I’ve Spent a Lot of Time in the Address Bar
Casey:
I've got to tell you, there's a thunderstorm that just ripped through the area, and I think we're in the clear.
Casey:
But if we interrupt the show because I need to go start a generator or something, then my apologies.
Casey:
But it should be fine.
Casey:
I think we're through the thick of it.
Marco:
That sounds really hardcore.
Marco:
I've got to go start my generator, everybody.
Casey:
Well, the thing that is, is that I think I've told the story somewhere, but my parents live only 45 minutes west of me, but their area loses power regularly.
Casey:
And they got this like obscenely expensive, ridiculous Honda inverter generator that weighs 85,000 pounds.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Well, then they ended up getting a Generac or whatever, whole home generator, and they were like, here, you can borrow this forever.
Casey:
And so I've had, or we have had this ridiculously nice Honda generator in our garage for probably five-ish years now, and I believe I've used it once for about 35 minutes, and that's it, because around the time that they...
Casey:
not bequeathed, but bequeathed us to the generator, that's when the power company cut down a bunch of trees that were near the lines leading into the neighborhood.
Casey:
Because the lines outside the neighborhood are lines, are above ground lines, and the stuff inside the neighborhood is underground.
Casey:
So...
Marco:
Well, the law of, you know, large equipment that you buy for yourself for some kind of, you know, special conditions is that the moment you, first of all, the moment you buy it, that condition will probably never happen again.
Marco:
But certainly if that condition happens, you will need it for the briefest of time.
Marco:
So the moment you start your generator, the power will come back on.
John:
Correct.
John:
Assuming you can get it started after it's been sitting in your house for seven years without ever being started.
Marco:
Well, right.
Marco:
In that case, if you can't get it started, the power will stay up for three days.
Casey:
But yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
It hopefully will not be an issue.
Casey:
But if suddenly I disappear or get very, very quiet, it's not because I'm sleepy, even though I am.
Casey:
It's because we lost power.
Casey:
So hopefully not.
John:
We know you're dying to use it.
John:
You have this big thing.
John:
You're like, I just hope we lose power so I get to run out and use the big generator.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
I would very much like to use a generator.
Casey:
I would rather not do it under duress during a podcast.
Casey:
That I'm not as keen on.
Casey:
You're trying to use recreational generator use?
Casey:
Exactly.
Yeah.
Casey:
We have to remind you that the ATP store is back.
Casey:
It is back and better than ever, maybe.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's back, though.
Casey:
And we have a whole bunch of stuff for sale.
Casey:
We have a bunch of returning stuff from past years, which I'm not going to talk about.
Casey:
We talked about that last episode.
Casey:
But we have some new stuff.
Casey:
John, if you don't mind, would you quickly just talk through the new stuff very, very quickly, please?
John:
If you enjoyed slash endured the member special where I showed how I managed my windows on my Mac, we have a shirt celebrating that.
John:
Don't worry.
John:
The shirt doesn't look too ridiculous.
John:
It's just our logo with some windows behind it that most people won't even be able to recognize as windows.
John:
And then you get to explain the shirt.
John:
and explain how you feel about my window management technique, good or bad.
John:
Anyway, we've got that.
John:
And don't forget, it's not just a shirt.
John:
It's a tank top.
John:
It's a long sleeve.
John:
It's a sweatshirt.
John:
Everything is everything, as Merlin says.
John:
And then we have the ATP graffiti shirt, which is our logo written in Palm OS graffiti style handwriting recognition that also comes in a bunch of different styles and colors.
John:
And then finally, I guess we said we weren't talking about returning stuff, but I want to talk about the performance shirt because that is basically not been for sale for like five, seven years or something.
John:
If you work out and you get sweaty and you want a shirt that will, I guess, wick away that moisture better than normal, try the ATP performance shirt.
John:
And yeah, then we have a bunch of returning stuff.
Casey:
They have the polo, too.
Casey:
So, yeah, check it out.
Casey:
So you can go to ATP.fm slash store to go and make your purchases.
Casey:
Remember, you have until Sunday, the 28th of April ATP time.
Casey:
But you don't need to worry about when the store closes.
Casey:
You know what you're doing right now?
Casey:
You're signaling, you're pulling over, or if you're walking, you're looking for a gap in the crowd, you know, walk to the side of the sidewalk or what have you, and you're going to go to atp.fm slash store, and you're going to place your purchase right now with plenty of time to spare.
Casey:
We had someone write in, I don't remember if it was an email or a tweet or, well, toot or whatever, um,
Casey:
And they said,
Casey:
know or feels like, yeah, there's a bunch of people who say, oh, it's like two minutes later and I forgot.
Casey:
Which, fine, whatever.
Casey:
I deserve it.
Casey:
I own that.
Casey:
But every single time, there's at least one, usually between two and five people that say, oh my gosh, I'm the one.
Casey:
I never thought it would be me and I'm the one.
Casey:
So, atp.fm slash door.
John:
It's happened to me.
John:
I think one of the sales, I forgot to buy stuff.
John:
Luckily, because it's my sale, I can just go to the Cotton Bureau people and say, yeah, I know the sale's over, but I want X, Y, Z. But that doesn't apply to you, the listener.
John:
So get your order in before the store closes.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Final note, remember, you go to your member page at atp.fm slash member and get your bespoke coupon code or whatever you want to call it, discount code, which will get you 15% off.
Casey:
And if you aren't a member and want to get 15% off, atp.fm slash join.
Casey:
Why else might you want to right this very moment go to atp.fm slash join, John?
John:
We've got a new member special.
John:
Our member special this month is another ATP Insider, and it's about our computing origin stories.
John:
If you want to hear a bunch of old guys wax nostalgic about how they got their starts in computers, we have a podcast episode for you.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
It was a lot of fun.
Casey:
You know, it's funny because I'll only speak for myself.
Casey:
My memory is garbage, and I can barely remember what I had for dinner three hours ago, two hours ago, whatever time it is.
Casey:
But I feel like there are these moments—and I'm sure this is true for everyone, not just me—but there are moments that are just crystal clear from decades ago where I just vividly remember a feeling or a thing or an event, and it was fun—
Casey:
going through some of these like seminal moments in our lives and talking about, you know, kind of like a speed run of all of Reconcilable Differences.
Casey:
You know, how did we get to be the way we are?
