Tiny Toastie
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So, moments before recording, the following appears in the show document.
Casey:
Pre-show.
Casey:
The newest member of Marco's family.
Casey:
I don't know if this is a very unexpected pregnancy announcement, which I doubt, or if this is something like you found Rivian to replace the FJ, or maybe Hopps really needed a buddy after 10 years or however old he is.
John:
Or he got a new USB charger.
John:
Like, really, the family is a very large, wide-encompassing term.
John:
Very bold.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So is this a new jumpstart thing for your perpetually broken FJ or is this something else entirely?
Marco:
I actually have a new jumpstart thing for my perpetually broken FJ.
Marco:
Is it part of the family?
Marco:
No, I wouldn't say that.
Marco:
Not yet.
Marco:
It needs to earn its spot.
Marco:
Yeah, not yet.
Casey:
It needs to earn its keep.
Marco:
I will say that the Arment family has been expanded by... Another XDR?
Marco:
Another toaster oven.
John:
Oh, this is not where I expected you to go.
John:
How many toaster ovens does one family need?
Marco:
Well, one.
Marco:
Well, okay.
Marco:
So, for a while, we have had... What the hell is it called?
Marco:
Is it the Dash?
Marco:
What's the... It's the tiniest toaster oven you've ever seen.
Marco:
dash mini toast driving in aqua at nordstrom here's the link created barrel 25 bucks looks like a piece of garbage yes it is um so it is it is a very nice piece of garbage so does that even fit a single slice of bread this looks minuscule it fits one piece of bread oh my god too big of a piece of bread yes or nine kid chicken nuggets which is it's most common use
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So this was your only toaster oven until recently, I take it?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Where we keep appliances in this house is a pretty small area.
Marco:
It's like this countertop in a little pantry off the side of the kitchen.
Marco:
Now, we could keep appliances in other places, but then they would be like out in the middle of the room, basically.
John:
And we don't want to... You're spitting in the face of people like me who have no counter space.
John:
I just want you to know that.
Marco:
that's fair um so we have kind of you can choose how to use it for big i know it's you're just like we have it but we're not going to use it right yeah this is this is this is hurting me a little too john if it makes you feel better but carry on marco right so anyway we want things to look nice and so we don't want to have our countertops like in the most visible part of the room covered in appliances i wouldn't want this thing on my counter either actually so anyway that's fair you know i'm a huge fan of toaster ovens um which isn't i mean come on
Marco:
Yeah, and I don't usually toast that many pieces of bread per se.
Marco:
Tiff does.
Marco:
She makes Adam toast every morning almost, but we don't usually toast a lot of bread, but we do heat a lot of things up in toaster ovens.
Marco:
So I wanted to have one.
Marco:
So in the spousal negotiation process of trying to get a toaster oven in this house, we came upon this kind of joke.
Marco:
So Tiff got me this as a joke gift, this dash mini toaster oven.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
She got me this about a year ago.
Marco:
I forgot whether it was for Christmas or some other creation.
Marco:
But she got me this as a joke gift.
Marco:
And it actually is really nice if you have extremely small needs.
Marco:
So, you know, we have an oven as part of our stove.
Marco:
But obviously, you know, the larger the airspace you're heating up, the longer it takes.
Marco:
And so this thing, by being so incredibly tiny, we call it tiny toasty.
Marco:
And it heats up incredibly fast.
Marco:
So when you are heating things like chicken nuggets for a kid dinner or something like that, it actually is really nice because it is so damn fast to heat up.
Marco:
The downside is that it fits basically nothing.
Marco:
And it's so small that certain items can't fit into it at all.
Marco:
Like if you wanted to reheat a slice of pizza or something, that doesn't even fit.
Marco:
So forget it.
Casey:
That's the whole purpose of a toaster oven, for goodness sakes.
Casey:
Right.
Marco:
so but we've been getting and and tiff uses a slot toaster in the morning to make adam's stuff so like we've been getting by with just a slot toaster and this both of which were you know cheap kind of garbagey things that were purchased more mostly for aesthetics you know not quite for their functionality you know they're both this kind of like you know minty teal aqua color um so anyway so we've had those things for you know a year or two whatever and
Marco:
And I kept thinking, you know, I really would love a toaster oven that was a little bit bigger.
Marco:
Now, if you look at the market of toaster ovens, including the Syracuse approved models, there really are not many that are both small and good.
Marco:
There are almost none.
Marco:
and what small means is actually a pretty narrow range because okay so at the higher end you have these toaster ovens that are trying to be everything they're trying to be a quote air fryer which look everyone air fires are great but they're just convection ovens that's what they are convection ovens are great this is just a new marketing term for small convection ovens so it's great but we don't we didn't really need a new word for it but hey okay whatever i'll leave that aside
Marco:
okay so uh so all the new ones trying to be these you know they had these large convection fans and they they want to be able to fit a whole like frozen pizza or the they'll show a picture of people putting like two whole chickens next to each other in a toaster oven okay at that point we'd be fine to just use the oven the regular oven
Marco:
We don't need a toaster oven that can fit an entire animal in it.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
We have an oven if we need to do that.
Marco:
So the toaster oven is supposed to be smaller than the oven by a good margin so that it can be faster, more convenient, and countertop, etc.
Marco:
So, okay.
Marco:
So we have this small space.
Marco:
So we wanted something that was bigger than tiny toasty that could fit at least two slices of bread.
Marco:
But we also didn't need it to fit eight slices of bread.
Marco:
Like we don't need it to fit an entire, you know, everything.
Marco:
So, okay.
Marco:
We wanted a new toaster oven, but it had to be small-ish.
Marco:
Not super, not this, but, you know, small and compact and good looking.
Marco:
And ideally, here's the other thing.
Marco:
Nothing we have in this kitchen or in this house really is like silver stainless steel.
Marco:
Every single appliance that everybody makes is silver stainless steel front.
Marco:
Everything for like everything for like the last 20 years.
Marco:
It's it's just all stainless steel or fake stainless steel.
Marco:
It's all gray and silver.
John:
with the one of the reasons why we have the microwave that we do is that it was one of the only ones that i could find in white because white looks best in the in the place that we're putting these things so it's like all right oh would you say white just happened to you then so what do you have against stainless i mean the stainless is obviously a fad but it is all it also has the benefit of mostly being neutral so it goes in lots of different kitchens whereas if you make it in colors you got to make it in 50 different colors and it might not go in everybody's kitchen like obviously i know why you're looking for something that's
John:
Not silver, but like if white is okay, why is, you know, it's kind of the same blah goes with everything neutral, right?
Marco:
It only goes with everything because everything in most houses is stainless or has stainless accents or has at least brushed silver accents.
Marco:
So things like, you know, cabinet handles and drawer pulls and towel rods.
Marco:
In most houses these days that were built anytime recently, those are all some kind of silver or gray.
John:
and so it it fits in only because everything is that color here we don't have any of that color and so everything is like white or gold or you know something so or you know teal or blue whatever so it's neutral like it doesn't clash if you have gold uh draw pulls the stainless steel doesn't clash with that really it's neutral but it's not it doesn't match with anything we have no it definitely doesn't match unless again unless you have all stainless steel and by the way i i had recently was forced to get a dishwasher uh see upcoming rectif's
John:
And I couldn't get white.
John:
I wanted to get white.
John:
Every dishwasher I've ever owned has been white.
John:
But COVID supply chain, they're like, yeah, no, we don't have white.
John:
Your choices are stainless and stainless.
John:
So guess what?
John:
I have a stainless dishwasher now.
John:
Yeah, everyone does.
John:
Yep.
Marco:
Yeah, it's hard to buy anything that's not, as you just found out.
John:
I'm just so glad I got my fridge before COVID because I would not, like our fridge is white.
John:
Our fridges have always been white, but I would not want a stainless fridge.
Marco:
So, I decided to purchase.
Marco:
I did some research.
Marco:
I measured things.
Marco:
I took, like, boxes of graham crackers and boxes of, like, tea bags and, like, stacked them up into the shape and measurements of different models I was looking at so I could put it on the counter and see, like, exactly, like, what kind of toaster oven would fit, how much counter space would it take up.
Marco:
Because we also, like, the counter that these are placed on, this is also used as an active working area in Merlin's parlance.
Marco:
This is also sometimes a food prep area or a staging area for food that is going in and out of the microwave or something like that.
Marco:
So smallness, again, smallness was greatly preferred.
Marco:
I came up with pretty much the only one I could find that was small, white, although it's kind of white-ish.
Marco:
It's a little bit off-white, but it's pretty white.
Marco:
So small, white, and toaster oven, and reasonably decent.
Marco:
Wait, is this going to be on your counter?
John:
Is that why you're worried about the appearance so much?
John:
It's in the pantry area, but we care about how things look back there, too.
John:
But the pantry area is hidden.
John:
The whole benefit of not having it out is that you can get it in your toaster.
John:
It doesn't match everything.
John:
Who cares?
John:
It's off in another room.
John:
We see it.
John:
All right.
John:
I feel like this is going to be inferior to what you know will be my recommendation, which is the 450.
Marco:
john through this was not my goal however i got the toaster oven that i think is the choice that will maximally piss you off oh no oh no is it shaped like an animal does it have a griddle on top for making sausage i was gonna say what was that red one with that was oh gosh what is this thing the multi-function breakfast choppy that's what do you that's what marco got here i'm pasting an image in the chat
Casey:
Oh my god, you got the Balmuda?
Marco:
I got the Balmuda toaster.
Marco:
This is the steam toaster oven.
Marco:
That's not as bad as the breakfast station thing.
Casey:
This is the one that we did on stage, right?
Marco:
Yeah, this is the one that Alex Cox and Cars Against Humanity brought up on stage when we did it.
Marco:
did our last live show mother of god as a joke you think this looks better than stainless i don't i think the off-white clash is way more than stainless wood it actually when you see it in person it it blends in a lot more like i think like the camera's white balancing is doing a little bit more of an aggressive job of showing the difference here in person it just looks white basically especially because it is on the other end of the counter right
John:
Do you recall the Photoshop gradient toast that came out of this thing when we did a review on stage?
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
John:
The picture of me holding it up.
John:
It's like a literal gradient from dark to like white.
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
Marco:
That's not what you want out of a toaster.
Marco:
I am familiar with all of the shortcomings of this toaster.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
I know from doing that live show.
Marco:
I know from watching YouTube videos and reading reviews.
Marco:
I am familiar with all the shortcomings of this toaster.
Marco:
and yet and and don't forget what i said a little while ago we don't actually eat toast that often but this was the smallest nice looking white toaster oven i could find and it's nice i'm gonna photoshop the breville the breville 450 in there and it will look so much better
Marco:
So the problem with almost all the Breville ones is that it's like one to two inches bigger in each dimension.
Marco:
So it's actually like substantially larger.
John:
I think it's close to the Belmuda.
Marco:
No, it's not.
Marco:
It's like two inches wider.
Marco:
It's about two inches deeper.
Marco:
It's similar height.
John:
Well, again, looking at the embarrassment of riches you have in terms of countertop space, even in your little pantry thing,
John:
You've got so much space.
John:
Who cares if it's an inch wider?
Marco:
So I have cleaned this up for installing the new hoster.
Marco:
When you install a new appliance, you pick up all the old ones, you clean under them and everything.
John:
You have so much room.
Marco:
But this is a working area.
Marco:
I need the room to put stuff.
John:
See, upcoming rec tips about active working areas.
John:
I understand what you're saying, but you have the extra inches there.
Marco:
so anyway word we got this thing and of course even though we don't usually eat a lot of toast i had to also order the fancy japanese milk bread to to put it and so we actually we had like the correct type of bread as far i mean it's hard but i what i could get mailed to me but you know the correct ish type of bread this japanese milk toast with um a name that i forgot but be into the nest well it's a good recipes for that on youtube if you want to try baking again
Marco:
Yeah, I thought about that, actually.
Marco:
But it was easier just to buy a pack to see if I liked it first before I bought the special pan and everything else.
Marco:
But anyway, yeah, we tried it out today.
Marco:
It all arrived today, tried it out, and it's actually really good.
Marco:
i can strongly recommend making crazy japanese steam toast it is so good now granted it tastes mostly like toast like it it is not like you know if if the best toast can be you know is a one to ten kind of scale it's not like a 20 it's more like you know a 13 or 14 like it's it's a really good toast it still tastes like toast but man is it good yeah
Marco:
And yeah.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
Strongly recommend.
Marco:
So now I have the toaster that I apologize so much to Mr. Syracuse.
Marco:
But my God, I am so happy with the ridiculous steam toast.
Marco:
And I will say it actually I never actually touched it when we had it on stage.
Marco:
Relative to other toaster ovens that I've seen, it's pretty nice.
Marco:
It's nicely designed.
Marco:
It's a nice appearance.
Marco:
The knobs, they don't feel like BMW knobs, but they feel pretty decent for a toaster oven.
Marco:
The interface is nice and simple.
Marco:
It has nice simple iconography.
Marco:
It's very subtle.
Marco:
It sounds good.
Marco:
The LEDs are yellow and not bright searing blue.
Marco:
It's just like a nice toaster.
Marco:
And so overall, I'm very happy with it so far after 12 hours.
Marco:
And, you know, we'll see how it goes after that.
John:
I think I remember one of my complaints from the show was that the rack inside there is made of such thin wire, you feel like you could crumple it up in your hand, which doesn't give a quality appearance.
John:
But, you know, anyway, if you're not going to get the toast that I recommend, I'm glad at least you got one that has a trick, like this whole steam thing.
John:
It has a trick that makes it unique, has a unique selling proposition, as they say.
John:
And you like the result of that.
John:
You like the toast that came out of it.
John:
So, you know, at least you didn't get another...
John:
This thing is basically like a larger version of the Tiny Toasty, which is just a bad toaster and has no extra features to it at all.
John:
Although, every time I look at this one, I'm so angry that they made the window so small.
John:
It's like, we're not welding inside there.
John:
Just let me see my toaster.
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
Oh, my gosh.
Casey:
This is not at all where I saw this conversation going.
Casey:
And I am surprised that, John, you're being so gentle.
Casey:
Maybe it's because...
Casey:
At least Marco and you and me all agree that the toaster oven is the one true method of toasting.
Casey:
But golly, I'm surprised.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anyways, I was not happy last week.
Casey:
So last week we had a couple of power spikes and then we had a power failure.
Casey:
Now, on the plus side, this all happened...
Casey:
Within days of me getting, I don't remember which one it is, but what did you think you recommended, Marco?
Casey:
A CyberPower?
Marco:
Yeah, the UPS.
Marco:
CyberPower AVR series, I believe, right?
Casey:
I think that's right.
Casey:
I'll try to remember to put something in the show notes.
Casey:
But one way or another, I had just gotten that, actually, because my whole power setup, really everywhere in the house, but particularly in my office, was a mess.
Casey:
Um, so now I've got that straightened out a little bit, but, uh, last Thursday, thankfully it was Thursday and not Wednesday.
Casey:
Uh, last Thursday we had a power spike and you know, like it flickered on and off a couple of times and it died for like an hour and I'm still not entirely sure why it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
Um, but there didn't seem to be any casualties from this.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
except my one and only set-top box for my Verizon Fios TV service.
Casey:
Yes, I still have traditional TV service.
Casey:
No, I'm not interested in getting into a debate about it.
Casey:
It's just the way we work.
Casey:
So we had this easily 10, possibly 15-year-old DVR.
Casey:
Like, truly, this thing was ancient.
Casey:
I don't remember exactly when we got it, but it was old.
Casey:
And it had been long in the tooth already, but apparently it really improperly died.
Casey:
And the behavior that we saw, it was just constantly rebooting itself over and over and over and over and over.
