100 Million Tire-Kickers
Casey:
One of my favorite things is to take the listeners on the journey through the show notes.
Casey:
And I feel like I've been doing this a lot lately, but the boys have been very clever with their entries in our internal show notes.
Casey:
And for pre-show, it reads as follows.
Casey:
Marco's butt crack update.
John:
so marco how's your butt crack i couldn't think of a better way to word this can you give me a couple seconds to uh think about this though because i just just read this now and i want to before you tell me what it is i'm gonna try to figure it out okay go ahead casey you can help me here so as far as i can recall we haven't talked about anything involving butt crack we have talked about his pants pockets and the weight of the phones and stuff like that no no no john
Casey:
This is like role reversal here.
Casey:
I actually remembered something.
Casey:
I'm very proud of myself.
Casey:
What is this about?
Casey:
So Marco sat on, I think it was Tiff's iPad.
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
Oh, got it right.
Casey:
Yes, the iPad.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
And then it got cracked by his butt.
Marco:
Hey, hold on.
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
I never said I was the sitter or Tiff was the city.
John:
I assume that Tiff sat on Adam's iPad.
John:
That was my read of the situation.
John:
oh i genuinely thought that marco did well this is the mystery now this is what we really need to know because now apparently butt crack was just me not remembering the ipad thing so please tell us marco name names who sat on what i'm not gonna name names you have to there's only three people in your house somebody it was hops they could have it well hops i don't think hops could damage anything doesn't weigh enough he weighs 14 pounds and it's mostly fluff he could only shatter casey's windshield he couldn't break an ipad
John:
well done well done i keep bringing that up to everybody who talks about things i'm like you know my friend shattered his windshield with an ipad you're a cautionary tale for the world well i'm glad i could serve that purpose that and pouring drinks on aaron's laptops just basically anything that's precious that's aaron's well i think people know that that's possible like a poor laptop it's bad but people don't realize if you literally touch your windshield with an ipad well now i'm whenever i tell this to people like you sure he didn't throw it at the windshields he said he just placed it up
Casey:
No, no.
Casey:
I mean, I was accelerating in the direction of the windshield, but it remained in my hands the whole time.
Casey:
Because, again, to recap, I was just placing it on the dashboard for a few minutes.
John:
Yes, placing it.
John:
You were placing it.
John:
This is why we need dash cams, but facing the other way.
Casey:
Well, right?
Casey:
I mean, again, I should...
Casey:
I should call Erin up here to tell you her version of the story because hand to God, if she wasn't there, and she said this to me herself, if she wasn't there and didn't witness it herself, she would be saying the exact same thing.
Casey:
She said to me, like, if I wasn't, it's so, we are, we, and especially you, Casey, are so lucky that I was here to witness this because I would never have believed that that just happened.
Casey:
Anyway, I'm sorry, we're delaying.
John:
So you're still refusing to name names?
John:
Why?
John:
We don't care who it was.
John:
It's iPads on couches.
John:
We understand how things happen.
John:
This is not a comment on anybody's weight.
Marco:
Regardless, an iPad was sat upon.
Casey:
Oh, very good passive voice.
Marco:
And it created, the event created a large mark on the screen, a long either scratch or crack on the screen.
Marco:
The other members of my family voted and decided that they said it was a crack.
Marco:
I looked at it and I thought it was a scratch, but it was very large, whatever it was.
John:
It went across like... How could it have been a scratch?
John:
Do you have like those metal rivets sticking out of the back of any of your things that you would be sitting with?
Marco:
i i don't know how how that kind of mark would have been made um but regardless it it looked bad and and so the rest of my family said it's definitely a crack the owner of the ipad was uh understandably very upset about this to the point where again this is what created the whole swap where i swapped this ipad with my ipad um and i reset them you know a
Marco:
I transferred everything over, swapped them so that the owner of the iPad could be compensated with a fresh one, and I would use the cracked or scratched or whatever one.
Marco:
Because the replacement cost of that out of AppleCare, which it was, would be $600.
Marco:
And I thought, you know what, I'll just use a cracked iPad.
Marco:
It's still working for me just fine, whatever.
Casey:
Let me quickly interrupt.
Casey:
Did we ever reach a conclusion with regard to cellular on the iPad?
Casey:
I remember there was a kerfuffle about it, but I don't remember if you ever actually got it working.
Marco:
I'll get to that in a minute.
Marco:
The answer to that is no, I did not eventually get it working.
Marco:
I even now have a totally separate physical SIM fresh from AT&T in there, which also worked for a couple of days and then got no service.
Casey:
What?
Marco:
So here's...
Marco:
Here's what has happened in the meantime.
Casey:
Oh, so you unquestionably have bought a brand new iPad with brand new cellular service because you will throw money at the problem to make it go away.
John:
You could have bought refurbished ones.
John:
He likes doing that from Amazon lately.
Casey:
Well, that's true.
Casey:
That's true.
Marco:
All right, you're jumping ahead a little bit.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
i i was i had to go to the apple store for other uninteresting reasons um and a couple of people had written in to say why don't you just bring it to an apple store and have them look at it sometimes if there's no like other signs of obvious damage like drop damage on the frame sometimes they'll just replace it kind of out of goodwill or assuming that you know maybe maybe you you know maybe it kind of broke too easily um so you know it's worth going in there and asking
Marco:
So I thought, all right, what the heck?
Marco:
I was going to go to the Apple store anyway for something else.
Marco:
So I brought the iPad with me along with the iPad mini that I got a few months ago because I wanted to trade it in because I hate it for reasons.
Marco:
Long story short on that, I bought it to be an e-reader.
Marco:
It's a terrible e-reader.
Marco:
And also, I really miss promotion.
Marco:
And also, I really hate using iPads without keyboards, it turns out.
Marco:
And the keyboard options for the iPad mini are terrible.
Marco:
Trust me, I know.
Marco:
I've tried them.
Marco:
even yes even listener that one that you say is highly rated on amazon that has five stars yeah even that one terrible anyway and the and the keyboard for the ipad pro is so much better and i i don't even use the magic keyboard with the trackpad i use the regular flippy smart keyboard folio i still like that better than the magic keyboard for my own purposes and my preferences
Marco:
And I have one in good authority, so does Craig Federighi.
Marco:
I love that combo, the 11 inch iPad with that keyboard, the smart keyboard folio, not the trackpad magic keyboard.
Marco:
It's a great combo.
Marco:
It's relatively small and lightweight.
Marco:
The keys actually feel pretty good, especially considering, which is funny, I think they're butterfly keys, but they have that membrane over the top that makes them actually stay good.
Marco:
Anyway, I hate the iPad mini.
Marco:
So I'm like, this is going terribly for me.
Marco:
I've had it for too long.
Marco:
I can't return it.
Marco:
I don't want to deal with selling it.
Marco:
So I was like, I'm just going to trade it into the Apple store.
Marco:
i go to the apple store with the ipad mini that i don't want and the butt crack ipad i show show the ipad to the you know the are they still called geniuses i don't even know show the ipad to the apple store representative and and he was a very nice guy and and he's he's looking at the he's looking at the scratch crack and he's like i don't think it's a crack
Marco:
And I'm like, well, is there some way?
Marco:
Because I told him, I'm like, look, I'm fine working like this, but if it can be easily repaired, I don't want to lose a bunch of money on trading down the road.
Marco:
So he looked at it and he ran his finger over it.
Marco:
And I showed him how it worked on the tuck screen.
Marco:
And he's like, nope, I'm pretty sure this is not a crack.
Marco:
And so this shouldn't hurt your trading value.
Marco:
And so I thought, great.
Marco:
In that case, I'd like to trade this in.
Casey:
That's a pretty solid pro move.
Marco:
Yeah, because I have someone here right now who says it's not a crack.
Marco:
And this person can accept a trade-in.
Marco:
So let me let me just do this now and not keep it for another two years and then trade it.
Marco:
And then for nothing, if if by then the mail in company says, oh, no, that's a crack.
Marco:
So, like, OK, I quickly decided, like, you know what, I'm going to trade both of these.
Marco:
So I traded them both in.
Marco:
And Adam has a new one.
Marco:
Excuse me, the person whose iPad got sat on.
Marco:
oh the truth has leaked out down farther although the way you were talking about before made me think that marco sat on it so i don't know i can't decide but it was pretty clear that it was adam's ipad yes so regardless um adam has a new ipad on the way funded almost entirely by the trading of these two ipads that i didn't want for reasons um and then i will take back my ipad that has the bad cellular um i'll take that back and deal with it some other way
John:
That was totally a crack, though.
John:
I mean, again, if it's a scratch, what would have made the scratch?
John:
And if it's so visible, why would you not be able to feel?
John:
It's just an internal crack.
John:
It's like one of the layers below the top layer has cracked.
John:
That's kind of what I was assuming was probably the case.
John:
You don't need to explain to the guy about internal cracks.
John:
Once he says it's not a crack and it shouldn't affect trade-in, you are wise to say, great, here you go.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
That wasn't even my plan going in.
Marco:
I was going to trade the small one, but as he was getting all the logistics in place to trade in the small one, I was like, wait a minute.
Marco:
this what am i going to hold on to this for like i have i have an open i hope to open out now take it you may never find another person who doesn't understand about internal cracks yeah exactly i would take take this chance so yeah anyway um the the the situation hopefully will resolve itself with the butt crack well that has resolved itself and then the cellular i'll figure out you know i'm not a huge rush to solve it if it's on my own ipad because i don't use my ipad that much so we'll solve that some other time
John:
I hope the adults in the house will look where they're sitting from now on.
Casey:
I'd like to start with some follow-up slash follow-out.
Casey:
I was listening to the beginning of today's upgrade before we recorded.
Casey:
I didn't get too far into it.
Casey:
But I got far enough to discover what the title was referring to.
Casey:
The title of upgrade number 467 is The Least Important Mac.
Casey:
John, would you like to guess what Mac that they were referring to?
John:
I'm still thinking about whether there should be a hyphen between least and important.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Don't touch the question, though, sir.
John:
I think probably there should be.
John:
Yeah, no, I did see this episode appear in my podcast feed and I had to look at the summary.
John:
And then, of course, you're thinking the notes.
John:
And so, yes, it all makes sense.
Casey:
Yeah, so Jason and Mike had a reasonably brief but actually very interesting conversation about, okay, well, what is the deal with the Mac Pro?
Casey:
And Jason said, you know, hey, I think I can summarize it, so now I will summarize Jason's summary.
Casey:
This is getting Inception-like, but here we are.
Casey:
I haven't seen it.
Casey:
Oh, we should put that on the list for the number special.
Casey:
um all right so uh jason was saying look apple wanted to ship what was it it was a jade 4c die was that the internal code name yeah okay the the although technically that was the one with with four m1 maxes not even four m2 maxes but we get the idea they wanted to ship the quad is what we keep calling it on the show exactly so they wanted to ship the quad they couldn't make it work and you know german said this months ago that they just can't make it work or they abandoned it for one reason or another well they could make it work it's just a question of do you want to pay as much money as it would take to make it work
Casey:
also fair but one way or another they they shelved that the project at least at the time and yet you know they still wanted apple still wanted the the apple silicon transition to be done and so that means they had to ship something so they shipped what they got and what they got is an m2 ultra uh which i think you know as jason had said it's what is it occam's razor you know the the most obvious answer is probably the correct one it he made a pretty compelling argument that that could be the case is there anyone contesting that that
Casey:
was the case uh not necessarily but i don't know i thought it was a pretty good summary that he spelled out in just a couple of minutes yeah i mean the only thing i would add is the thing that i mentioned they didn't have to ship what they had they could have said uh no mac tro the transition is complete well but i think that the implication is jason was saying was that they will probably bring back this quad chip well not bring back but you know what i mean like
Casey:
They will actually ship the quad chip at some point.
Casey:
We'll see.
John:
That's the nature of the Mac Pro.
John:
There are many things that they could do, and we wonder what they will do.
John:
I feel like if the 4C doesn't work out, the quad doesn't work out for whatever reasons, pricing, whatever, I think it would have been
John:
in keeping with Apple's actual plans to just say, never mind, the transition is complete.
John:
And they would have had to do, they wouldn't have had to, but it would have been nice if they did that to say, kind of like they did by saying, oh, the Mac Pro is for another day, to reassure people.
John:
They could have said, we're not shipping one now because we couldn't make the Mac Pro that we wanted to make, but rest assured...
John:
This product isn't dead, and we're going to have another one.
John:
That would be almost unprecedented, except they literally did that with this exact computer back when they had the roundtable.
John:
So it's precedented now.
John:
Apple does not talk about future products with one exception, and that is the Mac Pro, and they've done it twice now.
John:
Once the roundtable, which is like...
John:
Do they ever do that?
John:
We're going to make a new computer and we haven't even started making it, but we're going to tell you about it, but it's totally coming.
John:
And the second, we haven't announced something during this keynote presentation, but rather than just not saying it, we're going to tell you, oh, I know you were expecting us to say it, but don't worry, it's coming later.
John:
Twice they've done it.
John:
The least important Mac.
John:
The least important and the one that is the most likely to Apple to do totally uncharacteristic things like telling you about what they're going to do in the future.
Casey:
Both of those things can be true at the same time.
John:
It is the least important Mac in terms of sales volume, but it's the most important Mac in many other ways.
Casey:
In what ways then?
John:
Well, it's a good thing I wrote about this back before the trash can came out.
Casey:
Oh, are you really doing the Halo car thing again?
John:
Yeah, but it's not just the Halo car thing.
John:
It's the idea that I think that I espouse, which Apple can agree with or disagree and so can other people, but if I was running Apple...
John:
I would say that it would be important for the company to reach for the stars and try to make the world's fastest personal computer, not the world's fastest computer.
John:
They're not selling supercomputers, but they sell personal computers and they sell a range of them and they sell laptops and they sell laptops.
John:
And there is something to be said for shooting for the stars and going for it to make the best, fastest thing you could possibly make.
John:
because it's cool primarily which is the argument i made in the thing you're not going to make money on it it's not going to sell any things or whatever yes there's also a trickle down in tech and we'll get to that in a little bit because apparently they talked about that in upgrade as well but it's important for the company it's important for the people who work at the company it's the reason they make the gr toyota stuff like it's like the people who work there some of them want to make a hot rod too and it does advance the state of the art and it does attract and retain employees and there is sometimes a trickle down effect but all that aside
John:
It's also just cool.
John:
And if you run a company, you can decide, what do I think is cool?
John:
Maybe I don't think desktops are cool at all.
John:
I'm gonna do all laptops.
John:
Maybe I think what's cool is headsets and watches.
John:
Like everyone can decide what they want for their company.
John:
I'm not saying this has to be the way Apple does things, but if I ran Apple, this is what I would do.
John:
And I know there are some people at Apple who agree with me and probably more people at Apple who don't.
John:
And so it is a constant struggle against good.
John:
That would be me.
John:
It's happening inside the company.
John:
It happens outside the company.
John:
Some people have no interest in the Mac Pro and some people like me have disproportionate, seemingly inexplicable interest in the Mac Pro.
John:
And that's just the way it is.
Casey:
John, you probably know off the top of your head, which will make this very brief game very unfun.
Casey:
But the case for a true Mac Pro successor, give me a date off the top of your head.
Casey:
2011?
John:
12?
John:
13?
Casey:
You got it at the end.
Casey:
2013.
Casey:
March 8 of 2013.
John:
I was going to guess 13.
Casey:
What did I say was the anniversary of ATP?
Casey:
That was like almost to the day when we really and truly embraced, or the two-year anniversary.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
No, that wasn't it.
Casey:
It was 2013, the anniversary.
John:
Yeah, I was confused because that's the trash can year.
John:
2013 is the trash can year.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So I was writing this before the trash can had come out.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
Golly, 10 years ago.
John:
And as I've said multiple times before, people said, oh, is the trash can a true Mac Pro successor?
John:
I think it is.
John:
They tried to make a hot rod.
John:
They didn't do a good job.
John:
but you know they it's not like they didn't try right it's not like they said i give them a tall mac mini you know they did something and so i you know full credit to apple for that attempt they're not all going to be winners
John:
golly so atp was just a wee little baby in march 8th of 2013 the case for true mac pro well so here's a question if they had released only the mac studio and had called it mac pro oh what would we think of that as a mac pro people would have been super angry because that they already had that name and they made a big deal at the round table of it being an expandable modular computer blah blah so this is modular you can attach a monitor yet it's as modular as a mac mini
John:
Well, but it has all this Thunderbolt bandwidth.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
But the problem is that we've already been there and done that.
