Corporate Relationship Counselor
Casey:
I've made a couple of just absolutely terrible errors.
Casey:
I have asked Marco Armin for advice on things to buy.
Casey:
Related to absolutely nothing at all.
Casey:
You know, ATP membership is a thing.
Casey:
If you wanted to go to ATP.fm slash join, you could join and be a member of this very program.
Marco:
He's recommending relatively inexpensive things now, though, right?
Marco:
In my defense, the most expensive pair of headphones I recommended was only $700.
John:
Oh, I thought you were talking about the flashlights.
John:
Who was asking about the flashlights?
John:
Well, there's both.
John:
Yeah, Casey was asking about the flashlights, too.
Casey:
Yeah, no, I've brought this on myself.
Casey:
I have made this bad.
Casey:
This is not really Marco's fault.
John:
Just ignore his headphone advice when he tries to get you to buy a $1,000 pair of headphones.
John:
You can just ignore that and go to the next one.
Marco:
none of them were a thousand dollars and i recommended one that was like 180 and one that was like 300 one was 899 or something no i said that's the that's what i use but i wasn't saying he should buy it it's a different kind than what he wants it's just i've known marco for 20 25 years something like that at this point maybe even more than that yeah maybe but anyways you would think well i guess the first 15 of those years didn't count because neither of us had money but yeah exactly you would think it's
Casey:
think in the last 10 years, I would know better than to ask Marco for advice.
Casey:
And in Marco's defense, both of these times, I specifically solicited the advice.
Casey:
I have not pulled any... Well, I shouldn't use that turn of phrase.
Casey:
I have not made any moves on either of these items, but I did put a $70 flashlight, which if I recall, I'll put in the show notes.
Casey:
I put a $70 flashlight quietly into the Amazon shopping cart, and within a day, Aaron said to me,
Casey:
What is the $70 flashlight?
Casey:
Why do you think you need it?
John:
I hope none of the product photos have like a person's hand for scale because that's not going to help your case.
John:
It's really not.
John:
It's like next to a quarter.
John:
It's like, wait, what?
John:
Is this a doll's flashlight?
Casey:
Is this a flashlight made for ants?
John:
They're not big.
John:
They're way smaller than you think they are.
Casey:
oh my word but anyway you would think after all this time i would know better than to ask marco for help because the problem with asking marco for help when it comes to purchases is that you will be spending considerably more money than you would like to spend well do you want something good it's like people come to me and they're like what should i buy that's good and then i tell them and they're like that's a lot of money yeah because it's good
John:
Well, there is a discontinuity or at least an area of that graph where the two lines diverge and do not ascend at the same rate.
John:
And very often, your recommendations are past that point.
John:
I wouldn't say very often.
Casey:
The problem, though, is that it is often, it is often, if not nearly always, that the thing that Marco suggests is very, very good.
John:
It's better, but, you know, it was like quality and price were tracking pretty nicely with each other with a similar slope, and then at a certain point, price starts
John:
going up a little bit steeper and then you just follow that graph out to the right for a while and all of a sudden you're like well it is better like my mac pro basically yeah right yeah like you can talk once every 10 years i buy something like marco how often do you buy a flashlight or a pair of headphones not that often
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Yeah, I solicited this advice because it's a long and involved story that I will cut down as much as possible.
Casey:
Basically, there is a old train tunnel that is being turned into a rail trail park thing.
Casey:
And by donating a very small amount of money, I have gotten the perk of being allowed to tour it before it opens, presumably this fall.
Casey:
And this train tunnel, I mean, it's something like a mile long and it's pitch black in there.
Casey:
And I have flashlights, but I have crappy like $10 or $20 flashlights.
Casey:
I don't have something that would illuminate a mile long train tunnel.
Casey:
And this flashlight will not, well, might, but probably won't illuminate a mile long train tunnel.
Marco:
No, it's not made for long throw.
Marco:
It's made for wide illumination of where you are.
Casey:
Which actually is probably better.
Marco:
You can get some that are made for like super long throw, but then they have like a narrower beam.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
And so I asked Marco, hey, you know, I need something that'll last me something like, you know, an hour and a half, and that'll be pretty damn bright.
Casey:
What do you got?
Casey:
And so he recommended, and I will put in the show notes, the Olight SR2, 1150 lumens, USB magnetic rechargeable variable output slides.
Marco:
Olight S2R Baton 2.
Marco:
Isn't that what I said?
Marco:
You said SR2.
Marco:
Which sounds like a car.
Casey:
Or SR71, right?
Marco:
That's not a car.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Or a flashlight.
Marco:
He was thinking MR2.
Casey:
But the funny thing is I wanted to see an example of it in use.
Casey:
And Marco very graciously said he would record a video and did end up recording a video of it at nighttime.
Casey:
And it was very impressive.
Casey:
That will not be in the show notes.
Casey:
but i you know did a youtube search to see like an example of this in action and of course do you remember the name i'll have to dig it up the name of the the channel i ended up on it was like sensible prepper or something like that is in ever has been like doomsday prepper and i realized oh this is not good this is not good for me no well there's the problem with researching any kind of like you know
Marco:
Let me get a nice flashlight.
Marco:
Flashlights are part of the, quote, everyday carry community.
Marco:
And that very quickly leads you to guns and gun people.
Marco:
And I just have I want nothing to do with that side of it.
Marco:
And so like it's really hard to get good opinions and reviews.
Marco:
of anything that even goes near the everyday carry type category of useful little gear things to have that maybe fit in a bag.
Marco:
And it's like you so quickly fall into a crazy rabbit hole of communities and priorities that you don't have and don't want to be in.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
But he's a sensible prepper, so it's okay.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
That's like a compassionate conservative.
Marco:
I have a big apology to make.
Marco:
We have gotten so much feedback, way more than I expected, on an audio problem in last week's show.
Marco:
Indeed.
Marco:
Last week, there were some, I believe, cicadas.
Marco:
Is that right, John?
Marco:
Never found them, but yeah, some kind of critter.
Marco:
Yeah, some kind of, you know, August bugs.
Marco:
It sounded like, you know, cicada bug noise on parts of John's track.
Marco:
And I noticed this during the edit.
Marco:
And normally I'd be able to remove such noise during the edit and nobody would ever know.
Marco:
This time I tried a couple of ways to remove it, my usual techniques to do it.
Marco:
And I just couldn't get it out without like totally crushing the rest of his high frequency audio and making him sound very weird.
Marco:
And so I thought, you know what?
Marco:
It won't be that big of a deal.
Marco:
Let me just leave it in.
Marco:
Maybe nobody will notice.
Marco:
Everybody noticed.
Marco:
we're still getting messages on twitter via email saying like hey there's some kind of noise something wrong with the recording and john's track you get people saying it's really hard to listen to that they thought something was wrong with their car um and so i am so sorry uh i later edited i later re-edited the file and uh so if you re-downloaded it after a certain point uh you would have gotten the edited version that didn't have the cicada noise
Marco:
So basically, after the first few hours of it being out, some people recommended some different techniques.
Marco:
What I ended up doing was basically a band pass, but notching out only the 7,000 to 8,000-ish frequency range that these bugs were in with a method that was working better than what I was doing before.
Marco:
So anyway, so the fixed version is out, and I greatly apologize.
Marco:
The funny thing is, I was actually really nervous that people would notice an audio problem last week,
Marco:
because i was using a new microphone for the first time in probably four years oh i didn't notice no one noticed thank god i think i was kind of hoping nobody would like have a problem with it or it wouldn't be a big shift for anybody um but it mattered a lot to me to get this right and we got zero people noticing that because everybody was noticing these very loud
John:
like bug noise on john's track and answer some questions from the chat room and elsewhere yes i mean literal insects they're like literal living insect creatures outside my house somewhere making noise um and yes i have all my windows closed and no this is not normal the reason i suspect cicadas is because i think in my area it's a cicada season like i pretty much never see cicadas around here we found a couple of dead ones on the sidewalk in our travels over the past couple weeks so i think this is
John:
you know anomalous like it's unexpected for us to have any bugs that make this level of noise and further unexpected for them to be so loud that you know despite being closed into my little podcasting sarcophagus here with all the windows closed and no air conditioning on everything all sealed up still they were so loud they were just coming through the windows and walls of this building into into my microphone that should only be picking up like my voice from six inches away
John:
Oh, yeah, right.
Marco:
You have the world's most sensitive microphone.
Marco:
You have a large diaphragm condenser.
Marco:
That should pick up everything in the universe, and for some reason, every other week, it doesn't.
Marco:
Every other week, your audio is perfect, and I have no idea how, because that kind of microphone, I can't get to work right in my room's
John:
ever because i'm in a room with like carpeting and a bookshelf and weird shaped walls and there's lots of stuff to absorb the sound but you know i mean yes it does pick up a lot but when i get far away from the mic it gets quieter right so this bug like it was loud for a bug but still it's outside and all the windows are closed and so it's not that loud i'm amazed i'm kind of amazed that it showed up on the track at all but obviously it did
Marco:
Yeah, so anyway, my apologies to everybody.
Marco:
I will be a little more aggressive in the future about trying to remove things like that that I think nobody will notice.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Uh, Mac rumors, not the website, just the rumors about Macintoshes.
Casey:
Uh, apparently today is the day.
Casey:
And as we record this at nine o'clock in the evening on August 19th, uh, it, I guess, you know, West Coast is always a little behind.
Casey:
And so maybe something will happen, but we were told at some point recently that we would get a new iMac, new AirPod studio, new HomePod 2, new HomePod mini.
Casey:
Have any of those things happened, gentlemen?
Yeah.
John:
We got a new iMac, but not on August 19th.
John:
And I just wanted to swat this down.
John:
I don't want to attribute it to any source, like, whatever.
John:
Because we talked about it on whatever that show was, like, a couple of episodes ago, just because it was such a huge dump of rumor info.
John:
It's like, wow, someone's really laying it on the line with all these announcements and dates.
John:
And now I think we can just ignore it forever, because August 19th has come and gone, and these things didn't happen.
John:
And even though the iMac did happen, it didn't happen on August 19th.
John:
So...
John:
So much for the Nostradamus-like prediction filled with dates.
Casey:
And then would you like to add a clarification about the thing you were trying to quote last week?
John:
This is the reason I think people should listen to our podcast, because we're the only podcast in which one of the hosts will try to cite a half-remembered saying from a shareware website that really comes from something in ancient history that I couldn't even remember.
John:
And then a listener will write in to tell us
John:
uh i know which saying you were talking about and also turns out as they say the popular notion of the saying is a mistranslation so here we go this is nate mavis who says the quote you were reaching for is from socrates not aristotle and it's from apology 30b i have no idea about how classics work apology 30b do they like number and letter anyway that's a thing um
John:
you have construed it as some ancient scholars have being virtuous will lead to wealth and other good things this was me talking about like apple should concentrate on just trying to make good stuff and then they'll be successful because of that instead of the other way around right he says but that's an incorrect translation socrates says rather that virtue makes wealth good not virtue will make wealth and other good things for you think of what you tell a kid playing against cheaters if you cheat to win winning isn't good playing by the rules virtuously is what makes winning good
John:
So MF Bernie proposes his interpretation in a paper from 2012, which we will link in the show notes, and no other tech podcast will.
John:
And Nate says, I spent the chunk of my dissertation defending it in detail, and now I'm in software.
John:
I leave it up to you which interpretation is more relevant to Apple's situation today.
John:
So there you go.
John:
I meant the first sense that being virtuous will lead to wealth and other good things, but the other perhaps more correct interpretation is also applicable, I think.
Casey:
That is actually very interesting, and I agree.
Casey:
You will not hear anyone else talk about that.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
So there was some hubbub in the last day or two, and I saw that this video existed, but I didn't get a chance to watch.
Casey:
Apparently, somebody has dropped a Big Sur beta onto a Lenovo touchscreen-enabled, I presume ThinkPad, but a Lenovo laptop, and the touchscreen worked?
Casey:
What's going on here?
John:
So first of all, let me start by saying I have no idea if this video is real.
John:
But if it is real, the pitch of the video is, of course, if a touchscreen laptop works and you touch it, maybe it would just interpret that as mouse movement or mouse clicking, and then why wouldn't it work?
John:
But if you watch the video, the whole point is that the person in the video performs gestures, like pinch to zoom in the Maps application in macOS, and the gestures work.
John:
in in the big sur beta on this laptop again i have no idea if it's real or not the reason i included here and we'll put a link to the video is just so you can see what it might look like for for you know what in what contexts might touch be useful on a mac with a touch screen because whether it's real or not you can see someone using a laptop with mac os on it with real mac os apps and occasionally
John:
pawing at the screen now the performance and responsiveness seems atrocious it's almost like is it working is it not working and you see it's kind of working so it's it looks really terrible but a it's it's on a lenovo who knows what kind of support this is b it might not even be real and c it's a beta so i thought it was mostly a curiosity but it's interesting to see like one of the first videos in the wild showing real hard presumably real hardware and real software uh showing someone touching a mac in the screen
Casey:
Additionally, there's some changes with regard to the menu bar icon spacing.
Casey:
I can never remember what these things in the upper right are called.
John:
Menu extras, menu bar icons.
John:
I think menu extras is what Apple calls them or what they used to be called under the covers.
John:
Anyway, we talked about this when we talked about Big Sur, that, yes, all the different things being spaced out for touch, right?
John:
And we mentioned the menu.
John:
This is not a new feature.
John:
The very first Big Sur bit had this in it.
John:
But here is Ricardo Mori on Twitter.
John:
uh complaining about the new spacing not because you know necessarily he minds that it's like spread out so it's easy for your fingers to touch but now they take up more room and so here's a little screenshot uh you can see in his tweet where he says my icons used to take up about this amount of room but now that they all have a huge amount of white space between them
John:
On a 13-inch laptop, the icons take up more than half of the menu bar.
John:
And so if you have an app with a lot of menus, they're going to clash in the middle, and your icons are going to get hidden, and it's inconvenient.
John:
So this is the downside to sort of spreading macOS out for finger spacing or whatever it is they're doing.
John:
Whether they're doing it for finger spacing or not, bottom line is they're spreading stuff out.
John:
There's all the new large controls.
John:
The menu bar can be enlarged.
John:
The menu icons are spread out from each other.
John:
And if you have a laptop with a small screen, suddenly it feels even smaller because there's all this extra white space between things.
John:
So it would be kind of neat to have an option to sort of collapse that spacing if you don't have a touchscreen Mac or if you just, you know, don't plan on touching your menu bar icons.
John:
But somehow I don't see that option forthcoming.
Casey:
Yeah, it's so hard not to conclude that touch is coming to macOS because it seems like so many of these changes are curious, if not dumb, if that wasn't the end goal.
Casey:
And typically Apple does quite a bit.
Casey:
quietly orchestrate their future plans.
Casey:
You know, things like auto layout is a great example.
Casey:
You know, it used to be that Apple didn't care if you laid everything out, you know, by the pixel or point.
Casey:
And then they started saying before we got bigger phones, you know, you might want to just think about like a relative layout where you're anchoring things to other things.
Casey:
And that might be a good call.
Casey:
And then fast forward a few months and suddenly we had bigger iPhones.
Casey:
And so it certainly seems that we're getting touchscreen Macs
Casey:
or some sort of alternate input mechanism, if not touch.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
If not, this seems like such a weird choice to just add all this white space everywhere.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Finally, John, you're having a problem with your rubbers.
John:
yikes yeah this is i spent all that time and we talked about on the show i don't know six months ago or something picking out a mouse trying a bunch of mice seeing of which i felt comfortable because i wanted a new one with my fancy new computer when i got my mac pro my i was using an ancient mouse and it was just not great
John:
Uh, and I eventually settled on the Microsoft precision mouse, which, you know, had some trade-offs sort of all the ones I tried.
John:
It was the one I liked the best.
John:
I even, after that, I'd use it for like a month or so.
John:
I even considered doing the cheese grater thing, the actual physical thing that grates cheese from a cow.
Um,
John:
And buying multiples, right?
John:
Because I'm like, well, I like this mouse.
John:
I found a mouse that I liked.
John:
It took a lot of, you know, buying multiple mice to see if I could find one.
John:
But I found one I liked.
John:
So why don't I, you know, maybe they'll stop making this one or maybe they'll change it in a way I don't like.
John:
Maybe I should buy multiples.
John:
But I didn't because I figured, well, I don't know.
John:
I used the last mouse for like 15 years or something.
John:
I don't, you know, I'm not going to wear, I don't need to buy a new one.
John:
Like if 15 years go by and I need to get another mouse, I'll do the research again.
John:
But now for a little while, I felt like there was like some kind of schmutz or something on the side of my mouse.
John:
And occasionally I would like scrape it with my fingernail to like that schmutz off of there.
John:
And it would like go away.
