Socks in the Knob-Hole
Casey:
We were talking in the pre-show, like the pre-pre-pre-show before we went live.
Casey:
And, you know, I was asking Marco how things were going.
Casey:
And I noted that he seems to have been out of pocket a lot recently.
Casey:
And Marco didn't take offense at that.
Casey:
And he said, well, we got to talk about that.
Casey:
Not in the, like, I'm in trouble, come to the principal's office way.
Casey:
In the, oh, do I have a story for you kind of way.
Casey:
So how's it going, bud?
Casey:
The story's not that interesting, right?
Marco:
I've been very slowly renovating a new house moving into the new house all of the stuff from the old house has been in a giant pile of boxes that consumes the entire garage of the new house because we sold the old house months ago like a long time ago like in the fall it's been a journey however as of this week
Marco:
I have spent the first night in the new house.
Marco:
Good.
Marco:
Which is a huge step.
Marco:
I'm currently recording from the new house.
Marco:
Oh, that's good.
Marco:
The first podcast recorded in this house was under the radar earlier yesterday.
John:
Didn't we get the first one when you were in the driveway in a car?
Marco:
That wasn't in the house.
John:
It was on the property.
Marco:
It was, yes.
Marco:
It was on the Wi-Fi.
Marco:
It was on the property, but it was not in the house.
Marco:
But no, I'm now coming to you from the new house, from the new office that is not nearly sound damp enough yet because there's almost nothing in it.
Marco:
So I'll be doing some isotope processing on the file.
John:
You should have taken some of those boxes from the garage, the ones with clothes in them, just dumped them out all over the floor.
Marco:
Yeah, I have like a moving blanket, a dog, a foldable mattress.
Marco:
Like I have a bunch of other stuff like, you know, soft things absorbing the sound.
John:
No offense to Hops, but I don't think he's really doing a lot of work there.
Marco:
No, we don't have doorknobs yet.
Marco:
And so normally there would be a giant hole in the door that would let sound in from outside.
Marco:
So I've stuffed a pair of socks in the door hole.
John:
If you see socks stuffed in the knob hole, don't disturb Marco.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, there's a lot going on here.
Marco:
Oh, and most importantly, of course, I wasn't able to complete the network wiring jack installations until all the painting and stuff was done, which I'm not even sure if it's done yet.
Marco:
So I haven't done that yet.
Marco:
So instead, I'm running a network cable in the classic way, out the window, into the garden, across the front yard.
Marco:
We know how you love taking indoor things and putting them outdoors.
John:
This is your kink.
We know it.
Marco:
It's the
Marco:
i can run ethernet outdoors oh my god it'll be a thrill oh my god john i'm not prepared for this wow so anyway that's that's what i'm recording right now i'm recording through 140 ethernet cable going out my window across my yard into my garage to reach the router with socks in the door hole but this doesn't sound bad actually that sounds like everything is mostly copacetic am i wrong
Marco:
I mean, we're getting there.
Marco:
Like, there's, I mean, there's, God, there's so much to do.
Marco:
Like, you know, above me in the ceiling, in the middle of the room is just a hole because the fans are like, you know, like we're just ordering fans now.
Marco:
So those haven't gotten installed yet.
Marco:
Like, we don't have any, like our silverware is somewhere in the middle of the giant cube of boxes in the garage.
Marco:
So I went to a dollar store and got like some, you know, little flimsy dollar store silverware to eat dinner with.
Marco:
We have no chairs to sit on while eating dinner.
Marco:
So we're all just like standing at the counter, like,
Marco:
It's very much a kind of an ad hoc situation going on here, but we're making it work.
John:
We've talked about this before, but when did you become, we talked about it in the context of Casey Sling, but when did you become a fan person, Marco?
John:
When did this happen?
John:
Ceiling fans.
Marco:
I've always been a ceiling fan person.
Marco:
I love ceiling fans.
John:
Your past house did not have ceiling fans in every room.
Marco:
No, it didn't.
Marco:
And that was... That was a problem for you?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Ceiling fans are awesome.
John:
And your beach house doesn't have ceiling fans in every room, does it?
Marco:
It has them in every bedroom in my office.
Marco:
Well, you were a secret fan person.
Marco:
I didn't know it.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Ceiling fans are amazing because first of all, Casey, they're quiet.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, that's if you buy ones that aren't crap and install them less than 10 years ago.
Casey:
And I did both of those things.
Casey:
They were crap and they were installed 10, actually like 15 years ago now.
Marco:
You have to try – I mean unless it is actually like rocking, which I believe – isn't that the problem with yours where like it rocks and the chain hits the dome and stuff?
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
Would you like me to go turn it on?
Casey:
I'm happy to turn it on for you.
Casey:
No, please don't.
John:
It's impossible to filter out.
John:
It's oscillating enough that the chain is hitting the thing.
John:
I'm afraid it's going to fall off and hit you in the head.
Casey:
No, that's more the family room one or the living room, depending on what you want to call it.
Casey:
That's the one that's oscillating enough that it's probably going to fall down at some point.
Casey:
This one, I think, is just oscillating some.
John:
You need some new fans, Casey.
Casey:
You can probably just tighten that one.
John:
It should be balanced.
John:
Is there dust buildup on one of the propeller blades or something?
John:
It should be stable.
Casey:
Here's the thing, John.
Casey:
When you live down here in the South, it's hard to find people that are good at what they do when they work on your house.
Casey:
That doesn't seem like it is.
Casey:
That's everywhere.
John:
Maybe you could do it yourself.
John:
You just buy one and install it.
John:
It's not rocket science.
Marco:
Let me tell you, listeners out there, if for some reason you are tired of constantly being afraid that you might get laid off, that you might not be able to find a job,
Marco:
Let me tell you, tech is not the right place for you.
Marco:
If you want to be sure that you will always have a job no matter what, become a plumber.
Marco:
There are no plumbers.
Marco:
Try to find any plumber to come to your house, let alone a good one.
Marco:
become a plumber or something, some other similar trade, electrician, like any kind of like locally working trade, you will have infinite work.
Marco:
I guarantee you, you'll be able to command whatever price you want.
Marco:
That job can never be outsourced and will never become AI and will never go away.
John:
On the downside, poop.
Marco:
Yeah, well, yeah.
Marco:
Electricians have a little bit easier job in that way.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
But yeah, it is so hard to find trades, to find tradespeople to come to your house to do work.
Marco:
Even big jobs where they stand to make a lot of money, but you can't find enough of them.
Marco:
There's infinite demand.
Marco:
yep can can confirm and what's wrong with ceiling fans john what is your ridiculous angst against them i'm not it's not a fan i don't say there's anything wrong i just didn't know marco was a fan person fan people are people who need to have fans blowing on them in most of the rooms in their house i wouldn't say need to but i would say need to what a fan does is it it buys you some headroom from needing like the air conditioning to be colder so for instance speaking of headroom fan people tend to be shorter no offense
Marco:
How low are your ceilings that you're going to hit your head on a fan?
John:
My ceilings are very low.
John:
And in my in-law's house, where they are fan people, I am forever dodging fans with my head.
Casey:
How tall are you?
Casey:
John, you're not 17 feet tall.
Casey:
My word.
Marco:
I'm tall enough that fans are a threat to me.
Marco:
What's the average height of an American room?
Marco:
Like eight feet?
Marco:
What are we talking about?
John:
Yeah, but my ceilings in this house are not eight feet, as you know.
John:
And the fans usually hang down by what, about seven or eight inches from the ceiling?
John:
No, they hang down lower than that, especially if they have the ones with like the little ornate kind of flower, like a swirly little arm with a flowery light thing on the end of them.
John:
You know those things?
John:
I don't think they've made those in 30 years.
John:
Well, I mean, I'm talking about my in-law's house.
John:
It's not brand new stuff.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Fair enough.
John:
Their fans don't oscillate at least.
John:
But yeah, no.
John:
Fan people, I don't want air blowing on me.
John:
I don't want the sound of a fan.
John:
Every time I enter a room in fan houses, I turn them off and then someone comes in and turns them back on.
John:
It's constant battle.
John:
You're constantly walking through fan houses.
Casey:
Your house, your fans.
Casey:
Only fans, my friends.
Casey:
Only fans.
John:
Oh, wow.
Marco:
No, first of all, a ceiling fan on low is usually inaudible.
Marco:
And usually having that little bit of air of air movement, if it's like a hot day outside and I want the air conditioning on, usually I can if I'm just using the fan, I can wait until the room is like 78 degrees before I really feel like I need the air conditioning on.
Marco:
Whereas if I have no air movement, it's more like, you know, 72 degrees.
John:
What we had in one of my houses, the last house I was in with my parents, by the way, it maybe doesn't work in every climate, but it worked pretty well in ours, is I forget what they call it.
John:
We called it the attic fan.
John:
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Marco:
Yeah, like a central fan that sucks air into the attic from the house, and so it pulled all the iron.
John:
Exactly, right.
John:
And it wasn't particularly good or fancy or whatever, but it had the same effect that you're describing, where we would just open the windows and turn on the attic fan, and you'd get cool natural air coming in, like in the evening or in the morning.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it was great.
John:
It was so much better than the air conditioning.
John:
Eventually, you had to resort to the air conditioning.
John:
But I enjoyed that.
John:
But those are noisy.
John:
But the key thing about those is they do not blow air onto you.
John:
But that's what you want.
John:
That's called a breeze.
John:
That's not what I want.
John:
It's absolutely not what I want.
John:
It's what fan people want.
John:
Not what I want.
Marco:
I guess I've added myself as a fan person.
Casey:
Me too.
Casey:
Don't let him shame you.
John:
Don't let him shame us.
John:
Marco was a secret fan person.
John:
I didn't know.
John:
There are dozens of us.
John:
There are millions of you.
John:
Millions.
Casey:
This is the correct opinion.
Casey:
It's not fair of me to be the arbiter of what's right and what's wrong, but we are correct.
Marco:
Maybe John's the minority.
John:
I am.
John:
I absolutely am.
John:
I understand that the majority of Americans are fan people.
John:
My own wife is a fan person.
John:
it's coming from inside the house do you live in a fan house then is that the problem no i don't live in a fan house i was able to hold the line on that but she's absolutely a fan person so she's been living this whole time denied of her fans well not really because she has she has her own fans they're just not ceiling fans but that's the best kind of fan well you know as she i think in our house the ceilings are so low that the fans really would be an issue like our some of our ceilings are like seven feet so do the math on that one it's not great
Casey:
John, you've denied that poor woman not only fans, but air conditioning.
Casey:
You are a monster, sir.
John:
She's not denied air conditioning.
John:
She gets her air conditioning.
John:
Don't you worry about that.
Casey:
Jim Buell writes, with regard to image captioning on iOS, and I actually meant to bring this up, and it completely slipped my mind.
Casey:
I'm glad Jim reminded us of this.
Casey:
Jim writes, regarding image captioning on iOS that you spoke about in the last ATP Overtime, I recently noticed that Siri is able to provide a basic description of images sent via iMessage.
Casey:
Using AirPods with announced notifications turned on, Siri will say something like, Jane sent a photo with a child sitting on the floor playing with a jigsaw puzzle.
Casey:
These descriptions have seemed pretty accurate to me.
Casey:
Not sure when this debuted, but I started noticing it within the past few weeks.
Casey:
I want to say it was a little more than a few weeks.
Casey:
I want to say it was like two to three months maybe.
John:
Yeah, it's been a while.
Casey:
But I've noticed this as well.
Casey:
And it's also incredibly nice when you're using CarPlay.
Casey:
Because even though I'm not in the car as much as I think I make it out to be, it is not unusual for me to receive at least a couple of text messages when I'm driving.
Casey:
And I never look at my phone when I'm driving because I have this magical thing called CarPlay, which Marco used to have and now has forgotten about.
Casey:
Um, and so they'll do the same thing, you know, CarPlay, their Siri on CarPlay will do the same thing where it'll read you a vague description of, um, of what the picture is.
Casey:
And I got to say, it's not always great, but it's certainly a heck of a lot better than nothing.
Casey:
Like my most infuriating moment in CarPlay is, you know, such and such sent you a link to twitter.com.
Casey:
useful okay like that's great and now this message is read so i will forget to go back to it and you haven't told me anything you can't read the tweet you can't even read the title of that page like it's useless it's so frustrating but like do not disturb while driving turned on no only because of carplay i used to before i had a car with carplay and now with carplay it doesn't it doesn't affect me unless i tap on the screen and say i would like to hear this message pay attention to the road don't worry about the messages you're getting
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Well, anyways, the point is, this is very, very cool, and I'm glad that Jim reminded us to bring it up.
Casey:
And again, it ain't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than getting, you know, Aaron sent you a picture.
Casey:
Great.
Casey:
Thank you for that.
