Adding Some Carrot
Marco:
Wow, we're going to get to bed tonight before 10 o'clock.
Casey:
I am very happy about this because Daddy didn't get a nap today.
Marco:
Oh, poor you.
Casey:
I usually try on ATP days.
Casey:
I usually try to get a little snooze in, and I did not have the chance.
John:
This would be a lesson to me because I cut off some follow-ups.
John:
I'm like, we don't have time.
John:
We've got so much stuff, but I could have left it in.
Casey:
Oh, no, John.
Casey:
This is not the lesson you should take from this.
Marco:
The last thing this episode needs is more follow-up.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
John, I hear we have some YouTube updates you would like to share with the class.
John:
Yeah, as we said last episode, YouTube has a thing where they'll read your podcast RSS feed and make little quote unquote videos out of each podcast episode.
John:
There's nothing in the video except for the logo of the show.
John:
There is no actual video component, but at least the audio is there.
John:
And we did that because it's, you know...
John:
It doesn't require anything of us.
John:
It's just an RSS feed like any other podcast.
John:
And YouTube consumes it and does this.
John:
It's like, great.
John:
Because we know some people like to use... For whatever reason, they like to use YouTube to listen to audio.
John:
And so now they can with our podcast.
John:
A few updates on that.
John:
First is that...
John:
YouTube will import the quote unquote descriptions of the video from the RSS feed.
John:
So basically our show notes that have all our links, YouTube will import that.
John:
Our show notes are in HTML.
John:
The YouTube podcast RSS ingestion thing, I don't know what it's doing, but it ends up taking our HTML and turning it into plain text filled with tons and tons of blank lines.
Hmm.
John:
it looks awful i don't know what it's doing i mean obviously it it extracts all the urls and puts them out longhand in the thing so there's no like link that you don't know where it's going to go everything is http called like you can see the url so it does that with the links which also lengthens it a little bit but then it put tons of blank space in there so i wrote an automation to get rid of all the blank space then the second problem was uh
John:
If my automation didn't run fast enough to sort of slim down the show notes to get rid of all the blank spaces, sometimes they were too long and YouTube would truncate them for us, hopefully, by just cutting them off.
John:
Apparently, YouTube can host petabytes of video.
John:
I forget what the absurd number is, like how many gigs of YouTube videos are uploaded per second.
John:
It's some ridiculous number.
John:
But the descriptions are limited to 5,000 characters because they don't want to waste space.
John:
You really have to think about the space efficiency.
John:
If you let everybody put, I don't know, like four kilobytes of text in there, what's going to happen?
John:
Anyway, and so I was fighting with that with my automation.
John:
And then someone suggested that wouldn't it be great if YouTube, when they ingested the RSS feed...
John:
would uh it also understand our chapters because we put chapters in the podcast because youtube now supports chapters and wouldn't it be great if they could just take our chapters and stick them in there um and so all this conspired uh to make me eventually decide you know what i'm just going to put a link to the show notes so it just says show notes colon https colon slash less atp.fm slash one two three four um
John:
And then you can just get to the show notes that way and they'll be correctly formatted and you'll see all of them and they'll never be truncated.
John:
Well, then the chapter stuff turned out to be super easy because I already had a script that was modifying the description.
John:
Apparently, the way chapters work on YouTube is you just put some text in the description that looks like a chapter list.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
YouTube parses that.
Marco:
Oh, the time... You, like, put timestamps as text?
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Yep.
John:
That's it.
Marco:
That's literally... Yeah, Overcast also parses that.
John:
That's their system.
John:
And so I'm like, oh, great.
John:
So now I know what all the show notes will be.
John:
So I'll just replace all the show notes with show notes, colon, link to show notes, and then chapter, chapter, chapter, chapter.
John:
So for people who are listening on YouTube, now you get access to chapters, too.
John:
Here's one caveat, though.
John:
To do all this, I had to use the YouTube API, which is, like, you know, part of the Google... Some Google developer platform.
John:
So I have to, like, get a Google developer account and...
John:
Say I want to use the YouTube data API v3 and deal with auth and do all sorts of crap like that.
John:
And then I'm writing my script and I'm debugging it.
John:
I'm trying to get it to work.
John:
Right.
John:
And every time I did this, I've been doing this for like four days now.
John:
I blow through my API quota.
John:
Yeah.
John:
like there's a number of requests per day that you're allowed to use and the first time i blew through it i was like i didn't know there was a quota well i guess there's a quota i'll just be more careful tomorrow right uh but every single day i've worked on this i've blown through my quota within like less than an hour um you can i was like i'll just pay them money here here google here's 10 bucks give me more api requests i just need this for a few days to finish development of this thing after that it's i'm not going to need a lot of requests right but apparently they won't take your money
John:
So you have to request more API access.
John:
And there's this form that you fill out that's like, tell me about your application.
John:
What are you using it for?
John:
How many people are using this?
John:
Can you send us your source code?
John:
Why do you need to use this API?
John:
If you didn't use this API, what would happen?
John:
They just want to know so much about you.
John:
Where are your parents from?
John:
How are you feeling right now?
John:
Have you ever spoken to anybody about this script?
John:
Has anyone seen this script?
John:
What are you going to use it for?
John:
Can you just give me more requests?
John:
Anyway, they came back to me today and said, can you send us a source code to the script that you use to upload your videos?
John:
What?
John:
For the umpteenth time, I don't upload my videos.
John:
As I said at length last time I wrote to you and filled out your giant form, it's your feature that's reading my... I don't upload the videos.
John:
They're already there.
John:
I just want to change the descriptions.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
They're never going to give me more requests.
John:
Anyway.
John:
Final thing is you may be wondering, why are you blowing through your API request?
John:
Are you just doing something dumb?
John:
On the first day, I was like, oh, I must have just, you know, had some loop that looped too many times and burnt, you know, when you're just writing code, I didn't know there was a limit.
John:
I probably did something dumb.
John:
But now I've realized that I have no idea how the things I'm calling relate to their API queries or whatever.
John:
Because as far as I'm aware, and I've stepped through it in the debugger, here are the calls.
John:
List videos in playlist, right?
John:
And it's 50 per page, so I got to call that 10 times because they have a paging system, right?
John:
So that's 10 requests, 10 or 11 requests to loop through all the 500 and something videos, right?
John:
But that's five calls to the Google API function.
John:
I'm doing this in Node, right?
Okay.
John:
what i think is maybe yeah i'm calling a function five times maybe each one of those calls fires off 100 api requests or something and then while i'm looping over them the only thing i ever do is i loop over the things that i've just got from this query each you know 50 at a time right and i look at them and say do i need to update this description and if i do i call an update api once and i say update this description right
John:
But somehow I blow through my daily quota of 10,000 requests within an hour.
John:
I'm like, there's no way I made 10,000 function calls.
John:
And now I'm thinking like, is there some internal retry logic that I don't understand?
John:
Anyway, I'm almost done with the script.
John:
But of course, I can only work on it for a few hours a day before I blow through my quota.
John:
So tomorrow I get 10,000 new requests.
John:
Hooray!
John:
See if I can manage not to blow through all those.
John:
But I did manage today to update all the descriptions.
John:
So they're all up there and they all have chapters.
John:
Please do enjoy.
John:
wow we appreciate your service salute emoji um by the way here's what the limits are uh queries per minute 1.8 million queries per minute per user 180 000 queries per day 10 000 what so you can do 1.8 million queries per minute for a fraction of a second and then you're done for the day
Casey:
Oh, my word.
John:
Google.
Casey:
Well, genuinely, I know I sounded sarcastic a moment ago, but truly, I do appreciate your service because this is a pain in the tuchus that I am pretty freaking confident I can speak for Marco in saying, I would have given up on this long ago and said, hey, you should be using tube anyway.
Casey:
Tough noogie.
Marco:
I would never even attempt at this.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
So, again, we appreciate you, John.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We appreciate you, even though apparently you don't know what the back of a Mac looks like.
Casey:
Tell me about this, please.
John:
Yeah.
John:
During our connector tier list thing, I had said that the DB50 connector was the SCSI that was on the back of the Mac.
John:
And that's not the case.
John:
It was DB25, which, of course, looks like DB50, but a little bit narrower.
John:
And when things aren't really to scale on a bunch of little thumbnails, it's hard to tell.
John:
I apologize for this mistake.
John:
I think the last time I plugged in a SCSI DB25 connector was many decades ago.
John:
So what can I tell you?
Casey:
We regret the error.
Casey:
The offending party has been sacked.
Casey:
John, if you haven't heard this episode and don't know what the crap it is we're talking about, what can you do?
John:
You can go to atp.fm slash join and become a member.
John:
We have these member specials that we do, and they're silly and fun.
John:
And the last one we did was ranking various computer connectors.
John:
And it was a blast.
John:
You should check it out.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
If you go to atp.fm slash join, then you can not only get access to this member special, but all the member specials that preceded.
Casey:
And at this point, we're building up a fair repertoire, not repertoire, a catalog is the word I was looking for,
Casey:
And so you might want to check those out.
Casey:
ADP.FM slash join.
Casey:
iOS screen sharing.
Casey:
We were talking about how to help perhaps in a relative that is a bit older and less tech savvy, or maybe just someone who in general who is less tech savvy.
Casey:
And John, you said something that I would have called you on had I realized that you were wrong, but I thought you were exactly right.
Casey:
It turns out we were both wrong because as it turns out, iOS does have screen sharing.
Casey:
Can you tell me about this, please?
John:
Yeah, some people are saying this was rolled out in iOS 15, although I think it might be older than that.
John:
I'm not sure when it rolled out.
John:
But yes, you can do screen sharing in iOS, but screen sharing in the way of they can share their screen with you so you can see it, which don't get me wrong, is very helpful.
John:
but you can't control it.
John:
I didn't think there was any way to control it, but then someone named Jenger said, there's no remote control unless you're on the same Wi-Fi network with the same Apple ID and switch control is enabled.
John:
Well, those things are probably not going to be the case if you're trying to help a relative, because if you're on the same Wi-Fi network, then just walk over and help them with their thing, right?
John:
And the same Apple ID, they're probably not using your Apple ID.
John:
So it's interesting to know that that is possible to remote control it under this narrow circumstance, but with regular screen sharing, all you can do is see their screen and then just...
John:
try to talk them through it which is again way better than not being able to see their screen but the beauty of the mac one is you just get to take over because a lot of the times they're not interested in learning how to fix it or what went wrong they just want you to fix their computer and that that is made so much easier by just okay uh you know hit the accept button and now i've got control of your computer and i'll fix it for you and you're done
John:
Indeed.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We had a fair bit of feedback about our slash my rant about Apple and their 30%.
Casey:
And I think, John, you had maybe not corrections, but some notes you would like to add?
