My Butler Can’t Use It
I fixed something today.
I mended something!
I don't know if you'll get that reference.
It's a Jeremy Clarkson thing.
Oh, okay.
Anyway, carry on.
What did you fix?
It took three weeks, but I have fixed my stupid Dyson vacuum broken trigger.
I was not aware that you had a Dyson vacuum with a broken trigger.
Long story short, yes, I use Dyson vacuums.
Of course I do.
Years ago, when it came time to buy a new vacuum, I did all the research, and I looked at the specs, and I'm like, I got this giant upright Miele vacuum that has massive suction power and is amazing to pull out all sorts of crap from rugs.
But it's super heavy and corded, and therefore I hardly ever use it.
Meanwhile, one year, TIFF requested one of these little cordless Dyson thingies, like the V7 or V8 or V9 or whatever it was back then.
Which, by the way, must have incredible profit margins because they are so expensive.
I also have one.
Oh, and before we go any further, so we have one of the, not OG, but an older corded, you know, upright Dyson vacuum with the ball on the bottom.
I remember we got it from like, I don't know, woot.com.
You know, it was considerably discounted.
And I got to say, I'm not that impressed with it.
So do you like the cordless one?
Because the corded, I did not think was that great.
I also had an upright one and I didn't like it and ditched it.
But the cordless one, I feel like...
comes closer to justifying its insane price yeah so i actually had that exact same heavily discounted dyson stand-up ball one from a million years ago um it eventually broke in some way that i didn't feel it was worth fixing um although i i actually did fix it a couple of times along the way there because one of the one of the positives about dyson is that while they're not the best built things in the world there are lots of service parts available um for not that and they aren't that hard to get and they aren't that expensive
um so that you can at least service them to some degree which is nice but anyway so the problem is so i had this beautiful up this big upright heavy thing and it was we just never used it like i would use it occasionally but like you know no one else in the house would ever use everyone hated it and i would never like bring it upstairs it's too heavy and all this stuff so anyway one year tick request one of the dyson v whatever is for christmas and everyone loved it and that's all we ever used from that point forward and the melee still sits in the closet never gets used
Problem is they are built crappily in certain ways, and one of those ways is the little red trigger that you squeeze.
If you search the internet for Dyson broken triggers, you'll see these are horribly designed.
All the pressure to hold that trigger against the battery terminals is this little thin piece of plastic that cracks very easily.
One thing about those triggers, though, one thing they did get right about the triggers is the effort to pull the trigger is very, very low because it would get fatiguing if you were holding it and you had to hold the trigger and it was fighting you the whole time.
Incredibly weak springs in there.
So it's very easy to hold it down.
And I believe in the current versions of this, they just got rid of the trigger entirely.
So they probably should have done because who wants to hold the thing down all the time?
I think it's like a switch or something on the most recent one.
So mine hasn't broke.
And I have always appreciated that they made the trigger really easy to pull.
But I also kind of wish it didn't have a trigger.
Anyway, to answer your question, Casey, about how good they are, the problem is they're not super good at being vacuums.
Like they're okay at being vacuums, but they're really convenient.
It doesn't really matter that they're not great vacuums.
It matters that that's the one you're going to grab and use the most often.
The same way like your phone is not a great camera.
but it's an okay camera, and it's always there, and you're always going to use it, and you're going to end up using it way more than you use your better camera.
Even though you have a better camera, it's the same kind of thing.
The thing I'll say for the Dyson handhelds is they do have a lot of suction for their size and weight, because I've had a lot of handheld vacuums over the years, starting with my parents' Dustbuster back when Dustbusters were a thing, and they came in beige.
Those were terrible, and I've had other handheld ones over the years, and the Dyson handheld, like, you know...
per unit mass and like suction per unit mass is really good on it as long as you keep it clean um everything else about it is a little cheap and the battery dies pretty quickly and they're really expensive to replace but still the best handheld i've found but i i can't i it has not made it to my good products list because i feel like it's just too expensive
Yeah, and they're not amazing products.
They're just decent products, and the competition is worse, as far as I know.
Anyway, so my trigger broke.
I had to replace it.
It became one of these projects like, all right, first of all, you order the replacement trigger.
It gets here.
So that's four or five days.
Then I have the replacement.
I start taking the vacuum apart based on YouTube videos that tell me how to take stuff apart.
and i realize oh my i don't have a screwdriver that can reach down this long skinny hole to get to the screw like this deeply recessed screw so now i gotta order order some skinny screwdriver there goes another four days five days then i finally get it in there i finally get down i get in there i need another screwdriver this time i need a torx bit on the end of a long skinny screwdriver all right four more days
read ahead of the instructions marco find out which tools you're going to need well they're all just youtube videos they're not good at documentation anyway so then eventually i finally i finally have all the tools i need i finally get to the trigger which by the way is hilariously complicated and hostile to get to like it it's like repairing a butterfly keyboard like there's it's just you have to take apart the entire thing and you're really diving you have to like bend these terminals like it's a ridiculous process um
I finally get in there and I was smart.
I bought a metal trigger so it wouldn't break.
I go to put the metal trigger on.
It doesn't fit without bending it because you have to bend and snap it on.
And the moment I bend it even slightly to get it to fit, it breaks.
oh it's stupendant so order plastic ones another five days i'm not sure i agree with the uh the actor in that sentence if there was one uh i broke it okay i broke it i think that's more accurate but i was trying i'm like is there any way i can get this to somehow snap on was it the wrong part no it was the right part but you know it's one of those things you know it's this is from dyson this is like you know amazon randos oh yeah no
yeah especially for the batteries i would not recommend buying the much cheaper ones from amazon because oh batteries definitely i wouldn't no but but a little plastic piece that dyson misdesigned from the start no anyway so the amazon ones have like they have like more plastic in the right areas anyway so finally another five days go by i finally get my plastic ones today i finally
put it back on and reassembled it and it works.
And it took such a ridiculously long time.
And it was so not worth it.
If I'm honest with you, like I must, I must've lost like five hours to this project at least.
Oh my word.
Probably still worthy.
Cause you don't want to buy another one of those.
They're just too expensive.
I know.
Well, but the one I was preparing was like five years old.
It's like it wasn't super new, but it's like it's almost not worth it.
Anyway, even though I hate these things, they still they still are the ones I go for the most.
And I do the most vacuuming in the house.
So that's I guess that's important.
john there's some exciting news it's not it's old news i just want to mention it again um i'm still selling my shirts and since they're only sold every five years i made the sale extra extra long because i do not want to hear if people say oh i just missed the sale this sale is running it's running so long i apologize to the people who ordered their shirts already they're like when is my shirt coming like the sale's not even over yet it ends saturday august 12th if you want a hypercritical shirt
I hope you're hearing this before Saturday, August 12th.
Do the Casey thing and, like, pull over to the side of the road and order.
Like, don't set it off to later because they're not coming back for five years.
I'm excited, by the way, that I think, so it's 2028 they'll be back.
That means in 10 years after that it'll be 2038, which is the 32-bit rollover of the Unix Epoch, I think.
So that'll be a fun one.
But anyway, don't wait.
If you want a shirt, get one.
That's what they're here for.
For all the people who have these shirts and they're wearing out or they didn't get one the last time and they want one,
hypercritical shirts go to hypercritical.co slash shirt before august 12th if you're listening to this now like john alluded to please pull over to the side of the sidewalk if you're in new york to the side of the road if you're almost anywhere else and go ahead take out your phone hypercritical.co slash shirt
What if you're on one of those giant escalators for the London Underground?
Do you have enough space to squeeze over to the right?
No, don't do it then because you're not going to notice when the bottom of the escalator comes and you're just going to fall over and cause a big mess.
Wait until you're off the escalator and then step to the side.
Well, and plus, what side of the escalator do you stop on?
Because they drive on the wrong side of the road.
Do they also walk on the wrong side of the road?
Yeah, there's no way to tell there.
It's like tipping.
There's no way to tell what to do.
Yeah.
it's not true anyway hypercritical.co slash shirt uh we got a piece of follow-up from wilson martinez and wilson writes i can't figure out who is who when listening can you say your names in the next podcast so i can put a name to a voice well i'm casey and i'm the normal one and you can take that however you'd like marco how would you like to introduce yourself i'm marco and i'm the jerk john
You have to say more.
The whole point of this segment is you get to hear our voices.
This is John.
This is what my voice sounds like.
It's a little bit like Kermit the Frog.
I don't think my voice sounds anything like the other two.
I think we have very distinct voices, but you might not know.
So if you're wondering who's John, that's me.
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
That's me.
This is my voice.
You're hearing my voice right now.
See how much content I'm giving them?
So they'll know this is my voice.
Whereas they just heard Casey briefly and they've already forgotten what he sounds like.
And Marco said like two words and then Casey laughed over him.
So they don't know who Marco is, but they know who I am.
They'll figure out the rest.
Yeah, it'll be fine.
My voice is my passport.
Verify me.
Who said that?
That was Casey speaking.
Every time we speak now, you have to say, hi, this is John.
I'm speaking now.
Hi, this is Tim.
No, you're confusing people now.
They think you're Tim.
No.
You have to go back and say you're Casey.
We don't have a Tim.
The reason I put this in the show notes is because I wanted like a chapter marker to send people because lots of people can't distinguish our voices and we don't introduce ourselves.
And I apologize for that, but it's just part of the show format.
But from now on, if someone asks, I'll save this in a little notes document and I'll send it to them and I'll be able to listen to this and they'll hear me saying, yes, this is John.
This is what my voice sounds like.
Sometimes I mumble.
we couldn't have done a better job of this to introduce people to who we are in our show who's talking i don't recognize that voice oh my gosh yeah sorry this is marco over oh no no it's happening again just every time we talk it's like irc we have to prefix it with our name marco colon
Casey, no, I'm screwing it up now.
Edit that out, Marco.
We're going to confuse people.
Oh, my gosh.
The funny thing is, like, I don't know, something like two years ago, I got a burr up my keister about this.
Hi, this is Casey.
Like two years ago, I got a burr up my keister about this.
Casey got a burr up his own keister about this.
Why are you putting burrs up, you know, there?
Anyway, just bear with me.
He got a burr.
He didn't say how it got there.
It's passive voice.
Yeah, I bet ER doctors hear a lot of that.
It got there.
I don't know how it got there.
One in a million shot, Doc.
One in a million.
Anyway, so I had put together a meet your hosts page on the ATP website, which is there.
It's been there this whole time.
The call's coming from inside the house.
It is?
Yes, atp.fm slash hosts.
And I put this together a while ago.
And the funny thing is, I put together a blurb for Marco and for John and myself.
And I think both of them tweaked the blurb that I gave them.
At least a little.
I didn't tweet this.
I would never leave a semicolon in my blurb.
Oh, we got to change this.
It links to my Twitter handle.
Come on.
Oh, this was years ago.
Stay with me.
Anyway, the point is... I've gotten taller since then.
I don't think you have.
the point this is going so far off the rails it's ridiculous but anyways the funny thing to me though is that marco i think you at least acknowledge the existence of this page you know two years ago whatever it was and then basically ignored it which is you know typical marco fashion that's neither good nor bad it's just you know typical marco john however could not let this thing that no other human has seen until today stand and triple the size of his little blurb making it far more involved than either of the two of
Yeah, because if you're going to tell people who you are, say something to distinguish who you are.
Like, you may know me from such things as, you know, Troy McClure style.
Anyways, it probably should be updated.
But what I was envisioning was not only would we have, you know, this image of us and little blurbs about each of us.
But I envisioned having, you know, like Marco microphone review style, you know, snippets of us talking like from the show or perhaps even introducing ourselves or whatever.
This has been such a train wreck that we cannot extract any of this to use on this page.
No, that's exactly correct for our show.
Yes.
It should be a giant train wreck.
Although it occurs to me that it sounds... Introducing ourselves, that's what they do on the earnings calls, you know?
Yep.
That's why you're doing this.
Hi, this is Tim or whatever.
This is not Tim.
This is still John.
Don't be confused.
Yeah.
we're doing a terrible job of this this is amazing now don't you appreciate the fact that we don't introduce ourselves or refer to ourselves by name most of the time right i think at this point they've all stopped listening yeah it's so true that's what chapter markers are for baby if you already knew our voices you already skipped this chapter
That's true.
Well, but then you missed out on this delightful, beautiful train wreck.
You missed out learning about atp.fm slash hosts, which is a terrible page that we need to either update or delete.
I feel like now we can't.
Like, now we have to leave it.
No, you have to stay there.
We'll fix it.
We'll just get rid of the Twitter handles and put in our Mastodon handles and stuff.
We'll fix it.
We'll work on it.
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Apple Vision Pro Labs developer kit and compatibility evaluation signup are live.
And you can ask to work with Apple, as it says in the URL, in order to do any of these things.
So they're starting extremely soon.
I forget exactly when, but I think in the next week or so.
At least the Cupertino ones are happening.
And then there's going to be labs in London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
um that is where you can go in and use a vision pro presumably with your app and tweak it and work on it and so on they can take your app and do a compatibility evaluation so they run it kind of like app review kind of sort of style i mean none of the three of us have any issues with app review so that's awesome and they'll tell you hey it's a pile of garbage or hey there's a video player here
that you need to look at or whatever the case may be or maybe they'll talk about copyright and then finally you can apply to get a vision pro developer kit um which we should talk a little bit about the details with regard to that as well here in a moment but all of those things you can do right now and i think that signups for the labs at least i believe those close very very soon like in the next couple of days if i'm not mistaken
Um, I have not yet signed up for any of this in no small part because I have not done anything vision pro related.
