Be Careful Out There
Casey:
Are you sad at all about the M5 leaving?
John:
You should pull the engine noise MP3s off the computer so you can play them anytime you want when you miss it.
Casey:
So let's move on to something super exciting.
Casey:
Let's talk about SQL Server on Linux.
Casey:
I couldn't even get it out with a straight face.
Casey:
I tried so hard I couldn't even do it.
Marco:
Well, this is kind of interesting, right?
Marco:
Because Microsoft has their database SQL Server, which forever has required Windows Server.
Marco:
And I would imagine a lot of Windows Server licenses were exclusively to run Microsoft SQL Server.
Marco:
So them making this or announcing that it will be available for Linux is interesting, you know, because that's because that means, again, like we brought up last week, how them bringing .NET to Linux officially would be, you know, interesting and might have a negative effect on their Windows Server licenses.
Marco:
This will probably have an even bigger negative effect on their Windows Server licenses.
Marco:
So I think what this is showing is that Microsoft would rather that you use .NET and use SQL Server than necessarily be stuck to Windows Server.
Marco:
And so all the reasons that people have for not using Microsoft Server products, now they have one big one less.
John:
fewer then they bring this up last week i don't know maybe i'm misremembering but i remember uh talking about the similar issues of like uh that microsoft is uh becoming more friendly to linux and how people don't like to run linux servers and windows servers the two kind of separate domains of knowledge they really just run all linux servers linux is everywhere in the enterprise um and so that microsoft could
John:
sell you i think i might have said exchange server for linux or something like that but anyway and also like that microsoft could have its own linux distro eventually um and it wasn't you know that was like last week and then this announcement came i mean i'm sure this announcement was telegraph for people who pay more attention to microsoft than i do but i had no awareness they were even close to this but then you know there it went right after last week's show so it uh and i think uh christina warren was also joking about a microsoft linux distro around the same time
John:
I don't see that as implausible, although a couple of people from Microsoft tweeted, oh, you know, we partner with Red Hat and so on and so forth, and we let them do what they do best, which is do a Linux distro.
John:
We don't have one or whatever.
John:
But if Microsoft pursues this strategy to basically we will sell you.
John:
enterprise software and we're not going to be super picky about where you run it like if a lot of customers want to run our software on linux fine we'll we'll sell them a version to run on linux um because they're not not the the everything windows company anymore i mean they haven't been uh for a while now since balmer left basically or maybe even before
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
It's an interesting push for sure.
Casey:
And I'm curious to see where this all ends up.
Casey:
But I like it.
Casey:
I think this is Microsoft playing to their strengths, which we've talked about several times on and off in the past.
Casey:
So good on Microsoft.
Casey:
Moving on, we got a lot of people that wrote in to talk about TV mounting over a fireplace.
Casey:
Because unsurprisingly, a lot of people were perturbed at where I mount my TV.
Casey:
And we got two recurring links, which we'll put in the show notes.
Casey:
And it was Neil Weinstock that I guess was the first one in with these links.
Casey:
One of them is dynamic mounting, which is very similar to the other, which we receive far more often, which is mantle mount.
Casey:
And the two of these things basically allow you to stuff the TV over the fireplace when it's not in use, but then drop it down kind of in front of the fireplace when you are using it.
Casey:
And these are very clever and things that I would never, ever bother with because I just don't care that much.
Marco:
i would be so nervous about this like i mean again i i know that you can make a mount that's super strong and everything but man having it having the tv on the wall is bad enough having it like suspended on this arm that reaches like a couple of feet away from the wall it's like thinking about like the stresses on that mount oh my god i oh i could not sleep at night with that above my tv
John:
or on my TVs are light it would be fine but it is kind of weird though because your room looks weird with your TV kind of hanging in front of the fireplace like I guess it's kind of a solution and the idea is you can push it back up when you want the room to look nicer or whatever but it still seems weird to me
Casey:
And then final piece of follow up.
Casey:
I had tweeted a challenge to you slash our mutual follows that here's the PDF of my owner's manual for my TV.
Casey:
Make it work.
Casey:
I got a plethora of suggestions, most of which were actually very helpful, which I do appreciate because oftentimes with Twitter, that's not the case.
Casey:
So tentatively, I think it may be fixed.
Casey:
It's been very not reliable.
Casey:
Sometimes it seems to be working right, sometimes not.
Casey:
When I say working right, what I mean is that it doesn't overscan or anything like that.
Casey:
It appears to be, I changed a million things at once because I'm a terrible debugger apparently when it comes to these sorts of things anyway.
Casey:
I think it is basically the showroom mode or something like it, some sort of like, ooh, let me do everything automatically mode.
Casey:
When I first changed that, it didn't seem to make a difference.
Casey:
Then all of a sudden it seemed to be working.
Casey:
So gosh, only knows.
Casey:
But the positive sign so far.
Casey:
So thank you to the people on Twitter that had sent in some tips.
Casey:
And in theory, I think it might be better now.
John:
So I think both you and Marco have had people download PDFs of things that you own and read them for you and tell you how to work them.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I think the common thread between us here is that we just don't care enough about this particular thing.
Casey:
Like Marco does not care enough about – Well, but you should care.
John:
About finding the battery in his car?
John:
He cares.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
ish and about knowing how to do shortcuts on the iDrive for example personally i think that's a little weird that you didn't care that much but you know teach their own and for me i could not have possibly cared less about reading the manual to fix this problem i had lived with it for like six years at this point i can live with it some more however now that it is fixed i am quite well tentatively uh i i'm quite pleased that uh that i was gonna say i spent the time but really that the internet spent the time to read the pdf for me so thanks internet
Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Fracture.
Casey:
So this past weekend, we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday and we had gotten her a fracture print of a photo that I had taken of Declan at a park nearby that we really like that she had commented to me.
Casey:
Oh, man, that's a really great picture.
Casey:
I really like it.
Casey:
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Casey:
And that was like a month ago.
Casey:
And so we had pretty much instantly turned around, went to Fracture, knowing her birthday was coming and had that printed, made, pressed, however you want to phrase it.
Casey:
And she opened it up and instantly burst into tears because she was so overjoyed about how good it looked and how awesome it was.
Casey:
And so seriously, kids, give it a shot.
Casey:
It's really good stuff.
Marco:
so i actually have some surprise follow-up oh i thought we were done nope this is surprise follow-up because on my desk right now i have two of the apple smart battery cases oh god seriously seriously we're back to this we're gonna spend even more time on the apple smart battery it's just quick just quick you get one for the the plus and one for regular they don't make it for the plus no one for me one for tiff
Marco:
they only make it in the one size just for the success that's it yeah yeah because the plus already has enough battery life anyway i i have my you know my my cheap amazon one that i got and i i expressed some concern about you know being not mfi certified i'm a little worried about what i might do to my phone but otherwise it seems all right but i decided for this trip tiff wanted one too and i decided let's try these i'll give it a real shot a real honest shot and honestly it's pretty good
Casey:
I feel like this is a common theme with you.
Casey:
Oh, this is crap.
Casey:
Fast forward.
Casey:
You know, that's not so bad.
Marco:
Yeah, you're right.
Marco:
Nobody else would ever do that, Casey.
Marco:
Like Apple and BMWs and iPhone.
Casey:
No, I'm not innocent on this one.
Casey:
I'm not innocent.
Casey:
I'm just bringing you down to my level.
Marco:
I understand the appeal of this case now.
Marco:
So first of all, it is really easy to take on and off because of the weird bendy top.
Marco:
It does indeed look really stupid.
Marco:
Holding it is actually not bad because the little ledge from the bottom edge of the bump, you actually can rest on your pinky and have kind of a nice handhold there.
Marco:
Unless you're John.
Marco:
Unless you're John.
Marco:
But if you hold your phone normally, you can do that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And the smartness aspect of it is really nice where you never have to turn it on or off.
Marco:
Like that to me, that is what really sets it apart above all the other ones is that it is always just automatic and you can see its status in your today view in the batteries widget.
Marco:
And when you first plug it in, it shows both side by side.
Marco:
It shows the case and your battery.
Marco:
So overall, it's actually pretty nice.
Marco:
It still looks stupid.
Marco:
It's still big and clunky.
Marco:
Not as big and clunky as some battery cases I've seen and used, but it's still big and clunky.
Marco:
The only major downside to it besides its stupid looks, I think, now having used it, really the only major downside is that the amount of extra capacity that you get really isn't that great.
Marco:
It's something – I mean, I don't know, something like two-thirds of a charge or half a charge –
Marco:
So it is enough if you need just a little boost.