John:
Yeah, obviously, we've talked about this topic tons and tons of times in the past.
John:
And very often when we talk about it for the 15th or 16th time, we don't say all reiterate all the same things.
John:
I know it sounds like we do, but we don't actually say all the same things that we said last time.
John:
And then people write in to tell us about them.
John:
And in this case, we get a lot of people coming back to say, you know.
John:
the fee that Apple charges for its in-app purchase, whether it's 30% or 27% or whatever, that's not for payment processing.
John:
So I don't know why you were talking about Stripe and how much they charge and that they would make a replacement in-app purchase thing or whatever, because Apple's not charging you for payment processing.
John:
They're charging you for access to their intellectual property, hosting and distribution, marketing, whatever thing people thought we would explain to us.
John:
And then presumably we would hear them and say, oh, we hadn't thought of that.
John:
You're right.
John:
They should get 30%.
John:
And obviously the Stripe comparison, because Stripe is a payment processor.
John:
Like what we were saying is Stripe would do all the same things Apple does in terms of APIs and so on and so forth, right?
John:
But here's the thing, and this is the reason I keep mentioning and linking my stupid blog post about this that apparently is not clear enough for people to...
John:
understand what i'm saying or maybe they just don't read it which you know fair enough but the thing is it doesn't really matter what apple thinks the 30 is for or what you think the 30 is for or what the 30 is actual actually for or whether it's for payment processing whether it's for access to intellectual property or it's this that the other thing none of that matters the only thing that matters is
John:
How do people feel about paying the 30 percent?
John:
The people who have to pay the 30 percent, how do they feel about paying for it?
John:
Do they feel like that's fair price or do they feel terrible about it and they resent it?
John:
And it's fair for you to try to convince somebody who resents the 30 percent.
John:
that they shouldn't be resentful.
John:
They just need, maybe they just didn't know that they're actually paying for access to Apple's intellectual property.
John:
And maybe you think you can convince them and then they will feel okay with it.
John:
But I can tell you that all the arguments put forward by people saying, no, here's what Apple's 30% really is for, have thus far not proven convincing to the developers who resent their percentage.
John:
And then the second thing I'll say is that Apple itself really does not spend any time at all trying to convince developers
John:
That 30% is the right amount.
John:
Like you see much more from people who are trying to explain on Apple's behalf what they think the 30% is quote unquote for.
John:
But how much do you see Apple making an effort to explain when they're not on the witness stand in a court case?
John:
Why it is that they think they should get 30%.
John:
And that I think might contribute to the dissatisfaction.
John:
Like that's what it boils down to.
Marco:
Do you think any answer they would actually give would actually make people all of a sudden be, oh, okay, I guess I will pay it.
Marco:
I don't think the people who don't want to pay it would be satisfied by any explanation Apple could possibly give.
John:
With Apple attempting to explain it, at least there would be some kind of conversation.
John:
Obviously, that's part of the...
John:
here's the thing that's why i was talking about game consoles apple developers some of them resent the 30 but game console developers resent it less right the 30 that they pay not to say they don't resent it but they resent it less and that must seem unfair to apple but i would say to apple have you made any effort whatsoever to try to figure out what
John:
the origins of the satisfaction dissatisfaction and talk about it.
John:
Not that you're going to be able to talk them into it or whatever, but the first step along that road is communicating about it.
John:
Whereas Apple's like, how about we just say nothing and continue to insist on 30%.
John:
And that of course leads to more resentment.
John:
And this doesn't, I know this doesn't seem fair.
John:
It doesn't seem like, well, that's not, you're not being fair at it.
John:
Why do they not like it?
John:
But that's what I tried to write about on that blog post.
John:
Like at this point with this going on for so many years, for so long,
John:
It's clear that for whatever reason, there is resentment about the amount of money that Apple asks for.
John:
Is it fair?
John:
Is it unfair?
John:
Should people not feel that way?
John:
Should people feel that way?
John:
The fact is they do.
John:
And so far, it's been getting worse and not better.
John:
And that may seem...
John:
like not right to certain people but it is what it is that's what the art of the possible post is about it's like you may not think it's fair apple you may think you're justified but there is resentment there it is an unhealthy relationship that is not getting better so something has to change if you want the
John:
this resentment to go away and that's what i would say to all the people who say you don't understand the 30 is not for payment processing it's for x y or z doesn't matter what it's for it only matters if people are okay with it and people are less okay with it than than apple wants them to be and it fosters a relationship where there's this sort of distrust and resentment between the two parties and that has ramifications like for example division pro launching without a netflix youtube or spotify app on it
Marco:
I talked about this a little bit on the talk show coming up soon, but I think Apple does not know how to either court developers or to negotiate when they are not in a position of power, which is basically any negotiation.
Marco:
Apple, what they know how to do is dictate, and they know how to be fond all over.
Marco:
But when people aren't busting down the doors to get into their app stores and to participate in their new platforms, they don't know what to do.
Marco:
they don't negotiate.
Marco:
They don't really do a lot of outreach or trying to build those relationships.
Marco:
All they do is manage when people come to them.
Marco:
And even that, it's really more of a dictation scenario.
John:
They're very controlled in their messaging and they don't get roped into arguments they don't want to have, which is just good PR, right?
John:
But you're right that the thing I was talking about, they don't spend any time trying to convince people that they should feel better about the deal they're getting.
John:
That's what they don't do.
Marco:
I'm convinced they really do not know how to negotiate or build those relationships because to a large degree, they never really had to.
Marco:
So much of Apple in the last 15 years or whatever, during so much of that time...
Marco:
They have been in the position of power in the areas that they would need this skill potentially in.
Marco:
So they really haven't had to use any kind of negotiation or relationship building, developer outreach.
Marco:
Even developer relations is fairly minimal in its interaction with most developers.
Marco:
So Apple doesn't know how.
Marco:
They just think everyone just comes to them all the time.
Marco:
And they seem...
Marco:
genuinely surprised when they put something out there and it goes kind of poorly with some people in the community or with certain developers or whatever.
Marco:
I don't think they know what to do because they literally do not know how to negotiate.
Marco:
They've never really had to in most ways.
Marco:
And if you look at the ways that they are not in power,
Marco:
App stores for lesser platforms that don't have the massive reach that the iPhone has or whatever else.
Marco:
If you look at certain content deals, in many of those other areas, they actually don't do very well.
Marco:
They don't succeed very much because they don't have this skill.
Marco:
So when it comes to this, you know, the 30% thing, like they are just so accustomed to being able to dictate whatever they want for the iPhone and have people, you know, grumble and bend over backwards to accommodate them because the iPhone is such a big market that when it comes to something like the Vision Pro launching,
Marco:
No wonder so many developers, especially the big companies, no wonder they're like, why should I work with you?
Marco:
There's not the big audience here to make it worth it.
Marco:
So why should I give you more power when I'm kind of tired of what you've done with your power?
John:
And that's the Apple's usual move.
John:
Their main negotiating tactic is, well, we'll just sell as many of these as we can.
John:
If we make a good enough product, we'll make the market big enough that you'll have to pay attention to us.
John:
And that's that is an important strategy and a good idea.
John:
It's just made more difficult by the fact that you don't have as much help from third party developers as you could have if you had a better relationship.
Marco:
That's also not negotiation.
Marco:
That's literally just dictating to the market.
John:
But it is a form of saying, can we make this more attractive to you?
John:
And one way to make it more attractive is that we, Apple, it's our job to make a product that people want to buy so that we'll sell a billion of them.
John:
That's on us.
John:
We'll do that.
John:
And that will make the platform more attractive to you.
John:
And it's not taking away the bad.
John:
It's not taking away the stick.
John:
It's adding some carrot.
John:
Anyway, one final thing on this.
John:
We also, the last episode, we were talking about the whole, hey, you want to use a link out to a third-party payment thing?
John:
You can do that, but you still have to pay us pretty much the same amount you always paid us.
John:
We talked about that last episode.
John:
And I saw some discussion online of people saying, well, given all of this, given that it's just like the Dutch dating app thing or whatever, why would anybody choose to use a third-party payment processor?
John:
Because it just seems like more work and you pay exactly the same amount.
John:
So it's like...
John:
Even if they're complying with the letter of law, which Epic says they're not, but we'll see how that goes in court.
John:
How, you know, who would choose to do this?
John:
It's like they've given an option and they'll have zero people who want to do it.
John:
And as we've discussed many, many times in the past, but didn't mention on last episode, we will reiterate the one remaining important motivating factor is when you send somebody through a third party behavior processor or whatever, have them pay on your website.
John:
Unlike with the App Store, you now, quote unquote, own that customer.
John:
You know who they are.
John:
You know what they paid with.
John:
You probably have their email address.
John:
Like when when someone does something through in-app purchase, Apple owns the customer.
John:
Apple knows who they are.
John:
You don't know.
John:
You just get the money, you know, the 70 percent or whatever of the money they give you.
John:
But you know nothing about them.
John:
Right.
John:
Um, that if you have the type of business where quote unquote, owning the customer in that way is valuable, you may be willing to pay exactly the same amount as you paid before, do a lot more work, subject yourself to audits from Apple.
John:
Also, now you can own the customer.
John:
And what kind of business?
John:
Might it be really important that they own the customer?
John:
Probably businesses that are going to make some money on the side selling information about you or spamming you or doing other things.
John:
So, yeah, there is a reason somebody, a company might want to go through these hoops to do this, even though they're paying Apple exactly the same amount.
John:
It's just to get ownership of the customer, ownership of the customer's information, all that stuff.
Casey:
And with that in mind, I'm happy to report that the rumblings about how Apple will handle this forthcoming EU law about sideloading is that they're going to be extremely generous.
Casey:
Oh, I'm sorry, breaking news.
Casey:
No, they are not going to be extremely generous.
Casey:
My mistake.
Casey:
They are going to continue to be petulant turds.
Casey:
According to the Wall Street Journal, which writes, Apple is planning to add new fees and restrictions when it begins allowing people to download apps outside of the iPhone's closed ecosystem.
Casey:
Apple's approach to the EU law will help ensure the company maintains close oversight of apps downloaded outside the App Store, a process known as sideloading.
Casey:
The company will give itself the ability to review each app downloaded outside of its App Store.
Casey:
Apple also plans to collect fees from developers, of course they are, that offer downloads outside of the App Store, said people familiar with the company's plans.
Casey:
Who'da thunk it?
Marco:
We don't know a lot about this yet, but I think anybody who is surprised by this I think is not paying attention because we have seen over and over again if a regulator or a lawmaker passes some law that says they have to somehow give up some of their control or money in the app store, they will do it only kicking and screaming and only the bare minimum they need to do, and they will make it as absolutely painful as possible.