John:
And Apple, for whatever reason, decided, no, let's have a roundtable.
John:
We are going to make this kind of computer that some people want.
John:
That's what they said.
John:
And we're going to call it Mac Pro.
John:
If it came out and was called Mac Studio, then it would be like, I guess there's no Mac Pro.
John:
And people would be mad.
John:
But if they tried to call that thing the new Mac Pro, it would be the trash can all over again.
Marco:
uh because people would be angry that it's not really a mac pro and the people who wanted a mac pro would not be satisfied by that um you know it's a thing that apple could have done and apple could have just written it out because like who cares it's not gonna be a big deal but well but the funny thing though is that like only like the the mac pro they just released is not that much more quote expandable than the mac studio well it fits slightly more pci cards than the studio does but that but like ram isn't expandable graphics aren't expandable
John:
it's the same process it's true but it has a lot of room for pci cards and for people who want to put cards in there that aren't gpus they can't do anything with the mac studio it is not useful to them i know they have breakout chassis or whatever but the bandwidth just isn't there for that so yeah and there's no rack mount version of the studio and you could put little rack mounts like they do the mac minis it's just a different kind of computer i'm not particularly saying that they should have shipped this mac pro especially at the prices they shipped it at
John:
If they had skipped, I would be gnashing my teeth well, but if they skipped and said, we couldn't do the quad, so stay tuned, we're going to try to do better next time, I'd be like, okay.
John:
I don't mind that they ship this one either.
John:
I'm glad people who find it useful want it, but it's not a slam-bang winner like the 2019 was.
Casey:
Was it though?
Casey:
At 90 gazillion thousand dollars.
Casey:
Anyway, so Jason and Mike continued on.
Casey:
Jason, you know, as we alluded to, named the Mac Pro is the least important Mac.
Casey:
And then Mike made a really interesting point very succinctly.
Casey:
And I'm paraphrasing, but what he basically said was, look, all the interesting technology is now flowing from iPhone to Mac, not the other way around.
Casey:
And this was in part his retort to they need a halo car.
Casey:
Well, it was Mike saying, well, the halo car is the iPhone's
John:
But I disagree with that.
John:
I disagree with this assessment that interesting tech is flowing iPhone to the Mac.
John:
I don't think that's true.
John:
Setting aside the fact that I don't think the technology trickle down is the main reason you do it, as I think I established before, my opinion, the main reason you do it is because it's cool.
John:
Right.
John:
But the technology direction is not that way.
John:
So look what's in the Vision Pro.
John:
It is not an iPhone chip in there.
John:
It's a Mac slash iPad chip in there.
John:
And you can say, well, but it's iPhone cores.
John:
They made those cores for the iPhone and they just put a bunch of them together.
John:
The M series chips are not as simple as, oh, just take a bunch of iPhone cores and put them in a bin together and shake them up and you're done.
John:
The M series chips have stuff done to them.
John:
First of all, to work out the multi-core stuff so that it is efficient and that has the right balance between the cores and the GPUs.
John:
But second of all, there's more stuff they did to the M series chips.
John:
And iPhone chips are not powerful enough to run the Vision Pro.
John:
They had to use an M series chip plus whatever the heck is in the R thing, right?
John:
That is not a reverse direction pro.
John:
If anything, that's a flow from the Mac, which they made those chips for, but thus the M, down to the iPad and the Vision Pro.
John:
Second, when you're doing advanced stuff like Halo car type stuff, you have to do the things that haven't been done before, like trying to do the quad or the Internet connect with the ultra or really trying to ramp up the GPU to make things possible that are not possible on computers that people actually buy.
John:
right that's nobody buys these halo cars nobody buys these mac pros right but you never know what's going to be possible when you put it all together and put it into a million dollar supercar or fifty thousand dollar mac pro what kind of applications are possible what kind of frameworks are possible what kind of new workflows are possible that will eventually trickle down to the slower crappier things nobody is working out like oh i didn't think i could work without a pro you know the old days uh proxy workflows for video right what if you made a computer that's powerful enough that you didn't have to do proxy workflows
John:
That doesn't happen first on the MacBook Air.
John:
It doesn't happen first on a Mac Mini.
John:
It doesn't happen first on an iPhone.
John:
It happens first on whatever the most powerful computer Apple sells is and then trickles down when eventually all the other computers get better.
John:
But writing the software to say, hey, I bet on our most powerful computer you can do 4K 60 no proxy workflow.
John:
The first time that happened, however many years ago that happened, it didn't happen first on the iPhone.
John:
Right.
John:
So I don't think all the interesting tech is flowing that direction.
John:
And it's another one of the self-fulfilling promises.
John:
If you continue to limit what you're willing to do at the high end, if you're like, well, we'll do like what the MacBook Air has, but no better than that.
John:
And that'll be our high end ship.
John:
Like if there was no M1 Max, no M1 Pro or no M2 Max, M2 Pro, no M2 Ultra.
John:
And the top of the line was just a plain old M2 that is also in the iPads.
John:
Of course, you're limiting the scope of how much is going to flow back down because you only had to do a limited amount to combine the iPhone chips into the plain old M2.
John:
But to combine those iPhone cores and all that other stuff and the decoders and the RAM and the big honking monster GPU that has everything plumbed the right way.
John:
from the quad now there's much more to trickle down there's you're so much farther away so much bigger higher more expensive there's more to trickle down i mean even stuff like the afterburner card which eventually got ditched and its functionality incorporated into the apple's biggest chips is another example of things trickling down where we have an idea of how we could do something better eventually we'll build that as a chip by putting an fd code into it yeah i don't think all the interesting tech is flowing iphone to the mac and not the other way around
Marco:
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Casey:
Tell me about Vision Pro eyes, please.
John:
I meant to get an offset for this, but we're talking last show about whether the eyes that you see on the outside of the Vision Pro are, you know, enhanced video of your eyes or whether they are just CGI's the same way they would do on your persona, like that little fake version, a digital version of you.
John:
And in the talk show 378, the one from WWDC, various Apple executives are on stage discussing those eyes.
John:
And their discussion strongly implies but does not flat out state that the eyes are essentially CG the same way they're done in the persona.
John:
You can listen to it.
John:
It starts around 54 minutes into the show.
John:
They're not really talking about that specifically, but if you listen to what they say, it seems like it's a persona.
John:
But it's really hard to tell because it's a good reading apprehension test because if you look at the transcript and listen to the words, some people will be absolutely convinced that they totally said it's just like persona.
John:
But then you have to look at it and it's like, well...
John:
They said, just like in the persona, it does X, or it's like the persona, or, you know, we don't fake your blinking when you blink, the eyes blink.
John:
But that's true of the digital persona too, right?
John:
But it also could be true of video.
John:
So it seems like it's a persona.
John:
It would be nice if this was clarified.
John:
No one wrote in from Apple to tell us one way or the other.
John:
Obviously, we'll find out if and when we get these headsets.
John:
But for now, we'll file it pretty strongly in the it's all fake CG and it's not your real eyes.
Marco:
The impression I got was it is based on the digital persona.
Marco:
It is fake CG.
Marco:
I kind of don't see how else they would realistically do it.
Marco:
They are tracking your eyes and they're using that to render what the CG eyes are doing, presumably, but
John:
they don't have a full image of your face in regular lighting because there there is no regular lighting projecting onto your face like a movie space helmet yeah that's why i thought i mean that's why because it's the image is so dim that's why i thought it would be like a night vision thing and obviously they would have to enhance it because they can't get a picture of like the bridge of your nose because like the nose piece is on there so it would have to be sort of stitched together but there is enough stuff facing your eyeballs that they could get a pretty accurate night vision view of them
John:
And because it's so dim and weird in there, I thought that's what it was, but maybe not.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I still we've heard a lot of feedback on this topic.
Marco:
I still think the digital personas and the eyes being based on probably the same thing.
Marco:
I think that's going to not age well for this product.
Marco:
And it wouldn't surprise me to see major changes in those areas for future versions, like maybe getting rid of them.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Again, I mean, obviously none of the three have tried this, but I don't think it's nearly as offensive as so many other people do.
Casey:
But that includes some people who have tried it.
Casey:
So you very well may be right.
Casey:
And I might be eating my words in 12 years when I actually get my hands on one.
Casey:
We mentioned, I forget exactly what the context was for this, but we were mentioning last episode that we have a quite impressive list of different professions and histories that
Casey:
through our listenership.
Casey:
And this makes me incredibly happy.
Casey:
It really genuinely does.
Casey:
And we have a tour of a few people that wrote in with their backgrounds.
Casey:
This was most particularly spurned from going developer to doctor or occasionally the other way around.
Casey:
So Ellie Ragoni writes, if you didn't know of a listener who is a former software engineer turned doctor, now you do.
Casey:
I was a software developer in Manhattan about 10 years ago before going to medical school.
Casey:
I currently work as an emergency physician in Western Massachusetts.
Casey:
Greg Rogalski writes, I was a software developer in the 90s at Oracle prior to leaving the computer field and becoming a physician.
Casey:
I'm now a radiologist in private practice.
Casey:
Nick writes, Dr. Nick even writes,
Casey:
I worked in tech for 15 years as a Cisco network engineer and Unix sysadmin.
Casey:
I am now a doctor in an emergency department here in Australia.
Casey:
By the way, that Dr. Nick thing, that was a reference, John, just FYI.
Casey:
And finally, Fletcher Weld writes, after listening to episode 542, I wanted to expand the ATP listener universe, TM.
Casey:
A little bit more, I'm a professional ballet dancer and an aspiring iOS developer on the side.
Casey:
I haven't had an opportunity to provide insight into the ballet world for the podcast yet, but maybe one day.
Casey:
So yeah, not a doctor in that case, but still very cool.
Casey:
And this was just a subsampling.
John:
Many, many people wrote in to tell us.
John:
So now I feel like thoroughly learned our lesson.
John:
There is no way that we can give a fantastical example, a hyperbolic example of like, imagine if we had a listener that X or Y, because we do.
John:
Yep, exactly.
Casey:
Which, again, it may sound like I'm not being serious, but truly, this makes me incredible.
John:
I probably would have gone for Ballet Dancer eventually, but then I got preempted on that because they're like, surely no ballet dancers listening to the show, let alone ballet dancers who are also iOS developers.
John:
Of course there are.
John:
Of course there are.
Of course.
Casey:
All right, and then we had some statistical analysis feedback with regard to the members episode poll that John was running.
Casey:
Are you still accepting responses for that, John?
John:
Yeah, I should probably close it down.
John:
I mean, no one's really responding to it anymore.
John:
But yeah, we did get a bunch of more responses.
John:
But yeah, nothing has changed about them.
John:
And Chris wrote in to explain why.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So Chris Rose writes, John mentioned an interesting statistical phenomenon when talking about a survey.
Casey:
After a given number of responses, the average or whatever he was calculating did not change much as new responses were submitted.
Casey:
A recent theme of the show has been the broad range of professions your listeners have.
Casey:
So let me add another.
Casey:
I'm a statistician.
Casey:
I will probably get that wrong at least five times.
Casey:
Most of my programming is statistical analysis work, but I grew up on basic C assembly language and lots of others.
Casey:
And yes, I've written Swift code for iOS.
Casey:
The phenomenon John mentioned is related to the concept of standard error.
Casey:
In many statistical analyses, you want to use measurements to estimate some unknown value.
Casey:
Standard error is the expected difference between your estimate and the true value of whatever you are trying to estimate.
Casey:
It is calculated as the standard deviation of whatever you are measuring, divided by the square root of your sample size.
Casey:
Obtaining more responses did not change John's estimate much because of the, quote, divide by the square root of your sample size, quote, part of the calculation.
Casey:
If you plot one over the square root of n, you'll see the curve drop towards zero pretty quickly as n increases from zero.
Casey:
But then the curve flattens out.
Casey:
That means it's pretty easy to drive standard error down towards some value by making small increases to sample size.
Casey:
But to meaningfully decrease the expected error further, you need dramatically more measurements.
Casey:
A 100 times increase in size only delivers a 10 times improvement in the standard error.
Casey:
Once you've got a reasonable number of measurements, getting more doesn't help that much.
Casey:
As John collected more data, his estimate was just wandering around with whatever value he was trying to estimate, staying, on average, one standard error away from it.
Casey:
It was pretty good.
Casey:
Pretty, pretty good.
John:
So that happened.
John:
We got many more responses and the graphs barely moved.
John:
Again, when I paste in new data and look at everything in the big spreadsheet, I'm like, did they move?
John:
Did I paste it in correctly?
John:
Yeah, it was fun.
Casey:
Yep, I appreciate that.
Casey:
That was lightly edited by John, but still a very good summary.
Casey:
So thank you, Chris.
Casey:
All right, let's do some topics.
Casey:
We had some breaking news last week that Instagram threads their Twitter-like replacement, or whatever you want to call it, their Twitter-like app had just launched within a couple hours of us recording last week.
Casey:
As we sit here tonight, we are a little bit on a weird schedule this week and next.
Casey:
So it is Monday night, the evening of July 10, as I am speaking to you right now.
Casey:
And we have a little bit of, and it's not really follow up, but talk to discuss about Threads.
Casey:
First of all, apparently this is Threads version two, which I was not aware of.
Casey:
And one of you probably, John, put a link to TechCrunch from 2021 in the show notes.
Casey:
It says that Instagram will shut down its companion app Threads by year end.
Casey:
Today I learned...
John:
did anyone remember that i had no recollection of this whatsoever never heard and so this is this is the reason this is interesting is just oh look we none of us remember this app that got canned back in 2018 but here's what's extra interesting about it because as we're going to talk about the the real threads the current threads in a moment uh this was an app put out by instagram that leveraged your instagram social graph and it got no traction
John:
I mean, maybe it wasn't differentiated enough from Instagram because it was kind of like Instagram, but just for certain things.
John:
But this is an example when we talk about the real threads of like what's different about threads this time.
John:
We are going to talk about the fact that it leverages Instagram social graph and the fact that
John:
a lot of people use Instagram and Facebook is huge and so on and so forth, but there are other ingredients that made for threads, threads V2, threads V current, uh, being different than threads V1, which wasn't that long ago.
John:
It got shut down in 2021.
John:
It went from 2019 to 2021.
Marco:
I mean, that was kind of a bad time for like people traveling and posting photos, but it wasn't a bad time for people to be communicating through their phones though.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
You're taking pictures of your sourdough starter or whatever.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
I think before we dig into social graph and stuff like that, I feel like we should spend at least a moment talking about our experience on threads so far.
Casey:
Since I'm talking, I'll start.
Casey:
I have not used this very much.
Casey:
I can't put my finger on how I feel about it quite yet.
Casey:
In some ways, it feels kind of like Twitter in that it seems like everyone is there.
Casey:
I'm not saying that's factual, but that's kind of what it feels like to me.
Casey:
Everyone is more enthusiastic and less grumpy at the moment, which is a nice change of pace from the Twitter that we knew a few months ago.
Casey:
The app, I keep going back and forth.
Casey:
There are parts about it that I think are either pretty or that I like, but there's a lot that I just... Again, I can't put my finger on what about it I don't like, but I don't love a lot of the choices the app makes.
Casey:
I really dislike not having any sort of experience on the Mac.
Casey:
And I was thinking about this earlier, I think when I saw Marco, you lamenting the fact that there's no Mac app or no Mac, you know, real interface at this point.
Casey:
I never thought of Twitter as a Mac exclusive experience, but certainly most of the time I spent on Twitter, I spent on my computer and,
Casey:
and i'm not saying that you know i wouldn't use threads if there's no mac or ipad app but it it certainly makes me less enthusiastic about it and and maybe i'm the only one other than marco that feels that way but i don't know that that really does kind of bother me um the notification scenario for me it was a mess like i was getting blown up constantly by notifications so i'd turn all those way way down real real fast
Casey:
I apologize if that comes off as a humble brag.
Casey:
I don't mean it that way at all.
Marco:
I feel like anyone would have had... Because it was importing all your Instagram people, so it was an explosion of notifications that first night.
Casey:
Yep, exactly.
Casey:
I also don't love that it asked...
Casey:
I feel like it asked me, do you want to follow, pre-follow, if you will, all of your Instagram contacts?
