Panic Shutdown
Casey:
I wanted to let the two of you know that I am sitting this episode out.
Marco:
Is the Mac Pro out?
Casey:
No, no, God, holy crap, no.
Casey:
Don't even mess with my emotions like that, please.
Casey:
I made the mistake of starting but not finishing Merlin-style El Camino, which is the Breaking Bad Netflix movie.
Casey:
And I'm only about halfway through, and I really want to finish it, so I'm just going to be quiet this one.
Marco:
I saw that the other day, too.
Marco:
Do I have to have seen Better Call Saul?
Marco:
Because I haven't.
John:
no but you have to have seen breaking bad yeah i've seen breaking bad not recently like when it was out i saw it same you might want a refresher because there's a lot of uh a lot of stuff in it that they don't really spend time explaining to you who this person is you just have to kind of remember so you might want to read a recap
Casey:
So not a joke.
Casey:
First of all, I have not seen Better Call Saul and I've heard it's tremendous, but I have not seen it.
Casey:
Secondly, I also watched Breaking Bad most recently when it was ending and I really wasn't sure how I was going to remember everything because I can barely remember what I ate for dinner tonight.
Casey:
And what I thought to do, which seems so far to have worked out really well, is I went to Wikipedia.
Casey:
Don't laugh yet.
Casey:
I went to Wikipedia and went to Jesse Pinkman's Wikipedia page and read his character biography.
Casey:
And I feel like that reasonably caught me up.
Casey:
In the five minutes I spent to read this, it did a pretty good job of giving me the blow-by-blow and reminding me of all the things that he and Walt had gotten into.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
I recommend doing that as a poor man's, a poor person's way of catching yourself up.
Marco:
Is this the movie that shows what happened to him afterwards, basically?
Marco:
Okay.
Casey:
It's not a... I can't say I like it as much as I liked Breaking Bad, although Breaking Bad...
Casey:
What a rollercoaster, man.
Casey:
Like it was such a great show and I loved it, but it did not leave me feeling great.
Marco:
Oh, no, it was very heavy.
Marco:
It was like it was such a just massively heavy show.
Marco:
Like it was like it was one of those things like, you know, I could I really enjoyed it overall, but I can only watch like one or two episodes at a time.
Marco:
like it's like all right i'm done for the night i need to watch something else and then like i think what happened was like you know in uh towards the end of 2016 um the mood of the world took a negative turn and ever since then i haven't really been able to watch like heavy dark shows i don't i just don't enjoy i don't i don't want to feel more that way than you know we already do as a society so i just i haven't been able to get back into shows like that yet
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Casey:
Aaron and I watched the first two or three seasons.
Casey:
I'm sure I've told the story before, but we watched the first two or three seasons together.
Casey:
And then at some point, she looked over at me after watching a particularly intense episode, which is hard to say because they're all intense.
Casey:
But we watched a particularly intense episode, and she looked over at me, and she just had this kind of puzzled look on her face.
Casey:
I'm like, whoa, what's wrong?
Casey:
And she said...
Casey:
this doesn't make me happy.
Casey:
I don't think I'm going to watch this anymore.
Casey:
And that was that.
Casey:
And the funny thing about it was she was invested enough that she would ask me to give her the extraordinarily quick summary of what happened as I continued to watch.
Casey:
But yeah, it is not a show that makes you happy, although it is definitely an unbelievable piece of filmmaking.
Casey:
And El Camino, which is the movie that they just released on Netflix a week or two ago,
Casey:
I definitely am enjoying it quite a bit.
Casey:
I'm definitely on the edge of my seat quite a bit, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily recaptured the magic 100%, but that's to be expected.
John:
It's like a middle-of-the-road, longer-than-usual episode of Breaking Bad, basically.
John:
It definitely didn't need to be a movie.
John:
It's like an epilogue episode, but they had more time, so it kind of takes its time getting where it's going.
Marco:
Hmm.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know if I could get back into that mindset.
Marco:
Like it was it was such a different time.
Marco:
Like it wasn't that long ago, but like it was a different time.
Marco:
Like things have changed a lot since then.
Casey:
What is Aaron Paul been up to?
Casey:
He was in that car or something or was it Need for Speed?
Casey:
He was in some car racing movie that was actually surprisingly enjoyable.
Casey:
And then I haven't seen anything from him other than that.
Marco:
He's a great actor.
Marco:
I mean, I think one of the reasons why I stayed in that show as a watcher, even though it was awful, even at the time, it was darker than I normally would have enjoyed because it was just so well made.
Marco:
It was so well written.
Marco:
It was so well acted.
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Casey:
And I actually think it's very, very well filmed.
Casey:
I am not a good critic of these sorts of things.
Casey:
So for all I know, they're either using all the like rookie tricks in the book, or it's just, you know, saccharine that, you know, this is the sort of thing that an uneducated person would think is beautiful.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Or maybe it's legitimately beautiful.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Maybe John can weigh in.
Casey:
But one way or another, I think it is a very pretty show.
Casey:
In the same way that Top Gear, for all of the things that you could say that are terrible about Top Gear, most all of which are deserved, one thing I think you can't take away from it was how pretty it was.
Casey:
And Breaking Bad and so far El Camino seems to be the same.
Casey:
Anyway, so I'm going to skip the rest of the episode.
Casey:
You guys have fun.
Yeah.
Casey:
John, tell me, if I had a TiVo because I was clinging to 2002, how would I opt out of the pre-roll ads?
John:
It's not easy.
John:
I mean, the title of this article wants to make you think they're going to tell you how to opt out of TiVo pre-roll ads.
John:
But if you read the article, it's like, oh, none of these things sound like things I really want to do.
John:
I mean, the only one that makes some amount of sense is downgrading to the old version of their little OS because the old version will not be getting pre-roll ads.
John:
So if you get involuntarily upgraded like I did, it is possible to roll back to the old version if you don't mind losing all of your recordings, which kind of sucks.
John:
Right.
John:
And that's the best option.
John:
Another option is you can call them and beg.
John:
And apparently, if you are persuasive, they will sort of opt you out.
John:
But it's unknown whether this is a permanent opt-out or just appeasing an Angry Cups through an opt-out.
John:
And it doesn't seem like that's a scalable solution.
John:
And then, you know, the final option they list here is, like, maybe we'll figure something out.
John:
Maybe you could, you know, piehole the DNS for the ad server.
John:
Who knows?
John:
It's a grim situation.
John:
But in case you are one of the other 25 TiVo users left in the world and are wondering about this, we'll put the link in the show notes.
Right.
Casey:
Can I have a quick moment about Piehold?
Casey:
We did not talk about this yet on the show, did we?
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Okay, good.
Casey:
I didn't think so.
Casey:
A few months ago, or maybe it was a year ago now, a while ago, I discovered Docker.
Casey:
Yes, welcome to 2014, I'm aware.
Marco:
I still haven't, don't worry.
Casey:
See, thank you, Mark.
Casey:
That genuinely does make me feel a little bit better.
Casey:
But I discovered Docker and I discovered HomeBridge.
Casey:
And I was aware of both of them existing, but I didn't ever think to put both of them together.
Casey:
And so my Synology, which I love very much, it has Docker support on my particular Synology, which is the same one that you two have.
Casey:
And so I put a Docker container of HomeBridge on my Synology, and now I can control with
Casey:
some amount of reliability, I can control non-HomeKit stuff with HomeKit, which is really great.
Casey:
Well, I don't remember how I got it in my head, but one way or another, I decided recently, oh, you know what?
Casey:
I should try that pie hole thing because I've heard that's really, really good.
Casey:
And
Casey:
My very limited understanding, and jump in either of you when you're ready, is that this is a DNS server that's designed to be run on a Raspberry Pi.
Casey:
And so it's really lean and really, really quick.
Casey:
And the idea is you set your home network or perhaps just one computer to use the Pi hole as your DNS server.
Casey:
And then it will simply ignore or not resolve DNS host names for things.
Casey:
things that they know are nothing but advertisements.
Casey:
So it's sort of a network-level ad blocker, which is really, really interesting.
Casey:
And sure enough, there's a Docker container for the Synology that lets you set up PyHole.
Casey:
And it took me like five minutes.
Casey:
And then I tweaked my network such that the network is issuing the PyHole address as the DNS server.
Casey:
And
Casey:
So far, about a week in, it seems to be working pretty well.
Casey:
And there's only been a couple of occasions that I've need to temporarily disable it in order to get a website to work again.
Casey:
I am really, really pleased with it.
Casey:
I'll probably write it up on my website at some point or another.
Casey:
But if you're looking for a reason to get a Raspberry Pi, which I actually am, but I also already have a
Casey:
Uh, you know, pie hole in a Docker container.
Casey:
It's a pretty sweet setup and it was not hard to set up at all.
Marco:
That's interesting.
Marco:
Like, cause like I've, I've never used any of the, any of the various like network wide ad blocker methods.
Marco:
You know, usually we should involve DNS, uh, type things like this.
Marco:
and i because i'm always afraid that it'll just break stuff because like every ad blocker i've ever used or written has always has always broken stuff and i've always needed some kind of like you know temporary disable thing now with piehole like how how much of a pain in the butt is it to temporarily bypass it
Casey:
Okay, so here's where I'm going to lose everyone.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Casey:
So just... Is temporarily bypassing it like just changing your DNS back?
Casey:
No, no.
Casey:
I suppose you could do it that way.
Casey:
But no, that is not the solution I use.
Casey:
Good.
Casey:
So the way that I have been doing it, which is perfect for me, but terrible for anyone else in the house, namely Aaron, is that it's actually got a really robust web interface that, among other things, lets you disable it for, you know, 30 seconds, I think like five seconds, 30 seconds, or, you know, basically until you decide to turn it back on.
Casey:
Let me see.
Casey:
I'm signing in now.
Casey:
disable for 10 or 30 seconds, five minutes, a custom amount of time, or just straight up turn it off for a while.
Casey:
And I got to say, this web interface is really, really, really good.
Casey:
And it works surprisingly well, given how lean and mean this thing is.
Casey:
And it shows, so I have 27 clients and 31,790 queries, of which 2,545 of them were blocked, which is 8%.
Casey:
And there are 113,447 domains on the block list.
Casey:
And it shows you pretty graphs and things of that nature.
Casey:
But the problem is you have to be able to log into this thing in order to disable it for a little while.
Casey:
And you're disabling it for the entire network rather than for one host.
Casey:
Now, somebody on Twitter had sent me a workflow or shortcuts shortcut that you're supposed to be able to just run after you've plugged in your...
Casey:
API key, if you will, and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And it would disable it via this shortcut, which would be perfect for me and Aaron, actually.
Casey:
But I couldn't get it to work in the brief amount of time I played with it.
Casey:
So I guess that's many words to say there must be mechanisms by which you can do an easy temporary disable because there's APIs and things of that nature.
Casey:
But the one that I'm familiar with
Casey:
I couldn't get to work and I haven't really given it a real honest shake yet.
Casey:
So I need to go back and reevaluate.
Casey:
But I am really, really pleased with this so far.
Casey:
Now, the problem with this, though, is what happens when I'm outside my home network.
Casey:
you know, because this is only providing DNS for my intranet.
Casey:
It does not provide DNS to the internet.
Casey:
And I suppose what I could do is expose this publicly, which seems like a terrible decision.
Casey:
And so I think what for now I'm going to do is if I'm really browsing the web remotely and really am getting annoyed by ads, I'll just
Casey:
hop on my VPN into the house and then I will get that DNS server back and then everything should work as it does in the house in theory.
Casey:
Although, to be fair, I have not validated that yet.
Casey:
But in general, whether or not PyHole is your thing, and I'm saying that not only to Marco but the listener, whether or not PyHole is your thing, I cannot say enough good things about Docker and how unbelievably easy it is to get some entirely complex...
Casey:
software stack up and running in almost no time.
Casey:
John, you're using Docker at work for like actual work things, right?
Casey:
Or am I making that up?
John:
Yep, I am.
Casey:
Anything I've said wrong or anything you'd like to add in general?
John:
Some things about Docker annoy me, but I think it's true of anything you have to use for work eventually.
John:
You have to find all the things that annoy you about it, but it's fine.
John:
Jeff Atwood had an article about PyHole from a year or two ago.
Casey:
No, it was six months ago.
John:
Yeah, he actually used a Raspberry Pi like hardware, which was part of the fun project nature of it to get a cute little computer next to his router with a little tiny screen on it.