Marco:
So
Marco:
With the EU DMA and forcing sideloading by law, I can't imagine Apple's going to just say, okay, well, I guess we have to allow it and just throw their hands up and say, all right, done.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
We've seen they're going to make it as incredibly hostile and painful and expensive as possible because they don't want to be doing this.
Marco:
And honestly...
Marco:
For this particular case, I feel very differently, as we talked about last week, about whether apps should be able to link out to external payments.
Marco:
But for sideloading and third-party app stores, I really don't think this is a great idea for iOS.
Marco:
I'm worried about what it could do, especially with – we don't have to imagine.
Marco:
It's been in the news.
Marco:
A Facebook app store – or excuse me, a meta app store –
Marco:
There are so many ways that can go badly for users and developers.
Marco:
I really don't want that to be the case on iOS.
Marco:
So I'm not surprised Apple is going to be probably very painful on this.
Marco:
And in this particular case, I'm not going to be upset about it.
Marco:
But certainly, if you were hoping that they would just allow you to download something off someone's website, and that'd be it, and it'd be super easy, and you can totally bypass...
Marco:
The app store review process or code signing with Apple or rules or whatever, and especially bypass any kind of financial arrangement with Apple, I think that's only going to happen through a lot of painful lawsuits and legislation again down the road.
Marco:
But for now, Apple is going to do the bare minimum they can and make it so hostile and expensive that nobody will do it.
John:
It does make me wonder, like, the people who are writing these laws, like, is this just like an example of regulatory capture where the regulated company is really running the show here?
John:
Because it's just a bunch of rich companies and people who are in sway to rich companies sort of arranging for them.
John:
We're going to pass this law, which looks good to our people, but really behind the scenes, well, you can just do whatever you want.
John:
You're still going to get all your money.
John:
You're still going to have all your control.
John:
It'll be fine.
John:
Just go with it.
John:
Or did they actually try to, you know, pass this Digital Markets Act that would like increase competition for apps on the iPhone and just did such a bad job of it that Apple's approach, as described in this rumor, complies with the letter of the law?
John:
Because if Apple's still controlling everything about it and still getting the same amount of money, how is that competition?
John:
Like how you haven't made the market and like, what was your, what were you trying to do?
John:
EU is presumably trying to increase competition, right?
John:
People can't put their apps on the iPhone unless Apple says they can.
John:
So let's fix that by allowing Apple to decide what apps can go on and collect money.
John:
Like I, I,
John:
It's fine.
John:
It's hard to believe they would have done such a terrible job that all this would be allowed.
John:
But maybe they did.
John:
And maybe it's just a bad law anyway.
John:
Or maybe this rumor is not true.
John:
Or maybe this is what Apple wants to do.
John:
But you will say, no, that doesn't fly.
John:
We'll see how it shakes out.
John:
But it is baffling to me.
John:
But I will say one thing, just like I said before, like, why would anybody do this with the third party payments?
John:
The answer was to own a customer.
John:
there is still one thing that this EU law and this approach to satisfying it would provide that didn't exist before.
John:
And that is, and again, this is another assumption based on information we don't know, the assumption being that even though Apple gets all its money and gets to check the apps for malware and do whatever, still, I would assume that the whole point of this is that if you want to put an app on your own app store on the thing and Apple doesn't want that app to be distributed, they can't stop it.
John:
So like,
John:
If you want to put up a Nintendo emulator or some other app that Apple refuses to put in there, you want to have a different web browser engine or something like that, right?
John:
What this would allow is, yes, Apple gets the same amount of money.
John:
Yes, Apple still does code signing.
John:
Yes, they scan for malware.
John:
But Apple can't actually stop you from putting up an iOS version of Chrome that uses the Blink Engine, for example.
John:
If they can stop that, then this is totally pointless, and I don't know why they did it at all.
John:
But that is the one additional thing that even this terrible solution would provide.
John:
If there's an app that Apple wouldn't let you put in an iPhone, now, in theory, you can get it on there through one of these third-party app stores because Apple...
John:
Well, I wouldn't say can't stop it, but Apple won't stop it.
Casey:
Speaking of Apple and legislative and related issues, apparently their workaround for the Massimo-related import ban on the Apple Watch is software.
Casey:
So over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber writes, Apple refuses to say so, but it seems clear that this is a software change.
Casey:
These new watch units still have the blood oxygen sensor, but the sensor is disabled by software.
Casey:
This workaround definitely does not apply to the already sold watches, even after those watches upgrade to future versions of watchOS.
Casey:
The reason why is that the ITC injunction is an import ban.
Casey:
Apple is banned from importing watches that violate Massimo's patents.
Casey:
Units that have already been sold aren't affected by an import ban.
John:
Yeah, that's what we were wondering about last time.
John:
This seems like pretty solid info, even though it's not officially confirmed by Apple.
John:
And by the way, if you go to Apple's website and you go to the Apple Watch page, you'll see a big blue banner on the top that fades to black after a few seconds that says, Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 no longer include the blood oxygen feature.
John:
I presume you won't see that banner if you're not in the U.S., but if you are, there it is.
John:
Boom, right at the top of the page before it fades out.
John:
Never mind.
John:
It might come back.
John:
We'll see.
Boom.
Marco:
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Casey:
The additional close power is just the reciprocal of the focal length in meters.
Casey:
If you're correct about the Vision Pro, excuse me, the Apple Vision Pro, having focal distances of 1.3 meters, then you'll need 1 over 1.3 or about 0.7 diopters of additional power or add power over your normal distance correction.
Casey:
So if you usually wear a negative 6D prescription for distance...
Casey:
you'll need about a negative 5.25D to see effort-free at 1.3 meters.
Casey:
If you wear a plus 2D to see far, you'll want a plus 2.75D.
Casey:
And if your glasses prescription includes astigmatism, this adjustment will only affect the sphere power.
Casey:
Of course, this is assuming you want the lenses to do all the focusing work for you.
Casey:
Most people under 40, womp womp for the three of us, can do all the focusing they need to see things up close.
Casey:
And I'd even say many people under 50.
Casey:
Woo!
Casey:
Could focus up to 1.3 meters without additional add power.
Casey:
But trying to sustain that focus for long periods of time could become uncomfortable.
Casey:
I'd be curious to learn how the folks at Apple will approach this.
Casey:
Will they just use the distance prescription?
Casey:
Will they automatically adjust it by adding 0.75?
Casey:
Will it be age dependent?
Casey:
For example, under 40 years old, no adjustment, 40 to 45 year old plus 0.25, etc.
Casey:
I have a hard time believing that they'd want people to get specific glasses prescriptions that are adjusted to focus at 1.3 meters, though.
Casey:
The easiest thing to do would be to just extrapolate from the distance prescription.
Casey:
Dealing with people's reading prescriptions, computer prescriptions, etc.
Casey:
would just introduce a lot of confusion into the process.
John:
Yeah, this brings up one point that I saw a lot of people asking questions about.
John:
They're like, why would it be a focal distance of 1.3 meter?
John:
No one's going to have glasses that are calibrated to 1.3 meters.
John:
They're going to have their distance glasses and their reading glasses for like reading distances with the ad power that we talked about.
John:
And I was talking about like where you can go to your eye doctor and just tell them what normal distance you look at.
John:
The important point that's brought out by Todd here is...
John:
When you adjust prescriptions, like if you have regular eyes with lenses, even if you're an old person, you still have the ability to use the muscles in your eye to squish your eyelids into a different shape, to change your focal distance.
John:
That gets worse as you get older, but it doesn't go away.
John:
So you don't need a prescription exactly suited to...
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
So you don't need glasses calibrated or prescription calibrated to 1.3 meters.
John:
You can have it calibrated any distance away from that that you can accommodate by squishing your eye muscles to focus on that.
John:
And again, as you get older, the amount that you can squish gets worse because I guess your lens gets harder or whatever because you're getting old and you're just getting crusty, right?
John:
that's why old people need two sets of glasses because they can no longer change their focal distance as much as they could when they were young and healthy and vibrant yes um but anyway hey i'm still mostly healthy and vibrant as todd points out uh if it's near the edge of what you can accommodate like you really got to use your eye muscles to really squish your hard little lens uh to to see it it might be uncomfortable a long period of time so you want some prescription that's close to
John:
to 1.3 meters but don't think that you have to get a prescription that's exactly 1.3 meters when i was a younger person i just had one pair of glasses and i could see every distance with them and i didn't have any ad power to my prescription i was a young person i had supple lenses i would say here's my prescription i can see right in front of my face and all the way down the road and that just changes when you get older right so that's the important thing to remember your eyes do focus themselves they have the ability to do that
John:
uh most people's eyes anyway i think if you get like cataract surgery and they put like solid lenses in there you might lose a lot of that ability but anyway um so don't think you need some special prescription and i'm also curious about what apple's doing because i would imagine they're just using your distance prescription because for most people with your distance prescription you can do 1.3 meters for me it's borderline if i put on my distance prescription i can focus at 1.3 meters but it hurts my eyeballs because i'm old so that's kind of at the limit of my but anyway
John:
Don't think you have, you don't have to buy glasses for every focal distance, right?
John:
Your eyes will do some work themselves.
John:
It's just a question of how old are your eyes and how much work can they do?
Casey:
Then Jaycon K writes, optometrist here.
Casey:
You mentioned the focal distance of the Apple Vision Pro, excuse me, of Apple Vision Pro.
Casey:
Hi, I'm Casey.
Casey:
Being 1.3 meters, ad powers are written as the inverse of a meter, or 1 over 1.3, which is about plus 0.75.
Casey:
So people looking for a typical single vision correction at 1.3 meters would be their distance prescription plus 0.75.
Casey:
We typically test ad powers at 40 centimeters, making 1 over 0.4 or plus 2.5 a common reader prescription.
Casey:
However, this all assumes the patient has no accommodation or eyes-focusing power that they are adding.
Casey:
Younger, thankfully, Jay Conkay provided a pronunciation guide, which I will now butcher.
Casey:
Younger presbyopes still can accommodate or focus some, so the bifocal strength is less.
Casey:
I think, John, this is what you were talking about.
Casey:
Interestingly, the Apple website instructs people to pick the reading insert that matches their prescription, so I'm sure that if the lenses are compensating for the difference in the Apple Vision Pro, sorry, in Apple Vision Pro focal length versus how it's typically measured.
Casey:
Either way, I'm really curious to hear more about the Vision Pro...
Casey:
sorry, about Apple Vision Pro insert process.
Casey:
It's so awkward.
Casey:
Why do they make us do this?
Casey:
As well as feedback on the visual experience.
Casey:
Also, it's worth noting, I didn't realize this until just earlier today when I was doing research for the episode.
Casey:
There are two different kinds of inserts, and I think we're going to talk more about this later, but there's reader inserts, and that's Apple's words, where you just, I guess you kind of just tell them what kind of a script you want.
