ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I have finally reached an important milestone.

00:00:02 ◼   ► You already got glasses.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Have you bought a boat?

00:00:05 ◼   ► I regret to inform you that I now need to use reading glasses when using a laptop.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I have finally crossed threshold that when the laptop is on my lap, that distance has

00:00:21 ◼   ► finally gotten a little fuzzy.

00:00:23 ◼   ► So did you get the ones that the two lenses magnetically snap to each other?

00:00:28 ◼   ► Or did you just get a regular one that's on a, like a stringer on your neck?

00:00:32 ◼   ► All right.

00:00:34 ◼   ► So far, here's my glasses situation and setup so far.

00:00:37 ◼   ► So I have a pair of progressives that I believe I mentioned or I got about, I don't know, like

00:00:44 ◼   ► around Thanksgiving, I started wearing them.

00:00:46 ◼   ► So I got a pair of progressives that is nothing on top and reading on the bottom.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I'm wearing them almost all the time now, like doing stuff around.

00:00:55 ◼   ► But the problem with progressives is that the part that is in focus for the reading is

00:01:00 ◼   ► really only like the bottom middle of your field of view.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So as a result, those are actually pretty bad for computer use.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Because for computer use, you want like a large, flat rectangle to be entirely in focus, not

00:01:14 ◼   ► just like the part of it that your head is most pointing towards near the bottom.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So progressives, I have found, are great for pretty much all of the rest of life except

00:01:25 ◼   ► computers.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Now, I don't know if you've heard, I do occasionally use computers.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Would you say you're doing a lot with computers right now?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah, as always.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So progressives are, again, they're wonderful for all other situations, but computers, they're

00:01:40 ◼   ► not so great for.

00:01:41 ◼   ► For computers, I just need reading glasses, just like low power, like, you know, 0.5 or 0.75

00:01:47 ◼   ► reading glasses for computer use.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Did you get them already?

00:01:51 ◼   ► So I've tried a bunch of, I have a bunch of like cheap ones from Amazon, basically.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And they're fine.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Like one that I carry around in my backpack, there's this company that makes these really

00:02:01 ◼   ► flat folding ones, they're called Thin Optics, and they're like $40, which for a pair of Amazon

00:02:07 ◼   ► reading glasses is very expensive.

00:02:09 ◼   ► But what's great about the Thin Optics is that their case folds completely flat.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So it ends up being maybe like three or four millimeters thick, and it closes magnetically.

00:02:21 ◼   ► The case is pretty fragile.

00:02:23 ◼   ► I've already broken one case, but the glasses themselves, like, because they're super, super

00:02:28 ◼   ► flat, they're not very attractive.

00:02:30 ◼   ► It almost looks like the 3D glasses you get in a movie theater, like that kind of construction

00:02:34 ◼   ► of just like really like thin, bare metal.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Like, I will say, I recommend if you get them, the ones with the round clear frames are the

00:02:44 ◼   ► ones that I like the best.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I have like the rectangles and the rounds.

00:02:47 ◼   ► The rounds, I think, look a lot nicer.

00:02:49 ◼   ► They're not, like, fashionable enough that you'd want to wear them in public more than

00:02:54 ◼   ► you had to.

00:02:54 ◼   ► But in a pinch, like, you can always have, like, it's so thin, you can keep that thing

00:02:58 ◼   ► in your pocket.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Like, I know they have like some folding ones where you can like stick on the back of your

00:03:02 ◼   ► phone case.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I saw our contractor who did our renovations here.

00:03:05 ◼   ► He did.

00:03:05 ◼   ► He had one of those, like the ones that stuck to the back of his phone case all the time.

00:03:09 ◼   ► So that was, and he pulled them out constantly to refer to stuff.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So that was, I thought, I thought a good move.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Can you give us a link?

00:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll get one for the show notes.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Because I'm picturing you like an anime villain now, of like flat, you know.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So if you go to thinoptics.com, it's spelled exactly as you would expect.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and I just get them on Amazon.

00:03:26 ◼   ► I don't know if they have like an official store.

00:03:27 ◼   ► They don't ship super fast.

00:03:29 ◼   ► They usually, it's usually like a week out.

00:03:31 ◼   ► But I have found, like, if you want a pair of reading glasses that you can literally have

00:03:36 ◼   ► all the time with you without just doing like the chain around the neck thing, I have

00:03:40 ◼   ► found those to be the best.

00:03:42 ◼   ► But again, they are very thin, a little bit odd looking, and awfully expensive for reading

00:03:46 ◼   ► glasses.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So my other strategy for reading glasses is just like, I just have cheap ones all over

00:03:51 ◼   ► the house.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Like I get those, like, thin titanium, I guess, temples?

00:03:57 ◼   ► Are those the sticks?

00:03:58 ◼   ► What are we?

00:03:58 ◼   ► Yes, that's what they call.

00:03:59 ◼   ► So thin titanium sticks with like the frameless plastic ones, plastic lenses that you can get

00:04:05 ◼   ► for like 15 bucks.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Like I have those all over the place.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And that's, that's kind of my strategy for like nightstands, you know, next to the living

00:04:13 ◼   ► room couch, that kind of thing.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Holiday gift idea.

00:04:17 ◼   ► You got to get a, you got to get them around your neck.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Then you can have one perched on top of your head and also one around your neck and be looking

00:04:24 ◼   ► for your glasses.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Awesome.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And I feel, I know I can tell already that I'm maybe one year away from glasses at my

00:04:34 ◼   ► desk for my, my desktop computer too.

00:04:36 ◼   ► It's like, it isn't that different of a distance.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So I can tell like it's, it's close.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Like the desktop monitor is arm distance.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'm not quite there, but I'm getting close.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I can feel it.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Uh, we have some great news.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Uh, we have a new HB member special HB insider school then.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And now, uh, this was a question from a listener.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I forgive me.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I don't recall who it was offhand and John, you kind of brought this to us.

00:05:02 ◼   ► So do you want to give us the nickel tour of what the member special is?

00:05:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:05 ◼   ► The idea was, uh, the question was like, uh, what do you think school is like for your

00:05:10 ◼   ► kids?

00:05:10 ◼   ► Cause we all have kids who are either in school now or recently been in school.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And how do you think your own self would have fared in today's school versus what school

00:05:19 ◼   ► was like when you were a kid?

00:05:20 ◼   ► So that was the jumping off point for the special.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And we ended up basically talking about what school was like for us and what school was like

00:05:26 ◼   ► for our kids.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And we did try to imagine ourselves in the current scenarios and various permutations.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Uh, but it really just ended up being a big exploration of schooling from the perspective

00:05:36 ◼   ► of parents who have kids in school.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And obviously from the perspective of people who are once kids who are in school, uh, and

00:05:42 ◼   ► uh, I, I was there representing the eighties and, uh, you two were representing the nineties

00:05:47 ◼   ► and then our kids have been spread pretty well over the, uh, two thousands.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Uh, this, this was one of those member specials slash topics where I thought, and I said to

00:05:57 ◼   ► Aaron before we recorded, eh, it'll be like half an hour, which I know enough about us to

00:06:02 ◼   ► know how it'll be longer than that.

00:06:04 ◼   ► We ended up going damn near too, I think.

00:06:06 ◼   ► So there was more here than I thought, which is typically how it works out.

00:06:09 ◼   ► But, uh, but it was, it was, it was a lot more in a lot more interesting than I expected.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I came into this slightly begrudgingly and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So, uh, HPM insider school then and now, if you are not a member, you can go ahead and

00:06:23 ◼   ► join at ATP.fm slash join where you get our not guaranteed, but almost guaranteed monthly

00:06:28 ◼   ► member specials.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Uh, you can no longer get your limited time, uh, or discounts on limited time merch sales,

00:06:34 ◼   ► which actually come to think of it.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I have yet to see anyone say I missed it.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Maybe you're learning.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Maybe you're learning not to admit it.

00:06:42 ◼   ► I can do it for you, Casey.

00:06:43 ◼   ► You want to know?

00:06:44 ◼   ► I actually almost missed it.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I didn't miss that part of it because I don't, I, I pretty good about doing that.

00:06:50 ◼   ► But what I did miss is, did you notice I didn't do my normal, like there's one hour left,

00:06:54 ◼   ► there's five hours left.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Oh, that's true.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And no frame game.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Did you miss it?

00:06:57 ◼   ► I mean, I kind of did say like, it was earlier in the day.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I was like, oh, there's 10 hours left.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I'm like, I should wait until there's like three hours or something.

00:07:04 ◼   ► And then when it came time to be around two or three hours, I think I was watching a TV

00:07:07 ◼   ► show and I said, eh.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And then by the time the TV show was over, I'm like, oh, the sale's over.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Whoops.

00:07:11 ◼   ► So sorry, everybody, but let this be a lesson to you.

00:07:13 ◼   ► You can't rely on me nagging you the last, oh, I wouldn't have, I would have, would

00:07:18 ◼   ► have gotten it, but I didn't, if I hadn't seen your one hour to go thing, you just

00:07:22 ◼   ► got to plan better.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Like there's three weeks to do this anyway.

00:07:24 ◼   ► So I'm happy that I didn't see anybody complaining about the fact that they missed it.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I think, uh, everyone is all learning together that, uh, three weeks is plenty of time to get

00:07:31 ◼   ► your orders in.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And we just want to see those Mac pro believe shirts at WWDC as usual.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Uh, so anyways, I got myself sidetracked.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I apologize.

00:07:39 ◼   ► But yeah, if you want to hear this member special or any of the others, what, what did we say

00:07:43 ◼   ► we're up to you?

00:07:44 ◼   ► Like 15 or 20 at this point?

00:07:45 ◼   ► I don't remember a bunch, uh, go to atp.fm slash join.

00:07:48 ◼   ► All right.

00:07:49 ◼   ► We need to do some follow-up.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I haven't been this excited about follow-up in a long time.

00:07:53 ◼   ► I have done the unthinkable.

00:07:55 ◼   ► I've asked Marco to do even more homework and not only that consume yet another content snack.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And I've done it for good reason, which we'll discover here in a minute.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Uh, what have I asked you to watch Marco?

00:08:08 ◼   ► Well, it's a new, uh, Apple vision pro adventure episode called hill climb.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And this is about a woman who is attempting to climb, uh, up Pike's peak, which is a, I guess

00:08:20 ◼   ► a hill or mountain in, uh, Colorado here in the States.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And she's trying to be the first woman to do it in under 10 minutes.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And this, I thought was incredible in a car, in a car.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I feel like you're leaving that part out.

00:08:32 ◼   ► That's a pretty important detail.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Yeah, that is a very important detail.

00:08:35 ◼   ► It would be really hard to climb a mountain in under 10 minutes.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:08:38 ◼   ► That was a critical detail that I 100% left out.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Racing up a mountain in a race car.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Racing up a mountain in a race prepped, uh, Toyota Supra.

00:08:46 ◼   ► So, uh, Marco, what did you think of it?

00:08:49 ◼   ► It was, I think the best one of these I have seen.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Good.

00:08:53 ◼   ► The best one of the adventure ones I have seen.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Um, possibly my favorite of the immersive, uh, film so far.

00:08:59 ◼   ► I, I think my, my favorite might still be the submarine one because I think that one looked

00:09:05 ◼   ► a lot more like a stage play, which I think the vision pro is very good at.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Um, this one relied a lot, a lot on, you know, motion showing a car and stuff.

00:09:13 ◼   ► So it was like a little bit, I got a little bit motion sick with this one.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Um, and I would say if you are motion sensitive, you probably shouldn't watch any immersive video,

00:09:22 ◼   ► but especially probably not this one.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Um, but I liked it.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I, I think it did still repeat some of the mistakes that I've seen or like the, the non-ideal

00:09:33 ◼   ► choices that, that, that we, that we've talked about before of like being super close to people

00:09:36 ◼   ► like where it's kind of creepy, having a lot of cuts in certain parts, a lot of motion, not,

00:09:41 ◼   ► not quite being sure where to focus.

00:09:43 ◼   ► But what was nice about this one is that, um, the, there was almost no soft focus.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Almost all scenes were set to basically infinite focus.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And so you didn't have like focus problems looking like, you know, in different parts

00:09:55 ◼   ► of the frame.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Um, and it was a pretty, you know, fun story of like this woman racing up this mountain.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Like it's, it's a dramatic thing and the car looked cool and the lighting was cool with

00:10:05 ◼   ► the sunset and everything.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And like, it was well done.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Um, so it was still just a content snack, but it was a pretty good one.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And afterwards you won't want any real snacks cause you'll feel a little bit sick.

00:10:15 ◼   ► So it actually is also good maybe as a dieting tool.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And by the way, uh, just to save us from, uh, people sending this in because, uh, Mark would

00:10:23 ◼   ► have mentioned stage play and not this week, but next week we will talk about that service

00:10:26 ◼   ► that it says they're going to, uh, record a bunch of stage plays and release them on

00:10:30 ◼   ► owl vision pro.

00:10:30 ◼   ► So we do know about that.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Uh, we'll get to it next week.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Uh, also we'll probably talk in the future about the, uh, YouTube promo that has also just

00:10:38 ◼   ► dropped, I think like an hour ago, but anyways, uh, what did you think of the star

00:10:42 ◼   ► of the film, Laura Hayes, me, uh, I don't know.

00:10:46 ◼   ► She was cool.

00:10:47 ◼   ► I mean, I don't, I don't, I didn't know her before this.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Are you, are we like following her, uh, her career or something?

00:10:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Uh, would you do me a favor, please?

00:10:54 ◼   ► Would you go ahead and open the short audio clip that I had prepared for you before the

00:10:59 ◼   ► show?

00:10:59 ◼   ► All right.

00:11:01 ◼   ► One minute.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I haven't heard this yet.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Here we go.

00:11:03 ◼   ► So before you play it, uh, to be clear, uh, Marco has not heard what he's about to hear.

00:11:07 ◼   ► This is only like 10 ish seconds.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And I told him under penalty of death, he is not allowed to listen to this until right

00:11:14 ◼   ► now.

00:11:15 ◼   ► There we go.

00:11:17 ◼   ► How was that?

00:11:17 ◼   ► That was awesome, bro.

00:11:18 ◼   ► It's like having fun.

00:11:19 ◼   ► That's great.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Good deal.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Good deal, guys.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:11:24 ◼   ► This was from when we went to driving school.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Was she the instructor who drove us on the hot lap?

00:11:28 ◼   ► She was the instructor that drove you on the hot lap.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I was watching this and I'm sorry, I was watching this and I f***ing s*** myself when

00:11:39 ◼   ► I saw her because I was like, oh my God.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Is that, oh my God.

00:11:45 ◼   ► That's the same Laura that was, so to back up in 2013, underscore said to Marco and I, we've

00:11:50 ◼   ► told this story before and we did a whole neutral on it, but in 2013, we, we underscore

00:11:54 ◼   ► said to us, I'm turning 30 and I want to go to BMW performance driving school in South

00:11:58 ◼   ► Carolina and I'd like you two to go with us or to go with me.

00:12:01 ◼   ► And of course, Marco and I didn't even take a breath before we said absolutely yes.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And so Marco drove down to Northern Virginia, picked up Dave, the two of you came here and

00:12:11 ◼   ► if I recall correctly, spent the night and then we drove down in the, in the M5 down to

00:12:15 ◼   ► South Carolina and we did a two day performance driving school and Laura Hayes, the star of

00:12:21 ◼   ► this Apple vision adventure thing was one of the instructors at BMW driving school.

00:12:27 ◼   ► when we, when we were there in 2013, how small a world is this?

00:12:31 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:12:31 ◼   ► I was so desperately hoping that you would not place her because this would have been so

00:12:36 ◼   ► boring if you did.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I totally didn't.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Like, I mean, that was so long ago.

00:12:40 ◼   ► It was.

00:12:41 ◼   ► I totally forgot.

00:12:42 ◼   ► Like, I remember the lap.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Are we all, can we just sit back and be amazed at the fact that Casey somehow, he can't remember

00:12:51 ◼   ► what we talked about on the podcast last week, but he remembers in 2013, the person who

00:12:56 ◼   ► drove, not him, but someone else around the track at the BMW racing school.

00:13:01 ◼   ► It was a hell of a lap, by the way.

00:13:03 ◼   ► It was amazing.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I'm going to go for, I'm going to, I have a theory on this.

00:13:06 ◼   ► I'm going to go for the, uh, the arm in the bucket of ice water theory that I've talked

00:13:10 ◼   ► about in Rectifs that you do experiments where if you put someone in discomfort while asking

00:13:14 ◼   ► them to memorize something, it sticks in their memory better.

00:13:17 ◼   ► So not just discomfort, but like any sort of dramatic thing, which is why I like memories

00:13:20 ◼   ► of trauma or big, but the ice bucket thing is they just had someone memorize a list of

00:13:24 ◼   ► pictures that, you know, they just show you a bunch of pictures and then later you have

00:13:27 ◼   ► to repeat back what they showed you.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And one group just did it normal.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And the other group did it with their arms sitting in a bucket of ice water.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And the ice water people crushed it because being in discomfort and pain causes the memories

00:13:37 ◼   ► to stick better.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So the, the excitement of going to the BMW driving school and potentially the discomfort

00:13:42 ◼   ► of high G forces while going around the track and just generally having a extraordinary experience

00:13:47 ◼   ► made the memory stick.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Whereas our podcast is just too boring for Casey to remember what happens on it.

00:13:52 ◼   ► That's right.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Uh, no, I don't know what my deal is, but that I think it's because that, that two days

00:13:57 ◼   ► was so much fun and with, you know, some of my best friends, but also having an experience

00:14:02 ◼   ► so unlike anything I'd ever done before.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And mostly since, um, no, I thought it was incredible.