John:
Anyway, if you're interested in another person's experience,
John:
It's kind of a setup guide.
John:
I'll put that link in the show notes too.
Casey:
Actually, in that is a really good screenshot of the web interface that I was talking about.
Casey:
So if you go to Jeff Atwood's link in the show notes, it's codinghorror.com.
Casey:
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see the piehole interface.
Casey:
And I don't know, maybe I'm easily amused, but it's a very good looking and pretty easy to use interface for something that I believe is just an open source project that nobody's making any real money off of.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I just think that's super cool when a whole bunch of nerds can come together and do something nice.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
That's squarespace.com slash ATP.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Speaking of home networking stuff, I don't know if this is really a topic or not.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Actually, I didn't put it in the show notes.
Casey:
I meant to ask you about this.
Casey:
I'm glad you brought it up.
Casey:
What are you up to, man?
Marco:
So I just basically just upgraded all my home networking gear.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Now, can we pause?
Casey:
Can you just give a quick executive summary of what the gear was?
Casey:
And then let's talk about what the new stuff is.
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
So here, you know, I have a home network here.
Marco:
Originally, I set this up about eight years ago.
Marco:
So I've gone through a couple of routers in that time.
Marco:
But the one I've been using for the last probably five years or so is the Ubiquiti Edge Router Lite 3.
Marco:
This little black $100 thing that has been rock-solid, reliable, and really got me started on the Ubiquiti bandwagon.
Marco:
The switch has been this rock-solid HP 18-something rack-mount switch.
Marco:
I think 1815?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Some kind of HP 18 port or 24 port, whatever it was.
Marco:
Big HP rack-mount switch.
Marco:
And those have been running rock-solid reliable for many, many years.
Marco:
And then for Wi-Fi, I would plug in, in recent years, basically, whatever the Ubiquity access points were that were available at the time.
Marco:
And I started out with one, and then went to two, and then went to three, as I identified various bad spots in my house.
Marco:
And this was all before modern, home, consumer-friendly mesh stuff like Euro, the sponsor of our show frequently, I should disclose.
Marco:
Anyway, so – and I should clarify, all of my Eero experience has been in other houses besides this one.
Marco:
So the beach, in-laws, stuff like that.
Marco:
So what drove this for me, what drove this upgrade was that once you have multiple access points, sometimes clients will do weird things with like whether they will roam between them properly online.
Marco:
or whether they'll hold on to one bad connection rather than roaming onto the one better one.
Marco:
Most of the stuff is dramatically improved if you have newer hardware and newer software behind it and everything on the router end to be able to roam clients with these newer standards and things like that.
Marco:
I also just wanted a speed upgrade on my access points.
Marco:
And Ubiquiti does this weird thing where they require you to run controller software to set certain things up, to make certain changes, and to enable certain features.
Marco:
And you don't have to run it if you don't need to make certain changes or you don't need to enable certain features.
Marco:
And you have to run it on a computer or something.
Marco:
And I had...
Marco:
long abandoned whatever computer was running this i couldn't run it anymore on my mac mini because it required java and all this great stuff so i'm like all right and they have sold for years now these little things called cloud keys that are basically just a little bit they're basically raspberry pies like pre-made uh to run their software to run this this like controller software on um and since then they've also had this
Marco:
you know, huge new generation of new switches and new routers.
Marco:
They're the new, um, the security gateway line of routers.
Marco:
This was all like, this all came out after I made my setup.
Marco:
I decided, you know what, let me just upgrade everything to all new stuff.
Marco:
I'll, I'll go all ubiquity this time.
Marco:
Uh, even though my HP switch has been rock solid and still works totally fine, but I figured I'll get, I'll get ubiquity switch cause that'll save me a bunch of wires.
Marco:
Cause now it has power of ethernet built in.
Marco:
So basically, so what I got was a, uh,
Marco:
24-port power Ethernet switch, security gateway as the router, the security key 2 as the controller.
Marco:
So I got it all set up today, and this is still like, you know, the Ubiquiti line of things is still very much for nerds.
Marco:
However, it is way nicer now if you go all in the way I did, like with all the most modern stuff,
Marco:
That all supports power over Ethernet to the newest standards.
Marco:
It all supports their software controller thing.
Marco:
I didn't have to log in to the router and the switch separately.
Marco:
I didn't have to log in to every access point to configure it separately.
Marco:
All I had to do was log in to the controller, the little cloud key thing.
Marco:
And it configured the router for me and all the APs and everything.
Marco:
You basically just log into one thing and it controls everything.
Marco:
It controls all their software updates, all their settings.
Marco:
It coordinates the Wi-Fi network between all the access points.
Marco:
It's so much easier now than it used to be.
Marco:
And so if you are in the market for very nerdy pro-grade networking gear...
Marco:
all the new ubiquity stuff is really nice and really awesome.
Marco:
And so I got it all set up.
Marco:
I got all my devices named in the control panel and everything like all, all fancy, get all set here.
Marco:
I'm very happy with it.
Marco:
Obviously it's only been like 12 hours.
Marco:
So maybe, you know, maybe if things go wrong, I'll let you know in a future episode, but I'm, I'm all ubiquity here at home.
Marco:
And, and, and there's, it certainly is worth considering or it's worth asking like,
Marco:
why this kind of crazy overkill setup instead of something like an Euro system.
Marco:
The reality is, for most people, the answer is just get something like the Euro system because you don't need something like this.
Marco:
And truth is, need is a fun word in nerddom.
Marco:
I don't need this either.
Marco:
It allows a certain degree of flexibility, first of all.
Marco:
I don't need to upgrade
Marco:
the entire component system at once now.
Marco:
As I've done over the last, I don't know, five years that I've been running Ubiquity Gear, as new standards can come out for things like faster Wi-Fi, I can just replace the access points.
Marco:
And maybe not even all of them.
Marco:
instead of having to, like, buy a whole new router and a whole new system and everything like that.
Marco:
I can do certain cool things.
Marco:
Like, I mentioned I have three access points.
Marco:
One of them is in my garage.
Marco:
And I can have a separate network that runs only on that one that my car can pull its software updates off of because my car is not good at picking the best Wi-Fi network and will often, like, pick the furthest away access point in the house if it's on the same SSID.
Marco:
So, like...
Marco:
You can do things like have certain SSIDs that only broadcast among certain access points.
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
There's an even greater level of control and nerdery and separation of concerns here than what you get with any kind of consumer system.
Marco:
That's the whole point of these enterprise systems.
Marco:
Not to mention reliability and capacity and ability to deal with interference and certain things and certain traffic patterns better because they're made for...
Marco:
way higher density and higher needs usage than what my house is likely to have.
Marco:
It's a really nice overkill setup, and if and when I eventually upgrade to Casey's degree of Fios that is gigabit both ways, I'm going to be happy to have things like a faster router, more packet capacity, and all this other stuff.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to hopefully never thinking about it again because that's what Ubiquity lets you do basically.
Marco:
You set up your stuff and you have one fun nerdy day of figuring out how it all works and then you can just forget about it.
Marco:
You never have to reboot anything.
Marco:
It's just rock solid.
Marco:
So I'm hoping all this new stuff is as rock solid as all my old stuff was.
John:
You know, I've got that Fios too now.
John:
I think you've got the slow internet connection among us.
Casey:
Oh yeah, look at that.
Marco:
Yeah, mine's only $150.
Marco:
$150?
John:
Oh my goodness.
Casey:
That's awful.
Marco:
I don't know how you live.
Marco:
It was the fastest at the time.
Marco:
When I got it like seven years ago, that was the fastest they offered.
Marco:
It works perfectly.
Marco:
I never have problems.
Marco:
So the last thing I want to do is call Verizon over to change something.
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
John:
I bit that bullet recently too.
John:
I think I had it for a similar length of time.
John:
Do you...
John:
Anyway, mine maxed out at 75, so I was stuck at 75.
John:
I couldn't get any faster with the box I had, and eventually I just had to do it, and it turned out fine.
John:
It was ridiculous.
John:
They replaced my, like, original Fios box, which was just massive.
John:
It was, like, the size of a, I don't know, like a...
John:
uh rebel alliance backpack on hoth that's how it was it was huge um and they replaced that with a tiny box like you know maybe the size of a lunchbox and the only thing inside the box is a even tinier thing that looks like like an eight port switch velcroed inside there that's like like
John:
whatever it was before it was like this bespoke special custom thing with all these electronics and it's just basically replaced by like some little thing you look like you could buy it off amazon i don't know what it actually is but it's it's comical um all right question about your your setup though is is your garage climate controlled in any way uh no because i'm wondering what like a safe operating temperature range is for that equipment
Marco:
right and so and you know if you look it up it'll tell you you know it's something like you know five degrees to a hundred and something degrees you know it never gets below five in your garage no so this so this as far as i know so my garage is not insulated but it does close and and the walls are made of cinder blocks and it's it touches my house on top back and side and
Marco:
So like three of the, you know, I guess five surfaces that could be exterior exposed aren't.
Marco:
They're, you know, attached to my house.
Marco:
So it has some degree of temperature isolation from the outside world.
Marco:
In my experience running...
Marco:
running this gear in my garage for the last eight years, it has not been a problem yet.
Marco:
I even run my Synology out there.
Marco:
And part of the reason why is, obviously, just by being not outside and by being attached to a house and having a big, thick, old wood door that closes and everything, it's not going to get as cold as it does outside.
Marco:
If it's zero degrees outside...
Marco:
Unless it's been zero degrees outside for like two weeks straight, my garage is going to be much higher than that.
Marco:
It's not going to be warm, but it's not going to be zero.
John:
You might need another internal combustion engine car to warm up that garage for you.
Marco:
And then also I figure like this gear operates 24-7.
Marco:
So it never really has a chance to cool down.
Marco:
I'm not storing it in zero degree rooms off and then trying to power it on.
Marco:
I think that also helps with things like condensation and everything.
Marco:
I keep everything there for networking, the switch, the router.
Marco:
I have two UPSs for various reasons.
Marco:
I have the Synology running all the hard drives in there.
John:
24 7 year round and it hasn't been a problem yet i haven't lost a single hard drive in the synology yet knock on whatever wood this is i haven't uh you know lost any networking gear to to heat or anything it seems fine well my second synology had a had a bad disc it wasn't it wasn't bad yet but synology does those disc health checkups and it would like email you and says hey i found a bad sector and i've been like ignoring it for two years and eventually it's like you know i really found a lot of bad sectors on this disc i'm like all right
John:
Those were the drives I ended up replacing because I just replaced both of them because it was just a two-drive, my little two-drive synology.
John:
They weren't the Western Digital Reds.
John:
They were just something else, like just regular consumer hard drives.
John:
Anecdotal data for those designed for NAS BS overpriced drives actually outliving the standard consumer models.
John:
I replaced them with Western Digital Reds.
Casey:
Well, I am jealous of your networking setup, but not your connection to the rest of the world.
Marco:
So you win some, you lose some.
Marco:
But it's rock solid.
Casey:
I don't doubt that.
Casey:
Truth be told, and I don't think they're a sponsor of this episode, are they?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Truth be told, my Eero setup has actually been very, very good.
Casey:
I had a little bit of a hiccup with local host loopback.
Casey:
So if I...
Casey:
if i went to a host name that resolved to itself there was a like month or two window a time where that was having some problems but outside of that which by the way since been fixed it's been pretty darn solid i've been really happy with the euro so uh and you know they're not paying us to say that so that's pretty cool yeah like like you know like i've used euro in you know again my in-laws place and vacation houses and it's been totally great that's why i keep using it for those places
Marco:
oh and one other thing to disclose on the ubiquity stuff the rack mount stuff that i got has very loud fans so in my garage this is fine if you're looking for something for like a home office i mean you should be accustomed to the fact that one u rack mount stuff usually has very loud fans but in this case that holds it has very loud fans so you know use caution
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by ExpressVPN.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And you should probably use ExpressVPN.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Because, you know, you have things like HTTPS, you have things like other types of encryption, but you don't have it on everything.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Let's return to follow up that we were doing three hours ago.
Casey:
Folding phones and form factors.
Casey:
I don't know which one of you put this in the show notes, but we should call out the most recent episode of Connected 265 entitled What Are You?
Casey:
A Dictionary, which was great for a plethora of reasons.
Casey:
But what's relevant right now is Mike decided to spend an obscene amount of money on the Galaxy Fold.
