Make a Little Maze
Casey:
We have some news for those of you who are members, our beloved members.
Casey:
If you're not a member, you can go to ATP.fm slash join.
Casey:
We have released another member special.
Casey:
I would call this monthly, but we're not terribly good about being consistent about that.
Casey:
But our roughly monthly member special.
Casey:
Our sometimes member specials.
Casey:
Our sometimes member specials that we do accidentally.
Casey:
Ding.
Casey:
Anyway, so we did a tier list and we discussed this on the episode.
Casey:
But John, would you give us a brief overview of what a tier list is and what it is that we were ranking?
John:
We were supposed to have links in the show notes to explain what that is.
John:
And now we do.
John:
So good news.
John:
Of course, you only see the show notes if you remember.
John:
But anyway, it's a tier list in the style of from video game culture that is spread elsewhere.
John:
You put things into different ranks, usually with like letter grades where A, B, C, D, E or A, B, C, D, E.
Marco:
sometimes heavy where oh god let me tell you by the way for whatever it's just a little side note here you know so my kids in school and we get the you know the elementary school report cards and have you seen a recent elementary school report card and do the grades make any sense to you
Casey:
Well, I think Declan's on letters now, but I believe in kindergarten and first grade, it was like one through four or something like that.
Casey:
It was very unusual.
Marco:
So our report card, first of all, it's in trimesters, not semesters or quarters, because why be normal?
Marco:
So we have these three columns, and not only on the same side, but even within the same section of it, they seemingly switch between a letter system that is not ABCDF,
Marco:
They even use like C is one of the letters used, but it's, it's good.
Marco:
It's not like, so it's very confusing.
Marco:
And then within the same section, they'll use numbers for certain things, but it's not even one, two, three, it's like four, five, six.
Marco:
Like it, it's, I swear, I don't understand.
Marco:
Like every time we get a report card, it's, it's like, all right, so here's music.
Marco:
How'd you do music?
Marco:
Well, you got like a four, an R and a tomato.
Marco:
Like, okay.
Marco:
Like, I, I don't know what this means.
Like, yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, so, yes, tier lists.
Marco:
They make more sense than school report cards these days.
John:
You'll see that when you get to high school and start approaching college stuff, you'll also find out that high schools across this great country of ours also have no consistency and are completely wild, so...
John:
pity the poor college admissions people who have to somehow make sense of what these things mean on their transcripts anyway tier lists uh we'll put the links in these show notes uh i'll make sure uh we get them into the regular show notes here uh there's a wikipedia page on it and there's a know your meme page uh apparently has origins in fighting games uh and as you would imagine a is good it's better than b and
John:
but there's also an s tier which is above a sometimes they do pluses and minuses like s plus s minus a plus a minus anyway we did a very traditional one with s at the top and then a through d and then f for failing and what did we rank every iphone that has been released at the time of recording
John:
indeed not counting color variants or size variants you know what i mean no no well no size variants we did no i mean like uh storage size oh yeah yeah and that actually did come up in some i'm not going to spoil it for people but one of the phones one of the complaints people had who listened to the episode about the phones is like yeah i kind of agree with your rating of the phone except if you consider that apple sold it with way too little storage for too long
John:
Which we didn't consider, but, you know, it's hard to factor that in.
John:
Anyway, we ranked the iPhones, and there's actually a video version if you want to see the tier list as we drag things up into it, because that's how it works.
John:
The tier list starts empty, and you grab something, and you say, where does it go?
John:
Is this an A?
John:
Is it a B?
John:
Is it a C?
John:
Is it an S?
John:
And you drag it in there, and then you start laying the things in until it's entirely filled, and you can watch that beautiful process happen.
John:
with a link that is in the show notes but you can only get to those show notes if you are a member so go to atp.fm slash join if you want to see this rank phones and by the way i thought oh it's a tier list how many phones are there's not that many phones we'll just chuck them in the grid and we'll be done uh you'll be shocked to know that it took us a really long time because we argued about a lot of phones
Marco:
Us?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Also, there are more phones than you think.
Marco:
At first, there's one phone a year.
Marco:
And then as you get into more recent years, they released four phones every year for the last four or five years.
Marco:
There's a lot of options, it turns out.
Casey:
Yep, turns out.
Casey:
But it took us something like 90 minutes, give or take a little bit.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
I almost murdered my co-hosts, I don't know, only three or four times.
Casey:
So I consider that a personal and moral victory.
Casey:
So yeah, it went well.
Marco:
I would say like, if you think we occasionally argue about something in the regular show, like the rate of argument per minute.
Marco:
was way higher in in this special than it is in a regular show we take our work very seriously we're not just gonna chuck these things up into the grid and go okay whatever just chuck it in there any place is fine no we wanted to get it right and and chances are whatever you think about the iphones chances are you will agree that we didn't get it right yes because nobody will think that we got everything right but yeah there's too many variables the odds of you matching uh us exactly are slim
Marco:
We don't even think we got it right because we couldn't agree.
John:
No, but we had to come to a consensus.
John:
We had to come to an often grudging consensus, which is different than us doing it individually.
John:
We had to be beaten down into giving up.
John:
No spoilers.
John:
People will see what they say.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So as we said before, ATP.fm slash join.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
Let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
This is from Anonymous with regard to the R1 chip.
Casey:
And Anonymous writes, in a past episode, Marco speculated about the R1 chip running a real-time OS.
Casey:
The R1 chip does not have any significant amounts of CPU computational resources.
Casey:
The R1 contains a SEP, or Secure Enclave Processor, some very small, simple in-order CPU cores to handle DMAing the sensor data directly into the M2,
Casey:
Camera ISPs, or image signal processors.
Casey:
MIPI, or Mobile Industry Processor Interface, a standardized interface for connecting peripherals and sensors.
Casey:
A display image warping engine.
Casey:
And a couple of Leap Audio DSP engines like the AirPods have.
Casey:
The real-time stuff mentioned in the WWDC keynote is in addition to the... How do you pronounce this?
Casey:
Is it XNU?
Casey:
Is it SNU?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
The XNU, Darwin Kernel Scheduler.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Darwin Kernel Scheduler on an M2.
Marco:
What we've heard about here and there and what they, I believe, went into even in the State of the Union about Vision OS and how it's broken up is that modern Apple ARM chips have the ability to run multiple OSes in parallel.
Marco:
And I don't know whether it's technically virtualization or some other technique, but it's something like that at least.
Marco:
And so one of the things that it is running is a real-time OS alongside the Vision OS main core or...
John:
That's not what this feedback is saying.
John:
This feedback is saying is they just modified the new whatever schedule, the Darwin kernel schedule.
John:
That XNU kernel is in all of our devices.
John:
It's in every Mac, in every iPad, in every iPhone, in every Apple TV, in every HomePod.
John:
The Darwin kernel is in there, right?
John:
And that handles scheduling, right?
John:
They just made a change to Darwin's scheduling to have, I'm assuming, a new kind of scheduling, which is so you schedule all the stuff with your preemptive multitasking according to priorities and whatever, like the way the operating system does.
John:
But there are some extensions, apparently, for the kernel that runs on the M2 Envision.
John:
As I said, there's another kind of scheduling, which is I don't care what the hell else is going on.
John:
this is going to get this amount of CPU time, you know, on schedule, no matter what else is happening.
John:
And so that's what I think that I don't think it's running two different OSs or anything or slicing them, even if the ARM processor is capable of that, at least from what this feedback says is simply a modification of the scheduler to give it a, because this has been true of many Unix operating systems in the past, that is one of the scheduling priorities, like hard real time, like,
John:
oh, you can schedule this stuff according to your normal scheduling algorithm, but always leave X number of scheduling spots for these things if they happen to be available.
John:
And if they are available, they get that spot no matter what.
John:
And there's a limited number of them and they have to finish in a certain amount of time and so on and so forth.
John:
That's my interpretation of this feedback.
Marco:
Yeah, I think that sounds right based on how it's worded.
Marco:
And that would kind of make sense.
Marco:
But I think the technical detail of it is, I guess, different.
Marco:
But I think the result is the same, which is exactly what we were talking about with the requirement for CarPlay controlling gauge clusters.
Marco:
You need some kind of real-time component, whether it's a full OS or whether it's a part of your OS.
Marco:
There has to be a real-time guaranteed component to control that kind of thing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Based on how they described Vision OS architecture in one of the videos, it seems like that is how Vision OS is built, is that there is this real-time component that runs probably all the room-displaying stuff that uses the R1 for various things, but that the actual execution of the OS code is not happening on the R1.
Marco:
It seems that the R1 is not like a one-to-one computational peer to the M2,
Marco:
but rather an accelerator chip that, you know, similar to other specialty accelerator chips we've seen in various hardware in the past, which is interesting to know.
Marco:
And that kind of suggests that the R1 is maybe not as large or sophisticated of a deal as we might have originally assumed.
Marco:
And that probably won't be upgraded super frequently, maybe, and might be easily broken up from, you know, the M2 or whatever else.
Marco:
So it's
Marco:
This is probably a good news in the sense that the R1 is not as probably, like, big and expensive and hot as we would have guessed.
John:
Yeah, it sounds like an IO chip, basically.
John:
I mean, it does more than that because, obviously, it processes stuff, but its job is to get everything from the sensor to, as I say, DMA and into the M2, which is direct memory access, where it just...
John:
shoves the data somewhere where the m2 can get it really easily the m2 doesn't have to do anything the data just appears there on a schedule right uh and it handles all the sensors and i imagine the r1 uh will have to be upgraded when the sensors get upgraded if they bump up the cameras and suddenly the image signal processor can't handle it right or if they have it come up with a better algorithm for doing the de-warping or whatever but
John:
uh in the absence of that kind of upgrade you can just keep that r1 just keeps doing its job it's a very fancy io processor that lets the m2 not have to deal with that stuff and the whole dma thing is like okay well then how does m2 get access to that information it's just in this place where the m2 can get to it real fast and it's just there and the m2 is like oh there it is for me um the fact that it's not actually running a separate operating system or at least according to this feedback as far as we could tell does mean that you know if you if you
John:
uh you know panic the kernel everything stops like the real-time stuff doesn't get nothing gets scheduled like this is the one and only kernel right and so it's not like you have the kind of isolation that you need to get in a car or something where the systems really are separate and you can crash the infotainment but the speedometer you know keeps showing the speed this one if you if you new kernel panic it it's game over for everything
John:
Again, as far as we can tell from this, you know, not particularly detailed feedback, when we get these things, we'll find out because they'll crash.
John:
And when they crash, we'll be like, oh, did it crash in such a way that everything goes away?
John:
I mean, even on your Mac, sometimes things can crash and like, oh, well, you know, this app is beach balled, but these other ones still work.
John:
Or like, I can't do any IO, but anything that doesn't do IO still works, right?
John:
Like the very subsystems of the operating system can get hosed because they're often run by these separate processes or whatever.
John:
But if the kernel goes down, everything goes down.
John:
So, you know, once people get dev kits, because those will probably be crashy, or the real thing, then we'll kind of find out how much work Apple has done to sort of make this bulletproof.
John:
But as we discussed in past shows, if this entire thing crashes, it's not the end of the world.
John:
Like, you just pick it off off your face.
John:
Like, you're not going to crash into a tree because of it.
John:
I don't think they would have done... It would have bent over backwards too far to make sure, like, under all circumstances that you can still see the outside world through the AR thing.
John:
Of course, they never want it to go all dark in your head, because that would be scary and stuff, but...
John:
I think they'll just do that the way they normally do, which is, hey, when's the last time your phone kernel panics?
John:
It doesn't happen that often.
John:
They're able to make this operating system stable enough that normally what's going to happen is your app's going to crash.
John:
Or maybe, you know, even like the quote unquote entire user space would crash, which happens on a phone occasionally, especially with beta OSs.
John:
But the kernel doesn't crash.
John:
It just reboots the user space.
John:
The kernel is running fine the whole time.
John:
So if the kernel and the real time stuff are running the camera things, maybe that will stay up.
John:
We'll see.
Casey:
Sure enough.
Casey:
Let's talk about vision pro vision.
Casey:
Um, let's talk about foveated rendering, computational blur and VAC and all sorts of fun stuff.
John:
So, uh, James Laughlin, before we go to that, before we start James's thread, because that one top line item was a reminder to me to talk about these things.
Uh,
John:
okay good talk yeah the the uh was it uh virgins accommodation conflict thing where um you have the expectation that you're the squishy process of focusing uh it corresponds to a particular uh virgins uh angle of your eyes uh and if there's a mismatch between them uh it feels weird that's the vac thing that we've been talking about and we're talking about ways to ways to deal with that like you know it
John:
If this headset, as it appears to be the case, has a single focal distance for the entire headset, even if you look at something that's real close to you in the headset, something that's far away in the headset, the accommodation distance is always the same.
John:
Because it's just one screen.
John:
It's just one flat screen.
John:
And yes, there are lenses and stuff in front of it, but if the lenses don't move, the lenses inside the thing, if the lenses don't move...
John:
The virtual, you know, the screen that you're focusing your eyes on is always going to be the same eye squish distance from you.
John:
So what could they do to change that?
John:
Some people suggested that foveated rendering would help here.
John:
Foveated rendering is where you're rendering something on the screen, but you only render in detail the part where you know the people are looking.
John:
right and that is mostly a feature that is used for like 3d games where it's really expensive to render like the whole 3d scene like say you have some game that you can run on 4k on a powerful gaming pc but you know if you don't have a really good gpu it only maybe gets 30 frames per second that's not great for a headset right
John:
Now imagine you have to run two 4K screens, each showing slightly different views.
John:
You have to run it twice as much.
John:
Oh, now I'm down to 15 frames per second.
John:
That's not fast enough.
John:
What am I going to do?
John:
I have to run two separate 4K screens on M2 with just a plain old M2, not an M2 Pro or M2 Max.
John:
How am I going to handle that?
John:
Well, one way to deal with that is in a headset, you have the advantage of knowing where the person is looking.
John:
So you can tell the GPU, don't render the whole 4K scene for each eye.
John:
Just render in detail the part where we know they're looking.
John:
And then everything else, render like a half-assed version, right?
John:
Lower, you know, a polygon count.
John:
Don't use the good textures.
John:
Like, that's foveated rendering.
John:
And that is really, that's, you know, people have been doing that headsets for a long time.
John:
It's a really great way to get better frame rates for something where it's computationally expensive to render the whole scene.
John:
You're taking advantage of the fact that you know where they're looking.
John:
does not help with vac because first of all it doesn't change the focal distance at all even though you may be you know the other parts that where you're not looking may be quote-unquote blurry they're blurry in the sense that like if you render a game with like a lower poly count or with lower quality textures or with lower resolution they're blurry in that way but they're not blurry in terms of oh they're a different eye squish distance from you like you you're looking at your finger an inch in front of your face and you're looking at you know the horizon they're not blurry in that way
John:
and that's what the other suggestion people said what about portrait mode where they do computational blur where if you look at the coffee table inside the headset they could computationally blur the distant wall that's behind you so then the coffee table would be clear and the wall far away would be blurry and we don't have to worry about vac anymore but no again it's like looking at that on your phone screen the eye squish distance as you look at a portrait mode picture on your phone screen never changes
John:
Yes, the background behind someone in portrait mode looks, quote-unquote, blurry, but your eyes continue to focus on a foot and a half from your nose.
John:
They do not change their focal distance.
John:
When you see something blurry in a photo, it's either simulating or legitimately showing what a lens saw at that time, and the lens sees some things that are sharp and some things that are blurry, but when you're looking at the picture...
John:
In terms of focusing on the pixels on the screen, the whole plane of the screen is the same focal distance from you, more or less.
John:
So they can't use computational blur.
John:
Foveated rendering does not help.
John:
None of those things are going to help with VAC.
John:
But that's where we get to James O'Loughlin.
John:
How do you pronounce that?
John:
I think so.
John:
Thread on Mastodon that pointed us to a couple of examples of things that actually would solve this problem, unlike foveated rendering or computational blur.
Casey:
Alright, Apple Vision Pro has no solution for vergence, accommodation, conflict.
