Rotate Those Tennis Balls
Marco:
I have finally reached an important milestone.
Casey:
You already got glasses.
Casey:
Have you bought a boat?
Marco:
I regret to inform you that I now need to use reading glasses when using a laptop.
Marco:
I have finally crossed threshold that when the laptop is on my lap, that distance has finally gotten a little fuzzy.
John:
So did you get the ones that the two lenses magnetically snap to each other?
John:
Or did you just get a regular one that's on like a stringer on your neck?
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So far, here's my glasses situation and setup so far.
Marco:
So I have a pair of progressives that I believe I mentioned.
Marco:
I got about, I don't know, like around Thanksgiving I started wearing them.
Marco:
So I got a pair of progressives that is nothing on top and reading on the bottom.
Marco:
I'm wearing them almost all the time now, like doing stuff around.
Marco:
But the problem with progressives is that the part that is in focus for the reading is really only like the bottom middle of your field of view.
Marco:
So as a result, those are actually pretty bad for computer use.
Marco:
Because for computer use, you want like a large, flat rectangle to be entirely in focus, not just like the part of it that your head is most pointing towards near the bottom.
Marco:
So, progressives, I have found, are great for pretty much all of the rest of life except computers.
Marco:
Now, I don't know if you've heard, I do occasionally use computers.
Casey:
Would you say you're doing a lot with computers right now?
Marco:
Yeah, as always.
Marco:
So, progressives, again, they're wonderful for all other situations, but...
Marco:
computers they're they're not so great for um for computers i just need reading glasses just like low power like you know 0.5 or 0.75 uh reading glasses for computer use did you get them already so i've tried a bunch of i have a bunch of like cheap ones from amazon basically and they're fine um like one that i carry around in my backpack um there's this company that makes um these really flat folding ones that they're called thin optics um
Marco:
And they're like $40, which for a pair of Amazon reading glasses is very expensive.
Marco:
But what's great about the thin optics is that their case folds completely flat.
Marco:
So it ends up being maybe like three or four millimeters thick and closes magnetically.
Marco:
the case is pretty fragile i've already broken one case um but the glasses themselves like they're because they're super super flat they're not very attractive it almost looks like the 3d glasses you get in a movie theater like that like kind of construction of just like really like thin bare metal like i i will say i recommend if you get them the um the ones with the round clear frames are the ones that i like the best i have like the rectangles and the and the rounds the rounds i think look a lot nicer um
Marco:
they're not like fashionable enough that you'd want to wear them in public more than you had to but in a pinch like you can always have like it's so thin you can keep that thing in your pocket like i know they have like some folding ones where you can like stick on the back of your phone case i saw our contractor who did our renovations here he did he had one of those like the ones that stuck to the back of his phone case all the time so that would and he you know pulled them out constantly to refer to stuff so that was i thought i thought a good move can you give us a link
Marco:
Yeah, I'll get one for the show notes.
John:
Because I'm picturing you like an anime villain now of like flat, you know.
Casey:
So if you go to thinoptics.com, it's spelled exactly as you would expect.
Marco:
Yeah, and I just get them on Amazon.
Marco:
I don't know if they have like an official store.
Marco:
They don't ship super fast.
Marco:
It's usually like a week out.
Marco:
But I have found like if you if you want a pair of reading glasses that you can literally have all the time with you without just doing like the chain around the neck thing, I have found those to be the best.
Marco:
But again, they are very thin, a little bit odd looking and awfully expensive for reading glasses.
Marco:
So my other strategy for reading glasses is just like I just have cheap ones all over the house.
Marco:
Like I get those like thin titanium, I guess.
Marco:
temples are those the sticks what are we yeah so the thin titanium sticks with like the frameless plastic ones uh plastic uh lenses that you can get for like 15 bucks like i've i have those all over the place um and that's that's kind of my strategy for like nightstands you know next to the living room couch that kind of thing holiday gift idea uh you gotta get a gotta get them around your neck
John:
Then you can have one perched on top of your head and also one around your neck and be looking for your glasses.
John:
Awesome.
Marco:
And I feel, I know I can tell already that I'm maybe one year away from glasses at my desk for my desktop computer too.
Marco:
It isn't that different of a distance.
Marco:
So I can tell it's close.
Marco:
The desktop monitor is arm distance.
Marco:
I'm not quite there, but I'm getting close.
Marco:
I can feel it.
Yeah.
Casey:
We have some great news.
Casey:
We have a new ATP member special, ATP Insider School, then and now.
Casey:
This was a question from a listener.
Casey:
Forgive me, I don't recall who it was offhand.
Casey:
And John, you kind of brought this to us.
Casey:
So do you want to give us the nickel tour of what the member special is?
John:
Yeah, the idea was the question was like, what do you think school is like for your kids?
John:
Because we all have kids who are either in school now or recently been in school.
John:
And how do you think your own self would have fared in today's school versus what school was like when you were a kid?
John:
So that was the jumping off point for the special.
John:
And we ended up basically talking about what school was like for us and what school was like for our kids.
John:
And we did try to imagine ourselves in the current scenarios and various permutations.
John:
But it really just ended up being a big exploration of schooling from the perspective of parents who have kids in school and obviously from the perspective of people who are once kids who are in school.
John:
And I was there representing the 80s and you two were representing the 90s.
John:
And then our kids have been spread pretty well over the 2000s.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
This was one of those member specials slash topics where I thought, and I said to Aaron before we recorded, it'll be like half an hour, which I know enough about us to know how it'll be longer than that.
Casey:
We ended up going damn near two, I think.
Casey:
So there was more here than I thought, which is typically how it works out.
Casey:
But it was a lot more and a lot more interesting than I expected.
Casey:
I came into this
Casey:
slightly begrudgingly, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Casey:
So HPM Insider School, then and now, if you are not a member, you can go ahead and join at atp.fm slash join, where you get our not guaranteed, but almost guaranteed monthly member specials.
Casey:
You can no longer get your limited time or discounts on limited time merch sales, which actually, come to think of it, I have yet to see anyone say, I missed it.
Casey:
Maybe you're learning.
Casey:
Maybe you're learning not to admit it.
John:
I can do it for you, Casey.
John:
You want to know, I actually almost missed it.
John:
I didn't miss that part of it because I don't, I pretty good about doing that.
John:
But what I did miss is, did you notice I didn't do my normal, like there's one hour left, there's five hours.
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
And no frame game.
Casey:
Did you miss it?
John:
I mean, I kind of did say like, it was earlier in the day.
John:
I was like, oh, there's 10 hours left.
John:
I'm like, I should wait until there's like three hours or something.
John:
And then when it came time to be around two or three hours, I think I was watching a TV show and I said, and then by the time the TV show was over, I'm like, oh, the sale's over.
John:
whoops so sorry everybody but let this be a lesson to you you can't rely on me nagging you the last oh i wouldn't have i would have would have gotten it but i didn't if i hadn't seen your one hour to go thing you just got to plan better like there's three weeks to do this anyway so i'm happy that i didn't see anybody complaining about the fact that they missed it i think uh everyone is all learning together that uh three weeks is plenty of time to get your orders in and we just want to see those mac pro believe shirts at wwdc as usual
Casey:
So anyways, I got myself sidetracked.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
But yeah, if you want to hear this member special or any of the others, what did we say we're up to?
Casey:
Like 15 or 20 at this point?
Casey:
I don't remember.
Casey:
A bunch.
Casey:
Go to atp.fm slash join.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We need to do some follow-up.
Casey:
I haven't been this excited about follow-up in a long time.
Casey:
I have done the unthinkable.
Casey:
I've asked Marco to do even more homework.
Casey:
And not only that, consume yet another content snack.
Casey:
And I've done it for good reason, which we'll discover here in a minute.
Casey:
What have I asked you to watch, Marco?
Casey:
Well, it's a new Apple Vision Pro adventure episode called Hill Climb.
Casey:
And this is about a woman who is attempting to climb up Pikes Peak, which is a, I guess, a hill or mountain in Colorado here in the States.
Casey:
And she's trying to be the first woman to do it in under 10 minutes.
Casey:
And this, I thought, was incredible.
Casey:
In a car.
Casey:
In a car.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
You're leaving that part out.
Casey:
That's a pretty important detail.
Casey:
Yeah, that is a very important detail.
Casey:
It would be really hard to climb a mountain in under 10 minutes.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
That was a critical detail that I 100% left out.
Marco:
Racing up a mountain in a race car.
Casey:
Racing up a mountain in a race-prepped Toyota Supra.
Casey:
So, Marco, what did you think of it?
Marco:
It was, I think, the best one of these I have seen.
Marco:
Good.
Marco:
The best one of the adventure ones I have seen.
Marco:
Possibly my favorite of the immersive films so far.
Marco:
I think my favorite might still be the submarine one because I think that one looked a lot more like a stage play, which I think the Vision Pro is very good at.
Marco:
this one relied a lot a lot on you know motion showing a car and stuff so it was like a little bit I got a little bit motion sick with this one and I would say if you are motion sensitive you probably shouldn't watch any immersive video but especially probably not this one but I liked it I think
Marco:
It did still repeat some of the mistakes that I've seen or the non-ideal choices that we've talked about before of being super close to people where it's kind of creepy, having a lot of cuts in certain parts, a lot of motion, not quite being sure where to focus.
Marco:
But what was nice about this one is that
Marco:
the there was almost no soft focus almost all scenes were set to basically infinite focus and so you didn't have like focus problems looking like you know in different parts of the frame and it was a pretty you know fun story of like this woman racing up this mountain like it's it's a dramatic thing and
Marco:
The car looked cool and the lighting was cool with the sunset and everything.
Marco:
It was well done.
Marco:
So it was still just a content snack, but it was a pretty good one.
Marco:
And afterwards, you won't want any real snacks because you'll feel a little bit sick.
Marco:
So it actually is also good maybe as a dieting tool.
John:
And by the way, just to save us from people sending this in because Marco had mentioned stage play, not this week, but next week we will talk about that service that says they're going to record a bunch of stage plays and release them on Apple Vision Pro.
John:
So we do know about that.
John:
We'll get to it next week.
Casey:
Yes, thank you.
Casey:
Also, we'll probably talk in the future about the U2 promo that has also just dropped, I think, like an hour ago.
Casey:
But anyways, what did you think of the star of the film, Laura Hayes?
Marco:
Me?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
She was cool.
Marco:
I didn't know her before this.
Marco:
Are we following her career or something?
Marco:
I don't know.
Casey:
Would you do me a favor, please?
Casey:
Would you go ahead and open the short audio clip that I had prepared for you before the show?
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
One minute.
Marco:
I have not heard this yet.
Marco:
Here we go.
Casey:
So before you play it, to be clear, Marco has not heard what he's about to hear.
Casey:
This is only like 10-ish seconds.
Casey:
And I told him under penalty of death, he is not allowed to listen to this until right now.
Casey:
oh my god this was from when we went to driving school was she the instructor who drove us on the hot lap she was the instructor that drove you on the hot lap i was watching this and i'm sorry i was watching this and i f***ing s*** myself
Casey:
when I saw her because I was like oh my god oh my god is that oh my god that's the same Laura that was so to back up in 2013 underscore said to Marco and I we've told this story before and we did a whole neutral on it but in 2013 we underscore said to us I'm turning 30
Casey:
And I want to go to BMW Performance Driving School in South Carolina.
Casey:
And I'd like you two to go with me.
Casey:
And, of course, Marco and I didn't even take a breath before we said absolutely yes.
Casey:
And so Marco drove down to Northern Virginia, picked up Dave.
Casey:
The two of you came here and, if I recall correctly, spent the night.
Casey:
And then we drove down in the M5 down to South Carolina, and we did a two-day performance driving school.
Casey:
And Laura Hayes, the star of this Apple Vision Adventure thing, was one of the instructors at BMW Driving School when we were there in 2013.
Casey:
How small a world is this?
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
I was so desperately hoping that you would not place her because this would have been so bizarre.
John:
boring if you did i totally didn't like i i mean that was so long ago it was like i remember the lap are we all can we just sit back and be amazed at the fact that casey yes somehow yes remember he can't remember what we talked about on the podcast last week but he remembers in 2013 the person who drove not him but someone else around the track at the bmw racing school
John:
It was a hell of a laugh, by the way.
Casey:
It was amazing.
John:
I have a theory on this.
John:
I'm going to go for the arm in the bucket of ice water theory that I've talked about in Rectifs.
John:
You do experiments where if you put someone in discomfort while asking them to memorize something, it sticks in their memory better.
John:
Not just discomfort, but any sort of dramatic thing, which is why memories of trauma are big.
John:
The ice bucket thing is they just had someone memorize a list of pictures.
John:
They just show you a bunch of pictures, and then later you have to repeat back what they showed you.
John:
And one group just did it normal, and the other group did it with their arms sitting in a bucket of ice water, and the ice water people crushed it because being in discomfort and pain causes the memories to stick better.
John:
So the excitement of going to the BMW driving school and potentially the discomfort of high G-forces while going around the track and just generally having an extraordinary experience made the memories stick, whereas our podcast is just too boring for Casey to remember what happens on it.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
I don't know what my deal is, but I think it's because that two days was so much fun.
Casey:
And with some of my best friends, but also having an experience so unlike anything I'd ever done before and mostly since.
Casey:
No, I thought it was incredible.
Casey:
And so I'm watching this video.
Casey:
And I see her and I'm like, holy crap, I think that's the lady from driving school.
Casey:
And I did just a quick spot of Googling and sure enough, I was right.
Casey:
And so I was flabbergasted.
Casey:
Now, I did the same thing with Underscore.
Casey:
I didn't speak with him verbally, but I sent him the link to the hill climb thing.
Casey:
And I said, what did you think?
Casey:
And he said, oh, it was good, whatever.
Casey:
And I said, what did you think of the host or the star or whatever?
Casey:
And he basically said the same thing.
Casey:
Oh, she was cool.
Casey:
I was like, did you recognize her?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Wait.
Casey:
So yeah, I am not only stunned that I remembered, well, anything, but I remembered something that Underscore didn't remember.
Casey:
And that, my friends, is an actual miracle.
Casey:
So yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Casey:
In any case, yeah, that never happens.
Casey:
So I just thought that was hilarious.
Casey:
And as much as I did genuinely enjoy the hill climb, like 10, 15 minute thing, it was just such a weird small world moment.
Casey:
Like never in a million years did I think when we were on episode like 20 or something like that of ATP, then well, I mean, neutral was dead, but only just at the time.
Casey:
And here it is, you know, 12 years later.
Casey:
And we're talking about one of our instructors at driving school.