Casey:
So I get online with Verizon because the Verizon terrestrial service, I can't speak for the wireless stuff, but for Fios, surprisingly, in the last couple of years, you can do a lot with their automated systems.
Casey:
As an example, when the power did come back, my Fios internet wouldn't come back.
Casey:
And I got online, you know, tethered to my phone.
Casey:
And I said, hey, you know, my phone number doesn't have
Casey:
you know, file service right now.
Casey:
And the website just said, okay, we're going to reset your, presumably my ONT or whatever, but we're going to reset your service.
Casey:
And, you know, five minutes later, sure enough, it was back.
Casey:
I didn't talk to a human, not via chat, not via phone, nothing.
Casey:
So
Casey:
I get on the website and I'm saying, oh, my set-top box is broken.
Casey:
And one of the options it actually gave me was, you know, it's rebooting constantly.
Casey:
And it said, okay, we'll send you a replacement, you know, just like the one you've got.
Casey:
Which one is it?
Casey:
And the options, I forget if there was like no option for me to select the one in question or if that, or maybe it didn't look right to me one way or another.
Casey:
I was like, oh, it's none of those.
Casey:
And immediately, okay, time to talk to a person via chat.
Casey:
Fine.
Casey:
So I talked to a person via chat.
Casey:
They're very, very nice.
Casey:
And even though it took forever, presumably because they're talking to like 17 other people at once, they did agree to send me a new Fios box.
Casey:
after they insisted that they send a text message to my phone.
Casey:
Why did they send a text message to my phone, do you think, gentlemen?
John:
Hmm.
John:
To make sure you're who you say you are?
John:
Is there a two-factor?
Casey:
Well, that, okay, yes.
Casey:
Okay, I'm sorry, two text messages to my phone.
Casey:
One was to verify who I am, but the other one was more interesting.
Casey:
We've talked about this just a couple of months back.
Marco:
Did you have to record a video of the broken box?
Casey:
I am stunned, Marco Arment.
Casey:
Well done, sir.
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
You get a gold star for today.
Casey:
So they send me this link.
John:
In the future, you'll have to record all broken things on your phone.
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
What if your phone breaks?
Casey:
So they send me this link via text message to techsee.me, T-E-C-H-S-E-E dot me.
Casey:
And what it basically did was initiate a one-way video chat.
Casey:
So the person, the chat person could see my camera, but they couldn't see me like it was, you know, the camera on the back of the phone.
Casey:
So they couldn't see me, but they could see my camera.
Casey:
And they had me hold up the set-top box so they could see it.
Casey:
And I don't know why, but they, like, used a cursor, which I could see on my screen, on my phone.
Casey:
They used a cursor to, like, circle where the serial number was and, like, circle a couple other things.
Casey:
I'm not entirely clear why.
Casey:
And then when they were done, they wrote, with their cursor, they wrote O-K on the screen.
Casey:
And that was my hint that we were done here.
John:
I have to say, when you put this link in the show notes, I couldn't figure out why you did.
John:
I thought we had the wrong URL because I'm like, you have to replace your Fios box.
John:
I expected this to be a website with like a different ONT or a different cable box or something.
John:
But let me just tell you, if you haven't gone to the site, listener, you go to the site and the text on top says...
John:
Delight your customers with visual AI.
John:
Apply the power of computer vision and augmented reality to transform your customer experience and dramatically improve your business outcomes.
John:
That sort of business marketing speak there is basically their version of what Casey described.
John:
You're going to point your phone at something and they're going to write on it so you can see that they're circling...
John:
where the serial numbers and stuff.
John:
And I guess technically that's augmented reality, but I'm not sure it transformed the customer experience and dramatically improved business outcomes versus Casey just saying my box is broken and them saying the serial number is on the bottom.
Marco:
You have to figure, like, the hoops that these companies are making people jump through now for simple stuff like this, there must have been, and probably still is, such a massive amount of, like, fraud that consumers pull on companies to get free...
Marco:
boxes or free electronics or make like an extra 10 bucks somewhere like there you just got to figure like the number of scams and the amount of fraud that's out there must be massive way more than anybody thinks it's hard to tell like we always hear about that on the iphone like that there are way more scams than you think an apple has to deal with them and it's a headache but for like cable boxes or computer mice i do wonder
Casey:
And remember, they have billing information for me.
Casey:
And they made it very clear that if I don't send the existing box back within a month, they're basically going to repossess the house.
Casey:
So I agree with you.
Casey:
What are they trying to prevent?
John:
Well, in this case, I actually believe the marketing speak in this case.
John:
In this case, I think the problem is if you've ever worked tech support, you know that you would...
John:
you wish you could do something where you could just see what they're seeing or like show their screen or whatever.
John:
So I think this technology is like as ridiculous as it sounds, it beats trying to explain to someone on the phone where the hell the serial number is when you're not entirely sure that they're even touching the right box.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But consider that at the time in which I was picking up the or starting the video call, all I had been instructed to do was show them the box.
Casey:
Like I was never instructed to send a serial number.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
They jump right to this tech once they get accustomed to it.
John:
Right.
John:
I'm not essentially defending this use of yours.
John:
I feel like with you, conversation on the phone would have been better.
John:
But once this tech is available, it becomes the cure all.
John:
It's kind of like when I'm debugging anything with my parents.
John:
I just like step zero, share your screen.
John:
Like, I don't I don't wait to get to that point.
John:
We just jump right to there because it's just more efficient.
Casey:
But but that but I don't think the purpose of it was to see the serial number.
Casey:
I think the purpose was actually just to verify that the box was in my possession and didn't look like it had been drop kicked or something, which is the weirdest part.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Or yeah, just just sanity checking what you're saying, because when people say like, you know, I have done tech support in a professional context and you can't trust people with things that people say because you're not on the same page.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So anyway, I just thought it was funny, given that we had just talked about that a few months ago.
Casey:
And they eventually did dispatch a new box.
Casey:
It arrived.
Casey:
And very, very briefly, the new box arrives and it has to activate itself because reasons.
Casey:
And it tries to do that.
Casey:
And it's like, nope.
Casey:
And to try it again.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Can't connect.
Casey:
Then eventually I have a try another time.
Casey:
Meanwhile, my Eero, which is my in-home router, is saying, oh, hey, there's a new box that just pulled an IP address on your network.
Casey:
And it's such and such, such and such, which is clearly the cable box.
Casey:
And it was like, nope, can't activate.
Casey:
So I call Verizon.
Casey:
This time I actually call them.
Casey:
And I'm like, hey, my box won't activate.
Casey:
And they're like, okay, well, have you checked that your Verizon router's on?
Casey:
It's not a Verizon router.
Casey:
Oh, well, what are you doing?
Casey:
Well, I have an Eero and a couple of Mocha Bridges and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Marco:
This is when you get kicked up the chain, I think.
Casey:
Actually, no.
Casey:
So what ended up happening was there's a very, very kind guy who is clearly way out of his depth.
Casey:
And he seemed to be chatting either verbally or via, you know.
Casey:
keyboard with a co-worker who eventually stumbled on the right incantation to get the thing to like force an activation but it was funny to me because i mean this is not it's it's an odd setup with verizon files typically you have their router not always but typically you have their router and it's weird to not but it's not completely and utterly unusual like neither of you guys are using verizon routers right because marco you haven't you have a ubiquity setup and
John:
john you have era if i'm not mistaken right yeah and every time i got like the thing is as long as you know what you're doing with your stuff the the number of things they can do on their end mostly affect things that are not the router they'll help you debug their router but if you don't need their help debugging your router they can still do all the same things that they do on their end like resetting your ont or testing their connection from your end or doing all like that's all you need them to do and so really i mean you could even just lie and say oh yeah i've totally got the verizon router and if they say does it is the green light on just say yes the green light like
Marco:
You can do that if you wanted, but... What if they ask a more, like, you know, vague question, like, how many lights do you see on the front?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Seven?
Casey:
No, but anyway, so it all worked out fine in the end, but it just made me laugh real bad that I had to video chat with them in order to prove that I had the box that I inevitably have to send back anyway, because otherwise they repossess the house.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
Now, this actually means something to me personally because the Stack Overflow podcast, they say they've been doing it for more than a dozen years.
Marco:
That's true because more than a dozen years ago, I was listening to it.
Marco:
I listened to it whenever it would come out.
Marco:
I remember clearly listening on my video iPod on the way as I was walking in when I worked in the city.
Marco:
And I was listening to them talk about how they were building the site and the considerations they were having over time and everything.
Marco:
And it really was one of the very first podcasts I listened to.
Marco:
And I kind of never stopped after that.
Marco:
And I'm very happy with that.
Marco:
But this is a great show.
Marco:
And it really has evolved over time as Stack Overflow, of course, became the juggernaut that it became in our world of programmers here.
Marco:
The podcast grew and everything.
Marco:
And it really has really gone in great directions.
Marco:
From Rails to React, from Java to Node, they host important conversations and fascinating guests that will help you understand how technology is made and where it's headed.
Marco:
Hosted by Ben Popper, Ryan Donovan, Cassidy Williams, and Siora Ford, the Stack Overflow podcast is your home for all things code.
Marco:
So check out the Stack Overflow podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Marco:
Obviously, I'm biased, but...
Marco:
Wherever you get your podcasts, it's great.
Marco:
I strongly recommend if you like our show, you're probably going to like their show too.
Marco:
So once again, the Stack Overflow podcast available wherever you get your podcasts.
Marco:
Thanks to the Stack Overflow podcast for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Moving right along, we got a lot of feedback with regard to battery charging, and I think this originated as an Ask ATP thing.
Casey:
And a lot of people recommended Al Dente, which I have not tried myself, but we got lots of recommendations for it.
Casey:
I believe there's a free, or perhaps even open source, and a paid version, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
And somebody wrote, and I didn't put the quotation in here, so I don't know who to credit.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
But with Aldente installed, you can set a charging limit in a more healthy charging range and with more features like sailing mode, not sure what that means, or heat protection so you can keep your battery healthy even longer.
John:
I think it was a marketing copy from the website.
Casey:
Oh, is that what it was?
John:
Okay.
John:
It basically gives you way more options about when should the battery charge to full, what level should it stop.
John:
Like if you want to customize that and you don't want to use discipline and your own timing system to do it, there's software that will do it.
John:
And so Al Dente is recommended by many of the battery micromanagers who listen to it.
Yeah.
Casey:
Uh, that is accurate.
Casey:
Uh, so anyways, moving right along.
Casey:
Uh, we have some more feedback with regard to my email woes.
Casey:
Um, I haven't solved anything yet.
Casey:
I'm still kicking the can down the road, but the current theory is indeed to switch to fast mail, um, for reasons, but that's, that is the plan.
Casey:
However, there's a little bit of, there's some updates and, uh, something in the show notes, I presume John put in called the Gmail funnel solution.
Casey:
Tell me about this.
John:
A lot of people suggested it, and it's actually what I do, and it's worth mentioning, even though I don't think it solves any of Casey's problems.
John:
It may not solve all of your problems if you have the same sort of Google for my domains or whatever thing.
John:
But the solution lots of people suggested is do whatever you want to do to get your email address at whatever service you want to use.
John:
You have to have somewhere for the mail to go for you at your cool domain dot com, right?
John:
And for however many accounts you have.
John:
But then
John:
Behind the scenes, what you do is you make yourself a free Gmail account and you forward everything from all your other email accounts to the free Gmail account.
John:
And then you set up Gmail so it can send through the outgoing SMTP servers of those services so you can send as those people as well.
John:
So you get email to me at mycooldomain.com.
John:
And when you reply, it comes from me at MyCoolDomain.com, right?
John:
But people don't know that it went to the actual mail server for MyCoolDomain.com and then got forwarded to Gmail and then it was sent from Gmail through the outgoing MyCoolDomain.com servers.
John:
I do that for all my email accounts.
John:
My Gmail is my funnel.
John:
I have lots of different email accounts.
John:
you know lots of different custom domains all sorts of random crap they all funnel into gmail and i could send as them from gmail if i want to in practice i barely bother but if you just set up the rules to say like reply to who it was sent to you can set that up in gmail so when you reply it automatically will reply from whoever it was sent to sometimes it's a pain to set that up it can be tricky and it's changed over the years but gmail does have enough features for you to get that done in most cases and
John:
That would solve the problem if you're like, well, I want to use Gmail.
John:
I don't want to pay for mail storage.
John:
I want to have, you know, I like the interface.
John:
I like the search.
John:
I like having lots of room, but I don't want it to actually be the front door to my email.
John:
And then your other places where you have mail, if you get a full-fledged account somewhere else and don't just forward it, but instead keep a copy there and also forward it, then you can still use the Gmail interface, but have a backup copy of your mail at Fastmail or whatever.
John:
The problem it doesn't solve is if you have lots of different accounts and
John:
you need more storage than Gmail free offers or, you know, you don't want to use the Gmail interface or you don't like Gmail, then obviously things like FastMail are more straightforward.
John:
But so many people suggested this.
John:
I thought I should bring it up especially since it's what I actually do.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And speaking of storage, according to Ashish Gandhi,
Casey:
The discontinuation of the free custom domain affected me as well, but wanted to point out that for $6 a month, you'd get 30 gigabytes of storage and not 15 like free Gmail.
Casey:
So your 20 gig need would be fulfilled without paying for extra storage space at $2 a month, which I did not realize.
Casey:
I don't have any links to share about that, but it is worth noting.
Casey:
Additionally, so this is a very quick tangent.
Casey:
When I was a younger man and really wanted to watch a BBC television program about cars, I would hang out on a website in an IRC chat room called Final Gear in order to...
Casey:
See if any trucks drove by with episodes of Top Gear on it.
Casey:
And a friend of mine, Daniel Nelson, who I friended long after this was a thing in my life.
Casey:
Daniel is one of the main people that was at Final Gear.
Casey:
And so it's always a pleasure to hear from him.
Casey:
And Daniel wrote us.
Casey:
And he wrote...
Casey:
Please don't run your own mail server.
Casey:
If you do, you won't be able to run it directly on your Synology unless you have a, quote, relay host, quote, that has a non-residential IP, because all known residential IP ranges are included on all the block lists that email providers use.
Casey:
If you do decide that you want to go down that rabbit hole of running your own server, my favorite setup is from, and then I'll put a link in the show notes, and it explains things really well.
Casey:
But seriously, don't run your own mail server.
Casey:
It's caused me more headaches than anything except for maybe running IRC servers.
Marco:
uh trying to get your ip unblocked so people can receive your email again because someone at microsoft got a little too excited with their ip ranges is exactly as fun as it sounds so yeah uh no thank you yeah i can definitely see like you know because if you think about why would mail services block residential ip ranges well because if if your computer is hacked and like by some malware uh
Marco:
to relay spam through it then it's good it's that's going to mostly come from residential ip ranges and how many legit mail servers are coming from there almost none so it's like like oh god back i think i mentioned this on the show before but um at tumblr um david was very adamant that the signup process be like as smooth as possible that's why there was no confirm your password box
Marco:
and there was no email verification at first.
Marco:
I mean, I don't know if this changed after I left in 2010, but that was a long time ago.
Marco:
But anyway, sign-up was just three fields.
Marco:
It was like the blog name, email, password, that's it.
Marco:
And he was very adamant that it has to be super easy, super smooth, and go right in.
Marco:
And after a while of it being popular for a little while, we started getting spam at an amount that we had to actually act on it.
Marco:
And so we decided to put up a CAPTCHA on the registration form, but only for people who we thought were already spammers.
Marco:
So only if we had a high confidence that the person was a spammer anyway.
Marco:
So we weren't putting everyone through a CAPTCHA.