Casey:
I definitely think that that was a cool idea.
Casey:
No joke.
Casey:
That was a great idea.
Casey:
I swore I said no, though.
Casey:
Maybe I didn't.
Casey:
But I could have sworn I said no, and I kind of wish I'd said no, because...
Casey:
I feel like the people I follow on Instagram, I follow them on Instagram for a reason.
Casey:
But just because you put up pretty pictures or what have you, it doesn't necessarily mean that I want to hear your thoughts about everything under the sun.
Casey:
A silly example of this, and judge me if you will, but I really enjoy looking at accounts that have really pretty pictures of like Disney World, for example.
Casey:
I really enjoy Disney World.
Casey:
It's a happy place to me.
Casey:
It's okay if you don't feel that way.
Casey:
That's fine.
Casey:
But for me, I enjoy that.
Casey:
But I don't necessarily need to be kept up with the ins and outs of what's going on in the Disney community every day of the week.
Casey:
Like, that's not the level I'm at.
Casey:
And so here it was.
Casey:
I ended up accidentally, ding, following all of the... Maybe it was like five or ten accounts, but following all these accounts, we're constantly going back and forth about, oh, remember this ride?
Casey:
Remember that ride?
Casey:
Oh, this is cool.
Casey:
Oh, did you hear about what's going on now?
Casey:
Which, again, that's fine.
Casey:
It's just that's not something I'm necessarily interested in.
Casey:
I want to see the pictures.
Casey:
I don't necessarily want to see the text.
Casey:
And I feel like...
Casey:
In a way, I'm kind of crossing the streams a little bit here, which, again, is my own doing.
Casey:
And there's no reason I couldn't unfollow them on threads.
John:
Well, there is a reason, though.
John:
You could unfollow them on threads.
John:
But does that mean you wouldn't see posts from them anymore?
Casey:
Well, I don't think it means anything for Instagram, which is what I want.
Casey:
Like, I would want to follow them on Instagram.
John:
Right.
John:
You keep following them on Instagram and you unfollow them on threads.
John:
You're like, now I won't have to see that discussion about Disney stuff that I'm not interested in threads.
John:
But I think that's not true.
John:
I think threads would still show them to you.
Casey:
I misunderstood your point.
Casey:
I'm with you now.
Casey:
And yes, actually, that's one of the things that is, thank you so much, because that's one of the things that has driven me nuts about threads is that I'm seeing, like, I feel like it used to be this way on Twitter, like 10 plus years ago.
Casey:
I'm seeing all these conversations between people that maybe I follow one of them.
Casey:
And I guess this is just algorithmic timeline, like coming to get me.
John:
Maybe you follow none of them, which is much more likely.
John:
That also happens.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And like that.
John:
And to be clear, Twitter, when used through a third party client was never like this.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And that's the way I'm used to seeing Twitter.
Casey:
And so I can understand from like a bootstrap perspective, especially if I'm only following like one or two people at the beginning.
Casey:
Okay, yeah, sure.
Casey:
Show me all of these other conversations.
Casey:
But I really do not care for what I feel like.
Casey:
It feels kind of like eavesdropping to me, which it isn't because these are all public conversations, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But it just kind of feels that way.
Casey:
And I really don't care for it, especially since a lot of the times this is content that
Casey:
isn't particularly relevant to me and again some of this is my own fault i can unfollow again to pick on this example these disney accounts on threads but i just don't i don't love that and and that has not made me very happy um all in all but i do think i have a positive view of threads in the broad scheme of things but it hasn't
Casey:
It hasn't captured my attention the way that Mastodon has.
Casey:
I think because I'm a nerd, I think because my nerd friends are all on Mastodon, and because Mastodon feels most directly similar to the pieces of Twitter that I care for.
Casey:
I'm not saying it's most directly similar to Twitter, because I think that's probably threads, but it's most directly similar to the Twitter that I enjoy.
Casey:
Third-party apps, chronological timeline, blocking channels,
Casey:
filtering with regular expressions, all these sorts of things that I'm not seeing in threads yet.
Casey:
If there's no immediate responses to anything I just said, then Marco, please tell me what your broad thoughts are on threads, and then we'll start picking apart the individual stuff.
Marco:
Well, you know, I think, so first of all, I haven't used it a ton simply because, as Casey said, there's no Mac story right now.
Marco:
And they also went through the trouble of opting out of the compatibility for M1 powered Macs for this app to run.
John:
I think you two are weirdos within weirdos because it is boggling my mind that your main interface over the years with Twitter has been on the Mac.
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, this is where I am most of the day.
John:
You know, I'm like, I guess, I mean, I read on the Mac too, but the vast majority of my reading of Twitter like things has always been on the phone.
John:
Like, obviously I have the Mac app.
John:
I run it all day.
John:
I use it.
John:
But like to be majority Mac, that's you are a minority of a minority.
Marco:
Yeah, and also the majority of my posting is on the Mac as well because a lot of times I'm posting as part of something I'm doing, whether it's announcing the show going live or posting new episode notifications or posting questions about something I'm working on code-wise or posting a screenshot.
Marco:
There's so much I'm doing on the Mac.
Marco:
That's why when Mastodon was first taking off, before we had Ivory on the Mac, I really wasn't getting that much into it.
Marco:
Because it was very difficult for me to work it into my flow and my life.
Marco:
And Blue Sky actually worked on the Mac because they didn't opt out of that compatibility.
Marco:
And so their iPhone app worked just fine.
Marco:
And I'm talking about Blue Sky in the past tense.
John:
You used the same cruddy app in both places.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And it worked terribly on the Mac because when iPhone-only apps run on the Mac...
Marco:
They don't run in a flexible window, and they don't even run at the largest iPhone size.
Marco:
He would think, okay, if you're going to run an iPhone app on the Mac and it's going to be non-resizable, run it at the size of the iPhone Pro Max.
Marco:
Nope, doesn't do that.
Marco:
It runs at some fixed small size, and you can't resize it.
Marco:
So it's tough.
Marco:
It's not a good experience, but at least it's something.
Marco:
And so that's how I was using Blue Sky for a while.
Marco:
And I'm talking about Blue Sky in the past tense because, honestly, I've forgotten to continue to use it.
Marco:
And I think I'm going to give that a second here.
Marco:
But, honestly, now that Threads is out, I don't see a strong future for Blue Sky.
Marco:
But, anyway, these social networks like this, you know, everyone is like, in gamer terms, it's like everyone keeps starting new Minecraft worlds.
Marco:
and like starting everything let's start everything from scratch and it's super fun for for a little while as everyone's like you know finding other people and refollowing for whoever they were following in other places before and then someone comes in and wrecks everything yeah and and the problem is take over yeah that's the problem like eventually it becomes night and it becomes all nazis and like and like what part of the reason why i i didn't really get long-term engaged into blue sky is
Marco:
is that every time i would go to blue sky all of the conversations going on would be about nazi issues whether even if it wasn't the nazis themselves everybody was just talking about what to do about nazis they're wringing their hands about how nice we should be to them not even that just like everybody was basically everybody was mad all the time and while i appreciate the reasons they were mad that wasn't a fun place for me to keep going back to
John:
Although I have to say that this this this genre of discussion taking the form of I went to Social Network X and everyone was talking about why has always bothered me because it's always done in a way that that uses that observation to characterize the service.
John:
And sometimes there's some truth to it.
John:
If lots of people have a similar experience, that's why the discussion happens.
John:
But with services that are Twitter like it is mostly a function of who you follow with caveats about threads that we'll get to in a second.
John:
And so saying whenever I go to X, people are always talking about Y. It's like, no, no, the people you follow are always talking about Y or enough of the people you follow are talking about it.
John:
And it annoys you enough that you makes you feel like that's all they're talking about, because those things stand out and all the people posting pictures of their cats fade into the background because of things that annoy you stand out more.
John:
with algorithmic ones it's it's different but like but i have to say like and and and the way the opposite of that is like hey but what if everybody says it and what you just said is totally true when people are just coming on to a new service it is natural that most of the people who are talking are talking about the new service because hey like it's the new minecraft world hey everybody here we are where are we going to build i'm going to build over here what do you think of this did you find out where even i did it like i came onto threads and i was like how do you find out the list of people that someone else follows like it was hidden in the ui somewhere right and
John:
When you see enough people saying that, it makes sense.
John:
But I have to say that for services that have settled down to the point where there's not a gigantic influx of millions of new people every single day, if you continue to not see the discussions you want, and if you are not subjected to a non-optional algorithm timeline, you can adjust what you see by changing who you follow.
John:
And that was true on Twitter with third-party clients only.
John:
And it's true of Mastodon is not so true of threads, unfortunately, which we'll get to in a little bit.
John:
And in Blue Sky, it's mostly true because Blue Sky did have a timeline that will show you only stuff from the people you follow.
John:
So this is this is to suggest to people that if your experience of a service that gives you control over your experience.
John:
is not to your liking and if that service is not in its you know september or whatever like where all the new students come in or whatever you can do something about it and you should do something about it even case you're like oh i don't want to see all these people like immediately unfollow i mean again not that it's going to save you on threads but yeah ruthlessly unfollow i know people don't like to do it because it feels like they're doing mean things to their friends or whatever but that's how you can hammer these services into a shape that is more pleasing to you and
John:
And that's how eventually you see someone complaining for year number 17 on Twitter that they hate seeing people discuss whatever topic.
John:
I can't stand any more discussions about sports.
John:
I just can't stand it.
John:
Stop following people talk about sports and it will solve your problem.
John:
And they're going to say, yeah, but he's a first party client.
Marco:
I'm going to be like, oh, there's your problem.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
And with all these services, look, you've been hearing me say a similar thing for a year, that the service is who you follow.
Marco:
If you're lucky.
John:
Right.
Marco:
Your perception of the service is...
Marco:
usually for most services historically, who you follow.
Marco:
But yeah, the problem is that's not the case for these new ones that are very algorithmic and trying to promote things from other people.
Marco:
Or they're so small that you kind of have to go fishing in the pond of random tweets just to find people.
Marco:
And also these services tend to allow drive-by replies.
Marco:
So even if you are not talking about something, someone else can...
Marco:
can reply to you or mention you to get you to talk about something or to ask you why you're not talking about something and so it it there there are some holes in in the um in in the seal of like i just want to talk about xyz like in practice well that's that's where actual that's where the actual population comes in for example if you allow nazis to be part of the population it's not a solution to say well don't worry you can block them
John:
Because who wants to spend their day blocking Nazis, right?
John:
And it's like, well, we can't solve that problem.
John:
It's like, yes, you can.
John:
Don't let them be there.
John:
It's like going to your favorite restaurant and it's like, yeah, the clowns come in with seltzer bottles and squirt everybody.
John:
But if any individual clown does that to you, just block them and we'll make sure they can't squirt you anymore.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then a succession of clowns squirts you with seltzer and you're like, well, I blocked every single one of them, but I'm still soaking wet and I don't like this restaurant anymore.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Can't you just not let the clowns in?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Also, you're only blocking the bottles, not the clowns.
Marco:
They can just go buy a new bottle and bring it right in and squirt you again.
John:
And they would say, well, can't you just not let the clowns in?
John:
And they'd be like, well, but it's a free country.
John:
We got to let the clowns in.
John:
It's like it's a restaurant.
John:
Anyway, continue.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So back to threads.
Marco:
So I've had a hard time using it because it, you know, in standard Zuckerberg fashion, it really tries to clone a lot of the Twitter app experience.
Marco:
Problem is, as previously mentioned, I never had the Twitter app experience.
Marco:
I have the Tweetbot and Ivory experience, which is so much nicer.
Marco:
And the actual like first party Twitter app, I never used that.
Marco:
So, you know, I went to Blue Sky first and they ripped off the Twitter experience.
Marco:
Now I'm on Threads.
Marco:
They ripped off the Twitter experience.
Marco:
Everyone's cloning something I hate, it turns out.
Marco:
I mean, but they kind of have to, though.
John:
Agree.
John:
I mean, we're a bunch of weirdos here talking about our particular thing because we're giving our opinion on it.
John:
But just to be clear, we do understand why Twitter is like this, why Instagram is like this, why Threads is like this, because...
John:
And maybe people listening to this podcast don't know because they're more similar to us.
John:
But if you don't have an established network of people who you want to follow and discuss things with, but you just land in this app, just like, you know, show me something, right?
John:
I'm just a regular person.
John:
I want to be entertained.
John:
It's not as simple as TikTok where you just start swiping and it'll figure you out, right?
John:
But...
John:
So people don't have huge followings, people who are going to answer their questions.
John:
If you're not Marco and you post a question about iOS and you don't follow anybody from the iOS developing computer and nobody follows you, you're going to say, hey, I couldn't figure out this thing with whatever.
John:
No one's going to answer you.
John:
No one's going to even see that.
John:
You have to have something that lets people sort of bootstrap the social engagement.
John:
And so that's where these algorithms come in.
John:
They say, we know you don't have a lot of followers.
John:
We know you don't even know who you're supposed to follow.
John:
So let's chuck a bunch of stuff in your face that we think you might find interesting.
John:
And you have to do that.
John:
to be a mass market social network.
John:
You have to give that, and it's not just a way for people to get started and to get going.
John:
Some people stay that way the whole time.
John:
They don't want to follow 500 people.
John:
They're never going to get 1,000 people to follow them.
John:
They just want to show me some interesting things, and they'll pick out people they follow, and they'll, you know,
John:
find some people they find interesting and maybe interact or whatever but they need sort of that that foundation of the app will figure out what it thinks you want to see to make it a pleasurable experience for you uh and you know twitter did that with the algorithm timeline and threads does it like crazy you probably want to see what other people want to see which is celebrities or whatever and presumably if you have a do a good job with the algorithm like tiktok seems to they'll figure out what you like based on you know creepily watching what you spend more time lingering on in the scroll view whatever the hell they do right but
John:
But that's their job.
John:
And that is not our three experiences of Twitter.
John:
But apps like this have to do that if they want to be a mass market.
John:
I mean, so Blue Sky is still invite only.
John:
And it was like 50,000 people.
John:
Mastodon is like 2 million with like 1 million active.
John:
As of Monday, July 11th, Threads, which came out like last week, is at 100 million people.
John:
That's the point I wanted to make with the Threads V1.
John:
It's like, well, of course there are 100 million.
John:
They leveraged the Instagram social graph.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The original version of threads also leveraged the Instagram social graph.
John:
Something else must have changed.
John:
And we all know what has changed.
John:
Number one, Twitter bought by a maniac thrown in the dumpster.
John:
Number two, this trend of, hey, let's try different social networks.
John:
blue sky mastodon all these things like there's blood in the water right previously if if if facebook's instagram whatever meta had launched this when twitter was at the top of its strength and everyone was on it and the president was posting on it and it was just like the place where everything was happening this app would have died instantly no one would have cared it did die in 2019 it wasn't the same app obviously but like
John:
it's not just like oh we're facebook we automatically win no but when there's blood in the water people want a new comforting thing that you launch the app if you have an instagram app even if you don't even use instagram it knows that you have one because you launched it on your phone or whatever it's like puts a button boom and what do you have to do nothing there's that thing do you want to follow the instagram people yes no it doesn't matter what you answer because whatever you answer it's going to throw a bunch of crap in your face and you're going to look at it
John:
And that is a mass market friendly 100 million people in a week, 100 million signups.
John:
Is it sustainable, this growth?
John:
It doesn't matter.
John:
Like they are now the big.
John:
I mean, Twitter itself only has they have in the hundreds of millions, right?
John:
At their height, the top, the height of Twitter's power was hundreds of millions of people.
John:
This has a single hundred million people after a week.
John:
That's how much people are dissatisfied with Twitter.
John:
So that I mean, that's one of the main reasons we're talking about it.
John:
And, you know, the fact that it doesn't do what we want to do yet is kind of a bummer for us.
John:
But it shows how if you want to win the social networking game of Twitter like things, the bar was substantially lowered by Elon Musk.
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Marco:
I think if any of these Twitter replacements are going to have a chance of being mass market, Threads is the one, period.
John:
It's at 100 million people.
John:
I would say it's already mass market.
John:
Again, if they can sustain that.
John:
All those people could leave next week, but we'll see.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
It's at 100 million tire kickers, but these things tend to have massive drop-off for a lot of people.
Marco:
We'll try it out and then see who's still there in a month.
John:
I mean, it happened with Mastodon, even.
