ◼   ► If anything would see Intel own less than 50.1% of the new company or lose its voting

01:10:53 ◼   ► rights, the Commerce Department wants to make sure Intel will still fulfill its US manufacturing

01:10:57 ◼   ► promises.

01:10:58 ◼   ► That could make it difficult to fully spin out.

01:11:00 ◼   ► "The economics of Intel's foundry are so challenged that I don't know how a spinoff is even feasible

01:11:04 ◼   ► without a massive cash infusion," Ben Bajarin writes.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Ultimately, I hope a buyer for Intel Foundry emerges who can help the US gain an edge in

01:11:12 ◼   ► domestic semiconductor manufacturing, as this is far more strategically important geopolitically

01:11:18 ◼   ► than many realize.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Ooh, there's a lot there.

01:11:21 ◼   ► So the sad story of Intel.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Our perspective on the Apple side of things was that Intel was the enemy, then Apple went

01:11:29 ◼   ► over to Intel when they had the best chips, and then they left them when they didn't anymore.

01:11:33 ◼   ► And in between, a lot of stuff has been going on at Intel.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Obviously for the young people to remember, there was the Wintel duopoly, which was Windows

01:11:42 ◼   ► for Microsoft and Intel chips, those two companies dominated the personal computer age from the

01:11:50 ◼   ► dawning of the PC until basically the internet age.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Intel was powerful because of legacy and history and the duopoly power that they had.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And also, for a while there, they were powerful because they were the best at manufacturing

01:12:09 ◼   ► silicon chips.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Their fabrication facilities for silicon chips was better than everybody else's.

01:12:17 ◼   ► People who dislike x86 will say, "That's how they can make the ugly pig that is the x86

01:12:22 ◼   ► construction set be the dominant chip in the world," because their fabs were so much better.

01:12:28 ◼   ► They had finer process nodes than other people.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Their processes were multiple years ahead of the competition.

01:12:33 ◼   ► They were the best in the world.

01:12:35 ◼   ► When Apple went over to them, that was true.

01:12:38 ◼   ► They made the best chips in the world.

01:12:40 ◼   ► It just so happens the chips they made were x86, but whatever, you could make that pig

01:12:44 ◼   ► fly if you put it on a fab that's two years ahead of everybody else.

01:12:48 ◼   ► During that time when they're making all that money, they were blinded by their success.

01:12:53 ◼   ► They missed out on the smartphone resolution because they're like, "We make all our money

01:12:55 ◼   ► selling these x86 chips.

01:12:57 ◼   ► We're the best in the world.

01:12:58 ◼   ► We sell the best PC chips.

01:12:59 ◼   ► That's where the show is.

01:13:00 ◼   ► We sell server chips.

01:13:01 ◼   ► That's great.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Who cares about phones?

01:13:03 ◼   ► We're not interested in that."

01:13:04 ◼   ► Intel owned a big stake in a company that made ARM chips.

01:13:08 ◼   ► So did Apple, for that matter.

01:13:10 ◼   ► And Intel said, "You know what?

01:13:12 ◼   ► We don't think there's any future in ARM chips," and they sold it.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Whether or not that was a smart move, they also didn't make their own mobile chips.

01:13:22 ◼   ► For the AI machine learning stuff or even the crypto things or whatever, Nvidia was

01:13:27 ◼   ► out there, is now what was briefly the biggest company in the world, is now the size of Apple

01:13:32 ◼   ► thanks to all the AI training they do on their GPUs.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Intel missed out on all that as well.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Speaking of GPUs, Nvidia, AMD, Intel tried to make GPUs a couple of times.

01:13:44 ◼   ► They're currently making GPUs.

01:13:45 ◼   ► They're not very good at it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► One of their products, by the way, I remember I had someone who I worked at a job with who

01:13:51 ◼   ► left the job to go work at Intel on this project.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Do you remember the Larabee project?

01:14:00 ◼   ► Let's make a GPU, let's make a graphics card out of tons and tons of tiny x86 chips because

01:14:06 ◼   ► that's what Intel knew how to do.

01:14:07 ◼   ► We make x86 chips.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Can we make a graphics card out of those?

01:14:10 ◼   ► What if we make a whole bunch of little tiny x86s and put a ton of them on a chip?

01:14:15 ◼   ► Can we make a GPU out of that?

01:14:17 ◼   ► That was the Larabee project.

01:14:18 ◼   ► You know who's in charge of the Larabee project?

01:14:20 ◼   ► Pat Gelsinger.

01:14:23 ◼   ► He was trying to make a general purpose like GPU massively parallel computing thing.

01:14:27 ◼   ► That project didn't go well.

01:14:30 ◼   ► But during all this time, Intel has been like, "Yeah, but we make all our money on our other

01:14:33 ◼   ► chips and so we're doing fine."

01:14:35 ◼   ► But then another bad thing happened.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Yet another bad thing.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Intel, who used to be the leader in fabrication, lost that lead.

01:14:43 ◼   ► They made the wrong bet, stupidly, on what the next generation of silicon fabrication

01:14:50 ◼   ► would be.

01:14:51 ◼   ► They actually made the right bet.

01:14:52 ◼   ► They invested in this company that would be the future of that.

01:14:54 ◼   ► They invested in this EUV technology.

01:14:57 ◼   ► But then they said, "You know what?

01:14:58 ◼   ► Even though we invested billions of dollars in it, we think that's kind of expensive and

01:15:02 ◼   ► we think we can do it a different, cheaper way."

01:15:04 ◼   ► And they were wrong.