Marco:
But I feel like on the flight on the way out there, we both drained our cases down to nothing and drained our phones down partially, just like in the airports here and there, you know, going in and out of planes and everything.
Marco:
And yes, you can plug it on the plane, but then you have this cable running across your lap and it's kind of inconvenient and you got to reach in the bag in and out.
Marco:
So like ideally you don't have to.
Marco:
So, you know, ultimately it was, they did provide enough power, but it would be nice if they provided more.
Marco:
If you're going to have the big battery backpack on your phone at all, I would like a little more power than what this offers.
Marco:
Other than that, pretty good.
Marco:
I wouldn't say it's a great value for the money, because they're $100, and you can get other battery cases for $50.
Marco:
So not a great value, but the fact that you never have to turn it on or off, and it just automatically charges your phone as necessary, and it depletes itself first and charges you first...
Marco:
All those things, actually, pretty nice.
Marco:
So that's my abbreviated review of the Apple Smart Battery Case after having mercilessly made fun of it for like three episodes.
Marco:
Did you get a white one?
Marco:
We got one of each color.
Marco:
Tiff insisted on the white.
Marco:
I insisted on the gray.
Marco:
Both colors are crappy colors.
Marco:
The white hasn't discolored itself yet, but I'm sure it will soon.
Marco:
They both pick up tons of pocket lint because they are the rubbery silicone material.
Marco:
Physical form-wise, they're exactly as mediocre as you expect.
Marco:
But they do work pretty well.
Marco:
I would just only wish for a little bit more power.
Marco:
Overall, though, it is not terrible.
Marco:
I expect it to be terrible, and it's not terrible.
Casey:
cool well that's surprising but i guess exciting um yeah i mean the one i have i have this uh battery case i think it's by lenmar and um yeah i mean it's okay it's a little bit clunky but um i think they have a newer one actually now that's thinner um this one i got with my six um
Casey:
i like it it works fine but uh it's definitely big and large and um i don't know if i'd say heavy but certainly not light um so it's it's all right and i don't know maybe if i were to do it again maybe i'd get one of these like you have um to be honest i did get one of those battery packs that you had recommended what what who makes that again
Casey:
Volt Ready.
Casey:
Volt Ready.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
It's got to be reliable.
Casey:
How could it not be?
Marco:
$25 from a company you've never heard of that has all these little flimsy cables on it.
Marco:
It works most of the time.
Marco:
Why not?
Marco:
It works exactly what you'd expect for a $25 battery.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
And I got one of those on your recommendation, which I guess was on someone else's recommendation first.
Casey:
The one I got is a truly hideous gold color because that was the only one that was available at the time.
Casey:
I don't even see it on Amazon anymore, so maybe that's been updated since then.
Marco:
It's too tacky even for Amazon.
Marco:
Seriously.
Casey:
So yeah, I haven't traveled with it yet, but I am going on a trip soon with a plethora of other people, and I presume it will be a mixed crowd of...
Casey:
iPhones and Android phones.
Casey:
And it was appealing to me that this would have a connection for each because I'm a nice guy like that.
Casey:
So we'll see how it goes.
Casey:
If my phone melts, then you can laugh at me and say I should have gotten the smart battery case.
Marco:
I'm not sure I would ever tell somebody they should have gotten the smart battery case.
Marco:
It's not that good and it is fairly expensive.
Marco:
Again, it's expensive for the capacity that you get.
Marco:
But again, it is really nice not to have to manage it, like flip it on or flip it off.
Marco:
Like that part is really nice.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, ultimately, this might be just convincing me that I should probably just go with the 7 plus when the 7 comes out.
Marco:
But we'll see what happens.
Marco:
don't do it man mike might have been right don't do it man no you know well what's what's pushing me more and more towards that as time goes on not only my my battery um preferences but also i i really don't use ipads when i i have i i at least didn't get myself a pro and i'm probably not going to get myself the new you know pro mini whatever whatever
Marco:
the heck they're going to call the the new ipad air with pencil support and pro speakers and pro like style like you know whatever the the rumors from german is that they're going to call it ipad pro also which my theory on that actually not now that we're talking about it like my theory on that is i think it makes sense for apple's current marketing goals to name all the big ipads pro
Marco:
because they want people to be thinking of the iPad as a machine that you can do professional work on to help differentiate it, not only from big phones and everything, but also to help differentiate it from Amazon's six-pack of cheap tablets.
Marco:
They want the iPad to be...
Marco:
a premium product that you can do pro work on if you need or want to so i think that's i think that their goal here if the if they do indeed call it a pro of some form i think their goal here is for you just for you to just think of the ipads as the pro tablets and you'll still have the mini that probably won't be called pro but you know so the only non-pro ipad left will be the mini do they still call that one mini there's no more just plain old ipad
John:
Maybe.
Marco:
I mean, for some of the years that MacBook has existed, there was no just plain old MacBook.
Marco:
And if you look at the laptop lineup, which I think is a fair comparison here.
Marco:
This was covered pretty well on Upgrade and Connected the last couple of weeks.
Marco:
But if you look at the Mac lineup, you have some on the low end, and then you have the entire middle and high end is all called Pro.
Marco:
And that's partially because these are higher end things.
Marco:
Partially because I think Apple realizes that gives the whole line an air of professionalism, of premiumness, superiority.
Marco:
And it kind of makes MacBook, you just follow it with Pro.
Marco:
It kind of makes the whole line seem prestigious to have so many of them called Pro, especially so many of them people actually buy.
Marco:
So to have most of the iPads that end up being sold have Pro in their name
Marco:
I think helps contribute to the perception Apple wants to create that the iPad can be used for pro use.
Marco:
Whether or not it can is a different story.
Marco:
Many people can, many people can't.
Marco:
I'm not going to get into that on this episode.
Marco:
But I feel like that is a plausible reason why they would want to do this.
John:
i was on one of those episodes of upgrade and what i said on that episode was i think that uh the middle the middle size like the plain ipad size the original ipad size i guess you would call it i think there's room to have a model that's that big with pro in the name and a model that's also that big without pro in the name because at this point there are enough pro features the smart connector the pen the high refresh rate screen the speakers the
John:
that it's enough to differentiate it to say the pro one has all that stuff and is more expensive and the non-pro one that is the same size is thinner lighter smaller cheaper and worse than all those other ways doesn't have a smart connector doesn't support the pen at all maybe the camera's crappier maybe it has even last year's cpu or whatever but
John:
It just seems silly to me to require what I consider the regular iPad size to be encumbered by all of the pro features.
John:
I mean, if I just think about what kind of iPads do rich people want to buy for their toddlers, they don't want to buy them the pro.
John:
But mini is not, you know, it's more fun for a toddler to have the big.
John:
screen to like finger paint on and and play little games and just do stuff like that so i really hope eventually maybe maybe for this first one they won't do but i really hope eventually there is a pro 9.7 inch one that's the regular size right yes 9.7 inch yeah there's a there's a pro 9.7 and a non-pro 9.7 because already i mean there aren't even that many pro features but i think there are already enough features to clearly differentiate the two lines that there wouldn't be any confusion about it and
John:
they can hit more price points they could push the pro one up in price and they could push the non-pro one down by using cheaper stuff yeah maybe i don't know we'll see you know knowing tim cook's apple there's probably gonna be like 17 different ipads goodness all right so uh do we want to actually get to what we were planning on talking about today
Marco:
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So there was a bit of a brouhaha over the last week or two about an OS X ransomware attack.
Casey:
This is the one that was in the transmission, which is a BitTorrent client.
Marco:
No, it's a client for acquiring new home videos.
Marco:
Home movies?
Marco:
What does the Apple TV call them?
Marco:
Home videos or home movies?
Marco:
Yeah, home videos I think they're called.
Casey:
So yeah, so Transmission is a BitTorrent client slash home movie acquirer.
Casey:
And apparently, if I understood what happened correctly, the website had been screwed with, hijacked, etc.
Casey:
And somebody re-signed Transmission with a valid Apple cert, although not the original Transmission cert, I believe.
Casey:
that also had ransomware stuffed within it.
Casey:
And so a bunch of people downloaded from the website and got an infected version of transmission.
Casey:
Now, Sparkle, which is the auto updater that many, many, many apps outside of the App Store use, that I believe was written by Andy Matushak originally.
Casey:
Anyway, that, I guess, was not affected, but downloads from the website were.
Casey:
And there was a ransomware virus thing in there that basically said, hey, we have just we've encrypted your entire hard drive.
Casey:
Pay us money or you can never get any of your files back.
John:
I thought it encrypted like individual files, not the whole drive.
John:
Like it didn't it's not whole disk encryption.