Marco:
Only likely spam candidates.
Marco:
And there were a number of ways that... So I devised a number of heuristics of, well, first of all, what are they entering as their blog name, email, and password?
Marco:
Certain patterns are being used by spammers.
Marco:
But the one, the one that was by far the most effective, the first class a, whatever it is of Russia.
Marco:
I just put all of Russia through the capture, anything coming from Russia.
Marco:
And that stopped something like 98% of the spam.
Casey:
Nice.
Marco:
And and the Russia, you know, and it sounds like, you know, to the good people of Russia who aren't spam bots, you know, there are some of you out there.
Marco:
You're certainly not the majority.
Marco:
Most of the people from Russia are not people.
Marco:
They're spam bots that we experience on the Internet.
Marco:
But.
Marco:
There are good people there.
Marco:
And I understand, like, maybe you might be offended by by the fact that I was putting your entire country through a capture as if you were a spammer.
Marco:
But the reality is that actually did stop most of it.
Marco:
And so I can see kind of the same thing going on with this email server thing of like, yeah, if you're running a mail server out of your house.
Marco:
There are some people who do that there.
Marco:
I'm sure there are good people out there who are trying that.
Marco:
But the vast majority of email coming from houses like as as the SMTP agent is going to be bots and is going to be, you know, people whose computers have been affected by malware.
Marco:
It's like, of course, every mail server is going to be like, nope, forget it.
Marco:
No way.
Casey:
That actually reminds me, by the way, very quickly, I was reminiscing about the open source software Zimbra, which was like some sort of kind of G Suite before G Suite existed sort of thing.
Casey:
And I had a handful of people reach out who are either recent or current Zimbra users who said, stay away, stay far, far away.
Casey:
Apparently, it has gone very downhill since I dabbled with it 10, 15 years ago.
Casey:
So I thought that was funny.
Casey:
Marco, you could have free email forever, or you have other options, apparently.
Marco:
So big thank you to Emmanuel Corvisier, who wrote in to tell me that FastMail, so I had said last episode that, you know, I've been using FastMail as my email host for something like, you know, 10 or 12 years, some absurdly long time, and I have posted referral links here and there, like on my blog or whatever else, and so I've built up over time like $2,600 in referral credit, and every time they bill me,
Marco:
It just deducts from that.
Marco:
But I'm building up credit faster than I'm spending it.
Marco:
And so I was joking like it's going to take me 100 years to actually go through all this.
Marco:
Well, anyway, Emanuel wrote in to say that Fastmail has like an FAQ entry that you can get paid out excess referral earnings above $100.
Marco:
So I opened a ticket.
Marco:
I'm like, hey, can I have like $2,500 of this as a payout?
Marco:
And they paid it out within like an hour.
Marco:
It was so fast.
Marco:
Holy cow.
Marco:
So legitimately, thank you to Emmanuel.
Marco:
You made me $2,500.
Marco:
And I'm very thankful for that.
Marco:
And that paid for some of the car stuff we'll talk about later.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Moving away from email.
Casey:
And my new toaster.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
It's all Emmanuel's fault, John.
Casey:
It's all Emmanuel's fault.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So moving away from email, we talked last week.
Casey:
Carlos Carpio Garcia wrote in with regards to universal control from Wi-Fi to cellular and back.
Casey:
And after hearing the show, Carlos had recorded a video, which we will link, wherein you can see this in action, which I thought was really cool and worth, I think the video is like two minutes or something like that.
Casey:
And it's worth a couple minutes of your time.
Casey:
And then unrelated to that, Carlos writes that apparently you can play Xbox Game Pass on the iPhone using HTML5, which I remember us talking about when that was promised, but I didn't remember it having launched.
Casey:
And according to Carlos, it works, quote, pretty well, quote.
John:
Yeah, that show was a long time ago, so people can be forgiven for not remembering.
John:
But it was when we were debating, like, when, you know, when Microsoft was trying to get their app on the App Store and Apple was rejecting them, saying you can't put a streaming game service on our App Store.
John:
And, you know, and so they're like, well, fine, we got to go to the web.
John:
But yeah.
John:
Yeah, you can't get the app on there, but you can try playing the games through the browser.
John:
Good luck.
John:
Works okay, I guess.
Marco:
Could this actually be a good way to get gaming on the Mac?
Marco:
I mean, I understand iOS has certain limitations and everything, but I know it still is going to be limited by what browsers can do, but browsers can do a lot these days.
Marco:
What if the solution to gaming always kind of being second rate on the Mac is this kind of thing?
John:
I mean, you could do this now, but it's not really setting the world on fire because it's not the best way to play in particular games that require sort of low latency, you know, quick reflex type stuff, which a lot of the most popular games tend to be like that.
John:
You could probably play, you know, Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering or something like that.
John:
But even then, I feel like it might take away from the experience.
John:
Like, I've done it.
John:
Every time one of these streaming things comes out, I try it.
John:
And it's not the browser that's holding it back, especially on the Mac where you've got a lot of horsepower behind it.
John:
So it's more of a latency problem.
John:
Yep.
John:
and you can like it like don't get me wrong it's viable and it's better than nothing if you have no other way to play a game how i've sometimes before i go to bed i remember there's a thing i need to do in destiny and i pick up my phone and i do the playstation 5 remote play thing i can wake up my playstation 5 from my bed with my phone turn it on launch destiny go do a thing and then put my playstation 5 back to sleep
John:
wow that is pretty slick and that's just me within my house um but it is not a great experience like even within my house like the thing is it's just you know it's over in the same wi-fi network the latency is not great and destiny has a lot of controls try doing using those controls in a confident manner on a phone screen not easy but uh it's uh good enough for me to go get the thing that i almost forgot to get from xur
Casey:
Totally.
Casey:
Don't you hate when that happens, Marco, when you forget the thing at Zur?
John:
That sounds like a parody.
John:
Old snake face.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Sometimes you get good stuff and I forget about it until I watch one last YouTube video before I go to bed.
John:
Oh, I should pick that up and I don't have to get out of bed to do it.
John:
That's the future that I was promised.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
With regard to the Ask ATP about phone theft, Guy Rambeau points out an article where the theory is it's actually about stealing banking information.
Casey:
So quoting from the article, before the pandemic, it was common to see bicycle thieves stealing phones from inattentive people in the street, but they used to resell the phones.
Casey:
Now there's a specialized gang that not only invades the iPhone, but also the bank accounts on it as well.
Casey:
So basically you grab an unlocked iPhone and the first thing you do is go searching for banking apps and start plundering, uh, poor people's, uh, bank accounts and stealing money and stuff.
Casey:
So that was not something I expected, but it's an interesting thought.
John:
It was like a nineties hacker movie, a specialized gang of techno thieves.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Totally.
Casey:
Uh, all right, Marco, did you fix your problems with playing music, music from the sixties and seventies and so on?
Marco:
So this is really interesting, too.
Marco:
So as part of the three part after show last week, which by the way, normally I would that was I always feel like a multi part after show is kind of an editing cop out.
Marco:
I try to pick like one part and just make it.
Marco:
That's the after show.
Marco:
And that's it.
Marco:
But I just could you had these three distinct parts last week.
Marco:
I just had to do it.
Marco:
So anyway, I know I recognize a little bit of a cop out to just glue things together.
Marco:
But anyway, I think I think it was worth it.
John:
So one of the things that's called editing.
Marco:
Yeah, but with no transition.
John:
Like there was any transitions in the actual conversation?
John:
It's fine.
John:
You should feel free to do that.
John:
You do not have to insert fish between them.
John:
Please don't insert fish.
John:
That wasn't fish.
Marco:
It's Archie Bell and the Drells, which I just heard organically through this music.
Marco:
Anyway, so I was saying how we've been doing this fun thing where we're asking Siri on the HomePod every morning to play the top hits from a certain year.
Marco:
And we're incrementing year by year, doing one year a day, starting from 1960, and we're going to keep going to the present day.
Marco:
And we're still doing that.
Marco:
We're in, I think, 1973 or something like that now.
Marco:
Man, the 70s.
Marco:
It's like the first few years of the 70s, it's like everyone's taking a nap because so much happened in the 60s.
Marco:
They're just tired now.
Marco:
It's so mellow and sleepy.
John:
But anyway.
John:
How dare you?
John:
There's amazing hits of the 70s.
John:
I'm going to take the time to promote.
Marco:
promote an album but it is only going to be exciting to you if you already like things from the 70s so never mind but i like things i like a lot i i do like a lot of things in the 70s but like what the top hits are is is a different story necessarily anyway um so so what i i was complaining that it seemed like when i would ask you know i would say play top songs from x year and it would say okay playing top 25 songs from x year
Marco:
And it seemed like it wasn't getting through that many before it would like, you know, forget what it was doing and start playing something from the 90s or whatever.
Marco:
And so it just, it seemed like it was getting sidetracked fairly easily.
Marco:
And we were like, wait, this came out back then?
Marco:
And we'd go and check and it didn't.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
even though this is this is crazy so a few people wrote in um to suggest that i look at the up next cue on the phone because like because one of the great things about airplay 2 and the way this works with handoff and everything is you can tell the home pod by voice play whatever you want
Marco:
And then you can go on your phone into a control center and you can connect to it.
Marco:
And you can then reveal the HomePod's music session in your iPhone's music app.
Marco:
So you can control it from there.
Marco:
So you can see everything the music app can normally see.
Marco:
You can see the, of course, artist and band info and everything.
Marco:
You can jump to the album.
Marco:
You can add it to your playlist if you like it.
Marco:
And you can see the up next queue.
Marco:
And so if you ask for top hits from a year and it says playing top 25 hits, if you actually look at the Up Next queue, it only has like, depending on the year, between like six and nine songs on it.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
So even though it says top 25 hits,
Marco:
it's playing like nine songs and then it's going to other related stuff that it thinks is related but off you know is not what you ask for anymore so first of all that's the most amazing siri thing ever because of course siri says it's playing 25 songs and then plays nine like okay fine siri i'm i'm used to you now sir siri is like you know your your stoner friend it's like you mean well but god you're always high like you're always forgetting everything and
Marco:
It's like, jeez, you seem like a good person, but my god, I'm relying on you to do simple things and you just forget what you're doing and walk away.
Marco:
Oh my god.
Marco:
Anyway, but a few people wrote in to say, the trick here, instead of saying play top hits from 1975, to say play pop hits 1975 because they have these playlists on Apple Music, pop hits colon year number.
Marco:
And if you say play pop hits year, and I think it's also, you know, there's rock hits, stuff like that.
Marco:
But if you say that, that plays much longer playlists that are actually available on Apple Music.
Marco:
You can go look at them.
Marco:
And so it seems like that is the correct way to do this.
Casey:
So instead of saying T-O-P or anything like it, you're saying P-O-P.
Casey:
Yes.
John:
It's kind of shocking that Sirian didn't mishear you and do the right thing accidentally.
Marco:
Maybe once or twice it might have.
Marco:
But yeah, so that's the smart thing to do.
Marco:
That's the effective thing to do, to say pop hits from a year or rock hits or something like that.
Marco:
But if you just say top hits, it'll say it's playing 25 songs, then it'll play like eight or nine of them and then walk away.
John:
Neato.
John:
Or if you're doing the 70s, you could just say, play Some Guys by Jonathan Colton.
John:
That's the album I put in the... I haven't heard that one.
John:
Show notes in the chat.
John:
It is faithful, note-for-note, exact sound-alike covers to 70s hits, which is normally when you do covers like, I'm going to do my own spin on this song, or I'm going to do an acoustic version of a 90s song and put it in a movie trailer.
John:
No, this is, I'm going to try to sound as much like the original track as I possibly can, allowing for the fact that I am not those people.
John:
I mean, what I did when he first, when Colton first put out this album, he also said, and by the way, here are links to like all the original tracks.
John:
So you can, you know, get them because those are all on Apple Music or they're on all the streaming services.
John:
So I have both the cover album and the original tracks.
John:
And again, obviously his voice is not going to sound exactly like the voices of 17 different singers.
John:
But this album is amazing.
John:
He does an amazing job.
John:
And what it made me do is realize how much I liked a lot of these songs from the 70s.
John:
So then I got the originals as well.
John:
And they're all in my collection now.
Marco:
Bye.
Marco:
Bye.
Marco:
Bye.
Marco:
So you can focus on what you do best and you can earn sustainable recurring revenue really quickly to start.
Marco:
So Memberful has everything you need to run a membership program.
Marco:
Things like Apple Pay support, optimized checkout pages, easy member management, dashboard analytics, free trial support, gift subscription support, private podcast hosting if you want.
Marco:
So much more at Memberful.
Marco:
and it seamlessly integrates with the tools that you already use with lots of fully managed integrations with the most popular services.
Marco:
If you have any questions, Memberful always has access to a real human for you to help answer your questions, and Memberful aligns their goals with yours.
Marco:
Their world-class support team is not trying to take more money from you or anything.
Marco:
They want to grow your revenue, and you retain control.
Marco:
You have payments go to your Stripe account.
Marco:
You retain ownership and control of the audience.
Marco:
You retain branding decisions and branding, you know, look and everything.
Marco:
And so you really are in control of your membership the whole time with Memberful.
Marco:
It is a great service and you can see for yourself by getting started for free with no credit card required at memberful.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Once again, get started for free selling memberships to your audience.
Marco:
It's an amazing revenue stream.
Marco:
It's great to diversify.
Marco:
And I can speak from experience here.
Marco:
Memberful is a really great service.
Marco:
So get started for free with no credit card required.
Marco:
Memberful.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Memberful for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So there's been a lot of drama, additional drama, with regard to the Netherlands and Apple's attempt at compliance with their dating app rules.
Casey:
Oh my gosh, you guys.
Casey:
So I'm having a real hard time.
Casey:
I don't think we're going to have time to explore this during this episode.
Casey:
We're already running kind of long.
Casey:
But I really feel like...
Casey:
Am I rooting for the bad guys?
Casey:
I know I've said this before, but Apple is really not acting like good guys these days, or good people, I should say.
Casey:
It really seems like Apple, in this context, if not many others, is really being kind of gross.
Casey:
And they're kind of acting like petulant children, which...
Casey:
It's not entirely unlike Apple, but I don't know.
Casey:
So much of my being is tied around being enthusiastic about Apple, and it's a real culture shock for me personally anyway when Apple does things that I just find to be so deplorable and gross.
Casey:
And maybe that's a little bit strong, but it's just I don't dig this at all.
Casey:
And I know that like...
Casey:
Most people who listen to this show are probably also enthusiastic about Apple.
Casey:
And if we just sit here and complain and moan and whine about Apple for two hours every week, that's not fun for any of you to listen to.
Casey:
And I don't want to alienate our listeners.
Casey:
But I also want to call it like I see it.
Casey:
And this is gross, my guys.
Casey:
Like, this is gross.
Casey:
And so what's going on?
Marco:
Wait, wait.
Marco:
Before we continue, Casey, I need to tell you that this podcast does not support the App Store's private and secure payment system.
No.
Marco:
All purchases in this podcast will be managed by the developer, ATP.
Marco:
And your stored app store payment method and related features such as subscription management and refund requests will not be available.
Marco:
Only purchases through the app store are secured by Apple.
Marco:
Now, would you like to learn more?
Casey:
Continue or cancel?
Casey:
Let's learn more.
Casey:
So when you use a third-party payment system within your app, this is actually quoting from an Apple support document.
Casey:
When using a third-party payment system within your app, your app must include an in-app modal sheet explaining that purchases are made through a source other than Apple.
Casey:
The modal sheet design and messaging must exactly match the specifications provided in figure one.
Casey:
the title is this app does not support the app stores, private and secure payment system.