John:
Mastodon, again, up to multiple millions and then kind of went down to the 1.5 million who are actually willing to stay, and it's creeping back up again.
Marco:
Yeah, but still, even if they lose 80% of their people...
John:
they're still 20 times the size of mastodon so you know i think this is going to be the replacement for twitter for most people if if facebook doesn't screw it up because there's still plenty of room for facebook to screw up not not i was gonna say not intentionally like elon but not as incompetently as elon screwed up twitter because it would be hard to compete with that that's really probably like one for the ages like how can you do everything possible wrong over and over again
John:
but it's not as easy as you think it is twitter had the advantage of being the first one to do anything like this so he defined everything about it and twitter was fairly incompetent and stupid too but it was literally the only game in town and invented this entire thing so it got a lot of grace and we were talking about this in slack channel like do you think threads is going to be like twitter even if threads ends up being 10 times bigger than twitter it will never be like twitter because it's not singular right there's already other things out there like mastodon
John:
You know, and Blue Sky and Noster and like, it's a different world where we, you know, when Twitter was just Twitter, it's kind of like Google is now like there was a bunch of search engines and then there was Google.
John:
And we still really haven't entered the post Google age despite Bing and DuckDuckGo existing and everything.
John:
um we are in clearly in the post twitter age where there was a singular thing twitter and it will we will never be in a time it's like you know going to like a streaming video versus cable tv versus you know antenna tv there will never be another time where we're all watching the same show on tv all the time like we were back when there were limited choices and there will never be a time when there's a singular focus of this kind of network social networking like there was in the twitter days even if threads becomes 10 times bigger
Marco:
But keep in mind, too, with threads, a huge part of the 100 million people who are there now were not Twitter users.
Marco:
They were Instagram users.
Marco:
We'll see how much this... I do think it's going to stick, but I think it's going to be...
Marco:
different uh in terms of who's using it how and for how long um and we'll see i i am optimistic about its future which and i say this in terms of like i think it has good chances of sticking around um not in terms of like i'm super happy about this because i still am not a fan of this company at all
Marco:
And so I don't love the fact that they are the ones owning this.
Marco:
That being said, I also think that Mastodon will be fine.
Marco:
There's enough people now on Mastodon that seem to have built a life there and built patterns there and built an audience and have apps configured and all set up the way they like and everything.
Marco:
The people who have been using Mastodon to date, most of them will continue to use it.
Marco:
I think our nerd circles, we formed a community there, and all the people who were there before, they have these communities there, and they're fine.
John:
There is a possibility of a backdoor Next-style takeover, where Apple bought Next, but essentially the people who were part of Next ended up taking over Apple.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Facebook doesn't want this to happen, but depending on how well the two sides of this play it, it could work out very much not in Facebook's favor and very much in our favor as the people who like Mastodon.
John:
So in theory, Threads is supposed to be an activity pub app that is in theory, according to Facebook, going to federate with the other activity pub things like Mastodon.
John:
If that actually happens, and Facebook said it will, if that actually happens, and if that happens in a way that makes sense, what it means is that weird people like us who are on Mastodon, who like to use the Mastodon apps, what I would say the vibrant third-party ecosystem of apps that can read Mastodon, which does not exist anywhere else for Threads or for Blue Sky or anything like that, will be able to follow people on Threads.
John:
And people on Threads will be able to follow us.
John:
And we can sit here and use our app, and they can sit there and use the Threads app and see tons of stuff that's just algorithmically chucked in their face,
John:
And everyone can have what they want while still communicating together in a decentralized, federated universe that we call the Fediverse.
John:
And if that happens...
John:
If people are on threads and those people who are dissatisfied with the threads app, with the threads algorithm, with threads, moderating choices, with threads, anything that they would then have the option to say, you know what?
John:
Things are not going the way I want over here in Facebook land.
John:
Is there somewhere else I can go while still following all the same people, but using getting my choice of applications and using a better app and not having ads in my face and having fewer Nazis or whatever, they can go to another instance that they like better.
John:
Right.
John:
That's the promise of decentralized social networking.
John:
And if that happens, I have to think that people if this in a friction free market, which, of course, all these, you know, the people, these were the big companies.
John:
We love market forces and capitalism and friction free movement of capital and people.
John:
Yeah, they don't want friction free.
John:
They want all the friction keeping everybody on their thing as prisoners.
John:
They want to build a moat.
John:
There's a reason that phrase exists, and it's not because they want friction-free movement among choices, right?
John:
They do not want competition.
John:
They want to lock you in.
John:
They want to, you know, right?
John:
But if they actually federate, people will be able to go elsewhere, and there will be a sort of activation energy that is required because first you have to know that you can do it, and second it's a pain and technical and blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
But when everyone was dissatisfied with Twitter, we would have killed for some kind of way to take us and all our social network
John:
elsewhere to a place to an instance that had different moderating decisions and different applications and different business bottles or whatever but we couldn't that didn't exist we had to start from zero and we tried with app.net and it didn't work and then mastodon tried and it didn't pull people away it took twitter going in the toilet to give us enough activation energy to build up our new minecraft world over in mastodon and now if threads come out and it is the mass market thing if they actually federate and if they do it in a way where they don't take over control of everything and do the embrace extend extinguish thing
John:
if they don't successfully pull off that maneuver, we could be in a much better situation.
John:
Like I would be much more down on threads if they weren't even pretending to do that.
John:
But the fact that they feel like not pretending, but like, I'm sure the people there who want to do the right thing, but they work for Facebook.
John:
So I
John:
don't know how well that's going to work out um but it gives me some hope that this could be like a terrible mistake by facebook to enter into this like why they could have just done threads and not have it done activity pop and not promise to federate and they would be just successful at this point one week after launch
John:
But the fact that they did that and promised that means that we have an end.
John:
We have an ability to slowly but surely... Kind of the way Linux slowly but surely displaced all the proprietary Unixes.
John:
When Linux first came out, when some college student made some little toy operating system that ran on its PC, nobody at IBM, at Sun, at HP were like...
John:
you know, in 20 years, we're going to be out of business.
John:
We're not going to be making Unix anymore.
John:
Everyone's going to run Linux.
John:
They would have laughed and laughed and laughed.
John:
Linux is nothing.
John:
Linux is like the Mastodon.
John:
Not even the Mastodon.
John:
It was used by 100 people, right?
John:
And Linux came through and swept through the entire world.
John:
There are different market forces at play there, but it's the same type of thing where the small, open thing that gives people, users more freedom...
John:
is able to disrupt the worlds of proprietary Unix where everything was super expensive and everything was locked down and you couldn't get the source code unless you paid a lot of money.
John:
I think social networking is also ripe for that kind of disruption.
John:
I think that's what Mastodon is doing.
John:
And I think Threads is...
John:
walking into that trap if they do everything they say they're going to do in the nicest possible way which you know you can decide what you think the odds of that are um i don't think like margo was saying i don't think if threads does this all the super evil stuff they can do i don't think they'll be able to reach out and destroy mastodon because that's the nature of decentralization threads can do whatever it wants but they can't literally reach out and shut down mastodon instances only the people who run it and the people who use it can you know make that happen either by
John:
not funding it enough or giving up on developing software or whatever but facebook doesn't control anything having to do with mastodon so i i am cautiously optimistic and if i had to root something if i had to root for something if i had to root for blue sky or nostr or threads i find myself in the awkward position of kind of rooting for threads because it's the only one that even claims to be built on activity pub and activity pub is what runs the service i like which is mastodon
Marco:
My worry with the federation thing... I mean, so I have two worries with threads federating.
Marco:
One, of course, is that they just won't do it.
Marco:
Or they'll do it and then undo it.
Marco:
Let's set that aside.
Marco:
Let's assume they actually follow through with their word.
Marco:
They can do it in terrible ways, too.
Marco:
There's a third option.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And I think... And by the way, whatever their word is worth...
Marco:
it seems like the instagram leadership seems to be better people than the facebook leadership so maybe this little subdivision of this company may maybe they're they are more trustworthy than mark zuckerberg who and by the way if i had to advise them i would say mark you're still going to get like 90 of the population just let the other 10 be happy
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
It's not like, oh, Mastodon's going to take over.
John:
I just gave the example of Linux taking over, but again, there were different market forces there.
John:
You'll get most of the users anyway.
John:
You can actually be nice, but we'll see how it works out.
Marco:
Mark Zuckerberg has had many opportunities in his life to do the right thing and has seemingly taken none of them.
Marco:
he's thought a lot of he's not really hard about a lot of them though in the end he's decided he can't he can't bring himself to make the right decision yeah like zuck zuck has proven himself to be really a horrible person and so anything that gets to his level i don't trust to be done in in a good way but the instagram people do seem like they have better heads on their shoulders than he does so hopefully um you know this goes the right way the other ways this could go poorly are if they federate but
Marco:
it doesn't really do anything because the reality of following people from threads on mastodon or other activity pub sources it is something no one ever does or it's so clunky that you you can't get any audience out of threads that way or threads it does such a good job of promoting its own accounts that you're better off having only a threads account
Marco:
and then tell Macedon people, you know what, I'm going to abandon my Macedon account.
Marco:
Follow me over there because it's 10 times bigger.
John:
We were just discussing this in Slack too, and everyone has been assuming, and I also assume, that you won't be able to use Ivory as a Threads client.
Marco:
Right.
John:
I'm assuming the exact same thing.
John:
The best we could hope for is that, hey, you'll be able to use the Mastodon client of your choice and you'll be able to follow people on threads and threads people will be able to follow you.
John:
But you will not be able to use Mastodon to read threads.
John:
You will not be able to use Mastodon client to see the threads algorithmic timeline because they can't serve you ads or whatever.
John:
So that's the best case scenario that we're describing, brother.
Marco:
way yes the the worst case one is what you're talking about where it's like they make it so technically clunky to have any kind of interaction that the fact that they're federated is is like academic and pointless like practically they might as well not be federated right or or the situation of like you know whatever yeah all their algorithmic stuff is going to make sure that mastodon and other activity pub sources posts are not promoted at all and they like the people will just never see your post
John:
downgrade them or like imagine if you tried to follow someone on threads but rather than seeing the post of the person you followed on threads when you hit the API endpoint it would say here's some stuff we suggest for you like the endpoint would be like show me the latest post by person X and it would be like I know you want to see the post by person X but how about these instead
John:
yeah exactly that's another way they oh well we're federating it's just that we have a different idea of what it means to see the post by a single person we think you should also see a bunch of other crap like there's so many ways they could do this badly but the possibility of them not doing it badly right now as of monday july 11th exists this remains to be seen with the federation angle um so i'm going to set that aside for the moment and then just go back to threads the service
Marco:
I stand by what I said last week in the after show when we had had like two seconds to look at it.
Marco:
I trust Facebook to actually do a better job of both technical scaling and of content moderation than either Twitter or most mass on instances and
Marco:
And that's not to say they do a good job.
Marco:
They don't.
Marco:
But again, I think it's worth the perspective that I don't think it's possible to do a great job of content moderation if you have a very large social service.
Marco:
Because by having a very large service, you're going to have a whole bunch of crappy people trying to do crappy things.
Marco:
And it's very difficult to make policies that are consistent and enforceable around that.
Marco:
And a lot of stuff is going to slip the cracks no matter what.
Marco:
So that being said...
Marco:
My fear of Mastodon, as I said last week, and last fall when it was getting big, my fear of Mastodon has always been, I don't think this can scale both technically or content moderation-wise to a lot of users.
Marco:
Fortunately, I don't think Mastodon is going to have to scale that way.
Marco:
I think Threads is going to be doing the scaling job for everyone else.
Marco:
But Twitter is a mess in that area.
Marco:
They've been okay at technical stuff, although they were better before the acquisition of the technical stuff.
Marco:
But before the acquisition, Twitter at scale ran surprisingly well for the last decade.
Marco:
The scale they operated at at Twitter is so impressive and how responsive and reliable everything was at Twitter was actually very impressive for their scale.
Marco:
Facebook also manages that.
Marco:
Instagram is pretty solid.
Marco:
It's not perfect, but it's pretty solid technically.
Marco:
And so far, Threads... Obviously, I had a rough first day with all the notifications and post load failures and everything, but it seems like...
Marco:
I mean, look, they just got 100 million users in less than a week, and it's still up.
Marco:
That says a lot.
Marco:
I don't know of anyone else who could have done that.
Marco:
Google, probably.
Marco:
No, I don't think so.
John:
Well, that's actually a good contrast, by the way, speaking of social networks.
John:
Someone pointed out, I forgot who it was, probably on Mastodon.
John:
You know what other service had 25 million people within its first week?
John:
Google+.
Yeah.
John:
You know, if you leverage an existing social graph or an existing audience, you can get lots of people real fast, but you got to you got to keep them.
John:
And obviously, threads is already ahead of that by a substantial amount.
John:
But we'll see what the retention is like.
John:
Marco, what you were saying about the moderation, it's interesting to contrast Twitter.
John:
with facebook uh because the thing that twitter and facebook both have obviously the mass and a dozen is millions of dollars and tons of employees um but both of them pre-elon pre-elon twitter and facebook both of those services were brought up in an environment where you know this phrase that we're now hearing now because of elon where they they work diligently towards brand safety
John:
Most of the things that Facebook did related to moderation were not out of the goodness of their heart because if you want to run advertisements from Coca-Cola, you can't have child porn next to it, right?
John:
Yes, child porn is illegal too.
John:
You can't have as many Nazis as you might want to have.
John:
What?
John:
it's as intellectually honest for you to allow them to post what they want right and so there they were companies run by adults again pre-elon their companies run by adults that knew that their bread was buttered by doing advertising so they did what it took to try to keep the advertising happy in the typical way that yes of course people who you know people still yell them about their decisions but they were trying to sort of thread that needle like you know
John:
We need to satisfy our billionaire right-wing CEO, but also we need to make Coca-Cola happy, and we don't want too many people yelling at us.
John:
So how can we figure that out?
John:
Should we really ban people who say you're being tracked by 5G with the COVID vaccine, or should we just let them say it and it's probably fine?
John:
Nothing bad could possibly come of that.
John:
I don't know.
John:
We get enough pushback.
John:
We'll change the rules.
John:
But that's the type of company that's like –
John:
run by somebody who first and foremost wants to make money and understands they need advertisers, but also has some pseudo-intellectual stuff about letting everybody post whatever the hell they want.
John:
And they would try to walk that line, right?
John:
Post Elon Twitter doesn't care about that line, right?
John:
And it's just like, whatever, I'm just going to make random decisions about my whim.
John:
But that's the advantage that Facebook has now with threads is...
John:
Already, some popular accounts that are popular on Twitter and are accustomed now in the post-Elon world, accustomed to be able to say whatever they want on Twitter, were getting dinged and getting stuff pulled down on threads.
John:
Because threads starts off with the Facebook slash Instagram ethos of, no, you can't be super terrible.
John:
And in fact, we have tons of employees whose job it is to make sure you're not super terrible.
John:
You're not on Twitter anymore.
John:
Not to say that Facebook are the amazing good guys and they're going to clean up this town or whatever, but there is a baseline level of non-Naziism that even Facebook over decades has established, this is the Nazi line for Facebook.
John:
And it's not where we'll want the line to be, but a line exists at least.
John:
Whereas Twitter, it's like, I don't know, how does Elon feel today?
John:
Who freaking cares?
John:
It's not, they have stopped being a, they've stopped being a company and stopped being just like, you know, the disembodied id of one very not well person.
John:
So that is an advantage because, like you said, they have the scale to do it and they have a bunch of existing rules that make it a pleasant enough place for, you know, regular people to be.
John:
It's the same thing with Facebook.
John:
Why is everybody on Facebook?
John:
Facebook tries to be pleasant enough.
John:
Yes, there are all sorts of dark corners of Facebook where people are just, you know, doing and saying terrible things.
John:
But in general, I believe that still the majority of this country, although you wouldn't know it by looking at the presidential votes, but that's a second issue.
John:
The majority of this country don't want a bunch of Nazis yelling at them constantly.
John:
And Facebook makes sure that it's friendly enough for the majority of the people in this country to say, oh, Facebook, whatever, it's there, it's fine, or whatever.
John:
If they can do that with threads, they're already way ahead of Twitter.
John:
And like you said, they're probably also ahead of Mastodon.
John:
Not because Mastodon doesn't want to do those right things, depending on your instance or whatever, but because most Mastodon instances are not equipped to...