Casey:
And he spent about a week with it and did a really, really good job of reviewing it, particularly the hardware on that episode.
Casey:
And it is worth listening to.
Casey:
So you should check that out.
Casey:
But I presume one of you probably, John, has thoughts about form factors.
John:
Yep, I listened to that episode, and it was interesting to hear what Mike thought of it, how he was using it, how it's holding up, and, you know, the prospects for it, and so on and so forth.
John:
And we talked about folding phones a while ago, and then again with the most recent episode with the Microsoft Duo and the Neo thing and everything.
John:
And I had a thought that I think I failed to voice last time we discussed this while listening to Mike talk about his Galaxy Fold thing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And in particular, he was talking about how the outer screen was too narrow to be useful in the folded form or whatever.
John:
It made me think of... The context we were discussing last time was like...
John:
Is the additional screen space worth the need to unfold your phone when you use it?
John:
And the outer screen, you know, in theory could let you not have to unfold it, but Mike was saying that it was a little bit too narrow.
John:
But the flip side of that is rather than using folding technology to give you a much larger screen in a small package, I started to think about using folding to take existing sized phones and make them
John:
smaller in one or the other dimension while they're in your pocket uh and it also kind of like you know if we could go back to the thinness race and start getting the phones to be thinner again you could have a phone that was like the size of an iphone 11 or iphone 11 pro but folds in one dimension or the other i was also thinking of it for the those really skinny phones from essential you know they look like super dumb but uh
John:
If you could fold an iPhone 11 Pro, A, which way would you want to fold it?
John:
And B, would that be more useful or useful at all as compared to something that's even bigger that folds out to be basically a phablet or a little miniature tablet?
John:
What do you think?
Casey:
So I understand this, right?
Casey:
So you're saying take my 11 Pro and make it foldable, but there is an external screen on the smaller version?
John:
Let's set aside external screens for now.
John:
It's like, just say, if you could fold it, would you want to fold it like the long way so it becomes a long, skinny stick of gum?
John:
Or would you want to fold it so it becomes almost square?
John:
Or I guess you could fold it at an angle if you're...
John:
Feeling a little feisty, but that makes no sense.
Casey:
I would think I would want it to fold such that it becomes a square, but I don't, I, I'm not really sure why, to be honest.
John:
It's just, I mean, and I'm also assuming that like you could save some thickness.
John:
So it wouldn't actually be twice as thick.
John:
Cause if you become a square, it would be like a, what was that one?
John:
The, uh,
John:
Game Boy SP?
John:
Which was the Game Boy that was like square folded into a little sandwich?
Marco:
I know there was one, but you're asking the wrong people.
Marco:
But regardless, yeah, it was a similar kind of thing.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think I would go long stick of gum because a square wouldn't allow it to fit that much better in pockets that it wouldn't have fit in before.
Right.
Marco:
whereas a long stick of gum would allow it to be like you know you only need the pocket to be big in one dimension like you can put it in a deep pocket but not necessarily a wide pocket that i think would be more useful in the real world you can put it in that little change pocket where the ipod nano was remember no we can't do that because that's where my airpods go
Marco:
Were those special pants that he had made for the presentation?
Marco:
Because like I don't think like I have lots of jeans.
Marco:
None of my jeans change pockets would actually hold an iPod Nano in a way that you couldn't see the top of it.
Marco:
I think it's plausible.
John:
Unlike most women's clothing, men's clothing tends to have actual pockets that are real and not, you know, like fake pockets that look like their pockets but really don't go down anywhere.
John:
but but like i i feel like those hat that had to be custom pants because like the change pocket like the width of it that was fair but i feel like he had to have a longer like a deeper pocket made maybe this is no one see this is what we missed out by not having podcasts back in the day people might have amusing themselves about this but we could have actually tested it all right go get a pair of jeans and wear it to the podcast and try i mean i suppose they do it on youtube as well
John:
I was thinking, like, I like the idea of long, skinny stick, but I think I'd be frustrated by the unfolding.
John:
Like, again, you know, the benefit is, oh, I can fit it in smaller places.
John:
I can fit it in a smaller pocket.
John:
Maybe it's easier to take in and out because it's like a little stick instead of a wide thing.
John:
You know, sometimes they're, especially for the big phones like the Mac size, you put it in, like, a front or a back pocket, and if your pants are tight, you feel like you can't really, like, squat down or you'll be bending the thing or whatever, and maybe...
John:
gets a little bit easier if it's skinny and it can slide i don't know but bottom line is if you don't have any external screen which you certainly wouldn't if it was skinny and probably wouldn't if it was square you do have to unfold it to use it at all and i don't know if the the again the size benefit would be worth that um getting back to what mike said he like he's all in on the idea of like i can do more with this more powerful device because i have so much more screen space it was not just that there was more screen space he talked about you know the
John:
android being sort of a laissez-faire about multitasking it's like you want to have 20 apps running fine have 20 apps i don't care what you do with your screen just have 10 floating windows and three apps running and do whatever right uh and that's powerful especially when you have a lot of room for it so he's using it as like a little miniature computer even said that like it felt less like a phone and more like a little miniature computer um so if that's what you're going for certainly you're willing to tolerate the
John:
and the awkwardness or whatever because no other device can give you such a huge screen while being pocketable in any form because if that thing didn't fold, there's no way you could fit it in any of your pockets unless you wore like those really huge baggy tactical pants things or whatever with like the giant thigh pocket or something or unless you had a custom underscore pocket in your clothing to hold your MacBook or whatever.
John:
Anyway, I just was thinking about it.
John:
I still...
John:
For phone-style purposes, using phones like we do today, I'm still struggling to see Folding as a net win.
John:
But if you want a weird miniature computer that's not a laptop and not a tablet, apparently Fold has at least one fan in Mike.
Casey:
It might be the only one.
Casey:
but we'll see if that thing breaks i mean he's had it for like a week or whatever so i'm still i still have little faith in its durability it has already been like this whole thing on twitter of people posting about like the little dots appearing on the crease basically ruining the screen fun all right john tell me if you didn't want to get the chef's knife you were uh talking about last episode what should you get instead
John:
Uh, I'm not sure about it.
John:
I referred to the knife as that.
John:
It's like the OXO good grips of chef's knives.
John:
Well, predictably OXO good grips does in fact make a chef's knife.
John:
Uh, and we'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
You can take a look at it.
John:
But I have to say, despite the fact that I'm sure the grip is very pleasing, uh,
John:
It doesn't look as good as my knife for one reason, like the bolster or whatever, the thing where the handle goes into the blade.
John:
On my knife, it's like plastic, squishy, grippy material all the way into the blade, whereas this has like a fancier, more expensive looking metal bolster.
John:
And that's not great because I want it to be grippy everywhere.
John:
I don't want it to transition to slippery stuff.
John:
And the second thing is the bolster goes all the way down to the end, the bottom of the blade.
John:
So like the back corner of the knife looks like it's not...
John:
a cutting surface.
John:
It's just part of the bolster.
John:
And I don't, I don't like that either.
John:
I like to use the bottom part of my knife.
John:
Anyway, I like my knife better, but if you do want the OXO good grips with knives, they make one and it's only 20 bucks.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Uh, Apple apparently has rolled out Siri auto audio clip grading opt-in, and there's now an ability to request history deletion in the 13.2 and watch.
Casey:
It was six, six, six point one, uh,
Casey:
And so this is in response to everyone rightfully losing their minds over Apple people, particularly contractors, listening to our conversations with Siri to evaluate and grade them and so on and so forth.
Casey:
So now things are a little bit different.
Casey:
Tell me, John, what's different about them?
John:
I put all the bullet points from the TechCrunch article in here, but I think the bottom line is you have to explicitly opt in and you can opt out at any time.
John:
So there's a bunch of other things about how they use transcripts and all the other stuff, but like giving the user control.
John:
Whereas before, there was no awareness and no control.
John:
Now, presumably, if you listen to tech podcasts, you are aware.
John:
And when these new versions of the OS come out, you will actually have control.
John:
I think there are more details with like you can opt in on a per message basis or something like that.
John:
But anyway, as soon as these versions come out, which I think are probably going to be the first versions that we may feel comfortable recommending people use.
John:
Well, maybe not the Mac OS version, but like 13.2 might be safe.
Marco:
So I'm running the 13.2 beta, of course, and I'm having issues with it.
Marco:
The kind of issues that you would have like in July during beta season.
Marco:
In beta 2, I would frequently have the volume HUD thing when you were adjusting volume like through a car or Bluetooth controls.
Marco:
The volume HUD would come on screen and then just stay there and you couldn't dismiss it.
Marco:
It would just be there forever.
Marco:
My more recent challenge with it is that Siri just stopped talking.
Marco:
That plays out in a few interesting ways.
Marco:
when you try to set an alarm, it responds to you with total silence, which is not confidence-inspiring for your alarm to wake you up in the morning.
Marco:
Any time that Siri would speak a response, or it should speak a response, it would just play that amount of silence, basically.
Marco:
And the UI would look like it was speaking, and it would just be silent.
Marco:
That also meant that when I was driving using Apple Maps, it failed to use voice directions.
Marco:
It failed to speak to me to say, turn right up here, because whatever is using that same engine.
Marco:
Fortunately, I also had Waze, which has its own speech engine.
Marco:
These are the kind of bugs I'm facing in the 13.2 beta so far.
Marco:
These are totally new bugs compared to 13.1.
Marco:
My whole navigation bar bug that made me have to ship a very evasive version of Overcast to dodge around it.
Marco:
That was a new bug to 13.1.
Marco:
Like 13.0 didn't have that bug during its betas.
Marco:
And now the 13.2 bugs are new bugs entirely that, again, the main 13 betas didn't have.
Marco:
So as far as I'm concerned, Apple is still shipping rough beta quality software to all of its customers.
Marco:
And 13.2 doesn't seem to be changing that.
John:
Well, but these are 13.2 betas.
John:
We have to wait to see 13.2 release to see how much better that is.
John:
I'm continuing.
Marco:
Yeah, look at 13.0 release and 13.1 release, and you can see why I'm a little bit skeptical.
John:
I know, but I feel like 0.1 is better than 0.0.
John:
I think the trend is in the right direction, at least.
Marco:
It's less horrible, but 0.1 still has pretty severe beta quality bugs.
Marco:
And what's driving me nuts is at least 13.1 broke my app and lots of other people's apps as well in a way that all of our customers are seeing and blaming us for, understandably.
Marco:
13.2
Marco:
seems to be okay on my apps, but is now breaking the phone.
Marco:
So I don't know what's worse.
Marco:
I mean, if you never use voice prompts and never adjust the volume, never need your phone to speak to you anything, you know, maybe 13.2 is okay for you.
Marco:
But Beta 3 came out today, so I'll see if it's any different.
Casey:
Good luck.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else you want to talk about, Marco?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
There's one other thing.
Marco:
So I wanted to give a quick promo for an app called Optimist Player.
Marco:
And the reason why it's a really good app, and the reason I'm promoting it is because the author of this app did me a massive favor, and I wanted to try to pay him back in whatever way I could.
Marco:
He really helped me out a lot with my AirPlay 2 code.
Marco:
And my AirPlay 2 feature is still not shippable.
Marco:
I still have a long way to go, but I hit a huge roadblock, and he basically helped me past it.
Marco:
So I wanted to give his app a quick promo.
Marco:
It's called Optimus Player, and it looks kind of like QuickTime Player, but it supports all the different formats that you would normally have to use something like VLC for.
Marco:
And it's way nicer than VLC, like way nicer.
Marco:
And it's very Mac-like.
Marco:
It has AirPlay 2, which is why he was able to help me.
Marco:
He used it.
Marco:
It has AirPlay 2.
Marco:
And on the Mac, there's almost nothing that has AirPlay 2.
Marco:
So that's pretty impressive.
Marco:
It has proper color reproduction on the Mac, which VLC often doesn't.
Marco:
And it's just very Mac-like, very Apple-like.
Marco:
So it's a great app.
Marco:
It's $5.
Marco:
OptimusPlayer.com.
Marco:
And I thank the author very much for his help in my AirPlay 2 journey.
John:
I'm always looking for apps like this.
John:
I'm going to get this right now.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, five bucks, like you can't go wrong.
Casey:
I also was pleased to see that it's just, well, I shouldn't say just as though it's not a big deal.
Casey:
It is sitting on top of FFmpeg.
Casey:
And as someone who knows FFmpeg more than most, I can tell you that you don't just do anything with FFmpeg.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So yeah, this looks really good.