Casey:
No software solution is invented, to my knowledge, by anyone.
Casey:
It would have to be a hardware solution.
Casey:
Meta has shared many prototypes and research on this problem.
Casey:
All solutions require various display mechanics and optics.
Casey:
Search, for example, for Verifocal Oculus.
John:
And I did that, and that's what's in the show notes here.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Eye tracking is table stakes for any solution.
Casey:
Magic Leap 1 had two focal planes on its displays and used eye tracking to switch between the two.
Casey:
Oh, and yes, VAC can cause eye strain if dense visual elements are placed too close to a person.
Casey:
The UI, for example, or reading a book after a few minutes, not sure how long it'll take for various people, will cause eye strain.
Casey:
MetaQuest Pro is the closest thing to a dev kit available now for the Apple Vision Pro.
Casey:
Good prototyping tool, serious about Vision OS development, in James's opinion.
Casey:
But you need to obviously recognize the constraints of the MetaQuest Pro and Apple Vision Pro and work within them.
Casey:
Obviously, this requires Unreal or Unity dev experience to prototype for it to make sense.
John:
So here is some of the things they mentioned.
John:
Oculus' very focal lenses.
John:
They're exactly what they sound like.
John:
They're little lenses inside the headset that move so that you can actually change the focal distance, presumably depending on where you're looking.
John:
So when you look at the coffee table, the little lenses move so that your eye squish has to change so you can focus on the coffee table because it's closer to you.
John:
And when you look at the distant wall, the little lenses move again.
John:
um so here are a couple excerpts from the thing we'll link in the show notes uh this is from 2019 so it's kind of old it's a michael abrash who whose name you might recognize from id software fame working on uh doom and quake and all that stuff he i guess he came over to oculus when uh you know facebook uh bought them and you know uh john carmack was there anyway that that whole group of people apparently he was still there in 2019
John:
So this is Mike Abrash, Facebook's reality lab chief scientist, discussed two newer versions of the Half Dome prototype.
John:
Half Dome is their name of their prototype headset thing.
John:
A revealed last year which used moving lenses to sharpen focus.
John:
Half Dome 2 is a smaller and lighter version of that.
John:
The varifocal system uses voice coil accuators, which I can't pronounce.
John:
It's those things that are inside like lenses for big cameras, voice coil things.
John:
And also, I guess they move the heads in hard drives as well.
John:
And flexure hinge arrays, I don't know what those are.
John:
Compared to the original Half Dome, the parts are quieter and have less friction and are more durable.
John:
So this is Half Dome 2.
John:
It's the second version.
John:
It's like, we found a way to move the little lenses back and forth faster and quieter with less power.
John:
Similar to the advancement that you've seen in big lenses that go on cameras where they have to move your lens elements back and forth quickly and quietly.
John:
In Half Dome 3, the varifocal system ditches moving mechanical parts for an electronic version, which is a big contributing factor in making Half Dome 3 even smaller than the other prototypes while eliminating noise and vibrations.
John:
It packs a new type of liquid crystal lens made from thin alternating stacks of two flat optical elements, polarization-dependent lenses, or PDLs, and switchable half-wave plates.
John:
I don't know what these things are, but what they're trying to say is there's a solid-state component...
John:
That lets you change focus without having to actually move lens elements.
John:
I'm, you know, again, I'm not sure how it does that, but like with crystal displays and all those little things, you know, bend light in various ways.
John:
So it can make some sense.
John:
Um, continuing by stacking the series of PDLs and switchable half dome halfway of plates on top of each other, we're able to achieve smooth, very smooth, very focal that lets you comfortably and seamlessly adjust your focus in the headset.
John:
Um,
John:
With six liquid crystal lenses, the system can cycle through 64 focal planes.
John:
The number doubles with each additional lens for smooth transitions, right?
John:
So this whole thing, and you mentioned it before, the 64 different focal planes, that's better than one focal plane, but the granularity, I don't know what the granularity of the human eye is, how many different focal planes can you focus on, but I bet it's more than 64.
John:
Like if you put a paper where you can just see it and then move it an inch and then move another inch and then move another inch, you can get a lot of different focal distances, right?
John:
with your eye squish but i'm sure it's not infinite so that is a super interesting example of what people are trying to do to solve this problem albeit in the prototype thing starting with hey let's just have a bunch of lenses and move them and let's move them make them move faster and quieter and can we do with no moving parts yes but now we only have 64 different positions it's also an open question of how many different positions did you have when you were moving the lens is it more than 64 depending on how far it's moving and anyway um so that's real cool and the other thing that was mentioned
John:
is this company whose name by all accounts should be pronounced C-Real because the name of the company is capital C, capital R, lowercase E-A-L.
Casey:
Oh, no, I kept pronouncing it C-Real in my head.
John:
Well, I mean, C-Real, it's the thing about like display stuff.
John:
I was like, ooh, C things that are real.
John:
Makes perfect sense.
John:
But I watched one video and the guy who works for the company called it Creel.
John:
I'm like, come on, guys.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
What?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Creel, are you kidding me?
Marco:
How is it not C-Real?
Marco:
It's unbelievable.
Marco:
The guy said Creel.
Marco:
Why is the R capitalized?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Yeah, next thing you're going to tell me is that it's pronounced Jif, not Gif, and that can't be right.
John:
Anyway, Cereal, it's like Letterboxd, I'm never going to say Creel, has a thing on our technology page that will link.
John:
It says, our unique light field display technology reconstructs light as it exists in the real world.
John:
By removing the fixed focal plane and projecting true 3D images with actual focal depth,
John:
Virtual objects can be blended with reality at any distance without any visual conflict.
John:
So this is a true AR lens.
John:
They have like a pair of glasses that you put on your face.
John:
They're clear glasses.
John:
And they project light through those glasses into your eyeball while you're also looking at the room through those glasses.
John:
And I watched their little explanation video several times.
John:
And for the life of me, I cannot figure out what they're saying they're doing.
John:
But the number 64 may come up again because it looked like they had like an eight by eight grid of things.
John:
And they like they project a whole bunch of different images that enter your eye at different angles.
John:
And then like there's there's they just basically they project all focal distance.
John:
It seems like they project all focal distances at the same time.
John:
And then, you know, they have like they had an example like, oh, you're looking at a hummingbird that's going to land on your finger.
John:
But then you're looking at like the, you know, the virtual screen that's 10 feet away.
John:
Those are the two different focal distances.
John:
You just choose what you want to look at.
John:
You want to look at the hummingbird?
John:
Focus your eyes on the hummingbird, just like if it was there in real life.
John:
If you want to look at the screen across the room, focus your eyes on the screen across the room, just like if it was there in real life.
John:
No moving parts, no figuring out where you're looking, no eye tracking whatsoever.
John:
It's just they produce, they call it the light field.
John:
And I've seen a lot of things about these light fields where they put all, just like when you're looking in the real world.
John:
When you're looking in your room in the real world, the room doesn't know where you're looking.
John:
All the light from the room is just coming into your eyes at a million different angles.
John:
And you, by focusing your eye, by squishing the little lens element of your eye, you're able to choose which part of the room is in focus.
John:
and yes your virgins also you know virgins to to deal with the binocular vision so you're not seeing double or seeing like overlapping images that's what virgins does for you and the accommodation of squishing lenses focuses whatever light that you want to be in sharp focus on the back of your retina and that's what they say their light field display does although it did show like an eight by a grid of things so maybe it also has 64 focal planes uh but so there is a preview of potential future technologies
John:
for apple vision pro version two after the uh the ceo after tim cook has a 20 year reign and decides he wanted to take another run at ar goggles because the first one failed wow uh spoiler alert for 20 years from now we don't know how it's going to turn out but anybody like if this is a successful product eventually technologies like the ones we're seeing here
John:
are inevitable because it's the next step in making it more natural whether it's actually ar where you're looking through a pair of glasses which we always talk about and you just can't really do that well at this point or simply a headset with a variable focus focus distance because that feels more real and it feels a lot less like you're looking at a screen inside a headset which is what we're doing right now
Casey:
All right, Vision Pro limits.
Casey:
The Vision Pro safe area is limited to a 10 by 10 foot square for VR experiences.
Casey:
Apple says when you start a fully immersive experience, Vision OS defines a system boundary that extends one and a half meters from the initial position of the person's head.
Casey:
If the head moves outside of that zone, the system automatically stops the immersive experience and turns on the external video again.
Casey:
This features an assistant to help prevent someone from colliding with objects.
John:
So if you thought you're going to be like, oh, on top of Mount Hood, I'm going to walk around.
John:
No, you're not.
John:
I mean, they showed that in the demo of like, oh, that's the breakthrough type of thing.
John:
But like Apple could choose to have this environment like essentially move with you, right?
John:
So you'd walk two feet forward and you'd be two feet forward in the Mount Hood space, but it would still keep projecting Mount Hood around you.
John:
And for safety reasons, apparently the first version of Vision OS, when you were in a VR experience, which means you can't see any of the outside world, you're allowed to sit there and be in any expansive environment you want.
John:
But you've only got basically five feet in any direction before your head pops out of that virtual square.
John:
And they say, ah, you've gone too far.
John:
And, you know, that makes sense because, you know, again, I talked about it in the keynote.
John:
They did not show people moving around much with this.
John:
The only thing they ever showed anyone mobile at all was the guy, you know, taking video of his daughter's birthday.
John:
Right.
John:
And that was different than being entirely in VR.
John:
So they're very conservative to start.
Casey:
Additionally, Apple Vision Pro has a speed limit and travel mode is required for use on flights.
Casey:
This is from 9to5Mac.
Casey:
Oh, shoot.
Casey:
I forgot to mention the prior link, which we will have in the show notes to 9to5Mac talking about the Vision Pro safe area.
Casey:
um there is an embed in that of 12 minutes of vr fails which is probably not the fun the nicest thing for me to laugh at but this is people like you know punching tvs and falling into walls i apparently am a terrible human and i thought it was hilarious so don't sleep on that uh anyways uh and we'll put a link directly to that video in the show notes
John:
How are my balls by Casey Liss.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
Exactly.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Apple Vision Pro has a speed limit and travel mode is required for use on flights.
Casey:
Internal Vision OS code seen by 9to5Mac suggests that the Apple Vision Pro will limit its functionality or even stop working entirely when the user is moving too fast.
Casey:
The system has alerts that tell the person wearing the headset that they're, quote, moving at unsafe speeds, quote.
Casey:
Is that written by Nader, Ralph Nader?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Another alert message found in the Vision OS code warns the user, quote, virtual content has been temporarily hidden until you return to a safe speed, quote.
Casey:
The system may act as a protection so that users don't try to interact with Vision Pro while driving a car, for example.
Casey:
Vision OS also has a travel mode designed to let users interact with the device even on a plane.
Casey:
Quote, if you're on an airplane, you'll need to keep travel mode on to continue using your Apple Vision Pro, a message reads.
Casey:
However, based on the Vision OS code, the inputs when using travel mode will be limited and the user must remain stationary for it to work.
John:
Don't worry about that.
John:
We're packed in like veal on those planes.
Marco:
And this is, you know, these both of these, you know, the safe area and the, you know, speed limit and airplane mode.
Marco:
You got to figure like when Apple releases a new product, the level of scrutiny on them is massive.
Marco:
And the number of people out there who are going to try to generate a bad PR story or who will amplify a bad PR story if one exists is also massive.
Marco:
So they have to be really careful that whatever they release, there's not going to be some story a week later that some idiot got themselves killed doing something really stupid with it or worse.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
these these are very clearly like you know the 10 by 10 feet for vr experiences that's because if they didn't do that and somebody walked into their tv instead of being in casey's video they would just sue you know and like and and if if somebody stupidly put one of these on while driving a car and they crashed and killed somebody they would also sue apple like you know it's not about apple being sued it's also the right thing to do like
John:
like you're right they are under more scrutiny but i feel like the people making these decisions weren't first and foremost thinking like lawyers they're mostly just thinking like good people but yes additionally of course if you know there is there is a increased scrutiny in anything apple does right like you know if you look at like all the all the hoops they jump through with air tags to make sure that they can't be used very effectively as stalking devices and they didn't get that quite right on the first try either and they're still trying right
Marco:
yeah and like and you look at look around like the rest of the industry you can buy a gps tracker for like 20 bucks that doesn't do any of those safety things that you know like it's they're the whole industry is filled with devices that that are easily used for terrible purposes um and those companies get around get along just fine but apple can't do that they have they're way too big they have way too much scrutiny on them and frankly they care too much about doing the right thing you know those companies change their names every five minutes anyway so
John:
They do, yeah.
John:
It's impossible to have any scrutiny on them.
John:
As soon as you scrutinize them, it disappears and a new company pops up with a different set of consonants.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
But anyway, so yeah, Apple is going to be more conservative because A, they do think it's the right thing to do and that's probably correct, but also B, they have to be because they have so much scrutiny on everything they do.
Marco:
So they're going to do everything they can to make absolutely sure that the Vision Pro is very difficult to impossible to use in really stupid, harmful ways.
John:
Yeah, and like I said before, I suspect, although I don't know because I haven't tried it and I don't think anybody has, there are pretty severe limitations on the sensor distances that are useful with this thing.
John:
So, you know, how far does LiDAR go?
John:
How, you know, is there anything, is there a fallback when the LiDAR can't reach anymore?
John:
There's little LiDAR spray things.
John:
You can try them on the iPad.
John:
Like, they don't reach to infinity.
John:
They're not going to travel a city block, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
they're not useful at a certain distance.
John:
Does it fall back to camera?
John:
How far does the camera go?
John:
How much image processing are going to go?
John:
They, this, this device does not have any awareness of its surroundings beyond some reasonable limit based on the sensors that are in it because it's not designed to, it's not designed for you to get on the back of a horse and go riding off into the, you know, it's, it's not, I don't think it's designed for you to be out on the city street walking around.
John:
There's just too much stuff happening.
John:
It's designed to be used the way Apple showed it being used, uh, which does not involve a lot of motion and involves a lot of fairly simple controlled environments.
John:
Uh,
John:
And so everything about this product is trying to tell you this is how you should and must use it because it's just, you know, it can't make sense of the world outside of a bubble that that its sensor range extends to.
John:
And unlike something like a driver assistance in a car, its sensor range is probably not that big and doesn't have to be for the job it's being sold to do.
Casey:
We got some feedback, semi-conflicting feedback about my, well, really Aaron's Volvo windshield.
Casey:
Alan D writes, before becoming an iOS developer, I was very heavily involved in the automotive windscreen trade.
John:
Let me pause here for a second.
John:
There's a reason I bolded that.
John:
We always talk about how we say, if we talk about anything on this show, there'll be some listener who's an expert in the field.
John:
I feel like it's just trolling us now.
John:
I was an iOS developer, but I was also heavily involved in the automotive windscreen.
John:
Like, one, it was like, well, I listened to the show, and I know a lot about windscreens.
John:
I'll write in.
John:
But before becoming an iOS developer, now everything's going to be like, I work at Apple now, but previously I was a master chef.
John:
And let me tell you, not only do we have a listener in every industry on every topic that we're ever going to talk about, but also a bunch of them are also now currently Apple employees or iOS developers.
John:
Anyway, I just thought that was fascinating.
Casey:
And I would just like to build on that by saying, that's freaking awesome.
Casey:
And I'm very proud of all of us.
Casey:
I really am.
Casey:
So Alan, before becoming an iOS developer, I was heavily involved in the automotive windscreen trade, working for Belron.
Casey:
They own Safelite Autoglass for over 15 years.
Casey:
Casey mentioned that he didn't get an OEM windscreen made by Volvo as the main problem with his windscreen.
Casey:
This is a common mistake made by a lot of customers who assume that Volvo, BMW, Audi, etc.
Casey:
all make the windscreens that go into their car, where in fact the manufacturers simply outsource to the cheapest manufacturer and then get them to apply the relevant logo during the process.
Casey:
If you look at the many different brands of cars, depending on the year of manufacturer, you'll see the glass is made by lots of different companies with the car logo next to it.
Casey:
It is better to look for a windscreen made by a competent manufacturer than simply look for the car logo.