John:
to manifest the desires of the people who run them as efficiently as Facebook is.
John:
I would say that the good instances have better desires that they would like to manifest, but it's difficult to bring that to reality.
John:
And I keep coming back to it.
John:
Matt Sonnen hasn't even figured out a financial model, a sustainable financial model, like doing it through donations of people who are on the servers you want.
John:
It's working so far for some instances in some cases, but I feel like that needs to be worked out.
John:
Facebook has figured out a financial model.
John:
They don't have to worry about that.
John:
They got that covered, right?
John:
The financial models, they're going to show you ads.
John:
So it's kind of weird where Twitter has pulled itself out of the game by being ridiculous.
John:
mastodon is trying to do all the right things depending on your instance and trying to provide a choice choice of third-party apps choice of instances choice of experience choice of finance model choice of moderation choice choice choice choice choice and hope we're hoping that that will all work out great over there because there's lots of choices and if one of them doesn't work out we're not dead and then threads is like we are baseline competent facebook level of nazi removal and we're trying to make a fun instance and if you like instagram maybe you'll like this
John:
And it may sound like damning with faint praise, but that makes thread like threads, like head and shoulders above everybody else for the average person.
John:
And, you know, therefore 100 million people in a week.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Best of all, you can get employees to fix their own device security issues without creating more work for IT.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Collide is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and it ensures that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
Visit Collide.com slash ATP to watch a demo and see how it works.
Marco:
That's Collide spelled K-O-L-I-D-E dot com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And let's start tonight with a technology topic.
Casey:
Then we're going to do a little bit of Ask Neutral, actually.
Casey:
We're going to start with Wes Chamnis, who writes, On the Mac, one of the main reasons I continue to use 1Password is that it's where I've been storing my software license keys.
Casey:
I do the same, by the way.
Casey:
If I am forced to move on from 1Password, do you all have any recommendations for a place to keep these?
Casey:
Or does John just have them all saved in a text file somewhere?
Casey:
Yeah, I feel this pain.
Casey:
I don't want to get on a rant again about this, but a couple of months ago, it was very recently, I downgraded, well, I changed the version of 1Password I had installed from version 8 to version 7, and suddenly the 8Password
Casey:
Trillion paper cuts that 1Password 8 was giving me all went away.
Casey:
But there's hints and indications that 1Password 7 is not long for this world.
Casey:
So I have a feeling that right now they're taking the carrot approach, but soon they're going to be taking the stick approach and saying, no, you've got to upgrade if you want to continue to have a usable product.
Casey:
At which point, especially now that we've got some sharing coming in the, what is it, iCloud keychain or whatever it's called, and pass, what is the new thing that Ricky's done?
Casey:
Pass keys.
Casey:
Pass key, thank you.
Casey:
I kept wanting to say pass code and I knew that wasn't right.
Casey:
Anyways, between pass keys and the shared stuff in iOS and macOS, that's probably where I'm going to end up.
Casey:
But what do I do about my software licenses?
Casey:
So Wes and Casey would like to know, John, what should we do?
John:
I don't have them in a big text file.
John:
I'm not my parents.
John:
Although my parents don't pay for software.
John:
Who am I kidding?
John:
Also fair.
John:
Yeah.
John:
They do have big text files.
John:
Well, I think it's supposed to remember it.
John:
So my suggestion is maybe not what you want to do, but it's what I do.
John:
I use a product from Barebone Software, makers of BBEdit, my favorite text editor for these 30 some years.
John:
uh it's called yojimbo it was originally called sidekick but that name was taken i don't know if it was taken by the same company you two might know from the pc days did you know sidekick for like i think for dos even no i knew like the the little texting phone yeah exactly okay it was before your time anyway there have been software products called sidekick i forget why they couldn't use the name sidekick but anyway they renamed it yojimbo uh yojimbo is uh what is the name for it kind of like a uh
John:
lunchbox app what are they called like an app where you just chuck a bunch of shoebox shoebox app yeah um you can save text files there you can save uh you know downloaded versions of web pages uh notes with and without passwords and they have a separate item for saving serial numbers for software because hey they make software and back in the day before the app stores were pervasive you bought software and you got a license code for it
John:
I have a lot of license codes, and they're all in Yojimbo.
John:
Every time I get a new software product that has license code, I add a new serial number, they call it, because they use the old style language.
John:
I add it in Yojimbo.
John:
Yojimbo syncs with iCloud.
John:
I just use it on my Mac.
John:
I don't remember if there was an iOS version.
John:
They used to have a version that would sync it to the web and stuff.
John:
It's had a long history, and I don't think one of their more popular apps, certainly not as popular as BBEdit, but
John:
It 100% does the job.
John:
And if it ever goes down the tubes, I'm not sure what I'll do.
John:
I guess I'll just dump and export all of them.
John:
And honestly, maybe I will put them in a text file.
John:
But Bare Bones is great about software support.
John:
I kind of can't believe they've supported Yojimbo over so many years, but they continue to do so.
John:
So if you are a Malesmith fan, I feel bad because Bare Bones did can that one.
John:
But if you're a Yojimbo fan, it's still out there for you to get.
John:
Try it.
John:
I like it.
Marco:
So I would do a simpler solution.
Marco:
My solution to this, it is 1Password right now, but before 1Password managed this for me, I just had an email folder called software registrations.
Marco:
And every time I would get an email confirmation that included the registration number, which usually happens with purchase, I would just move it to that folder.
Marco:
I have since moved to 1Password, but in the innovating years, I've kept that folder going in the email.
Marco:
So I would leave it there.
Marco:
I would still have the folder there in my email as a backup, but my primary would become a secure note in notes.
Marco:
So you are keeping them in a text file.
John:
well what's the difference between one password and a secure note locked by face id is there are there that many differences well they're not all in one text document they have to search for the document by the way it's worth noting that uh the keychain allows you to make secure notes within it as well so you can go to keychain access and do a new secure note uh it doesn't have a dedicated item for serial numbers but you can you can add these things individually to keychain the difference between the big text file and the
John:
the individual ones is, are you opening up a single document and searching within it versus are you looking at a collection of things and filtering them based on some criteria?
John:
That's the only real difference.
Marco:
Yeah, but anyway, I think whenever anybody's looking for alternatives to 1Password, for some of the things that are not just passwords, like for passwords, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, probably just using the Apple built-in password management stuff is probably fine for a lot of that stuff.
Marco:
For anything that is not supported by that system,
Marco:
Honestly, a secure note, like a locked note in Apple Notes, locked by Face ID, that's probably a more secure and more realistically usable solution than what a lot of people out there would recommend or would try.
Marco:
So that, I think, would be totally fine.
John:
I'm still afraid of some syncing disaster nuking all my stuff in notes.
John:
I have nightmares about it now.
John:
i don't i really wish i wish that they would let you export everything it's like a big or something but they still don't i mean just like don't worry you don't need to export it i mean it's been fine nothing bad has happened but that's why people put things in text files because a text file like it is it is easier to be sure that you have it as secure as you think you have it
John:
uh it'll be all and all my backups on my time machine backups on the hard drives of computers that are in my attic like it's a text file and i'll always be able to read it versus notes where if there's a syncing disaster it's like okay well so where are all your backups of notes can you pull out an old mac and see them no because it'll sink and it'll destroy everything can you get at it any other way is it backed up in your time machine backups well maybe kind of could i dig it out of there like it's different and i know your jimbo seems like it's the same way but it has a local database file that is backed up so if your jimbo syncing goes haywire you can't actually restore for backup
Casey:
All right, now let's do some Ask Neutral.
Casey:
Steve Stutz writes, how do you feel about just about every car company that wants to make an EV, even Rivian, now adopting Tesla's charging standard?
Casey:
This is the North American charging standard as compared to, what does CCS stand for?
Casey:
I forget.
Casey:
Shoot, it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
But anyway, when this was written, it was just Rivian and like Ford and GM, I think at the time, that had pledged to switch to NACS.
Casey:
But now it's Ford, GM, Volvo, Rivian, Polestar, Mercedes, and potentially more.
Casey:
You don't know.
John:
By the time you hear this episode, it's usually more.
Casey:
Yeah, that's probably true.
Casey:
My initial reaction to this, particularly when Ford, I think, was the first shoe to drop, when Ford said it, I was angry.
Casey:
And the reason I was angry was because, look, we had everyone on the same page except petulant Tesla, who wouldn't just get in line like everyone else.
Casey:
And I was really upset because it seems silly to me to continue to allow Tesla, well, I shouldn't say allow, but you know what I mean, to continue to have Tesla doing their own thing because we're better than you because we're Tesla.
Casey:
And then everyone else is all in CCS land, all consistent.
Casey:
Now it seems like everyone's going to be all in NACS land and all consistent.
Casey:
And truth be told, I have not used either of these connectors.
Casey:
I've driven cars with both of them.
Casey:
I've not used the connectors.
Casey:
And everything I've understood is that the NACS connector is pretty much universally considered to be a better connector than CCS.
Casey:
So I don't actually mind where this has ended up.
Casey:
There was the uncanny valley, if you will, where some of the companies have committed.
Casey:
I guess we're still strictly speaking there, but I think the writing's on the wall.
Casey:
There was the uncanny valley when some of the companies have committed, but very few of them have had.
Casey:
And I thought, oh, gosh, here we go again.
Casey:
We're going to have two standards forever.
Casey:
But it seems pretty, pretty clear that we're going to end up on NACS here in North America.
Casey:
And that's just going to be the end of it.
John:
You keep saying NACS like it's a thing, by the way.
John:
Like this is one of the best magic tricks.
John:
Remember when this first announcement was made, it was like, oh, Ford's going to use Tesla's connector.
John:
It's like, oh, they must have done a deal.
John:
They get access to superchargers, you know, whatever.
John:
And then they said, yeah, Ford's going to use the North American charging standard connector.
John:
And I said, what?
Yeah.
John:
What the hell is the North American charging standard?
John:
Brilliant marketing.
John:
Right.
John:
There's the Tesla connector and there's CCS, which is a, like an international standard.
John:
And there was Chad demo, whatever, which is right.
John:
Right.
John:
Um, but I'm like, what the hell is NACS?
John:
And I was like, is this some, you know, because people were putting it, writing about it as if this is a thing.
John:
I'm like, that's,
John:
That's not a thing.
John:
It's like saying, you know, you can declare whatever you want to be the standard, but like standards are a thing.
John:
You can't just declare yourself to be the standard.
John:
Well, it turns out that A, they did just declare themselves to be the standard, but B, Tesla submitted their...
John:
you know gave their connector design the thing that plugs into your car to charge it to sae international it's the what is sae it's a society we'll put a link in the show notes so this is june 27th they did this so tesla no longer controls this standard it has been given to an international standards body and then they called it north american charging standard which now that it's owned by a standards body and let's be honest in north america the most best chargers have that connector
John:
So I think, yeah, that's the North American charging standard.
John:
Because Tesla – and that's why all the other companies are lined up behind it because they're like – they're not going to adopt a connector that Tesla controls.
John:
Tesla is a competitor.
John:
They would rather, you know, set themselves on fire than do that.
John:
But now that the connector is not under the control of Tesla –
John:
and they want access to tesla's charging network now they'll sign themselves up to do it so it's not just like some magic renaming they did tesla had to give up some control of this and give it over to a standards body the second thing casey was talking about being angry about this i don't know if you've never seen or used any of these connectors you may think this is just like six of one half a dozen the other i don't care i just want to know that i can charge my thing uh but the tesla connector
John:
It's a better connector.
John:
It's just better.
John:
So CCS, I don't know if this is true, but it looks like a connector that was originally designed.
John:
I think this actually is originally designed to be a connector.
John:
And then they said, oh, and by the way, you designed that so long ago that you didn't know about DC fast charging.
John:
So we want to do that.
John:
Can you do that with your existing connector?
John:
And they were like, oh, damn, no, we can't.
John:
But when I have a solution, what if we put basically another connector like two inches below the existing connector and that will be the one you use for DC fast charging.
John:
So it made a connector that was basically like two connectors stacked vertically and not particularly compactly.
John:
It's huge.
John:
It's huge.
John:
It's ugly.
Marco:
It's weird.
Marco:
That's exactly what happened, by the way.
Marco:
It was like the J1722 or whatever connector first.
John:
It's huge, ugly, and weird to insert.
John:
And the Tesla one, because it was designed from the start to work with DC fast charging, is small, simple, delicate, doesn't take up a lot of room.
John:
And here's the thing about Tesla.
John:
I know you're like, oh, but Tesla, they don't know how to design anything.
John:
Elon's in that job.
John:
He's, you know, destroyed...
John:
This connector has been around long enough that if there were some fatal flaw with it, we would have found it by now.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like, so I think this connector has shown that it does not blow up, does not melt, seems mostly idiot proof.
John:
Like there's enough Tesla sold that we can say this is the better connector.
John:
And it sucks that we were so close to having a standard, even though it was a crappy standard.
John:
But if there's going to be one standard and I get to pick which one it's going to be,
John:
I want it to be the good connector.
John:
So I'm kind of glad that the quote-unquote Tesla connector, which we can now call the North American Charging Standard, is winning because the other connectors suck so bad.
Marco:
Yeah, it's very similar.
Marco:
So first of all, I have owned both of these connectors and I've used both of these connectors.
Marco:
So because we have TIFFS i3 that has the CCS plug and we had, of course, my two Teslas over the years that had the Tesla plug.
Marco:
And so I have a lot of experience with the Tesla plug and a little bit of experience with the CCS plug.
Marco:
first of all it's as john said like the ccs connector it's basically the car version of the usb 3.0 b connector i think it's worse than that well yeah because it's like it's like 20 times bigger but it's like the b connector stacked on top of an a connector
Marco:
No, the USB 3.0 B connector looks like the USB B plug.
Marco:
The B is like the one that you see on printers, like on the printer end.
Marco:
So it's like the 3.0 version of that has the same like, you know, little trapezoid or whatever, but then like it has like a little secondary group of stuff above it.
Marco:
So it looks actually comically similar to a tiny version of the CCS plug.
Marco:
Anyway, the Tesla plug, like John said, if you're going to have one of these two plugs, that's the one you want.
Marco:
You want the Tesla one.
Marco:
It is just nicer in use.
Marco:
There are a few advantages and disadvantages between the two in terms of capabilities or little implementation details, but overall...
Marco:
They're both fine and usable, but if you're going to pick one, the Tesla one is nicer to use in practice for a lot of reasons.
Marco:
So in terms of standardization, look, I'm no fan of Elon Musk.
Marco:
I don't really care who invented this plug.
Marco:
If it's the better plug, it deserves to win.
Marco:
And standards-wise, look, we've had a number of years here now having electric cars be mainstream and widespread, in large part thanks to Tesla.
Marco:
And for a long time, Teslas were the best electric cars in the market.
Marco:
They've earned a lot of their success, and they've earned a lot of accolade and, to some degree, gratitude from the industry and from people because they really did achieve advancing electric cars in a huge way.
Marco:
They really did achieve that mission, and they deserve a lot of credit for that.
Marco:
That being said, as we've had all these new entrants into the market that are gaining ground and I think have promising futures, we had this annoying format war going on in North American charging between CCS and the Tesla connector.
Marco:
The uncomfortable reality of the situation is that while most models of a car in the market used CCS...
Marco:
By volume, there were a ton of Teslas, I think more Teslas than all the other ones combined, at least for the first few years of these other competitors existing.
Marco:
I don't know if that's still the case today, but it at least was the case, and it might still be.
Marco:
Tesla just sells a whole bunch of cars.
Marco:
So there's more Teslas on the road for a long time, if not still.
Marco:
And then also way more Tesla superchargers compared to comparable DC fast charge stations that had CCS.
Marco:
Now, you can go onto PlugShare or ChargePoint or whatever, all these apps.
Marco:
You can say, oh, look, no, that's not true.
Marco:
Look how many more CCS stations there.
Marco:
Look how many more, you know, level one or level two charging stations there are for this other one.
Marco:
And you look, it's like, yeah...
Marco:
That's like, you know, a dryer outlet kind of voltage there.
Marco:
But if you want DC fast charging, the options for CCS were usually not more numerous than the Tesla Supercharger Network.
Marco:
And then you actually go to them and they'd be broken half the time.
John:
That was part of the motivation of these companies, by the way, you know, being willing to go to it was that they they're selling electric cars now.