Like I have, I would like to do some of this.
I am enthusiastic about the idea of trying the vision pro.
Um, but I have done literally nothing.
And so I don't know if I'm a particularly great candidate for any of these things.
Uh, perhaps if I can ever get my head above sand or above water or whatever, uh, with regard to call sheet, then, uh, maybe I'll apply for one if it's not too late.
But Marco, I assume you have applied for all the things.
I have actually applied only for the dev kit, only because my actual app for Vision Pro is nowhere near ready, because it is only the rewrite of my app, which at this point, I would describe it as maybe 20% or 30% done.
It's really not anywhere close to shipping.
So I applied for the dev kit.
Kind of optimistically.
And I even, you know, they have you explain in like 200 words or so, like, you know, why you should why you want one and why you should have one, basically.
It's like a job application.
And I even wrote in there, I'm like, look, this is not a visually compelling app.
This is a three column list view showing lists of podcast episodes.
And it's not it's not like a super immersive experience.
So if that's what you're looking for, no problem, no hard feelings, I understand.
However, what I'm looking for is basically, I want to know how the audio system works, how background audio works.
I want to know how my audio engine, which is pretty low level, interacts with the hardware.
I want to be able to play with different audio configurations and options and things like that.
So that's why I want access to the hardware.
But it's not a super visually massive immersion kind of app.
So I don't think I'm going to get one in all likelihood.
And frankly, I probably shouldn't get one for all those reasons.
If they have a fairly limited number of them, which it sounds like is going to be the case, and if they want to only give it to really high-impact visual kind of apps...
There is no way I should have one.
But if if they happen to want to give one to a podcast player that is showing a list of episodes and playback controls, I would love to actually use one because I think it's going to be very difficult to develop good apps for this platform without actually having one.
Because we don't know how any of the controls or the mechanisms or the conventions actually feel and work and look and practice.
Like right now, I'm doing a whole bunch of iPhone design work.
I'm doing, you know, because I'm in the middle of this rewrite.
Plus, I'm working on my iOS 17 widgets for my old code base.
I'm hopefully going to have iOS 17 widgets ready shortly.
And so I'm doing a lot of design work where I'm laying out interfaces on the iPhone app.
And yes, I have the simulator, but on my desk right now are three iPhones because of various sizes and ages and things because you have to feel it.
You have to try it.
It's funny.
Actually, I happen to have dug up what I believe is my first ever podcast appearance because they had Chuck Joyner.
on Mac power users this past week and I remembered I'm pretty sure his show that I did in April of 2010 I think this was between the iPads announcement and its release which is kind of funny like listening back I mean first of all
it is not i was not good on this show i was first of all i was like calling in from a phone i sound terrible and i i spoke extremely slowly for some reason i don't know what has changed maybe i've just had a lot of coffee in the in the intervening you know 13 years it's new york working its magic
Yeah, right, I guess.
But anyway, I like I re-listened to this and it was interesting.
Like I was listening back because this was the time period where we were based.
We spent a big part of the show kind of talking about our expectations of what the iPad would be like because, again, it was announced, but it wasn't available yet.
And I was able to develop for it.
Like they released the SDK before we all had hardware.
And by the way, and please don't, if you listen to this, please know, like I'm not proud of like this.
It's very dated in a number of ways.
I made a couple of assumptions about a male audience a few times that I feel really bad about now.
Like, you know, please be kind.
But anyway, it was a similar time period where we had this hardware announcement and they showed off the hardware, but nobody had it yet.
And we were all developing apps for it without having access to the hardware yet.
The problem was that I was saying, like, we don't know how this is going to feel in our hands.
We don't know how certain things will work yet.
And what I ended up shipping for Instapaper, which was the app I was using at the time, which is what the interview was mostly about, what I ended up shipping for Instapaper's first iPad app was just a stretched out iPhone app.
And it sucked.
It was terrible.
And I replaced it as quickly as possible with a total redesign.
And I fear that what's going to happen with Vision Pro is we're all going to make these versions of our apps in the simulator between now and whenever we can get our hands on a real one, probably early next year at the best case.
And then we're going to actually get it and realize, oh, this is totally wrong.
Because you can tell when I'm doing the iPhone work, I can do this great design in the simulator.
And the first time I run it on a device, I can instantly tell, oh, that's wrong.
That's too small.
That's too big.
Or that doesn't work.
Or that doesn't look right.
Or it doesn't feel right.
You really need to use the hardware to really know how something feels.
And it doesn't need to be something super flashy or involved or innovative to hit those walls and to realize you've made a design mistake.
It can be a very simple table view app and you can instantly know, oh, this doesn't work right on the hardware.
And with this hardware in particular, this is even more different than when we were going from iPhone to iPad.
Because at least iPhone to iPad, at least first of all, the interface looked and worked very similarly to the iPhone.
And it was still a touchscreen.
So it was far more similar than what we have now going from literally anything to the Vision Pro, which is controlled totally differently, looks totally different, works totally different.
The app environment, like everything about it is so different down to the fundamentals of how you interact with it.
So I suspect this is going to be a platform where you really need the hardware to really design an app that's worth using it all.
So that's why I applied to the developer kit.
And I kind of feel bad that even if I get one, I'm going to have very little to show in my app for maybe six months.
I think six months from now, I could probably have a working version with the new code base that actually has like...
a useful amount of features that could you know be released on its own but between now and then i'm not going to have much to show for it so like that's why i didn't even apply for the labs yet because i have nothing to run yet i didn't apply for the um you know please run my app and tell me if it's broken test flight thing because again like i don't i'm not even to that point yet so anyway i applied um and then assuming they maybe possibly ever say yes in the next you know three months that'll give me time to actually figure out how i'm going to comply with the security requirements
Indeed.
Before we talk about that, John, did you apply for any of these things?
I presume not?
No, I don't have any Vision Pro apps.
They're working on none of my apps.
It's not relevant to my apps.
I don't have any ideas for Vision Pro apps.
I'm not going to get one.
Fair enough.
All right, so a friend of the show, James Thompson, was tooting on Mastodon when this all happened.
James said, you know, needless to say, I applied to get the Vision Pro developer kit for PCALC and probably more interesting Dice by PCALC, which is like a Dice simulator you can use for, say, role-playing games or whatever.
And then James continues, the security requirements for keeping the developer kit safe read more like a PlayStation developer kit and unlike anything else I've seen with pre-release Apple hardware, for example, the Apple Silicon DTK.
So this is a little bit long, but I think it's worth reading.
This is now Apple's words as a part of the developer kit like signup or whatever.
Apple says, you agree that all access to, usage of, and storage use of the developer kit will be in private, secure, workspace accessible only by you and your authorized developers.
For example, fully enclosed with solid doors, floors, walls, and ceiling and locks that can be engaged when the developer kit is in use.
You must ensure that unauthorized persons, including any family, friends, roommates, or household employees, household employees, my word, do not access, view, handle, or use the DK, the developer kit.
Oh, my butler can't use it.
Right, exactly.
Very, very, very Silicon Valley, am I right?
The DK may not be moved from or taken away from its shipped to address by you or your authorized developers without Apple's prior written consent.
If you will be away from your workspace for more than 10 days, consult with your Apple point of contact about how to keep the DK safe while you are away.
You agree to restrict access to the DK to you and your authorized developers and take all reasonable precautions to safeguard the DK from loss or theft.
I mean, if I get one, my in-home office does not have a lock that has a key.
Yeah, you need a new house.
And it has windows.
Like, does that mean I can't use it?
Like, what the lock?
You just have to have solid doors, floors, walls, and ceiling and locks that can be engaged when it's not used.
I'm going to go out and let me say... No, but no one else is allowed to view it.
So you can only use it when you have locked yourself in the room.
Right, right, right.
I think pretty much zero people are going to fully comply with this because it's basically impossible human nature wise to fully comply with this, even if you have the best of intentions, because it demands so much of you that's out of the ordinary.
And the normal human mind will rebel against the absurdity of these requirements for a product that has already been announced and tried by the press, although not us.
uh it's not like you know if before this was revealed i can understand something like this but it's just it's just impossible to comply with this like unless you have compliance officer there who's like checking all the time there's no way even with the best of intentions you're gonna like it requires it just requires too much so i'm not quite sure why maybe this is just boilerplate they have for when they like you know like unity has been working on stuff for like two years so like before it was announced i can imagine agreements like this
uh being enforced in a big company but this this developer kit thing is open to anyone who wants to apply so like individual developers who work from their home are going to get this device they can't comply with this like unity might be able to because they're a big company and they actually have compliance officers and stuff and there's millions of dollars online if they screw up or whatever but individual developers won't um i think it is interesting that they're being so super cautious about it but i do wonder if this is like leftover language from like the before times before wwc
Yeah, well, because this is the level of security that you would have if they're showing off some new hardware soon, and they go to your company a couple weeks ahead of time, like, here, try this new iPad, make your app for it, we'll show it in the keynote.
This is that level of security, although when that has happened, it's been even higher in the sense that usually they put it in some tremendous enclosure, so you can't even really see what the device looks like outside of the screen.
Yeah, sometimes or sometimes they'll have you come to them to work on it in a place that they control like but all those situations that you're describing involve companies and companies have people whose job it is to like comply with these things and not get the company sued because companies have a lot of money and there's contract like that all makes perfect sense.
But hey, individual developer come throw your hat in the ring to sign up for this thing and we'll send you a developer kit.
boy this is overkill for that yeah but that being said i first of all i fully expect that only companies that have those kind of resources are are likely to get developer kits i think everyone else is going to be told come to a lab maybe not you but i think individuals will get it there's enough individuals with interesting apps that apple wants to have a developer kit and i think they're going to send it to them i think there will be individuals who work out of their home who are going to get a dk yeah
I genuinely believe, I really, really do, that Underscore will end up with one of these, as an example.
Oh, yeah.
He should, actually.
And he should.
So I would be surprised if there aren't at least a handful of hashtag blessed individuals that get them.
But the thing that struck me about this is, again, I haven't even applied.
And I think I tend to be a straight shooter.
I tend to try not to break the rules.
And so I would probably do a best effort on following these rules.
But leaving all of this aside, all
all things being equal, if I got one of these, of course I'd be like, Aaron, you have to try this out.
Why would she not?
And it occurred to me as I was thinking about this.
Well, now you're never going to get one.
Oh, no, totally, right?
No, you can make her an authorized developer.
You already said on a podcast where you identified yourself by name so they know which voice is which that you are not going to comply with this agreement, so forget it, Casey, you're not getting one.
Yeah, it's all your fault, John.
I was okay when they thought it was you.
But anyways, it occurred to me that
there is every possibility for this thing to phone home.
And, you know, it's aware, presumably, if I don't know if it's like a retina scan or whatever the scan was, but to identify who's using it, it hypothetically will know if somebody else was, you know, put this thing on and has tried it.
And is it going to phone home to Apple if you do that?
Oh, that's why I was talking to my friend Brad about this.
And, you know, Brad had pointed out, you know, oh, if somebody walks up to you, is it going to be like, oh, somebody was in the presence of this thing?
You know what I mean?
Like,
i'm not sure self-destruct on your face right like i don't think apple is quite that evil vindictive no no but they're not but it is hypothetically possible and that that kind of creeps me out what i mean look and i'm sure in their terms i'm sure it says something like they can do whatever they want um but no i wouldn't be worried about that i'd be worried about like you know
disappointing dad like that's that's kind of what i'd be worried about here you know because in many ways it's similar to like there's been a couple of times in the past where i've been trusted with pre-release review hardware um that wasn't at all the same thing as this i mean that was like you know hey we have this macbook pro that we're releasing in you know a week we've already announced it uh you know here you can take one to review for a week you know and that's very different from
this is a brand new platform that is unlike everything we've ever shipped before, and it isn't shipping to the public for seven or eight months, probably.
That's a very different situation, obviously.
So I would expect this to have a lot of security.
And the reality is, what I should probably do is go to a lab, and I'm sure I would have not that much trouble getting a slot in a lab.
The problem is, I don't want to fly all the California.
I can't.
To fly all the way to California for this is, that's a lot.
And so, look, I'll do it if I have to, but certainly not yet.
I mean, I would wait until closer to release time before I did that, but that's a much larger thing for me.
If they had one in New York, I'd be there, no question I'd be there.
Right.
That's the thing.
I was very surprised that it was, you know, left coast or get the hell out.
I really would have expected them to do something in New York somewhere.
And I mean, I heard through the grapevine that there is an Apple establishment in New York, like where presumably this sort of thing could happen.
So I don't know.
I was very, very surprised that, you know, they're telling everyone to go to California or pound sand.
I thought they had one of them, maybe just the compatibility labs in multiple cities across the world.
There are, yeah.
But the only one in the U.S.
is in California.
Oh, all right.
London, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
There you go.
Anyway, but yeah, this is quite amusing to me.
And I mean, in the defense of Apple, I understand what they're going for here.
And certainly, I think if I were in their shoes, my approach would be, let's put the fear of God into all these people and make them think that they have to be super strict with it.
Even if they really didn't care and all they cared about was, you know, not having a video demo or anything like that, you know, don't go to YouTube, don't go to The Verge or whoever.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is like a butt covering for what Apple doesn't want is someone like posting a picture of here's what the developer kit looks like, right?