John:
Yeah, it's like the kind of glasses you can buy at the drugstore.
Marco:
Yeah, because you don't need a prescription to buy reading glasses in the U.S.
Marco:
You just know, oh, I'm a plus 1.5 or whatever.
Casey:
Right, right, right.
Casey:
And then there's what we have already been talking about, the full-on scripted prescription inserts, which is what I think Todd Zarwell was talking about.
Casey:
And it sounds like Jay Conk is more talking about the reader inserts.
Casey:
I wish I had given that context before.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
But anyway, there you have it.
Casey:
Let's talk Vision Pro, baby.
Casey:
So the pre-orders have happened.
Casey:
I did notice, by the way, that the URL for the Vision Pro is not apple.com slash vision pro, but rather apple.com slash apple hyphen vision hyphen pro, because of course it is.
Casey:
Nevertheless, pre-orders happened.
Casey:
We'll talk about what we did or did not order in a minute and whether or not we caved or kept up to our theories from last week.
Casey:
But let's go through what was available to order.
Casey:
There were three storage tiers.
Casey:
The default was 256 gigs.
Casey:
which came in at $3,499.
Casey:
Then 512 gigs, so doubling that is an additional $200 to basically $3,700.
Casey:
And a terabyte is plus $400, so doubling it again.
Casey:
So a total of $3,900, which is a lot of money.
Casey:
Then AppleCare Plus is $500 or maybe $499 or alternatively, $25 a month.
Casey:
And then there's a litany of accessories that you can order.
Casey:
So gentlemen, please jump in and interrupt me when you're ready.
Casey:
We start with an extra battery.
Casey:
That is $200.
Casey:
There is a travel case, a bespoke travel case, which is also $200.
Casey:
It's like optioning a Porsche.
John:
Everything is at least $200.
John:
Right?
Casey:
Yeah, it's so true.
Casey:
It's so true.
Marco:
Yeah, the travel case in particular, like, ooh, that's a lot of money for that.
Marco:
It's made out of $1 bills.
Yeah, right.
Casey:
And annoyingly, I knew that I think it was Spigen, Spigen, whatever they're called, came out with a travel case that was something like 30 to 50 bucks.
Casey:
And I saw that it was a thing.
Casey:
And if I had ordered a Vision Pro, I should have ordered it.
Casey:
And so I regret not having done so, but that's neither here nor there.
Marco:
Don't worry.
Marco:
So keep in mind also, stuff that's not proprietary to the Vision Pro, like a case.
Marco:
Anybody can make a case very easily for this.
Marco:
Or a battery, probably.
Marco:
Well, I don't know.
Marco:
I think it has a custom connector.
John:
We'll see how it goes.
Marco:
Yeah, but anyway, any of these things, you're basically paying for day one Apple nice version of this.
Marco:
It's always going to be a huge premium.
Marco:
Whereas if you just wait a few months, at most, you'll be able to buy a million...
Marco:
$30 versions on Amazon of things like the travel case and stuff like that.
Casey:
Yeah, I looked on Amazon to see if there was anything there yet.
Marco:
I mean, look, like, I know what you got to in a second of, like, the Belkin battery holder, which is basically a plastic bracket for the battery that's $50.
Marco:
For your $200 battery.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I didn't.
Casey:
We didn't actually put that in the show notes.
Marco:
Yeah, I didn't put third-party stuff in there.
Marco:
Well, but that's barely third party.
Marco:
And you can tell, even in the Vision Pro travel case for $200, to hold the battery, they have to strap it in.
Marco:
Because they designed this blob of the battery that has zero way to attach anything to it.
Marco:
So the only ways to attach it to things or to attach things to it are incredibly inelegant wraparound or straps or plastic kind of things.
Marco:
They couldn't have just put a mounting hole or a slot.
Marco:
It's just like the AirTag.
Marco:
It's like...
John:
Make a robotic core.
John:
You add what you want to it, but we're not going to tell you you need a clip.
John:
What if you just want a slippery little stone?
John:
You can't make it smaller, but you can always make it bigger.
John:
Buy this $50 case.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So then light seals are $200 a piece.
John:
Let's look at this here.
John:
We have a piece of electronics, the battery.
John:
We have a piece of cloth, the case.
John:
And we have a cushiony thing.
John:
All of these things are $200?
John:
Really?
John:
These are equally valuable, equally...
Marco:
just the light seal that seems especially egregious because it's like it's a wear part it is well not i mean the thing on the front it's not the cushion yeah the cushion is what touches your face oh if you're thinking by the way oh light seal that's a thing that goes in your face no it's an extra 30 to get a complete thing that goes in your face
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
It says it includes the cushions in two sizes.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Anyway, replacement cushions are $30.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But if, for instance, you need to change the size of the light seal, like if you're adding another person to it or giving it to someone else or selling it to someone else, they probably have to spend $200 for a different light seal.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's bananas.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And it's just like, I mean, what is this made of?
Marco:
It's like, you know, probably some kind of like, you know, rigid, you know, plastic frame with cloth wrapped around it.
Marco:
It's 80% recycled material.
John:
I mean, it looks real nice.
Casey:
For what it's worth, I don't really begrudge Apple for this being not cheap, but this is quite expensive.
Casey:
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to make of it.
Casey:
But anyway, so the light seal, which, by the way, a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson, pointed out to me, somebody, M1 Astra on Twitter pointed out, there appear to be, according to this individual, totally
Casey:
28 light seal sizes.
Casey:
My word.
John:
That's why they don't list them.
John:
I put the sizes here, but when you look at the light seal, when you're trying to buy it, it says, what size is available?
John:
They're going to make you measure your face with their scanner thing.
John:
You don't get to pick from a pop-up menu of 28 sizes.
John:
What it gives you is a number and a letter.
John:
you know we'll talk about it with the ordering processes later but like it just tells you the size and presumably when you go to the store they'll do the same thing scan your face with the face id scanner and then it comes up with the size and obviously if you're at the store you could probably try it on if you're doing a tryout thing and decide it doesn't feel right or whatever but yeah a lot of sizes
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Then the light seal cushion as discussed is $29.30.
Casey:
Sizes N, N+, W, and W+, I guess normal and wide?
John:
Narrow and narrow and wide.
John:
Not normal.
John:
Let's not be normative.
John:
It's narrow and wide.
Casey:
Then we have the Solo Knit Band.
Casey:
So this is the one that goes behind your head, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
The one that looks like it's the one Apple wanted to make.
John:
Yeah, it's the one that looks cool.
John:
It looks less cumbersome.
John:
Less slapped together in the last minute.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So that's $100, which honestly, that seems more in line with what I would expect because that appears to be a relatively complex thing to make.
John:
It's an inert piece of fabric with adjustable straps on it.
Casey:
for a hundred dollars it has a knob on the side all right sure okay a hundred dollars and it does seem it does seem complicated to construct but yeah a hundred bucks in sizes small medium or large then there's the dual loop band now this one to your point john does look like they threw it together at the last minute it's got twice as many loops and it's the same price what a bargain
Casey:
It's also small, medium, and large.
Casey:
Then the optical inserts for reader style are $100.
Casey:
Optical inserts full-on prescription style are $150, and both of those are for pairs.
Casey:
So $100 for a pair, $150 for a pair.
John:
And just to be clear, when you buy the Vision Pro, you get a battery, you get a light seal with a cushion, you get the solo band and the dual loop band.
John:
You don't get the optical inserts of any kind.
John:
so it's not like you have to add all these numbers we put up together you pick your storage size which who knows how anybody knows what storage size to pick because we don't really know what we're going to be storing on it um and then if you want a travel case you can add that on and if you if you need optical inserts you can add them on but everything else comes in the box with it so it does have a lot of stuff like i said it does come with both the straps which is nice you don't have to pick one of them yes at these prices it comes with 600 of accessories in the box yeah well can't afford not to buy one
Casey:
Oh my gosh, you're not kidding, are you?
Casey:
Holy smokes.
Marco:
No, I'm not.
Casey:
All right, so Marco, what'd you order?
Marco:
I got the base model.
Casey:
What?
Marco:
You?
Marco:
I didn't get any glasses.
Marco:
I didn't get any extra storage.
Marco:
Do you not need glasses with it?
Marco:
I don't think so.
Marco:
So, you know, if we're correct that we're roughly doing like a, you know, 1.3 meter focus distance here, I don't need, the only glasses I need are reading glasses for up close stuff.
Marco:
And my minimum focus distance is still less than my arm length.
Marco:
So I think I'm fine.
Marco:
I don't think I'm going to need any kind of reader insert.
Marco:
But if for some reason I do, I can always just get those afterwards.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, you heard it here first.
John:
Marco bought the base model of something.
John:
I know.
John:
I am shocked.
John:
On purpose.
John:
For himself.
Marco:
No, and I'll tell you why.
Marco:
So, okay, first of all, I didn't get AppleCare because it's $500.
Marco:
And I don't see myself taking the Vision Pro many places.
Marco:
And I think by the time I am using the platform that much, if that time ever comes, there will probably be another model out that I will probably want to upgrade to.
Marco:
because i i think this again i think it's gonna be a fairly slow build up in like the app ecosystem and stuff like that so i didn't necessarily think apple care wasn't it was worth it for 500 um also i'm pretty careful with my stuff most of the time so i don't see myself breaking it anyway and then on the storage tiers i got the 256 base model because i'm considering this basically like an ipad and i think like how do i use ipads
Marco:
I don't foresee myself loading it up with a whole bunch of stuff to take on a plane that would actually exceed that level.
Marco:
And if it's anything other than loading it up with media, I don't know what I would use that much space for.
Marco:
I didn't want to super option up this one and then have all these resources I never used.
Marco:
And then when I want to buy the next one that's even better in two years to have invested so much in this one for stuff I never used.
Casey:
Oh, I totally, I don't think you should be, like, ashamed or kicking yourself or whatever about getting this.
Marco:
It's just out of character.
Casey:
Yeah, it's just extremely out of character, and I'm very proud of you.
Marco:
Well, I mean, and, you know, when I buy iPads and stuff, I don't ramp up the storage that much.
John:
Yeah, yeah, but that's, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, like you said, you know how you're gonna use an iPad.
John:
It's a known quantity.
John:
I think that's the problem with the storage in this one.
John:
Nobody knows, like...
John:
is storage going to be important or is it going to be like the apple tv where it's mostly a non-issue we don't know we don't know what the app ecosystem is going to look like and so everyone especially when you see these prices you're like let me just get the base one like it's because like you said marco if it turns out that you're wrong you're like oh i shouldn't have got that one it's constantly being filled up by the time you're annoyed by it you're just going to get the next model anyway so
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And to be fair, I do expect media for this is going to be large.
Marco:
If they had a 128, I wouldn't have gotten that one.
Marco:
Yeah, like a 3D movie because it's got to have basically a separate movie for each eye.