John:
And I think they probably have overwhelmed the combined all the Model 3s, although it might be close.
John:
But anyway, they would sell these cars and all of them had some kind of way to try to make chart.
John:
You know, they didn't have supercharger notes, but they had some kind of deal with somebody.
John:
It's a deal with Electrify America or Ford had a thing where you it would have it would, you know, do the searching for you across multiple vendors of charging stuff or whatever and try to find the best charging for you.
John:
And their customers were having poor experiences for that specific reason, that they could find chargers, but either they were slow, because, you know, they're not all superchargers, they're not all level three, or they get to them, and they would either not work at all, or they would only work at the slower speed, which is not a good experience.
John:
And that reflects poorly on Ford or General Motors or whatever, and it could motivate someone to buy a Tesla.
John:
So these people are changing to the better connector, which they don't want to do, but practically speaking, will make their cars better and more desirable.
John:
And also, and this is the part where Elon does win a little bit, gaining access to the Tesla supercharger network, Tesla still does control.
John:
They don't control the connector anymore.
John:
That's an SAE.
John:
But those supercharger stations are still 100% owned by Tesla.
John:
And so deals are made for these people who don't have their own charging networks to get access to...
John:
the good charging network with the good chargers and there therein lies most of the complications of this story because marco surely knows that if you go to a supercharger it's made to charge a tesla and it was like well i just got done saying they're all going to use the connector so no problem right no there's still a problem the problem is even if you're not casey listen don't back into every single spot those cords on those tesla superchargers are not very long you know how long they are they're long enough to reach a tesla
John:
because teslas all have the outlets in the same exact spot and it's near the back of the car and they make the cords that if you've seen the design of the superchargers they have a place where the cord rests so it rests like inside the little u shape of the thing yeah it's it's something like six feet or eight feet long it's not long it's like when you buy an apple proc and it comes with a cord that's way too short right it
John:
It's exactly the right length for a Tesla, but pull up there in some stupid gigantic GM thing where the charging port is like 17 feet up because it's a huge vehicle or it's like a Rivian or whatever.
John:
And it's not at the very front or the very back of the vehicle.
John:
And now you have to park like a jerk to even be able to get the cord to reach.
John:
And you're stretching it and it doesn't quite reach and the connector won't stay in.
John:
And this is before you get into the real technical problem, which presumably Tesla will address, but it's still a big deal.
John:
Tesla was not super early in the market because the CCS charger was like before DC fast charging existed.
John:
They were the first DC fast charger.
John:
So they're ahead of the game.
John:
They have a technically better connector.
John:
It supports DC fast charging out of the gate.
John:
But since the advent of Tesla, the fancy, fancy electric cars have been going to an 800 or 900 volt architecture.
John:
I don't know if anyone does 900, but 800 volt architecture.
John:
which allows them to charge faster, allows them to put less current through the wire, allows them to use less wire, which uses less copper, which uses less current.
John:
Anyway, there's lots of reasons to go to 800 volt.
John:
Superchargers do not do 800 volt at all right now.
John:
So if one of these car companies has an 800 volt architecture car and they get the Tesla supercharger thing, they can't charge at the rates that their car is supposed to charge at.
John:
It will be slower to charge an 800 volt architecture car on a Tesla supercharger than a 400 volt one.
John:
So something needs to be done there because the number of people doing 800 volt architectures is just increasing over time.
John:
I'm presumably Tesla will switch to that eventually, too.
John:
So I think we don't know what the deal is in the back rooms involving this, but this is something that needs to be addressed because if this is going to be the North American charging standard and if you're going to buy a Porsche Taycan with.
John:
800 volt architecture with a tesla connector they're not going to sell that until there literally is someplace you can plug it in and charge at the rate it's supposed to be able to charge at because who wants to buy uh you know a porsche ev that can only charge at speeds of like you know yesteryear like slower than 400 volts so i think the cord length and the 800 volt thing
John:
need to be addressed and could be things that are lurking out there for the very first people who get the very first ford gm volvo or whatever with these connectors i don't know if i think maybe polestar does a hundred volt i don't know if any of these people do a hundred volt but either way they're going to pull into one of these things they're going to reach for the cord they're going to go right
John:
And they're going to have to repark and reposition and it's not going to be pretty.
John:
And that's part of being a standard.
John:
Like the cords of gas stations are made to fit most vehicles that are going to pull up in front of the pump.
John:
They're not as short as Tesla super.
John:
If a gas station knew that only like Fords would ever pull in there.
John:
Right.
John:
Or, you know, even just the side things are on, like on Hondas, the gas thing is always on the driver's side.
John:
But in other cars, sometimes on the passenger side, gas stations have to account for all of that.
John:
And up until right now, supercharger stations didn't.
John:
So they will have to be retrofit and they'll have to figure something out.
Marco:
But I think overall, though, like that's probably the best case outcome here, because, you know, the reason why we are generally like we being like electric car owners here in the US, I think most of us are happy to see this change and to see Tesla's connection take over because.
Marco:
the tesla supercharger network is the best charging infrastructure out there right now it is it is the most first of all it's it has all the best locations because it was there first like the the ccs ccs chargers are like kind of in weird spots it's like oh you gotta get off the highway and drive a few miles to this mall and go in the the very outside edge of their parking lot the superchargers have the best locations for rich people let's be honest though
John:
because tesla was an early adopter rich person car and so they have the best locations in the rich person locations but ccs has the best location they have like rest stops and on highways and stuff like it matters you know well that counts it you know interstates can't people rich people travel interstate too but i feel like the there is the the perception that tesla has all the best real estate is based on like the best real estate as being the most expensive highest trafficked real estate but that is not the best real estate if you live someplace rural
Marco:
But for the most part, you need supercharging on highways and on high-traffic highways.
Marco:
So Tesla is everywhere with their stations, and the supercharger stations tend to be very well-maintained.
Marco:
They tend to work.
Marco:
You will drive up to it, and not only will there be enough bays that I personally – I mean, I know it's probably different on the West Coast.
Marco:
I've never pulled up to a supercharger and had it be full, ever.
Marco:
Get ready for that to change.
Marco:
Well, yeah.
John:
Yep, that's the problem.
Marco:
it's not a problem it's just this nature of like sometimes the gas station is busy too yeah but like I've never I've never had there not be capacity I've never put up to a supercharger or had it be broken ever I've done a lot of miles in Tesla's I've done a lot of supercharging I've never had a supercharger not work for me
John:
and by the way that's not just like oh because tesla is so much better tesla is motivated to make sure their chargers work because they own them and it's part of the value proposition of the car and you'd be like well aren't the other charging station people also motivated the answer is no they're not so if one of the big ones electrify america is owned by volkswagen and there was because of the dieselgate scam where they committed fraud to try to make the emissions of their vehicles look better they were required by court order to invest two billion dollars into like ev infrastructure or whatever
John:
so you know electrify america is essentially a compliance network we are complying with the settlement of a some kind of criminal case or lawsuit they're not particularly motivated to make that awesome the second thing is there are other companies that are out there for you know trying to do a good job at charging or whatever but their competition are other their competition is not tesla because if you if you have a car with ccs you can't go to tesla superchargers unless you have weird adapter or whatever that's changed very recently but anyway
John:
historically that hasn't been the case so they're just competing amongst each other and the level it's like grading on a curve it's like well you've got you got electrify america where volkswagen's not particularly motivated to do a good job and you have these other people who are like i don't know we're kind of on the verge of bankruptcy and we don't have a lot of money to put into this and so on right now this is another reason these car companies did this ford and gm and everything are doing this because what they're basically saying to all the non-supercharger networks is guess what
John:
Now you are competing with superchargers because the people who used to go to you can make a different choice and go to the supercharger.
John:
So if you don't want to immediately go out of business because you suck, you better start competing.
John:
And so the incentives have suddenly changed.
John:
Now, will they get better or will they go out of business?
John:
But honestly, either one of them is better than it was before, which is like they can continue to suck and there's no repercussions.
Marco:
I'm really happy that the format war in the US for charging plugs is going to clearly have a resolution within a few years.
Marco:
Everyone is going to be on NACS slash Tesla and that'll be it.
Marco:
CCS will be
Marco:
around for a while as the vehicles that's that are that are made with it now slowly age out it'll be around for a while but you're gonna have your ccs vehicles charging via adapters probably at superchargers they need to work out the 100 volt thing though because there are there are enough 800 volt cars sold in the u.s that tesla needs to have at least have a plan for that because you can't get rid of ccs until they know well people will they
Marco:
They will.
Marco:
But the point is, like, a format war is worse than whatever choice you might make for the connector.
Marco:
So the only way to end this format war, really, because, like, you can think, you know, why didn't Tesla just adopt CCS?
Marco:
And that's a good question.
Marco:
And the answer is they had no motivation to do it because of everything we just said.
Marco:
They already had infrastructure in place.
Marco:
It's not like Tesla came out with their own thing after CCS existed.
Marco:
Tesla had to make their own connector because there wasn't a good one.
Marco:
They made their own and then later CCS came along.
John:
Well, wasn't there the J17 thing?
John:
Didn't that predate Tesla's thing?
John:
It might have, but that connector sucked.
Marco:
yeah no i agree they needed to come up with something with dc fast charging like that's the problem like these these connectors might have existed in their non-dc fast charging form but that's not what they wanted so they made their own connector yeah so basically the only outcomes here were either everyone switched a tesla connector which seemed unlikely and impossible you know two months ago or we continue to format war you know which sucks or
Marco:
Tesla somehow switched to CCS.
Marco:
And what motivation would they have had to do that?
Marco:
And think of like, if you just look at raw numbers, like how many Teslas are on the road in North America?
Marco:
And I know Teslas have CCS connections in Europe.
Marco:
I know that.
Marco:
But just talking North America here.
Marco:
How many Teslas are already on the road?
Marco:
How many superchargers are already out there?
Marco:
The idea that they would that they would somehow, out of the goodness of their heart, give up their better connector and switch to CCS, which every Tesla owner would see as a downgrade next time they got a new car.
Marco:
I don't see I just I didn't see that happening.
Marco:
And so I thought we were just going to live with this format war forever.
Marco:
To see the format war have a pretty clear likely end in the near future, even though Elon has to win this one, fine.
Marco:
He earned it with this one.
Marco:
As much of a jerk as he is, he's made a lot of really good cars for a long time, and he made a really good connector, and he has a really good charging network.
John:
He didn't make that connector, let's be clear.
Marco:
People who worked for him made that connector.
John:
That might have existed before he bought the company.
Marco:
Whatever.
Marco:
However it happened,
John:
tesla deserves the success of that connector and it sucks that we have to give this jerk a win but in this case he did legitimately win and the alternative was worse but it's a win for us because we get to use the better connector and it's owned by a standards body which means that he can't do something jerky and pull the rug out from under the other car makers because he doesn't control the connector anymore
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
And where we will end up with this after, you know, again, there's going to be a transition period here.
Marco:
We're going to have CCS kind of lingering around for the next 10 years probably.
Marco:
But where we will end up in the long run is one standard with a lot of charging networks that are really good and a lot of charging stations that are really good that support this standard that you can pull off lots of different highway exits when you're on a long trip and charge up really fast.
Marco:
You can be pretty sure it'll work.
Marco:
And almost every car in the road will have the same connector.
Marco:
That is a really good place to land.
Marco:
And for electric vehicles to continue to grow and to reach more places in the market, that's necessary.
Marco:
You can't have a format war and expect this market to keep expanding and maturing because even the pain and the buttery of the format war turn a lot of people off.
Marco:
Or the questions about the format war turn a lot of people off.
Marco:
Or if you buy a CCS car and you realize you can't charge it anywhere good, that's going to turn you off.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
We're going to be in a better place in the long run with this decision.
Marco:
And I think we can set aside all the personalities involved and just say, you know what?
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
One standard is better than two, no matter what the standard is.
Marco:
And of the two they had to pick from here, this actually is better in a lot of ways.
Marco:
So I'm happy with it.
John:
I bet an alien is listening to this conversation and saying...
John:
you guys can't all agree what side of the road to drive on and you're like oh now we have one charging standard that's the thing about automotive stuff like not only can we not agree on standards for anything we can't even agree what side of the road to travel on like where the steering wheel should be in the car but we have worked out that there are these bubbles of agreement and we they tend not to touch by roads that much so like yeah
John:
It would be kind of ridiculous if the side of the road changed in every country in Europe, right?
John:
But the UK could have made a different choice, you know?
John:
Anyway, it's kind of silly.
John:
Obviously, this is NACS, North America.
John:
If you go to South America, forget it.
John:
If you go to Europe, forget it.
John:
If you're in China, I think a couple people live in China.
John:
Things are totally different there.
John:
Who knows what they're doing in China with their connector?
John:
Australia, they could have their own connector.
John:
You can't drive off Australia.
John:
It's fine, you know.
John:
So, obviously, this is an America-centric podcast.
John:
We recognize the rest of the world.
John:
What the rest of the world wants to do, like, I would suggest they adopt the North American charging standard because it's a really good connector and it's owned by a standards body.
Marco:
Well, but no, I mean, like, the reality is, like, most other countries, CCS is the norm and that's it.
Marco:
and tesla uses it in other places too because they have to sometimes by law like like i think in the eu but ccs sucks though it does suck but again but one standard is better than two so like if if you already had tesla on board with ccs in your continent good leave it that way one standard is better than two and we just got the better one sorry
John:
it's not it's like one standard it's one standard for each little fiefdom of driving rules and car design like it is kind of i mean get blame the british empire i guess but it is kind of amazing that we didn't we haven't agreed on the side of the road but we're almost there isn't that side of the road isn't there like a vast majority i don't know what the world if you went by population
John:
what side of the road is uh is in the lead but that that seems like not a minor thing when it comes to driving because you can't really connect those roads no i mean it's a lot it's a lot easier to use an adapter to charge your dc fast charge car than it is to switch the side of the side of the car you're driving from yeah if you want to live in the the republican slave-owning utopia of united states every state would be able to make that decision differently oh my god when you cross the border you'd switch over
John:
I don't even want to think about it.
Casey:
It's worth noting before moving on that, is it Alec?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Over at Technology Connections did like a 45 minute reaction video to when, I think it was after GM said they were going to adopt NACS, something like that.
Casey:
It is long as all his videos tend to be, but I was fascinated by it as I typically am by his videos.
Casey:
And so we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
Marco:
No spoilers.
Marco:
I'm still on the fridge video.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I skipped the fridge video, but I have a feeling I'm going to eventually go back and watch it.
Casey:
It's good.
Casey:
And yeah.
Casey:
And did we mention, by the way, speaking of Kentucky, that they mandated Tesla as the or the NACS as a charging plug?
John:
Well, yeah, they did the wise thing in the ways the government exert power in private industry, which is that if you want to be part of this government program that subsidizes charging stations, whatever, you must support Tesla's connector.
John:
yeah which makes sense because that's going to be the new default so yeah if you're getting government funds for what's supposed to be a universal network it should support the universal connector or at least both of them and that's another example like hey what's going to change the incentives of these not so good charging companies things have to change their incentives and one of them is government mandates i mean it explains why tesla uses ccs in other countries because the governments they're required them to if you want to sell cars in our country this is what you got to do so i'm glad to see
John:
some states forcing that as well, quote unquote, forcing it.
John:
They're not forcing it, but hey, if you want our money, you got to do what we say.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So yeah, the only thing that bums me out about this, because again, I was briefly not happy about it, but now that it seems like pretty much everywhere is going to land on NACS, I'm sorry, pretty much all the manufacturers here in the States are going to land on NACS.
Casey:
So I'm happy with this.
Casey:
Like Marco particularly was saying, one standard is much better than two, and hopefully we'll all end up on an ACS here in the States.
Casey:
The only thing is, though, it kind of bums me out for the next year or two, because I think, although I don't expect to buy a car in the next year or two, I think it's powerful.
Casey:
possible that i would and i think it is extremely likely i would get an electric car if i were to replace my volkswagen and at this point i don't want a ccs car like i'd rather not and i'm not buying a tesla so that means i'm going to have to wait for uh you know a couple of years it would be like getting an intel mac just before the replace with apple silicon yeah it's just not not not the best choice don't want to buy a car with a ccs especially an expensive car with the ccs connector that's rough you know
John:
yeah uh so anyway so we'll we'll see how this turns out we'll see how quickly it happens but uh yeah and the car makers are doing this like 2024 models is the early as you should expect expect this because things move slow in the auto industry so i do wonder i mean i guess most normal people don't know about this but i was wondering if there would be like a dip in ev sales for the people who do know to say maybe i'll wait a little bit like
John:
I don't know if people can wait a full year, but.