John:
But eventually I felt some of this thing under my thumb, under my, you know, my left thumb gripping the mouse.
John:
And I tried smoothing it away and it didn't really go away.
John:
And so then I said, let me pick this.
John:
Let me look at it.
John:
I looked at the mouse and it wasn't schmutz.
John:
The side of this Microsoft mouse, the entire left side, and the right side for that matter, is rubber-coated.
John:
The whole mouse is plastic, but it's rubber-coated plastic on the sides for grip, which I like.
John:
It's very comfortable, and it's a very smooth rubber.
John:
But it is apparently so soft and smooth and velvety that the act of me just using my mouse and having my left thumb in that same position on the side of the mouse, which is how I use it, I'm a side mouse gripper kind of person, has worn...
John:
doesn't warn it away but has worn a little like first it's like a little bit of a slightly shinier smooth spot and then there's like this little lip that i'm it's not a lip it's not the edges it's the center of the rubber and i've just made like a little rough patch with my thumb and i'm like oh no i haven't even had this mouse that long this is not gonna last 15 years so i don't know what i'm gonna do about this
John:
I mean, the mouse is fine, and now that I just know that's what it is, I don't pick at it, right?
John:
It's not like I've worn through it in a hole, and it's not like it's peeling off.
John:
It's just a little bit worn in that area.
John:
If it would wear evenly...
John:
you know, like a baseball glove or something, just kind of wear down and get a patina, that would be fine.
John:
But when it wears so that it has like a little flaky kind of rough bit, I don't really like that.
John:
So I don't know what I'm going to do about this, but I just wanted to update everybody on my mouse woes that apparently buying five different mice and trying them each for weeks was insufficient.
John:
And this is the thing with, I think about this with product reviews all the time.
John:
If you're doing a product review for a product review website or even just for yourself and your life, it's very difficult to know conclusively what is a good product from just using it for like a couple of weeks, especially if it's something that you intend to keep for a long time, right?
John:
Like, say, a cheese grater for your kitchen, that kind.
John:
um i love you have to say that every time now i mean i can't because you know anyway um you buy it you grate a bunch of cheese you do timing tests you do like this was the easiest we got the least tired doing it it made the even evenest you know gratings whatever it was machine washable and it was like all all this you know dishwasher safe rather um you say all these things about you're like this is the one
John:
and then you publish that article, and then you go off and forget about it, and one of your employees takes home the cheese grater, and then six months later, it breaks.
John:
I feel like you have to go back to the article and say, don't buy this cheese grater.
John:
It breaks in six months.
John:
It's not the best one.
John:
Yes, it had the best performance when it was working.
John:
This is like Casey's BMW.
John:
Yeah, it's good when it's working, but if it dies all the time, it's not actually the best choice.
John:
So I'm disappointed in my Microsoft mouse.
John:
I did some Googling, and I found...
John:
uh someone with the exact complaint uh for a microsoft mouse saying i used it for a little while and it wore in the exact same spot but it's not actually my mouse it's an earlier microsoft mouse with rubber stuff on the side i think they just use very soft touch rubber for it to be like expensive feeling and nice and it is expensive feeling nice but i think that soft touch rubber is not particularly durable so and it's not like you can replace the rubber on the side or anything so i don't know what i'm going to do i like this mouse enough that i would probably just like
John:
buy a new one every couple of years if after a couple of years it becomes dire but yeah so hard to find good mice these days we are sponsored this week by raycon everyone needs a great pair of wireless earbuds
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Casey:
The drama continues.
Casey:
Actually, if you'll give me about 90 seconds, I need to go pop some more popcorn.
Casey:
Epic and Apple still killing each other.
Casey:
Where did we leave all – where were our intrepid heroes the last we spoke?
Casey:
I don't even remember.
Casey:
It's been such a blur of anger.
Marco:
It was basically the very first night that this had come out, and they had sued Apple and Google.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But nothing else had really happened yet.
John:
uh you know fortnight had been taken down from the store but if you still had it installed it was fine and that's all that had happened there had been the lawsuits there had been the video release fortnight was off the store but if you still had it you could still play it right and there were there was a bunch of context that that we didn't actually have time to get to and we'll probably go into it uh shortly here um but yeah so casey sorry what's what's new this week
Casey:
So I may leave something out, but as best I understand, what's new this week is that, you know, like we said, Fortnite is removed from the App Store and Apple has told Epic that they have until a week from Friday.
Casey:
So the 28th to basically cut the shit out and start acting nice again.
Casey:
And if they don't, apparently their entire development account, their developer account will be taken away.
Casey:
Which means they won't be able to use Xcode.
Casey:
Well, they won't be able to do anything really with Xcode.
Casey:
They won't be able to do anything with any Apple platforms.
Casey:
And that would be a pretty serious bummer.
Casey:
And I'm still not clear whether or not there would be a trickle effect on the Unreal Engine, which we can talk about a little bit more what that is in a moment.
Casey:
But this is the, as I think Gruber has described it, or maybe it was Jason Snell, the nuclear option that, you know, this is the Apple saying you can go outside and play hide and go screw yourself option.
Casey:
And so that's what Apple has done.
Casey:
And there's been, you know, there's been a lot of all of the talking heads like us going around and around and around about what makes sense, what's fair, what's not fair.
Casey:
And, you know,
Casey:
I think there's a lot more to talk about about this case specifically, but God help me for the first time, I think, in my entire life.
Casey:
I actually sat down earlier tonight and tried to do like a poor man's mind map to try to figure out what is really going on here, because I feel like there are...
Casey:
There's maybe five different arguments that are all happening at the same time and are all interrelated about whether or not 30% is fair, whether or not AppReview is fair, whether or not Apple is being a retaliatory baby, and so on.
Casey:
And I was going to try to force us to pick these apart one by one, and I just don't think we'll be able to do it because they are so intertwined.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Something I think that's been very difficult for me is picking apart and separating these different concerns.
Casey:
And maybe we'll try to do that, just try to keep an eye on that as we discuss further.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
That's kind of the executive summary.
Casey:
Where would you gentlemen like to go from here?
Casey:
John, do you have immediate thoughts?
John:
Yeah, like I think before we start talking about the other stuff, we'll just talk about the threatened punishment.
John:
Right.
John:
So Apple said, what was it?
John:
They're going to terminate their developer account.
John:
And so, I mean, the first question may be, is that a thing that Apple can do?
John:
And the answer, of course, before you even look it up, you know, is yes, because all those terms and conditions that everybody just clicks through in every service that you ever click through terms and conditions on, I guarantee they all say we can do whatever we want and you have no recourse.
John:
Like that's what they all say.
John:
And you agree to that because what are you going to do not agree?
John:
I mean, you could not agree and not be a developer.
John:
Right.
John:
But like most companies are able to put language in all of their agreements for all of their sort of third party.
John:
You're going to do stuff on our platform that basically says, if you if we don't like what you do or even if we do like for any reason.
John:
We can just wake up in the morning and decide, you know what?
John:
We don't like you today.
John:
We can take away all your things because that's just the nature of the agreement.
John:
Apple's got the things.
John:
You want access to those things.
John:
This is the agreement, right?
John:
So, yes, the agreement says they can do this.
John:
And then in the agreement, it says this is what it means if we do this.
John:
If we terminate your account, you will lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities.
John:
Obviously, in these legal agreements,
John:
Very often terms are defined elsewhere, so you have to kind of look up what they mean.
John:
So this first thing that I'm going to read is going to sound bad, but I'm sure it's defined elsewhere to be not as broad as you think.
John:
So you lose access to the following.
John:
All Apple software, comma.
John:
Now, obviously, you're not losing access to all Apple software because that would mean like you'd go into the Apple store to try to buy an iPhone.
John:
They'd be like, are you Tim Sweeney?
John:
Get out of here.
John:
or they'd give you an iphone with no software on it like you can have this iphone but no software for you right but anyway all there's the sentence reads differently it's all app or software comma sdk is comma apis comma and developer tools now i think that's maybe just poorly written or apple software is a term defined elsewhere although the s is not capital so anyway you don't get to use the developer tools and stuff
John:
I'm skipping over a bunch of stuff just to get to the meaty stuff.
John:
One of the things you lose access to is the notarization service for macOS apps.
John:
Now, remember, it's not like you have an iOS developer account and a macOS developer account and tvOS developer account, although at various times there have been...
John:
distinctions related to platforms you essentially have a developer account a developer account is a thing that puts apps on the stores now companies can have multiple developer accounts i imagine depending on how many legal entities they have and we'll get all into that in a second but anyway they have a developer account right so this agreement is
John:
is not specific to saying, you know, if you get a developer account, you can make any of the kind of apps.
John:
You know, Marco can make a Mac app.
John:
I can make an iOS app, like, from our own single developer account if we want it.
John:
It's not limited by platform.
John:
So when they terminate the agreement, of course it's going to say, we terminate your access to the notarization service.
John:
You can't make notarized apps because you don't have a developer account, right?
John:
And it seems weird because...
John:
We're talking about an iOS app, you know, Fortnite and iOS and iPadOS, right?
John:
But now you're losing access to macOS things like you can't notarize a macOS app.
John:
It's like you weren't even mad at us about a Mac app, right?
John:
We're talking about it doesn't matter.
John:
This is the developer agreement.
John:
You lose access to developer ID signing certificates.
John:
So not only can you not notarize an app, which is like sort of giving it the Apple stamp of approval by sending it out to Apple and then they sign it and send it back.
John:
You can't even sign it yourself with your own developer ID certificate.
John:
So developer ID is where the developer can just sign an application and give it to somebody and it'll run automatically.
John:
even though Apple hasn't signed off on it, right?
John:
You lose access to the Universal App Quick Start program, which is the thing that gives you the DTK.
John:
So if you've got a DTK, you have to send it back to us.
John:
You can't have that anymore.
John:
And then finally, this is a little extra FU for Epic.
John:
You lose access to engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware.
John:
So what Apple is saying is, up until now, we here at Apple...
John:
have worked on our stuff on like our os's and our 3d engines and our drivers and all that stuff you know our 3d uh you know driver software and everything so that it performs well with unreal engine because unreal engine which we'll talk about in a little bit is a very popular engine for 3d applications on many platforms and it has been important for apple
John:
for Unreal Engine-based software to run well on Mac and iOS hardware.
John:
So what Apple is saying is not only are we going to terminate all this stuff and not give you access to any of our dev tools or anything, also we're going to stop making sure that Unreal Engine runs really well on our products.
John:
which i mean on the one hand it's like well most people don't get that kind of service from apple where you make some kind of third-party library and then apple spends its own resources making sure that your library runs really fast on their hardware but that just goes to show the nature of unreal engine and what casey was getting at before it's like okay given all this this is the this is the agreement they take away all this stuff what does that actually mean aside from like fortnight's not on the app store anymore
John:
Does it mean, for example, that other applications that use Unreal Engine are going to have problems?
John:
And briefly, Unreal Engine is a 3D engine that you can license from Unreal, from Epic, and use it to build a game on it.
John:
Because 3D engines are really hard to make, and Epic's Unreal Engine has been really good for many, many years.
John:
It comes with all sorts of stuff.
John:
It comes with an entire development environment for you to make your game.
John:
It's how a single-person developer shop can make a good-looking 3D game.
John:
That single person is not writing the 3D engine from scratch.
John:
they're licensing an engine and then building a game on top of it and it gives you much more than just the 3d engine gives you physics and scripting and like i said an entire ide it's a very complicated big thing um and uh the unreal engine actually has really nice licensing terms where i think it's like free to use until your game makes over a million in revenue and then after that uh epic gets like three percent of your revenue or something but it's used all over the place it's used on consoles it's used on pc games and it's used on ios games and mac games and you know the whole nine yards right so
John:
On the App Store now are many, many games that are built on Unreal Engine.
John:
Does this happening to Epic, like their developer account being terminated, does that mean that anything bad happens to applications not made by Epic but that happen to use Unreal Engine?
John:
The short answer is immediately no.
John:
So they terminated Epic's account.
John:
Do those games all break?
John:
No.
John:
They're all fine.
John:
But the medium to long-term answer is that
John:
If you would imagine that this developer count is the only way that Epic has to continue development of Unreal Engine on Apple's platforms, eventually Apple will release an OS where the Unreal Engine and or the tools stop working or have show-stopping bugs in them.
John:
And the game developers would be like, oh, I need to update my game for the new whatever OS.
John:
I'll need the new version of Unreal that works with the new whatever OS.
John:
And Epic would say, sorry, we can't actually make a new version of the Unreal Engine for whatever OS because whatever OS is an Apple OS.
John:
And we literally can't build anything for Apple OS because we don't have access to the dev tools.
John:
If you take a very narrow reading, yeah, that's a thing that could happen.
John:
But in reality, all right, so you terminated, Apple terminated this developer account.
John:
It's kind of a game of whack-a-mole to say, okay, well, what if Epic just makes another developer account?
John:
We notice it uses the same legal entity.
John:
Okay, well, what if Epic's parent company...
John:
was it 10 cent or whatever makes it has another shell company and they get a developer account and they become the unreal development company that is separate from epic and apple's not mad at that like this can go around forever and ever like bottom line is there's no practical way for apple to stop continued development of unreal engine and apple's platforms right legally speaking technologically speaking they could chase each other forever there's no way to actually stop it
John:
assuming both parties are invested in making this happen right so the punishment given everything that i said the punishment is actually kind of bad but it's not the end of the world and it probably won't affect everybody who built on unreal engine but the probably is where the damage is done say it never does affect any other person who builds on unreal engine
John:
if they think it might affect them they might be like do i want to use unreal engine because they're fighting with apple and i'm not quite sure how that's going to turn out it seems like it'll probably be fine but now i have doubts and maybe i'll use unity instead which is a competing 3d engine that works on apple's platforms and other you know pc and game consoles and stuff right so this is actually a fairly strong move from apple
John:
What they're doing, even if it never actually quote-unquote does anything, A, of course, the damage is epic because, you know, Fortnite gets off the App Store and they can't make the money from people using Fortnite on iOS devices.
John:
And people who use iOS devices spend a lot of money, so that's bad for them.
John:
And B, it makes...
John:
in Epic's words, damages their reputation.
John:
It makes people more wary about building games on top of Unreal Engine because Unreal Engine is made by the company that's fighting with Apple and maybe something could happen could affect my game.
John:
And so I think this is
John:
I mean, the nuclear option, maybe, but it's like it's a strong move.
John:
It's something that has to, you know, Epic has to take this seriously.
John:
Again, Epic could have anticipated they do this move because, of course, you know, what does Epic have that Apple can take away from them?
John:
their their apps in the store and then eventually their developer account right so i'm sure they planned for this but this i think a lot of people watching this are thinking this is where epic is going to blink because apple in their benevolence you know put a press release asterisk you know
John:
Yeah, the app store is designed to be safe and blah, blah, blah.
John:
As much as how great the app store is.
John:
And Apple goes on to say this is quoting from their little thing they send to the press.
John:
We very much want to keep the company, meaning Epic, as part of the Apple developer program and their apps on the store.
John:
The problem Epic has created for itself is one that can easily be remedied if they submit an update to their app that reverts it to comply with the guidelines.
John:
yeah it actually says reverted to comply with the guidelines they agreed to which applied to all developers i love that every time apple references develop the guidelines after the congressional hearing they always say the guidelines which by the way are totally the same for everybody the guidelines which apply to everyone equally the guidelines which as we know are are the same for every single person the guidelines which are have no exceptions like they always had a modifier to you know
John:
You can say it all you want, Apple.
John:
Every time you say guidelines, you can say which apply to everyone equally.
John:
It doesn't make it true.
John:
You can't just keep it.
John:
Anyway, that's setting that aside.
John:
So Apple's giving them an out.
John:
First of all, they gave them this deadline, whatever it was, the 28th.
John:
And then they're saying, just fix your game.
John:
Just take out the little thing that lets you pay with a credit card and change it back to the way it was and all will be forgiven.
John:
And so a lot of people are thinking, all right, well, maybe Epic has made its point and maybe Epic will continue to pursue the lawsuits, but maybe just to come back to a safe position while the lawsuits grind on through the courts.
John:
Maybe they just released a version of Fortnite that removes the or they didn't have to release it.
John:
They can just turn off the server side thing that enables enables that feature.
John:
Right.
John:
No more paying with a credit card and getting 20 percent off.
John:
It's back to normal.
John:
or they could just stick it out and say we're willing to take the potential reputational damage we're willing to have 10 cent open a shell company to take on unreal engine development like whatever we're we're in it for the long haul so i don't expect this is the end of the story but uh it's a bold counter move by apple uh and this you know the more more next week i assume
Marco:
I think bold is being generous here this should erase any doubt in anybody's mind whether Apple is the IBM in 1984 like yes clearly they are oh my god they are really not doing well in the court of public opinion right now they couldn't possibly have made a worse counter move if they're trying to at all seem like the good guys
John:
And by the way, the reason I think people are saying they look like a bully, just to make this very clear, is that, you know, the fight such as it stands, like you could just say, OK, well, you submitted an app that violated the rules and were angry at you and we pulled the app.