01:15:05 ◼   ► They could not.

01:15:06 ◼   ► So they blew a multi-year lead on the entire industry while the rest of the world made

01:15:12 ◼   ► the right bet, or TSMC made the right bet.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And now Intel has got chips that they sell for servers and PCs.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Apple doesn't buy from them anymore.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Their fab technology stagnated for years because they made the wrong bet.

01:15:29 ◼   ► So they didn't have the best fab in the world anymore.

01:15:32 ◼   ► They didn't even have the best x86 chips in the world.

01:15:34 ◼   ► I think one of the biggest signs that Intel was in trouble, one of the leading indicators

01:15:39 ◼   ► that Intel was in trouble if you were paying attention, was way back when they were all-powerful,

01:15:46 ◼   ► they couldn't even successfully transition from 32-bit to 64-bit.

01:15:50 ◼   ► They tried with Itanium and it was another bad bet.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Their competitor, their little, tiny little brother copying off them, AMD, came up with

01:16:00 ◼   ► x86-64.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And Intel didn't come up with that.

01:16:05 ◼   ► Intel wanted to do Itanium.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And it didn't work out.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And guess what we're all using.

01:16:09 ◼   ► When we say Apple went to Intel chips, with the exception of I think some of the early

01:16:12 ◼   ► ones, they went to x86_64.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And Intel didn't make that instruction set.

01:16:18 ◼   ► AMD did.

01:16:20 ◼   ► So Intel has lost everything.

01:16:24 ◼   ► They're not the best at making chips.

01:16:25 ◼   ► They don't have the best chips.

01:16:26 ◼   ► They're not selling the most chips.

01:16:28 ◼   ► They're not selling into any of the big growth markets, mobile, GPUs, crypto, AI training.

01:16:34 ◼   ► They're nowhere to be found.

01:16:35 ◼   ► So into this, Pat Gelsinger comes, comes back to the company.

01:16:39 ◼   ► He was also the lead architect on the 486.

01:16:41 ◼   ► He worked on Larrabee.

01:16:42 ◼   ► He spent 30 years at the company.

01:16:43 ◼   ► He left.

01:16:44 ◼   ► He came back after being at VMware.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Save the company, Pat.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And Pat says, "Here's how I'm going to save it.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I'm going to fix everything.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I'm going to make our fab best in the world again.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I'm going to start.

01:16:54 ◼   ► I'm going to have our fab take.

01:16:57 ◼   ► We're going to make chips for other people."

01:16:58 ◼   ► We didn't used to do that.

01:16:59 ◼   ► We only made them for ourselves because we were the best.

01:17:01 ◼   ► But now we're going to make them for other people too.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And then the other part of the company, we're going to make the best chips in the world.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And if our fab can't fab them, we're going to fab parts of them at TSMC because they're

01:17:10 ◼   ► the best in the world now.

01:17:11 ◼   ► So we're just going to, we just, you know, no more of this like, "Oh, we have to be tied

01:17:14 ◼   ► to our fab."

01:17:15 ◼   ► We're just going to do everything.

01:17:16 ◼   ► We're going to make great chips.

01:17:18 ◼   ► We're going to fab them, whoever's the best.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And our fab people are going to try to make the best fab.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And he was on the way to trying to do this plan and it wasn't working great.

01:17:27 ◼   ► And they just, the board of directors got tired of it and said, "You've spent too much money.

01:17:31 ◼   ► It doesn't look like it's going well.

01:17:32 ◼   ► You're out."

01:17:33 ◼   ► Arguably, they didn't give it a chance to see it through to the end, but also arguably

01:17:37 ◼   ► the end could have been the company going under, right?

01:17:40 ◼   ► Because they spent so much money, especially on the process stuff, their new processes

01:17:44 ◼   ► that are supposed to be competing with TSMC are not as good as CSMCs, are behind schedule

01:17:50 ◼   ► and they apparently have no customers.

01:17:52 ◼   ► So if you're going to be like TSMC and you're going to be in the business of making chips

01:17:56 ◼   ► for other people and you want to make the best fab in the world, A, you better have

01:17:59 ◼   ► the best fab in the world and B, you got to have someone who's going to pay you money

01:18:02 ◼   ► to make chips for them.

01:18:04 ◼   ► That's an important part of the business if that's what you're doing.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And then the other side of it, Intel trying to make its own chips.

01:18:09 ◼   ► It's been messing up by making chips with a bunch of problems that you may have read

01:18:12 ◼   ► about in the news.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And it's been using TSMC to help fab them.

01:18:16 ◼   ► But TSMC is like, if you want to fab your chips with us, we would prefer it if you weren't

01:18:21 ◼   ► also trying to be a fab yourself.

01:18:24 ◼   ► And so if you're going to have your own fab over there where you're trying to compete

01:18:27 ◼   ► for our customers, we're going to charge you more.

01:18:30 ◼   ► If you give up on that whole fab thing, TSMC might say, yeah, we'll give you a better price.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Just be like Apple.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Like they don't have a fab.

01:18:37 ◼   ► They just pass money and we make their chips.

01:18:38 ◼   ► They're not competing with us.

01:18:40 ◼   ► And so Pat was trying to make Intel do everything all at once and it wasn't going that great

01:18:46 ◼   ► and they kicked them out.

01:18:47 ◼   ► And this is a really, really sad, another very sad chapter in the downfall of Intel.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Not that I care that much because I'm not too invested in Intel and AMD is doing great

01:18:58 ◼   ► and Nvidia is doing great and Apple is doing great and TSMC is doing great.

