Trickle-Up Concern
Marco:
We've entered lined pants season.
Marco:
Cauterize, you mean?
John:
No, what?
John:
No.
John:
Pants have lines on them.
John:
They're cauterized, right?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
That's pretty good.
Marco:
No.
John:
Oh, you mean line, I guess, and they have linings.
John:
Yeah, okay.
John:
Yes.
John:
Lined pants.
John:
It's called thermal underwear, Marco.
John:
Look into it.
John:
Every pant can be a lined pant if you wear thermal underwear under it.
John:
I'm wearing thermal underwear under my pants right now.
Marco:
See, the problem with, okay, that is a solution.
Marco:
It's modular.
Marco:
You got to do what you got to do, right?
Marco:
That is a solution.
Marco:
It's not my favorite solution because then you add a bunchable layer gap, you know, with properly lined jeans.
Marco:
Like when you have, so I'm talking about like the jeans that have like the flannel lining in them.
John:
Yeah, but they're floating away from your legs and puffing out all your nice manufactured warm air every time you take a step.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe, but I see the problem with, you know, the separate underwear layer is that then they can move independently from the pant leg, which causes bunching.
John:
You just got to get good ones that stay in place.
John:
They're not moving around.
John:
You got to get a good, nice, high quality thermal underwear that does not move around or bunch up or like, you're not getting good ones that are not fitting you right if that's happening.
John:
They're like tights.
John:
They're like leggings.
John:
They don't, they shouldn't go anywhere.
Marco:
Also, I must admit, I do not like the process of putting them on.
Yeah.
Marco:
you mean sliding them over your the ends of your legs they're too tight are you putting them over your head is that what you're doing no they're they're they're too tight you gotta like you know you gotta like you know even them out like make sure they're on like i'm just i'm not a fan you you would not survive as a woman
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
I was about to say, like, this is considered the comfortable clothes for most women I know.
Casey:
And here we are as men complaining and moaning about it, which I'm not saying you're wrong, Marco, but this is like... I'm saying you're wrong.
John:
I don't think putting them on their underwear is onerous at all.
John:
It's just like a really big sock with no ends on it.
Casey:
On a wildly unrelated note, I am drunk with power right now because I had an epiphany a day or two back.
Casey:
And you two already know what I'm talking about.
Casey:
But a day or two back, I had an epiphany.
Casey:
And it occurred to me my – and I can't believe I'm saying this, but here we are – my bespoke Ultrafine 5K porch monitor –
Casey:
Because although we do have seasons, and we do have something that vaguely resembles winter, and so because of that, it is cold outside, by my definition.
Casey:
I'm sure you two would laugh at it, but for me, it's cold.
Casey:
And so it occurred to me, this bespoke ultrafine 5K that I would typically use on the porch during the nice weather is just going to be sitting for the next several months.
Casey:
What if I added it to my existing array of 5Ks?
John:
I don't understand how you got the starting point, that it's just going to be sitting.
John:
Why would you think it would be sitting, 5Ks?
Casey:
Well, when am I going to, I'm not going to use it.
John:
Why would you leave it on the porch?
John:
It seems like the default would be everything's coming in off the porch and my monitor is going onto my computer desk because where else would it go?
Casey:
It was sitting on the floor of my office because I didn't know what else to do with it.
Casey:
And then it occurred to me, wait a second.
John:
What do you do with this rectangle that lights up?
John:
I have no idea.
John:
There's a computer over here and there's a light up rectangle over there.
John:
Are they related in some way?
John:
We'll never know.
Casey:
When you already have 10 K's of resolution, do you really need 15?
Casey:
Well, damn it.
Casey:
Yes, I do.
Casey:
So now I have 15 K's of resolution and I am very excited about it.
Casey:
You two with your measly six K a piece.
Casey:
I have more than the two of you combined.
Casey:
And I think we're still talking about monitors.
Casey:
So here we are.
John:
More contiguous space.
John:
It's all broken up.
Casey:
that's true it's i it's i look full-on grandma's boy right now it's ridiculous and i'm loving every second of it and this is going to be great and i told myself i wouldn't incept marco but here we go this is going to be great until marco listens to this recording of my track and says to me oh my god you've created an echo chamber never again we'll hear all the fans on those two lgs going yeah exactly oh my god so yeah so we'll see what happens but right now i am mad and drunk with power and nobody can stop me
John:
You can have three windows open now, Casey.
Casey:
Three entire windows.
Casey:
Imagine that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we have a bunch of happy administrivia to take care of.
Casey:
First and foremost, there is a new hot off the presses member special that we released earlier today.
Casey:
If you are not a member, you can go to ATP dot FM slash join.
Casey:
You can join and become a member.
Casey:
you can do that and you can get all of the member specials we have ever recorded, not just the ones that are forthcoming.
Casey:
And you can get the bootleg, which is the, you know, immediately after we finish recording, it's the version of the show that has all our mistakes and all of me swearing and everything.
Casey:
And you can also get an ad-free version of the show, which is pretty great.
Casey:
But in this particular instance, what we're talking about is the ATP holiday special.
Casey:
Marco, would you like to tell me about what the holiday special is, please?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So it turns out we tried to talk about holiday traditions or things we look forward to or our favorite things to do or our least favorite things to do.
Marco:
And Casey wanted this episode to be 30 minutes long.
Casey:
I was just trying to say that it didn't need to be more than 30 minutes.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You needed to go to bed.
Marco:
He was sweeping.
Casey:
I mean, that's every day.
Casey:
That's every day when we start the show.
Marco:
Well, let's just say it lasted longer than 30 minutes because it's us, of course.
Marco:
And I thought it was pretty fun.
Marco:
And so we had a fun holiday episode.
Marco:
It is a light, fluffy, and fun thing that we made, and you can enjoy it.
Casey:
Yeah, that is available.
Casey:
Please go ahead and join at atp.fm slash join if you haven't already and have a listen.
Casey:
It really was a lot of fun.
Casey:
A lot of nostalgia, especially if you happen to be an old dude or like listening to old dudes talk about toys from 30 years ago.
Casey:
You're really going to like it.
Casey:
But there's more than just that.
Casey:
Now, what if, John, imagine a scenario where because of, you know, whatever your life situation is, you don't really have the spare cash to send our way, which we get.
Casey:
That's totally fine.
Casey:
No offense taken.
Casey:
But you really wanted to listen to these holiday specials.
Casey:
You shouldn't, you know, steal them.
Casey:
But is there any other thing that you could do instead?
Casey:
This is the season of giving.
John:
And in that spirit, we have done what programmers always do at the end of the year, which is rush like mad to get a feature out the door before the holiday season is done.
John:
People have asked for it, and we have hastily implemented it.
John:
John has hastily implemented it.
Casey:
I got to stop you there.
Casey:
We did not hastily implement anything.
Casey:
I didn't do anything for this.
Casey:
I lightly participated, and Marco sat on the sidelines and said, good work, fellas.
John:
I'm including you all in case it doesn't work.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Okay, I'll allow it.
Casey:
I'll allow it.
John:
We have added gift memberships.
John:
Go to atp.fm slash gift.
John:
Many people have asked for this.
John:
It is exactly what it sounds like.
John:
Someone else can buy you an ATP membership rather than you buying it yourself.
John:
Or you can buy someone else a membership so that they become a member.
John:
Here is the timing of this obviously is meant to get it out the door before the holiday season is over.
John:
That's why we're in such a big hurry.
John:
If there's some feature that's missing from gift membership, you can email us and we'll implement it.
John:
But we thought it was really important to get this out the door before the holiday season is over.
John:
And in particular, all the people who signed up for membership to get the discount in the ATP store, the ATP holiday store that came and went a while back,
John:
all those people's memberships are now expiring because we always say hey just sign up for the store get the get the discount buy your stuff it's worth it and you can cancel you know it's really easy to do right that's happening right now we are seeing people's memberships slowly disappear because they're like yeah i just became a member of the store i got my stuff and now it's over here's what those people can do ask somebody to buy you a membership
John:
as a gift for the holidays then the next time the store comes up you'll already have a membership because they bought you a gift membership so you still don't have to actually get the membership yourself it's a great way to save money all you got to do is give somebody url they don't all they need is this url they can just go there and obviously a credit card or something and buy you a membership you need to give them the url atp.fm slash gift the other thing they need to know is what email address you signed up for uh your your membership account
John:
uh if you haven't signed up for a membership account don't worry they can just use any email address that's you if they enter the wrong email address don't worry you can change it later but for everything to go seamlessly um it would be good if they knew what email address you would like to use at the website uh the final thing i'll add is the way these work again because of time constraints is the person who buys the gift membership for you after they successfully buy it they'll be presented with a screen that says here's what the person has to do to redeem their membership and there's a code you can enter there's also a link that you can go to but here's the the most important part
John:
And it's in red, bold, italic text on the page that they land on after they buy it.
John:
They have to give you that link, that redemption code, whatever.
John:
It's not going to get to you any other way.
John:
How can they give it to you?
John:
They can write it down on a piece of paper.
John:
They could print it.
John:
They could send it to you in a message.
John:
They can make a nice little card.
John:
But the point is, they have to give you that redemption code, that link, somehow, some way.
John:
Why don't we make a nice card and email it to you?
John:
Time constraints.
John:
We apologize.
John:
That is the system.
John:
Somewhat manual, but I can attest that it actually works.
John:
Someone actually has already purchased and redeemed a gift membership, so the system works.
John:
Please go to atp.fm slash gift, or rather, please send that URL to people in your life who would like to buy you a gift membership.
John:
And we'll be back here crossing our fingers and hoping this whole thing works.
Casey:
A couple of things I think we need to point out.
Casey:
First of all, what happens if I am an active and paid member, but I'd like a little bit of quote unquote free membership?
Casey:
Can I ask for a gift of ATP membership, even if I'm already a paying member?
John:
You sure can.
John:
If you get a gift, and by the way, the gift codes, when you redeem them, they start immediately.
John:
But if you already have a membership, all it does is shove your membership down into the future.
John:
So the gift membership begins immediately, and your remaining membership that you paid for, that will just resume once the gift membership is done.
John:
And in fact, if you get multiple gift memberships, so many people want to get you gift memberships, you get five of them.
John:
Redeem all five.
John:
They'll just stack one after the other.
John:
The first one you redeem will start immediately.
John:
The second one you redeem will just queue it up right behind it.
John:
The third one will be queue it up right behind it.
John:
There's no limit to the amount of gift memberships people can buy you.
John:
And again, as you redeem them, if you redeem multiple memberships, they will be queued up.
John:
And if you love it so much and your gift membership is about to run out, you can subscribe for real and your real membership will start as soon as your last gift membership expires.
John:
So we hope all this works as described.
John:
But the whole point is you can give the gift of ATP membership.
John:
You can receive the gift of ATP membership to the season.
Casey:
Additionally, just another point of order here.
Casey:
Let's suppose I bought a gift membership for you, John, but I screwed up your email address or you would prefer a different email address.
Casey:
What can I do about that?
John:
Yeah, the way the gift members work is on your member page, either the page for the person who purchased it or the page for the person who received it.
John:
you'll see all the gift memberships that you've dealt with in any way.
John:
So if you were the sender, you'll see all the ones that you sent, you'll see redemption instructions underneath there, and you'll also be able to change the address that it sent to.
John:
That's another constraint here.
John:
You can only redeem the gift membership if it was sent to you specifically, your specific email address.
John:
So if you're like, oh, I don't actually use that email address at atp.fm.
John:
I use a different email address.
John:
Just tell the sender they can go to their member page at atp.fm and then change the email address associated with the code, and then you'll be able to redeem it.
John:
So it's a pretty flexible system.
John:
If you have any problems with it, membership at ATP.fm.
John:
Send us an email.
John:
We'll fix it.
John:
But we think it should be all self-service, including the delivery part.
John:
Remember, make a nice card on construction paper.
John:
Use glitter.
John:
Just put that redemption code right in there.
Casey:
Well, thank you, John.
Casey:
Genuinely, thank you, John, for all of your hard work.
Casey:
You really did quite a lot in not a lot of time.
Casey:
I will speak for myself.
Casey:
I am loving the no-day-job Syracuse because you are just...
Casey:
hammering through all the ATP to-dos that Marco and I have become exceptionally good at kicking that can right down the road, and you've been just knocking them out left and right.
Casey:
So my public and heartfelt thanks to you, John, for quitting your job.
Marco:
Yeah, me too.
Marco:
For all these years, because John...
Marco:
you know had a day job that was not anything we could really ever see in our in our side of the world we didn't really ever know like is john like how how much of a programmer is john like we knew we knew he was very smart we knew he knew a lot about programming we knew we'd see all my pearl modules yeah like we knew he wrote pearl but who cares about that so you should see all the pearl i wrote at my day job just thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lines of it
Marco:
Now we can actually see what the fully deployed John is capable of.
Marco:
It's pretty impressive.
Marco:
Gift memberships.
Marco:
John has had this on the request list for our CMS for almost the entire time we've had a CMS.
Marco:
And I was always very...
Marco:
very reluctant to do it because we would start talking okay well how how would this work what you know there's so many little details that you have to figure out and account for and and build there's a lot to make this work and work well and not have weird side effects or weird issues it's like you know we we sometimes will run ads on our show for platforms that do this kind of thing for you and there is no better advertisement for platforms that do this for you
Marco:
than hearing how much work it takes us to try to do it ourselves.
Marco:
The amount of work and the diff, the size of the diff on the code base for this was so big.
Marco:
Again, it of course vindicates I was right to not do it all this time.
John:
I'm not sure that's a lesson you should be taking from this.
Marco:
But yeah, also, yeah, thanks, John.
Marco:
It's pretty great that you're doing this now.
Marco:
And both that it is done and that we didn't have to do it.
Marco:
Thank you.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
The PR, it was 2,800 lines added, 135 removed.
Casey:
So not a small PR by any stretch of the imagination.
Casey:
It's also been hilarious, although I didn't hear much of it this time, but it's been hilarious seeing Marco kind of react to us doing quote unquote real work in GitHub and doing pull requests and issues and things like that.
Casey:
And I feel like Marco's just sitting back there like Michael Jackson in Thriller eating his popcorn going, wow.
Marco:
that's a lot of work watching me enjoy that php just loving it i mean that that part is very fun i gotta be honest but yeah you know this again still moving so like you know i i wish i had any time to sit back and eat popcorn at any time for anything ever right now but uh i'm really very thankful that i'm not having any of this put on my plate thank you
Casey:
All right, let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
Thank you, John.