John:
Right.
John:
And that could be like, you know, that's it.
John:
Like, well, you did a bad thing with app and we rejected your app.
John:
Right.
John:
That's all they had to do.
John:
Right.
John:
Well, it's not all I'm saying is that like that would seem proportional.
John:
It's like you submitted a bad app or you rejected your bad app and we're and you broke our agreement like you did a sneaky thing.
John:
You broke the agreement.
John:
And technically, yes, we have, according to our agreement, we can do all sorts of stuff because, of course, our agreement tells us we can do whatever the hell we want.
John:
In fact, like I said, Apple can terminate your agreement for any reason if they just feel like it.
John:
Right.
John:
There doesn't even have to be a reason.
John:
But as Marco was saying,
John:
It seems mean to say, well, we're just fighting over this one app, but you really got to terminate my whole developer account?
John:
Like, we don't just develop Fortnite.
John:
There are other games by us on the store.
John:
Like, we do other things.
John:
That's why it seems like bullying.
John:
Because it's like, okay, well, this happens all the time.
John:
And the only time we've seen...
John:
entire developer account termination is if you're like putting up malicious software which i think would be a proportional response you have shown you are not responsible enough to have developer account you are putting out software that spies on people tries to steal information yeah but but but you know talk about treating all developers equally facebook's account should have been terminated many times ubers too like lots of big companies do all that their accounts are fine
John:
Yeah.
John:
So, I mean, that's the thing.
John:
Like, it's a measure of how big is Epic?
John:
Is Epic as big as Facebook?
John:
No.
John:
Are they as important to Apple's platform as Facebook?
John:
No.
John:
Is they important to Netflix?
John:
Probably not, right?
John:
Like, you can kind of go by the market cap of the company or kind of go by, like, you can size it up.
John:
Epic is a big, important company and their parent company is even bigger and even more important.
John:
but they're not Facebook, right?
John:
So anyway, that's why we're all saying this seems like bullying because they had a response that would seem more proportional that would fix the problem, which is like, hey, someone's app is on our store violating the rules, which this is another thing, not to go off on a tangent here, but I'm slightly confused about this.
John:
All right, so the app's not on the store, but if you still have it, you can play it.
John:
That's the kind of compromise we would expect because Apple doesn't want all these kids to get mad because they can't play Fortnite, right?
John:
But on the other hand, we can't have Epic...
John:
you know, breaking the rules, right?
John:
But those kids who are still playing Fortnite, they can still use their credit card, whatever, to get 20% off, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that's the thing about, like, the app, you know, enabling new features after it goes out, which is the thing that all apps do, but it's technically against the guidelines if you read them, you know, right?
John:
that apple actually doesn't have a good way to stop those transactions other than pulling the app entirely and like breaking it for everybody which they don't want to do because then people would really be angry like hey my kid can't play fortnite right now i'm super angry i don't want to say good adults play fortnite too whatever like
John:
the user should be very upset if you broke your thing so apple has to just kind of grin and bear it and while this grinds on yes new people can't get fortnite but honestly a lot of people already have fortnite on ios devices it is a very popular game and in the meantime they can all be buying vbucks for 20 off and that's got to burn apple right so i feel like maybe this you know bullying response is in response to sort of
John:
epic having one over on them because they can't or you know it would hurt apple more to literally stop fortnite from working for everybody which that's one more question when they terminate the developer account will fortnite stop working for everybody
Marco:
That's a good question.
Marco:
So as far as I know, there's multiple ways of Apple developer account expiration slash termination.
Marco:
So if your account just expires, like if you don't renew your developer account, your account expires, you can't submit new builds to your app and your app disappeared from the store.
Marco:
But anybody who has it, it can still run and you can still redown it from the purchases tab.
Marco:
Same thing if your developer certificate just expires and you still have your account, but like your distribution certificate that you built the last copy of the app with, if that expires, nothing bad happens.
Marco:
You just have to make a new one before your next app update.
Marco:
But otherwise, it still stays in the store.
Marco:
People can still download it and use it, etc.
Marco:
That's all fine.
Marco:
If Apple revokes your certificate in a malware kind of way, where they actually revoke the thing that says it's okay to run this, then you have a Charlie Monroe situation, which I still want to talk about.
Marco:
Then you have a situation where the app on iOS, I think, just crashes on launch and just refuses to run without any explanation.
Marco:
On the Mac, that's when you get the dialogue that says this app will damage your computer and you should move it to the trash.
Marco:
Oh, I have so much to say about that.
Marco:
But anyway, that's like revocation at Apple's level, not just like, you know, this is no longer valid, but like all previous signed things are now invalid from this app.
Marco:
So I don't know what happens if Apple terminates your developer account, but not for like a malware kind of reason.
Marco:
I think if you have the app, it continues to run.
Marco:
I think we've seen this like with various times whenever people have tried to like put emulators in the iOS app store and they're up for like a day and Apple figures it out and takes them down.
Marco:
I think they still run after that for people who already had downloaded them.
John:
so if that's the case i don't think all all copies of fortnite out there would be remote killed if their developer account got terminated yeah i mean this so what you described are the various options what we don't know is inside apple when when you hit the big terminate account button like does that make any of which of those things does that make happen if any obviously apple can do whatever they want regardless of what that button normally does they can decide a la carte
John:
We're going to terminate your developer account, and we either are or aren't going to revoke your certificate.
John:
But it's on the table as one of their options, and it's not clear from their threat what they'll choose to do when they do this termination.
John:
To give an example of emulators, like I downloaded an NES emulator like on day two of the iPhone or something.
John:
Somebody put up an NES emulator, and that worked for years.
John:
Now, when somebody put up the NES – this is early days – but whoever put up the NES emulator –
John:
that's a violation of the rules but it's also not malware but it's also kind of a blatant violation of the rules and there's also intellectual property things uh it's kind of a judgment call whether apple to think would apple have terminated that developer's account again it's not a clear-cut case of like you're trying to do something like really terrible you know like steal people's personal photos or something like that right um
John:
But you were breaking the rules, so I would imagine that they didn't terminate that developer's account.
John:
They just rejected that application, right?
John:
But who knows, right?
John:
But either way, it seems clear that they can choose to let the app live on.
John:
With the caveat in the case of Fortnite, if you let the app live on, literally millions of people will continue to be able to bypass an app purchase and get V-Bucks for 20% off.
John:
giving epic money obviously it's not sustainable long term because you know you want new customers and stuff like that but boy it really makes me think that i can't imagine apple tolerating three more years of 100 million people bypassing their in that purchase just because they refuse to reject the certificate for the game but on the other hand
John:
Does Apple want to break Fortnite for every single one of its customers?
John:
So they're starting to get between a rock and a hard place here.
Marco:
That's the least of the problems.
Marco:
I mean, my big problem with this... So lots of people have pointed out what Epic's real motives here might be.
Marco:
Yeah, they want to bring their app store to iOS and take 12% of everybody's cut instead of having to pay Apple 30%, whatever.
Marco:
That, to me, is separate.
Marco:
That's like...
Marco:
what epic wants to do with their money and everyone else's money is not really material to this conversation the what's material to this issue is like first of all like whether apple's rules are anti-competitive and and whether they've overreached or whether it's too big now and has to change or whatever else um and then secondly from that their their treatment of epic in this whether that's kind of you know quote fair or not whatever people think and
Marco:
I think no matter what you think of Epic, because I don't know anything about Epic, I don't care, but when I see what Apple's doing here, if you look at it kind of a big picture scenario here, Apple's in a really questionable place with antitrust and control and monopoly and anti-competitive behavior and
Marco:
I think it's well supported by lots of evidence around the world, the EU, the U.S.
Marco:
Congressional Committee.
Marco:
Their position is worthy of arguing, is worthy of consideration whether regulation needs to be applied.
Marco:
It is not a given that they are 100% in the right with the status quo.
Marco:
So EPIC has filed a lawsuit to challenge this.
Marco:
Whatever you think of Epic and how they're doing this, the idea of filing a lawsuit to challenge Apple's policies and control in this area, I think is a valid argument to have.
Marco:
I think that deserves to be heard and to be argued.
Marco:
What Apple is doing in response to this is such a bullying move that what they're effectively doing is shutting down the potential to have this be argued in court.
Marco:
They are throwing such a bullying move here that what they're basically saying is, we're not even going to allow this to get anywhere near arguing in a court or in front of a judge or anybody.
Marco:
We're going to destroy your entire business first so that nobody can challenge us.
John:
Well, they're not destroying their business, but they are doing the strongest move they have available in the attempt to scare them into presumably not pursuing a lawsuit.
John:
There's nothing Apple can actually do to stop them from.
John:
I mean, you can sue anybody for anything.
John:
Right.
John:
So but this is an intimidation tactic.
John:
Like, here's our threat.
John:
Here's a big hammer.
John:
We are going to do this thing.
John:
Here are the consequences of this thing.
John:
And the consequences are far reaching and damaging to your business.
John:
Again, it's not going to destroy Epic.
John:
Epic has, you know.
John:
This is not the I don't think Apple's platforms are their primary source of money, although it might be almost 50 percent of their money getting close to it anyway.
John:
But Epic, if they're stubborn, can plow ahead with their lawsuit.
John:
And by the way, I listed Tencent as their parent company.
John:
They're just an investor.
John:
They don't have a majority share.
John:
But Tencent is very big is what I was getting at.
John:
so this is this is it's an intimidation move it's a bullying move it's a it's a counter move in the current thing just to see if they blink and apple is trying as we said before it's trying to give them an out it was also at the end of that other little thing says we hope you're able to cure your cure your breaches of the apple program license agreement and continue to participate in the program what apple wants is for them to get back in line and it's saying here's the carrot you get back in line
John:
You can continue having Fortnite.
John:
We'll go back to making sure Unreal Engine works real well.
John:
You keep your developer account, and we just go back to the way things are, right?
John:
So, yeah, I think it's not going to immediately destroy Epic's business.
John:
It's not that big of a hammer, but it's trying to...
John:
Scare them off.
John:
Now, let's say they do this.
John:
They say, okay, okay, Apple, fine.
John:
Here you go.
John:
We changed Fortnite back.
John:
We didn't even have to release a new version because it's all done server-side.
John:
We changed it back to the way it was, and now it's just backed in that purchase, and you get your 30%.
John:
The lawsuits still exist.
John:
The letters that Apple has sent, as far as I'm aware, do not say, hey, Epic, and also, by the way, you have to drop your lawsuits, right?
John:
So I don't know if you want to put that into Apple's credit column or whatever, and I don't know if there's been a back channel,
John:
But Apple is not making dropping the lawsuits an explicit condition of this.
John:
It's clear that they want them to go away, and it's clear they're trying to intimidate Epic as much as they possibly can.
John:
But Epic could release the new version and say, okay, we're in compliance now.
John:
See you in court.
Marco:
I think the reason why they didn't just file a lawsuit without changing their app, they didn't just file a lawsuit saying you should change your policies and then keep their app compliant.
Marco:
Instead, they intentionally provoked the rule so that their app would be kicked out of the store so that they could be damaged so they could have standing to sue.
Marco:
I'm not a lawyer, so forgive.
Marco:
I'm going to try to not get too far into the legal side of this because I don't know it.
Marco:
But
Marco:
I think their case is probably easier to make if they are more damaged.
Marco:
If they can show that Apple had so much power that they lost X millions of dollars a day or whatever with this one thing, that actually might help their case, or it might help illustrate that Apple has too much power.
Marco:
Now, when I look at this move by Apple, this developer account threat,
Marco:
My first thought was, oh no, Apple lost their cool.
Marco:
If you're fighting with somebody and they lose their cool, usually it's good for you.
Marco:
Because if they lose their cool, they will start making moves that are maybe hastily thought out, that are maybe going to hurt them or can be used against them later.
Marco:
And so in this case, it looks like Apple lost their cool with this and made a threat that was really big and really over the top, I think.
Marco:
And I don't think it was a good idea for Apple to have made this threat.
Marco:
Because not only does it make them look even more like jerks, and honestly, I think it kind of makes them look desperate.
Marco:
But it also shows...
Marco:
to the world, to all the world's governments, to all the world's consumer protection agencies, to all the world's congresses and legislators, and to the courts, quite how much power Apple has.
Marco:
And it's too much.
Marco:
And that's the whole thing right now with the legislation possibly or regulation around them.
Marco:
They do have too much power.
Marco:
They should be regulated.
Marco:
They should have an injunction granted against this action while this lawsuit's pending.
Marco:
They have too much power and they are abusing it for anti-competitive purposes.
Marco:
And so for them to have made this extra move, taking it off the app store, as you said earlier, that's all they had to do.
Marco:
And then let the lawsuit proceed and let that work out over time.
Marco:
To also then threaten this...
Marco:
I think makes the case better for everyone who's fighting against them to say, no, look, they need to be regulated.
Marco:
They are acting as an abusive monopoly monopoly.
Marco:
Now they are trying to actively shut down not only competition, but legal challenges against them in ways that they probably shouldn't be able to.
Marco:
So I think this actually hurts Apple's case and makes it even more likely that they will be more heavily regulated down the road.
Marco:
That's why I think this is a bad move, and I think they will come to regret this.
John:
Yeah, it was clear from day one that Epic doing this stuff, they knew they were going to get kicked out.
John:
They weren't surprised about what happened.
John:
And getting kicked out was part of their plan, because like you said, it's not like legally speaking you need to do that, because you can say –
John:
here's how we would experience harm.
John:
But you have a stronger case.
John:
You can say, here's how we did experience harm.
John:
It's not a hypothetical anymore.
John:
It's a literal thing.
John:
Because if you argue in court, if we did this, then Apple would do that.
John:
And Apple could say, how do you know we would do that?
John:
We do weird things all the time.
John:
You have no idea what we would do.
John:
It's like, well, here's what you actually did.
John:
The downside for Epic, especially if we're right about this thing still being in the store with a 20% option is, is now Apple can show damages too.
John:
because they can say, for the last year that this has been, you know, in court, Epic has bid on the store not paying us our 30%, which they should be as part of the agreement.
John:
So we've continued to allow users to download their app, and here's how much money we lost in V-Bucks, right?
John:
You know, so Apple can cite damages as well.
John:
Again, not just a hypothetical where Apple could say, well, if we let people do that, they wouldn't give us a 30% and say, actually, they didn't let us give our 30%, and we were nice and didn't kick it off the store because we didn't want to anger our users, but here's how many millions of dollars we lost, right?
John:
So there's...
John:
It's a double edged sword there.
John:
But for sure, having all of these bad things happen in all cases, like they did with Google, too.
John:
They went on Google.
John:
They got kicked out of the store.
John:
They sued Google.
John:
They're going to cite the fact they were kicked out of the store.
John:
Like it's, you know, it's a clear strategy.
John:
It just it's a little bit tricky.
John:
uh something people have discussed on and off about this uh epic is complaining about all the stuff with the app store they take too big a cut they have too much control yada yada lots of people say well epic and unreal and all that stuff they participate in the game console world as well and the game console world is essentially exactly like the app store you can't release something for the xbox or the playstation without going through sony sony decides what goes on the platform sony's rules about qualifying your game for the playstation are way more draconian than apples like
John:
you know it's not there's a reason the app store has you know hundreds of thousands or millions of apps and the playstation does not have millions of games right sony tightly controls their their their store you know and back in the day it wasn't an app store it was like literal plastic discs but these days this digital version of all these games and you can also buy plastic discs and that's a whole other discussion in front of the time but anyway
John:
game consoles are you know very much like this and the game console vendors the platforms take a big cut according to apple's research in that paper they put out the cut is actually similar to the app store 30 percent ish depending on you know all sorts of deals or whatever um
John:
So why isn't Epic suing Microsoft?
John:
Why aren't they suing Sony?
John:
Why aren't you suing them?
John:
They're doing exactly the same thing to you.
John:
They take the same big chunk out of your thing.
John:
They don't let you do all the stuff you want to do.
John:
They don't let Epic have its own game store inside PlayStation.
John:
Every single thing they're saying about Apple is the same situation.
John:
Why aren't you suing them?
John:
And I think...
John:
Before we get to antitrust, which I think Marco has already weighed in on, and I've mostly not been weighing in on yet because I think there's so much to talk about before even considering antitrust.
John:
Getting back to my argument from last week, the reason that Epic is not suing Sony and Microsoft, it's the same root problem that Apple has, right?
John:
The platform owners, Apple, Sony, Microsoft...
John:
Their job is to try to create that win-win-win situation where developers, users, and the platform owner all succeed together, right?