Casey:
And the body is exactly what Marco just read.
Casey:
So, Oh my God.
Casey:
Like I understand to a degree that it, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for Apple to want to say, Hey, listen, you are taking, you know, your, your credit card almost said your life, but you're taking your credit card into your own hands.
Casey:
Now, like this, this is not, this could be dangerous.
Casey:
You know, here'd be dragons potentially, but,
Casey:
But good grief, this is aggressive.
Casey:
This is really aggressive.
Casey:
Unnecessarily aggressive.
Casey:
I feel like we're back in the mid to late 90s, and I'm sure I've told this story before on the show, but my dad started buying CDs from, I think it was CD Now, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
And, and that was like the Amazon of music.
Casey:
And then eventually got bought by Amazon actually, but it was like the Amazon of music long before people were really comfortable putting credit card information on the internet.
Casey:
And I remember dad tried it once or twice and like legitimately mom was like, okay, well, we're going to have to cancel these credit cards because inevitably this data is going to be stolen.
Casey:
And, and it ended up fine.
Casey:
And dad spent inordinate amount in an inordinate amount of money at CD now, but it feels like that kind of
Casey:
fear all over again it's it could be it's not secure and it's it's not private what's going to happen oh my gosh do I need to burn this credit card after use what am I going to do oh my gosh I should learn more obviously the the incentives are not aligned here when the company that has its own payment method that they want to use that pays them
John:
is allowed to dictate the text that you have to write to send someone to your other payment method of course they're going to talk up their own thing and say you don't want to leave us we're great but you know and by the way you have to write it this exact way i think the worst thing about this text is the bit towards the end that says um
John:
your stored app store payment method and related features such as subscription management and refund requests will not be available we know what they're saying because we know all the ins and outs of the thing like people do like the fact that all your subscriptions are in one place and now say this is a subscription in a third party it's not going to be listed with your other subscriptions right and apple makes it really easy to unsubscribe so you don't have to call someone on a phone and all the other bs right so that's what they're referring to there and we know what that means but the second bit is really the worst because it says subscription management and refund requests will not be available
John:
We know that one of the worst things about the App Store is that people who sell things on the App Store cannot refund people.
John:
Only Apple can refund them.
John:
Even if developers want to give someone a refund, they can't.
John:
Customers don't know that, would never guess that.
John:
And this is saying, oh, you might not be able to get refunds.
John:
When in reality, chances are very good that you will have a much better refund experience with a third-party payment provider than you will with Apple.
John:
Because Apple...
John:
You know, when you when you if you make a request, a developer developer says I can't refund you and then people think you're lying because that sounds absurd because it is absurd.
John:
And then if you make a request for Apple for a refund, they'll probably give it to you.
John:
But Apple doesn't care about you.
John:
And if they reject your refund, you have no recourse because Apple like it's not like you can go talk to somebody about it at Apple.
John:
You'd have to put up getting getting through the impenetrable wall that is Apple to get a refund for some software that you got rejected for a refund for is the same thing developers deal with when their app gets rejected and they try to get through app review and say, hey, you shouldn't have rejected this because you're wrong about how my app works.
John:
Can I find a human to talk to?
John:
And the answer is no.
John:
I'm not saying that Apple is bad about refunds, but I'm saying one of the reasons people want to use developers want to use third party things services is so that they can give better customer support than Apple does.
John:
It is a way to differentiate their product.
John:
Please let us, you know, good companies, obviously bad companies want to do it so they can refuse a refund.
John:
Right.
John:
But good companies want to do it so they can give you a better experience with customer support so they can give you a refund more willingly than Apple would and more quickly than Apple would.
John:
I know there's two sides to this, but you read this text and it makes it sound like, oh, I might not be able to get a refund.
John:
And that's just like flying in the face of one of the big motivations for people to want to use third party ones.
John:
Now, granted, the much bigger motivations, which we'll get to in a second, is save money.
John:
And then the bigger motivation for the bad people is refuse to give anyone refunds ever and scam people.
John:
But it's not like scams don't happen on the App Store as well.
John:
So anyway, moving on to the exciting part of this.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So that sounds like, hey, if you're going to use, and I'm picking on it just arbitrarily, like if you're going to use Stripe in-app, then you owe Apple a commission.
Casey:
Well, that seems a little weird, but okay, I can go with it.
Casey:
You know, Google's doing something similar, kind of.
Casey:
But then as you keep reading this document, even via the web, so if you link to, I believe you have to go to Safari, if I'm not mistaken, or whatever the default browser is, you can't.
Marco:
If you have to link out to the default browser, you cannot do web payments in-app.
Casey:
And you can't provide any sort of query string, if I recall correctly, or if you do, it has to be static amongst every single user.
Casey:
Which, again, I can sort of understand that to a degree.
Marco:
No, that is them complying with what regulators are asking for in the most minimal way.
Marco:
But again, it's Apple... This entire thing... I don't even want to nitpick this to death because it's probably going to change in a week.
Marco:
And as Casey was saying, I don't want to bring us down because I'm in a good mood this week.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I'm a huge fan of almost everything Apple does these days, except all this crap, like except the app store crap.
Marco:
And to be clear, when I complain about the app store, the payment stuff, many people assume that because I'm an app store developer that I'm trying to avoid paying Apple their commission.
Marco:
I'm not.
Marco:
I'm sticking with an in-app purchase no matter what people allow me to do elsewhere because, frankly, it works well for me and my app.
Marco:
However, A, it doesn't work well for everyone and everyone's apps.
Marco:
And B, I disagree with the assumption that Apple deserves to take a third of all commerce that happens on a major computing platform.
Marco:
And I so often will go back to the issue of things like lots of people build infrastructure or systems that then have customers come in, and it's okay when it's a small thing in a diverse pool.
Marco:
So for instance, it's okay if a store like Walmart or something wants to charge you 50% markup and you just got to eat it if you want to be in Walmart.
Marco:
That's okay as long as there are other stores.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
As long as there's a lot of retailers, then what one retailer does on their rules is not super severe.
Marco:
But as they get larger, the larger that retailer is, the more of like all of commerce has to play ball with that one retailer.
Marco:
Kind of like Walmart, which is why it might not have been a great example.
Marco:
Terrible example, actually.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The larger that one retailer is and the fewer alternatives people have or the less of the market the alternatives represent, the bigger a problem it is.
Marco:
And historically, you look at all forms of capitalism.
Marco:
That's when you start having introduced things like regulation.
Marco:
Capitalism in the more pure forms, like the less regulated forms, work well in certain conditions.
Marco:
Things like smaller environments or diverse environments or environments with healthy competition.
Marco:
Or the first half of a sci-fi movie.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
As one player starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, it starts to become more like a public utility or a monopoly where regulation of some sort is needed just to preserve the health of all commerce that's involved in such a major area.
Marco:
And I maintain that iOS...
Marco:
is one of those areas like iOS is now large enough and has been for some time and represents such a large proportion of so much commerce these days that to have this one provider being Apple dictating that they deserve a third of all the money that goes through it in certain ways is
Marco:
That starts to become problematic from a like large scale regulation perspective.
Marco:
And so I do think that this deserves to be looked at by regulators.
Marco:
And again, my concern remains that we don't usually benefit when regulators around the world start forcing changes upon tech companies.
Marco:
That's usually not great.
Marco:
Ideally, the tech companies would kind of self-regulate to the point where the governments wouldn't have to step in because they can probably do a better job of knowing what they want, knowing what we want as technology users, etc.
Marco:
And Apple keeps trying to...
Marco:
argue that if they start making less money from the app store fees, that this whole world of hell is going to rain down upon everybody through things like sideloading and payment fraud and everything.
Marco:
Apple is trying so hard to conflate these issues.
Marco:
But I really think we need to exercise extreme discipline in keeping them separate when arguing about them or when discussing them.
Marco:
Because the reason why Apple's trying to conflate all that stuff is because these other outcomes, like sideloading, alternative app storage things, I don't want that.
Marco:
Apple doesn't want that.
Marco:
I would say I bet most people who use iPhones don't want that.
Marco:
I bet most iPhone developers don't want that.
Marco:
But Apple is lumping those together because what they're trying to say is, if we aren't allowed to take our 30%, then the only alternative is this other extreme.
Marco:
And therefore, you must leave things the way they are so we can take our 30%.
Marco:
But these are all separate issues.
Marco:
If Apple does not relent on the 30% rules enough to get regulators off their back, regulators are looking at it in much larger ways.
Marco:
Regulators and lawmakers are all over the world floating bills right now to do things like require sideloading or require alternative app stores.
Marco:
That's a big problem for Apple.
Marco:
Again, look, I'll be honest with you.
Marco:
I do not have a lot of respect for Tim Cook on a number of levels.
Marco:
And so maybe this is coloring my viewpoint here, but Tim Cook's huge strategic risks he is taking in two areas, this and China, I think are really going to be a problem for him long term.
Marco:
And I think these are blind spots for him, honestly.
Marco:
I think he sees nothing wrong with this because
Marco:
keeping things the way they are in both China that's a whole other thing and you know all this apps or stuff they are making so much money from it but they really you know when you make this much money from me you really start to believe that you deserve it like you earn this but Apple doesn't deserve a third of all commerce that happens on their phones any more than the cell phone carriers do
Marco:
Or, you know, the browser makers.
Marco:
Like, does Mozilla take a third of all commerce that happens through Firefox?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Like, imagine if the web came up that way.
Marco:
It would be terrible.
Marco:
Like, that would have been a horrible outcome for the web.
Marco:
And it would have been much more limited and things wouldn't be where they are today.
Marco:
Apple's pulling a lot of crap here.
Marco:
But I think it's really important to...
Marco:
Try to disentangle it to some degree.
Marco:
Try to talk about these things separately.
Marco:
And Apple, unfortunately, won't see them separately.
Marco:
Because Apple is really doing a very good job of painting this as one extreme or the other.
Marco:
Either give us all the money or you have all the malware.
Marco:
And nothing in between.
Yeah.
Marco:
But the reality is it's not that way.
Marco:
The reality is all this stuff about App Store.
Marco:
To give you the example of earlier, they're saying, oh, the App Store can give you easy refunds.
Marco:
Do you know why the App Store gives you easy refunds?
Marco:
Because credit card companies give you easy refunds.
Marco:
And if you issue a chargeback with your credit card company, they're going to take the money back from Apple.
Marco:
And that sucks for Apple.
Marco:
Then Apple has to pay certain fees and chargeback fees and it raises their risk profile.
Marco:
They don't want that.
Marco:
So the reason why Apple gives you refunds easily is the reason why anybody online who takes credit card payments gives you refunds easily.
Marco:
Because the fear of chargebacks from their credit card companies.
Marco:
And the credit card companies are the ones who provide protection from things like fraudulent charges.
Marco:
Additionally, the App Store is filled with fraudulent charges.
Marco:
And app store payments are not the only way to spend money on your phone.
Marco:
So like none of this makes any, like Apple's trying to frame this in the way that makes them look best because that's, you know, that's what lawyering does.
Marco:
But A, they don't provide the protection you think they do.
Marco:
The credit card companies provide most of that.
Marco:
B, you can make tons of purchases on your iPhone in apps like Safari or in apps like Uber or Lyft or, you know, apps that sell services that the app store does not take a commission on.
Marco:
amazon.com amazon has an app no you don't have to go through safari to do it you can just get the amazon app and you can buy things with real money yeah i spend money on the amazon app all the time and you know what the amazon app is not available it doesn't support my app store payment method and related features such as subscription management and refund requests i guess you won't be able to get refunds yeah yeah and and you know the amazon app is not having apple secure my purchases it's not keeping my per like
Marco:
You know, there's this whole thing.
Marco:
It's just a huge smokescreen.
Marco:
Apple is taking what they can.
Marco:
And you know what?
Marco:
When I saw this document, I really was laughing my butt off.
Marco:
This this document is a version of Apple that I really, you know, Steve Jobs could have written this.
Marco:
I don't like to pull out the, you know, if Steve were still alive thing very often because it's usually in poor taste and usually wrong.
Marco:
But this attitude of like, you know what?
Marco:
You're going to try to regulate us?
Marco:
We're going to give you the biggest middle finger.
Marco:
You're going to shove it right where you know you want to shove it.
John:
You didn't even get to the worst part of it because we didn't get to the people who aren't already familiar with this document.
John:
And we said, oh, they're going to charge you money.
John:
The number that they chose was a 27% commission.
John:
as opposed to a 30% one.
John:
So Apple wants 27%, and then you're free to use whatever payment provider you want.
John:
Obviously, your payment provider will also probably want a percentage.
John:
And they said, we're allowing 3% for payment processing, which seems like it's low.
John:
So...
John:
If you were if you wanted to use a third party payment with it as an effort to save money, you won't because Apple wants almost as much money as they wanted before.
John:
But Apple's not going to process your payment.
John:
So you still have to pay a payment processor to do the actual payment after Apple takes its 27%.
John:
That's why that's the biggest F you because everybody seems like everybody knows, but no one ever says.
John:
The reason we want to use other payment methods is so we don't have to give you 30%.
John:
And Apple says, okay, fine, you can give us 27%.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it's incredible.
Marco:
Because if you look at the regulations that are coming down so far and the Epic case and what the judge said in the Epic case, no one is saying Apple can't collect commissions.
Marco:
So Apple is seemingly complying for the most part with the regulations so far.
John:
Well, not with this Dutch one, because the Dutch regulations said other things.
John:
Dutch regulations didn't specifically say how much Apple could or couldn't charge, but they said you have to allow developers to do A, B, and C. And Apple was like, no, we'd rather have developers just have to pick one of A or B or C. There are different parts of the Dutch regulation that Apple's not complying with.
Marco:
But the commission itself has not been attacked by anybody yet.
John:
And seemingly the parts that Apple isn't complying with, with this Dutch dating app thing, it's like, but why?
John:
Why are they not complying with those parts?
John:
I mean, it's almost like there's just crosstalk and Apple thought this would satisfy it.
John:
Because, you know, Apple is doing this as an FU, especially the text or whatever.
John:
But I don't understand the timelines here.
John:
It seems to me that Apple could have made this plan.
John:
And then this is the plan that the Dutch regulators rejected.
John:
And that's why Apple continues to be fined.
John:
Like, I don't think...
John:
If there was a plan that we didn't get to see before that wasn't this, then maybe this is a second attempt at it.
John:
But this is noncompliant in ways that I think should be obvious to anyone who saw the Dutch thing.
John:
So why would Apple bother coming up with a...
John:
technically non-compliant solution that they had to know is going to be non-compliant and also fill it with all this you know fu text and everything all the you know the upshot of this apple continues to get fined right this doesn't satisfy the regulations right well and look what's going to happen they're going to get more regulated because like they you know there there have been these you know a couple of relatively light hands trying to be applied to them and apple has basically bitten them off
Marco:
So, like, of course, they're inviting more laws and regulations upon themselves that are going to go further, like possibly things like sideloading in app stores.
Marco:
And that's not good.
Marco:
That's not a good outcome.
Marco:
Not for Apple, not for anybody.
Marco:
We don't want that.
Marco:
And yet, that's what Apple is forcing to happen by their insane greed around the App Store.
Marco:
The App Store money is such a corrupting influence on the company.
Marco:
It's making them bend over backwards to defend indefensible positions.
Marco:
They say horrible things in the press.
Marco:
They have a horrible reputation that impacts the other parts of their business.
Marco:
This is not...
Marco:
smart planning this is not good strategy and honestly they need new leadership already this is not how this company should be handling this and if they can't see that they need to bring people in who can
John:
Yes, this is one of those episodes where Marco calls for someone to be fired.
John:
Mark it on your bingo sheet.