Casey:
Well, we kind of sort of, at least in the technologist slash nerd way, we tried to do a speed run of that on this week's, or this month's, excuse me, member special.
Casey:
And I had a lot of fun recording it.
Casey:
I thought it was really, really fun and happy.
Casey:
And, you know, it was good to be happy and fun and nostalgic for a little while.
Casey:
So check that out if you'd like, hp.fm slash join.
John:
And we found some very surprising coincidences that related all of our three stories.
John:
There's an obvious coincidence.
John:
The longtime listeners of the show know, but there were more that were uncovered.
John:
So if you want to hear how we were connected and how our lives might have been different, if not for a few connected events, check it out.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So please have a look.
Casey:
ATP.fm slash store, ATP.fm slash join.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
One of you, and I got to assume it's John, but you never know.
Casey:
One of you put the following in our internal show notes document.
Casey:
How little kids write fours.
Casey:
What's this about?
John:
Sounds like it's about graffiti.
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
You know, I listen to the episode every every week.
John:
It's just a thing that I do.
John:
And it's for stuff like this because I missed it during the live recording.
John:
Marco was describing graffiti and he was like, which characters we like from graffiti.
John:
And Marco said he liked the fours because it's written like how little kids write fours.
John:
And I didn't catch that when we were recording.
John:
And I feel like I need to bring it to follow up here.
John:
Marco, how do little kids write fours?
Marco:
So what I meant by that, which is actually funny because it's not how my kid writes them, which I realized afterwards.
Marco:
But what I meant by that is you start in the upper left.
Marco:
You draw a right angle that goes down to the right.
Marco:
And then you lift the pencil up and you go to the top and you draw a straight down line from the top to the bottom.
Marco:
So it has an open top and there are no angles.
Marco:
So, you know, there's just right angles, basically.
Casey:
Yeah, that's how I have always written a four.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Now, it's funny that my kid actually draws fours with pointed tops, but starting from the bottom.
Marco:
So he draws the ascender up from, you know, dot on the bottom, straight up, diagonal down to the left, and then across to finish it out.
John:
But why did you describe that way, the first way you described as the way that little kids write fours?
John:
How do you write fours?
Marco:
Well, so I write fours with those same two strokes, but I write them as angled fours.
Marco:
So the top forms a triangle, not an open, like, you know, two parallel lines.
John:
I'm going to say I don't think there's anything little kiddish about the first way you described.
John:
It is one of the ways to write fours, for sure.
John:
I would think it's the most common way, but I don't know.
John:
But definitely it's not a little kid way to do it.
John:
I mean, as evidence from your own kid who was once little.
John:
You don't think the angled top is more common?
Marco:
No.
Casey:
I think the open like graffiti, as you described, you come down, hang a right, and then lift up and go straight up and down, or straight down, I guess I should say.
Casey:
That is the most common way I see of writing fours.
Casey:
I asked Declan when I saw this in the show notes, I was like, how do you write a number four?
Casey:
And he basically described what I just said.
Casey:
I am almost certain that Aaron does the triangle four, and I don't remember what her, it is all one stroke.
Casey:
I don't recall where she starts in
John:
but barco wasn't saying that the triangle for that he was drawing his one stroke he just said he angles the starting line you know he goes down into the left then straight across to the right and then picks his pen up and makes a vertical stroke which in practice if you do that you're basically doing the graffiti style for but you're just angling that and like practically speaking it's not always going to touch the vertical like the angled line is not always going to exactly meet the vertical line
John:
How sloppy are you writing your fours?
John:
Well, you know, it depends on how fast you're writing or handwriting isn't great.
John:
Anyway, I just wanted to put this in here because I don't think the graffiti way of drawing fours is the little kid way.
John:
And by the way, speaking of kids drawing upwards, my son also writes all of his letters from the bottom, despite me and all of his teachers trying to tell him not to do that.
Casey:
This drives me nuts.
Casey:
And it's one of those things that it's kind of in the spirit of secret things.
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
Weird things.
Casey:
People do secret things.
Casey:
Secret weird things.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
It's like secret weird things to piss you off.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know why, but it bothers me way more than it should when people go vertical and go bottom to top rather than top to bottom.
Casey:
I don't know what it is.
John:
My son is the first person I've ever seen to do it.
John:
And I think maybe it's because handwriting is less emphasized than it was when we, at least when I went to school.
John:
And so kids are left to their own devices and maybe left to their own devices.
John:
It's like a 50-50 whether the kid's going to decide to do from top down and bottom up.
John:
And all I can say is that I could not convince my son to write his letters from top down.
John:
Neither could any of his teachers in school.
John:
I think I tried harder than his teachers in school, so it is what it is.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't recall Adam ever getting a grade in handwriting, but I did.
Marco:
I went to a Catholic school for elementary school, so we very much got a very prescribed way to write.
Marco:
Of course, we had to learn cursive, and we got graded.
Marco:
We got a separate grade on our report card called handwriting.
Marco:
That's right.
Marco:
But none of that existed anymore, at least in Adam's public school that he's in now.
Marco:
I don't know if the Catholics, they probably still do it.
John:
Yeah, I'm not saying it has to either.
John:
I'm just saying there's a difference.
John:
And yeah, I'm with Casey.
John:
It just makes me unreasonably angry.
John:
People draw levels from the bottom up.
John:
But somehow he survives.
Casey:
Do you fellas use the crossbar on letters Z's or Z's and sevens?
John:
I do it on sevens.
John:
And I will shamefully admit I started doing it on sevens when I started taking French in like fifth grade.
John:
I do not slash sevens or z's or zeros.
John:
Oh, yeah, I do zeros, too, actually.
John:
I forgot about those.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
No, I don't do zeros.
John:
I do sevens.
John:
I don't do z's.
John:
I just do sevens.
John:
And it's pointless because my ones don't look like sevens.
John:
That's the point of the slash.
John:
And the seven is to distinguish it from ones because one of the ways to do ones is to make it like a seven where the top part angles down a lot.
John:
So I don't even do that.
John:
I totally admit it's an affectation that I started in French class in fifth grade.
Casey:
At some point, I think it was much later in life, I think it was like high school or something, this was something that I became aware of and I was like, ooh, that's fancy.
Casey:
I want to be fancy.