Marco:
Yeah, I'll tell you what, like, I'm not feeling good about my Rivian pre-order right now.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
It's too late for you, Mark.
John:
You literally already ordered the car.
John:
Just take your car.
John:
But with you, Mark, by the time that the Tesla connector is pervasive, you will be on two cars from then.
Casey:
That is also true.
John:
although your test is did last a long time but i feel like you'll be rotating through cars a little bit faster oh some some real-time feedback from the chat room um they first is the map of right hand uh drive versus not right hand drive because that's confusing i know right hand drive is where the steering wheels on the right but anyway people who drive on the right side of the road which is also the correct side of the road
John:
versus everyone else and it is you know it's the british empire like i said uh and the map is heavily in favor of driving on the right side of the road and apparently france and the netherlands switched in the 60s can you imagine that 60s was a tumultuous time just one day i'm sure there's a story about this but like one day in the 60s they said everybody everybody switch
Casey:
No, there is.
Casey:
There was a 99PI about this.
Casey:
I'll try to find a link for the show notes.
Casey:
I doubt I'll be able to come up with it.
Casey:
But it was fascinating.
Casey:
And they talked about on this podcast episode about how there was like this big, you know, PR push to get everyone ready for it and so on and so forth.
Casey:
It was very, very interesting.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And countries with functional governance where they can rally the people to all do a change that will be beneficial for them in the long term.
John:
Can you imagine that?
Casey:
Just think about it.
Casey:
That would be amazing.
Casey:
A functional government.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
That would be cool.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, wrapping up our Ask Neutral, Yodological writes, what are some unexpected things, good and bad, about using an electric vehicle?
Casey:
Well, one of the things is you don't get a transmission.
Casey:
That's sad.
Casey:
But Marco, I think that you are obviously the most well-qualified to answer this question.
John:
There's still a transmission.
Casey:
Not in anything but a Porsche.
John:
There's really not.
John:
Yes, there is.
John:
A transmission is just a series of gears that change ratios that connect to your wheels.
John:
That's what a transmission is.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Thank you for well-actuallying us.
Casey:
Thank you so much.
John:
jeez no people think it's the cars run by magic i mean the only the only car where you could say you don't have one of those ones that have the motors in the hubs have you seen those i think uh sob whoever owns the whoever chinese company currently owns the remains of sob made an ev with hub motors so the motors are literally in the wheels so there really is no transition there but that's a terrible idea but the unsprung weight is just horrendous anyway go on
Marco:
Okay, so anyway, besides there being no gears, John... There are gears.
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
Marco:
Besides not having to shift gear in any way or have the car try to shift for you...
Marco:
The best thing about driving electric is it just feels better in every possible way.
Marco:
Like the drive train itself feels great because it is direct.
Marco:
Driving a gas car, there's a whole bunch of hacks going on to make that happen.
Marco:
There's a lot of mechanical complexity, a lot of...
Marco:
like abstractions and hacks and weird balancing acts that are being done between gear shifting options.
Marco:
And of course, like how the torque curve is all weird and tipped up the top and everything it's driving a gas car.
Marco:
It's a very irregular and, and oftentimes disconnected experience from the reality of what's going on.
Marco:
Electric drive trains are mechanically so much simpler.
Marco:
You feel that simplicity.
Marco:
Everything is immediate and direct.
Marco:
So it, it just, it feels better to drive.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
Some of the unexpected things, I can talk forever on this and I won't right now.
Marco:
I'll name two right now.
Marco:
Number one, dog mode.
Marco:
This is a setting on electric cars because you're not running a gasoline engine to make the climate control happen.
Marco:
It is safe to run the climate control remotely no matter where the car is parked.
Marco:
If it's parked inside a sealed up garage, doesn't matter.
Marco:
You're not going to cause carbon monoxide problems.
Marco:
And so they all have or many electric vehicles, including all Teslas and all Rivians, they have options to remotely like from their phone app.
Marco:
Turn on the climate control and you can just leave it running for hours if you need to.
Marco:
And they all have a Tesla and Rivian at least have this wonderful feature called dog mode where suppose you're on a road trip with a pet in the car and you want to go into a rest stop to go to the bathroom or you're going to have some lunch inside a restaurant or whatever.
Marco:
You need to leave the car somewhere where you can't bring the dog inside.
Marco:
you can leave the car with the ac or heat running at regular temperature kind of indefinitely like as long as your battery maintains and usually the like teslas will stop at 20 if you have if your battery dips below 20 it'll stop this feature but on a regular road trip you can leave this on for hours and it's fine
Marco:
And we many times I get used to this feature many times.
Marco:
I've done this where like we'll be on a road trip.
Marco:
I want to go inside for you know for a meal with the family or whatever.
Marco:
We'll have to leave the dog in the car for half hour 40 minutes whatever it is.
Marco:
My current gas monstrosity has sort of a feature like this except you can only launch it from the app.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Similarly, my gas monstrosity does not allow the remote climate control feature or remote start feature to run if the car has not been turned on for more than three days.
Marco:
With a Tesla, I know I can just open the phone app even if the car has been turned off and sitting there for a month.
Marco:
And before I get there, I can turn on the air conditioning.
Marco:
So when I get to my car, it's not a thousand degrees inside.
Marco:
I can't do that with my gas monstrosity.
Marco:
The remote climate control being so flexible and being able to be triggered either from the app or two buttons before you leave the car if you're parked somewhere, that's fantastic.
Marco:
I've never seen anything as good as that on a gas car.
Marco:
I know Tesla does those things.
Marco:
I think Rivian does most or all those things.
Marco:
I don't know about everybody else.
Marco:
Second thing, this is more of an everyday convenience thing.
Marco:
You don't realize what you have until it's gone.
Marco:
When you are driving a gas car,
Marco:
You have to, on some kind of regular interval, stop your everyday life to go fill it up with gas.
Marco:
Now, this is not a long process, maybe 10 minutes, but it is an annoyance that you have to, at some point in your regular everyday life, maybe it's once a week, maybe it's every two weeks, however often you get gas, you have to stop what you're doing and go get gas.
Marco:
And by the way, gas stations are stinky and gross.
Marco:
With electric cars, if you are not taking long road trips very often, if you're just doing your everyday driving, everyday life, and you're charging at a reasonable rate at home, you never have to stop and get gas.
Marco:
That's really important.
Marco:
Every time you leave your house, you have a full tank.
Marco:
So in your regular errands and your regular commute and everything, you never have to stop to get gas.
Marco:
You only ever have to think about charging if you assuming you have a place that you can park it at home where you can charge it, you know, like a garage or whatever.
Marco:
But you only ever have to worry about charging when you are on a long trip.
Marco:
People think like, oh, when you go electric, it's so much less convenient.
Marco:
You got to worry about range.
Marco:
And yes, you do have to worry about range on long trips.
Marco:
But for the entire rest of your everyday life, it's way more convenient because you're never having to stop and get gas ever, ever, ever.
Marco:
But now every time you get out of your car, you got to plug it in.
Marco:
Not every time.
Marco:
I mean, I would plug in the Tesla whenever it dropped below 50%, which was... It's just a new habit.
John:
Like, I'm not... It's a good trade-off.
John:
It's a net win for sure, but there is... It is only a net win.
John:
It's not like there's no negatives.
John:
The negative is there's a new thing you have to do at home that you didn't have to do before.
John:
It takes two seconds if you have it set up, although I will say that, like...
John:
the uh sort of uh suburban privilege of the expectation of course i have a place where i can park the car and plug it into my house electricity is not true for a lot of the population or urban situations like again the rest of the world has this more figured out than we do good cities would provide places along street parking where you can plug in your electric car through some sort of system where either you pay for it or the government pays for it or whatever somehow like that's
John:
It is to the advantage of cities to figure out how to do that, and I hope they do someday somewhere in the U.S., probably in California.
John:
But in the meantime, if you do have a place where you can plug into your house, that is a new habit you have to adopt.
John:
And the return for it is worth that investment, which is like you said, you wake up in the morning and your car is full.
Marco:
yeah it's and and agree like you know we do need this infrastructure it is a big challenge the good thing is if you're doing overnight charging and you don't need to charge a car from zero percent it can even be like in fact technology connections did a video on this uh like two years ago it can even be a regular 110 volt plug it doesn't even you don't even need high power for that because if your car only charges you know 10 every night
Marco:
Well, if you if you can charge it every time you park in front of your house, you're probably not using that many miles per day where you where that where you wouldn't be able to keep up that way.
Marco:
So, you know, any kind of, you know, they call it destination charging, whether it's like, you know, at your workplace, whatever, you know, if you go to the mall for the afternoon, you can plug in there like that's going to become more and more common.
Marco:
It already is going more and more common because you don't need like massive high amperage, high voltage charging if there's more charging everywhere people go.
John:
That's another point we didn't make in the Tesla connector thing is that I don't know if this is true of the CCS connectors.
John:
Well, it seems like it might be because they have the double connector thing.
John:
But in practice, the wires for CCS chargers are thicker and heavier.
John:
They're also longer because that's another... Tesla didn't make their thing short just for no reason.
John:
The shorter the cord is, the less it weighs.
Marco:
And Tesla's cable, by the way, is hefty.
Marco:
And we're talking about two different cables.
Marco:
The cable that you have in your house, that's not a DC fast charge cable.
Marco:
That is a 50 amp at most cable.
Marco:
And those cables, they're a little thinner and lighter than garden hoses.
Marco:
Whereas the ones at superchargers that are doing DC fast charging...
Marco:
Those are heavy, inflexible, thick cables.
Marco:
And I believe they're liquid cooled.
Marco:
The Tesla ones are?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When you're pumping that much current through a wire, cooling of that wire becomes fairly important and somewhat challenging.
Marco:
So I believe, I know one of them is, I think Teslas are liquid cooled.
John:
But anyway, the CCS ones are even worse.
John:
The CCS cables are even thicker and even heavier.
John:
And because they're also longer, they're heavier still to the point where people will have difficulty maneuvering.
John:
And if you've ever seen anyone struggle at a gas station maneuvering the comparatively incredibly lightweight rubber hoses that the gasoline goes through...
John:
It is a much more significant challenge to wrangle a full length, full wattage CCS connector.
John:
The Tesla ones are comparatively easier to maneuver, both because they're shorter, but also because I think they're actually thinner as well.
John:
So that's another challenge we'll have to face.
John:
But for the home ones, yeah, you can go from business.
John:
I mean, I've seen people do it in the neighborhood.
John:
I don't recommend this, but people take what looks like you really hope is an indoor outdoor extension cord.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And just run it from, like, a wall outlet in their garage, sneaking down their driveway to the thing and plugging it into their little, you know, charging, like, right?
John:
All the way up to fancy people like Marco who get, like, the actual proper, you know, charger and connector or whatever, right?
John:
And this is an example of infrastructure.
John:
Yeah.
John:
We can make infrastructure that makes all this easier for all of us.
John:
And I hope we do.
John:
But in the meantime, you can get by with the existing infrastructure.
John:
Most homes in America have at least one, what we call a dryer outlet that is the higher voltage, you know, higher power thing to power or an electric dryer that will charge your car faster.
John:
But even if you don't have that, as long as you're not taking really long commutes, a plain old outlet with a reasonable, good extension cord that can reach your car will work.
Marco:
Yeah, those are fine.
Marco:
Or like, you know, if you happen to have like a table saw outlet in your garage or something like some people have that or, you know, any kind of 220 volt outlet is way better than a 110 for this purpose.
Marco:
So if you have a 220 volt outlet in your garage, even if it's only like 20 amps or 15 amps, that's great.
Marco:
That's all you will need.
Marco:
And yeah, and if you want to have a regular like 110 volt, 15 amp circuit, you can do it on that.
Marco:
It's slow.
Marco:
You know, I think charging a full Tesla from empty on 110, I think takes something like a week.
Marco:
uh but you're never usually charging it from empty at your house like you're just topping it off from your daily usage and and so unless you have a very long commute even a 110 outlet keeps up with most people's needs just fine and and then again any 220 outlet if you have a dryer outlet or a circular saw outlet or if you you know go nuts and install an rv outlet in your garage like i did the nema 1450 outlet to
Marco:
For the really good chargers, you're set.
Marco:
Any of those options, you're totally fine.
Marco:
Anyway, so that's a short list of the unexpected things, good and bad, about using an electric vehicle.
Marco:
The bad thing, honestly, I think the only bad thing I can really say is they tend to be heavy.
Marco:
They're expensive, of course, and that's a problem as well.
Marco:
That's slowly getting better.
Marco:
I mean, they're just heavy, but they're so...
Marco:
fast and responsive in their throttle and drivetrain that it makes up for it and and the weight being all down low in the battery pack also really helps a lot uh with like handling and stuff but it slaughters your braking though like the the the weight really so there's multiple downsides to the weight well if you're doing a lot of braking you're doing it wrong
John:
But you know what I mean?
John:
In an emergency, when you want to bring this car to a stop, if they put the brake, especially early EV makers who are not quite sure how to do this, if they put brakes on it that seem correctly sized for the equivalent gas car, it's going to take longer to stop.
John:
And every part of the car, good EV makers know this and build it into their cars, but every part of the car takes more abuse from having more weight.
John:
So the suspension has to be beefier.
John:
All the
John:
The wheels, bearings, and bushings have to be beefier because these things weigh a ton, especially the quote-unquote good ones that have the big batteries in them.
John:
They just weigh so much that it really requires scaling everything up.
John:
And then the final thing that you can't really avoid is because they weigh so much, it damages the road more.
John:
like it's it's like a bunch of massive trucks if the entire world was filled with like 100 kilowatt hour uh battery packed evs now instead of all the regular cars we would be even in this country we'd be even worse off in our inability to find ways to funds our roads because no one wants to pay taxes um because they will destroy your roads having 6 000 pound cars driving over them damages your roads more than having 3 000 pound car that just makes perfect sense right and
John:
that goes to every every part of the car wears out faster it has to be beefed up and the road wears out faster and has to be redone more often and i think that again that is a net trade-off that we should make in exchange to not choking ourselves and our planet with co2 emissions so thumbs up but it is something to keep in mind if you're used to a light nimble car uh flitting around changing direction quickly and stopping quickly with drum brakes in the rear that's not going to happen with an ev
Casey:
One other thing I think is worth mentioning is a lot of times when I talk to people about the idea of an electric car, because even though I've not owned one, you know, I'm a car nerd, I'm a car enthusiast.
Casey:
So people will often ask me, you know, what's my opinion about these sorts of things?
Casey:
And one thing, and this is not a unique idea that I have come up with, but one thing that I think is worth remembering is that, you know, for most people, most of their trips are fast.
Casey:
five 10 miles a day like that's not always true and i'm sure there's plenty of cases where it isn't true but for a lot of people it is unusual to drive more than 10 20 30 miles in a day and even tiff's ridiculous i3 well i mean what's the range on that like 30 40 miles on an electric charge is that right it's like 150
Marco:
oh no it's way more okay i thought it was i thought it was considerably less than that so even better got the range extender yeah well the electric only range is something like 120 that seems optimistic for that car no i've we've done it i'm telling that car i mean obviously if it's like freezing cold outside you're not going to get that um but in in most conditions you can easily get over 100 it's i'm telling you the i3 the more we own that car and the more we've used it the more i've driven it
Marco:
the more I really appreciate how good of a car that was.
Marco:
It's really a shame they stopped making it and the market really went a different direction because it is so compact and nimble for being electric because they have that whole carbon fiber frame and the battery is not too huge, so it's not that heavy.
John:
You're getting it why they didn't sell them.
John:
Carbon fiber frame?
John:
What?
John:
Yes, it's weird.
John:
A little expensive.