John:
Another pause here.
John:
We've talked about this on the show before in our various neutral segments with a little car door noise.
John:
And I know from the car rebuilding channels, the categories of things that you can buy for your car are OE, which is original equipment, which is if you have a Honda car, you can go to the Honda parts dealer and they will sell you a genuine Honda, whatever it is, right?
John:
Of course, car manufacturers don't make all those parts.
John:
They have parts companies that make them for you.
John:
Maybe Bosch makes some sensor for them or, you know, makes the windscreens or like this.
John:
There's every company.
John:
Tires are made by, you know, the tires are actually branded by the companies that made them.
John:
But every single part of your car, chances are good, unless it's like an integral part of their engine, but even then, are made by some other manufacturer.
John:
But they're made for Honda, for BMW.
John:
The OE ones will have a BMW name or logo on them.
John:
The Honda ones will say Honda on them very often, right?
John:
Then you have OEM, which is Original Equipment Manufacturer.
John:
They're not OE, but they're the exact same part.
John:
Often, the company will make the part, as I said on a past show, like they'll make a part for BMW.
John:
Here's a BMW, a quote-unquote BMW water pump, but it's made by some company that makes these things, right?
John:
When you buy at OEM, one, it's cheaper, and two, it's often the exact same part, but they file off the BMW that's stamped into the metal.
John:
It's literally the same part, but they don't even make two different ones, one with the BMW stamped and one with not.
John:
They file off the BMW and say, oh, now this is OEM because it's from the original equipment manufacturer, but it's not the original BMW equipment because we filed off the BMW.
John:
Normally, they just make them without the logo, right?
John:
And then finally, there's third party, which is this will fit in your BMW.
John:
In theory, will do the job of the water pump, but it is not made by the company that made the water pumps for BMW.
John:
And by the way, often BMW will source water pumps from two or three different companies for the same car generation.
John:
So it's not even just one.
John:
And it certainly is an OE with the actual BMW logo on it.
John:
so i think that's what uh that alan is trying to say here that when you get a windshield yes of course these companies don't make their own windshields they buy them from somebody but you can get an oe one which is going to have a volvo logo on it whatever you can get an oem one which is made by the exact same company that made the oe one but it doesn't have a volvo logo on it and then you can get one that's third party that will fit on your volvo but is not made by the company that makes windscreens for this car for volvo
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And I think the first of the two windshields we had put in the car is a third party or was a third party one.
Casey:
And I can tell you for a fact, my lived experience, as they say, is that the heads up display was blurry when projected onto that windshield.
Casey:
I don't recall who manufactured what the deal was, but it was not a...
Casey:
windshield stamped with the volvo logo we now have a windshield stamped with the volvo logo and hey guess what the heads up display works perfectly so i don't know how alan wants to justify that uh i don't know what the headcanon is for that but i can tell you well did you see i know you have more feedback on this but you see the other feedback was saying that a lot of it could also be calibration issues regardless of who manufactured the windscreen you know what i mean yeah
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But again, I find that pretty skeptical or I'm pretty skeptical about that because it also when the safe late, the first time they tried to replace the windshield, somebody came out and was like, Oh, this isn't the right windshield.
Casey:
It doesn't work with heads up display.
Casey:
And then they just turned around and left.
Casey:
So, I mean, obviously I don't really know what I'm talking about, but all I do know is that a third party windshield went in, it didn't work with the HUD and then a first party or either OE or OEM windshield went in and I guess it was OE because it's Volvo stamped on it.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
Anyway,
Casey:
Something with Volvo on it now works, and that's what matters.
Casey:
Then Alan continues, Casey recommended that the listeners take their car to the dealership windscreen replacement.
Casey:
This is a huge mistake.
Casey:
So a person with hammer says, oh, look, you should find nails everywhere.
Casey:
Anyway, in all my years of experience, the dealers do not have specialist tools and chemicals needed to change a windscreen.
Casey:
The dealer nearly always calls a third party to come in and change a windscreen, and you will have no say in who is doing the work.
Casey:
It is often the cheapest company they can find.
Casey:
The dealer then adds a markup and passes this on to the insurance company.
Casey:
I get that, but I can tell you that when I was speaking to my local Volvo dealer, they said, oh, we have a specific guy.
Casey:
I guess, technically speaking, it could have been someone they brought in, but the implication from the way they were saying it was... It's absolutely somebody they brought in.
Casey:
That was not the implication I had, based on the way they were talking.
Casey:
Yeah, I know a guy.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
fun no no that's my point is that they had it was the way they spoke of it is that they had a specific employee that did this sort of work because they said like he was out a certain day or something like that but it's typically in i don't know it doesn't matter but anyways sounds like they know a guy i mean maybe but and again like the the sales the the particular volvo dealer that we work with like the sales department i probably made this speech before but sales department was a bunch of sleazeballs at the time we bought i mean when we bought a car dealer
Casey:
Well, no, but it was real bad insofar as, like, we were talking to a guy that's the salesperson, and Aaron would ask a question, and he would look at her, listen to her question, and then look at me to answer the question.
Casey:
It was very bad.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Yeah, it was super gross.
Casey:
But we've got a great deal in the car, so that's all that matters, right?
Casey:
Anyway, we also had anonymous feedback from a former Safelite tech, 32 years worth, who says, I am saddened to hear it took three trips to fix, but I'm not surprised.
Casey:
They continued on later, if you get a tech that cares about the quality of their work, then you have nothing to worry about.
Casey:
It's just that those folks are few and far between.
Casey:
Safelite gives their techs raises or cuts their pay according to four metrics they keep on you, your speed and efficiency, damage control, and wiper sales.
Casey:
I'm dumbing it down, but that's the gist of it.
Casey:
And I got to tell you, that sounds more like my experience.
Casey:
Who knows?
John:
Yeah, the one that didn't make any of the notes here was someone talking about calibration, specifically with Volvo, and saying that some of these cars have a calibration they'll do while you're driving.
Casey:
That's allegedly what the Volvo one is.
John:
Right.
John:
But but the but they don't have the ability to write that calibration because like the stored calibration is right protected.
John:
So the next time you power off and power on the car, it goes back to the stored calibration and it's off again until you drive a little bit.
John:
And if you go to the Volvo dealer, the Volvo dealer has the computer to override the right protect to calibrate it either live or stationary, get the new calibration values written to the stored value.
John:
And then you don't have to worry about it losing calibration when you disconnect the battery or whatever.
John:
So I feel like most of the magic with the dealer here is in the tools used to make your car happy with the windshield.
John:
Setting aside the potential, yes, if you just pull one that doesn't work with the heads of display, period, because it's just totally the wrong one.
John:
It doesn't have whatever.
John:
It doesn't have the reflective properties that are required.
Casey:
Right.
John:
But if it was just blurry, it could just be that this one ended up a slightly, you know, three millimeters different distance, and they just needed to calibrate it, but they didn't have the tools to calibrate it.
John:
Because if you think about it, if you're Safelite or whatever, you're not going to have the tools to talk to the computer of every single car to do the calibration.
John:
All that calibration stuff is lots of little setups and things, and you have to, like, they can't do that for every car in the world.
John:
So that's, I feel like, the value you're getting the dealer is...
John:
if there are tools to configure and calibrate and override the right protection and, you know, put a little test pattern or whatever, whatever they have to do to do the, to, to do the calibration, they'll have it at the Volvo dealer because they service Volvos, but safe flight is not going to have one for every car make and model in a year for the past, you know, 50 years to be able to, they'll have the windshields for it because they can just order it.
John:
Right.
John:
But they won't have the calibration tools.
John:
And that's, that's my theory on this whole thing.
John:
i mean i agree with you but it stands to reason that they should right because this is what they do for a living you know it's tom cruise well i i think their work is like you noted i think their work is changing i think it used to be just replace the glass right and now it's like what heads up display cameras sensors like it's a it's a new world i bet they will either adapt or die because yeah it's it's becoming their job pretty soon every new car will have some crap that needs to see through or reflect on the windshield and safely it's got to figure out how they're going to deal with that
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
Well, the other funny thing about this, this is already going on too long, I'm sorry, but the other funny thing about this was when I was filling out like the, oh, I need a new windshield, and they asked, okay, what's your car?
Casey:
And I could have provided the VIN, but I didn't have it handy, and so I said, oh, you know, it's a 2017 Volvo XC90, and they asked, does it have heated seats?
Casey:
which i think was their indication whether or not it had a particular package but yeah i wish that they had been a little more specific because i think that they they did not know these volvo or the the option packages well enough to ask the appropriate questions to discern the fact that i had a heads-up display so i mean it says what it says but um i don't know it's it's funny to me that this is conflicting feedback from somebody who worked for the parent company of safe flight and someone who allegedly worked for safe flight themselves
Casey:
All right, quickly moving on.
Casey:
We were talking several weeks ago now before WWDC about fixing a bug for only one developer.
Casey:
Do you guys remember what the context was for that?
Casey:
I forget why we were talking about it.
John:
I was saying someone, their feedback was, why would Apple bother fixing your bug?
John:
You're not an important developer for them.
Casey:
Oh, is this the shaky window one?
John:
Wouldn't they pay more attention to like Adobe or Microsoft or whatever?
Casey:
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
John:
And my explanation was that even if it's a bug found by a dinky developer, that same bug could affect the important developers or Apple itself.
Casey:
Sorry about that.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
So thank you.
Casey:
So, uh, Guy Rambo, friend of the show wrote when Apple released Mac OS Monterey, it broke something very specific in core Bluetooth that I'm pretty sure only affected my app.
Casey:
I filed a feedback and got a lab appointment and they fixed it during the beta cycle.
Casey:
This is a counterpoint to the idea that they'd never prioritize a report from a small developer.
John:
I mean,
John:
And that's the other part of it is like when you talk about Apple, you're thinking like this giant monolithic thing.
John:
But the individuals who work on the team that does Bluetooth probably really want to know if there's a bug affecting Bluetooth.
John:
And they're not thinking like, oh, I'm the big corporate Apple.
John:
I have to balance the priorities.
John:
No, they're just on the Bluetooth team.
John:
So if you go to a lab with the people who are on the Bluetooth team and you show them a plug in the Bluetooth stack, they're going to fix it because that's what programmers do.
John:
And their mind is not clouded by giant strategic visions of how resources have to be allocated across the entire organization.
John:
They just want to fix the Bluetooth stack.
John:
And yes, maybe they're overworked and have to do something else for this release so they can't get to it.
John:
But for low-level stuff like that, chances are good the Bluetooth team isn't overburdened by having to make a bunch of widgets for the new version of macOS Sonoma.
Casey:
So then more from Guy, this is with regard to SwiftUI and the Mac.
Casey:
SwiftUI does suck on the Mac if you're writing an iOS app and expecting it to work on the Mac.
Casey:
If you're making a Mac app, it's fantastic, especially if you know enough app kit to be dangerous.
Casey:
Paraphrasing Guy, SwiftUI uses iPad controls only for Catalyst.
Casey:
For pure Mac OS apps, SwiftUI renders as app kit.
Casey:
Then we also got some feedback from Clarko via Mastodon.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
SwiftUI isn't responsible for what you dislike about system settings.
Casey:
By default, SwiftUI uses the AppKit widgets.
Casey:
You have to opt into different styles, which system settings has done.
Casey:
And then you can quibble about those styles, for sure.
Casey:
But this is about the designers, not the technology.
Casey:
So Clarko has a couple of screenshots, again, link in the show notes.
Casey:
There's a form style grouped in a toggle style switch.
Casey:
And if you set those appropriately, you can get the difference between what you would expect to see, which is the kind of Mac idioms, if you will, and the godawful system setting stuff, which is more iOS style.
Casey:
So you can see those pictures in the show notes.
Casey:
It's pretty, pretty stark.
John:
I replied to this on Mastodon.
John:
I had two things to say about it.
John:
First, I didn't say this to Mastodon, but this is definitely true.
John:
SwiftUI on the Mac is not a wonderful, beautiful garden as it's described here.
John:
Witness my continuing weeks of trying to debug.
John:
One of the most basic things for SwiftUI on the Mac with AppKit, which is the ability to show SwiftUI view literally anywhere in an AppKit app.
John:
And that's, you know, a bug with that basic functionality is what I'm currently fighting with.
John:
So forgive me if I don't think that SwiftUI on the Mac is a paradise.
John:
But the second thing is, yes, there are different interface styles.
John:
So it's not like, oh, you don't blame SwiftUI for system settings.
John:
SwiftUI can do it the other way too.
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
Apple made system settings.
John:
They are choosing to use the ugly, worse, crappier, like, you know, interface style and not the app kit controls.
John:
And they're choosing that with each new thing that they make.
John:
So regardless of if it can show the app kit controls in that style, Apple seems to be saying, no, no, no.
John:
This is the way you write Mac apps now.
John:
They got to look like this garbage.
John:
and that's what we're complaining about it's not like we're blaming swift ui we're saying apple wants to use swift ui and they this is the new thing and apple is using it so it's a pretty strong hint that apple's saying hey this is the way yes it still supports the old way but that's only because we hadn't finished this new way now that the new way is done please do it like this so none of your pop-up buttons have any borders and all the labels are really far away from the controls and the checkboxes become toggle switches for some stupid reason and that's what we're mad about so it
John:
There are plenty of things to blame SwiftUI for on the Mac, but this I'm blaming on the whole sort of Apple's new way to write Mac apps.
John:
They think this is the way Mac apps should look and behave, and I disagree because I think it's bad and ugly.
Casey:
No argument here.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Alex writes, you talked about the Airjet solid state cooling system on a past episode.
Casey:
This was quite a while ago now.
Casey:
Now it's a mini PC and there's a link to a Mastodon post.
Casey:
This is the thing that looks kind of like a PCMCIA card, but it's actually not literally, but effectively a fan.
Casey:
You know, it will suck in warm air and blow it out the other end using like a vibrating membrane or something like that.
John:
None of
John:
Yeah.
John:
And this is like that.
John:
It's a bunch of like little tiny silicon things that move and sort of swoosh the air along through this tiny narrow channel.
John:
We put a video in it last time, but you can watch this thing.
John:
It's like air comes out of this box and there's quote unquote, no moving parts in the box.
John:
There is, there's moving parts, but they're really small.
John:
So they're hard to see.
John:
It's still kind of cool.
Marco:
we are sponsored this week by meh.com meh.com meh.com and what i like about this this is one of my favorite sites on the internet and i'll tell you why so what it is basically is a store that sells one really great deal a day so you can you go there every day and you see what are they selling today and it's usually some like deeply discounted kind of close out price on actually pretty good stuff
Marco:
And I've actually bought a few things from there myself.
Marco:
They often even have Apple stuff.
Marco:
Oftentimes it's like, you know, like kind of an outgoing model or like accessories or things like that.
Marco:
They had great deals on watch bands recently, like Apple watch bands that were amazing deals.
Marco:
So there's really great deals on meh.
Marco:
But they actually cater not only to people who want what they're selling, but they also cater to people who don't want what they're selling every day and are just kind of there to read the site or to join the community or comment on stuff.
Marco:
Because what they do,
Marco:
It isn't just like an Amazon sales page per day or whatever.
Marco:
It is a full write-up in a great style.
Marco:
It's very amusing.
Marco:
It doesn't take itself seriously.
Marco:
And they are really good writers there.
Marco:
And so it's just like a fun sales pitch every day for whatever they're selling.
Marco:
And this has earned them a community full of geeks, people like us, friendly people.
Marco:
And so for everything they sell, they have this funny write-up, the community.
Marco:
They might have a ridiculous song or a goofy poll.
Marco:
All for people, not only who are buying the thing, but even people who just show up who don't want to buy the thing.
Marco:
Because meh knows that you're not going to buy everything they're selling.
Marco:
So they focus on making it a great place to hang out.
Marco:
So you actually go back there and read it every day.
Marco:
And they largely succeed at that.
Marco:
And I find it so fun.
Marco:
I love this site.
Marco:
So check out meh.com, meh.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Use that link so they know you came from here.