Casey:
I haven't tried it yet, but I was glancing at the website when I saw this in the show notes.
Casey:
This looks really, really, really good.
Marco:
Every use of FFmpeg requires a Google search first.
Marco:
At least one.
Marco:
And also, honestly, I have...
Marco:
Never had great experiences with VLC on the Mac.
Marco:
I recognize VLC's importance in the open source community and the Windows world, but on the Mac, it's always been pretty rough.
Marco:
And so to have something that can play all those random formats that you might find that QuickTime player can't, to have something that can play that, that's better than VLC, is pretty valuable to me.
Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's do some topics.
Casey:
Is it time for us to talk about Apple in China?
Casey:
I mean, I feel like it probably is.
Marco:
I mean, if there's ever a time, this is a pretty big news week for it.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I know I'm chief summarizer in chief.
Casey:
I don't even know how to summarize this.
Casey:
There's so many moving parts.
Casey:
So there seem to be like...
Casey:
two or three different stories all happening simultaneously and let me just start down this path and either one of you two please feel free to interrupt me and save me so at around the same time there was some sort of kerfuffle with regard to blizzard and like video game competitions wherein i think the winner of some event said something that was in in favor of hong kong and the protests that are happening that's it we're banned in china
Casey:
Yep, that's it.
Casey:
We're done.
Casey:
Sorry, guys.
Casey:
So they said something in favor of Hong Kong and Blizzard, I guess, like cut them off, like rescinded this individual or this team's winnings and like fired some people or something like that.
Casey:
And there was all sorts of blowback because of it, which seems to me to be justified.
Casey:
Additionally, there was a general manager, if I'm not mistaken, for the NBA.
Casey:
I think the Houston Rockets, if I'm not mistaken,
Casey:
that issued a tweet that was pro-Hong Kong and quickly rescinded it when it was quickly apparent that that really upset China.
Casey:
And guess what?
Casey:
China's a big market for both video games and basketball, actually.
Casey:
And then additionally, how did Apple get involved in this?
Casey:
What was the genesis on Apple?
Casey:
Oh, the app.
Casey:
H.K.
Casey:
Map Live.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
So there is an app that somebody had tried to put on the App Store, which depending on who you believe and who you talk to...
Casey:
I guess the idea was to either try to help people not get accosted by the police, or perhaps if you listen to certain people, it would help people accost the police.
Casey:
So there's a lot of different he said, she said's going on here, but all at about the same time, these three seemingly unrelated, uh, uh, groups have run afoul of the people of the, the higher ups in China and the,
Casey:
China seemed to be more publicly than ever flexing their muscles and saying, we don't like this, and it has to stop.
Casey:
And I guess before we move on as to why this is important or not, is that a reasonable kind of quick summary about all this?
John:
There's been tons of other incidents as well, but those three are the ones that are the top of mind for us in the week that we're recording this.
Casey:
And I have to call out, he is a friend of ours, but Ben Thompson's Stratechery was Tuesday, October 8th, has a really, really good kind of walkthrough and summary of,
Casey:
about what's going on there and why it's important.
Casey:
And it is one of his weekly free articles.
Casey:
I cannot say enough good things about this article and really Stratechery in general, but I strongly encourage you to read that article because it is tremendous and it's a very, very good and in-depth, but not terribly long summary of what's going on.
Casey:
But I guess where this becomes relevant, particularly for ATP, is
Casey:
is Apple's put themselves in a real crummy position because not only is China an incredibly important market for Apple in terms of sales, but pretty much all of their hardware, with the possible exception of your two new computers, for the two of you, is made in China.
Casey:
And all of these iPhones are made in China.
Casey:
All these iPads are made in China.
Casey:
And that has left Apple very, very exposed.
Casey:
For a company that prides itself on being more than a traditional company, a company that values the environment, that values LGBTQ people and their rights, that values things that just seem like the right thing—
Casey:
It also seems like the same company, Apple, is also doing a real good job of bending over backwards to make China happy.
Casey:
And in and of itself, I think that's fine.
Casey:
Just hear me out for a second.
Casey:
In and of itself, that is their prerogative is a better way of phrasing it.
Casey:
If they want to bend over for Apple, then okay.
Casey:
But that seems incongruous with, oh, we're very forward thinking and we care about the environment.
Casey:
We care about doing what's right.
Casey:
Screw you, FBI.
Casey:
You can't have our encryption keys.
Casey:
There will be no back doors.
Casey:
Yay, we're the best.
Casey:
Oh, by the way, if China says anything about anything, we're going to do it because we need to immediately.
Casey:
And that leaves a really gross taste in my mouth.
Casey:
And I don't...
Casey:
I'm torn because a lot of people on Twitter have said to me about various things over the last six months, you know, how can you support whatever?
Casey:
They're terrible.
Casey:
How could you support those people?
Casey:
And what's been made clear to me over the last six months to a year to two years to whatever is
Casey:
is that pretty much any company, even one that most people seem to agree with and respect, like Apple, pretty much any company you can look at and say, oh, one time they did this deplorable thing and we should never support them again.
Casey:
Or this individual on their board is really, really gross and we should never support them again.
Casey:
And I am absolutely coming from a position of privilege here.
Casey:
I recognize that 1,000%.
Casey:
But
Casey:
If I didn't do business with any of these companies that have Achilles heels and gotchas and so on and so forth, I would have to be in a van down by the river because I wouldn't be able to do business with anyone.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
I've really, as we say to Declan or Declan sometimes says to us, I have mixed up feelings and I don't know what I think other than
Casey:
I don't like Apple in saying out of one side of their mouths, you know, we're the best.
Casey:
We're so forward thinking.
Casey:
We care.
Casey:
We care.
Casey:
We care.
Casey:
And then on the other side of their mouth saying, yes, China, whatever you need, whatever you need.
Casey:
Yes, of course.
Casey:
Absolutely.
Casey:
Whatever you need.
Casey:
So what do we do?
John:
Well, before we dive into the Apple side of things, which I think is interesting and is a little bit more tractable, I think I want to start by big picturing this.
John:
So Apple has a China problem.
John:
Lots of articles have been written with almost that exact headline.
John:
But the bigger picture is the world has a China problem.
John:
China is a problem for the world.
John:
It is a huge country with a very large population that has been growing in economic power for a long time.
John:
And it's also an authoritarian state.
John:
And those things combine to make a problem for everybody.
John:
Why is that a problem?
John:
Well, in the increasingly global economy, having lots of people with an increasing amount of money to spend on things makes them an important market for you to sell your products into.
John:
Also, part of China's economic engine is their manufacturing ability, which Apple takes advantage of.
John:
Many other people take advantage of as well, which makes them an attractive place for companies to have things made.
John:
As the rest of the world becomes increasingly economically entangled with China, there are pluses and minuses.
John:
The pluses are, in theory, we are all slightly less likely to nuke each other because we're all paying each other's money and China doesn't want to give up selling things to us and we don't want to give up selling things to China and China doesn't want to give up the manufacturing contracts and we don't want to give up building things there.
John:
And so...
John:
there is some incentive to not blow each other up.
John:
But on the other hand, they're still an authoritarian state that does terrible things.
John:
And we both have limited leverage to, you know, affect each other's behavior.
John:
We would like China to be less evil.
John:
China would like us to let them be evil.
John:
And so we're kind of at an impasse.
John:
And this is so much bigger than Apple.
John:
It is literally a problem for the whole world.
John:
Like this...
John:
This has to come to a head eventually.
John:
The prevailing theory when I was a kid was that, oh, as China becomes more economically successful and as we sort of export capitalism to them, it's inevitable they will become modernized and less authoritarian and so on and so forth.
John:
But practically speaking, China has basically used their economic growth and increasing technological savvy to become a more efficient authoritarian state using all the technology and money available to them.
John:
By the way, so have we.
John:
Yeah, true.
John:
To more efficiently oppress their people.
John:
And it seems like, I mean, it's hard to tell.
John:
I'm not a historian by any stretch, but it seems like in general, authoritarian regimes rarely fade away peacefully, let's say.
John:
But, you know, violent rebellion in China, if it was successful, would be
John:
an incredibly tumultuous event.
John:
There have been, you know, there have been violent rebellions and continue to be small violent rebellions all quashed by the giant that is China.
John:
And so I can, from the perspective of the world,
John:
This is a problem if you don't want a gigantic, powerful, authoritarian state to exist.
John:
But on the other side, and this we'll get into when we start talking about Apple, complete isolation of China is probably more dangerous in the long run because...
John:
Like they'll sort of fester and they already have nukes.
John:
And it's like, you know, they have a lot of people and a huge army.
John:
And like, this is the tension that, you know, the Western world and the entire world, in fact, has struggled with.
John:
Total isolation and non-engagement.
John:
I feel like the ship has sailed on that.
John:
But on the other hand, if you get too entangled with them, they do have some sway over you.
John:
And we see it in every form of business of every country that does any business with China, whether it's manufacturing, they are selling things into it.
John:
There are interests there that motivate both parties to more or less make nice with each other, which sounds good.
John:
Oh, great.
John:
Everyone's making nice.
John:
I'm not going to get nuked.
John:
But when you make nice with an authoritarian state, what tends to happen if you combine two colors, you get something that's in the middle.
John:
And if your one color is what you think of as better or good and you combine it with something that is worse, the combination will be worse than where you started necessarily.
John:
Right.
John:
It's like we hope that we would, you know, through through the free world's interaction with China, they would become more free.
John:
And I'm not sure if they have become more free, but one thing is for sure their export authoritarianism.
John:
has affected the rest of the world in mostly small ways, but in actual real ways.
John:
So I just, I wanted to give that framing in that Apple, that's what the podcast is about, so on and so forth, but no matter what Apple does, the entire world has a problem of some degree.
John:
Is it a huge problem?
John:
Is it going to end the world?
John:
Or is it a small problem?
John:
Could it become a big problem?
John:
But it is a problem, and it is not a new problem.
John:
It has been there for a long time, and the world has not come up with a way to deal with it
John:
and so this is i feel like i don't know if it's an increased awareness or just a flare-up in our little world of exactly what a problem it is to have 1.3 billion people under authoritarian rule with huge economic and financial power yeah and like i don't i mean i'm you know your typical ignorant american um
Marco:
I don't know anything about any of this.
Marco:
I don't know anything about China.
Marco:
I don't know anything about all the various political struggles with various groups and countries and districts.
Marco:
I don't know anything about it.
Marco:
It is shameful how little I know about China and the various politics around it.
Marco:
So I apologize for anything that I'm trying to say here because I'm probably doing a terrible job of it.
Marco:
But in business as in politics...
Marco:
The bigger you get, the more bitter pills you have to swallow that are just part of the nature of the game.
Marco:
To be running a massive multinational corporation, it becomes really hard for you to just tell the biggest market on earth, sorry, we don't want to do business with you because we don't like what you do.
Marco:
That's really hard for...
Marco:
officers of a public company to do without getting fired or sued by their shareholders or whatever else like like i'm lucky you know in my business like trying to block the overcast years ago and i don't care i didn't notice i didn't have that many customers there and i'm one guy nobody can fire me so like i didn't care so i you know it doesn't affect me at all i can i can make the decision to say i won't play ball with them apple can't you know from from the two different points of view you know as i mentioned like from the manufacturing and from the you know selling into the market
Marco:
Apple can't do that.
Marco:
They can't just say... Tim Cook can't just say, you know what, we're not going to play ball with you and we're going to let you ban our products and then we won't be able to make them anymore or sell them there.
Marco:
They could do that.
John:
I want to reframe this to say that I'm not presupposing, which is what part of the preamble was about, I'm not presupposing that...
John:
saying to China, F you, is actually the correct long-term move.
John:
We always frame it as like, oh, if Apple was as free as Marco, they would do the right thing and tell China to go screw itself, right?
John:
But is that the right thing?
John:
From one perspective, from the micro level, yeah, of course.
John:
The authoritarian government's telling you to censor things, and you shouldn't listen to them.
John:
You should say, screw you.
John:
And if they ban your products, then tough luck.
John:
It seems like the right thing to do.
John:
But big picture-wise, if everybody did that and you isolate China...
John:
it makes them more dangerous and it makes conflict more likely because you are less economically entangled.
John:
So that's why I feel like it's a quandary.
John:
I'm not willing to say that, big picture-wise, every company in the world should just say, screw you, China, because that leads to geopolitical instability with a gigantic, powerful country...