John:
It would just like find your files and encrypt them.
Casey:
Yeah, you are correct.
Casey:
So this was a bit of an issue.
Casey:
And the biggest issue is it was signed.
Casey:
I mean, it was a valid Mac app, not for the App Store, of course, but it was a valid Mac app as far as your installation of OS X was concerned because it was signed with a valid development certificate.
Casey:
Shady, perhaps, because it was coming from a very different place than the normal transmission certs.
Casey:
geographically speaking, but it was still a valid cert.
Casey:
So it was a bit of a cluster to say the least.
Casey:
What do we think about this?
John:
well the the big angle that a lot of people started going for was hey if this was on the mac app store this would never have happened and that maybe is true because what you're relying on on the app store is i guess app review to realize that this supposed bit torrent client uh if you wait a couple days and it starts encrypting your files maybe they wouldn't have noticed that because again it does wait a couple days maybe they're trying to wait out app review like if the app reviewer
John:
launch this app and tried using it it would work as expected does app review like leave it on the system running for a couple days or leave it around like maybe it would have got past app review as well um but that's that's one angle on it the other one is that
John:
The developer ID signing thing that Apple has created with Gatekeeper means that you download applications and they come in three forms.
John:
Totally unsigned, you know, pre-Gatekeeper applications, which is how every single Mac app was in all the years before Gatekeeper was created.
John:
applications that are signed with a developer id but don't come to the mac app store and then mac app store applications and that's sort of like three levels of i guess trust the totally untrusted one doesn't require any security you download a binary you run it it runs um and that's you know that's the way mac apps were for most of the life of the mac the developer id ones all that does is tie it back to
John:
an apple developer account which presumably ties back to a person or institution or somebody that you can hold responsible or whatever that's kind of relying on apple's sign up process to correctly identify somebody so like can you go through can you get an apple developer certificate putting in totally fake information probably um but that's that's the only thing that developer id is giving you that well two things one
John:
that your application hasn't been modified in any way which is kind of weird he's like well it wasn't transmission modified well they didn't just modify it they re-signed it so after they modified they signed it with their developer certificate and that certificate authenticated the fact that yes this thing if someone modifies this thing after you download it you'll know about it because the signature won't match but what you're worried about is someone modified it and then signed it and it is uh it is a
John:
you know a valid container for their malware so if anyone tried to mess with their malware signing would have caught it um and then the mac app store like it's the next leg up where there's actual human beings looking at your application and making sure it's okay so why wasn't this application on the mac app store my understanding is the mac app store does not allow BitTorrent clients at all do you guys know if that's the case that's right
Casey:
I believe that to be true.
Casey:
And a quick real-time follow-up, this encryption would never have worked due to sandboxing.
Casey:
So even if it made it through app review, it wouldn't have been able to touch the rest of the... Oh, because it can't get through the files.
Marco:
Well, I mean, in reality, this is a bit torrent client.
Marco:
So it needs to be able to write torrent downloads to a directory.
Marco:
And so what would probably happen is, yes, you could use sandboxing to have it pop up the dialogue and have you choose a directory where it can write...
Marco:
much more likely would be that even if it was sandboxed outside of the mac app store even if it was sandboxed um there would probably just be some option where they're like all right well just you know we need to write your whole drive to make some feature easier or to make this flow better and most people would say okay you can't even get that you can't even get that uh what do you call it entitlement anymore i think
Marco:
I think you're right.
Marco:
Well, so then it just wouldn't be sandboxed and nobody would care.
Marco:
What would make it useful in the App Store is the sandboxing requirement of the App Store, which is problematic in so many other ways.
Marco:
But in this particular case, that would have helped.
Marco:
However, the reality is, as long as there is a way to download apps that aren't in the App Store on the Mac, something like a BitTorrent client is almost certainly going to be downloaded outside of the App Store by almost all of its users.
Marco:
Just because dealing with the App Store kind of sucks, even as a user these days.
Marco:
And you can make a better BitTorrent app without sandboxing.
John:
So where the developer ID thing really came in here is like this transmission could have been the third kind of application that I said.
John:
Not signed with any stuff.
John:
It's just a binary that you download.
John:
It's sort of an old style Mac app.
John:
And if that had been the case and tons of people had downloaded it and it started encrypting their drives, there would be no real way to help them other than education saying, hey, if you accidentally downloaded this from this website during this time, you probably got an infected version.
John:
You should delete it and do this and do that.
John:
And here's how to disinfect your system and so on and so forth.
John:
But because it was signed with a developer ID, Apple could revoke the certificate of that developer ID through the little sneaky update thing that we just described, the checkbox that we didn't think was there.
John:
The reason regular users should keep that checkbox checked is that Apple has central control to make it so this thing doesn't launch anymore.
Marco:
We actually are getting real-time follow-up from Tipster in the chat saying that Apple can blacklist any binary through that system, including unsigned ones.
Marco:
Oh, well, then developer ID wasn't helping at all.
John:
That's a shame.
John:
So what were the makers of Transmission getting out of using developer ID?
John:
I suppose they make people not have to go to their gatekeeper settings and put it in the most insecure mode.
Casey:
Well, no, you can also, what is it, right click and select open and then it'll say, oh my God, are you really sure?
Casey:
And then you can say, yes, yes, I'm really sure.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
What do you get out of the developer ID thing as a developer?
John:
I guess you get less scary experience for users because you don't require them to...
John:
go to a setting that they don't understand and change it in a way that pops up a warning dialogue boxes or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't require them to, like, right-click and select open the first time they run the app and then go through the extra scary.
Marco:
Like, they still have the scary, this is an application you downloaded from the internet dialogue, but...
Marco:
if they just double-click on an app under default settings that is unsigned, it doesn't let them run it.
Marco:
It says, oh, sorry, this is unsigned, and then you have to right-click and say open.
Marco:
So it lets them bypass all of that, which, you know, if you're distributing Mac apps in this day and age, you should almost always have at least developer ID, if not the app store.
John:
And of course, in theory, you can track it back to whoever, whatever Apple developer account signed the bad piece of, you know, and again, that's just get back to detective work.
John:
Can you find someone who you want to hold responsible?
John:
Do they put valid information?
John:
Are they in a country that has a legal system that lets you find them or hold them accountable in some way?
John:
I'm assuming not.
John:
I mean, the other alternative suggested in the chat room is that maybe it was just a legitimate developer.
John:
They got a developer account hacked.
John:
Someone got into their developer account.
John:
Either we're getting their password, doing some other way to get into their developer account.
John:
There's also been a couple of bugs around that make it seem like you could exploit Gatekeeper to execute arbitrary software as if it's trusted.
John:
Those have been...
John:
surmised in in years past but there's there's so many ways you can hide from the consequences of doing this bad thing that that's like the maker of this ransomware like they're they're they're a bad actor here are they going to be caught and punished do we have the tools to do that maybe maybe not probably not i mean not everyone is uh somewhere where you can get at them so anyway x protect the thing that
John:
Downloads little updates in the background and disables things.
John:
Like your Ethernet driver.
John:
It may have disabled your Ethernet driver one week, but the next week it may have saved you from getting your files encrypted by ransomware.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, this is one of those cases where...
Marco:
Most of the time, one of the angles that big business tries to scare people with, to scare them away from piracy is, well, you know, if you pirate stuff, you never know what you're getting.
Marco:
It could be dangerous.
Marco:
You could get hacked.
Marco:
You could get malware.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
most of the time that doesn't happen with piracy like most of the time it's fine and that's one of the reasons so many people do it um but this is like the one time where they were actually right like this where you know this we you really need protections from gatekeeper and from sandboxing and you shouldn't pirate things because you're putting yourself at risk downloading random software from random places like this is the one time where that was actually true
Marco:
But that being said, I think this made for interesting news and it could prompt some interesting discussions for these few days.
Marco:
But I don't think this is going to meaningfully change anything for anybody.
Marco:
It's estimated that I think somebody said that the total number of downloads with the malware included was only something like 6,000, which for something like this, that's not that giant of a number.
Marco:
And then Apple fairly quickly blacklisted the binary, so it probably didn't even trigger the malware, like the encryption step of the malware for most of those people.
Marco:
So this doesn't seem like it's that big of an event.
Marco:
It's more about how we're all talking about, does this change our opinions of what the Mac should be, where it should go, security on the Mac.
Marco:
And that, I think, is a conversation worth having.
Marco:
But this particular malware, I think, is mostly a non-event.
John:
And interestingly, it wasn't pirated software that was infected.
John:
It was the software you used to get the pirated software.
Right, exactly.
John:
Which is slightly different.