Marco:
You know, I would love if that same AI or intelligence, whatever we're going to call it,
Marco:
could that be used to improve the way Siri reads aloud the text messages over AirPods as well, which is probably the same system?
Marco:
Because not even just images, just the way it reads text is often so stupid.
Marco:
The way it will stumble through things like phone numbers or package tracking numbers, it'll stumble through addresses really weirdly and poorly.
Marco:
It'll fumble all over bank alerts that have currency.
Marco:
It'll...
Marco:
The way it reads, just regular text, needs a lot of improvement.
Marco:
And this is the kind of thing, as Apple increases its various use of more advanced AI modeling and stuff across regular feature of iOS, this is the kind of thing I'm looking forward to.
Marco:
Yeah, sure, generate me a picture of a Jeep driving into a river.
Marco:
That's fun sometimes.
Marco:
But what I really want much more often is the basics of this kind of stuff to just be better.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so I'm looking forward to more of that, like the less flashy, more boring improvements to the OS that just kind of make everyday life better.
John:
This image capturing thing, by the way, I've had it happen to me as well, but incredibly inconsistently.
John:
I don't know what determines when it's going to do it or when it decides it's not going to.
John:
Once it did it the first time, I'm like, oh, this is great.
John:
I bet I'll be hearing this from now on.
John:
Nope.
John:
Every once in a while it does it, but most of the time it doesn't, and I don't get it.
John:
So hopefully that also gets more consistent.
Casey:
Yeah, indeed.
Casey:
If you are super bored and want something to do, you can watch the approximately nine hours of DMA compliance feedback session, which is now available to anyone, even those who didn't sign up for it.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
Yeah, the one thing I'll say about this is I was watching it, some of it today.
John:
I wanted to confirm the length so I could write the nine hour thing in the show notes here.
John:
And so I'm like, OK, well, I'll just look at it.
John:
Will it just tell me the time?
John:
No.
John:
OK.
John:
I know at the top it has like a time like from 9 a.m.
John:
to 1700 hours or whatever.
John:
But like I'm like, oh, was that the length of the meeting or is that the length of the video?
John:
Like I'll just move the scrubber to the end.
John:
But this video player that is installed on this Web page.
John:
is the most infuriating thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
John:
I think it is multiple videos and multiple videos broken up into pieces, right?
John:
So even though it's one continuous scrubber, it's like segmented.
John:
So you can't look at the timestamp to see where you are.
John:
So for example, I was playing it here and then I wanted to play it on my phone as I went out to wash dishes or whatever.
John:
I'm like, let me just set it to the same place I was.
John:
Let me just look at the timestamp.
John:
That will not work.
John:
Because on the phone, it plays them with the native player, but it plays them segment-wise.
John:
So you have to know which segment you're in and which offset within that segment.
John:
I've never seen anything like this in my life.
John:
It's called a timeline.
John:
It starts at zero and it goes to some amount.
John:
Wow.
John:
Just really, really Byzantine.
John:
Anyway, if you want to watch the thing, it is pretty much as boring as you would think it would be.
John:
And probably it's not that relevant, but...
John:
you know, if you're a completionist, if you're a completionist and Apple's legal woes, it is now available to you.
Casey:
All right, so Kara Swisher has interviewed Margrethe Vestier, who is the executive vice president of the European Commission.
Casey:
She's been the one that's been doing a lot of the talking and tweeting and whatnot about the DMA and so on and so forth.
Casey:
I do plan to listen to this.
Casey:
This just broke, I think, earlier today, so I didn't have a
Casey:
uh john gruber over at daring fireball i don't know why i introduced him like that as though we didn't know who he was but here we are anyways um uh john has listened to it and has some brief notes on it and apparently uh margata has confirmed that the eu contacted apple about both the home screen web apps thing and epics account that they took away and then curiously gave back so here we are
John:
That's me confirming that because I did listen to the interview.
John:
Oh, thank you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
She straight up says, like, you know, we were speculating.
John:
Oh, it's probably because the EU contacted them.
John:
And she just says, yeah, this thing happened.
John:
And then we talked to Apple and asked them to change it.
John:
And at least those two things about the home screen web app thing is a thing we didn't get a chance to talk about on the show.
John:
But it's not that important.
John:
But Apple was doing a thing and people were annoyed by it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
the the uh european commission contacted apple and they changed it and same thing with apple's account where we're like oh the the eu probably contacted them that's why they did it yep she confirms both of those things in a sort of matter of fact way and it's like we've been wondering about that and we have to hear the confirmation on a interview podcast whatever i mean more of the mysteries of this process
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Apple, Meta, and Google have been officially targeted by the EU in DMA non-compliance investigations.
Casey:
This is coverage from The Verge.
Casey:
The European Commission is opening five non-compliance investigations into how Apple, Google, and Meta are complying with its new Digital Markets Act antitrust rules.
Casey:
Quote, we suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA, the EU's antitrust chief
Casey:
again, Margarete Vestier, I think I have that right, said.
Casey:
And so this, we have a little more to say about this, but I find it so delightful.
Casey:
And I know everyone has made this point at least once, maybe twice, but I will now make it thrice.
Casey:
It is so delicious that Apple has to just throw stuff against the wall and pray that the people in charge like it.
Casey:
Like, oh, the Just Desserts here, and the Schadenfreude is just, it's just chef kiss.
Casey:
It's so great.
Casey:
I'm so here.
Marco:
But they're really not trying that hard.
Marco:
The EU has issued guidelines and Apple is welcome to do all of the work up front to see what will fit and then submit their work to the European Commission.
Marco:
And they'll tell them whether they fit their guidelines or not.
Marco:
But they have to do all the work first.
John:
They've already got a much better back and forth because they had that whole feedback session where Apple was allowed to participate.
John:
Can you imagine having nine hours to talk with AppReview about why they rejected your app and to defend why you think it should – that it does comply?
John:
Right, right, right.
John:
So this is – it's not just Apple.
John:
It's obviously as meta Google and whatever.
John:
I continue to think that DMA is poorly written and that if they had –
John:
consulted with people who knew better about the tech industry they could have said what do you really want to happen here because what you've written is not going to cause that to happen and lo and behold what they've written has not caused what they wanted to happen so they had that nine hour feedback session compliance feedback to basically say hey you out there in the world do you have a complaint about how any of these companies have complied with the dma i think this nine hour one might have just been apple right but anyways like
John:
Do you have complaints about how they complied?
John:
And as you imagine, as we discussed at length on past episodes, yes, people have complaints about how Apple is complying.
John:
So they have that nine hour session.
John:
And in response to that, the European Commission said, OK, Apple and Meta and Google, we think you're probably not complying with what we wrote, which, again, isn't shocking because what they wrote is too vague.
John:
And so now they're going to investigate whether they are complying and presumably tell them what they need to do to comply.
John:
And the specific things that they have complaints about are things that we talked about in the past but are also things that they could have written more clearly in the DMA.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And I do find it so funny in every sense of the word that –
Casey:
In the European Union, it is apparently okay, and I don't mean that to be snarky, I genuinely didn't know this, but it's apparently okay to just kind of make these hand-wavy rules and just expect people to understand it and work on it.
Casey:
And that's very different than my perception, at least, of the way the U.S.
Casey:
works, where everything is extraordinarily specific and any T's or cross, N's are dotted.
Casey:
I feel like I'm implying that the EU is not doing a good job.
Casey:
That's not what I mean.
Casey:
It's just that
Casey:
It seems like the EU very much wants these companies to comply with the very clear spirit of the law, and that is just not a thing here in the States.
Casey:
The law is the law.
Casey:
The spirit of the law doesn't matter.
Casey:
All that matters is, what are the words on the paper?
John:
I think our laws are also extremely vague, but maybe there's a little bit more horse trading up front with the powers that be to make sure that everyone agrees before...
John:
something has passed what it's going to take to comply with it, which is helpful, but apparently that didn't take place here.
John:
I just think they, I mean, the things they wrote in, I think, I think Apple and all the other companies probably are not in compliance with the letter of the DMA, but the spirit is beyond that.
John:
And I really feel like this could have been avoided.
John:
Like it's, it's easy to comply in these annoying ways when you don't specifically anticipate these kinds of things.
John:
people call it malicious compliance it depends on how how uh pessimistic do you want to be about the companies you could just be saying they're they're doing what they think they need to do and it's not actually malicious because it's poorly written but it could also be malicious but either way the dma could have been written better but i think there are actual violations of the letter of it so here this is from the the ec's press release uh specifically about apple a few highlights that are
John:
super interesting and really highlight how the ec could have improved the dma to avoid the situation says the commission has opened proceedings against apple regarding their measures to comply with their obligations to enable end users to easily uninstall any software applications on ios easily change the default settings on ios and prompt users with choice screens which most effectively and easily allow them to select alternative default service such as browser search engine or iphones if you watch that nine hour like
John:
Feedback session, so much of the feedback is complaining about minute details about the screen where you get to pick what your browser is.
John:
The people who are giving the feedback have legitimate complaints, but honestly, this is not the meat of the problem with Apple's anti-competitive behavior.
John:
Like, how much...
John:
This is not being able to choose the default browser.
John:
Okay, they should be able to, but let's not litigate the minutiae of the selection screen for seven hours.
John:
That is missing the forest of the trees entirely.
John:
I don't think they're wrong.
John:
They had some good points, but...
John:
The amount of time dedicated to that blows my mind.
John:
Same thing with the noncompliance.
John:
These things like changing default settings and the choice screens and uninstalling.
John:
And it's like, well, you made it possible, but it's not that possible.
John:
They're just so picky about the details of those things.
John:
Not important.
John:
Here's the big one.
John:
Like, it's not even one of the major points.
John:
It's like, oh, and by the way, also this.
John:
And this is the final bullet point.
John:
Apple's new fee structure and other terms and conditions for alternative app stores and distribution of apps from the web may be defeating the purpose of its obligations under Article 6.4 of the DMA.
John:
That's the meat of it.
John:
That's what we talked about when we talked about this.
John:
Apple has essentially complied in a way that makes alternative app stores, forces alternative app stores to not be more attractive than what Apple already offers.
John:
Like by imposing these fees, by saying it's going to be a real pain in your butt and look at these numbers, you're probably not going to be able to do anything better than we do because we're going to be still taking a huge amount of your money and whatever is left, maybe you can get a little bit money and basically in the end, you can't be any better than us.
John:
So it's, oh, it's competition, but we've arranged financial things that make it so that you
John:
that your alternative app store can't really be that much better than ours and in fact may actually be worse and will certainly be way more work for you yeah that may be defeating the purpose of its obligations under blah blah yeah you should have written that in like oh and by the way apple you can't ask for all the money from the alternative app stores you're making them economically unviable unless you have a spite store like epic right and you just remove their account
John:
That's not like they spend so much time talking about, oh, it's not fair that that, you know, the selection of browsers on the browser choice screen are browsers that have a large number of sales in the current app store.
John:
What if someone has a third party browser that's not in the current app store and yada yada?
John:
I'm like, yeah, that's a valid point.
John:
But geez, that is not the big one.
John:
So.
John:
the fact that they throw this in there like yeah that whole thing they don't say the core technology fee they don't say the whole percentage and the you know all the other things we've talked about monetarily with alternative app stores and sideloading they don't say that specifically but they vaguely allude to that and it's like oh yeah apple as a side note the entire foundation of your dma compliance may be considered to be non-compliant so get ready
Casey:
But don't worry, because we're going to figure out what the conclusion of those proceedings that they opened today.
Casey:
We're going to figure out those conclusions in, let me check my notes.
Casey:
Oh, a year.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
So this is from Six Colors that Jason pulled from an interview with Margrethe Vestier in a Reuters interview.
John:
This was before this whole non-compliance investigation was announced.
John:
And she said, if the new Apple fee structure will de facto not make it in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA, that is the kind of thing we'll be investigating.
John:
Yeah, that's why you should have written the DMA differently.
John:
Because if you had asked, hey, is it possible for Apple to seemingly comply with this, but just to make it not attractive at all to have an alternative app store, we all would have raised our heads and said, I know, I know how they're going to do it.
John:
They're just going to ask for money.
And they did.
John:
It's like, oh, God.
John:
Anyway, so, yeah, 12 months.
John:
Government moves slowly.
John:
We'll see how this goes.
John:
And it's not just Apple.
John:
It's Apple, Meta, and Google, and it's multiple threads.
John:
And so the fact that apparently nobody was able to comply with this to the satisfaction of the EU and they're all being investigated, some of that is on the EU in poorly written guidelines.
Casey:
Anonymous writes to us with regard to the DOJ suit here in the States, an iOS messages app versus third party messages app.
Casey:
So this anonymous person writes, regarding this bit from the DOJ complaint, and this is a quote from there, Apple prohibits third party developers from incorporating other important features into their messaging apps as well.
Casey:
For example, third party messaging apps cannot continue operating in the background when the app is closed, which impairs functionality like message delivery confirmation.