Marco:
Or even what I expect to enjoy on this a lot is immersive experiences.
Marco:
Put me on a mountaintop or whatever.
Marco:
That I expect to enjoy a lot.
Marco:
But how many of those am I going to have on there at once?
Marco:
How big can they possibly be?
Marco:
I think...
Marco:
200 gigs of free space should be plenty for what will, for my purposes, mostly be a dev kit and a messing around occasionally kind of device.
John:
Well, we still have questions like, but what if you turn on iMessage in the cloud?
John:
All your storage is gone now.
John:
But that's no problem because iMessage gives you lots of ways to control how much space it takes up in your devices.
John:
So don't worry.
John:
It'll be fine.
John:
No, it doesn't.
John:
It just takes all your space and there's nothing you can do.
Casey:
Focus.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So for me, I also ordered the base model.
Casey:
I did not get any accessories.
Casey:
I did not get AppleCare, although I'm thinking I might actually add AppleCare because I saw...
John:
We'll get to the repair prices.
Casey:
Yeah, I saw the repair prices, which we'll get to.
Casey:
But suffice to say, I think I might add AppleCare.
Casey:
And part of the reason I think I might add AppleCare is, if you'll permit me a slight tangent, I'd like to tell a funny story.
Casey:
So I was at a friend's house.
Casey:
It was a total of four couples, inclusive of Aaron and myself and the associated children.
Casey:
We were hanging out at somebody's house.
Casey:
This was, I think, the day of pre-order, the day after, something like that.
Casey:
I forget exactly when it was.
Casey:
We're all hanging out and they're all just beating me up in a friendly way about spending this pile of money on this thing that I may or may not even want.
Casey:
And that was totally justified for the record.
Casey:
But nevertheless, it was clear pretty quickly in the conversation that as much as they're giving me a hard time about it,
Casey:
Everyone in the group was at least intrigued by this thing.
Casey:
And I started to explain, well, here's the thing, though.
Casey:
I don't know if you could try mine.
Casey:
I'm happy to have you try it, but it may not be a particularly great experience because your faces may be differently shaped than mine.
Casey:
Well, they are differently shaped than mine.
Casey:
And the light seal may not match.
Casey:
So then that got into a conversation about what the hell does that mean?
Casey:
What are you talking about?
Casey:
Blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Well, how do we figure out if what you got works for us?
Casey:
Well, come to think of it, why don't you all bust out your iPhones and go and pretend like you're buying a Vision Pro?
Casey:
And so the next thing you know, and I wish I had taken a picture.
Casey:
I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture.
Casey:
But the next thing you know, our video would have been even better.
Casey:
All of them are looking at their phones doing the, and I know this is not a video podcast, but doing the
Casey:
thing for scanning your face, like Face ID style, in order to get their size.
Casey:
And so everyone was checking out, pretty much at the same time, checking out what size light shield they would need so they could see whether or not they could have a good experience testing out My Vision Pro.
Casey:
And the answer was of a total of eight people, inclusive, again, of Aaron and myself, and they were all boy-girl couples, as it turns out,
Casey:
All but two of the women could use my, or were sized to be the same as me, even though these body types are wildly different among the people that are allegedly the same size as me.
Casey:
The body types are wildly different, which I thought was quite funny.
Casey:
But yeah, just imagine a total of eight adults, you know, all of us, pretty much all of us in our early 40s, just doing the...
Casey:
thing all at once trying to size ourselves maybe it was one of those experiences you had to be there but it was hilarious to be watching all this go down uh but yeah i i bring all this up to say and this is relevant for the apple care plus thing because even though all of them are probably better with their stuff than i am i just have a vision of like i have a vision ding of handing you know handing the vision pro from one person to the other and it dropping on some tile or something like that and holy
Casey:
Holy monkey.
Casey:
Let's just skip forward to the repair costs.
John:
Don't you want to know if I ordered one?
John:
john did you order a vision pro no did anyone in your family order one no but i did go through the order process to get my size you should just tell the people oh don't worry if you want to try mine out just buy a new light seal for 200 bucks all right just 200 bucks to try casey's uh headset right right and then i would have a collection of them at the end uh oh for the record not that it matters uh solo knit band small do loop band small light seal 21w
John:
Someone was saying that they were getting different size measurements whether or not they said they had prescription lenses, but it could have just been variability in the face scanning bit.
Casey:
I actually heard that a lot as well.
Casey:
In my understanding, which I am not sure is correct, is that it actually accounts for a little bit of depth for the inserts if you're getting inserts.
Casey:
Again, I don't know if that's true.
Casey:
I could be accidentally lying to you, but it does stand to reason that maybe that's true.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Just a theory.
John:
that's why i mean obviously i didn't order one but if i had i ordered one like it would just make me feel a lot more comfortable to be able to sort of try on to know oh yeah definitely you know especially since we don't know what like the the return exchange situation will be like uh because of the variability because it's just your phone scanning your face because some people have reported i guess if you're on a borderline between two different sizes depending on what mood it's in and when you scan your face if it's going to put you on one side or the other it's like trying on jeans i mean you can know your jean size but it really helps to try them on for
Casey:
Yeah, I'm very curious.
Casey:
And I think, Marco, you had told me privately you're doing some in-store pickup somewhere.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
Yeah, because I basically figured if for some reason the light seal doesn't fit right or whatever, I figured that's a lot easier.
Marco:
And they might even, you know, like depending on what the process is for in-store pickup, they might even have me take it out and try it on there before I go.
Marco:
So that I figure in-person is probably best for something like this.
Casey:
Yeah, I feel the exact same way in that.
Casey:
And partially because my delivery schedule for UPS and FedEx seems to be at the end of the day, and partially because it just seemed like a smarter approach, I am also doing in-store pickup.
Casey:
And so by the time I got through the ordering process, which we should briefly talk about actually, but I went through the ordering process as quick as I could.
Casey:
I was trying to toggle between, or I was alternating between my iPad, my iPhone, and my Mac, and
Casey:
And it so happened that the iPhone landed first, and that was excellent because that seemed to be the thing that was most equipped to scan my face and so on and so forth.
Casey:
It took a little while to scan my face, I think in part because I was in a relatively dark room in the house.
Casey:
I was in the office, and it was still dark outside, or maybe it was an overcast day, I don't recall.
John:
And you may be hearing this and say, but Casey, Face ID doesn't need light.
John:
It just uses infrared.
John:
What difference does it make with the lighting was?
John:
Well, I can tell you that the scanning that you do in the Apple Store app on your phone demands that your room is well lit.
John:
I don't know why it does, but I just tell you for a fact, it will tell you that your room is too dark.
John:
And Face ID will never tell you that because Face ID, I believe, does not use the plain old light camera.
John:
It uses the IR spreader entirely.
John:
So whatever they're doing for this thing, apparently it also wants to actually see your face.
John:
You need to be well lit.
Casey:
it also it it threw me off too because it this one made me do just up down left right not a big circle so i kept doing it wrong and it kept yelling at me same exactly the same story trained us for years to do the roll your head around your neck muscles and now you gotta go up down left right there yep i i screwed up particularly i think they they have you scan it twice and i think it was the second time i don't know why i did it right the first time and not the second but i screwed up uh the second time because i was doing the roll just as you were saying marco
Casey:
And that is an important point, John.
Casey:
I appreciate you jumping in there.
Casey:
Yeah, I definitely got yelled at once or twice that the room wasn't bright enough.
Casey:
But nonetheless, it was really easy for me, other than my own issues following directions and doing up, down, left, or not doing up, down, left, right, and rather doing a circle.
Casey:
It was pretty easy.
Casey:
I mean, I didn't get the 8 o'clock time slot, which is a little bit of a bummer, but I'm a big boy.
Casey:
I can wait 30 freaking minutes.
Casey:
And so, yeah, I'm five stars on the ordering process.
Casey:
I thought it was really, really straightforward.
Casey:
I heard a lot of people...
Casey:
had problems particularly in busier stores where they would go to you know pick a pickup slot appointment whatever and then during the time they're doing the financial portion of the checkout then the pickup slot would run out of like available spots and i guess it was presented as a payment error but really the issue was that the the pickup slot had been snatched out from under them and this is huge apple energy to show either no error or an incorrect error when
Casey:
There's something wrong.
Casey:
But I didn't have that problem.
Casey:
Like it was lickety split for me.
Casey:
But I did hear a lot of reports of that.
Casey:
But I don't know of anyone that I had seen that was deeply interested in getting one that in plan to get one that wasn't getting one either day one or, you know, within the first week or something like that.
Casey:
And, you know, friend of the show, Alex Cox, they ended up ordering one online.
Casey:
late on launch day, if I'm not mistaken, and still was able to find a day one delivery.
Casey:
I don't think it was first thing in the morning, but still a day one delivery, which is pretty cool.
John:
Yeah, we'll get to the rumored sales numbers a little bit, but I hoisted up the repair costs so we can talk about next.
Casey:
Ah, yes, thank you.
Casey:
I got myself sidetracked.
Casey:
So, yeah.
Casey:
So, as I was saying, as all of my friends are scanning their faces and we look like a bunch of dorks, nevertheless, it occurred to me I will be potentially passing this backward and forward, and I think I will probably go on at least a couple of trips with this thing.
Casey:
And
Casey:
At first, I thought there's no way I want to pay $500 for AppleCare.
Casey:
And then I saw the repair prices.
Casey:
Cracked cover glass, $800.
Casey:
With AppleCare Plus, the extraordinarily affordable $300.
Marco:
It doesn't even save you the entire price?
Marco:
Of course it doesn't.
Marco:
You're paying $500 for this AppleCare Plus to save you a few hundred dollars?
Marco:
Well, wait for the next repair, though.
Casey:
And then additionally, what we assume to be a full replacement due to, quote, other damage.
Casey:
$2,400 if you do not have AppleCare.
Casey:
$2,400 if you do not have AppleCare.
Casey:
But it is comparatively genuinely affordable at $300 if you do.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
So for me, I think as long as they let me retroactively, you know how they typically in the first month or so let you add AppleCare.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
I think I'm probably going to be adding AppleCare because holy jamolies.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, so here's the thing.
John:
If you crack the cover glass, wouldn't you just leave it cracked?
John:
Who cares if people can see your eyes?
John:
As long as everything else works fine, I think people are going to be like, yeah, I'll pass on the $300 with AppleCare glass replacement so people can see my computerized eyeballs.
Yeah.
John:
but like what if it affects the cameras and stuff that's that's the question well well here's the thing like the two categories we'll put a link on the show notes to the web page the only two things you can pick are crack cover glass and other damage and other damages covers everything i what i'm wondering is like okay but what if there's no damage what if just like something goes wonky like your r1 chip fries itself or something is that also a 300 repair is like is any kind of thing 300 with apple care
John:
Well, that would be warranty for the first year.