01:19:01 ◼   ► But that whole part that we read at the end there with the whole sort of geopolitical

01:19:05 ◼   ► thing, that's a real thing.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It's not just like rah rah USA.

01:19:11 ◼   ► So much of the world's economy essentially depends on TSMC now.

01:19:15 ◼   ► All of the top end chips, the best manufacturing, that's in Taiwan.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Taiwan is in a politically precarious situation.

01:19:24 ◼   ► It would be great for the US government or any government to say, do we have a hedge

01:19:28 ◼   ► against that?

01:19:29 ◼   ► If things go really badly over there, can we make chips?

01:19:32 ◼   ► And the current answer is no, not really.

01:19:34 ◼   ► I know we've got TSMC with a plant in Arizona, but again, it's the same company.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And also they're not making the top end chips.

01:19:40 ◼   ► They're making like two years behind type chips.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Intel got $8 billion from the US government to help with manufacturing.

01:19:48 ◼   ► But now the CEO that was trying to make that plan happen is out.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And now the rumor is that maybe the board wants to really split it off and say, okay,

01:19:56 ◼   ► we're just going to be fabulous.

01:19:57 ◼   ► We're not going to make any chips.

01:19:58 ◼   ► We're just going to design them and then farm them out to somebody else.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And the US government's like, wait, no, don't do that.

01:20:03 ◼   ► The whole point is we need someone in this country who can make chips.

01:20:05 ◼   ► A US company that can make the best chips in the world.

01:20:09 ◼   ► We used to have that.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Intel, that used to be you, but it's not anymore.

01:20:12 ◼   ► And we need to get that back strategically.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And so maybe Intel has got these $8 billion handcuffs here, which isn't that much because

01:20:17 ◼   ► I think Intel like lost $16 billion in like the last quarter or something.

01:20:21 ◼   ► So the numbers here are big.

01:20:22 ◼   ► But yeah, if the US government wants some US company to compete with TSMC, I think it's

01:20:29 ◼   ► going to take more money and I'm not sure it's going to be Intel.

01:20:31 ◼   ► But I just look at this whole story and I feel bad for Pat Gelsinger because I think

01:20:34 ◼   ► he, maybe he bit off too much.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Maybe there's no way that his plan was going to work anyway, but at least he was trying

01:20:43 ◼   ► and his heart was in the right place and the things he were trying to do were technically

01:20:50 ◼   ► possible if he was given enough runway.

01:20:52 ◼   ► It's almost kind of like if Steve Jobs, when he came back to Apple in like 1998 and then

01:20:57 ◼   ► he started working on his plan and if there was some board of directors that said, it

01:21:01 ◼   ► doesn't look like he's going well, Steve.

01:21:03 ◼   ► He gave you a couple of years, but you're out.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And that would have been the wrong move.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Like I'm not saying that he would have turned it around like Steve did, but I really feel

01:21:09 ◼   ► like he didn't have enough chance.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Like if the board's going to support him and support this plan as they did, see it through

01:21:14 ◼   ► to the end.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Don't get cold feet halfway through because you can quote unquote tell that it's going

01:21:18 ◼   ► downhill because from everything that I've read, the Intel board of directors doesn't

01:21:21 ◼   ► really know or care anything about technology.

01:21:23 ◼   ► So kind of the reason they're in this situation is like, we know how to make money and we

01:21:27 ◼   ► want to make more money and don't tell me the mobile is going to be big and don't tell

01:21:30 ◼   ► me the GPU is going to be big and I don't want to hear about AI training and nothing

01:21:34 ◼   ► will ever change because we're Intel.

01:21:36 ◼   ► And those are the people who got them in this situation.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And so they hired Pat Gelsinger and then they just fired him.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I think it's sad and I'm sad about it.

01:21:44 ◼   ► I feel bad for Pat and I feel bad for Intel.

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I am glad Apple is isolated from it, but I still just worry about the entire world

01:21:54 ◼   ► depending so heavily on one small island in a politically precarious situation.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Growing up, especially as a PC person, like Intel was amazing.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I was never upset about anything Intel ever did growing up.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Now granted, they obviously made a lot of wrong choices.

01:22:12 ◼   ► The Pentium 4, you weren't upset about that?

01:22:15 ◼   ► That was a little upset.

01:22:16 ◼   ► I mean, maybe some, but it has netburst architecture.

01:22:19 ◼   ► It'll make the internet burst faster.

01:22:21 ◼   ► But the thing is Intel, for the young people, they made a chip that wasn't that great.

01:22:25 ◼   ► But then what do they do?

01:22:26 ◼   ► They made a better chip after like they fixed it, right?

01:22:30 ◼   ► They were good for a while, they were good at what they did.

01:22:32 ◼   ► And again, it really helped that they had the best fab.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Well in either way, they were firing on all cylinders for most of my childhood, or at

01:22:39 ◼   ► least that's the way I reflect upon it.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I feel like that's the way I knew about it then.

01:22:43 ◼   ► And even when I was really into Windows, there would still be a lot of stuff that would annoy

01:22:49 ◼   ► me about Microsoft.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And the only thing that annoyed me about Intel was that they kept coming out with better

01:22:54 ◼   ► stuff that I didn't have.

01:22:57 ◼   ► It was the march of progress, and Moore's Law was reliable as hell at the time.

01:23:00 ◼   ► And I don't know, it was such a, like, maybe the American in me is coming out, maybe I'm

01:23:06 ◼   ► getting a little rah rah USA and I don't realize it, but it was such a great story of like,

01:23:11 ◼   ► you know, let all of these people came together and made this just unbelievable company kind

01:23:17 ◼   ► of sort of out of nothing.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I know it was from a shell of, what was it, something semiconductor?