John:
It's a fun little thing to do, like drawing hearts in your eyes.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
I started doing it with sevens, even though my one is just a vertical bar.
Casey:
And I started doing it with Zs.
Casey:
Now, that does make sense because in my font, if you will, my two in a Z is effectively identical.
Casey:
I used to originally do the very swooshy, loopy two early on.
Casey:
And now I'm just a Z for a two.
Casey:
So the Z crossbar I stand by.
John:
The Z and the two aren't the same.
John:
The top of the two is rounded, Casey.
Casey:
No, mine is not.
Casey:
It's three straight lines.
Casey:
But that's not a two then.
Casey:
That's a Z. Well, that's why I have the crossbar for the Z. In any case.
Casey:
And then zeros.
Casey:
I forgot.
Casey:
I do put the diagonal slash.
Marco:
The slash.
Marco:
No, I know.
Marco:
I think what I'm learning today is that both of you have terrible handwriting.
John:
I could have told you that a long time ago.
John:
I can't confirm.
John:
Mine is nothing special at all, but man, you guys are terrible.
John:
I don't remember your handwriting being nice, Marco.
John:
We need to see a sample.
John:
Casey and I both admit we have terrible handwriting.
John:
I think you do too.
John:
Let's see some.
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
I'll show you.
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
Yeah, I was going to say, once upon a time, I made a font out of my own handwriting.
Marco:
you're not you're not an all caps person are you no although i do find i find that charming no i find that i find that a deranged so i just sent you in slack this is this isn't your example of good handwriting no i'm just i said mine's nothing special but yours is this is all your handwriting uh most of it and keep in mind this is on a white board yeah no this is not good handwriting by any stretch of the imagination i'm sorry
John:
I mean, maybe it's not as bad as mine, but it's close.
John:
It's almost as bad.
John:
Look, my handwriting is not good, but yours is worse, it sounds like.
John:
No, no, it looks very similar.
John:
This is what amazes me.
John:
Like, computer nerd guys who are similar age to me all have handwriting that looks like mine and it makes no sense.
John:
If I showed this to my wife, she would think this was close to my handwriting.
Casey:
I was going to say, this looks very similar to my handwriting.
Casey:
I think this is much clearer and easier to understand, but it's not that dissimilar for my handwriting.
John:
Here's where it looks like mine.
John:
See the line that says, ice maker doesn't?
John:
Second to last blue line.
John:
Look at the word doesn't.
John:
That is 100% me.
John:
I messed up that D. There's no baseline.
John:
Letters are all over the place.
John:
The apostrophe is going the wrong direction.
John:
It's the wrong smart apostrophe.
John:
The T is upside down.
John:
The end looks like an upside down rounded V. How is a T upside down?
John:
This is my handwriting right here.
John:
That word doesn't.
Casey:
That's me.
Casey:
That's not a good look, Marco.
Casey:
Everything else I actually think is pretty good.
Marco:
This is what happens when you start out Catholic and then you leave it.
John:
Then a computer's coming.
John:
You never have to write anything by hand again until you get graffiti.
Marco:
And then once a year you have to read your grandmother's birthday card and you're like, what is this?
Marco:
You have to read cursive once.
Marco:
Yeah, no, this I actually I was told one time by around around, you know, my teenage years by a psychologist I was seeing who I mean, he was terrible, let's be honest, but he was telling me feeling the bumps on your head to find out was wrong.
Marco:
he i i think he at the time um totally failed to recognize add and instead uh just told me i was just lazy and just keep trying harder it was easy it was easier to be a psychologist back then you just tell the kid they were lazy
Marco:
Yes, exactly, yeah, and I'd go in like once a week, and I still wasn't doing my homework, and my mom was frustrated and trying to figure out what was wrong with me, and I'd go in there, and the guy would meet with me for a while, then meet with her, and he would tell her I was just being lazy, and I was just trying harder, and just need to try harder, because that works great.
Marco:
It's like telling a depressed person, just smile.
Marco:
Did the guy ever think that maybe homework sucks?
Marco:
I mean, it does, but...
Marco:
That's fair point, John.
Marco:
Why aren't you doing your homework?
Marco:
Anyway, but he told me with that wonderful skill set that he actually analyzed my handwriting.
Marco:
And he said that my handwriting was lazy handwriting.
Marco:
Jeez.
Marco:
I mean, this guy was a real gem.
Marco:
He did a number on me.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
He told me basically he looked at it and he's like, well, you can see I'm kind of doing the bare minimum in each letter.
Marco:
I'm not leaving a lot of space, not putting a lot of effort into it.
Marco:
It communicates the words enough generally, but it does only the bare minimum for that.
Casey:
Gracious.
Casey:
John, we're going to need some sort of handwriting sample to put in the show notes.
John:
So get on it, please.
John:
I don't have any.
John:
I don't even have any pens on my desk.
John:
That tells you how much I love handwriting.
Casey:
You have an Apple Pencil, though, right?
John:
I do.
John:
No, wait.
John:
Actually, I have the Studio Neat thing.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I got one of those, too, right here.
Triplets.
Marco:
god we're such dorks i just don't have anything to write on but anyway i'll get you something i think i've bought more studio neat pens than i have depleted pens in the last 10 years maybe they'll dry up on their own that is depleting a pen when's the last time either if you went through a notebook like actually use all the paper in a notebook i don't think i've ever used all the paper in a notebook in my life i don't think i've
Casey:
i have i i used to be there was a window of time where i was a devout field notes person and then i eventually just kind of meandered away from that but i filled i'm no stephen hackett that fills them weekly but whatever it is but i filled a fair number of field notes way back in the day and i i still love love love those notebooks like they get my highest recommendation i honestly don't know if they've ever sponsored truly they're incredible notebooks but uh but no i i haven't carried one in years and i haven't filled one in
Casey:
Years and years.
John:
No, I never even purchased one of those.
John:
I was never feeling this person.
John:
Last time I wrote in a notebook was, I think, college.
John:
And those notebooks I never filled.
Marco:
Yeah, I was going through some of my old high school stuff when my mom sent me a bunch of my childhood stuff recently.
Marco:
And I was going through all my school notebooks.
Marco:
You know those black and white Dalmatian print composition notebooks that we had back then?
Marco:
I don't know if they still make them.
Casey:
No, they do.
Casey:
They do.