John:
And home movies, don't forget.
John:
Yeah, and this is kind of a shame.
John:
developers like this whose applications basically can't be on the mac app store for a policy reason setting aside all the things that you talked about marco about like well the good ones would want full access to your drive and it's less annoying to use this but even just like if they're categorically denied because we think bittorrent clients are are just as a category a thing that we don't want on the mac store for app store for whatever reason
John:
If you're a developer who makes a BitTorrent client and you're trying to, like, do as good a job as you can do not being in the Mac App Store, you would get a developer ID and you would sign your application and you would do all these things.
John:
But, you know, everybody, you know, everyone gets boarded sometimes.
John:
You could end up getting hacked.
John:
They could hack your website.
John:
They could...
John:
shove a little thing inside your downloadable application bundle and your reputation is smeared because everyone you know thinks that whether you knew about it or not it's like oh transmission isn't it that thing that encrypts your drive and and you know like i feel like they're doing everything they could
John:
within the bounds of the technology and the rules of the system they're operating in.
John:
And I feel bad that they had a bad result from that.
John:
I don't blame the developers.
John:
And I do give credit to Apple for putting in the system that they put in so many years ago to give them the ability to deal with this.
John:
But it does make me feel a little bit
John:
less safe about downloading applications on the mac because i you know i downloaded plenty of applications not from the mac app store or from the mac app store for that matter and every single one of those is exploitable through a non-technological means like for example mac app store application i don't have any faith that app review would correctly detect some sort of clever sleeping you know it waits a week and then it wakes up and does something bad to your thing
John:
and all that it takes for that to happen is for someone to get some poor legitimate developers a developer account password and you know muck up one of their builds or submit a build while they're away on vacation or do something else like that's just like a social engineering hack it's nothing to do with technology as far as the entire tech stack is concerned this would be a completely validated approved mac application um
John:
and there would be sandbox and everything like that and i i have you know is there a way to get out of the sandbox within the bounds of the sandbox sandbox can you do all sorts of damage probably like you could turn on the camera you could capture keystrokes typed into that application who knows what you could do um so like there's there is no truly safe scenario um and i i wonder exactly how much safer users are overall in
John:
If applications, if we assume that the Mac App Store is a superior level of security to just developer ID, it seems to me that every category of application that is just not allowed on the Mac App Store for some reason is potentially decreasing the security of users over what they could be if the Mac App Store was more permissive in terms of
John:
sure you can have a bit to our client like it's you know we we don't we don't say those things are you know no matter what we don't say those things are just evil we don't care how you use them because there are legitimate uses for them there's plenty of linux distros and stuff that are distributed via bit torn because it's a fast way to download stuff um anyway uh software is dangerous be careful out there
Marco:
No, man, this is like, that's the argument, one of the strongest arguments for Apple to actually improve the Mac App Store and sandboxing.
Marco:
Because right now they have a situation where the Mac App Store is just beyond disrepair.
Marco:
I mean, it's seemingly totally unstaffed.
Marco:
There's the app itself that is, you know, the store app that runs is...
Marco:
Horrible.
Marco:
It's buggy.
Marco:
It's messy.
Marco:
It's inconsistent.
Marco:
It's outdated.
Marco:
I'd say it's one of the worst apps Apple ships right now, is the Mac App Store app.
Marco:
The service behind it is spotty at best.
Marco:
Review times for developers are lengthy and inconsistent, way worse than iOS.
Marco:
And you have this technical requirement of sandboxing that, while great in theory, is a huge pain for developers because it has also been kind of half-baked in its implementation and also effectively unmaintained.
Marco:
And I want to maybe get to Steve Troughton-Smith's post about his WDC predictions that came up a couple weeks ago and his statement that Mac OS X is a dead platform.
Marco:
um i want to maybe get to that but and maybe this might lead us into that a little bit but it just seems like you know apple started down this path with the app store and sandboxing they they kind of they they said all right here's the future here's how we're going to do this this is going to be great they started and then it seems like nothing has changed since the mac app store launched except the introduction sandboxing which came shortly after that and then it seems like nothing has changed with sandboxing since then either but
Marco:
So we have the situation now where we have what is in theory a great system that could, in theory, protect people's Macs better and have more secure software and have easier distribution.
Marco:
But in practice, the implementation of that system has been fairly mediocre and it's been almost untouched for years.
Marco:
So if Apple really wants to improve the security of the Mac...
Marco:
What they have to do is make these things better.
Marco:
Make the App Store and Sandboxing able to support more apps so that more apps can do it and make them good enough that the developers are incentivized.
Marco:
They actually want to be in the App Store and they actually want to adopt Sandboxing.
Marco:
But it just seems like there's nobody driving the ship or whatever.
John:
If you had been looking at the show notes, you would have seen me push that down for next week.
John:
And if you had not been on vacation, you would have heard me talk about the exact question on Upgrade.
John:
Jason stole that one.
Casey:
Oh, spoiler alert.
Casey:
I haven't listened yet.
Casey:
I was saving it for my car ride coming up tomorrow.
John:
All right.
John:
But I did reject one of the topics that Jason suggested because I wanted to save it for this show.
Casey:
Oh, thanks, buddy.
John:
And it was not that one.
Marco:
I think there's some ground to cover here that you guys didn't cover on Upgrade.
Marco:
Because, you know, you made a good case for what the Mac is and what it should be, which I can summarize, if you'll permit, as basically, like, the Mac should be, like, the rock.
Marco:
Like, the stable, reliable platform that's kind of boring, doesn't get a lot of updates, but is stable and reliable.
Marco:
And I agree.
John:
That was one option.
John:
The other option was you do another OS X type transition.
Marco:
Right, sure.
Marco:
Honestly, though, I don't really see Apple doing that.
Marco:
I mean, I could be wrong.
Marco:
I hope I'm wrong.
Marco:
But it doesn't seem like they devote enough resources to the Mac anymore to really do any more big transitions.
Marco:
I think the era of big Mac transitions is over.
Marco:
And that might be good.
Marco:
It's probably not.
Marco:
But ultimately, it seems like...
Marco:
Modern-day Apple seems to have this severe problem of basically just, as I mentioned before, the drive-by updates because they don't really have enough people that are permanently staffed on major parts of their engineering stuff anymore.
Marco:
It seems like so much of Apple's engineering resources are being devoted to other things.
Marco:
iOS, TV, watch, a car, most likely, other things like that.
Marco:
It seems like they keep moving the talent around so much that there's just nobody left working on boring old things like the Mac.
Marco:
And we haven't even seen how they can do their current platforms yet.
Marco:
We haven't even seen...
Marco:
What happens with watchOS and tvOS this year?
Marco:
They're each less than a year old.
Marco:
Does Apple have the engineering capacity to keep macOS, iOS on the iPhone and the iPad, which are actually quite different these days, tvOS, watchOS, and a future carOS?
Marco:
Do they have the capacity to maintain all of those to a healthy level?
Marco:
From what we've seen so far, I think the answer is probably not.
Marco:
So the question is, what gets backburnered?
Marco:
What gets put in Casey's parking lot full of white cars?
Marco:
What gets ignored?
Marco:
And I think usually it's been the Mac and the iPad.
Marco:
That's usually what gets ignored.
Marco:
This year, the iPad got some attention.
Marco:
We'll see what happens as time goes on.
Marco:
But they probably are not in the position where they're going to devote tons of engineering talent to the Mac.
Marco:
And that's unfortunate.
Marco:
And it is a mature platform that doesn't need a lot of attention.
Marco:
But again, I'm concerned whether they'll be able to do any kind of big changes in the future.
Marco:
So I think it's more likely that we will keep it on its current path of basically being the nice, boring thing that most of us use and depend on very heavily for our work.
Marco:
But it doesn't really get a lot of attention from Apple.
John:
I don't know if it's so much about their capacity to do it as, like, that they're going to put resources towards things with growth potential.
John:
And regardless of the size of the Mac and how it may be growing, I think the company feels that the potential growth does not warrant putting lots of resources behind it.
John:
Versus, say, the watch, where it's conceivable that they could believe that the watch is, like, the start of a whole...
John:
wearables thing and that the potential upside is huge so we're going to put lots of time and effort into the watch and then we'll see if the growth potential is there but the mac i think the company feels like in most customers and observers of the industry feel like there is not a tremendous growth potential in personal computer traditional personal computers anymore
John:
So when it comes time to allocate Apple's billions of dollars, it's easier to make the argument for the car or the watch or even the TV because they're all so small or so new or so non-existent that it's very easy to spin out a tale of potential huge growth.