Casey:
What a weird small world.
John:
That was pretty cool.
John:
We'll have a link in the show notes.
John:
You can watch a video of Marco being driven around the track by the star of this new hill climb.
Casey:
This is the same lady.
John:
It's on Vimeo.
John:
That's how old the video is.
John:
It's on Vimeo.
Casey:
Yeah, I had uploaded it.
Casey:
Now, I had uploaded it, but Marco was the...
Casey:
key to this because when we were at driving school, they had these at the time relatively advanced, but looking at it, you know, 12 years on very rudimentary, um, like performance computers or really data loggers and like camera capture things.
Casey:
And they gave you a USB key when you got there and you could plug in your USB key as you're doing your instruction and whatnot.
Casey:
And so you have, you know, videos and recordings of what you were doing and
Casey:
which is super cool.
Casey:
But the key was at the end of the two-day experience, they said, hey, you're all dismissed in a happy sense.
Casey:
You're all dismissed.
Casey:
You can leave if you want.
Casey:
But for what it's worth, if you would like, you can go on what they called a hot lap with one of the instructors.
Casey:
And you would pile in these then-new BMW M3s.
Casey:
They were E92 M3s, so V8s.
Casey:
And
Casey:
they'll take you on a lap of the track of the driving school.
Casey:
And I believe it was right before this, and I will never forget this, that the head of the driving school, Donny Isley, which is another name that I somehow remember, I don't know why, said to all the instructors that were going out, hey...
Casey:
It's October and we've already used up our tire budget for the entire year.
Casey:
I don't know if you remember this, Marco, but we've used the tire budget for the entire year.
Casey:
Please go gentle.
Casey:
And that lasted for maybe the first half of the first turn.
Casey:
And then all of the instructors were pretty much freaking sideways the entire time.
Casey:
It was amazing.
Casey:
And the key here, though, is that Marco, unlike me, Marco had the presence of mind to plug his USB key into that car's receptacle or whatever.
Casey:
Oh, that's right.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So you had you had on your key a recording of your hot lap.
Casey:
Now, I was the car in front of your car, if I recall correctly.
Casey:
And at one point we actually like clipped a cone or something like that.
Casey:
And you commented on it in the video.
Casey:
But you you at least had the presence of mind to record it where I did not.
Casey:
And so this is all it's on my Vimeo account, which I haven't looked at in years.
Casey:
But it's all thanks to your smart thinking at the time in October 2013.
Marco:
I will take a bow at my own awesomeness.
Casey:
Please do.
Casey:
So yeah, I just thought, I mean, I wouldn't have generally made you do this content snack.
Casey:
And to your credit, you did not whine at all.
Casey:
But I hope you see now why I was so insistent and persistent about you consuming this content snack.
Marco:
Yeah, okay, that is fair.
Marco:
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Casey:
I have a little bit of quick follow-up.
Casey:
I mentioned offhandedly, I think, last episode that, or maybe it was a couple episodes ago, that, see, I can't remember, John, that my AirPods Pro charging case, or excuse me, my AirPods Pro Mark II charging case, wasn't charging via Qi charging.
Casey:
And I had a listener reach out, and through a weird circumstance and series of events, they had a charging case that they weren't using.
Casey:
Trust me, it makes sense.
Casey:
It's just not worth getting into.
Casey:
And they offered very kindly to send it to me,
Casey:
So that I would have a charging case that would work, you know, via G charging.
Casey:
And I only just got it connected, I think it was either yesterday or this morning, I forget which.
Casey:
And I've only tried this a couple times.
Casey:
So take this with a fair bit of salt.
Casey:
But interestingly, this brand, well, brand new to me, I don't think it was a very old, I mean, the thing is in pristine condition.
Casey:
This charging case still isn't working.
Casey:
So it's the same buds, a totally different charging case, still doesn't want to charge via cheat.
Casey:
Why would it have anything to do with the buds, whether or not the case is charging?
Casey:
Now, again, I haven't done rigorous testing on this.
Casey:
And I also have a slight theory that it relates to whether or not the right AirPod is in the case.
Casey:
Because I feel like it did charge a little bit when the right AirPod was in my ear.
Casey:
Perhaps I'd set it next to the case for testing purposes.
Casey:
I agree, John.
Casey:
That's not the way you should normally use AirPods.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Something weird is afoot.
Casey:
I don't know what it is.
Casey:
I've got to do some more testing, but if you've heard specifically of something like this, please feel free to reach out to me.
Casey:
I'd love to hear what you have to say.
John:
You can go to the Apple store.
John:
I mean, I know they're not under warranty or anything, but they can probably diagnose it for it.
John:
I don't know anything about Qi, but is there some kind of handshake procedure before the charging begins and if you have a wonky AirPod?
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
Oh, and I should mention I tried it on like a...
Casey:
piece of garbage, like 10 or 15 buck.
Casey:
Like, I don't even remember what it is, like a Belkin charger or something like that.
Casey:
But I also charged it or tried charging it on a modern MagSafe puck.
Casey:
And the same behavior was, it was exhibited in both cases.
Casey:
So again, I got to do more testing, but it's so freaking weird that I wanted to cast about and see if anyone has any experience with this.
Casey:
Moving on, a friend of the show, D. Griffin Jones, reviewed the Sigma BF, which I believe we talked about in the after show a couple of weeks ago.
Casey:
This is the Apple-inspired... I don't know if they would say it that way, but that's how I look at it.
Casey:
The Apple-inspired camera that's basically a block of aluminum, and it looks really nice and looks really expensive, and...
Casey:
It turns out it's really nice and really expensive.
Casey:
But since somebody from our neck of the woods had their hands on it, we thought you might want to check it out.
Casey:
So there's going to be a link to both Deed Griffin Jones's text write-up as well as their video review as well.
John:
I think I sent you to a link to one of my camera review people pooping on this camera.
John:
And I wasn't too big on it when we talked about it either.
John:
And there is actually a relevant podcast link.
John:
I was recently on the Thoroughly Considered podcast with Dan and Tom from Studio Neat.
John:
It was very good, by the way.
John:
They have you pick like, I forget what the premise is, like pick one object that you really like the design of that you're going to talk about.
John:
And what did I pick?
John:
Of course, I picked the 2019 Mac Pro.
John:
So if you want to hear me talk at length about why I like the design of the Mac Pro, and while you're listening, think about how it is different than the Sigma BF in so many of the ways that I care about.
John:
It's a good sort of compare and contrast.
John:
The Sigma BF, I think, is...
John:
It's too much design for form and not enough for function.
John:
And the Mac Pro certainly has a lot of design for form, but the balance between form and function is more to my liking.
John:
And there's like an hour long podcast where you can hear me talk about why if you're interested.
Casey:
With regard to iOS, Ulay Oskar Eriksson writes, John says Apple hasn't brought window controls to the iPad because they're not willing to dedicate space in the UI for it.
Casey:
Except they already did.
Casey:
Every window in iPadOS has window controls at the top, also in regular old single window mode.
Casey:
It's even signified by three dots, like on the Mac.
Casey:
There's an option to close as well as minimize.
Casey:
Resizing also has dedicated visible controls, although they look different between split view and stage manager, while it's a hidden gesture on Mac OS.
Casey:
I had thought about this and knew about this, and I either didn't interrupt forcefully enough to say something, or I just forgot by the time I had the chance to come back to it.
Casey:
So yeah, this was a really good point, and this was one of many people reporting in the same thing.
John:
So I did mention the three dots on the show.
John:
Of course, Casey's not going to remember that because it was a whole episode ago, but I did mention the three dots.
John:
That's right.
John:
And this, like, obviously I'm aware of three dots, although I would say that they're not really evoking the stoplights.
John:
It's more like the ellipsis type dots for menus.
John:
But anyway, yes, it's three dots.
John:
They're kind of my point, that Apple is unwilling to sort of dedicate the space for window controls.
John:
When Apple introduced the three dots and does other things like this, they basically do it by...
John:
not really stealing space from content.
John:
I may be wrong about the three dots, but at various times on both iOS and iPadOS, when Apple has introduced stuff that belongs to the system, sometimes if they need space, they'll adjust the safe area insets, which is a...
John:
a thing that you're programmatically able to tell which area of the screen, in the case of the phone or window or whatever, is it safe for me to draw content because there's no stuff covering it.
John:
Same thing with the three dots.
John:
They're like, well, the three dots are kind of going to eat into your space, but if you don't have anything there in the UI, you can sort of kind of pretend like they're not there, but I don't even know if they adjusted safe area insets for the three dots or not.
John:
But that's what I'm talking about.
John:
Apple has not...
John:
put a title bar on because the Mac OS, when there's the title bar, although, you know, you can get around this now too, but in general, the title bar, you don't draw your content there.
John:
Your content begins below the title bar.
John:
Yes, I know about unified top bars and all the other things you could do on the Mac, but like, that's what I'm talking about.
John:
Really dedicating set aside.
John:
It's not going to eat into your content.
John:
It's not visible to you.
John:
You can start drawing at zero, zero, but not really because it's the lower left of the Mac, but whatever.
John:
Forget about coordinate systems.
John:
It's complicated.
John:
Um, uh,
John:
that's what they're not willing to do on iPad OS because they don't want to junk it up with stuff that is not relevant.
John:
If you're only doing one thing at a time on the iPad, same thing with window resizing or even scroll bars, which yes, you can grab the scroll, but even on the phone, you can grab the skull thumb and move it, but then it gets fatter when you can grab it, but then it gets skinny again and then it disappears entirely.
John:
Like they're not, they'd rather have stuff sort of kind of edge into your content or like be over your content briefly and disappear, but they're not doing anything.
John:
The dumb thing, which is like, you know, window Chrome.
John:
And that was my point.
John:
And so, yeah, Apple's three dots and their pull-down menu and their incursions into the content area to try to add controls is them sort of pussyfooting around because they...
John:
don't want to do the obvious thing and i'm not even saying that's the wrong decision because honestly it would make the ipad worse for i think the common case of people not doing 20 things at once so that's the problem they face and we'll see when wac rolls around what their new solution to that is
Casey:
Man, this WWDC is potentially going to be quite bananas because of some breaking news as well.
Casey:
So we'll get there in a little bit.
John:
On many fronts.
John:
This could be triumphant and disastrous on many fronts for Apple.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
And likely it will probably be both.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Continuing with follow-up, with regard to Synology, Melvin Gunlock wrote, one issue with the Synology-branded drives is that Synology doesn't offer anything above 16 terabytes at any price, while Seagate is already at 24 terabytes.
Casey:
It's a good point.
John:
Yeah, that is kind of crappy.
John:
Like we didn't mention that last time.
John:
Like, oh, they're just they're just relabel drives and it costs a little bit more.
John:
But what if they don't relabel the drives in the capacity that you want or the speed that you want?
John:
Like, it's just that's part of the first party thing is you get what choices do you have?
John:
The ones that they are willing to put the Synology branded sticker on and that's it.
Casey:
And then Aaron Power writes, one of the biggest points in poopification was left out.
Casey:
Of course, the drives are priced relatively competitively today because those new Synology NASAs have to compete with all of Synology's older stock.
Casey:
Once this has actually been fully rolled out across their product line, they will increase the price because that's when they have a captive audience who can only use Synology.
Casey:
Synology drives with their Synologies.
Casey:
Additionally, the price comparison was always comparing new drives, which is wild because if you're an individual or small business who wants a lot of storage, you're almost certainly not buying new drives.
Casey:
You're buying recertified drives.
Casey:
Right now on serverparkdeals.com, you can get a recertified 22 terabyte drive for 232 euros.
Casey:
The same drive costs roughly 420 to 450 euros used.
Casey:
If you're buying just two drives, that's €464 recertified versus €840 to €900 new.
Casey:
With the savings from the recertified drives, you could literally buy a new dedicated Synology 2-bay DS723 Plus for them.
Casey:
That's why people are upset, because that's what the actual markup looks like for people.
John:
So first, I don't know if you're buying recertified drives.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
Has anyone ever done that?
John:
I'm not saying it's not done.
John:
I'm saying it is common, but is it the majority?
John:
I think it's actually more common in the enterprise.
John:
I've seen a lot of people buying recertified drives for scenarios like that.
John:
Well, first of all, we'll put a link to serverpartdeals.com.
John:
If you're interested in recertified drives, yeah, they can be a good deal, just like refurb Macs.
John:
But I kind of like buying Macs.
John:
I think most people don't buy a reefer.
Marco:
Yeah, this email was written as if like everyone does this.
Marco:
What are you talking about?
Marco:
And I've literally never heard of anybody doing it.
John:
Maybe maybe hobbyists do it more like if you again, if you're trying to save money.
John:
But anyway, as for the first part of the email of like, well, now once once there is fully rolled out, then they'll turn the screws and open up the money spigot.
John:
Like I said last week, Synology is in a competitive market.
John:
There are alternatives to Synology.
John:
You are not locked in.
John:
It's network-attached storage.
John:
Lots of vendors make it.
John:
And if Synology does things that drive its customers away, like cranking up the prices once they have a monopoly on Synology-branded drives, other people are willing to swoop in and grab those customers.
John:
It's you don't have it's not the type of lock in of like your platform of choice.
John:
You haven't brought a bunch of apps or there's a little bit of lock in with the Synology apps.
John:
But anyway, that's what makes me less upset about this is because it is actually a competitive market.
John:
And honestly, if part of your hobby is like finding the best capacity drives or finding a good deal on refurb drives and stuff like that.
John:
It's kind of also part of your hobby to look at a new vendor for your NAS to see if there's something better out there.
John:
Kind of like part of the thing Casey's doing with the whole Ubiquiti thing is he doesn't currently have a Ubiquiti setup.
John:
He's got a different setup and going to a new setup.
John:
That's part of the whole fun and deal of it.
John:
It's like now it's a new thing with a new brand, with new products and new possibilities because that's a competitive market too.
John:
So...
John:
It's kind of crappy what they're doing.
John:
I don't want to pay more for my drives, but I'm not as pessimistic as Aaron that they somehow are going to turn on the money spigot and crank up the prices across their whole line of drives as soon as they can.
John:
They're already charging more than they would be otherwise.
John:
But you have other choices.
John:
And to the degree that they screw this up and alienate their customers, someone else will grab them.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, as we alluded to earlier, there is some breaking news.
Casey:
And to be clear, we are recording this on the evening of April 30, Wednesday night.
Casey:
And this broke like 10 minutes before we started recording.
Casey:
So these are very, very, not hot takes, I guess, but, you know, gut reactions.
Casey:
Hot off the presses.