Casey:
That's your gift to Marco and me, is doing all this.
Casey:
So thank you, John.
Casey:
Merry Christmas.
Casey:
Happy Hanukkah.
Casey:
All right, so let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
Let's talk about John's Blue Ocean.
Casey:
You have some footnotes here, John.
Casey:
How do we want to handle this?
John:
This was a footnote in the actual article from the day it was published.
John:
But I should have made it more prominent because I forgot about it, too, when we talked about it.
John:
Here is the footnote.
John:
This is basically the exact same URL that I linked to in the footnote that many people sent us.
John:
And it is a story from June 24th, 2023.
John:
Uh, from the verge that, uh, talks about European parliament, uh, voting on regulation that would, among other things, require smartphone manufacturers to make their devices, batteries more easily user replaceable.
John:
And that was the blue ocean discussion.
John:
My idea that for replaceable batteries, Apple things, and everyone was saying, Hey, he was going to make Apple do it.
John:
Of course, as with all things related to the EU and their various regulations and things that they vote on, it takes a while to get going and you're not quite sure how it's going to work exactly.
John:
Jason Eccles says that Apple says it already complies with this law.
John:
Of course, Apple would say that.
John:
You can buy an iPhone today and change the battery.
John:
They already have user serviceable batteries.
John:
They're even loaned you the tools so you don't need to buy them.
John:
And they've even made the removal of the back cover on the phones easier for two years in a row.
John:
So that is exactly the position I would imagine Apple would take.
John:
But here's some more from The Verge.
John:
According to a draft version of the regulation on the EU's website, the batteries should be replaceable, quote, with no tool or a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part or basic tools.
John:
I mean, that's a lot of things.
John:
It either has to be replaceable with no tools.
John:
or a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part i mean i guess apple complies with that because when they sell you the part they rent you the tools or basic tools anyway it also says that spare parts should be available for up to seven years after a phone's release and perhaps most importantly the processor replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman we'll see how this ends up working okay
Marco:
I look forward to like some court case in the future where Apple tries to argue that, you know, first of all, that like, you know, it's some kind of hex Torx security bolt is a common basic tool.
Marco:
And like, you know, what defines a layman exactly?
John:
Oh, hex tool.
John:
Forget it.
John:
Like these things are glued together.
John:
There's always some process where you heat things up and pry things apart.
John:
And I would, you know, I don't know what what is actually what the regulation is actually going to be, when it's going to take effect, how much of this language will still be in it.
John:
But it's out there lurking, potentially.
John:
I mean, and Apple's not the only one here.
John:
Every big smartphone maker has essentially sealed in batteries that are annoying and difficult to replace.
John:
Forget about doing with no tools.
John:
uh with tools that are supplied with the product i mean that seems like it would cover anything it's like now every time you buy uh you know oh i guess supply with the product or or spare parts so if you buy the battery the only way you can get the replacement batteries it comes with a gigantic set of tools in pelican cases it's like yeah we're compliant with the i don't know i don't know what they're trying to do with this thing are they trying to make it so people's phones last longer are they trying to make it uh so that you can actually have user replaceable batteries we'll see but uh
John:
That's out there, just like the USBC thing was.
John:
We talked about it for years, and it eventually happened, so maybe this one will too.
Casey:
All right, let's talk about the beeper battle.
Casey:
Where did we leave this last?
Casey:
It was working last we spoke about it, right?
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
Yes, and we were saying, hey, maybe don't get too used to this working for very long.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So Apple has since that time, Apple cut it off.
Casey:
And then apparently Beeper has come up with some workarounds.
Casey:
I'll get into a little bit of details here.
Casey:
Come up with some workarounds to get it back.
Casey:
Asterisk.
Casey:
And that's the most recent as we record on Wednesday night, as far as we know.
Casey:
So this all started with Apple issuing a statement.
Casey:
Apple says, at Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control of their data and keep personal information safe.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
I don't know why you moaned about the post significant risk to security and privacy, because I think that's pretty much 100 percent true.
John:
Right.
John:
Like the whole idea of the iMessage ecosystem is they have clients and servers and Apple writes them both.
John:
So Apple knows that they're not secretly taking your messages in plain text and sending them off to a server somewhere.
John:
because apple could do that like if it's unencrypted apple can get your messages well they could because they display them on the screen right like they write the client application right uh but apple knows they're not doing that because they're apple and they control all the ends once there's a third party client doing this of course at some point the third party client has to decrypt and decode the messages and display them on people's screens and at that point they could send them off to a server somewhere and save them and you know what like
John:
And Apple doesn't have any control over those third parties.
John:
So I think it does pose a significant risk to the security and privacy of everyone who's on the network.
John:
Because if you can't tell that you're messaging somebody who's using a third party client, that third party client could be doing anything and Apple has no idea what it's doing.
John:
is bieber doing that no i'm sure it's not like that's not their business is not stealing all your messages but apple doesn't know that so i when you have a system like i message and their servers where the security where apple can vouch for the security because they make the client and the server and they don't allow third-party clients that's kind of an essential part of the system and now is that you know were they really concerned about people's security is that the main reason they did this no maybe not but it is definitely a reason and i think it's a valid reason
Casey:
All right, that's fair enough.
Marco:
There's multiple battles going on here.
Marco:
One is like the technical battle between Beeper and Apple, and maybe they'll try to play some cat and mouse game for a little bit longer, maybe not.
Marco:
Also, there's the PR battle, and I think Apple's trying to squash this and move on as quickly as possible.
Marco:
Beeper is, I think, trying to prolong the PR battle or inflame it as much as possible because at the end of the day,
Marco:
While I applaud this level of reverse engineering and hacking because I think it's kind of cool as a nerd, they have no right to do this.
Marco:
I don't think it's a good thing for anybody, the world or Apple or Beeper, for them to keep trying to fight this fight.
Marco:
And I don't think it's a great experience for their customers to have to try to ride this roller coaster with them.
Marco:
I think the reality is what this is very clearly is not only some kind of – you can call it a hack maybe.
Marco:
That word has grown very vague over time.
Marco:
But I would also call it theft of services.
Marco:
They're building a commercial business.
John:
on stealing access to apple's iMessage servers and service uh in an unauthorized way that's a great business plan our business plan is we're not going to run servers we're going to use somebody else's servers oh so they're letting you use their service no they're not letting us yeah but they're going to be a foundational part of our business so we're going to use their servers without any permission and hope that we don't get caught or they can't stop us write that into your business plan see how much funding you get and by the way who is the company oh it's the richest company in the world
John:
oh that'll work out great and they and they really don't want you to be doing this like so like it's not like i message is some like you know side thing for apple they don't care about no it's pretty important it's it's a very important aspect of their most important product and if you didn't want to be noticed you can't like have publicity or marketing like maybe apple wouldn't notice if he was just if it was just that high school student making his own client and running it against i message and impressing all his friends with his blue bubbles apple probably never would have noticed but if it's a business they'll notice
Marco:
that's the thing like you know so they can keep playing the technical cat and mouse game ultimately i would imagine they will have a legal battle on their hands and they will lose that one promptly uh and severely and so i i can't imagine this is going to end uh well for beeper or anybody who who relies on this you know i said last time this is you know it kind of like the hackintosh like you know you shouldn't
Marco:
as a customer i wouldn't advise that you assume this will work at all in the future i wouldn't make any hardware buying decisions based on this so for instance if you were not buying an android phone because you wanted iMessage and this comes out and you're like great now i can buy an android phone like i would i would maybe not count on that being a thing like if you want to if you already have an android phone fine if you want to buy an android phone anyway for other experimentation fine or if you want to convert to it for other reasons fine
Marco:
But don't make any decisions based on this work because it already is semi-broken and I think will be promptly shut down by Apple legal pretty soon, if nothing else.
Marco:
Because, you know, again, like when you're when you're building a Hackintosh or, you know, unlocking your DVD player or whatever, that's a little bit different because you are like gaining access to a device that you already bought that that kind of doesn't leave your home.
Marco:
So who cares?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But in this case, they are literally hacking Apple's service.
Marco:
They're running this service.
Marco:
They are literally hacking into Apple's service and stealing use of it and then making a commercial product out of that.
Marco:
That is beyond any reasonable line.
Marco:
And whatever you think about iMessage and lock-in and anything else, frankly, I don't think it's that big of a deal because if you look around the world, iMessage is pretty big in the U.S.
Marco:
It's not very big outside of the U.S.,
Marco:
Because the rest of the world have discovered things like WhatsApp and Line and all the other different chat apps that everyone uses in different places.
Marco:
WeChat, you know, all the big ones that are in the rest of the world outside of the US.
Marco:
iMessage doesn't really have that much of a monopoly there.
Marco:
If anything, I think any market for this, it has probably already come and gone.
Marco:
Because anybody who has mixed chat groups or uses Android outside of the U.S.
Marco:
or whatever, those groups are all using other apps for their chat platforms.
Marco:
If anything, this shows maybe Apple should have made iMessage for Android a long time ago.
Marco:
But today, it's almost moot.
Marco:
I don't think this is going to change much of anything.
Marco:
But regardless, Beeper, it's a cool hack that, you know, the 16 year old kid who figured out this reverse engineering, it's very technically impressive.
Marco:
But this is not a business.
Marco:
And the sooner this stops, the better it'll be, honestly, for Beeper, because it's only going to get worse from here.
John:
Yeah, and people re-enabled it and they had a reply to Apple's statement that we'll link in the show notes where they were very indignant and they're like, what is Apple saying about security?
John:
We made it more secure because previously people were sending SMS and all sorts of ridiculous statements like that.
John:
It was like, look, if people on Android want to talk to people on iPhones with end-to-end security, they can just use WhatsApp.
John:
It's not like you're the only possible option here.
John:
But anyway, they eventually get down to like the bargaining stage.
John:
Like, look, if Apple's worried about security and privacy, we'll give them the source code so they can see if it's secure themselves.
John:
And we'll even have a third party security team look at it.
John:
And if they really want us to, we'll put a pager emoji next to all of our messages.
John:
So they'll know messages are coming from us.
John:
And it's like,
John:
They don't want to vet your source code.
John:
They don't want you to use their network at all.
John:
They didn't invite you.
John:
They didn't tell you you can use their servers.
John:
Like, if they're worried about security here, you can look at our source code.
John:
What are you trying to give them homework?
John:
They just don't want you to use their servers.
John:
Like, this kind of bargaining, like, saying, look, we're doing everything we can.
John:
We're bending over backwards.
John:
I don't see what Apple's problem is.
John:
The problem is they never invited you to use their servers.
John:
It's not a public service.
John:
It doesn't have a public API.
John:
It is not a platform.
John:
Do you understand?
John:
You're not allowed to use it.
John:
And they don't, we'll give them
John:
our source code how about you just go out of business like if you're willing to like you know do whatever apple wants you to do apple wants you just to go away you can't sit with us yeah exactly if apple wanted wanted iMessage on android they would just make it themselves they don't need beeper to do this for them here's the thing like if you wanted to if you wanted to go this route you should have gone to apple and say hey we think you should open up iMessage and we think we should be the contractor to build the third-party client for android and
John:
if apple said okay then they would have a contract and you would do that and that you know would apple agree to that probably not they'd probably try to do it themselves and do a bad job whatever that's the apple way for you know apps that are on other platforms see quicktime and safari for windows uh it's like but that didn't happen apple doesn't appear to want that if you if you want that to happen you need to convince apple because it's their service i don't i don't understand that is so and you won't convince them
John:
it's it's so i mean maybe you would maybe you can convince them i don't know like maybe the apple's gonna decide to do on their own but that's not what's happening here instead it's just it's really like the high school student is a great sort of avatar for this because it is kind of the level of like the you know sort of indignant child saying what do you want from me i just i don't know why you won't let me use your servers and charge people for it so mean here look my source code it's fine look we're not doing it's everything's
John:
Anyway, not a fan of Beeper.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm trying to picture like how I would react if someone did this to Overcast.
Marco:
Like if someone reverse engineered the Overcast API and made an Android app and started charging money for it.
John:
They were making an Android podcast client, but they didn't want to run their servers.
John:
I just use Marco servers.
Marco:
yeah and just advertise oh yeah this is overcast now you're using overcast right here like and they charge they would charge a subscription for their app right that's probably more expensive than mine and then they would come to me and they would say marco if you're worried about we'll send you the source code to our app and then you'll know that it's okay yeah i can i can just audit that on my own time somehow whenever i feel like it and let you continue to make money while using my server back end that you're not paying for
Marco:
And I have no control over what they do with my app or, you know, the service or yeah, that's like I would shut that down so quickly.
Marco:
Like I and I wouldn't care if I burned all my old clients.
Marco:
I would still I would shut it down immediately and I would not feel bad even for a second.
Marco:
And so I cannot fault Apple for this at all.
Marco:
Apple is 100% in the right.
Marco:
It is their prerogative to do whatever they want with the service.
Marco:
And the idea of having some other app interact with your service that you don't control, where the, as John mentioned at first, like, more like, you know, the security of the entire thing is part of your main product.
Marco:
It's part of the integrity.
Marco:
It's part of the selling point.
John:
The most used app in iOS, at least in the US anyway.
Marco:
Yeah, like,
Marco:
I would never in a million years allow a third party to be hacking my stuff on the side there with my service outside of my control.
Marco:
I would never in a million years allow that.
Marco:
And Apple sure as heck won't.
Marco:
And this is going to be over very soon.
Marco:
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Casey:
ECC RAM, it just won't die.
John:
I mean, it won't die because there are still nuances that we haven't gotten right.
John:
So we're going to keep doing it until we get it right.
John:
This will be the last time, though.
John:
This has got to be the last time we've got to get it right.
John:
Well, it will die, but it will tell you that it has died.
John:
Exactly.
John:
So to refresh everyone's memory, this was originally like an Ask ATP question, basically saying, ECC memory used to be a thing.
John:
Now on Apple Silicon, is it a thing?
John:
Should it be?
John:
What's the deal?
John:
And we've been narrowing, getting closer and closer to the truth.
John:
One final update from, of course, Jonathan Dietz Jr.
John:
And where last we left it was basically to summarize that the RAM used in the latest Apple Silicon Things have Undai ECC and support Link ECC, which is the ECC in transit between the RAM and the SOC.