John:
that we will start down here and the graph will go way up there whereas the mac if it has to argue for its resources it can show what its revenue is and how it's growing faster than the industry and how it's taking share from windows pcs but if they say okay is the mac going to be four times the size it is in a couple years they have to say well no probably not and so maybe they just don't get the resources
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So I think with the Mac, what's important about it is that they just maintain what they've started here.
Marco:
You know, the Mac is the pinnacle of personal computing.
Marco:
It really is the best personal computer out there.
Marco:
And whether or not personal computing has a huge growth potential in front of it, I think you're right, it probably doesn't.
Marco:
But that doesn't mean it's going away.
Marco:
And that doesn't mean it isn't already big and important.
Marco:
And yeah, it isn't as important as the iPhone.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
But it is still really important to a lot of people.
Marco:
And it is also the area in which I would say Apple has the worst and least threatening competition.
Marco:
You know, that Apple has tons of competition, you know, very strong competition in phones, in tablets, in watches, in TV boxes.
Marco:
And they will have tons of competition in cars if they're doing that, which sure sounds like they are.
Marco:
In the Mac, for personal computing,
Marco:
I don't know a lot of Mac users who are like, you know what?
Marco:
I'm tempted to go try Windows.
Marco:
That never happens.
Marco:
Yeah, they don't have... Windows is still the majority market shareholder.
Marco:
But first of all, that says something about growth, I think.
Marco:
But Windows is still the majority holder here.
Marco:
But the Mac is so good.
Marco:
And so many of us rely on it.
Marco:
And I feel like it's Apple's responsibility to keep it decent, to keep it good.
Marco:
Apple needs the Mac also.
Marco:
I mean, what are they writing on these iOS apps on?
Marco:
I guess we can get to Xcode on the iPad as a potential future thing.
John:
Xcode for iOS is coming.
John:
Is it?
John:
Someday.
John:
Remember the Swift announcement?
John:
I totally thought that was going to be... I did tweet about it a while back.
John:
I pinpointed the exact second in the video when they were leading up to the Swift announcement.
John:
They said a couple sentences...
John:
And I thought the sentences were like, this is it.
John:
It's Xcode for iOS.
John:
It wasn't.
John:
But the fact that I was so willing to believe that that's what they were announcing based on their vague introductory statements, it just seems inevitable to me someday.
John:
But yeah, like the Mac, the Mac is not you talk about the weak competitors to the Mac, like, you know, no one wants a Dell running Windows or whatever.
John:
You know, as we all know, the real competitor to the Mac is things that are not personal computers.
John:
Apple knows that everybody knows that the maintenance argument is like, right, well, so until something until and unless something comes along, they can do everything the Mac does better.
John:
Right.
John:
Until the iPad Pro grows into that role or whatever that grows into that role.
John:
Like maybe you're all into VR by then.
John:
Who knows?
John:
Until that happens, we still got Max.
John:
It's still a big business.
John:
You have to put a certain amount of effort into it just to keep that business going.
John:
And that argues for that, like the suggestion you mentioned from Upgrade.
John:
my one of my one or two paths for the mac which is the stability path which is not just like do what it takes to keep the mac sort of humming along the way it is but like you know i i basically describe two strengths of the mac one strength of the mac is
John:
That it is the platform that you expect not to change and grow that much.
John:
Like it's not in the market that's taking off like a rocket ship or whatever.
John:
So how can you turn that into a strength?
John:
You can turn that into a strength by saying, okay, what we're going to do with the Mac year after year after year, it's all we're going to do is find every single thing that doesn't work on it and make it work.
John:
Like that's all we're going to do.
John:
We're not going to care how many bullet points or features that we have.
John:
Like you're not going to add features.
John:
Right.
John:
but every single release all you want to do is brag about how much better the thing you know how much more it does what it was always supposed to do in the first place how much more stable it is you know how how many bugs you squashed uh any part of it you know security would be a great area to go into on the mac because that's kind of a stability thing it's not like a feature like we're really nailing down security even more and more closing more security holes being you know
John:
that's one way to go and so that would make an experience as a mac user it's like well every year there's not a million new features but every year the mac gets better and better like it gets better for the purpose that we're using it and that would be and you would sell it based on that you would say like you can start saying the world's most reliable operating system or bulletproof or you know whatever however you want to spin it like you can sell stability because
John:
if you told any mac user right now that we have a new version of the mac operating system that you know snow leopard style has no new features and not only that but also like we didn't rip out any subsystems and change them or anything we just like we said what it does now we're going to make it do that better people were like yeah sure sign me up if you heard from friends that hey i installed the new mac operating system and everything was exactly the same except for whatever problem i used to have is gone now they would they would love that right
John:
and the other option to go on the mac is what could what is the other strength of the mac uh it's not you have a i'm gonna say it's not battery powered because laptops are the majority of the mac sold but you have a higher power envelope than you do on on uh ipads and phones and stuff like that
John:
you can right now you can put more powerful stuff inside a mac even a laptop than you can inside a phone or tablet because ipads are because uh max and uh you know even the thinnest laptop max and everything they have a higher overhead you can fit more stuff in there you can put a bigger battery and you can put a higher cpu maybe not that much hotter in the case of the macbook one but certainly much hotter in the case of the imac which is plugged into the wall or the mac pro or the 15 inch or whatever um
John:
Take advantage of that.
John:
Pursue the high end there.
John:
Try to install the fastest of the fast stuff.
John:
Cater to the idea that if you have minimal computing needs, get the MacBook One or an iOS device.
John:
But if you really want a big, strong Mac, we'll make you the biggest, strongest Mac that you can have.
John:
And then what you would do with the software is say, every year it's going to get faster and more powerful, and we're going to have...
John:
you know the the the fanciest features and the best gpus and the best cpus and the fastest ssds and stuff like that really make it like a pro product that takes advantage of the mac and so far apple seems to be doing neither one of those things instead they're kind of like limping along every year they feel like they need to do a release where they have some features to tout and they're kind of monkeying around inside there and they do fix the bugs they don't make it super duper fast and you know but they don't on the other hand they don't
John:
do nothing year after year and make it boring and that strategy of sort of maintenance level investment with an outward appearance of every year there's an amazing new os just doesn't seem to be striking a good balance for for customers
Marco:
One thing I would say, too, and Steve Tratton-Smith covered this in his blog post also, I really think that development of apps for the Mac is really seemingly at a standstill.
Marco:
Even Apple can barely keep their own apps developed for the Mac.
Marco:
And certainly third-party development for the Mac seems to be
Marco:
almost non-existent i mean there's just very little action happening there all the actions on ios and obviously a big part of that is that developing apps on ios has a bigger market you know you can you can sell to more people there's more people shopping in the app store so like the chances of you making a ton of money by being on top chart is higher on on ios probably uh but
Marco:
There is a big part of this, too, on the Mac where the Mac does not run UIKit.
Marco:
The Mac runs AppKit, its own older framework that is kind of like UIKit.
Marco:
But when you write apps for iOS, you're running against this newer, kind of cleaner, more modern framework.
Marco:
And when you write apps for the Mac, you're running against this crustier, older framework that has a lot more baggage and legacy in it.
Marco:
And UIKit for iOS was kind of like the new version of the UI framework with all the lessons they've learned from AppKit over the years.
Marco:
And the Mac has gotten some of those lessons ported back to it from iOS for developers to make their lives easier.
Marco:
But I think still not most of them.
Marco:
And I think as a developer who came here kind of through iOS, and I currently am not, I don't have any Mac apps that I've released.
Marco:
Or that I'm working on, really.
Marco:
Don't get crazy.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
So, you know, I would be so much more likely to put effort into Mac apps if they used a version of UIKit.
Marco:
And I've tried AppKit.
Marco:
I've tried making Mac apps before.
Marco:
And I'm sure if I was entirely motivated to do it, I'd plow through and I'd learn and it would be fine.
Marco:
I'd learn AppKit.
Marco:
I'd tolerate the inconsistencies and it would be fine.
Marco:
But the fact is right now, the fact that I have to learn this similar but still fairly different UI framework on the Mac to make Mac apps...
Marco:
That is a big barrier that is discouraging me from doing it.
Marco:
So you have a combination of no UI kit on the Mac, plus the crappy app store situation, plus the fact that it's a smaller market to begin with.
Marco:
I feel like something there has to change for developers to be interested in making Mac apps.
Marco:
And right now, it seems like nothing is on the horizon for any of those two things to change.
Marco:
And AppKit proponents or experts can make all the same arguments that shouldn't matter that people like me make about Swift not being necessary.
Marco:
You can look at that and you can say, well, I could learn Objective-C, but it has all these ugly brackets.