You know, because that'll be a whole thing.
Yeah, or they don't want like people tearing it down and doing the iFixit, you know.
And they don't want you to say, well, I comply with your agreement, but someone sneakily took a picture.
And it's like, look, if you comply with our agreement, there'd be no way.
For someone to sneakily take a picture of it because our agreement is so airtight.
So no matter what happens, it's your fault, which is what lawyers do.
Yeah, exactly.
Indeed.
The other thing, too, is like, you know, because I'm giving all these statements assuming that it will be fairly hard to get developer access to this.
That's assuming there's a whole bunch of people trying.
That's probably a safe assumption in absolute terms, but in relative terms, I think Apple needs developers to be interested in this platform a little harder than they normally have to push.
With the iPhone, they don't really have to push at all.
We come to them.
you know with the other platforms like they have to do a little bit of pushing because like it's it's less compelling or less like gotta have it for developers and i think the vision i think vision os is gonna have a you know as i mentioned before i think it's gonna have a pretty gradual start it's not gonna have a lot of unit sales to start it's it's not gonna be easy to get for a lot of people for a while due to lots of things not least of which is the price of course but also you know the manufacturing and country availability and stuff like that so
it's going to be a while before this platform really ramps up with developer interest.
It might be the case that any of us who are interested in making apps for it, they might be like, yes, please, here, you know, we don't know.
I guess we'll find out.
It remains to be seen like how competitive these developer resources actually are.
I hope there's tons of people wanting to develop for this platform because frankly, I think it's pretty cool.
And I'm hoping to be a user of this platform and I'm wanting to have a healthy software ecosystem.
but I also I've heard from a lot of people who are kind of like you know in the wait and see camp and as I mentioned in my vision pro challenges segment a few weeks back I don't think a lot of big companies are going to jump on board quite yet so it's probably going to be largely down to independent enthusiasts and developers like underscore and you know possibly me and you know we'll see you know whatever John comes up with and
hopefully case you can port call sheet to it and everything but like which actually I think it would be a pretty good use for it yeah I do as well it's not lack of enthusiasm it's just lack of time there's only one of me and I'm trying to get the damn thing out the door which we'll talk about here in a minute but yeah I mean I think call sheet does make sense for it but I can't well maybe I could but I am of the kind that I can't in good conscience apply for a developer kit before I at least have something to show for it even if
even if Apple doesn't necessarily care, I care.
You know, I want to have a little bit of my head around, I want to have my head a little bit around what all this means.
And I'm not there yet, but hopefully I will be soon.
Yeah, it doesn't really help that I have to rewrite all my widgets first.
And then also they redesigned all of watchOS and like all this other stuff I have to get to first really for this fall.
But anyway, we'll get there.
All right.
And then a friend of the show, Steve Trouton-Smith, also noted that the Vision Pro loan period is until 90 days after the launch of the retail product in the United States.
It would make sense for Apple to extend that period in countries that have no retail launch of the Vision Pro unless it expects developers with in-progress apps to either pause development or try to figure out how to import one from the U.S.
That's a good point.
Yeah, I mean, really, honestly, at this point, as I was saying earlier, I think if you're going to release an app for this platform, you need to be trying it on hardware first.
And if you have no way to get one of these afterwards, I don't see how you continue to maintain an app on this platform.
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Oh,
I was on vacation last week, as was John, which is why we recorded early.
And for the first time ever, we actually timed them in parallel rather than serially.
So I was very proud of John and myself.
But nevertheless, that's neither here nor there.
So when we last left our hero, that hero would be me.
Hi, this is Casey.
When we last left our hero, I had submitted CallSheet to the App Store with a build that I could release, but I knew there were a few fixes left to be done.
The screenshots weren't exactly what I wanted.
I just wanted to get something across the finish line before I left for vacation.
And I don't think I made it clear that that was the real push when we spoke about this last, a couple of weeks ago.
But I really wanted to get something through app review before vacation.
So at least I could go on vacation, not stressing about it, knowing, hey, I've made it across the finish line at least once.
I have something I could release if I really wanted to.
Everything's kosher.
Everything's good.
As we discussed and as John got extremely fired up about, which was very kind of both of you guys to get my back like that.
But anyways, as we discussed last time, which was two weeks ago, I got three different rejections.
The first was they want an unclickable URL in the app description.
Fine, I did that.
Then I got a rejection for there being a video player in the app that doesn't have a video player.
Fine, we clarified that.
Then I got a rejection for...
using Disney and Pixar copyrighted material in the screenshots that I provided to Apple, and I got rejected.
And so I wrote Apple because this was happening as close to real time as one could be with AppReview, you know.
They would send something within a half an hour or 45 minutes.
I would send something back within about an hour after that.
They would send something back and it was going back and forth.
And so in my ignorance, my naivety, I don't know how to pronounce that word.
You know what I'm thinking of.
Because I'm a dope, I thought, hey, let's just get on the phone.
You call me or I can call you or whatever.
Let's just get on the phone.
Let's hammer this out in like five, ten minutes.
We'll get it done.
It'll be fine.
And they said, sure, we'll call you back in three to five business days.
Well, three to five business days meant that when I was on the beach in Cape Charles, I received a phone call from Apple.
So I ran to the dune, which was far away from all the people and the music and all that.
You're supposed to keep off the dunes, Casey.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I ran to the cutout through the dune that you used to get to the beach.
See, I forget with whom I'm speaking.
By the way, that was Marco, everybody, that lives on the beach.
Hi, this is Casey.
I'm the chief interrupter.
I don't know if that's true.
It's definitely true.
But I spoke with a gentleman who only identified himself as Richard.
Hand to God, he was incredibly kind and incredibly patient and incredibly chill.
I probably shouldn't state this publicly because it's mildly embarrassing, but I cannot remember having a phone call that I was this, maybe not scared, nervous, worried...
just a ball of emotion about like my heart was pumping a mile a minute in retrospect i should have done a apple watch like heartbeat doodad you know what i'm thinking of and like actually read my heart did you get the alert that's like hey your heart rate's a little off it looks like you're talking to app review right it's so true um do you want to begin a workout
You know, people are always doing those fake icons for different kinds of workouts.
They should do a talking to app review workout.
Someone work on that.
100% true.
So anyways, so I mean, I cannot tell you how I was not really moving and I was like mildly out of breath.
I was so nervous for this phone call.
And truth be told, Richard was so nice and so chill.
And I, based on his demeanor alone,
I really didn't need to be this worked up.
I had built this up in my head.
I've been stressed about it through the beginning of our vacation, and I'm just freaking the F out, right?
And he gets me on the phone, and one of the first things he said, which kind of made me chuckle, and I don't remember the words verbatim, but as close as I can remember, he said, I just want to let you know,
that I have to tell you this call cannot be recorded and I do not consent to it being recorded, which I thought was quite funny.
I mean, that's an interesting sentiment to express, even to those that aren't the exact words, because cannot be recorded?
Well, Richard, I'm not sure you're right about that.
I'm pretty sure it can be recorded.
And I register your lack of consent, but I happen to live in a state that requires only one of us to consent and I consent.
So where are we now, Richard?
But that's not a good way to start that call, so I'm glad you didn't do that.
No, it is not.
It's like this call could be recorded.
It probably shouldn't.
You probably should not record.
As far as you know, I'm not recording this, Richard.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
And if you recall, I did briefly look at the state laws or the Commonwealth laws here in Virginia.
And as far as I can tell, it is a single party consent state.
Now, California is not, if I remember correctly.
So I don't know how that would work out, but it doesn't.
I mean, you can do whatever you want within the law, but then also Apple can just reject your app forever.
So think about that.
There's that too.
I did not record it because I was standing on a beach.
So he gets me on the phone and he basically says, I've taken a look at your situation.
Your app is good to go.
Do you want me to release this one or do you want to send another bug fix through?
What do you want to do?
I want to pause you here, Casey, because one strain of feedback we got after the show where I was complaining about your rejection and how ridiculous it was, was from people with experience with copyright and dealing with IP law and ownership of stuff.
And many of those people were super duper confident that we were a bunch of dummies and just didn't understand how copyright law worked.
And I think all of us were fairly deferential saying we're not lawyers.
We don't understand how copyright works.
But one thing we do know, and what I tried to emphasize in that episode, is there are many apps like this on the App Store.
And there is no way that all of those apps, some of which are made by individual developers like Casey, have gotten all the clearances that these supposed experts in copyright law think we need to get.
And I think Richard saying, oh no, your app is fine, pretty firmly puts the decision in our camp saying, we were right.
You don't need contracts with every movie and television production company in the world to produce an app like Casey's.
In fact, Apple said, it's fine.
Yep.
And we had... I could look it up.
I have my phone next to me.
But I would say we had a five to ten minute conversation.
But the TLDR, the short short of it was, it was fine.
And they were good to release as if I was good to release.
And so I genuinely...
I have no idea if I got through because of ATP, if I got through because John Syracuse was upset and Marco Armin were upset.
I really don't think that's it.
I genuinely don't think it is.
I think the app is fine.
That's the whole point.
Exactly.
There are so many apps like this.
If just a single human who understands anything about the app store looked at it, they'd be like, oh, yeah, there's tons of apps like this.
Does this do anything wrong?
No?
Then why are we stopping it?
well and also i feel oh by the way this is marco i feel like that all that you need to know is it's now resolved that's it like don't even don't dwell too much on why just just move on and you know what is it past performance has no whatever implications on future whatever they tell you about the stock stuff this doesn't mean that the app won't get rejected for the exact same reason next time you submit it that's the magic of the app store
Yep, that is the magic of the App Store.
And I asked him a few things, not in a challenging way.
Like, hey, I think at one point I said, hey, you know, for the future, should I have handled this differently?
Like, did I do something wrong here?
And I was very deferential.
I was very, you know, I was trying to say in so many words, like, look, I don't want to waste your time.
I actually might have even said that to him.
I don't want to waste your time.
I think I know what you were trying to say, but in a very nice way.
Exactly.
I mean, I was trying to say this whole process has been BS.
Yes.
I was trying to say this was a waste of everyone's time, especially mine.
What should I have done for the next time?
And again, he was very kind, very chill.
He said, no, no, no, you're good.
You didn't do anything wrong.
It's all fine.
And you should have said, and Richard, what do you think you should do for next time?
Is there anything that you want to talk about that maybe you could have done better?
Oh, that's very funny.
So anyway, so we were on the phone for like five or ten minutes, and he said, okay, how do you want to proceed?
Do you want to release this one?
And it was all a pending developer release once it gets through app review.
But I said, you know what?
No, I'd like to see this across the finish line.
Would you go ahead and send it through, please?
He said, absolutely, no problem.
I'll give you a call.
It'll probably be a couple hours.
We'll get it through.
This was somewhere to the order of 1 o'clock in the afternoon Eastern time.
6 o'clock Eastern time comes around.
The app still hasn't passed review.
I know that it's in review because you can see the state of things using App Store Connect.
And there's an app for that, I think also called App Store Connect.
There's a website, blah, blah, blah.
And I see that it's been in review for like a couple hours now.
I am pooping my pants because the very kind Richard had told me unequivocally, it's good to go.
But I thought I was good to go before I even sent it to review.
And it turns out I was wrong about that.
So what's the deal?
And right around the time I'm like spiraling into the depths of despair, I get a phone call from Apple.
And it's Richard.
And he says, hey, you're probably wondering what's going on.
I said, yes.
Yes, I am.
There's something wrong on our end.
I'm not entirely sure what it is, but we're working on it and we'll get it through.
I promise.
Okay.
Are you sure?
Yep, yep, yep.
I'm totally sure.
Would you like me to give you a call when it's through?
Yes, please, because I'm really worried.
He said, no worries.
I will give you a call.
And then it was actually, of course, it was like 10 minutes after that that it all went through.
He gave me another call.
All was good.
So sitting in the App Store right now, pending developer release is the very first release of Call Sheet.
All right.
Which I'm extremely excited for and I'm extremely thankful for.
And actually, before I talk release plans, I should back up a half step.
I'm sorry.
I should have reordered this in the show notes.
We got a lot of feedback from lawyers and people with amateur lawyers saying, as John had mentioned a moment ago, oh, it's absolutely copyright.
Apple cannot accept anything like that.
You're absolutely 100% going to have to use stable diffusion to make fake...
Fake poster art.
I actually had somebody reach out to me.
I wish I had their name in front of me.
But they said, hey, I'm a producer on such and such and I am giving you permission to use this thing that I have the rights to, which is very kind.
I really appreciate that.
It's hard to get.
Only 700,000 more people you need to get agreements from.
Exactly.
No, but I don't want to besmirch this fellow.
It was very kind of him to say that genuinely.
But anyways, a lot of people said, you know, of course, this is never going to work.
And a lot of other people said, oh, I've been through this.
Here's what you need to do.
And so the most concise example of this, and I think most easy to understand, was Ibrahim Thamim, who wrote, I just wanted to suggest something that might help with the App Store rejection you talked about in the last episode of ATP.
I spent a lot of time with the same exact issue with my app that used the movie database API.
What finally got them to accept the app was to include a note below in the review information section.
It's weird, but this seems to be what they're looking for.
Since then, I've been able to get multiple similar apps approved by providing this exact note.
The note is as follows.
As mentioned extensively in the app, all imagery and metadata used in this app is from the moviedb.org API.