John:
For the first year, yeah.
John:
But after that, anyway.
John:
Oh, man.
John:
So I don't know.
John:
I don't know how to gauge the AppleCare on this.
John:
I remember when I noticed that the AppleCare had run out on my 2019 Mac Pro, which happened several years ago at this point.
John:
And I was like...
John:
because if anything breaks on this thing it's also like a bazillion dollars so yeah i mean i guess this is this argues for the doing the 25 a month thing instead so you can just continue it indefinitely but for this particular product if you make it for the first two years you're probably buying a new a new or better one potentially yeah because i i can't imagine like you know if you get really into this two years from now there's gonna be a better one that you're gonna want and you're gonna want it yeah
Casey:
David Schaub in the chat makes a good point.
Casey:
They only have one part other than a full hardware replacement.
Casey:
So that's probably why, at least for now, it's cover glass or anything else.
Casey:
It's just like the Apple Watch.
John:
They don't even replace the cover glass in that.
John:
It's just total replacement.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right, the weight.
Casey:
So let's talk about weight.
Casey:
This is in grams, all right?
Casey:
So I'm going to start with other things and end with the Vision Pro.
Casey:
PlayStation VR 2, 560.
Casey:
Valve Index, 810.
Casey:
MetaQuest 2, 503 grams.
Casey:
MetaQuest 3, 515 grams.
Casey:
MetaQuest Pro, which is the closest, I think, most analogous device to the Vision Pro,
Casey:
722 grams.
Casey:
The Apple Vision Pro, I'm sorry, not the Apple Vision Pro, Apple Vision Pro, 600 to 650 grams, depending on the light seal and the headband.
Casey:
But John, you helpfully reminded us of something.
Casey:
Can you tell me about why these numbers aren't really fair?
John:
so some of these in fact other than the valve index all these headsets have their batteries built in whereas that apple vision pro weight is just the weight of the apple vision pro not including the weight of the battery and i think that's fair because the point is that apple didn't put the battery on the headset you put it in your pocket or wherever else you're going to put it with that 50 clip and so the weight actually isn't in the headset but you can see it's
John:
It's pretty heavy.
John:
You know, the MetaQuest 2 and 3 are lighter and they have the batteries with them.
John:
So the MetaQuest 2 and 3 are 503, 515, and the Apple Vision Pro is 600 to 650.
John:
And those Quest ones have the battery in the headset.
John:
The Valve Index is the big chunker, but it is also probably the beefiest sort of gaming thing and includes the battery inside it.
John:
Anyway, I don't think it's outrageous.
John:
I think the weight is reasonable.
John:
I think Apple did a pretty good job keeping it light.
John:
I think Apple made a wise choice not to have the battery as part of the headset.
John:
I just wish they had made the dangling battery a little bit bigger.
Marco:
Yeah, this doesn't seem that bad.
Marco:
I mean, my big favorite headphones are 500 grams.
Marco:
Goodness.
Marco:
I mean, this seems pretty normal for a high-end thing you'll have on your head.
Marco:
I mean, how much are the AirPods Max?
Casey:
I'm trying to look.
Casey:
384.8 grams.
Casey:
You are pretty darn close.
Marco:
I mean, they feel really heavy on your ears for a long time, but again, that's part of their design.
Marco:
Based on this, the Vision Pro doesn't, excuse me, Apple Vision Pro doesn't really seem like it is, you know, particularly heavy compared to its peers.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And then apparently attaching the Zeiss optical inserts to the Apple Vision Pro.
Casey:
There I go again.
Casey:
To Apple Vision Pro.
John:
They're not the boss of you, Casey.
John:
You can say it however you want.
John:
They're not going to come in.
Casey:
No, I'm trying to make a point.
Casey:
This is my... You're not...
John:
You're making a point by obeying their marketing edict?
Casey:
No, I'm making a point that it's so ridiculous that this is the way they want it pronounced when nobody actually pronounced it this way except marketing at Apple.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
Attaching Zeiss optical inserts to Apple Vision Pro requires pairing.
Casey:
On 9to5Mac, they write, "...the pair of Zeiss optical inserts comes with a personal code to pair the lenses to Apple Vision Pro."
Casey:
After attaching the optical inserts magnetically to the headset, users will have to, quote, scan the pairing code on the card inside Zeiss optical inserts box to finalize the pairing process, quote.
Casey:
The code in question appears to be an app clip code that triggers a system action to pair the Zeiss lenses to the Apple Vision Pro.
Casey:
That's interesting and kind of cool.
John:
So this brings up a point that was mentioned before, right?
John:
uh you may be wondering and i don't know if this is different in other countries why can you get readers uh like we were saying in the drugstore like you don't need a prescription you just go buy them uh whereas uh apple is insisting that you have a prescription uh signed by a u.s uh qualified optometrist or whatever to be able to even buy these inserts like why why all of the uh
John:
stricture around certain kinds of vision correction and not others i don't actually know the answer an optometrist will write in maybe in next episode and tell us here's my best guess my best guess is based on what we were just talking about like accommodation and everything that if you have if you put on a pair of readers and you pick the wrong one you pick plus 2.5 instead of plus point one or whatever one or whatever uh that yeah
John:
It doesn't cause as much eye strain, like you're not going to mess up your eyes by doing it.
John:
It'll just kind of like things will be blurry and things close up will be bigger than they were or whatever.
John:
Whereas the prescription lenses that you need a prescription for, like these inserts for people who can't just use readers, if you were to get the wrong prescription and wear them for a long time, that it could...
John:
if not mess with your eyes, then at least cause problems with your eyes in terms of like causing eye strain.
John:
And potentially, I suppose, mess with your eyes.
John:
I've seen a couple of stories recently about what causes nearsightedness, what causes people not to be able to see things far away.
John:
It was part of a scare story of like, oh, kids are staring at the phone screens up close.
John:
And if you do a lot of that, it will make you nearsighted.
John:
Kind of like the thing that your parents used to tell you, if your nose is buried in books, you'll end up wearing glasses because you're focused on things up close.
John:
It turns out there is some medically explainable mechanism within how the eye forms and grows over time that lends some support to the idea that if you spend a lot of time focusing on things really close, that your eyes can become misshapen in a way that makes you not able to see things far away.
John:
That's my guess.
John:
If you're an optometrist and you're out there and you know why is it, is it just some historical regulatory thing that doesn't make any sense?
John:
Or is there actually a medical reason not to let people say, I know by a prescription, it's this, that, and that.
John:
Give me these lenses.
John:
Okay.
John:
Is that why we're not allowed to do that in this country?
John:
Or is it just some weird thing?
John:
And anyway, this pairing process, you only need to pair, I think, the ones that, well, we'll see when people get these.
John:
I would imagine you don't need to pair the readers for the same reason that you don't need a prescription to buy the readers.
John:
But we'll see how that works out.
John:
If you do need to pair the readers, then I don't understand this feature at all.
John:
You can even get these engraved, by the way, because it's hard to tell like one insert from one person insert from another.
John:
They like magnetically snap in.
John:
but i think you get free engraving on them or you can put your name on the insert so if you have a whole family using the vision pro and they have different inserts and presumably different 200 face shields that's how you can do it just look for the tiny incredibly low contrast engraving that you won't be able to see without your actual reading glasses and then you'll know which inserts to put in
Casey:
Wonderful.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We made a brief mention of this earlier in the episode.
Casey:
Mark Gurman writes, I've been told that Apple's initial inventory for launch weekend is about 80,000 units, which the company sold out in the first hour of pre-orders.
Casey:
Is that true, though?
Casey:
I don't think that's actually true.
John:
Well, read the next rumor.
John:
These are all people guessing about how many units they have.
John:
Germany is usually pretty well sourced, but, you know.
Casey:
So then Ming-Chi Kuo writes, Apple sold between 160,000 and 180,000 Vision Pro headsets during its first pre-order weekend, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Casey:
I'm sorry, this is being recounted by MacRumors.
Casey:
Quo said that the headset sold out soon after the pre-order process opened, with shipping times for all models slipping by five to seven weeks.
Casey:
While the instant sellout and extended shipping times appeared to be positive at first glance, Quo cautioned that shipping dates remain unchanged 48 hours after pre-orders opened.
Casey:
indicating that demand may quickly be tapering off after core enthusiasts place their orders.
Casey:
Again, it's hard for me to square this, which I'm not trying to say that they're wrong, but square this with what Alex had, where they were able to order, I think it was like my evening time, and still get a day one delivery.
John:
But they're saying for the first weekend.
John:
The first weekend is two days, right?
Casey:
Fair, yeah.
John:
It's not like on the very first day.
John:
I didn't check, but if you were to go to order now, I'm assuming you can't get day one delivery anymore.
Casey:
Yeah, I didn't check either, but I presume you're right.
John:
But I mean, the thing we all don't know, and we're trusting rumors like German or whoever to tell us, is like, we don't know how many have been made and are ready to ship to people.
John:
And, you know, presumably only Apple knows that.
Casey:
Well, so I haven't confirmed this, but Chris3 in the chat writes, I just went on and could get one for the 3rd of February in store, but late February if shipped.
John:
Yeah, that's the other factor.
John:
Very often with everything that Apple sells, if you try to get it shipped to your house, you get one shipping date.
John:
But if you're willing to go to a store and pick it up, you get a different one because I guess there's different pools of inventory for retail stores like they always want to have stuff available in retail stores at the expense of people who are ordering it for delivery.
Casey:
So we'll see what happens.
Casey:
And then, of course, we have to bring up the reseller market.
Casey:
And there's a post on 9to5Mac, which talks about this.
Casey:
And apparently, based on both what 9to5Mac has found and what we looked at briefly, it looks like generally it's between $5,000 and $10,000.
Casey:
Yes, I said $10,000 for one of these.
Casey:
I did try to look for completed auctions on eBay, and I think I did find one for something like $5,000.
Casey:
So that's the thing.
John:
yeah it's some story i wish i had the link for notes of saying like you know that's people who wanted to resell this basically had found a way to automate the process that we all just described of like going through the apple store app and scanning your face and buying one apparently they found a way to automate that i don't know i'm just picturing like mannequin heads or something or whatever so they could order tons of them for resale that that was the story i don't know if there's any if the story is true i don't remember where i saw it but i just just imagine you know the the
John:
The motivation to get a bunch of these on day one so you can resell them, kind of like ticket scalpers, is motivating somebody to come up with a way to quickly and in an automated fashion go through the face scanning process.
Casey:
And then a couple of videos that I genuinely think are worth your time.
Casey:
First of all, there's the Apple Vision Pro Guided Tour, which you can find on Apple's website.
Casey:
There's different segments, but they stitch them together into one cohesive movie that's something like 10 minutes.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I think it's a pretty good representation of what the Vision Pro is all about.