Marco:
I don't want to.
Marco:
And Swift comes along eventually, and Swift is getting a lot of people into iOS and Mac development who weren't there before because they just didn't want to learn Objective-C.
Marco:
A similar kind of effect could happen on the Mac with UIKit.
Marco:
If they brought UIKit in some form, obviously it couldn't be identical, but if they brought it in some form to the Mac, I think that would really bring in a lot of developer interest and really help reignite third-party interest in the Mac as an application platform.
Casey:
So I hear us, and we're not the only ones, talk about, well, the Mac App Store is a dumpster fire, which, to be frank, it kind of is.
Casey:
Nobody's doing much for the iPad these days, by and large.
Casey:
Obviously, Federico, amongst others, would disagree.
Casey:
But certainly there's a lot of people that aren't paying a lot of attention to the iPad.
Casey:
You're not paying much attention to the iPad, Marco, for example.
Casey:
And, oh, pay up front apps are a dumpster fire.
Casey:
Maybe that's a poor way of phrasing it, but they don't really work.
Casey:
The only thing that's even slightly working seems to be free within-app purchase.
Casey:
So I feel like the three of us, and again, we're not the only ones, say the Mac App Store sucks.
Casey:
iPad App Store sucks.
Casey:
The iPhone App Store has a lot of great options, but it sucks to make money in.
Casey:
are we crazy?
Casey:
Like there's a lot of apps in the app store and there's a lot of stuff getting made every single day.
Casey:
So why?
Casey:
Like either we're a little bit crazy or it's just not as dire as we think it is.
Casey:
Does that make sense?
Casey:
Like it just, the situation cannot be as bad as we're painting it.
John:
i think you're confusing different kinds of badness all right so one kind of badness uh is uh the the fact that it doesn't seem to be a lot of people making new mac applications like there's every week there aren't thousands of new mac applications most of which may be crap but every once in a while there's a good one like there's not a lot of activity not a lot of churn not a lot of like
John:
There's not a growing base of customers to sell to.
John:
That base is small and there's not tons and tons of developers knocking on the door to make tons of new Mac apps.
John:
So that's one kind of ailment because if you have a software market and not many people are making new applications for that platform, the platform feels kind of crappy.
John:
The iPhone has the opposite problem.
John:
Everybody wants to make an app.
John:
everybody's making an app and they're just all climbing all over each other to get the last scraps and figuring out how to exploit people how to extract money from people there's so many apps there's too many apps in the app store it's not because people don't care about the iphone people care about the iphone a lot like there's tons of developers there's tons of apps and all the things you described about there but oh yeah you can't have paid up front apps and blah blah that's a symptom of an entirely opposite problem which is you know too much activity lots of competition lots of people trying to figure out how to get money and
John:
plenty of people are getting rich on the app store like enough people that it attracts other people right from the outside it looks like all you hear about the stories of the five developers who are getting rich and you don't realize that there were 10 000 apps submitted that week right and none of those people are going to get rich but there's enough people getting rich that it seems like that's the place to go everyone has phones it's a huge market even if that market isn't growing it's still tremendous
John:
so there's just two ends of the spectrum the phone and the mac both of which have problems but they're totally opposite problems i mean you would kill to get a little bit of that ios app store problem on the mac where oh we can't handle the the overflow every time every time i look at the map app store there's 10 000 new applications i can't handle it that just doesn't happen right so and then in the middle the ipad i think it has more of the max problem where it's like
John:
Yeah, there's lots of applications that you can run on the iPad, but not a lot of them really take advantage of what's different about the iPad.
John:
You know, the big complaint now is that people are iOS applications that already run on the iPad, but don't take advantage of split screen or don't support the iPad Pro's display or both.
John:
And why don't they update them?
John:
Well, it turns out that even though the iOS platform has tons of customers, the iPad subset is much smaller.
John:
And so it's more like the Mac where you're like, if I have to spend some time, I'm going to make sure that my iOS application is updated for the iPhone 7 or whatever new features that has.
John:
And then maybe when I have time...
John:
I'll update the if I get around to it, I'll update the iPad version of my iOS application to take advantage of something that only works on the big iPads like split screen or whatever.
John:
So you're right that there's something to complain about everywhere.
John:
But I don't think it's I don't think it's as if we're saying that they all have the same problem.
John:
They have very different problems with very different causes and very different solutions.
John:
So it doesn't doesn't seem to be a contradiction to me.
Casey:
I guess that's fair.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It just seems weird that all three platforms seem to have some really, really systemic issues.
Casey:
And I'm not saying that those issues aren't real.
Casey:
I'm not saying that they're not extremely important.
Casey:
But I...
Casey:
I don't know, just how does Apple either not care or not fix this or are we crazy and it's not as bad as we think it is?
Casey:
I don't know, it just seems weird to me that we feel, and again, it's not just us.
Casey:
So many people feel like this is broken now.
Casey:
And there seems to be not a lot of care given to it from Apple.
Casey:
And I presume that there is care.
Casey:
But as usual, it's all happening internally and we're none the wiser.
Casey:
But golly, it's just it seems weird to me that there's no action on this.
John:
Well, you haven't listed like the pros of, for example, the Mac side where something that we all hear from our developer friends and is probably true is that it's easier to make money with a really good application on the Mac than it is on iOS.
John:
Because if you have a really good application on iOS, guess what?
John:
There are thousands of really good applications on iOS.
John:
If you have a really good application on the Mac, there are not thousands of really good applications on the Mac, especially not thousands in your category, whatever kind of application that you made.
John:
And for whatever reason, again, it may just have to do with physical size or whatever, you can tend to charge more for the Mac version.
John:
Not tremendously more these days, but still more.
John:
So if you are a super talented developer and you can make a really good application in a category...
John:
that is not overcrowded on any platform, if you make it a Mac application, charge $9.99 for it.
John:
Even though you will sell far fewer copies, you will make up for it for the fact that you'll make more money on the Mac.
John:
And again...
John:
It's hard to go apples to oranges there.
John:
It's like, well, you can't make the same application that you can make on iOS.
John:
And who knows?
John:
Maybe it'll take you longer to make it on the Mac because, like Marco, you don't know the Mac and you have to learn it or whatever.
John:
There are lots of variables in the mix here.
John:
But I would imagine sort of the average price of applications sold on the Mac, the ones that are not free, is higher than on iOS.
John:
And Mac users are still willing to pay money for good applications.
John:
And your application really will stand out because you don't have to compete.
John:
with the thousands and thousands of other really talented developers who may have the same idea for an application in the same category as you um and that's again it's the opposite type of problem if you look at someone like uh omni who does uh both things they have great mac applications that they charge real money for not 99 cents and they also have companion ios applications
John:
and i think they're finding a way to play to the strengths of each platform like we should make a mac application because our applications are complicated and sophisticated and we can charge high prices for them and mac users will pay it whereas if we have sophisticated complicated applications they either won't work on ios uh because it's just not a platform that supports this complexity and if it does work we have to charge less money and on the other hand people want to to have access to their data on the go and so on and so forth so we'll make a series of ios applications
John:
which will be high priced for iOS applications, but still lower priced than like a $99 Mac app or whatever.
John:
And it'll be a virtuous cycle and you'll be able to use your, you know, your Mac and your iOS applications together.
John:
Like it is possible to take advantage of the ecosystems as they exist and make money off of it and do a good job.
John:
But Omni, I feel like it's kind of
John:
grandfathered in and that they have the expertise and talent and experience on the mac platform and have expanded out into ios if i think of like where is the next omni coming from is there going to be a company that starts up now that has that deep expertise on the mac and is able to make amazing mac applications and charge reasonable prices for them and also make companion ios applications
John:
um i don't know how many of those are popping up whereas on ios like i said since there are so many people since the numbers are so big even if a fraction of a fraction of percent of them end up striking it rich it's enough that you i just saw a story the other day like some some story about the class that people make clash of clans how many millions and millions of dollars they're making off of that stuff um there's just so much activity and so many customers happening happening on ios that it is attracting people whereas the mac i don't see
John:
I don't see it attracting people.
John:
I felt even better in the days of Textimate, where it's like, what's this?
John:
A text editor coming?
John:
I never heard of this Textimate text editor.
John:
How dare you try to make a text editor?
John:
Everyone knows a text editor market is all sewn up by insert name of other competitors here.
John:
But Textimate was very popular.
John:
And it could have been a going concern if...
John:
If the Mac market had been enough to make the maker of TextMate as much money as Clash of Clans got, you can be sure he'd still be making that, and Marco wouldn't be using TextMate 2 or whatever old version he's using now.
John:
He is still making it.