Therefore, any information regarding permission to use the images or metadata, please refer to and then hit the movie database terms of use URL, which basically says, I am not a lawyer.
Look, everything that's been uploaded to us, as part of uploading it to us, we are asking those who are uploading it, do you have the rights to this?
And they have attested yes.
So if they have the rights to it, now we have the rights to it because they're granting us rights.
And now we're granting you rights.
So I think it's kind of like, you know, Spider-Man pointing at himself sort of situation.
I don't think that's how it works.
I like the fact that Ibrahim put the little F you at the beginning, which is like, as mentioned extensively in the app, which you may or may not have actually looked at.
I mean, it's kind of like uploading a web browser and saying, just so you know, every web page this web browser loads is on the web and that content is not part of our application.
And yet Apple will still say, I don't know, I could browse porn, rejected.
yeah yeah i mean there's lots of there's lots of sort of you know superstition about do this and they got my thing through but the problem is like it's such a random number generator like app review like is it did i get through because of something that i did or did it get through just because i was going to get through no matter what at that point like like richard said casey didn't need to change anything about his app he didn't need to get agreements with every movie studio he didn't need to do any
his app as is was just plain fine which is what we all thought because again there are apps that are very similar that are I've been on the app store for years and years and why wouldn't Casey's be fine no but it's all about you know it's a bunch of humans and they make mistakes or they're afraid to you know step over a possible line or whatever else and so
As long as this system is human-based, it's going to have human problems.
It's going to be inconsistent.
They're going to mess up sometimes.
You're going to get crappy reviewers sometimes.
And if the system wasn't human-based, if it was AI-based or something, we would have different problems.
We wouldn't have no problems.
Part of being an iOS developer is you've got to play the system.
You have to know that there's occasional landmines you're going to step on.
You don't really know how certain things are going to go, and you kind of just build that into your expectations.
And we can rage, and we can fight against it, and we can say app review sucks, we can say we shouldn't need to do this, etc.
And that's all.
Sometimes we need to fight that fight, but usually we just have to work within the system the way it is.
But see, but here's the thing with the system.
You mentioned that it being AI powered, like it could be worse.
It could be like no humans involved, but like we have the worst of both worlds.
Like we have fallible humans, but also we don't have the humanity that comes with them.
Like the thing, what we would expect, maybe not in Casey's case, but in other cases where people get angry about things is like in actual human relationships between humans or even just relationships between companies, a thing called reputation exists.
There is a level of trust that gets built up.
Like panic, the software developer panic,
should have a should be treated differently by Apple than I am or than Casey is because they have such a long history of such high quality applications.
There is trust built up from literal decades of working with this company and these same people.
When humans relate to each other, it's not all the same.
So AppReview, everybody's the same.
Everyone's supposedly treated the same.
That's supposed to be fair.
But what it doesn't allow to happen is to like, let's give panic the benefit of the doubt.
Let's assume, you know, that they're not secretly doing like, let's not assume the worst of them.
Let's give them a reviewer who actually looks at their app and knows that it doesn't contain a video player.
You know what I mean?
Like there should be different treatment.
There is different treatment for Microsoft, Google, Adobe, you know, the big companies that are big competitors or that Apple needs or whatever.
So that does exist as we've talked about.
But I feel like the next level down, like we want, if it's humans to humans, I want the advantages of it being a human power process in addition to the disadvantages.
now i just feel like we just get the disadvantages and there are no advantages and whether that's an advantage like oh casey gets to talk you know casey assumed when he talked to you and he'd be able to work it out because at that point he's getting higher bandwidth treatment and to casey's point earlier wouldn't it have been easier to skip all that time that we've wasted both of our time and energy before this five second phone call this five second phone call granted it's not as scalable as you know people after you can't be calling everybody on the phone or whatever
But if they if Apple had put the amount of effort they put into that phone call into one or two of those early reviews, this whole problem could have been avoided.
So I still feel like I'm not saying that they have to be perfect.
There's always going to be mistakes.
But if it's going to be human powered, I want some of the advantages of human review.
And part of those advantages is the ability to build up trust and a reputation over time for good developers.
which, again, may not apply to Casey with his handful of apps that he's put out, but the other developers... Are you saying he's a bad developer?
No, but I'm just saying, like, you know, some developers... He's not Panic, right?
He's not Adobe, he's not Microsoft, he's not one of those giant companies, and he's also not a small developer who has, like, decades and decades of, you know, he's that underscore, you know what I mean?
Like, those type of relationships...
built up over time saying has underscore been sneaking bad stuff in there is he stealing people's contacts right is he making gambling apps for children no no no he's not doing any of that so he should have a higher level of trust than hey we've never heard of this developer and i have no idea what this app is well but on the on the other hand though
i mean look again the system has a lot of flaws but i also love the fact that everyone gets a similar level of bs you know like that that there aren't i mean i mean there is just for adobe and google and microsoft and you know yeah but like you know facebook netflix you know facebook isn't able to break a certain rule much more than we can but you know when they break it gets in the other direction they get extra scrutiny
Well, well, but like when they break a rule, they still can't release the app, but they aren't kicked out of the developer program forever.
You know, it's like there is some big company privilege for sure.
And there have been like, you know, occasional special deals made like, you know, there was always there was that rumor that seemed pretty well backed that like Netflix was not paying the 30 percent for some time.
And again, as I've said in many years in the past, that's appropriate.
Apple should do that.
It makes sense.
It would be dumb not to do that.
Anyway, so the system is not perfect, but overall, it does work mostly the same for most people most of the time.
And so that is a little more comforting, and that's probably better than the alternative of the big companies get much better reviewers, and then the rest of us get only Casey's first-level reviewer.
Right?
So I think the point that Ibrahim and a few other people have said who have also used stuff from the movie database is that they want... I'm putting a lot of words in a lot of people's mouths here, but it seems to me that the general gist of it is that Apple wants to be able to say, look, this person or this company or whatever...
at least on the surface, seems to have some sort of rights to the content that they're presenting.
And by using the Movie Database API, they have granted me those rights.
And presumably on the ingestion side, like I was saying a minute ago, whoever's uploading this stuff, they're claiming to have these rights.
Doesn't mean they do, but at least they're claiming to.
So the Movie Database feels like, if I'm right or wrong, they're in the clear.
I'm not saying that's factual.
I'm just saying that that's what they feel like.
And then Apple can say, well, look, this app developer says they got the rights from there.
Don't sue me.
Don't sue Apple, Disney.
Sue either the movie database or this Casey List character.
Sue them.
Again, maybe this is just a circumstantial.
I think it was John that said that earlier.
Hi, this is Casey.
And maybe that maybe this doesn't have anything to do with it, but enough people have said similar things that it makes me think that that might be factual.
I mean, these all sound like good hacks for trying to get through those those first reviewers that you got who just aren't paying enough attention to your app.
And you just need to find some way to find some words that their eyes are going to fall across and go, oh, that makes me feel better about it.
Because, again, Richard didn't say you need to add the statement.
Richard didn't say you need to get this agreement.
He didn't say anything.
He said you're good to go because he, I think, by the time he called you on the phone, understood what your app was about.
uh you know as mentioned extensively in the app as the room said maybe you should have mentioned it more extensively in your app maybe your launch screen should be like powered by tmdb api in any case so what are the plans for launch so as we record what is it today the 26th of july you know i'm not quite ready to hit the go button but i think the plan is uh and this is just between us atp listeners um i think the plan is
On Monday, the 7th of August, that is the intention.
Monday, the 7th of August, the app will go live.
My intention is in the next 24 to 48 hours, I am going to cut off the previous member-only perk of the test flight.
But hand to God, this app is much better because of all of the people that used it before it went to app review.
And I'm really appreciative of all the people that signed up to try it, that signed up at atp.fam slash join.
I'm appreciative of all of you who have sent me feedback.
Almost all of it was extremely useful and extremely actionable.
Some of it was not, but that's how it goes.
It's been awesome.
And it's been surprisingly pleasurable for me to get all of this feedback and to work through problems that I didn't see because I'm too close to it.
And if I'm completely honest, the reason I did all this originally was because I was trying to juice ATP memberships.
But it actually ended up working out really nice for me in the sense that it worked out nicely for CallSheet.
So I'm really thankful for it.
I appreciate if you spent any time looking at the app and sending feedback and so on.
But yeah, on Monday, August 7th, that is the plan.
I plan to release then probably 9 in the morning Eastern, but we'll talk about it when we get closer.
Or maybe I'll certainly be tooting about it on Mastodon.
Maybe I'll be threading it.
We'll talk about that potentially in a minute.
There are no precise app release times in the App Store.
Well, there's that too.
That's true.
But anyways, but the idea is on Monday the 7th.
And genuinely, I'm really, really excited.
I'm really scared, but I'm really excited.
I hope the damn thing works.
And I'm really looking forward to it.
So on Monday the 7th, that's what's going to happen.
It works and it's going to be great.
You'll see.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Continuing on the follow-up that will not end, and that's in no small part my fault.
Hi, this is Casey.
On Upgrade 468, an anonymous Apple engineer talked to the wrong podcast about Mac Pro stuff.
What the hell is this?
I know, right?
I have endured hours of Mac Pro bullshit.
I mean, content.
I have endured hours of it.
And I, the hell with you two.
I don't get the benefit of getting this feedback to lord over these two jerks.
I quit.
Everyone's fired.
You're all fired, and I quit.
Anyway, Upgrade 468, which other than this moment is one of my favorite podcasts, except right now.
I hate it right now.
But anyway, Upgrade 468.
An anonymous Apple engineer working on the GPU team said the following.
I presume this was John that transcribed this.
Thank you, John.
The Apple engineer said, the quad chip has been canned with no plans to return.
For context, we are actively developing what will presumably be the M5 chip.
And the quad chip was only ever specced for the M1 and removed late in the project.
There are no plans to create a quad chip through at least the M7 generation.
My understanding is that the quad required too much effort for too small a market.
Something interesting that may come in the M8 and future generations is called multi-die packaging.
This allows the CPU and GPU parts of the chip to be fabricated on different dies and packaged together, much like how two Max chips make an Ultra.
With this design, it's conceivable that we could have three, four, five or more GPU dies with one or two CPUs for a graphics powerhouse or vice versa for a CPU workstation that doesn't need as much GPU grunt.
However, as far as I know, no such plans exist yet.
John, you have the floor.
So some of this is old information.
We knew the quad was cam.
We knew it was only planned for the M1, so on and so forth.
But the new information is, oh, and by the way, we talked in the past episodes, so they could do the quad in the M3 or generation or something.
It's like, no, this rumor.
And again, I want to emphasize that upgrade cannot and does not vouch for this anonymous system.
uh thing because we get anonymous feedback they just you know this is what they say this is what they're claiming so just i don't want if this turns out not be true don't blame upgrade and don't blame us it's you know you just sometimes you get anonymous feedback but this is what this thing uh this person claims um they said not only is the quad not coming anytime soon there are zero plans for it up through the m7 this by the way shows you how long the timelines are in hardware stuff has to be planned out years and years in advance for this stuff
um plans can of course change but this really shows what apple is thinking if this rumor is true about the directions it's not like oh we couldn't do the quad it was too expensive uh and you know the m2 is not that different from the m1 but we'll revisit this later it's more like we couldn't do the quad it's too expensive and by the way forget about the quad
Just forget about it.
We're just going to plan out our chips.
We're going to go M3, M4, M5, M6, M7.
We'll just plan out our long five-year, six-year, ten-year plan.
Don't even worry about the quad.
It doesn't need to be anywhere on there.
We don't need it.
The multi-chip packaging thing, we've talked about that back in the day when we were originally talking about the Jade 4C and everything and chiplet architectures and the city of chips and different ways to put multiple dies in the same package.
This is before we knew about the Ultra, really.
But yes, of course, that is a conceivable approach.
But
If this rumor is true, if this anonymous inside tip is true, it tells you what Apple thinks of the future of the Mac line.
And what it thinks is that it does not need to have anything more powerful than the Ultra.
Obviously, the M3 Ultra will be more powerful than the M2 Ultra and up to the M4.
They'll get faster over time, but it seems like they think that class of chip
is all they're going to need what that says about the mac pro whether they keep shipping that big tower case or whether they don't or whatever is not that important unless you're one of those people who really needs those pci slots uh but what this really says to me is they think that if you're doing something with a mac right now or you have to wait for the computer uh
they're not going to do anything to help you other than give you one that is incrementally faster than you have now.
Like there's not, they could get more performance.
Like there is more performance to be had.
So in any realm, GPU or CPU, you could get a PC that has more GPU cores,
much bigger uh you know more cpu cores much bigger gpu they would do your task faster assuming it's a cross-platform app or there's some equivalent or whatever but they're like no if you get a studio or a mac pro which is basically the same whatever speed that does it at i know you could get a pc that does the task twice as fast because it has twice as many cores but we're never going to sell a machine that's like that so if you if you sort of look at the pc market and you say
here is the sort of performance ceiling for CPU and GPU for personal computers within some reasonable price ceiling.
Apple is always going to be a fairly significant step below that because they're just not going to build anything that can compete with the high end because they're saying we're not going to build something that's like a quad, which means the biggest thing they're going to build is an Ultra.
And we kind of know the thermal envelope of the Ultra, the machine they put it in.
This rumor is saying is basically like, look, if we can't fit it in the Mac Studio case, we're not going to make it.
Because, you know, if we needed something bigger, you know, like I really don't think they're going to make an ultra that's too big to fit in the Mac Studio case, for example.