01:23:21 ◼   ► Fairchild?

01:23:22 ◼   ► Fairchild, yeah.

01:23:24 ◼   ► But for the purposes of this conversation, it came from almost nothing and became this

01:23:28 ◼   ► juggernaut, this international juggernaut.

01:23:30 ◼   ► It was so cool, I mean, in that it was so important.

01:23:36 ◼   ► When Intel wasn't what generated Silicon Valley, but it was early on in Silicon Valley.

01:23:40 ◼   ► And you know, there was such a great American story, a great corporate story.

01:23:44 ◼   ► I mean, I know I have very different feelings about capitalism than I did a little while

01:23:49 ◼   ► ago, but still, it was such a great story.

01:23:51 ◼   ► It was something to be proud of as a nerd, as an American.

01:23:55 ◼   ► And it really, from the outside, seems like they were sniffing their own farts way too

01:23:59 ◼   ► much and they just thought they could do nothing wrong.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And then they continually did things wrong and didn't seem to care because other parts

01:24:07 ◼   ► of the business were, you know, booing them.

01:24:09 ◼   ► They were money.

01:24:10 ◼   ► They found they wanted to make money.

01:24:12 ◼   ► They did what they thought were smart decisions to make money.

01:24:14 ◼   ► And those people who made those decisions are rich and retired now.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And so they're like, yeah, it worked out.

01:24:18 ◼   ► But none of them were technologists.

01:24:21 ◼   ► To be in the tech industry long term, you do have to have some... your decision making

01:24:28 ◼   ► needs to be influenced in some way based on technical understanding.

01:24:31 ◼   ► What's the next big thing?

01:24:33 ◼   ► Is it important to be in mobile?

01:24:35 ◼   ► Is power consumption important on CPUs?

01:24:37 ◼   ► Are GPUs going to be more or less important in the future?

01:24:41 ◼   ► Things like that.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Or you'd come to that to a bunch of business people and they'd say, okay, yeah, sure, maybe,

01:24:47 ◼   ► but like, let me show you the numbers.

01:24:49 ◼   ► We're making money selling x86 in the server right now because the internet is booming

01:24:53 ◼   ► and we're better than AMD and we're better than everybody in the world and we just got

01:24:56 ◼   ► Apple so we don't have to worry about like the iPhone.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Who's going to buy an Apple phone?

01:25:00 ◼   ► That's so stupid.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Like you need someone with some tech industry instincts to influence your decisions that

01:25:08 ◼   ► if you don't do that and you just do what's going to make you the most money right now,

01:25:12 ◼   ► you will miss everything.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And Intel missed everything.

01:25:16 ◼   ► It's really, it's such a sad story.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And again, from the outside, it seems like such a cautionary tale about hubris that,

01:25:25 ◼   ► it really seems like they thought they could do no wrong and didn't really understand or

01:25:31 ◼   ► believe when they did do wrong.

01:25:33 ◼   ► And it's really just crummy.

01:25:35 ◼   ► It's bums me out.

01:25:36 ◼   ► But I, and as much as I feel for them, like if you've been shooting yourself in the foot

01:25:41 ◼   ► slash torso slash face enough times, like I'm running out of sympathy.

01:25:46 ◼   ► And well, from a geopolitical standpoint, yes, I think it's important that we are not completely

01:25:50 ◼   ► and utterly reliant on Taiwan, but it certainly doesn't seem like Intel is going to fix that

01:25:54 ◼   ► problem for us no matter how much money the U S government is pumping.

01:25:57 ◼   ► And like, I feel like they're handcuffed now because the way they would fix it, it's like,

01:26:01 ◼   ► we should just be giving money to a company.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Then the only thing they're going to do is figure out how to fab chips.

01:26:06 ◼   ► And being tied to Intel, which wants to sell chips that it's designs, some of which are

01:26:11 ◼   ► fed to TSMC just complicates things.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Like if you're a fab, you just make chips.

01:26:16 ◼   ► Anybody who wants to make you, they give you money, you make their chip.

01:26:19 ◼   ► That's your whole business.

01:26:20 ◼   ► You don't make any chips.

01:26:21 ◼   ► You don't sell any chips.

01:26:22 ◼   ► You build chips that other people tell you to build and they give you money for it.

01:26:25 ◼   ► That's what TSMC does.

01:26:26 ◼   ► It's a business that makes sense.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And the other side or all the other chip makers, Apple, AMD, like they don't make their own

01:26:33 ◼   ► chips.

01:26:34 ◼   ► They design them and then they pay somebody else to make them.

01:26:36 ◼   ► They call it fabulous chip designers, right?

01:26:39 ◼   ► And Intel Pat's plan for Intel was like, we're going to be, have a fabulous chip design part

01:26:43 ◼   ► of the company and we're going to have a fab part and they're going to be the same company

01:26:46 ◼   ► technically, but like we're going to build a wall between them and the people who are

01:26:50 ◼   ► designing the chips, they don't have to go to Intel to build them.

01:26:54 ◼   ► They should go to whoever has the best.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And then the Intel fab, just, you should just try to be the best.

01:26:58 ◼   ► And it was just, it was never going to work out again because when Intel is trying to

01:27:02 ◼   ► fab at ships with TSMC, TSMC is going to be like, so you want to fab your chips with us

01:27:06 ◼   ► while you try to work on a business that competes with us?