John:
But we weren't sure if Apple was using that.
John:
So the upshot was like, oh, they could have as good ECC as the Xeons did.
John:
We're not sure if they do, but they should have better ECC than the plain old consumer intels that didn't have ECC in the old days.
John:
Here is further clarification for that.
John:
On-die ECC is not part of the JDEC system.
John:
i always i always heard jedec there you go ondite ecc is not part of the jedec specifications for lpddr memories it is implemented in various proprietary fashions by drm manufacturers to increase yields on leading edge process notes this is what we heard from a lot of people like oh that error correction is not for correcting errors it's actually just for correcting errors which is very confusing but it's like what it was the motivation the motivation i'll continue reading here
John:
Uh, not all, all LPDDR4 chips incorporate on die ECC.
John:
However, many do, it really depends on which manufacturing process used and we'll link to a white paper that sums up the issue in the show notes.
John:
Uh, Jonathan continues, as you correctly surmised, Apple has gone out of their way to minimize trace lengths to ensure the highest possible signal integrity with their on package memory for Apple Silicon.
John:
Uh,
John:
They also minimize electrical loading by placing only a single die or rank on each LPDDR channel and have elected to stick with relatively conservative LPDDR6400 speeds rather than pushing the envelope with something like LPDDR5X9600.
John:
Apple doesn't appear to have Link ECC enabled on the M-series chip, and it's not clear to me that the memory controllers necessarily support it.
John:
If they're simply using DesignWare IP from Synopsys, then it's probably along for the ride, but who knows.
John:
Classic sideband ECC, where you have extra DRM devices written and read back by the memory controller, provides end-to-end SECDED.
John:
Yeah, that's single-bit error correction, double-bit error detection.
John:
I think we talked about this in the past show.
John:
Neither ONDII nor LINK ECC do that.
John:
So this is the important distinction that we didn't get at before.
John:
All this ECC stuff we're talking about does not do single-bit error correction or double-bit error detection.
John:
So what does it do?
John:
On-die ECC silently corrects any single bit errors that happen on die with no involvement from the host system.
John:
This allows DRAM manufacturers to sell chips that may contain a sprinkling of defective bits as known good dies and their customers are none the wiser.
John:
As an added benefit, on-die ECC will also correct any single bit errors caused by external factors in rows that are otherwise free of manufacturing defects.
John:
Did you get that little bit?
John:
So like, they do this so they can sell you RAM that has bad bits because they know the ECC will fix it.
John:
But also, if a cosmic ray hits your chip...
John:
They'll fix that too, provided it happened on one of the things that didn't already have a defect.
John:
So if the cosmic ray hits one of the good cells in the RAM, it causes an error, ECC sees it, the on-die ECC sees it and fixes it.
John:
great if the cosmic array hits one of those rows that had a bad manufacturing defect and it was only working because etc was fixing the one bit errors now you've got a two bit error and it can't correct that so that's this is the important distinction um jonathan continues there is no mechanism present to inform the host system when errors are corrected or uncorrected errors are encountered so if you get that two bit error
John:
Not only is it not corrected, but the RAM chip can't tell you about it.
John:
So that error is getting passed on and link ECC doesn't matter because at that point you've got erroneous data coming off the RAM chips.
John:
So that's a bummer.
John:
When the memory controller handles ECC, it can track errors using counters and provide substantially more robust features.
John:
For instance, John's Xeon-based Mac Pro reports memory errors for each DIMM and system information, and macOS will alert you when the DIMMs are failing and require replacement.
John:
This is a fun thing from back in the Intel days.
John:
I think it was my 2008 Mac Pro.
John:
It might have even been my G3.
John:
I don't remember.
John:
But one of those big tower computers with an Intel CPU that I owned that had DIMMs in it.
John:
had little red led lights in on each little slot that the memory dims went in and if you had a bad dim or inserted in the wrong place or whatever it would light up red to tell you which one was bad amazing loved it you can even see it in the like about this mac thing it would tell you like the i think it would tell you the error count on each on each dim right yeah
John:
And that's the full-fledged ECC where every single DIMM has extra memory.
John:
We talked about it before.
John:
That's implemented by the memory controller, right?
John:
That is a more robust solution.
John:
So Jonathan continues.
John:
All DDR5 memories implement on-die ECC, yet DDR5 DIMMs with extra chips for sideband ECC are still a thing.
John:
In fact, because DDR5 DIMMs are divided into two 32-bit channels, the ECC versions are 80 bits wide and require two or more additional chips to store the ECC data."
John:
LPDDR channels and die interfaces are both 16 bits wide, so adding one extra die per channel to implement sideband ECC would require doubling the number of DRAM dies.
John:
This is obviously not a practical solution.
John:
If you want to achieve the same level of ECC available on Xeon's and AMD EPYC platforms using LPDDR memory, you have to implement inline ECC.
John:
In this scheme, the memory controller stores ECC code along with the actual data on the same die without making the channel wider.
John:
Obviously, this comes along with some performance implications and a reduction in memory size available for storing data.
John:
To date, Apple has not implemented inline ECC and Apple Silicon Macs.
John:
So to sum up, ECC, is it a thing in Apple Silicon?
John:
Not in the same way it was on Intel Xeons, but in slightly more ways than it was on non-Xeon Intel Macs.
John:
Could Apple Silicon benefit from it?
John:
i think so yes but the costs involved mean that the only place it would really be appropriate would be on the mac pro if apple continues to make that a thing and maybe on the highest of high-end mac studios and based on all this my guess would be that apple is never going to do either one of those things because it's so expensive uh and like because they don't want to do the inline one because you don't want to take a performance hit and the other one is just so much more expensive and
John:
I don't think there's any appetite for that from Apple's customers or from Apple itself, which is kind of a bummer.
John:
But as many people who wrote in, you know, pointed out or supposed, we got ECC for all those years on the Intel Mac Pro because Intel put it there.
John:
And Apple essentially got it because if you wanted a Xeon and it supported ECC memory, like it's just, you know, there you go, right?
John:
I suppose they could have not taken it or whatever, but it was already there.
John:
It was priced into the package.
John:
Now that Apple gets to decide what features exist, and now that Apple's decisions about what features to implement really are not focused on the Mac Pro, like at all, I can't imagine this ever appearing.
John:
But I still think that if there's one computer that it would be appropriate for, it would be the Mac Pro.
John:
The rest of them, probably not.
John:
Anyway, watch out for those cosmic rays.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think you're probably right.
Marco:
They probably won't ever do it again.
Marco:
But if they are looking for more things to differentiate the Mac Pro and maybe even the Mac Studio from, say, the laptops or the entire rest of the product line, that is something they could do.
Marco:
Again, I think you're probably right.
Marco:
They probably won't.
Marco:
But it would be at least a differentiating feature.
John:
Yeah, I mean, and why does Intel do it?
John:
Like, everyone always points this out in their emails to us.
John:
They're like, well, you know, where is it really important that you handle these error cases?
John:
Things like money, right?
John:
One bit gets flipped and you don't detect it in a money transfer thing.
John:
That could be a lot of money gained or lost in a millisecond, right?
John:
It's a big deal.
John:
And so you want...
John:
So redundancy, protection, you know, protection against everything you possibly can.
John:
And cosmic rays, like they're going to come, they're going to tunnel through your data center.
John:
You know, how deep underground you make it, there's probably some cosmic ray that's getting in there, errors in manufacturing.
John:
You do not want those to happen without you knowing about it.
John:
It's fine to detect it and throw up your hands and say, I cannot continue and just halt the whole machine.
John:
That is better than accidentally adding or moving billions of dollars because some bit flips somewhere, right?
John:
Or thousands or, you know, one cent or like whatever.
John:
You just, you really want the numbers to add up at the end of money stuff.
John:
And similarly for like safety systems and, you know, weapon systems or medical things or whatever, there are cases where you want to do everything you possibly can to protect everything.
John:
uh the integrity of the memory but there's pretty much nothing that apple does except for the car that they haven't ever shipped where that rises to that level of reliability concern so then it's really just a matter of okay well are they are they putting so much ram in some machine that the odds of one bit an undetected one bit error become 100 over the course of a year of running or something and how important is that you know so i i loved it when i had it i like the little lights on the dims uh i would i would take it if they gave it to me but reading all this makes it seem like i'm not going to get
Casey:
Joe Lyon has some thoughts on U.S.
Casey:
fabs and the semiconductor business.
Casey:
Joe writes,
Casey:
Because process node shrinks basically made it so that companies could continue to pump out more transistors year after year while using roughly the same amount of wafers or increasing the wafer outs or the number of fabs at a reasonable pace.
Casey:
But with silicon shrinks slowing way, way down for all kinds of chips, in the future, the main way to pump out more gigabytes of memory or storage or more logic transistors, etc.
Casey:
is going to be to build new fabs and generate more wafers.
Casey:
Instead of relying on process shrinks as a way to continue growing transistor outputs, the future is going to have to also rely on massively expanding the number of fabs and wafers to keep up with transistor demand growth.
John:
So watch for that gigantic silicon fab opening somewhere near you.
Marco:
I am at least not at all well-versed on things like world politics or even the ins and outs of the semiconductor trade.
Marco:
But looking at things like the US, the CHIPS Act or whatever it was called, where we're funding a whole bunch of fab stuff.
Marco:
And I know a lot of it's basically going to Intel and stuff.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
But looking at a lot of this stuff, the computer industry has grown up during an era of...
Marco:
pretty pretty stable world peace in most of the world we've been able to have things like you know free trade with china with taiwan uh you know all these like you know very like globalized economies we have this assumption that we will be able to do this and therefore like oh we we can build all these ships in taiwan because of course that will always continue to be available and and we won't have any problems at all by doing that um
Marco:
And I think it's probably better for the industry to start building in some safeties, to start diversifying, you know, have, have factories in multiple countries that make critical parts, be able to do as much stuff as you can domestically, you know, in a country as big as the U S you know, hopefully we should have our own capacity for a lot of this stuff.
Marco:
And I know, again, we, I don't know anything about this business to the level that, you know, other podcasters do talk about this and, you know, analysts and stuff.
Marco:
Uh, but yeah,
Marco:
To the extent that we can, I know we are pretty far from being able to make like cutting edge chips and cutting edge fabs here in the US.
Marco:
I know that.
Marco:
And we might stay that way forever.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But it is probably a good idea for lots of reasons.
Marco:
to build as much as we can with our own capacity here.
Marco:
And so all the stuff that we're seeing, new fabs being built, funding for them, different geopolitical effects, I think this is probably for the best.
Marco:
The more we can build here, probably the better.
John:
And even things like TSMC, not a U.S.
John:
company, having them make fabs inside the U.S.
John:
is another hedge because they can, in theory, do have the cutting-edge knowledge.
John:
The fabs they're making here I don't think are going to be cutting-edge, but in theory they could be in the future.
Marco:
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Marco:
You've got to start somewhere.
Marco:
And so all this reinvestment of this new capacity we're building out, it's a good start.
Marco:
It is far from the end, but it's a good start.
John:
Yeah, and I would say second only to healthcare, I think computer chips are going to be a business for the foreseeable future.
John:
It's not like they're going away.
John:
Maybe they'll be replaced by quantum things.
John:
All I'm saying is this is an industry that is not a flash in the pan.
John:
Computers will be with us for a very long time, and as they evolve, we should make sure we have some piece of that business.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Obviously, we have many parts of that.
John:
The U.S.
John:
is doing great in terms of operating system platforms.
John:
The two main phone platforms are U.S., it's Google and Apple, right?
John:
And the PC platforms, Microsoft and Apple.
John:
We've done a lot of great things here, but there are some gaps, and silicon chips are definitely one of them.
Casey:
John, tell me that you found a solution to this problem that only you are having with the Sonos Roam.
John:
Yeah, so I have been gathering a bunch of stuff related to my Sonos Roam that would occasionally stutter when I tried to play music to it through AirPlay.
John:
And my solution, my workaround had been to either restart the Roam, restart the phone, or both.
John:
I've also tried the thing that someone suggested, maybe it was Guy Rambo or something.
John:
If your phone is set up as a developer device and you go to the developer settings screen, there's a thing that says Reset Media Services.
John:
That also works, by the way.
John:
I've done that a few times.
John:
Reset Media Services usually also fixes the problem.
John:
Anyway, since I reported that, many, many people sent me many, many links from many long-suffering Sonos customers over the course of many years having exactly the same problem with the Sonos Realm.
John:
We will put many of those links in the show notes.
John:
solutions are offered all the solutions they suggested did not actually fix the problem for me but people continue to suffer with it someone even thought it was a manufacturing defect and that the new ones didn't have it I don't think that's true because I purchased two of these over the course of many years and the most recent one has the same problem as the old one here's the upshot the current situation is that I have heard that this problem is being worked on inside Sonos so I'm out here kind of like I was with the window dragon bug saying fingers crossed
John:
They know about it at Sonos.
John:
They should know about it because a lot of the links we're going to put in are like the community sites on Sonos, like the Sonos' own forums.
John:
People have been complaining about it for years.
John:
And maybe me complaining about it on a podcast gave it a little, you know, nudge, kick.
John:
But it's still happening.
John:
But in theory, someone is working on it.
John:
So that's the situation.
John:
I will let you know if and when a firmware update arrives in my house that fixes the problem.
John:
In the meantime, I'll just keep rebooting things.
Casey:
Fun.
Casey:
Feedback from, at this point, two or three months ago, we were talking about AWS S3 Glacier.
Casey:
And this is, I don't know if I'm the best person to give a summary of it, but basically long-term file storage that's allegedly very slow, but it's very cheap.
Casey:
And I forget exactly who it was.
Casey:
I assume John was theorizing, oh, maybe it's on, like, optical media or tape or something like that.
John:
It was a rumor.
John:
It's a story that you hear.
John:
If you're involved with AWS S3 and you hear about Glacier, someone will mention the rumor that, oh, they're using optical drives or Blu-ray discs or something.
John:
Whatever was like the cheap but slow.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Yeah, because the whole thing is like, you know, Glacier, it's like S3, sort of.
Marco:
However, it's way cheaper to store things.
Marco:
And the idea is the tradeoff you're making by being way cheaper to store things is they make it more expensive to get data back out and it's slow to get data back out.
Marco:
So the idea of Glacier is if you have a lot of data to store that you tend to write a lot more than you read.
Marco:
So, for instance...