John:
2 is in beta with constant updates.
John:
i know it's the open source thing welcome to the end of build and analyze like five years ago or whatever that was yeah i know but like but but you know not the text editors are an exciting field but like text editing is something that people do on the mac um and it's not as if there are 17 really good high quality text editors to come out for the mac every week there's maybe like one or two a year right and they usually have to have an ios counterpart or no one's interested in them
Casey:
So another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is, am I an old man?
Casey:
Bear with me here.
Casey:
But I think it is really silly the hoops that someone like Federico jumps through.
Casey:
And I have deep respect for Federico, but it seems silly to me the hoops that Federico jumps through in order to accomplish things that are really quite simple on the Mac.
Casey:
And we talked about this.
Casey:
A few weeks ago when I was talking about signing a PDF from my iPad and dealing with scans and things like that and how, for me, it was very, very difficult to do that.
Casey:
And I talked with a handful of people like Mike Hurley about that segment because Mike used to be very anti-iPad and then now is almost as big an iPad fan as Federico is.
Casey:
And I don't know, it just seems to me like they feel like I'm missing the point.
Casey:
And in Federico's case, it is deeply important to him to be able to work from anywhere.
Casey:
And that's semi-true with the Mac-ish, or maybe it's true with a Mac and a tethered phone, but it's not as true as an iPad Pro.
Casey:
You can take an iPad Pro anywhere, it has its own internet connection, and you can work anywhere.
Casey:
And it still seems to me to be a bit crazy.
Casey:
And I can't help but wonder, are the three of us just too old to understand the purpose of the iPad?
Casey:
And to bring this back to what Stephen was saying on his post, is OS X really kind of dead?
Casey:
Like, I don't know, it just seems like maybe we're the ones that are missing the boat.
John:
What do you mean, what are you lumping me in with you?
John:
I'm the one who wanted an iPad Pro.
John:
I'm the actual iPad user.
John:
I'm the one sitting next to my bed.
Casey:
Well, I use my iPad daily.
Casey:
So I am also a very, maybe not devout, but a very frequent iPad user.
Casey:
I love my iPad.
Casey:
I love it.
Casey:
But I would never in a million years look to my iPad to get something done over looking at my Mac.
Casey:
Even to some degree, the typical things like consumption.
Casey:
Maybe if I'm just cruising Twitter, I would probably choose my iPad over my Mac.
Casey:
But damn near anything else, man, I'm going to go to my Mac first because I just feel faster, quicker, better with it.
Casey:
And I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is, is that because it's what I'm used to?
Casey:
And it's not that the Mac is faster and quicker and better.
Casey:
Sure, empirically it is.
Casey:
But you know what I mean?
Casey:
Like, is it just because that's what I'm used to and I have severely OS X colored glasses?
Marco:
Let me settle this for you.
Marco:
We are all old men.
Marco:
I am, in this way, the oldest.
Marco:
I am the least flexible, most skeptical of new things, most defensive of my old ways of the three of us.
Marco:
I also like the iPad the least out of the three of us, I think.
Marco:
That being said, I have no problem with people who can do tons of their work or all their work on the iPad.
Marco:
I wish I could, honestly, because there's a number of advantages to going all iPad.
Marco:
Obviously, there's the physical advantages that iPads are smaller and lighter and have better battery life usually than most Mac laptops.
Marco:
But also, you know, that's kind of where Apple's attention is.
Marco:
Now, again, that being said, I wouldn't necessarily assume that the iPad version of iOS is going to keep Apple's attention for very long.
Marco:
It has it now, but it didn't have much attention for years.
Marco:
And as we see Apple getting pulled in all these different directions as they try to tackle everything all at once with limited engineering resources and a few ways that they're unwilling to budge that will make it hard for them to attract more engineering talent to get as much as they need.
Marco:
Things like, you know, remote workers, salaries, terms of employment, stuff like that, that just make it hard for them to attract certain talent.
Marco:
Um...
Marco:
It's only a matter of time before the iPad falls out of the spotlight for Apple.
Marco:
It's only a matter of time before the resources that were devoted to making iOS 9 really great on the iPad and getting the iPad Pro out the door and getting the multitasking and stuff like that.
Marco:
Getting the special things for the iPad that are in iOS.
Marco:
It's only a matter of time before those resources are put somewhere else.
Marco:
Before that attention is directed somewhere else in Apple.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I don't necessarily expect the iPad to be Apple's star platform for long, but right this second it is.
Marco:
So right this second, if you are a person who gets all your work done or a lot of your work done on an iPad, this is a great time to be one of those people because you're getting cool new stuff from Apple recently and seemingly you might get a little bit more soon.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
We'll see what iOS 10 does.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It's kind of nice to be in Apple's sweet spot of where they're putting their attention, where they're putting their resources, and what they're likely to do in the future.
Marco:
So that's nice.
Marco:
But to me, it just doesn't stick.
Marco:
The iPad, to me, it does feel like jumping through tons of hoops.
Marco:
But that's just the work I do.
Marco:
And it's the kind of use that I do.
Marco:
It's the kind of user I am.
Marco:
It's what I'm used to.
Marco:
I think personal computers with keyboard, mouse, big monitor, at a desk a lot of the time, I think that world is going to stay for a long time.
Marco:
I don't think it is as dire as a lot of people have said.
Marco:
But I also... I totally don't begrudge anybody else for using whatever they think is better and whatever they're most comfortable with.
Marco:
Because for them, it's iPads and phones, maybe.
Marco:
For me, it's Macs.
Marco:
And that's fine, you know?
Marco:
And...
Marco:
The only problem is that it is pulling Apple in all these different directions.
Marco:
It is pulling their resources in all these different directions.
Marco:
And I think that could be a bit of a problem.
Marco:
And we've seen it become a little bit of a problem so far with just things that get ignored and things that get neglected and things that get these drive-by updates.
Marco:
I hope they can find a way to resolve this, but I'm not hopeful about the chance of that actually happening.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I...
Marco:
I really hope I'm wrong about all this and that over the next couple of years they prove us wrong and we see major significant changes to the app stores and macOS gets notable updates and they keep updating all their new product lines and not just neglect the ones that aren't getting them a lot of attention forever.
Marco:
But I don't see any evidence that we're heading in that kind of direction.
Marco:
And that's my concern.
Casey:
Yeah, and I don't mean to begrudge those that prefer to use an iPad.
Casey:
It's just it's hard for me to understand why that's better.
Casey:
I mean, other than the mobility, which is pretty much unequivocal, I just don't get why that's better.
Casey:
And I think what I really should be saying is that for me, it's not better.
Casey:
And I don't mean to begrudge that it is better for Mike or Federico or anyone else.
Casey:
I'm just saying for me, it's hard for me to wrap my head around why that would be better.
Casey:
And I think, Marco, you made a great point that a lot of that relates to the fact that now I'm living in Xcode.
Casey:
Previously, I was living in VMware Fusion.
Casey:
That's my day-to-day job, whereas for a lot of these people, that's not their job.
Marco:
Also, what I said earlier, all the action in the App Store, all the action in apps is happening on iOS right now.
Marco:
If you make use of cool, new, modern apps to do pretty much anything to do different workflows, maybe you're doing photo editing and you want to use cool plugins and effects and everything, all of that action is happening on iOS.
Marco:
iOS, if you want to play games ever, games on the Mac are kind of miserable most of the time.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
All of the action for cool new apps that are being developed, cool new workflows, cool new things you can do with your computer, most of that is happening on iOS.
Marco:
Most of it's on the iPhone in particular, but some of that's also getting to the iPad.
Marco:
On the Mac, there's no action to be had.
Marco:
Mac apps are seemingly either in stasis or dying.
Marco:
You have Aperture, gone.
Marco:
Logic and Final Cut are barely supported.
Marco:
You have third-party apps that are withering on the vine a lot of the times.
Marco:
It's tough.
Marco:
It's...
Marco:
It's a little scary to be a Mac user right now as we see a big part of the world moving on.
Marco:
A big part of Apple's and third-party developers' efforts moving to other places.
John:
what you said before about the ipad like you do think that eventually their attention will go elsewhere like it's in the sun now with like the ipad pro but that eventually the you know they'll lose interest again because you know the early in the ipads hit life it was basically like a a less less important version of ios that didn't have many ipad specific features uh for several years um and
John:
That may be the case, but I have to think that Apple overall as a company, one of its goals that it has to have somewhere on its big list of multi-year goals is to do what it normally does and be the company that cannibalizes the Mac.
John:
So they see the Mac with no big growth potential.
John:
They see it as...