Casey:
Yes, there you go.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
So what are we talking about?
Casey:
So Epic Games claims victory as Apple is sanctioned for defying court order over App Store rules.
Casey:
Reading from 9 to 5 Mac.
Casey:
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction designed to stop the company's anti-competitive app store practices.
John:
Let me pause you here for a second.
John:
Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but if you're like me, you've been watching with growing impatience the various court cases involving our government and, you know, temporary restraining articles and judgments and blah, blah, blah.
John:
that as case you just read this is about the apple versus epic cake case uh and in particular the result of that case from 2021 it's now 2025 so what they're saying is hey in 2021 you lost a court case and the court said apple you have to do x y and z now in 2025 we have a decision about did apple do x y and z or did they not do it
John:
So if you're following any current court cases that are winding their way through the American justice system, think about this when you try to put realistic timelines and when you should expect literally anything to happen.
John:
Anyway, continue.
Casey:
Again, reading from 9 to 5 Mac.
Casey:
According to the 80-page order, Apple, quote, thwarted the injunction's goals, quote, by imposing new fees and obstacles that continue to stifle competition despite clear instructions from the court.
Casey:
The judge didn't just sanction Apple.
Casey:
She referred the matter to the U.S.
Casey:
Attorney's Office for possible criminal contempt proceedings.
Casey:
Oh, damn.
Casey:
I love this.
Casey:
This is getting interesting.
Casey:
Apple's vice president of finance, Alex Roman, was found to have lied under oath, according to the document.
Casey:
Internal documents contradicted public testimony and showed Apple knowingly chose anti-competitive options.
Casey:
All right, now I'm going to throw in a little bit of commentary.
Casey:
I don't know if this was just my upbringing or not even upbringing, but like it is drilled.
Casey:
It was drilled into me.
Casey:
I don't know how or why.
Casey:
So I, I'm, I'm struggling not to say this is an American thing.
Casey:
Maybe, I don't know.
Casey:
Maybe this is an American thing.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But, but for me, I feel like it is like a cardinal sin to lie under oath, not only because it's very illegal, but like you just don't do that.
Casey:
You either plead the fifth, which is to say I won't incriminate myself or
Casey:
But you don't or you tell the truth.
Casey:
You don't lie.
Casey:
Like that's that's real bad news.
John:
You can lie.
John:
You just have to say you don't recall.
John:
Well, Reagan defense is fair.
Casey:
But to say to to say that Alex Roman is apparently, you know, lying under oath.
Casey:
That is a big deal.
Casey:
Continuing on, the court has now barred Apple from charging its 27% commission.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
It's hard not to laugh.
Casey:
From charging its 27% commission on external purchases in order to immediately stop interfering with developers' ability to communicate alternative payment options to users.
Casey:
The judge specifically called out Apple's use of full-page quote-unquote scare screens designed to deter users from leaving the App Store payment flow, its requirement that developers use static, non-dynamic URLs when linking to alternative payment methods, and its policy of still claiming a commission on web purchases made outside the App Store.
Casey:
These design choices, the court found, were engineered to introduce friction and suppress user conversion.
John:
Yes, they absolutely were.
John:
100%.
John:
As we're reading this, you may be thinking, didn't you talk about this in the show like years ago?
John:
Yeah, we did.
John:
When the judgment came, because there was a judgment and Apple lost the lawsuit and we saw what they did and we said, here's what Apple's doing in response to that judgment.
John:
And they're going to like, they're still charging money, but it's 27% instead of 30%.
John:
And they don't want you to tell people about payment methods except in this special way.
John:
And they're doing all these things.
John:
And we were like, this just seems so restrictive.
John:
And just like, it just didn't seem to us that...
John:
whatever they were doing was in the spirit of the judgment.
John:
It's like, well, whatever that, you know, the years roll by that was back in 2021.
John:
Like, I guess it was fine.
John:
No, it wasn't fine.
John:
It wasn't at all.
John:
And it just, it's frustrating to me that it's like, we talk about it.
John:
It's like, this just doesn't seem like they're doing what the court told them to do.
John:
And the court's like,
John:
Four years later.
John:
Oh, no.
John:
You're not doing what we told you to do.
John:
It so frustrates me that it takes this long because they essentially got four years of taking all that money from people.
John:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Well, I mean, is anyone taking them up on this?
Marco:
But you're right.
Marco:
They were able to exploit the system to have four years of noncompliance.
John:
um and you know we'll see if i mean i don't know can they appeal this i'm sure there's like i'm sure it's not over yeah that's i was like whenever i'm reading these court judgment articles and deciding whether they go into the show it's like i just i'm just waiting for the last sentence which is like uh apple will of course appeal and the blah blah blah like how many more years do we have to wait so i don't actually know the answer to this because then this is breaking like you know the hour we're recording the show so we didn't know the details but it is
John:
satisfying to see what seems like from the outside of the legal world, because very often common sense doesn't lead you to the correct legal conclusions because the law is not common sense.
John:
There's very little overlap between them in many cases.
John:
But just to see, like, they were told to do a thing by the court and they...
John:
did something not that like and sometimes we yell it seems like sometimes you say like it seems like the the judgment wasn't good enough is that that was kind of the angle i felt like we often took was like the judge should have said different things because based on what the judge said apple seems to think this is complying with it and we're looking from the outside going no you're missing the point this isn't complying at all but it just turns out that
John:
Apparently, the judge didn't need to say anything different, just needed to wait four years for Epic to appeal.
John:
And they didn't appeal.
John:
Epic complained, essentially, hey, we won this court case.
John:
And Apple says they're doing what you told them to do, but we think they're not.
John:
And so that's what this case is about.
John:
And it's taken four years for this to happen.
John:
And it's just it's maddening.
John:
But it is good to see sanity prevail, which is like...
John:
You know, you can't you can't just like see what the court says to do and then just do something that you feel like doing.
John:
That's not what the court said and say done and done.
John:
At least once in this case, Apple is being held to account.
John:
Do you think this will stick?
John:
I was almost wanted to push this the next week because I don't know what is the appeal process, Ken.
John:
I don't know how far this will go.
John:
Anything being referred to the government, like, oh, they're referring criminal charges to the government, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Yeah, but what government are they referring to?
John:
It's like, just everything's up in the air about the rule of law in this country these days.
John:
So I don't actually know how this is going to go.
John:
I wanted to pair this story with a bunch of topics that we're not going to get to this week about EU stuff that is
John:
not as close to home as this is, but it's very much in the same vein of someone told Apple to do something.
John:
Then Apple did a thing and we all looked at it and said, you're not doing what they told you and nothing happens for years.
John:
Well, that other shoe will probably drop next week.
John:
I mean, again, it's an old, it's actually an older story than this, but in all these cases, it's just, it is satisfying to see someone officially saying, no, Apple, you're not doing what they told you to do, which is something that we've all felt here on the outside.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Cause like, here's what's going to happen.
Marco:
Like if,
Marco:
If for some reason we actually luck out and Apple is forced to let people link out to websites to make purchases –
Marco:
oh my god, the sky is falling.
Marco:
If this actually happens, which that's a huge if, because they can just keep probably appealing or arguing or deferring or delaying all their various delays and tactics they're going to use.
Marco:
But if this actually happens, how I expect this to settle out and end up is a few high-profile games will have their own payment things,
Marco:
Some other services will crop up and offer payment gateways for the rest of us.
Marco:
Some people will use them.
Marco:
Most people won't.
Marco:
And it will be fine.
Marco:
And I don't expect Apple to go down quietly.
Marco:
Maybe if you do this, they'll say you can't use in-app purchase then, which would actually be a pretty interesting stick to wield.
John:
Well, I mean, speaking of sticks that Apple has to wield, I'm we will actually finish with this thing because we're not actually done with the scathing comments about Apple.
John:
I just kind of paused in the middle here.
John:
But like one of Apple's tools here as a bad actor is, OK, we'll we'll finally do what the courts told us to do.
John:
But guess what?
John:
everybody's app has to go through app review and lots of things can happen in app review yeah it'd be a shame if something happened to your nice app you've got there it'd be a shame it's held up for a really long time in app review over a bunch of bs i mean we know they're gonna they're gonna do that regardless yeah that but that's hard to litigate against and you just know kind of like lots of apps that you know apps that do things that apple looks askance at even if they're technically allowed those apps tend to get hung up a little bit more it's like does that
John:
apple like what you're doing with your app or they're not like it and let me tell you any app that tries to use a payment processor that's not apple's where they're paying zero percent to apple and can link out and do whatever they want and tell people like those apps i can imagine them having a little more difficult time in app review and good luck challenging that in corpus now it's like a you know
John:
pattern of behavior are they really biased about like that would be such a hard court to uh case to win because you have to show that apple is intentionally slow rolling or screwing because like and in apple's defense they would say we do this to everybody it would be really hard to prove that they're doing it more to apps that have this but they're totally going to
Marco:
That would, to be clear, I believe, be against the judge's order because it would be considered some kind of retaliation.
Marco:
For sure.
Marco:
And by the way, and I'm glad Judge Gonzalez here was a little bit more verbose this time.
Marco:
I remember her initial order, remember there was that whole thing about buttons and links, and there was a missing Oxford comma, and it was kind of vague as to what would qualify.
Marco:
She used a lot more words and commas this time, and so it's very clear.
Marco:
She left a lot less room to wiggle and argue about maybe...
Marco:
She wasn't being so firm.
John:
No, this was really firm like this.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You're seeing, you know, again, not to get into too many contemporary court cases, but you're seeing similar things where judges give give rulings in the sort of normal expected way, expecting people to understand them the way, you know, like expecting them not to be malicious, expecting them to just like, oh, that's how I always give rulings.
John:
And they usually get done.
John:
not accounting for the fact for something that we all know which is like no you have to you have to really be much more precise because they are going to they're going to weasel out of this like a five-year-old trying to get a later bedtime like they're going to do every trick in the book like they and it just you know the judges almost often seem naive they're like they'll just do what i said right nope so now you know second time's the charm i guess
Marco:
Yeah, but I think what's going to happen here is, yes, if Apple can still fight this, they will continue to.
Marco:
And if they are forced to comply, as it seems like they might be, they will do it as maliciously and as pettily as possible.
Marco:
Because John's right.
Marco:
We have a history with Apple.
Marco:
We know that.
Marco:
They are personal and capricious and vindictive with app review.
Marco:
If you are trying to make a case that Apple is arbitrary and capricious, look at the App Store.
Marco:
We know the actual people all the way to the top regarding the App Store are...
Marco:
personal and vindictive and capricious.
Marco:
There's a huge history of that over time.
Marco:
So we know that.
Marco:
So we know, of course, they're going to do this kind of stuff.
Marco:
But, you know, we'll see.
Marco:
Big companies will keep suing them and they're going to keep being jerks.
Marco:
And, you know, eventually...
Marco:
eventually stuff will settle out.
Marco:
But I think what will end up happening is another version of Apple totally taking the wind out of the sails of everybody else.
Marco:
And it's just going to be a matter of how they do that.
Marco:
And so, again, I think, John, you're right.
Marco:
I think some App Store mystery delays are very likely.
Marco:
And even if you get past that, it would not surprise me if they did a rule change of like, well, if you do this, you can't use our in-app purchase system.
Marco:
And if they do that,
Marco:
That puts a real hurt on games, which are the big whales here that they make most of their money from.
Marco:
Because when you look at the big companies like Netflix, HBO, or whatever they're called now, those companies all bowed out of in-app purchase years ago.
Marco:
None of those big apps actually use in-app purchase.
John:
I think they might come back.
John:
Now, if they don't have to pay Apple anything, don't you think they'll just re-add to their apps, their sign-up through the phone flows?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
But I'm saying like, you know, what revenue is actually at risk here from Apple?
Marco:
It's not Netflix because like, you know, like those big apps don't use it anyway.
Marco:
It's the money they're already not getting.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like they're already not getting those.
Marco:
They are getting a lot of money from whales in games.
Marco:
Like that's where they're getting a lot of money.
Marco:
And so what is at risk is that game money.
Marco:
I think if Apple said you can't use our in-app purchase system if you do this, which I'm not sure would be against the judge's order.
Marco:
You need another four years to determine that.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
If they say that, I don't know if most games would do that because a lot of games are used by kids on parentally controlled devices.
Marco:
And a lot of those will like, you know, they won't allow the parent won't give the kid the credit card.
Marco:
but maybe they'll have in-app purchase allowed with the parental approval situation, which is what we did with our kid for many years.
Marco:
We still do.
Marco:
And so the kid has to ask for approval for each purchase.
Marco:
It pops up on our screens through Apple's in-app purchase thing.
Marco:
If a game that's played by kids, which is most games, can't do that, it might not be worth them giving up Apple's cut.
Marco:
So we'll see.
Marco:
Apple still has a lot of levers they can pull to keep all of their money, believe me.
Marco:
But even if you set all that aside,
Marco:
If they follow the judge's order, allow links out to the web to make purchases, even if a bunch of big games and a bunch of big apps actually do that and actually offer that as an option and use an app purchase, I bet Apple still doesn't lose a noticeable amount of money.
Marco:
Because most people will still choose internet purchase because it's convenient and already set up.
Marco:
That was the whole value back when it started.
Marco:
The whole value of App Store purchase methods is that when the App Store launched, everyone who had an iPhone already had an iTunes account with a credit card linked to it.
Marco:
And so now if you have like an Apple ID or now Apple account, you probably have a payment method of some kind on it.
Marco:
And you can use Apple's in-app purchase system to make purchases and it's convenient.
Marco:
So Apple will still get most of those convenience purchases.
Marco:
And for the ones that they have to like, you know, maybe maybe try a little harder to get.
Marco:
Oh, darn, they'll have to compete.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
What a tragedy.
Marco:
What a hardship.
Marco:
I feel so, so sorry for the challenges they're going to face.
Marco:
No, really.
Marco:
I mean, it's about time they started competing.
John:
This might actually benefit Apple because I just saw more breaking news that –
John:
epic they're saying hey apple we'll bring fortnight back to the app store if you let us just you know reinstate our developer account and we'll bring fortnight back because now we don't have to pay you for any transactions and honestly like you know marco saying like you're not losing any money they weren't you like you weren't getting this money anyway so it's not like you're losing that much a couple games will do it and you'll get fortnight back on the store so the net result to apple is
John:
despite their stubbornness, if that actually goes through, is that they might actually be in a better position because the value of Fortnite being on their store is probably higher than the value of money they're going to lose from the handful of people who actually use the in-app thing.
John:
And maybe they'll change or actually make their own payment.