Right.
The M6 Ultra will fit in the Mac Studio case because that's what that chip is designed for.
But you could build something with more cores that would be faster that would fit in the Mac Pro case.
And this rumor is saying Apple does not plan to do that at all.
And that's fine for people who don't really wait for their computers to do much of anything.
But if you're currently waiting on your computer and you're like, boy, I wish this could be faster.
Yeah, next year it will be faster.
But if you're like, but this could be twice as fast as if I had twice as many CPU cores, Apple's like, it could be, but we're not going to make that machine for you.
And that may be fine because most people don't need that.
But it is disappointing on multiple levels.
Obviously, it's disappointing to me and I think they should make that machine because it's an exciting thing to pursue and so on and so forth.
But it does mean that a certain section of the market that continues to think, well, maybe next year they'll make one and maybe this Mac Pro is just an interim step.
If this rumor turns out to be true, those people who don't listen to this podcast probably are going to be like, as the years pass, they're going to be like, huh, I guess Apple's just not...
just not going to do that anymore and they'll be disappointed and i do wonder if we're not just going through this cycle again that we've gone through a couple of times where apple sort of loses interest in the mac pro mac pro level hardware and either stops making it or make some that's disappointing and then pro users get angry and then apple apologizes and tries to make a new one like i don't that's not a healthy cycle
But I mean, the two alternatives are we were in that cycle again and we're going to like there's going to be some equivalent of the roundtable like five years from now.
Right.
Where there'll be some crisis and people are going to be complaining or there won't be that crisis.
And Apple is just stepping back from that market entirely.
And I think stepping back in the market entirely is, again, I think it's a bad idea, but it's also like not for the reasons you think like setting aside GPUs, because I want to set that aside for a second.
Just CPU.
The, you know, the Mac Studio is small and there's only so much CPU heat generation you can put in that case.
Again, setting aside GPU, pretend the GPU is like as small as you could possibly make it.
You can make and use more CPU cores for things that are highly parallel.
Maybe Apple doesn't care about those things like, you know, 3D rendering in Blender or whatever, whatever tasks that you have that can actually spread across all the CPU cores.
Even something simple as compiling.
If you have a huge application, I imagine, if Xcode is doing its job, it could use 24, 48 cores if you're building some gigantic thing, maybe.
I don't know what the best examples of multi-CPU things are, but...
Those applications exist.
And Apple is basically saying, even though you can use more CPU cores, we're not going to sell them to you.
And you can get them from Intel, because Intel will sell you something with 56 cores right now.
And you need a big case for it.
And we do have a big case, but we're not going to put any CPUs like that in there.
And that's always going to be disappointing and limiting.
The GPU is now getting to them.
This is actually a separate issue because Apple could at any point in the future say, oh, and by the way, we've decided to bring back external GPU support, whether it's an Apple GPU or a third party, like that option is always there.
Even if it's just for compute or whatever, they can always do that.
But the CPU thing is actually worse because you can't add more CPU cores with a card.
So as long as Apple continues to make a thing with card slots,
The M5 generation, if people are complaining or they think there's some market they need to go after, they can come back with the FPGA card, like the Afterburner, right?
But they can also say, hey, we have an external GPU or some machine learning thing.
Those slots exist.
Apple can use them.
There's nothing about the lack of a quad that precludes that.
What the lack of the quad kills is big multi-core CPUs.
Because where are the CPU cores going to come from?
Now, the whole idea of being able to rebalance them, like let's make one with lots of CPUs and few GPUs or vice versa, that's cool and all.
But if you have to fit it within the Mac Studio thermal envelope, there's only so much horse trading you can do there.
Like, oh, I want to have five more CPU cores, but then I have to reduce my GPU.
And you can never put as much GPU as you want in there because there's just not enough thermal headroom.
And if you start pushing out the GPU for more CPU cores is...
you can't push out all the GPU you have to drive the display somehow so I think that's interesting and I think if they actually use that technology they should use it to make essentially the equivalent of the quad that's not actually a quad it would be an ultra but there would be two much bigger ultras with different ratios of stuff and then like a third party GPU or something like that so
Anyway, we'll see how this goes.
Like, I don't know how much credence to put in this rumor.
It is pretty definitive saying that we're just not going to do this for a long, long time.
But boy, if there's not because there was pushback before, like, why did they have the Mac roundtable?
The Mac Pro is a big part of that.
But part of what people wanted was make me a fast computer and make it expandable and quote unquote modular.
Remember the big discussion we had?
What the heck do they mean by modular?
I think what I thought they meant by modular, I made it said as a joke, but also kind of serious was they mean the monitor is not part of the computer.
That's one definition of modular.
And Apple makes a modular computer, multiple modular computers, where the monitor is not part of it.
One of them is called the Mac Studio.
That does fulfill one of the things that roundtable was about, because people were kind of pissed at, like, I don't want, iMac Pro is an amazing computer, but what if I don't want the screen connected to the computer part?
Please make me a modular computer.
And they did.
I mean, they made the trash can and that was modular too, but that was also a problem.
That was before that.
But the Mac Studio does fulfill a lot of that promise.
But I do wonder if we're not just headed for another collision of people saying, come on, Apple, insert competitor name here, offers me an 87-core CPU, and NVIDIA is making this monster GPU that you can't compete with.
But you offer me nothing that can do anything like that.
And I have to leave your ecosystem and use PC instead because you don't compete in that category anymore.
Maybe Apple will say, fine, see ya.
I don't care.
We don't sell that many of those anyway.
But I do think that is probably a mistake.
Like I said, the...
The Vision Pro uses a chip from a Mac, granted a lower power chip from a Mac, but it does not use an iPhone chip.
So I really do think Apple should reconsider these plans.
It doesn't mean they need to make a quad because maybe that's the wrong approach to making a Mac Pro caliber system on a chip or whatever.
Maybe trying to put four of them together is too much.
maybe they want to revisit and say we're going to make the ultra and the extreme will be basically two things that are bigger than a max shoved together like the ultra you know what i mean there are other potential options but that's not mentioned in these plans either but i'm i'm just the idea i got apple you gotta run with this my idea is uh don't do this because totally giving up the high end is something that apple has
pretty much never done in every generation of mac they've ever made they've at least sort of kind of tried to be in the conversation on the day of release with their high-end computers to say whatever the biggest baddest pc can do we can do some selected some handpicked set of things better and i think it's going to be harder and harder to be able to say that if they just say we are never going to make anything that can't fit in the studio case so this is a disappointing rumor and apple should see me after class
Everything you can do, I can do better.
No, it was surprising even to me.
And as much as I like to give you two a hard time about the Mac Pro, I mean, I do want the Mac Pro to exist.
I think there's something we said for Apple having a no-holds-barred, you know, just all-out incredible computer.
Yeah.
I will sit here and debate with you, John, whether or not you need that computer.
But nevertheless, I do think it should exist.
And it is a bummer that they seem to be letting it go.
Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see how they market.
Like, you know how they market?
They're always like, oh, they have some graphs.
They show it against like old Intel Macs and stuff like that.
But even the current graphs that they put against like, you know, PC GPUs are mostly fantasy.
But they're just going to have to stop doing that entirely because they're just going to be like, no, we're never...
We're never going to compete with that.
But how can we?
Like, how can you compete on a, you know, embarrassingly parallel CPU problem when you have half the number of CPU cores?
Like no TSMC, you know, fab advantage is going to let you compete with twice the number of CPU cores or more on a highly parallel thing.
And the same thing with GPU.
So it's very disappointing.
Yeah, but I still, the more I think about this, the more I think that my passing theory from last episode about like, this is really just, you know, the Mac Studio is the Mac Pro.
And what we now know is the Mac Pro is just the Mac Studio in a PCI case.
The more I think about it, the more I am comfortable with that theory.
I mean, that is what they've shipped, but it's also saying that they're not going to make what was previously.
The Mac Pro is a slot in the lineup, and what you're saying is that slot doesn't exist anymore.
Instead, there's a Mac Studio and Mac Studio with a backpack.
Sort of, except I would characterize it differently.
Those are the facts, but I would say that's actually not only unsurprising, but mostly fine in the sense that when you look at where high-end computing is these days,
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't think Apple has been a major player in high-end GPU computing for some time now.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They keep making worse and worse machines and shooing the market.
Then, of course, they're not going to be a player.
And then you use the fact that you're not a player to say, well, we don't need to be in that market because there's not really a player there anyway.
You can get out of any market by slowly doing that to yourself.
That's true, and that is what they've done.
However, I don't think this Mac Pro losing its GPU support is as big of a change as we initially thought, simply because that market has already largely left them.
And again, through their own doing, you're right, but...
That market was already mostly gone.
So I think having the Mac Pro exist as basically the PCI Express breakout box for the Mac Studio and having the Mac Studio really be the current Mac Pro for most other needs...
I think not only is that clearly the case, but I think that's fine.
It's not fine for everyone, but that is fine for most of the market that the Mac Pro still had at all.
Well, that's why I mentioned at the beginning, like, do you in your work ever have to wait for the computer?
Because some people, that's not true.
Like you just don't, people just don't have to wait for the, and I'm not talking about like network, like this webpage is loading slow.
Like, are you waiting for the local computer to grind through something using disk IO, using CPU or using GPU?
And like 99% of Apple's customers, especially in Apple Silicon, that is not, they don't wait for anything.
Like they're waiting for the network, but they're not waiting for, oh, the CPU is grinding over this or the GPU, maybe game playing.
You could say, I wish I had higher frame rates, but like you're playing the game.
It's fine.
But there are some people who are waiting for the computer and for them to be out there knowing that this thing that takes them 15 minutes could take them seven right now, not next year on a computer, but right now it could take them seven because they could have doubled the CPU cores and their thing is using all the CPU cores.
And knowing that Apple could make that machine, and Intel does, but they're not going to ship it to them, is going to be frustrating for those people.
So we're going to be losing a new section of people.
Not the GPU people who already left, not the people who wanted the stuff that Apple hasn't offered in years and years, but the people who...
pretty much up to this point expected that apple would be in contention with you know again with cpu power mostly um and occasionally with gpu power to do whatever it is that they wait on their computer doing now a big part of that is video stuff where i feel like apple still is in contention because they do have those dedicated units inside the socs for doing video so i think the video people will actually be should be mostly happy
Because I don't think a lot of those cases adding more of those video units would be useful to them because they're usually just like trying to encode one or maybe two videos at the same time, but not like 20 of them at once.
But I do think there's another class of people who wait for their computer to finish stuff.
who now are going to know that they could be waiting half as long because their thing is parallelizable.
And that hasn't been the case before.
I try to think back, like, was there a time when Apple just opted out completely?
There have been dark times where they've done a poor job, but never has there been a time where they say, we're not even going to try to compete.
And to be clear, this rumor doesn't really say that because we don't know what the M6 looks like.
we you're just assuming it's going to have the same ratio of cpu gpu power units and efficiency cores as they currently do we have no idea so i don't you know even if this isn't true we may you may be reading too much into it to think they're not going to compete at all but it sure seems like that they subscribe to the idea that yeah you wait a little bit but look what are you going to do switch to pc probably not so it'll be fine
Matt Rigby writes,
Specifically, we encounter these issues using docks that include the Asmodai ASM-235 USB to SATA chipset.
This unfortunately includes the very popular OWC Drive dock and other iterations of the Blackmagic rack-mount SATA dock, among others.
We haven't found any immediate solutions to this issue thus far, but we've had success with a variety of Nintendo-level plasticky docks from StarTech that don't utilize this chipset.
So in short, Marco, you're not alone.
There's definitely some chipset, driver, or Apple Silicon weirdness out there.
Sorry, I don't have a solution.
Yeah, my solution has just been try to rely less on USB connected drives that are always connected.
So that's why I moved my time machine to Synology.
That was the big one.
And it's just, yeah, there's something weird with Apple Silicon Macs and many USB drive enclosure type things or SSDs.
And I just, I gave up.
Like, I'm like, I can't keep dealing with this.
So just move that role to the network.
I mean, you should check to see if you have this chipset thing.
And because like a lot of those enclosures are fairly cheap, like you can get an enclosure of like 20 or 30 bucks, you might want to just try a couple of different enclosures and see if it solves the problem.
The problem is it's intermittent.
So like it might take me months of troubleshooting to slowly figure that out.
And it's just it's not worth the hassle.
Indeed.
Wall Street Journal writes that threads is already losing its allure for users adding urgency for new features.
This was, I think, a couple of days ago now.
But anyway, for a second week in a row, the number of daily active users declined on threads, falling to 13 million, down about 70% from a July 7 peak, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The average time users spend on the iOS and Android apps has also decreased to four minutes from 19 minutes.
Yeah.
I like that last sentence because it's like, oh, don't worry, we're adding features.
So come back.
They're going to be really cool.
And then we're going to crap it all up.
Yep.
Before trying to monetize.
So come back so we can put ads in your timeline.
One of the most fun things, I think I mentioned this when Threads first came out, I said I was annoyed they didn't have a chronological timeline, but it's obviously why they need an algorithmic one because that's the right choice for most users.
And the developers of the application said, oh, don't worry, chronological timeline is coming.
And I said, but will I have to re-enable it every single time I launch the app like I have to in Instagram?
And they didn't answer.
Well, guess what the answer was?
The answer was yes.
You will have to re-enable it every time you launch the app because why would we remember that setting?