John:
yes like a little bit expensive it is it is such a such an odd vehicle but it's really good and there's nothing on the market like it well a car and driver on the back page this month had like they have like hey so you're thinking of buying a used car here's what you should know about it and the one on uh on your car the i3 was this month and they said uh
John:
maybe ask the owner when the last time they changed the oil on the range extender was because people buy them and yeah it's got a range extender but like you never need to use it because as casey was saying you don't take a lot of long trips and this thing's got plenty of juice and you forget the gas engine is there and you kind of can't drive a car 15 years and not do anything to the gasoline engine because it gets super angry
Marco:
i can tell you it's gone through one gallon of gas in these three years of ownership that's not great for the engine either when's the last time you changed the oil on it never that's not good either marco but you can't forget the car is so every time you get into the car first of all if the engine hasn't run in a long time it'll it'll alert you on the display and then the moment you dip below 75 battery it'll run the engine for a little while just to run it i
John:
I know, but you have to change the oil on internal combustion engines, even if you don't run them.
John:
Why?
John:
You can't just leave it there for 15 years.
John:
It's not good.
John:
Well, it's only been three.
John:
Oh, all right.
John:
Well, yeah, you have a relatively new one.
John:
Is this a new one or do you buy?
John:
Because I know she had one.
John:
I think it was like the second to last year they made them.
John:
Well, anyway, I feel like an oil change every three years is not excessive.
John:
Consider changing the oil on your range extender.
John:
I don't even know where that would be.
John:
You need to go and find that dipstick and take a picture of what it looks like in there.
Casey:
There isn't a dipstick.
Casey:
It's a BMW.
Casey:
Oh.
Marco:
I couldn't even find the gas hole for a while.
Marco:
God knows where the oil is.
Marco:
BMWs don't have – they have a way to check the oil.
John:
I mean I'm looking at all these 90s BMWs.
Casey:
My 2011 BMW did not have a dipstick.
Casey:
It had a place in the iDrive where you would go when the car was running and ask it, would you please tell me what the oil level is like?
John:
BMWs used to have dipsticks.
John:
I'm watching these old car rebuild channels where they're older BMWs.
John:
But anyway, I would love to see what the oil, if you want, drop the oil pan to pull out the plug.
John:
What does this oil look like after three years of sitting there in the car?
Casey:
What is it, Vantablack or something like that?
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
It's just sludge.
Casey:
All right, we've got to finish up.
Casey:
Let me finish my thought.
Casey:
Let me finish my thought, and then, Marco, you need to leave a message for the BMW dealer and ask them to change the oil on this thing.
Casey:
But anyways... You think they even know where it is?
Marco:
How many of these did they really sell?
Casey:
Three.
Casey:
They know, and they'll charge you $400 to change it.
Casey:
Also true, actually.
Casey:
But anyways, the point I was trying to drive at, and then we got sidetracked, was if you're a suburban homeowner here in America...
Casey:
it is likely that you will once or twice a year want to go get like a bunch of mulch to put around your landscaping at your house if you're a better homeowner than I am.
Casey:
And I feel like a lot of people get hung up on range and they say, well, we take a summer trip to the beach every year.
Casey:
What are we going to do then?
Casey:
Well, first of all, and I'll give Marco a chance to corroborate this, but I would argue that once you're past the age of 25, stopping for half an hour and getting out of the car, even on a four, five, six, seven, eight hour road trip,
Casey:
That ain't so bad.
Casey:
That's actually kind of nice.
John:
Marco doesn't have to drive very far to get to the beach, just FYI.
Casey:
Well, that's true.
Casey:
But nevertheless, the other thing is I don't buy a car specifically for hauling mulch once a year.
Casey:
I don't buy a pickup truck just because I need to haul mulch occasionally.
Casey:
If I really need to do that sort of thing, I'll either make do with what I've got or I'll rent a pickup for a day or something like that.
John:
If only we weren't broadcasting the show to Americans, Casey.
John:
Because what is the best-selling vehicle in America?
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
John:
A pickup truck.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
And I don't get it.
Casey:
But that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
My point is just that, you know, again, I have these conversations often.
Casey:
And I had basically this exact conversation with a friend of mine.
Casey:
And he was saying, well, we go to the beach in South Carolina every year.
Casey:
And that's like an eight-hour drive or something like that.
Casey:
And we go to Blacksburg, our mutual alma mater, every year.
Casey:
And that's a three-and-a-half-hour drive.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I get that.
Casey:
I really do.
Casey:
And I'm not the kind of person who generally rents cars for road trips, so I don't put wear and tear on my own car.
Casey:
Like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Casey:
But if 98% of your trips are 10 miles or less, or whatever the case may be, don't buy a car for two trips a year.
Casey:
Buy a car for the 98%.
Casey:
Don't buy it for the 1%.
Casey:
That's my final advice.
Marco:
people who think electric won't work for them because of their two trips a year they take it will work just fine for them like you will have to do a tiny amount of planning in the sense of look how long it is and if that's larger than the range of your car find a supercharger on the way that's and most of the cars will do this for you cars will do that for you like honestly just put in the destination it will tell you where to go
Marco:
Yeah, and if not, use any of a million different apps that will all do it for you as well.
Marco:
And I thought before I had a electric car, I had the same range anxiety.
Marco:
Is this going to work for me?
Marco:
I drive upstate a lot.
Marco:
And it's fine.
Marco:
You think it's going to be this really big deal, and in practice, it just isn't.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
It's really totally fine.
Marco:
And then everything else about it is better.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week, Memberful, Rocket Money, and Collide.
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.
Marco:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
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.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
One of your big Swift UI challenges when making Call Sheet, which by the way, I've been using Call Sheet a lot because we've been re-watching some TV finally and I keep seeing like, oh, it's that guy.
Marco:
Who's that?
Marco:
We decided to re-watch the first season at Party Down.
Marco:
We haven't seen it in a long time and they have a new one so I wanted to catch up with the old one.
Marco:
And I was looking and I didn't realize until I'm like where there's this one guy in one episode playing some, you know, side character.
Marco:
And I thought for sure, like, I'm never going to find this.
Marco:
But I looked up and I was pleased to see that call sheet not only has, you know, TV show info, but it has per episode info on the people who were in each episode.
Marco:
So I was able to say, all right, season one episode, whatever.
Marco:
And it was right there.
Marco:
It was it was awesome.
Casey:
Oh, thanks.
Casey:
No, that's, that's, that's the idea.
Casey:
And, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm not going to say out loud cause I don't want to jinx anything, but the plan for tomorrow morning is to send it to Apple, um, as a, you know, as the sacrificial, uh, release, you know what I mean?
Casey:
Like the, I'm sure there will be an issue.
Casey:
I'm sure they will have a problem.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The one to reject.
John:
You think you're just going to reject it for an app purchase flow or do you think there's something else?
Casey:
I have no idea, to be honest with you.
Marco:
Most likely a net purchase.
Marco:
They look very closely at that, and almost no one gets it right the first time.
Marco:
It could be something as simple as you have a privacy policy, but you don't have a terms of use.
Marco:
It's stuff like that.
Marco:
There's all these little requirements they have.
Marco:
By the way, you need a terms of use.
Casey:
I do have one.
Casey:
I didn't earlier, but I do have one now.
Marco:
You can just copy and paste.
Marco:
Everyone else does it.
Casey:
Yep, yep.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure I stole underscores and lightly edited it to make it more relevant to my particular use case.
Casey:
But anyways, so I hope to – no promises, but I hope to send to Apple tomorrow because the idea is –
Casey:
I'm going to be traveling very soon, and I don't want to be thinking about this while I'm gone.
Casey:
So in a perfect world, which won't happen, but in a perfect world, I do a release or two.
Casey:
I go back and forth with Apple once or twice this week, and then hopefully it is queued up and ready to go for after travel.
John:
Make sure you have it set not to be released as soon as it's approved.
John:
All right.
Casey:
That's very true.
John:
Easy to forget that setting.
John:
And if you're on vacation is the wrong time.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Inevitably, what will end up happening is I won't get it done in through Apple before I leave.
Casey:
And it'll end up having to happen, you know, late this month.
John:
It's the same situation as you because I'm about to go on vacation as well.
John:
I was like, you know what?
John:
I really want to push out because I've been working my Sonoma release, but I can't.
John:
They won't accept builds made with Sonoma Xcode.
John:
I'm in the weird situation that if you've watched the WDC sessions about the tools that Swift has now for backporting APIs, well, Apple is using them.
John:
So there's a new API introduced in Sonoma, but they backported it to Ventura.
John:
So like, this is awesome.
John:
People on Ventura can have it too.
John:
But guess what?
John:
I can't submit that build until I can build on Sonoma and submit it.
John:
And they're not accepting stuff that's built on Sonoma until Sonoma gets closer to release.
John:
so I have to go back to my mainline branch, and I was like, well, I should just cut a release of this and just take out the Sonoma-specific features, which aren't really Sonoma-specific and will actually work on Ventura, but, you know, anyway.
John:
But then I said, no, don't put a release before you go on vacation.
John:
What are you thinking?
John:
Just let it ride, don't worry about it, and you come back from vacation and you can address it.
John:
So that's what I'm doing, and I would advise you to do the same thing.
John:
You can submit it as a sacrificial one, but just, like, configure it not to get accepted, go on vacation, and don't worry about it until you get back.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, most of that is the plan.
Casey:
The sacrificial release is part of the plan.
Casey:
The question is, will I have the self-control?
Casey:
Assuming that there's still back and forth between me and AppReview, will I have the self-control to really put it aside while I'm on vacation?
Casey:
We'll see.
John:
Don't actually write the code to address the issues while you're on vacation, please.
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, well, no promises.
Casey:
But hopefully, again, in a perfect world, which won't be the case, I will get it through App Store review before I leave, and then I'll sit on releasing it until I'm back.
Casey:
Or maybe even once I'm back, if I do another submission or two to Apple, that's fine too.
Casey:
But at least I know I've gotten one through, you know what I mean?
Casey:
And my understanding...
Casey:
from my own experience and from those like marco that have done subscription stuff before is that the first release they really do take a pretty fine tooth comb which makes sense i don't begrudge them that at all and then after that it depends on who you get and what your luck is but um generally speaking it's not quite so ruinous after you get one through but getting that first one through can be ugly and this is my first rodeo when it comes to subscriptions i'm sure i've screwed something up i'm sure something's not right so i gotta i gotta try so
Casey:
We'll see if I do that tomorrow morning.
Casey:
No promises.
Casey:
But that's the idea.
Casey:
But we were going somewhere with this.
Casey:
And I feel like we got totally sidetracked.
Marco:
The reason I brought up... So the reason I thought of you today is that... Well, first of all, have you run the current build on iOS 17?
Marco:
Because you should.
Marco:
Because I think you have a search box problem.
Casey:
Well, and that is something that Apple changed in this beta seed.
Casey:
And I need to give that a shot and start filing bug reports because a few people have brought it to my attention.
Casey:
But yeah, apparently you can't actually see the search box anymore as you're typing, which is super fun.
Marco:
Yeah, and this has been a theme of iOS 17 beta so far.
Marco:
There have been a decent amount of keyboard placement bugs.
Marco:
So obviously, they're messing around in that area.
Marco:
So I would expect quick fixes here in future betas.
Marco:
But the reason I thought of this is because today, as I'm rebuilding my UI, I finally got to the .searchable modifier as I'm trying to figure out search fields.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Putting some stuff together.
Marco:
And I was like, man, I really could use the information of when the search field is active.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Which you can get in iOS 17, by the way.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, you can get it in iOS 16.
Marco:
But so when it's active, you know, I want to know that.
Marco:
And I instantly I found like a little modifier, you know, like text and then placeholder placement.
Marco:
And then, you know, the is active binding to the bool, like as you'd expect or is presented, whatever it is.
Marco:
Mm hmm.
Marco:
As soon as I hit enter on that, it said, this requires iOS 17.
Marco:
You've got to put an available thing around it, which, by the way, is super clunky in SwiftUI.
Marco:
That is the worst to do in SwiftUI.
Marco:
But I immediately was like, oh, wait a minute.
Marco:
Isn't this...
Marco:
the problem you were facing, like, didn't you before 17, like, didn't you have to jump through a million stupid hoops to try to get this?
Casey:
I'm still jumping through because I'm releasing before 17.
Casey:
And this was in concert with a friend of the show, Guy Rambo, who did a lot of the heavy lifting on how do you snoop and spelunk within UI kit and expose that in a reasonably, in a reasonably pretty way.
Casey:
And so that's what we're doing.
Casey:
And I can share that code with you, Marco, if you're interested.
Casey:
But anyways, it's a total pain in the butt in 16.
Casey:
And then,
Casey:
And actually what ended up happening was when I moved from the standard search interface with the searchable interface to the bottom mounted search interface, I actually just canned.
Casey:
I couldn't use searchable anymore.
Casey:
I forget why, but it's really not designed to be anywhere but where Apple wants it.
Casey:
And when I tried to put it in that bottom panel, it was just a mess.
Marco:
No, it pretty much has to be in a navigation bar.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And so I just gave up on it and I'm not using the system searchable or the system search affordance, which I would prefer to be able to use it, but it's just not possible where I have my search box right now.
Marco:
Yeah, that's true.
Marco:
Anyway, yeah, and I did think of you today.
Marco:
I'm like, wait a minute, I just fixed in like, you know, 20 minutes what you fought for a very long time.
Marco:
i'm on because so how did you fix it then through various like you know stack overflow searching i found that there was an environment variable that's set it's called like is searching or something what it's weird because it only applies to like sub views so but i made like a quick little wrapper i'll i'll send you i'll send it i'll post it just but
John:
Plumbing state information from where you have it to where you want it is a fun pastime in 51.
Casey:
That's exactly it.
Casey:
That is seriously so true.
Marco:
I'll send you a quick screenshot so you can see.
Casey:
Yeah, I'd be fascinated to see this because this is news to me.
Casey:
And again, I don't need it anymore, but I would have loved to have known about this.
Marco:
So it's the environment is searching is what you're looking for in a little utility view.
Marco:
But yeah, so I basically made a wrapper to do what John said, like plumb this value, like bind it from here to here.
Marco:
And now you have an is presented binding for iOS 16 as well.
Casey:
Wow, that's very cool.
Casey:
I really wish I had realized that.
Casey:
I don't think I was aware of that, because I don't have any recollection of this being a thing that I was like, oh, I would use that, but I just don't think I even knew about it.
Casey:
You know, it's too bad.
Casey:
I've been...
Casey:
This is going to sound like a rant, and I don't mean it to.
Casey:
The documentation that Apple's been putting out lately has actually been surprisingly good.
Casey:
I probably should put up a blog post saying, look, I stand by everything.
Casey:
Did I already say this on the show?
Casey:
I might have.
Casey:
But I stand by everything I said a couple of years ago, maybe it was a year or two ago, about how their documentation was piss poor.
Casey:
And there are still a lot of areas where it is piss poor.
Casey:
But recently, it has gotten worse.
Casey:
Way better.
Casey:
Way, way, way better.
Casey:
And I'm genuinely so happy to see it.
Casey:
I am so here for it.
Casey:
But there are times that, and maybe it's my own Google Foo failing me, but why did I not know that this existed?
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
I really wish...
Casey:
in the commentary and documentation about searchable, this should have been called out more explicitly.
Casey:
Or there should have been some sort of sample code that shows this and demonstrates this.
John:
It needs to be more findable, I find very often.
John:
I'm searching for stuff in SwiftUI.
John:
I'm searching for things that I know how to use, but I just want to double-check something.
John:
And there's just too many hits because they're just all simple words.
John:
And it's like, well, no, narrow it down to SwiftUI, but we'll narrow it down to this.
John:
No, I don't want to see the ones for this.
John:
No, that's not what I want.
John:
Like, it's just...
John:
It was the advantage of the old school single big namespace NS whatever APIs.
John:
They had distinct names that you could search for.
John:
But search for frame, man.
John:
It's just, what?
John:
Search for anything that's common on multiple kinds of elements.
John:
And I'm like, I want to find the part that Casey's talking about where someone explains...
John:
oh, by the way, here's how the box model in CSS parlance works in SwiftUI.
John:
And I figured that would be somewhere adjacent to the thing where they're talking about how you can set frame and what it does and what the different alignments mean and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Nope, that's that.
John:
The documentation probably exists, but it is not easy to find the way people mostly find things, which is let me type some words into the search box.
John:
And that's kind of...
John:
That's kind of frustrating with 50 UI.
John:
Like, I think that's the next level of what they have to do is if they have great documentation, they need to find a way to, and I know it's a hard problem, but they need to find a way to let you find it.
John:
Like by typing in the string that you want to type in, which is going to probably be a single, very short word that is very common across 50 different APIs.