Marco:
archives of log files or like database backups or you know things like you're writing them a lot you you hardly ever have to read them but you really want very cheap storage uh then that's what glacier is for so that's why there were all these weird rumors when it came out like how are they doing this it was way cheaper than s3 they're like are they that maybe they have some kind of like tape robot and they just have a million backup tapes and they're and like a million tape robots that are going through fetching them or who knows what they were
Casey:
It's like, what was it?
Casey:
Was it a racer with Vanessa Williams and Arnold Schwarzenegger where there was like a climactic scene where they were getting like mini discs or CDs or something?
Casey:
I think they were like, what is it?
Casey:
The tray.
Casey:
We were talking about this just a month or two ago.
Casey:
The tray that you put the CD in and the CD.
Casey:
The caddy?
Casey:
The caddy.
Casey:
That's what I was looking for.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
And they would like spit out a caddy and Vanessa Williams had to like, I don't know, copy it or something like that.
Casey:
It was a delightfully crappy movie.
Casey:
I should watch that again.
Marco:
Caddies were awful, but they looked really cool in movies.
Casey:
Yep, exactly.
Casey:
Anyways, all this to say that Anonymous has written in with regard to AWS S3 Glacier.
Casey:
I work for AWS.
Casey:
Glacier has never been optical disks nor tapes.
Casey:
It's always been hard drives.
Casey:
The way they make storage cheaper is they over-provision the storage racks, and only a fraction of the drives are powered at any given time.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So so what I assume this means is like, you know, because obviously power is a major cost for a data center.
Marco:
It might even be the biggest cost for the center.
Marco:
And so the idea is, I guess they just have racks that are just stuffed full of hard drives.
Marco:
Most of them are just powered off and they power on the ones that they need upon request, I guess.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
And over-provisioning, I'm assuming, means that they couldn't turn them all on at the same time because they wouldn't be able to get the heat out fast enough.
Marco:
Yeah, presumably they're limited by either heat or power or both.
Marco:
But they stuff them full and they say, all right, at any given time, we can power on 40% of these or whatever.
Marco:
And they manage it that way.
John:
And I'll give my little AWS pitch now.
John:
If you're using S3 and you haven't looked at it in a while, Marco, no, maybe it's not relevant for Marco, but for people who are actually storing huge amounts of data.
Marco:
Is it still super expensive?
Marco:
Yes.
John:
It's not relevant to me then.
John:
Okay.
John:
for people who are storing huge amounts of data um there have been advancements in the financial advancements in s3 the most recent of which is s3 intelligent tiering uh they had so many ways to like oh you can save money just take your least recently used files and tier them down to a cheaper storage and do this and do that and it's like it's like yeah you could do that but am i going to write some weird sophisticated algorithm that figures out which files i should tear down and which files i should tear up because of course you get charged every time you tear them and everything like
John:
Several years ago, AWS introduced S3 intelligent tiering, which, yes, they do charge you for.
John:
But net-net, the fact that AWS does it for you is probably going to save you money, right?
John:
So basically, you just say, here, S3, here's my file.
John:
If I don't...
John:
access it in a while, just put it in cheaper and cheaper storage, cheaper and cheaper and slower and slower storage, right?
John:
And when I get it, pull it up to the faster storage, like just S3, just do everything for me and try to save me money.
John:
Because I think AWS learned over the years that if you give all these different tiers and different price structures and everything,
John:
and hope that people will write some sophisticated algorithm that moves all their data to the most economically advantageous tier, they won't.
John:
It's too hard to do, right?
John:
They just want you to do it for them.
John:
And that exists.
John:
It's called, I believe it's called intelligent tiering.
John:
So look into that.
John:
If you're paying a lot of money for your stuff that started in S3, I believe intelligent tiering might even go all the way down to Glacier, but I'm not sure.
John:
But anyway, if you haven't looked at their pricing stuff in a while, there may be something out there that will save you some money with little to no work on your part.
Casey:
And then finally for tonight, photos not processing faces or pets.
Casey:
So this was you.
Casey:
Remind me, John, you wanted it to process stuff.
Casey:
You wanted to sync now or your process now button and you didn't have one, right?
Casey:
Or something along those lines.
John:
Yep.
John:
Photos does a bunch of things in theory, but it does them when it damn well feels like it and you can't make it do it any faster.
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
So this is via Justin Mercer.
Casey:
Justin writes, it's not going to help John's situation, but this stack exchange on just unplugging an external monitor immediately fixed my own problem overnight after not making progress for three weeks on detecting faces and photos.
Casey:
Coincidence or not, added to the photos, homeopathic remedies.
Casey:
And so the TLDR on the Stack Exchange is that somebody did a lot of spelunking and found, if I recall correctly, that the GPU felt like it was thermal, well, maybe not thermal, throttling, but it was not in a...
Casey:
position thermally to do a lot of this ai you know ml sort of detection and whatnot and once the person stack exchange unplugged their external monitor thus putting less of a burden on the gpu suddenly everything started churning and churning almost immediately
John:
That's the problem with all these background things that I talked about, like Apple's trying so hard to be nice to your system, so much so that they'll refuse to run if they're afraid this will use too many resources.
John:
And what I'm always looking for is the button that says just use all the resources now.
John:
And then I'll push the button when I want you to stop.
John:
Like I'm telling you now, it's okay.
John:
You don't have to only run on the e-core.
John:
You don't have to only run not on the discrete GPU.
John:
Like do not like, you know, because by default the services are, this is something that was back in the Intel days when you had the integrated GPU and the discrete one or whatever.
John:
Just like, don't worry about it.
John:
If you see a resource on the computer, just use it.
John:
Use all the resources now.
John:
This is the thing I want you to do.
John:
And then have a button that say, okay, I'm back on my computer.
John:
I want you to stop doing that.
John:
And that doesn't exist yet.
John:
So hopefully that'll be next year's big photos feature.
Casey:
All right, let's do some topics.
Casey:
And it seems like it's all security all the way down.
Casey:
And let's start with the very uncomfortable news that governments are apparently spying on Apple and Google users through push notifications, which is super fun.
Casey:
There was an article on Reuters.
Casey:
Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps push notifications, a U.S.
Casey:
senator warned on Wednesday.
Casey:
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Google and Apple.
Casey:
Although the details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.
Casey:
Apple and Google's push notification services give the two companies unique insight into the traffic flowing from those apps to their users, and in turn puts them in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps, Wyden said.
Casey:
He asked the Department of Justice to, quote, repeal or modify any policies, quote, that hindered public discussions of push notification spying.
Casey:
From his letter, the data these two companies receive includes metadata detailing which app received a notification and when, as well as the phone and associated Apple or Google account to which that notification was intended to be delivered.
Casey:
In certain instances, they might also receive notifications
Casey:
unencrypted content, which could range from back-end directives for the app to the actual text display to a user in-app notification.
Casey:
In a statement, Apple said that Wyden's letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitor push notifications.
Casey:
So Apple said, quote, now that this method has become public, we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.
Casey:
We have a little more here, but let me take a breath.
Casey:
Gentlemen, anything you'd like to add?
John:
Yeah, so this situation and Apple's response to it, this is just a fact of life in this country and I assume in all countries.
John:
Companies operate within governments.
John:
Apple is a U.S.
John:
company.
John:
They are subject to U.S.
John:
laws.
John:
And sometimes those laws say that Apple has to do things for the government and that Apple also can't tell anybody about them.
John:
And I'm sure Apple doesn't like that, but they are a US company are subject to US laws.
John:
So they do it.
John:
And in this case, I'm assuming, of course, Apple knows that they're being asked for push notification stuff, but they are apparently also constrained from telling anybody that that's happening for security reasons.
John:
But now that it is public, now that the senator has said this and it's public, apparently, and I'm not a lawyer, but apparently Apple's lawyers now believe that because it is public, they can say, yes, this was totally happening to us.
John:
We couldn't say anything before, but now we can say something.
John:
Which is crappy, but that's the way things work.
John:
And this isn't more of a government issue than a tech issue, but it's the intersection of those two wonderful things.
John:
Because in our country, in theory, the laws that we subject the companies to are the laws that we have chosen by electing representatives who then make the laws and so on and so forth.
John:
That process, the distance from what the people want to which laws companies like Apple are subject to often seems like a long distance.
John:
It's like, what can I do as a voter to change this?
John:
This issue is not going to be, quote unquote, on the ballot anywhere.
John:
It's not going to be in campaign ads.
John:
It's not going to be front of mind for a lot of people.
John:
People who don't listen to tech podcasts probably don't know about it.
John:
And yet somehow laws related to this that basically say when and how the government can demand something from a tech company.
John:
And when and how the government can force that company not to say anything about it, those laws are written and exist.
John:
And if you don't like them and they sound like, hey, I don't like that.
John:
I don't want to live in a country where my government can do that.
John:
You might say, I want to change that.
John:
Is there some way I can change that through voting?
John:
And the answer is, in theory, yes.
John:
In practice, yes.
John:
probably there are more important things like preserving democracy, stuff like that, you know, that may, you know, like when do we get down to the point where you're voting based on nuances of policy about security for tech companies?
John:
We're probably not at that point, which is disappointing.
John:
I personally find frustrating because I do care about these issues, but I care more about preserving democracy and abortion, for example.
John:
So you're really, it's like, and our stupid two-party system is like,
John:
Look, you already know who you're voting for anyway.
John:
There's not that much you can do about it, except I suppose to become more informed and pressure the representatives that are closest to you so that hopefully somehow this is like the reverse of trickle deck in economics and probably works about as well.
John:
Trickle up concern where...
John:
You voice your esoteric concerns to the representatives who are closest to you in the hopes that somehow, some way, some message might filter upwards in the chain to someone who has some power over this.
John:
The good thing about stories like this, and this wasn't Reuters and was picked up in maybe not the mainstream press, but like the mainstream-ish press, is that this puts it into people's minds.
John:
They say, hey, you may not know this, but this is a thing that your government is able to do.
John:
It's able to do this stuff, and it's able to force the company not to tell you.
John:
And we know Apple in general...
John:
doesn't like to be in that position, has fought the U.S.
John:
government before over issues like this.
John:
Like, we want the texts of this, you know, person and Apple says we can't give them to you and the government wants them to put in back doors and all this other stuff.
John:
Like, to the degree that this enters the public mind by being in the New York Times or being your local newspaper or whatever, I think it's good.
John:
But I'm so...
John:
pessimistic about uh the ability to change any of this just because of how how distant i feel as a voter and how distant i think we all are as citizens of this country from what happens at the way far other end of the government so like i said this is not really an apple story i think apple is doing mostly the right things here with one caveat that we'll get to in a second uh but hearing this story does not make me happy
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I know our government has done stuff like this for a pretty long time, decades.
Marco:
And that's nothing new, but it doesn't make it any better.
Marco:
I can't think of something that's less American, at least less of the ideals of what American means than...
Marco:
We're going to have some kind of police action against you, and we're going to prevent the company that we are getting your data from from even telling you that they gave us your data.
Marco:
That is...
Marco:
I would love to hear, you know, some of the founders of the country, I think, would have a pretty big problem with that.
John:
I wouldn't go that far.
John:
But I mean, the other thing is, that's why those canaries exist, where they'll have a page that says, we have not, this thing has not happened to us.
John:
And what they do is they just remove that from the page if it ever happens to them.
John:
Yeah.
John:
so they can plausibly say we didn't tell anybody it happened we just you know removed something from our website right and i you know i don't know if this the problem with the canaries is you kind of have to anticipate the thing that might happen so you can put a state you can put the negative version of the statement there and then remove it um so i don't know if that was an issue here but anyway uh senators apparently can find out this information and make it public which then gives apple cover to say something without violating the law or whatever so
John:
Maybe that's also part of the system working.
John:
And by the way, if you're wondering how these laws happen, this is kind of a terrible ratcheting mechanism we have in this country and others, I'm sure, which is based on fear.
John:
Whenever there's a crisis and people are afraid, that's the perfect time to pass a bunch of laws that give expansive powers to the government to invade people's privacies for quote unquote safety.
John:
And when the danger is gone, those laws go away.
John:
Of course not.
John:
It only goes in one direction.
John:
Anytime there's a crisis, pounce on it.
John:
Make more laws.
John:
You know, the Patriot Act, 9-11, whatever.
John:
You know, people are afraid.
John:
Pass more laws that gives the government more power to invade people's privacy.
John:
And we'll repeal that when the danger's gone.
John:
They never will.
John:
It's like the tolls that are there to pay for the bridge.
John:
And once the bridge is paid for, do the tolls go away?
John:
No, they never go away.
John:
In fact, they just keep going up.
John:
So that's another reason I'm pessimistic about reversing stuff.
John:
Not that nothing can be done because, you know, again, these stories coming out,
Marco:
helps it get into the front of mind people do have hearings about it and some of our representatives do care about this and try to do try to make things better but boy it's an uphill battle yeah i think more interesting than this is like what data did apple give law enforcement uh agencies or whatever this was like what information does apple have to give them
Marco:
So Apple runs the push notification service.
Marco:
Apple has, you know, the metadata, you know, they cited metadata detailing, you know, which apps sent and received the message, you know, and what, you know, to what phones with what push notification tokens, you know,
Marco:
And so presumably if – suppose some law enforcement thing is basically wiretapping someone for whatever – again, I'm not a lawyer, but so whatever the modern-day equivalent of that would be called, basically wiretapping a phone.
Marco:
They can go to Apple and say, hey, any push notifications that go to this person, we want a copy.
Marco:
Presumably Apple has to say yes, as we said.
Marco:
So that data, you know, the app sends data through the push notification service to Apple.
Marco:
Apple can then capture it on the way to the phone.
Marco:
I can't think of any other way this could work.
Marco:
I would assume that they couldn't just use basically an SSL proxy on somebody's connection because I would assume the push notification service would not deliver those then.
Marco:
I assume it does some kind of...
John:
Yeah, it's just metadata.
John:
That's why I quoted the part of the thing where they said it might be unencrypted data.
John:
Because I can imagine, because this is both Apple and Google, by the way, it's not just Apple.
John:
I can imagine there are some situations where there might be some unencrypted payload that is not related to the push notification.
John:
But maybe, especially on Google platforms, maybe there was a time where there was unencrypted data.
John:
But essentially, it's just metadata.
John:
It's kind of like the metadata that we talked about with the government tapping phones.
John:
It's basically like, who's calling who and for how long?