John:
And you may look at it and say, well, why is Epic mad at Apple and not mad at Sony?
John:
that's the job of the platform owner to make sure that people aren't so mad that they sue them right and so the simple explanation is that despite epic having butted head heads with console makers at various times in fact having very similar sort of head butting arguments about uh internal purchases and selling inside and outside the store like these things have played out in the console world in fact sometimes specifically with epic um many times and
John:
The game console platforms have better managed their relationship.
John:
This little triangle relationship between users, developers, and the platform.
John:
They've managed it better enough.
John:
Better enough.
John:
Not like their developers aren't mad at them sometimes.
John:
Not like users aren't mad at them sometimes.
John:
But they've managed it better enough that they're not in the situation.
John:
Right?
John:
It's not that the rules are different.
John:
It's that the people who are the platform owners...
John:
have better than apple been able to say it's our job to make sure that people don't get so pissed that they sue us right and and that sort of relationship like if you wanted to pin it down to like well what have they done that's better right game console makers understand gaming and the gaming market better than apple does in many ways and one of those ways is that they understand it's a lot it's an entertainment industry right and it works more like you know making movies and tv shows where
John:
Those platforms actively cultivate talent and participate in this win-win scenario where they will help pay for the development of a flagship game for a timed exclusivity, right?
John:
They will recruit talent.
John:
They will invest in studios that make games.
John:
They will help you market your game.
John:
They will sell branded versions of your console that are like, you know, Gears of War branded, right?
John:
All this relationship between Sony and developers is why developers hate Sony less than Apple or why Epic does anyway, right?
John:
Because Sony is there saying, here's a bucket of cash with a dump over your head.
John:
Or Microsoft says, develop Gears of War.
John:
Here's millions of dollars to develop it.
John:
Keep it on our platform only.
John:
We'll make a special Xbox that's Gears of War branded and we'll sell it in the store with Gears of War.
John:
And Epic is like, yes.
John:
we like you this is good and apple's like put your app on our store give us 30 and 99 a year like it's it's a different it's not that type of relationship like consoles have first party games consoles have timed platform exclusives mostly you know that's i'm not saying that apple has to do that i'm not saying just about games or whatever all i'm saying is that
John:
the game console makers have better managed their relationships.
John:
And that's what Apple is doing wrong.
John:
They're not making sure everybody is happy.
John:
Many things spin out of that.
John:
Once the war starts, once the shooting starts, it just gets worse and worse.
John:
And like Marco said, losing your cool is not good.
John:
I wish I could remember this specific example.
John:
There's actually a specific example of Epic intentionally going against the rules and butting heads with one of these console makers.
John:
And they settled it...
John:
more quietly and more amicably than apple has done so far i mean this isn't over yet right but i'm saying like you're always going to have flare-ups and the big players like epic who are cranky are always going to butt heads with you you've got to manage that right you know at the end of my uh art of the possible thing do you want to be right or do you want to be happy
John:
Like, do you want to just be like, well, we're just sticking to our principles and then get sued and have this giant disaster?
John:
Are you going to say, like, even though I think I'm right, let's get back to the part where we all win.
John:
Let's get back to the part where we at least find an acceptable compromise because we get an advantage from you being on our platform and you get an advantage from being on our platform and our customers want your game.
John:
So let's facilitate.
John:
You got to get back to that win.
John:
And that's essentially, you know, it's not as if that what Apple is doing is.
John:
Well, there's a separate argument to be like, is it more important or worse for Apple to be doing it versus game consoles or whatever?
John:
And again, I'll save that for later.
John:
But just bottom line, the game console makers have historically done a better job of managing their relationships.
John:
And I feel like Apple needs to go to a corporate relationship counselor.
John:
Oh, my gosh.
John:
Epic is on the couch.
John:
How do you feel when Apple tells you they're going to terminate your house?
John:
Epic's like, I feel bad.
Yeah.
Marco:
i feel like apple doesn't appreciate me apple tell epic how you appreciate it i don't know this could be a whole skit i can't do it on the fly yeah and this is the kind of thing that apple is historically not good at like the like apple dealing with other companies in general it's not very good at especially when the negotiations are actually negotiations and compromises on both sides as opposed to apple just being able to dictate things exactly that's the way apple likes it they're real happy with those relationships
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
When it comes to Apple having to work with companies where they don't have all the power in the discussion, they're historically quite bad at that, actually.
John:
And by the way, that scenario happens all the time in the App Store.
John:
When it's Apple versus an individual developer, Apple tends to find a way to deftly handle those conflicts because they have all the power.
John:
And so they're not usually super jerky about it, at least not intentionally.
John:
Sometimes, again, Charlie Monroe accidentally jerky, right?
John:
But in general, in these scenarios where it's single lone developer versus giant app
John:
apple apple finds a way to get past them we've talked about a million of those uh app store things over the years like oh some developer had a thing with apple but because apple has literally 100 of the power in every possible way they get resolved and we move on because apple essentially just runs you over right you you comply or you go away but either way it's solved but when it's not one dinky little developer and instead of another billion dollar corporation apple doesn't know how to use its words and talk about its feelings and we head up here
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's tough because on the surface, I can see why Apple is acting the way it is.
Casey:
I completely disagree with their course of action, but I can understand it at a surface level.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But Epic did something that is expressly forbidden.
Casey:
Not only did they do this runaround where they downloaded this update directly into the app, which I know for games that's sort of kind of allowed, but it seems like the way they did it probably wasn't allowed.
Casey:
But beyond that, they had this third-party payment system that is expressly not allowed.
Casey:
And it seems like there should be a consequence for that.
Casey:
I mean, that seems pretty straightforward.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Then they escalated by suing Apple.
Casey:
Well, you know what?
Casey:
F*** you right back.
Casey:
Now you're not allowed in the store anymore.
Casey:
Again, on the surface, I can understand how this seems like a reasonable series of actions.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I feel like nobody at Apple has taken a step back and said, as we said last time, are we the baddies?
Casey:
Nobody has said, is this really appropriate?
Casey:
Because we are not the scrappy upstarts anymore.
Casey:
And I'm not the first person to say that in the last couple of weeks, and I won't be the last.
Casey:
But so much of Apple appears from the outside to be thinking of themselves as the beleaguered upstart, and they're not.
Casey:
They are IBM now.
Casey:
And
Casey:
If you want to enjoy the spoils of being IBM, then you need to act like a grown-up.
Casey:
And Apple is not acting like a grown-up right now.
Casey:
And it's crummy.
Casey:
And the other thing about it is, and this is what I was alluding to earlier, so much of this is intertwined with so many ongoing kerfuffles that Apple is involved with, if not directly started.
Casey:
And why did Epic decide to do this end around and try to take money directly?
Casey:
You know, did they do that because they want a direct relationship with the customer?
Casey:
Well, maybe, but I don't think that's it.
Casey:
Did they do that because they wanted to make it easier on the customer?
Casey:
Well, certainly not because in-app purchase is unequivocally easier on the consumer.
Casey:
It may not be easier on the developer, but it's easier on the consumer.
John:
It's not easy on the consumer's pocketbook.
John:
fair fair that's a good point but it's it's easier saying that i think i was saying like more than half of the customers uh pick the cheaper option i'm like really it was only slightly more than half i thought 100 of the customers but maybe they were suspicious because they're like wait a second this must be some kind of scam but yeah customers want it to be cheaper
Casey:
Yeah, absolutely.
Casey:
And so why did Epic do it?
Casey:
Well, I mean, obviously they wanted money.
Casey:
They wanted more money.
Casey:
But I think that to a large degree, Epic, as many other people have said, this 30% is just too darn much.
Casey:
The rent is too dang high.
Casey:
And I don't think that's an unreasonable perspective.
Casey:
And it's...
Casey:
And then, like, the App Store.
Casey:
Like, this is another different topic.
Casey:
Like, is the App Store and App Review reasonable today?
John:
Well, actually, before you get to that, the 30%, 30% being too darn high, again, consoles also charge 30%.
John:
You have to add a qualifier.
John:
It's too high for what Epic feels like it's getting for its money.
John:
That's the difference.
John:
Why aren't they mad at Microsoft?
John:
They're paying Microsoft 30%.
John:
How are they happy with that?
John:
It's because I guess they feel like they're getting value for their money.
John:
Again, maybe they're going to do a branded console.
John:
Maybe they're going to help them with marketing.
John:
Maybe they're going to advertise their game in their marketing materials.
John:
Maybe they have a close relationship about exclusive future games.
John:
That's corporate relationship management, right?
John:
That's what the console makers are doing better than Apple.
John:
So when we say 30% is too high and someone says, uh-uh, Microsoft Charger's 30%, how is that different?
John:
Microsoft is managing the relationship better.
John:
It's more than just that 30% number.
John:
Clearly, Epic thinks, for this 30%, A, we're not getting enough value, and B, there's extra pains in our asses.
John:
like you know dealing with apple is worse than dealing with microsoft even though it is you know harder to get something onto the consoles than it is into the app store as far as epic's concerned at the level that it plays it has less of a problem not no problem because again i think that epic is super mad at the console makers too but so far not as mad as they are at apple and so yeah you just like that if you are a platform and you're dealing with an epic and epic is important to you and they have fortnite that is a popular game
John:
manage that relationship better so 30 is too high for the value that you think you're getting like that's the qualifier and everything in any sort of relationship are we all okay enough with the terms not to literally go to war and so far the answer with apple is no we're not okay and the other console makers like for now we're okay enough
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And the other thing that got me thinking is I was talking to a friend of mine and mostly about the idea of like sideloading.
Casey:
So, you know, should it be possible for an iPhone to install an app that somebody downloads over the Internet?
Casey:
So, yes, you can sideload now with like a developer certificate.
Casey:
And if you sort of kind of know what you're doing.
Casey:
You can even sideload using, what is it, Alt Store or something like that.
Casey:
That, again, is fiddly and complicated, but you can do it.
Casey:
But should sideloading be allowed?
Casey:
And at first, my initial reaction was, hell yeah, because this is no longer just a phone.
Casey:
This is your primary computing device.
Casey:
Even for some people like myself, I spend more time in front of a computer than...
Casey:
most people, like a traditional computer.
Casey:
But nevertheless, in so many ways, I would say my iPhone is my primary computer.
Casey:
And this is getting into the whole, like, is the iPhone a console, which has floated around many of our friends' podcasts, but particularly on Dithering recently.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Whether or not you consider the iPhone a console, I do think that the iPhone is for many people their primary computing device.
Casey:
And if it's their primary computing device, shouldn't they be able to put whatever software they want on it?
Casey:
And that's a very slippery slope.
Casey:
And at first I would say yes, and then I thought about it and I was like, well, yeah.
Casey:
I don't think, I don't know.
Casey:
I don't think so, actually.
Casey:
So then that brings up this topic of curation, which is what my friend brought up.
Casey:
Like, the app store is curated.
Casey:
Now, you can take curated to mean only the best.
Casey:
You can take curated to mean not actively hostile.
Casey:
You can take curated to mean, well, it may be garbage, but at least it doesn't steal your data and crash.
Casey:
You know, maybe it's not actively hostile in that it doesn't steal your data, but it also doesn't crash.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
There's so many ways to take curated.
Casey:
And I think that that's okay.
Casey:
And I think that most Apple customers want a more curated experience, however you define curated.
Casey:
But we are how many years in the iPhone 13 or something like that?
Casey:
It was 2007, wasn't it?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So we're 13 years into the iPhone.
Yeah.
Casey:
At this juncture, I feel like it is reasonable to let consumers make more choices for themselves.
Casey:
I don't know that we really need Big Brother Apple to be running interference for us quite as much as they have been.
Casey:
Now, I wouldn't necessarily take that all the way to allowing sideloading.
Casey:
But, for example...
Casey:
What was it?
Casey:
The Xbox thing from last week?
Casey:
I already forgot the name of it.
Casey:
Xbox Live or something like that.
John:
XCloud.
John:
Thank you.
Casey:
XCloud.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
XCloud and Stadia.
John:
That's not the actual name.
John:
That was the code name.
John:
I still don't know the real name.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Well, whatever.
Casey:
These streaming gaming services or even like an emulator.
Casey:
Take a Nintendo emulator.
Casey:
One of the things that Apple said is, well, hold on.
Casey:
We can't verify that all these games are not trash.
Casey:
So no, you can't have that in the App Store.
Uh-uh.
Casey:
why like let the consumer decide well because they couldn't verify that this game is going to use an app purchase that's that's the real answer well that's yeah you're right we can't review all these games to comply with this extremely anti-competitive problematic rule that we have right no you're right and so at this point 13 years on i mean the iphone is almost old enough to get a learner's permit in most american states 13 years on
Casey:
I think that customers understand what the iPhone is about and the iPad, too.
Casey:
I'm picking on the iPhone.
Casey:
But, you know, what iOS is about.
Casey:
And I feel like we should be allowed a little more choice.
Casey:
And I don't think that we're the scared little children in the corner wondering how to use this new computing platform.
Casey:
Again, I don't think sideloading is the answer, but I feel like there should be a relaxation of what is allowed on the App Store.
Casey:
And that doesn't necessarily explicitly relate to Epic, but I think that that's one of these boiling points that I'm seeing lately is that people are saying we want more choice and Apple saying no.
Casey:
And that's crummy and I don't like it.
Marco:
Yeah, because I think the role of keeping users safe.
Marco:
Which is very important.
Marco:
Yes, I like that a lot.
Marco:
And I actually, I said this last week too, I actually don't want sideloading or alternative app stores.
Marco:
That's not what I would hope for as an outcome here.
Marco:
I'm totally fine having the app store continue to be the only way to get apps.
Marco:
And as a slightly further step from that, I would be okay with sideloading long before I'd be okay with alternative app stores.
Marco:
Because the OS has technical limitations.
Marco:
I took this under the radar this week.
Marco:
The OS has technical limitations where an app currently cannot install another app.
Marco:
uh and if that was still allowed if if apps could be installed through you know enterprise distribution basically through through you know that kind of like managed side loading procedure um but they couldn't themselves then install other apps so so you could have you know apps that were distributed you know on websites but you couldn't have you know good like alternative app stores unless they would just be like giant webview or something but like i'd be fine with that too but
Marco:
Ultimately, I actually don't really think either sideloading or alternative app stores are incredibly necessary or compelling on iOS.
Marco:
However, the app store, I think, overstates its value.
Marco:
Apple overstates the app store's value in terms of curation and user safety.
Marco:
There's lots of apps in the app store, I would say the majority of apps in the app store, that are total garbage.
Marco:
There's lots of apps in the App Store that steal your personal information in ways that you don't necessarily think or expect or are fully disclosed on, many of them by Facebook.
Marco:
There's lots of apps in the App Store that do crash or that don't work as expected or that don't work as advertised or that don't provide all the advertised functionality because AppReview is neither perfect nor thorough nor consistent.
Marco:
The App Store is not actually providing a huge degree of safety, consumer protection, stuff like that.
Marco:
Most of the safety and consumer protection come from the operating system.
Marco:
They come from the technological limitations that it isn't that apps aren't reading each other's files and installing persistent demons behind the scenes that you can't uninstall.
Marco:
They aren't avoiding that because App Store policy wouldn't let them.
Marco:
They don't do that because they can't on iOS, because the OS blocks that kind of behavior.
Marco:
It is literally impossible to do the kind of things on iOS unless you found some kind of security exploit.
John:
So I know the point you're getting at, and it's mostly true, but the thing is, practically speaking, if you were able to very easily get people to download applications that Apple never looked at,
John:
um those that the way it would be damaging is because those are the applications that would use private apis to find the exploit to do the thing right you know what i mean like it's not to say that you can't get can't get something with an exploit through the app store because if you find a really good exploit you might not have to use private apis you might not have to do anything that they can detect right but once you have that side channel it's way easier once you find an exploit to say now we're home free right so the os is supposed to stop all of those things but if you find an exploit and especially i feel like
John:
unfettered access to private apis and to be able to poke around like that that's how you find a hole in the sandbox more easily in fact many of the jailbreaks require some kind of like in like that where you can get arbitrary code execution so you can get to private api so it may all i'm saying is it makes it more challenging for the technical limitations you just described to to hold right because they're obviously they're not foolproof right and app review is even app review is not foolproof but app review is one more stage where apple can say okay
John:
Are they trying to bypass our technical limitations?
John:
Let's use our tools to detect it.
John:
Without that extra step, you're just relying on technical barriers, and they're never perfect.
John:
Exploits are found all the time, right?
John:
So it is not a completely black and white situation, but certainly most of the benefit that we, like you were saying, most of the benefit that we enjoy is from the technical barriers, not from the quote-unquote curation.