John:
We talked about this last episode and we're like, there's no definition of those words, no reasonable definition of the words in that sentence that is technically true.
John:
Right.
John:
But the feedback that you're about to get to says, OK, those words, even though they are just vague and ridiculous, like obviously third party messaging apps can continue operating the background just like any iOS app can subject to constraints, yada, yada.
John:
And message delivery confirmation can be done through push notification.
John:
So on its face, that sentence is not true and makes no sense.
John:
But that's just in the complaint.
John:
That's not the court case.
John:
Right.
John:
So this feedback and we got multiple pieces of this feedback.
John:
I picked one of the most succinct ones is basically saying when you read that, what's under lurking underneath those two sentences is this.
John:
And this is actually a an issue.
Casey:
Yeah, so I didn't think it was an issue at all.
Casey:
You know, this is why push notifications exists, but no, it's an issue.
Casey:
And this is one of the comments that we got that convinced me.
Casey:
So back to this anonymous feedback.
Casey:
I work in a major messaging app, and I can provide some more information from an engineering perspective.
Casey:
iMessage is not a single app, but a set of processes and services with escalated or reduced privileges.
Casey:
Other apps are forced to be in a single process.
Casey:
This is a severe limitation, especially for security and performance.
Casey:
Apple's quote-unquote blast-door low-privilege process handles all untrusted and high-risk data, for example, media attachments and messages.
Casey:
Only iMessage can do that.
Casey:
Competitor messengers are forced to either compromise security and performance or compromise on features, for example, support fewer attachment types.
Casey:
iMessage does a lot of processing in the background specifically to handle incoming messages much better than any of the competitors can do.
Casey:
You had mentioned APNS on the show, Apple Push Notification Service, but there's much more to do for each incoming message than just displaying a notification.
Casey:
For example, for the best receiver experience, you would want to pre-process attachments and send delivery confirmations.
Casey:
This is currently either severely limited or not possible at all for third-party apps.
Casey:
It
Casey:
Also, check the permissions for the Messages app in iOS Settings Messages.
Casey:
I see three items there, while other full-featured third-party messaging apps request more than a dozen.
Casey:
And I think this is with regard to privacy features and, you know, oh, can you share your location?
Casey:
Can you share this?
Casey:
Can you share that?
Casey:
Anyway, back to Anonymous.
Casey:
And did you notice that Messages does not ask you for location access?
Casey:
Have you seen a warning that Messages has been able to access your entire photo library for the past 10 months?
Casey:
Probably not.
Casey:
I could go on and on, but the point is that messaging really is an example of Apple's anti-competitive behavior.
Casey:
So I was reading this, and I was all ready to start arguing in favor of Apple, and maybe because I'm a shill, who knows.
Casey:
But anyways, I really didn't think this was a big deal.
Casey:
And as I read more and more into this, and there were a couple other pieces of feedback, like John said, that were very similar, I've been convinced that no, this is legitimately kind of gross.
John:
Yeah, this is one of the things about the DOJ trial.
John:
there is ample examples of apple preferencing its stuff over third-party stuff it's easy to find that stuff we could name stuff off the top of their head the things they picked in the complaint seem weird to us but even lurking under something as simple as this where it tries to say that you know third-party messaging apps uh can't do message delivery confirmation like well that's not true they can't operate in the background well that's not true right but what is true and what we could have told them and they could have written a sentence better is
John:
Yeah, of course, Messages has privileges that third-party messaging apps do not have.
John:
Here is just a list of some of them.
John:
There's even more from the other people who sent the feedback of like, look at all the things that Messages can do that we literally can't do because we're not allowed to.
John:
And what we would say is like, yeah, duh, everyone knows that.
John:
Apple privileges its own apps on its operating system, right?
John:
Of course, to win this lawsuit, the DOJ has to prove that Apple has monopoly power before they can then go after them for all the many, many things that Apple does to privilege its own apps over third-party apps.
John:
And you have to sort of show that it is, you know, doing that is fine if they're not a monopoly.
John:
So they have to say, you do have monopoly power in whatever market we define.
John:
If we successfully prove that, it should be so easy to pick however many small things you can pick that Apple does that privilege its stuff over everybody else's.
John:
And this message example is just one.
John:
Now, how significant is that privileging?
John:
You know, how important is it?
John:
What what kind of remedy is required in response to that?
John:
Does it address any of the real issues that we've talked about in terms of competitive app stores and Apple taking cuts of money and everything goes through the store and having control?
John:
Like those are much larger issues.
John:
The DOJ thing doesn't even seem to want to tackle.
John:
But if the DOJ is able to prove that Apple has monopoly power, it should be trivially easy for them to find a whole bunch of, quote unquote, little things like this, because we know Apple does this all the time.
John:
And, you know, again, we see this and we say, yeah, that's just the way it is.
John:
It's their platform and they get privileges.
John:
But some of that stuff, in theory, may be illegal if Apple has monopoly power.
Casey:
Speaking of monopoly power, apparently it is sort of kind of my fault that the DOJ antitrust suit is happening in New Jersey because apparently this was a thing with fake teeth, and I have a couple of those.
Casey:
That's the hell of an intro.
Casey:
Yeah, well, Verge writes a couple of days ago, what do artificial teeth have to do with the Department of Justice's massive lawsuit against Apple?
Casey:
Well, they may be one of the reasons why the DOJ decided to file its lawsuit in the state of New Jersey instead of, say, Virginia, hooray, or Washington, D.C., like it did for Google and Microsoft.
Casey:
So apparently, William Kovachik, former FTC chair, noted that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the New Jersey District Court, has, quote, some pretty good law for plaintiffs on monopolization issues, quote.
Casey:
He goes to point to a 2005 decision by the Third Circuit in favor of the government in a case called U.S.
Casey:
v. Dentsply.
Casey:
In that case, the appeals court found that the denture manufacturing company violated anti-monopoly law by using, quote, exclusive dealing agreements to prevent rivals from getting inputs they need to succeed, quote.
Casey:
Rebecca Hall-Allensworth, antitrust professor and associate dean for research at Vanderbilt Law School, notes that the Dentsply case may prove particularly useful for the government's argument for Apple's market dominance.
Casey:
While she says courts often consider monopoly power to be more in the range of 90 percent market share, Dentsply had 75 to 80 percent market share based on revenue and 67 percent based on units.
John:
And then she said, that, I'm guessing, is at least part of why they filed there.
John:
That's why all these patent stuff gets filed in East Texas because they have judges in that court system that are friendly to stupid patents, right?
John:
So, yeah.
John:
Why is it filed in New Jersey?
John:
This probably does not hurt.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Then Gavin Lang writes, I am currently a master of public policy student interested in the regulation of the technology industry, and I found your conversation in episode 597 about the DOJ lawsuit against Apple very interesting.
Casey:
Last year, Senator Bennett of Colorado issued S-1671, the Digital Platform Commission Act of 2023.
Casey:
Essentially, it would create a new regulatory body equivalent to the FDA with the authority to regulate tech companies.
Casey:
The stated purpose of this bill is to address two primary issues, among others, with federal regulation in the tech industry by allocating significant bureaucratic discretion to the commission.
Casey:
Number one, the tech industry iterates so quickly that it is impossible for Congress to pass laws quickly enough to keep up adequately with these companies.
Casey:
And two, there is not a culture of highly technical employees in the federal government or in Congress to craft policy that appropriately addresses the uniqueness of the tech industry.
Casey:
The commission would include a quote-unquote code council staffed by technical experts, nonprofits, academics, and representatives from companies who own the platforms.
Casey:
This helps to solve many of the issues you noted, such as the federal government often having trouble defining what a market is in the industry.
Casey:
To address this concern, the commission would be required to enter into an MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding, with the FTC and DOJ to assist them in enforcing current laws where there is overlap in jurisdiction.
Casey:
I believe the most effective way for the federal government to approach the regulation of the tech industry would be to create a new agency dedicated to creating a comprehensive regulatory regime.
John:
Left on set here is assuming that bill went nowhere.
John:
Congress going to Congress.
John:
Anyway, this is one bit of feedback I got from the last episode of me saying that it's how preferable it is to be able to affirmatively make a law of saying what you want.
John:
And I think I did mention regulation several times, but maybe I didn't emphasize it enough.
John:
You don't actually literally have to pass new laws every time you want something done.
John:
One of the things you can do, one of the things Congress can do, is pass laws that create regulatory bodies.
John:
And then the law imbues those regulatory bodies with the power to regulate the industries they control until Republicans get control of the government and then tell you that the EPA can't control people polluting in rivers.
John:
But anyway, setting that aside...
John:
We have things like the FDA and the EPA that are regulatory bodies who are imbued by laws with the power to regulate the industries that they control.
John:
And so every time the FDA determines whether something is safe or unsafe or whatever, make some new guidelines for poultry or whatever they're doing,
John:
It's not like you have to pass a new law through Congress every time.
John:
These regulatory bodies are empowered to do that.
John:
And so they can move much more nimbly and swiftly.
John:
The European Commission, from a U.S.
John:
perspective, looks like a regulatory body, right?
John:
They're not, you know, voting on and passing laws in the EU in the same way that Congress passes laws that apply to the U.S.
John:
They are a regulatory body that is tasked with regulating regulations.
John:
Commerce, I guess, with European Commission or whatever.
John:
Anyway, they're currently looking at tech sector and they're passing whatever their system is.
John:
I'm sure it's different than ours, but it looks to us much more like a regulatory body.
John:
So it's not like you have to have individual tailored new laws every time you want to change something.
John:
We can and do make regulatory bodies that regulate all parts of life in the U.S.
John:
With some success, I would say things like the FAA, FDA, even the EPA, despite my earlier snark, I think have been shown to be useful and partially successful things within our government.
John:
So a bill like this or even something that expands the I mean, I wouldn't expand like the FTC or whatever to cover this.
John:
But anyway, I'm saying is it doesn't have to be a new law every single time we can actually have regulatory bodies.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have breaking news as of earlier today.
Casey:
WWDC has been announced.
Casey:
I lost a bet with myself.
Casey:
It is actually Marco's birthday week, which I should have guessed because it always is.
Marco:
No, that's the thing.
Marco:
It usually isn't.
Marco:
It hasn't covered my birthday, which is June 11th.
Marco:
It hasn't covered June 11th for like seven or eight years.
Marco:
It's been a while.
Casey:
Oh, I feel like it always then abutted your birthday one way or another.
Marco:
Yeah, it's always the week before.
Casey:
I thought it would be the second or third or whatever it was that Monday.
Casey:
I don't have a calendar in front of me.
Casey:
And it turns out, nope, it's June 10 to 14.
Casey:
And it's going to be just like the last couple of years.
Casey:
A special event on Monday, June 10.
Casey:
And you can sign up to get a free ticket to go to that.
Casey:
Which I have done.
Casey:
I honestly don't know if I will go even if I do get a ticket.
Casey:
I probably would if I got a press pass.
Casey:
But if I get a regular Schmo ticket, I don't know if I would bother because it's considerable expense.
Casey:
And we'll see.
Casey:
Marco, did you even know that this was a thing given how busy you've been?
Casey:
And if so, did you sign up?
Marco:
I did indeed sign up.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
You know, we'll see what happens.
Marco:
WBDC for me is always fun, even though, you know, business wise, I shouldn't be too excited about Apple stuff recently because of all this court stuff and it's putting a big damper on their images for me as a developer and everything.
Marco:
That's all true.
Marco:
I also just love their stuff, and WBDC is always a really good time for me.
Marco:
It's always a very motivating time as well.
Marco:
I always am there, and I get all jazzed up and all motivated to just go do all the new stuff for Overcast that I need to do.
Marco:
And so it's good for that as well.
Marco:
So even though I continue to have conflicting feelings about how Apple treats the App Store and their relationship with developers –
Marco:
I still generally maintain that that's a problem with a very small number of people at the top.
Marco:
And WBDC is a chance for you to see all the work and interact with all the other people in the company, most of whom have, I would say, healthier views of their relationship with developers.
Marco:
And so it's the time when I get to feel really good about what they're doing and about what I'm doing as a developer on their platforms.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So, yeah, I mean, I've signed up as well.
Casey:
We'll see what happens.
Casey:
John, I'm sure that you signed up to leave your house for any reason.
John:
I did.
John:
I've been trying to go to WWC ever since it's been at Apple Park.
Casey:
You did sign up?
Casey:
I'm stunned.
John:
I always sign up.
John:
Every year.
John:
What?
John:
Haven't you listened to me?
John:
I've been so annoyed that I haven't been able to go because I'm like, I really want to go to one at Apple Park.
John:
I've never, well, I have been to Apple Park, but.