John:
Maybe that will change, like you said, if third parties start springing up to make
John:
third-party in-app purchases as seamless as Apple's, but those aren't going to pop up overnight.
Marco:
If this thing actually sticks, if people are actually allowed to link out without paying Apple a fee, there's going to be a bunch of services that crop up that offer payment processing for 6% or whatever.
John:
Yeah, and then the EU will have to say, well, the fact that those services can't do a parental pops up on their phone and lets you approve it thing is anti-competitive and Apple needs to allow that, but only in the EU.
Right.
John:
Because that because that's the final barrier is like, why, why can't why is it not going to work for kids games?
John:
Why can't third parties just have a thing pop up?
John:
Well, because you can't have a persistent background process that runs on all the parents phones all the time that can do this.
John:
Only Apple can do that because they control the platform and they don't expose that.
John:
And that would be yet another thing that falls under the EU's judgment of this is not allowing enough competition.
Casey:
You know, if I'm RevenueCat and or Stripe, I am, you know, if I'm Stripe, I'm working on APIs and trying to get those squared away.
Casey:
Maybe they already exist for all I know, but working on APIs to make it easy to collect money, you know, from iOS apps.
Casey:
And if I'm RevenueCat, I'm implementing or integrating rather with that API to have like basically a store kit as done by RevenueCat, which they kind of already have, but you obviously can't.
John:
It just doesn't do the payments.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
So it's a heck of an opportunity if this sticks.
Marco:
And by the way, everyone is going to do like discounts too.
Marco:
Like everyone's going to offer like you can buy with an in-app purchase for $10 or you can go to our website and buy it for $7 or whatever.
Marco:
15% off.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You know, they're going to highly incentivize that.
Marco:
Or, you know, create an account on our website and pay that way and we'll give you a free hat in the app or whatever.
Marco:
You know, they're going to do that.
Casey:
Continuing from 9to5Mac, the judge ascribed Apple's behavior as a blatant attempt to sidestep the court's authority, writing that the company's response, quote, strains credulity, quote, and amounted to a cover-up Apple seemingly believed the court wouldn't uncover.
Casey:
Oh, geez.
Casey:
Now reading from the – well, I will put a link from The Verge in the show notes, but this is actually from the injunction itself.
Casey:
This is a quote I pulled from the injunction.
Casey:
This is an injunction, not a negotiation.
Casey:
That's big like mom and dad talk right there.
Casey:
There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.
Casey:
Time is of the essence.
Casey:
The court will not tolerate further delays.
Casey:
As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition.
Casey:
The court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anti-competitive acts to avoid compliance with the injunction.
Casey:
Effective immediately, Apple will no longer impede developers' ability to communicate with users, nor will they levy or impose a new commission on...
Casey:
off-app purchases.
John:
So it sounds like this will take effect immediately.
John:
And then if any legal challenges or follow-ups, or again, I don't know what avenues are open to Apple, but it seems like in the meantime, while Apple is pursuing whatever it can potentially pursue, you got to cut it off.
John:
You got to stop doing it right now.
Casey:
So what does this look like then?
Casey:
It's just instructions to app review not to reject these sorts of scenarios, I guess.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, again, giving instructions to app review, does that seem like a thing that you could reliably do?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Could you just put it in that little notes to app review field when you submit your app?
Marco:
Just link to the Verge article on this decision?
John:
Because, like, Apple, this is the two aspects of AppReview that frustrates us.
John:
One is the sort of, like Marco was saying, the personal nature of Apple being vindictive and not treating apps equally if it doesn't like the app or the company or whatever.
John:
That is a thing that happens.
John:
But the other side of it is just the random inconsistency that's not because they hate you, but it's just because...
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like, who knows the review you happen to get.
John:
So when Apple says things like we're going to do a new thing where now bug fix updates won't be held up, even if there's another problem with your app.
John:
That's the thing that Apple wanted to do.
John:
Like, I don't I trust that they were serious about that.
John:
Like, I think that's the thing they wanted to do.
John:
And they told that review, hey, if there's some issue, but it's just a bug fix, let the bugs go through so they can fix the issue in the next one.
John:
I bet they told app review to do that, but it's been years and it happens all the time.
John:
Some will say, Hey, it's supposed to remember that rule where they're supposed to let bug fixes through.
John:
Well, they rejected me.
John:
And I said, but it's a bug fix.
John:
And they said, no, I didn't hear from them or whatever.
John:
Like they can't, it seems like they don't have control over app review.
John:
Like,
John:
even when they want to have control over it like that it is just too inconsistent and amorphous and they can't make it do much like if there's some big directive that comes down that everybody knows about fine but when they try to do stuff like that especially when they try to do nice things that they actually want to do like let buck like how is that still inconsistent years after that supposedly been policy and it's true so many of their policies people like but
John:
But this is your policy and this is supposed to be OK.
John:
And you can't have a conversation with AppReview if you can't get anyone to reply to you.
John:
So some, you know, some reply comes back from AppReview and you read it and it's like, I don't think they understood what my app is or what my explanation was.
John:
It seems like maybe they didn't read it at all.
John:
I don't understand what they're asking me.
John:
So you reply back and you hear nothing.
John:
And while this happens, your app is still just rejected.
John:
That's the Kafkaesque experience of AppReview.
John:
And so forgive me if I'm not enthusiastic or optimistic about them changing something about AppReview in response to the judgment and having that change, which they in this case, they definitely don't want to do.
John:
result in a visible consistent change to app review because what are you going to do you submit your app they reject it because you link out to third-party services do you start a four-year journey for your multi-billion dollar journey for a court case to get a judgment in your favor no you just sit there and take it because you're an indie developer and you can stare at the verge article you want and read the judgment and feel good about it but the fact is your app was rejected what are you going to do
Casey:
It's something.
Casey:
I'm really curious to see how this plays out.
Casey:
And, you know, it's just, we don't need to get into it much, but it's just too bad that it takes a very pissed off and justifiably pissed off judge to get to this point that Apple...
Casey:
has no choice but to let people through, basically.
Casey:
And I get that Apple put in a lot of work and a lot of money to make iOS and to make AppKit and UIKit and SwiftUI and all that.
Marco:
My eyes are rolling out of my head right now with this stupid argument they always make.
Marco:
I know why you're saying it, but this is the stupid argument Apple always makes.
Marco:
And it's dumb.
Marco:
It doesn't make sense.
Marco:
It's like...
Marco:
That's the argument that tells us that they are trying to say that our apps add nothing to their platform, that we are purely taking – there's no other way for apps to contribute value to Apple's platform besides through internet purchase commissions.
Marco:
That is what that argument says.
Marco:
And they keep making that argument.
Marco:
And that's why – that's one of the many reasons why whatever you want to say about Tim Cook as a CEO, I have zero respect for him as a person.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, it's just bananas that this is the argument that Apple keeps making.
Casey:
And again, as I've said many times and lamented many times, that they feel so entitled that they are owed this money.
Casey:
And it's just no.
Casey:
Literally no, according to this judge.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
I'm very curious to see how this shakes out.
Casey:
I've got my popcorn ready.
Casey:
The tea is getting spilt as we speak, so I'm excited for it.
Casey:
Um, speaking of things I'm excited for, uh, some weird YouTube channel rose from the dead, uh, yesterday, I believe it was as we record this.
Casey:
Uh, and it was not Casey on cars.
Casey:
It was Marco's YouTube channel.
Casey:
Uh, we, this is one of those times that you didn't tell us anything and not that you have to, but you didn't warn us or tell us or anything like that.
Casey:
Just all of a sudden, there's a new video on Marco's YouTube channel.
Casey:
So what is going on?
Marco:
Almost a month ago, I decided I was finally going to try an e-ink note-taking tablet.
Marco:
I've been seeing for years the ads on Instagram for the Remarkable tablet.
Marco:
And I always thought, that thing looks so cool.
Marco:
And yet, I don't take notes.
Marco:
So what am I doing?
Marco:
I never bought it because I'm like, I know as cool as that is, I love e-ink.
Marco:
As I've described when talking about e-readers and stuff and the terminal, I love e-ink as a screen technology.
Marco:
I just don't read that much.
Marco:
So even though I've had a Kindle for most of the last 10 to 15 years, they've been out since 2007, I think, I've had a Kindle for most of that time.
Casey:
Quick interruption here.
Casey:
Do you happen to have another box of Kindles ready to go out somewhere?
Casey:
Because mine just died and I could use a hand-me-down.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
The only Kindle I own right now is the previous generation of the paperwhite, whatever the nicest paperwhite is, but not the newest one.
Casey:
Well, if you want to give it a good home, I am accepting.
Casey:
So we'll talk after the show.
John:
One of Marco's old Kindles actually finally died over here, as in will no longer take a charge.
John:
So we've actually been recycling some of those out.
John:
You had to actually buy a new Kindle for the first time.
Marco:
Going back into the box for the next one?
John:
No, just e-waste now.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
So I love e-ink screens.
Marco:
Actually, I do have a Kobo e-reader if you're trying that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, so love, love, love, love e-ink screens, but I don't read that much.
Marco:
In fact, one thing I think I would have enjoyed more these days, when Kindle's first launch, or in their first few years, they had deals with newspapers and magazines to basically have Kindle versions of the New York Times every day.
Marco:
And it was really nice.
Marco:
And in fact, the Kindle periodical format...
Marco:
is what I hacked to make Instapapers digest, have the navigable links and the tables of contents and stuff like that.
Marco:
I figured out the data format through some sleuthing and stuff like that, and I let Instapaper generate those.
Marco:
And so Instapaper would generate the same format that you'd get from the New York Times or whatever.
Marco:
And that program with the Times and everybody else, the whole Kindle Periodicals program ended years ago.
Marco:
They don't do it anymore, which is a shame.
Marco:
Because I would love that, but for whatever reason, Amazon dropped it or the companies didn't want to do it anymore or whatever.
Marco:
Anyway, so I don't read, really.
Marco:
Getting back to this, I basically don't read.
Marco:
Yet I still love E-Ink.
Marco:
And so when I saw these note-taking things, I'm like, man, that would be great, but I don't take notes.
Marco:
Then I started having in-person meetings for the restaurant.
Marco:
Granted, everyone who's worked in an office, this is going to sound like kindergarten, but I have hardly ever had in-person meetings.
Marco:
Certainly not in the last 15 years.
John:
Also known as meetings.
Marco:
Thanks.
Marco:
So I really don't like taking notes in meetings on a computer.
Marco:
It's, you know, first of all, like they're big.
Marco:
They take up your whole lap.
Marco:
But also like when you're typing into a computer, number one, it's hard for the other person to tell whether you're paying attention to them or not or like doing something else on your computer.
Marco:
And number two, there are a thousand other things on your computer for you to do.
Marco:
So I don't like taking notes on a computer in person with other people.
Marco:
It just feels inattentive.
John:
I just want to tell you from experience in meetings for many, many years, people take notes on computers in meetings.
John:
It's very common.
John:
It's not to say that it's a thing you need to do.
John:
I'm just telling you that I think the standards of the business world have long since accepted the idea that you will be taking notes on a computer during a meeting.
Marco:
Yeah, they have.
Marco:
And I get that.
Marco:
But I you know, it doesn't like when you look around the room at a meeting and you see people typing on laptops, I don't I bet most of them are not taking notes.
Marco:
I bet most of them are typing emails and stuff like that.
Marco:
They're not paying attention.
John:
Well, it depends on the meeting, I suppose.
Marco:
Anyway, so as we're like, you know, meeting with like our manager and the staff and the chef, like I wanted something that I could just take notes on.
Marco:
And so I've tried, I tried two things.
Marco:
I tried paper, like actual just paper.
Casey:
Barbaric, I tell you.
Marco:
And the problem with paper is you just can't, like, move stuff around.
Marco:
You can't, I mean, you can erase stuff.
Marco:
I guess that's a form of deleting stuff, but it's not a very good form of it.
Marco:
So you can kind of delete.
Marco:
It's a pain.
Marco:
It's slow.
Marco:
It's dusty.
Marco:
And you have to be using pencils.
Marco:
You can kind of move stuff around in the sense that you can, like, you know, tear the paper off and move it around.
Marco:
Or you can, like, rewrite stuff.
Marco:
Like, it's a bit of a cumbersome process.
Marco:
Certainly there's no, like, you know, undo, redo.
Marco:
There's no layers there.
John:
We should invent something to help with that.
John:
Another thing, by the way, that I'll add about paper is that you have to draw a little picture of every letter.
John:
I'm not sure if The Remarkable is going to help you with that, but I just want to throw that out there.
John:
Okay, thanks.
Marco:
Anyway, so I also, you know, because I have an iPad and an Apple Pencil, I tried that.
Marco:
And I tried one of those textured films, not the paper-like, but the new one, like I think it's that Astro pad or something.
Marco:
It's the one that has like a custom metal nib for the Apple Pencil that you screw on.
Marco:
And the film is magnetic, which is kind of fun.
Marco:
Anyway, tried that, which is like the most paper-like film by a lot of people's metrics or whatever.
Marco:
Plus, I tried the Apple Pencil just by itself on the glass.
Marco:
But the problem with using the iPad this way, first of all, even with the films and the special pen tips, it's still a pretty slick surface, which actually I think makes it a little bit more difficult to write small and precisely.
Marco:
I found like, you know, because the pen just like it slips really easily.
Marco:
And I found that it's kind of an unpleasant writing experience.
Marco:
And
Marco:
The iPad, you know, it's a little bit like chunky and heavy to hold in one hand.
Marco:
And no, I'm not going to spend like $1,000 on a new iPad Pro for a device I hardly ever use.
Marco:
And then I also realized like, you know, one thing I would like is something to like sit on my desk and, you know, be kind of like my to-do list for the day or the week.
Marco:
And again, paper is fine for this, but something digital will be better.
Marco:
So I tried the iPad just as like a test.
Marco:
And the problem with the iPad sitting on your desk as, like, a to-do thing is that, first of all, like, it's sitting there glowing.
Marco:
Like, you know, it's lit.
Marco:
So it's a screen.
Marco:
It's a little distracting.
Marco:
Every notification that would come on my phone, it would, like, sync to my iPad.
Marco:
That would light up and it would come up on there, too.
Marco:
You know, it would occasionally turn itself off and have to, like, unlock it.
Marco:
Or I'd have to turn it on to have it, like, set it to never go to sleep, in which case it would burn through the battery and just be slowly warming up my desk all day.
Marco:
Like, that's no good either.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So it's not a great fit for that.
Marco:
And then also the iPad, because I'm getting those notifications coming in and stuff like that, I'm always tempted to just switch away.