01:27:10 ◼   ► Here's your price.

01:27:11 ◼   ► It's a different price than Apple gets.

01:27:13 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:14 ◼   ► And it's just, it's, and now Apple's, you know, the U S government's giving the $8 billion

01:27:20 ◼   ► and Intel, I think the board of directors would want to say, we just need to split this.

01:27:23 ◼   ► We're just, it's two companies.

01:27:24 ◼   ► We need to not be with just two companies, the fab and not the fab, but where does the

01:27:28 ◼   ► $8 billion go?

01:27:29 ◼   ► And the U S government's like, uh, you can't do that because we give Intel $8 billion.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And so you cannot split.

01:27:35 ◼   ► Otherwise we're going to have something to say about that.

01:27:36 ◼   ► So I don't know how this is going to work out.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I don't see how firing Pat does anything except for like, lets them stop spending so much

01:27:44 ◼   ► money because they were spending a lot of money trying to implement his plan and now

01:27:47 ◼   ► he's gone and now the plan is gone.

01:27:50 ◼   ► And now what do they do next?

01:27:51 ◼   ► They don't even have a CEO.

01:27:52 ◼   ► They just have interim CEOs.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Not great.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Not great Intel.

01:27:56 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by one password extended access management.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Quick question.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Do your end users always, and I mean always without exception, do their work on company

01:28:08 ◼   ► owned devices and it approved apps?

01:28:11 ◼   ► All of it.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't think so.

01:28:13 ◼   ► So next question, how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all of those

01:28:18 ◼   ► unmanaged apps and devices?

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01:28:36 ◼   ► Check it out at one password dot com slash ATP.

01:28:40 ◼   ► That's one password dot com slash ATP.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Thank you so much to one password extended access management for sponsoring our show.

01:28:48 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:28:53 ◼   ► We probably only have time for one of them and John CG writes, after Jason Snell's The

01:28:57 ◼   ► Mac is the Model piece, which an aside from me, if you haven't read that, I recommend

01:29:01 ◼   ► it.

01:29:02 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:29:03 ◼   ► Anyways, after Jason sells Mac is model piece, what are some features you'd love to see?

01:29:06 ◼   ► I'd love to add to your apps, but deliberately don't ship because you don't think Apple would

01:29:10 ◼   ► approve.

01:29:12 ◼   ► This is a really good question and I was thinking about this earlier today and off the top of

01:29:16 ◼   ► my head, I can't really think of anything which is bad.

01:29:20 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:29:22 ◼   ► I'm sure there are some things.

01:29:25 ◼   ► The only thing I could come up with, which is I think I could work around it today, but

01:29:31 ◼   ► I don't have any particular interest in running a server for CallSheet and I think, and we'll

01:29:35 ◼   ► talk about this in the future, I think I'm going to end up doing so a little bit in the

01:29:39 ◼   ► near future, but if I can avoid it, I'd like to.

01:29:43 ◼   ► One of the most frequently requested features that I haven't even begun to think about is

01:29:49 ◼   ► let me know when a movie is available.

01:29:51 ◼   ► Perfectly reasonable, perfectly reasonable thing to do.

01:29:55 ◼   ► The easiest way to do that is to have some sort of background daemon that will every

01:30:00 ◼   ► great once in a while look and see, all right, of all the things you have pinned or favorited

01:30:04 ◼   ► or what have you, are any of them available yet?

01:30:07 ◼   ► If so, send a notification.

01:30:08 ◼   ► There are ways that you can work around this within the context of what Apple allows today,

01:30:13 ◼   ► but the easiest way one could argue for me to handle this is just to have some process

01:30:18 ◼   ► that's running the background always.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Once every hour, once every day, whatever the case may be, it wakes up and does a little

01:30:24 ◼   ► research and processing and then goes back to sleep.

01:30:27 ◼   ► That's not allowed.

01:30:28 ◼   ► Honestly, I think it's for the best, but that's the only thing that I can think of off the

01:30:32 ◼   ► top of my head that I would potentially ship, but again, that's kind of a weak answer because

01:30:36 ◼   ► I can work around that in other ways.

01:30:38 ◼   ► In fact, Marco, you and I talked about this.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I can't remember if it was privately or on the show.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Marco's telling you to make a server.

01:30:42 ◼   ► That's what he's going to tell you.

01:30:43 ◼   ► No, you and I had talked about this, I think, privately and there were ways to handle this

01:30:48 ◼   ► outside of running a server or having a daemon or what have you.

01:30:51 ◼   ► I'm not interested in exploring that right now.

01:30:53 ◼   ► We will surely explore that sometime eventually in the future, but that's the only answer

01:30:58 ◼   ► I have.

01:30:59 ◼   ► John, let's go to you next because I have a feeling your answer will also be pretty

01:31:02 ◼   ► simple and then Marco, I think you're going to have a little bit more to say.

01:31:05 ◼   ► Well, I mean, there's things that I don't ship, not because I think Apple want to approve

01:31:09 ◼   ► them.

01:31:10 ◼   ► I know they want to approve them.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Some of them I've tried to submit just to see that they want to approve them.

01:31:15 ◼   ► On the Mac, the things my app does are not that complicated, but I would like to do some

01:31:19 ◼   ► other things that just aren't APIs for.

01:31:22 ◼   ► To give just one example, my switch glass thing is like little pallets on the side of

01:31:26 ◼   ► the screen.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Of course, the dock exists too and you can't get rid of it because there's things only

01:31:30 ◼   ► the dock can do.