John:
sure i mean but many of those same tools are running through the notarization service so like when you submit your binary for notarization it's scanning it for a lot of those same kinds of things i mean but if you had a side channel you wouldn't have to notarize it either right like the whole point of a side channel is i can i can give somehow distribute this app to users and apple never sees any part of it i won't notarize it you know maybe it'll use developer id no i don't
Marco:
i don't think that's necessarily a given i mean they could have it they could have it work the same way that that you know enterprise distribution works and well i don't know enterprise distribution i guess are those binaries ever going through apple servers well anyway it could be like on the mac where on the mac like now you know with modern os is like you you really have to jump through hoops to run something that's not uh developer id signed and i think soon or already notarized and so they could do the same thing on ios where like they would have to be notarized binaries and everything so like
Marco:
Some of that attack area could be reduced.
Marco:
I mean, there are ways to get around that.
Marco:
You can construct the selector from strings.
Marco:
There's all sorts of ways that you can get around their static analysis tools.
John:
And the thing is, companies like Epic, I think the reason Epic wants to relax the rules is...
John:
you give if you just relax the rules a little bit epic would find a way to essentially bootstrap their entire store right all they need is a tiny little corner like it's like hey go to our website and click this link and it will use some weird exploit to get their foot in the door to bootstrap the process which will pull down you know like you can it doesn't take much
John:
this is the thing with like security flaws once you can get that little thin end of the wedge in you and you see it from like the easy the easy jailbreak stores and the ways they try to make enterprise certs like less annoying if you can get that in there and like it's it's worthwhile for a company the size of epic to play that whack-a-mole game with apple like we'll use this weird exploit to get the thin edge of the wedge in and
John:
to be able to bootstrap our store install process, and then once we get that, we're off to the races, and then we won't require anything to be notarized, or maybe we'll notarize it behind the scenes and make an ICUI for it.
John:
It's worthwhile to them, monetarily speaking, to go through heroic measures to make it as less annoying as they possibly can than all the things that Apple throws up.
John:
So it's still...
John:
like and i don't think apple wants to engage in that war right you know it's more cut and dry but it's like there's the app store and nothing right you know so i'm it's that's why every time we talk about sideloading it becomes like uh like from both perspectives it's it seems like it can't be as good from the user's perspective and then from apple's perspective if they open that door even a little bit it's
John:
You know, it's a new front, a new war you're waging on a new front.
John:
Now all of a sudden we allowed this, but now we have to find everybody who can find the little path that we've allowed and use that to bootstrap their entire universe that is filled with like Bitcoin mining or God knows what.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, that's like this is why I'm not pushing for sideloading or alternative app stores, really.
Marco:
I don't think the world would end if we had that, but that's not my ideal outcome.
Marco:
My ideal outcome is the app store policies get slightly relaxed in the most problematic areas.
Marco:
i really would not want apple to totally lose control of distribution and software quality on ios they've already lost a lot of it just by by size i mean like like the value of the app store from any kind of like store perspective like you were mentioning earlier about like game consoles and you have things like cooperative marketing efforts between the platform vendor and the apps and everything or the games and everything um and and here you know you don't
Marco:
The App Store does not do much for any apps marketing anymore.
Marco:
There are way too many apps.
Marco:
Not a lot of people are just casually browsing the App Store as a thing that you do every day.
Marco:
Like when the phone was new, you would just kind of casually browse the App Store because you had no apps.
Marco:
It was like a fun thing to just browse around.
Marco:
Hey, let's install whatever's here.
Marco:
This looks nice.
Marco:
I'm going on a plane.
Marco:
Let me go to the games page and see what games are new and install some games.
Marco:
These days, it's a much more mature system with a billion apps in the store.
Marco:
The marketing value is nearly nothing.
Marco:
Even the apps that get featured, they have less traffic going to them than they used to.
Marco:
Because it's just, again, people aren't doing that in the same way that they used to anymore.
Marco:
And the app store design doesn't help either.
Marco:
It's very low information density.
Marco:
You have very few apps per page, etc.
Marco:
So all these things combined to be like, this is providing very little marketing benefit.
Marco:
The hosting benefit is something that exists, but it's something that you could host yourself for pennies or dollars per month.
Marco:
It's not significant that they're offering that.
Marco:
What the App Store mainly is offering here is that app review process and the payment integration for the upfront purchasing and everything and the ease of the payment integration.
Marco:
So that's what they're offering.
Marco:
And so anybody who says 30% is not worth it for that, I agree with.
Marco:
It's not worth it.
Marco:
And for Apple to be in a position where they can dictate, we are going to take 30% of all your money that goes through this platform.
Marco:
was a totally reasonable-ish, I mean, it was never incredibly great, but a reasonable-ish position to take when they were small.
Marco:
And the argument I made last week is, like what Case was saying earlier, this is now a major computing platform.
Marco:
This is a huge part of lots of people's lives in really critical ways.
Marco:
Imagine a couple of scenarios here to help make this point a little bit better.
Marco:
A, imagine if Windows PCs and Macs were this way from the start.
Marco:
Imagine if all PC and Mac software for the entire history of those platforms, Microsoft and Apple respectively, were controlling everything that could possibly ever get written on them and forcing everyone to put 30% of all commerce through them.
Marco:
Imagine if Google Chrome and Apple Safari and every browser, imagine if web browsers required that all web commerce had to pay them that happened through their browser or they would make their sites unbrowsable in their browser.
Marco:
Imagine now you might say, oh, well, you know, Apple built this whole system on mobile.
Marco:
Okay, that's interesting.
Marco:
Apple's not the only company that has contributed massive critical infrastructure on mobile.
Marco:
I would argue that if Apple deserves 30% of all transactions that happen on phones...
Marco:
So does your carrier.
Marco:
What if AT&T all of a sudden decided, you know what?
Marco:
We're going to demand 30% of all transactions that happen through our network.
Marco:
Or you have to remove your phone for network.
Marco:
Like ISPs, broadband, cellular, component makers, network providers.
Marco:
Like what if Cisco decides, you know what?
Marco:
All this traffic that's routing through our switches, we built this infrastructure.
Marco:
We deserve 30% of all money that goes through it.
Marco:
It's a ludicrous argument, and you can start to see how if any company really did this for a large portion of the economy, it would crush that economy, and it would severely restrict it.
Marco:
It would cause lots of problems, and everybody would probably be better off.
Marco:
The entire economy would probably be better off if those gatekeepers did not do that after things get to a certain scale.
Marco:
And you look at game consoles, and game consoles are fundamentally different.
Marco:
They just are.
Marco:
They're not general purpose computers.
Marco:
They serve a significant part of an economy, but not like a broad part.
Marco:
They serve a narrow part in certain specialized ways, and that's it.
Marco:
So general purpose computers, PCs, Macs, and yes, mobile phones are a much more broad tool, much more essential to everyday life in the same way that like, you know, certain services like, you know, your, your water and electric supply are regulated as essential services.
Marco:
That's how these computing devices are.
Marco:
They are essential.
Marco:
And it makes no more sense that Apple deserves 30% of everything that goes to their platform and can dictate everybody that goes on and off of it than if AT&T or Comcast or Cisco or so many of those other things, if they would do the same thing.
Marco:
No one here deserves to lock up an entire market in a way that has this much impact on the economy and has massive anti-competitive forces at play as well.
Marco:
we're beyond that level of like companies can do whatever they want because it's their company like again once things get to a certain size they go beyond that it is the monopolist's style and role and duty to always say we built this we put all this money into it we deserve to retain our control they always say that like standard oil i'm sure said that like a
Marco:
The railroads back in the day, I'm sure they said that too.
Marco:
That is their job to play that card and to try to drum up public opinion and the court's opinion to say, we built this and we deserve to run it however we want.
Marco:
But that's not how society works.
Marco:
Capitalism in its purest sense doesn't work.
Marco:
You need exceptions and regulations that are part of the system to keep it healthy and to keep the economy from being locked up and having these giant monopolies form and kind of crush everything under them.
Marco:
And this is that size now.
Marco:
This is that kind of thing.
Marco:
And in the same way that AT&T shouldn't be able to say, we are now going to just take 30% of all your money that goes through our network, Apple is now too big for that.
Marco:
And their platform needs to be regulated to preserve this entire section of our economy, of our society, of
Marco:
of everyday consumer and business usage of their platforms they need regulation they are too big to have the control that they have and the way they exercise their power they they're just it's too big and too important for that now and the needs of society are now above that
John:
I've still been studiously avoiding the antitrust stuff, and I don't want to delve into it this late stage in this episode, but I will leave it in the topic list because I'll give my take on antitrust stuff maybe next episode.
John:
But I do want to save myself from another flurry of emails, assuming there's no bugs outside my window.
John:
First, the name of the xCloud thing, Project xCloud, was their streaming gaming thing.
John:
It's just going to be part of Xbox Game Pass, which is their subscription gaming service.
John:
It'll be part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
John:
Second item, I mentioned Microsoft and, you know, Gears of War branded Xbox and all that other stuff.
John:
Microsoft actually bought Gears of War a couple of years back, bought like bought the entire franchise.
John:
Right.
John:
That, I imagine, is another example of corporate relationship management.
Right.
John:
it's not like microsoft stole it from epic they bought it with lots and lots of money right that's you know we'll make a game it'll be exclusive for your platform um and then oh well actually we'd like to make a new franchise and microsoft's like well we kind of like unreal let's come to agreement here's a giant bucket of money can we have or not unreal can we have gears of war here you go here's gears of war right that's better corporate relationship management and talent retention than apple is doing
John:
and somebody in the chat room earlier said that uh can't believe he's listening to uh apple fans arguing against the walled garden why don't you just use android if that's your your argument i don't think any of us are arguing against the walled garden we're just saying we'd like the garden to be better tended right or we'd like the rules of the garden to be different in fact you know we just got done talking about sideloading we're not arguing against the walled garden it's not a walled garden anymore it's more of like a walled prison
John:
It's not fun to be in here.
John:
We're not like frolicking through the flowers and sitting on a bench and appreciating nature.
John:
Some people are angry, right?
John:
It doesn't mean the concept of a walled garden or a curated space is bad.
John:
Again, game consoles.
John:
Game consoles are the most walled garden.
John:
They have extremely closed walls, very tight control walls.
John:
And I like game consoles for those reasons, because the platform owners who succeed learn how to cultivate with both money and encouragement and marketing and everything you every tool they possibly imagine talent that makes creative things.
John:
That's part of we talked about this with Apple Arcade.
John:
Apple kind of sort of got a tiny bit of a clue of like, hmm, maybe we should give people money.
John:
to make good games for our platform but the scale they're doing with apple arcade is nothing compared to the scale the console makers do it like console makers how much money does sony pay to naughty dog to put the last of us exclusively on that platform like that that bucket of money could pay for all of apple arcade 75 times over now apple might say they're being savvy and saying we're not putting all our money into these big buckets but there's a reason when everyone says triple a games most people don't think of phones or ipads even though there are some really great games for phones and ipads
John:
uh you know i still think apple doesn't quite understand but anyway getting back to walled gardens like i i personally love walled gardens that are beautiful gardens they have walls but the beauty of the garden is worth it enough for me to pay the admission to get the console to sit down and play the set of games that sony has decided are allowed to be on their platform and given the amount of time i have i appreciate the fact that
John:
of all the games on the platform i could actually scroll through the list of all of them and there's a small enough number and the best ones are really really good that's why i keep buying sony consoles right so like i said i don't want to get into my personal take on the antitrust stuff now because we have so much ask atp that i think i want to get to but i wanted to address those small items just so we get slightly less feedback and by the way if you already tweeted at me before you got to this point in the show that happens what can you do
Marco:
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It's just wonderful to be a Squarespace customer because you get so much functionality built in with all their plans.
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Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And I'd like to take a very, very brief detour.
Casey:
And I would like to thank Brendan.
Casey:
Yeah, I know, right?
Casey:
I'd like to thank Brendan Riel, who put together AskATP.fm, which is a search engine for Ask ATP questions and answers.
Casey:
And this, I think, was born from me saying, why is it that we're asked how to move things between computers 85 times a year?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Their identities frequently become swapped and I usually have a once per day fun time with the Mac OS monitor arrangement slash resolution configurator.
Casey:
This functionality for configuring monitors as exposed by the OS is horrendous.
Casey:
The arrangement tab does not identify any of the monitors.
Casey:
Even when you click and drag to adjust their position, you have no idea which monitor you're affecting.
Casey:
Similarly, the UI for display configuration is needlessly spread out across N windows if you have N monitors, and it's impossible to tell if two monitors have the same make and model which window corresponds to which monitor.
Casey:
I guess there was a question here.
Marco:
My question is more of a comment.
John:
Yeah, I put this in there.
John:
I mean, the question is probably like, don't you think this is bad?
John:
So a few thoughts.
John:
So first of all, I it's been so long since I use multiple monitors that I actually had to like, you know, connect to my external monitor, my external monitor surrogate, which is my sidecar iPad to confirm this.
John:
Yeah.
John:
and i don't i don't i'm too old to remember how it used to be but i double checked and of course now i forgot again but anyway mac os has pretty much always had a way to do exactly one of the things he's asking more which is what what monitor is this in the arrange panel where it shows you little little squares or rectangles each one represents your monitor if you have one big monitor one small monitor it's easy to tell which is which the big one is the big rectangle is the big monitor and the small rectangle small monitor but what if you have monitors that are exactly the same size how do you tell which is which
John:
if you just click and hold on the little rectangle it will put a red border around the monitor that you are clicking and holding on like you'll click and hold in the little preference pane on like a little tiny representation of your monitor but then you that actual monitor will get a giant red outline around it like in real life if you look at so anyway that feature does exist it's not obvious that it's there but you can identify the monitors in that way right so then you can tell which one you're rearranging
John:
The other part of this, though, has a tie-in to one of my Switchglass War stories, which I'm not going to have time to go into entirely here, but I will give the short version of it, which is...
John:
uh when you have monitors connected to your computer like and actually before i get to that the thing about the windows being spread out this is the thing that the mac os does and has always done i think for adjusting monitors if you try to adjust the settings on the monitor you know you have system preferences open and you got the monitor preference pane um and when you pull up the monitor's preference pane yeah it's whatever your main window is that has system preferences on it will show the monitors thing
John:
But then on every other monitor, you'll also see a little miniature monitors preference pane that has the settings that apply to that monitor.
John:
So if you want to change the resolution of a particular monitor, you bring your mouse cursor to that monitor where there is a window sitting there that says pick one of these resolutions, pick this color depth, whatever, pick this rotation thing.
John:
And the window in that monitor applies to that monitor.
John:
Right.
John:
That's the system that they use for a long time.
John:
It's a little bit easier than having to do like, OK, well, first I click the little representation of my monitor and then now I know my future changes apply to that monitor.
John:
Like it's better when they I think it's better when every single monitor has dead center on it, a window and that window controls the monitor that it's on.
John:
In fact, I like that feature so much that when I made Switch Glass, one of the features I wanted to have is that the little switchy palette thingy, you get one of those on each monitor.
John:
And if you want to adjust the settings, I made one preference window.
John:
I tried to do this.
John:
I muddled it a little bit.
John:
Anyway, I made a preference window.
John:
And when you open preferences, you get one preference window on every single monitor.
John:
And if you want to adjust the settings of the little palette on that monitor, you use the preference window that's on that monitor, right?
John:
So I use the same approach, which most people maybe aren't familiar with or that seems weird.
John:
But to me, it seems very a fairly clean way to do it.
John:
I modeled it because I put global settings at the bottom, but then I labeled them global settings.
John:
Anyway, it's whatever it is.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway.
John:
This problem of like, OK, like that's the app they want.
John:
I wanted to make in switch class.
John:
Seems easy.
John:
Like I'll just make, you know, I'll I'll walk through the list of monitors and I'll put a little, you know, on first launch, I'll put a little palette on every single monitor.
John:
And then when people make, you know, if preferences, they'll change the settings.
John:
And then when they change the settings, I'll save them.
John:
But I have to save the settings for each monitor.
John:
Like, all right, I made this palette like really big in the upper right.
John:
So I got to say, OK, really big in the upper right applies to this monitor.
John:
Well, what is this monitor?
John:
I need some way to identify monitors, just like Mac OS, you know, and poor Nathaniel need some way to identify monitors.
John:
So I'm going to save I'm going to save this state.
John:
I'm going to save somehow this monitor.
John:
And I thought, foolishly, this would be an easy thing to do.
John:
There's probably some API you call that just gives you some kind of identifier for the monitor that's unique to that monitor, and you just save it.
John:
But, you know, nothing in software development is ever that easy, especially in those weird edge case areas that I'm wandering in macOS, right?
Yeah.