00:14:08 ◼   ► And so I'm watching this thing with the vision for all my head and I, and I see her and I'm

00:14:13 ◼   ► like, holy crap.

00:14:15 ◼   ► I think that's the lady from, from driving school.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And I did just a quick spot of Googling and sure enough that I was right.

00:14:21 ◼   ► And so I was flabbergasted.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Now I did the same thing with underscore.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Like I didn't speak with him verbally, but I sent him the link to the, the, um, hill climb

00:14:30 ◼   ► thing and I said, you know, what did you think?

00:14:33 ◼   ► And he said, Oh, it was good.

00:14:34 ◼   ► You know, whatever.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And I said, did you, what'd you think of the host or the star or whatever?

00:14:38 ◼   ► And he's basically said the same thing.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Oh, she was cool.

00:14:39 ◼   ► I was like, did you recognize her?

00:14:41 ◼   ► No, wait.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And so, uh, so yeah, I am, I am not only stunned that I remembered, well, anything, but I remembered

00:14:49 ◼   ► something that underscore didn't remember.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And that my friends is an actual miracle.

00:14:53 ◼   ► So yeah, that's pretty good.

00:14:55 ◼   ► In any case, yeah, that never happens.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So I just thought that was hilarious.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And as much as I did genuinely enjoy the hill climb, like 10, 15 minute thing, it was just

00:15:05 ◼   ► such a weird small world moment.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Like never in a million years did I think when we were on episode like 20 or something like

00:15:12 ◼   ► that of ATP, then well, I mean, neutral was dead, but only just at the time.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And here it is, you know, 12 years later.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And we're talking about one of our instructors at driving school.

00:15:21 ◼   ► What a weird small world.

00:15:23 ◼   ► That was pretty cool.

00:15:23 ◼   ► I'll have a link in the show notes.

00:15:24 ◼   ► You can watch a video of Marco being driven around the track by the star of this new hill

00:15:30 ◼   ► climb.

00:15:30 ◼   ► This is the same lady.

00:15:32 ◼   ► It's on Vimeo.

00:15:33 ◼   ► That's how all the video is.

00:15:34 ◼   ► It's on Vimeo.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:34 ◼   ► I had uploaded it.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Now I had uploaded it, but Marco was the, the, the key to this because when we were at driving

00:15:41 ◼   ► school, they had these at the time, relatively advanced, but looking at it, you know, 12

00:15:45 ◼   ► years on very rudimentary, um, like performance computers or really data loggers and like camera

00:15:51 ◼   ► capture things.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And they gave you a USB key when you got there and you could plug in your USB key as you're

00:15:58 ◼   ► doing your instruction and whatnot.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And so you have, you know, videos and recordings of what you were doing, which is super cool.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But the key was at the end of the two day experience, they said, Hey, you know, you're all dismissed

00:16:10 ◼   ► in a happy sense, you know, you're all dismissed.

00:16:11 ◼   ► You can, you can leave if you want, but for what it's worth, if you would like, you can

00:16:16 ◼   ► go on what they called a hot lap with one of the instructors and you would pile in these

00:16:20 ◼   ► then new BMW M3s.

00:16:22 ◼   ► They were E92 M3s.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So the V8s, and they'll take you on a lap of the, of the track of the driving school.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And I believe it was right before this.

00:16:32 ◼   ► And I will never forget this, that the, the head of the driving school, Donnie Isley, which

00:16:36 ◼   ► is another name that I somehow remember, I don't know why, uh, said to all the instructors

00:16:39 ◼   ► that were going out, Hey, it's October and we've already used up our tire budget for the

00:16:45 ◼   ► entire year.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I don't know if you remember this Marco, but, uh, we've used the tire budget for the entire

00:16:49 ◼   ► year.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Please go gentle.

00:16:50 ◼   ► And that lasted for maybe the first half of the first turn.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And then all of the instructors were pretty much freaking sideways the entire time.

00:16:58 ◼   ► It was amazing.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And the key here though, is that Marco, unlike me, Marco had the presence of mind to plug his

00:17:06 ◼   ► USB key into that car's, you know, uh, receptacle or whatever.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So you had, you had on your key, a recording of your hot lap.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Now I was the car in front of your car, if I recall correctly, and at one point we actually

00:17:20 ◼   ► like clipped a cone or something like that.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And you commented on it in the video.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Um, but you, you at least had the presence of mind to record it where I did not.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And so this is all, it's on my Vimeo account, which I haven't looked at in years, but it's

00:17:31 ◼   ► all thanks to your smart thinking at the time in October, 2013.

00:17:35 ◼   ► I will take a bow at my own awesomeness.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Please do.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Uh, so yeah, I just thought, I mean, I wouldn't have generally made you do this content snack and

00:17:44 ◼   ► to your credit, you did not whine at all, but I hope you see now why I was so insistent

00:17:48 ◼   ► and persistent about you consuming this content snack.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:51 ◼   ► That is fair.

00:17:51 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Factor.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Make this your best season yet with nutritious two minute meals from Factor.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Eating well has never been this easy.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Just heat up and enjoy giving you more time to do what you want.

00:18:07 ◼   ► So you can get outside instead of prepping and cooking indoors.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Factor meals arrive fresh and ready to eat.

00:18:12 ◼   ► So they're perfect for any active or busy lifestyle with 45 weekly menu options.

00:18:17 ◼   ► You can pick gourmet meals that fit your nutritional goals.

00:18:20 ◼   ► You can choose from things like calorie smart, protein, plus keto and more.

00:18:24 ◼   ► So Factor also can power your day with satisfying breakfasts on the go lunches, premium dinners

00:18:30 ◼   ► and guilt-free snacks and desserts.

00:18:32 ◼   ► It's easy to savor more this spring.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Factor meals pack in the flavor with none of the fuss.

00:18:38 ◼   ► I personally have tried Factor.

00:18:39 ◼   ► They sent me some sample boxes and it's really good.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And in fact, we're going to order more because my family loved them.

00:18:45 ◼   ► The meals were great.

00:18:46 ◼   ► They were really, you know, real crowd pleasers, some really good flavors there.

00:18:49 ◼   ► I like the high protein amounts they had and they were super easy.

00:18:53 ◼   ► You can just cook them in the oven for a few minutes or microwave them for literally two

00:18:56 ◼   ► minutes and they're done.

00:18:58 ◼   ► But they're just so much better than like, you know, you know, stuff from the freezer,

00:19:01 ◼   ► way cheaper than takeout.

00:19:03 ◼   ► It's a great option.

00:19:04 ◼   ► I really enjoyed my Factor experience so far, so I'm going to make more of it.

00:19:08 ◼   ► So get started yourself if you'd like at factor meals dot com slash ATP 50 off and use code

00:19:15 ◼   ► ATP 50 off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

00:19:20 ◼   ► That's code ATP 50 off at factor meals dot com slash ATP 50 off for 50% off plus free

00:19:28 ◼   ► shipping.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Factor for sponsoring our show.

00:19:35 ◼   ► I have a little bit of quick follow up.

00:19:36 ◼   ► I mentioned offhandedly, I think, last episode that or maybe it was a couple episodes ago

00:19:41 ◼   ► that see, I can't remember, John, my AirPods Pro charging case or excuse me, my AirPods Pro

00:19:47 ◼   ► Mark 2 charging case wasn't charging via Qi charging.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And I had a listener reach out and through a weird circumstance and series of events, they

00:19:56 ◼   ► had a charging case that they weren't using.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Trust me, it makes sense.

00:19:59 ◼   ► It's just not worth getting into.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And they offered very kindly to send it to me so that I would have a charging case that

00:20:04 ◼   ► would work, you know, via Qi charging.

00:20:06 ◼   ► And I only just got it connected.

00:20:08 ◼   ► I think it was either yesterday or this morning.

00:20:10 ◼   ► I forget which.

00:20:10 ◼   ► And I've only tried this a couple of times.

00:20:13 ◼   ► So take this with a fair bit of salt.

00:20:14 ◼   ► But interestingly, this brand, well, brand new to me, I don't think it was a very old.

00:20:19 ◼   ► I mean, the thing is in pristine condition.

00:20:21 ◼   ► This charging case still isn't working.

00:20:24 ◼   ► So it's the same buds, a totally different charging case still doesn't want to charge via Qi.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Why would it have anything to do with the buds whether or not the case is charging?

00:20:37 ◼   ► Now, again, I haven't done a rigorous testing on this, and I also have a slight theory that

00:20:43 ◼   ► it relates to whether or not the right AirPod is in the case, because I feel like it did

00:20:48 ◼   ► charge a little bit when the right AirPod was in my ear.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Perhaps I'd set it next to the case for testing purposes.

00:20:54 ◼   ► I agree, John.

00:20:54 ◼   ► That's not the way you should normally use AirPods.

00:20:56 ◼   ► But something weird is afoot.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

00:21:00 ◼   ► I got to do some more testing.

00:21:00 ◼   ► But if you've heard specifically of something like this, please feel free to reach out to me.

00:21:05 ◼   ► I'd love to hear what you have to say.

00:21:06 ◼   ► But yeah, it's...

00:21:07 ◼   ► You can go to the Apple store.

00:21:08 ◼   ► I mean, I know they're not under warranty or anything, but they can probably diagnose it

00:21:11 ◼   ► for it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Like, I'd imagine...

00:21:11 ◼   ► I don't know anything about Qi, but is there some kind of handshake procedure before the

00:21:14 ◼   ► charging begins?

00:21:15 ◼   ► And if you have a wonky AirPod, you know?

00:21:17 ◼   ► Oh, and I should mention, I tried it on like a piece of garbage, like 10 or 15 buck.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Like, I don't even remember what it is, like a Belkin charger or something like that.

00:21:25 ◼   ► But I also charged it, or tried charging it, on a modern MagSafe puck.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And the same behavior was exhibited in both cases.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So, again, I got to do more testing, but it's so freaking weird that I wanted to, you know,

00:21:38 ◼   ► cast about and see if anyone has any experience with this.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Moving on, a friend of the show, D. Griffin Jones, reviewed the Sigma BF, which I believe

00:21:45 ◼   ► we talked about in the after show a couple of weeks ago.

00:21:48 ◼   ► This is the Apple-inspired, I don't know if they would say it that way, but that's how

00:21:52 ◼   ► I look at it, the Apple-inspired camera that's like a, basically a block of aluminum, and

00:21:56 ◼   ► it looks really nice and looks really expensive.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And it turns out it's really nice and really expensive.

00:22:01 ◼   ► But, since somebody from our neck of the woods had their hands on it, we thought you might

00:22:05 ◼   ► want to check it out.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So, there's going to be a link to both D. Griffin Jones' text write-up, as well as their

00:22:11 ◼   ► video review as well.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I think I sent you two a link to one of my camera review people pooping on this camera,

00:22:19 ◼   ► and I wasn't too big on it when we talked about it either, and there is actually a relevant

00:22:25 ◼   ► podcast link.

00:22:25 ◼   ► I was recently on the Thoroughly Considered podcast with Dan and Tom from Studio Neat.

00:22:31 ◼   ► It was very good, by the way.

00:22:32 ◼   ► They have you pick, like, I forget what the premise is, like, pick one object that you

00:22:36 ◼   ► really like the design of that you're going to talk about, and what did I pick?

00:22:39 ◼   ► Of course, I picked the 2019 Mac Pro.

00:22:42 ◼   ► So, if you want to hear me talk at length about why I like the design of the Mac Pro,

00:22:46 ◼   ► and while you're listening, think about how it is different than the Sigma BF in so many

00:22:52 ◼   ► of the ways that I care about.

00:22:53 ◼   ► It's a good sort of compare and contrast.

00:22:56 ◼   ► The Sigma BF, I think, is too much design for form and not enough for function.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro certainly has a lot of design for form, but the balance between form and

00:23:08 ◼   ► function is more to my liking, and there's, like, an hour-long podcast where you can hear

00:23:12 ◼   ► me talk about why if you're interested.

00:23:15 ◼   ► With regard to iOS, Ule Oskar Eriksson writes,

00:23:19 ◼   ► John says Apple hasn't brought window controls to the iPad because they're not willing to

00:23:22 ◼   ► dedicate space in the UI for it, except they already did.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Every window in iPadOS has window controls at the top, also in regular old single window

00:23:31 ◼   ► mode.

00:23:31 ◼   ► It's even signified by three dots, like on the Mac.

00:23:34 ◼   ► There's an option to close as well as minimize.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Resizing also has dedicated visible controls, although they look different between split view

00:23:40 ◼   ► and stage manager, while it's a hidden gesture on Mac OS.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I had thought about this and knew about this, and I either didn't interrupt forcefully enough

00:23:48 ◼   ► to say something, or I just forgot by the time I had the chance to come back to it.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So, yeah, this was a really good point, and this was one of many people reporting in the

00:23:55 ◼   ► same thing.

00:23:55 ◼   ► So, I did mention the three dots on the show.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Of course, Hasey's not going to remember that because it was a whole episode ago, but

00:24:00 ◼   ► I did mention the three dots.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And this, like, obviously I'm aware of three dots, although I would say that they're not

00:24:05 ◼   ► really evoking the stoplights.

00:24:07 ◼   ► It's more like the ellipsis-type dots for menus.

00:24:09 ◼   ► But anyway, yes, it's three dots.

00:24:11 ◼   ► They're kind of my point, that Apple is unwilling to sort of dedicate the space for window controls.

00:24:16 ◼   ► When Apple introduced the three dots and does other things like this, they basically do

00:24:21 ◼   ► it by not really stealing space from content.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Like, I may be wrong about the three dots, but at various times on both iOS and iPadOS, when

00:24:30 ◼   ► Apple has introduced stuff that belongs to the system, sometimes if they need space, they'll

00:24:36 ◼   ► adjust the safe area insets, which is a thing that you're programmatically able to tell which

00:24:42 ◼   ► area of the screen, in the case of the phone or window or whatever, as safe for me to draw

00:24:48 ◼   ► content because there's no stuff covering it.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Same thing with the three dots.

00:24:52 ◼   ► They're like, well, the three dots are kind of going to eat into your space, but if you

00:24:55 ◼   ► don't have anything there in the UI, you can sort of kind of pretend like they're not there.

00:24:59 ◼   ► I don't even know if they adjusted safe area insets for the three dots or not, but that's

00:25:03 ◼   ► what I'm talking about.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Apple has not put a title bar on because the, and macOS, when there's the title bar, although,

00:25:10 ◼   ► you know, you can get around this now too, but in general, the title bar, you don't draw

00:25:14 ◼   ► your content there.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Your content begins below the title bar.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Yes, I know about unified tile bars and all the other things you could do on the Mac, but

00:25:19 ◼   ► like, that's what I'm talking about.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Really dedicating, set aside.

00:25:23 ◼   ► It's not going to eat into your content.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It's not visible to you.

00:25:26 ◼   ► You can start drawing at zero, zero, but not really because it's the lower left on

00:25:29 ◼   ► the Mac, but whatever.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Forget about coordinate systems.

00:25:31 ◼   ► It's complicated.

00:25:32 ◼   ► That's what they're not willing to do on iPadOS because they don't want to junk it up with

00:25:37 ◼   ► stuff that is not relevant.

00:25:39 ◼   ► If you're only doing one thing at a time on the iPad, same thing with window resizing or

00:25:43 ◼   ► even scroll bars, which yes, you can grab the scroll, but even on the phone, you can grab

00:25:46 ◼   ► the skull thumb and move it, but then it gets fatter when you can grab it, but then it gets

00:25:50 ◼   ► skinny again and then it disappears entirely.

00:25:51 ◼   ► They're like, they're not, they'd rather have stuff sort of kind of edge into your content

00:25:57 ◼   ► or like be over your content briefly and disappear, but they're not doing the dumb thing, which

00:26:01 ◼   ► is like, you know, window Chrome.

00:26:03 ◼   ► And that was my point.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And so, yeah, Apple's, Apple's three dots and their pull down menu and their incursions into

00:26:11 ◼   ► the content area to try to add controls is them sort of pussyfooting around because they

00:26:15 ◼   ► don't want to do the obvious thing.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And I'm not even saying that's the wrong decision because honestly, it would make the iPad worse

00:26:22 ◼   ► for, I think the common case of people not doing 20 things at once.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So that's the problem they face.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And we'll see when WAC rolls around what their new solution to that is.

00:26:31 ◼   ► And this WWDC is potentially going to be quite bananas because of some breaking news as well.

00:26:38 ◼   ► So we'll get there in a little bit.

00:26:40 ◼   ► On many fronts.

00:26:41 ◼   ► This could be triumphant and disastrous on many fronts for Apple.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Yep.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And likely it will probably be both.

00:26:46 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Continuing with follow-up with regard to Synology, Melvin Gunlock wrote, one issue with the

00:26:52 ◼   ► Synology branded drives is that Synology doesn't offer anything above 16 terabytes at any price

00:26:57 ◼   ► while Seagate is already at 24 terabytes.

00:27:00 ◼   ► It's a good point.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I hadn't considered that.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that is kind of crappy.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like, we didn't mention that last time.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Like, oh, they're just relabeled drives and it costs a little bit more.

00:27:07 ◼   ► But what if they don't relabel the drives in the capacity that you want or the speed that you want?

00:27:13 ◼   ► Like, it's just that's part of the first party thing is you get what choices do you have?

00:27:17 ◼   ► The ones that they are willing to put the Synology branded sticker on and that's it.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And then Aaron Power writes, one of the biggest points in poopification was left out.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Of course, the drives are priced relatively competitively today because those new Synology NASAs have to compete with all of Synology's older stock.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Once this has actually been fully rolled out across their product line, they will increase the price because that's when they have a captive audience who can only use Synology drives with their Synologies.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Additionally, the price comparison was always comparing new drives, which is wild because if you're an individual or small business who wants a lot of storage, you're almost certainly not buying new drives.