Casey:
And they do briefly talk about using your Mac within the context of Vision OS.
Casey:
I wish I had a better, shorter description for that.
Casey:
But anyways, they show that among many other things.
Casey:
The one funny thing about this, though, and I'm not the first to point this out, is that they have someone who they claim had never used a Vision Pro, which I do take on face value that that's probably true.
Casey:
But the person, the gentleman that's using the Vision Pro, they have a persona or they have the eyesight turned on.
John:
And I'm pretty sure... They set it up off camera.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So they must have at least done enough setup to get through the orientation process and eyesight scanning process off camera.
Marco:
Yeah, that was a really weird... I have a hard time believing that those were his first reactions.
Yeah.
Marco:
they're actors yeah don't tell anybody yeah like still and they were so the reactions were so well in line with how marketing wants to describe things and everything was so effusive they're reading from a script don't tell anybody there's there is no way it's a commercial yeah still i thought it was i thought it was tastefully done i thought it was nice yes
John:
We all want to believe that we will be happy in our beautiful clutter-free home led through a magical experience of this Apple product by attractive, charismatic people.
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
The content of it was good.
Marco:
Just the conceit that, oh, this is allegedly this person's first time ever.
Marco:
I don't really buy that.
John:
I thought it was fine.
John:
I mean, the important job, the reason I think that it's worth looking at is if you're wondering, if you just want to see for the umpteenth time or you've never seen it before, what are all the things you can do with this?
John:
They go through all of them.
John:
Here you go.
John:
This is what it looks like.
John:
You can do this.
John:
You can do an app.
John:
You can look at a movie.
John:
They just go through it all very quickly.
John:
It's a nice overview.
John:
It's a guided tour.
John:
I thought it was a well-done video.
John:
If someone, for example, like Casey, if you're having dinner or something, they're like, what is this thing you're talking about?
John:
I would send them the link to the video and say, if you actually want to see what this thing is that we're talking about, this video will more or less explain it.
John:
As long as you get the idea that what you're seeing very often is what that person is seeing inside the headset, you'll be fine.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
They also have a like minute and a half long making Apple vision pro video, which is very much, you know, marketing.
Casey:
It's almost like, you know, it's the sort of thing that usually accompanied Johnny in his white room.
Casey:
Uh, but it was a seriously sweet 90 second video.
Casey:
So it's worth your time.
Casey:
Uh, it's, it's bananas, the stuff that they're going through in order to make these things.
John:
So it's trying to make you feel better about the price.
John:
You say, well, it is really complicated to build.
John:
And we have a lot of fancy machines.
John:
Although I always wonder with these things, like,
John:
how do square the beauty of these videos and the machines making it with what must surely be the much more cluttered and sad looking factories where things are put together with workers being oppressed by, you know, like it's just, there's, there's the marketing video of the factory and there's what a real factory looks like and how the people who work in that factory feel about working there.
John:
And that's, I think there's still some distance between those.
Marco:
By the way, some quick real-time follow-up.
Marco:
I also just now checked the Vision Pro ordering to see how back-ordered is it now.
Marco:
So now we are almost a week from ordering being opened up.
Marco:
I'm able to get all three capacities not at any store I want, but at a store that's within a decent drive for day two or three delivery.
Marco:
Like February 4th, February 5th, February 4th.
Marco:
It's all really right there.
Marco:
So
Marco:
Maybe there's some... And they're all backordered for mail order out to February 28th, but that's a little... That's very surprising to me.
Marco:
I think maybe... Obviously, they're going to probably reserve a lot for retail, but...
John:
Maybe these are not actually selling out as quickly as we think.
John:
Well, again, we don't know how many they made.
John:
If they already made as many as they can make, like they made all of them now and they're just sitting there waiting, then, yeah, you're not going to sell through a year's supply in the first week.
John:
But if they made, you know, 20,000 of them, they still have some left.
John:
That's much more concerning.
John:
But only Apple knows.
Casey:
I also wonder if they favored, and I think, Marco, you were just alluding to this, if they favored the retail experience.
Casey:
And I wonder if they have, you know, like regional caches of Vision Pros or something like that, which they can easily get to a retail store, but maybe is a little bit harder to get into the shipping ecosystem for whatever reason.
Casey:
I know nothing about logistics.
Casey:
Maybe that's an extremely, well, it is an extremely ignorant decision.
John:
Some people were speculating that Apple might be making decisions about what other countries to open up based on how much stuff they have lying around, like for Canada or whatever.
John:
So we'll see.
Casey:
Speaking of other countries, that was a perfect segue.
Casey:
Thank you, John.
Casey:
Apple Vision Pro, App Store, Apple Music, and TV app require U.S.
Casey:
Apple IDs.
Casey:
So this was stated on Apple's website in the pre-order section, but MacRumors has a pretty good summary.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Number two, the App Store requires an Apple ID with region set to the U.S.
Casey:
Number three, purchases on Apple Music and the TV app require an Apple ID with region set to the U.S.
Casey:
Number four, for customers with vision correction needs, Zeiss will only accept vision prescriptions written by U.S.
Casey:
eye care professionals and will only ship to U.S.
Casey:
locations.
Casey:
Number five, customers may not be able to access certain apps, features, or content due to licensing or other restrictions in those countries or regions.
Casey:
And finally, number six, Apple support is only available in the U.S.
Casey:
This is fascinating.
Casey:
This is particularly fascinating for a lot of our mutual friends.
Casey:
I don't recall where I heard the story, probably on Connected or maybe AppStories, but the length to which Federico and Mike have gone to procure these devices is
Casey:
is astonishing and it is worth listening to their stories again i would look at connected uh i probably won't put a link in the show notes because i'm not sure where i heard this for sure um but anyways it is worth investigating this because it is both funny and amazing what they've done in order to make this work but yeah it is kind of crummy for those not in america and i get especially if they're inventory constrained why they would start here but i do feel for our you know european and uk friends
John:
Also, I'd be terrified to change the region on anything having to do with my Apple ID because of all the horror stories I've heard about it.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
You don't want to do that.
John:
You're basically just going to end up using a test Apple ID, which is great because, again, if you used your own Apple ID and you synced your messages, it would just fill the SSD.
John:
I don't know that that's true, but I'm just bashing on Apple's poor control of storage on the iPhone when it comes to messages.
Marco:
Hello, listeners.
Marco:
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And now back to the show.
Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
I think we've actually slacked on this accidentally for the last couple of weeks.
Casey:
So one way or another, we're getting back to it, baby.
Casey:
Nigel Warren writes, listening to the, quote, Vision Pro tidbits segment of episode 570, I was struck by how the lens inserts complicate things in a variety of ways.
Casey:
Do you know why the Vision Pro doesn't have some kind of focal adjustment diopter like a camera viewfinder would use?
Casey:
Sure seems like it would make the buying using sharing of the device easier.
Casey:
Are there specific requirements or constraints that make it not practical for a headset?
Casey:
Do other headsets use lens inserts or have some kind of built-in adjustment system?
Casey:
I thought a lot of other headsets, or at least the MetaQuest, I thought they do take inserts, but I am talking way outside my comfort zone.
Casey:
Do one of you actually have facts to share about this?
John:
Well, I mean, I think this ties into everything we just discussed.
John:
All right, so what I was speculating about, is there something about prescription lenses that
John:
that justifies us having to have a prescription in this country to get them, unlike readers.
John:
In other words, some kind of health damage or thing that could be done that will be bad for your eyes if you're just allowed to do it willy-nilly.
John:
You really need someone to give you a prescription.
John:
If that's true, then maybe they don't want to provide the type of adjustment.
John:
But setting all of that aside, the much easier explanation is any kind of adjustability for lens stuff
John:
it adds space and complexity.
John:
Maybe not a lot, but it is additional space and additional complexity versus snap and inserts.
John:
And I can imagine the snap and inserts can be higher quality because it is just one lens element that doesn't move, that's exactly the right position, that is exactly your prescription.
John:
And then finally, there's more to your prescription than can be adjusted easily.
John:
Now, obviously, you can adjust it.
John:
When you go to the eye dark, you know that big thing you sit in front of, and they go one or two, three or four, and it's got a million different lenses that go in front of your eyes?
John:
That can adjust for everything.
John:
It's the doctor's, you know, it's their device for figuring out what your prescription is.
John:
But there's more than just that, you know, the sphere number or whatever.
John:
You can have astigmatism.
John:
They make you look at the lines, tell you which one is thicker.
John:
Like, it is possible to do all those things.
John:
But when I look at the size of the thing at the eye doctor, I think to do that well probably requires space they don't want to spend on the inside of this device.
John:
Space, weight, complexity, cost, all of that.
John:
Those, I think, are the main reasons that this doesn't exist in the Apple Vision Pro because it makes for a smaller, lighter, simpler headset not to do that, and especially if you wanted to do it well.
John:
I don't know the details of what's going on inside the big thing in the doctor's office aside from things tumbling in front of my eyes and things looking different, but I know it's not as simple, especially, again, if you have astigmatism.
John:
of just having a lens that you move farther and, you know, closer and farther away from your eye.
John:
If you have bad enough eyes, there's all sorts of things that can be wrong with them that are not solved by taking a single lens element and moving it farther or closer to your eye.
Casey:
Lawrence Koteff writes, Do you have an email backup regime outside of Time Machine or local computer backups?
Casey:
Recently, a family member accidentally deleted all of their iCloud and email in the Mac Mail app, not realizing that they had all the folders selected when they hit the delete button.
Casey:
And being a very fastidious email user, they immediately emptied the trash folder without noticing.
Casey:
Apple does not provide any way to restore trashed email, so we were left with restoring the mail database from a backblaze backup.
Casey:
This got most of them back, but apparently Apple Mail does not always download and store the contents of emails and attachments.
Casey:
So many of them were blank and lost.
Casey:
I haven't found an obvious solution for automatically backing up an email account, and I wanted to know if this is something you have considered before.
Casey:
For me, it is not.
Casey:
I don't have a good answer.
Casey:
It's just I'm not terribly worried that I will put myself in that position, I say, as I knock on wood.
Casey:
But I don't have any good answer for this.
Casey:
Marco, do you do anything about this?
Marco:
Not besides just local file backups.
Marco:
First of all, I am not an aggressive trash emptier.
Marco:
The purpose of the trash is to be a buffer.
Marco:
If every single time you delete anything, you immediately empty its trash, whether it's in your mail app or the trash on your Mac...
Marco:
you're kind of, you know, ruining the point of the trash.
John:
I think of that every time I delete something from my media volume on my Synology because the finder says, just so you know, I'm going to delete this immediately and not move it to the trash.
John:
Is that okay?
John:
And the only choice you have is yes, it's okay or no, don't bother deleting it.