John:
turns out there is no really good way to do that there's a bunch of ways that look super tempting one of them is like a monitor id or a display id that you get and the very first thing i did is that oh display id there you go that's easy and it's like some big number uh and if you save that number when you launch it again uh and you set and you look up the just go through all the displays you'll find the one with the same id and it matches up like this is great i'm like oh but what if this number changes every time you reboot so i rebooted my computer number stayed the same
John:
like that problem solved this is like day one um what a great developer am i've just solved this problem uh no that's a trap uh so i don't i forget what it is like apple doesn't promise that this thing does what it does but it's called like id or something and it and practically speaking it works so like i figured i was done uh and then i started getting weird bug reports from people and it turns out if you have a mac laptop with a discrete and an integrated gpu when it switches from the discrete to the integrated gpu that number changes
John:
And the bug reports I was getting for this were mind-bending because I was like, A, this never happens for me.
John:
And B, what in the world are you talking about?
John:
I'm like, what do you mean?
John:
Because, again, they would do something unknowingly that triggered the use of the discrete GPU.
John:
And if they did that and then they launched the app, it would pull the settings from the discrete GPU number.
John:
Because the numbers were stable, but they were different numbers for discrete and integrated.
John:
It took me so long to figure that out.
John:
Anyway, that doesn't work.
John:
so i need some other way to identify it there's a bunch of info you can get using weird fc apis that tell you the vendor the make the model number and the serial number i'm like i'm home free because even if you have the exact same monitor they're not going to have the same serial number right all right crack developers what was the problem with this api private no i mean this is mac i can do whatever the hell i want no no private i don't know maybe maybe you need casey should know it's your computer engineer
John:
Hardware sucks.
John:
You buy some random ass monitor and you call these APIs.
John:
Oh, this one doesn't return anything for serial number.
John:
This one doesn't return anything for model number.
John:
This one doesn't return anything for vendor monitors like any APIs to say you can call this API and it will return like a number representing the vendor or return F F F F F F F.
John:
And monitors in the real world... And I need all three.
John:
I can't just do make and model because, again, if you have two identical monitors, which a lot of people have, I still can't tell all monitors.
John:
They're both the same make and model.
John:
But they return nothing for anything.
John:
And then the internal display...
John:
sometimes returns weird stuff because the internal display is made by weird different manufacturers right so that little api is out the window can't use that because hardware is like i don't have a serial number i don't know what you're talking about finally what i settled on was there's a color was it color sync or some color space there's some api that does some crap that i don't understand out of the covers that gives me a number that is my best effort it is like
John:
It's stable across GPU switches.
John:
Even on monitors that don't return a serial number, it returns a stable identifier.
John:
I honestly have no idea where it's coming from, and I think it's related to ColorSync thing, but the OS does have some way to identify the monitor.
John:
I don't think that is even 100% reliable, but it's reliable enough that I no longer get these bug reports.
John:
All this long story is to say that the act of, in macOS, the act of identifying a monitor so that you know the next time the computer words up, that's the same monitor I saw before, is actually extremely difficult.
John:
And it would not surprise me if the Herculean efforts that I went through to make sure this works in all weird scenarios...
John:
is not what the monitor arrangement handling of macOS proper goes through.
John:
Because I can imagine macOS proper might use, for example, the make model and serial number and just say, well, of course, everything always returns a serial number and then just not care about some cheap knockoff monitor that doesn't do that, right?
John:
Or maybe the color sync thing or whatever it is that I'm using, one of the failure modes is in Nathaniel's specific case with his specific monitors.
John:
So I don't have a good answer for you, but I can tell you that this problem is not well solved in macOS.
John:
And it doesn't surprise me that you're having these problems.
John:
And I would love, I mean, I'll follow this on a radar at some point or feedback or whatever.
John:
I would love for Apple to provide APIs that perform this function, because I think being able to identify the same monitor across boots is important.
John:
I kind of feel for Apple, though, because if you literally have an identical monitor,
John:
And that monitor just lies or just doesn't tell you anything about itself.
John:
And there's another one right next to it that does the exact same thing.
John:
How do you tell which monitor is it?
John:
Maybe, maybe somewhere under the covers, again, the GPU identifier, but like on boot up when it senses these two monitors, like maybe you could tell what port they're connected to.
John:
I don't, I don't even know.
John:
Anyway, this is a hard problem.
John:
I'm sorry, Nathaniel.
John:
And it's one of my many miniature war stories about dealing with switch glass.
John:
And I, I feel for all of us.
John:
Just have a single monitor.
John:
That's the solution.
John:
Get a really, really big $5,000 monitor.
John:
That's my advice.
Casey:
Oh, excellent.
John:
Six if you want the stand.
John:
You know what?
John:
I'd actually forgotten about the stand until Marco said that, so thank you.
John:
You're welcome.
Marco:
But I recommend expensive products.
Casey:
Let's not forget.
Casey:
Mike Milanozzo, or perhaps Casey List, writes,
Casey:
where I might not recognize small details, buttons with a slight shadow, spacing on different elements, et cetera.
Casey:
Do you know of any websites or YouTube channels that do app teardowns that could be a good way for me to hear experts give constructive feedback?
Casey:
Any other resources you can recommend a part-time developer with little artistic sensibilities?
Casey:
Well, I'm all ears, gentlemen.
Casey:
What do you got?
Marco:
I should have an answer to this, but the simple answer is no, I don't.
Marco:
I have gone into this process myself for the same reason.
Marco:
I, too, have been a developer with no design skills that couldn't afford to pay someone else for help.
Marco:
I have now moved into being a
Marco:
who doesn't feel like paying people for help because i like doing everything myself if i can and it has all sorts of benefits for things like speed and and workflow and everything doing it that way um first of all there's no shame in this like there's no shame in my apps are kind of ugly and i don't know how to help and i and i can't afford a
Marco:
So there's no shame in this.
Marco:
Own it as Mike is.
Marco:
So that's fine.
Marco:
And don't be afraid to actually address this and call it out in public and be vulnerable in this way and solicit feedback from people who will give it.
Marco:
Also, there are just kind of certain general principles that you can start with.
Marco:
one of the best is, like, you could actually read the HIG.
Marco:
I haven't, but you could.
Marco:
Because, like, when it comes to things like sizing of controls, spacing, a lot of design comes down to just following the platform standard.
Marco:
And many of iOS's tools and, you know, things like auto layout, things like even... What the hell was that?
Marco:
Sorry, there's some kids outside that just threw a rock at my window.
Casey:
what seriously terminated his developer account yeah yeah it should be all right they ran away i was gonna say are they looking to like flirt with you or something is this like you know a late 90s early 2000s date movie seems unlikely go to the window maybe it's some romance are they holding up a boom box perhaps marco hasn't seen it neither have i i just know the reference ah
Marco:
i think i've seen like bits and pieces like on tnt or something anyway um auto layout swift ui you get a lot of this stuff for free of like following the standard spacing following standard sizing etc so a lot of it is like if you if you don't actively mess with it it will be right
Marco:
And so that's like one way to kind of ensure that you have like a reasonable design is just like follow things that are as standard as possible if you can.
Marco:
One of the other major areas of design becomes typography.
Marco:
And this goes to not only how you lay out your text, but where you lay it out in the UI, what style of text you use for different elements, what sizing, what spacing, how you word things, how you capitalize and punctuate things.
Marco:
And the style of how to do that is all spelled out in various style guides all over the place.
Marco:
Apple has style guides here and there.
Marco:
You can also just kind of look at what other apps do.
Marco:
When you're writing your setting screen text or whatever, you can go and look and see what do most other apps do for capitalization of this setting.
Marco:
Do they capitalize every word?
Marco:
Do they capitalize only the first word?
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
You can kind of look at other apps and...
Marco:
This is how I've learned most of my app design skill, if you can call it that.
Marco:
Taking cues from what do Apple's built-in apps do in this way?
Marco:
And look at the really boring ones like mail.
Marco:
How do Apple's built-in apps or the settings app, how do they design this thing?
Marco:
What size icon do they use in this context?
Marco:
What style of text and capitalization do they use in this context?
Marco:
Et cetera.
Marco:
That's a lot of design right there.
Marco:
And then as you get more comfortable with this, as you start to make things fancier, just kind of be careful.
Marco:
Like, dip your toe in things slowly.
Marco:
So, for instance, if you want to do something like add a custom font, that's a risky move.
Marco:
You can do it well.
Marco:
You can do it poorly.
Marco:
Be careful.
Marco:
Go into it slowly.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Add like one font, not seven.
Marco:
That's step one.
Marco:
Use it, you know, gently, like dip your toe in soleil.
Marco:
Don't pick like a super extreme font with like tons of overt personality that that might be, you know, off putting to people and stuff like that.
Marco:
As you're sizing your text or picking colors or at least shades of gray for your text, don't use a bunch of different shades or a bunch of different colors.
Marco:
Pick a small number of colors and a small number of sizes and a small number of styles.
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
So you end up dipping your toast slowly into custom design rather than looking like a ransom note made of torn up magazines.
What?
Marco:
But other than that, unfortunately, I can't actually recommend specific YouTube channels or books or websites to do this because not only do I not know of any off the top of my head and I didn't really read or watch any, but also if you start asking designers, you can go to various designer websites or forums or have designers yell at you on Twitter.
Marco:
If you ask them, what is the right way to do this or what's the best way to do this or how do I make this better?
Marco:
they're all going to give you different answers.
Marco:
They're going to disagree with each other.
Marco:
They're going to be contradictory.
Marco:
Many of them are going to be wrong.
Marco:
Many of them are going to be bad.
Marco:
Or many of them are going to actually work worse in the context of an app.
Marco:
Because designers aren't all perfect.
Marco:
I mean, how many developers do you know who are perfect?
Marco:
I think I know zero.
Marco:
If you think about development as a practice, it's pretty much impossible to do it perfectly.
Marco:
And you can ask four developers in a room how to do something, and you're going to get four very different answers.
Marco:
And design is the same way.
Marco:
Designers don't all agree on everything.
Marco:
They're not just one monolithic block that they can give you the one truer answer.
Marco:
They're going to have recommendations that are all over the map.
Marco:
And some of them are going to be bad designers.
Marco:
Some of them are going to be great designers.
Marco:
And it's kind of hard to tell if you don't know what you're getting ahead of time.
Marco:
So it's actually really hard to involve other people in a great way here.
Marco:
No one person is going to tell you everything correctly and everything you need to know.
Marco:
So it is worth developing the skill on your own.
Marco:
It is worth like developing a sensibility of at least like general guidelines of like, here's, I can make a pretty good version one.
Marco:
And then if I get a lot of feedback to a certain point, then maybe I can adjust the screen or adjust this, you know, font or move this control or if my users are not finding something or if they're complaining about how something looks like, maybe then adjust it.
Marco:
But yeah,
Marco:
Overall, this is a worthwhile skill to develop, but I don't unfortunately know of any good shortcuts to do it, except try to mimic what the system apps do as much as possible if you have any doubt on a design choice.
John:
I'll just make one modification to what Marco said in one edition.
John:
A modification is I think you should read the HIG, the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
John:
It's not going to be super helpful.
John:
It's not going to tell you exactly what to do, but there's tons of text there.
John:
And even if you disagree with it, it has a rationale.
John:
And you will find things in the HIG, especially if you're not an experienced designer, that you hadn't even thought about, that you hadn't even thought this was a thing to make a decision about at all.
John:
Even if you disagree with the decision that the HIG says or it seems weird or whatever, you don't agree with the rationale, just knowing that this is a thing that you should think about and make a decision about is valuable.
John:
So I would absolutely read the HIG.
John:
Not read it as the Bible, but read it just to sort of get the lay of the land.
John:
Start learning what it is that you don't know.
John:
And the addition, I would say, is find other developers to bounce things off of.
John:
Ideally, they'd be more experienced developers, but even if it's just a bunch of people who are at the same level of experience, having other people...
John:
put their eyes on what you're working on really helps.
John:
Like, you know, so I've been a Mac user since 1984.
John:
I know what Mac UIs should look like.
John:
When I was making my first Mac app, I could tell it was wrong.
John:
Like it's, you know, if you have experience with the platform, you're like, well, I'm not a designer, but I've been using a Mac for years and this looks messed up.
John:
i was very able to tell that you know i got like a bunch of controls i'm laying out in a dialogue and it's not doesn't look right to me like it's off and i can even tell you what specifically was wrong with it it's it feels heavy on this side and this spacing feels too tight it's like okay well then what if you just make the spacing bigger it's like no it's still wrong like i have a fiery finely tuned sense of what is right and wrong from vast experience with the platform but what i didn't have vast experience with is say you've got this bucket full of controls
John:
How do you lay them out in a way that doesn't feel wrong?
John:
It's real easy to do it when you just have a simple problem or like one of the examples from the HIG.
John:
But what about when you've got your app with your stuff in it and experienced Mac developers say, oh, I've been faced with that same bucket of controls and here's how I dealt with it.
John:
I did it like this, did it like that.
John:
And again, they're not going to agree, but the way I...
John:
essentially workshopped like in my very first dinky little mac app the one tiny little preference window i bounced it off a bunch of vastly more experienced mac developers and they also didn't agree right but we could all agree it was wrong and they had some good ideas about how to make it better and then i essentially took the idea that i like the best and modify it with my own taste and then would bring it back again and say what do you i mean i think marco was in the channel in case you're both in the channel when i was doing this
John:
i would relay out the dialogue and say what do you think of this and then five more opinions would chime in and then i would you know do the same thing find the opinion that i agreed the most with give it a try and try it again and iterate and so on and so forth that's a great way to learn and obviously maybe you're not going to have access to a slack channel with like people with decades of development experience but surely you have access to some other developers and law of averages mean that some of them will be more experienced or better designers than you that combined with what marco was saying
John:
You know, you just got to put in the time and do all those things.
John:
And I think you'll be fine.
John:
There's no become a great designer in 21 weeks course that you're going to find on YouTube that's going to do what just putting in the time and giving it a try and, you know, doing some basic background reading and bouncing ideas off your friends.
John:
That's all there is to it.
Casey:
A. Krishna Rao writes, I'm a longtime Windows user since the early 90s, but I love my iPhone and iPad.
Casey:
The new move to Big Sur and Apple Silicon that can run apps across Apple platforms has me finally contemplating the big switch.
Casey:
Where do I start?
Casey:
I'm a power user and want more than the basics.
Casey:
That's such an open-ended question.
Casey:
I don't even know where to start with the answer, to be honest with you.
Casey:
If you want to laugh, you can look through the exchange that Marco and I had 15, no, 12 years ago now?
Marco:
Before the iPhone or iPad existed.
Casey:
Was it?
Casey:
Was it?
Casey:
I thought it was after the iPhone, but maybe you're probably right.
Casey:
Maybe it was 2006.
Casey:
I thought it was 2008.
Casey:
But anyways, we a long time ago had this conversation publicly via Tumblr.
Casey:
And so you can go get a good laugh about that.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Where do you start with this?
John:
This question doesn't make it clear whether this is about hardware or software.
John:
Is it like what hardware should I buy or where should I get started learning about things?
John:
I mean, on the sort of software slash knowledge side, listening to weird, nerdy podcasts like ATP is a great start because even though, especially if you're new to the platform, a lot of the stuff we talk about is going to go over your head.
John:
Just through osmosis and exposure, you will start to learn things about the platform.
John:
Again, kind of like reading the HIG.
John:
You'll learn...
John:
what the issues are and the lay of the land maybe you won't understand the details but you're like oh this is a thing and that's a thing and maybe you'll hear us talk about something like you know clipboard managers or something i mean which you probably know from windows already anyway but just as an example a category of app that we talk about as if it's just a thing that everybody knows about uh but maybe you're not familiar with or like you know quick launchers like launch bar or whatever and that will send you down a rabbit hole and then you know outside the podcast world finding websites or people to follow on twitter
John:
that are themselves Mac power users, and just absorbing the fire hose of those websites, those blogs, those Twitter streams, you will pick up everything you need to know about being a more advanced user on the platform.
John:
I know people always want sort of the...
John:
like i said the 21 day course or whatever just like here you go here's everything you need to know and people always want someone to create those and they hope they exist but the thing is stuff like that dates very quickly and has a huge amount of opinion inserted into it and generally isn't financially uh you know very advantageous so they tend not to exist or if they exist they're they're either were never valuable or they're no longer valuable because they're too far out of date right
John:
So people who learn that way, people are like, look, just tell me everything I need to know.
John:
I learn well from videos.
John:
I learn well from reading.
John:
Tell me that about this new thing.
John:
In most new things, that doesn't exist.
John:
The example I always go back to, I think I wrote about once, is remote control cars.
John:
Tell me everything I need to know about remote control cars.
John:
No, that's not the way it works.
John:
What happens is you get a car, and you build it, and you break it, and you buy a bunch of magazines filled with stuff that you don't understand, and you read them for a year, and at the end of the year, you know more than you did at the beginning.