00:27:53 ◼   ► You're buying recertified drives.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Right now on serverparkdeals.com, you can get a recertified 22 terabyte drive for 232 euros.

00:28:01 ◼   ► The same drive costs roughly 420 to 450 euros used.

00:28:05 ◼   ► If you're buying just two drives, that's 464 euros recertified versus 840 to 990, or excuse me, to 900 new.

00:28:13 ◼   ► With the savings from the recertified drives, you could literally buy a new dedicated Synology 2-bay DS723 Plus for them.

00:28:20 ◼   ► That's why people are upset because that's what the actual markup looks like for people.

00:28:24 ◼   ► So first, I don't know if you're buying recertified drives.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Has anyone ever done that?

00:28:29 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not done.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I'm saying it is common, but is it the majority?

00:28:35 ◼   ► I, you know, I think it's actually more common in the enterprise.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of people buying recertified drives for scenarios like that.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But, well, first of all, let's just, we'll put a link to serverparkdeals.com.

00:28:46 ◼   ► If you're interested in recertified drives, yeah, they can be a good deal, just like Refurb Max.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But I kind of like buying Max.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I think most people don't buy a Reaver.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:56 ◼   ► This email was written as if, like, everyone does this.

00:28:59 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:29:00 ◼   ► And I've literally never heard of anybody doing it.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Maybe hobbyists do it more, like, again, if you're trying to save money.

00:29:06 ◼   ► But anyway, as for the first part of the email of like, well, now once there is fully rolled out, then they'll turn the screws and open up the money spigot.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Like I said last week, Synology is in a competitive market.

00:29:17 ◼   ► There are alternatives to Synology.

00:29:19 ◼   ► You are not locked in.

00:29:20 ◼   ► It's network-attached storage.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Lots of vendors make it.

00:29:24 ◼   ► And if Synology does things that drive its customers away, like cranking up the prices once they have a monopoly on Synology-branded drives, other people are willing to swoop in and grab those customers.

00:29:33 ◼   ► It's not the type of lock-in of, like, your platform of choice.

00:29:38 ◼   ► You haven't brought a bunch of apps for it.

00:29:39 ◼   ► There's a little bit of lock-in with the Synology apps.

00:29:41 ◼   ► But anyway, that's what makes me less upset about this is because it is actually a competitive market.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And honestly, if part of your hobby is, like, finding the best capacity drives or finding a good deal on refurb drives and stuff like that, it's kind of also part of your hobby to look at a new vendor for your NAS to see if there's something better out there.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Kind of like part of the thing Casey's doing with the whole Ubiquiti thing is he doesn't currently have a Ubiquiti setup.

00:30:06 ◼   ► He's got a different setup.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And going to a new setup, that's part of the whole fun and deal of it.

00:30:10 ◼   ► It's like now it's a new thing with a new brand with new products and new possibilities because that's a competitive market, too.

00:30:17 ◼   ► So it's kind of crappy what they're doing.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I don't want to pay more for my drives.

00:30:21 ◼   ► But I'm not as pessimistic as Aaron that they somehow are going to turn on the money spigot and crank up the prices across their whole line of drives as soon as they can.

00:30:29 ◼   ► They're already charging more than they would be otherwise.

00:30:32 ◼   ► But you have other choices.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And to the degree that they screw this up and alienate their customers, someone else will grab them.

00:30:41 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Masterclass.

00:30:46 ◼   ► This Mother's Day, think about what's something that your mom's always wanted to do.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Get into painting, write a novel, improve her business negotiation.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Whatever it is, this Mother's Day, you can finally help her achieve it with Masterclass.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Our parents were our first mentors.

00:31:01 ◼   ► But who do they look up to?

00:31:02 ◼   ► Chances are, look around Masterclass.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I bet you can find some great instructors there that really can help your parents with whatever they're trying to do.

00:31:10 ◼   ► So whether you're just showing love to them or yourself, nothing compares to a gift that can change your life for the better.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Our parents helped us expand our horizons.

00:31:18 ◼   ► You want to return the favor?

00:31:19 ◼   ► Give them the gift of Masterclass.

00:31:21 ◼   ► There's nothing like gaining a fresh perspective from experts who have seen it all and have the wisdom to prove it.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Masterclass is the only streaming platform where you can learn and grow with over 200 of the world's best experts.

00:31:34 ◼   ► For just $10 a month, billed annually, membership with Masterclass gets you unlimited access to every single instructor across the entire service.

00:31:43 ◼   ► It's an amazing deal.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And you can access Masterclass wherever and whenever you can.

00:31:48 ◼   ► On your phone, on your computer, on smart TVs, even just in audio mode.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Say if you're driving or walking the dog or something, you can even access Masterclass in audio only.

00:31:57 ◼   ► So you can think like a boss and live like a legend with Martha Stewart.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Learn how to invest in the stock market with legendary investor Ray Dalio and some of Wall Street's best.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And learn leadership skills from former CEOs like Indra Nooyi, Howard Schultz, Rosalind Brewer, Whitney Wolf Hurd, and so many more.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And these classes really make a difference.

00:32:15 ◼   ► 88% of members feel that Masterclass has made a positive impact on their lives.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Our listeners always get great discounts on Masterclass of at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash ATP.

00:32:28 ◼   ► See Masterclass' latest deal at least 15% off at masterclass.com slash ATP.

00:32:35 ◼   ► That's masterclass.com slash ATP.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Masterclass for sponsoring our show.

00:32:45 ◼   ► All right, as we alluded to earlier, there is some breaking news.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And to be clear, we are recording this on the evening of April 30, Wednesday night.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And this broke like 10 minutes before we started recording.

00:32:57 ◼   ► So these are very, very, not hot takes, I guess, but, you know, it got reactions.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Hot off the presses.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Yes, there you go.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So what are we talking about?

00:33:06 ◼   ► So Epic Games claims victory as Apple is sanctioned for defying court order over App Store rules.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Reading from 9 to 5 Mac, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction designed to stop the company's anti-competitive App Store practices.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Let me pause you here for a second, not to go off on too much of a tangent, but if you're like me, you've been watching with growing impatience the various court cases involving our government and, you know, temporary restraining articles and judgments and blah, blah, blah.

00:33:39 ◼   ► As Casey just read, this is about the Apple versus Epic case, and in particular, the result of that case from 2021.

00:33:48 ◼   ► It's now 2025.

00:33:49 ◼   ► So what they're saying is, hey, in 2021, you lost a court case and the court said, Apple, you have to do X, Y, and Z.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Now, in 2025, we have a decision about, did Apple do X, Y, and Z, or did they not do it?

00:34:05 ◼   ► So if you're following any current court cases that are winding their way through the American justice system, think about this when you try to put realistic timelines and when you should expect literally anything to happen.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Anyway, continue.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Again, reading from 9 to 5 Mac.

00:34:18 ◼   ► According to the 80-page order, Apple, quote, thwarted the injunction's goals, quote, by imposing new fees and obstacles that continue to stifle competition, despite clear instructions from the court.

00:34:28 ◼   ► The judge didn't just sanction Apple.

00:34:31 ◼   ► She referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for possible criminal contempt proceedings.

00:34:35 ◼   ► Oh, damn.

00:34:37 ◼   ► I love this.

00:34:38 ◼   ► This is getting interesting.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Apple's vice president of finance, Alex Roman, was found to have lied under oath, according to the document.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Internal documents contradicted public testimony and showed Apple knowingly chose anti-competitive options.

00:34:51 ◼   ► All right, now I'm going to throw in a little bit of commentary.

00:34:54 ◼   ► I don't know if this is just my upbringing or – well, not even upbringing, but, like, it is drilled – it was drilled into me.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I don't know how or why, so I'm struggling not to say this is an American thing.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't know.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Maybe this is an American thing.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But for me, I feel like it is, like, a cardinal sin to lie under oath, not only because it's very illegal, but, like, you just don't do that.

00:35:16 ◼   ► You either plead the fifth, which is to say I won't incriminate myself, but you don't – or you tell the truth.

00:35:21 ◼   ► You don't lie.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Like, that's real bad news.

00:35:24 ◼   ► You can lie.

00:35:25 ◼   ► You just have to say you don't recall.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Well, it's a Reagan defense.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Fair.

00:35:28 ◼   ► But to say that Alex Roman is apparently, you know, lying under oath, that is a big deal.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Continuing on, the court has now barred Apple from charging its 27% commission – I'm sorry.

00:35:43 ◼   ► It's hard not to laugh – from charging its 27% commission on external purchases and ordered it to immediately stop interfering with developers' ability to communicate alternative payment options to users.

00:35:52 ◼   ► The judge specifically called out Apple's use of full-page, quote-unquote, scare screens designed to deter users from leaving the App Store payment flow.

00:36:00 ◼   ► It's a requirement that developers use static, non-dynamic URLs when linking to alternative payment methods, and its policy of still claiming a commission on web purchases made outside the App Store.

00:36:09 ◼   ► These design choices, the court found, were engineered to introduce friction and suppress user conversion.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Yes, they absolutely were.

00:36:16 ◼   ► 100%.

00:36:17 ◼   ► As we're reading this, you may be thinking, didn't you talk about this in the show, like, years ago?

00:36:21 ◼   ► Yeah, we did.

00:36:23 ◼   ► We sure did.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Because there was a judgment, and Apple lost the lawsuit, and we saw what they did, and we said, here's what Apple's doing in response to that judgment.

00:36:30 ◼   ► And they're going to, like – they're still charging money, but it's 27% instead of 30%, and they don't want you to tell people about payment methods except in this special way, and they're doing all these things.

00:36:39 ◼   ► And we were like, this just seems so restrictive.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And just, like – it just didn't seem to us that whatever they were doing was in the spirit of the judgment.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And it's like, well, whatever, you know, the years roll by.

00:36:50 ◼   ► That was back in 2021.

00:36:51 ◼   ► Like, I guess it was fine.

00:36:53 ◼   ► No, it wasn't fine.

00:36:54 ◼   ► It wasn't fine at all.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And it just – it's frustrating to me that it's like – we talk about it, and it's like, this just doesn't seem like they're doing what the court told them to do.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And the court's like, four years later.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:37:04 ◼   ► You're not doing what we told you to do.

00:37:08 ◼   ► It so frustrates me that it takes this long because they essentially got four years of taking all that money from people.

00:37:12 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:37:12 ◼   ► Well, I mean, is anyone taking them up on this?

00:37:15 ◼   ► But you're right.

00:37:17 ◼   ► They were able to exploit the system to have four years of noncompliance.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And, you know, we'll see if – I mean, I don't know.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Can they appeal this?

00:37:26 ◼   ► I'm sure there's like – I'm sure it's not over.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that's – I was like, whenever I'm reading these court judgment articles and deciding whether they go into the show, it's like, I'm just waiting for the last sentence, which is like, Apple will, of course, appeal, and blah, blah, blah.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Like, how many more years do we have to wait?

00:37:39 ◼   ► So I don't actually know the answer to this because then this is breaking like, you know, the hour we're recording the show.

00:37:43 ◼   ► So we didn't know the details.

00:37:45 ◼   ► But it is satisfying to see what seems like from the outside of the legal world because very often common sense doesn't lead you to the correct legal conclusions because the law is not common sense.

00:37:56 ◼   ► There's very little overlap between them in many cases.

00:37:58 ◼   ► But just to see like they were told to do a thing by the court and they did something not that.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Like – and sometimes we yell – it seems like – sometimes we say like it seems like the judgment wasn't good enough.

00:38:11 ◼   ► That was kind of the angle I felt like we very often took.

00:38:13 ◼   ► It was like the judge sort of said different things because based on what the judge said, Apple seems to think this is complying with it.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And we're looking from the outside going, no, you're missing the point.

00:38:22 ◼   ► This isn't complying at all.

00:38:23 ◼   ► But it just turns out that apparently the judge didn't need to say anything different.

00:38:27 ◼   ► The judge needed to wait four years for Epic to appeal and – no, they didn't appeal.

00:38:31 ◼   ► They – Epic complained essentially, hey, we won this court case.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And Apple says they're doing what you told them to do, but we think they're not.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And so that's what this case is about.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And it's taken four years for this to happen.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And it's just – it's maddening, but it is good to see sanity prevail, which is like, you know, you can't – you can't just like see what the court says to do and then just do something that you feel like doing that's not what the court said and say done and done.

00:38:57 ◼   ► At least once, in this case, Apple is being held to account.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Do you think this will stick?

00:39:03 ◼   ► Again, because if it's – I was almost wanted to push this to the next week because I don't know, like, what is the appeal process, Ken, that you're like, I don't know how far this will go.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Anything being referred to the government, like, oh, they're referring criminal charges to the government, blah, blah, blah.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but what government are they referring to it?

00:39:18 ◼   ► It's like just – everything's up in the air about the rule of law in this country these days.

00:39:24 ◼   ► So I don't actually know how this is going to go.

00:39:26 ◼   ► I wanted to pair this story with a topic – a bunch of topics that we're not going to get to this week about EU stuff that is not as close to home as this is, but it's very much in the same vein of someone told Apple to do something, then Apple did a thing, and we all looked at it and said, you're not doing what they told you, and nothing happens for years.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Well, that other shoe will probably drop next week.

00:39:47 ◼   ► I mean, again, it's an old – it's actually an older story than this.

00:39:50 ◼   ► But in all these cases, it's just – it is satisfying to see someone officially saying, no, Apple, you're not doing what they told you to do, which is something that we've all felt here on the outside.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Yeah, because, like, here's what's going to happen.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Like, if, if, for some reason, we actually, you know, luck out and Apple is forced to let people link out to websites to make purchases, oh, my God, the sky is falling.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Like, you know, if this actually happens, which that's a huge if, because, yeah, they can just keep probably appealing or arguing or deferring or delaying or, you know, all their various, you know, delays and tactics they're going to use.

00:40:31 ◼   ► But if this actually happens, how I expect this to kind of settle out and end up is a few high-profile games will have their own payment things.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Some other services will crop up and offer, like, you know, payment gateways for, like, the rest of us.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Some people will use them.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Most people won't.

00:40:52 ◼   ► And it will be fine.

00:40:54 ◼   ► You know, and I don't expect Apple to go down quietly.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Like, you know, maybe if you do this, they'll say you can't use an app purchase then, which would actually be a pretty interesting, you know, stick to wield.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Well, I mean, speaking of sticks that Apple has to wield, I'm, I'm, we will actually finish with this thing because we're not actually done with the scathing comments about Apple.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I just kind of paused in the middle here.

00:41:15 ◼   ► But, like, one of Apple's tools here as a bad actor is, okay, we'll, we'll finally do what the court has told us to do.

00:41:24 ◼   ► But guess what?

00:41:25 ◼   ► Everybody's app has to go through app review.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And lots of things can happen in app review.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it'd be a shame if something happened to your app there.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It's a nice app you've got there.

00:41:34 ◼   ► It'd be a shame if it's held up for a really long time in app review over a bunch of BS.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I mean, we know they're going to, they're going to do that regardless.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's hard to litigate against.

00:41:41 ◼   ► And you just know, kind of like lots of apps that, you know, apps that do things that Apple looks askance at, even if they're technically allowed, those apps tend to get hung up a little bit more.

00:41:53 ◼   ► It's like, does Apple like what you're doing with your app or do they not like it?

00:41:57 ◼   ► And let me tell you, any app that tries to use a payment processor that's not Apple's where they're paying 0% to Apple and can link out and do whatever they want and tell people like those apps, I can imagine them having a little more difficult time in app review.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And good luck challenging that in court because now it's like a, you know, a pattern of behavior.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Are they really biased about like that would be such a hard court to a case to win because you have to show that Apple is intentionally slow rolling or screwing this like and in Apple's defense, they would say we do this to everybody.

00:42:28 ◼   ► It would be really hard to prove that they're doing it more to apps that have this, but they're totally going to.

00:42:32 ◼   ► That would, to be clear, I believe, be against the judge's order because it would be considered some kind of retaliation.

00:42:37 ◼   ► But for sure.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And by the way, and I'm glad Judge Gonzalez here like was a little bit more verbose this time.

00:42:43 ◼   ► I remember like her initial order.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Remember there was that whole thing about like buttons and links and there was like a missing Oxford comma and it was like kind of like vague as to what would qualify.

00:42:52 ◼   ► She used a lot more words and commas this time.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And so it's very clear like there, she left a lot less room to wiggle and argue about maybe she wasn't being so firm.

00:43:03 ◼   ► No, this was really firm like this.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:05 ◼   ► You're seeing, you know, again, not to get into too many contemporary court cases, but you're seeing similar things where judges give give rulings in the sort of normal expected way, expecting people to understand them the way, you know, like expecting them not to be malicious, expecting them to just like, oh, that's how I always give rulings.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And they usually get done not accounting for the fact for something that we all know, which is like, no, you have to you have to really be much more precise because they are going to they're going to weasel out of this like a five year old trying to get a later bedtime.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Like, you know, they're going to do every trick in the book like that.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And it just, you know, the judges almost often seem naive.

00:43:41 ◼   ► They're like, oh, they'll just do what I said.

00:43:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:43 ◼   ► No.

00:43:44 ◼   ► So, you know, second time's the charm, I guess.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:47 ◼   ► But I think this is what's going to happen here is, yes, if Apple can still fight this, they will continue to.

00:43:54 ◼   ► And if they are forced to comply, as it seems like they might be, they will do it as maliciously and as pettily as possible.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Because John's right, like we we have a history with Apple.