Like, we want you to see the algorithmic timeline.
And yeah, it'll stay on the chronological one, but if the app gets pushed out of memory or you relaunch it or 24 hours pass or whatever we decide, guess what?
You're back on the algorithmic timeline.
Just manually select the chronological timeline every time.
I don't see what the problem is.
Well, the problem is, uh, that shows that you hate me.
Uh, so I don't like this app, but yeah, so this is, this is why one of the reasons I'm very glad that we picked the title, uh, for Marcos phrase, 100 million tire kickers, because they got all users, uh, real fast.
Uh, but you have to do something to keep those users.
And despite what the wall street journal says, and it's typical sort of, uh, you know, financial business person thing, they need to add features, uh,
i'm not sure adding features lack of features is why people are leaving threads like they came in to kick the tires and i think what makes people stay is a compelling experience as they say in business speak and that has very little to do with the feature set people you know went to twitter and continue to go to twitter building their user base up to whatever it currently is several hundred million or whatever they're down to now but anyway
uh because of the experience on twitter and twitter had like no features for a really long time right uh and granted the bar has been raised but like it's not the lack of features that's making people leave they're leaving one because i feel like it's a fragmented market and two they were just hopping in to check it out and they're not entirely sure if it's a place where that they're gonna make a home or whatever they're not sure how it fits into their life and
And they're not sure they, you know, are really enjoying it or there's something there that's making it sticky for them.
And I think that has nothing to do with lack of features, lack of chronological timeline, lack of editing, any of that stuff.
Because lack of editing, for example, didn't stop Twitter from being... Twitter at its peak had no editing.
And that, you know, we complained about it, but it didn't stop Twitter from becoming super important.
So...
I kind of agree with the meta executives for saying, like, we knew it would drop and it's fine.
Like, they can, you know, what they want to do is build it back up.
There's going to be a big burst of interest and then people are going to taper off.
But it's not like they dropped to zero.
And the advantage Facebook slash meta has is...
They have the money and time and maybe the will to keep doing this and build it up like it's not going to go.
You know, the expectation that it would just say and soon it will be five billion people.
That's unrealistic, but they have time to make a go of it.
So I don't think this is a doom and gloom story, but it does show how, you know.
what those tire kickers thought tire kickers were most of the tire kickers were not particularly convinced by the experience of using threads which mostly has to do with what was it like like what do you what's there what are you reading are your friends there is there interesting news there are you seeing celebrities like are you do you find the content compelling kind of like the same way that what made people stay on netflix it's not the quality of the application or the video player it was do you like the shows
That's what would make people stay on threads or any sort of social media type service.
And then once you all get there, then your thing will be filled with ads before trying to monetize the platform before really making it just a miserable place to be.
And so I would like to do a temperature check for the three of us.
Hi, this is Casey.
What is your threads usage these days?
Because this happened for me and for John, at least.
It happened before vacation.
And I was looking at it, you know, like once or twice a day before vacation.
And then vacation happened.
And I don't think I've opened it since.
And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with threads.
I'm not saying that it's turned bad or anything like that.
But I just kind of forgot about it.
So I'm curious, and perhaps we'll start with my concurrent vacationer, John.
Are you using Threads at all?
Are you up, down, or about the same from a couple of weeks ago?
I still try to visit all the apps pretty regularly.
Obviously, Masked Online is my main one.
So when Threads came out, I saw a big decline in activity among the people that I follow on Blue Sky.
All those qualifiers are important.
because my experience is not the same as other people's experience, especially since I tend towards chronological timelines and not algorithmic ones.
Threads, where I previously didn't even have a choice of a chronological timeline, I saw the threads activity drop off after the initial burst as well.
And most of the activity I see in threads has nothing to do with anybody I follow because it's an algorithmic timeline and they're just throwing me random stuff in my face.
And I think their algorithmic timeline does an okay job.
It wasn't totally off the wall of things I might be interested in.
it was a, it was a reasonable mix of sort of mass market media stuff.
Plus like people that I could conceivably be interested in following or whatever.
Um, I will try the chronological timeline.
If I can remember to reselect it every freaking time I launched the app because they hate their users and we'll see if that changes thing.
But I, I definitely saw less activity.
Like I,
Less posts from the people I follow, even given the algorithm.
Less replies, less mentions, less long conversations.
And I feel like that's natural after the initial burst of activity.
But the Mastodon experience, like the Mastodon had a big burst of activity and it kind of tapered down.
But the level it tapered down to, my timeline on Mastodon is...
more active and more interesting and more engaging to me than my timeline and any other service but that's just me i i feel like that is not necessarily true other people i've heard from a lot of people that they feel like blue sky is that for them that blue sky is where the interesting conversations are happening and even though there was a traffic decline when threads came out still they feel like blue sky is like their anchor of where like the most interesting things are and i bet that's true of some people in threads too so i
I don't know how this is going to shake out yet.
I feel like threads did get an important head start on being a mainstream thing, and certainly they still have way more than Mastodon and way more than Blue Sky, which is still invite only, but I still feel like it's anybody's game.
And obviously I'm rooting for Mastodon to be like the slow and steady wins the race.
Just, you know, no one can stop us because it's open source software and anybody can run a thing or whatever.
But on that front, Threads continues to claim that they're going to federate with ActivityPub.
So if and when something happens in that area, I'm sure we'll talk about it.
Indeed.
Marco, what are you doing with Threads?
Oh, this is Marco, Marco Colon.
So far, I am mostly forgetting to open the app because I've just been working a lot on my Mac, which is what I am usually doing most of the time in my adult life.
And there is no Mac story yet.
And when I think the most likely Mac story that they add is not going to be some nice app like Ivory.
It's going to be a web version of the phone app.
Yeah, they said they said that's coming.
Right, which is... I mean, Instagram has that.
It's not great.
Even the phone app is clunky because there's not multiple account support.
So if I want to have... I have my personal account, and then I have an account for Overcast, and we have an account for ATP.
Well...
On the Mac, I have Ivory always in four-column view.
I have my personal timeline, then I have my personal mentions, then I have ATP mentions, and then I have Overcast mentions.
So I'm keeping track of my personal account and my two work accounts...
all the time, and I'm able to quickly and easily post from each one, retweet from one to the other, or whatever the case may be.
That's how I used Twitter for a decade or whatever, and this is how I now use Mastodon.
While Threads has way more people, and in fact many of the people on Threads, as I mentioned before, the community I have found on Mastodon is...
wonderful uh for ios developers it is not wonderful for diversity at all and there's a lot of people who i would love to follow their content and mastodon is feeling increasingly more strongly like i'm using desktop linux
It's like there's only this one subset of nerds that I'm finding here.
And again, this is probably mostly on me in the sense that it's hard to find people outside of your circles on the servers because it is less algorithmic.
And that's again, that's I'm sure that's a lot of my fault.
But it feels like this is a chat room for developers and nerds.
And that's fine.
But there's also other people in my life I want to hear from and read their stuff and interact with them.
and way more people of way more variety that i want to follow are posting on threads and i'm not there most of the time because i just i'm not browsing it on my phone most of the time i i'm at my mac that's where i consume things and i also don't find the threads that particularly you know a good fit for me necessarily in the way it works and how it's organized things like that so
the way I get to threads is probably going to end up being via Federation if that ever happens.
And I, and as we've discussed, that's not likely to be a great experience from either direction.
The way it's probably going to work is threads is going to be very much like Instagram for me.
Instagram is an app that I can't use on my Mac.
Uh, and well, I guess I could use the web interface, but it sucks.
So it's, it's an app I don't use on my Mac because it's there.
There's no third-party clients for it.
It can't fit into my workflow very well.
I have multiple accounts, but I barely use them, and it's very hard to manage.
And that's an app that has a ton of people who I'd like to follow, but I usually forget to check it.
And I end up checking Instagram maybe once every week or two, and there's a whole pile waiting for me when I get there.
I dip in, check a little bit, and then I switch apps at some point, and then I forget about it for the next two weeks.
That's probably how Threads is going to go for me personally for the foreseeable future because Threads is not where I am.
It is on my phone.
Great.
I'll check it sometime, but it's not on my Mac.
I totally agree with you.
And I do look at Instagram probably more than I should, but I certainly don't look at it near as much as I look at Mastodon now or Twitter in the past.
And in no small part, that's because most of the day I'm at my computer and I want to use a native app to look at these things.
And there isn't one for Instagram, there isn't one for Threads, and there is one for Mastodon.
And it's great.
So I hear you.
Yeah, the fragmentation is a problem for like the – we're all looking for a quote-unquote Twitter replacement or whatever.
Like Twitter had everybody.
Twitter had the celebrities.
Twitter had the tech nerds.
It was the only thing.
They got critical mass and there was no real competing services.
Now there's just –
There's even celebrity fragmentation.
So Mastodon has the nerd adjacent celebrities.
So like a sci-fi author, like a famous sci-fi author is going to be on Mastodon.
But like Tom Cruise is not going to be on Mastodon.
Julia Roberts, whatever.
I respect random movie stars.
Like the big stars who are not nerd adjacent in any way, not on Mastodon right now.
Threads has a bunch of celebrities, but those nerd celebrities who are on Mastodon primarily use Mastodon, even if they're also on Threads.
So if they're having an interesting conversation, it's probably going to happen on Mastodon, but only because they're nerd adjacent.
But then they miss out on conversing with the rock and roll stars who are on threads or on Instagram or are still on Twitter.
And so even just – even the mainstream is fragmented.
Like obviously the nerds are fragmented.
Like it makes lots of historical sense why all the nerds are on Mastodon and everything like that.
And I am glad that I have a nerd community there.
But I do miss the feeling like, okay, but either – two things.
Either the mainstream is at the same place where I am, which is not currently the case.
Or at least I know where to go to find the mainstream.
And I feel like when I go on threads, I'm not even getting all the mainstream because I see the people who are still on Twitter.
I see the people who are primarily on Maston, even though they're technically on threads.
And this this I think is related to why people might have checked out threads and not be that interested because they see the mainstream fragmentation, too.
They're like, oh, this isn't as hopping as Twitter was.
Maybe if they find their little subset, like a lot of people have found like a good like niche community on Blue Sky.
But Blue Sky doesn't have all the mainstream celebrity, important, famous people, politicians, companies like no one service has that anymore.
And I think that like, oh, if you go here, Delta Airlines is here and that funny Comcast account and your favorite celebrity and your favorite sports star.
There is no one place where all of them are.
And having them all in one place makes that really compelling to the common person.
And so now I can feel for someone who's like, no, I tried it, but none of these places are like Twitter used to be.
And Twitter is also not like it used to be.
So I guess I'll go look at TikTok.
That's where we are right now.
I don't see that being resolved anytime soon.
I think we're going to be in this in this weird fragmented world for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, I tend to agree with that as well.
All right, Marco, do you want to talk to us about the Ubiquity Dream Router and why it's a piece of garbage?
Yeah, so I mentioned the end of last show.
This is Marco.
I mentioned that we purchased a new house and that I'll be setting up networking gear and stuff in it.
uh and i was looking at ubiquity's new gear i mentioned in passing i ordered the dream router and i couldn't believe it was only 200 bucks and it seemed like the successor to the dream machine which was their previous cylinder which i'm literally talking to you through right now many people wrote in to point out that the dream router while it looks just like the previous cylindrical dream machine
is actually like a cut-down model.
That's why it's so inexpensive.
And in particular, it is apparently very slow to process things, and that its slow processor limits its throughput on an internet connection to roughly 700 megabits.
And I mentioned I'm getting gigabit fiber, so everyone wrote in to tell me
I should not use the Dream Router.
It is too slow, and my gigabit fiber will oversaturate it, and I won't be able to get my full connection speed and whatever else.
First of all, thank you, everyone, for telling me that.
I didn't know any of that.
This is great to know, and I will try to return it, although their website is currently broken for returns tonight, so I'll figure that out some other time.
I love Ubiquiti stuff, but the problem is it goes out of stock constantly because everyone loves Ubiquiti stuff.
So the thing I was looking at instead of the Dream Router is the Dream Machine Special Edition.
This is a 1U rack mount.
It includes a PoE switch like the Dream Router.
It doesn't have an AP, but I get separate APs usually, so it's less important.
It has a hard drive bay in case I want to use security cameras.
I'll get to that in a little bit.
But I was looking at the Dream Machine Special Edition as the alternative here.
when i was looking it was in stock and then when everyone wrote in to tell me i shouldn't get the dream rider i thought oh great i'll just go order the other one i was looking at sold out and it's remained sold out for the entire like week and a half since we last recorded also during that time the dream rider itself went out of stock
cool i believe it came back in stock today if anybody wants them uh but this is the problem with buying ubiquity gear they are frequently out of stock uh just sold out and you don't know when they're coming back in you know you can sign up for the notices and they might come back in stock the next day or the next month or never you don't know
And you can go on Amazon or eBay and pay some scalper vendor some premium over Ubiquiti's prices.
Ubiquiti stuff is usually pretty affordable.
It's part of the reason they got so popular.
So you can go pay Cisco-level prices for Ubiquiti gear from some retailer somewhere who's ripping you off.
But...
It's very frustrating when you need Ubiquiti gear now, now, now, and you go to get it and it's just sold out.
But ultimately, the reason they have this problem is that they are very desirable and good for them.
I've used their stuff for a while and I think they've earned their success and there's a reason why I keep buying their stuff.