Marco:
And so the problem I have with my presumably undiagnosed ADHD, one problem I have is that if something is out of sight, it's out of mind.
Marco:
And this is the problem why I don't just use Apple Notes for my to-do stuff.
Marco:
Because as soon as the Apple Notes window is behind anything else, I never think to check it again.
Marco:
As soon as the note that I'm in is not the currently selected note, I'm never going to see it again unless I search for it.
Marco:
If something is out of sight, I will not go back and remember to go check it or remember to go back to it.
Marco:
I just won't.
Marco:
And I can set reminders and alerts and stuff, which I do constantly.
Marco:
But once something is out of sight, I'm never going back to it.
Marco:
So I want something to actually be on my desk, not on my computer screen.
Marco:
And something that wasn't a full-blown app platform like an iPad so that I couldn't do anything else with it.
Marco:
Because then whatever is like my scratch pad or my whiteboard to-do list thing that's sitting there, that's just always what's on screen.
Marco:
Like it never goes away.
Marco:
It can never be anything else except that.
Marco:
Which again, paper works great for that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It has the other shortcomings.
Marco:
So anyway, I decided after having a few meetings with the restaurant staff, I'm like, you know what?
Marco:
Let me try the Remarkable.
Marco:
So I got the Remarkable, too.
Marco:
There is also a more recent device, the Remarkable Paper Pro, which is larger and color e-ink.
Marco:
It has a backlight and a few other little improvements.
Marco:
I decided not to get the Paper Pro because the Remarkable 2 is smaller, lighter, cheaper, and if you don't want color or don't need color, there's a bunch of things about the Remarkable 2 that are actually a little bit better for my purposes.
Marco:
You know, the screen is a little bit, you know, it's a little bit higher contrast like for the black and white.
Marco:
The refresh is, you know, quite different and simpler.
Marco:
I think it fits better in my hand because it has a big left margin that the Remarkable Pro doesn't.
Marco:
So I love the Remarkable 2 like physically and shape wise.
Marco:
And I don't need the light or the color of the Pro.
Marco:
So anyway, I got the Remarkable 2.
Marco:
And I use it for like a week or two.
Marco:
And then I started seeing all these people, like Matt Gemmel was on Mac Power Users.
Marco:
I saw him mention, and I've seen a couple of people mention these devices called the Super Note, which is a competing thing to the Remarkable line and these other E-ings.
Marco:
There's also, like, there's the Books tablets.
Marco:
There are some large e-readers now that have this functionality built in, like the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Ellipsa.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
It's a pretty big market now.
Marco:
There's a couple of Chinese companies on Amazon that have AI e-ink tablets that I didn't look too much into.
Marco:
It's a pretty large category.
Marco:
But it seemed like, for my purposes, Remarkable seemed like it was the most Apple-like design.
Marco:
So I decided to go with that.
Marco:
But then...
Marco:
When I saw the people talking about the SuperNote changes, I'm like, ooh, some of that stuff I would really like.
Marco:
One of the big things is that you can link between notes.
Marco:
You can draw your own links and link them to different pages and different notes.
Marco:
I'm like, ooh, I would love that for certain types of organization.
Marco:
That would be really cool.
Marco:
And it had the higher resolution screen and the nicer pen tips.
Marco:
I'm like, all right, let me try one of those before the remarkable return window elapses.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I ordered a Super Note, the big one, the Super Note Manta.
Marco:
And that was also really good.
Marco:
I carried that and used that for all of my task management for like a week and a half or so.
Marco:
And that was great.
Marco:
However, then when I went back to the Remarkable,
Marco:
to clear it off to return it, I was like, oh my god, this is so much faster and more responsive.
Marco:
It kind of ruined me.
Marco:
I'm like, oh man, I do love some of the Super Notes geeky stuff.
Marco:
Super Notes had other problems too.
Marco:
The sync situation is...
Marco:
terrible on the super note whereas the remarkable sync situation is amazing so anyway i made a quick youtube video comparing these two devices i didn't want to get too far into the weeds on the comparison here um because it's it's better to see it visually um so go look at my youtube video it's like it's like 19 minutes or so i think
Marco:
of just me kind of comparing, contrasting these two tablets, showing like what I like and don't like about the Super Note Manta versus the Remarkable 2.
Marco:
It was like a quick, like all, you know, straight one take, you know, iPhone being held above my desk on a stand, like just looking straight down, just looking at my hands operating these devices.
Marco:
So it's a quick, you know, fairly dense YouTube video if you want to see these two devices and why I ended up choosing the Remarkable 2.
Marco:
So what I've been doing is I just have like three pages of,
Marco:
on the remarkable that I swipe between.
Marco:
I have my personal to-do list, my restaurant to-do list, and my overcast to-do list.
Marco:
And whatever I'm working on like that day, like when I'm at the restaurant, the restaurant to-do list is facing up.
Marco:
It's showing on the screen.
Marco:
And it just sits there all day next to me in the office in the restaurant.
Marco:
And so I can have to-dos.
Marco:
I can write down little notes down there.
Marco:
I can see what I'm doing that day or that week.
Marco:
I'm finding it really, really nice to just always have that there.
Marco:
Because, like, when these devices, when they go to sleep, they just display whatever they were last displaying.
Marco:
Like, it goes into a low power state after a while to save battery.
Marco:
But, like, they're remarkable.
Marco:
It can sit at my desk all day displaying the same thing and be totally fine.
Marco:
And when I want to, like, actually...
Marco:
do something, take the pen off and write on it, it wakes up in a second.
Marco:
It's so fast.
Marco:
I have found it's really, really nice to have this second surface.
Marco:
It's barely even a screen.
Marco:
I was going to say second screen, but it's barely a screen.
Marco:
This second surface of just this electronic notepad
Marco:
For me to show my to-dos that are always there as I am working on whatever I'm working on.
Marco:
On overcast days, I'll flip to the overcast page.
Marco:
On other days, I'll flip it to the personal page.
Marco:
I'm getting a lot more done now.
Marco:
Because unlike every other computer-based to-do system I've ever tried...
Marco:
it doesn't just get buried when I forget to look at it.
Marco:
It's always there on my desk.
Marco:
It's never swiped into a different app.
Marco:
It's never turned off and hidden behind things for very long.
Marco:
It's just there on my desk.
Marco:
So, so far, I am really enjoying this.
Marco:
And so I did make that YouTube video.
Marco:
Check it out if you're curious.
Marco:
I didn't really go into my workflow much in that.
Marco:
That was really just a comparison of the Super Note versus the Remarkable.
Marco:
But this here is kind of how I'm using these devices.
Marco:
And so far, I'm really enjoying it.
Casey:
It's a lot of money to spend on a to-do list, but I do get the appeal.
Casey:
And I've never really played with any e-ink, like interactive e-ink thing.
Casey:
That's not the word I'm looking for.
Casey:
But I've never drawn on anything that has e-ink as a display mechanism.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Um, from the video, it looked like it was reasonably good performance in terms of like, you know, it's not one of those situations where you've moved the pen like three or four millimeters, but the ink that, that supposedly flew, you know, came out of the pen was three or four millimeters back or what have you.
Casey:
It seemed like the refresh rate was decent.
Casey:
Um, the only thing that I noticed in the video, which I found somewhat off putting is it seemed like a pretty violent, like full screen refresh every once in a while.
John:
That's e-ink for you.
John:
It's a limitation of the technology.
Marco:
Yeah, that's the e-ink refresh.
Marco:
Now, I'll tell you two things on that.
Marco:
Number one, so on the pen latency, like input on the pen, it's great.
Marco:
It's way better than I expect it to be possible.
Marco:
It is really good.
Marco:
And I should say, I'm not a pen nerd.
Marco:
I'm not a pen and paper user in most other parts of my life.
Marco:
And I'm not, I was never that into the Apple Pencil in part because of that.
Marco:
You know, the Apple Pencil probably beats it on that kind of latency.
John:
It absolutely does.
Marco:
But it's close enough that it doesn't really matter.
Marco:
Like it's close enough for my purposes.
Marco:
Like I'm not doing super precise work.
Marco:
I'm not doing fine art work.
Marco:
I'm doing to-do lists.
Marco:
I'm treating it like a little whiteboard.
Marco:
And so it's totally fine for my purposes.
Marco:
And certainly when you are using it, you don't notice the latency.
Marco:
And regarding the full screen refresh, it's just like a Kindle.
Marco:
When you're reading a Kindle, you don't really notice the refreshes.
Marco:
You might notice the first few and then you stop noticing.
Marco:
That's how it is when you're using one of these things.
Marco:
You stop noticing the refreshes after a few minutes at most.
John:
Someone in the chat room was asking what the refresh rate was, and I think that's one thing you should have gone into in the video.
John:
Refresh rate is not the right thing to think about when you're thinking of e-ink, because it doesn't work like a regular screen.
John:
If you visualize what it actually is, it makes much more sense, which is just a bunch of...
John:
Imagine a bunch of tennis balls.
John:
Half of them is painted black.
John:
Half of them is painted white.
John:
And you can rotate them so the black part of the white part is facing up.
John:
That's an e-ink screen.
John:
Only the tennis balls are really, really small.
John:
And so nothing happens.
John:
Remove all power from the device.
John:
The black tennis balls that are facing up are still black.
John:
And the ones that are white half is facing up are still white.
John:
There's no power required to do that.
John:
There's nothing being projected, just setting aside any back lights and stuff like that.
John:
That's what the screen is.
John:
Only the parts that change need to be changed.
John:
So if you're drawing a line, all the other tennis balls are just inert.
John:
Nothing is happening to them.
John:
They're not refreshing.
John:
There's no sort of refresh rate.
John:
It's not like an OLED or an LCD where it changes the refresh rate based on how many times it has to update.
John:
If you're drawing on it with a pencil, it might update a lot.
John:
But if you're just sitting there like the Apple Watch, it might update once a second.
John:
No, those other tennis balls are not doing anything.
John:
They're ignoring, you know, only the part that you're changing has to change.
John:
Downside is it takes a long time to rotate those tennis balls.
John:
And that's why it looks fairly horrendous when you, for example, not drawing, because drawing is just turning a bunch of tennis balls to be black side up.
John:
Okay.
John:
Uh, and you drag something, I'm going to take this drawing from the upper left and drag it to the lower right.
John:
That has to erase where the drawing was a moment ago and then draw the drawing in a new position and then erase where it was and draw it again and erase where it was.
John:
And that's a lot of tennis ball turning.
John:
Uh, and you can watch the video that it looks like it looks worse than like a passive matrix LCD screen from the nineties because you just can't rotate the tennis balls fast enough.
John:
So that is not the strength of this device.
John:
And it's not because, like, again, don't think of it as refresh rate.
John:
Like, what is the refresh rate of the screen?
John:
Is it 30 frames per second?
John:
I can tell you, based on, like, early e-ink screens, the Remarkable is, in fact, remarkable that it can do this at all.
John:
Like, if your expectations are calibrated to, like, you had, like, one of the older Kindles, you'd be like, how does the Remarkable do that?
John:
But if you're thinking it's going to be, like, a modern LCD screen or OLED screen,
John:
it's not like that at all so and so that's why i said like if you're going to draw with it the apple pencil is amazing for drawing is one of the the lowest latency things that you can get if you're drawing letters if you're drawing little pictures of letters like marco's doing you don't really care like you're not doing quick strokes and sketch like that's it's you know for like as marco said the qualifier he added for his purposes
John:
The screen is amazing, but don't expect Apple Pencil style responsiveness and don't expect anything like a computer screen when if you're trying to move stuff around.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I should say, too, like one thing I like about the remarkable is, again, I really and I say this not not flippantly or not and not without consideration.
Marco:
They have very Apple-like design, and it runs deep.
Marco:
Part of what you might not like about Remarkable versus competitors is that it is a closed system.
Marco:
You can't add whatever you want to it.
Marco:
You can't run whatever apps you want on it.
Marco:
It has a limited tool palette to be simpler and kind of chunkier and easier to use.
Marco:
The design is very nice, but the features are very limited.
Marco:
You have to pay for its sync service, which is this proprietary sync service.
Marco:
And it works really well, way better than the Super.
Marco:
It works really, really well for sync and that kind of thing.
Marco:
But it's all managed and you have to pay for it and everything.
Marco:
And so that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Marco:
But the result is the Remarkable 2 is a five-year-old device, and it performs better than the brand-new Super Note by a lot.
Marco:
It's not even close to the responsiveness and everything.
Marco:
It's way better.
Marco:
And in part, that's because they engineer the crap out of their own version of Linux and everything.
Marco:
But in part, that's also because they choose to do less.
Marco:
Like the SuperNode has a lower resolution screen.
Marco:
That probably makes certain things a lot faster.
Marco:
I mean, sorry, the Remarkable, rather, has the lower resolution screen than the SuperNode.
Marco:
So it makes things a lot faster.
Marco:
The Remarkable is doing a lot less, like...
Marco:
detailed analysis of what you're writing.
Marco:
It's not doing live handwriting recognition.
Marco:
The Remarkable, as far as I can tell, the handwriting seems to be pixel-based, whereas on the SuperNote, it seems to be vector-based.
Marco:
So the SuperNote is doing a lot more advanced technical things, but the Remarkable, as a result of its choices and engineering, is a much nicer overall experience, but more limited.
Marco:
And if you're looking at one of these things, or one of the book's tablets, or any other kind of, you know, the big E-ing tablet category,
Marco:
There really isn't like one recommendation I can give because it depends on how you use it.
Marco:
Like you can use these tablets in about as many ways as you can use paper.
Marco:
And there's a lot like – if you ask somebody like, what paper should I buy?
Marco:
It's like, well, you're going to have some follow-up questions to give a good recommendation to what exactly you mean by that and what your needs are and what your priorities are.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
the same thing applies here like there's a million different ways to use these things i'm barely scratching the surface by using it as basically a desktop to-do list and whiteboard but it's a cool category of device and i would suggest if you are if any part of this resonates with you of like you know having something that's kind of always there with your with your task list that's like separate from your computer if that resonates with you maybe give one a shot i mean
Marco:
The good thing about Remarkable, too, is Amazon has them.
Marco:
You can get them overnight.
Marco:
They're very popular.
Marco:
You can get them very quickly.
Marco:
If you don't like it, it's Amazon.
Marco:
You can always return it.
Marco:
But I think it's worth a try.
Marco:
One other thing that I'll mention for workflow purposes and productivity purposes...
Marco:
Generally, like as, you know, again, part of my like self-diagnosed, probably ADHD, I like to have a queue of possible things I can work on because I don't necessarily know what kind of time, conditions and motivation I'm going to have on a given day to be able to get stuff done.