Marco:
meh.com slash ATP whether you want to buy anything or not it's a fun read it's a great site check it out meh.com slash ATP thank you so much to meh for sponsoring our show
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We should talk at least briefly.
Casey:
There's a little bit of development with regard to Apollo and its unfortunate shutdown.
Casey:
Quick chief summarizer and chief summary.
Casey:
Reddit looked at Twitter and said,
Casey:
That thing that you did with the third-party devs that was super evil and really, really not cool, that looked awesome.
Casey:
We want to do that too.
Casey:
So they said to pretty much all their third-party devs, hey, we're going to charge you literally millions of dollars, and we're going to do that in like two weeks.
Casey:
So Apollo is shutting down.
Casey:
There's a bunch of other equivalent apps that are shutting down.
Casey:
And apparently Apollo is following in the footsteps of our other beloved apps, Tweetbot and Twitterific, and is doing the, you know, hey, you can choose to get your refund, but would you like to not get your refund?
Casey:
um which is what i i actually went and updated apollo earlier with the expectation that i would see that prompt and would immediately say no i do not need my money back but it didn't prompt me so i don't know if maybe i didn't grab yeah i did the same thing yeah maybe maybe i think expired i don't know but i updated for the same reason or maybe you weren't on an annual plan uh that's what it was i think i did a one-time purchase you're right because i think i did like 70 like super mega one-time purchasing i think that's what it is good call marco
Marco:
a few things to know here you know so first of all you know we didn't talk about the reddit thing yet because and none of us are super into into that community so we don't really know much about it besides i thought we didn't we talk about it i thought we never actually did oh that's that's why i kind of object to casey's summary which is not particularly accurate
Casey:
All right, fine, screw it.
Casey:
Let's dig into it, man.
Marco:
Yeah, all right, let's go back.
Marco:
All right, so Reddit's being a jerk.
Marco:
No, so looking at the Reddit situation, again, huge disclaimer that none of us are heavy Reddit users.
Marco:
So we're not really in that community.
Marco:
So it's hard to judge the nitty-gritty specifics of it.
Marco:
But if you look at the behavior of Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman is his name?
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Marco:
Again, this is not part of my world really, so I didn't really know him.
Marco:
But it's hard for me to think less of him than I think right now.
Marco:
Because the way he has conducted it... So what they've chosen to do in broad strokes is Reddit has decided fairly recently, like in the last few months, they decided we're going to start charging money for API access.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Look, it's their company.
Marco:
That is their prerogative to do.
Marco:
They can choose to have an API or not.
Marco:
They can choose the terms with which that API is used.
Marco:
So it is their prerogative, just like it is Twitter's prerogative, to set pricing or limitations on their API or to say, you know what, we don't even want this kind of app to use our API at all.
Marco:
Or they can say, hey, we're not even going to have an API.
Marco:
I run an app with a web service and I choose specifically not to have a public API for lots of reasons.
Marco:
So that is their prerogative to choose that and to operate it as they see fit for their business and whatever.
Marco:
What makes this needlessly hostile and horrible are multiple factors.
Marco:
Number one, as Casey said, the pricing that they chose to set was pretty high and basically makes their party apps impossible.
Marco:
Now, again,
Marco:
That is their prerogative.
Marco:
They can do that.
Marco:
But there's, like with many things with Twitter's horrible new owner, there's a good way to do things and then there's a jerk way to do things.
Marco:
And you can make these exact same decisions and do them in a better way with more notice, better transitional opportunities or terms or just warning or anything.
Marco:
There are better ways to do it.
Marco:
And at every step of the way, Reddit's CEO has chosen seemingly the most hostile and worst option for both the company and for him personally.
Marco:
When you look at the dynamic here, you have a large company, Reddit, this billion-dollar company that's trying to IPO, apparently, that's been around forever.
Marco:
It's a big thing.
Marco:
It's a big entity.
Marco:
Lots of power.
Marco:
Lots of money behind that.
Marco:
Going to battle with this one independent app developer, this individual guy, Christian Selig, who's like... There's like a handful of them they're doing battle with.
John:
All the people who make the popular are third-party clients.
Casey:
Well, yes, that's true-ish.
Casey:
But in particular... But in particular.
Marco:
Like he has lobbed personal attacks in public against this against Christian Selig as a person like he's he has attacked his integrity.
Marco:
He's lobbed accusations like serious accusations.
John:
He did the same thing about the couple of the other developers, too.
John:
As soon as the other developers popped up to whoever does the riff app, he said a bunch of stuff about him that also wasn't true.
John:
So he's equal opportunity jerk.
Casey:
But the best part of this, though, is that it turns out that Christian in, and you should watch or listen to, I think, did he do it on video?
Casey:
He did a video, Christian did a video with somebody, and he did an episode.
Casey:
That's who it was.
Casey:
Thank you.
John:
He was also on the talk show recently.
Casey:
That was the other thing I was going to bring up.
Casey:
Both of them are excellent.
Casey:
Quinn did a fantastic job.
Casey:
Gruber did a fantastic job.
Casey:
They're both worth watching, despite the fact that they cover similar territory, or listening, or whatever.
Casey:
But the best part is, in Canada, my limited understanding is, which is where Christian is based, it is single-party consent to record a phone call.
Casey:
So if Christian says you can record this phone call, you can record that phone call.
Casey:
And he recorded all these phone calls with Reddit, where they claimed that he did a bunch of really sleazy... Christian did a bunch of really sleazy, gross stuff...
Casey:
Well, guess what, baby?
Casey:
He has receipts.
Casey:
And so he posted little snippets where it clearly debunks these just utter bullshit claims that Reddit is making.
Casey:
It's just gross.
Casey:
I don't know how Christian is as kind and upbeat as he is, I guess, hashtag Canada.
Casey:
But I would be so mad.
Casey:
I am mad, and it doesn't even happen to me.
Casey:
Of the three of us, I am the heaviest user of Reddit, and I am at best a light Reddit user.
Casey:
And I am furious about all this.
Casey:
And I can't believe how gross Reddit has been through the whole thing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And like if you look at, you know, obviously we're much closer with Apple.
Marco:
We follow Apple.
Marco:
We comment on all our stuff.
Marco:
So we've seen over time there have been many stories in the press.
Marco:
about some dispute between Apple and an app developer, often, over maybe some kind of app rejection or something, or some kind of terms thing, or some kind of alleged problem.
Marco:
And Apple never punches down
Marco:
Apple almost never comments publicly about these reports.
Marco:
And if they do, they never punch down.
Marco:
Now, I have heard through various back channels occasionally that a version of the story that's in the public is not the full story and that Apple actually had good reasons to do what they do.
Marco:
Like, this has happened before.
Marco:
And yet, even in that case, even in the case where a developer is trashing them all over the press,
Marco:
and apple could kind of you know exonerate themselves in some way by saying something publicly even then they don't because they are run by adults who and and they're a big company and they know like that would be like punching down and that would that would not be good for multiple reasons and not just yeah not just the punching down thing
John:
It's bad PR.
John:
Yes.
John:
The way you do it is they're consistent.
John:
And so their consistent wall of not saying anything as much as it frustrates us doesn't allow you to interpret their saying nothing as an admission of guilt or not.
John:
And so, again, if you have a third-party developer who's lying about Apple saying...
John:
Apple did this to me and they did that to me.
John:
And Apple knows for a fact that that's not true.
John:
Apple will continue to say nothing because they have nothing to gain by refuting.
John:
Part of it is because they have all the power.
John:
If they don't want your thing on the store, it's not going to be on the store.
John:
Maybe if you're super big and important like you're Epic and you're in a big lawsuit about them.
John:
then you know people get on on the witness stand and get deposed for legal proceedings and maybe even tim cook would come in the public but that is like the last resort but for an individual dinky developer who wants to lie through their teeth that apple did this that and the other thing and apple knows it's not true they're never going to say anything because that's called discipline pr uh but you know the human inclination of course is oh but i know that's not true and i'm going to go back out and whatever toddlers are running reddit like cannot resist the urge to do that and so they do
Marco:
Yeah, and frankly, again, I don't follow Reddit.
Marco:
I don't know anything about Steve Huffman.
Marco:
But the way he has handled this in the PR sense, again, setting aside the business question of whether they should charge for their API and how much they should charge.
Marco:
And there's a whole other thing with how they treat moderators, which is horrendous.
Marco:
There's such a mess on their plate right now entirely of their own doing.
Marco:
But just seeing how Steve Huffman has handled public comments about the situation and about actually lobbying accusations against these individual developers –
Marco:
he is not fit to run a company of that size.
Marco:
It's so grossly unprofessional.
Marco:
In addition to him clearly being a huge jerk, I mean, that's obvious.
Marco:
He's definitely a huge jerk and definitely, I mean, I would say a liar.
Marco:
It's hard to candy coat that when you see he's literally just blatantly lying.
Marco:
But just his handling of the PR just shows he is totally unqualified and incapable and inappropriate to run a company of that size.
Casey:
Yeah, I tend to agree with you.
Casey:
And the funny thing is, I think some of this was just, ooh, let's get angry about something.
Casey:
But I think it started from a good place.
Casey:
And a lot of subreddits, basically communities within Reddit, decided, oh, we're going to protest all these charges.
Casey:
And I think that was in no small part because the unpaid labor of Reddit, the moderators of all these communities, use these third-party apps to continue to moderate these communities.
Casey:
And this is unpaid work that benefits the communities but also benefits Reddit.
Casey:
And the moderators are losing these tools as part of the collateral damage of these decisions.
Casey:
So a lot of subreddits decided to shut down effectively for a few days.
Casey:
And I haven't kept my thumb on the pulse as to what ended up coming of that, but it sounds like nothing happened.
Casey:
And then some of them decided to be funny and or snarky.
Casey:
I think the F1 subreddit decided to mark themselves as not safe for work, which isn't really true.
Casey:
And they came up with a somewhat cockamamie, but also believable excuse that, oh, racing is dangerous, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But the reason they did that was because Reddit doesn't put advertising on not-safe-for-work subreddits.
Casey:
So now they're seemingly cutting off some of Reddit's revenue.
Casey:
A lot of these communities are still dark.
Casey:
They're basically not public at all.
John:
You'll know this if you try to Google for something and get a Reddit result, which happened to me many, many, many times in the past week.
John:
Google still has the cache versions of them, but it just shows you how many times you don't realize that one of the results you click on is Reddit.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And so a lot of these subreddits are still dark as far as I know.
Casey:
And actually, breaking news that I noticed literally as we're recording,
Casey:
So Reddit has come in and basically said, which we did know already, said to some of these communities, look, if your moderators are going to keep this community dark, we will put in new moderators.
Casey:
We will ask for volunteers to be new moderators, which...
Casey:
I get why they're doing it, but that's super sleazy, super gross.
Casey:
And so then breaking today.
Marco:
Also, again, just unwise.
Marco:
I think one thing that has become very clear with this whole drama is that Reddit thinks they are much more important than their community is.
Marco:
And the community showed them otherwise.
Marco:
And by the way, good for them.
Marco:
The amount of... The strength of the Reddit community and the Reddit moderators that they've shown during all this is impressive.
Marco:
It is really quite something.
Marco:
And Reddit, the company, I think was caught totally off guard.
Marco:
And again, if they had a capable leader in place, this never would have even gotten to this point.
Marco:
Again,
Marco:
Again, even if they decided we should charge for our API and this is what we should charge for our API.
Marco:
They could achieve the same result on not that different of a timeline with the same terms, the same pricing.
Marco:
Even with having apps probably shut down, they could have achieved the same result in such a better way if they just handled it better and if they just weren't flaming the fire at every step they could rather than taking the easy, nicer approach or the better PR approach or just the more mature adult approach.
John:
You know, on that topic and in terms of the actual terms of the deal, this is actually something that we've talked about a lot on the show over the years, mostly in the context of Apple.
John:
Often I end up comparing it to the gaming industry, but like when we talk about the App Store, right?
Yeah.
John:
and the deposition and what the various people who are on the stand for Apple would say about the App Store and how they view the value proposition.
John:
This is a little bit of an epidemic, even among the best companies, where there'll be some company that we usually talk about in terms of a platform, like gaming companies have platforms, so the game console Apple has platforms, right?
John:
But also in Reddit, you know, they have a community.
John:
A relationship with a bunch of other people or entities that are not the company,
John:
That forms the whole.
John:
So Apple makes a platform.
John:
Third-party developers make apps for it.
John:
That forms the whole of the product.
John:
You get a phone.
John:
Apple puts a bunch of stuff on the phone.
John:
You can get third-party apps.
John:
Game consoles, somebody makes them.
John:
They're first-party games, but they're also third-party games.
John:
Reddit, they put up a website.
John:
They run the servers.
John:
But then it's a system where other people can come in and make communities and run their communities.
John:
They're using Reddit software.
John:
They're using Reddit server.
John:
They're both getting benefits from that thing, right?
John:
And the problem a lot of these big companies have been having lately is the people who are in charge of them
John:
have started to miscalculate what that relationship is really like, always in the same way.
John:
The way they always do it is they think that they are more important than they really are.
John:
So if you're Apple, what you think is basically, you should just even be lucky that we're letting you put apps on our thing.
John:
Your app wouldn't even exist if we didn't make this platform.
John:
Therefore, we are clearly entitled to
John:
All of the money.
John:
Not all the money, but like a big part of it.
John:
And we're entitled to what we think we're entitled to.
John:
If you're going to come here and say that we shouldn't get that much money, you're wrong because you don't understand the value we're bringing.
John:
Right.
Marco:
Not only that, how dare you question our our value?
Marco:
How how dare you think that our customers are your customers?
Marco:
How dare you think that you that you bring anything to this table at all?
John:
practically speaking apple does have all the power they can just kick you out of the app store right and because they have that power it starts to convince them that they have more that they are responsible for more of the value than they actually are or whether you think it's they actually are basically what it ends up with the companies that run these things end up in a situation where their picture of their participation in the value thing stops matching and
John:
Yeah.
John:
reddit twitter same type of deal like you can go through it all people will list off all the things like well you know you wouldn't have a subreddit if reddit didn't exist but reddit wouldn't exist if people didn't add content and all those moderators are working free and reddit a website that nobody uses has nothing no value whatsoever and every piece of value the reddit have is because people went there but people wouldn't have gone there reddit and make it and you go back and forth and back and forth here's the deal
John:
all all that matters is is there agreement is there some kind even if it's just like uh you know an agreement where everybody's a little bit dissatisfied between how the value is divided and this gets to things like oh okay we want to start charging for an api right all right so you have to come to you have to make sure that when you enter into that thing
John:
Your idea of how much value that you're providing and how much value the third parties are providing match each other.
John:
And they have to match in all the ways.
John:
They have to match in sort of like what we feel, but they also have to match in like what we can afford.
John:
Like we talked about this with Apple, like the e-book store, right?
John:
The e-book industry, publishers, authors, that whole cluster over there that existed before the internet doesn't have room to give 30% of a book sale to Apple.
John:
there the percentages of sales for books are like where they go to the author the publisher but that's already all divided up there is not another 30 hanging around to give to apple apple doesn't have to pay itself 30 for its ibook store but if amazon wanted to sell kindle books through you know according to apple's rules through the app store in their app they would have to give apple 30 that 30 just doesn't exist so
John:
That's why you can't buy Kindle books inside the Kindle app on the thing.
John:
Apple refuses to change the rules, but those things aren't compatible, right?
John:
So with Reddit, they're saying, okay, we can charge this much through the API.
John:
And they're probably thinking...
John:
Well, all the app developer has to do is increase the price of its app by the amount that we say.
John:
And this is an economic situation.
John:
They're like, but we don't have that flexibility.
John:
If we raise our prices like that, the number of people who pay for our app will drop to 1% of what it was.
John:
And it doesn't really matter what would actually happen.
John:
All that matters is what people think would happen.
John:
So Apollo is shutting down rather than raising its prices 10 times, right?
John:
Because he is calculating, whether correctly or incorrectly, that he can't sustain that price.
John:
If you charge me this much and I pass that on to my customers, my customers are going to flee and I'm not going to have a business.
John:
So I'm preemptively saying that I don't have a viable business.