John:
another market that could potentially be cannibalized by other markets like it's small these other markets are growing um apple's whole thing is we want to be the ones to cannibalize the mac you know we want to be the ones to cannibalize the ipod by replacing it with the iphone we if because if we don't do it
John:
someone else will eventually because if whatever thing that we're talking about being cannibalized does not have a very big growth trajectory eventually whatever size it is will be dwarfed by whatever the next big thing is so apple is kind of in the business of okay well let's figure out what that next big thing is because if we just do nothing someone else will do it for us and the ipad and the the emphasis on the ipad pro is one effort to do that hey if the mac's going to be cannibalized let let us do it um
John:
i've always said that the ipad has the potential to be the thing that replaces the mac if given enough attention and if its capabilities are extended and the ipad pro could be like the very very beginning of that process but say it doesn't work out so they try to make they try to cannibalize the mac with the ipad pro and it doesn't work if the ipad loses apple's attention i think it will be because they have another idea of a thing that's going to cannibalize the mac and they only have a certain number of shots of this idea of what's going to cannibalize the mac before someone else does it for them but i think
John:
that Apple as a company does not want some other thing made by some other non-Apple company to be the thing that finally makes the Mac irrelevant.
John:
I think Apple wants to make the Mac irrelevant, and right now the iPad is the thing that's doing that.
John:
So I have to think that attention is going to be paid to the iPad until either something else makes the Mac irrelevant, as in not an Apple product, or until Apple gives up on the iPad doing that and decides that it needs another solution.
John:
I don't think there is any long-term where...
John:
60 years from now the mac soldiers on pretty much exactly as it is i just don't see that happening so my hope is that apple figures out uh what to replace the mac with and i think the ipad line has the potential to do that if enhanced in all the ways that we've discussed in past shows in terms of larger screens ipads that aren't really particularly portable way more capabilities in uh in ios figuring out the whole file situation so on and so forth
Marco:
I think you're probably right long term on an infinite timescale thing.
Marco:
You're probably right.
Marco:
But I have a hard time seeing how iOS gets from here to there.
Marco:
And technically, you know, like on a low level, like on an API level, on a kernel level and everything, you're probably right that like the next version, the next major version of macOS is probably an iOS derivative.
Marco:
And I don't know when that's coming out and whether that'll be good.
Marco:
But I think what replaces macOS eventually will indeed be a version of iOS.
Marco:
And we will just have large iOS devices with keyboards and mice.
Marco:
I guess.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, probably.
Marco:
And that would also solve my UIKit problem with UIKit versus AppKit kind of thing.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
There's so much distance between iOS today and what it would have to be to be even a basic macOS replacement.
John:
that i i have a hard time seeing that happening just because the distance is so great and maybe that's a short-sighted of me i don't know well i mean it may not have to be an equivalent for you but like when you're retired or dead it just needs to have the capabilities of the people who grew up in the generation that grew up with ios devices find acceptable to do like the same kind of things you're doing now
John:
developing software like i don't know you know whatever whatever it is that you're doing with your mac that you feel like you can only do on your mac all that needs to happen is there needs to be a generation of customers who feel like they can best do that on some tablet type device
John:
Whether or not you can best do that on a tablet-type device doesn't really matter.
John:
The capabilities need to be there.
John:
It's like Casey was saying about Mike.
John:
Mike finds the iPad experience superior in ways that Casey doesn't understand.
John:
I can understand some of them in terms of just the simplicity, and there's fewer things that can go wrong on an iOS device, and there's fewer things to worry about or whatever, and also...
John:
That things feel better sometimes in terms of just like body gesture or touching the screen or using a pen or whatever.
John:
And those can go a long way towards covering up the fact that you're actually it takes more steps or it's less efficient or it's, you know, it's not as straightforward as it would be on the Mac or whatever.
John:
But.
John:
i'm totally willing to give the ipad pro and that type of thing a shot because like apple has just barely scratched the surface they just now divided the screen up into two pieces like that's that's the level they're at right they've just now offered you an actual keyboard that you can attach to the thing like this is the babyest of baby steps like they just now gave you a stylus which is a thing that has not really taken off on the mac but it offers you know a a new angle so
John:
i'm willing to give that a few years i'm not it's not a slam dunk but i think there is a fruitful avenue of pursuit there and what they're pursuing again is not the phone obviously what they're pursuing is if the mac is going to go away or be replaced with something we think it might be this and then we would benefit because it's like well fine mac shrinks ipad pro grows all that money goes to apple the ipad is uh gets on a better growth trajectory or whatever
John:
So, yeah.
John:
I feel like the Mac is safe for a long time just because even if Apple is 100% right, it will take them a long time to figure out all the ins and outs.
John:
And probably the Mac will last for all of our active careers or whatever.
John:
But when we're in our dotage and retired, don't be surprised if we're looking at grandkids on a big iPad Pro screen.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Squarespace, and Hover.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, it was accidental, and you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C-O-A-R-C
Casey:
So, John, let me ask you something.
Casey:
Have you ever been to Las Vegas?
Casey:
And if not, how badly do you want to go?
John:
You know the answers to both of those questions.
Casey:
I did that more for my own laughter.
Marco:
So, as I was in Vegas last weekend, and Casey, as you are headed to Vegas in a few days...
Marco:
I hope that you consider while you're there, as I did while I was there, what it would be like to see John Syracuse in Vegas and the state of mind he would be in to be sitting there.
Marco:
I felt so bad for him even not being there.
Marco:
Like, just, I felt so bad for theoretical Syracuse in Vegas.
Marco:
Like, that...
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
He would be so miserable.
Marco:
Not to mention the flight on the way there, but, you know, any, I mean, my God, to see him in any part of Las Vegas would be both sad and incredible.
John:
It's not my cup of tea, but I'm not a miserable person.
John:
They have food there, right?
John:
At the very least, I would find some kind of food that I could eat that I would like.
John:
How could you not?
John:
There's got to be a million different restaurants there that make some kind of hopefully good food.
John:
I wouldn't be interested in gambling.
John:
Smoking is disgusting.
John:
I don't like lots of people.
John:
Yeah, there's not a lot there for me, but if I was stuck there...
John:
There are a lot of restaurants, right?
Marco:
So I could find something.
Marco:
There are excellent restaurants.
Marco:
However, many of them require walking through a smoky casino to get to.
Marco:
Yeah, that's pretty gross.
Casey:
Delightful.
Casey:
Did you end up up or down against the house?
Marco:
down by roughly $100.
Marco:
That's not bad.
Marco:
Not only is that not bad, but that was after three nights, and a lot of that was given out as tips to the dealers.
Marco:
You were up 50% the last time I heard, and you were like, maybe I can just stop now, but apparently you didn't.
Marco:
I was up 40% after the first night, but then the second night was way down, and then the third night was kind of even.
John:
right but you said after that you said after the night that you were up you you mused to yourself i believe in slack maybe i should just quit while i'm ahead he said and then didn't yes i mean gambling is always you know in hindsight gambling is very easy no it was in hindsight it was it was current right then site you had that you had that insight immediately at the time not later not
John:
Not the next day you didn't say, boy, I really should have quit when I was up 40%.
John:
When you were up, you said, maybe I should quit now.
Marco:
I did say that, but then I wouldn't have had as much fun the next two nights because I wouldn't have had that activity.
Marco:
So it's like I paid that money for an activity.
Marco:
I mean, most of the games that you can gamble on in Vegas, the odds are always in favor of the house, but the percentage that they're in favor of the house by is usually not that big.
Marco:
And so if you kind of bet responsibly, you don't make really huge bets or make accelerating bets to try to win back your money.
Marco:
My strategy is very simple.
Marco:
I bet the same amount of money on every bet I took.
Marco:
I was playing to play, not to win a bunch of money, because I know that the chances of winning a bunch of money were very, very low.
Marco:
So simple as that.
Marco:
It was a fun activity and it served its purpose.
Marco:
And I paid about $100 for three nights.
Marco:
And that includes tips and that includes all the free drinks I got at the time.
Marco:
So I think that's actually pretty good for my first gambling experience.
Marco:
Actually, that was my second gambling experience.
Marco:
My first gambling experience was in college when I discovered that online blackjack existed.
Marco:
And I put $20 of real money into online blackjack in college.
Marco:
Lost it in about 10 minutes.
Marco:
And I was like, well, I'm an idiot.
Marco:
That was dumb.
Yeah.
Marco:
i didn't do it again never again yeah because that that's like that's not really a lot of fun that's a very short time to lose all your money and it just yeah it wasn't that one that one was it didn't have the same appeal it would have been better if someone smoked a cigarette next to you while you did it