Marco:
So I like if I'm feeling motivated to do a certain type of thing or I have a certain block of time, I like being able to choose from a medium-sized collection of things to do.
Marco:
And so something might sit on that list for a while, but then one day I'll knock out 10 of them.
Marco:
That's kind of how I've always worked, like in bursts and kind of having a selection.
Marco:
The problem with that system is that if the queue gets too deep and stuff gets buried, it never gets done.
Marco:
So what I like about this, in part, again, because it's always being displayed, I can always see it, and so it never gets too buried.
Marco:
Also, what I like is trying to keep each category, personal, restaurant, and overcast, trying to keep them to one page.
Marco:
It actually keeps my to-do queue to a reasonable size because as I start having to write smaller and cram stuff in and move stuff a little bit tighter together, I start realizing I should just do some of these things and make some room.
John:
I did see that the Remarkable has a zoom feature, so that might be your enemy here.
John:
It does, yes.
John:
Because you'll be pinching to zoom to write tinier, but then you'll never zoom back out, so things are now below the fold.
John:
You'll never find them again.
Marco:
Well, the good thing is e-ink is so sluggish to use.
John:
Yeah, you don't want to do the zooming.
Marco:
Yeah, zooming is unpleasant enough that you don't really want to do a lot of it.
John:
I can see your future here, though, Marco, because what you're looking for is a device that is always in view, that isn't annoying like a screen, that doesn't have notifications, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Boy, when we get those AR glasses and you can just glance to the upper left wherever you are with one of your umpteen pair of AR reading glasses you have scattered throughout the house.
John:
and your to-do list is always in your field of vision but just up and to the left it will never leave you it'll be with you all the time because you'll be wearing glasses all the time that sounds like hell well you know you're carrying around this remarkable so it can be in your field of view to remind you that you have to do things imagine if it was just in your field's view magically
Casey:
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All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And David McQueen writes,
Casey:
You may argue that someone like Google has already demonstrated success with a Siri-like utility, but that just may mean that they have been more clever about implementing a fake version of whatever Siri is meant to be.
Casey:
So it seems quite likely to me that Apple management has simply misjudged what is currently possible in terms of Siri's kind of quote-unquote intelligence, and perhaps the engineers working on Siri are not able or willing to fake it better.
Casey:
I haven't used Google's agent maybe ever, outside of Erin's car, I should say, because it's in her car to some degree.
Casey:
But certainly the demos that I see and the advertisements that I see, which I presume, unlike Apple, are actually real,
Casey:
They seem a heck of a lot more impressive and a heck of a lot closer to my expectation of what Siri could and should be than anything that Siri has ever done, which leads me to think, yeah, it is possible.
Casey:
Now, granted, I don't think it's terribly reasonable to say, oh, Siri, remember that thing that I did three weeks ago with the person?
Casey:
Go email them and ask them to do that thing again, or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
But in
Casey:
And so I don't think that's really feasible, but a lot of the stuff that, and I think even Apple started to talk about this at WWDC last year, things like, you know, make an appointment for the thing that's on my screen right now, or add the thing that's on my screen to the calendar that I feel like is an achievable, achievable problem.
John:
Yeah, I think this middle paragraph nails it.
John:
Other companies have done it.
John:
It's not like we're asking for something that no one else has done.
John:
This is a thing that people have done.
John:
You know, Amazon's voice assistant and Google assistant before it.
John:
Forget about LLMs.
John:
Predating, entirely predating LLMs.
John:
What those other Siri-like products were doing then without LLMs, that's what I would consider a, quote, properly functioning Siri.
John:
Don't need any LLMs, no world knowledge, no friend that you can have a conversation with, no, none of that.
John:
Just the basic stuff that Siri is supposed to do that other assistants did faster and better with more flexibility.
John:
And if anything, it seems like Siri is backsliding being able to do less today than
John:
That it could before LLMs arrived.
John:
And so, yeah, I think it's entirely achievable.
John:
I think the mistake is believing that properly functioning Siri is like a magical little person that you can talk to.
John:
No, that's that's not properly functioning Siri.
John:
That's a fantasy for everybody.
John:
Nobody has that.
John:
And LLMs can give us a glimpse of some aspects of that and blah, blah, blah.
John:
But forget about that.
John:
We just want to be able to talk in a normal conversational tone of voice without being careful about exactly how we phrase it and getting it to set timers for us and answer the phone and turn the volume up and add a reminder.
John:
And, you know, that type of stuff.
John:
That's what I would consider a properly functioning Siri.
John:
When you can ask it things like, you know, how many days until Thanksgiving?
John:
And it gives you the correct answer.
John:
No LLMs are required for this.
John:
I promise you, like doing date math, knowing when the Super Bowl is like.
John:
being able to have some integration with apple's own services like when does the next episode of severance air like these are all achievable no no quote-unquote ai required that's why it's so frustrating so yeah i think it is definitely achievable because other people have achieved it because you can ask google assistant things with and it gives you much better answers and again forget about world knowledge forget about how tall is tom cruise forget about anything like that just the
John:
you know, setting reminders, setting timers, doing all that.
John:
It's just... Apple is so far behind here.
Marco:
Yeah, like, we don't even have Siri doing the basics that it used to do reliably.
Marco:
Like, we're so far behind.
Marco:
Like, what I expect out of a, quote, you know, properly functioning Siri, like...
Marco:
What I expect there is not the concept video they demoed last year at WBC about, like, we're going to look through all your email and find out your mom's flight for you.
Marco:
Like, it's not even – like, that's pretty ambitious.
Marco:
It's not the stuff of, like, we're going to have this be able to book flights for you and book an entire vacation.
Marco:
Like, no, not even – you know, all that garbage that the other tech companies keep, like, demoing in concept videos or promising for the future, like –
Marco:
That's not what we're asking or expecting.
Marco:
We just want it to do things that we know it can and should do because every other voice assistant has been doing them for years.
Marco:
It's not that complicated or impossible because we know, we've seen it be done by Google Assistant, Alexa.
Marco:
We've seen them do these things for years now.
Marco:
So we know it's possible.
Marco:
We know that the state of the art is very capable of
Marco:
And, you know, we're not asking for the world.
Marco:
We're asking for basic functionality to be more reliable and a little bit smarter.
Casey:
Stephen Klink writes, with the near ubiquitous presence of Apple Pay these days, do you still carry a wallet on you most of the time?
Casey:
Even if it's still something you usually bring with you, do you ever take trips without it and just rely on your phone for payment?
Casey:
I see a ton of younger folks just assuming Apple Pay will be accepted wherever they go.
Casey:
How long do you think it'll be before I, as an older person, will feel comfortable leaving my wallet at home?
Casey:
For me, comfortable leaving the wallet at home?
Casey:
Never.
Casey:
I'm also the kind of idiot that carries a little bit of cash with me all the time because I'm that old, kids.
Casey:
But for me, I do carry a wallet.
Casey:
I should have brought it in here with me.
Casey:
I forgot to.
Casey:
But off the top of my head, it has in there my driver's license, the one credit card that Aaron and I use for like 90% of our purchases, the business credit card, just in case.
Casey:
I think
Casey:
think i have our personal debit in there if i'm not mistaken and then um a couple of insurance cards because we are a failing backwards nation that needs that sort of thing um and a little bit of cash and and so i don't really feel right if i don't have my wallet with me as long you know outside of the house um i don't typically ever leave it at home on purpose there have certainly been occasions that i'll leave the house without it um but i don't care for it and i don't generally do it
Casey:
And that's in no small part because oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes if I'm leaving the house, I'm driving somewhere and I need to have my driver's license.
Casey:
And I think that there's some sort of like grace period where you can provide a driver's license later in Virginia if you don't have it when you're driving, but you're certainly supposed to have it.
Casey:
And we're not one of those cool states that lets you do the driver's license on your phone thing.
Casey:
So, yeah, I don't know that I would ever really feel comfortable without it.
Casey:
Although I will say that I believe Home Depot finally caved with regard to Apple Pay.
Casey:
They did.
Casey:
Kroger finally caved with regard to Apple Pay.
Casey:
We very rarely go to Walmart, but we do occasionally go to Walmart.
Casey:
And so that is, I think, maybe the only holdout.
Casey:
because I'm pretty sure Kroger was the last big one.
Casey:
So yeah, I mean, Apple Pay is pretty much everywhere now, anywhere that I frequent, but I don't think I could go without my wallet.
Casey:
Let's end with George Costanza and start with Marco, please.
Yeah.
Marco:
I think it's one of those questions where it depends a lot on what kind of situations you find yourself in and how predictable and known they are.
Marco:
Suppose you live in most of America.
Marco:
In most of America, you have not a ton of independent stores you're going into a lot.
Marco:
You're going into a lot of chain stores, big retailers, big box stores.
Marco:
you're very likely that those stores are going to take Apple Pay.
Marco:
But if you're somewhere with like, you know, like a little dense town or whatever, and you have like little mom and pop deli or whatever, like that's going to be a lot less likely for that to always work.
Marco:
And when you see like, you know, what Stephen asked here is they say, I see a ton of younger folks just assuming Apple Pay will be accepted wherever they go.
Marco:
I think what you're seeing there is youth.
Marco:
And young people oftentimes are not prepared for some situation in the world, not because that situation doesn't exist, but because they haven't seen it yet.
Marco:
And so you can't really necessarily look at young people and be like, well, they don't even have to consider this.
Marco:
So maybe it's going away.
Marco:
Like, that doesn't necessarily follow.
Marco:
Like, you know, we see what we've seen a lot in technology is
Marco:
is when people have young kids, and we've all been these people, when people have young kids, they'll use an iPad, and we'll say, kids in the future don't even care about computers.
Marco:
They'll just do everything on iPads.
Marco:
until they get old enough and they start caring about computers and then it's like oh okay well that that was just youth that wasn't that that wasn't that computers are going away it's that these young people you know these kids uh didn't have a need for a computer or weren't motivated to use a full-blown computer because an ipad solved their needs well if you're like you know a teenager going around town like you could just have a phone and beep into everything but
Marco:
It's probably fine.
Marco:
You might have to occasionally ask before you sit down somewhere, hey, do you take Apple Pay?
Marco:
Sometimes the answer will be no, and you'll have to try somewhere else.
Marco:
You might assume a place takes Apple Pay, sit down, realize they don't, and then...
Marco:
God knows what you have to do.
Marco:
Jump through some hoops to figure that out.
Marco:
Eventually, when you have dads, the three of us, when you have us walking around, we've seen situations, we've been in situations where we weren't prepared and it kind of, you know,
Marco:
It kind of scares us a little bit too deeply.
Marco:
So now that's why we carry around like, you know, cases carry around like, you know, cash from, you know, maybe like some Canadian bills in case we end up there, an HDMI cable.
Marco:
Like you never know when you're going to need this stuff.
Marco:
But the reality is, again, it depends a lot on where you go, what you do during the day.
Marco:
If you're just going to work and going to the gas station and going to the same two restaurants most days and you know all those things take Apple Pay, okay, then that's fine.
Marco:
I think most people...
Marco:
tend to need a credit card and or cash at some point in regular everyday life still and so to answer the question i still carry a wallet all of the time not around my house but if i if i leave my house i
Marco:
There is a wallet in my pocket, and it has a bunch of credit cards, and it has some cash, and it has my driver's license, and the usual stuff.
Marco:
It's not even a big wallet.
Marco:
It only has a few cards, but it still has cards, and I think I'm going to need them for quite some time.
Marco:
And once you're carrying a wallet at all,
Marco:
Whether it has one card or three cards and some bills doesn't actually really make that big of a difference.
Marco:
So, like, once you're carrying it at all, you might as well prepare yourself for more situations and have a bit of cash, too.
Marco:
And, you know, if you're, say, if your one card is an American Express...
Marco:
also maybe carry a visa, that kind of thing too.
Marco:
There's all these considerations.
Marco:
Once you want to be prepared for most things, you can add more things in there.
Marco:
But all this is to say that I think the dream of having no wallet
Marco:
is and rather I should say I guess because you can always have one of those like phone back things the dream of carrying no other cards and just using Apple Pay and no cash no cards not having a driver's license for some reason like I think that's still a dream for most people and I don't think we're that close to it.
Casey:
Now, before we have John answer the question, do we remember what ATP recording it was?
Casey:
I remember being in Marcos Hotel Room in San Francisco.
John:
Too bad we weren't on a BMW race course, huh?
Casey:
I know, right?
Casey:
Yeah, you remember every detail of that.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
John held up his absolutely ridiculous Costanza wallet, and I will never forget it.
Casey:
There is a picture of it, which I'm trying to dig up.
John:
It was San Francisco, so you should go back to the San Francisco years.
Casey:
Uh, no promises, but I'll see.
John:
I can find the picture if you want, cause I have it too.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Well, either way.
Casey:
Uh, so John, have you pared down your wallet any, or is it still 14 feet tall?
John:
Well, first I want to talk about the, uh, the youth thing, uh, slightly different take on that.
John:
So, um, having seen my kids go through this, uh,
John:
At first, the reason, well, the reason my kids anyway, and it may be different for your kids as they come upon the stage, my kids started paying for things with Apple Pay.
John:
That was the first way they essentially paid for things, period.
John:
And it's because kids generally can't get credit cards.
John:
until they get a little bit older so it's a very i don't know for 15 year olds have a credit card but even when you get a little bit older it's not as easy as you would think to get a credit card and kids aren't going to do it on their own but because of the magic of apple pay and parental things and apple pay cash or whatever all my kids had the ability they had essentially money on their phone we would send them through apple pay cash thing with the apple pay family thing they could pay for things for their phone before they ever had a job certainly before they ever had credit cards
John:
That becomes their experience of paying for things, and that leaves an impression.
John:
When they get older and actually have credit cards and have jobs and do get paid, still they never come in contact with cash because they're paid, direct deposited into their account, and they still want to pay for things with their phone.
John:
I'm not sure my son has ever paid for anything with cash.
John:
Granted, he doesn't buy too much stuff.
John:
My daughter has paid for things for cash, but she only does it grudgingly and considers any place that doesn't let her bloop with her phone to pay for things as just hopelessly backwards.
John:
you know and that's but it doesn't mean they're not carrying wallets though because they're kind of in the same situation i'm in where the wallet essentially becomes like in case you said this too a uh a conveyance for your driver's license because our state doesn't allow you to have any kind of phone-based driver's license and once you're driving you need to have your license on you i don't know what the rules are about not having it i don't want to take that risk you need your license when you're driving um
John:
So what's in my kids' vaults?