John:
And that shows that Reddit, in making this decision of how the value is going to be apportioned in their community, miscalculated.
John:
It has offered something.
John:
Here is our API pricing.
John:
And that is not palatable or acceptable or reasonable to the people who make the apps.
John:
And if Reddit wants third-party applications, they should have rethought that.
John:
If they don't want third-party applications, good job.
John:
You did it, right?
Marco:
You scared them all away.
Marco:
Well, not even that.
Marco:
It's like bad jobs.
Marco:
I think clearly they don't want their already applications.
John:
Well, you can do it in a way you're saving face.
John:
You're like, we didn't say you're banned.
John:
We just set the prices.
John:
And if you didn't like the prices, so what?
John:
They executed this so poorly on every level.
John:
But they think their API is worth that much.
John:
Their calculation was, this is how valuable we think we are.
John:
Previously, we were giving this away for free because we were so magnanimous.
John:
But now when we look at the overall picture of the ecosystem, here's what we think our value is as the API provider.
John:
Therefore, that's how much we're charging.
John:
And
John:
You can say whether they're right or wrong about that.
John:
Their right or wrongness depends entirely on, well, what does the other side of this think like?
John:
Did the third parties agree with you that you're worth that much?
John:
If they agreed, they would pay it.
John:
But if they disagreed, they're not going to pay it.
John:
And you've failed to come to an agreement.
John:
And we talked about this with Apple and app developers and game developers because the game console makers are...
John:
incredibly evil and cutthroat and draconian and just have like a reputation that would make apple blush right they are not nice to people they want control of everything nintendo used to make you pay them to manufacture your cartridges you couldn't manufacture themselves you had to pay nintendo to do it and they would charge an arm and a leg they're just insane deals but through all of this the game consoles always knew that
John:
that for us to be continuing to be in this industry we have to make nice with the game developers somehow we can be bitter enemies but we have to find a way to come to an agreement whatever that deal is you'll be a launch thing we'll make a special version of the xbox with your game branded on it you'll be a bundle tie-in if you make this game for us we'll give you this many millions of extra dollars like
John:
It's a business, right?
John:
And they figure out business deals.
John:
And more importantly, they try not to miscalculate what their value is.
John:
Can we go to this game company and say, hey, if you want to be on the next PlayStation, not only are we not going to pay you anything, but you have to pay us $100 million.
John:
And then we're going to let you put your game there.
John:
And they go, oh, sup, see you later.
John:
And suddenly be like, whoa, we miscalculated, right?
John:
What's happening is the people who run these companies, Apple to a lesser degree because it's sort of more of a slow motion disaster, but like Twitter and Reddit in particular, Twitter and Reddit in particular are run by people who massively miscalculate their value portion of the...
John:
of the whole and then act based on that miscalculation with disastrous results right again it doesn't even matter if they're right or wrong all that matters is what the other side of this equation thinks if you're right or wrong because you need to get agreement with them and this is what frustrates me so much it's like business 101 right it doesn't actually matter if your product is worth or not worth this it only matters if people are willing to buy it and you could say oh it's dumb that they're not willing to buy it but if they're not willing to
John:
buy it you have to do something different and just the red thing i mean you know elon musk is just a jerk who cares whatever but but the red thing it seems like they truly believe that if we just hold strong and and you know don't and you know do strike breaking i'm gonna be like reagan and i'm gonna fire all the air traffic controllers and it's like you're taking the wrong lessons from history here people like and they're just doubling down on it because they're like this is how we want it to be it's like if you want to have a business with no third-party clients and all the people who traditionally use reddit scared away like what i don't know what you're gonna have left after that
John:
But if you wanted to, like, not totally destroy the value that you had established in Reddit, you're doing a lousy job of it.
John:
And I find it incredibly frustrating.
John:
This is slightly different than the, you're going to have to believe this, the enchantification thing, which I'll try to find a link for.
John:
I think that's subtly different.
John:
This is much more of just the simple case of,
John:
of misreading the room, as we would say, of thinking that your relationship with your third parties and your communities is different than it is.
John:
And maybe you don't realize over the years your opinions have drifted apart.
John:
Or maybe this guy became CEO because his pitch to everyone else in the company was like, we've been giving this API away for free.
John:
Do you realize how much value we're giving away?
John:
We just got to turn on this money spigot and we'll all be rich, boys.
John:
and they miscalculate it.
John:
And it's just, and also they're jerk on top of that and everything, right?
John:
But like, I still feel like even if they did it in a nice way, one year sun setting period, you know, easy, ease people out, give people some like, people who established clients like Apollo would have two years to do it.
John:
And, you know, even if they did it the nicest way possible, the bottom line is at the end of that kind of Twitter style, when they, you know, before they killed the API, Twitter before Elon, basically,
John:
stopped allowing third-party clients but allowed existing ones to continue to sell a fixed number of things still they changed the shape of their business they changed it in a way that was worse for a lot of people and a lot of people didn't like and that is either an intentional plan that they didn't want a service where people have third-party clients or they didn't realize what they were doing they thought oh it'll just be like it is now except for we won't have this problem you know there'll be no downsides the upsides will be we don't have to worry about that and we can show ads to everybody and there's no downsides and there absolutely are downsides and
John:
like red it's doing the same thing where they feel like we can start changing the api everything else will be the same everybody will love us all reds will have lots of activity we'll just make more money and that's not they shouldn't have thought that's how it's going to work about it that's not how it has worked and i really just wish all these people well with the exception of elon because there's no helping him
John:
could just sit down and learn to share kindergarten style and learn how in any kind of relationship or negotiation, you have to come to some kind of consensus or agreement to find a mutually beneficial solution.
John:
You can't win by stamping your foot and saying...
John:
This is what I want.
John:
I'm never changing it.
John:
I'm doubling, tripling, quadrupling down, even though those aren't things.
John:
And if you defy me, I will kick you all out and replace you with, I guess, people who want to be moderators in a situation where the company is going into tubes like this.
John:
Very frustrating.
John:
And I'm not a heavy Reddit user either, but it frustrates me to see people...
John:
making such obviously bad decisions and it reminds me a lot of apple where they miscalculate their value proposition with their third parties and it has led to like years at this point we up to a decade of just unfortunate unnecessary tension between apple and developers where there should be uh you know a more mutually beneficial arrangement where people aren't quite as unhappy as they are right now
Casey:
It's just too bad.
Casey:
And my limited understanding, and I might have this wrong, but if Christian and the other third-party app developers had time to work with, they might have been able to make this a tenable situation.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
The problem is that Reddit is going to crank up the fees from, I think, either literally or effectively zero to literally millions of dollars in the span of just a couple weeks.
Casey:
And three, four weeks ago, Christian was still accepting reasonably priced subscriptions for a price point of free.
Casey:
And so now...
Casey:
He can't float this literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, I guess millions of dollars until he can start ratcheting up the prices on his existing customers.
Casey:
And it's not the customer's fault.
Casey:
They didn't do anything wrong.
Casey:
It's just that Reddit has spontaneously decided to charge 10x or whatever, or effectively infinite more if it was free.
Casey:
And they didn't give Christian and the other app developers the time to work with that.
Casey:
And Christian has been pretty clear in any of the communications that I've read or listened to or what have you, that if he was given the time and if the fees were reasonable—
Casey:
He thinks he could have made this work, but because he was given no time and the fees are astronomical, it's just he has no chance or excuse me, no choice but to basically sunset the app.
Casey:
And so that's actually why we were brought here originally was to talk about the plan for sunsetting the app.
Marco:
Because there's multiple problems with how that like.
Marco:
So the main problem is that Reddit gave like a month notice for this massive change.
Marco:
But Apollo, like many apps, sells annual subscriptions.
Marco:
And the way Apple, the same problem hit Tweetbot and Twitterific when Twitter cut them off with very little notice.
Marco:
But no notice, actually.
Marco:
They just cut them off.
Marco:
So same problem here, almost as bad as that.
Marco:
At least Christian had a few weeks' notice.
Marco:
But anyway, so the problem is when you buy a subscription from the App Store, when you buy a year subscription, Apple will pay that out to the developer in full at their next payment, which is usually about a month, a month and a half away.
Marco:
So you basically are being paid in advance for the whole subscription, or at least for all but one month of it.
Marco:
If the value of the subscription disappears, Apple has to refund those customers' money.
Marco:
It isn't necessarily always a policy choice.
Marco:
There are certain legal requirements where in many countries and states, they have to do that.
Marco:
So in this case, Apple basically has to refund the money and then will debit the developer's account by whatever the value is of any unclaimed refunds.
Marco:
Now, if you explicitly opt out as the customer, then Apple does not need to refund your money.
Marco:
But by default, they will refund your money for that subscription or whatever time is left on it.
Marco:
And that's going to put Christian in the red by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Casey:
Yeah, his back-of-the-envelope math says it's a quarter million dollars that he's going to basically owe Apple.
Marco:
Yeah, and Apple will have to collect it from him.
Marco:
Like, they kind of have to do this.
Marco:
And so, again, this is why a better way to do this by Reddit would have been give him six months or a year notice.
Marco:
And then he could, like, you know...
Marco:
Stop selling those subs immediately and then figure out, do I want to sell a more expensive plan or do I want to shut down the app?
Marco:
Either way, that gives a lot more time to not be on the hook for so many refunds all of a sudden.
Marco:
So anyway, and again, exact same problem happened to Tapbots and Twitterific.
John:
That's why Apple has a plan for this, because they basically got to figure out how this is going to be handled with the Twitter clients.
John:
And now they're just rerunning that same playbook to the point where I think the like Apollo devs and other are talking to like the developers of the Twitter apps to say, hey, how did you handle this and how did it go for you and everything?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So two things.
Marco:
Number one, if you have Apollo and if you have ever paid for for a subscription in Apollo, there is an update that Christian issued today in the App Store right now.
Marco:
Go check and see if you have this latest update and it will offer you if you have one of these subscriptions active that will be automatically refunded.
Marco:
It will offer you an opt out screen.
Marco:
we suggest you opt out.
Marco:
It's the nice thing to do, and it'll help out a developer.
Marco:
Secondly, as a final farewell, Christian has added this wallpaper pack.
Marco:
He's had all these relationships with great designers that have made icons for Apollo over the years.
Marco:
These awesome design resources you can buy as a fun little thing in the app.
Marco:
So I suggest it might help him out.
Marco:
He didn't, you know, he didn't ask us to say this, but, you know, you know, in this community, I like to think we help each other out.
Marco:
And certainly, you know, we did, we did whatever we could for Icon Factory and Tapbots.
Marco:
And I want to do the same thing here.
Marco:
Please decline your refund if you have one.
Marco:
And please consider buying the wallpaper pack or...
Marco:
the tip jar is still in the app.
Marco:
It's a simple in-app purchase tip jar.
Marco:
Those don't have to be refunded.
Marco:
So if you go buy something in the tip jar, whatever amount you feel comfortable with, that could really help a really good developer get out of a really crappy situation.
Marco:
And finally, I would urge Apple to consider...
Marco:
either an option or a requirement that annual subscriptions don't get paid out all at once in advance.
Marco:
Now, you could say that all of us who are getting paid these annual subs, all of our individual businesses and developers out there who are getting paid this, you could argue that we should properly account for that and account for it over the time and say, all right, well, we're going to kind of keep this money in a reserve and just take it out of this reserve and pay ourselves...
Marco:
one month portion at a time for the duration of the subscription or whatever.
Marco:
Yes, we should be doing that, and I think that's kind of a wake-up call for all of us who have annual subs in our apps that, oh crap, we need to start accounting for this.
Marco:
But that's a lot to expect a lot of people to even think of, let alone to do.
Marco:
So ideally, Apple would not pay us
Marco:
Anything that has to be refunded.
Marco:
See, what normally happens with App Store payments is the delay between when somebody buys something in your app or buys your app and when Apple pays you out, it's like a month and a half, which I believe is long enough that they can be reasonably sure they're not going to have to refund it by that point.
Marco:
So they know that whatever money they pay out to developers on that month and a half timescale, if it's not for something longer than that time, like if it's just for a quick in-app purchase or like a month-to-month subscription, they know they're not going to have to issue mass refunds for any of that stuff.
Marco:
So that's why I think the Twitter thing caught them by surprise that I don't think they even had a mechanism in place to get money back from developers.
John:
I don't know about that.
John:
My app figures reports are often negative numbers.
John:
I mean, obviously, my daily total will be a negative number because obviously I'm not selling copies of my dinky applications.
John:
And sometimes the only thing that happens on a day is someone asks for a refund and then after the negative number, which is not a great feeling.
John:
But still, Apple apparently does have a mechanism for that.
Marco:
Well, but you probably have never had a negative payout.
Marco:
Well, we'll see.
Marco:
You know, give me time.
Marco:
Well, anyway, so the point is, I think this caught Apple off guard as well.
Marco:
I think they didn't expect to have to all of a sudden have a way for developers to pay them back a large sum of money.
Marco:
And also, you know, I hope that this has kind of woken them up to this being a problem as they allow purchases that have durations beyond their payout window by a large margin.
John:
Right.
John:
And you think about how long the app store has been around, like it's been around since 2008.
John:
It's not a new phenomenon.
John:
And here in fairly short order, we have multiple instances of this because it's not the type of thing that would normally happen.
John:
You normally competently run sort of platforms and communities are run by people who understand.
John:
you know the delicate balance and work to maintain it and recently a bunch of people have not been working to maintain it and i feel like apple was caught by surprise because it doesn't seem like like in in any kind of sort of you know expected business scenario stuff like this wouldn't happen except for like maybe extenuating circumstances or like a family-run business where somebody important dies and and people are fighting over it succession style or whatever but in general uh
John:
Like the fact that we made it from 2008 until now without this being a big issue and then all of a sudden, I feel like this is an industry's trend.
John:
And I want to reiterate the same point I made 50 times.
John:
People in the chat room are saying, well, like, oh, you know, he doesn't have to worry about that with Apollo because he could just start charging the new rate.
John:
And that big refund, he would make that up in new customers anyway.
John:
So it's not a big deal.
John:
Again, it doesn't actually matter.
John:
if the API pricing actually is tenable or untenable with no notice.
John:
All that matters is what Christian thinks it is.
John:
That's what business deals are like.
John:
You can argue all you want with somebody, but if he thinks this is not going to work for his business and he thinks his only option is to shut down, he's going to shut down.
John:
And Reddit, that is your problem if you thought it was a good idea to have Apollo.
John:
If you didn't, then fine, good.
John:
But if you did think it was,
John:
No amount of arguing to saying Christian could support this.
John:
That's the reality of business.
John:
It only matters what other people think and what you can convince them of.
John:
It doesn't matter what the reality is.
John:
Maybe this pricing would work perfectly.
John:
And so anyone arguing that he's doing this and he's silly, he should just start charging and he would be fine.
John:
You could be totally right, but it doesn't matter.
John:
Doesn't matter.
Marco:
Also, you know, I would venture to say chances are Christian knows more about his business than you, random commenter, do.
John:
Again, I'm not arguing one way or the other.
John:
It's just that the people always want to argue the point of like they think they know and they think that Christian is wrong to do this.
John:
And it's like it doesn't actually matter who's right or wrong.
John:
In a business relationship, you have to come to an agreement that you think is mutually beneficial.
John:
You may be totally wrong.
John:
One or both parties may be totally wrong and ends up not being mutually beneficial and somebody ends up getting screwed.
John:
But they have to think it's okay to agree to it.
John:
my favorite one is what uh was it spyglass who like licensed a browser engine to microsoft or internet explorer um and their deal was they get a percentage of all the sales and then microsoft gave away internet explorer for free so whatever their percentage was of zero they got zero microsoft is pretty good at making deals but the thing is when they made that deal they thought it was good they were wrong but they made the deal and then it's a signed contract anyway just you know that's that's the reality of the world and i do think this trend is worrying the fact that it's happening a lot more recently
Marco:
And I think the reason why this exploded in this way, there's obviously many factors here.
Marco:
A, obviously Reddit's run by jerks and they're apparently trying to IPO or whatever.