Marco:
Yes, we need better leadership.
Marco:
This is not appropriate.
Marco:
This is terrible strategy.
Marco:
This is not good.
Marco:
And they're going to have more regulation forced upon them.
Marco:
That's going to be a worse outcome for everyone, including them.
John:
Anyway, they're not compliant.
John:
They continue to get fined.
John:
The fines go up to a maximum of 50 million euros or something, and then there's the possibility of this expanding to different kinds of apps or going to the EU, and the same scenario that just Marco outlined is like, this could snowball and get worse.
John:
There is the possibility that Apple could do something to smooth it over and make things better.
John:
Who knows what will happen, but yeah, that's why the sort of dickishness of this thing is so baffling, because
John:
Like, why bother being petty for something that you know isn't going to satisfy the thing anyway?
John:
Like, this description of a system has no point in the real world.
John:
It is not a thing that's going to be implemented.
John:
It doesn't solve any problem that Apple was presented with.
John:
And so Apple's not going to do it because why would they do a thing that they don't want to do that won't solve the problem of them being fined?
John:
So this saga continues.
John:
I'm sure it will continue for a while now.
John:
But this is a...
John:
This is a sad chapter in this saga as the ACM, the Dutch Association of whatever that is applying these rules says, says the ACM is disappointed at Apple's behavior and actions.
John:
They're not mad.
John:
They're just disappointed like a sad parent.
Marco:
i'm just i mean honestly i'm i'm coping with this just by laughing at it like it's just it's so over the top ridiculous that i just have to laugh at it like i at this point i'm i'm so like i'm out of anger i i have no more anger left it's just funny now and and i it's sad to watch it really is sad the only way it could be funnier is if they ask for like a 97 commission yeah
John:
And I'm not sure why regulators haven't caught on to this yet.
John:
It's like, look, if you don't include anything about the fee being charged, Apple's free to charge whatever it wants.
John:
That's part of the thing that shows why we need regulation.
John:
It's like, okay, well, in a functioning economy, a functioning market economy,
John:
Apple wouldn't be free to charge whatever it wants because if it charged too much, developers would say, well, I'll just go elsewhere.
John:
But it seems that no matter how hard Apple turns the screws, their market position is so dominant with respect to money being made in the mobile space.
John:
Even though Android exists and is technically bigger, more money is made at iOS devices.
John:
It's like...
John:
how much could Apple charge before people would actually, before it actually have an effect?
John:
Like when someone in a market is so dominant that they can do things that hurt the other people and those people don't flee to a competitor that shows they might have too much power.
John:
And so that's, you know, like in these regulations, it's,
John:
If one of the concerns is, hey, these companies want to be able to use third-party payment providers so they don't have to give 30% to Apple, you need to write that into the regulation.
John:
Otherwise, Apple will be like, all right, fine.
John:
We'll keep charging the same amount we always charge.
John:
Whatever.
John:
You didn't say we didn't have to.
John:
And so if that's the goal of regulation, these regulations are failing to accomplish that goal.
John:
Obviously, the Epic thing didn't even touch it at all.
John:
I'm not sure what the Dutch one says about...
John:
percentages, but it's clear that whatever it said, it's not enough to accomplish that goal.
John:
If your goal is people should be able to process payments while paying Apple less, that's not part of this regulation at all.
John:
So again, I'm baffled as to why Apple didn't comply and just...
John:
Continue to get their 30% because it was just about the 30%.
John:
Why wouldn't Apple play nice and say, oh, fine, we'll comply with all of your regulations in a nicey, nice way and continue to get exactly the same amount of money.
John:
It's really that's why it looks so petulant.
John:
It's like it's not even like we're taking the money away from Apple.
John:
You can still have the money due to the stupid way this regulation is written, but you still won't comply with it.
Casey:
And so there was some really good coverage about this on this week's upgrade, number 393.
Casey:
And about two-thirds into the Apple's 27% chapter, Jason said a few really, really interesting things that kind of crystallized something in my head.
Casey:
So Jason said – and he's talking from the perspective of an average Apple employee –
Casey:
Since Apple built the platform, Apple deserves a portion of the revenue of the apps that were generated.
Casey:
And so then Jason continues, of course, the truth is that Apple benefits so much from the sale of devices that run those apps that if the apps didn't exist, you know, the products wouldn't be as popular.
Casey:
You know, and he points out, look at like, you know, late 90s Apple and Mac OS, where...
Casey:
things were not great unless you were really enthusiastic like John Syracuse.
Casey:
But things were not great in terms of software for the most part.
Casey:
And there wasn't a lot of software, or at least comparatively anyway, there wasn't a lot of software on the Mac.
Casey:
And I think what this crystallized in my mind is that
Casey:
It appears as though Apple feels like it has a parasitic relationship with developers.
Casey:
The developers just suckle at Apple and suck all the good stuff out of Apple.
Casey:
And because of that, God darn it, Apple does deserve 30% because all these parasites sucking on the side of us, all they do is take, take, take, take, take, and they never give anything back.
Casey:
Where the reality, if you have two brain cells to scrape together, the reality is it's a completely symbiotic relationship that without Apple, you know, Marco wouldn't have written Overcast or arguably wouldn't be as popular or wouldn't have made as much money or what have you.
Casey:
But similarly, without people like Marco writing apps like Overcast...
Casey:
And maybe me soon, because I'm getting close.
Casey:
But nevertheless, without people like Marco writing apps like Overcast, nobody would be buying an iPhone.
Casey:
How many tens of dozens of people bought Windows phones?
Casey:
Dozens, I tell you.
Casey:
And so, like, this is what I find so gross, is that, like, I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to think it wants a cut.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I think what you were saying earlier, Marco, is exactly where I come down, that there's a threshold.
Casey:
And maybe it's like pornography.
Casey:
You don't really know it.
Casey:
You can't describe it.
Casey:
You just know it when you see it.
Casey:
But there's a threshold wherein suddenly this doesn't feel appropriate anymore.
Casey:
And 30% early on, it was still aggressive, but I think it was mostly appropriate.
Casey:
But at this point, we are reaching what I would call, and I'm probably using the term wrong, but I would call like a common carrier problem.
Casey:
point where this is, like you had said earlier, Marco, this is a utility.
Casey:
And I just find it really, really gross that Apple seems to think that because of work they did 15 years ago, whatever it's been, they still deserve 30% of everything that happens.
Casey:
Like, they still deserve 30%, even though, Marco, how much do you spend, this is a rhetorical question, but how much do you spend on advertising for Overcast, just to make sure that Overcast appears in search results?
Marco:
Actually, that's a bad example because a few months ago I dropped it to zero because I was so tired of it.
Marco:
I have spent over the last few years enough money on search ads to have bought a small house somewhere.
Marco:
And I felt bad about that.
Marco:
Given the direction the app store was going, I didn't feel like I wanted to support it in that way anymore.
Marco:
And so I totally stopped.
Marco:
I stopped all search ads.
Marco:
Honestly, looking like now that I have a few months of sales data without them,
Marco:
um it's it seems like the people who i was getting from search ads were not very valuable and so i'm actually i'm saving a ton of money and it seems like the business is fine without them and and honestly it just it's more of like a like an emotional thing like i just didn't want to keep paying into that anymore because it's a very it's a gross system
Casey:
So you and I are both coming up with just stellar examples in this segment.
Casey:
But the point I'm driving at is that what you just said, it's a gross system.
Casey:
It really is.
Casey:
And, you know, if Apple had really spotless documentation for everything, okay, maybe they'd earn their 30%.
Casey:
If they gave us extremely reliable dev tools that worked every time and web services that worked every time, hello, recent iCloud problems, okay, maybe they would earn their 30%.
Casey:
But like,
Marco:
See, even that, I feel like we're conflating it again.
Marco:
We're buying into their framing of the argument by saying that.
Marco:
But Apple makes the Mac, and there's developer tools.
Marco:
There's all the same tools build stuff for the Mac, and the Mac has APIs, and they don't take 30% of all software that runs on the Mac because that's not how that market grew up, right?
Marco:
But they still have very clear incentives to make those things for the Mac, to make the tools, to make the APIs, to run the platform.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because they sell Macs and they profit off of Macs and nobody would buy the Mac if it didn't have apps.
Marco:
The phone is the same way.
Marco:
They don't need the App Store itself to be a huge profit center.
Marco:
The App Store is what makes people buy iPhones in part.
Marco:
And in a big part, you know, it's not the only thing that makes people buy iPhones, but like the apps that people buy are a huge reason why.
Marco:
And more importantly, if the app store was not there or was less healthy or didn't have as much good stuff in it and had even just one more scam head.
Marco:
It's so full of crap.
Marco:
Like, even the app store.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
The app store is full of scams and garbage.
Marco:
That's one of the most galling parts about this.
Marco:
Apple is painting this picture like they're protecting everyone from scams.
Marco:
The app store is filled with scams.
Marco:
And it seems like no one's watching.
Marco:
It seems like scams climb the top charts and make tons of money.
Marco:
And as long as Apple is making 30% of that scam money, they don't give a crap until bad press happens.
Marco:
Then someone goes and looks.
John:
If you think about the App Store, it's kind of an ideal environment for scams, like any kind of sort of criminal enterprise where you're trying to deceive people and get money.
John:
That is or anything where it's like sort of a rigged type of game.
John:
That is the most appealing environment.
John:
uh for in a case where you're gonna get someone someone's gonna take a cut right because you're like look it's all just profit like for for us we make the scam app we trip people into paying we will gladly pay 30 for the privilege of being able to spam our scam apps to get them in front of tons of eyeballs if you are a criminal enterprise that you'll gladly pay that protection money that is these those are the customers that are the most happy
John:
to uh to work within the app store system because they're like yeah 30 i'd rather keep all of it but this is a scam anyway like it's all it's all it's all criminal enterprise and it's boy they make it so easy just make i make a new apple id and make a new scam app send it in the store get a bunch of customers burn it down and we just do that over and over again it's a big machine we turn the crank and we get the money in the same way that
John:
organized crime is happy to pay protection money to the people the big bosses up the chain it's like yeah but we're all making money here right that's why we're all in on this like i pay protection money because that's you know that's just the cost of doing business but i love the fact that i can do all these crimes right so they are probably the that complain the least about the app store rules because as far as they're concerned it's just a system that they can work with i can work with the system this i can use the system to spray a
John:
developers, the ones that make the best apps, that want the best for their customers.
John:
They like the rules the least because the App Store rules impair them from being really good developers.
John:
Again, giving better customer service.
John:
If someone contacts them, knowing who their customer is, being able to help them specifically, being able to issue them a refund directly instead of sending them to Apple, right?
John:
Stuff that good developers want to do.
John:
The App Store rules, like they punish the best developers and they essentially...
John:
reward or the cost of doing business for the worst developers and so like it's no surprise that the app store is kind of filled with scams because it is they thrive in that environment and they don't mind they don't mind all like it's just like well if something's bad or you get rejected burn that Apple ID make a new one make a new scam app like it's oh I got I got banned and I'm sure Apple spends lots of time banning thousands and thousands of apps but it's just like they're outnumbered by the bad scams because they've made an ecosystem where scams can thrive
Casey:
In summary, I think Raxal Brough in the chat has hit the nail on the head.
Casey:
Apple should be required to distribute to developers 30% of iPhone hardware sales to account for the value the third-party apps provide to the iPhone.
John:
I was looking at this blog post I wrote.
John:
Look at the date of this boy.
John:
It's 2020.
John:
I would settle for 27%.
John:
I wrote this post in 2020.
John:
It was about whatever the app store issue of the day was, but I tried to write it in as clear and generic terms as I had, and reading over it again, it still applies today.
John:
On this show, very often we talk about what Apple is greedy and what they deserve and what they feel like they're taking, and also these emotional type of words about
John:
This tug of war between these two parties who are fighting over this pool of money and how much of it should I get and how much of it should you get.
John:
But like in the end, it is just it is a it is a market situation where in healthy markets.
John:
There is a relationship between the parties involved where neither one of them can really screw over the other one because the other one will just go elsewhere, right?
John:
So if Walmart decides to quintuple their prices overnight, people will shop elsewhere.
John:
As big as Walmart is, and it's really big, if suddenly they said, ah, now it's quintuple prices, the market is competitive enough that people will say, well, I'm not going to Walmart anymore because...
John:
They just quintupled their prices.
John:
I'm going to go someplace cheaper, right?
John:
You need to have a healthy enough market where when one party does something that the other party really doesn't like, that there is some sort of competitive give and take.
John:
And you might say, okay, well, if Apple does things that developers don't like, they should leave the platform.
John:
That's how it should work if the system is healthy.
John:
But I feel like now we're in a situation where
John:
developers and apple can't agree on how this relationship should be but it's not yet bad enough to make the developers go elsewhere because there are other countervailing forces one of which being where else would i go to the other platform that has the same rules as apple that's not much of a choice what if walmart controlled this prices you said well i'm not shopping at walmart anymore i'm going to go to some other store and every other store you went to also controlled its prices
John:
Then you as a consumer or a developer in this case, you would feel like, why would I go to Google Play?
John:
Their stores, their rules aren't that much different than Apple's.
John:
And they're the only other game in town for if I want to make a native app on a mobile platform.
John:
That makes it feel like a market that is not functioning correctly.
John:
And what I wrote in this post is like...
John:
If if Apple wants to make this relationship work and it can, it just needs to come to an arrangement where everyone feels like things are OK.
John:
As Casey pointed out, there wasn't this acrimony on day one of the app store because everyone was getting rich and it was awesome.
John:
Right.
John:
And those rules were not that much better than they are now.
John:
In many ways, they were worse and there were fewer options.
John:
Right.
John:
It's not the specifics of the rule because we always get feedback.
John:
It's like, well, what percentage is right if you think they don't deserve 30 percent?
John:
What about 15?
John:
What about two?
John:
You think they should have nothing.
John:
It's not the specifics that matter.
John:
And we keep bringing up game consoles.
John:
Game consoles have way worse rules than Apple's App Store.
John:
So why isn't every game developer revolting against game consoles?
John:
Because the game consoles have managed a relationship such that
John:
There's been enough give and take and there's enough competition in the game console market, even though there's not a lot of competition, but there's Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and they have different rules and different platforms.
John:
Even that little extra bit of competition versus Android and Apple is enough to make the game console market function correctly such that the relationship between developers and console makers, though often acrimonious, is not to the dire state.
John:
that the relationship between apple and its developers currently is and it's up to apple to manage that relationship and it's up to us collectively to potentially add laws and regulations to make this market function more efficiently such that the two parties can find a way to come to an agreement because right now it seems like apple has too much power and developers have too little yep
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It makes me feel gross.
Casey:
And it's complicated by all of a sudden today, as we record, Microsoft announces, quote, a principled approach to app stores, quote.
Casey:
And so I'm going to read kind of a lot, and I apologize.
Casey:
I'm going to try to summarize as best I can, but there's a lot here.
Casey:
But Microsoft is kind of
Casey:
seeming at least on the surface anyway to be the good guys so now even as someone who was kind of team microsoft ish in the 90s even i'm kind of looking around like wait a second apple's the jerks and microsoft's the good guys now like i keep saying guys i'm sorry apple are the jerks and you know microsoft are the good people now that that's weird i don't know i think i can summarize this without having to read all the things okay i'll put a link in the show notes and people can check it out but um
John:
you could replace all the text in this entire document with, we're a distant third.
John:
Now, I don't mean that.
John:
That's a cynical and bad way to do it.
John:
I think Microsoft really does believe all these things.
John:
But when you are not the market leader, when you are not the strong second place, but when you are a very distant third,
John:
You need something to make you different and to get to get into the game.