John:
Their driver's license.
John:
Is there any cash in there?
John:
Almost never.
John:
Or if there is, like it's because they blooped for somebody and that person gave them cash and they're like, what do I do with this paper?
John:
And they just shove it in there and never look at it again.
John:
Like cash is not a part of their lives.
John:
I actually think we are way closer than it seems to not having to deal with cash because I'm seeing two people grow to adulthood and
John:
and basically ignore the existence of cash and credit cards despite having both of them in favor of using their phones to pay for everything.
John:
And then before I get to myself, I'll say that my wife's angle on this, it's my experience that, well, at least my wife anyway, has a wider variety of
John:
ways she can carry stuff out of the house.
John:
She has a bunch of different purses.
John:
She has a bunch of different bags for work.
John:
She has luggage when she's traveling for work.
John:
Like there's lots of different combos you can do.
John:
But one of her mainstays is that she has transformed her phone into a wallet with Apple's little MagSafe wallet thingy.
John:
So her phone has driver's license and credit cards on it.
John:
So it's like, do you want to just go out with your phone or do you need to have your wallet?
John:
What if your phone is your wallet?
John:
What if you bring your phone with you and it also has your credit card and driver's license in it?
John:
Then you've basically got that covered.
John:
She also has purses and things with increasingly large collections of credit cards and room for cash and all that other stuff or whatever.
John:
So there's a lot of variety there, but I think it is actually possible to go out with just your phone without leaving behind your credit cards.
John:
It's pretty hard to put cash in there, but certainly you can have credit cards and driver's license and stuff.
John:
As for me personally, I still have that giant wallet that Casey was talking about.
John:
It doesn't have as much stuff in it before.
John:
Was it pared down on some credit cards and stuff?
John:
But it has a surprising amount.
John:
It's got my driver's license.
John:
It's got my, like Casey, my main, the main family credit card.
John:
It's got my business credit card that I pretty much never use, but it's in there.
John:
It's got healthcare card for me and my kids because I take them to doctor's appointments.
John:
And so it's handy to have their cards because that's the other thing.
John:
Like, why don't your kids have the healthcare cards?
John:
What would they carry it in?
John:
Their wallet?
John:
Are they driving?
John:
No, then they won't have the card with them.
John:
That's just a fact of life.
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
In all fairness, regarding health insurance cards in the US, my current health plan just never mailed us cards.
Marco:
I haven't had a health insurance card for like a year and a half.
Marco:
And it's been...
Marco:
It's occasionally annoying in the sense that when a doctor asks, like, all right, can I see your card?
Marco:
I every time have to say, well, we don't have cards, but I can give you the numbers.
Marco:
I can give you like my subscriber number and the plan name and whatever else.
Marco:
And so far, it has worked every time.
Marco:
It's been fine.
John:
yeah unlike driver's license you don't actually have to have the card but they do always ask for like a scan of it it's like can i just apple can i just airdrop you a jpeg and the answer is no like whatever like you don't actually need it but i do have it because it does come in handy and it just it just simplifies things and also the the health care cards that we have are flint they're not credit card thickness they're really flimsy or whatever anyway and i do also how i have my debit card in there as well and my triple a card um
John:
uh triple a triple this is a lot of cards you can do in the wallet app you have to i think you have to install the triple a app which stinks i should try that thing because i would gladly get rid of that card it it does seem like a lot but it's less than i had before but i also do have a part of my wallet that contains cash i do find myself having to use it sometimes for example the person who cuts my hair there the hair cutting place lets you pay for the haircut with credit card but they don't they don't accept a tip on the credit card you have to tip
John:
And cash.
John:
They used to accept tips in Venmo, but they stopped doing that, I think, when Venmo changed their rules or whatever.
John:
So anyway, this is all like tax avoidance crap.
John:
But tipping for my haircut, I always got to make sure I have cash.
John:
Where else do I need to have cash?
John:
There are other instances.
John:
Oh, there's places in the North End that only take cash because they're old school, right?
John:
So I do tend to want to have cash on me.
John:
I don't always.
John:
My wife has cash on her much more reliably than I do.
John:
I don't know if she encounters more places where she needs cash or she just feels comfortable.
John:
Very often...
John:
I will see that there's not been cash on my wallet for three weeks.
John:
I'm about to go to haircut and I got to go ask my wife for cash.
John:
I can have money for a tip.
John:
Um, but I'm not opposed to going out with only my phone, but because I want to have my driver's license with me, uh, most of the time, even if, even if I'm not driving, like if I'm going somewhere and my wife is driving and I'm just the passenger, I still bring my license because, uh,
John:
I don't know.
John:
What if she doesn't feel like driving home or what if she wants to drink at the restaurant and I don't and then I can drive home?
John:
You know, like I'm just I want always going to be ready to be a driver, even if I am not actually the one who's driving.
John:
And I even though she loves the magnetically attached wallet thingy.
John:
i'm not big on that i feel like it could come off so i'm just yeah so i'm i'm always going i'm out with my wallet and my phone and my wallet is too big i grant it's too big but it's slimmer than it was you know like all of us like we're all maybe a little bit too big but if you're slimmer than you were you're going in the right direction so i'm working on it uh and the other thing i have a lot of sentimental value for that wallet because i've had it
John:
I think longer than my kids have been alive.
John:
It's maybe a 25 year old wallet.
John:
That tracks.
John:
It's a little worse for wear, but I, it has a lot of sentimental value to me.
John:
So I like my wallet.
John:
I'm going to keep my wallet.
John:
Um, but if I could, if I have my driver's license on here, uh, and I do have like all the cards that are in my wallet or on here, and if I can get a triple A card here, I would gladly go with just my phone.
John:
It's just that, as you both said, I do have a lot of experience of situations where, uh,
John:
My phone is not enough.
John:
And not everybody in a group traveling needs to have all the things at all the times, but I do feel like it's kind of my role to be the backstop against the people who didn't bother bringing cash and who didn't remember to bring the healthcare card and who don't know what their AAA number is and the card's not there.
John:
Like, that's me.
John:
So that's the role I fill.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, Dylan Copeland writes, recently a friend and I went on a holiday together and as a way to share photos, I created a shared library and manually added the relevant photos to it.
Casey:
This seemed to work great as the photos turned up on her iPhone.
Casey:
She now has added photos to the shared library, but they are not appearing on my devices.
Casey:
Trying to research this problem, I'm now wondering whether we should have done a shared album instead of a shared library.
Casey:
I've read through several articles on the differences between the two and when to use each, and I am none the wiser.
Casey:
Shared library seems to be the one that does what I want, I think.
Casey:
Apart from each of us actually being able to see the photos the other has added to the shared library, I am paying for iCloud, so I want the photos to be counted against my storage limit.
Casey:
Anyway, that's the issue in a nutshell.
Casey:
Any clarification or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Casey:
I feel like I've lost track on what the right guidance is here.
Casey:
So not because of Dylan, just because in general, I don't think I understand what the bestest answer is.
Casey:
So if one of you has it, please feel free.
John:
I already responded to Dylan about this, just didn't leave him hang, because I don't even know how long this has been in there.
John:
We've got a long queue of SKDP.
John:
Anyway, this is part of the problem with Apple's
John:
Progress on photo sharing stuff.
John:
They have this legacy of features that they've added before they got around to adding the one big feature that I want, which is the shared library, which allows my wife and I to contribute our photos to one shared photo library.
John:
That's features great.
John:
I waited for over a decade for it.
John:
It finally arrived.
John:
It seems to be working well, but it has serious limitations in that I believe still this is the case.
John:
You can have one shared library.
John:
So Dylan went on this vacation and made a shared library.
John:
And it's like the functionality worked great other than that bug, which that just sounds like a bug to me.
John:
Like it should work both ways.
John:
But anyway, shared library is the richest way to share a bunch of photos with another person that Apple provides.
John:
But you only get to do it once.
John:
And I guess you could destroy that shared library or leave it or abandon it or whatever and then start a new one.
John:
But it's not in the sense of like, what should I do if I want to have a shared album of my vacation stuff?
John:
Shared library functionally
John:
for that particular instance is the right answer because a shared library is just like you having a photo library.
John:
You can see the photos, you can tag them, you can edit them.
John:
They're full resolution.
John:
They sync to iCloud.
John:
It's like, it's just, it's like the photo library.
John:
It's fully functional photo library, but two people can see it.
John:
It is a shared library, but only having one of them,
John:
only having one of them is like, well, this is great for the me and my wife solution because we just need the one.
John:
Although honestly, I would like to have one with me and my kids too.
John:
But anyway, but that's just such a severe limitation.
John:
Your other choice is shared album, which long predates shared library, but that is lower resolution, no editing,
John:
Terrible interface and all the apps to adding and removing people.
John:
You can allow other people to add things to the album, but it's not particularly granular.
John:
And I wouldn't want to share vacation pictures that way because you want the full res ones.
John:
Like if you took a really good picture of the two of you, I know kids don't care these days and they just...
John:
mash the side buttons of their stupid phone to take a screenshot when a picture they like comes on the screen they think they're saving photos kids come on man but but like you do you if you want it's a good like when these are the best you know the beautiful sunset when you're on vacation get the full resolution one don't i forget what shared library cuts them down to but like
John:
It is a pale shadow of an actual shared library, but you can have multiple shared albums.
John:
And I believe there's like a 5,000 picture limit for each shared album, so there are limits there or whatever.
John:
But anyway, I wish Apple would just do away with shared albums, convert everybody's shared albums to shared libraries, and allow you to have an arbitrary number of shared libraries.
John:
That would be great.
John:
But we don't live in that world.
John:
So, to answer Dylan's question...
John:
I'm glad you enjoy some vacation with the shared library, but it's a, it's one, you only get to do that once.
John:
And now you have to decide, do I want to coordinate with my friend to say, Hey, I'm going to remove abandoned slash delete this library.
John:
So please harvest all the pictures from it.
John:
Because I can only ever have one of these, and I just realized that.
John:
And then the fallback is a shared album.
John:
Or honestly, use a third-party service.
John:
Put it in your own photo library.
John:
Upload them using the SmugMug app.
John:
I'm sorry if SmugMug is out of business.
John:
I don't even know what the current landscape looks like.
John:
Use Google Photos.
John:
What I do on vacations, this is all my photo library.
John:
And then I...
John:
export the edited full res pictures and then upload them to a Google drive and send the link to everybody.
John:
It's, it's not great.
John:
This is something that Apple should solve.
John:
It took them over a decade to get shared, to get one shared library and it seems to work pretty well.
John:
So maybe within the next decade, we will have N shared libraries.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors.
Marco:
This episode, Wild Grain, Masterclass, and Factor.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
One of the perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic.
Marco:
When you join as a member, you can hear that.
Marco:
And all of our other member stuff, including our member specials, as we mentioned earlier, everything we've done in the past there, and present, and of course, future, as long as you're a member, you get access to all that atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
This week on our bonus topic on ATP Overtime,
Marco:
We're talking about Apple has already apparently added AI-generated review summaries to the App Store.
Marco:
So you'll get to see all sorts of fun AI work in App Store reviews.
Marco:
What could possibly go wrong?
Marco:
Thank you for listening, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Mastodon, 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-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-
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
Are any of you thinking about buying a $20,000 pickup?
Casey:
Because I'm not actually thinking of it, but I'm kind of thinking of it.
Casey:
So what we're talking about is this entered my world via The Verge.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
But there was a post by Tim Stevens talking about how there was announced a new pickup called, I think, the Slate pickup.
Casey:
Pickup is under a slate truck.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
Which allegedly is under $20,000 after incentives.
Casey:
And it's an electric pickup.
Casey:
It has no radio.
Casey:
It has no touchscreen.
Casey:
It has basically nothing.
Casey:
It doesn't even have paint.
Casey:
We're bringing back the ghost of Saturn where all the body panels were like some polycarbonate or something or other.
Casey:
Not polycarbonate, but something.
Casey:
Some sort of plastic.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
And so this is absolutely bananas.
Casey:
It looks, I think the proportions are more like a key car than a traditional American pickup.
John:
No, they're like a traditional American pickup from the eighties.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Which is basically a key car now.
Casey:
Um, but anyways, this thing looks so cool and I kind of want one even though I, I am the last person on earth that should buy one.
Marco:
I love that they're doing this.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I love, first of all, I just love when car companies do risky things.
Marco:
Even the stupid Cybertruck.
Marco:
I know it has more political load these days, and that's with good reason.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I at least am glad that things like the Cybertruck, they still exist.
Marco:
People still take design risks with cars because they sure don't take many of them.
Marco:
If you look at every other car on the road, it seems like we have 12 companies making the exact same car all the time.
Marco:
We just have so little variety.
Marco:
And so to see somebody like Slate here...
Marco:
doing something really different like this is a really bare bones car designed to like be kitted out and diy'd later and customized like crazy it's basically like the framework laptop of cars i love that that sounds awesome like even though like i don't think i would have a use for one
Marco:
I would not say I would never have a use for one.
Marco:
And I think it's such a great idea to strip stuff down to basics because obviously the people who know about car manufacturing are saying how genius it is to not have paint.
Marco:
Because apparently painting and painted panels and paint management is one of the most costly parts of making cars.
Marco:
And that makes sense.
Marco:
And they just don't have it.
Marco:
These are all just plastic panels.
Marco:
They're meant to vinyl wrap them if you want to.
Marco:
You can kind of do what you want there.
Marco:
It's a really good idea.
Marco:
And the idea of making cars cheaper, you might think this would be great for hobbyists and everything.
Marco:
It might be.
Marco:
But what I'm thinking is this is genius for fleet vehicles.
Marco:
Because you look at what are the top-selling cars in the U.S.
Marco:
every single year?
Marco:
Fleet vehicles.
Marco:
It's like the F-150 basic pickup.
Marco:
And the reason why is because your local power company buys thousands of them.
Marco:
And every contractor has one of those white pickup trucks.
Marco:
They're everywhere.
Marco:
Every utility, every contractor, every government employee, every government agency, they're all driving around like white fleet vehicles everywhere.
Marco:
So something like this, I think would actually have a pretty large potential sales volume because those vehicles usually are cheap, low, you know, low frills.
Marco:
Like, you know, cause when, you know, when the government is buying cars for the water department, they don't care to outfit it with like leather seats and stuff.
Marco:
Like they, you know, they just get the basic, whatever, whatever is cheapest.
Marco:
So like, I think this could be pretty big in, in that market, but
Marco:
And I think for the DIYers, I think it'll just be really fun.