00:44:07 ◼   ► We know they are personal and capricious and vindictive with app review.

00:44:13 ◼   ► If you were trying to make a case that Apple is arbitrary and capricious, look at look at the App Store like they we know like the actual people all the way to the top regarding the App Store are personal and vindictive and capricious.

00:44:28 ◼   ► So we said we there's a huge history of that over time.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So we know that.

00:44:33 ◼   ► So we know, of course, they're going to do this kind of stuff.

00:44:34 ◼   ► But, you know, we'll see.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Big companies will keep suing them and they're going to keep being jerks.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And, you know, eventually, eventually stuff will settle out.

00:44:43 ◼   ► But, you know, I think what will end up happening is another version of Apple totally taking the wind out of the sails of everybody else.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And it's just going to be a matter of how they do that.

00:44:54 ◼   ► And so, again, I think, you know, John, you're right.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I think some App Store, you know, mystery delays are very likely.

00:45:00 ◼   ► And even if you get past that, it would not surprise me if they did a rule change of like, well, if you do this, you can't use our in-app purchase system.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And if they do that, that puts a real hurt on games, which are the big whales here that they make most of their money from.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Because when you look at like, you know, the big companies like, you know, Netflix, HBO or whatever they're called now, like those companies all about an in-app purchase years ago.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Like none of those big apps actually use in-app purchase.

00:45:29 ◼   ► I think they might come back now.

00:45:30 ◼   ► If they don't have to pay Apple anything, don't you think they'll just re-add to their apps their sign-up through the phone flows?

00:45:36 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:45:36 ◼   ► But I'm saying like, you know, what revenue is actually at risk here from Apple?

00:45:40 ◼   ► It's not Netflix because like, you know, like those big apps don't use it anyway.

00:45:44 ◼   ► It's just the money they're already not getting.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Like they're already not getting those.

00:45:47 ◼   ► They are getting a lot of money from whales in games.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Like that's where they're getting a lot of money.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And so what is at risk is that game money.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I think if Apple said you can't use our in-app purchase system if you do this, which I'm not sure would be against the judge's order.

00:46:04 ◼   ► You need another four years to determine that.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:06 ◼   ► If they say that, I don't know if most games would do that because a lot of games are used by kids on parentally controlled devices.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And a lot of those will like, you know, they won't allow the, you know, the parent won't give the kid the credit card, but maybe they'll have, you know, in-app purchase allowed with the parental approval situation, which is what we did with our kid for many years.

00:46:28 ◼   ► We still do.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And so like, you know, the kid has to like ask for approval for each purchase.

00:46:32 ◼   ► It pops up on our screens, you know, through Apple's in-app purchase thing.

00:46:34 ◼   ► If a game that's played by kids, which is most games, can't do that, it might not be worth them giving up Apple's cut.

00:46:43 ◼   ► So we'll see, like Apple still has a lot of levers they can pull to keep all of their money, believe me.

00:46:47 ◼   ► But even if you set all that aside, if they follow the judge's order, allow links out to the web to make purchases, even if a bunch of big games and a bunch of big apps actually do that and actually offer that as an option and use an app purchase, I bet Apple still doesn't lose a noticeable amount of money because most people will still choose an app purchase because it's convenient and already set up.

00:47:09 ◼   ► That was the whole value back when it started.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Like the whole value of App Store purchase methods is that when the App Store launched, everyone who had an iPhone already had like an iTunes account with a credit card linked to it.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And so now if you have like an Apple ID or now Apple account, you probably have a payment method of some kind on it.

00:47:29 ◼   ► And you can use Apple's in-app purchase system to make purchases and it's convenient.

00:47:33 ◼   ► So Apple will still get most of those convenience purchases.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And for the ones that they have to like, you know, maybe try a little harder to get, oh darn, they'll have to compete.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Oh my God!

00:47:45 ◼   ► Oh no!

00:47:45 ◼   ► What a tragedy!

00:47:46 ◼   ► What a hardship!

00:47:47 ◼   ► I feel so, so sorry for the challenges they're going to face.

00:47:51 ◼   ► No, really.

00:47:52 ◼   ► I mean, it's about time they started competing.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Yeah, this might actually benefit Apple because I just saw more breaking news that Epic is saying,

00:48:00 ◼   ► hey Apple, we'll bring Fortnite back to the App Store if you let us just, you know, reinstate our developer account and we'll bring Fortnite back because now we don't have to pay you for any of the transactions.

00:48:09 ◼   ► And honestly, like, you know, Marco saying like, you're not losing any money.

00:48:12 ◼   ► They weren't, you like, you weren't getting this money anyway.

00:48:15 ◼   ► So it's not like you're losing that much.

00:48:16 ◼   ► A couple of games will do it and you'll get Fortnite back on the store.

00:48:18 ◼   ► So the net result to Apple, despite their stubbornness, if that actually goes through, is that they might actually be in a better position because the value of Fortnite being on their store is probably higher than the value of money they're going to lose from the handful of people who actually use the in-app thing.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And maybe they'll change or actually make their own payment prices.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Maybe that will change, like you said, if third parties start springing up to make third party in-app purchases as seamless as Apple's.

00:48:47 ◼   ► But those aren't going to pop up overnight.

00:48:49 ◼   ► If this thing actually sticks, if people are actually allowed to link out without paying Apple a fee, there's going to be a bunch of services that crop up that offer, you know, payment processing for 6% or whatever.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Yeah, and then the EU will have to say, well, the fact that those services can't do a parental pops up on their phone and lets you approve a thing is anti-competitive and Apple needs to allow that, but only in the EU.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Because that's the final barrier is like, why is it not going to work for kids' games?

00:49:16 ◼   ► Why can't third parties just have a thing pop up?

00:49:18 ◼   ► Well, because you can't have a persistent background process that runs on all the parents' phones all the time.

00:49:22 ◼   ► They can do this.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Only Apple can do that because they control the platform and they don't expose that.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And that would be yet another thing that falls under the EU's judgment of this is not allowing enough competition.

00:49:35 ◼   ► You know, if I'm RevenueCat and or Stripe, I am, you know, if I'm Stripe, I'm working on APIs and trying to get those squared away.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Maybe they already exist for all I know, but working on APIs to make it easy to collect money, you know, from iOS apps.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And if I'm RevenueCat, I'm implementing or integrating rather with that API to have like basically a store kit as done by RevenueCat, which they kind of already have, but you obviously can't.

00:49:59 ◼   ► It just doesn't do the payments.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:50:01 ◼   ► So it's a heck of an opportunity if this sticks.

00:50:04 ◼   ► And everyone, and by the way, everyone is going to do like discounts too.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Like everyone's going to offer like you can buy within an in-app purchase for $10 or you can go to our website and buy it for $7 or whatever.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Like they're going to.

00:50:14 ◼   ► 15% off.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:50:16 ◼   ► You know, they're going to, they're going to highly incentivize that.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Or, you know, create an account on our website and pay that way and we'll give you a free hat in the app or whatever.

00:50:23 ◼   ► You know, like that, you know, they're going to do that.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Continuing from 9to5Mac, the judge ascribed Apple's behavior as a blatant attempt to sidestep the court's authority, writing that the company's response, quote, strains credulity, quote, and amounts it to a cover-up Apple seemingly believed the court wouldn't uncover.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Oh, geez.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Now reading from the, well, I will put a link from the Verge in the show notes, but this is actually from the injunction itself.

00:50:49 ◼   ► This is a quote I pulled from the injunction.

00:50:50 ◼   ► This is an injunction, not a negotiation.

00:50:53 ◼   ► That's big like mom and dad talk right there.

00:50:57 ◼   ► There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Time is of the essence.

00:51:02 ◼   ► The court will not tolerate further delays.

00:51:05 ◼   ► As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition.

00:51:08 ◼   ► The court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anti-competitive acts to avoid compliance with the injunction.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Effective immediately, Apple will no longer impede developers' ability to communicate with users, nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.

00:51:23 ◼   ► So it sounds like this will take effect immediately, and then if any legal challenges or follow-ups or, again, I don't know what avenues are open to Apple, but it seems like, in the meantime, while Apple is pursuing whatever it can potentially pursue, you've got to cut it off.

00:51:37 ◼   ► You've got to stop doing it right now.

00:51:39 ◼   ► So what does this look like, then?

00:51:40 ◼   ► It's just instructions to app review not to reject these sorts of scenarios, I guess?

00:51:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, again, giving instructions to app review, does that seem like a thing that you could reliably do?

00:51:52 ◼   ► Yeah, could you, like, just put it in that little, like, notes to app review field when you submit your app?

00:51:56 ◼   ► Just link to the Verge article on this decision?

00:51:59 ◼   ► Because, like, Apple, this is the two aspects of app review that frustrates us.

00:52:04 ◼   ► One is the sort of, like Mark was saying, the personal nature of Apple being vindictive and not treating apps equally if it doesn't like the app or the company or whatever.

00:52:11 ◼   ► That is the thing that happens.

00:52:12 ◼   ► But the other side of it is just the random inconsistency that's not because they hate you, but it's just because, I don't know, like, who knows?

00:52:22 ◼   ► The reviewer you happen to get.

00:52:23 ◼   ► So when Apple says things like, we're going to do a new thing where now bug fix updates won't be held up, even if there's another problem with your app.

00:52:31 ◼   ► That's the thing that Apple wanted to do.

00:52:33 ◼   ► Like, I don't, I trust that they were serious about that.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Like, I think that's the thing they wanted to do.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And they told app review, hey, if there's some issue, but it's just a bug fix, let the bug fix go through so they can fix the issue in the next one.

00:52:43 ◼   ► I bet they told app review to do that.

00:52:45 ◼   ► But it's been years and it happens all the time.

00:52:49 ◼   ► Some will say, hey, it's supposed to, remember that rule where they're supposed to let bug fixes through?

00:52:52 ◼   ► Well, they rejected me.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And I said, but it's a bug fix.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And they said, no, I didn't hear from them or whatever.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Like, they can't, it seems like they don't have control over app review.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Like, even when they want to have control over it.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Like, it is just too inconsistent and amorphous and they can't make it do much.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Like, if there's some big directive that comes down that everybody knows about, fine.

00:53:17 ◼   ► But when they try to do stuff like that, especially when they try to do nice things that they actually want to do.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Like, how is that still inconsistent years after that supposedly been policy?

00:53:25 ◼   ► And it's true of so many of their policies.

00:53:27 ◼   ► People are like, but, but this is your policy and this is supposed to be okay.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And you can't have a conversation with app review if you can't get anyone to reply to you.

00:53:36 ◼   ► So some, some, you know, some reply comes back from app review and you read it and it's like,

00:53:42 ◼   ► I don't think they understood what my app is or what my explanation was.

00:53:47 ◼   ► It seems like maybe they didn't read it at all.

00:53:49 ◼   ► I don't understand what they're asking me.

00:53:51 ◼   ► So you reply back and you hear nothing.

00:53:52 ◼   ► And while this happens, your app is still just rejected.

00:53:55 ◼   ► That's the Kafka-esque experience of app review.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And so forgive me if I'm not enthusiastic or optimistic about them changing something about app review in response to the judgment and having that change,

00:54:09 ◼   ► which they, in this case, they definitely don't want to do, result in a visible, consistent change to app review.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Because what are you going to do?

00:54:17 ◼   ► You submit your app, they reject it because you link out to third-party services.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Do you start a four-year journey, four-year, multi-billion dollar journey for a court case to get a judgment in your favor?

00:54:25 ◼   ► No, you just sit there and take it because you're an indie developer and you can stare at the Verge article you want and read the judgment and feel good about it.

00:54:32 ◼   ► But the fact is, your app was rejected.

00:54:34 ◼   ► What are you going to do?

00:54:34 ◼   ► It's something.

00:54:36 ◼   ► I'm really curious to see how this plays out.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And, you know, it's just, we don't need to get into it much, but it's just too bad that it takes a very pissed off and justifiably pissed off judge to get to this point.

00:54:50 ◼   ► That Apple has no choice but to let people through, basically.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And I get that Apple put in a lot of work and a lot of money to make, you know, iOS and to make AppKit and UIKit and SwiftUI and all that.

00:55:05 ◼   ► My eyes are rolling out of my head right now with this stupid argument they always make.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I know why you're saying it, but this is the stupid argument Apple always makes.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And it's like...

00:55:15 ◼   ► And it's dumb.

00:55:16 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It's like, that's the argument that tells us that they are trying to say that our apps add nothing to their platform.

00:55:23 ◼   ► That we are purely taking...

00:55:25 ◼   ► There's no other way for apps to contribute value to Apple's platform besides through internet purchase commissions.

00:55:31 ◼   ► That is what that argument says.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And they keep making that argument.

00:55:34 ◼   ► And that's why...

00:55:35 ◼   ► That's one of the many reasons why whatever you want to say about Tim Cook as a CEO, I have zero respect for him as a person.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's just...

00:55:44 ◼   ► It's bananas that this is the argument that Apple keeps making.

00:55:49 ◼   ► And that they...

00:55:50 ◼   ► And again, as I've said many times and lamented many times, that they feel so entitled that they are owed this money.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And it's just no.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Literally no, according to this judge.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So, I don't know.

00:56:02 ◼   ► Well, I'm very curious to see how this shakes out.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I've got my popcorn ready.

00:56:06 ◼   ► You know, the tea is getting spilt as we speak.

00:56:09 ◼   ► So, I'm excited for it.

00:56:10 ◼   ► Speaking of things I'm excited for, some weird YouTube channel rose from the dead yesterday, I believe it was, as we record this.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And it was not Casey on Cars.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It was Marco's YouTube channel.

00:56:25 ◼   ► This is one of those times that you didn't tell us anything.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Not that you have to, but you didn't warn us or tell us or anything like that.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And just all of a sudden, boop, there's a new video on Marco's YouTube channel.

00:56:35 ◼   ► So, what is going on?

00:56:37 ◼   ► A few...

00:56:38 ◼   ► Almost a month ago, I decided I was finally going to try an e-ink note-taking tablet.

00:56:44 ◼   ► I've been seeing for years the ads on Instagram for the Remarkable tablet.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And I always thought, that thing looks so cool.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And yet, I don't take notes.

00:56:57 ◼   ► So, what am I doing?

00:56:58 ◼   ► Like, what?

00:56:58 ◼   ► I never bought it because I'm like, I know, as cool as that is, I love e-ink.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Like, as I've described when talking about e-readers and stuff and the terminal, I love e-ink as a screen technology.

00:57:12 ◼   ► I just don't read that much.

00:57:14 ◼   ► So, like, even though I've had a Kindle at some, you know, for most of the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, they've been out to 2007, I think.

00:57:24 ◼   ► I've had a Kindle for most of that time.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Quick interruption.

00:57:26 ◼   ► Quick interruption here.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Do you happen to have another box of Kindles ready to go out somewhere?

00:57:30 ◼   ► Because mine just died and I could use a hand-me-down.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Maybe, the only Kindle I own right now is the previous generation of the paperwhite, you know, whatever, like, the nicest paperwhite is, but not the newest one.

00:57:44 ◼   ► Well, if you want to give it a good home, I am accepting.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So, we'll talk after the show.

00:57:49 ◼   ► One of Marco's old Kindles actually finally died over here, as in will no longer take a charge.

00:57:53 ◼   ► So, we've actually been recycling some of those out.

00:57:56 ◼   ► We had to actually buy a new Kindle for the first time.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Going back into the box for the next one?

00:58:00 ◼   ► No, just e-waste now.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:58:05 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:58:06 ◼   ► So, I love e-ink screens.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Actually, I do have a Kobo e-reader, if you're trying that.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Anyway, so, love, love, love, love e-ink screens, but I just, I don't read that much.

00:58:18 ◼   ► In fact, one thing I would have, I think I would have enjoyed more these days, when Kindles first launched, or like, you know, in their first few years,

00:58:27 ◼   ► they had deals with, like, newspapers and magazines to basically have Kindle versions of, like, the New York Times every day, and it was really nice.

00:58:35 ◼   ► And, in fact, that, the Kindle periodical format is what I hacked to make Instapapers digest, have, like, the navigable links and the tables of contents and stuff like that.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I figured out the data format through some sleuthing and stuff like that, and I let Instapaper generate those.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And so, Instapaper would generate, like, the same format that you'd get, like, from the New York Times or whatever.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And that, that program with, like, the Times and everybody else, like, the whole Kindle periodicals program ended years ago.

00:59:01 ◼   ► They don't do it anymore, which is a shame, because I would love that, but I just, I, you know, for whatever reason, you know, Amazon dropped it, or the companies didn't want to do it anymore, or whatever.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Anyway, so, I don't read, really.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Getting back to this, I basically don't read.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Yet, I still love E-Ink, and so, when I saw these note-taking things, I'm like, man, that would be great, but I don't take notes.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Then, I started having in-person meetings for the restaurant.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Granted, everyone who's worked in an office, this is going to sound like, you know, kindergarten, but, like, I have hardly ever had in-person meetings.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Certainly not, you know, in the last 15 years.

00:59:36 ◼   ► Also known as meetings.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:59:41 ◼   ► So, I really don't like taking notes in meetings on a computer.

00:59:47 ◼   ► It's, you know, first of all, like, they're big, they take up your whole lap, but also, like, when you're just, like, typing into a computer, number one, it's hard for the other person to tell whether you're paying attention to them or not, or, like, doing something else on your computer.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And number two, there are a thousand other things on your computer for you to do.

01:00:03 ◼   ► So, I don't like taking notes on a computer in person with other people.

01:00:07 ◼   ► It just feels inattentive.

01:00:10 ◼   ► I just want to tell you from experience in meetings for many, many years, people take notes on computers in meetings.