John:
officially i've never been there for an apple event let's say that uh and so i yeah i absolutely want to attend wdc at apple park uh because i have never attended wdc at apple park i loved going to wdc in san francisco i didn't like to travel but i loved going to it i even mostly liked going to san jose wasn't as good but still fun uh so yeah i put my hat in the ring to hopefully uh get a ticket this year despite missing out on it and
John:
To be fair to Apple, I was invited to go the year my son graduated from high school.
John:
And the reason I remember that is because I had to decline because I had to go to his graduation and have to.
John:
But I chose to go to his graduation rather than attend WWDC because they literally overlapped.
John:
And it was painful for me to have to say thank you so much.
John:
I invited him to the press pass.
John:
Thank you so much for the invitation.
John:
But unfortunately, I have to decline because my son is graduating high school.
John:
So I went to my son's high school graduation and I was never invited to WWDC again.
Casey:
Was that 21?
Casey:
one i want to say is that right he's a sophomore in college now so i don't know do the math yeah well i don't want to do that math right now but i think that i think you and i both got uh relatively late invites which is fine i mean i'll take it over no invite um but at that point like i think michaela still wasn't vaccinated and so i don't want to get on a plane and uh and you obviously had a much bigger thing to worry about than wwdc and yeah since then we've been ghosted which is sad but it's
John:
okay yeah but i'm anyway i'm not i'm not thinking of getting a press pass i'm like i just want like one of the regular lottery things which and also to be fair to apple i was lucky enough to get a lottery driven ticket to wwc and san francisco and san jose a lot more than should be uh allowed by chance so i'm not going to say that i've been deprived i absolutely haven't but all i'm saying is that i would really like to go to at least one wwc at apple park so fingers crossed for this year
Casey:
Man, how wild would it be if we do all end up at WWDC one way or the other this year?
Casey:
That'd be pretty cool.
Casey:
So yeah, so we'll see what happens.
Casey:
Greg Joswiak did tweet, it's going to be capital A, absolutely capital I incredible, which I really don't like reading into these things, but that seems pretty on the nose.
John:
you don't need to read into that yeah exactly that is as upfront as it could possibly be yep uh and i don't i didn't uh look at the official wdc site i don't think they make any even uh feints towards ai stuff but of course we all know the rumors have been ai stuff this is the year we talked about in the very first episode of 2024 this is the year apple sprinkles ai sauce and everything right and so here's greg jaws react absolutely 100 confirming
John:
that uh this wwdc ai is going to be a big thing so just in case you were wondering if those rumors are true because you know sometimes we have these rumors that go on for months and months and then apple like has to do like strategic leaks to undercut them like when we're all there was all these rumors of hardware at wwdc and apple basically had to say there's going to be no hardware at wwdc like to just make sure we all aren't disappointed on the day well this is the opposite of that they're saying ai stuff it's coming so i'm excited for that
Casey:
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That's about as long as you'll take listening to me tell you all the great stuff about Factor.
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Casey:
I have to tell you that it was like two weeks ago, I had a roasted garlic chicken with green beans and sour cream and onion mashed potatoes.
Casey:
The whole thing was good, but those sour cream and onion mashed potatoes, I'm still thinking about them two weeks later.
Casey:
But you can do all sorts of other stuff too.
Casey:
There's pancakes, there's smoothies, there's all sorts of other things as well.
Casey:
And what's also great about it is, hey, there's effectively no prep.
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Casey:
We're going to do a little bit of car-related stuff.
Casey:
This isn't really neutral.
Casey:
This is technology that's car-adjacent or car-jacent technology.
Casey:
You know what I mean.
Casey:
So don't immediately skip to the next chapter.
Casey:
Give us a chance.
Casey:
You might actually like it.
Casey:
And the first thing we have to talk about is that people are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars.
Casey:
This was from July of 2023, apparently, that J.D.
Casey:
Power, which is a... I don't know.
Casey:
They kind of do surveys and stuff of car owners.
Marco:
Yeah, like user research and stuff.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
So The Verge writes,
Casey:
Only 56% of owners prefer to use their vehicle's built-in system to play audio, down from 70% in 2020.
Casey:
Less than half of owners said they like using their car's native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I know all the electric car people, hi Marco, are going to come out and be like, oh no, the electric car people get it, they're so much better, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But really...
Casey:
Anyway, for all of us regular people with regular cars, I can tell you that I have never used an in-car infotainment that was even half as good as CarPlay.
Casey:
And my Volkswagen is pretty good.
Casey:
And I actually really liked my BMWs, even though even when I bought it, it was relatively aged.
Casey:
But that being said, they're just not as good as CarPlay.
Casey:
And so I am not surprised that these auto manufacturers who really don't know what they're doing when it comes to software, when they try software, I'm not surprised it doesn't go terribly well.
John:
They know what they're doing when it comes to pinching pennies, though, and I feel like the headline here is not so much that the score was awful or that the people don't like the native stuff and prefer their phone stuff.
John:
The headline is in 28 years of doing this stupid survey, and I don't put too much stock in their surveys, but either way, in 28 years, this is the first year-over-year decline.
John:
Right.
John:
And so that that shows it's not just like, well, it fluctuates from year to year and who cares or whatever.
John:
That's a long run with people generally saying each year they're a little bit more satisfied because car, you know, the tech inside their car would get better or whatever.
John:
Now, a year over year decline with most of them signing dissatisfaction with the infotainment.
John:
I see that squarely on the automakers of like you say, Casey, not being good at this, but B, seeing as we've discussed and we're about to discuss further dollar signs when they say, oh,
John:
we can get rid of all these buttons and stuff and just put everything on touchscreens.
John:
And yeah, we're not very good at making touchscreens, but it'll save us so much money and it's futuristic.
John:
People will love it.
John:
And the, you know, the fancy electric cars that actually do have native in-car stuff, even though Casey still wishes they had CarPlay, they're like...
John:
mostly a rounding error with the exception of tesla the model y sells in huge numbers right and maybe that's trying to bring up the average for everybody else but i can tell you outside of tesla and the other good ev makers infotainment situation on cars that regular people buy has been getting worse and worse
Casey:
It's really no good.
Casey:
And I mean, as much as I snark on Marco and his electric cars, I will absolutely admit and concede that the Teslas of the world and the Rivians of the world have way better infotainment than pretty much anything else that I've seen.
Casey:
For me, I still don't particularly care for it, and I still would vastly prefer CarPlay.
Casey:
Vastly prefer CarPlay.
Casey:
But they are definitely the best of the breed if you're not considering Android Auto or CarPlay.
John:
But they're also, and Tesla in particular, is one of the largest vendors for this next item.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So European crash tester, Euro NCAP, I mean, I don't know how to summarize it other than they're doing the Lord's work.
Casey:
So they say that car makers must bring back physical controls or they will pay the price in terms of ratings.
Casey:
So this was covered on Ars Technica earlier this month.
Casey:
Matthew Avery, who is the Director of Strategic Development for the Automotive Safety Organization European New Car Assessment Program, or Euro NCAP,
Casey:
Uh-huh.
Casey:
Uh-huh.
Casey:
New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving.
Casey:
So Euro NCAP wants to see the physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features like the European Union's e-call feature.
Casey:
Euro NCAP is not a government regulator, so it has no power to mandate the car makers use physical controls for these functions.
Casey:
But a five-star safety score from Euro NCAP is a strong selling point, similar to the IAHS, or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's coveted top safety pick program here in the U.S.
Casey:
And it is likely this pressure will be effective.
Casey:
Just...
Casey:
I'm here for this.
Casey:
I'm so incredibly here for this.
John:
This is one of the great things about it not being a government regulator.
John:
So they're kind of making these assertions like there's no sort of burden of proof to say, well, but is it actually safer to have physical controls versus test controls?
John:
What have you tested to show this is the case and all sorts of things?
John:
And I know that we've talked about stories in the past where people have done studies in this to show that it is safer.
John:
But in general, you look at this, you're like, oh, common sense dictates that, yeah, you can use a physical control without looking at it much more easily than you use touchscreen without looking at it.
John:
Even if things never move in the touchscreen, even if they're always in the same place, you can't really feel for the location.
John:
One of the things that I thought about when considering the story was like, you know, we're just...
John:
Just trying to get out of winter here, although it's still ice on my morning walks with the dog.
John:
But anyway, in theory, spring is coming.
John:
But during the whole winter, in my wife's car, which has heated seats, I wear gloves in the car.
John:
Big winter gloves because my hands are always freezing.
John:
Anyway, I can not only...
John:
turn the seat heaters to off, low or high for either one of the front seats with my gloves on without looking.
John:
I can also tell if they are currently off, low or high for both seats in the dark without looking at them with my winter gloves on, with my big giant winter gloves on.
John:
And you know why?
John:
Because they both have rocker switches that are level when the thing is off, tilted forward when it's low and tilted back when it's high.
John:
I can literally feel for that
John:
Without looking at it ever, I've never looked at those switches.
John:
Why would I look at them?
John:
Because they're like in front of the stick shift, right?
John:
That's where they are on the central console.
John:
So when I look at this, I'm like, I don't have to see your 17 scientific surveys to support your new law that the government is saying that you have to use physical controls.
John:
When they say physical controls allow drivers to take their eyes off the road less, I look at that and say, yes, that is obviously true.
John:
Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't study this.
John:
They should.
John:
The more evidence we have to say, no, we didn't just assume this is true.
John:
We actually tested it.
John:
But the common sense in me says, yeah, in my experience, that's true.
John:
Common sense to me says it's true.
John:
My experience using touchscreens, which at this point is vast, says that it's true, right?
John:
And the fact that they're not making a law, but they're just saying, hey, do what you want.
John:
But we are a respected organization that rates cars based on their safety.
John:
And we have decided as part of our ratings, which are not law, they're not binding, right?
John:
We're not a government.
John:
We're not forcing you to do anything.
John:
You do what you want.
John:
But we think...
John:
here at Euro NCAP, that if you don't do this, you're going to get dinged and you're not going to get a five-star score.
John:
We have those same things in the U.S.
John:
where it's a thing that is respected, that people look up the crash safety ratings.
John:
We also have government things to do that as well, but like the...
John:
It's not legally binding.
John:
You don't have to do what they tell you.
John:
We don't stop you from selling a car if it doesn't get a five star crash rating.
John:
You can still sell it, but know that people are going to look this up and they're going to see that your car got a three star instead of a five star.
John:
And maybe they're going to pick a competitor car, which is why, as the story says, even though this is not a law or a government regulatory body, this kind of pressure will likely be effective, even on U.S.
John:
car makers, because they're not going to make a separate competition.
John:
car for europe with physical controls and then one for the u.s with just a touchscreen they're going to make one car to save again to save costs like they don't want to make two different cars for different directions so this will help us in the same way that california's more stringent like emissions laws tend to help like all cars in the u.s kind of sort of depending on how annoying the car maker is about making a california only model so i read this and i'm like you go euro end cap because i 100 agree with this
Casey:
and i think the reason car makers are doing it is to save money and i think it's a terrible decision and i think it is unsafe but more importantly it's annoying yep couldn't agree more it's just there are certain things that you should be able to do without looking away from the road i think adjusting the temperature turn signals i could even say that hazards i i could get behind not having having to look at in order to use i think that's more like hazards type of thing where maybe the uh the touchscreen is dead because it's not like an essential like
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
And so I would say you need a physical thing because like if you had some kind of accident or whatever and you got to turn the hazards on because you're off the road and your touchscreen is dead, there should be a physical button for that.
Marco:
Not that you need to see it when you're driving.
Marco:
That's why that's required in the US.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But yeah, I think most of these – most of the things that this European body is requesting are very reasonable.
Marco:
Turn signals, horn, like that all is very reasonable.
Marco:
And I think really the only car as far as I know that has –
John:
not already comply with that is tesla's new steering wheel designs for for many of their cars now i thought um john weren't there some ferraris that had turn signals on the wheel or something like that yeah the the new ferraris have uh well so here's the thing i don't know the details of this but it says physical controls the controls on the ferrari i think are capacitive touch but a lot of the like the the the tesla ones i believe it's that stupid thing where the entire thing is a button and where you have your finger on it you know we talked about it before like the whole thing does move so i think tesla's might be compliant
John:
But it depends on when they say like physical controls, do they mean it has to be a stock or can it be a stupid button on your steering wheel?
Marco:
Yeah, either way, I think this is mostly currently aimed at Tesla.
Marco:
I mean, I don't think many people are going to change their mind on their Ferrari purchase because your end cap does not give it a full safety rating.
John:
Yeah, and a Ferrari, to be clear, does not care what you're saying about its cars.
John:
Because they don't need to.
John:
No one's cross-shopping the Ferrari and saying, but it doesn't have a five-star crash rating.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yes, exactly.
Marco:
You know that I – of the three of us, I'm the only one who drives cars with touch controls largely.
Marco:
But I think old Tesla, like the Model Ss that I had years ago and my current Rivian –
Marco:
They, I think, strike a fairly good overall balance of there are stocks and buttons for some critical things, and then a lot of other stuff is on the touchscreen.