It's really good.
and it isn't perfect occasionally there's a dud but you know usually their their track record is very high and it's and for what you're getting it's usually pretty pretty remarkably affordable so uh all it is to say don't buy the dream router turns out i'm going to try to return mine and try to get myself a dream machine special edition if i can get it in time but i probably can't so i'm probably going to be sticking with the dream router for a while
Did you see their, like, Powerwall thing?
I forget what it's actually called.
Yes, the Dream Wall.
That's $1,000.
That's really cool, but it was very expensive.
Yes, the Dream Wall is basically, like, it's similar to the Dream Machine Special Edition, but it's this, like, wall-hanging thing that weighs, like, 25 pounds, hangs off your wall, and has a built-in, I believe, an 18-port PoE switch.
It has a massive PoE switch built in, and it's $1,000.
Yeah.
it's like okay well i see what this is for i don't need 18 ports even in any switch for the for the new house i think i'm gonna need something like six or eight ports i'm not i'm not doing like every room in the house so uh i'm just doing kind of you know key areas that i've that i learned are necessary and that's about it so anyway the the dream machine special edition will be fine if i can get a hold of one and until then i'll use the dream router and cry
All right, so Marco, you seem to be deep into home security or maybe home automation, or I'm not even sure what's going on, but you have some thoughts about Logitech, CircleView cameras, HomeKit secure video, and more.
What's going on?
Yes, so...
As mentioned, I have cameras on the outside of my house for various reasons, and I've used various ones over the years.
Time-wise, my oldest cameras in use are an original pair of Nest Outdoor cameras.
These are probably something like seven years old by now.
They're fine.
And then I also have used the Logitech CircleView HomeKit Secure video cameras for about maybe a year on those.
home kit secure video was announced a few years ago or two years ago or something like that still to this day there's only as far as i can tell two lines of cameras that work with home kit secure video i think it's only the logitech circle view and they have a doorbell version and the one i use it like the kind of standalone one and there's an eve there's a couple of eve cameras one indoor and one like hardwired outdoor one
and that's it as far as i can find there are as far as i can tell there are no other home kit secure video capable cameras the the appeal of home kit secure video is it's it sounds amazing on paper and so i kind of wanted to give this like update one year in of having this be like my primary video system for for this house like you know how i've how i've been using it and how it's been performing so the circle view cameras they're
relatively affordable i think about 150 160 each something like that they are outdoor or indoor capable they have 180 degree field of view which is a blessing and a curse it's it's hard to see detail very far away with that kind of perspective but you know you can put them pretty much anywhere and have a reasonably wide view of whatever you need to see the selling points of home kit secure video
are that number one, you don't need to pay like an additional cloud service.
Like most of these cameras like Nest and everything else, like you usually have to pay some kind of cloud storage service fee, some new subscription every month.
Oh, you got to pay 20 bucks a month for Nest protect, secure, you know, whatever that kind of stuff.
HomeKit Secure Video just uses your iCloud storage, and the number of cameras you can have on it is related to whatever tier of iCloud storage you have.
I have the highest tier of iCloud storage, and I believe that entitles me to quote unlimited cameras, I think.
Lower tiers, I think you get like two or three or four or something like that.
But HomeKit Secure Video is not continuous recording.
It only records motion events.
So if you want to look back and see like, oh, you know, what were the leaves like, you know, 18 hours ago, unless there was a car driving by or a person walking by, you're not going to see that.
It only records motion events and like the few seconds around them.
So that's kind of how they get around not having too much data being recorded.
By comparison, like my old Nest Cams were continuous 24-7 with, I think, like a week or a month retention.
The upside of that is you have a huge record of everything that happens around you.
Downside of that is it uses a ton of data.
The continuous streaming of that data to the cloud, to some data center in Google, uses a ton of your ISP local bandwidth, so you need a pretty good connection.
You need no data cap, really.
That's kind of the main differences between those two systems.
In terms of actually using HomeKit Secure Video stuff, the other advantage is that it does most or all of its processing locally.
So any kind of object recognition, any kind of intelligence...
It's doing all that locally on your local network.
It does require you to have some device being a HomeKit hub, like an Apple TV or a HomePod, but it does it locally.
The great thing about HomeKit secure video is that when things happen, they are fast.
And this is one thing I absolutely love about it.
And we have, we have like one on our, like the area where we park our bikes here.
And every time someone comes home, they usually come home on a bike.
When Adam's coming home from school, I know because I get the tap tap on my watch and I look and it says a bike camera.
And then I know like, you know, 15 seconds later, he's going to walk up to the door and boom, there he is.
And it's so fast whenever, and I know too, like when I go down there to get my bike or when I, when I show up, I pull into the,
the bike area, and I feel the vibration on my wrist like two seconds later.
It's that fast.
It's awesome.
What's also great about the HomeKit video is that it is integrated with iOS very well.
So when I get that tap-tap on my wrist, I can look at my watch, and right there on my watch, it'll show a little thumbnail.
If I look at it on my phone and I long press notification, just right there in the long press view for notification, I get the video clip of the motion event right there.
It plays right there.
I don't even have to open any app or anything.
So it's really nice in the Apple ecosystem to use HomeKit Secure Video when it works.
Oh, here we go.
Here's the downsides to this system.
The accuracy of the intelligence, like, does it recognize things properly?
Does it have false positives?
Does it have false negatives?
I have found the accuracy is usually pretty good.
It usually identifies people, you know, when there actually are people there, although sometimes it thinks a moth flying around at night is a person.
I don't know why.
But for the most part, it's pretty good recognition.
It is way better than my old Nest Cams were.
I don't have new Nest Cams to test.
I don't know how good the new ones are.
But it's way better than the old ones are.
Again, it's way faster to recognize than the old ones are too.
And I love those notifications with the video clips.
That is great.
The problem is the Logitech Circle View camera is really mediocre.
It drops the connection all the time.
It'll have long spans where it disconnects.
And HomeKit helpfully alerts you when your camera disconnects and reconnects.
So I see this happening all day long.
And I have, I should point out, I have, I think, four of these in use on the network.
The one in the bike area is super reliable.
All the other ones are not.
And I don't know why.
I don't, frankly, I don't really care why.
They're just, they're not.
And if you'd search the internet for like solutions on this problem, you see people all reporting the same thing, that their Logitech circle view cameras are super unreliable and they drop off the network all the time or they disconnect or whatever else.
Everyone has solutions that basically amount to turn it off and turn it on again, and it works for a while.
Oh, cool.
If you reset the network in some way, if you reset your router, it'll force them all to disconnect.
When you turn it back on, they'll stay connected for a few days, and then they'll start flaking on and off again.
people say oh i signed a dynamic or a static ip did that no no change uh put it on 2.4 gigahertz did that no change like you know all these different things you can do to try to try to debug a glitchy wi-fi device i've done them all i've had a year to do them all the logitech circle view cameras are just super flaky super mediocre i will have spans of hours or days where a camera will just have will just say no response
something could be happening like somebody could be you know stealing my bike so i feel like it kind of kind of defeats the purpose of cameras if a lot of the time when you go to look at them so suppose like suppose we're away and a storm comes through i want to know like what's going on around my house and you know maybe you know on my house or usually if a storm's coming through i'll put a camera in the house as well when we if we leave and
So I can check and see like, is there water coming in?
You know, that's important stuff.
And these cameras are just so unreliable.
It's really hard to depend on them for anything.
Honestly, I'm torn here because when it works, it's really nice.
And I love all those integration features.
I love how incredibly fast it is when it's working.
But these cameras are garbage and no one except Eve makes any other ones.
And Eve only has one outdoor capable one.
And it requires it to be like hardwired by an electrician.
You can't just like plug it into an outlet.
It requires like direct wiring and it has to mount onto a box.
And I actually have one.
sitting here i've had it for like six months and i haven't had an electrician be able to come out install it yet so like it's just sitting here waiting but it's like that's not going to work for most of my use of these cameras like you know i obviously i use a lot of these around and and anyway so there's basically no options except the logitech and and there's one eve cam like
And this I feel like this is a problem with so much HomeKit stuff.
It's a great system, but Apple doesn't make the equipment and they outsource it to someone and they make the equipment and it's maybe it's OK.
Maybe it's not.
Maybe it's buggy.
Who knows?
And that kind of defeats the purpose of the whole system because like it undermines the quality of the whole ecosystem when we don't have good options.
So anyway.
All this is to number one, kind of warn everyone, I really don't recommend the Logitech Circle View, and therefore most of HomeKit Secure Video, because it is really flaky and really unreliable, and it's a shame.
The other thing is I'm curious if anyone has had experience with another system that's really good, that actually is reliable.
In particular, I'm curious, like, is the modern Nest camera good?
They've only seemingly updated it once since I've gotten the other ones like seven years ago.
It seems like... It's not Nest anymore.
So I have both of them.
I have the old Nest and I have a new post-Nest, like whatever it's called now, Google Home.
Yeah, the one that uses Google Home, yeah.
Yeah, and...
I mean, my indoor one or so both of these don't have the speed thing that you're talking about.
Like they are they're network based and they're not speedy to they're pretty speedy with it with the hey, something has happened.
But when you want to go look at it, it's really dependent on your network connection.
It's not I don't think it's going to be as instant as you thought it would be that my outdoor one I think I've had for about a year now.
Uh, so far so good.
Uh, I, I mapped out its little area to ignore like passing cars, but tell me about like, you know, things that are happening on my property with the little, little mappy, you know, those things that have where you just mask out areas.
That's been pretty reliable.
Also it's recognition.
It has face recognition so it can know who people are.
And it, it also does like on its own, it can say vehicle animal person, uh,
All that is pretty much dead on.
Like, when a rabbit goes by, it knows it's an animal.
When a person walks by or walks up the driveway, they know it's a person.
And when a vehicle pulls into the driveway, it's pretty good about that.
But I feel like the interface to the data that it has collected is fairly impoverished.
It is continuous recording, and I do have all this footage that I can go through.
But the ability to navigate it isn't great.
Like, I do wish it was...
in some respects i wish it was local like you were saying like well not that iCloud is local whatever but processing local would be great and storage local like on Synology or QNAP or those other ones would be great but on the other hand i love that everything is remote so that if someone hits the the camera with a baseball bat i'll still have footage of them yeah you know or like if the house burns down i'll have footage before the house burns whatever it is nice that it's continuous recording to a cloud thing that yes i pay for but
the annual fee for me to have my two cameras is not too onerous and it's basically 24 7 continuous recording inside and outside of my house which i found very valuable even just to see what the dog is up to you know what i mean yeah um and i can compare because the indoor ones also have face recognition and supposedly know who everybody is uh and it's pretty good it tells me dog barking
Alex has entered the kitchen you know like it knows people it knows where they are it knows what's going on when you know in the house when we're not home but sometimes it's like unknown person in the living room like oh come on it's just Alex again it's the same person like they're not unknown and the indoor ones do that more than the outdoor ones do.
so i think i think they have come a long way since and i think my indoor one is even newer than yours the outdoor one seems to do a pretty good job and i like the strategy of the outdoor one to be a tiny standalone computer on its own it makes them bulky and expensive and you got to pay for the service but i don't have a home hub to worry about it doesn't interact with icloud in any way and i'm pretty sure i don't have an apple watch but i see my wife when she gets the alerts she sees a little thumbnail of
of like, you know, we noticed the person in your kitchen, and it shows them the person in the kitchen.
Are they as timely as yours?
Probably not, but they, you know... And I think she can tap on it to see a little video clip, too, if, you know, if the cell data wins are right.
So I don't think...
I don't think the modern Nest ones have all the advantages you just described.
But in terms of reliability, I can pretty much always connect to the camera and there has been no point where it has not been recording.
Occasionally, if I can't connect to it, it's because my network connection is flaky wherever I am.
But it's not like the camera didn't record that.
When I get back home, I can use the awful interface to scroll back through to find that footage.
So, I mean, this is not a satisfying answer.
Yes, they've gotten better, but I mean, it's hard for me to recommend this over what you have because it's just a different set of trade-offs.
Yeah, so I just checked.
So it turns out I actually have six of the circle views, not four, my mistake.
So I have six circle views.
Currently, two of them say no response.
Earlier today, I checked and four of them said no response and they were a different set of
Like, so it's just... They're unbearably unreliable.
But, like, I just... Yeah, maybe I will try the Nest again.
But anyway, I also... I'm curious, too, if the listeners know, like, I know Ubiquity has their own cameras, and they record locally, but you can access them remotely.
And, you know, they record onto either one of their network video recorders or the hard drive slot in the router I'm trying to buy but can't.
So...
I'm curious if anybody has experience... I've never used Ubiquiti's cameras.
I know Synology also has a built-in surveillance station feature where you can have stuff recorded into that.
I've never used that either.
So let me briefly interject here.
So I have never used surveillance station...
I know almost nothing about it.
It's the second thing on the list of to-dos after Call Sheet gets released.
And the first thing is the fiber project that will probably never actually happen.
But nevertheless, I do want to put a couple of cameras around the house and perhaps one in the house to see what Penny is doing when we're not here.
But anyways, my parents have a Synology, a very, very Synology.
I think it's a two-bay Synology.
And and they use surveillance station and I have seen it used a handful of times.
I know very little about it, but my dad seems pretty satisfied with it.
Now, I don't think he's I mean, he's very savvy, but I don't think he's, you know, to the level of any of the three of us.
And I don't know what the notification situation is like.