John:
As someone who lived through the Cold War, that doesn't make me feel particularly comfortable.
John:
If that strategy was going to work, the ship has sailed on that.
John:
So I feel like continued engagement with China...
John:
is not necessarily the wrong thing.
John:
And that's why I'm wary about any framing that says, Apple should do the right thing, but can't because of reasons X. The reasons X are totally real, but I'm almost not entirely convinced that just like the sort of teenage rebellion, screw you China, I do what I want, is actually the right thing to do in all circumstances.
Marco:
realistically speaking, what can slash should Apple do here?
Marco:
And I don't think they should totally pull out of China.
Marco:
I don't think they can, first of all, and I don't think they should.
Marco:
There's lots of arguments that, you know, one of the arguments is that people in China should have access to
Marco:
relatively secure and good phones, even though yes, all Chinese iCloud data is stored in Chinese government run places.
Marco:
So, you know, there's certainly reduced freedom and security for iCloud users in China than there was anywhere else.
John:
But it's better than the alternatives in theory.
John:
Like that's the sort of the mixing of the colors.
John:
If you're going to mix, you know, Apple with China and come up with something that is less authoritarian than China, even if only by a tiny bit.
John:
That's I mean, that's the argument Apple has made that like it's better for us.
John:
It's better for everybody if we are there, even if we are not as secure as we are in the US.
John:
At least we're more secure than the totally state owned and run like totally infiltrated manufacturers where nothing is secret.
Marco:
exactly and and that's and i don't you know that's a tough argument for me to take honestly i don't i don't love that argument but i understand it and so okay and it's convenient because you can make that argument this is why we have to be in this huge market see we're making china you're making china better really you're making a lot of money yeah exactly but i think apple has to play ball with china to a large degree that is that is just like one of the bitter pills possibly the biggest bitter pill that apple has to swallow as a business like
Marco:
I truly believe that Apple's leaders are not bad people.
Marco:
They don't want to do bad things.
Marco:
They actually want to be overall social good while making ass loads of money constantly.
Marco:
But they want to be overall social good.
Marco:
But China's a big area where they have to
Marco:
just kind of quietly do what China wants much of the time because Apple has a just ton of dependency on China.
Marco:
And so I think in the same way that the Tim Cook doctrine has always been to own and control the primary technologies that we need or whatever, I think they have broken that principle with the degree of dependence they currently have on China.
Marco:
The manufacturing angle, I think, is the biggest one.
Marco:
They obviously...
Marco:
To lose the sales of their products into China would be massive.
Marco:
It's a huge portion of their market.
Marco:
It's a huge portion of the world's market.
Marco:
It's slated to become an even bigger portion of the world's middle class.
Marco:
And so that would be a huge problem to lose sales into China.
Marco:
But Apple sells enough phones in the rest of the world, they'd be fine.
Marco:
It would be tumultuous in their earnings and in their stock and everything else.
Marco:
The leaders might get fired by the board or by the shareholders or whatever.
Marco:
Things would be bad.
Marco:
For most of Apple's customers, it wouldn't be a problem.
Marco:
It would be overall not a company-ending event if they couldn't sell their products into China anymore.
Marco:
But if they suddenly couldn't make their products in China anymore, that is a much bigger problem for them.
Marco:
And they make so many products at such incredible tolerances and specifications and qualities and, most importantly, volumes –
Marco:
that the Chinese supply chain and manufacturing capacity and talent and just the entire manufacturing infrastructure there, Apple currently can't do without that.
Marco:
They have a couple of factories in different places around the world.
Marco:
They have some manufacturing capacity outside of China, but it's nowhere near enough that they could absorb the loss of China without huge disruption and massive problems.
Marco:
And that, to me, I think that is a direct violation, a direct risk exposure on that Tim Cook doctrine of trying to own your primary technologies.
Marco:
In as much as a company can be independent from risks of governments interfering, that's always a big challenge for companies.
Marco:
And obviously, Apple's always going to be at risk of its own home country's government interfering with it.
Marco:
To expose yourself to a massive amount of risk of another
Marco:
authoritarian country with huge power over you it seems like it's an improperly taken risk by Apple and that's why I think like I'm not saying they should pull out of the Chinese market I am saying they need to significantly diversify their manufacturing and I know it's hard I know there's not nearly the infrastructure in other places in certain ways that China has I know that and
Marco:
But Apple's really big.
Marco:
They have a lot of money.
Marco:
They ship a lot of products.
Marco:
They have a lot of factories that they can – like Apple could significantly help jumpstart this.
Marco:
And so to whatever degree Apple can build up manufacturing capacity elsewhere –
Marco:
This should be, if it hasn't already been, this should be a wake-up call that they are exposed to way too much risk with the amount that they depend on China right now.
Marco:
And so the easiest way out of that – and I use the term easiest here loosely because these are all very hard, very complicated problems that we don't understand.
Marco:
But the least horrible and least risky and least expensive way out of this –
Marco:
is probably going to be to significantly build up manufacturing capacity elsewhere.
Marco:
As much as I hate to say it, some degree of conservatism was right in the sense that if you build it in our country, that does reduce your risk in certain ways.
Marco:
But I don't know enough about it to say whether that's even possible.
Marco:
But certainly, if anybody can do it...
Marco:
a company that has a massive amount of cash, that produces a massive amount of products and has huge manufacturing expertise in-house, Apple can figure out how to diversify its manufacturing.
Marco:
And Apple has the clout and the resources to move markets in major ways here.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Apple actually can create manufacturing infrastructure that can rival China's in some way.
Marco:
I know it's a huge long-term project.
Marco:
I know it's not going to be fast or easy or cheap.
Marco:
But to me, I see this as an existential threat for Apple if they don't do this.
Marco:
They have to do this because if stuff goes bad with China and Apple all of a sudden can't make their product there anymore...
Marco:
They not only won't be able to sell to China, they won't be able to sell to anybody.
Marco:
That is a huge risk and the company needs to diversify to mitigate that.
John:
So Apple manufacturing China is a good example of engagement with China.
John:
You can imagine when this strategy was being formulated.
John:
Apple's manufactured stuff in China for ages.
John:
But in the beginning, it seems like a way that we can take advantage of an emerging cluster of manufacturing ability that is obviously less expensive than doing it
John:
at home and less expensive than doing, you know, it's inexpensive and highly skilled.
John:
And there's like, there's a synergy there where they want to build up manufacturing.
John:
We want to have things manufactured.
John:
They're very willing to do what we want.
John:
And for, you know, for the amount of money we want to give them.
John:
And it's a symbiotic relationship.
John:
Apple, not single-handedly, but to a large degree, the story of Apple manufacturing elsewhere has been that Apple puts in a lot of money up front.
John:
You read all the stories back when the unibodies were coming out that they would buy all the CNC machines in the world and have them use them in all their factories and put the capital up front to build the factories.
John:
Apple didn't make China's manufacturing capability, but Apple put a lot of money into it.
John:
What it has done in China is
John:
Exactly what you were describing, which is put money in to make the kind of manufacturing capacity you want that didn't previously exist to the degree and the size that you needed it to.
John:
the thing is Apple has undertaken that project for a decade now, you know, maybe almost two.
John:
Like they've, they've put a lot of time and energy into building up that capacity and they have been diversifying.
John:
Like, but I think the, the main thing that makes me confident that they can do it is they can do what they did in China over a course of another decade.
John:
Right.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
to build up high-tech manufacturing capacity that they can therefore then use to sell to other people.
John:
So there's no shortage of other countries that would love for you to build your stuff there and give you all those billions of dollars.
John:
But it does take a really long time, and you're not going to replace or catch up with China in a one- or two-year plan.
John:
It's going to be over the course of the next decade or so.
John:
I think that type of response...
John:
Like, while it feels good to say, screw you, China, we're putting the Hong Kong mapping app back in the store, you know, go Apple, we're doing the quote-unquote right thing all the time, we just give, you know, the middle finger to the authoritarian state, a hugely less satisfying, but perhaps in the long term, more effective response is to...
John:
Accelerate plans to do, you know, to move your manufacturing out of China.
John:
Accelerate means we're going to do it in the next decade instead of two decades from now, right?
John:
That is a response.
John:
That is sort of an economic response that is like...
John:
It's a thing.
John:
China will know that Apple's doing it.
John:
China will understand that we got this big of a contract last year to do this thing, and now we get less of a contract.
John:
You are remaining engaged with the authoritarian state, but you are tapering off your investment and giving it to other countries, maybe even other neighboring countries.
John:
China sees that.
John:
This is the power of the incentives that we have.
John:
Our power is not...
John:
We can say, screw you, China, at any point.
John:
We don't have that power.
John:
Apple doesn't have that power.
John:
The world doesn't have that power.
John:
But Apple and the world does have the power to say, maybe less of that, less of China, less of doing stuff in there.
John:
Like, that's our power.
John:
And if they want to say, hey, Apple, come back to China, then you can have a discussion.
John:
That's like, this is the sort of, sort of, uh...
John:
economic form of diplomacy like actual geopolitical diplomacy blowing people up in wars and territory or whatever is a different thing today most of that happens over the course of like who's going to get what contract to build what thing for what company and you know it's it's sort of much more crass
John:
form of negotiation, but that's the way things are done.
John:
That is the power Apple and the world has, and it is a more boring and much less satisfying and much more slow motion form of power.
John:
In the meantime, China's power over the rest of the world is much more immediate, but
John:
This has been discussed in this week with discussing things with China.
John:
For most of our life, or for at least half of our lives, China has had a huge influence over the movies that get made in Hollywood.
John:
Because Hollywood wants to sell movies in China, and China doesn't want movies that make China look bad.
John:
So it was just been a thing for years and years.
John:
It used to be just a comical thing.
John:
Like, oh, you know, in this movie they did this thing because it plays better in China.
John:
Or they took this out because China doesn't like that.
John:
And it seems kind of funny and weird, but eventually you're like, this is not a great situation.
John:
Why is the media we're making in Hollywood being bent to the will of an authoritarian state?
John:
I mean, I was out of the world.
John:
I was like, well, so we can sell the movie over there because international box office is huge and they have a lot of people who go to the movies and
John:
That's the answer, but it's not a great answer.
John:
But, like, that's an immediate thing.
John:
Like, that China makes it known, hey, we're not going to show your movie if you say bad things about us or do things that we don't like.
John:
And that means, like, immediately, the people who are making a giant blockbuster movie for $200 million in Hollywood, you know, China says jump, they say how high.
John:
It's small stakes, but it happens immediately.
John:
Whereas Apple slowly transitioning its manufacturing to places other than China over the next decade or two,
John:
hugely less satisfying way slower not as dramatic and in the meantime apple needs to explain why it's doing what china wants uh try to come up with reasoning for its moves that fits in with the ethos that casey was describing hey apple i thought you were the think different do good things for the world type thing
John:
And it's it's difficult to explain.
John:
And not only difficult to explain, we're not it's not entirely sure that it's right.
John:
I was saying that I wasn't willing to say the total lack of engagement with China was the right answer.
John:
I'm not sure it's the right answer or the wrong answer.
John:
Like they Apple could laboriously explain what I just described and it could end up being the wrong answer.
John:
Like no one knows exactly how things are going to go.
John:
you know the history of the world has showed us anything it's not easy to predict how these things are going to go down often they hinge on very small stupid things including like apps getting rejected and whatever is happening with hong kong and everything so there there are no easy solutions here but i i agree with marco i think i said as much when we first discussing this in slack a couple weeks ago
John:
And I'm sure neither of us are out ahead of Apple on this.
John:
Apple surely has known for a long time and certainly knows now that they should be finding alternatives that, you know, they, they made the original trash can in Texas or whatever.
John:
Obviously that's a silly, you know, low volume thing, but I made all eight of them there.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But like the fact that things like that exist, I mean, part of it's part of the U S political system and all that garbage, right?
John:
But yeah,
John:
They're increasing manufacturing in India.
John:
Apple is doing this already.
John:
Because it is unsatisfying and slow, you might think, oh, Apple needs to start right now and get out of China.
John:
I think they're already doing that as fast as they can.
John:
Just as fast as they can is really slow.
John:
And that's just a guess.
John:
And in the meantime, Apple has to put out press releases saying...
John:
We're banning the app that shows you where police are because reasons.
John:
And it's not satisfying and it doesn't feel good.
John:
But...
John:
There's no easy solutions here.
John:
I wish I could tell you exactly what everybody should do.