Marco:
I'm fine with that.
Marco:
And I think what Euro NCAP is saying here is not all touch controls are bad.
Marco:
What they're saying is there are certain controls that are so important to safety and basic operation that they need to be physical.
Marco:
And
Marco:
vehicles i've owned have had those controls be physical and it's i and i agree that that is a very good balance um and that's that's part of the reason why i don't like you know the modern direction tesla has gone because they're going a little further a little too far in that direction for my taste um but i think we i think this is not like a massive shift in what we have to do or what they want people to do i think this is a small course correction that mostly just applies to tesla and not not many of their
John:
makers well i mean it's like the thing we talked about with the the whenever we're talking about volkswagen like that they had a couple of generations of cars where they have the climate controls on the touchscreen and their customers complain so much that they're changing out on all their models going forward but unfortunately they just introduced a whole new line of like this year's model year crop of cars that have the old system and so it's like no we i know you're annoyed by it but we totally fixed this that the not these cars but the
John:
But next time we show you a car.
John:
And that stuff is not part of NCAP.
John:
I'm not saying you have to have climate controls, according to this thing here.
John:
But customers want that.
John:
And so customer feedback is also a way to make this happen.
John:
And it took however many years of VW shipping cars with the climate controls.
Casey:
And it's not that much.
Casey:
It's only been for the Mark VIII Golfs, as far as I understand.
John:
But it's also on the ID.4 and all the other things.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But it's only been a couple of years.
Casey:
It's been like one or two.
John:
Yeah, but the reason they get dinged for it is because they have the benefit of seeing every other carmaker do this and get complained about, and they didn't learn from it.
John:
It's like, you know, these are recent models, right?
John:
And, you know, climate controls and touchscreen, it's everywhere.
John:
BMW does it on all their new cars.
John:
They are not going back on it.
John:
Like, everybody does it, you know, and it remains to be seen if anyone will complain about that, or maybe they won't care because everyone just uses automatic climate control in BMWs.
John:
But stuff like that, I think, falls into the category of...
John:
foolish cost savings or foolish attempt to be futuristic like i mean the the worst one for me is aiming the aiming the air and the teslas with that stupid interface they've always had oh geez louise just let me point a vent like it's just so much better in every possible way but you got to save those two cents on the little you know or whatever it is 50 cents on the little moving vent pieces uh
John:
just it drives me bonkers right so consumer feedback will give you some of this but apparently consumer feedback isn't sufficient to to like you know to fix all the problems rapidly and this is like like margo said this is for the essential stuff i don't know what the details are but i i really do think that things like turn signals being buttons on a steering wheel then the steering wheel like you know turns and you have to kind of like find them it's just going to make people either use their blinkers less frequently or less adeptly
John:
or not use them at all like BMW drivers.
John:
Because the stock interface to turn signals, the fact that the stock is always in the same place and doesn't move and you can just hit it, that is an amazing interface.
John:
The stock interface return signals, the traditional one where it stays up when you push it to go to the right and stays down when you push it to go to the left, that stock interface,
John:
has amazing ergonomics it's so easy to do it's so unconscious it's so clear what you're in the process of doing the little blinking light on the instrument cluster just to show the arrow where it's like it's tried and true for a reason i would say the same thing by the way about round steering wheels car makers if you're listening round is a good shape for a thing that rotates just fyi no one wants to make round steering wheels anymore hopefully that will come around but we'll see
Casey:
I don't feel that strongly about, like, flat-bottomed wheels.
Casey:
My Volkswagen's wheel is a flat-bottom, and it's fine.
Casey:
Like, I'm not saying you're wrong, for the record.
Casey:
It's fine.
John:
But now they're flat everywhere.
John:
Have you seen, Casey?
John:
They're not flat-bottomed anymore.
John:
Like, yours is a circle with a flat bottom.
John:
Now they're all, like, hexagons or...
Casey:
Yeah, no, no, I know.
Casey:
I think my dad's Corvette, if I'm not mistaken, has a flat top and a flat bottom.
John:
Yeah, it does.
John:
And they're getting even funkier.
John:
It's like wheels, man, wheels.
John:
But like, I mean, the big thing about this, about picking like which controls need to be physical and which don't is brings up a thing that I brought up when we were talking about touchscreens years ago.
John:
It's like, okay, why don't you just put the steering wheel on touchscreen?
Yeah.
John:
And everyone's like, well, that's ridiculous.
John:
Steering wheel on the touchscreen.
John:
Aside from all the people think the cars are going to drive themselves.
John:
No one would ever put the steering wheel on touchscreen.
John:
But then a few years later, Tesla put the frigging gear selector on the touchscreen.
John:
Right.
John:
Well, why not?
John:
But the steering wheel on the touchscreen is so great.
John:
Everyone has their limit.
John:
It's like, OK, I'm with you right up until you put the steering wheel on the touchscreen.
John:
I'm like, well, good.
John:
So now we know there is a limit.
John:
We're just arguing over where it is.
John:
And I think Euro NCAP is going to help move that line back a little bit.
Casey:
I sure hope so.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Aaron's car has, you know, climate control on the screen and it is fine, but it is not fun to use.
Casey:
Like, I would much rather be able to have a dial for the temperature and preferably for heated seats like a button or a rocker or something like that.
Casey:
Both heated seats and wheel and temperature, all of that is on the touchscreen and I really don't care for it.
Casey:
And I mean, and I mostly like her infotainment.
Casey:
It's pretty good.
Casey:
And honestly, the only time we use CarPlay is generally speaking if I'm driving the car, which is pretty rare.
Casey:
She does occasionally use CarPlay, but very infrequently.
Casey:
She generally just uses the infotainment.
Casey:
And leaving aside the fact that it takes a calendar year to start the infotainment, it's actually pretty good.
Casey:
But I absolutely am driven bananas by having the HVAC controls installed.
Casey:
in the touchscreen i don't care for it at all it is so much nicer in my car to just reach down to where the dial i know that where that dial will be and i just twist the littlest bit and you can feel for it that's the important thing because people like oh but it's always in the same place and touch screen i know just where it will be okay that helps but you can't feel for it like in the dark or to adjust to micro adjust your reach if you just were off by a little bit
Marco:
Well, but, you know, in defense of these controls on touchscreens, I've driven the Model S, I've driven the Rivian.
Marco:
Both of those have almost all of the HVAC, if not all of the HVAC stuff.
Marco:
I think both of them, all of the HVAC stuff is on the touchscreen.
Marco:
I did have some issues with the Model S when that Facebook designer took over and redid their whole design and did things like hide the defroster inside of a menu.
Marco:
But that was later in the ownership of that car.
Marco:
And for the first few years of owning that car, that was not a problem and it was great.
Marco:
I would caution you not to rule out the concept when it is possible to design a good one.
Marco:
You know, in the sense that, like, if, for instance, suppose the iPhone hadn't happened yet, and we were all using weird advanced versions of BlackBerrys, and they put out touchscreen things, and it's like, well...
Marco:
Tuck screen phones just don't work.
Marco:
And the real problem might be that the tuck screen phone that we had that we were accustomed to or that we had been exposed to was not a good tuck screen phone or didn't have a good tuck screen design.
John:
I think this is a bad example, Marco, because we look at our phones when we use them.
Marco:
No, but this is not a bad example because you can account for a lot of the flaws of your experience.
Marco:
Casey, your experience with the Volvo one, what you keep saying is it's poorly designed, it's slow, it's cumbersome.
Marco:
Those are not inherent flaws of touchscreens.
Marco:
That is flaws of that touchscreen system.
Marco:
But it is possible to make good touchscreen controls for many of these things.
Marco:
And in some ways, the tradeoffs end up being better.
Marco:
For instance...
Marco:
The vent thing that you hate so much, John, where you get to aim the vents on modern Teslas.
Marco:
I didn't have that on my Model S. I do have that on the Rivian.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
There are certain advantages.
Marco:
There are certain disadvantages.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
And a lot of people with Tesla Model 3s that have that love them.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
Like many of these differences are just different and there are pluses and minuses.
Marco:
But if you've only ever if you never really lived with one, you might still only ever be in the transition learning phase.
Marco:
This thing sucks phase instead of like I actually am used to this now and I appreciate what's better about it.
Marco:
Or if you've only been exposed to a bad one, like Casey's Volvo, like, you know, that maybe it's possible that there's good ones out there that you just haven't lived with.
Marco:
Because I can say, like, as the only one of us that has actually owned two, actually three, touchscreen cars,
Marco:
I don't hate all these climate controls on the touchscreen when it is properly designed, when the defroster is always in that one spot and always available, which it is on the Rivian and it was for most of the Model S. When they are well designed, it's fine.
Marco:
It is totally fine.
Marco:
And there actually are some benefits.
John:
Well, you just highlighted one of the problems with it, which is that you bought the car and it was fine.
John:
And then there was a software update.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It was buried in a menu and that doesn't happen with a button.
John:
So that's one downside.
John:
Obviously, there's an upside to that too, which is they can fix things that are annoying later on and they can't move a button.
Marco:
And honestly, and as much as that drove me nuts with the Tesla when they did that, I mean, that was just a bad design.
Marco:
But as much as that drove me nuts...
Marco:
I also did benefit quite a lot from Tesla adding features and making improvements over the time that I owned the vehicle.
John:
Yeah, we're not saying touchscreens are bad and they shouldn't be in cars.
John:
We're just saying what you put on them.
John:
Like, again, what we were just talking about was like we're talking about HVAC specifically.
John:
None of us are talking about like the drive mode selector or the place where you program in your.
John:
personalized driving thing where you pick the steering feel and the regen and like obviously the touchscreens are great for all of that we know what their strengths are right but even the thing where you're saying like well you just haven't tried a good one that is a another condemnation of using touchscreens for things like vents because we weren't in a situation where we didn't have a tried and true solution that everybody could do nobody was confused for the most part that most car makers were not confused about how to do a vent that you can point the airflow out
John:
Pretty much all the car makers did a thing, and it was competent.
John:
Enter touchscreens, and now suddenly, a thing that we had a solution to on every car from inexpensive to expensive, now it's chaos, and it's like nobody knows how to do it anymore.
John:
It's like, wait a second, we do know how to do it.
John:
It's called a vent, and you point it at people, and only the good, expensive car makers know how to do it?
John:
You took a thing that was a solved problem across the entire industry, and you turned it into a thing where, well, you just have to make sure you get the right one.
John:
You must have just got a bad one.
John:
So that's one damning thing.
John:
The second thing I'm going to say about your phone example and the BlackBerry thing is...
John:
Like I said, we're meant to look at our phones.
John:
In fact, when we use our phones, we're looking at them so much so that the fact that we do have to look at our phones to use them is used as an example of why you should not use your phone while you're driving.
John:
Because when you're driving, you have to look at the road.
John:
that's how much you have to look at the phone.
John:
It's a thing that you look at.
John:
So the things that we're complaining about for touchscreens and HVAC, that's not a weakness of the phone because when you go to use it, you're looking at it.
John:
So you don't have to wonder where the button is.
John:
You're always looking at it.
John:
That's how you use a phone.
John:
Whereas how you drive a car is looking out the windshield of the road.
John:
And when I want to turn on the seat heaters or figure out if they're on low or high or whatever, I should be able to do that without taking my eyes off the road at all with winter gloves on, which was if it was a capacitive button or something else, there's no way I could do that.
John:
I could feel through the winter gloves what position the switch is already in and adjust at the position I want.
John:
And I would say seat heaters is a pretty esoteric feature of the car.
John:
It's not like turn signals or whatever.
John:
And the fact that we can do that with seat heaters with the amazing technology called switches,
John:
That I don't want to give up for the hopes that someone can define something, you know, on a touchscreen that's almost as good, but only if you buy a very expensive, very fancy car.
John:
Like I said, touchscreens have huge advantages.
John:
They should be used for all the things that are impossible to do with buttons or way worse with buttons.
John:
But there are enough things that that is not the case on.
John:
And
John:
HVAC, I don't think I would, I'm not going to not buy another car, a new car because it has HVAC on touchscreen.
John:
In fact, I'm probably going to have no choice, right?
John:
That's not actually a big deal to me.
John:
But for me, if I could choose where to draw the line, I would make HVAC physical, right?
John:
But the line that Euro NCAP is drawing is like turn signals.
John:
The steering wheel wipers like and I totally agree with that.
John:
That stuff is so much more essential, like not being able to having to fiddle to turn on the wipers.
John:
Oh, just use automatic wipers that work perfectly.
John:
Well, you must not have good ones.
John:
The good automatic ones work well.
John:
Like, no, wipers are a solid problem.
John:
Again, it's a stock or however you're going to do it.