John:
And so Microsoft has laid out a bunch of rules that are much nicer to developers.
John:
This is an example of like, hey, I guess the market is working, right?
John:
Because look, now there is a competitor saying, is Apple being mean to you?
John:
Is Android Google Alphabet being mean to you, mobile developer?
John:
or in this case, they're mostly addressing game developers, come to the Microsoft side.
John:
We'll be nicer.
John:
Why?
John:
Because we're hungry.
John:
We want your business.
John:
We are a competitor.
John:
And right now everyone's over there and we're trying to get people to pay attention to us.
John:
So we are going to be nicer to you.
John:
We're going to let you sideload.
John:
We're going to let you use your own payment methods.
John:
We're not going to take any percentage of them.
John:
You just do whatever you want with that.
John:
We'll have a great developer program.
John:
We'll give you all the tools you need.
John:
We'll let you deploy to all sorts of different platforms.
John:
If you look at the rules there, like if Apple came out with a set of rules, it would be like the end of Return of the Jedi, the good version, not the SE, where everyone is celebrating.
John:
It would be like, yay, look.
John:
But Microsoft's saying, here we are.
John:
We'll do all this great stuff for you.
John:
And the reason the cynical take comes in is like, well, of course they're going to say that because they're in third place.
John:
And it's like, well, what if they really mean this?
John:
you eventually get down to a lower part of the document and to microsoft's credit they call this out but still the lower part of the document that says some may ask why today's principles do not apply immediately to the current xbox console this was the best
John:
part as as you listener may know xbox even though xbox is doing way better than microsoft's other efforts right so xbox is one of the big three in consoles and i mean maybe they're in third place in this console generation but they're not distant third xbox does okay right and at various times xbox has done really well in the console market so apple or apple microsoft is stronger in the console market
John:
i was not asking myself why these rules do not immediately apply to xbox because they don't have to because xbox already has a relationship that works because xbox has more power in the console space than all these other app stores that microsoft's trying to get off the ground right um and so the spin that microsoft puts on this it says
John:
Well, you know, emerging legislation is not being I'm reading from the document emerging legislation is not being written for specialized computing devices like game consoles for good reasons.
John:
Oh, please, Microsoft, tell me what these good reasons are.
John:
And Microsoft says game consoles specifically are sold to gamers at a loss to establish a robust and viable viable ecosystem for game developers.
John:
The costs are recovered later through the revenue earned through the dedicated console store.
John:
Okay, well, first of all, Nintendo may not have gotten your memo about selling a hardware at a loss because at various times in history, Nintendo has absolutely not done that because they make really cheap hardware and eventually, or sometimes from day one, sell it at a profit.
John:
But second, the idea that you're saying, well, you shouldn't regulate us because we sell our hardware at a loss and this is the only way we can make money.
John:
It's like...
John:
That's not a law of nature.
John:
You could make money by selling the hardware.
John:
In fact, Nintendo sometimes does doing that.
John:
Like, they're saying, well, this is the way the market is, so of course you have to let us do whatever we want with our console game stores, which is kind of BS.
John:
Anyway, Microsoft goes on to say, nevertheless, we recognize that we need to adapt our business model, even for the store on the Xbox console.
John:
Beginning today, we'll move forward applying principles one through seven, and if you look at the document, principles one through seven are very touchy-feely and are easy to comply with.
John:
To the store and the Xbox console, we're committed to closing the gap on the remaining principles over time.
John:
Okay, well, good luck with that because I feel like if Xbox becomes dominant, they're not going to be motivated to comply with the other more difficult things about complete openness and third-party payment methods and multiple app stores and all the other stuff, right?
John:
Now, I'm not faulting Microsoft for this.
John:
It's a smart move.
John:
It's a good move.
John:
And they are essentially being the good guys, as Casey pointed out, by having these much more open rules.
John:
It's not hard.
John:
But it is a carve out.
John:
It's like in the areas where we are weakest, we are willing to cede power.
John:
But in the areas where we have even a little strength, like on the Xbox, yeah, we're not going to do all those nice things there.
John:
because come on like we need to things need to be exactly as they are today forever because that's how our console business and and don't get me wrong microsoft is selling xbox consoles at a loss and so is sony especially in the beginning for that matter um and then making it up in games but that's not the only way money can be made from games people don't sell pcs at a loss and then make it up in game sales pcs are sold for a profit a small profit but pcs are sold for a profit and games are also sold for a profit
John:
There are lots of different ways the market can work, and it doesn't really matter one way or the other.
John:
Anyway, this is interesting because it is a contrast to Apple and Google, the Android stuff.
John:
It's also interesting in how little of a splash this is going to make.
John:
I know this is mostly about game stores and gaming on PCs, but it is also about gaming on mobile devices and everything.
John:
But honestly, I don't think Google and Apple feel like they're threatened by Microsoft's better policies because Microsoft, despite their efforts, sorry, Windows Phone.
John:
Sorry, I can't name all the other ones.
John:
The Kin, Windows CE.
John:
Come on, what else do we got?
John:
Microsoft has tried to have a mobile platform.
Zune.
John:
many yeah zoom but that wasn't really the same thing i mean pocket pc was really just windows ce yeah they've tried to have mobile platform it didn't work out that well for them uh so they're not really a player in that space which puts them at the mercy of google and apple when it comes to do things like oh we want to put the xbox streaming app on the app store and apple says no and they have to use a web browser to do it which is not ideal for them um this shows how little power they have in that market so
John:
Again, I don't want to fault Microsoft for saying we're going to be better because that's how a competitive market should work.
John:
But I don't think the market is competitive enough for this proposal to really change things in a dramatic way.
John:
And I'm slightly disappointed that...
John:
they did not have the sort of courage of their convictions and apply these rules to xbox as well i think they may actually apply to xbox because honestly like i said the console market doesn't have to work the way it has and a lot of things that microsoft has said especially in that interview with phil spencer on so techery has indicated that microsoft has a vision of the future of making money in gaming that is different than it is now and i think in that future there's no reason these rules couldn't apply to xbox but today they're not quite ready for that
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Like I said, I'm having a little bit of an internal crisis.
Casey:
Like Marco said, I love so much of Apple's stuff.
Casey:
And I love so much about the choices that Apple makes.
Casey:
But golly, the choices around the App Store in China are really, really gross.
Casey:
And it's yucking my yum quite a lot.
Casey:
And it's really making me sad.
Marco:
I mean, in many ways, I can feel as mixed about it as I often do about my country or my state or my town.
Marco:
I love my country where I live and it would be a pretty big ordeal to ever leave it, but it doesn't mean I agree with everything that the government does.
Marco:
You can have mixed feelings about something.
Marco:
You can like some of what something does and not all of it.
Marco:
So often people try to simplify it into like, oh, these people are all complaining.
Marco:
Apple...
Marco:
responsible for your success or whatever.
Marco:
And no, it's more complicated than that.
Marco:
And we can overall be a pretty big fan and pretty good customer of this company while also pushing for them to be better in the areas that they're currently, frankly, full of crap and doing real damage.
Marco:
Because the thing is, the reason why I care so much about this is, as I was saying earlier, I think they're totally blundering this to the point where
Marco:
It would not surprise me if two to five years from now, we have iPhones that are all out there filled with Facebook BS spyware mostly because they got sideloading or they got alternative app stores.
Marco:
And now everyone has to install the Facebook sideloaded app to get Instagram or whatever the new thing is or WhatsApp, whatever Facebook makes people install.
Marco:
People will install whatever Facebook tells them to install.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I worry about that outcome.
Marco:
I worry, like, right now, this platform is in a pretty good place in a number of areas.
Marco:
And if we get sideloading or alternative app stores, there's going to be a number of things about it that I'm afraid are going to get worse.
Marco:
That's going to significantly impact my life, both as a developer on this platform and as an iPhone user.
Marco:
And I really don't want that to happen.
Marco:
And I really think that where we're headed right now shows clearly that Apple...
Marco:
does not see anything that they have to change.
Marco:
They see nothing wrong with what they are doing.
Marco:
And more importantly, setting aside any judgment of whether they deserve anything or what they think is moral or whatever else, setting aside all that, Apple thinks they can get away with this.
Marco:
They clearly think they can get away with this on the current strategy they're on, like kind of indefinitely into the future.
Marco:
And that's a big risk.
Marco:
That's a huge risk, and I think it's going to blow up in their face by forcing the platform to get worse in these other ways.
Marco:
That's why I'm so right off about this, because I don't want this platform to get worse.
Marco:
I love this platform.
Marco:
I live on this platform.
Marco:
I make my living on this platform.
Marco:
This is one of the most amazing platforms that's ever come out of computing.
Marco:
But it's at risk right now.
Marco:
It is being put at risk by Apple's own mishandling of the situation, by Apple's own bad leadership in regards to this area of just not giving an inch to the point where they're going to be forced to give way more than that.
Marco:
And that's going to be bad for everyone.
John:
I know you're still against sideloading, but my opinion has never been as extreme as yours, and with each passing day is getting more and more in favor of sideloading, because honestly, I see it as the best competitive pressure to put on Apple.
John:
I agree with you about all the bad things, but I feel like...
John:
I would much prefer Apple to change the rules of the App Store because there is a competitor, which is sideloading, rather than them changing them in response to regulation because regulation is written by people who don't understand the problem and it can never be forward-looking enough and it's so slow-moving and it's so terrible.
John:
Regulation at this level of detail of like, oh, this piece of software has to allow this thing to happen never works out well.
John:
But if there were sideloading, in addition to all the bad things,
John:
Developers who didn't like Apple's rules would say, well, I'm just going to go to sideloading.
John:
And I think they would very quickly build up an ecosystem of good developers on sideloading.
John:
Obviously, there would be an ecosystem of bad developers, but there already is that in the App Store.
John:
There would be an ecosystem of good developers on sideloading, which would apply competitive pressure to Apple.
John:
People wouldn't have to leave the platform entirely, abandoning their entire skill set and their entire company and their entire product that they worked all these years on.
John:
Instead, they could say, we're still going to have the product, but we're going to sell through this alternate app store or from our website or whatever, you know, and that would apply pressure on Apple's app stores because Apple wants those people back in the app store paying a cut to them.
John:
They would have to write rules where.
John:
The developers agreed, it is worth it for me to be in the app store.
John:
For these benefits, I'm willing to pay this amount.
John:
That whole thing, that whole ratio is screwed up right now.
John:
And the problem is those developers have nowhere to go, nowhere where they can go easily.
John:
Because then people are like, oh, we have competition.
John:
They should just go to Android.
John:
What if you have an entire company filled with developers who are iOS developers and you have a product line and thousands of customers?
John:
who are paying you every month on a subscription basis to use your really cool app that you spent years and years writing.
John:
And it's like, oh, just go to another platform.
John:
That is a weaker form of competition.
Marco:
That's not an option.
Marco:
I mean, because the reality is like there's so many markets of apps, like, for instance, podcast players, where like the iPhone has like three quarters of the market.
Marco:
Like it's not it isn't like 50 50 here.
Marco:
We're not talking about small differences.
Marco:
We're talking about very, very big differences.
Marco:
There is no real alternative.
John:
and it's not it's not like it's not an impossibility it's all about like the ratio like how painful would it be for me to move versus how painful is the are the current rules and you know apple has not made the commission 99 because that would be so painful that everyone have to leave and everyone go out of business right but they're also you know and they they decrease it to 15 but only if you follow these rules and only if you make less than this amount of money and like
John:
the current balance i mean again i just i'll put this link in the show it's called the art of the possible you just read it it sounds kind of generic or whatever but like it describes the problem accurately which is that apple wants it to be like this and developers want it to be like that and apple thinks it can get to its goal state with its current set of rules and just by holding a hard line and it's and they're getting farther from their goal not closer are they getting farther from their role because developers are getting more pissed or are they getting farther from their goal because they're making worse rules and
John:
I think it's mostly the developers are getting more pissed because Apple is giving in various ways, but they still haven't found the meeting point.
John:
But the problem is developers have no recourse other than to grumble because it is so painful for them to go elsewhere.
John:
Not impossible.
John:
It's not impossible for them to go elsewhere, but it is a balance.
John:
How much pain is this versus how much pain is that?
John:
But developers should really just not be in pain.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Caseta by Lutron, smart lighting control.
Marco:
Lutron has been pioneers in smart home technology for decades, and they're firing all cylinders now, I'm telling you, because Lutron Caseta is fantastic.
Marco:
So forget about smart light bulbs.
Marco:
That's the wrong way to do it.
Marco:
The better, smarter way to do it is smart dimmers and switches in the wall.
Marco:
So that way you can control whatever lights you want with the smart switch in the wall.
Marco:
And you don't need to speak to a voice cylinder to be able to control the lights or run a special app.
Marco:
You can do those things.
Marco:
And that's great.
Marco:
It's great to have those options.
Marco:
You can set up smart automations.
Marco:
You can set up sensors and triggers, which I actually have some, which are great.
Marco:
I'll tell you about it in a second.
Marco:
But the great thing is that when it's just the switch in the wall that's being controlled, anybody can walk into the room and push the switch on the wall.
Marco:
So no one has to learn your house.
Marco:
You don't have to try to convince the other members of your house, hey, don't touch the switch.
Marco:
It's going to disable the smart bulb.
Marco:
No, just use the switch on the wall if you want to.
Marco:
And then also, it can be smart through apps and voice control and everything else.
Marco:
So what I have, I have a Lutron Caseta motion sensor down in an area that like it's like below my house and it's dark down there a lot.
Marco:
And so I have lights on the wall that are controlled by a Lutron switch, a Lutron Caseta switch, and the sensor toggles it.
Marco:
So every time I approach that doorway, the lights light up next to it.
Marco:
And it's the nicest thing, and it works every single time.
Marco:
And I've tried so many smart home things.
Marco:
None of the other ones worked every single time.
Marco:
Lutron Caseta is that reliable.
Marco:
It works every single time.
Marco:
Not most of the time, not some of the time, every time.
Marco:
And I love it so much for that.
Marco:
So get smart lighting the smart way with Caseta by Lutron smart switches.
Marco:
Learn more about Caseta at Lutron.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's Lutron.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Lutron Caseta for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do at least a little bit of Ask ATP, turn these frowns upside down.
Casey:
We can start with Stephen J. Stutz, who says, I really enjoyed your discussion on AirPods potentially using ultra-wideband chips.
Casey:
This is, I don't know, a month or two ago.
Casey:
Something I don't quite understand is, why doesn't anyone think of using Wi-Fi for audio playback?
Casey:
The HomePods uses it as well as Sonos speakers.
Casey:
Can't Apple use Wi-Fi on their AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max?
Casey:
I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are.
Casey:
I think...
Casey:
To me, this is pretty clear.
Casey:
So it's power.
Casey:
It's just Wi-Fi is way too expensive from a power perspective.
Casey:
And and that's why we need to figure out or not we, but that's why Apple's working on all these like super low power.
Casey:
But but yet high bandwidth tools is because Wi-Fi is extremely expensive from a power perspective.
Casey:
I mean, unless I'm missing something, right?
John:
Yeah, I mean, there's probably more to it than that.
John:
I don't know the specific technical details, but sort of the way the protocols work with Wi-Fi and how like the sort of the use case of Wi-Fi is like full-fledged devices that are on the network together.
John:
And there are things about that in terms of how do you join the network?
John:
How do you communicate across the network?
John:
What is the latency?
John:
What kind of protocols are used to send packets to and fro?
John:
that are made for, you know, what we use it for.
John:
Computers on a network that spans your whole house or like a pretty long distance that gets very high speeds, but it's not optimized for super low latency, you know...
John:
for something in your pocket to get to something that's in your ear with very low power.