01:00:16 ◼   ► It's very common.

01:00:17 ◼   ► It's not to say that you, this is the thing that you need to do.

01:00:19 ◼   ► I'm just telling you that I think the standards of the business world have long since accepted the idea that you will be taking notes on a computer during a meeting.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah, they have, and I get that, but, you know, it doesn't, like, when you look around the room at a meeting and you see a bunch of people typing on laptops, I bet most of them are not taking notes.

01:00:37 ◼   ► I bet most of them are typing emails and stuff.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like, they're not paying attention.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Well, it depends on the meeting, I suppose.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Anyway, so, as we're, like, you know, meeting with, like, our manager and the staff and the chef, like, I wanted something that I could just take notes on.

01:00:51 ◼   ► And so, I've tried, I tried two things.

01:00:53 ◼   ► I tried paper, like, actual just paper.

01:00:58 ◼   ► It's barbaric, I tell you.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And the problem with paper is you just can't, like, move stuff around.

01:01:04 ◼   ► You can't, I mean, you can erase stuff.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I guess that's a form of deleting stuff, but it's not a very good form of it.

01:01:08 ◼   ► So, you can kind of delete.

01:01:10 ◼   ► It's a pain.

01:01:11 ◼   ► It's slow.

01:01:12 ◼   ► It's dusty.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And you have to be using pencils.

01:01:15 ◼   ► You can kind of move stuff around in the sense that you can, like, you know, tear the paper off and move it around.

01:01:20 ◼   ► Or you can, like, rewrite stuff.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Like, it's a bit of a cumbersome process.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Certainly, there's no, like, you know, undo, redo.

01:01:26 ◼   ► There's no layers.

01:01:27 ◼   ► We should invent something to help with that.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Another thing, by the way, that I'll add about paper is that you have to draw a little picture of every letter.

01:01:35 ◼   ► I'm not sure if The Remarkable is going to help you with that, but I just want to throw that out there.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Okay, thanks.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Anyway, so, I also, you know, because I have an iPad and an Apple Pencil, I tried that.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And I tried one of those textured films, not the paper-like, but the new one, like, I think it's that Astro pad or something.

01:01:56 ◼   ► It's the one that has, like, a custom metal nib for the Apple Pencil that you screw on.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And the film is magnetic, which is kind of fun.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Anyway, tried that, which is, like, the most paper-like film by a lot of people's, you know, metrics or whatever.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Plus, I tried the Apple Pencil just by itself on the glass.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But the problem with using the iPad this way, first of all, even with the films and the special pen tips, it's still a pretty slick surface.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Which actually, I think, makes it a little bit more difficult to write small and precisely.

01:02:27 ◼   ► I found, like, you know, because the pen just, like, it slips really easily.

01:02:31 ◼   ► And I found that it's kind of an unpleasant writing experience.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And the iPad, you know, it's a little bit, like, chunky and heavy to hold in one hand.

01:02:39 ◼   ► And, no, I'm not going to spend, like, $1,000 on a new iPad Pro for a device I hardly ever use.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And then I also realized, like, you know, one thing I would like is something to, like, sit on my desk and, you know, be kind of, like, my to-do list for the day or the week.

01:02:55 ◼   ► And, again, paper is fine for this.

01:02:57 ◼   ► But something digital will be better.

01:02:59 ◼   ► So I tried the iPad just as, like, a test.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And the problem with the iPad sitting on your desk as, like, a to-do thing is that, first of all, like, it's sitting there glowing.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's lit.

01:03:09 ◼   ► So it's a screen.

01:03:10 ◼   ► It's a little distracting.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Every notification that would come in on my phone, it would, like, sync to my iPad.

01:03:14 ◼   ► That would light up and it would come up on there to, you know, it would occasionally turn itself off and have to, like, unlock it.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Or I'd have to turn it on to have it, like, set it to never go to sleep.

01:03:24 ◼   ► In which case, it would burn through the battery and just be slowly warming up my desk all day.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Like, that's no good either.

01:03:29 ◼   ► So it's not, like, it's not a great fit for that.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And then also the iPad, like, because I'm getting those notifications coming in and stuff like that, I'm always tempted to just switch away.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And so the problem I have with, you know, with my presumably undiagnosed ADHD, one problem I have is that if something is out of sight, it's out of mind.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And this is the problem why I don't just use Apple Notes for my to-do stuff.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Because as soon as the Apple Notes window is behind anything else, I never think to check it again.

01:03:59 ◼   ► As soon as the note that I'm in is not the currently selected note, I'm never going to see it again unless I search for it.

01:04:05 ◼   ► If something is out of sight, I will not go back and remember to go check it or remember to go back to it.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Like, I just won't.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And I can set, like, reminders and alerts and stuff, which I do constantly.

01:04:15 ◼   ► But, like, you know, there's only – once something is out of sight, I'm never going back to it.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So I wanted something to actually be, like, on my desk, not on my computer screen.

01:04:24 ◼   ► And something that wasn't a full-blown app platform like an iPad so that I couldn't do anything else with it.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Because then whatever is, like, my scratch pad or my whiteboard to-do list thing that's sitting there, that's just always what's on screen.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Like, it never goes away.

01:04:42 ◼   ► It can never be anything else except that.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Which, again, paper works great for that.

01:04:46 ◼   ► But it has the other shortcomings.

01:04:48 ◼   ► So anyway, I decided after having a few meetings with the restaurant staff, I'm like, you know what, let me try the Remarkable.

01:04:55 ◼   ► So I got the Remarkable 2.

01:04:58 ◼   ► There is also a more recent device, the Remarkable Paper Pro, which is larger and color e-ink and has a backlight and a few other little improvements.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I decided not to get the Paper Pro because the Remarkable 2 is smaller, lighter, cheaper.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And if you don't want color or don't need color, there's a bunch of things about the Remarkable 2 that are actually a little bit better for my purposes.

01:05:21 ◼   ► You know, the screen is a little bit, you know, it's a little bit higher contrast, like, for the black and white.

01:05:27 ◼   ► The refresh is, you know, quite different and simpler.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I think it fits better in my hand because it has a big left margin that the Remarkable Pro doesn't.

01:05:35 ◼   ► So I love the Remarkable 2, like, physically and shape-wise.

01:05:38 ◼   ► And I don't need the light or the color of the Pro.

01:05:42 ◼   ► So anyway, I got the Remarkable 2.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And I use it for, like, you know, a week or two.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And then I started seeing all these people, like, Matt Gemmel was on Mac Power Users.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I saw him mention, and I've seen a couple of people mention these devices called the Super Note, which is a competing thing to the Remarkable line and these other E-inx.

01:06:03 ◼   ► There's also, like, there's the Books tablets.

01:06:06 ◼   ► There are some large e-readers now that have this functionality built in, like the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Ellipsa.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And so it's a pretty big market now.

01:06:15 ◼   ► There's a couple of Chinese companies on Amazon that have, like, AI e-ink tablets that I didn't look too much into.

01:06:22 ◼   ► It's a pretty large category.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But it seemed like, for my purposes, Remarkable seemed like it was, like, the most Apple-like design.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So I decided to go with that.

01:06:31 ◼   ► But then when I saw, like, the people talking about the Super Note changes, I'm like, ooh, some of that stuff I would really like.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Like, you know, one of the big things is that you can link between notes.

01:06:42 ◼   ► You can, like, draw your own links and, like, link them to different pages and different notes.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I'm like, ooh, I would love that for, like, certain types of organization.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Like, that would be really cool.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And it had, like, the higher resolution screen and the nicer pen tips.

01:06:53 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, let me try one of those before the Remarkable return window elapses.

01:06:57 ◼   ► So I ordered a Super Note, the big one, the Super Note Manta.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And that was also really good.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I carried that and used that for, you know, all of my task management for, like, a week and a half or so.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And so – and that was great.

01:07:12 ◼   ► However, then when I went back to the Remarkable to, like, clear it off to return it, I was like, oh, my God, this is so much faster and more responsive.

01:07:23 ◼   ► It kind of ruined me.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, man.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Like, I do love some of the Super Note's, like, geeky stuff.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Super Note had other problems, too.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Like, the sync situation is terrible on the Super Note, whereas the Remarkable sync situation is amazing.

01:07:37 ◼   ► So anyway, I made a quick YouTube video comparing these two devices.

01:07:41 ◼   ► I didn't want to get too far into the weeds on the comparison here because it's better to see it visually.

01:07:48 ◼   ► So go look at my YouTube video.

01:07:50 ◼   ► It's, like, 19 minutes or so, I think, of just me kind of comparing and contrasting these two tablets, showing, like, what I like and don't like about the Super Note Manta versus the Remarkable 2.

01:08:01 ◼   ► It was, like, a quick, like, all, you know, straight one take, you know, iPhone being held above my desk on a stand, like, just looking straight down, just looking at my hands operating these devices.

01:08:10 ◼   ► So it's a quick, you know, fairly dense YouTube video if you want to see these two devices and why I ended up choosing the Remarkable 2.

01:08:17 ◼   ► So what I've been doing is I just have, like, three pages on the Remarkable that I swipe between.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I have my personal to-do list, my restaurant to-do list, and my overcast to-do list.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And whatever I'm working on, like, that day, like, when I'm at the restaurant, the restaurant to-do list is facing up.

01:08:36 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's showing on the screen.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And it just sits there all day next to me in the office in the restaurant.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And so I can have to-dos.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I can write down little notes down there.

01:08:46 ◼   ► I can see what I'm doing that day or that week.

01:08:49 ◼   ► I'm finding it really, really nice to just always have that there.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Because, like, when these devices, when they go to sleep, they just display whatever they were last displaying.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Like, it goes into a low power state after a while to save battery.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But, like, the Remarkable can sit on my desk all day displaying the same thing and be totally fine.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And when I want to, like, actually do something, like, you know, take the pen off and write on it, it wakes up in, like, a second.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Like, it's so fast.

01:09:13 ◼   ► So I have found it's really, really nice to have this kind of, this second surface.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's barely even a screen.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I was going to say second screen, but it's not, it's, like, barely a screen.

01:09:23 ◼   ► This, like, second surface of just this electronic notepad for me to show my to-dos that are always there as I am working on whatever I'm working on.

01:09:33 ◼   ► You know, on overcast days, I'll flip to the overcast page.

01:09:36 ◼   ► On other days, I'll flip it to the personal page.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And, like, I'm getting a lot more done now.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Because unlike every other, like, computer-based to-do system I've ever tried, it doesn't just get buried when I forget to look at it.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Like, it's always there on my desk.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's never swiped into a different app.

01:09:56 ◼   ► It's never, like, turned off and hidden behind things for very long.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Like, it's just there on my desk.

01:10:02 ◼   ► So, so far, I am really enjoying this.

01:10:07 ◼   ► And so I did make that YouTube video.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Check it out if you're curious.

01:10:10 ◼   ► I didn't really go into, like, my workflow much in that.

01:10:13 ◼   ► That was really just a comparison of the Super Note versus the Remarkable.

01:10:17 ◼   ► But this here is, you know, kind of how I'm using these devices.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And so far, I'm really enjoying it.

01:10:23 ◼   ► It's a lot of money to spend on a to-do list.

01:10:26 ◼   ► But I do get the appeal.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And I've never really played with any e-ink, like, interactive e-ink thing.

01:10:33 ◼   ► That's not the word I'm looking for.

01:10:34 ◼   ► But I've never drawn on anything that has e-ink as a display mechanism.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And from the video, it looked like it was reasonably good performance in terms of, like, you know,

01:10:45 ◼   ► it's not one of those situations where you've moved the pen, like, three or four millimeters.

01:10:48 ◼   ► But the ink that supposedly flew, you know, came out of the pen was, you know, three or four millimeters back or what have you.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It seemed like the refresh rate was decent.

01:10:57 ◼   ► The only thing that I noticed in the video, which I found somewhat off-putting,

01:11:01 ◼   ► is it seemed like a pretty violent, like, full-screen refresh every once in a while.

01:11:05 ◼   ► That's e-ink for you.

01:11:06 ◼   ► It's a limitation of the technology.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the e-ink refresh.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Now, I'll tell you two things on that.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Number one, so on the pen latency, like, input on the pen, it's great.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Like, it's way better than I expect it to be possible.

01:11:19 ◼   ► It is really good.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Yeah, nice.

01:11:21 ◼   ► You know, I am – and I should say, you know, I'm not a pen nerd.

01:11:24 ◼   ► I'm not a pen and paper user in most other parts of my life.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And I'm not – I was never that into the Apple Pencil in part because of that.

01:11:32 ◼   ► You know, the Apple Pencil probably beats it on that kind of latency.

01:11:36 ◼   ► It absolutely does.

01:11:37 ◼   ► But it's close enough that it doesn't really matter.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Like, it's close enough for my purposes.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Like, I'm not doing super precise work.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I'm not doing fine artwork.

01:11:46 ◼   ► I'm doing to-do lists.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I'm treating it like a little whiteboard.

01:11:49 ◼   ► And so it's totally fine for my purposes.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And certainly when you are using it, you don't notice the latency.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And regarding the full-screen refresh, like, it's just like a Kindle.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Like, when you're reading a Kindle, you don't really notice the refreshes.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Like, you might notice the first few, and then you stop noticing.

01:12:08 ◼   ► That's how it is when you're using one of these things.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Like, you stop noticing the refreshes after a few minutes at most.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room was asking what the refresh rate was.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And I think that's one thing you should have gone into in the video.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Refresh rate is not the right thing to think about when you're thinking of e-ink

01:12:22 ◼   ► because it doesn't work like a regular screen.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And if you visualize what it actually is, it makes much more sense, which is just a bunch

01:12:29 ◼   ► of, imagine a bunch of tennis balls.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Half of them is painted black.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Half of them is painted white.

01:12:33 ◼   ► And you can rotate them.

01:12:34 ◼   ► So the black part of the white part is facing up.

01:12:36 ◼   ► That's an e-ink screen.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Only the tennis balls are really, really small.

01:12:39 ◼   ► And so nothing happens.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Any, like, remove all power from the device.

01:12:44 ◼   ► The black tennis balls that are facing up are still black.

01:12:46 ◼   ► And the white, the ones that are white half is facing up are still white.

01:12:49 ◼   ► It's just, there's no power required to do that.

01:12:51 ◼   ► There's nothing being projected, just setting aside any backlights and stuff like that.

01:12:54 ◼   ► That's what the screen is.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Only the parts that change need to be changed.

01:13:00 ◼   ► So if you're drawing a line, all the other tennis balls are just inert.

01:13:05 ◼   ► Nothing is happening to them.

01:13:06 ◼   ► They're not refreshing.

01:13:07 ◼   ► There's no sort of refresh rate.

01:13:08 ◼   ► It's not like an OLED or an LCD where it changes the refresh rate based on how many times it

01:13:12 ◼   ► has to update.

01:13:13 ◼   ► If you're drawing on it with a pencil, it might update a lot.

01:13:16 ◼   ► But if you're just sitting there like the Apple watch, it might update once a second.

01:13:18 ◼   ► No, those other tennis balls are not doing anything.

01:13:21 ◼   ► They're, they're ignoring, you know, only the part that you're changing has to change.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Downside is it takes a long time to rotate those tennis balls.

01:13:28 ◼   ► And that's why it looks fairly horrendous when you, for example, not, not drawing, because

01:13:35 ◼   ► drawing is just turning a bunch of tennis balls to be black side up.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And you drag something, I'm going to take this drawing from the upper left and drag it to

01:13:43 ◼   ► the lower right.

01:13:44 ◼   ► That has to erase where the drawing was a moment ago and then draw the drawing in a new position

01:13:48 ◼   ► and then erase where it was and draw it again and erase where it was.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And that's a lot of tennis ball turning.

01:13:52 ◼   ► And you can watch the video that it looks like it looks worse than like a passive matrix LCD

01:13:58 ◼   ► screen from the nineties, because you just can't rotate the tennis balls fast enough.

01:14:02 ◼   ► So that is not the strength of this device.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And it's, it's not because like, again, don't think of it as refresh, right?

01:14:09 ◼   ► Like what is the refresh rate of the screen?

01:14:10 ◼   ► Is it 30 frames per second?

01:14:11 ◼   ► I can tell you based on like early E-ink screens, the remarkable is in fact, remarkable that it

01:14:16 ◼   ► can do this at all.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Like it does.

01:14:18 ◼   ► It's a, if, if you are, your expectations are calibrated to like, you had like one of the

01:14:24 ◼   ► older Kindles, you'd be like, how does the remarkable do that?

01:14:26 ◼   ► But if you're thinking it's going to be like an LC, a modern LCD screen or OLED screen,

01:14:30 ◼   ► it's not like that at all.

01:14:32 ◼   ► So, and so that's why I said like, if you're going to draw with it, the Apple pencil is amazing

01:14:37 ◼   ► for drawing is one of the, the lowest latency things that you can get.

01:14:40 ◼   ► If you're drawing letters, if you're drawing little pictures of letters, like Marco's doing,

01:14:44 ◼   ► you don't really care.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like you're not doing quick strokes and sketch.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Like that's, it's, you know, for like, as Marco said, the qualifier he added for his purposes,

01:14:53 ◼   ► the screen is amazing, but don't expect Apple pencil style responsiveness and don't expect

01:15:00 ◼   ► anything like a computer screen when, if you're trying to move stuff around.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And I should say too, like one thing I like about the remarkable is again, I really, and

01:15:09 ◼   ► I say this not, not flippantly or not, and not without consideration.

01:15:12 ◼   ► They, they have very Apple like design and it runs deep.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Part of what you might not like about remarkable versus competitors is that it is a closed system.