John:
a twisty thing on the stock or a stock itself i want to be able to get to the wipers asap i want to be able to know how to adjust them without thinking i don't want to have to use a touchscreen for that so i'm cheering on euro end cap but hvac my preferences for not to be there casey doesn't like his touchscreen hvac but i am perfectly willing to believe the touchscreen hvac will not or is not the end of the world and will not drive me completely insane but we'll see when i get one
Casey:
Yeah, I think you might eat those words at some point, but we'll see.
Casey:
I mean, and I do take Marco's broader point that, you know, well done infotainment can be not that bad, but I don't know.
Casey:
There are certain things that I'm willing to futz around on a screen for and certain things I'm not.
Casey:
And for me, HVAC is one of those things.
Casey:
I do not want to go to a screen for it.
Casey:
I don't doubt that the Rivian screen is way better and works much faster and better and so on and so forth.
Casey:
But ultimately, particularly when I'm driving, I don't want to have to look anywhere.
Casey:
And yes, I know that these buttons don't move within the screen, but because there's nothing physical to feel for, I will never be 100% sure where these buttons are.
John:
And you have to look to check state.
John:
That's why I keep talking about the seat heating buttons.
John:
I can check the state of it.
John:
Is it already on?
John:
Is it already on high?
John:
Is it already on low?
John:
Yeah.
John:
is my daughter's in the passenger seat is hers on high and I'm going to need to turn it off.
John:
She's going to complain that she's getting too hot, right?
John:
Like that.
John:
I can check that with my gloved fingers in the dark without looking.
Casey:
All right, so there's one more piece of automotive-related news.
Casey:
Mark Gurman wrote, what is this, on my birthday, actually, that Apple's new CarPlay, this is the thing where they take over the instrument cluster and the whole rigmarole, is their last hope to crack the auto industry.
Casey:
Gurman writes, the concept for the new CarPlay, known as Project Ironheart within Apple, was to take the system to the next level by fully integrating it into vehicles.
Casey:
It would take over more screens in a car's instrument cluster, as well as features like the radio and air conditioning system.
Casey:
This is a big change from the current CarPlay interface, which is more focused on letting you operate Apple services and doesn't handle most of the car's controls.
Casey:
At this point, we should probably do a quick refresher on what the equivalent system is from Google.
Casey:
So I'm going to start, and John, just interrupt me when I go off the rails here.
Casey:
But Google, for a long time, has had Android Auto, which is their equivalent of CarPlay.
Casey:
This is how you would mess with your music app or your podcasting app and so on.
John:
It's how you project your phone onto car screens.
John:
So if you have an Android phone and your car has Android Auto, your Android phone can project its screen onto one or more screens in the car.
John:
And that's what CarPlay does.
John:
It projects your iPhone screen onto one or more screens in your car.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So it may not be exactly one-to-one with CarPlay, but it's effectively the same thing.
Casey:
However, in the last few years, they've come out with Android Automotive.
Casey:
This is different than Android Auto that we just described, but Android Automotive.
Casey:
And Android Automotive is, I don't know how to appropriately describe it, but it's the infotainment system that the car is running, irrespective of whether or not a phone is connected, right?
John:
It's an operating system.
John:
Basically, you can think of it this way.
John:
Oh, my car runs Linux.
John:
Well, just say, oh, my car runs Android Automotive, which is Linux-based, whatever.
John:
Like, Android Automotive is running on your car.
John:
It's not running on your phone.
John:
You don't have to have a phone at all.
John:
You can get in any car that's running Android Automotive, and when you start the thing up and the infotainment screen lights up and lets you pick radio stations and do whatever you're going to do,
John:
The operating system that those screens are projecting from is Android Automotive and it is running on the car.
John:
It is not related to your phone at all.
John:
You can have Android Automotive in your car and many manufacturers do.
John:
And Android Automotive cars can support CarPlay and Android Auto.
John:
So the operating system of the car, Android, not the whole car, but just the infotainment thing, is Android Automotive.
John:
And that supports CarPlay.
John:
When you say, oh, I really wish they would add CarPlay support to my car, chances are good that your car is running Android Automotive.
John:
And when you say you want them to add CarPlay support, you want them to add CarPlay support to the Android Automotive operating system that is running on your car.
John:
Because that's how your car is able to project itself onto the screens in your car.
John:
Because the OS that your car is running, which is Android Automotive, lets that happen.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And actually, my parents just got a new Volvo, and their new Volvo has Android Automotive as the infotainment system, and I've used it for literally 30 seconds.
Casey:
But that being said, it was so much faster and nicer than our, what is it, like almost 10-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old Volvo at this point.
Casey:
It was so much more responsive and so much nicer.
Casey:
But again, that was only 30 seconds of use, so I might have a different opinion on
Casey:
But my understanding from those who have used Android Automotive, like our friend Jelly has a Polestar sedan.
Casey:
I forget which one that is, the Polestar 2, I think.
Casey:
And Jelly has had very complimentary things to say about Android Automotive as well.
Casey:
So anyway, coming back to Mark Gurman.
Casey:
Polestar, there you go, Porsche, BMW, excuse me, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, Lucid, Stellantis, which is, you know, Chrysler, et cetera, and General Motors now offer cars with the Android Automotive operating system built in.
Casey:
After just seven years, Android Automotive is the market leader with an estimated 35% of the car operating system market.
Casey:
The new CarPlay is a response to that.
Casey:
Apple hopes it can win over users and automakers with a slicker interface and greater customization.
Casey:
There's one big difference, though.
Casey:
The new CarPlay still runs on the phone and isn't a new OS embedded in the vehicle.
Casey:
All right.
John:
So we need to stop right here.
John:
This is another place where a German's analysis, as usual, makes me just, my head spin.
John:
Like, how in the world is the new CarPlay a response to an operating system that runs in the car?
John:
But the difference is it's not an operating system that runs in the car.
John:
It's, I mean...
John:
It's not the same thing.
John:
What I'm saying is the new CarPlay, the one that projects itself on all the different screens, still runs on your phone.
John:
You still need an iPhone and needs to be in the car and needs to be connected either wired or wirelessly to make the new CarPlay experience, which means that all these cars need to have some operating system that runs them when you don't have a phone because you need to be able to get into them and drive without an iPhone or without any phone, like the car should work, right?
John:
So is it a response?
John:
Maybe you can say yes because Apple thinks this is the way it should work, but the bottom line is that
John:
uh this new car play does absolutely nothing to stop car manufacturers from using android automotive because how the heck are you going to do this new car play without some kind of operating system on the car and the car needs to have you know a speedometer and stuff when you're you're not in it with your iphone so uh i object to this entire paragraph but uh i kind of get what he's trying to say but pick different words
Casey:
All right, so coming back to Gurman.
Casey:
Apple explored turning the new CarPlay into a full operating system that runs on cars directly, but the approach would have worked best with Apple-designed chips and other proprietary technologies like displays.
Casey:
It wasn't seen as practical to install that in cars.
Casey:
Another pause now.
John:
So I get what he's saying here too, but I would say that the counter example, the Apple counter example,
John:
is apple tv right they sell a little hockey puck with apple silicon in it that will run tv os and it will do apple tv plus you know and a bunch of other apps and stuff too but also you can buy a tv and watch apple tv plus on it and there's no apple silicon in that tv it's some garbagey media tech chip right like
John:
When it comes to it, Apple can get its software onto non-Apple Silicon with much worse processors and these weird things that deal with all these different manufacturers.
John:
But when it's important, they do it.
John:
And it's important to get more people to watch and pay for Apple TV+.
John:
So now every time you buy a TV, it's got Netflix built in.
John:
It's got Apple TV Plus built in.
John:
It's got all these things built in.
John:
And that is not Apple Silicon in there.
John:
And, you know, there's no Apple proprietary hardware in there making that happen.
John:
It is just plain, oh, the smart TVs are essentially little computers, by the way, a lot of them are on Android.
John:
And Apple wants to be everywhere, so it makes sure that it writes a little Apple TV Plus app that works there.
John:
So I understand why Apple would prefer that all these cars have Apple Silicon in them to give really good experience.
John:
And I would imagine that the iPhone that people are projecting from is significantly more powerful and better tuned to iOS than any car is going to be.
John:
But when it's important, if you actually want to be everywhere in the market like they did with Apple TV+, it's a thing that Apple is actually willing to do sometimes.
Casey:
I take your point, but I don't think it's apples to apples.
Casey:
In the case of an infotainment system, it would still probably, particularly for gauges, need to be a real-time OS, which has very specific constraints.
John:
I don't think any gauges are real-time OS.
John:
Do you think the gauges are run by real-time OS?
John:
I think they have to be.
John:
I mean, they're certainly not in CarPlay.
Casey:
That's the thing is that, well, oh, you mean in the new CarPlay?
Casey:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Casey:
Yeah, in the new CarPlay.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
But I think if you were the car manufacturer and Apple comes to you and says, hey, we'll take over the gauge cluster for you, I would say like, look, you need to have something that's reliable and that's real time, you know, in every definition of the word.
John:
I don't.
John:
I don't think the gauge cluster in Marcos Rivian is real-time OS.
John:
I don't think the gauge cluster in any car, I mean, every car is an LCD gauge cluster now.
John:
I don't think there's a real-time OS running that.
John:
I think that is just the same, it can crash at any time, it's not a big deal thing that is running the infotainment.
John:
It's basically Android.
John:
Android Automotive is running those instrument clusters and it's not real-time.
Marco:
Didn't we get some feedback a few months back that they had to be real-time in the U.S.?
John:
Yeah, again, I don't know the details, but my guess would be that's not what they're currently doing.
John:
I mean, and with Apple doing it with the iPhone thing, Apple hasn't announced anything related to that.
John:
So we can – I actually had this discussion recently with somebody about Apple Vision Pro and the R1 chip.
John:
We've talked about it before, about is it running a real-time OS or is it not?
John:
And still –
John:
no one from Apple has officially come down from on high and given a secret anonymous feedback to let us know definitively what is risen real time.
John:
There's supposedly some real time subsystem that's happening somewhere in iOS, but iOS itself is not a real time operating system.
John:
And I don't know.
John:
Um, but anyway, um,
John:
I a lot of the stuff like you don't bottom line is if your instrument cluster goes black the car continues to work yeah it's bad that you can't see the speedometer and all that other stuff and it shouldn't be that way permanently but it's not as essential as like the steer by wire system right or your brakes the brake by wire systems you know what I mean
Casey:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Casey:
And I guess what I was eventually driving at was if I was Apple and I was building a car with Project Titan and I built a real-time OS, I probably would have built that real-time OS against some sort of Apple Silicon.
Casey:
And it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't particularly want to have to build that same OS against a different kind of Silicon.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's not impossible, I would assume, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't want to.
Casey:
And so that's kind of how they back themselves into this corner.
John:
There's another thing I don't know.
John:
Does Android Automotive have a real-time kernel or the ability to run real-time processes for its instrument cluster stuff?
Casey:
I don't know, and I don't think I'd be able to figure that out without having to give future Marco a whole bunch of work.
Casey:
We'll presumably get some feedback.
Casey:
Maybe Sam of Wellesmith is still listening.
John:
Yeah, it would be interesting.
John:
This whole thing...
John:
To clarify, technically, if people know when we say real-time operating system, what does that mean or whatever?
John:
It's basically like if you think about the example from my childhood is operating systems that would run on space probes, right?
John:
And the thing that distinguishes them is that when you set something up and you say this program runs and does this thing, it always does things according to guaranteed deadlines.
John:
So...
John:
There's no scenario in which some operation that's supposed to get done at the very latest by this particular time will occasionally take a little bit longer.
John:
And how could that happen?
John:
Well, for example, say your program is running along and all of a sudden some other process starts and it allocates a bunch of memory.
John:
And then when some instruction goes in your program, your thing is supposed to be done already.
John:
But it's like, oops, this page was swapped out and now I got to pull it back in from swap.
John:
So this operation took twice as long as it normally does.
John:
Sorry about that.
John:
Now you just missed your deadline.
John:
Real time operating systems for things like space probes or whatever, like if they miss their deadline for anything, the like it's a complete failure, like absolutely 100 percent complete failure.
John:
It's not like oopsie or whatever.
John:
That's not how our computers work now.
John:
If you do something like run a benchmark and then you like start up some other program and start rendering in the background, your benchmark score will go down because your other process is taking resources from it.
John:
Real-time operating systems allow processes to reserve, essentially.
John:
I am always going to get these resources.
John:
My things are always going to happen on this time schedule, guaranteed by the operating system.
John:
There's nothing anything else on this system can do to make it so that I don't hit my deadlines.
John:
That is important for things like space probes that are going, you know...