John:
It's just not made for that.
John:
I don't, I don't, I'm not sure what the rules are for wifi in terms of like, what do you need to be, what do you need to do to be sort of a citizen on that network?
John:
Like how many identifiers are available?
John:
How quickly can you get on and off the network?
John:
And you know, the latency and addition to what you said, which is the power stuff.
John:
And so that's, that's the thing about these protocols.
John:
Like it's just invisible magic going through the air as far as you're concerned, but every one of them is made for a specific use case.
John:
And when we talk about the ultra-wideband stuff, the reason we're excited is because this is even better for this specific use case.
John:
We were talking about, like, communicating with your AirPods, right?
John:
That use case is very different than the requirements for my laptop is on...
John:
the tcpip network that's made in my house so that it can be on the internet through like a NAT or whatever very different use cases so it's just a technology that never targeted this scenario and so it's not as good at it in basically every way that you could possibly measure
John:
including by the way, like how much does it cost to get a wifi chip?
John:
And you know, like all the way down to how small can you make it on top of all the power stuff?
John:
Like if you just look at the whole list of requirements, it's not like wifi is terrible.
John:
It's just a poor fit for this case.
Casey:
Chris Kerner wrote.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Do any of you use a color calibration tool like the spider by data color on your third-party monitors?
Casey:
Now that I ask this, I guess this is mostly a question for Casey.
Casey:
If so, why or why not?
Casey:
Related, do you think Apple will bring the, quote, use your iPhone to calibrate your TV, quote, feature from the Apple TV to the Mac?
Casey:
Uh, no, I don't do any sort of color calibration because I don't do the kind of work that I think necessitates it or I'm too dumb to know otherwise.
Casey:
So, uh, no, this is not something I've ever bothered with.
Casey:
I'm going to guess that Marco, you probably haven't.
Casey:
And I'm going to guess that John, there's a better than 50% chance you have.
Marco:
I actually used to use this kind of thing back forever ago before I used like, you know, IMAX and Apple monitors.
Marco:
Like I, cause I used to like before, before the retina age, I used exclusively like third party monitors.
Marco:
I had, you know, a giant HP 30 inch.
Marco:
I had Dell 24 before that.
Marco:
Um, and I actually did use one of these like spider color calibrators for a few years in the middle there.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
I could never get my monitor colors and everything to look exactly right.
Marco:
And I don't know if that's just because I was using maybe not super great monitors for things like color accuracy.
Marco:
I wasn't doing color correction work.
Marco:
I was just a programmer with a fancy camera sometimes, but...
Marco:
Otherwise, I wasn't doing super critical work.
Marco:
I just thought it was cool.
Marco:
And Tiff was doing critical photo work at that time.
Marco:
And so we got it for her to use it.
Marco:
But once you have the hardware, you can calibrate as many Macs as you want normally.
Marco:
I don't know if it's changed since then, but that's how it worked back then.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Yeah, I used it and it was fine.
Marco:
Like I would occasionally look back at the other profiles and kind of switch between them every so often and try to figure out like, is this better?
Marco:
Do I like this better?
Marco:
Or, you know, something might be a little bit too dark or whatever else.
Marco:
And yeah, I never really quite nailed it.
John:
Yeah, the problem with calibration tools, especially with third-party monitors, is often the monitors don't give you enough control over the monitor's output to align it with correct calibration.
John:
This is a problem with TVs, too.
John:
Like, you usually have to unlock the super-duper expert surface settings to even get close, but some TVs still don't give quite enough adjustments to get it exactly perfect, right?
John:
And then, obviously, there's variations in hardware and whatever technology your screen is using.
John:
For calibration, I used to do the silly on-screen calibration with ColorSync back in the day on the Macs just to see that you aren't super far off.
John:
And that for people like Casey and other people think, oh, I don't care about colors.
John:
If you have a third-party monitor that's really far off, you should do something about it.
John:
Because if you're making an app and you're trying to decide, is this amount of contrast between the label and the background sufficient for this to be a usable thing?
John:
you may be fooled by a different calibration on your monitor.
John:
This used to happen back in the day when Macs and PCs had different gamma settings and things that looked awesome on the Mac would look weird on the PC and vice versa, right?
John:
So even if you're not doing fancy color work, you just want to be in the ballpark at least.
John:
Or at the very least, you need to be able to set up your monitor so you know what your customers are seeing.
John:
Are your customers on a PC?
John:
Are they on a Mac?
John:
Are they on a phone?
John:
Because, you know, the contrast between elements in your application can make a difference in usability.
John:
And especially if you're trying to walk that line and be fancy and kind of like,
John:
push up to the edge of contrast which it probably shouldn't do anyway but if you are then you have to have an accurate enough monitor to know that your judgment call and when it's the right color looking at your screen applies to everybody else and as for the apple tv feature where you hold up your phone coming to the mac or whatever i would guess that the apple answer to that question would be like uh well you don't need to do that with apple monitors because we pre-calibrate them at the factory and really good at it but your tvs we have no idea what it's like out there so we gave you this feature
John:
but third-party monitors with their Apple
John:
wants to know it or not, are a thing, especially since Apple makes so few monitors, especially no affordable ones, that I could see that feature coming.
John:
Hey, if you've got a third-party monitor, use this little thing.
John:
But it's the same problem.
John:
It's like, okay, well, you know, it's the same problem with TVs where we complain about the system.
John:
You hold the phone up and it does a bunch of measurements or whatever, but then the only thing that that app has the power to do is change what the Apple TV outputs.
John:
It doesn't have a way to change the settings on your TV.
John:
And if the settings on your TV are super wackadoo, you're never going to get close enough by changing the output coming over the HDMI cable to compensate for that.
John:
That's why when people calibrate televisions, they don't do it by changing the output of the devices.
John:
They actually change the settings on the TV itself.
John:
But the app has no way of doing that.
John:
It has no idea what your settings are.
John:
Ditto for third-party monitors.
John:
the app has any app that they made like this has no way to change the whatever buttons and menu systems that are on your third party monitor for adjusting your thing and i think the settings on monitors tend to be far less extensive than especially the super duper expert settings on tvs we have to type a weird code in the remote and you get these scary menus where you can screw stuff up that's what a real television calibrator will do to actually get your television accurate so if apple does introduce this
John:
Just like on the TV, it's probably better than nothing if you're using a display that is super far off.
John:
But the real solution is for Apple to make a much more affordable Apple monitor that is good enough out of the box.
Casey:
Priyansh Singh writes, My partner is using the new M1 MacBook Air for the last few months, and it has signs of this problem that I thought Apple would have fixed by now.
Casey:
The keyboard leaves an imprint on the screen.
Casey:
I had the same issue with my Air back in 2017.
Casey:
Do you have suggestions on how to save the screen?
Casey:
Putting in a case for the laptop or a membrane over the keyboard feels icky.
Casey:
I've noticed this from time to time, but it's never been bad enough to bother me, which is basically the story of my life.
Casey:
See also fan noise and so many other things that I know deeply upsets the two of you.
Casey:
I know people who have put some sort of thin piece of foam in between the keyboard and the screen anytime they close their laptop, which seemed a bit excessive to me.
John:
Just make sure you always put it the right way.
John:
Because if you keep flipping it over, all you're doing is transferring the finger grease to the screen by way of an intermediary.
Casey:
Right, right.
Casey:
But for me, I just don't stress about it, to be honest.
John:
People always talk about this as if it's like a design flaw in the computer.
John:
And you could...
John:
argue that it is, but the engineering trade-offs Apple would have to make to fully eliminate this problem are not the ones that people would want.
John:
Obviously, if you just leave it on your desk and you close it and it's getting finger-y on the screen, that's probably some kind of design flaw, but most of the time when people get this,
John:
It's because they put it in a backpack or something where it gets squished.
John:
And it's very difficult to make something as thin and as wide, you know, large, you know, length and width as the top of a laptop that will resist flexing so much that it won't flex even the millimeter it takes to hit the keycaps, right?
John:
So the tradeoffs Apple have to make is that you have to make it way stronger or they'd have to make the gap bigger or the lid thicker or all of those things.
John:
And I don't think you want a thicker lid that's heavier.
John:
And I don't think you want a bigger gap.
John:
And you may say, oh, well, let's just make it two millimeters.
John:
If you put your laptop in a book bag full of books, a surprising amount of force can be applied to the middle of that screen.
John:
And to try to get it so there's no amount of force in a book bag that can compress the middle of the screen to hit the keyboard, you need a very big gap or a very big screen or both.
John:
And I don't think people want that.
John:
Now, it's possible Apple is not making the right trade-off, so they need a little bit more space, a little bit more strength.
John:
I will be on board with that, but if you want to avoid this, rather than putting a weird piece of paper in between your thing, try not to put your laptop in a situation where it gets squished.
John:
And if it's never squished and it's on your it's on a desk and no one is ever putting pressure on it and still getting fingerprints, then, yeah, that's that's Apple has made a design problem there.
John:
Maybe your thing, your hinge is screwed up in somewhere or whatever, and the Apple should definitely fix that.
John:
But most of the cases that I've seen, especially in the modern age where that happens, it's due to squishing.
Marco:
Yeah, and a lot of times if you just flip it around in the bag, like if you make the screen point the other direction from where you've been doing it, sometimes that can improve things.
Marco:
Obviously, as John said, if you can reduce the amount or frequency in which it's getting squished, that's better.
Marco:
But yeah, this is entirely from squishing, and there's not much you can do about it if you're going to keep having it in squished situations.
Marco:
Almost always backpacks are the challenge here, and how you solve it is up to you.
Marco:
I would also suggest that ever since the screens have gotten glass coverings instead of the old matte coverings, it's way easier to clean these marks off.
Marco:
As soon as you see them, clean them.
Marco:
Because if they sit there for a long time and build up over years, it will be much harder to clean them off without damaging the screen finish and everything.
Marco:
But if you just clean them regularly as you notice them, it's pretty easy to stay ahead of it.
John:
The other solution is you just pretend you have a touchscreen Mac.
John:
Wow.
John:
Because if and when touchscreen laptop Macs ever come, you think you have finger grease on your screen now, just wait.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Stack Overflow Podcast, Lutron Caseta, and Memberful.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's K-C-L-I-S-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-K-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-K-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-K-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-Y-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech Podcast.
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
You, Marco, have asked me a couple of deeply alarming questions last week, including sending me a photograph of your FJ Cruiser on a flatbed or being loaded onto a flatbed.
Casey:
What's going on there, bud?
Marco:
All right, so where we left last week was... All right, traffic's hero.
Marco:
Yeah, so where we had left was the previous couple of times I had gone to run some errands on the mainland.
Marco:
I had tried to start up the FJ, and it would start, but it would take some doing.
Marco:
It would not start easily.
Marco:
It would, you know, slowly...
Marco:
and eventually start but it and and i said also like it didn't i wasn't sure if it was the battery because i would like start it up eventually run you know go to a store drive for 15 minutes to get there and then i'd come out of the store and it would have the exact same trouble starting up afterwards so i was like well i don't know if it's the battery or the alternator or the starter or who knows what
Marco:
Now, I don't know really anything about cars.
Marco:
Like, I talk about cars sometimes.
Marco:
I don't know how to fix cars.
Marco:
I don't know how to diagnose problems.
Marco:
I don't know what's what and, like, what certain symptoms indicate.
Marco:
But, you know, so I described this in the show and everyone was basically like, yeah, you should get a new battery.
Marco:
So I thought, all right, first of all, John was saying and everyone said, like, just go to any car store or any car parts store that sells batteries.
Marco:
They'll install it for you.
Marco:
And I can do it in five minutes myself.
Marco:
Thanks, John.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
But OK, go to any store that sells them and they'll install it.
Marco:
Well, not so on Long Island.
Marco:
i even even like like chain stores that say officially on the website like we'll install it for you they also all say like call the store to check and if you call any of the stores around here most of them are like oh yeah we don't actually do that or we don't sorry we we don't have enough staff to do that right now like clear i was telling you to install it yourself the listeners were all saying they'll install it for you
Marco:
Yes, but I did eventually find there was an advanced auto parts somewhat nearby that both had batteries and would install them for me.
Marco:
And I called the store and confirmed, yes, we will actually install it for you.
Marco:
Yes, even on a Saturday.
Marco:
I thought, okay.
Marco:
So I went over on Saturday because a Saturday is the only time that I have...
Marco:
a window that I can take the ferry over and have a two and a half hour stay there.
Marco:
Normally it's one and a half hours and you can't get anything done then.
Marco:
So on the weekdays, but on Saturday I can get two and a half hours.
Marco:
So thanks.
Marco:
Thanks winter ferry schedule.
Marco:
Um, so I made this plan.
Marco:
I'm like, all right,
Marco:
I'm going to go, and I pre-ordered the battery online, so it would be waiting for me in the store, guaranteed stock.
Marco:
I'll get there, I'll do whatever it takes to start up the FJ, drive it over to the Advance Auto Parts, get the battery installed by them, and I'll be all set.
Marco:
And I had a couple other errands to run, but I figured, like, worst case, I can just switch over to, you know, the Model S and do the errands and that, you know.
Marco:
But once I get the FJ figured out, if I have to.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
On the way there, I'm bringing with me my new SuperCAP.
Marco:
battery charger or jumpstart thing that I had just gotten the auto wit super cap from Amazon.
Marco:
And I already had in the car, the lithium battery that I, that I'd mentioned, which was the, the, um, I'll say it now.
Marco:
It was the no co one that like gets really, really high reviews on Amazon.
Um,
Marco:
Okay, so I get there, and I cannot get it to start.
Marco:
This is the first... Like, every other time I've tried to start, I have eventually gotten it to start after, you know, maybe five to ten seconds I'd be able to get it to start.
Marco:
And this was just not having it.
Marco:
So I thought, well...
Marco:
I'm prepared for this outcome.
Marco:
Pop the hood.
Marco:
Look around.
Marco:
Oh, there's the battery.
Marco:
Pull the little caps off so it gets the terminals.
Marco:
And I connect the jumpstart battery, which I had pre-charged on the boat right over.
Marco:
So I knew it was fully jumpstart.
Marco:
I connect it.
Marco:
It activates.
Marco:
It beeps.
Marco:
And it counts down.
Marco:
And then it beeps when you're supposed to try to start the car.
Marco:
So I try to start the car.
Marco:
And it turns.
Marco:
And then it doesn't start.
Marco:
And I go, that's not good.
Marco:
So I go back to the battery and tell it to go again.
Marco:
Oh, sorry.
Marco:
This is the super cap.
Marco:
And then it doesn't start.
John:
What noise did it actually make?
John:
Because I'm sure it didn't make that noise.
John:
Did you get a ticking noise?
John:
Did you hear the starter motor running or not?
John:
Not yet.
Marco:
So eventually, after a number of tries, I started hearing a rapid clicking noise.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
Again, listeners, I don't know anything about cars.
Marco:
I know you're all screaming now what the problem is, but I didn't know the problem because I don't know anything about cars.
Marco:
I remember that somebody had said like, oh, if you hear a clicking noise, it could be something else like the alternator or something.
Marco:
And I thought, oh, no.
Marco:
So here I am.
Marco:
The super cap won't start it.
Marco:
I then tried the NOCO GB40, whatever it is.
Marco:
I tried the lithium battery, which claimed to have enough charge to do it.
Marco:
It had almost a full charge.
Marco:
Tried that.
Marco:
Also didn't have enough power to actually get it going.
Marco:
And I eventually just heard that rapid clicking again.
Marco:
So I thought, I'm in over my head.
Marco:
Now, keep in mind the situation I'm in.
Marco:
I have a very short time window.
Marco:
At this point, I have two hours before I have to get back on the boat and go back.