Marco:
There was one for every class, and every class did the same thing.
Marco:
The first three or four pages would have something on them, and then the entire rest was just blank.
Marco:
I'd just given up.
John:
It was every class, just all blank.
John:
It's the equivalent of a January gym membership and attendance.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Oh, man, we've gone right off the rails.
Casey:
This is going to be a long show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I wanted to quickly call attention to Paul Chernoff wrote and said, hey, the car buying process that Casey described, this was a reply to an Ask ATP last week.
Casey:
The car buying process is basically exactly what some guy or group of people, I'm not entirely clear on where the genesis for this was, but there was somebody who wrote the three-step car buying process, and this is no longer on the internet, but I dug up a archive.org link, which I'll put in the show notes, where they say previously,
Casey:
Pretty much the same thing I said.
Casey:
I mean, it's not exactly, but it's spiritually the same basic idea.
Casey:
And the three steps are determine the make and model of car you want.
Casey:
Write a bid letter, which basically means, all right, I'm going to send a letter to these dealers that says, I want this with this, this, this, this, and this options.
Casey:
And I would like your out the door price with tax title, you know, fees, taxes, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
And then you contact all your dealers and have them effectively negotiate with each other through you.
Casey:
And that is a lot of work and it takes a long time, but, uh, that's how I've done it the last several years.
Casey:
And you can see a more, uh, a longer writeup of this, uh, if you go through this archive.org link.
Casey:
So I wanted to call it to your attention for the gentleman whose name I don't know who wanted to buy a car like six months ago.
Casey:
And we're finally now getting around.
John:
So here we are.
John:
Someone also wrote in to tell us that there are people who do this for you.
John:
Oh, interesting.
John:
And, uh, and of, of course, because anything involving, uh,
John:
paying someone to do a thing for me watch out for the ones who are actually paid by the dealership because obviously they're going to steer you towards buying stuff from the dealership but apparently there are legitimate people who you pay a fairly large amount of money sometimes even a percentage of the cost of the car and they will essentially perform the exact process you just described although presumably a little bit more efficiently because they know all the dealers and are constantly talking to them or whatever and they're not just a stranger so if you really don't want to deal with it if you can find one of these people who will
John:
That is very true.
Casey:
they have effectively pre-negotiated on behalf of all their members.
Casey:
And if you say to a company, Hey, I'm buying under the Costco program, I think your options are limited, but allegedly they have pre-negotiated.
Casey:
So it's like, this is the price.
Casey:
That's the deal.
Casey:
And it's usually a decent deal, maybe not the best possible deal, but a decent deal with very little work involved.
Casey:
However, that being said, when we bought Aaron's Volvo, which is the last car that we bought that was applicable for this, uh, that made zero difference whatsoever.
Casey:
Now our dealer, our local Volvo dealer, the sales department in particular were trash and
Casey:
And it was one of those scenarios where I was very clear up front.
Casey:
Aaron was sitting next to me.
Casey:
This is her car.
Casey:
We're buying it for her.
Casey:
And she would ask a question and the gentleman, the salesman would then look at me to answer her question, which was super gross.
Casey:
And I hated it.
Casey:
It was real bad.
Casey:
And I could tell you all sorts of stories about this.
Casey:
But in theory, there are places where you can do this Costco thing and it will help.
Casey:
Marco, I have great news about your car.
Casey:
Rivian's new software update will help you avoid all the broken EV chargers, of which we know there are many.
Casey:
This is from The Verge.
Casey:
Rivian is pushing a new software update that will give its customers better insight into which EV chargers to visit and which to avoid.
Casey:
Rivian's solution is to use their vehicle fleet to gather data about broken chargers, which then get downranked in the company's software algorithm.
Casey:
Chargers are rated A to F. This is like an anti-Reddit, huh?
Casey:
What was the dig?
Casey:
It was the other one that predated Reddit.
Casey:
anyways rivian says every time one of our vehicles interact with the charger we have a number of data points which are uploaded to the cloud and that give us a very accurate understanding of the health of the session that vehicle is having so we get data related not only to the number of successful sessions but also how many trials did you make how was the payment what's the speed of the interaction what's the overall peak performance that you have within a session what's the thermal derating behavior and so on and so on so that's
Casey:
That's cool.
Casey:
That's good news.
Marco:
Yeah, this is great.
Marco:
I don't know if they're going to necessarily surface user comments and all.
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
But even simple things to know, like, hey, this one is timing out.
Marco:
And I guess this algorithm will include that.
Marco:
I guess that's what they mean by trials, number of trials.
Marco:
that I made because sometimes like you'll pull up to an Electrify America charger and the first bay you pull up to you plug in and it just won't connect for whatever reason it will time out or it will throw some weird error and then you have to like alright get out unplug back the car out pull into the next spot restart the whole thing over plug like this is the experience of modern Electrify America chargers and that has never happened to me at a Tesla charger the only thing that I've ever had happen negatively at a Tesla charger occasionally you get a slow one
Casey:
Oh, no.
Marco:
It would still be like 60 kilowatts.
Marco:
It would just be slower than 100, 120, 150, some of the higher speeds we can see these days.
Marco:
But that was the only problem I ever had at a Tesla charger.
Marco:
So once again, I continue to... First of all, I love my Rivian.
Marco:
Second of all, I love when I get to use Tesla chargers with it because they work better.
Marco:
And third of all, I still maintain that I think...
Marco:
Tesla owners are going to be very upset about this.
Marco:
Maybe Tesla maybe shouldn't have opened up their chargers, but there's a lot of arguments on both sides of that.
Marco:
But I definitely think that they're making everyone else's lives better with EVs except Tesla owners whose lives are being made worse by this change.
John:
Actually, one other bit of a follow-up I don't have the person to attribute this to, but someone told us that Tesla essentially had to do this if they wanted in on the...
John:
what is it called inflation reduction act whatever infrastructure federal funding yeah to get if you want in on that gravy train you essentially had to open up your chargers to everyone else they didn't necessarily have to propose their thing as a standard or whatever but uh many things aligned to make this essentially the only move that tesla could make because tesla wants that government money
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Joe Lyon writes with regards to reticle limits, and I'm going to nope right out of this because I don't even know what the heck is going on here.
Casey:
So, John, take it away.
John:
Sure.