John:
They don't know anything that was said.
John:
They can't see the contents of it.
John:
Right.
John:
But they just know this person called that person for that amount of time.
John:
And that metadata is incredibly valuable.
John:
Even if you have no access to what was said, merely just knowing this thing happened, then this person got a message as push notification.
John:
Then this person got a message as push notification.
John:
You can start connecting the dots and seeing how people you don't know what they're saying.
John:
Right.
John:
Because it's end to end encrypted and Apple can't tell you.
John:
But just knowing how the dots are connected, that metadata is so valuable and can reveal so much without having to see any of the information.
John:
And practically speaking, Apple can't give you the information because it's encrypted.
John:
So this is like the best you can get from Apple and Google for essentially tapping communications on these end to end encrypted networks.
John:
At least we're not like the UK where their government's trying to make it so that encryption is illegal.
John:
You have to back doors and everything.
John:
We kind of fought that battle in the 90s with the chips and TVs or whatever, and hopefully it won't come back up again.
John:
So I suppose things could be worse.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But also, you know, so from Senator Wyden's letter, it says in certain instances, the data that's captured might also have unencrypted content of the messages.
Marco:
For anybody who doesn't know the way this works, you know, for Overcast to send a notification to my apps, basically when you say yes, allow this app to send me notifications.
Marco:
The app gets a token, just a long string.
Marco:
And so on sync, back to my servers, it reports, hey, this user has this push notification token.
Marco:
So anytime new episodes of shows, this, this, and this are published, send notifications to this token.
Marco:
So if I send, like, you know, new episode released, here's a title, here's a description.
Marco:
If I send that in a notification, Apple has access to that.
Marco:
And so if Apple's being, you know, forcibly tapped here by a government, the government would have that.
Marco:
Now, a different way I could send it is...
Marco:
What you send to Apple is an arbitrary JSON dictionary.
Marco:
You can put whatever you want in there.
Marco:
Now, by default, if you put things like title, message, it'll display those exactly as you'd expect in the kind of basic default way.
Marco:
But you don't have to do that.
Marco:
You can send it in whatever format you want, and then your app can have a custom extension running.
Marco:
That's a notification content modifying extension.
Marco:
When your app receives that notification from Apple, it'll receive that JSON dictionary, and before the phone displays the notification to the user...
Marco:
You're allowed to run on the local phone app.
Marco:
You're allowed to run this extension for a short time to modify or add to the content of the notification between the notification services payload that you sent from your servers through Apple with the JSON dictionary and being shown to the user.
Marco:
So what I assume, I actually don't know this, but what I assume is that the security conscious chat apps most likely encrypt the data they send to Apple servers and then they have their notification content modifying extension decrypt stuff on the app side.
Marco:
This kind of tapping wouldn't work.
Marco:
That's what I assume is happening when the senator's letter says in certain instances they might be able to receive unencrypted content.
Marco:
I'm guessing most of these apps probably do that, and that's why it isn't always unencrypted content.
Marco:
And it's certainly interesting to think, like, how could Apple... Because, you know, Apple does not like when governments force them to hand over data.
Marco:
They really don't like that.
Marco:
They have, and they continue to, change the security and design of their services to minimize the amount of data they have in the first place for governments to even come looking for.
Marco:
So it wouldn't surprise me if maybe at some point Apple changes the push notification service and the way it works to have much more encryption built in so that Apple has less ability to even tap this data in the first place.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Agreed.
Casey:
So Apple has since updated their law enforcement guidelines to require a judge's approval before handing over these records.
Casey:
Gruber had called them out, amongst others, but had called them out saying it's kind of BS that Google apparently required a judge's order, whereas Apple just took it on Scout's honor at the time that you were really a police officer and you were on the up and up.
Casey:
and so they've changed it and previously apple required only a subpoena to turn over push notification records whereas google required a subpoena subject to court oversight apple has now updated its guidelines now requires a search warrant and it reads the apple id associated with the registered apns token that's apple push notification service and associated records may be obtained with an order under some government code or a search warrant so there you go and we will put relevant links in the show notes
John:
Yeah, it's kind of weird that Apple is so against this, but then they were slightly more lax than Google.
John:
Maybe they didn't know they could get away with requiring what Google required because you would think like it's not kind of again, it's not really up to the companies to decide what they do and don't comply with.
John:
But maybe Apple wasn't aware until all this came out that they could have been more restrictive than they were.
John:
So now they are more restrictive.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So yeah, this is gross.
Casey:
I mean, it's not surprising, but it's gross.
Casey:
And I'm glad that Apple has swiftly taken action to be more transparent about this.
Casey:
Well, maybe not transparent, but more, I guess, restrictive is a better word about this.
Casey:
But either way, it's gross.
Casey:
Governments, generally speaking, I don't think they should be doing this.
Casey:
But here we are.
John:
It's not that they shouldn't be doing it.
John:
It's just that the way we want it to work is when it's super really important, yes.
John:
But when it's not super really important, no.
John:
And the way it actually works is as soon as they're able to do it, they do it all the time as much as they can.
John:
It doesn't matter how important it is.
John:
Yep.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's what we're complaining about.
John:
Not that we think, oh, government should never.
John:
Because this is the role of government.
John:
They should be allowed to force companies to do things for security reasons, you know, in extreme circumstances.
John:
Right.
John:
that's part of the function of government that i think we all agree on the problem is when there's no transparency and no oversight what we know happens is the government just does it whenever they feel like it and it's real easy to do that when nobody can tell you they're doing it so they're doing it and they're like no one's gonna know that we're doing this anyway i just want to know what my neighbor had for lunch yesterday so i'm gonna check his text messages right and the company can't tell anybody i'm doing it because that's against the law you
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like that's not that that's people doing that, but I for sure people are using it to like spy on their significant others and other bogus stuff.
John:
Like just look at all the history of all surveillance laws and tech.
John:
It is just so massively abused and a complete lack of transparency and oversight just makes that worse.
John:
And the normal, you know, it can be secret oversight, as in your your representatives and, you know, in Congress or whatever have committees that oversee this.
John:
But someone needs to be aware of it.
John:
Someone who is accountable to the people needs to be where this is happening.
John:
And ideally, it would only happen in extreme circumstances and not just all the time whenever people feel like it.
John:
And I think all of our collective faith in the government's ability to do that is very low because we just assume based on past events that they'll just do it whenever they feel like it and not tell us about it.
Marco:
Yeah, because that's what actually happens.
Marco:
It's not like we're just being conspiracy theorists here.
Marco:
No, we have decades of history showing us that's exactly what happens.
Marco:
This is not a theoretical.
Marco:
This is just what happens.
Casey:
Fun.
Casey:
Now, speaking more about things that you can do yourself to protect yourself, in the new iOS beta for 17.3, there is a new feature called Stolen Device Protection.
Casey:
So let's
Casey:
Set the stage, I think it was in the spring or thereabouts, it was Nicole Nguyen and Joanna Stern, I believe, wrote a couple of articles that were really, really good about how apparently it has become a thing for thieves to look over your shoulder or put you in a position so that it is easy for them to look over your shoulder as you type your iPhone passcode.
Casey:
They will then swipe your phone.
Casey:
They will run away with it.
Casey:
And because they have your iPhone passcode, they basically have the keys to your entire Apple kingdom.
Casey:
They can change the passcode on your phone.
Casey:
They can disable remote wipe.
Casey:
But more importantly, they can go in and change the password on your Apple ID.
Casey:
So this is not your phone's passcode, but your Apple ID password.
Casey:
And then you're screwed.
John:
Yeah, then they own everything, all your photos, all your data, all your movies, all your everything.
John:
And in this situation, Apple can't help you because they don't have any way to get that account back from you.
John:
They don't have any proof that you are who you are.
John:
You're just SOL.
John:
It's just a bad situation.
John:
And I have to say, by the way, that article about thieves are watching over your shoulder in bars and stealing your phone is totally one of those scare stories that makes people like, oh, I'm afraid now I'm going to read this thing.
John:
Who even knows how frequently that was happening?
John:
But in this case, it doesn't matter.
John:
Because the story does conclusively show this is possible.
John:
This is A, has happened, because here are some people it happened to, and B, it is possible.
John:
So even if it only very, very rarely happens, it's the type of thing of like, well, if it's possible, can we do something about it?
John:
That doesn't seem ideal.
John:
I don't entirely believe that there's an epidemic of this going on, and suddenly I'm afraid that everyone's going to swipe my phone or whatever.
John:
But knowing that it's possible makes me think...
John:
there's something that could be improved about the phone that I'm using, because it seems like that shouldn't be possible, and clearly it is.
John:
So that's something that needs to be fixed, regardless of how often it actually happens.
Casey:
Yep, couldn't agree more.
Casey:
So Apple has come out with, in 17.3, this new feature called Stolen Device Protection.
Casey:
If you enable the new Stolen Device Protection, your iPhone will restrict certain settings when you are away from a location familiar to the iPhone, such as your home or your work.
Casey:
Here's the rundown, writes, I believe this is from Gruber,
Casey:
An Apple ID password change.
Casey:
If you do nothing, so if you don't enable this new feature, a thief can use the passcode to change your Apple account password and lock you out.
Casey:
This move is the key to thieves turning off Find My and wiping phones for resale.
Casey:
Since you, the iPhone's owner, don't have the changed Apple ID password, you can't immediately locate your phone or remotely wipe its data.
Casey:
With this new feature, again, only in beta right now.
John:
And by the way, I want to emphasize this.
John:
You can't look at your phone or remove your data.
John:
Also, you will never have access to any of your stuff ever again.
John:
Your photos, your purchases, all of that is potentially gone.
John:
Because the thief doesn't care about that.
John:
They're not stealing your photos, although maybe they'll wander through it looking for nudes or whatever.
John:
But they do want to sell your phone, and they don't care that they just locked you out of your stuff.
John:
Because they changed all your stuff on your Apple ID.
John:
You don't have the new information.
John:
You never will.
John:
They're not going to send it to you.
John:
That's why it's a bummer.
Marco:
And also, depending on what else they can access, once they have access to everything else on your phone... Like all your bank account passwords.
Marco:
Yeah, they can possibly go into something like PayPal or your bank, and they can take your money.
Marco:
And there are documented cases of that happening exactly by this method.
Marco:
If somebody has your phone and your Apple ID...
Marco:
and your passcode to your phone, they can do a lot.
Marco:
And that was the real, I think, the really eye-opening part of this story when it broke last year, or earlier this year, the really eye-opening part of that was I didn't, like, most people, I think most nerds especially, we didn't know that with a phone and a passcode you could reset the Apple ID password.
Marco:
And so we didn't realize, like, wow,
John:
the passcode to your phone is way more of an attack vector than we would have potentially uh thought of before that that was the real shock here because because most people use a passcode that's just a bunch of numbers they don't use the longer alphanumerical one because it's just too annoying to use so that's why it's easy to shoulder surf because you can see the giant buttons they're hitting and people don't think about people like oh my apple day that's a big complicated password and i've got two factor on and i've got this and i've got that but like
John:
So we talked about this when we originally talked about the story for a bunch of historical reasons.
John:
And in modern days, customer support reasons, that stupid numeric passcode, which might be, you know, I think, do they still allow you to four digit ones?
John:
I hope they don't.
John:
But anyway, a small number of digits on a gigantic keypad is easy to see.
John:
That alone, plus possession of your phone is enough for them to just break everything.
John:
And that is not great.
Marco:
I don't think most people realize the way most people cavalierly both handle their phone or set it down on tables in public or type in the passcode over and over again when Face ID fails.
Marco:
The way people treat their phones and entering their passcode, the level of casualness that people treat their phones and passcodes means that having a phone and having a passcode should not be as powerful as it is.
Marco:
And that's the great thing that Apple is addressing that.
Marco:
And this is a very, very, very early version of it.
Marco:
It literally just came out today, I think, or yesterday.
Marco:
So it's very new.
Marco:
And it's just now in this very first beta for 17.3 years.
Marco:
So we'll talk about it in a sec, but we're going to see how this goes.
Marco:
But this is very, very new kind of first draft attempt at making some changes here.
Marco:
So I think some changes here are badly needed.
Marco:
So this is a very welcome thing to see.
Marco:
And we can nitpick the details here and there.
Marco:
But overall, I'm super glad they are they're actually addressing this.
Casey:
Yep, so we never explained the difference.
Casey:
So if you do have this feature on, if you want to change an Apple ID password when away from a familiar location, the device will require your Face ID or Touch ID.
Casey:
So the idea is it requires the user that's using the phone to prove they are the owner of the phone.
Casey:
It will then implement an hour-long delay before you can perform the action.
Casey:
After that hour has passed, you'll have to reconfirm with another Face ID or Touch ID scan.
Casey:
Only then can the password be changed.
Casey:
So I think the theory here is, A, you're proving it's you, B, you're doing it twice, and C, you're delaying this.
Casey:
So if somehow you got through the first touchpoint where you've proven that you want to do this, the thief would still have to wait an hour.
Casey:
And hopefully in that hour, particularly when it comes to a phone,
Casey:
You have realized that your phone is gone and you have borrowed somebody else's phone to either remote wipe the phone or do whatever you need to do in order to prevent them from stealing it.
John:
You put it in lost mode.
John:
Like there are lots of things you can do pretty quickly just from any web browser.
John:
You can go to iCloud.com, log in with your password.
John:
Just remember, they couldn't change because they're on the hour delay, right?
John:
So they've still got your phone and they're still probably going to resell it or whatever.
John:
But you can just get to a web browser within an hour or I guess call like 1-800-SOS-APPLE or whatever the hell the number is now and just say, look,
John:
like you know it's you don't need the phone to do it you don't need another app apple device that's logged in you just need a web browser and the ability to go icloud.com and hopefully you know your apple id password or have a backup code written down somewhere so we were debating in slack whether we think an hour is the right amount of time for that because remember if you have this turned on what this also means is that when you legitimately want to change your apple id password you also have to wait an hour
John:
So is one hour the right amount?
John:
Should it be four hours?
John:
Should it be 24 hours?
John:
Again, security versus convenience.
John:
If you want more security, it's going to be way more inconvenient at that time you do want to change your Apple ID password.
John:
And there are probably some edge cases we're not thinking of where it's really, really important for you to change your Apple ID password now, now, now, but you have an hour delay.
John:
So I think this is a good start because, I mean, the obvious thing that we talked about when we originally said this is like, why don't they just make it so your passcode can't do that?