John:
All I can tell you is what probably Apple's best bet is and probably essentially what they already are doing.
John:
And then we just have to cross our fingers and hope tanks don't roll into Hong Kong and the whole world blows up.
John:
And in the meantime, we've got to deal with authoritarian exports from China infiltrating our country to mix in with, as Marco pointed out, our own homegrown brand of authoritarianism.
John:
And it's
John:
We're back to Breaking Bad again, aren't we?
John:
This is a feel-good episode.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
This geopolitical climate isn't making me happy, Casey.
Casey:
No, tell me about it.
Casey:
Let me ask both of you, and I'll start with John, if you could snap your fingers.
Casey:
And you could either make Apple completely unreliant, no longer reliant on Intel at all, or you could snap your fingers and make Apple not reliant on China at all.
Casey:
And let's assume that it's magic.
Casey:
And I know you love these, John.
Casey:
It's magic and nothing else changes.
Casey:
You know, there's no penalties that you can see.
Casey:
It's just you snap your fingers.
Casey:
Neither Intel is not a problem or China is not a problem.
Casey:
Which do you do?
John:
China, easy.
John:
Apple's barely relying on Intel as it is, and within a few years, they'll be off of Intel entirely anyway.
John:
China, China is so much a harder problem.
John:
Apple's basically already off of Intel for practically, inside Apple, where things are five years ahead of where they are outside Apple, Intel is gone.
Casey:
That's a bold statement.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm a John on that one.
Casey:
You really think Intel's gone in five years from now, Apple?
Marco:
Yeah, I think so.
John:
I really hope so.
John:
Our freaking phone is faster than all their Macs.
Marco:
Come on.
Marco:
And maybe not totally 100% gone, but I think very few of their products will be left running Intel processors in five years.
John:
We're talking about how hard it is to do the China thing.
John:
They've done most of the hard work for getting off of Intel.
John:
Where are they going to get their chips from?
John:
They're going to make them themselves.
John:
They own and control them.
John:
Are those chips good?
John:
Yes, they're really good.
John:
all that's left is the okay and now we're transitioning and here's the transition strategy which apple has done before like the hard part was if you had mentioned this you know before apple had the iphone they had intel max that's like they want to get off intel it's like who are they going to use that for their chips and their max amd
John:
And you're like, well, what if Apple makes their own chips?
John:
And everyone would laugh and laugh.
John:
But we're way past that now.
John:
That problem is mostly solved.
John:
Whereas the China thing, you would really need a magic genie finger snapping thing because Apple, I feel like, is just in the early stages of trying to deal with that.
John:
And in the meantime, I'm, you know, I'm being optimistic and saying, of course, Apple wants to do the right thing.
John:
There are huge powers, as Marco pointed out, on the other side of this saying, what are you doing?
John:
Don't get out of China.
John:
Just make the authoritarian state happy because they manufacture things really well and cheaply.
John:
And we want you to keep doing that because we're, you know, plutocrats who all we care about is our investment and we have billions of dollars in Apple stock.
John:
So don't do that.
John:
Like that exists.
John:
That's a real thing.
John:
As much as any individual leader at Apple may want to do the right thing.
John:
And as, you know, as Marco said, like, you know, the board could ditch them and replace them with someone who's more likely to bend to China's will.
John:
Like those forces exist within our country and have to be dealt with just like anything else.
Marco:
Also, I mean, first of all, so a couple other quick follow-up items here.
Marco:
Number one, I think we are closer to dropping Intel than we might think because look at how much stuff got removed from Catalina.
Marco:
Look at how much legacy cruft that the operating system has been dropping over the last couple of years and especially this year.
Marco:
If you were doing an architecture transition pretty soon, you would want as little legacy stuff around as possible, and you would want all the apps that you'd have to support being built using modern tools and things like that.
Marco:
So that's step number one.
Marco:
Item number two here is...
Marco:
I think one of the exacerbating factors in the most recent dust-up with Apple in China, with the HKMAP Live app, is that we don't have sideloading in the app store.
Marco:
Or in iOS devices, rather.
Marco:
Part of that app's removal, and again, I'm sorry, I don't know anything about the politics behind any of this.
Marco:
I should, but I don't, and I'm sorry.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Part of the problem with the apps removal is that you have no other alternative.
Marco:
Now, you do have their web app.
Marco:
And apparently, I've been told, their web app is pretty good.
Marco:
And, you know, so it's kind of moot that Apple removed the app from the app store because the web app can still be used for the same purpose, apparently, I've been told.
Marco:
But the fact is, we don't have sideloading on iOS devices.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I don't know that Apple will ever do that.
Marco:
I would consider it fairly unlikely.
Marco:
But that is one kind of relief valve that if they needed one, they could pull it.
Marco:
Where they could just start allowing sideloaded software with certain restrictions.
Marco:
Maybe it's notarization, who knows what.
Marco:
But certain restrictions so that they could still do an expert kind of blacklist thing and blacklist obvious malware, but that they would...
Marco:
not be running everything through the app store, and therefore not even be putting themselves in the position of having to block apps for certain government requests.
Marco:
And sure, the Chinese government could then just go to the web host that was hosting the app and make them block it.
Marco:
Yes, that is true, but at least it wouldn't be on Apple.
Marco:
And so that is one relief valve again.
Marco:
I don't think they're ever going to pull it, but they have, by putting themselves in the position of being the gatekeeper to all software on iOS, they then also put themselves directly in the position of having to deal with stuff like this.
Marco:
And if they weren't the only gatekeeper for all software, they would remove themselves from the business of having to deal with a lot of this crap.
John:
Apple could, I mean, Apple has, I imagine, been of two minds internally about this for a long time.
John:
But it's like a struggle.
John:
It's like the advantages are just too much.
John:
We can't allow side loading.
John:
They could be helped out, quote unquote, helped out by, for example, the U.S.
John:
government deciding that with this, you know, these ongoing antitrust things that they have to allow side loading.
John:
And that kind of solves one of Apple's difficult problems in that.
John:
We never knew whether we could do it before.
John:
Keeping everything closed was like a problem, and it put us in all sorts of binds.
John:
And now it's like, well, we don't have a choice.
John:
The U.S.
John:
government says you can't do that, so we won't.
John:
And we get the benefits that you just described without ever having to make that difficult decision, which may or may not be the right.
John:
Basically, if you're allowed to not have sideloading, it may actually be the right decision for Apple to not have sideloading.
John:
But if you're not allowed to forbid sideloading,
John:
Apple's problem is solved.
John:
It's like, well, we have no choice.
John:
Right.
John:
And again, you know, it's an American company subject to American laws.
John:
You can do different things.
John:
But I feel like that would be somewhat of a relief for Apple, like taking that choice away.
John:
I'm sure they don't see it that way.
John:
I'm sure they don't see increased government regulation as the answer to any of their problems.
John:
But from the outside and in general in American corporate history.
John:
When companies get too large and powerful, government regulation is often the only way to make things better because you can't rely on the companies to regulate themselves.
John:
Too many things are aligned against them being good at regulating themselves.
John:
That's the role of government.
John:
Whether we're at that point with Apple, we're going to have a whole other discussion when these antitrust stuffs roll on and whether or not we'd agree with any individual case that's going up against them, but
John:
I feel like part of the, and not just Apple, all the large tech companies, they're not going to solve these problems themselves.
John:
They are producing more and more difficult problems for themselves because their path to power has led them in that direction, and they're not going to turn from it unless some other influence pushes them in that direction.
John:
Maybe dealing with China is not enough, but the U.S.
John:
government saying you can't do that anymore.
John:
Or like you can either we can either break you up or you can allow sideloading.
John:
Apple would be like sideloading.
John:
Sure.
John:
Great.
John:
We'll do it.
John:
Like there's all sorts of scenarios in which Apple could be convinced that it is suddenly in their best interest to make a deal with the U.S.
John:
government to allow sideloading.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Chris Wright wants to know, will progress bars or time remaining estimations ever become broadly more accurate, linear, and consistent with smooth animation from zero to 100%?
Casey:
And if not, would you care to explain some of the computational reasons why?
Marco:
Oh, this is a good one.
Marco:
So the answer is no.
Marco:
Time remaining bars and progress bars will never be incredibly accurate on a broad scale.
Marco:
And the main reasons why come down to unpredictable tasks and lazy programmers.
Marco:
And neither of those are ever going away.
Marco:
So unpredictable tasks would include things like if you have to fetch something over a network.
Marco:
so for instance, like a progress bar for loading a webpage, you have no idea how long it's going to take.
Marco:
Not to mention the fact that every new piece of data you fetch, like in a webpage, if you're loading a webpage progressively, every new thing that you load might then add something that needs to be loaded to it.
Marco:
So you might all of a sudden read in, oh, here's a script tag, let me load the script, and then that script tag adds other scripts, or adds images that need to be loaded or something.
Marco:
And so like,
Marco:
You don't know until you finish loading something whether you have more stuff to load.
Marco:
And you don't know how long it will take to load each thing because you're pulling over the network.
Marco:
So there's that whole category of things that this is never going to be perfectly predictable.
Marco:
You can make estimates, but it's never going to be great.
Marco:
And then there's lazy programmers.
Marco:
The reality is there's not a lot of...
Marco:
both skill to do things incredibly right at a level like that for a progress meter to be accurate, and there's also not a lot of economic incentive for project managers and bosses to allocate resources to engineering time to making the progress bars better.
Marco:
The reality is that all this stuff is dictated by time and economics and everything, and nobody's business is depending on those progress bars being accurate.
Marco:
And so the engineers will always have things that their bosses are telling them that they should do instead of working on that.
Marco:
And many of the engineers who would do things that would give a progress bar its percentage to show...
Marco:
also aren't that good at estimating things and might not have the skill to do it right in the first place.
Marco:
So the combination of lazy programmers or slash programmers who aren't given the power to do it right and the unpredictability of many of these tasks, it's never going to be great.
Marco:
I think progress bars, as we see them now,
Marco:
Not only are...
Marco:
about as good as we're ever likely to see them again, but are actually worse than they used to be in some ways.
Marco:
Because I feel like now we have even more tasks than ever that do network requests or that do more complex things.
Marco:
And the era of mobile has introduced the era of the spinner.
Marco:
And the spinner is not a progress indicator.
Marco:
It is simply a activity indicator.
Marco:
It doesn't tell you how complete something is.
Marco:
It just tells you something's happening.
Marco:
And most people are fine with that.
Marco:
As long as the spinner keeps animating, most people don't think it's a problem.
Marco:
Most customers are fine with that.
Marco:
We actually now have fewer operations that show progress bars.
Marco:
Most of them will just show a spinner until they're done, no matter how long it takes.
John:
I think there's two more things.
John:
First, I would give much heavier weight to unpredictability because I feel like that is the real reason why you're never going to be satisfied.
John:
But there's two other reasons.
John:
One is user experience.
John:
Chris said it in the thing.
John:
The expectation of a progress bar, a traditional progress bar,
John:
is that it's you know it's this linear consistent smooth animation right one one thing that violates that is if suddenly your progress bar goes backwards like what what do you mean backwards i was i was 10 and now i'm 5 this thing is broken but as marco pointed out you don't know how far you are you could be doing a thing and suddenly you have much more work than you thought if you were to proportionally scale the new amount of work that you know you have to do you thought you had to do 10 things now you have to do 100
John:
suddenly the progress bar goes backwards people hate that second thing is impatient users people want things to be done fast the more work you do to get an accurate progress bar the longer your task takes there's no better example than this than doing any file operation in the finder where it tries really hard to count up all the things that it's going to have to do to give a better more accurate progress bar and you're like oh my god finder just start doing the thing yeah
John:
I don't care how many things are.
John:
Look, let me tell you, it's millions.
John:
There are millions of things.
John:
Whereas if you go to the command line and do rm minus rf directory, rm does not traverse the directory tree to find out how many things it has to delete to give you a progress bar.
John:
It just starts deleting crap, which is why the finder, one of the many reasons the finder takes a real long time to do operations on large amount of things.
John:
It's spending time to try to give you the best progress bar you can get.
John:
People don't want that.
John:
They want the thing to take the smallest amount of time.
John:
They also want a progress bar.
John:
But as Marco pointed out, if you give them a spinner and do the task twice as fast, it's way better than spending half your time figuring out all the work you're going to have to do, like pre-flighting it all to get an accurate progress bar and then marching it through.
John:
That's not worthwhile.