Marco:
B, we're in an area of the economy has gotten tougher for tech companies.
Marco:
Money is no longer free to borrow.
Marco:
Everyone is starting to look for returns and look for profitability and everything.
Marco:
And so in that kind of environment, people start tightening their belts and people start looking for different, hey, where can we scrounge up some more money out of whatever our resources are because maybe we're having trouble hitting our quarterly numbers or whatever because it's hard economically right now.
Marco:
So you see companies like, hey, whatever we were giving away for free.
Marco:
Yeah, we're going to stop doing that.
Marco:
Or, hey, this thing that you pay money for, we're going to increase the price on that now, you know, because that's just that's just part of what goes on when you have economic conditions like we have right now.
Marco:
And so that the combination of that, along with, you know, Reddit apparently wanted to IPO or whatever.
Marco:
I don't follow that too closely.
Marco:
And also the trend of increasing use of subscriptions to pay for apps and
Marco:
And I think that all has come together.
Marco:
That's why the app store hasn't seen this like this.
Marco:
You know, that's why this hasn't come up in all this time, because 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, we didn't have a lot of apps monetizing by paying 10 bucks a year or whatever.
Marco:
Like that wasn't as common of a thing back then and has become much more common in recent years.
Marco:
And now you have these, and also, you know, these apps were built on services that at the time that they were built and first used, the services were generally friendly towards the concept of third-party apps.
Marco:
That's why many of them have APIs.
Marco:
And then that whole culture has shifted over time and that, you know, very few companies are offering APIs anymore.
Marco:
Those that are are very restricted and tend to be like, you can't just make a third-party client.
Marco:
You can like, you can add value to our platform, but you can't take any or whatever, you know, so it's much more like that.
Marco:
But anyway.
Marco:
So all this is to say, please, everyone, if you have Apollo, go get it or, you know, open it up, get the update, decline your refund if you if you at all can.
Marco:
And I hope you can and consider putting some money in the tip jar.
Marco:
And secondly, I really urge Apple to consider a change to how subscriptions that are longer than a month are paid out.
Marco:
I would love if Apple would take that accounting burden on themselves at their level and say any subscription that's priced longer than a month, we will dole out your payments in monthly increments.
Marco:
And whether you have to have an opt out for that for like big companies, if they want to do their own thing, fine.
Marco:
But that should be the default.
Marco:
The default should be you are paid only one month worth of each subscription every month until it expires.
Marco:
And the bar for that not happening to you should be somewhat burdensome, some kind of paperwork or accounting requirement, or maybe they're required to be a corporation rather than.
Marco:
An LLC or individual or something like some other kind of, you know, paperwork barrier so that developers like me and Christian and Icon Factory and soon possibly Casey aren't all of a sudden thrust into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to Apple if something we depend on all of a sudden goes away.
Casey:
I mean, here's the thing.
Casey:
Apple, we pay you between 15% and 30%.
Casey:
Earn it.
Casey:
This is why we pay you 15% to 30%.
John:
So this attitude is exactly the type of thing that I was describing where Apple would have to take this new account because you may be listening to this and disagree with Casey saying that they are earning it or they aren't or whatever.
John:
And you may hear Marco saying, well, why don't you just do the counter?
John:
Like you said, Marco, you should just do it or whatever.
John:
Here's the deal.
John:
If you're Apple and you run the platform, what you have to do the math on is, okay, we know there are people who are individual selling apps.
John:
like Christian selling Apollo, like Marco selling Overcast.
John:
They're just one person.
John:
They're not big companies.
John:
We could ask them to do the accounting on their end.
John:
They really should.
John:
They really should account for it this way.
Marco:
They'll make money.
Marco:
They can make money on the float in the meantime.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
We could say, hey, you should really do that.
John:
But will they do it?
John:
And if we think that we can scold them and tell them and have WWDC sessions that teach you how to do basic accounting to spread the money out or whatever, will that actually work?
John:
And if it doesn't work and those developers end up shuttering their app, if that's a result Apple doesn't want, what Apple has to say is like, look, we know developers could avoid this by acting in a different way.
John:
But if they're not going to act in a different way, and we can't convince them to act in a different way, and we don't want Overcast to be shuttered or Casey's app to get canned because all of a sudden they start changing for his API, is there something we, as Apple, could do to help our platform be successful as a whole?
John:
Like, say, giving out the money a month at a time, which is more annoying for us, although we do get to keep the money on the foot like Margo said or whatever, but it has upsides for us.
John:
But it is a change on our end that someone looking at this might say, why does Apple have to do that?
John:
Why don't you just learn how to account for your stuff?
John:
It doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong.
John:
It only matters what thing can you do as a platform owner that will lead to more future success and fewer things you don't want to happen.
John:
And if you don't want developers' apps to get snuffed out of existence because the platform they were running on did something jerky, if you can do something to make that less likely and you're Apple, you should do it.
John:
And instead of spending all your time saying, we shouldn't have to do that, Mark should just learn how to do basic accounting.
John:
If you want to have that attitude, you better hope that Marco learns to do basic accounting.
John:
But if he doesn't and Marco's app goes away and that's not what you want it like it's it's so it's so frustrating.
John:
It's the same thing in politics.
John:
Same things in relationships is do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
John:
Like all the arguments I see around the Reddit things are people who just absolutely want to be right and don't care anything about people being happy.
Casey:
As a final note before we move on, if you are interested in supporting Christian, you can do all the things that Marco was talking about.
Casey:
But also Christian makes Pixel Pals, which is sort of kind of like a Tamagotchi-ish sort of thing.
Casey:
And I mean that in a good way.
Casey:
It's pretty slick.
Casey:
It started as like a little thing in the blank area above – well, not blank, but you know what I mean.
Casey:
The kind of no man's land in the area above the –
Marco:
uh dynamic island and now it's its own app and it's very cute and you can pick up pixel pals and put a link to the app store in the show notes and uh and you can check that out as well we are brought to you this week by you atp members actually probably not you listener who's hearing this right now because members don't hear the ads in the show and this is going to be marked as an ad so members get an ad free version of the show so look we love either way you listen to the show
Marco:
If you want to support us by listening to our ads, that's a great way to support us.
Marco:
If you want to support us by membership, that's another great way to support us, maybe even greater, because membership gets you some fun stuff too.
Marco:
For just $8 a month, you get the ad-free version of the show, you get the bootleg feed, which I'll explain more later, and you get occasional fun bonus content and maybe occasional discounts here and there, merchandise discounting here and there.
Marco:
um you know right now you're currently getting access to casey's app uh beta link and test flight so there's all sorts of little fun stuff we throw in throughout the year for members the main thing though is that ad free version of the show that's what most people sign up for and we find it's it's it's very well liked we get good feedback on that and on the bootleg in particular
Marco:
So the bootleg is our unedited live stream.
Marco:
So if you want to listen to this instead or as well, this is the unedited raw version of the show.
Marco:
It has nothing taken out.
Marco:
It has also no ads added in.
Marco:
And it's kind of everything we record during the live stream.
Marco:
So it includes...
Marco:
beating an end kind of discussion side discussion here and there anything that we screw up that i would have edited out of the main show stays in the bootleg if you want to hear casey swearing that stays in the bootleg too you want to hear us pick titles at the end that stays in the bootleg so that's also a very fun thing a lot of a lot of our members choose to use
Marco:
You can get all this for just $8 a month.
Marco:
We have annual plans.
Marco:
We have different currencies available.
Marco:
But basically, it's $8 a month.
Marco:
So if you want to choose to listen to our show that way and support our show that way, we'd love to have you as a member.
Marco:
It's a wonderful way to support the show, and we hope you get some cool perks out of it as well.
Marco:
ATP.FM slash join to join us as a member.
Marco:
If not, you want to keep listening this way.
Marco:
That's cool, too.
Marco:
We'd love you either way.
Marco:
Either way, you support the show.
Marco:
But if you want to become a member, ATP.FM slash join.
Marco:
Thank you so much.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
David Hadley writes, I'm curious what you think about the framework laptop, which claims to be a modular, upgradable, repairable, and e-waste reducing, in contrast to basically every other laptop on the market.
Casey:
It looks super interesting, and it really appeals to the nerd in me.
Casey:
The big problem is no macOS.
Casey:
Is this something that we one day... Is this something one day we might see Apple do or maybe forced to do by regulators?
Casey:
So if you're not following...
Casey:
What the framework laptop is, it's basically a laptop shell that you plug a bunch of components into.
Casey:
And you can change the motherboard reasonably easily, certainly a lot more easily than most laptops.
Casey:
It has a series of ports on the side that...
Casey:
Whatever port is being exposed to the outside world, it seems like basically internally all of them are just USB-C devices.
Casey:
So there's like a USB-C socket on the motherboard that you would plug maybe HDMI, maybe USB-C, maybe one or two USB-As.
Casey:
And so you can kind of configure these laptops to be whatever you want them to be.
Casey:
I think this is super cool.
Casey:
I would never in a million years actually want one, though, because it's one of those things where part of what makes a laptop, any laptop, not just an Apple laptop, but part of what makes a laptop so great and allows them to be thin and light and whatnot is because there are no affordances for changing those thin light internals.
Casey:
And I totally get what the framework laptop is after.
Casey:
I think it's a very clever idea, and it seems, having never handled one, to be implemented well.
Casey:
But this is fixing problems that I don't personally have.
Marco:
I think if it ran macOS, we might have a different discussion.
Marco:
But ultimately, there is a cost of modularity.
Marco:
And it tends to come in bulk and physical complexity.
Marco:
And so at the same time...
Marco:
There are costs to Apple's current approach of being almost entirely non-modular.
Marco:
A typical modern Apple laptop, you can replace nothing.
Marco:
You have no options.
Marco:
You can't even do basic service to replace a dead SSD or RAM stick or whatever.
Marco:
Those things are all out of the question with any modern Apple stuff.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
First of all, I think the market has spoken that largely the market prefers things to be nicer, pre-made, sealed up, and less service ability over time if that means they can get something thinner and lighter and nicer looking and everything like that.
Marco:
But also, if you were to actually add all the capability and complexity, the physical complexity to make these things more modular,
Marco:
I think what you'd end up with is a laptop that nobody buys.
Marco:
And that's why these tend to be these kind of specialty enthusiast products.
Marco:
And even then, I think they have a hard time computing and lasting very long.
Marco:
But if I was more in the PC world and not the Mac world, I would consider something like this, maybe, if I had these kind of needs.
Marco:
But again, like...
Marco:
It seems like companies like this give you lots of different options to put together a laptop you don't want.
Marco:
But ultimately, I'd rather just get the one I do want.
Marco:
And I think too many people think the same way to let these companies last very long.
Casey:
Does it have an X jack connector?
Casey:
No, I wish it did.
Casey:
I know we've talked about that so many times on the show, but I wish it did.
Casey:
But, I mean, it looks kind of gross.
Casey:
But you can have onboard Ethernet, and I tell you what, if there's one thing I wish my laptop had, and I'm not kidding, I really do wish it had Ethernet.
Casey:
I understand why it doesn't.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
I'm not here to litigate it.
Casey:
I'm just saying I wish I had it.
Casey:
But you can get a microSD expansion card.
Casey:
You can get DisplayPort.
Casey:
You can get an audio expansion card, which basically looks like a headphone jack.
Casey:
You can get USB-C, USB-A.
Casey:
There's all sorts of stuff you can plug in here, which, again, I love the idea of this.
Casey:
I agree with what Marco said.
Casey:
You're creating a laptop that no one will ever buy.
Casey:
John, I think I cut you off.
Casey:
What was your opinion on this?
John:
Yeah, the economics of these things are pretty tricky because the reason why it is appealing for customers, whether they're old fogies who remember the way things used to be or whether they're young people who can just understand the concepts, is like, OK, well, I spend a lot of money for the laptop.
John:
But if I decide I want to, you know, it doesn't have enough memory, wouldn't it be great if I could add more memory to my existing laptop instead of buying an entirely new laptop?
John:
Because adding memory costs less than buying a new laptop.
John:
So that is giving me, by buying your product, I'm getting more value out of it because I'm not forced to buy an entirely new laptop when something about this laptop doesn't satisfy my needs.
John:
Whether it's a lateral move, like swapping these set of ports for that set of ports, or an upgrade, faster CPU, more RAM, whatever.
John:
you know, better screen, whatever thing you want to replace.
John:
Me as a customer says, I like that.
John:
I like not having to buy a new laptop.
John:
So the product is more valuable to you, right?
John:
To the person selling you the product, though, that's worse for them.
John:
Because when you buy a new laptop, you give them much more money than if you just upgrade the RAM.
John:
That is assuming you even buy the RAM from them, which is a whole other issue of like, hey, can I buy third party things into this?
John:
Or can I only buy the proprietary modules from this company?
John:
But either way, the company says, well, okay, but if we can't sell you a new laptop in three years, we're just going to sell you like a, you know, $100 RAM stick or something.
John:
that's not good for us because we have to pay our employees and design the next one of these laptops or whatever.
John:
So the way companies like this, uh, square this, and there are lots of companies like this in the world is if you're going to buy something that basically lasts longer, in this case, we're saying it lasts longer because you can upgrade it with technology marches on, but anything, a blender, a bicycle, you know, whatever, uh,
John:
You can buy one that will last you longer because it's more durable, because it's more modular, both.
John:
It will cost you more money.
John:
And the reason it costs you more money is because you're not going to buy another blender from this company because this one's not going to break in two years.
John:
So they have to get the money from you now.
John:
And they're selling you what you agree is a more valuable blender or more valuable bicycle because it will last you longer.
John:
And you won't have to buy a new bicycle.
John:
And in exchange for the value, you give them more money.
John:
And that chases you up the price scale until all of a sudden you're like, I wanted to get this so I didn't have to buy a new laptop.
John:
But now this one costs twice as much as a new MacBook Pro.
John:
I know that isn't true of this framework thing, but I'm just saying just in general, when you make something modular and longer lasting, you're either going to go out of business or you need to charge people more money for it.
John:
And you run up against these barriers pretty quickly.
John:
Now, when technology...
John:
fits with modularity like when we're using rams on sticks marco just said ram sticks there are no ram sticks in max of course we all know this right there used to be ram sticks even in laptops little tiny so dims right when that was already part of the product because that was the best and only way we had to make the product it's already modular and so why not take advantage of that and apple used to sell ram upgrades for their laptops and used to be able to upgrade the storage or whatever but as technology marches on
John:
and you and that is not an inherent part of the product but you'd have to add it in yourself companies have to run the experiment hey if we seal the battery into the bottom of the 17 inch laptop will people still buy it or will they be like hell no i need to be able to replace the battery on a flight and my battery runs out i want to swap in a second battery apple ran the experiment with whatever it was the 17 inch power book whatever it was the answer was
John:
Customers are fine with it.
John:
You know, it's more annoying and they wish they could change the battery.
John:
But did they stop buying laptops?
John:
No, they did not.
John:
And then soon that happened to everything else.
John:
Same thing with phones.
John:
You used to be able to swap the phones in the back of your cell phones and people love to.
John:
I ran out of battery.
John:
I can put a new one or whatever.
John:
Cell phones stopped doing that.
John:
First, they made it harder to do it.
John:
Then they just stopped doing it entirely, just like Apple.
John:
Did people stop buying cell phones?
John:
Did some company that made a cell phone with a changeable battery, did they come and sweep through the market and dominate?
John:
No, they did not.
John:
So people are voting with their wallets and with their feet.
John:
And they're saying we like the advantages of simplicity, no grit that gets in there, you know, no snapping little shell that keeps coming off, no connector that gets wonky or whatever to seal the battery in.
John:
No, I can't replace it.
John:
Yes, it will eventually go bad.
John:
And then I'll buy a new phone.
John:
Customers are choosing that.
John:
So the only people who won't choose that are the people who value the longevity and flexibility and
John:
And the only way to make money from those people is to charge a lot.
John:
And then you get into a smaller, smaller market.
John:
The only thing that will change this is change in the incentives.
John:
One example would be a dystopian sci-fi scenario where we don't have the resources for you to buy a new laptop every three years.