01:15:23 ◼   ► You can't add whatever you want to it.

01:15:25 ◼   ► You can't run whatever apps you want on it.

01:15:27 ◼   ► It has a limited tool palette to be simpler and, you know, kind of chunkier and easier

01:15:33 ◼   ► to use.

01:15:33 ◼   ► The design is very nice, but the features are very limited.

01:15:37 ◼   ► It, you have to pay for its sync service, which is this proprietary sync service.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And it works really well, way better than the super.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Like it works really, really well for like for sync and that kind of thing, but it's all

01:15:49 ◼   ► like managed and, and you have to pay for it and everything.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And so like that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

01:15:54 ◼   ► But the result is the remarkable, this is a, the remarkable two is a five-year-old device

01:16:01 ◼   ► and it performs better than the brand new super note by a lot.

01:16:05 ◼   ► It's not even close to how like the responsiveness and everything.

01:16:08 ◼   ► It's way better.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And in part that's because they engineer the crap out of their own, you know, version of

01:16:15 ◼   ► Linux and everything.

01:16:16 ◼   ► But in part, that's also because they choose to do less.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Like the super note has a lower resolution screen and that probably makes certain things a lot

01:16:23 ◼   ► faster.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Um, the super, I mean, sorry, the, the remarkable rather has the lower resolution screen than the

01:16:28 ◼   ► super note.

01:16:29 ◼   ► So it makes things a lot faster.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Um, the remarkable is doing a lot less like detailed analysis of what you're writing.

01:16:35 ◼   ► It's not doing like live handwriting recognition.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Um, the remarkable, as far as I can tell, the, uh, handwriting seems to be pixel based.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Whereas on the super note, it seems to be vector based.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Um, so like the super note is doing a lot more advanced technical things, but the remarkable

01:16:49 ◼   ► as a result of its choices and engineering is a much nicer overall experience, but more limited.

01:16:56 ◼   ► And like, if, if you're looking at one of these things or one of the books, tablets or

01:17:00 ◼   ► any other kind of, you know, the, the, the big eating tablet category, there really isn't

01:17:04 ◼   ► like one recommendation I can give because it depends on how you use it.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Like you can use these tablets in about as many ways as you can use paper.

01:17:13 ◼   ► And there's a lot, like if you're, if you ask somebody like, what paper should I buy?

01:17:17 ◼   ► It's like, well, you're going to have some follow-up questions to give a good recommendation

01:17:21 ◼   ► to what exactly you mean by that and what your needs are and what your priorities are.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And, you know, so the same thing applies here.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Like there's a million different ways to use these things.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I'm barely scratching the surface, um, by using it as basically a desktop to-do list and whiteboard.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Uh, but it, it, it's a cool category of device.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And I would suggest if you are, if any part of this resonates with you of like, you know,

01:17:45 ◼   ► having something that's kind of always there with your, with your task list, that's like

01:17:48 ◼   ► separate from your computer.

01:17:49 ◼   ► If that resonates with you, maybe give one a shot.

01:17:51 ◼   ► I mean, the good thing about remarkable too, is like they, you know, Amazon has them.

01:17:55 ◼   ► You can get them overnight.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Like they're, they're very popular.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Like you can get them very quickly.

01:17:59 ◼   ► If you don't like it, you can, you know, it's Amazon.

01:18:01 ◼   ► You can always return it.

01:18:01 ◼   ► But like, I think, I think you, I think it's worth a try.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Um, one of the things that I'll mention, like for workflow purposes and productivity purposes,

01:18:11 ◼   ► generally like as, you know, again, part of my like self-diagnosed, probably ADHD, I like

01:18:17 ◼   ► to have a queue of possible things I can work on because I don't necessarily know what kind

01:18:24 ◼   ► of time conditions and motivation I'm going to have on a given day to be able to get stuff

01:18:30 ◼   ► done.

01:18:30 ◼   ► So I like if I'm like feeling motivated to do a certain type of thing, or I have a certain

01:18:36 ◼   ► block of time, I like being able to choose from a medium sized collection of things to do

01:18:42 ◼   ► like, so, and so something might sit on that list for a while, but then one day I'll knock

01:18:46 ◼   ► out 10 of them.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Like that's, that's kind of how, that's how I've always worked like in bursts and kind

01:18:51 ◼   ► of having a selection.

01:18:51 ◼   ► The problem with that system is that if the queue gets too deep and stuff gets buried, it never

01:18:58 ◼   ► gets done.

01:18:58 ◼   ► So what I like about this in part, again, because it's always being displayed, I can always see

01:19:04 ◼   ► it.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And so it never gets too buried.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Also, what I like is trying to keep each pay, each category, personal restaurant and

01:19:12 ◼   ► overcast, trying to keep them to one page.

01:19:15 ◼   ► It actually keeps my, my to do queue to a reasonable size because as I start having to write smaller

01:19:22 ◼   ► and cram stuff in and move stuff a little bit tighter together, I start realizing I should

01:19:28 ◼   ► just do some of these things and make some room.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Oh, I did see that the remarkable has a zoom feature.

01:19:33 ◼   ► So that might be your enemy.

01:19:34 ◼   ► It does.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Yes.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Because you'll be, you'll be pinching to, you'll be pinching to zoom to write tinier, but then

01:19:39 ◼   ► you'll never zoom back out.

01:19:41 ◼   ► So things are now below the fold.

01:19:42 ◼   ► You'll never find them again.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Well, the good thing is like E-Ink is so sluggish to use.

01:19:47 ◼   ► You don't, yeah, you don't want to do the zooming.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:49 ◼   ► You don't actually, yeah.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Zooming is, is unpleasant enough that you don't really want to do a lot of it.

01:19:53 ◼   ► I can see your future here though, Marco, because like what you're looking for is like

01:19:56 ◼   ► a device that is always in view.

01:19:58 ◼   ► that doesn't annoying, like a screen that doesn't have notifications, blah, blah, blah.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Boy, when we get those AR glasses and you can just glance to the upper left, wherever you

01:20:06 ◼   ► are with one of your umpteen pair of AR reading glasses you have scattered throughout the house

01:20:10 ◼   ► and your to-do list is always in your field of vision, but just up and to the left, it will

01:20:14 ◼   ► never leave you.

01:20:15 ◼   ► It'll be with you all the time because you'll be wearing glasses all the time.

01:20:17 ◼   ► That sounds like hell.

01:20:18 ◼   ► Well, you know, you're carrying around this remarkable, so it can be in your field of view

01:20:22 ◼   ► to remind you that you have to do things.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Imagine if it was just in your field's view magically.

01:20:26 ◼   ► We are brought to you this week by Wild Grain.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Wild Grain is the first Bake from Frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries, and pastas.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Wild Grain's boxes are fully customizable to your taste and dietary restrictions.

01:20:40 ◼   ► In addition to their classic variety box, they recently launched a new gluten-free box

01:20:44 ◼   ► and a plant-based box.

01:20:45 ◼   ► It's 100% vegan.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Best of all, they take the hassle out of baking since all their items bake from Frozen in about

01:20:51 ◼   ► 25 minutes or less with no mess and no cleanup.

01:20:54 ◼   ► So they sent me a box a few months ago, so we've talked about this a couple of times,

01:20:57 ◼   ► and I've highlighted in the past their delicious apple cider donuts that remind me of the orchard

01:21:03 ◼   ► that we go to every fall.

01:21:04 ◼   ► But let me tell you, an apple cider donut works any time of year.

01:21:06 ◼   ► They sent tear and share cranberry pecan rolls.

01:21:09 ◼   ► They sent a full-on sourdough bread, so you don't have to keep your starter alive or anything

01:21:13 ◼   ► like that.

01:21:13 ◼   ► They sent croissants, which we'll talk about in a minute.

01:21:16 ◼   ► They sent this spaghetti-looking thing.

01:21:18 ◼   ► What is this called?

01:21:18 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, John Siracusa.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Tonarelli or something like that.

01:21:22 ◼   ► And they also sent some chocolate chip cookies.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And let me tell you, is there ever a bad time for chocolate chip cookies?

01:21:28 ◼   ► No, there's not.

01:21:29 ◼   ► There's never a bad time for chocolate chip cookies.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And the best thing is, if you get them in your box from Wild Grain, you can just pop one or

01:21:37 ◼   ► more in your oven right here at home and not have to worry about making a trek all the way

01:21:42 ◼   ► into town to go to your special fancy, chmancy cookie place.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So if you are ready to bring all your favorite carbs right to your doorstep, go to Wild Grain

01:21:51 ◼   ► so you can begin building your own box of artisanal breads, pastas, and pastries.

01:21:55 ◼   ► For a limited time, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off their first box, plus free

01:22:00 ◼   ► croissants in every box.

01:22:01 ◼   ► That's free croissants in every box.

01:22:04 ◼   ► When you go to wildgrain.com slash ATP to start your subscription, you heard me, free croissants

01:22:10 ◼   ► in every box.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash ATP.

01:22:14 ◼   ► That's W-I-L-D-G-R-A-I-N dot com slash ATP.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Or you can use the promo code ATP at checkout.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Our thanks to Wild Grain for sponsoring the show.

01:22:24 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:22:29 ◼   ► And David McQueen writes, is your or Apple's idea of properly functioning Siri achievable

01:22:35 ◼   ► given the current state of the art, meaning current engineering capabilities?

01:22:39 ◼   ► Another way of thinking about this is to ask whether the expected or desired behavior of

01:22:43 ◼   ► Siri can be achieved by more and better engineering effort, or does the underlying science or theory

01:22:48 ◼   ► not yet exist?

01:22:49 ◼   ► In my somewhat informed opinion, the latter is the case.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Achieving something like the expected behavior of Siri is an unsolved research problem, not

01:22:56 ◼   ► an engineering problem.

01:22:57 ◼   ► You may argue that someone like Google has already demonstrated success with a Siri-like utility,

01:23:01 ◼   ► but that just may mean that they have been more clever about implementing a fake version

01:23:06 ◼   ► of whatever Siri is meant to be.

01:23:07 ◼   ► So it seems quite likely to me that Apple management has simply misjudged what is currently possible

01:23:13 ◼   ► in terms of Siri's kind of quote-unquote intelligence.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And perhaps the engineers working on Siri are not able or willing to fake it better.

01:23:20 ◼   ► I haven't used like Google's agent in maybe ever.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And so outside of Erin's car, I should say, because it's in her car to some degree.

01:23:33 ◼   ► But certainly the demos that I see and the advertisements that I see, which I presume, unlike Apple, are

01:23:41 ◼   ► actually real, they seem a heck of a lot more impressive and a heck of a lot closer to my

01:23:46 ◼   ► expectation of what Siri could and should be than anything that Siri has ever done, which

01:23:51 ◼   ► leads me to think, yeah, it is possible.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Now, granted, you know, I don't think it's terribly reasonable to say, oh, Siri, remember that thing

01:23:59 ◼   ► that I did three weeks ago with the person, go email them and ask them to do that thing

01:24:03 ◼   ► again or whatever the case may be.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And so I don't think that's really feasible.

01:24:07 ◼   ► But a lot of the stuff that and I think even Apple started to talk about this at WWDC last

01:24:13 ◼   ► year, things like, you know, make an appointment for the thing that's on my screen right now or

01:24:16 ◼   ► add the thing that's on my screen to the calendar.

01:24:19 ◼   ► That, I feel like, is an achievable problem.

01:24:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think this middle paragraph nails it.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Other companies have done it.

01:24:25 ◼   ► It's not like we're asking for something that no one else has done.

01:24:28 ◼   ► This is a thing that people have done.

01:24:30 ◼   ► You know, Amazon's voice assistant and Google assistant before it.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Forget about LLMs.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Predating, entirely predating LLMs.

01:24:38 ◼   ► What those other Siri-like products were doing then without LLMs, that's what I would consider

01:24:44 ◼   ► a, quote, properly functioning Siri.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Don't need any LLMs, no world knowledge, no friend that you can have a conversation with.

01:24:51 ◼   ► No, none of that.

01:24:52 ◼   ► Just the basic stuff that Siri is supposed to do that other assistants did faster and better

01:25:00 ◼   ► with more flexibility.

01:25:00 ◼   ► And if anything, it seems like Siri is backsliding being able to do less today than it could before

01:25:06 ◼   ► LLMs arrived.

01:25:07 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I think it's entirely achievable.

01:25:09 ◼   ► I think the mistake is believing that properly functioning Siri is like a magical little person that

01:25:15 ◼   ► you can talk to.

01:25:16 ◼   ► No, that's that's not properly functioning Siri.

01:25:18 ◼   ► That's a fantasy for everybody.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Nobody has that.

01:25:20 ◼   ► And LLMs can give us a glimpse of some aspects of that and blah, blah, blah.

01:25:23 ◼   ► But forget about that.

01:25:24 ◼   ► We just want to be able to talk in a normal conversational tone of voice without being

01:25:29 ◼   ► careful about exactly how we phrase it and getting it to set timers for us and answer

01:25:34 ◼   ► the phone and turn the volume up and add a reminder.

01:25:37 ◼   ► And, you know, that type of stuff.

01:25:39 ◼   ► That's what I would consider a properly functioning Siri.

01:25:42 ◼   ► When you can ask it things like, you know, how many days until Thanksgiving and it gives

01:25:46 ◼   ► you the correct answer.

01:25:47 ◼   ► No LLMs are required for this.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I promise you like doing date math, knowing when the Super Bowl is like being able to have

01:25:55 ◼   ► some integration with Apple's own services.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Like when does the next episode of severance air?

01:26:00 ◼   ► Like these are all achievable.

01:26:02 ◼   ► No, no, quote unquote, AI required.

01:26:05 ◼   ► That's why it's so frustrating.

01:26:06 ◼   ► So, yeah, I think it is definitely achievable because other people have achieved it because

01:26:10 ◼   ► you can ask Google assistant things with and it gives you much better answers.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And again, forget about world knowledge.

01:26:16 ◼   ► Forget about how tall is Tom Cruise.

01:26:17 ◼   ► Forget about anything like that.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Just, you know, setting reminders, setting timers, doing all that.

01:26:22 ◼   ► It's just Apple is so far behind here.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Like we don't even have Siri doing the basics that it used to do reliably.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Like we're so far behind.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Like what, what I expect out of a quote, you know, properly functioning Siri.

01:26:39 ◼   ► Like what I expect there is not the concept video they demoed last year at WBC about like,

01:26:46 ◼   ► we're going to look through all your email and find out your mom's flight for you.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Like it's not even like, that's pretty ambitious.

01:26:51 ◼   ► It's not the stuff of like, we're going to have this be able to book flights for you and book

01:26:56 ◼   ► an entire vacation.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Like, no, not even, you know, all that garbage that the other tech companies keep like demoing

01:27:02 ◼   ► concept videos or promising for the future.

01:27:04 ◼   ► Like that's not what we're asking or expecting.

01:27:08 ◼   ► We just want it to do things that we know it can and should do because every other voice

01:27:14 ◼   ► assistant has been doing them for years.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Like it's not, it's not that complicated or impossible because we know we we've seen it

01:27:23 ◼   ► be done by, you know, Google assistant Alexa.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Like we've seen them do these things for years now.

01:27:30 ◼   ► So we know it's possible.

01:27:32 ◼   ► We know that the state of the art is very capable and, you know, we're just, we're not

01:27:37 ◼   ► asking for the world.

01:27:38 ◼   ► We're asking for basic functionality to be more reliable and a little bit smarter.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Steven Klink writes, with the near ubiquitous presence of Apple Pay these days, do you still

01:27:50 ◼   ► carry a wallet on you most of the time?

01:27:51 ◼   ► Even if it's still something you usually bring with you, do you ever take trips without it

01:27:55 ◼   ► and just rely on your phone for payment?

01:27:56 ◼   ► I see a ton of younger folks just assuming Apple Pay will be accepted wherever they go.

01:28:00 ◼   ► How long do you think it'll be before I as an older person will feel comfortable leaving

01:28:04 ◼   ► my wallet at home?

01:28:05 ◼   ► For me, comfortable leaving the wallet at home?

01:28:07 ◼   ► Never.

01:28:08 ◼   ► I'm also the kind of idiot that carries a little bit of cash with me all the time because I'm

01:28:13 ◼   ► that old, kids.

01:28:14 ◼   ► But for me, I do carry a wallet.

01:28:16 ◼   ► I should have brought it in here with me.

01:28:18 ◼   ► I forgot to.

01:28:19 ◼   ► But off the top of my head, it has in there my driver's license, the one credit card that

01:28:24 ◼   ► Aaron and I use for like 90% of our purchases, the business credit card just in case.

01:28:29 ◼   ► I think I have our personal debit in there if I'm not mistaken.

01:28:34 ◼   ► And then a couple of insurance cards because we are a failing backwards nation that needs

01:28:40 ◼   ► that sort of thing.

01:28:41 ◼   ► And a little bit of cash.

01:28:43 ◼   ► And so I don't really feel right if I don't have my wallet with me outside of the house.

01:28:50 ◼   ► I don't typically ever leave it at home on purpose.

01:28:54 ◼   ► There have certainly been occasions that I'll leave the house without it, but I don't care

01:28:58 ◼   ► for it and I don't generally do it.

01:29:00 ◼   ► And that's in no small part because oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes if I'm leaving

01:29:04 ◼   ► the house, I'm driving somewhere and I need to have my driver's license.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And I think that there's some sort of like grace period where you can provide a driver's

01:29:11 ◼   ► license later in Virginia if you don't have it when you're driving.

01:29:13 ◼   ► But you're certainly supposed to have it.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And we're not one of those cool states that lets you do the driver's license on your phone

01:29:19 ◼   ► thing.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know that I would ever really feel comfortable without it.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Although I will say that I believe Home Depot finally caved with regard to Apple Pay.