John:
And the other thing, someone in the chat reminded me of the original Aqua progress bars, which I thought were a fairly, like many things in Aqua, they were a fairly ingenious innovation.
John:
People might not remember these because things are no longer candy and lickable.
John:
But they were a typical progress bar, like a horizontal bar that fills.
John:
It would fill with this blue candy-colored-looking cylinder thing.
John:
But inside the blue candy-colored cylinder was like a wavy pattern that scrolled within the cylinder.
John:
which was a nice example of a single element a progress bar going from left to right that also incorporates the spinner thing saying is my computer frozen is this job still going because the progress bar isn't getting any bigger but because that texture is animating it communicates to the user don't worry even though it's a lie most of the time don't worry that
John:
The thing that you wanted to do, we're still trying to do it.
John:
It's just even though the progress bar isn't moving, the computer is still working.
John:
It's basically a user-reassuring idle animation that lets them know that it's progressing and not frozen, even though, again, that texture animation probably just happens automatically.
John:
For all you know, the job could be frozen.
John:
I thought that was a clever innovation.
John:
Our progress bars today on the Mac and elsewhere tend not to do that, but...
John:
Anyway, yeah, it's never going to be good because you can't predict the future and you don't want it to be good.
John:
Trust me.
John:
Just try deleting a folder with a million files in the finder and you'll wish for no progress bar or a progress bar that starts at zero and goes to 100 when it's done.
John:
Those really were beautiful progress bars, though.
John:
They were likable.
Casey:
Charles Clements writes, I'm curious as to your app of choice for composing the written word for things like blog posts, reference notes, and other persistent writing.
Casey:
Also, do you tend to write using Markdown, regular plain text, rich text, or heaven forbid, Microsoft Word?
Casey:
Lastly, do you always use a heavy device for your writing like a Mac laptop or desktop, or might you use an iPad on occasion?
Casey:
This and the next question are the continuation of John putting in Ask ATP things that I thought I could answer very quickly via email or tweet.
Casey:
So this I have already answered for Charles, but I will answer for everyone.
Casey:
When I write blog posts, I do it in Visual Studio Code, which probably strikes a lot of people as really weird.
Casey:
But it's a really good IDE for JavaScript.
Casey:
And my website is Node.
Casey:
And it also is very good at Markdown.
Casey:
And the blog posts are all written in Markdown.
Casey:
Generally speaking, if I'm doing anything except Apple Notes, I'm using Markdown.
Casey:
And I'm generally doing it in Visual Studio Code on my computer or working copy, which is a really excellent Git client on the iPad.
Casey:
And that's usually where I'm doing that sort of thing.
Casey:
And my long-term storage, if not my website, is typically Apple Notes.
Casey:
Marco, how about you?
Marco:
Anything that is code that is not in Xcode, so obviously I write my source code for my app in Xcode, but other types of code, blog posts, anything that I would have to write in Markdown, that I will almost always do in TextMate on a Mac, whether it's desktop or laptop.
Marco:
Although I don't do a lot of blog posting anymore, but when I do, it's almost always TextMate.
Marco:
When I'm writing other things, I'm usually using Apple Notes.
Marco:
and that i can and often do uh edit on other platforms i i often will use my ipad to write a big note um or my phone and it's nice to have that synced and everything so and because i don't i never got into like the various um that whole category of like merlin dropbox text editor apps like that you would like you'd have like a folder and dropbox and it would sync all your text documents and you'd be able to edit them then on ios and mac and everything
Marco:
I never got into any of those that heavily.
Marco:
It never made it a part of my workflow.
Marco:
I never had a synced text base before until I got really into Apple Notes.
Marco:
Apple Notes is my main home for most text.
Marco:
It's only when I have to get into server-side code stuff or writing Markdown that I drop to TextMate now.
Marco:
Therefore, that allows me to be more device agnostic and having everything synced everywhere is really useful.
John:
John?
John:
My answer is boring.
John:
It's actually kind of like Casey's.
John:
I use BBEdit for everything.
John:
Everything I've ever written on the web has been done in BBEdit.
John:
All my programming is done in BBEdit for the most part.
John:
I don't like or use Markdown.
John:
I write in plain text or for when I'm making something that's going to be HTML.
John:
I actually write it in HTML.
John:
As horrifying as that is for modern people, that's what I do.
John:
I don't use Word.
John:
I think the last time I used Word was like writing papers for school.
John:
I didn't write them in VVEdit because they wanted, you know, I had to print them a proportional font and have, you know, all that stuff.
John:
I will not write on an iOS device if I could possibly help it.
John:
I don't have a keyboard for my iOS device.
John:
Like, I'll write on the iPad on-screen keyboard, you know, emails and stuff like that, but I would never...
John:
I would never choose to write anything long form there, and I would avoid writing anything long form if I could possibly help.
John:
But I think the most writing I've ever done on an iPad was when I used to go to WWDC and I would bring a Bluetooth keyboard with me.
John:
Back before iPads had fancy keyboards, I would just bring like an Apple desktop Bluetooth keyboard, and that's what I would type on.
John:
But a laptop is a better solution for that.
Casey:
i don't recall ever having seen you done that that that must have looked pretty funny i think you were i saw it a couple years yeah like the ones with like they took the the double a batteries you know those with like the tube bluetooth that's yeah yeah no i know what you're thinking of i just i don't recall having seen you do that i'm sure i did but i don't remember it uh can you summarize before the internet yells at you and i'm one of them uh why don't you like markdown
John:
Uh, I don't, I don't like, uh, having to write and then like transform.
John:
Like, I don't, I don't like the, the sort of transformation compilation stuff.
John:
Like I, I, I would say I grew up writing HTML.
John:
I, I wrote HTML from almost the earliest time that anyone was writing HTML.
John:
I'm very comfortable writing HTML.
John:
Uh,
John:
I don't have to write it all manually.
John:
BBedit has lots of tools and keyboard shortcuts to make it easier.
John:
I don't mind it, and it is exactly what I want it to be.
John:
I'm not a fan of writing a weird, funny syntax that gets transformed into HTML.
John:
It's because I find it more mentally taxing and more work-based.
John:
than doing it the other way.
John:
And it's basically because I wouldn't be using Markdown for its intended purpose.
John:
Markdown's intended purpose is that you can write it in Markdown and it's perfectly fine looking at it as is.
John:
You don't have to transform it into something else.
John:
The idea is you write it in Markdown, it's human consumable already.
John:
But that's not a use case that I have.
John:
I don't have a use case where I want to write
John:
quote-unquote styled organized text that is consumable as is everything i'm writing is going to be viewed in a web browser in which case i need it to be html or its code or something like that um yeah so when i did all my writing i would write it in html which i find perfectly natural i would proofread it in html with bb at its live preview window you can get a window right next to your text window that's showing you what it looks like rendered in the website template with all the styling that's gonna you know it's it's not like i'm staring at ahref and trying to
John:
parse out the stuff like that i can see it's like a wussy wig editor but you do all your editing in the other window you know it's it's anyway um my workflow for bb it works with me and i don't have a place in it for markdown
Casey:
I mean, whatever works for you, man.
Casey:
That just strikes me as totally bananas.
Casey:
But you do you.
Casey:
Let people like things.
Casey:
Tom Hurtnit writes, we are considering getting an iMac to be a family computer.
Casey:
We're not planning to use it for Plex or any other server, etc.
Casey:
Do we really need a UPS?
Casey:
I would use a decent search protector.
Casey:
In replying to this tweet, I basically said, it's under $100.
Casey:
Why the hell wouldn't you?
Casey:
And I think, if I recall correctly, Tom had said he didn't realize that they were that cheap.
Casey:
And I think that was kind of the end of the conversation.
Casey:
But I absolutely say, you know, you don't have to get a super fancy UPS.
Casey:
It doesn't have to last, or at least if you live in most modern areas where power doesn't fail that frequently.
Casey:
If you live somewhere where you just need to be able to hold your computer over for five to ten minutes, I don't know why you wouldn't.
Casey:
And plus, most decent UPSs you can hook up via USB to your computer and if you install the appropriate software or what have you, it'll actually tell the computer, hey, I'm running out of battery power.
Casey:
You might want to shut yourself down.
Casey:
And then the computer or Synology, for example, hint, hint, will shut itself down when the UPS is running out of battery power.
Casey:
Marco, how do you feel about this?
Casey:
Do you have a whole house generator in New York or what are you doing in order to keep your power supply uninterruptible?
Marco:
We don't have any kind of backup power or anything, but I do have UPSs on desktops.
Marco:
So that's kind of my rule.
Marco:
Any kind of desktop or important server infrastructure, I put a UPS on.
Marco:
Not because it's super necessary, but just because it's really annoying if your computer just all of a sudden turns off while you're working on it and you have unsaved stuff and you lose your work.
Marco:
And as you mentioned, UPSs are not very expensive, especially compared to the price of the computers that they are plugged into.
Marco:
They also happen usually, if you get a good one, which is more than $100, but if you get a good one, you can get some fancier power filtering and power protection circuitry than you might be able to get out of a basic circuit strip.
Marco:
So you do have a little bit more protection there from risks, but I don't think it's honestly, I don't think it's the kind of risk that most people have.
Marco:
So it's mostly just for convenience.
Marco:
With a laptop or an iOS device, if you're having a big windstorm, like what's going through here right now, and the power goes out for a split second, you don't need the UPS to last an hour, but...
Marco:
it might be nice if it lasts like two minutes, you know, because like most, I think most power outages in most places are not long, but you might have like a blip or 30 seconds where it's out or something like that, right?
Marco:
So like, it's really nice to have some things that you, so you don't just lose your work.
Marco:
and because they're relatively inexpensive and last relatively a long time, eventually the batteries wear out, but they last relatively a long time, then it's generally a good idea for desktops.
Marco:
And I feel like most people don't even face this problem because most people are just using laptops and iOS devices.
Marco:
But if you're using desktops, it's nice.
Marco:
And I also put all of our networking gear on it as well.
Marco:
So I mentioned earlier when I'm talking about my network upgrade, I have all of the...
Marco:
the router the switch the fios modem and all my wireless access points all of them are on the ups are on a different ups than my computer obviously but they're they're all like on a big one in the garage the synology so that way like if there is a power outage as long as verizon also keeps their service up optically i still have an internet connection which is nice
John:
John?
John:
I just replaced the battery in my Synology UPS.
John:
Yeah, the answer is get one for your desktop stuff.
John:
There are a little bit of a hassle in that they do have batteries, and you do need to replace them when they wear out, and eventually the UPS surge protection stuff in it will also wear out, but they're so worth it.
John:
I mean, depending on how stable your power is, my power is very stable.
John:
Once every few years, we get a flicker.
John:
But a flicker will take out what you're doing.
John:
And not to mention, like, sort of brownouts and undervolts like this.
John:
Electronic equipment tends to be finicky.
John:
And even if it's something as simple as, you know, playing on your PlayStation that's not hooked up to a UPS and the power dips just long enough for it to, you know, blip off or something, like, it's...
John:
It ruins your day.
John:
There's also the theory, I think, Margaret, that you're conditioning the voltage.
John:
You can get a fancy one that tries to make your power cleaner.
John:
Honestly, the power supplies in your devices help with that as well.
John:
But yeah, it's a no-brainer.
John:
They're cheap.
John:
It is difficult if you're getting a big, fancy computer or have lots of stuff hooked up to size it correctly because if you do the math, it'll be like, I need to buy this super expensive UPS.
John:
That's true, but...
John:
I've gotten by for many years with a massively undersized UPS that gives me just enough time to panic shutdown.
John:
It starts making this noise like, oh my God, I got to shut down, I got to save.
John:
It's all you need is a couple seconds to save and shut down.
John:
And as for OS integration, macOS has integration at this point where you don't need to install any software.
John:
Most UPSs you get that have a USB connection.
John:
You just hook it up, and the Mac will understand it's UPS, and you can configure it to shut itself down.
John:
In this case, Synology did the same thing.
John:
Oh, I didn't realize that.
John:
If I lose power on my Mac Pro that's sitting under my desk right now, my UPS will scream bloody murder.
John:
My Mac will immediately shut down, and I will have just enough time to shut down.