Marco:
I also have other errands I have to run that's going to take most of that time.
Marco:
And I don't know what to do.
Marco:
And so I'm like, you know what?
Marco:
Coming over here, it takes up the whole day to go over there.
Marco:
So it's not...
Marco:
I don't have a lot of options here.
Marco:
So I'm, so I get in my other car and I drive over and I start doing, I like had to go to a target and charge the car and also stuff like that.
Marco:
And so I'm doing those errands.
Marco:
And as I'm sitting in the parking lot, I start calling, you know, I called the Toyota place that the previous owner always got serviced at.
Marco:
And I'm like, Hey, can you know, do you have like a tow service or anything?
John:
And do you not have AAA?
Marco:
I don't have AAA.
Marco:
No.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, they would have come to you with a big super duper chargey thing and probably got you going.
Marco:
Well, the problem is at this point, because I had two different jumpstart batteries of two different types, both of which being very well reviewed, both not able to start the car.
Marco:
I thought at that point, it's probably not the battery and I'm in over my head now.
Marco:
And so this needs somebody who has, you know, this is going to be a bigger problem.
John:
AAA will do whatever is needed to get you going.
John:
I'm just saying like you would have, rather than calling the Toyota dealership, you know, if you had a AAA membership, they would have come over for probably substantially less money and they can tackle whatever problem you have.
John:
If it involves taking your car and putting it on a flatbed.
Marco:
Well, fun fact, the battery that I had pre-ordered at Advance Auto Parts was about $200.
Marco:
And for Toyota to install a brand new battery, including labor, was $220.
Casey:
That's actually not bad.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So I'm like – It happens when you buy Toyotas and not, you know, Teslas or Lexus or BMW.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I called them and I asked and I learned that.
Marco:
I'm like, all right, you know what?
Marco:
I'm just going to send the car to you.
Marco:
And they didn't have a towster, but they recommended a local company.
Marco:
And so I had to pay an extra like 200-ish dollars, like 180, whatever, to get towed there.
Marco:
Oh.
John:
You had the Model S, drive the Model S to the auto parts store, get the car battery, drive it back.
Marco:
But I didn't know that it was the battery at this point, right?
Casey:
No, I can get behind.
Marco:
I have two jumpstart batteries that both failed to work.
John:
I know what you're saying, but you also highlighted that you're not an experienced jumpstarterer.
John:
no but but these things this is very simple you know you don't have to figure out oh do i connect to the wrong terminals do i connect one to the car body no you just connect it right to the right terminals and you power them on is that actually what your the jump uh starter batteries told you to do yes did you not read the instructions no they tell you to connect it to the like the same colors you connect light colors to light colors you don't okay i'm just sometimes they would tell you to attach like when you jump starting you attach it to the car frame to avoid sparks you don't blow yourself up whatever
Marco:
no so anyway so i at this point i figure like it's got to be it's got to be something else not just the battery because i i was equipped to deal with the battery with these jumpstart things it's not it's clearly not just that so anyway i i get it towed over i i i'm like arranging this like from the parking lot of target as i'm like trying to do other errands and then i eventually go back meet the tow truck at the car get it loaded up
Marco:
get over to toyota and then yeah they called me on monday morning they're like yeah you know what we looked through everything it was just the battery the alternator's fine the starter's fine oh my god it was just the battery and so you should have kept this the secret interestingly uh we got this tweet from michael panzer uh who referred me to this youtube video reviewing different jumpstart batteries uh and testing them out and actually seeing how much voltage they deliver and everything else
Marco:
and included in this test is an earlier version of the super cap from auto wit that i have and the no code gb40 thing that i have so it was both both of them were included in this test and the super cap delivered okay performance but for a pretty short time it you know it was it burns out pretty fast and
Marco:
the noco battery that i was that you know was supposed to be even more powerful was like one of the worst performers in this test oh so these so this thing that has very strong reviews on amazon it turns out it seems like it just might be really bad and so i have learned a few things so so first of all keep in mind the cost of these two jump starters was about 200 bucks total the tow truck was about 200 bucks and
John:
All this was to actually just replace a battery that had I had more car knowledge and... Had you just listened to me and ordered a battery from Amazon instead of buying all this weird stuff and carried the battery from Amazon with you in the car and shoved it in there.
Marco:
Yeah, but I didn't know if that would be the problem.
Marco:
And like...
Marco:
because all the other signs pointed to it not being the problem necessarily and so anyway amazon reviews i i know there's a lot of like you know review spam and and fake reviews and everything but i i yeah this thing i can't recommend the no code product the super cap maybe for different needs it might be better um but instead i i ordered from the video the one that performed a lot better
Casey:
Imagine that.
John:
I spent another $100 on... You got a brand new battery now.
John:
If there's nothing else wrong with your car, you're not going to need this thing.
John:
This is also true.
Marco:
Well, in theory, again, for a car that is driven regularly, the way regular people drive their car, maybe I wouldn't need it for another five years.
John:
If you start the engine once a month and drive it around, you're probably okay with a brand new battery.
Marco:
Yeah, but that's a lot of probabilities.
Marco:
And I will gladly spend $100, not six or whatever, but I'll gladly spend $100 for a jumpstart battery that allegedly works so that if I ever need something like this again, I will be better prepared for it.
John:
Well, so I'm sure you thought of this and probably I don't know the details of how this works, but it seems somewhat absurd to me.
John:
That you're buying a series of jumpstart batteries because you're worried that when you get over the ferry that your car in the parking lot won't be able to start because its battery is bad.
John:
And it's parked next to your other car that is a gigantic battery.
John:
Like a huge battery, like way bigger than those jumpstart packs.
John:
And you own it and it's there.
John:
Is that not possible in Teslas?
John:
You can't jumpstart another car with a huge battery.
Marco:
First of all, I don't think you can.
Marco:
I mean, that just seems... I mean, you could... I could charge up one of these other ones, but that would take like, you know, a half hour.
John:
Like, it would take a while.
John:
It just seems so terrible because like, again, when regular people...
John:
have their batteries uh die on them very often you have jumper cables in your trunk and you're looking for a friendly person in the parking lot who can help jump start your car that's a thing oh yeah and they and they jump start the car with another car that just has a gasoline engine plus a 12 volt battery but you've got a huge battery inside this car and you're like oh i need i need a new tiny little 12 volt battery to get my car started
Marco:
no because it can't deliver the right kind of power in the right way to an external terminal i know i know what you need is a dongle yeah that's it but it just it just seems very absurd you're buying a series of way smaller lithium-ion batteries and you have the world's supply of lithium-ion batteries sitting next to you i know well but and you know but the thing is i'm not always going to have that giant battery sitting next to it like ideally first of all if i ever get the driving permit this car is going to be here
Marco:
And it's going to be not starting next to my house.
John:
And you get a battery tender because it was plugged into your house's voltage.
Marco:
Right, which is probably a better idea.
Marco:
But right now, I don't have that option.
Marco:
But, you know, I don't want to have to rely on having two cars forever.
Marco:
Like, I don't know where I'm going to be in a couple of years.
Marco:
If I still have the FJ, if I still have the Tesla, I might have only one of those cars.
Marco:
I might have neither of those cars.
Marco:
I might still have both of them.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So, yeah, so I don't... This is all...
Marco:
Regular people who have better car knowledge could have probably avoided all of this, but because of both my combination of bad knowledge, bad luck with these Jumpstart batteries, and a weird situation that makes it very difficult to actually get my car worked on.
John:
Don't forget refusal to listen to me.
Marco:
Add that to the list.
Marco:
Yeah, I'll add that to the list.
Marco:
Thanks, John.
Marco:
But yeah, so anyway, that's what happened.
Marco:
I got the car back.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
It is kind of funny.
Marco:
It's one of those giant Toyota service centers where they have a car wash on premises.
Marco:
So they give you this code.
Marco:
You can go get a free car wash.
Marco:
I'm like, oh, sure.
Marco:
What the heck?
Marco:
This is the first time I've been through a car wash with the FJ.
Marco:
And, you know, it's automatic one, you know, just the big, you know, rollers and everything.
Marco:
And the front windshield on it is at such like a vertical angle.
Marco:
Like it's like it's it's so like straight up and down.
Marco:
So on aerodynamic that the little blow dryer at the end of the automatic car wash couldn't even it didn't even blow the windshield dry.
Marco:
It blows all the water off, but that thing assumes that your car is going to have an aerodynamic shape, so the water can all blow off the whole thing all at once.
Marco:
And with this, it comes out, it's still dripping wet because it's so un-aerodynamic.
Casey:
It's like a Jeep.
Casey:
You did end up with a Jeep.
John:
Well, it's also got windshield wipers, so I think you'd be okay.
John:
Yeah, I have three of them.
Casey:
So TWJ writes in the chat, quote, according to the Tesla's owner's manual, you cannot use the Tesla engine to jumpstart a regular vehicle due to the low voltage batteries in electric vehicles.
Casey:
If you were to use your Tesla to do the job, then you risk damaging your engine.
Casey:
I'm not sure why it says engine there.
John:
That's weird.
Casey:
If you're to believe this, then you cannot use that.
John:
Are they talking about trying to use the 12-volt battery from Tesla?
Marco:
Well, I assume they would have to because I can't imagine there's any mechanism in the car to unload the power from the main battery pack at 12 volts and probably hundreds of amps
John:
well i mean some some cars have this like i forget which brand it is but one of them has a thing where you can power all sorts of stuff like they have power lines you can power your house with them the lightning that does that like it's just a matter of having the right electronics in there to get the voltage and the amps to the point where it can do a 12 volt battery right that's a thing car makers could do like the problem is not lack of electricity the problem is we just didn't think that was a feature that's worth adding to the tesla so they didn't add it
Marco:
yeah and it's not it wouldn't be a trivial thing to add like you know to to have to be able to deliver that well but to be able to like deliver like exactly 12 volts at a huge amount of amps for a short time to like to charge someone else's battery or get their car thing like it is kind of specialized on the grand scale of the electronic stuff that's going on inside of tesla this additional amount of hardware it would be additional hardware space and expense but it's nothing compared to what they have to do to allow you to slam all those volts and turn it into torque at the wheels oh yeah it's just different
Marco:
Although I guess now I know that you can actually do that for $100 if you pick the right one.
John:
Yeah, I was speaking of picking the right one.
John:
So this link will be in the show notes to the video review of this.
John:
The guy who does this video review, I'm familiar with this person because he comes up on all my channels because I watch videos like this all the time.
John:
The channel is called Project Farm.
John:
The guy, if you watch one of these videos and then you watch another one, you realize, oh, they're all like this and this guy is like this the whole time.
John:
And I like that he reviews lots of different things and you can get these big sort of I have 50 of these things and let me show you them in action.
John:
But very often he takes these tools.
John:
It's very it's mostly tools takes these tools and uses them in ways.
John:
that are not a reflection of how they would be used in real life.
John:
Like if I get a pair of wire cutters, I probably want them to cut wire, but he's like, I tried to cut in half this hardened steel nail and here's how they held up.
John:
It's like, I'm never going to do that.
John:
You found the toughest wire cutters, but if all I ever cut is wire...
John:
I don't care how long it takes to get through an inch thick nail at all.
John:
I tried to get through an inch thick nail and it broke these pliers.
John:
I'm never going to do that with hand pliers.
John:
I don't have the strength to do that.
John:
They use like a hydraulic press to make it do it.
John:
These didn't hold up that well, right?
John:
And then the second thing is, in addition to testing crap that doesn't matter,
John:
he won't test things that do matter like how comfortable are they subjective things like does this cut into my hand when i use it one of the ones i was watching he was testing scissors and he's like here's how they perform he did an offhand comment boy my hand really hurt after i use these that should
John:
make it lose the competition it's like but it came in second place because it was sharp i did the sharpness test after i cut through 500 sheets of you know aluminum foil with it and then i did the sharpness a i'm not going to be cutting aluminum foil and b i don't care how sharp it is if it hurts my hand when i use it so it's very kind of like he gets it in his head of you know
John:
how it's always testing for toughness kind of like a machismo approach like what does it take to break this tool how much of a ridiculous thick item can it cut through and for the batteries is like can it start a locomotive diesel electric locomotive like i don't care about that it's just can it start a car i'm not saying all his tests are bad like very often he is testing very relevant things but if you watch enough of them you realize a lot of the time he's testing things that you don't care about and that he's not testing things that you should care about yeah this is my problem with almost every reviewer of almost everything ever
Marco:
That's why I actually usually look at things like Amazon reviews, even though I know there's so much garbage there, because I don't want to get just one person's opinion on something, because a lot of times what they are looking for is not necessarily what I'm looking for in the qualifications.
Marco:
You mentioned the scissors that hurt your hand.
Marco:
I would love to know that actually, because I, I bought a lot of products that were rated by some, you know, review site that might be about cutting wires as being like, Hey, this is something that's really, this is the best one.
Marco:
This is the single best one.
John:
It holds, it holds its edge after cutting through 8,000 reams of paper.
John:
It holds its edge better than the other ones.
John:
It's like,
John:
I'm never going to cut through that much paper, but I totally care that it hurts after the first two sheets and that should disqualify it.
John:
Don't put it in second place because it was the second sharpest after a thousand reams of paper.
John:
I don't care.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
But like, that's the kind of like, that's why like when I, when I read,
Marco:
I want to read multiple reviews or something.
Marco:
And that's where Amazon has some value.
Marco:
Even though I know a lot of stuff on there is fake, I can at least have quick access to lots of reviews of this.
Marco:
So I can kind of assess, like, first of all, which of these even seem real?
Marco:
And then the ones that seem real, what kind of stuff are they complaining about?
Marco:
And what was this person looking for?
Marco:
And did this give that to them?
Marco:
And is that the kind of stuff I'm looking for?
Marco:
Or is this person... You look at the negative reviews, and a lot of the negative reviews will...
Marco:
say things that are actually positives to you.
Marco:
And you can kind of be sure those are probably real reviews if they're negative.
Marco:
And so there's actually a lot of input there that you can process it.
Marco:
Even if you assume most of it is garbage, you can at least process it and get some kind of aggregate value out of bits and pieces you pick up.
Marco:
Whereas if you just go to one reviewer, if you don't know what their priorities are, if you don't know whether your priorities line up with theirs,
John:
it can be you can make a lot of really bad choices or bad conclusions of how much you might like something based on how much they did yeah the good thing about the project farm thing is that like it's clear you know they're mostly objective tests here's a measuring device here's a challenge i do i do the challenge i use the measuring device which is like how much force did it take or i have a sharpness testing thing like it's not subjective it's all objective measures right but the trap is you like these videos are made to get views or whatever and like and are
John:
tuned to the interest of this person but it's like oh they're all objective tests you can just take that information and leave it the trap is watching these videos and not realizing that you are falling into the trap of saying these are the these are the values that matter because it's like 17 tests in this video and those are the tests that matter right because it's very easy to fall into that it's very easy not to think about how your priorities might differ or to not see the thing that he didn't test he said well they're objective tests it's just data you can take it or leave it
John:
But because like the video is choosing which things to test, it's, you know, it's not the fault of the video that this happens, but it is natural for people to say, well, there's so many different chests here.
John:
Clearly, this probably covers all of the value of the thing.
John:
And then you get it and you realize, oh, it's too small for my hand.
John:
And that was nowhere in the criteria and you didn't even think to look for it.
John:
Right.
John:
And because it couldn't be in the right.
John:
How can they know how big your hand is?
John:
Right.
John:
So that's why when you're looking to buy a product, you're looking at reviews or whatever.
John:
Don't sort of like accept the list of things that are being tested as the world of possibilities for things that could be tested about the thing.