John:
Why don't they just make it so the passcode is insufficient to do that at all?
John:
And all the answers we got from people in the know at Apple is like, that's not really viable because people forget everything in their life essentially except for their phone passcode.
John:
And that's like the only lifeline to rescue their stuff.
John:
And that happens, you know, to my point before about how often has it actually happened that people are shoulder surfing your code.
John:
The thing about people forgetting all their stuff and having being rescued by their passcode that they only know because they type in a million times, that happens instantly.
John:
so much more than thieves' shoulders over.
John:
It is incredibly common.
John:
So that's why Apple didn't and essentially can't do the thing where they just say, yeah, your passcode won't be able to be this powerful anymore because it would be a support burden nightmare.
John:
Basically, if your goal is to reduce the number of people who lose all their stuff,
John:
Making that change would increase the number of people who lose all this stuff.
John:
They'd be losing it for a different reason for, quote unquote, their own fault.
John:
Right.
John:
Instead of thieves doing it.
John:
But, you know, what you're trying to do is make it so fewer people lose all this stuff, not more.
John:
So this is an attempt to say, OK, we're going to implement a system where we keep all the benefits of being able to save people's bacon if they just know their passcode, while also preventing the thief scenario or giving you giving you that one hour gap to save yourself somehow.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
I mean, I dig this in principle.
Casey:
It seems well thought out.
Casey:
It seems to be not punitive if you're at a place that your phone recognizes, you know, home or work.
Casey:
Assuming that that actually does work.
Casey:
I saw somewhere on Maston today that somebody tried all this out and said their phone, or maybe it was Gruber actually, I think had said that his phone had been somewhere for a long time or it was like a test phone.
Casey:
And it didn't, it's still, or I forget it.
Casey:
Something was not.
John:
Yeah, it was Gruber who did it.
John:
He did it in his house.
John:
Like that's part, the location thing is trying to balance the convenience of saying like, oh, if you're in your house, you can change your Apple ID password.
John:
But like home and work, that's tricky because if you work in a big office building and someone shoulder shifts your phone at like the little, you know, cafe in the lobby and goes into the lobby bathroom,
John:
they're still at your work.
John:
And so now they don't have the hour delay.
John:
So that's the tricky bit about like, are we going to have to pick the locations that we consider safe?
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Probably someone's not going to shoulder surf your passcode inside your house and then go into another room and change your Apple ID password.
John:
But at your quote unquote work, that could totally happen.
John:
So I hope there's some flexibility there.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't love that little exception.
Marco:
I would rather, I'd rather see that either removed or controllable.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And again, home, I feel like that's semi-reasonable.
John:
Although if you're not home and the thief steals your phone, which you're out without, I guess, and then just goes into your yard and changes it, it's just security versus convenience.
John:
There's no easy answers here.
John:
But you rapidly find out if you're ever involved in any way in implementing one of these things because it's so easy when it's happening to you saying, this should be more secure and it should be like X and be like Y. But for the whole rest of your life, you'd be, this should be easier.
John:
I shouldn't have to wait an hour.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Everyone wants everything to be just the way they want it when they need it, but there are trade-offs.
John:
That's the practice of engineering.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So if you want to turn this on on the beta settings, face ID and passcode or touch ID and passcode, stolen device protection in there.
John:
Are you two going to turn it on?
John:
Absolutely.
Casey:
I probably will.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't see any reason not to.
John:
I'm definitely going to turn it on, if only to see how annoying it is.
John:
All right.
John:
Because I want the protection and I'm willing to tolerate a reasonable amount of annoyance.
John:
And so, you know, the only way to find out how annoying it is, is turn on and try it.
Marco:
Not only am I turning it on, although I think I'm going to wait until maybe after the beta to turn it on.
Marco:
I don't know if I want to turn on the beta one version of this in case it hoses my account somehow.
Marco:
But as soon as this is stable enough, not only am I turning it on, I'm going to require it for all devices in my house.
Marco:
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Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Will Lineweber writes, iPhones have had OLED screens for a while now.
Casey:
Does the prospect of OLED burn-in make the always-on display option a bad idea?
Casey:
Likewise, what about the new iOS 17 standby mode?
Casey:
Will, I have now seen the FedEx logo, and now I am stressing about something that I didn't think about until I read this.
Casey:
So thank you, Will, for that.
Casey:
To be honest, I'm not worried about this.
Casey:
I've had...
Casey:
A couple of iPhones with OLED now, or a handful of iPhones with OLED.
Casey:
I can't even keep track.
Casey:
And I haven't noticed any burn-in, and I'm just going to continue to try not to notice it.
Casey:
So for me, I don't really care.
Casey:
Let's start with Marco, and then we'll talk about Mr. Worried himself afterwards.
Casey:
So Marco, what's your thoughts?
Marco:
We've had OLED screens and iPhones for a while, as Will says.
Marco:
The always-on display we've also now had for a couple of years.
Marco:
I assume either the physical panels or some of the software implementation details or both, somehow Apple has mitigated the risk of burn-in enough.
Marco:
Now, you know, the always-on phones, you know, no one's had them yet for like four or five years, so we'll see.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Not only have I not seen any burn in problems, I haven't even heard of anyone having any burn in problems.
Marco:
Well put.
Marco:
So it seems like if there are any, they must be so rare that it's really not a problem.
Marco:
So it seems I was I was concerned about that as well.
Marco:
Like when they first announced the always on, I thought surely that's that runs as risk.
Marco:
Maybe the always on is such a small percentage of the possible brightness of the screen.
Marco:
Maybe that helps a little bit.
John:
um but i don't know but whatever it is it seems to not be a problem so the screen tech uh in tiny oled screens is not quite the same as in like televisions uh although it is closer to monitor type things or all oled stuff uh does eventually burn in and wear out but what's happening is the the organic compounds are degrading
John:
in the light up thingies there's lots of stuff you can do in software to compensate for that what you really want to have is headroom such that if it degrades your the circuitry compensates for it because you weren't driving it at its maximum brightness anyway so if it degrades a little you just give it a little bit more extra juice and it maintains its brightness and those are the mitigation factors that most oleds use the thing that phones have going for them versus televisions are many so the first used to be before the always on displays is they're just not on all the time right if you're not using them phone screens go to sleep
John:
That changed with the always-on display, but as Marco noted, Apple's implementation of always-on, including on the watch, but also in standby mode, and the always-on display on phones and everything, has been fairly conservative with how bright the display is.
John:
And that's related to the second thing, which is HDR.
John:
Televisions, if you have them on all the time, people tend to keep them bright, especially if it's in a bright room.
John:
And if you happen to be watching HDR content, it could be even brighter.
John:
Our phones are HDR-capable.
John:
But most people do not leave their phone on a static screen of an HDR static screen for hours and hours at a time with a static, you know, CNN ticker at the bottom or whatever.
John:
And that's pretty much what it takes to burn one of these things in in one or two or three year period.
John:
Because remember, the phones, because they don't have replaceable batteries.
John:
end up getting chucked in three years anyway because the batteries are bad on them right or recycled or whatever right so i think all those things are protecting the screens like burn-in happens based on time and brightness and the staticness of the element and how much headroom the screen has and our little screens are not on that long are not kept that bright and are fairly resilient against the burn-in because these tiny little screens first of all they don't even get as bright as televisions televisions are going i mean even even macbook pro screens well those aren't old or whatever but
John:
Television screens are now breaking through the 2000 nit barrier going up even higher than that with OLEDs.
John:
Our phones are not there.
John:
And, you know, it's like my Pro Display XDR.
John:
All day it's sitting here, not that it's an OLED or anything, but all day it's sitting here showing me quote unquote white windows, but they are at most 500, 600 nits.
John:
And unlike Marco, I don't have them at that brightness, right?
John:
They're not at 1600 nits.
John:
Like they're not HDR brightness.
John:
And that's also true of our phone screens.
John:
And that is really, really protecting them, right?
John:
There are other manufacturing differences between how do the OLED screens in our phones work and how do the OLED screens in our televisions work.
John:
They're not the same.
John:
Depending on which OLED tech, there are certainly not QD OLEDs.
John:
And even the WRGB OLEDs from LG, they use a white backlight with color filters versus the AMOLEDs that are in our displays now are actually also slightly different.
John:
All that has conspired to make it so that our phones do not
John:
suffer from burning that we notice that is the key part right it could be happening and it's being compensated for but the bottom line is do you see any part of your phone screen where something is bothering you in the normal lifetime phone so far the answer has been no and i think that will continue to be the case so
John:
I think it will be spared.
John:
The rumor, by the way, for the OLED iPad is that it's going to be a double layer OLED from Samsung.
John:
So it'll be two OLEDs that essentially run at lower brightnesses stacked on top of each other.
John:
So the total brightness is higher, but each individual OLED is running at lower brightness.
John:
So therefore you're preserving more of the part that wears down through brightness.
John:
That's the key.
John:
Just don't show things very brightly.
John:
Don't send a lot of electricity to those OLED pixels and they'll wear out slower.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Julian Gamble writes, Marco has talked about his, quote, extreme minimalism, quote, approach to coding projects and in particular adding libraries.
Casey:
It has given us all great joy to see Marco embrace Swift and Swift UI.
Casey:
I do note that these have less of a minimalist approach in coding culture when it comes to libraries.
Casey:
Has Marco's conversion of Overcast to Swift meant that he has moved away from his library minimalism?
Casey:
What's going on there?
Marco:
Not only have I not moved away from my aversion to using third-party code in libraries, I'm actually going more in that direction.
Marco:
And now Overcast already didn't have much third-party code in it.
Marco:
I think at some point I had the 1Password SDK...
Marco:
I use a little... It's literally like one file called TP Circular Buffer, which is an audio ring buffer library.
Marco:
It's one C file with a handful of functions in it, mostly macros.
Marco:
And I use this Facebook KVO utility, which I hated the fact that I had Facebook code in my app, even though it also was like two files.
Marco:
And I could read it all, and it was very minimal.
Marco:
But the new version...
Marco:
so far uses none of those things except for tp circular buffer like that like my audio ring buffer at uh library that's it that's the only thing uh so i don't even like um overcast originally used fmdb gus mueller's library for sqlite i don't use that in the new version either because i wrote blackbird and it talks directly to sqlite so i don't even need that like i've gone more in the direction of my own code
Marco:
Now, I don't honestly see why Swift and SwiftUI make it harder to do this or would push me more in the direction of using third-party code.
Casey:
So let me jump in here.
Casey:
Yeah, why would I be doing this?
Casey:
Right, so I think Julian's point is that Swift, less Swift, but maybe more SwiftUI, is a pretty big framework.
Casey:
And I don't think that Julian is considering...
John:
Compared to what?
John:
Compared to UIKit or AppKit?
Casey:
No way.
Casey:
So hold on.
Casey:
Here's the thing.
Casey:
I don't think Julian is making the distinction between first and third party.
Casey:
I think if you were to look at this as both of them being equivalent, which I do not.
Casey:
I'm just saying I think that's where Julian's coming from.
John:
My guess was it has to do with Swift package manager.
John:
Like basically that Swift, unlike Objective-C, Swift has an Apple-supported –
John:
an actual package management system and a culture of making packages and sharing them.
John:
And Objective-C never had that.
John:
Objective-C had CocoaPods and whatever that other one was, and they were never really officially Apple-supported, and it was just kind of janky.
John:
But if you're doing anything in Swift, it's becoming kind of like as good as Pearl was in the late 90s, where you can look up a package that does what you want and grab it and add it to your project pretty easily.
John:
And that culture just didn't exist in the Objective-C days.
Marco:
Yeah, or it was much smaller.
Marco:
I mean, so I am using Swift packages, but they're all packages I wrote.
Marco:
Like the current version of the rewrite has, I think, four packages, but they're all just, you know...
John:
oc audio oc utilities like you know it's all of my overcast utility classes and common classes and and and that's and and blackbird that's by the way why every language should have an officially supported package system even if you never use anyone else's packages using it for your own stuff is just so much nicer to have actual official support right there in xcode that's going to i don't know swift package managers had growing pains and it's young and but like just
John:
The fact that we're on that road and that Apple actually supports it and that there's one true thing that the whole community get behind just makes everything so much better, even if you never use anyone else's code.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
In the olden days, we had frameworks.
Marco:
We had Objective-C frameworks that are fully supported on iOS as of not too many versions in.
Marco:
And I just never got into frameworks.
Marco:
I tried.
Marco:
As a developer, I am not an advanced Xcode user.
Marco:
I'm not an advanced build system engineer.
Marco:
Anything that requires weird build settings and a lot of trickiness in Xcode.
John:
Or even running things from the command line, doing builds from the command line, which I know a lot of people are into.
Marco:
Yeah, any of that.
Marco:
That kind of stuff becomes a huge block for me to do anything that requires it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm not good at it.
Marco:
The documentation is minimal.
Marco:
The usability of Xcode doing advanced stuff like that is usually pretty awful because it's like everyone just kind of knows how to do it from a million years ago and they've never made it easy.
Marco:
So anything that involves advanced build system tricks...
Marco:
I usually can't and won't do.
Marco:
And if I try to do it, it costs me hours.
Marco:
And I eventually come up with some brittle thing that then breaks six months later when I try to do something else.
Marco:
So I try to avoid that kind of thing.
Marco:
So Swift packages have been mostly great.
Marco:
The downside is that Xcode is buggy as hell when dealing with them.
Marco:
But the good news is that when it works, if you're willing to clean your build folder and clear all issues and maybe quit Xcode a lot and be careful what you have open at the same time across two different projects, then if you baby it in those ways, the system actually is conceptually pretty simple and is certainly much easier to use.
John:
And it's getting better.
John:
And we know Apple is behind it.
John:
So it's not just like, oh, well, is this going to be the one that wins it?
John:
This is going to be the one that wins.
John:
Like Apple is, you know, it's gotten better already.
John:
It still needs to get better than it is now.
John:
But like I have full confidence that they will continue to work on this.
John:
And the community seems to be behind it.
John:
I can look for Swift packages and find them sometimes for things I'm interested.
John:
Again, even if I'm not going to use them, it just makes it easy to just make a new empty project, pull the package in and poke around in it.
Marco:
And to be clear, the reason why I don't use third-party code much, if at all, is mostly because I've been burned by it in the past a lot.
Marco:
And when I'm doing the calculus of, is it worth it to write my own version of this?