01:31:31 ◼   ► That's one category of things that only the dock can do, like get notification badges

01:31:35 ◼   ► and stuff.

01:31:36 ◼   ► There are various times in history have been ways to sneakily get at those private APIs

01:31:40 ◼   ► and use them, but of course, if you figure out how to do that, you will not get into

01:31:44 ◼   ► the app store.

01:31:45 ◼   ► So if I want to be in the app store, I can't do any of that.

01:31:47 ◼   ► But let's talk about something much more basic.

01:31:50 ◼   ► My little switch glass pallet thing can be on any edge of the screen, right?

01:31:55 ◼   ► But I also want to know when the dock is on the same edge so I can implement things of

01:31:59 ◼   ► like hiding when the dock, like if you're on the same edge as the dock and you make

01:32:04 ◼   ► the dock appear, I want my thing to hide itself so they don't conflict with each other, you

01:32:07 ◼   ► know, that type of thing, right?

01:32:09 ◼   ► I've got a preference that says like hide on dock conflict in my settings screen or

01:32:13 ◼   ► whatever.

01:32:14 ◼   ► But to implement that well, what I have to know is something that I'm sure everybody

01:32:19 ◼   ► who thinks about this for two seconds thinks surely there's an API for this.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Which edge of the screen is the dock on?

01:32:25 ◼   ► Simple question.

01:32:26 ◼   ► You can only have it in three places, bottom, left and right.

01:32:30 ◼   ► That's it.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I just want to know, where's the dock?

01:32:34 ◼   ► Not only is there no API for that, but in some situations, there's no way for you to

01:32:38 ◼   ► figure it out.

01:32:39 ◼   ► The way you can figure it out sometimes is by comparing the available height of the screen

01:32:45 ◼   ► versus the full height of the screen because there's an API that will tell you here's the

01:32:48 ◼   ► pixels you're able to draw in and it subtracts like the menu bar and the dock.

01:32:52 ◼   ► Then you can figure out, basically I know the menu bar is roughly this height.

01:32:58 ◼   ► And if the height, if the remaining height is not what I think it should be, it's probably

01:33:02 ◼   ► because the dock is down there taking up some part of it.

01:33:04 ◼   ► So you can figure out where the dock is based on those APIs.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Which is a real roundabout way to do it that makes you have to try to figure out how you're

01:33:11 ◼   ► going to estimate the menu bar height, which is not also a really good API for.

01:33:14 ◼   ► And it's like, look, I just want an answer with three possible, you know, an API.

01:33:17 ◼   ► Where dock?

01:33:18 ◼   ► Where is the dock?

01:33:19 ◼   ► Tell me.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Left, right, bottom.

01:33:21 ◼   ► Just tell me.

01:33:22 ◼   ► I'm not going to tell you the math.

01:33:24 ◼   ► But if they have the dock set to hide, then you can't even do that.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Because then it says available pixels, all of them.

01:33:30 ◼   ► You're like, yeah, but the dock is hiding down there.

01:33:32 ◼   ► I have no way to know it's hiding down there because now the math doesn't work anymore

01:33:35 ◼   ► because it's taking up zero space unless it's visible.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So at any given point, if you try to do that math, you don't know where the dock is.

01:33:43 ◼   ► But guess what?

01:33:44 ◼   ► There is an API for this.

01:33:45 ◼   ► It's just private.

01:33:46 ◼   ► And you can get at it.

01:33:47 ◼   ► And I figured out how to get at it.

01:33:48 ◼   ► And it's an API that says, where's the dock?

01:33:50 ◼   ► And it tells you whether it's left, right, or center, exactly what I wanted.

01:33:53 ◼   ► But no, Apple rejected my app because I used that API.

01:33:56 ◼   ► And, you know, obviously I filed feedback and said, please give me an API that lets

01:34:00 ◼   ► me know where the dock is.

01:34:01 ◼   ► And they're never going to do it.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Simple stuff like that is maddening because back in the pre-app store days, you could

01:34:11 ◼   ► just do it.

01:34:12 ◼   ► If you could figure out how to do it, just ship it.

01:34:14 ◼   ► And if they break that private API, well, you'll have to fix it in your app and test

01:34:17 ◼   ► it on betas and so on and so forth.

01:34:19 ◼   ► Tons of apps do that.

01:34:20 ◼   ► I was thinking about the Christmas lights app.

01:34:22 ◼   ► What is the name of that one that has been going around lately?

01:34:24 ◼   ► Oh, I know exactly what you're thinking.

01:34:25 ◼   ► I can't think of the name.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Festivus or festival or something like that.

01:34:27 ◼   ► I think it's like Festivious.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:30 ◼   ► One of the things it does is it puts Christmas lights on your dock.

01:34:32 ◼   ► And when you're like mousing over the dock, if you have magnification enabled, the Christmas

01:34:35 ◼   ► lights move up along with the magnification.

01:34:37 ◼   ► I looked at that and I said, how are they figuring out what level of magnification it's

01:34:42 ◼   ► set to?

01:34:43 ◼   ► I know you can find a way to get that on the Mac, but is that an API that would be acceptable

01:34:47 ◼   ► in the Mac app store?

01:34:49 ◼   ► I don't know for a fact that they're using private APIs to implement that, but I think

01:34:52 ◼   ► that app is not available in the Mac app store, which makes me think, hey, they're doing something.

01:34:56 ◼   ► It's a Christmas lights app.

01:34:58 ◼   ► Who cares?

01:34:59 ◼   ► But Apple will be like, no, you can't have it on a Mac app store.