01:29:29 ◼   ► They did.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Kroger finally caved with regard to Apple Pay.

01:29:31 ◼   ► We very rarely go to Walmart, but we do occasionally go to Walmart.

01:29:35 ◼   ► And so that is, I think, maybe the only holdout because I'm pretty sure Kroger was the last

01:29:40 ◼   ► big one.

01:29:41 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, Apple Pay is pretty much everywhere now.

01:29:46 ◼   ► Anywhere, I'm sorry, anywhere that I frequent.

01:29:48 ◼   ► But I don't think I could go without my wallet.

01:29:52 ◼   ► Let's end with George Costanza and start with Marco, please.

01:29:55 ◼   ► I think it's one of those questions where it depends a lot on what kind of situations you

01:30:03 ◼   ► find yourself in and how predictable and known they are.

01:30:06 ◼   ► And suppose you live in most of America.

01:30:10 ◼   ► In most of America, you have not a ton of independent stores you're going into a lot.

01:30:17 ◼   ► You're going into a lot of like, you know, chain stores, big retailers, big box stores.

01:30:21 ◼   ► You're very likely that those stores are going to take Apple Pay.

01:30:26 ◼   ► But if you're somewhere with like, you know, like a little dense town or whatever, and you

01:30:30 ◼   ► have like little mom and pop deli or whatever, like that's going to be a lot less likely for

01:30:34 ◼   ► that to always work.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And when you see like, you know, what Stephen asked here is, you know, they say, I see a

01:30:41 ◼   ► ton of younger folks just assuming Apple Pay will be accepted wherever they go.

01:30:44 ◼   ► I think what you're seeing there is youth and young people oftentimes are not prepared for

01:30:52 ◼   ► some situation in the world, not because that situation doesn't exist, but because they haven't

01:30:57 ◼   ► seen it yet.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And so you can't really necessarily look at young people and be like, well, they don't

01:31:02 ◼   ► even have to consider this.

01:31:03 ◼   ► So maybe it's going away.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Like that isn't, that doesn't necessarily follow.

01:31:06 ◼   ► Like, you know, we see what we've seen a lot in technology is when, when people have young

01:31:13 ◼   ► kids and we've all been these people, when people have young kids, they'll, they'll use

01:31:17 ◼   ► an iPad and we'll say kids in the future don't even care about computers.

01:31:22 ◼   ► They just, they'll just do everything on iPads until they get old enough and they start

01:31:27 ◼   ► caring about computers.

01:31:28 ◼   ► And then it's like, oh, okay, well that, that was just youth.

01:31:30 ◼   ► That wasn't, that wasn't that computers are going away.

01:31:33 ◼   ► It's that these young people, you know, these kids didn't have a need for a computer or weren't

01:31:40 ◼   ► motivated to use a full blown computer because an iPad solved their needs.

01:31:43 ◼   ► Well, if you're like, you know, a teenager going around town, like you could just have a

01:31:48 ◼   ► phone and beep into everything and it's probably fine.

01:31:51 ◼   ► You might have to occasionally like ask before you sit down somewhere, hey, do you take Apple

01:31:55 ◼   ► Pay?

01:31:55 ◼   ► Like, and some, sometimes you won't, sometimes the answer will be no.

01:31:59 ◼   ► And, you know, you'll have to go try somewhere else.

01:32:02 ◼   ► You might assume a place takes Apple Pay, sit down, realize they don't.

01:32:05 ◼   ► And then God knows what you have to do, you know, jump, jump through some hoops to, to figure

01:32:09 ◼   ► that out.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Eventually when, when you have like, you know, dads, like the three of us, like when you have

01:32:17 ◼   ► us walking around, it's like, we've seen situations, we've been in situations where we weren't

01:32:22 ◼   ► prepared and it kind of, you know, it kind of scares us a little bit too deeply.

01:32:27 ◼   ► So now that's why we carry around like, you know, cases carry around like, you know, cash

01:32:31 ◼   ► from, you know, maybe like some, some Canadian bills in case we end up there, an HDMI cable,

01:32:36 ◼   ► like you never know when you're going to need this stuff.

01:32:38 ◼   ► But the reality is, again, it depends a lot on where you go, what you do during that.

01:32:43 ◼   ► If you're just going to work and going to the gas station and going to the same two restaurants

01:32:47 ◼   ► most days, and you know, all those things take Apple Pay.

01:32:50 ◼   ► Okay, then that's fine.

01:32:51 ◼   ► I think most people tend to need a credit card and or cash at some point in regular everyday

01:33:01 ◼   ► life still.

01:33:01 ◼   ► And so to answer the question, I still carry a wallet all of the time, not around my house.

01:33:08 ◼   ► But if I, if I leave my house, there is a wallet in my pocket and it has a bunch of credit

01:33:13 ◼   ► cards and it has some cash and it has my driver's license and all of the, and you know, the usual

01:33:18 ◼   ► stuff.

01:33:19 ◼   ► It's not even a big wallet.

01:33:20 ◼   ► It only has a few cards, but like it's still, it still has cards.

01:33:24 ◼   ► And I think I'm going to need them for quite some time.

01:33:27 ◼   ► And once you're carrying a wallet at all, whether it has one card or three cards and some bills

01:33:34 ◼   ► doesn't actually really make that big of a difference.

01:33:36 ◼   ► So like once you're carrying it at all, you might as well prepare yourself for more situations

01:33:41 ◼   ► and have a bit of cash too.

01:33:42 ◼   ► And you know, if you're say, if your one card is an American Express, you know, also maybe

01:33:47 ◼   ► carry a visa, you know, like that kind of thing too.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Like, you know, there, there's, there's all these considerations.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Like once, once you want to be prepared for most things, you know, you can, you can make

01:33:56 ◼   ► more, add more things in there.

01:33:58 ◼   ► But all this is to say that I think the dream of having no wallet is, and, and, and rather

01:34:05 ◼   ► I should say, I guess, cause you can always have one of those like phone back things, the

01:34:08 ◼   ► dream of carrying no other cards and just using Apple pay and no cash, no cards, not having

01:34:14 ◼   ► a driver's license for some reason.

01:34:16 ◼   ► Like I think that's still a dream for most people.

01:34:18 ◼   ► And I don't think we're that close to it.

01:34:21 ◼   ► Now, before we have John answer the question, what, do we remember what ATP recording it

01:34:28 ◼   ► was?

01:34:28 ◼   ► I remember being in Marco's hotel room in San Francisco.

01:34:31 ◼   ► It's too bad we weren't on a BMW race course, huh?

01:34:33 ◼   ► I know, right?

01:34:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:34 ◼   ► You remember every detail of that.

01:34:35 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:34:37 ◼   ► John held up his absolutely ridiculous Costanza wallet and I will never forget it.

01:34:41 ◼   ► There is a picture of it, which I'm trying to dig up.

01:34:43 ◼   ► It was, it was San Francisco.

01:34:44 ◼   ► So you should go back to the San Francisco years.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Ugh.

01:34:47 ◼   ► I'll have to, no promises, but I'll see if I can dig it up.

01:34:50 ◼   ► You can find the picture of it if you want, cause I have it too.

01:34:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:34:51 ◼   ► Well, either way.

01:34:52 ◼   ► Uh, so John, have you pared down your wallet any, or is it still 14 feet tall?

01:34:56 ◼   ► Well, first I want to talk about the, uh, the youth thing, uh, slightly different take

01:35:00 ◼   ► on that.

01:35:00 ◼   ► So, um, having seen my kids go through this, uh, at first the reason, well, the reason my

01:35:07 ◼   ► kids anyway, and it may be different for your kids as they come upon this age, my kids,

01:35:12 ◼   ► uh, started paying for things with Apple pay.

01:35:15 ◼   ► That was the first way they essentially paid for things period.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And it's because kids generally can't get credit cards until they get a little bit

01:35:24 ◼   ► older.

01:35:24 ◼   ► So it's a very, I don't know if a 15 year old can have a credit card, but even when you

01:35:27 ◼   ► get a little bit older, it's not as easy as you would think to get a credit card and kids

01:35:31 ◼   ► aren't going to do it on their own.

01:35:33 ◼   ► But because of the magic of Apple pay and parental things and Apple pay cash or whatever, all my

01:35:38 ◼   ► kids had the ability, they had essentially money on their phone.

01:35:42 ◼   ► We would send them through Apple pay cash thing with the Apple pay family thing.

01:35:45 ◼   ► They could pay for things for their phone before they ever had a job, certainly before

01:35:49 ◼   ► they ever had credit cards.

01:35:50 ◼   ► That becomes their experience of paying for things.

01:35:53 ◼   ► And that leaves an impression when they get older and actually have credit cards and have

01:35:58 ◼   ► jobs and do get paid.

01:35:59 ◼   ► Still, they never come in contact with cash because they're paid direct deposit into their

01:36:03 ◼   ► account and they still want to pay for things with their phone.

01:36:06 ◼   ► I'm not sure my son has ever paid for anything with cash.

01:36:10 ◼   ► Granted, he doesn't buy too much stuff.

01:36:12 ◼   ► My daughter has paid for things for cash, but she only does it grudgingly and considers any

01:36:17 ◼   ► place that doesn't let her bloop with her phone to pay for things as just hopelessly backwards.

01:36:22 ◼   ► You know, and that's but it doesn't mean they're not carrying wallets, though, because they're

01:36:28 ◼   ► kind of in the same situation I'm in where the wallet essentially becomes like Casey said

01:36:33 ◼   ► this to a conveyance for your driver's license, because our state doesn't allow you to have

01:36:38 ◼   ► any kind of phone based driver's license.

01:36:40 ◼   ► And once you're driving, you need to have your license on you.

01:36:42 ◼   ► I don't know what the rules are about not having it.

01:36:44 ◼   ► I don't want to take that risk.

01:36:45 ◼   ► You need your license when you're driving.

01:36:46 ◼   ► So what's in my kids' wallets?

01:36:49 ◼   ► Their driver's license.

01:36:51 ◼   ► Is there any cash in there?

01:36:52 ◼   ► Almost never.

01:36:54 ◼   ► Or if there is, like it's because they bloop for somebody and that person gave them cash

01:36:57 ◼   ► and they're like, what do I do with this paper?

01:36:58 ◼   ► And they just shove it in there and never look at it again.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Like cash is not a part of their lives.

01:37:02 ◼   ► I actually think we are way closer than it seems to not having to deal with cash because

01:37:08 ◼   ► I'm seeing two people grow to adulthood and basically ignore the existence of cash and

01:37:14 ◼   ► credit cards, despite having both of them in favor of using their phones to pay for everything.

01:37:19 ◼   ► And then before I get to myself, I'll say that my wife's angle on this, it's my experience

01:37:24 ◼   ► that, well, at least my wife anyway, has a wider variety of ways she can carry stuff out

01:37:31 ◼   ► of the house.

01:37:31 ◼   ► She has a bunch of different purses.

01:37:33 ◼   ► She has a bunch of different bags for work.

01:37:35 ◼   ► She has luggage when she's traveling for work.

01:37:38 ◼   ► Like there's lots of different combos you can do.

01:37:40 ◼   ► But one of her mainstays is that she has transformed her phone into a wallet with Apple's little MagSafe

01:37:46 ◼   ► wallet thingy.

01:37:47 ◼   ► So her phone has driver's license and credit cards on it.

01:37:50 ◼   ► So it's like, do you want to just go out with your phone or do you need to have your wallet?

01:37:53 ◼   ► What if your phone is your wallet?

01:37:54 ◼   ► What if you bring your phone with you and it also has your credit card and driver's license in it?

01:37:58 ◼   ► Then you've basically got that covered.

01:38:00 ◼   ► She also has purses and things with increasingly large collections of credit cards and room for

01:38:06 ◼   ► cash and all that other stuff or whatever.

01:38:07 ◼   ► So that's there's a lot of variety there.

01:38:10 ◼   ► But I think it is actually possible to go out with just your phone without leaving behind

01:38:14 ◼   ► your credit cards.

01:38:15 ◼   ► It's pretty hard to put cash in there, but certainly you can have credit cards and driver's

01:38:18 ◼   ► license and stuff.

01:38:18 ◼   ► As for me personally, I still have that giant wallet that Casey was talking about.

01:38:23 ◼   ► It doesn't have as much stuff in it before.

01:38:25 ◼   ► Was it pared down on some credit cards and stuff?

01:38:27 ◼   ► But it has a surprising amount.

01:38:28 ◼   ► It's got my driver's license.

01:38:29 ◼   ► It's got my like Casey, my main the main family credit card.

01:38:33 ◼   ► It's got my business credit card that I pretty much never use, but it's in there.

01:38:36 ◼   ► It's got health care card for me and my kids because I take them to doctor's appointments.

01:38:40 ◼   ► And so it's handy to have their cards because that's the other thing.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Like, why don't your kids have the health care cards?

01:38:44 ◼   ► What would they carry it in their wallet?

01:38:46 ◼   ► Are they driving?

01:38:47 ◼   ► No, then they won't have the card with them.

01:38:49 ◼   ► That's just a fact of life.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Hold on.

01:38:51 ◼   ► In all fairness, regarding health insurance cards in the US, my current health plan just

01:38:57 ◼   ► never mailed us cards.

01:38:59 ◼   ► I haven't had a health insurance card for like a year and a half.

01:39:02 ◼   ► And it's been occasionally annoying in the sense that when a doctor asks like, all right,

01:39:08 ◼   ► can I see your card?

01:39:09 ◼   ► I every time have to say, well, we don't have cards, but I can give you the numbers.

01:39:13 ◼   ► I can give you like my subscriber number and the plan name and whatever else.

01:39:18 ◼   ► And so far it has worked every time.

01:39:21 ◼   ► It's been fine.

01:39:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:21 ◼   ► Unlike driver's license, you don't actually have to have the card, but they do always ask

01:39:25 ◼   ► for like a scan of it.

01:39:26 ◼   ► And it's like, can I just Apple, can I just airdrop you a JPEG?

01:39:29 ◼   ► And the answer is no, like whatever.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Like you don't actually need it, but I do have it because it does come in handy and it just

01:39:34 ◼   ► it just simplifies things.

01:39:36 ◼   ► And also the health care cards that we have are, they're not credit card thickness.

01:39:39 ◼   ► They're really flimsy or whatever.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Anyway, and I do also how I have my debit card in there as well.

01:39:44 ◼   ► And my AAA card, um, AAA, AAA, AAA, this is a lot of cards you can do in the wallet

01:39:49 ◼   ► app.

01:39:50 ◼   ► You have to, I think you have to install the AAA app, which stinks.

01:39:52 ◼   ► I should try that thing because I would gladly get rid of that card.

01:39:54 ◼   ► It does seem like a lot, but it's less than I had before.

01:39:57 ◼   ► But I also do have a part of my wallet that contains cash.

01:40:00 ◼   ► And I do find myself having to use it sometimes.

01:40:03 ◼   ► For example, the person who cuts my hair there, the haircutting place lets you pay for the haircut

01:40:07 ◼   ► with credit card, but they don't, they don't accept a tip on the credit card.

01:40:11 ◼   ► You have to tip in cash.

01:40:13 ◼   ► They used to accept tips in Venmo, but they stopped doing that.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I think when Venmo changed the rules or whatever.

01:40:17 ◼   ► So anyway, this is all like tax avoidance crap, but tipping for my haircut, I always got to

01:40:20 ◼   ► make sure I have cash.

01:40:21 ◼   ► Um, where else do I need to have cash?

01:40:24 ◼   ► There are other instances.

01:40:25 ◼   ► Oh, there's places in the North end that only take cash because they're old school.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Right?

01:40:30 ◼   ► So I do tend to want to have cash on me.

01:40:32 ◼   ► I don't always, because my wife has cash on her much more reliably than I do.

01:40:36 ◼   ► I don't know if she encounters more places where she needs cash or just feels comfortable.

01:40:40 ◼   ► Very often I will see that there's not been cash on my wallet for three weeks.

01:40:43 ◼   ► I'm about to go to haircut and I got to go ask my wife for cash so I can have money for a tip.

01:40:47 ◼   ► Um, but I'm not opposed to going out with only my phone, but because I want to have my driver's

01:40:56 ◼   ► license with me, uh, most of the time, even if, even if I'm not driving, like if I'm going somewhere,

01:41:01 ◼   ► my wife is driving and I'm just the passenger, I still bring my license because I don't know,

01:41:05 ◼   ► what if she, uh, doesn't feel like driving home or what if she wants to drink at the restaurant

01:41:10 ◼   ► and I don't, and then I can drive home, you know, like I'm just always, I want always going to be

01:41:13 ◼   ► ready to be a driver, even if I am not actually the one who's driving.

01:41:17 ◼   ► And I, even though she loves the magnetically attached wallet thingy, I'm not big on that.

01:41:23 ◼   ► I feel like it could come off.

01:41:24 ◼   ► So I'm just, yeah.

01:41:26 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm always going, I'm out with my wallet and my phone and my wallet is too big.

01:41:31 ◼   ► I grant it's too big, but it's slimmer than it was, you know, like all of us, like we're

01:41:35 ◼   ► all maybe a little bit too big, but if you're, if you're slimmer than you were, you're going

01:41:38 ◼   ► in the right direction.

01:41:39 ◼   ► So I'm working on it.

01:41:41 ◼   ► Uh, and the other thing, I have a lot of sense of mental value for that wallet.

01:41:44 ◼   ► Cause I've had it, I think longer than my kids have been alive.

01:41:47 ◼   ► It's maybe a 25 year old wallet that tracks, it's a little worse for wear, but I has a

01:41:54 ◼   ► lot of sentimental value to me.