John:
Reticle sizes, the physical glass slash quartz mask, are industry standards, so chip designs can be shared between foundries and fabs, and reticle designs can be put into different photolithography tools.
John:
In reality, ASML is the only supplier of EUV photo tools, so they more or less determine the reticle size.
John:
Any fab using ASML EUV tools will use the same reticle size and therefore have the same die size limit.
John:
So this was when we were talking about reticle limit and TSMC's reticle limit.
John:
TSMC's reticle limit is the same as everybody's reticle limit if they're using these extreme ultraviolet stuff, which they're using if they're doing stuff at like 3 nanometers.
John:
So anyway, EUV reticles are 104 millimeters by 132 millimeters, which can project a field size or die size on the wafer of 33 millimeters by 26 millimeters.
John:
That's where the 858 square millimeter max die size comes from.
John:
So that number we had in last week's episode was correct.
John:
That is the reticle limit for how big can a single exposure or single die thing on a wafer be.
John:
The answer is 858 square millimeters.
John:
Joe continues, any chip using modern EUV processes over that size has to be made from multiple physical dies with die-to-die interfaces or mounted on silicon interposers, etc.
John:
I think you can also do multiple exposures, but that gets even more expensive.
John:
Continuing, all of TSMC's N3 whatever lines are on standard EUV as are Intel's processes from 3D, 20A, and 18A.
John:
Intel has weird names for their processes.
John:
Because they're using Angstrom, so that's what the A is for.
John:
The upcoming N2 line will also be standard EUV.
John:
So N3 and N2, both EUV and EUV max reticle size is 858 square millimeters.
John:
After TSMC's N2 and Intel's 18A process, the plan is to move to high NA EUV.
John:
And the NA stands for numerical aperture.
John:
It's the measure of the ability of an optical system to collect and focus light.
John:
We've talked about this in the past, but it's good to remind everybody this is coming.
John:
Um, the N2 stuff, this high NA EUV will allow continued transistor shrinks.
John:
That's thus the N2, two nanometers instead of three, but at a huge cost, high NA EUV will use the same 120 by 132 millimeter reticle as a UV, but the max die size will be cut in half to 429 square millimeters.
John:
Um,
John:
So that's going to be big.
John:
Like I said, we've talked about this in past episodes.
John:
So just remind people, this is coming.
John:
Not in the N2 generation.
John:
N3 and N2, they'll still be 858.
John:
But after that, the max reticle size will be half.
John:
429 is, I think, smaller than the M3 Max.
John:
So you can't even fab an M3 Max as it is currently designed on the process that's going to come after N2.
John:
I don't know what they're going to call it or whatever.
John:
So this is out there in the future, and this is why we talked about it on the show in the past.
John:
An interview with Johnny Surugi where he said, talking about future Apple stuff in very vague ways, he said, quote, one of the things that is going to be important is packaging.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes to both that ATP episode and that clip from the interview.
John:
Why is packaging going to be important?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Apple will literally not be able to make max size chips or larger once this process comes, unless they cut them up into individual pieces and do chiplets or something like that.
John:
Or I suppose they could do multiple exposures as well.
John:
But I think when Johnny Surugi says packaging is important, I think that's what he's talking about.
John:
He's talking about not the N3 generation, not the N2 generation, but the one after that.
John:
Those chips are already being designed or have already been designed or in, you know, like...
John:
There's many, many year lead time in this.
John:
So the reason Johnny Cerugi is saying one of the things I think is going to be important is packaging is because he already knows about the chips that Apple is planning for this generation where the reticle size is cut in half.
John:
And I don't think Apple's going to just say, well, I guess we can't make any chips bigger than a pro.
John:
No, they're going to still make big chips, but they're going to make them out of a bunch of smaller chips.
John:
And that'll be fun to watch.
John:
Still doesn't quite answer the question about what the...
John:
you know m3 ultra is going to be is it just two m3 maxes what about the m4 there's a bunch of rumors this week uh i didn't really put them in the notes but just people have been talking about m4 stuff saying oh here are the rumors are all the m4 ones yeah there will be an m4 and the m4 will have low end chips medium end chips and high end chips uh the rumors aren't juicy they don't say okay but what are those chips is it are they going to be a max size chip are they going to stick two of them together to make an ultra like i think once we see the m3 results we'll know more about that
John:
Still doubt in the rumors whether there will be an M3 Ultra.
John:
Some people say, oh, well, let us skip the M3 generation for the Studio and the Mac Pro.
John:
And maybe the M4 will be out sooner than you think.
John:
I think there are rumors of the first M4 chip coming out before the end of the year.
John:
So lots of rumors swirling about this.
John:
But those are the M3 and the M4.
John:
Those are all still 3 nanometer.
John:
I think when we see what the hardware announcements are, WWC will tell us a lot more.
John:
But for now, know that the M4 is coming.
John:
And it's supposed to be really good at AI.
John:
There's a quote from Johnny Surugi in that interview as well saying, many years ago, we determined that AI would be important.
John:
And so obviously, all of Apple's chips going forward will have even more AI stuff in them.
John:
Not that they didn't already have stuff in them.
John:
Uh, so yeah, the M4 rumors are not exciting or concrete at this point, but it's exciting to see the number go up.
John:
Uh, and it will be interesting to see if Apple skips the M3 generation, the M3 marketing generation for the chips and its high end computers and jumps them right to M4 or something.
John:
I hope they don't because that would mean a much longer wait, but we'll see at WWDC.
John:
Indeed.
Casey:
What was the context for this next item?
John:
Robots thing.
John:
We talked about robots in the ATP Overtime, and I said I would love something that could hold my phone, and I mentioned the first product that we're going to talk about here.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
So there are a couple of Belkin iPhone mounts or phone holders, if you will, that exist that are specifically designed for use with a TV.
Casey:
And there's the $50 Belkin iPhone mount with MagSafe for Apple TV 4K, which you can sit either on top of your television or in front of it on like a mantle if you're a crazy person with a TV too high up like me or perhaps a TV stand or something like that.
Casey:
uh and then there's another one belkin auto tracking stand pro with doc kit and this is 180 which is quite a lot of money but hypothetically it will follow you around as you're walking around the room and it even has a little battery so if you're like a tiktoker or whatever you know you're doing instagram reels then you can bring this out in the field and have it track you as you walk around so uh that's again 180 bucks
John:
I think we had this in the notes ages ago.