Marco:
Like, I love this idea so much, even if I don't think I would have a need for one right this second.
Marco:
I love this idea so much.
John:
Yeah, the difficulty with cars versus, say, the framework laptop is that the barriers to entry to making a car of any kind for a new car company are very, very high.
John:
We've seen this with how many electrification EVs has given the chance for lots of new car companies to potentially emerge, to be nimble and move faster than the big companies.
John:
And it's real hard.
John:
Just getting to the point where you can sell a car, one car, your first car to an arbitrary person in the United States, there's so much you need to do.
John:
It's a very regulated industry.
John:
It costs a lot of money to build one of these, to build a factory, to go through all regulations.
John:
You got to deal with, even if you're an upstart car company, you're like, we're going to do everything differently.
John:
Well, you kind of have to deal with the
John:
giant industry behind the automotive industry that supplies parts and everything.
John:
And you can say, well, we're not going to do that.
John:
We're going to make all our own parts.
John:
And that's really difficult to ask Lucid.
John:
So you end up having to deal with the same parts manufacturers as everybody else.
John:
And that sort of drags you back towards the middle and it's hard to stay unique and everything.
John:
And then crash testing, reliability.
John:
How easy is it to make your first car and not have things fall apart on it?
John:
Again, ask Tesla, ask Rivian.
John:
The first few years, it's a little rough going.
John:
And those are the success stories.
John:
So even if you have the best intentions and a lot of money and the right idea, it's just so hard to get that one first car into customers' hands and not have like the wheels fall off of it or pieces of trim fall off or some catastrophic problem because –
John:
cars are complicated and you've never made one before as a company and even if you hire experienced people just there's something to be said for the you know decades and decades of experience in large car companies of honing the parts of their products that you don't think about and i hesitate to even say this but things like door handles or rear view mirrors that you know that you can aim where you want and they stay where you go like no matter what the temperature is
John:
over a decade of use or like just the minute, the minutia, like the little tiny parts.
John:
I was going to say knobs for cars don't have them anymore, but like just any, any little part of a car, it's like, Oh, we don't need to do that.
John:
We can just make one of those.
John:
And you haven't thought about the 17 ways it can fail.
John:
So you should just buy the, you know,
John:
whatever the the alternator from the company that everyone else buys an alternator is from because manufacturing alternator yourself or going with a new company that has never done a car alternator before it's going to come back and bite you and there's 50 000 parts like that in there so as much as i'm rooting for slate it's got that thing of like oh well if i get one of these where do i get it serviced so i go to a minor key
John:
And they'll service it for, well, it's like DIY.
John:
It's DIY because you might be doing a lot of it yourself because it's not going, you know, a car company coming from nowhere is not going to spring up and have a dealer that it's close to you as the local Toyota dealer because they're not as big as Toyota.
John:
And so it's so hard to get that ball rolling.
John:
That's why a lot of these big car companies like Tesla and Rivian and Lucid start with the rich folks.
John:
Because like, well, OK, we'll only have our dealerships in the major cities where all the people with lots of money live and our car will cost 100 grand.
John:
And there'll only be a few of them anyway.
John:
And it'll work out versus coming from this direction, which is $20,000 pickup truck.
John:
You need someplace where people can service these.
John:
And you can say, oh, you can do everything yourself.
John:
And like we're partnering with I forget where they said they were parking.
John:
Was it Meineke or anyway?
John:
I don't think they named it.
John:
Yeah, bring like some existing national chain of places that does like oil changes and stuff.
John:
They'll do all the service on your car.
John:
It doesn't make people feel comfortable.
John:
But anyway, for DIY people who are willing to take that risk, who want to have, as Marco says, a beta car, this is cool.
John:
The other aspect, the one I'm most excited about and the innovation that I like to see a car company take on, as much as I love my beloved Lucid and Rivian doing things in the high end and stuff that's really cool and everything,
John:
the slate car here or the slate truck or whatever, and you can put like a cap on it and make it more like an SUV and everything, which is what most people want.
John:
But anyway, this slate thing, the most important innovation, the two part most important innovation is that it's an electric vehicle with a smaller battery.
John:
And we talk about this all the time that it's like, you can't sell an EV in the US unless it gets a whole jillion miles range.
John:
And that means it needs to have a hundred kilowatt hour battery.
John:
And that means it's got to weigh 5,000 pounds or 7,000 pounds.
John:
If you just make the battery smaller, the thing gets lighter.
John:
Oh, and the range goes down.
John:
Well, no one's going to buy it.
John:
Well, what if I told you it was 20 grand?
John:
Now, can we finally put a smaller battery in an EV?
John:
Can we do that?
John:
Because we said a million times that Casey's getting by with this behemoth vehicle with like a 30 mile range.
John:
He's using an EV with a 30 mile range that's lugging around a gigantic internal combustion engine.
John:
And it's fine.
John:
It's a huge SUV with 30 miles of range.
John:
But also, it's also
John:
got hundreds of miles of range if he wants to engine but he doesn't use that so it's like you have to trick people i wish you could like sell them a car and say oh yeah it's got a v8 under the hood but it's all paper mache there's no actual v8 there and it's just a tiny little battery and like so yes if i hope this gets popular and i hope people pick up on it i hope it becomes like a cool fad or whatever
John:
Because you're tricking people into buying an EV with a small battery because EVs are great.
John:
People love them.
John:
The small battery makes a better EV, not a worse one, as long as you're within the range because it's a lighter vehicle.
John:
Everything about it is better.
John:
You need less power to move the things that it's going to be so fast anyway because it's an EV.
John:
twenty thousand dollar ev small battery and a pickup truck perfect perfect like because don't make a twenty thousand dollar ev with a small battery that looks like a little turd americans don't buy that you gotta make a pickup truck because pickup trucks is what americans want because i love your pickup voice yeah i don't just i don't like pickup trucks but americans do so if you're gonna fool an american into buying an ev with a small battery which they will love to be clear make it a pickup truck and they'll be like
John:
Like, yeah, it's my cool little, and by the way, and a small pickup truck.
John:
Like, I can't tell from the pictures, but this doesn't look small to you.
John:
It's almost the size of a normal car.
John:
Like, it's not something where it's like, you know, they do those diagrams of like.
Casey:
John, cars have moved on in the last 30 years.
Casey:
Do you need to as well?
John:
What, they should be giant?
John:
Like, I'm talking about the diagram.
Casey:
No, I'm not saying they should be, but I mean, I think you continuing to bemoan the fact that they're all giant is not terribly useful.
John:
It is useful.
John:
I was going to say the diagrams they would show you of like how far in front of you does a five-year-old need to stand before you can see them.
John:
And those diagrams do not fare well when comparing to modern pickup trucks, especially because the trend in modern pickup trucks is to make the front of them as tall as possible because that's manly.
John:
There's no functional thing.
John:
It's actually worse for aerodynamics, but they have to be like that and not sloped.
John:
Because that looks macho and tough and it just makes the visibility worse and makes you much more likely to run over a bunch of kids.
John:
Anyway, the whole point is all that space, all that giant hood, especially on an EV, even if you're putting frunk there, that's mostly wasted space.
John:
You want better aerodynamics.
John:
You want a smaller car that's easier to park.
John:
If you're going to be doing a 30 mile commute from your house to your office,
John:
a giant pickup truck with capacity for 75 people that still can't put a put a piece of plywood in the bed because the bed is shrunk into this tiny vestigial little pouch because everything you have don't have enough room once you've done all the manly things that your car needs to have this is so much better because i people people enjoy small nimble cars very often people have fond memories of that first car which is probably a small nimble car because you can't afford a big car
John:
And later when you, oh, I want a big car that's luxurious, whenever you get a bigger and bigger car, but then you try a smaller car, even if it's like a sporty car, like, oh, it's so much easier to park.
John:
It feels so much more fun to drive around because it's lighter weight and I can zip through things and I don't feel like my side mirrors are sticking out so far that they're going to smack the mailboxes as I drive down the road.
John:
So I think I wish this company luck.
John:
Everything is stacked against them in terms of making literally any car ever that is successfully sold and works and is reliable.
John:
But I love the fact I want to see more people making EVs with small batteries.
John:
This is...
John:
Like, cause first of all, I would buy one if I, if there was an EV with a small battery, cause it would be cheaper, it would be lighter and I don't need to go very far and it would fill a perfect role in my life.
John:
My problem is most of the EVs with small batteries are just completely unappealing to me.
John:
And I'm hoping for the people who love pickup trucks,
John:
hmm there you go an appealing cute fun pickup truck that's an ev with small battery i wish them the best of luck and by the way i think the plastic thing is a great idea saturn's were ugly as sin this seems nicer looking but like uh one of the great things about it besides not being painted and letting you do vinyl wrap and saving money and blah blah is the same thing that saturn used to tout which is not only are the panels plastic but
John:
But there, in theory, I know this always hasn't worked out, but in theory, the plastic is the same color through the whole thickness.
John:
So if you get a scratch, it doesn't reveal like, oh, the outside is gray.
John:
But when you scratch it, now there's a big white line because the inside of the plastic is white, but the outside is gray.
John:
In theory, it's the same color all the way through.
John:
So the scratches won't show up that much.
John:
I love that for a pickup truck.
John:
For a little fun pickup truck, $20,000, small battery, no radio, bring your own phone, DIY, vinyl wrap.
John:
Sounds great.
John:
I think more companies should be doing this.
John:
I'm not going to buy one, but I hope lots of people do.
Casey:
A couple of quick points.
Casey:
First of all, I do agree with you that American cars are too big, including our beloved XC90.
Casey:
You're not wrong about that.
John:
Well, at least yours can hold a lot of people.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But the ship has sailed is all I'm saying.
Casey:
And it's not for the best.
Casey:
It's probably for the worst, but the ship has sailed.
Casey:
But speaking of the beloved XC90, I posted on Blue Sky earlier today.
Casey:
Erin got gas in her XC90 today.
Casey:
It is the fourth tank of gas, if I recall correctly, that she's put in the car since we bought it in July.
Casey:
So it was around 300-ish days ago that we bought the car.
Casey:
The very first tank of gas we put in September, November, January, and now April.
Casey:
This is the end, actually, coincidentally, the next-to-last day of each month.
Casey:
So September, November, January, and April.
Casey:
And her cumulative miles per gallon, which is BS because it's not a fair assessment given the car's plug-in hybrid, but the cumulative miles per gallon is 111.
Casey:
Okay.
John:
Just think of how much better range you'd be getting if you could leave that V8 engine in your house.
Casey:
It's an inline four, first of all.
Casey:
But second of all, you're still right.
Casey:
It's very true.
Casey:
But it's been astonishing how infrequently, and again, now I'm just making your point for you.
Casey:
It's astonishing how infrequently we need to use the gasoline in that car.
Casey:
I mean, it was sitting at a quarter of a tank, which is lower than I prefer, but it's her car.
Casey:
It was sitting at a quarter of a tank for like a month, maybe two, because she just never uses the gasoline.
John:
And how much horsepower is your engine, your motor?
John:
Not the electric motor.
Casey:
The electric one or the gasoline one?
Casey:
The electric one, I think it's either just below or just over 100 horsepower.
Casey:
I just saw this, too.
John:
So if someone tried to sell you a car the size of the XC90, and they told you it has 150 horsepower and 30-mile range, you'd be like, get out of here.
John:
I don't pay $70,000 for a car that has 30 miles of range and 150 horsepower.
Casey:
Oh, absolutely.
John:
Giant, like, there's no way I would buy that.
John:
And you'd say, well, look how much room it has.
John:
It holds, like, eight people, and, you know, it's stylish.
John:
It's got all these fancy interior features.
John:
It's like, boom.
John:
but it's 30 miles of range and 150 horsepower.
John:
That's ridiculous.
John:
I can't live like that.
John:
And you are living like that, but you also paid for a internal combustion engine that you're not even using.
John:
And so when they say $20,000 EV that probably also has like, what, 200 horsepower in a car that weighs half as much as yours does?
John:
I'm telling like for people who haven't driven EVs, like when they say, well, 200 horsepower, that's not enough for me.
John:
I need to like, that's spoken like someone who hasn't driven an EV and doesn't understand what the EV driving experience is like, because it's not like a 200 horsepower internal combustion engine.
John:
So yeah, I just, I want more people to, I wish, I wish the big car companies that people aren't afraid of would have the guts to try this.
John:
And arguably you say, well, Nissan does it with the Leaf, but the car is so ugly.
John:
Like they need someone to have a combination of the good idea of small battery EV and also, uh,
John:
make a car that is appealing and not say, we're going to make this the weird snail car for the weird snail car people.
John:
Like this is not the weird snail car.
John:
This is a cute little pickup truck.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I mean, to be clear, Aaron's car is sufficiently mobile.
Casey:
I was going to say fast, but mobile went on full electric, which is how she typically drives it.
Casey:
But if you are ever in the need to actually get up the road with a quickness, you need the gasoline.
Casey:
Like the, it's either like 80 or 120 horsepower.
Casey:
I can't remember off the top of my head and I was trying to find it real quick and I couldn't.
Casey:
But anyways, the electric motor is not really sufficient for being the only motor.
Casey:
But obviously, if this was for electric, first of all, it's a giant SUV.
Casey:
Second of all, it's carrying around a not small internal combustion motor.
Casey:
And if this was the EX90, which is the all-electric one, then that would have a lot more battery, a lot more electric motor, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
But it's been astonishing how well she's been able to get on with
Casey:
a not really sufficient amount of horsepower.
Casey:
Just the other day, I washed it and I didn't have a lot of time to actually properly dry it, so I just took it around the block, basically.
Casey:
And I had it in pure mode, which is to say all electric.
Casey:
The only way it'll turn on the gasoline is if I...
Casey:
do the little step down that your car doesn't have because you insist on Japanese cars.
Casey:
Marco knows what I'm talking about from his BMW days.
Casey:
But anyways, if I hit the little step down, it'll turn the gas on.
Casey:
But otherwise, I could floor it and it'll just stay in electric.
Casey:
And let me tell you, I floored it from a stop and it was not quick.
Casey:
Like, it was...
Casey:
really hurt in trying to get up the road with a quick... It's fine for regular driving, but in terms of... It was not really quicker than it is when I'm at half throttle.
Casey:
Whereas that car, when both are in use, when I stand on the gas, when it's willing to turn on and I allow it to turn on the gasoline engine...
Casey:
That car is properly fast, much faster than you would think a SUV that weighs as much as my house could or should be.
Casey:
So I wouldn't like it always in battery mode the way it is right now, but I also fully recognize that that's not the way it would be if it was a full battery electric vehicle.