I do know that everything is recorded locally.
I think it's processed locally as far as I'm aware.
So I think it would get you.
pretty close to what you want.
And I think the way it works is you get like one or two cameras, personality, quote unquote, for free, but then you have to buy like licenses for additional cameras or something like that.
Again, I'm talking very well out of turn at this point, but I believe that is a solution that you should at least investigate.
It may not be the rightest answer for Marco, but I would at least take a look because my parents have been using this for literally years and they seem really satisfied with it.
I'm hoping that the Ubiquiti ones are good because most of them, maybe even all, but I think most of them at least are powered via power over Ethernet.
I love PoE stuff.
Yeah, that's the way my parents is as well.
Yeah, like, you know, first of all, it's way more reliable.
because it hardwires the network connection as well it also saves on cables like then i don't have to have all these like you know usb extension cables with sealed boxes to protect them from the weather running from these outlets that themselves have to be sealed like it just makes everything better and then it's easy to like then they have power backup because all my poe hubs are tied into like my main ups system backed up by tesla powerwall batteries so like you know i had like and solar powered you know in an emergency so like
All my networking gear, I have on redundant power.
And so I can count on it even if, say, a hurricane comes through.
I'm not here and I want to see how my house is doing.
I can probably do that unless the fiber goes out.
That's a different story.
But for the most part, I love PoE stuff for lots of reasons.
And that also allows me to then...
Part of the problem with the Logitech Circle Views is that, as mentioned last episode, they come with this roughly 10-foot USB power cable.
And so you can only have it 10 feet from either an outdoor outlet...
or you know some kind of sealed box that you can put some kind of extension or storage strip or whatever into that can you know protect that joint that joint from the weather and that's annoying too uh whereas i can just buy like a hundred foot ethernet cable and just run it from the insulated inside to the camera seal it at the camera end with you know an enclosure or some kind of goop or whatever uh
and be done and that's it and and you know so i i think that's ultimately what i what i will probably try next but i kind of just want to know like are ubiquity's cameras good is ubiquity's interface for accessing them good are the apps good are they reliable you know it does it play well with ios do i have to use one of those home kit bridging kind of apps um like either home bridge or hoobs or you know whatever i've never used those before but you know do i need to use those or can i can i get away without them
If I do use those, are those good?
Are those reliable?
You know, it's such a big topic.
And so anyway, I hope to get some good tips from people.
So thank you in advance for whatever you can tell me.
Yeah, just very quickly with regard to Hoob's HomeBridge and Home Assistant is the other one you'll hear a lot about.
I did try to use Home Assistant literally years ago.
It's unquestionably more powerful than HomeBridge, without a doubt.
It also was one of those things where the way it thought and operated was the antithesis of the way my brain thinks and operates itself.
And I'm not saying it's bad by any means.
And again, everyone who I know that can wrap their head around it, Merlin as an example, swears by it.
But I just could not get my brain to click with Home Assistant.
HomeBridge is what I use, and it's extraordinarily reliable.
I do almost nothing to it.
I run it in a Docker container.
I think we should probably start talking about those at some point, Mr. Marco.
But anyways, I really do encourage and endorse Homebridge.
It's very, very good.
Pretty straightforward.
Pretty simple.
It didn't used to be, but now it is.
And I don't know barely anything about hooves other than I know that it's a thing that exists.
Very helpful.
Thank you.
Indeed.
You're welcome.
And I should clarify, too, like the reason why I like having a bunch of cameras around my house, it's not just because I'm, you know, I'm not like paranoid about crime.
You know, I have found many uses for these where it's useful to know, like, for instance, if you're away for the weekend and someone drops a package on your porch.
That's really good to know.
So you can ask a neighbor, hey, can you please bring it in or something?
There are lots of checking on your house during storms, checking on John's dog.
There's lots of occasions in real life where like, oh, if you happen to have remotely accessible cameras in your house that are reasonably private or not in your house, but like around your house.
occasionally in your house i don't i don't put cameras in my house when i'm home um but you know if you're if you're gonna leave for the weekend the storm coming you put a camera in and you can check on stuff like that kind of thing i i love having those those abilities they have proven useful many times um it isn't just to scare away people from peeing under my deck uh it is also high utility so anyway uh thank you in advance for anything you can you can send me listeners and if you happen to recommend ubiquity stuff hopefully it'll be in stock
So, thank you very much to our sponsor this week, Notion.
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
And we will talk to you next week.
That was Marco, by the way.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
Accidental.
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, it was accidental, and you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N
So over the last couple of weeks, I've had some interesting troubleshooting adventures.
I wanted to quickly detail them in part so if there's anyone who ever runs into either of these situations, they can learn from my mistakes.
And partly because I thought they were funny and or weird.
uh first of all when we were where were we we were gone for some reason it was not the beach trip that just happened it was um it was a couple of weeks ago i forget where we were but we were away from home for a few days um i think we might have been at my parents and a really bad storm came through richmond and uh it took out it it's a long story why which we can get into but it's not interesting but suffice to say it took out the
It's not the ONT.
It's like the power supply for the ONT.
It's the thing that's in my garage, not the thing that the fiber comes into in the back of the house.
It's the thing that's in my garage plugged into a regular outlet.
And I believe, like I said, it's the power supply for the ONT, for the Fios.
It took out that outlet, like that outlet is GFCI outlet.
It tripped for whatever reason.
And so the Fios connection to the house was down for several hours.
And a couple of days later, after I'd come home and reset all that and so on and so forth, a couple days later, I was somewhere, I forget where I was, maybe a library or something, and I was trying to use my WireGuard VPN.
WireGuard is really, really good, and I like it a lot.
It has a couple of features that keep me stuck to it.
In the past, TailScale has sponsored, and TailScale, and they did pay us to say this a while ago, but legit, TailScale's really good, and it's a lot less fiddly than WireGuard.
Um, so I, I have tail scale is like a redundant system in case wire guard fails, which it was doing at this, at this particular point in time, I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was going on.
And I don't know if you happen to know anything about wire guard, but do you guys know, do you know how wire guard works either of you by chance?
Nope.
No idea.
Okay, so apparently, and I am also getting outside my comfort zone here, but apparently it all works via UDP.
So what this seems to mean, from my limited understanding, is that the WireGuard client software will often tell you that you are connected when you are not, in fact, connected.
Because it's just sending packets out into the ether and assuming that they're getting to where they're supposed to be getting.
It took a lot of troubleshooting for me to figure out what the issue was with my WireGuard, which would connect...
but would do nothing.
I couldn't reach the internet.
Nothing was going on.
It was dead in the water, except it said it was connected.
Was it IPv6?
No, very good guess.
And you're kind of close.
As it turns out, what had happened was, I use a host name off of Casey, a host off of CaseyList.com as my house's IP address.
And so, you know, I can go to, you know, mainstreet.kclist.com, if you will.
And I can get to, that will, you know, will push me over to the house's IP address.
Well, when the file sits down for several hours, you know what changes?
Your house's IP address.
But because tailscale is this weird UDP thing, or at least I think that's why, it thought it was connected.
God knows where it was connected to.
But when it actually tried to get any response from the WireGuard server, did I say tailscale a minute ago?
I meant WireGuard.
I'm sorry.
Anyways, when it tried to get any information from the WireGuard server, it wasn't listening because it was at the wrong IP address.
So it turns out fixing... You got a new IP address from Verizon is what you're saying.
Correct.
Yes, yes.
I mean, someone else probably has your own IP address, so...
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly right.
And so it just took me forever to figure this out, including tearing down my whole WireGuard installation on my Raspberry Pi, which is the server, and rebuilding it from scratch, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
And it turns out I just never updated my mainstreet.caseylist.com IP address.
That's what DNS is for.
Why don't you have a dynamic DNS thing?
for that well because this is all running through hover and i don't have anything that i that i've automated to like report into hover that mainstreet.caseless.com needs to be updated i've been using this free dynamic dns thing for i don't know it's at this point it's like a streak like a contest so that it's it's a free service that gives you a dynamic ip address you just you pick the host name and they say you know
you like something on your network will ping them occasionally and it'll let them know what your ip address is right um and it's free but they really don't want it to be free they want me to pay for whatever like the next upsell thing is yes this was i was using dyn dns i think that's what i'm using which now is dyn.com and years ago it became clear that they wanted nothing to do with free users and so i just abandoned it at that point
That's my concern with Cloudflare, by the way.
Cloudflare, they give a lot for free.
Even their $200 a month plan gives away a lot of unlimited this, unlimited that.
But they are always pushing very, very hard for the upsells, for all the paid stuff that is not only not free and...
definitely not unlimited it's extremely expensive and extremely you know you pay buy the everything for the upsell stuff um and i worry like you know cloudflare right now like a lot of things on the internet right now are only um affordable to their to their owners and hosts because of cloudflare and i feel like they're like they're one bad quarter away from ruining a lot of a lot for people
I think they're doing OK.
But like the free service that I use back in the first it was just free back in the good old dot com days.
And then it was like, oh, they would send me an email every once in a while that said, like, visit this Web page to let us know you're still using it.
So, of course, I just automated that and had a system that just.
And then eventually in the more modern age, they said, oh, well, now there's a capture on it.
Right.
And at the point they added the CAPTCHA, I'm like, well, it's not worth my time to automate this anymore.
So for the past, it's got to be a decade.
I should look it up.
For the past at least five years, maybe possibly 10, maybe more.
Once a month, I get an email that says, go to this web page and click this I am not a robot box or solve this CAPTCHA to let us know that you're still using this IP address.
And I've been doing it once a month.
For real.
I'm just, I'm like, it's like a, what do you call it?
A game of chicken.
I'm like, I'll do this forever.
Like Captain America, I could do this all day.
I have paid zero dollars to this company ever.
And I'm getting a free IP address that's always up to date with my IP of the thing, right?
And they just constantly are saying, you sure you don't want to upgrade?
I'm like, yeah, no, I'm sure.
yep i'm human no i'm sure yeah i'm sure this month too i'll be sure next month too and i just like it's got this has got to end like i i wonder if someone inside the company is like this person has been on our free plan for 16 years can we can we do something about this like no i'm just going to keep solving the capture so uh i mean this is not probably a good use of my time but like i said i don't want to break the streak but you could run dns yourself you know run your own dns this is the old dream of the internet back in the old days i'm
gonna run a linux server i'm gonna have my own dns i'm gonna run my own mail server and that's so distant from us but things like fastly and cloudflare actually do bring some of that back and aws do bring some of that kind of back into reach uh in exchange for selling a small part of our soul to the man but uh you know it is what it is
Indeed.
The other one, I can't, this story is going to have to be really quick because I don't remember the details, but I was having a different networking issue inside the house.
The call was coming inside the house for the second time I made that joke this episode.
And I found that
I think the Wi-Fi was working fine, if memory serves.
But Ethernet wasn't working at all.
And I could not for the life of me figure out why.
I'm pretty sure that was a circumstance.
And this started because I was downstairs trying out, I think, a dongle for my laptop before we went to the beach.
But because I bring an Ethernet adapter everywhere because I'm a weirdo.
And I just wanted to verify that this dongle that I had still worked.
And it wasn't working, and I was like, well, that's weird.
Then I tried a known good dongle, you know, USB-C to Ethernet dongle.
That didn't work.
Uh-oh.
This ain't right.
So then I move upstairs.
I was doing this downstairs.
And the situation downstairs is, you know, Ethernet to switch to Mocha bridge to coaxial cable that runs eventually up to the office to a different Mocha bridge to the main switch for the house.
It's a total nightmare mess of like possibilities for issues.
It's been pretty much rock solid for years.
But if I'm in the troubleshooting mindset, it's a pile of what ifs that I needed to eliminate.
So I come upstairs with the known good dongle.
I plug it into my main switch.
It's a 16-port gigabit switch in the house.
I forget who makes it.
I think it's D-Link.
It's been, again, rock solid for years.
And I plug it into the switch.
Still not working.
And then I plug back into my desk setup with my beloved CalDigit TS4 that has Ethernet running into that.
Still not working.
I think I rebooted my Eero once or twice, trying to get that to work.
That didn't work.
Nothing is working.
Would you care to guess either of you what the issue was and how I fixed it?
Is it IVV6?
Nope.
Good guess, but no.
Is there a USB SSD plugged into something?
No, no.
You know what I had to do to fix it?
I had to restart my Switch, which is something I don't think I have ever said before in my life.
Oh, my God.
I've never had to do that with any Switch ever.
I was going to say you had to replace your Switch.
I don't think I know how to restart any of mine, but I have replaced a Switch before.
I pulled the power from it, counted to five, put it back in.
Everything's been fine since.
Actually, I think if we had a power failure a couple years ago, one of my Switches... This was what started it, I think.
Yeah, one of my Switches was freaking out.
The lights were all going crazy on it, and I yanked the plug on it.
That helped.
I did look this up.
How long have I been freeloading on this dynamic IP?
The answer, based on the oldest email that I have telling me that I need to go somewhere, your free DNS is going to expire unless you go to this thing and tell us you're still using it.
The oldest one of those emails I have is from 17 years, two months, and 21 days ago.
Yeah.
that's how long i've been freeloading once a month for 17 years oh i feel like i'm really uh really uh you know competing with casey on the cheapskate scale here it's free like why would i pay for the thing it does everything that i needed to do the price i pay is i and at this point because of the captures like remember your ip and everything i just have to click a link click i'm not a robot and i'm done