John:
hundreds of thousands of miles an hour or whatever and they have to make split second decisions you can't have a situation in which like oops some other process ran and your thing ran a little slower now you missed your deadline um as you can imagine that's not important for phones computers all these systems that we have where yeah you know if you run two things you one thing will go slower than if you're running it by itself right that's why we say if you're running benchmarks make sure you don't have other processes running make sure time machine isn't running in the background because the things we do with our computers do not get reserved uh
John:
unperturbable guaranteed resources with deadlines on all of them that's not the way we want our computers to work but if you have something that's supposed to control like a machine hurtling down the road that could kill somebody it's a good idea to have some part of the that system be if it's running software be real time such that you're never surprised by like
John:
Something taking twice as long as expected or some other process spinning up and making your thing slower and delaying something.
John:
And so that's what we mean when we need real time operating system.
John:
I'll put a link in the show notes to the Wikipedia page, which there are other various more vague definitions of it.
John:
But this is what we're talking about.
John:
Things happen on a guaranteed time.
John:
Resources are guaranteed.
John:
And nothing else that happens on the system can perturb those.
John:
And that is totally inappropriate for the thing that lets you play podcasts over Bluetooth in your car.
John:
So that's not going to be a real-time operating system.
John:
That is not essential functionality.
John:
Speedometers, is that essential?
John:
It would be useful because like if you want it to be as real-time as a physical speedometer used to be in the really old days...
John:
But in the end, the car still works without it.
John:
But when we say drive by wire and brake by wire, what we mean is lots of modern cars have a brake pedal that is not physically connected in any way to the braking system.
John:
It's just basically like an electronic switch that sends a signal to a computer that actuates the braking system.
John:
And they have steer-by-wire systems where your steering wheel is not connected to the front wheels physically, but instead is just connected to a thing that senses its position and then activates a bunch of electronic motors.
John:
And those probably don't even run an operating system at all, really.
John:
It's probably just embedded systems or whatever.
John:
But if there was any kind of involvement of any operating system or a kernel involved in those systems...
John:
It's probably a real-time operating system because you want pretty hard guarantees that when you turn the wheel under some very controlled deadline, the wheels of your car will also react in turn.
Casey:
Real-time follow-up from Hairline1 in the chat.
Casey:
Apparently Android Auto is not real-time.
Casey:
And Hairline One provided a page where there's a compare and contrast between QNX, which is the kind of de facto standard real-time OS that's used in most cars, versus Android Auto.
Casey:
And that's one of the cons for Android Automotive is that it's not real-time.
Casey:
And then as I was clicking around looking at QNX a little bit, it was written by two different people, Dan Dodge and Gordon Bell.
Casey:
And apparently Dan Dodge, as per Wikipedia, announced his retirement from QNX in 2015 and
Casey:
And then in mid to late 2016, it was reported that he joined Apple to work on the Project Titan thing, which I did not know.
Casey:
So there you go.
John:
I wonder what he's doing now.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So just to finish out this never-ending topic on CarPlay, Mark Garman writes, the limited rollout of the new version of CarPlay is focused on very high-end cars.
Casey:
In fact, the only model confirmed to be getting the new CarPlay is the Aston Martin DB12, which costs roughly $245,000 and up.
Casey:
Porsche hasn't said which model or models are getting the feature.
Casey:
Gurman says, I'm told that Apple has no plan in place to make money from the new software.
Casey:
As with the current version of CarPlay, the company isn't looking to charge users for it or force car manufacturers to pay to install it.
Casey:
Just for the record, Apple, if you are listening, if you would like to send me a DB12 to test for a little while, I am happy.
Casey:
I'm happy to do that at no cost to you.
Casey:
And I will happily feature that car in that experience on a full episode of this podcast.
Casey:
I promise that to you.
John:
They won't give you a press pass to any of their events, but they'll send you a $245,000 car.
John:
That's right.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
I'm here for it.
Casey:
I've waited.
Casey:
They knew what was coming.
Casey:
They knew I needed to build up the credit, so to speak, so I could get this.
Casey:
This is my moment.
Casey:
This is my time to shine.
Casey:
Please send me the DB12 whenever you're ready.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And not to drag this back down to the regulatory stuff, but there is a bunch of stuff in the DOJ complained about the potential threat of Apple extending its monopoly power to take over the car industry.
John:
And I hope you've seen as we've gone through the landscape and what Apple is currently doing that I don't think Android Automotive has much to worry about from CarPlay at this moment.
John:
I don't think so either.
Casey:
So we should probably do some Ask ATP, and we're going to start that right now with a question from Ask Cortex, episode 153.
John:
I love if we just steal whatever we want from other podcasts.
John:
It's fine.
John:
It's part of the community of podcasting.
Casey:
We are a melting pot.
Casey:
Stolen from Ask Cortex, number 153, Nick writes, how soon after waking up do you begin actively engaging with your phone or another screen?
Casey:
I don't want to answer this question, so Marco, how about you?
Marco:
I will give the answer that we all do because if we're all being honest, we all know I interact with my phone pretty much immediately after waking up.
John:
It says actively engaging.
John:
So I'm going to say that clarifying this question, I'm going to say turning off your alarm does not count.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Well, okay.
Marco:
So most days I just hit snooze, you know, once or twice, then get up.
Marco:
But when I go into the bathroom to like brush my teeth and stuff, I bring my phone with me.
John:
You're going to brush his little phone teeth.
Marco:
Usually I am reading, you know, I'm like doing my initial phone triage of check the email, you know, all that stuff.
Marco:
Usually I'm doing that while brushing my teeth.
John:
Well, wait a second.
John:
This is actually, this is, this is actually related.
John:
You wake up and immediately brush your teeth.
Marco:
Yes.
Casey:
Am I doing this wrong?
Casey:
Yes.
John:
I brush mine after breakfast.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
That is the correct answer.
Casey:
Now, using a communal cup to rinse is not the correct answer, but brushing your teeth after breakfast is the correct answer.
Marco:
See, now we're going to hear from all the dentists.
Marco:
What I read forever ago somewhere, which is not a very credible information source...
Marco:
is that you don't want all of the crap in your mouth from overnight.
Marco:
You don't want to consume that.
Marco:
So the idea is brush and get it out of your mouth as soon as you can when you wake up.
John:
You said something different than I thought you were going to say.
John:
No, I have never heard that.
John:
I also don't think that's a thing.
John:
But, you know, there's no harm in brushing before as long as you also brush after breakfast.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
I will allow that.
Casey:
Yeah, for me, I wake up and generally speaking, and this has been the case for most of my life, if I open my eyes even just to look at a clock –
Casey:
I will be, if it's after like, or if it's within an hour of when I normally need to wake up, the moment I open my eyes, that's it for the day.
Casey:
I'm up.
Casey:
And so that's generally speaking the way it works.
Casey:
And so if I open my eyes, I maybe will wait 15 seconds before I grab my phone and start screwing around on it.
Casey:
But yeah, it's pretty much instant.
Casey:
I don't use an alarm pretty much ever because Erin gets out of bed before me.
Casey:
And even though she is effectively a ninja when she gets out of bed, I am a light sleeper, like I said, when it gets to morning time.
Casey:
And so by her getting out of bed before me, it wakes me up.
Casey:
And yeah, in the time it takes her to walk from the bed to the bathroom, and I assure you our house is not that large, I have already grabbed my phone and started looking at something.
John:
Does she use an alarm?
Casey:
She does, although more often than not, she'll wake up before the alarm by a little bit, and so she'll have silenced it before it goes off.
Casey:
But again, just her getting out of bed will wake me up, even if her alarm doesn't.
John:
I guess I'm the only one out here...
John:
Hold in strong against the irresistible draw of the phone.
John:
So like both of you, apparently, my phone is reachable from my bed.
John:
It's on my nightstand where it charges.
John:
I don't use it as my alarm clock.
John:
I have a super crappy ancient clock radio, Sony digital clock radio thing that I use as my alarm.
Casey:
Is it the square white one that we all had in the 90s?
John:
No, but it would be a familiar model.
John:
It's not great, but I've had it forever.
John:
I think what I should probably just do is record that.
John:
I hate all the phone alarms.
John:
The only time I use my phone is when I'm traveling, and I have PTSD from it waking me up at 5 a.m.
John:
to get a line on WWDC, and all the alarm tones that I use just give me bad memories of travel stress, and that's just a me thing.
John:
Anyway, so I have my clock radio.
John:
I do set an alarm on it.
John:
My routine on weekdays is very well defined.
John:
Sometimes I wake up before my alarm.
John:
Sometimes I don't or whatever.
John:
But anyway, I get out of bed.
John:
I pick up my phone and I put it in my pocket.
John:
I take my AirPods and put them in my pocket too.
John:
And then I eventually make my way downstairs and put my phone and my AirPods in the downstairs location, which is like on a little sideboard table or whatever.
John:
And I do my morning routine, which...
John:
as involved at various times and still does involve getting my kids ready for school and currently involves driving my daughter to school and dropping her off at school that whole morning routine happens and i literally do not look at my phone i don't even look to see if there are notifications on it what so because i remember i put i put it in my pocket i put it on the sideboard put everything downstairs here's here's how we know john doesn't run servers
John:
A, I don't really want servers, but B, if my phone made a noise or vibrated with a notification, I would probably look at it.
John:
My notifications are so, I have so few of them, that's probably not going to happen unless literally somebody calls me.
John:
I guess if I got a text message, my phone would vibrate.
John:
I have text message notifications on, but I get so few text messages, right?
John:
But in the absence of any surprising thing,
John:
My phone screen goes unlooked at, I guess, until essentially, well, it used to be until I would get in the car to, like, drive kids.
John:
But now the kids don't let me play my music in the car anyway.
John:
But I do take my phone and stick it to the MagSafe mount.
John:
But it's not doing anything there except for, like, trickle charging, right?
John:
So I bring my phone with me in case, like, I get into an accident and need to call somebody or whatever.
John:
Like when I leave the house, I have my phone, but still I have not actively engaged with the screen.
John:
Only when I get back after the morning has been done, everybody's off to where they need to go and I'm back in the house.
John:
That is when I sit down and look at my phone screen, usually when I'm eating breakfast.
Casey:
That is bananas to me.
Casey:
I thought it was bananas enough that Snell keeps his... Well, I say that as though it's bad.
Casey:
I thought it was unusual that Snell charges his phone in a different room.
Casey:
That's not bad.
Casey:
It's actually probably healthy, but it's unusual.
Casey:
But for you not to even look at it until you've made an entire school run, that is...
Casey:
Wow.
John:
Yeah, because at this point, I'm waking up 7-ish, 7.30, and then I'm back at the house after dropping my daughter off at a little bit after 9.
John:
So my first active engagement with the phone screen every day is, you know, an hour.
John:
Wait, it takes you an hour and a half to drop her off?
John:
That's not how long it takes.
John:
That's when I wake up versus when I drop her off.
John:
Well, what are you doing then?
John:
Go downstairs, clean up whatever mess was in the kitchen, make her lunch, make sure she's awake, deal with whatever last-minute emergencies there are related to school stuff, like things like that.
John:
And the thing is, because this is specifically asked about my phone screen, it didn't ask about my Mac screen.
John:
And if I manage to get everything ready and I'm waiting for her to finish getting ready, I may go in and...
John:
and look at what's happening on my mac and look at my email on my mac screen for two minutes usually i don't have that kind of time but because i'm usually trying to chase her out of the house because she's not a morning person um but if i do have time that's what i know too but my phone my phone screen does not get looked at until i'm back at the house and i'm about to eat breakfast and even then like i'll put the phone on the table and then i'll get my breakfast get all my stuff or whatever and like as i'm you know eating breakfast i'm putting the food into my mouth then i'm unlocking my phone and probably going to mastodon
John:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Good for you.
Casey:
I mean, I'm poking fun a little bit, but good for you.
Casey:
That's probably I would argue that is a much healthier relationship than I have.
Casey:
So credit to you.
John:
I mean, the thing is, like, I'm also not a morning person.
John:
So if I woke up a half an hour earlier, I could stare at my phone for a half an hour in bed, but I'd rather be asleep.
John:
So like it's I get up when I have to to do the things I have to do in the morning, which involves, you know, used to be hurting two people and I was just hurting one person.
John:
But, you know, and like I said, depending on what kind of disaster is in the kitchen from the night before they didn't get cleaned up, I'm dealing with that, emptying the dishwasher, doing all that stuff in the morning, making my daughter breakfast if that's what she wants me to do at that time, figuring out if she does want me to make her breakfast.
John:
There's a lot of child serving going on.
John:
Once all my kids are off at college, maybe this routine will change and I'll stare at my phone in the bed like a normal person.
John:
But right now it's not happening.
John:
And then on weekends...
John:
I try to sleep on weekends because I don't have to do anything in the morning if I'm lucky.
John:
And in weekends, I will, if I'm able actually to sleep in, I will grab my phone and look at it in bed before I get out of bed.
John:
Because it's the luxury of the weekend that I don't have to go and deal with anything.