01:41:55 ◼   ► So I like my wallet.

01:41:57 ◼   ► I'm going to keep my wallet.

01:41:58 ◼   ► Um, but if I could, if I have my driver's license on here, uh, and I do have like all the cards

01:42:03 ◼   ► that are my wallet or on here and if I can get a triple A card here, I would gladly go with

01:42:06 ◼   ► just my phone.

01:42:07 ◼   ► And it's just that, as you both said, I do have a lot of experience of situations where

01:42:12 ◼   ► my phone is not enough and not everybody in a group traveling needs to have all the things

01:42:18 ◼   ► at all the times, but I do feel like it's kind of my role to be the backstop against the people

01:42:22 ◼   ► who didn't bother bringing cash and who didn't, who didn't remember to bring the healthcare card

01:42:27 ◼   ► and who don't know what their triple A number is.

01:42:29 ◼   ► And the card's not there.

01:42:30 ◼   ► Like that's me.

01:42:31 ◼   ► So that's the role I fill.

01:42:32 ◼   ► All right.

01:42:34 ◼   ► And then, uh, finally Dylan Copeland writes, uh, recently a friend and I went on a holiday

01:42:40 ◼   ► together and as a way to share photos, I created a shared library and manually added the relevant

01:42:44 ◼   ► photos to it.

01:42:45 ◼   ► It, this seemed to work great as the photos turned up on her iPhone.

01:42:49 ◼   ► She now has added photos to the shared library, but they are not appearing on my devices.

01:42:52 ◼   ► Trying to research this problem.

01:42:54 ◼   ► I'm now wondering whether we should have done a shared album instead of a shared library.

01:42:58 ◼   ► I've read through several articles on the differences between the two and one to use each.

01:43:01 ◼   ► And I am none the wiser.

01:43:02 ◼   ► Shared library seems to be the one that does what I want.

01:43:05 ◼   ► I think apart from each of us actually being able to see the photos the other has added

01:43:09 ◼   ► to the shared library, I'm playing paying for iCloud.

01:43:12 ◼   ► So I want the photos to be counted against my storage limit.

01:43:15 ◼   ► Anyway, that's the issue in a nutshell.

01:43:16 ◼   ► Any clarification or advice would be greatly appreciated.

01:43:19 ◼   ► I feel like I've lost track on what the right guidance is here.

01:43:22 ◼   ► So, uh, not because of Dylan, just because in general, I don't think I understand what the

01:43:28 ◼   ► bestest answer is.

01:43:29 ◼   ► So if one of you has it, please feel free.

01:43:31 ◼   ► I already responded to Dylan about this just to didn't leave him hang because I don't even

01:43:35 ◼   ► know how long this has been in there.

01:43:36 ◼   ► We've got a, we've got a long queue of SKDP.

01:43:38 ◼   ► Anyway, um, this is part of the problem with Apple's progress on photo sharing stuff.

01:43:45 ◼   ► They have this legacy of features that they've added before they got around to adding the

01:43:50 ◼   ► one big feature that I want, which is the shared library, which allows my wife and I

01:43:54 ◼   ► to contribute our photos to one shared photo library.

01:43:57 ◼   ► That's features.

01:43:58 ◼   ► Great.

01:43:59 ◼   ► I waited for over a decade for it.

01:44:01 ◼   ► It finally arrived.

01:44:02 ◼   ► It seems to be working well, but it has serious limitations in that.

01:44:06 ◼   ► I believe still, this is the case.

01:44:08 ◼   ► You can have one shared library.

01:44:11 ◼   ► So Dylan went on this vacation and made a shared library.

01:44:13 ◼   ► It's like the functionality worked great other than that bug, which I, that just sounds like

01:44:16 ◼   ► a bug to me.

01:44:17 ◼   ► Like it should work both ways.

01:44:18 ◼   ► But anyway, shared library is the richest way to share a bunch of photos with another person

01:44:23 ◼   ► that Apple provides, but you only get to do it once.

01:44:26 ◼   ► And I guess you could destroy that shared library or leave it or abandon it or whatever, and then

01:44:30 ◼   ► start a new one.

01:44:31 ◼   ► But it's not in, in the sense of like, what should I do if I want to have a shared album

01:44:36 ◼   ► of my vacation stuff, shared library functionally for that particular instance is the right

01:44:42 ◼   ► answer because a shared library is just like you having a photo library.

01:44:45 ◼   ► You can see the photos, you can tag them, you can edit them.

01:44:47 ◼   ► They're full resolution.

01:44:48 ◼   ► They sync to iCloud.

01:44:49 ◼   ► It's like, it's just, it's like the photo library.

01:44:51 ◼   ► It's fully functional photo library, but two people can see it.

01:44:55 ◼   ► It is a shared library.

01:44:57 ◼   ► But only having one of them, only having one of them is like, well, this is great for

01:45:02 ◼   ► the me and my wife solution because we just need the one.

01:45:04 ◼   ► Although honestly, I would like to have one with me and my kids too.

01:45:06 ◼   ► But anyway, but that's just such a severe limitation.

01:45:09 ◼   ► Your other choice is shared album, which long predates shared library.

01:45:14 ◼   ► But that is lower resolution, no editing, a terrible interface and all the apps to adding

01:45:22 ◼   ► and removing people.

01:45:22 ◼   ► You can allow other people to add things to the things to the album, but it's not particularly

01:45:27 ◼   ► granular.

01:45:27 ◼   ► And I wouldn't want to share vacation pictures that way because you want the full res ones.

01:45:32 ◼   ► Like if you took a really good picture of the two of you, I know kids don't care these

01:45:35 ◼   ► days and they just mash the side buttons of their stupid phone to take a screenshot when

01:45:39 ◼   ► a picture they like comes on the screen and they think they're saving photos.

01:45:42 ◼   ► Kids, come on, man, but, but like, do you, if you want, it's a good, like when these are

01:45:48 ◼   ► the best, you know, the beautiful sunset when you're on vacation, get the full resolution

01:45:52 ◼   ► one.

01:45:52 ◼   ► Don't I forget what shared library cuts them down to, but like it's, it is a pale shadow

01:45:57 ◼   ► of an actual shared library, but you can have multiple shared albums.

01:46:03 ◼   ► And I believe there's like a 5,000 picture limit for each shared album.

01:46:05 ◼   ► So there are limits there or whatever.

01:46:06 ◼   ► But anyway, I wish Apple would just do away with shared albums, convert everybody's shared

01:46:11 ◼   ► albums to shared libraries and allow you to have an arbitrary number of shared libraries.

01:46:14 ◼   ► That would be great, but we don't live in that world.

01:46:16 ◼   ► So to answer Dylan's question.

01:46:18 ◼   ► I'm glad you enjoy the vacation with the shared library, but it's a, it's one, you only get

01:46:24 ◼   ► to do that once.

01:46:25 ◼   ► Now you have to decide, do I want to coordinate with my friend to say, Hey, I'm going to remove

01:46:32 ◼   ► abandon slash delete this library.

01:46:34 ◼   ► So please harvest all the pictures from it because I can only ever have one of these.

01:46:38 ◼   ► And I just realized that.

01:46:39 ◼   ► And then the fallback is a shared album or honestly, use a third party service, put it in your own

01:46:43 ◼   ► photo library, you know, upload them using like the smug mug app, or I don't even, I'm, I'm

01:46:48 ◼   ► sorry.

01:46:48 ◼   ► Smug mug is out of business.

01:46:49 ◼   ► I don't even know what the current landscape looks like.

01:46:50 ◼   ► Use Google photos.

01:46:51 ◼   ► Use a, you know, what I do with on vacations.

01:46:54 ◼   ► This is all my photo library.

01:46:55 ◼   ► And then I export the edited full res pictures and then upload them to a Google drive and

01:47:01 ◼   ► send the link to everybody.

01:47:02 ◼   ► It's, it's not great.

01:47:03 ◼   ► This is something that Apple should solve.

01:47:04 ◼   ► It took them over a decade to get shared, to get one shared library and it seems to work

01:47:08 ◼   ► pretty well.

01:47:09 ◼   ► So maybe within the next decade, we will have N shared libraries.

01:47:12 ◼   ► All right.

01:47:13 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsors.

01:47:14 ◼   ► This episode, Wild Grain, Masterclass and Factor.

01:47:18 ◼   ► And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:47:20 ◼   ► You can join us at atp.fm slash join.

01:47:23 ◼   ► One of the perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic.

01:47:28 ◼   ► When you join as a member, you can hear that and all of our other member stuff, including

01:47:31 ◼   ► our member specials, as we mentioned earlier, everything we've done in the past there and

01:47:35 ◼   ► present and of course future, as long as you're a member, you get access to all that atp.fm

01:47:39 ◼   ► slash join.

01:47:40 ◼   ► This week on our, on our bonus topic on ATP Overtime, we're talking about Apple is apparently

01:47:45 ◼   ► as it has already apparently added, uh, AI generated review summaries to the app store.

01:47:51 ◼   ► So you'll get to see all sorts of fun AI work in app store reviews.

01:47:56 ◼   ► What could possibly go wrong?

01:47:58 ◼   ► Thank you for listening, everybody.

01:47:59 ◼   ► And we'll talk to you next week.

01:48:13 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP Overtime, and if you're into Mastodon, you can follow

01:48:34 ◼   ► them at C A S E Y L I S S. So that's Casey Liss M A R C O A R M N T. Marco Armin S I R A C U S A C.

01:48:50 ◼   ► Are any of you thinking about buying a $20,000 pickup?

01:49:09 ◼   ► Cause I, I'm not actually thinking of it, but I'm kind of thinking of it.

01:49:13 ◼   ► So what we're talking about is, uh, this broke for, to entered my world via the verge.

01:49:19 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

01:49:21 ◼   ► Um, but there was a post by Tim Stevens talking about how there's a new, uh, there was announced

01:49:28 ◼   ► a new pickup called, I think the slate pickup is under a slate truck.

01:49:32 ◼   ► I'm sorry, which allegedly is under $20,000 after incentives and it's an electric pickup.

01:49:38 ◼   ► It has no radio.

01:49:40 ◼   ► It has no touchscreen.

01:49:41 ◼   ► It has basically nothing.

01:49:44 ◼   ► It doesn't even have paint.

01:49:45 ◼   ► We're bringing back the ghost of Saturn where all the body panels were like some polycarbonate

01:49:50 ◼   ► or something or other, not polycarbonate, but something, some sort of plastic.

01:49:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:49:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:49:53 ◼   ► And so this is absolutely bananas.

01:49:57 ◼   ► It looks, I think the proportions are more like a key car than a traditional American pickup.

01:50:02 ◼   ► No, they're like a traditional American pickup from the eighties.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Right.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Which is basically a key car now.

01:50:06 ◼   ► Um, but anyways, this thing looks so cool and I kind of want one, even though I, I am the

01:50:13 ◼   ► last person on earth that should buy one.

01:50:14 ◼   ► I love that they're doing this.

01:50:16 ◼   ► I like, yeah, I, I love, first of all, I just love like when car companies do risky things,

01:50:23 ◼   ► like even, you know, even the stupid cyber truck, like I at least, I know there, I know it

01:50:29 ◼   ► has more, you know, political load these days and that's with good reason, but I at least

01:50:35 ◼   ► I'm glad that things like the cyber truck are still, they still exist.

01:50:39 ◼   ► Like people still take design risks with cars because they sure don't take many of them.

01:50:43 ◼   ► Like if you look at every other car on the road, it seems like we have, you know, 12 companies

01:50:48 ◼   ► making the exact same car all the time.

01:50:51 ◼   ► Like we just have so little variety.

01:50:53 ◼   ► And so to see somebody like slate here doing something really different, like this is a

01:51:02 ◼   ► really bare bones car designed to like be kitted out and DIY later and customized like crazy.

01:51:09 ◼   ► It's basically like the framework laptop of cars.

01:51:12 ◼   ► I love that.

01:51:13 ◼   ► That sounds awesome.

01:51:15 ◼   ► Like, even though like, I don't think I would have a use for one, I would not say I would

01:51:21 ◼   ► never have a use for one.

01:51:22 ◼   ► You know, I, and, and I think like, it's such a great idea to like strip stuff down to basics

01:51:28 ◼   ► because like, obviously like, you know, the people who know about car manufacturing are

01:51:31 ◼   ► saying like how genius it is to not have paint because paint apparently like painting and painted

01:51:36 ◼   ► panels and paint management is like one of the most costly parts of making cars.

01:51:40 ◼   ► And that, you know, that makes sense.

01:51:41 ◼   ► Um, and they, they just don't have it.

01:51:42 ◼   ► These are all just plastic panels.

01:51:43 ◼   ► They're meant to like vinyl wrap them if you want to, like, you know, you kind of do what

01:51:47 ◼   ► you want there.

01:51:47 ◼   ► It's a, it's a really good idea.

01:51:49 ◼   ► Um, and the idea of like making cars cheaper, like you might think this would be great for

01:51:57 ◼   ► like, you know, hobbyists and everything.

01:51:59 ◼   ► And it might be, but what I'm thinking is this is genius for fleet vehicles.

01:52:03 ◼   ► Cause like you look at like what, what are the top selling cars in the U S every single

01:52:08 ◼   ► year fleet vehicles?

01:52:10 ◼   ► It's like, you know, the F one 50 basic pickup.

01:52:12 ◼   ► And the reason why is cause like your local power company buys thousands of them.

01:52:17 ◼   ► Like there's like, you know, and every contractor has, has one of those, those white pickup trucks.

01:52:23 ◼   ► They're everywhere.

01:52:24 ◼   ► Every utility, every contractor, every government employee, like every government agency, they're

01:52:29 ◼   ► all driving around like white fleet vehicles.

01:52:32 ◼   ► So something like this, I think would actually have a pretty large potential sales volume

01:52:36 ◼   ► because those vehicles usually are cheap, low, you know, low frills.

01:52:41 ◼   ► Like, you know, cause when, you know, when the government is buying cars for the water

01:52:45 ◼   ► department, they don't care to outfit it with like leather seats and stuff.

01:52:49 ◼   ► Like they, you know, they just get the basic, whatever, whatever is cheapest.

01:52:51 ◼   ► So like, I think this could be pretty big in, in, in that market.

01:52:56 ◼   ► And I think for the DIY wires, I think it'll just be really fun.

01:52:59 ◼   ► Like, I love this idea so much, even if I don't think I would have a need for one right

01:53:04 ◼   ► this second.

01:53:05 ◼   ► I love this idea so much.

01:53:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:08 ◼   ► The difficulty with cars versus say the framework laptop is that the barriers to entry to making

01:53:14 ◼   ► a car of any kind for a new car company are very, very high.

01:53:17 ◼   ► We've seen this with how many, you know, the electrification EVs has given the chance

01:53:22 ◼   ► for lots of new car companies to potentially emerge, to be nimble and move faster than the

01:53:26 ◼   ► big companies.

01:53:27 ◼   ► And it's real hard.

01:53:28 ◼   ► A lot of them try and they fail and they disappear.

01:53:31 ◼   ► And even the few that are out there still struggling, like a Tesla and Rivian.

01:53:35 ◼   ► I mean, Tesla is the one big successful story and Rivian still fighting the good fight, but

01:53:39 ◼   ► like for every Rivian, there's like a Fisker or like there's companies that never even got

01:53:43 ◼   ► to the point where there was a car that anybody could buy.

01:53:46 ◼   ► And Lucid's still out there struggling despite tons of money funding it.

01:53:49 ◼   ► Like just getting to the point where you can sell a car, one car, your first car to an

01:53:54 ◼   ► arbitrary person in the United States.

01:53:56 ◼   ► There's so much you need to do.

01:53:57 ◼   ► It's a very regulated industry.

01:53:59 ◼   ► It costs a lot of money to build one of these, to build a factory, to go through all regulations.

01:54:03 ◼   ► You got to deal with, even if you're an upstart car company, you're like, we're going to do

01:54:06 ◼   ► everything differently.

01:54:07 ◼   ► Well, you kind of have to deal with the giant industry behind the automotive industry that

01:54:13 ◼   ► supplies parts and everything.

01:54:14 ◼   ► And you can say, well, we're not going to do that.

01:54:16 ◼   ► We're going to make all our own parts.

01:54:18 ◼   ► And that's really difficult to do.

01:54:19 ◼   ► Ask Lucid.

01:54:19 ◼   ► So you end up having to deal with the same parts manufacturers as everybody else.

01:54:23 ◼   ► And that sort of drags you back towards the middle.

01:54:25 ◼   ► And it's hard to stay unique and everything.

01:54:27 ◼   ► And then crash testing, reliability, how easy is it to make your first car and not have

01:54:32 ◼   ► things fall apart on it?

01:54:34 ◼   ► Again, ask Tesla, ask Rivian.

01:54:35 ◼   ► The first few years, it's a little rough going.

01:54:38 ◼   ► And those are the success stories.

01:54:41 ◼   ► So even if you have the best intentions and a lot of money and the right idea, it's just

01:54:46 ◼   ► so hard to get that one first car into customers' hands and not have like the wheels fall off

01:54:51 ◼   ► of it or pieces of trim fall off or to some catastrophic problem because cars are complicated

01:54:57 ◼   ► and you've never made one before as a company.

01:54:59 ◼   ► And even if you hire experienced people, just something to be said for the, you know, decades

01:55:04 ◼   ► and decades of experience in large car companies of honing the parts of their products that you

01:55:10 ◼   ► don't think about.

01:55:11 ◼   ► And I hesitate to even say this, but things like door handles or rear view mirrors that,

01:55:16 ◼   ► you know, that you can aim where you want and they stay where you go.