John:
That's it.
John:
There's no...
John:
There's no course, there's no instruction, there's no smooth path to learning.
John:
It's just dive in there and expose yourself to the things that you want to achieve.
John:
Find people who are already there and then just absorb their output.
John:
Even if in the beginning it doesn't make any sense to you, it will eventually.
John:
That's the way we all got to where we are.
John:
We didn't know anything about computers and we just...
John:
went to you know we just sat in front of it and plugged away or went to the computer class or the computer club i took i took typing courses they called them but we were typing on computers which meant that i could figure out how to print my name on the screen in between the typing what you know like there's no there's no shortcut just like the designer questions no shortcut but the good news is there's tons of resources no matter how you want to consume it if you like youtube there's plenty of youtubers where you can just watch them start talking about tech stuff if you like podcasts hey here you are
John:
right if you like blogs or websites there's tons of those out there um just finds the ones that appeal to you and just start start absorbing you will learn and if this is a question about what computer to buy i'm sorry we we failed you but we'll be more specific next time well yeah where do i start buy a mac yeah that's which one yeah i know well some anyway buy a laptop no don't do that it's terrible
John:
We can't even agree on that.
John:
You're not buying anything until the ARM Macs come out, so, you know, hold that thought.
Marco:
Well, but, like, I mean, would you tell somebody, like, don't switch to our platform right now?
Marco:
I don't think I would tell them that.
Marco:
I think I would, you know, it's not the best time in the world to buy a Mac hardware.
John:
Our platform?
John:
I didn't get my check.
John:
Do you get a check?
John:
It's not my platform.
Casey:
You don't get your 30%?
John:
Yeah, where's my 30%?
John:
I built this platform.
John:
yeah now i would i would say i would say especially if you if you're a long time windows user thinking of switching because because this person says uh because of the arm transition and the ability to run ipad apps right you know that has me finally contemplating the big switch yeah wait wait for arm if you can wait for arm for sure if you're switching platforms like that means you're already on a platform and you're fine stay there it'll you know wait until our max are available they will hopefully be compelling and that's that's the thing that is specifically attracting this person
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And you probably won't have a long wait.
Marco:
I mean, maybe like another month before the first one is available.
Marco:
And it's probably going to be a laptop.
Marco:
So, yeah.
John:
And only two years until, in theory, they're all available because it's a two-year transition if all goes to plan.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, thank you very much to our sponsors this week.
Marco:
Hey.com, Squarespace, and Raycon.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can learn more about that at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was 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
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-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
Casey:
Accidental Tech Podcast So Long
Casey:
So Alex Keeling wrote in, and I think this was supposed to be an Ask ATP question, but we wanted to move it to a Ask Neutral question.
Casey:
Are we doing that now?
Casey:
Yeah, that's a thing now.
Casey:
Alex asked, she was asking about general stick shift driving techniques and advice.
Casey:
And I don't have the actual letter written to us, but basically, how do you drive a stick?
Casey:
I could answer this question.
Casey:
And then John will explain that everything I've said is wrong, even though it wouldn't be.
Casey:
So let me just cut to the chase and ask John, how do you drive a stick?
John:
You can chime in on these bullet points.
John:
I feel like we can all chime in on them.
John:
We've all driven stick.
John:
I mean, this wasn't directly from her thing.
John:
I just like listed a bunch of because she was just, you know, asking in general.
John:
But this is my list of like things that people talk about about driving stick.
John:
And maybe I left stuff off.
John:
But just chime in.
John:
Go ahead.
John:
Tell us what you think about all the bullet points.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So to start, how do you learn?
Casey:
There are
Casey:
Very, very different ideas about how to do it.
Casey:
And I've only taught a couple of people, to be honest with you.
Casey:
But what I like is starting out without using the gas at all.
Casey:
So you're stopped dead.
Casey:
You're using your left foot, of course.
Casey:
You slide.
Casey:
Slowly come off the clutch until you see and or feel and or hear the engine start to bog a little bit because the clutch is starting to pick up.
Casey:
And then you push the pedal all the way back down.
Casey:
Do that again to feel where it is the clutch is starting to grab.
Casey:
And you do that a whole bunch of times, just not even intending to move.
Casey:
You know, hopefully you're on a flat surface and you're just kind of staying still and you're getting a feel for where the clutch is really grabbing.
Casey:
Then you do the same thing extremely slowly, but eventually let yourself get to a roll.
Casey:
So you're eventually all the way off the clutch.
Casey:
And then you stop and you do that again.
Casey:
And you do it super slowly, a whole crap load of times.
Casey:
And then once you get a feel for how that works, just make it faster.
Casey:
Simple, right?
Casey:
That's all you got to do.
Casey:
Um, and that's, that's how I like, uh, just do it, just learning how to get going.
Casey:
Um, the other, well, it used to be pro tip, but not as much anymore, uh, because of electronic parking brakes.
Casey:
But the other thing you can do is if you're ever on a hill and need to take off, particularly if you're in a front wheel drive car, which most are, then you can use your handbrake to hold you where you are while you're doing the whole dance with your feet and then release the handbrake with your hand.
Casey:
Once you start to creep forward, um,
Casey:
Um, that is a very neat trick that I didn't know for a long time.
Casey:
And I wish I'd known when I was first learning, but in terms of technique and advice, um, I am a big believer in, uh, John's first bullet here, which is downshifting and engine breaking.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
So what that means is as you're approaching, say, a stoplight, you would – and let's say you're in, I don't know, fourth gear because you're just around town.
Casey:
As you're approaching the stoplight and you see it's red, downshift into third and then come completely off the gas.
Casey:
And –
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
The compression of the engine will force the engine to try to slow down.
Casey:
And when you're off the clutch, that means if the engine's slowing down, your wheels are slowing down.
Casey:
And so I'll downshift once or twice or maybe even three times coming up to a stop sign or stop light.
Casey:
And that's, again, downshifting and engine braking.
Casey:
And I am in favor of this.
Casey:
Some people would argue that that's a poor choice because you'd rather wear your brakes than wear your engine.
Casey:
And I understand that.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I've always done it.
Casey:
John, before I move on to the next bullet, thoughts about that?
John:
You should do all the bullets because you've already gone through learning and downshifting.
John:
So I'm going to go ahead.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I'll carry on then.
Casey:
Common guidance, which I am terrible at.
Casey:
Do as I say, not as I do.
Casey:
Keep your hand off the shifter.
Casey:
It's bad for the lift linkage.
Casey:
It's bad for the transmission potentially.
Casey:
Just don't touch the shifter if you're not actively shifting.
Casey:
I often rest my hand on the shifter, which is not at all what you're supposed to do.
Casey:
But you should keep your hand off of it.
Casey:
So if you want to make things smoother, and this is kind of like moving from novice to amateur level, if you want to make things smoother on a downshift, then you can do what's called rev matching.
Casey:
So let's say you're cruising at, and I'm making this up, but let's say you're cruising at 40 miles an hour in fourth gear and you're at 2000 RPM.
Casey:
Well, you know, or you will learn over time, that if you were to downshift at 40 miles an hour from fourth to third, then that will bring you to about 3,000 RPM from 2,000 RPM.
Casey:
Well, what you can do in order to make things a little smoother is you would press the clutch, you would blip the throttle, do a little...
Casey:
with your right foot to get the RPMs of the engine up to about 3,000 RPM or wherever you think it'll land, and then you come off the clutch.
Casey:
And the reason you do that is because then the engine and the transmission are all in their appropriate relative speeds such that there's no, like, jerking backward and forward.
Casey:
The opposite of this is just popping the clutch, which means you are, you know, you're doing...
Casey:
what I say, 30, 40 miles an hour in fourth gear, you press in the clutch, you downshift to third, and you just come right off the clutch real fast.
Casey:
And then you'll feel that like of your whole body shifting as the engine and the transmission are coming back into an even relative speed.
Casey:
So I, again, strongly encourage rev matching.
Casey:
It will make your downshifts particularly considerably smoother.
Casey:
Then if you want to go from novice or you've gone from amateur to novice.
Casey:
Now, if you want to go from novice to expert level, you can do what's called heel towing, which is something I also do, which is kind of difficult, although I do it in the wrong way.
Casey:
So the way you're supposed to heel toe is you're supposed to put the toes of your right foot on the brake, which is the middle pedal, and you're supposed to twist your foot such that the right heel can press the gas pedal.
Casey:
So the idea is.
John:
What makes you think that's the way you're supposed to do it?
Casey:
Because it's called heel toe.
John:
I think you, I mean, I understand that it can be done both ways, but I think the way you describe, I would say the way you described is the wrong way.
Casey:
Well, in this and the way I described is not the way I do it.
Casey:
And I'll describe how I do it in just a moment.
Casey:
But like if you ever see like racing drivers doing what I would call a heel toe downshift, I almost always see them done with a twist of the foot such that instead of your foot, you know, instead of your toes being at midnight and your heel being at six, your toes are at like 10 and your heel is at like four.
Casey:
And again, that's not the way I do it, but that's the quote unquote standard way of doing it.
John:
I think that's the opposite of what you just described.
John:
Basically, I'm saying heel on the brake, toe on the gas, but you were saying toe on the brake, heel on the gas?
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I always thought I saw it was that you're twisting your foot counterclockwise.
John:
Whenever I see videos of people's feet, I always see heel on the brake, toe on the gas, and that's the way I think of it.
John:
Obviously, both of them will work.
John:
Anyway, continue to do the description.
John:
Why are we touching the gas and the brake at the same time?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So the theory is, especially if you're driving with a quickness, it doesn't have to be that way, but often if you're driving with a quickness, you're coming up into a turn very quickly.
Casey:
You're going to brake as you're entering the turn, and then on the way out of the turn, you're going to want to stand on that gas as much as you can.
Casey:
But because you've lost all that speed in the turn, you're now in the wrong gear.
Casey:
So the idea is you will start your braking and then press your foot on the clutch to come down a gear.
Casey:
And then as you're braking and your foot is on the clutch, you're already on top of two pedals, you would like to do that blip of the throttle to do the rev matching that we were just talking about at the same time.
Casey:
So you now have three pedals you need to interact with and only two feet to do it unless you're extremely gifted.
Casey:
And so what you would do is you would...
Casey:
Blip the throttle with potentially your heel, potentially your toe.
Casey:
Or what I actually do, and I've done in every car I've ever owned, is I keep my foot vertically oriented.
Casey:
My toes are at midnight.
Casey:
My heel is at 6 p.m.
Casey:
or whatever.
Casey:
But I will roll my foot.
Casey:
So I'm rolling as though – I don't know how to – it's so hard to paint a word picture here.
Casey:
But I'm rolling the right edge of my foot such that it's hitting the gas.
Marco:
This is terrible podcasting.
Casey:
It is terrible podcasting.
Marco:
I'm so happy this is the after show.
Casey:
So you roll your foot such that you can press the gas with the right side of your foot and the brake with the left side of your foot.
Casey:
Now, someone in the chat is saying, oh, this is racing technique and not safe driving.
Casey:
I disagree, actually.
Casey:
I think it is safer to not disrupt the balance of the car.
Casey:
So this is more necessary in racing.
Casey:
But I still think if you're coming through a turn and you need to downshift, the last thing you want to do is disrupt the balance of the car.
Casey:
And if you're popping the clutch or doing a whole bunch of things in serial rather than parallel, that can disrupt the balance of the car.
Casey:
So that's what I would call heel-toe shift.
Casey:
And John, I'm genuinely curious to hear how you perform such a maneuver because, again, for me, it's a roll with the left side of the foot on the brake, right side of the foot on the gas.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I drove manual for probably 10 years.
Marco:
i never did any of this stuff except downshifting sometimes this doesn't surprise me and it was fine i like i never lost a clutch i never blew out an engine like it's fine like you you don't need to do almost any of this the electric car owner speaks yeah exactly thank you john uh but hey alex asked what what do we recommend well this is what we recommend this is the crash course in the
John:
This is what Casey recommends so far.
Marco:
Alex asked about, quote, general stick shift driving techniques and advice.
Marco:
This is none of that.
John:
Casey added his own bullet point for learning, but everything else, I think, is one more bullet point, Casey, the last one.
Casey:
I'm trying.
Casey:
I'm trying.
Casey:
I'm trying.
Casey:
And then finally, double clutching.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I'm a little weaker on this.
Casey:
This is not something I ever do.
Casey:
But the idea is, typically, with a car with synchros, which is basically every modern car, you would just, let's say you're going from second to third.
Casey:
You press on the clutch, you move the shifter, you come off the clutch.
Casey:
Well, it used to be, and it still is in certain circumstances, like 18-wheelers, for example, that
Casey:
In order to get the transmission and the engine spinning at reasonable rates, you would need to kind of modulate that yourself.
Casey:
So instead, what you would do is you would push the clutch in, get the gear shift in neutral, come off the clutch, push the clutch in again and...
Casey:
Then put the gear shift in third and then come off the clutch.
Casey:
And that's double clutching.
Casey:
And maybe John has a legitimate reason why you would do this in a modern car.
Casey:
I never, ever, ever do this.
Casey:
And that is all the bullets that John put in.
Casey:
And off the top of my head, that's actually all the things that I – oh, actually one other thing.
Casey:
If you live in a snowy climate or if you're in a situation where maybe you're on a slick road or something like that, it is possible to start from a dead stop in gears other than first gear.
John:
Spoken as someone who didn't learn stick on a car with 75 horsepower.
Yeah.
John:
There is that.
John:
I assure you, my Volvo wagon could not start in any conditions in second gear.
John:
Oh, come on.
John:
It had four gears plus an overdrive button, and second gear was not going to send you anywhere.
Marco:
One of my happiest moments with my Maxima was when I was starting from a stop going uphill, a pretty steep stop, and the Maxima did not have hill hold.
Marco:
It was too old for that.
Marco:
It was a 1996 Maxima, so long before that was a common thing.
Marco:
And so I got it from first.
Marco:
I got it from a stop.
Marco:
I thought I was in first.
Marco:
And I was uphill and I just slowly crept up.
Marco:
Man, that was harder than I thought.
Marco:
And then I realized I was in third.
Marco:
And I just started in third uphill and it didn't stall.
Marco:
It made it.
Marco:
It didn't have a lot of extra power, but it did make it.
John:
It had more than a giant Volvo wagon that probably weighed a million tons with a 75 horsepower engine in it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
All I'm saying is if you're in a modern car and you're in like snow or something like that, it is potentially advantageous to start in second or potentially even third because you're putting less torque against the wheels that are driving the car and that would make it less likely to do like a burnout or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
Oh, burnout.
Casey:
If you're in a front or wheel drive car and not an all wheel drive car, give the car way too many revs, you know, three, four, 5,000 RPM as you're sitting still and then just pop the clutch.
Casey:
And that's basically all you need to do.
Casey:
Although in a modern car, you're probably going to need to turn off traction control and all that jazz, but you can do it.
Casey:
That is the list, I think.
Casey:
Let me try to add as you're talking, John, the things I just came up with.
Casey:
But where did I go wrong?
Casey:
What did I forget?
John:
I'm not going to go into learning because we have a separate thing for that.
John:
Maybe I'll talk about that.
John:
I am, of this podcast, the only person who has successfully taught another human how to drive stick, as far as I know.
Casey:
That's not true.
John:
I taught David Karp how to drive stick.
John:
A child's human.
Casey:
My own child's human.
Casey:
Okay, fair enough.
John:
He was only 19 at the time.
John:
Does that count?
John:
Anyway, I'll talk about that some other time.
John:
It's a whole different thing.
John:
Downshifting versus engine braking.
John:
The trade-off, Casey mostly got all the points I want to make, but the trade-off is...
John:
is not i would say it's not between like uh wearing your brakes versus wearing the engine it's wearing your brakes versus wearing your clutch right so when you when you engine brake you're not letting the clutch shift but it is more stress on the clutch in a situation when you wouldn't be doing it at all you're downshifting engaging a lower gear and if you're not doing rev matching all of a sudden
John:
The, you know, the engine, the transmission is going faster than the engine and the transmission is connected to the engine.
John:
All of a sudden it speeds the engine up.
John:
And yes, that is where on the engine, but it's also where on the clutch because you've just touched a clutch to a transmission.
John:
You've, you know, you've made, you've mated those surfaces and they were turning at different speeds.
John:
If again, if you didn't do rev matching, right.
John:
Uh,
John:
if you don't engine brake at all you will wear your brakes down way faster right and you say well brakes actually are more expensive than a clutch if you look at how much it costs to replace four brake pads that's more expensive than one clutch if you look at the parts cost unfortunately the clutch is inside your car in a place that is hard to get to and so changing your clutch tends to be way more expensive than changing your pads um
John:
All that said, I mean, I feel like that's the trade-off you're doing.
John:
I think it is essentially unsafe not to do any engine braking in a stick shift car.