Marco:
I might have different requirements than you do.
Marco:
Overcast, the code base is now 10 years old.
Marco:
And I am like I'm writing it now for hopefully the next 10 years or beyond.
Marco:
This is something like what if you're if you're just trying to get something out there quickly and your concept of am I still going to be like whatever whatever thing I'm building right now.
Marco:
Am I going to be the one responsible for it 10 years from now.
Marco:
If your answer to that is maybe not or definitely not or haha, what are you talking about?
Marco:
Then you have different priorities than me.
Marco:
If you need to build something faster, if you're building something for, say, a company and it doesn't really matter whether you use someone else's even or odd library or not,
Marco:
Go for it.
Marco:
Get your job done faster.
Marco:
You won't even be there in 10 years.
Marco:
Who cares?
Marco:
If you're building something for a hackathon, if you're building something as a prototype, if you're building something as a version 1 that you think might become a business but maybe not, or you're just doing it for fun on the side, by all means, build it however you want.
Marco:
Build it quickly.
John:
Or if you're building something that other people might have to work on using the library that everybody uses for that thing means that they can hire another person who has a chance of understanding it without having to read all of your code and figure it out.
John:
Like, you know, that's that's the argument for third party.
John:
You know, there are lots of positive arguments, third party libraries, not just like it's always bad.
John:
And Marco can avoid that badness because he's lucky.
John:
Sometimes there's goodness.
Marco:
Yes, exactly.
Marco:
But my priorities are so different, and my needs are very different.
Marco:
It isn't just me being a jerk.
Marco:
I mean, it's partly that.
Marco:
But I need to know that whatever I'm writing now is going to never give me trouble.
Marco:
And never surprise me with, say, discontinuation or never surprise me with some detail on how it works that I wouldn't have expected or might be hard to find.
Marco:
I'm building stuff for the long term, you know, for myself.
Marco:
And so I don't care who else works on it because no one else is going to ever work on this code in all likelihood.
John:
yeah i was waiting for that i was waiting for that but in a case where this might have backfired his own php framework because he's the only person who's ever going to work on this so it doesn't matter that he used some third party or thing that people might be familiar with and there'll never be anyone parachuting into the code who suddenly has to not only understand the product but also the framework it's built on
John:
what php framework would you have been familiar with i mean sure granted but still like i could find documentation for i don't even know what the php frameworks are i know when we talked about this on the member special everyone wrote in said you should have used blorp or gloop but anyway i'm sure there's i'm sure there's documentation online for those frameworks i think it's all laravel now right
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I've never used them.
Casey:
I think Laravel is the bespoke one.
Marco:
No, it's far from bespoke.
Marco:
It is so taken over PHP culture.
Marco:
In the same way that if you're building a web app in Ruby...
Marco:
You're probably building it in Rails and Rails was so successful that it like it took over all of like whatever, if there was anything else going on.
John:
Not only did it take over, like there was one point where like the new version of Rails was essentially the big, they absorbed the Rails competitor and say the new version of Rails is the thing that used to be competing with Rails.
John:
I'm getting the details wrong, but something like that more or less happened.
Marco:
Right, yeah.
Marco:
And to that extent, I think Laravel or Laravel, I've never used it.
Marco:
I think that has absorbed so much of PHP that if you're using PHP, it's kind of just assumed that you're using Laravel, I think, for most people.
John:
Is that how you pronounce that?
John:
I think Blorp or Gloop that I said was probably just as good.
Marco:
I have no clue.
Marco:
I've never heard it spoken about.
John:
Now we're going to get feedback.
John:
All the Blorp users are going to write in.
Casey:
Yeah, the four remaining Glorp users are going to write in and say it's not pronounced that at all.
Casey:
But that's right.
Casey:
Anyway, all right, let's move on.
Casey:
Torstein writes, two months in, how do you like the action button?
Casey:
Is it useful?
Casey:
Is it just meh, irritating, or gimmicky?
Casey:
Any accidental?
Casey:
accidental activations, uh, wishlist for future upgrades to it, or will it go the way of the touch bar and get less and less attention from Apple?
Casey:
Uh, for me, I like it.
Casey:
I don't think it's been world changing, but it's nice to have something in a place where I had effectively nothing.
Casey:
And by that, I mean the, the most useful thing that the ring silence, which did for me since the moment I got my Apple watch was being a good fidget toy, which, well, really a terrible fidget toy, if I'm honest, but I used it a lot as a fidget toy.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
And so now I have something useful there.
Casey:
For me, I'm using it for the camera.
Casey:
I haven't come up with a better way or not a better or a more useful thing that I thought that I think I would prefer.
Casey:
And so I've stuck with the camera and I do like having it.
Casey:
I like having the camera available to me without thinking about it.
Casey:
I am fully aware it's on the lock screen.
Casey:
I'm fully aware it's in control center, but this is still faster and I like having it there.
Casey:
And honestly, I don't have any plan to change it.
Casey:
I know that Federico, amongst others, have been doing some really impressive and wild things with the action button and shortcuts, but that's filling a need I don't think I have.
Casey:
So I like it.
Casey:
I don't think it's do or die, so to speak, but I definitely like it.
Casey:
I prefer it over the ring silent button.
Casey:
Uh, John, I've, I picked on Marco first the last couple of times.
Casey:
John, what do you think?
Casey:
Well, you don't have one of these.
Casey:
Nevermind.
Casey:
Back to Marco.
John:
I don't have one.
John:
Um, but I do have something to add here.
John:
It was the last part of the question I was like, do we think it will go to the touch bar and get less and less attention?
John:
The rumors for iPhone 16 is not only will they all have the action button, not just the pro ones, but the whole 16 line will have the action button.
John:
But there is, I mean, I know we're like, you know, almost a year out, but like the other rumor is that they're going to add another button to the other side of the phone near the bottom.
John:
like basically below the power button and i don't know like this is one of those rumors where it's like really are you misunderstanding some kind of thing in the supply chain or something but anyway watch for that i'm all for adding more buttons obviously there's a limit you can't have buttons you know up and down the sides and the tops and bottoms of the phone uh but i feel like
John:
We were in a button drought, kind of like the port drought on the laptops for a long time.
John:
The action button has sort of broken through.
John:
I think Apple's committed to it.
John:
I think you're going to see it on phones going forward.
John:
I think especially the action button taking over that spot is an easy win because you already had a control there.
John:
So it's not like you're carving out a new spot for it.
John:
And if it actually adds another button to the other side somehow, you know, we'll see.
John:
Maybe it'll be a button bonanza.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Marco, what do you think?
Marco:
I love it.
Marco:
It's not like a world-changing thing, but it's a nice thing.
Marco:
So I have mine mapped to the flashlight, which, again, like the camera, it's usually on the lock screen, so I could just do that, but I have a dog, and it's winter.
Marco:
and i often am like you know taking them out for a second i don't want to like go get the big flashlight off the shelf and bring it like you know i want to just like oh i'm outside all right let me see this or i'm like you know i'm reaching under a cabinet for something you know oh let me quickly pop this on um it's very useful as a flashlight in my life and so i i have it as that it's not super exciting it has been a nice a nice minor improvement
Marco:
I've never had any accidental activations to answer Torstein's question and whether they add more buttons in the future or more like, you know, more sequences of presses that you could do to have different actions on this.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But I look forward to to these little minor things adding up.
Marco:
The other thing is that that I used to, you know, I'm not a monster.
Marco:
And so my phone does not ring most of the time.
Marco:
It vibrates or whatever else.
Marco:
And I used to, every night before bed, flip it to out loud mode again.
Marco:
And then I'd wake up and get ready in the morning and flip it back to silent mode.
Marco:
And occasionally I would forget to do that.
Marco:
And so occasionally my phone would unexpectedly ring out loud.
Marco:
And every time I was like, ah, like it was so jarring when that would happen.
Marco:
And man, if that would happen like somewhere like around other people, I would be mortified.
Marco:
So by removing the ring silent switch, it has removed the ability for me to quickly and easily change that setting.
Marco:
So the result is I don't, I don't change it anymore.
Marco:
I just leave it on silent mode all the time.
John:
And I, if you did want to do it, couldn't you schedule it with shortcuts?
John:
probably i don't know i don't know i think you can i think you can make shortcuts fire based on time of day and then you could just i think you can just you know anyway probably i endorse not turning your ring around when it's nighttime like especially if you have your phone and vibrate if it's on like a hard surface it'll wake you up too just with the vibration
Marco:
Yeah, and the thing is, the reason I would do it was just an old habit of, I want to make sure if I'm getting alerts that my servers are down or whatever, I want those to make noise and wake me up.
Marco:
Or if someone in my family is calling me, maybe somebody's having an emergency that I need to know about, whatever.
Marco:
But now there's all these different settings of things like do not disturb and all these different, you know, you can put different settings and different contacts and filter modes.
Marco:
You can have things break through.
Marco:
And so there's so many options now to let important stuff break through the silent switch that I'm fine to just have it on all the time now.
Marco:
It's great.
John:
Plus, you're a parent.
John:
So if you're anything like me, your ability to sleep through any kind of noise has been destroyed by having an infant.
John:
So again, if you just put it on vibrate and put it on your nightstand, it will wake you up.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Notion.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because 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 Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
So you got a new toy, apparently?
Marco:
I got a new desk toy.
Marco:
And maybe away from my desk sometimes, too.
Marco:
I'm going to send the picture to you.
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
I got myself something I had in college and high school.
Marco:
Oh, my gosh.
Marco:
I got myself a Palm Pilot.
Marco:
Specifically, the Palm 5X, which I think was the best Palm Pilot ever made.
Marco:
Now, I'm a little biased because it's the one I had in college.
Marco:
In high school, I had a Palm 3X for a couple years, the end of high school.
Marco:
And this, what I have learned is that Palm Pilots now are available on eBay for basically nothing in good working order.
Marco:
So this cost $20.
Marco:
Oh, my word.
Marco:
Came with the full box, docking cable, everything, charger, like everything.
John:
You could have just gone out to my attic because I've got one.
John:
My suggestion is you get vexed.
John:
V-E-X, two X's, V-E-X-X-E-D.
John:
Really fun game.
Marco:
Okay, I'll lift it up.
Marco:
Yeah, so in high school, I never had a phone.
Marco:
This was like, you know, 1996 to 2000.
Marco:
So it was too early for, you know, teenagers to have phones.
Marco:
Some people had pagers or beepers in this time, but I did not.
Marco:
That was not going to happen for me.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
At some point, I got a job.
Marco:
I was working at a natural food store, just basically a grocery kind of thing.
Marco:
And I got a job, and eventually I had a few hundred dollars built up, and I wanted so badly, I got myself a Palm 3X.
Marco:
I was a junior in high school.
Marco:
What did I need an organizer for?
Marco:
What did I have to organize?
Marco:
You weren't doing any homework anyway.
Marco:
I wasn't doing any homework.
Marco:
I didn't have like calendar events to organize.
Marco:
I didn't have a ton of phone numbers to keep track of.
Marco:
I didn't have like a massive to do list.
John:
Did you want just a really expensive thing that plays games worse than a Game Boy?
Marco:
So, well, honestly, frankly, I might disagree with that statement because the Game Boy was not.
Marco:
I know people have a lot of nostalgia for the Game Boy.
Marco:
The Game Boy was not a great system, in my opinion.
Marco:
But, you know, it was also had great.
John:
It had great games for it.
John:
That's the key.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So I got this pump out in high school.
Marco:
It might have been the first like major electronic thing that I paid for with my own money with the money from that job.
Marco:
And I just loved it.
Marco:
none of the teachers in school knew what the heck it was.
Marco:
So I could just be like tapping around on it, playing a game and they wouldn't know what I was doing.
Marco:
Like they would think I would, I was organizing my life or whatever, or they might think it was just like a weird calculator.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
So I could, I was playing with it all day in school.
Marco:
I love Palm OS.
Marco:
Like a few months back,
Marco:
It floated through our RSS news circles that people had made this awesome web emulator for it, and you could just play all these old Palm games in your browser.
Marco:
And so, of course, I opened it up, and I found the Mealborn game I always played called Rally 1000, an implementation of the popular French card game Mealborn, also called 1000 Miles.
Marco:
anyway booted that up and that's the game that was like one of my big time waster games like throughout all of high school and college and i loved playing it again like it brought back those memories and i haven't i haven't owned a palm pilot since probably 2004 2005 like an old person calling them all palm pilots i don't think they they dropped the pilot name by the time this product came out right
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I think even my Palm 3X, I believe that was after it was bought by 3Com.
Marco:
I think it had the 3Com logo on it.
Marco:
I no longer have it, so I can't verify it.
Marco:
But anyway, the Palm OS was really delightful.
Marco:
I think it was extremely well-designed.
Marco:
And keep in mind that the era these are from, these are from the late 90s.
Marco:
I looked up the specs.
Marco:
They
Marco:
it had like a 20 megahertz processor something like you know four to eight megabytes of ram depending on which one you got you know the screen was 160 160 monochrome or grayscale like it was very very basic from a computing standpoint but they did some really clever things and for instance like you know the the handwriting recognition system graffiti first of all i thought that was the coolest thing in the world like i would write graffiti on notebook paper just because i thought it looked cool oh my gosh and
Casey:
That is a whole new level of nerdy.
Marco:
Oh, of course.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
At the time, to have reliable handwriting recognition asterisk, like you had to write this certain way.
Marco:
But if you wrote that certain way, it was very fast and reliable.
Marco:
And so when you compare it to the Newton, which I never own, but I use one once or twice.
Marco:
And the Newton tried to have free form handwriting recognition.
Marco:
And it didn't work that well because the computing power just wasn't really there yet.
John:
The thing about the Newton, though, like, yes, it didn't work as well, but here's the thing, especially the original version of the Newton, you could write cursive.
John:
And the first time I wrote cursive on a Newton and it changed it into print, I was like, this is the future.
John:
This is the most amazing device ever.
John:
And then I wrote another sentence and it totally mangled it.
John:
But, like, the fact that it could ever do it even once with, like, my cursive, which is not particularly good, I'm like, how is it doing?
John:
What is this witchcraft?
John:
I think later versions of Newton OS, they dropped the ability to support cursive, but...
John:
I was amazed by it with the original Newton.
John:
Of course, the original Newton was humongous and massively more expensive than this, and that's why Palm did so much better than the Newton in the market.