01:35:01 ◼   ► You figured out how to tell what the magnification is set to on the dock because you can set

01:35:05 ◼   ► the magnification at different levels still.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Right?

01:35:07 ◼   ► So you don't know, like you can track where the cursor is, but you have to know A, that

01:35:10 ◼   ► magnification is enabled and B, how high is the magnification enabled so they know how

01:35:14 ◼   ► high to move the Christmas lights up as the cursor moves around.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And it's just a fun little app like that.

01:35:21 ◼   ► Things like that can exist.

01:35:22 ◼   ► The fact that things like that can exist in the Mac app store is criminal.

01:35:26 ◼   ► Like I understand why they like, you know, we don't want you to use private API or whatever,

01:35:30 ◼   ► but it's either like allow people to do that or make API's for that stuff.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Right?

01:35:36 ◼   ► It's frustrating anyway.

01:35:37 ◼   ► And yes, of course you can say, well, why are you distributing things on the Mac app

01:35:41 ◼   ► store at all?

01:35:42 ◼   ► Why don't you just do what the Christmas light app did and just sell it on a website?

01:35:45 ◼   ► For me with my apps, they're worth more than $0, but not much more.

01:35:51 ◼   ► They're not worth enough for me to run my own store.

01:35:53 ◼   ► They don't make that kind of money.

01:35:55 ◼   ► Right?

01:35:56 ◼   ► It's like, so I'm kind of, for me, the Mac app store is a boon because I can sell apps

01:36:01 ◼   ► for a pittance and not make too much money and not have to worry about it or whatever.

01:36:05 ◼   ► But it is frustrating to me.

01:36:06 ◼   ► And very often I've thought about having a version that's outside the Mac app store that

01:36:10 ◼   ► has more features.

01:36:11 ◼   ► And the final thing that I've talked about in the past is my app is like the doc and

01:36:15 ◼   ► I wanted to be able to right click and quit apps.

01:36:18 ◼   ► And I couldn't do that.

01:36:19 ◼   ► See a past episode where I talked about this.

01:36:20 ◼   ► I had to ship a non sandboxed app that you can download from my website that communicates

01:36:25 ◼   ► with my Mac app store app to allow you to quit apps.

01:36:27 ◼   ► It's basically like the functionality that I couldn't ship to the Mac app store.

01:36:32 ◼   ► I shipped in a separate app that I have to sneakily lead you to download if you know

01:36:36 ◼   ► where my website is.

01:36:38 ◼   ► And once you have that app installed, my app will find it and launch it in the background

01:36:42 ◼   ► so it can talk to it to do the thing that I want it to do.

01:36:45 ◼   ► That's insanity.

01:36:46 ◼   ► And it's entirely because Apple will reject my app if it does what I want it to do, which

01:36:51 ◼   ► is be able to right click something and select quit like you can on the doc.

01:36:54 ◼   ► That's really quite sad.

01:36:56 ◼   ► All right, Marco.

01:36:58 ◼   ► I actually have much less to say here than Jon.

01:37:02 ◼   ► Oh, I'm surprised.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Why?

01:37:04 ◼   ► I sold you short.

01:37:05 ◼   ► I sold my private API to iOS, I think, but not so much to Mac OS.

01:37:09 ◼   ► So basically, there's a couple of reasons why you might want to do something that Apple

01:37:14 ◼   ► would reject.

01:37:15 ◼   ► One of them, a big one, is something about money.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Another big one is a category of app they won't even allow the entire category.

01:37:25 ◼   ► Stuff like porn or emulators previously, that kind of stuff.

01:37:29 ◼   ► Or another one is Jon's thing of I want to either use a private API or I want to use an

01:37:36 ◼   ► API that is public but use it in a way that Apple would reject because I'm using it "wrong"

01:37:41 ◼   ► in an unintended way, like hijacking the volume button for the camera shutter, that kind of

01:37:46 ◼   ► stuff.

01:37:47 ◼   ► And so when I look at what I have thought about doing with Overcast over the years,

01:37:53 ◼   ► in the context of types of apps or types of features they won't allow, I've never really

01:37:59 ◼   ► run into that kind of problem.

01:38:00 ◼   ► Like I don't want to make an emulator or a gambling app or anything like that.

01:38:04 ◼   ► That's not really been a problem for me.

01:38:07 ◼   ► What you also don't want to do, which is also totally forbidden in iOS, is make what you

01:38:12 ◼   ► would call a system enhancement app.

01:38:14 ◼   ► Things like Quicksilver or Switch Glass or a thing like when people used to jailbreak

01:38:19 ◼   ► phones that change notifications or multitasking in Switch, things that work at the system

01:38:24 ◼   ► level.

01:38:25 ◼   ► They're not an individual app, you just want to change how the whole system works.

01:38:28 ◼   ► Little clipboards that people have been trying to do on iOS forever and it's so clunky because

01:38:32 ◼   ► Apple absolutely does not want you to make apps like that for the phone.

01:38:36 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:38:37 ◼   ► So I haven't run into that and so I don't have an answer to anything like that.

01:38:42 ◼   ► Now if you look into the private API side or the unintended API side, I have occasionally

01:38:50 ◼   ► had ideas for features or implementation details that I have backed away from.

01:38:57 ◼   ► I forget what this idea was but a long time ago I had some idea that was like, because

01:39:04 ◼   ► I'm always playing podcasts while walking my dog in all kinds of weather, including

01:39:10 ◼   ► rain and snow and cold and everything, I've had all sorts of different ideas for how to

01:39:15 ◼   ► remotely control the app when the phone is in your pocket.