John:
I'm not sure I made it into a show.
John:
Um, uh, the, the tracking stand works with doc kit, which is a framework that Apple introduced to, for this purpose, let's like third party camera moving thingies, uh, have an API that works with them.
John:
I assume it works with FaceTime, but I don't know that for a fact, but anyway, um,
John:
I really want the Belkin one because I'm always just precariously leaning my phone against my television.
John:
I do have a TV stand, but especially because the phones are not even with the camera bump on them and everything, and they're kind of slippery, even with a leather case.
John:
So I would like something to hold it like the Belkin stand is, but $50 for...
John:
an inert piece of plastic with a magnet it seems kind of pricey so i haven't bought one and then the auto tracking thing i totally forgot about but this is kind of what i was talking about i would love it if something could just point my camera at me but i think that doesn't change continuity camera continuity camera would still be using the wide angle lens and it would still be cropping out of it and i'm not sure that the belkin thing would change that uh but on the topic of apple making robots which we've now talked about
John:
on the show in at least two separate episodes.
John:
Uh, this thing, all it is is a thing that you, it's got a MagSafe thing that you stick your phone on and it like moves to, I guess, rotate and possibly tilt your camera.
John:
$180.
John:
So I would use that as a context for how expensive is it to make things that have electronics in them and move?
John:
This doesn't go anywhere.
John:
It doesn't vacuum your house.
John:
It doesn't clean your dishes.
John:
It doesn't do anything.
John:
It has no cameras.
John:
It has no sensors.
John:
It is literally a powered thing with a motor that moves your phone and it sits in one place.
John:
And it's $180.
Casey:
Well, I mean, you can bring it out, like I said.
Casey:
I take your point.
Casey:
Your point is still fair.
Casey:
But I mean, it is designed for use elsewhere.
Casey:
And so it doesn't need to be plugged in always, although presumably it's going to need to be plugged in most of the time.
John:
Yeah, the battery adds a little cost.
John:
But remember, this isn't even Apple.
John:
It's Belkin.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And we, we never really did get any good, uh, read on whether or not Apple like feeds Belkin designs.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Cause a lot of people theorized and I mean, it's tracks if you ask me that a lot of times Apple will be like, Hey, Hey, Hey Belkin, take this envelope.
Casey:
And, uh,
Casey:
see if there's anything interesting here.
Casey:
And then they end up making these like, you know, stands or holders or what have you.
Casey:
And there was one in particular, I can't remember what it was now, that was like very clearly an Apple design, but was made by Belkin.
Casey:
For the life of me, I can't remember what it was.
John:
One of the dongles.
John:
This Belkin thing, doesn't this Belkin thing look like a Google device to you?
John:
It looks kind of like the bottom of a Google Home.
Casey:
Yeah, it does.
Casey:
But nevertheless, this is cool.
Casey:
And I'd love to try one, but I am way too frugal.
Casey:
And I also don't do that many FaceTime calls on a TV.
Oh.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So I use them with the built-in mail app on my phone and my Mac.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
We can talk about a first look at Europe's alternative app stores.
Casey:
This actually posted, I think, before we recorded last week.
Casey:
We didn't have the time to get to it.
Casey:
This is on The Verge.
Casey:
Another potential roadblock to widespread third-party marketplace adoption is just how fiddly it is, with each store taking around a dozen screen interactions to install.
Casey:
It goes like this.
Casey:
You begin by clicking a browser-based link to load the alternative store.
Casey:
From there, you receive a pop-up informing you that your installation settings don't allow marketplaces from that developer.
Casey:
Then you head to settings to enable the marketplace.
Casey:
Then you return to your browser and click the download link again.
Casey:
Then you receive another prompt asking you to confirm the installation.
Casey:
Finally, you can open the store and browse the available apps.
Casey:
That is not exactly delightful.
Casey:
Not surprised at all.
John:
Yeah, this is something – this happens in the Mac too, and it's an annoying pattern, but the annoyance serves a function, so you can't really get rid of it.
John:
The Mac experience is you try to run some Mac app, and it's like, you need to give me full disk access or screen recording permission or some other thing that it needs to do its job, right?
Yeah.
John:
But you can't give it that permission from within the app.
John:
Because if you could, people would just throw up a dialogue.
John:
People would go, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
John:
If you could approve it from within the app by clicking a button, apps would trick you into doing it.
John:
So there always has to be a process that's like...
John:
that they'll tell you go to system preferences slash system settings and go to the screen and do this and do that and some apps on the mac went so far as to sort of automate that process they would like lead you through it wizard style and they would bring up system settings and they would make their own windows lined up alongside the window with like arrows pointing to the things you had to get like that was short-lived i think because uh system settings can change
John:
system preferences changes to system settings and apple moved everything around and i feel bad for the people who made these you know wizards to do that but it's because the user has to it's like when when someone calls you and you don't trust them or whatever hang up and like go to the the website that belongs to that company and find the number and call them back yourself
John:
So you know you're actually talking to the person you think you're talking to.
John:
Don't trust that the number they called you from is not spoofed or whatever.
John:
So you, as the user, have to go and do a thing.
John:
And all the app or alternative app store or whatever can do is say...
John:
you know or in this case the os saying oh you haven't allowed that developer to install third-party marketplaces you need to do that and users are like how do i do that i don't know how to do that go to system settings where in system settings can't you just do it for me can't you just send me a button that says okay approve yes and the answer is no they can't do that because if they did that if it was possible to do that at all every app would throw a thing in your face that says do you like puppies click yes and then you just approve the app you know
John:
And, oh, don't worry, AppReview will catch that.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
We know how many things get past AppReview.
John:
So, it is annoying and fiddly, and I'm sure Apple didn't really care about streamlining this much, because this is still more than one or two back and forths, but
John:
Some part of that fiddliness is essentially unavoidable to actually implement the security that isn't trivially exploitable.
John:
I think it's too much on the Mac.
John:
I think, you know, Jason Snell's talked about this a lot when he had to set up his new Mac and he just went into a rage about how many times he had to approve things.
John:
I think there should be a way to sort of do mass approvals or a better interface to approvals instead of the current way of digging in to find stuff and scrolling like this.