Marco:
Yeah, so I think getting out of the habit of trashing everything or emptying the trash constantly, that would be extremely beneficial to whatever degree you have control over it for whatever people you're talking about here.
Marco:
So I don't have this problem because I let the trash be the trash.
Marco:
I let it be a temporary buffer for deleted stuff in case I need to go get something out of it that I accidentally threw away or decided I didn't want to throw away.
Marco:
And I only empty the trash if I'm running low on space.
John:
I find it funny that both of my children, both in real life and on their computers, never empty the trash.
Marco:
Unless you are out of space, you need the space right now, there's not much reason to empty it right after you've been deleting things.
John:
Oh, there's a reason.
John:
There's a reason, the same reason that this person's relative emptied the trash.
John:
That reason is very simple.
John:
A full trash icon bothers people.
John:
oh that's what it is it's like it's like notification badges right i wish there was a way in the finder to say don't show the crumpled up paper because it makes people want to empty it makes me want to empty the trash yep that's a fair point john do you have any backup strategies for this what do you think i'm sure you do of course i do
John:
How many is the question?
John:
Right.
John:
So here's the things I do with my email.
John:
All right.
John:
First strategy.
John:
So I use Gmail for everything.
John:
I use the Gmail web client.
John:
I use it and like it.
John:
But I also use Apple Mail for this one purpose, which is to pop, to use the pop protocol to pull my Gmail using pop down to my Mac.
John:
Because that way I know I've got a copy.
John:
It's not like IMAP where it might be somewhere else.
John:
And, you know, the problem they were having, it's like, oh, but mail didn't have all the mail locally.
John:
Some of it was still on the server.
John:
I use POP, which is an older, dumber protocol, which says just give me a copy of the mail from the server.
John:
And I use Apple Mail periodically run it.
John:
So it will pop all my Gmail down and fill its Apple Mail database.
John:
But of course, I don't trust Apple Mail as far as I can throw it.
John:
So that's just one thing I do.
John:
The main thing I do.
John:
Once per year on a calendar reminder that I think it's sometime in December, I use the very good Google takeout feature that allows you to download data, your Google data onto your computer.
John:
And Google will make you a tarball, tar.gz file of all your Gmail.
John:
on demand whenever you want it and i do that once a year and that gives me all my i think it's in like inbox format or whatever so worst and then of course once those are files they're in my backup vortex and they get backed up or whatever so worst case scenario i'm gonna lose on average six months of mail assuming my apple mail thing totally doesn't work at all which again i'm not sure i entirely trust it so those are my strategies
John:
pop from gmail using a mail client that i don't actually use for mail and i just launch apple mail every once in a while and just let it run in the background and then quit it right because it catches up pretty quickly and then google takeout i suggest everybody who uses gmail as their main email thing put a reminder in your calendar once a year once every six months whatever you're comfortable with to download all your gmail you can set the options it will give you a single file a single multi-gigabyte file depending on how much mail you have
John:
It compresses really well, so gzip compression will get it down pretty small because it's mostly text.
John:
And that's what I suggest.
John:
And then, yeah, put that file into your own personal backup vortex and have it go on Time Machine and your super-duper clone and your cloud backup, the whole nine yards.
Casey:
Severin writes, do you use iMessage contact key verification?
Casey:
I just stumbled upon it in settings in iOS 17.2.1.
Casey:
I've never seen it before.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
In short, this is a mechanism by which you can verify that the people you are talking to are the people they claim to be.
Casey:
You can do a manual contact key verification by way of getting a key and then over FaceTime or a phone call or whatever, you read your two keys and verify that they're what you expect.
Casey:
I don't use this because I don't think anyone's going to man in the middle of me for state secrets.
Casey:
I just don't think I'm important enough.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Do you guys use this?
Casey:
Let's start with Marco again.
Marco:
no for the same reasons I didn't know about it until fairly recently but I think it's a pretty recent thing I think it's iOS 17.2 that added it but I don't really have the need for this level of security like in my iMessage now you know if this becomes easy and on by default and everything then sure yeah but you know for the same reason I don't use that like ultra lockdown protection mode of iOS I forget what that's called lockdown mode is that it yep
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I don't use that either for the same reason that like, you know, I don't I don't really deal with data that sensitive or and that big of a target.
Marco:
But if I were dealing with very sensitive stuff, if I was like a whistleblower or a journalist or, you know, like that would be different than I than I would be very happy.
Marco:
These features are here.
Marco:
But the way it is now, I don't need them.
John:
John.
John:
I do actually want to try it with somebody because I want to see how onerous it is.
John:
It seems kind of onerous.
John:
Like it seems like a burden that you would not want to deal with unless it was like super important.
John:
Like Marco said, like you're in an actual secure situation where you want to make sure you're talking to who you think you're talking to.
John:
I just wanted to see what that burden was.
John:
Do you have to like use some side channel to do something?
John:
Is it done all through the phone?
John:
I was willing to try it, but I haven't found anyone to try it with.
John:
So I currently do not have this enabled or used at all.
John:
And related to that, 17.3 is out now, iOS 17.3, and it has the stolen device protection and I turned it on.
John:
I turned it on on my phone and I had my wife update hers and turns it on on her phone and I'm trying to get my kids to turn it on.
John:
Have you guys turned it on?
Casey:
I haven't yet, but I probably should.
Marco:
I have it and I'm doing Tiff's phone probably this weekend with it because that's one of those things where because she can access our shared bank account and stuff, I feel like this is a family IT security policy thing that is worth closing all the doors on.
John:
Well, they can still get to your bank account.
John:
They just can't take over your Apple ID.
Marco:
Well, but again, yeah, it's a high-risk-enough situation, and also her passcode hygiene is not great.
John:
Anyway.
John:
The reason I did it on my wife's phone is, remember, the family photo library is on her Apple ID.
John:
Now with the great shared library feature, I get access to all of them, but technically it's her Apple ID.
John:
So having her Apple ID get taken over is really the worst-case scenario, not mine.
John:
Although I have all the purchases, so we'd lose all our movies.
John:
But honestly, I'd much rather lose the movies than the photos.
John:
So yeah, I want her to have stolen device production on.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsor this week, Squarespace.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
Marco:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They didn't move.
Marco:
has adam or tiff shown any enthusiasm for the vision pro adam because he is so into the quest uh three yeah he's so into that he has requested that i please let him try it tiff doesn't care at all what does adam know that there's no controllers
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
He's a big fan of... The Quest 2, some games could use just hand recognition.
Marco:
The Quest 3, based on what he's told me, it seems like that has gotten better.
Marco:
But not every game will use it.
Marco:
So he still uses the controllers.
Marco:
It makes sense.
Marco:
I can understand why.
Marco:
For gaming purposes...
Marco:
controllers are generally a better option, because you want the higher precision, you want maybe more buttons, because most of the gesture recognition of these systems, it can do a handful of gestures, no pun intended, but it's not doing every single finger individually, stuff like that.
John:
And latency is better with controllers, presumably.
Marco:
Yeah, I would assume so.
Marco:
When you look at the Vision Pro, it's very clear that this is a device that's made for computing first and games maybe second.
John:
or not at all right exactly whereas like you know the quest is a game console and to be fair to apple like you can just use like a playstation controller with the vision like that's their solution essentially oh you want to play a game in the vision pro just literally use your xbox or playstation controller right which is not the same thing as a vr controller which like in the like in the valve games like oh you have a virtual hand and you're reaching out to grab the ladder or the gun or the bottle like that's
Marco:
not a thing that apple is showing or promising at all it's more like oh you can put something in front of you and here hold the playstation controller now you get low latency fast access to buttons yeah yeah so but it seems it seems like you know the way apple has designed the vision pro they they want it to be a computer and that is a very different set of priorities and a very different set of choices than game consoles and
Marco:
the quest series those are game consoles first that facebook keeps trying to make computers and they're not very good but they're they're game consoles and you know and all this stuff that the vision pro does that's not games adam doesn't care he might someday but he doesn't now it's not his job he's 11 he hears about games
John:
you might like the movie thing or the panorama like imagine if they have like a you're riding on a roller coaster immersive experience thing that would be fun to do like but i'm thinking about games and the vision pro all that resolution that's good for looking at like your documents is not good for games games don't want to push that many pixels they want high frame rates and you can't get high frame rates in a you know a headset type thing with a low power soc and gpu on there and so not having so many pixels to push is an advantage to those less expensive ones but
John:
yeah the only thing i can think of where it'd be an advantage is oh you're on a roller coaster that you might want to see in like hdr you know 4k for each eyeball yeah but like i feel like i would think that's amazing i don't think adam would like he would just be like okay that's cool and then he would just go back to his game show him the gerbils demo from quick draw 3d neither one of you knows what that is no nope do you know what quick draw 3d is
John:
i know what quick so quick draw that was like the the toolbox functions in the original mac that made they made fast window drawing stuff right yeah it was the drawing api it's like you know like uh core graphics is now yeah quick draw was so what was quick draw 3d yeah so quick draw 3d was at a certain point and this this is the time when apple uh
John:
did its quote unquote most serious push into gaming.
John:
They made libraries for gaming stuff called game sprockets.
John:
They had input sprockets and a bunch of other sprockets for like handling joysticks and, you know, doing game type stuff.
John:
And they had a 3d API, you know, like instead of open GL or direct X or whatever, and they called it quick draw 3d.
John:
And it was a 3D API, just like all those other ones I described, except for much, much worse, and made by Apple.
John:
And one of the demos they had for it, like in a typical Apple fashion, once they came up with QuickDraw 3D, it works everywhere.
John:
There used to be a desk accessory called the Scrapbook.
John:
I don't know if you guys remember that.
John:
Nope.
John:
You'd go to the Apple menu to pick Scrapbook.
John:
And it was just basically an application with a bunch of...
John:
like a horizontal scroll bar and a bunch of different things and what could you put in the scrapbook anything you wanted you could paste in text you could paste in images you could paste in a movie and once quick draw 3d came out you could paste in 3d objects so you'd get a mac with quick draw 3d and you'd open the scrapbook and there would be a 3d model of a palm tree that you could rotate anyway one of the things they had i believe it was a demo application called gerbils i think and it was a quick draw 3d application that uh modeled i believe a bunch of
John:
of supposedly furry gerbils riding on a roller coaster in in 3d if you can find a movie of what gerbils look like uh it is the most hilariously not impressive to young people thing you've ever seen in your life and the frame rates were awful i don't think there was any 3d hardware acceleration either so it was all in software
John:
Not an impressive experience, but if someone can port gerbils to the Apple Vision Pro, I guarantee a bunch of old people like me who actually had a Vision Pro will buy it for 99 cents and try it.
John:
I'm like, yeah, so they'll sell like 12 copies.
John:
Right.
John:
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a big market for gerbils.