John:
If I'm lucky, if that happens to be a day, if I don't have to drive someone somewhere to do something, I will look at it for a few minutes before I get out of bed.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
I've learned a lot tonight.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Brian asks, you mentioned on a recent episode that we'll probably not upgrade to 128-bit in our lifetime.
Casey:
What would be the impetus for going from 64-bit to 128-bit?
Casey:
Wasn't this about memory in 8 to 16 to 32 to 64?
Casey:
Wasn't it about addressable memory?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Well, sort of.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So this came up like I was talking about how like it came up like why did mobile phone software age out like the early mobile phone software aged out of being able to run so quickly compared to early computer software.
Marco:
And one of the things I said was like, well, we did a bunch of transitions over the last few years like 32 to 64 bit that we probably like we probably won't have to do that again in our lifetime for that particular one.
Marco:
And the reason why is I mean, obviously, like there's
Marco:
Not every value that processors deal with is 64-bits these days.
Marco:
There's all sorts of different ways that processors can deal with larger numbers or larger, wider data paths than this.
Marco:
But 64-bit is kind of like when usually we're referring to whether a processor is 32-bit or 64-bit, usually we are referring to the size of the kind of regular integer type as well as the memory address.
Marco:
So when you are referring to an address in memory, that's usually the size of the pointer that refers to the memory addresses.
Marco:
And so all sorts of software details and tricks rely on these sizes and everything like that.
Marco:
So it's fairly important to how software is compiled and how it's made and everything else.
Marco:
And of course, it implies limits of how much memory you can address and things like that.
Marco:
And the reason why we are unlikely to make that jump again in our lifetime to go from 64-bit to 128-bit on that kind of level is do the math.
Marco:
See what kind of numbers you are dealing with when you compare 2 to the 64th to 2 to the 128th.
Marco:
And I think what you will find is that all of those doublings that are happening with every single one of those bits really add up.
Marco:
And so the amount of resources that we would be talking about that would require over 64 bits of address space.
Marco:
I don't have the number in front of me right this second.
Marco:
I can look it up while John explains why I'm wrong.
Marco:
But it's a large amount of memory, a very, very large amount of memory.
John:
No, you're not wrong.
John:
But the more important comparison is 32 bit.
John:
Two to the 32nd is a tractable number.
John:
It's like four billion.
John:
You can think of all sorts of real world problems where being able to count up to four billion is a limiting factor.
John:
It's like, especially if it's a sign thing and now it's negative two billion to positive two billion or whatever.
John:
Like, OK, well, there's more than four billion people on Earth.
John:
Right.
John:
So there's one.
John:
Right.
John:
There's more than four billion, you know, computers on Earth.
John:
Right.
John:
So if you had to assign addresses to them.
John:
So we have a IPv4 versus IPv6.
Marco:
And in storage space, it's four gigs.
John:
Yeah.
John:
For four, you know, two to the 32nd.
John:
There's lots of real world problems where we need to count higher than that.
John:
Two to the 64th, on the other hand, I believe is enough to give like a memory address to every grain of sand on the planet or something like that.
John:
Like it's really big.
John:
It's a really big number.
John:
Right.
John:
And so practically speaking, yes, of course, you use floating point numbers to count higher or whatever.
John:
But practically speaking, we're ever going to need to address more than two to the 32nd bits of RAM.
John:
Yeah, we already do.
John:
Right.
John:
That's why we have 64 bit.
John:
Are we ever going to need to address more than two to the 64th bits of RAM?
John:
Maybe someday, but not anytime soon.
John:
Let me tell you, because that's a lot of RAM, right?
John:
This is a tremendous.
John:
It's so much RAM, in fact, that yes, even though 64-bit processors have 64-bit integers and 64-bit pointers, quote unquote, if you look at the hardware, almost all of it doesn't use all 64 bits for the hardware addressing because they're like, come on.
John:
how much RAM is ever going to be in your phone.
John:
They will not use all those address lines in the hardware sense.
John:
They will save a lot of money by only using like 40 address lines, you know, from 32 up to 40.
John:
Like again, those doublings add up real fast.
John:
There's no reason to put enough address lines.
John:
And like even operating systems will just like ignore the top end bits of pointers to say, just ignore those pointers.
John:
No one's ever going to have that amount of RAM because you know,
John:
again maybe someday but two to the 64th is huge right so that's why even though nintendo 64 came out and said it's better because it's 64 well don't worry next year there'll be nintendo 128 no there won't i mean they can call it that but there's no reason to do that there's no benefit to that there's tremendous cost
John:
And there are no sort of real world problems that we're tackling these days that require more than two to 64th of anything to the 64th bits of RAM to the 64th things that we're counting.
John:
Again, floating point exists, setting aside the gaps in the numbers or whatever.
John:
So someday, yeah.
John:
We'll get there, but not in our lifetime, except for in very special applications.
John:
I'm sure some supercomputer person is going to say, oh, we use a 512 bit interface because it's really important.
John:
Yeah, there are specialist applications, but for your phone, for your personal computer, there is lots of cost and currently zero benefit to going to 128 bit.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsor this week, Factor.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Our new member perk is called ATP Overtime.
Marco:
This is an extra segment that we do for members exclusive.
Marco:
This week's overtime is on the future of Apple IDs.
Marco:
In particular, Apple ID was recently rumored to be rebranded to the Apple account in the near future.
Marco:
And so we're going to talk about that in this week's ATP Overtime.
Marco:
Thank you so much once again for the members who support us, atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
John, I hear you've been having some troubles with software these days.
John:
This is a thing I have with graphics programs in particular.
John:
I guess the only time I've ever really felt satisfied that I didn't have the problem about to describe is probably in some college course that I was taking where I think, don't quote me on this, but I think I was using AutoCAD.
John:
um people who know cad programs probably know or when i describe it but anyway this it was a cad program it was for some computer aided design thing where you could design something i forget if there was no 3d printers then i forget how we were manufacturing and stuff but it was basically just had to design physical things in a way that they could be manufactured right um and the cad program you know it had pallets and tools and a mouse cursor and the same thing you know all the stuff you used to but it also had a command line um
John:
uh and the things you did with tools you could also do from the command line and i feel like that was the only time i really felt like i could make the program always do what i wanted uh maybe it'll make sense when i describe what i was trying to do with this graphics program uh but the command line thing was very useful so
John:
uh i use affinity designer as my vector drawing program to do most of the artwork for the t-shirts that we sell uh stay tuned for our wwc sale coming up sometime in the future um and it's a vector program like like illustrator where you're not laying out pixels on a big grid you are defining these vectors mathematically and then so it's resolution independence you can make it any size you want um
John:
And when you're doing stuff like that, because you're not laying down a bunch of pixels and everything needs to be mathematically defined, these tools usually have interesting, let's say, ways to manipulate the things that you have drawn.
John:
Kind of like a CAD program, right?
John:
So the problem I was facing for one of the shirt designs that we've come up with for this year's sale, which I'm not going to spoil, but you'll see when we announce the sale at some point, is
John:
I was using Affinity Designer's tools to draw a shape.
John:
And in vector drawing program parlance, I call that a stroke.
John:
And the stroke is just a mathematical definition, right?
John:
And you can give the stroke a width, or it could be zero width, right?
John:
If it's zero width, it's just a totally invisible thing that you can, you know, curve text along or whatever.
John:
But I wanted to give the stroke a width, which means this is a line and it's going to show up on the page and say it's just a circle or whatever it is.
John:
And when you do the stroke width, you give the stroke width in whatever, you know, however you laid out the document, whether it's in inches or points or whatever.
John:
You can even give it a stroke width in pixels, despite the fact that it's a vector drawing program.
John:
One of the tools Affinity has that most vector programs have is, okay, how do you want me to draw this stroke though?
John:
Do you want me to draw the stroke?
John:
It's like a one centimeter stroke.
John:
You want me to draw it in black, right?
John:
Should it be centered on the path that you've defined?
John:
So like half of the black is on the outside of the circle and half of the black is on the inside if you're visualizing the stroke going around?
John:
Or should the stroke be all on the inside of the path?
John:
Or should the stroke be all on the outside of the path or various things in between?
John:
This is a common feature of vector programs, right?
John:
And I wanted this for the thing I was drawing because I wanted the stroke to be entirely on the outside of my shape because it was important that the inside proportions remain the same.
John:
So the entire stroke width needs to be on the outside, right?
John:
And then at a certain point, what I wanted to do was essentially slice samurai sword style through the shape that I had drawn.
John:
Right.
John:
And in AutoCAD and things like that, this is exactly the type of thing I would do probably from the command line to say, all right, here's the shape, do this, you know, define a new line, like a line that goes through the thing and slice through it or whatever.
John:
Uh,
John:
Um, stuff like that always seem to be ready at hand in AutoCAD.
John:
Extend this line until it hits that line.
John:
Make this thing perpendicular to that.
John:
Cut this thing here, right?
John:
Those things seem to work for me in AutoCAD.
John:
And in this program, if any designer, there's 15 ways for you to use a shape to chop another shape.
John:
They have all the Boolean operations.
John:
You can take a circle and a triangle, lay them over each other, and you can and them and or them or XOR them or subtract them and just like...
John:
Everything you could possibly imagine.
John:
You can draw a line through a thing.
John:
You can add nodes to a line and break the curve at this point and break the curve at that point.
John:
Like there's 55 ways to do this.
John:
And let me just stipulate right now.
John:
There's probably a way to do what I'm about to complain about in Affinity Designer.
John:
My complaint is I could not find it.
John:
All right.
John:
So here was the problem.
John:
I do the thing.
John:
I have the shape.
John:
It's a stroke is on the outside of the path.
John:
I draw the thing through it.
John:
I'm like, slice it here.
John:
And it slices it.
John:
And the second it slices, the stroke moves to be centered on the path.
John:
Because the definition of outside of the path only really makes sense for a closed shape, like a circle.
John:
And once I had sliced that circle, what is the outside and what is the inside?
John:
And as far as I was concerned, well, you know what the outside is?
John:
It's whatever it was before I sliced the damn thing.
John:
Because I had it set the outside.
John:
You knew it was a closed shape.
John:
You consider that the outside.
John:
I sliced it in half.
John:
Just leave the stroke where it is.
John:
I know it's confusing about where it might be.
John:
Maybe don't let me change it after that or something.
John:
But the bottom line is I had a shape.
John:
The stroke was on the outside of the path.
John:
I cut it and the stroke immediately moved to the inside.
John:
And this was a problem that was repeated, let's say, multiple times over this design.
John:
And I was like, how am I going to fix this?
John:
I have to go back and redraw these things.
John:
And I couldn't like mask them because I need these transparent areas and everything like that.
John:
And it just made me think, look, program, I know you can do this.
John:
I know you have it in you.
John:
It's clear you can.
John:
It's just a question of do your tools, are your tools orthogonal enough to let me accomplish a thing that I know must be possible?
John:
And the answer as far as me flailing and doing Google searches and YouTube searches and everything like that was no, I could not figure it out.
John:
i had to redraw every single one of those strokes with the line centered on the path moving the path by eye to try to and anytime you do anything by eye in a vector drawing program you've lost you've lost the game it's kind of like in a real time when a deadline isn't met anytime you are aligning something by eye in a vector program you have 100 lost if
John:
You're like me on your freaking XDR and you're zoomed in to 17,000% trying to align it.
John:
And you just know it's like, no matter how much you zoom, it'll always be off by a little bit.
John:
Like, I really hope bad designers are nodding their heads in an acknowledgement of, yes, you can zoom forever and you realize you never have it dead on, right?
John:
Now, the good thing for me is I understand this is going to be printed on a T-shirt at like maybe 300 to 600 DPI.
John:
So I don't need like, it's not as important as machining a part for the use inside an engine or something, right?
John:
So I can get away with fudging this, but it annoys me.
John:
I don't want to have to fudge it.
John:
I want it to be mathematically perfect like it used to be when the stroke was on the outside of the line until I cut the shape in half.
John:
So this is my plea.
John:
For anybody making any kind of tool, be like AutoCAD.
John:
If you have a set of operations that you can perform or a set of things that you can adjust, make sure they're all orthogonal, which means they don't interfere with each other.
John:
If you can do A and you can do B, doing A in some circumstances doesn't make B impossible.
John:
They're orthogonal.
John:
They're unrelated.
John:
They're at right angles to each other.
John:
If I can stroke the outside of a line and I can cut a shape, cutting a shape should not make it impossible for me to stroke the outside of a line anymore, especially if the line is already stroked on the outside.
John:
So if any affinity designer, people are listening to this and you can just tell me how to do it.
John:
It's too late now.
John:
I'm already done with the design.
John:
But for future reference, I would love to know.
John:
And if it literally isn't possible in an affinity designer, please make it possible.
John:
I know this company has just been acquired by a larger company, which probably spells doom for the program, but that's a shame.
John:
But anyway, until that happens, I would love to know how to do this.
Thank you.