John:
This process can be approved, but you can never get rid of the part that is essentially the equivalent of the user hanging up and saying, whatever you say, I'm going to call now the number that I think is for Visa credit card, like the number on the back of my credit card, right?
John:
I'm going to call that myself.
John:
And if you've hacked me so bad that that goes to the wrong place, then you win.
Right.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So we'll see what happens with this.
Casey:
We talked about it, Mike and I, on not the upgrade that just dropped this week, but last week when I guessed it on upgrade.
Casey:
And I just I really feel like this is a nonstarter unless something really, really weird happens.
Casey:
And I think.
Casey:
Some dorks, like us, will enjoy doing emulators, which we'll get to actually in a second, or something along those lines.
Casey:
But for most people, I just don't expect that most people will bother unless Facebook pulls their app from the traditional app store in the EU and says, oh, you have to go to Facebook's app store now.
Casey:
In which case, that's different.
Casey:
But assuming it's just alternative app stores, like what it says on the tin, I just don't see people going through it.
John:
This is surmountable.
John:
If you think...
John:
The number of steps here isn't too hard.
John:
There's nothing in it that doesn't involve just you're just tapping things on your screen.
John:
You just people just need to be adequately motivated and things that can actually motivate them are like you mentioned, you know, some some must have app like Facebook or whatever doing this that would do it.
John:
Right.
John:
But even stuff like, you know, someone does a tick tock about some app that they saw and then someone else does a tick tock.
John:
It's like, oh, if you want this cool app, you do these six steps.
John:
Like, never underestimate how influential a fast tutorial video plus the FOMO of some cool app that someone found on an alternative app store doesn't take much for that to happen, right?
John:
You need something like that.
John:
You need something to make people do it.
John:
They're not going to casually do it on their own.
John:
But the things that could lead someone to install a third-party app store can be much smaller and more trivial than, oh, you have to go there to get Facebook now, which I don't think is going to happen.
Marco:
oh yeah i mean like so many people installed things like configuration profile just to get like different app icons on their phone and that's way scarier and yeah takes more steps and more fiddly than this is basically just going back and forth to return a web browser and settings yeah by the way guess what the app store cares about none of that yeah those are app store apps that doesn't matter yeah install a configuration profile to change the icons for your instagram and stuff yeah go ahead what could possibly go wrong to apple's credit they did provide apis for doing that eventually
John:
Not on Vision OS.
John:
Yeah, well, you know, maybe you'll be able to rearrange the icon someday.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
As an app developer, I can't allow a user.
John:
Yeah, you can't change your icon.
John:
Hey, on the Mac, there's API to change your icon, but no APIs for other Mac apps to get what the hell you change the icon to.
John:
The doc can show your icon, but nobody else.
Casey:
Not that that would be bothersome to somebody writing a window management app.
Marco:
There's a feedback filed against it.
Marco:
No, but for the App Store stuff, I think people will go through this when there's an app they want to use.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
It's not going to stop them.
Marco:
Going back to what John was saying earlier about the Mac with its security dialogues of the app can tell you or the system can tell you, go to system settings and do this, but it won't give you an easy way.
Marco:
I'm not sure I accept without comment that that's good for security.
Marco:
It seems like a modern Apple security practice is to make something a real pain in the butt and make it really suck and hope that people will just not want to do it or will do it carefully because it sucks.
John:
I have to say, though, the sucking part of the Apple side of it is not necessary for the security.
John:
The necessary part is that you have to go do something.
John:
The app doesn't have an opportunity to dark pattern you into doing it like the app can't put up a dog.
John:
That's the necessary part for security.
John:
The fact that when you go to do it, it sucks because system settings is Byzantine and it's a pain to do.
John:
That's on Apple and that's not a necessary part of the security.
John:
that's just the way apple did it system settings is not easy to navigate the big scrolling list doesn't like sort by most recently requested like there are ways that apple could do this better and they don't but that's not part of the security the security part is the app does not have an opportunity to trick you and that's the essential part that you essentially have to you know what is it the devry tech remember i can't call you you have to make the first call you have to go make the move so i would say apple could fix a lot of the suckiness by not being so bad at making system settings
Marco:
yeah i actually i agree with that yeah you're right because like i don't mind like okay there's one place you have to go do this that's okay but it just really sucks and and apple doesn't always follow this themselves like how often you get a pop up on your phone saying like you got to go into your password and system settings and you tap that and it brings you to a screen where you need to enter your password uh that's terrible for security but but that's you know that's doing the same thing with your apple id password
Marco:
There's all sorts of paper cuts around this area.
Marco:
What I hope is that Apple is motivated to improve that user experience side of the Mac.
Marco:
Because you're right, the Mac definitely gets the worst of it.
Marco:
But we don't see any evidence that they care.
Marco:
It seems like, as Jason Snell wrote in that article, it seems like the Mac security team...
Marco:
always wins over any kind of remote usability concern.
Marco:
And that the Mac team in general seems to not really have the resources behind it to make bigger changes to make all this stuff suck less.
John:
Yeah, especially like in the mass case on the Mac of like you just set up a new Mac to do the things that would make that easier actually require the security people to do a bunch of stuff.
John:
So, for example, having a thing where like, look, I already gave this app permission and I've set up a new Mac and I want that permission to essentially transfer over.
John:
Doing that in a secure way is difficult and complicated.
John:
The UI team can't do that on their own.
John:
That's the security team would have to say.
John:
You have to say like, hey, security team, you have to come up with a trusted, secure way to transfer permissions from one Mac to another.
John:
based on, oh, you allowed it on this Mac, and on this Mac I say, hey, do you want this Mac?
John:
Do you want all the apps on this new Mac to have the same permissions as they did on the old Mac?
John:
And the user just says yes, and then security happens, and that happens in some way, right?
John:
And so that's part of the problem is,
John:
to get the better user experience, you also need buy-in from the security people, and they have to do a bunch of work.
John:
And then on top of that is, even with no help from the security team, the UI team could surely make this a hell of a lot better.
John:
Like I said, how about just a different way to sort the app so I don't have to scroll through that giant list?
John:
How about default sorting them by the app that most recently asked for something?
John:
Like, imagine that.
John:
So I'm just constantly scrolling through that list, which I convince myself is alphabetical until I scroll, and it's like the alphabet has started over again, and it's like, is this ASCII-abetical, and the capital letters come first?