John:
So the only way that we can economically make laptops is to sell you one and you have to use it for 15 years with every component being modular.
John:
And then all of a sudden the math works out differently because you can't buy a new laptop every three years because there's not enough beryllium or whatever the hell element ends that we end up running out of in this dystopian sci-fi scenario.
John:
Or we've polluted the planet to the point where there are laws in place.
John:
That's what the person says, like, where regulators make this?
John:
No, regulators would never make them do this.
John:
We can't even stop global warming.
John:
But anyway.
John:
In a hypothetical scenario where the external incentives change, suddenly the value proposition of this product changes entirely because the other thing isn't an option anymore.
John:
But I think what we've learned is when the other thing is an option, that's what people prefer.
John:
And the only way to stop it is for you and several billion of your friends to stop buying cell phones with sealed in batteries.
John:
Then they'll get changeable batteries.
John:
But if you don't think you can convince people to do that, that's why cell phones don't have changeable batteries.
Casey:
Zach Brachette writes, I've started to limit what apps I grant full photo library access to, but it comes at a cost.
Casey:
It's quite annoying to have to manually select new photos to include every time I want to.
Casey:
Say, share a recent picture in Slack.
Casey:
When an app requests permission to access my photo library, what does it actually mean?
Casey:
Does it mean an employee at that company could browse my photos at will?
Casey:
Does it mean the app could scan my library for any information that's in there?
Casey:
Or is full access less permissive than it seems?
Casey:
So it's been...
Casey:
a year-ish since i've looked at this closely but i ran into this for both peak of you and for masquerade my recollection which check my work on this because it's fuzzy is that full photo access basically means that you have mostly unfettered access to the user's photo library now presumably it would you would know one way or another if
Casey:
your entire photo library was being uploaded because your internet usage would go up, your phone would probably get hot, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
But strictly speaking, that app can look at whatever photo it wants whenever it wants.
Casey:
The advantage, though, and it's in most apps' best interest not to go that approach,
Casey:
Because you have to do a whole bunch of things and ask for permission in very, very scary ways to get full photo access.
Casey:
Where if you just do the, you know, this app can see the seven photos dance.
Casey:
An app can actually use that technique.
Casey:
And this is what I do in Masquerade.
Casey:
You can ask the system, I would like one photo, one photo only, please.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And then you don't have to do any of the scary permissions dialogues because you are doing a, what is it, XPC call, a cross-process, whatever call, that basically says to Apple's system, look, I don't care what you do or how you do it.
Casey:
Just give me a photo back, please.
Casey:
And then Apple is the one in charge of browsing through your photo library, presenting the whole user interface, and letting you pick which one you want.
Casey:
And you have, as an app developer, you have no sight into that whatsoever.
Casey:
All you know is you get an image coming out the other end.
Casey:
And for most apps, that's actually preferred.
Casey:
And I hear what Steven's saying, that that's kind of a pain in the butt.
Casey:
I know what Instagram does is the middle of the road thing, which is what I was describing, where it says, OK, you can have access to just these 12 photos.
Casey:
But the most convenient thing as an app developer and as a user, in my opinion,
Casey:
is to do that one shot.
Casey:
And again, this is what Masquerade does if you want to check it out.
Casey:
Just, hey, the user would like a photo.
Casey:
Go get me a photo, please.
Casey:
Honestly, if you have an app that loads users' photos, I would really look into that API because it's pretty good.
Casey:
But yeah, if you could do full access, that app developer could be super shady and you'd be none the wiser.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, you haven't run into this any, have you?
Marco:
No, I don't really work with photos.
Marco:
So in the regular photo access, do you get the location info or does your app have to request location permission?
Marco:
I think the most sensitive data in your photo library that would be the easiest to exploit in creepy ways would be the embedded location history.
Marco:
Because not only would you have a good idea of where their current location probably is, but you would have their entire location history, which is obviously extremely sensitive data that you know would be exploited by ad companies as much as possible.
Casey:
Yeah, I understand what you're asking, and I don't know.
Casey:
And part of the reason I don't know is because it's never even crossed my mind to look because I'm not a sleazeball.
Casey:
I would guess that with full access, you almost certainly get that data.
Casey:
Again, just a guess.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm not really sure what would happen if I were to wager a guess for the other modes.
Casey:
I would think maybe you do get that location data, but I cannot stress enough that I really don't know.
John:
This reminds me, more old man stuff, of how far the computer industry has come from the early days of not naivete, but just like it was so much smaller.
John:
So many fewer people even had computers, even before the internet.
John:
Computer security, the things we're just talking about, just didn't exist.
John:
Like even in the early Unix systems that were networked across the entire country with universities, you know, Telnet sent your passwords in plain text.
John:
TTYs were world writable by...
John:
like sometimes you could have accounts without passwords and people would do it routinely because it was just the honor system and everyone just be careful right and you just have to trust everybody because everyone was that's literally like the first version of instapaper you could just you could set no password you could just have it be blank and i didn't care and nothing bad happened you could do that on
John:
I think you can still do it on Mac OS.
John:
But the defaults were just, everything was open, right?
John:
And over the years, as the internet has become a thing, and as the world has gone on the internet, everything, the computing platform has added things like this photo permissions that we're talking about.
John:
But it all gets back to the same thing.
John:
These questions about what an app could do, if you give it full photo access,
John:
That app could upload every single one of your photos to its database, have an AI crawl through it to look for naked pictures of you and do whatever with them.
John:
And obviously, what could you do to stop that?
John:
Well, if the country you're in says it's illegal, you could try to prove in a court of law that they did a thing that broke the law and then sue them or get them arrested or whatever.
John:
But you also have to first know that they're doing it because maybe they're doing it behind your back and you have no idea.
John:
And it all gets down to the same thing back in the olden days, which is you have to trust the person who develops your application.
John:
Because every application, if it does something useful...
John:
could also do something nefarious.
John:
That is the nature of power.
John:
It is easier for it to have access to all your photos, but then you have to trust that the person who makes this app isn't uploading all your photos looking for naked pictures of you or stealing your location data or whatever, right?
John:
And yes, it's good that the OS has these barriers of saying you have to give it permission, maybe give it location permission, allow it to use the camera, allow it to record your screen, allow it to use the microphone.
John:
But you have to say yes to that for lots of apps to do their job.
John:
And at that point, you're in exactly the same situation you were in the 60s where people are logging into Unix things and everything's running over the internet in plain text.
John:
You have to trust the person or company.
John:
that made this application, that it is not doing something nefarious.
John:
And that will never go away because in the end, you want it to do useful work for you with your data.
John:
So you must give it access to your data.
John:
And we don't want to give it more access than it needs, but sometimes the amount of access that it needs could be used in a terrible manner.
John:
And that's why...
John:
you know, people and companies' reputations matter.
John:
That's why Apple's reputation matters.
John:
That's why if a company does something bad, it hurts its reputation and people will trust it less.
John:
If Apple was stealing all your photos and doing something, you know, selling your location data to some ad company or whatever, that would make us like and trust Apple less.
John:
And if some, you know, we've had apps in the iOS app store that were like stealing all your contacts was like Path was doing that or something before it was, you know, forbidden by the US before you had to ask for permission.
John:
And people found out about it and they thought less of that application and stopped using it.
John:
And that is, you know, that in the end, that is the system.
John:
So, yes, lots of people get scared when they realize what this application, quote unquote, could do.
John:
But you have to think then, but is the application doing that?
John:
And if you think the application is stealing your photos, don't use that app.
Casey:
Yeah, this is why I used to be pretty cavalier about it for Facebook properties, including Instagram.
Casey:
I immediately went to limited access because I have zero faith that they're not doing something gross.
Casey:
But generally speaking, ever since this became the whole limited library thing became a thing, I basically have chosen that whenever I can.
Casey:
Stephen Collins writes,
Casey:
For me, this is going to infuriate my co-hosts.
Casey:
I just chuck the camera and the lens in a lens bag.
John:
Just chuck it right into your windshield.
John:
You put it on the dashboard.
Casey:
That's exactly it.
Marco:
That's exactly what I do.
Marco:
Yeah, I just sit on mine immediately.
Casey:
Right, I just chuck it into whatever bag I'm taking to the beach and call it good.
Casey:
And I haven't yet had an issue, knock on wood.
Casey:
What is the correct answer, John?
John:
i mean i don't know like i don't have a lot of experience with these things i've tried to get a bunch of bags that are better than doing what you're doing which is not hard um i think i talked about this when i got it on some episode that i'll never be able to find again but i did get like a essentially it's a backpack for holding camera junk and it comes with a bunch of these little velcro dividers so you can sort of like if you're looking top down on it you can make a little maze that exactly fits your cameras and your lenses in some scenario it's kind of like uh
John:
I was going to say like paying Tetris, which people are more familiar with, but it's actually more like the inventory system in Resident Evil 4 or something.
John:
Anyway, finding a way where these things fit in with a little Velcro.
John:
You think it wouldn't work.
John:
You think Velcro wouldn't work.
John:
You think it's kind of janky.
John:
It works surprisingly well.
John:
It's kind of like a cheap version of making a custom bag where you have like foam inserts or whatever.
John:
Anyway, I use that instead of an actual backpack.
John:
I use this camera backpack and I endorse it.
John:
It could be better, but it's pretty good for the price I paid for.
John:
I put a link to my backpack in the show notes.
John:
I think it's called the Hex Ranger or something or other.
John:
I also have this holster thing for a single camera.
John:
It's like a single kind of like holster style bag where like camera and it's a long lens go into it to kind of like a gun in a holster and it goes like a shoulder strap.
John:
And that's good for a single camera.
John:
You can put a single camera in there with varying size lenses because the lens part is like an accordion that gets longer and shorter depending on how big you want it to be.
John:
I have one of those as well, and it's pretty okay.
Casey:
It's a ringing endorsement.
John:
I mean, from John.
John:
You know how many camera bags?
John:
Camera bags are like backpacks, like non-camera bags.
John:
There's a million of them out there.
John:
Lots of companies make them, and it's really just what your personal preference is.
John:
I would say...
John:
Try to find one that you think you'll like.
John:
You're probably gonna have to make more than one try, unfortunately, because you may think you like something until you get it and you find out you're wrong.
John:
But I would say get something.
John:
Something is better than nothing.
John:
I would say that the amount of protection that you need is probably less than you think.
John:
When I first got this backpack, I was like, oh, those little divider things, they don't seem too thick.
John:
And the walls of this,
John:
that's just you know a centimeter of this foam stuff unless you're going to be first don't take your backpack and like throw it across the room onto the hard floor don't drop it from three feet in the air but if you just treat your thing gently anything better than like the thin single layer of canvas of like a jansport backpack like any amount of padding goes a long way and especially if things are packed in there you know again tetris or resident evil style where there's not a lot of room for them to move and they're all up against something squishy
John:
that's pretty much all you need just be careful with your stuff but i don't have any specific recommendations for things that i think are amazing i think these things that i have are better than what i was using before and i'm also not looking to replace them but i'm also not a professional photographer who's constantly running around with my equipment so if you just want to go on vacation once a year something like these things will do fine for you
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
I've had both, quote, camera backpacks, similar to what John was describing, where you had little inserts that you Velcro around to wrap around exactly the stuff you used and be exactly the size you want.
Marco:
I've had both that and regular backpacks.
Marco:
I'm currently kind of in the middle of those.
Marco:
My current main backpack is the Peak Design Everyday, which has been around for a few years now.
Marco:
I have the first version, the large size of it.
Marco:
And I love it because one of the reasons why I'm always frustrated with backpacks is that most backpacks you have like some number of side pockets, inside pockets, outside pockets, but there's like the main compartment in most backpacks that is just one tall compartment.
Marco:
And what happens is you lay it all out.
Marco:
You get, oh, I'm going to solve this problem.
Marco:
I'm going to have these different arranged things in here.
Marco:
Maybe I'll have a sub bag inside my bag.
Marco:
Then you put it on.
Marco:
And as soon as you put it on, all the stuff in the main compartment sinks to the bottom of the main compartment.
Marco:
Everything is disorganized and then you have all this wasted space up top in this gap and then everything's down below.
Marco:
And what I like about the peak design every day, I think it's key innovation.
Marco:
is that in the main inside compartment of the bag is three of those Velcro things that form little shelves that you can move up and down anywhere you want in the bag.
Marco:
And they have little foldy ends that you can, like, fold up one end of one to make, like, a long vertical compartment if you want to, but then have these little, like, you know, Velcro shelves at different heights in it.
Marco:
So it actually divides the main compartment height-wise into different pieces.
Marco:
And you can move those around and make them bigger or smaller.
Marco:
So I usually operate with like one big top level and then a couple of small ones at the bottom where I could stash stuff.
Marco:
And I think it was actually, I think it was designed to be a camera bag.
Marco:
And I just use it as a regular backpack that occasionally holds cameras.
Marco:
But because it was made to be a camera bag, it is a little thicker and a little more padded and a little more structured than most thin backpacks are.
Marco:
So I would actually say,
Marco:
Not only is a camera bag a good option for carrying cameras, I think camera bags are the superior backpacks in general.
Marco:
Camera backpacks tend to be the best backpacks, in my opinion, for my preferences and my needs.
Marco:
Maybe it isn't always carrying a camera per se, but it's usually carrying electronics of other kinds.
Marco:
It's at least carrying a laptop or an iPad or both.
Marco:
It's probably carrying other, like, little electronic gear.
Marco:
Maybe it's carrying, like, a little portable game system or something or whatever I'm bringing on whatever trip or carrying for the family or whatever it is.
Marco:
So chances are, if you have any kind of electronics that you're carrying in a bag, a camera bag is a good choice because they are made, they are designed to be padded and protective of electronics.
Marco:
And as John said, you don't need a ton of protection, but it does help to have some.
Marco:
I'm a big fan of using camera bags in general, even when they often don't contain a camera.
Marco:
And again, I can't say enough good things about the Peak Design every day and its system of these movable and removable horizontal, when you're holding up the bag, horizontal shelf pieces that you can divide up the main compartment into.
Marco:
No other bag that I've ever seen.
Marco:
And I've bought a lot of backpacks over the years.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No other bag I've ever seen has kept me happy for as long as this one has and through as many different varied conditions as this one has.
Marco:
And it's almost entirely down to those wonderful divider shelf things that you can move up and down.
Marco:
That way I don't just have one giant main compartment where everything sinks to the bottom.
Marco:
So anyway, that being said, when I do carry my camera, to answer Stephen's question here, when I do carry my camera, it is in this bag like everything else that I carry everywhere else.
John:
And if you have a big bag or something, you can do it like you don't, I think you only need to graduate to the thing that I have with all the little dividers and everything.
John:
If you're in my situation where I have two cameras and multiple lenses, so I have two cameras, both of which have lenses on them, but then there are also multiple other lenses.
John:
That's just too much stuff to be rattling around, even with multiple compartments, even with three compartments, there's more than three things.
John:
And you don't want to put things next to each other where they can bump into each other, right?
John:
So that's when you know you've graduated to that.
John:
But before I was in that situation where I had two cameras and multiple lenses, I
John:
I had a single camera bag where my camera would fit in there and like the one or two lenses would fit in there.
John:
And I would put that bag inside my boring regular laptop because the single camera bag had padding in it.
John:
And the items were packed in there Tetris style, like with padding between all of them.
John:
And I would close that bag and then I would put that bag inside my backpack.
John:
And same thing with the holster thing.
John:
The holster thing can fit inside another bag because the holster is somewhat padded or whatever, you know.
John:
So...
John:
You know, don't run out and buy this backpack that's going to fit all this gear because you put your one lonely camera in there, especially if you don't even have any lenses for it or it's not even interchangeable lens camera.
John:
It's a waste, right?
John:
That's where you can even if you have a single big camera like Marco does with a big lens, if you have, you know, two or three of them and you have two or three compartments in your peak design everyday backpack, you're fine.
John:
But once you're like, okay, well, what do I put this lens?
John:
And this lens is this lens.
John:
Then you're into Tetris land.
John:
And that's when you have to get the other thing.
John:
So I wouldn't, you know, don't run out and buy something that fits way more equipment than you need.