John:
I mean, maybe it's because I'm using cheap cars, but the brakes alone without using any form of engine braking will make you feel like your car is worse braking because it does.
John:
Any car with a non-manual transmission uses some form of engine braking to help slow the car down.
John:
Like they, you know, an automatic transmission does not shift into neutral as soon as you try to come to a stop from 60 miles an hour.
John:
Like try that in a stick shift car in a safe way, go 60, hold down the clutch and try to brake and then do the same thing with downshifting.
John:
It's night and day.
John:
So you have to downshift and use engine braking.
John:
That has to be part of your driving.
John:
You don't have to do it horrendously.
John:
You can do some braking with less engine braking.
John:
You can downshift less aggressively.
John:
But I feel like you have to know how to downshift and engine brake.
John:
Even if you just do it as like a matter of, I find myself doing it as a routine, like a stopping from 30.
John:
I will go through all the gears back down to one.
John:
Sometimes I, you know, while I'm doing that, I'm barely engaging the gears in between just because it's a casual stop.
John:
It's just a good habit to get into.
John:
And my history has shown, like I sold my 1992 Accord just as the clutch was going.
John:
And that was an over a 10 year old car.
John:
Like eventually all clutches wear out, whether you do engine braking or not, but it's not like you're going to wear through your clutch in the first year or whatever.
John:
It'll be fine.
John:
Please learn how to downshift and do engine braking.
John:
Keeping your hand in the shifter?
John:
No, don't do that.
John:
I think most of the stories about how bad it is are sort of like, you know, tales that we tell each other, legends, urban legends about, oh, it's going to mess up your linkage and you're putting stress on that.
John:
I'm not even sure if that's true, but there's a more important reason.
John:
If your hand is on the shifter and you like sneeze and you knock it out of gear or do something like it, just don't have your hand on a control surface that you're not planning to control.
John:
You're just asking for you to screw something up.
John:
So don't rest your hand on the shifter.
John:
Isn't the steering wheel a control surface?
John:
Right, but you have to constantly steer, but you don't have to be constantly shifting.
John:
How much control of your hands are you losing?
John:
when you sneeze you could get startled or whatever like it's i mean obviously you have to be steering like you if you could avoid holding the steering wheel and you didn't have to steer then yeah you shouldn't hand shouldn't be that either but you have to steer but you don't have to constantly be shifting so why touch your hand to a thing that you could potentially screw up when there's no reason you need to be touching it
Marco:
Also, again, in my probably decade of driving stick, I don't think I ever accidentally knocked the car out of gear.
Marco:
That's kind of hard to do.
John:
But do you rest your hand on the shifter the entire time you're driving?
John:
Of course.
John:
It looks cool.
John:
That's terrible.
Casey:
Don't do that.
Casey:
Don't be one of those people.
John:
I was totally one of those people, and it was fine.
Casey:
I am one of those people, but I know I shouldn't be.
John:
I mean, yeah.
John:
Maybe in some kinds of cars or some older cars or some newer cars, it actually is bad to rest on the linkage.
John:
I just don't know if that's specifically true.
John:
I feel like the safety thing is more compelling.
John:
But in general, it's not...
John:
I'm not going to say sanitary.
John:
It's not like proper technique.
John:
It's like piloting a plane and leaving your hand resting on a landing gear switch.
John:
It's like, oh, I've never accidentally turned it on.
John:
Just get your hand off of it.
John:
Do you need to use landing gear now?
John:
Then just don't have your hand on the switch.
John:
Oh, I've never accidentally turned it on.
John:
Just don't do it.
John:
Rev matching?
John:
if i had fancier cars i would probably be more into it but my cars tend to be have so little power uh that this is not that big an issue that said it's kind of hard not to rev match once you get the hang of stick because you know again that you're about to to to shift and you know the engine is not going fast enough for the gear you're about to engage like you're about to you're about to pass right you downshift or at least i do in my wimpy cars i have to
John:
Downshift to pass anybody.
John:
That's always going to happen, right?
John:
And when I downshift, I know that the engine needs to be going way faster in this gear than it's currently going.
John:
You're going to get a head start on that.
John:
You're going to say, well, engine, get ready.
John:
Because if you don't do it and you just downshift, you have to, especially in my wimpy cars, you have to baby the clutch engagement so you don't suddenly lurch because...
John:
you know it's it's that the delta is big and the like there's not a lot there's not enough torque and power to just sort of overcome that easily so you have to baby the engagement and if you don't baby the engagement then it's lurchy and it's like why don't i just cut to the chase and get the engine up to the speed that i know round about the speed and the question is how do i know what speed needs to be you just know it needs to be faster than it is right the bad part about this is depending on the the size and weight of the flywheel in your car
John:
So blipping the throttle like this is something when I was looking at cool.
John:
Was it the T50?
John:
What the hell is the name of that car from the guy who made the McLaren?
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I know what you're thinking of.
John:
It either has like no flywheel or such a lightweight flywheel that it would literally be impossible for a human to blip the throttle because you'd blip it and then it would go up briefly.
John:
And then go right back down before you could even engage the gear, right?
John:
So it all depends on you having a flywheel in your car that says, okay, when I blip the throttle, I can then go back to changing the gear and get it into gear before the engine reverts to its previous speed.
John:
And in this super fancy $2 million supercar with no flywheel, you can't do that.
John:
And in modern cars, they do the rev matching for you a lot of times.
John:
I have never actually driven a car with its own rev matching.
John:
But certainly the engine computer can do it better than you ever will, because A, it knows the actual speed it needs to be, and B, it can do that while your feet are doing other things.
Casey:
Yeah, I've driven one.
Casey:
My dad's Corvette has optional automatic rev matching.
Casey:
I think it's on by default, but it's fairly easy to turn off.
Casey:
In fact, yeah, his car, which is a seven-speed stick, has paddles behind the wheel as though it's— Yeah, I was just going to say, you know why they do that?
John:
You know why it has paddles there?
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, it's for the rev matching.
Casey:
No, no, no, no.
John:
Those paddles are the paddles that you use to shift the car if you don't get it with the stick.
John:
Sure.
John:
And GM being the cheap car company, they didn't want to make a separate steering wheel without the paddles, so they just want to have the same steering wheel.
John:
So they just take the paddles and they put them, and they just write rev match on them, and they connect the wires to a different function.
John:
But you literally have two gigantic pedals, the same exact pedals that you would get for shifting that Corvette if you didn't have a stick, and they just put a white rev match at the top of each one, which is...
Casey:
I don't think it said rev match at the top, but otherwise I think we're saying the same thing.
John:
The ZR1, Doug, that video I had about the ZR1, I was laughing at that part.
John:
Like, why the hell does this car have these giant paddles?
John:
Like, oh, so it can be the same steering wheel.
John:
So they don't have to have a second part.
John:
Yeah, they turned this bug into a feature.
Casey:
Anyway, but his car does do it.
Casey:
And it was more accurate than when I did it.
Casey:
But I think that's, for me, that's part of the fun is trying to get a good rev match downshift.
Casey:
And so I quickly disabled it.
Casey:
Although if I was like taking it to the track or something like that, I would probably leave it enabled.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Heel-toe, I am terrible at.
John:
I don't know if it's because I have big, goofy feet.
John:
I don't know if it's because my little Hondas don't have pedals spacing or positioning that is amenable to it, but I am so bad at it that I've never been successful enough at it to find it to be enjoyable or useful.
John:
With the things I already described, it's just like...
John:
human rev matching and careful clutch engagement you and the fact that i'm not really going that fast in an accord like i'm not unsettling the chassis through corners casey i feel i i kind of relate to the people who are saying this is kind of more of a racing thing like if you're worried about the chassis becoming unsettled in corners slow down
John:
like yeah it's a cool thing to play with or whatever and maybe if i had a sports car again if i had a car with more power or a car that even had the notion that you might attempt this i assure you that no none of the hondas that i've ever owned had a notion that people can try to heel toe i don't know i find it very difficult to do and i'm not good enough at it to ever do it so i would set that aside to
John:
Double clutching, I only put on here because I used to know a lot of people back when I was a teen who would swear by driving their car with synchros and double clutching.
John:
They said, yeah, you don't need to do it because it's synchros.
John:
And by the way, the synchros are the thing that makes sure that when you engage the gear that the actual gears that are going to engage with each other are turning at the correct speed so you don't take a tooth gear turning faster than another tooth gear and try to mesh them, right?
John:
Double clutching in the big trucks, I don't actually know how they work behind the scenes, but it's basically like...
John:
Like Casey said, you take it out of the gear and put it into neutral, and then you have to bring the engine up to speed so that when you engage the gear, the two gears that you're going to engage are moving at the right speed.
John:
I think you're actually also responsible for modulating the throttle to get the engine up to speed, and then you engage.
John:
And if you don't match the speeds and you try to engage them, you're essentially taking two big metal gears moving at different speeds and trying to mesh them, and you get terrible noises and you destroy stuff, right?
John:
but for cars with synchros i i don't know if i just there's this crop of weirdos that i went to high school with like oh you should totally double clutch your car with synchro so i learned how to do it when i was learning stick and i did it for a little bit and as far as i can tell it's absolutely 100 pointless like it's worse it's slower it's not fun to do and there's no reason to do it so my advice is unless you're driving a semi which by the way they probably have automated transitions now anyway but like
John:
Unless you're driving a semi that requires it, double clutching is not a thing you need to know exists or learn how to do.
John:
Um, starting in second, third.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, this is where you have to know your car's power.
John:
Me have always been having weak cars starting in second for sure.
John:
And the snow is a thing you should do.
John:
Although I would still say that I had to start on a hill in second.
John:
Many of my cars didn't really have enough power to do that snow or no snow.
John:
Um, and burnouts, you'll just wear through your tires.
John:
Don't do that.
John:
It's all about getting the power to the road, but it's fun.
John:
Burnouts are fun.
Marco:
margo do you have anything to add tell us we should all buy drive electric cars i mean yeah i mean a electric cars do neatly solve many of these problems um but anyway if you're gonna drive stick like don't let this conversation turn you off of it this may sound like it's a crazy thing to do that's really hard and you have to do all these things to do it right and the fact is none of this is necessary you don't have to do any of this and you'll be fine so it's like i drove stick for you know all that time and and yeah never had to do almost any of this stuff
John:
that that's the that's the thing i think about stick shift driving mark of you saying you're you didn't know or care about this and you were fine in my experience when someone says i know how to drive shift a stick there is a wide range of experiences you would get by driving in the car with them like lots of people like wider than you would expect everyone like oh well you know you don't everyone knows how to drive and people are good drivers and bad drivers but
John:
The range of, like, the things I've seen people do in a car where they're ostensibly driving sticks sometimes boggle my mind.
John:
I don't know if it's because of a gap in learning or no particular standards or just people have bad habits, but boy, like...
John:
I don't know.
John:
You know, I'm not just saying like valets who like just have to know enough stick to park a car like people who own stick shift cars and you get in the car with them and you just like biting your tongue.
John:
It's like, what are you doing?
John:
And like you're jostling around and they don't know how to include the clutch and everything.
John:
I don't know why that is.
John:
Obviously, it's much less of an issue now because nobody has stick shift cars.
John:
And I feel like the longer this goes on and the rarer sticks become.
John:
the more this problem will solve itself because the only people who have them are hopefully people know how to do it.
John:
But, but I don't even know.
John:
But anyway, sorry, sorry to interrupt.
John:
Continue.
John:
I agree with you.
John:
You don't need to know all this weird stuff.
John:
You can be happy and just drive a stick and you'll be fine.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And like, like Marco said, I mean, this is expert level and extraordinarily fast data dump as to what John and I think about driving a stick, but really and truly you don't need 80% of this.
Casey:
And you probably won't hear 80% of this because Marco doesn't care about it and he'll cut it before it gets released.
Yeah.
John:
no i'm just keeping this in you will hear it from other people who drive stick though that's why i think it's important to cover all these points you'll find somebody who will look like a wise expert and will tell you that you should double clutch your car with synchros and just don't listen to that person like that's why i think it's worth knowing all this stuff mostly just so you know to dismiss it but i do think the engine braking one is that's the thing you have to know how to do if you don't i feel like your car is less safe because you you have way worse braking power way longer braking distances and it's just not
John:
It's not a good habit.
John:
Do not stop your car from 80 on the highway down to zero with the clutch depressed the whole time.
John:
That's bad for your brakes.
John:
It's bad for your life.
John:
Learn how to engine brake.
Marco:
Yeah, that's actually, that's the one thing that like when I was a newbie stick driver, like for my first few years driving stick, I didn't do that.
Marco:
And then I eventually developed that skill.
Marco:
And that was like a significant betterment of my stick driving abilities.
Casey:
I actually don't think it makes any difference in terms of the ability for the brakes to stop the car.
Casey:
I don't think the brake boost is, in most cars anyway, driven by engine RPM.
Casey:
Or if it is, it's a very small difference.
John:
It's not the brake boost.
John:
It's just that the engine... When you connect a fast-moving transmission to a slow-moving engine, some energy has to be spent to speed that engine up.
John:
That's energy coming out of your speed, of the vehicle.
John:
The kinetic energy is being used...
John:
The kinetic energy, as translated through the wheels, through the axle, into the transmission, is being expended, spinning the engine up from 1,000 RPM or whatever it dropped to, up to 2,000.
John:
And then you do it over again because you shift to a lower gear, the engine goes down to 1,000.
Marco:
Well, not only that, but the engine vacuum is doing way more than just spinning up the engine every time you shift.
John:
Yeah, I mean, I'm saying like spinning the engine because it's moving slowly.
John:
There's lots of things that make it hard to spin the engine up.
John:
Like, you know, you're not giving it gas to spin the engine up.
John:
The entire amount of energy is coming from the speed of the car.
John:
So you are bleeding off speed by using it to constantly spin the engine up from a lower RPM, right, to a higher one and then repeating that process.
John:
Right.
John:
And then the second thing is, even if the brakes have the ability to stop in the same distance,
John:
there you know you're going to produce more heat in those brakes if you have wimpy brakes lots of small cars have very very wimpy brakes and if you're stopping from a high speed they're not good at you know they get they get hot they get worse there's brake fade right especially if you're not in a sports car that's used to that type of thing yeah that's the big brakes to do if you ask the brakes to do the whole job themselves you're asking a lot of your brakes again especially if you drive a dinky economy car that has
Marco:
tiny tiny brakes maybe drum brakes in the back in the back and try tiny little you know discs with you know wimpy calipers in the front yeah it also it becomes more reasonable or more more extreme if you think about like suppose you're driving down a mountain and so you're going downhill for like 15 minutes straight like you're you're if you're riding only the brakes that whole time they're gonna overheat yeah you're gonna have overheating problems and that's that's no good
John:
They catch fire just like in Ford versus Ferrari, right?
Casey:
Yeah, there you go.
Casey:
And finally, with regard to engine braking, what if you're slowing down but then suddenly there's some sort of hazard that you need to speed around?
Casey:
So you want to be in the most appropriate gear for the current speed in the car because if you're caught unawares and you're in neutral or something and then you suddenly need to use the accelerator to swerve around a child or a dog or something –
Casey:
that's not a good place to be.
Casey:
You want to be in gear already.
Casey:
So all you have to do is slide your foot off the brake and onto the gas to get power as opposed to being in neutral or in way too high a gear such that you're either going to bog when you try to go or you're just not going to have any forward motion at all.
Marco:
And if you're in the correct gear for whatever speed you're decelerating in, you will have shockingly instant torque response when you hit that accelerator.
John:
I'm not sure about the accelerating around a child scenario, but that's what I was getting at before about the sort of habit of downshifting.
John:
Just constantly being in the appropriate gear for your speed is just a good habit.
John:
Like, even...
John:
Like I said, even if you're just downshifting through the gears, even if you don't even engage the clutch between some of them, just constantly being in the right gear is getting you so that if you did need to use the gas for whatever reason, it's ready to go and you don't have this process.
John:
Because the process is not just getting into gear.
John:
The process is...
John:
decide what gear is appropriate for the current speed put the car into that gear and then you can go whereas if you just routinely go row up and down the gears in order based on your speed as just sort of like a habit that you just do without thinking about you will always be in the appropriate gear for the speed and ready to go again and that's you know again that's what an automatic transmission or an automated manual that's what they're doing for you right there and of course they can shift way faster than you can and all these other things but like that's that's your hint on engine braking
John:
Automatic transmissions do not put your car in neutral.
John:
They use the engine to help break the car.
John:
As you slow down, automatic transmissions will downshift to be ready to be in the appropriate gear.
Marco:
So will DCTs.
Marco:
You can't just put the DCT in neutral very easily and coast to a stop.
Marco:
It really fights you on that.
Marco:
It really wants you to go down through the gears as you slow down.