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
When I bought the 3X, it was something like $300, and then when I later bought the Discounter 5X, it was something like $200.
Marco:
That was, for the time...
Marco:
relatively inexpensive compared to like a computer or a new like newtons were much more than that i believe and they were also much larger yeah they were more expensive they were bigger they were also substantially more powerful but yes but what was genius about about the palm you know whatever palm pilots whatever you call these what was genius about them is that instead of like you know the newton was like let's do
Marco:
Let's tackle a really hard problem in a really big way.
Marco:
Palm was more like, hey, you know what?
Marco:
Let's scale it back.
Marco:
Let's simplify what we're asking the hardware to do so it can be a lot more accessible and a lot smaller and cheaper.
John:
It was a lot like the Game Boy in that way.
John:
It was saying, look, we have a constrained environment, so what can we do in that environment?
John:
Let's make a product that...
Marco:
fills the role within those constraints and apple was like there are no constraints we want you to have something that's even more powerful than a mac but it's but it's uh in your hand yeah it's almost like i mean look see also like the vision pro like that's like you know they're like they're shooting for the stars with that one like we're gonna have this amazing thing yeah it's gonna be you know this this you know thing with this big battery pack is gonna be really expensive but it's gonna be amazing the palm pilot was like you know it was more like the quest it was like we're gonna simplify this way down but it'll be a lot cheaper and a lot you know simpler in certain ways
Marco:
So the Palm Pilot at the time, it was revolutionary.
Marco:
But it's interesting, looking back on it now, what I see now is, keep in mind, this device has no built-in networking, barely any built-in sound.
Marco:
There is a little PC speaker kind of buzzer, beeper kind of thing, but it's very basic.
Marco:
There's no headphone jack.
Marco:
There's no MP3 built-in playing functionality.
Marco:
Later models added stuff like that.
Marco:
But there's no modern features on this.
Marco:
If you want to have your contacts and your calendars and stuff synced to it, the way you would sync it was it had a cradle that plugged into a serial port on your computer.
Marco:
They had this whole hot sync system where you'd stick it in the cradle and you'd sync it almost like an iPod.
Marco:
So it would sync with your computer when it was in the cradle and you'd take it with you.
John:
And the connector was like the iPod too.
John:
Remember the 30-pin connector?
John:
Yeah.
John:
The Palm connector was very much like that but even crunchier.
Marco:
Yeah, but honestly, I think the Palm Connector was a little bit more sturdy because there's way fewer moving parts and way fewer pins.
Marco:
But anyway, it had this whole sync protocol.
Marco:
And actually, what I was kind of aping with Instapaper was an app I used to use all the time on the Palm Pilot called AvantGo.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
This oven go was basically like a like a web clipper that would run over the sync process.
Marco:
So it would and I think I forget the details.
Marco:
I think they actually had like deals with publications like newspapers and magazine sites.
Marco:
I think that's true.
Marco:
So you could get your daily newspaper through Avant Go, and it would be fully navigable.
Marco:
But it would basically save web content for reading offline on your Palm Pilot.
Marco:
Again, synced just like an iPod.
Marco:
I loved that.
Marco:
I went on a trip one time in high school, and I didn't have any laptop or anything yet or any cell phone.
Marco:
So I just loaded up my Palm Pilot with as much as I could get on Avant Go because I wanted reading material for the trip.
Marco:
And, like, just used it for, like, a week.
Marco:
Just totally offline.
Marco:
I had a couple of e-books.
Marco:
I had a whole bunch of Avon Go stuff.
John:
Yeah, you could have put e-books on it.
John:
Like I said, I always say that when I say I read the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit on the 160x160 pixel screen, this was that screen.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Like, I just, I love this thing.
Marco:
It was so far ahead of its time.
Marco:
And then...
Marco:
So I had the Palm 5X, as I mentioned, in college.
Marco:
And I remember I was thinking back, like, man, it took a long time for cell phones to match what the Palm 5X was, like form factor-wise.
Marco:
The Palm 5X is way smaller than you think it is.
Marco:
It weighs almost nothing.
Marco:
It weighs like 115 grams or something.
Marco:
It's like half the weight of a modern iPhone.
Marco:
And it is small and light.
Marco:
It has a built-in lithium rechargeable battery.
Marco:
It doesn't last very long after 23 years.
Marco:
But 24 years, excuse me.
Marco:
I actually, I've ordered myself a replacement battery.
Marco:
We're going to see how that goes.
Marco:
The installation process is not easy, according to YouTube videos.
Marco:
But this whole thing was only 25 bucks.
Marco:
So if I break it, I can just buy another one.
Marco:
uh it is remarkable like how many of these there are on ebay palm fives palm threes like all the different varieties the later ones like the m series they're all over ebay for like 20 30 bucks for really good condition ones and it's kind of fun and the thing is like you can't really do anything with like i i did actually install the sync software on my gaming pc um
Marco:
And getting it installed was a little you had to like, you know, go to some weird places on the Web to even get a copy of the software that would run on modern Windows.
Marco:
And then you have to like do a couple of weird things like make it run as administrator.
Marco:
I had to get a USB to serial adapter from God knows who on Amazon.
Marco:
So there was there were some hoop jumping to go through.
Marco:
But I wanted to be able to install my games.
Marco:
So it was nice for that.
Marco:
But it is kind of interesting.
Marco:
This device is just totally on its own.
Marco:
Because it has no built-in networking, and yet you can get modems and Wi-Fi add-ons, but they're huge, and most of them don't work anymore.
Marco:
With no networking, it is very limited in what it can do.
Marco:
It is closer to a Game Boy these days than to anything useful as a computing device.
Marco:
But that also means...
Marco:
that it's not broken yet.
Marco:
Like anything that relies heavily on networking that's pretty old is probably totally non-functional today.
John:
Like the Palm 7 that did have cellular.
John:
I wonder if that just doesn't work anymore because it was analog cellular, you know what I mean?
Marco:
Yeah, like what network would that even run on?
Marco:
Like that definitely wouldn't work today.
Marco:
And even if the networking part of it worked, what is it connecting to?
Marco:
With what SSL protocol?
Marco:
Like SSL breaks everything old.
Marco:
Like that's how the modern internet is like,
Marco:
basically any devices that have to connect to the internet to do useful things after you know 10 years they're useless because they're going to fall behind ssl requirements but this thing doesn't because it is self-contained if you want to be even more future-proof i would say get a palm 3x or 3xe because those were i believe the last models to use like just regular triple a batteries instead of lithium batteries and
Marco:
because that will be even more future-proof in the sense that you don't have to worry about this battery that's now 24 years old, you know, any possible risks of using it or just it being very low capacity.
Marco:
So anyway, so I just started, you know, playing these games again the last couple nights, just like sitting on the couch, you know, everyone else is watching TV, and I'm like playing my version of Heart's
Marco:
Or my version of Mealborn on here.
Marco:
It brought back so many memories of wasting time with this thing.
Marco:
And it's delightful.
Marco:
And yeah, the screen is really hard to see.
Marco:
You can hold the power button down for a backlight.
Marco:
And the backlight is not much easier to see.
Marco:
It is old.
Marco:
The screen technology is very, very old.
Marco:
And it, of course, is very limited.
Marco:
But it is delightful to use this thing.
Marco:
And I got to say, I have spent $25 on way worse things.
Marco:
I'm very happy that even if it ends up only being like a fun desk toy, it makes me so happy to just see and hold and use this thing.
Marco:
And I would venture to say, again, the Palm 5 and 5X both, I think, came out in 1999.
Marco:
I would say it took at least until the first iPhone before cell phones had caught up to this form factor.
Marco:
And maybe even the iPhone 5 because of how it made it much smaller and lighter and everything.
Marco:
I would say the Palm 5 and the Palm 5X, not only were these the best palms, in my opinion, across the entire lineup that were ever made, just form factor-wise and classic looks-wise.
Marco:
They looked the best.
Marco:
They feel the best.
Marco:
But also, they were so far ahead of their time, like maybe a decade ahead of their time.
Marco:
And yeah, they weren't phones, you know, I get that.
Marco:
But like the form factor and the design and the hand feel and how it feels in the pocket.
Marco:
And these were amazing devices, super iconic.
Marco:
way ahead of their time and i think palm os as i was saying earlier palm os just like the the the fonts the the widgets the interface widgets the designs i love the way this os looks and feels yeah of course it's dated but i don't know the history of this i would not surprise me if there were some similar talent between palm and apple going on here it is way closer to apple like than to windows like
Marco:
And I know because I also later, afterwards, when the Wi-Fi era of these things really came around, I switched to a pocket PC briefly.
Marco:
Between my Palm 5X and my phone eras, I had a pocket PC.
Casey:
Same.
Marco:
You know, it was better in the sense, like, technically, you know, it had a web browser.
Marco:
It could very slowly load web pages and everything.
Marco:
So it was better in those ways.
Marco:
But the design of the OS, the usability, the style, way better on Palm.
Marco:
Way, way better.
Marco:
And so, yeah, I it makes me very happy to see this.
Marco:
I am I still marvel at the fact that this is 24 years old and and it just was so far ahead of its time.
Marco:
So, yeah, if you if you like me are nostalgic for old palms, I can strongly recommend getting one on eBay for 20 bucks, 25 bucks.
Marco:
You'd be surprised how easy and cheap they are to get and for being in relatively good shape.
John:
And don't forget in the sort of death throes of the life of that company, they also had WebOS, which included lots of UI innovations that eventually iOS and Android would copy.
John:
And now it runs on your LG television.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
Literally, it happens on the rare occasions that the TV fully reboots itself.
Casey:
I don't mean just powers off, but fully reboots itself.
Casey:
You see WebOS right there on the TV.
Casey:
I went through Palm Pilot phase in high school because we are the same age.
Casey:
I think it started, I've told this story before on the show, but it started with an IBM.
Casey:
what's the um the less gross term for white labeling i can't think of it but um rebranded let's say uh the palm early palm pilots as oh gosh like message pads or something like that i don't remember what they were called oh yeah the ibm like work pad or something yeah yeah i forget what exactly what they called it and i and dad was issued one through work didn't used it like twice and said this isn't for me let me you know screw around with it and then
Casey:
And then I had a pocket PC.
Casey:
I had a Toshiba E740, which is important to know because this was one of, if not the first pocket PC that had onboard Wi-Fi.
Casey:
And this was when I was in college when Virginia Tech was just rolling out Wi-Fi on campus.
Casey:
And it also had a – what was it?
Casey:
A compact flash port at the top of it or whatever the IBM microdrive was.
Casey:
And so what I did was dad had gotten his hands on, I think, a one-gig microdrive.
Casey:
And so everyone around me was carrying like Ryo or Rio or whatever it's called, the little –
Casey:
crappy like 64 meg mp3 players which i had one and it was delightful and also a piece of garbage uh the really fancy dudes or people had the nomads that looked like disc men yeah they had a whole hard drive in there right but they had a whole hard drive in there uh that was what the fancy kids did but what i did was i put a micro drive
Casey:
in my toshiba e740 and i had a gig worth of or maybe it was a half a gig i don't know it was a lot for the time you know this was early 2000s and i had a basically a gig worth of music uh in my in my pocket pc and it was it was a complete piece of garbage it was slower than dirt and i loved this thing and i'm looking at it on ebay now not that i necessarily want one but it would be neat to see one for a little bit and it looks like
Casey:
There's one that they're making no claims that it works at all for $50, and then another one for $325.
Casey:
And I can assure you, it was probably more than $325 when it was new, and it wasn't even worth that much.
Casey:
So it's definitely not 20 years on.
Casey:
But man, did I love that thing, even though I agree with you, Marco, that the Palm was so much better designed and operated better.
Casey:
But this was, you know, the early 2000s when it was no longer useful to have a thing that was a satellite to your computer or not as useful.
Casey:
You wanted a thing that could actually operate on the internet on its own.
Casey:
And that's what this Toshiba did.
Casey:
And it was pretty cool.
Casey:
John, you didn't really talk about your time at Palm or the Palm.
John:
When you guys were all playing with your things, I was working for Palm.
John:
When you're playing with your devices in college, yeah.
John:
That's the only reason I ever got Palm stuff.
John:
I never wanted to really buy one myself.
John:
I really wanted a Newton, of course, but couldn't afford one.
John:
And then when I worked for Palm, I got the devices free, which is why I have an attic full of them.
John:
Not an unlimited number, but basically, you know, they give you a device when you got there, when new ones came out.
John:
And so, yeah, I have a whole bunch.
John:
I even have some handspring stuff over there.
John:
You remember them?
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Like an offshoot and then got re-merged back in, right?
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When were you there?
John:
What years were you there?
John:
I remember I got laid off when my son was an infant.
John:
So that was around 2004-ish was the one that ended.
John:
And I was only there for like maybe a year and a half or two years or so.
John:
So 2003, two, three, four.
John:
That was pretty late.
Casey:
What was the stack at that point?
Casey:
Was it C, C++?
John:
I was doing the web part of it, so I don't know.
John:
But I know the people who were doing it.
John:
We had a Windows C Pocket PC person.
John:
We had a Palm OS person.
John:
We had a Mac OS person.
John:
And we had a Windows person.
John:
And the Windows and the Pocket PC person were the same person.
John:
And the Palm OS and the Mac person were the same person.
John:
There wasn't a lot of people in this company.
John:
And I was the web person.
John:
There was one other web person there as well.
John:
golly that's bananas so yeah it was a skeleton crew but uh but yeah i got to use all the devices frequently i got to support the devices by telephone for people who couldn't get their ebooks onto their palm devices because we would rotate who had a phone support duty which is you know people say like oh you should have a job working in fast food so you know what working's like and the technical equivalent of that is everyone needs to do support
Marco:
It's funny, too.
Marco:
Like, all these games I'm talking about, like, you know, my version of Mealborn, 25 kilobytes.
Marco:
Minesweeper, 14 kilobytes.
John:
Go get vexed.
Marco:
It's really good.
Marco:
Reversi, 7 kilobytes.
Marco:
Like...
John:
everything is so tiny it goes on here i mean the whole thing's only eight megs of storage but still like that's really pretty great you should look at like play date games are like that now it's a lot like that non-black that monochrome screen there's like there's a game that's like a 3d like third person 3d flying a spaceship through space it's like 25 kilobytes for the whole game it's like how is that possible it's all like programmatically generated it's really cool not that storage space is a real concern these days but it is fun to see how small they are