John:
You'll know when you can't do it anymore.
John:
But in the meantime, like, especially if your camera comes with a bag, because a bunch of mine did, if your camera comes with a bag and your camera fits in there with its charger, with its lenses, with its thing, seal that bag up and then stick it inside another bag, bag in a bag, bag in a bag.
Marco:
Thank you so much to our sponsor this week, meh.com.
Marco:
And thank you to our members, especially who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
We have wonderful new member special out where we tier ranked all the iPhones to date.
Marco:
And that is, it is so much fun.
Marco:
You should really check it out.
Marco:
Thank you so much again to members.
Marco:
You're really, you're helping us out a lot these days.
Marco:
So thank you so much for that.
Marco:
And we will talk to you all next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arman, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They didn't mean to.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech podcast so long.
Casey:
John, tell me what's going on with your AirPods.
John:
They did me dirty?
John:
I don't know what the right phrase is here.
John:
Yikes.
John:
AirPods.
John:
Sometimes you put them in your ears and one of them doesn't make any sound.
John:
And then sometimes you got to put that one back in the case for a few seconds to make it happy.
John:
Are you familiar with this phenomenon?
Casey:
Yeah, I don't feel like I've run into it too frequently recently, but yes, I'm familiar with it.
Marco:
Oh, I have.
Marco:
AirPods are like the French chefs of electronics.
Marco:
God, they're so good most of the time, but man, are they unreliable.
Marco:
Sorry, French people.
Marco:
That's probably mean.
Marco:
Between the last generation AirPods Pro and this generation AirPods Pro,
John:
they are so buggy the new ones are less buggy than the old ones but they're still really buggy yeah and so because they're like you know what airpods like they're the tiny little plastic thing like you don't know what's going on inside there what is the problem is it a software problem is it a hardware problem there's such tiny little components is some tiny little component like poorly soldered and or like coming loose over time
John:
Or is it everything in the hardware is working perfectly and it's actually a software bug with the stupid Bluetooth stack and the connectivity?
John:
Like you can never tell.
John:
There is no way for you to debug this because it's just they're two tiny little computers in your ears and you don't control anything about them.
John:
And it's just like, like, you know, people will ask you if you're a tech nerd in your life.
John:
They'll say, one of my, I put my AirPods in and one of them's not making sound.
John:
What can I do about this?
John:
And like, you have to tell them like nothing.
John:
Like you can do, here are these steps that you can do to make it work again.
John:
Why did it work again?
John:
Pfft.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I've just learned through trial and error that if you do these things, sometimes you can bring it back to life.
John:
But sometimes you can't.
John:
Sometimes you got the AirPods Pro that make the crackling noise.
John:
Sometimes they just flat out die, right?
John:
It's just a thing that happens.
John:
It's not great, but AirPods are such an important part of my life that I, you know, I have to have AirPods.
John:
That leads me to, you know, the other thing that happens sometimes is you'll take them out of the case and you realize one of them just didn't charge in the case for some reason, even though it's been there overnight.
John:
One of them is 100%.
Casey:
Oh, yes, I've had that.
John:
And one of them is at 2% and it goes in your ear or whatever.
Marco:
Oh, mine usually, it's just dead.
Marco:
Like you take it out, you're like, oh, why am I only hearing it out of one ear?
Marco:
That's weird.
Marco:
Yeah, one's just dead.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So anyway, I have AirPods 3 that I bought, I think, when they first came out.
John:
And they've been pretty good for me.
John:
But a couple of days ago, I took them out of the case.
John:
And one of them wasn't making any noise.
John:
But the other one was.
John:
And I remember someone came up to ask me something just as I put them in.
John:
And I reached for my right ear.
John:
And I pinched it with the little pinchy thing.
John:
And, you know, it's kind of like the feeling of walking onto an escalator that's not running.
John:
You pinch the AirPod.
John:
And it's so freaking dead that it doesn't do the haptic feedback.
John:
yep and it feels just so wrong like you pinch it you're like what the hell like when i pinch this i'm supposed to hear a little chick in my ear and the little hat you know and it doesn't do that that's how dead it was right i'm like i'll put it back in the case or whatever charge it and you know whatever go back to what i'm doing try to pick them up because i had to have my airpods in so i could listen to pockets while i'm doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen right obviously it's not like i'm gonna leave them and come back and i listened in one ear for a while but that's unsatisfying so we went back and i'm like and then i'm looking then i'm opening up the the
John:
bluetooth thing and look at the charge level where it shows you it's like left ear at 100 right ear doesn't exist no icon underneath it at all it didn't even show the little battery icon anyway um to shorten this up i spent three days trying to resurrect this sucker did all the things you do oh forget this device try a different device try a different charger try a different airpods case try a different wire try this try that try hard resetting them try hard resetting the case try repairing with a different device just like
John:
because i have you know this is not my first rodeo i've messed with airpods before i tried it i tried it every night they were always on a charger on a different charger making sure they you know come back to life i'll resurrect you charge you 100 like whatever your problem is come back to me come back to me three days three days which both of which involved overnights in a different new ideal charging situation to really just resurrect this sucker for a
John:
And the right one was just well and truly dead.
John:
Just nothing.
John:
Like when you looked in the battery thing, it wouldn't even show the little battery icon underneath it.
John:
Like not a peep from it.
John:
No noise.
John:
No sound.
John:
No haptic feedback.
John:
Absolutely nothing.
John:
Then I go to the little Apple support app.
John:
I'm like, are they still under warranty?
John:
And of course they're not.
John:
Because I think I just didn't get Apple Care Plus or whatever for them, right?
John:
Because I had generally pretty good luck.
John:
My son has the same AirPods 3.
John:
He's on his third pair.
John:
oh my goodness his like the first one's like totally lost base the second one that one of the ears went super low volume and his were all under warranty repairs but like just luck of the draw and i got unlucky right so i can't not have airpods so i ordered a new pair of airpods 3 and of course i had to get my name on them because you have too many freaking airpods in the house i need to know which ones are mine did you get your memoji that's so cool when you do that i did not i just got my name i wish it wasn't all caps but it is
John:
that's so boring well it's easy to tell and it makes it less desirable theft target i suppose anyway see i i i have my face on mine that i think that does the same thing yeah oh i don't know but a lot of people look like you all those emojis have the same face shape anyway um
John:
So I ordered new AirPods 3 and, you know, rather they couldn't they didn't come and meet.
John:
I could have got them immediately.
John:
I just got into an Apple store.
John:
I could have had them like that nine dollar like, you know, same day delivery or whatever.
John:
But you can't do that when you want the monograms.
John:
And I did want the monogram.
John:
So I'm like, I'm going to have to go with that AirPods.
John:
I pulled out one of the kids old pair of AirPods because.
John:
The last one, my daughter was using, like, the original AirPods, and they were flaking out on her, and for, like, for Christmas, she got a new pair, right, of AirPods 3.
John:
But her old ones still work, so I was using them in the house, okay?
John:
So I ordered the new AirPods, and, you know, the wait, and they got the onogram, and they're shipping, they're on their way.
John:
As soon as this thing ships...
John:
The old AirPods start working again.
John:
Of course.
John:
Of course.
John:
Why did they start working again?
John:
I have no idea.
John:
I did nothing to them.
John:
I had written them off for dead.
John:
They weren't even on a charger for crying out loud.
John:
They were just sitting in the case.
John:
Three days I spent doing everything I could think of.
John:
It was not a peep.
John:
The thing gets shipped.
John:
I pick up the old ones, put them in my ear to see.
John:
They work.
John:
neat so can you return the monogrammed ones no oh so here's what i'm gonna do first i can learn my lesson i put a little reminder that's gonna go off probably tomorrow buy apple care press for you for your new airpods and like i hope they'll let me do like the annual thing where it never expires because basically i'm just on a subscription plan for airpods i'm never i can never not have
John:
I just keep paying Apple, and every time they die, I'm just going to bring them back to the Apple store and say, yep, they died again.
John:
Give me a new pair.
John:
Yep, they died again.
John:
Give me a new pair.
John:
Whatever I have to pay to make that happen, if it's a reasonable annual fee, I will pay that.
John:
I hope that's the case.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Do AirPods have that thing?
John:
I know Macs do.
John:
Macs, you can either, like, you can buy, like, two years or whatever for a fixed amount, or you can just pay, like, annually or monthly or whatever the hell it is forever.
John:
In hindsight, I probably should have done that with Mac Pro because Mac Pro is now out of warranty, too.
John:
Don't listen to me, Mac Pro.
John:
You're fine.
John:
But it's out of warranty.
John:
And you know how scary it is to have a computer this expensive that's out of warranty?
John:
Because I didn't do the thing where you keep paying forever because it was so freaking expensive for the Mac Pro, right?
John:
I just did, like, the few years, the two years or three years, whatever it is, and it's up now.
John:
i'm terrified something's gonna go wrong anyway by the way i cannot see any uh monthly option for the apple care for airpods pro yeah but anyway two years is better than because like i don't have faith that they're gonna last the two years and it's a shame and i don't know what the problem is but like and i don't know why these came back to life so my plan now i guess is to just spread my usage across these two and one set will be my bedroom uh airpods and one set will be my everywhere that's not the bedroom airpods
John:
and then at least my usage will be spread out between them.
John:
I don't know if that will make them both die faster, or will that make them last twice as long, but I'm not returning them.
John:
I'm disappointed in AirPod reliability, but this is just, you know, just an FYI for AirPods.
John:
I mean, maybe look into third-party ones, like Sony and other companies make other things that go in your ears, but I like the Apple ones.
John:
I like the integration.
John:
I like how they feel in my ears.
John:
I like how they sound.
John:
I like the battery life.
John:
I like pretty much everything about them, although I do still miss the tapping, right?
John:
But...
John:
reliability has been hit or miss.
John:
And I've had AirPods continuously since the very first pair.
John:
Uh, and my luck has been pretty good, but my kid's luck has not been great.
John:
So that's where I'm at.
John:
Double AirPods.
Marco:
Honestly, I've, I've been a double AirPods pro person since the AirPods pro came out.
Marco:
Um, because I, I, again, I also use them very heavily.
Marco:
Uh, I use them every time I leave the house for like a dog walk or something.
Marco:
Um, I stopped buying those big full size noise canceling headphones for planes and I use only AirPods pros on planes now.
Marco:
Um, and you can't, you kind of need two pairs sometimes to get through a very long flight.
Marco:
Uh, but, uh,
Marco:
I have two for various reasons.
Marco:
And I basically like one stays in the backpack all the time.
Marco:
And one is like the regular usage one.
Marco:
And occasionally the regular usage one, I will have forgotten to charge it.
Marco:
And so I'll go to the backpack one for that dog walk or whatever.
Marco:
But I can tell you it's kind of a nice life.
Marco:
It is stupid.
Marco:
It is unnecessary.
Marco:
But it does come in handy sometimes.
Marco:
Like, again, maybe my main ones are dead.
Marco:
Or what happens sometimes...
Marco:
Maybe I am, you know, on I'm on a trip and one of my other family members forgot their AirPods at home.
Marco:
I have spare one.
Marco:
I can get I can let them use this one like that.
Marco:
That happened.
Marco:
You know, this kind of stuff happens.
Marco:
So it's not having having an extra pair of AirPods in your life is is not as ridiculous as it sounds.
Marco:
And you will find ways to use it.
John:
surprising opinion from marco yeah very surprising my airpods are uh are never like the battery never runs out of my airpods like i am maybe because i'm just very good about charging things but like i use them so much it would be as unheard of as me picking up my phone and not realizing the batteries that that just literally never happens so i don't i don't know i don't have that hole in my life but i do i'm still trying to decide what to do i mean they're sitting here at desk they're in the box i literally haven't opened them but they have my name on them and i'm not returning them
Casey:
You might be able to return them.
Casey:
You might want to look into it.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm sure I could, but I'm just not going to.
John:
I'm not like cheese graters.
John:
I don't need to have 50 of these.
John:
For three days, I was without AirPods using my daughter's old janky pair.
John:
The AirPods 3 do sound better than the AirPods 1.
John:
We said this when they came out.
John:
They still do.
John:
I didn't like it.
John:
It's an important part of my life.
John:
Like Marco said, I wear them anytime I'm doing something.
John:
where i'm just like mindless you know not mindless but like walking the dog uh cleaning the kitchen doing dishes surprising amount of my time i spent even when doing like workouts and stuff i have the airpods in and i'm listening to like podcasts or music and stuff uh they're a really important part of my life and being without them uh is frustrating and so one way i can mitigate that is apparently to have more than one pair
Marco:
yeah like i i can't tell you like how how much i use airpods and and like how just how incredibly good like i the the regular ones never fit me but the airpods pros fit me great and just how incredibly good of a product the airpods pros pro i guess how good of a product they are oh my god i every time this comes i'm never going to stop singing the praise of this product
Marco:
I am such a headphone nerd, and I have gone through so many over the years, so many portable headphones, Bluetooth headphones, wired portable headphones, and the AirPods Pro made me forget about all of them, and it made me totally stop looking at any kind of headphone that's for anything other than at my desk.
Marco:
They are just that good.
Marco:
They are not only extremely convenient, but
Marco:
And practical and small and easy to bring anywhere.
Marco:
They also just sound really good, like for their for what they are, for their size, for what they are.
Marco:
I mean, they blow the category out of the water, like in how good they sound for, you know, compared to their peers.
Marco:
So they are it's just a fantastic product, despite all the bugs.
Marco:
And despite that, I've also had occasionally to have to replace one under warranty.
Marco:
And like, despite all of that, we tolerate all that because they're just so good.
Casey:
So when I dropped off Aaron's car at Safe Flight for the replacement, we had a first thing in the morning replacement.
Casey:
I didn't want to sit down there for the two or three hours.
Casey:
It took them to replace the windshield.
Casey:
So we dropped it off the night before.
Casey:
And for uninteresting reasons, I accidentally left my AirPods Pro in the passenger side door handle grab area.
Casey:
There's like a little gully there.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
So I was without for an evening, which I could have handled.
Casey:
But like John, you know, I do the dishes.
Casey:
I occasionally go for walks with either the dog or just as exercise.
Casey:
And I didn't want to be without any sort of AirPods.
Casey:
So I resurrected my AirPods regularly.
Casey:
I guess this is maybe two, whatever.
Casey:
It was the first time you could get them with a Qi charging case, I believe.
Casey:
So it's not the AirPods Pro.
Casey:
It was the original AirPods, or again, maybe the second generation, in a Qi charging case.
Casey:
And I resurrected them, and I put them in, and I only used them a couple of times, and it was for podcasts, and I didn't do any sort of real A-B testing or back-to-back testing, I should say.
Casey:
But maybe I just forgot how to get a good fit with the original AirPods because I'm used to the more rubbery tips of the AirPods Pro.
Casey:
But, oh my word, did they sound like garbage compared to the AirPods Pro.
Casey:
And I should probably, had I known we were going to talk about this, I should have done a test again.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
They sounded not great.
Casey:
And the AirPods Pro, like Marco just said, and I'm on the original AirPods Pro.
Casey:
I really want to get an AirPods Pro 2 or whatever they are, you know, the ones with the improved ANC and all that.
Casey:
And I feel so guilty about it when I have AirPods Pro whatever one that work just fine right now.
Casey:
uh now then again i didn't go to california you know this month so maybe i should maybe i could or should uh repurpose excuse for all frivolous purchases exactly yeah i absolutely am i absolutely am um you don't want to save it until early next year yeah well we'll see um but nonetheless uh i i i cannot believe how much better the airpods pro sound again this could be user error it's maybe that i just didn't have a good no it's not but it's not user error like so much better
Marco:
The AirPods Pros truly embarrass many other headphones that are both larger and more expensive than they are.
Marco:
Look, it's not going to replace a full-size pair of desktop wired headphones.
Marco:
It's not that good, but for little earbuds that are little wireless things that stick in your ear and have noise cancellation, they truly embarrass...
Marco:
all of their peers that are directly comparable, and then even headphones above their class, they embarrass many of them as well.
Marco:
They're really an incredible product.