John:
because it is not like my power supply in this thing what is like 450 watt or something and my new mac pro i'm gonna have to get a new ups by the way like it's a thing like surge protectors also wear out over time as well so a good rule of thumb is when you get a new computer especially if you waited 10 years uh get a new ups get a new surge strip i've actually gone through several ups's this they've they don't last as long as my computer apparently and
Marco:
nothing less as long as your computer that's true yeah anyway uh yeah get get a ups that's you know it's worth it yeah and and it is very important what you just said that like search protectors don't protect forever there's a thing in them that basically it gives itself up to to to protect you and then after that you have no more protection uh a good search protector will actually stop the power going through it if that thing ever wears out
Marco:
I'm sorry, I don't know the details of what these things are called, but the good ones will actually, most of them will have a light that's like, you currently have protection if this light is on, but you never look at it, right?
Marco:
So the good ones will actually cut off power if the protection ever fails to protect you.
Marco:
That way you know, oh, this stopped working, I need to replace it.
Marco:
That's a good thing to look into.
John:
When I said scream bloody murder, some of them will actually make noise.
John:
That's how I knew my UPS battery downstairs was bad, because the UPS was screaming.
John:
screaming with the warning light that says my ups battery is bad like and the battery replacing the battery in the ups is way cheaper than buying an entire like it was like 30 bucks or something i replaced them there these little square lead acid things so they're it's decidedly low tech and silly but uh worthwhile and again much cheaper than having to buy a new ups
Marco:
Yeah, it's basically little car batteries for you.
Marco:
I will put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
After a while, I'm getting the big APC brand ones.
Marco:
I've had a lot of very good luck in recent years with CyberPower.
Marco:
I'll put a link in the show notes to the line that I keep buying.
Marco:
I've now bought, I think, three of these or four of them over the last four years or so, and they've been wonderful.
Marco:
So I'll put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Casper, and ExpressVPN.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
I thought of this too late, and because it's in the after show, we can't use the title.
John:
But what I should have said with the phrase that I was looking for when talking about China was mutually assured consumption.
John:
that is very good and i was like it was right on the tip of my tongue but i couldn't pull it out so i just moved on so what you're really trying to say is you're trying to challenge marco to make that work somewhere just drop that in somewhere in the episode no i gotta google that someone already must have thought of that that seems like an obvious thing
John:
Did you mean mutually assured destruction?
John:
No, Google, I didn't.
John:
How is that?
John:
Do I have to put it in double quotes?
John:
Let's see.
John:
Google, on iOS, if you go to the Google web, Google.com on iOS in the browser, and it happens if you just type in the address bar in, like, Mobile Safari.
John:
You just type a search phrase there.
John:
You end up at a Google search results page, right?
John:
Whatever you typed in the address bar, like I just typed mutually assured consumption, ends up in this little rounded Google search field within the webpage.
John:
You originally typed it in the address bar.
John:
Maybe it's still in the address bar.
John:
I forget.
John:
But that text is also in the little rounded search area on Google.com, right?
Yeah.
John:
That little rounded search area, I cannot figure out how to use.
John:
I want to fix a typo or add a word.
John:
And for whatever reason, my hands and fingers and brains are on autopilot.
John:
And I'm just trying to like, you know, like I'm not thinking, you know, when you edit text in iOS, you're doing for so long, you're not thinking like, take your finger, put it on the screen, put the insertion, like you just do it.
John:
What you're thinking is, oh, I need to add ed to the end of that word.
John:
So you, you initiate the add ed to the end of that word iOS macro.
John:
And what happens instead on the google.com page?
John:
Is it like does another search or searches for the first auto completion or like it doesn't behave like a text field.
John:
And so that happens.
John:
It does some weird thing like it auto completes to the first guess on what I meant and goes off and does it.
John:
And I noticed that it's does it and I hit the back button.
John:
And then I really concentrate and I said, now engage your brain.
John:
whatever it did before make it not do that and add the ed to the end of that word and very often i can't figure out how to do it like what does it want me to do do i tap and hold do i tap once how do i edit the text in this search field and i get so frustrated with it and i fail and what i end up doing is making a new tab and typing the correctly typed thing into the address bar mobile safari again
John:
I feel like I should spend time and decode how that thing's supposed to work.
John:
It's obviously thwarting something that I'm either consciously or unconsciously doing, but I can't freaking figure out how to edit text in that thing.
Marco:
I've got to say, I never see this problem.
Marco:
I use DuckDuckGo by default everywhere.
Marco:
Also, when I have to edit a search or refine what I typed, I just go back to the address bar and do it there.
Marco:
To me, the address bar is my search box.
Marco:
Even after the fact,
Marco:
I never go to the one on the page in either Google or DuckDuckDo and edit it there.
Marco:
I always edit it in the address bar.
John:
I'll try it one of these days.
John:
Like, see, maybe I'm the only person who tries to edit it.
John:
Maybe it's not editable.
John:
Like, there's this confluence of, like, fake text field, autocorrect, auto-assumption, plus the locality of the X thing to clear.
John:
It could just be a lag thing because now that I'm doing a particular thing, it's like, it works fine.
John:
What's the problem?
John:
Something happens where it's not responsive or it's loading something or I tap on the wrong spot with my fat finger and I get into this frustrating loop that I can't figure out.
John:
Anyway, that's my complaint about Google for the day.
John:
Mutually assured consumption.
John:
Did I spell?
John:
I got to spell it right.
John:
And on the desktop, I can edit things easily.
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, it's not like iOS or iOS web browsers have problems with text fields.
Marco:
I'm sure it's that Google has overrode this with a thousand lines of JavaScript to do all sorts of crazy crap.
John:
It is not a standard search field.
John:
So the phrase definitely appears in many things.
Marco:
They probably reinvented typing.
Marco:
Freaking Google.
John:
Remember the JavaScript scrolling?
Marco:
Those were the days.
Marco:
They still do that, like scroll jacking.
Marco:
Like, that's still a thing.
John:
Apple still does it.
John:
I know, but now it's GPU accelerated, so it's way better.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
Yeah, Apple's product pages always do scroll jacking.
Marco:
It drives me nuts.
Marco:
Like, what was wrong with web pages?
Marco:
We had, like, so much of the web today.
Marco:
Like, I was using a thing earlier, and it was some, like, you know, Ajax progression through states of a form instead of just using forms.
Marco:
And you could tell by the browser activity that it was loading almost instantly by
Marco:
But then I had to wait for an animation of the page to fade in on each step.
Marco:
And I'm just like, we have gone backwards here.
Marco:
This is not better.
Marco:
We have all the technology in the world now.
Marco:
All the networks are super fast now.
Marco:
And we're just wasting it all on superfluous animations and loading massive 10 megs of JavaScript.
Marco:
You do all sorts of crazy crap.
Marco:
It's like...
Marco:
The web sucks right now.
Marco:
It's terrible.
Marco:
So much of web design is just awful, and it's not the fault of the technology.
Marco:
It's the fault of the people.
Marco:
The technology is there to make great website experiences super easily, super lightweight, but people aren't using it that way because that's not what's currently in fashion.
Marco:
What's currently in fashion is to waste as much as possible and make fancy things that don't work well and suck up tons of power and take time and break half the time.
Marco:
Like, what was wrong with just webpages?
Marco:
They were great.
Marco:
Why did we have to mess them all up?
John:
I think we had the same discussion back when, like, the first of Apple's scrolljacking product pages appeared.
John:
Remember that?
John:
I don't remember what the product was, but, like... I think it was the 2013 Mac Pro.
John:
Was it?
John:
Was that the first one?
John:
That was certainly one of the bad ones.
John:
It was definitely... I mean, certainly the current Mac Pro.
John:
All the product pages do it now.
John:
And the thing is, for those type of things...
John:
I've come around to the idea that as a sort of brochure, cool visual experience, it's a fun thing for me.
John:
I still think it's wrong for almost everybody because normal people are not...
John:
appreciating the fun visual thing they just think this web page doesn't work like a normal web page therefore it seems broken and i'm confused about what to do which is why it's the wrong decision to do for a public facing web page but the people making it are i think in the same mindset as me is that you know it is a cool whizzy thing and if you are not confused
John:
By that, it can make an appealing visual presentation.
John:
You still hope that there's a normal page somewhere with actual text on it for you to find the information you want.
John:
But for sort of like a... As an advertisement, it worked.
John:
But I feel like it's the wrong move because nobody...
John:
Your web page works different than every other web page?
John:
I don't like your web page.
John:
Like, yeah, but doesn't it look cool?
John:
It's like, yeah, but I'm confused about how it works or what it does or is there more of the page?
John:
Or I would never have guessed that by scrolling more, this thing would be revealed and popped up and is the top of the page gone now?
John:
It's like...
John:
It breaks people's mental model of how the web works.
John:
And if none of those things come along, people just throw up their hands and we're back to Flash all over again where everything is an unpredictable custom UI in a square in the middle of a web page and you have no idea what you're going to get.
Marco:
I feel like we're already there.
Marco:
When Flash intros became a thing back forever ago, they very quickly went out of style because we all recognized...
Marco:
this is just a waste of people's time and bandwidth.
Marco:
Nobody wants to sit around and wait for this.
Marco:
Just give me the information.
Marco:
We don't need to be brought on a ride.
Marco:
And I feel like that should have happened with all this scrolljacking stuff five years ago and just hasn't.
Marco:
And I don't know why it hasn't, but for some reason, this is all still common and acceptable.
John:
Do you remember when Flash, like, we got rid of, like, the entry, whatever, I forget there was a word for them, like the, not splash screen, but, like, anyway, we got rid of that, but still there persisted essentially entire websites that were themselves custom-made Flash applications.
John:
Like, there was no waiting to get to it.
John:
Where you got to was this inscrutable weird Flash doohickey, right?
John:
So that's where we are with the web stuff is very often, like, you're not asked to wade through something to get to something.
John:
The thing you're trying to get to is itself...
John:
a weird nonsensical sort of it's not nonsensical but it's like it's unlike what we expect as a web page and also mostly there's never any
John:
never anything for people to hang their mental hat on.
John:
Like this reminds me of a thing that I understand.
John:
Therefore, even though it's different than other webpages, because it's like other thing that I understand, it's tractable.
John:
And normally the other thing that I understand is if there's some kind of, not normally, but like one of the common ways you can give somebody something to hold onto is if there's a physical analog, if I can make sense of this, here it comes, spatially and physically speaking, um,
John:
oh, I see, it's kind of like three layers moving past each other.
John:
And, like, if you can make heads or tails fit in that way, it's still not great, but you can figure it out.
John:
But the problem with mostly scroll-jacking pages is there's no real-world counterpart with which you're familiar that you can say, oh, I get it, it's just like X, right?
John:
To give an example, carousels, named after a thing that has a physical reality.
John:
And in general, even though they're weird, in-page carousels make sense to people.
John:
It's left to right a series that you can envision it as either a circle or as a long horizontal line of pictures.
John:
And many, many websites, especially if they have lots of photos, have carousels.
John:
I think people accept those.
John:
It's not like a page.
John:
It's a it's a different internal element.
John:
But there is a real world analog that people understand and we accept them.
John:
but the scroll jack mac scroll jack mac pro page try explain to me what those layers are and how they interact with each other you see it in new york times stories all the time people always like oohing and aahing over them like this makes no sense i have no idea how much movement on the scroll bar results in how much movement of which elements and how they transform and fade into the foreground and background and twist and turn and
John:
like all those stories that people like that show statistics one screen at a time it's like you've just made the world's most fancy powerpoint transition with a scroll bar control which i don't i don't think is an upgrade i mean i guess i guess what you're saying i guess some people still do like them but i feel like if i sent that web page to any person who was not into technology or web design they would just consider it a slightly broken and weird web page
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
The New York Times infographics can be really good.
Casey:
Overcast was in one of them recently that I thought was pretty well done.
Casey:
And I'm looking at the Mac Pro page now, God help me, and it does scroll jack in a few places, but it's not nearly as aggressive and obnoxious as it was on the original Trashcan Mac Pro, because I remember that being bad.
Casey:
Or am I thinking of actually the 5K iMac?
Casey:
There was something that, like, you zoomed into a... Yeah, the 5K iMac did it, too.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I'm not sure which one was... The trash came out first.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
But one of them, like, I remember you zoomed into, like, or maybe zoomed out of the display or something like that, and it was just...
Casey:
It was clever the first time I saw it, but then it was just annoying.
Casey:
And I feel like Apple has toned it back a lot, which I appreciate, because it used to be really, really aggressive in years past.
Casey:
And now there's a couple of times where it's a little bit frustrating, but generally speaking, I don't think it's too bad.
Casey:
It's pretty bad.