01:39:18 ◼   ► I've tried things like using the accelerometer to detect certain tap patterns if you just

01:39:23 ◼   ► whack the back of the phone.

01:39:24 ◼   ► That was even before they added the triple tap accessibility gesture you can now do that

01:39:28 ◼   ► with.

01:39:29 ◼   ► One idea I had was, if you pause the podcast while it's paused, if you use the volume up

01:39:39 ◼   ► and down buttons, maybe it can navigate through a spoken menu.

01:39:43 ◼   ► It's like the iPod without the buttons on it.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:47 ◼   ► So I've had ideas like that over time where I've thought about the idea and I'm like,

01:39:51 ◼   ► but then they would probably reject that because I'm misusing the volume buttons or whatever.

01:39:56 ◼   ► Or in the modern day, like the AirPods thing where you can shake yes or no.

01:39:59 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

01:40:00 ◼   ► Apparently I bounce my head too much because every time a notification comes in I start

01:40:03 ◼   ► hearing those little ticks.

01:40:05 ◼   ► Like for people to know when you get a message and it says, like, do you want me to reply?

01:40:08 ◼   ► You can shake your head left and right to say no or up and down to say yes.

01:40:12 ◼   ► And when you shake it, what you hear in the AirPods is little doop, doop, doop, that sounds

01:40:16 ◼   ► like little like beads knocking around to let you know that it's sensing your shaking.

01:40:20 ◼   ► But whenever it comes on and notifies me, I'm not shaking my head.

01:40:24 ◼   ► I'm not trying to say yes or no, but already while it's reading me the message that says,

01:40:27 ◼   ► do you want me to reply?

01:40:28 ◼   ► It's going tick, tick, tick because I can just move my head around too much.

01:40:32 ◼   ► It doesn't trigger a yes or a no, but it is weird that I feel like these little rattly

01:40:37 ◼   ► things are loose.

01:40:38 ◼   ► But anyway, you could use that for like head shake gestures to control overcast.

01:40:42 ◼   ► But oh, there's no APIs for that.

01:40:44 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:46 ◼   ► There's other stuff like last year's OSes, watchOS 9 or whatever last year's OS is, when

01:40:55 ◼   ► they released the Series 9 watch that had the double tap gesture introduced.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Then you know it's not watchOS 9 because it was Series 9 and the numbers never matched.

01:41:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:05 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, you're right.

01:41:06 ◼   ► So for the first year of the double tap gesture, the OS did not let third parties do anything

01:41:13 ◼   ► good with it.

01:41:14 ◼   ► So all it would do would be hit the first button on any notifications that would show

01:41:18 ◼   ► up on our app.

01:41:19 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

01:41:20 ◼   ► You know, so there were all these customer requests saying, hey, can you please make

01:41:23 ◼   ► double tap play or pause?

01:41:25 ◼   ► And I couldn't do it because there was no API.

01:41:27 ◼   ► I bet there were some kind of private notification name somewhere that was being posted that

01:41:31 ◼   ► I could have responded to, you know, but I wouldn't, but you know, Apple would definitely

01:41:35 ◼   ► reject that.

01:41:36 ◼   ► So like there's been occasional things like that, but nothing really big.

01:41:38 ◼   ► And then finally, like the other big area of, you know, stuff Apple would probably reject

01:41:43 ◼   ► that I would stay away from, as mentioned earlier, is money stuff.

01:41:48 ◼   ► So what could I do with money or business model stuff that Apple would most likely reject?

01:41:52 ◼   ► And the only time I've ever really thought of something good here, and it wasn't actually

01:41:57 ◼   ► good in the end, was, and I've mentioned this before, I briefly started asking around

01:42:03 ◼   ► different podcasters I knew if they'd be interested in participating in what I would

01:42:07 ◼   ► call like the, you know, the readability of podcasts.

01:42:09 ◼   ► This is like a throwback back to my newspaper days.

01:42:12 ◼   ► There was a competing app called Readability that I was briefly involved with.

01:42:15 ◼   ► They had a scheme where you'd like, you'd pay them, I think it was like 20 bucks a month

01:42:19 ◼   ► or something.

01:42:20 ◼   ► It would keep track of what articles you saved to it, and if you saved articles from sites

01:42:26 ◼   ► that participated with them and that agreed to their program, they would divvy up your

01:42:31 ◼   ► 19 bucks a month or whatever, and it's like, all right, well, if you read five articles

01:42:35 ◼   ► from the New York Times and five articles from USA Today, then we'd give, you know,

01:42:39 ◼   ► 10 bucks to New York Times and 10 bucks to USA Today, like that kind of thing.

01:42:43 ◼   ► That never really took off with Readability in large part because the publishers didn't

01:42:48 ◼   ► really want to form agreements with them.

01:42:51 ◼   ► And I had the bright idea, why don't I do this for podcasts, and briefly forgot about

01:42:55 ◼   ► that side of it.

01:42:56 ◼   ► My idea was what if, you know, Overcast collects whatever it is, 10, 20, 30 bucks a month from

01:43:01 ◼   ► people and divvies it up to pay whatever podcast they listen to, you know, make an alternative

01:43:06 ◼   ► revenue stream for podcasts.

01:43:08 ◼   ► Apples 30% at the time cut would really eat into how that would look to people because

01:43:15 ◼   ► the idea is like, all right, well, if you're paying, you know, 10 bucks a month, Apple's

01:43:20 ◼   ► taking three of them, Overcast would probably take one to be able to pay for the admin cost