John:
What the hell?
Casey:
yep it's amazing all right so definitely not because of any uh legal issues or regulations or anything like that absolutely had nothing to do with the fact that apple is now allowing the app store the app store to offer retro game emulators definitely had nothing to do with any pressure from anywhere i love this i love this so much this is it's so okay here here's how this goes
Marco:
Apple is now all of a sudden forced in the EU to offer sideloading.
Marco:
What's a popular reason that people often sideload in a way that wouldn't really matter at all if they allowed it in the App Store?
Marco:
Game emulators.
Marco:
So isn't it interesting that right as they need to force open their sideloading thing in a pretty big market in the world, they suddenly have a change of heart on allowing gaming emulators on the app store everywhere.
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
Which, hmm, somebody might think that might deflate a lot of the demand for sideloading and therefore retain control for the App Store.
Marco:
What a surprise.
Marco:
Imagine that.
Marco:
Maybe there's a larger lesson here.
Marco:
Maybe allowing things in the App Store that are otherwise harmless is better for Apple's continued long-term control of the platforms.
Casey:
whoa, whoa, let's not get completely out of bounds here.
John:
I think Apple doesn't think it's harmless.
John:
One of the reasons they stopped this was like, hey, there's no in-app purchase in those games.
John:
We don't get paid for those games.
John:
We don't get to approve those games.
John:
As far as they're concerned, it's like, look, you want to put Space Invaders on the iPhone, we better get our cut, right?
John:
If you ask them, I think they would tell you that's why.
John:
We don't want to have essentially app stores within app stores.
John:
We don't want apps that run other apps like...
John:
That was their main objection to this.
John:
Now, I agree with you.
John:
That's not actually a problem.
John:
Apple is being stupid about it, but that's what they think.
John:
And so, yeah, they're being forced to this.
John:
And this is even more hilarious because what's his name?
John:
Riley tested.
John:
Yep.
John:
So he is the alt store guy.
John:
Alt store is a thing that existed for a while to let you install.
John:
non-Apple-approved apps on your iPhone, but it was complicated and used... What did it use?
John:
It used a test flight system or something like that?
John:
I forget.
John:
I forget the details, too.
John:
Anyway, it was technically complicated and weird, but anyway, Alt Store is a name that you might have heard.
John:
It is, you know, for all the time before this whole EU thing, you're like, is there another way you can get apps onto the app instead of the App Store?
John:
You might have heard of Cydia, and you might have heard of Alt Store, and these are all kind of like...
John:
You know skirting apples rules and technically complicated or whatever.
John:
All right, but Riley's got his start by making an emulator a retro game emulator for iOS that then was not a lot on the App Store and then you know
John:
got on the alt store it was just his thing uh and is funded through patreon and so now he's making alt store a third party app store using the apple dma third party app store thing or whatever and his the reason he's doing this so he can put his retro game emulator
John:
on his alt store using Apple's official thing.
John:
So, like, this Apple opening the store to retro game emulators is lightning focused on the one dude who ran alt store and is now going to put alt store in the EU, you know, alternative marketplace thing, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
for his one emulator it's not like they said well here's all the world of things that could possibly be in a third-party store and we better compete with them it's like i know this one guy and alt star by the way has been in waiting for approval i think for like a month or something i forget what his complaint was but there's it's been a slow roll for them him to get a thing like they know he's doing this so this is this rule is targeted on one person's alt star to say we're going to preempt you which is
John:
ridiculous and i mean i feel like he should be honored that they feel like he's such a threat to putting a emulator where they're just like come on back come on back to the app store you don't have to have that third-party store even though we made you jump through all these hoops and do all this stuff never mind you can have on the app store it'll be fine
John:
Which is not because his thing is funded through Patreon and you still can't do it on the App Store, so he's still doing Alt-Star, but whatever.
John:
I don't know that it's aimed at this one person, but it is strangely coincidental.
Marco:
I don't know if it's aimed at that one person, although honestly that is exactly the kind of pettiness that App Store leadership would actually do.
Marco:
Uh, but no, I, I think it's more strategic.
Marco:
I think it's like, it's literally just like, this is a reason why a lot of people might sideload.
Marco:
Let's deflate the air in that balloon because it turns out like this is some low hanging fruit.
Marco:
There really is not any good reason why Apple couldn't have emulators on the app store.
Marco:
It really doesn't harm them at all.
Marco:
It doesn't really, as long as they keep it within the parameters they're keeping it, which is
Marco:
retro systems and kind of bring your own ROMs and you assert they're okay.
Marco:
As long as they do all that, then they're not really in legal trouble with it.
Marco:
But yet there is all this demand for it.
Marco:
So this is a clear instance where they can just allow these because there really wasn't that good a reason to disallow them in the first place.
Marco:
So they're just allowing them now because it is high benefit to the App Store and to Apple strategically and very, very low risk and cost compared to other ways they could open up to deflate demand for sideloading.
Marco:
I think other ways would have larger downsides in costs.
Marco:
It wouldn't be as clear-cut.
Marco:
So, for instance, if they...
Marco:
If for some reason big crypto apps that don't fit what they currently allow in the app store become big in some kind of sideloading thing, which, I mean, is anybody still doing crypto?
Marco:
But if they are, maybe that would be a thing.
Marco:
But there's bigger downsides there.
Marco:
If they would start allowing porn apps, they've never allowed porn apps in the app store.
Marco:
That's probably obviously going to be a big thing in sideloading contexts, I'm sure.
Yeah.
Marco:
There's obviously bigger downsides to that.
Marco:
If they want to keep things a certain way in the app store, keep certain standards, stay out of certain legal problems there.
Marco:
But with emulators, there really was not much reason not to allow them.
Marco:
So I think there might be some element of personal spite there, but I think that's probably a small component, if any.
Marco:
The much bigger thing is this is just pure strategy.
Marco:
Right as they're forced to offer sideloading, remove a big reason why anybody would need to do that.
Marco:
So that would be, hey, come back to the App Store, back inside the walled garden.
Marco:
Look, it's nice here.
Marco:
Here's an emulator.
Marco:
Go nuts, kid.
John:
And you described that a couple times as like deflating the need to go to a third-party App Store.
John:
The other word for that is competition.
John:
hey our competitors are doing the thing that customers want if we want to get those customers back let's do the thing that customers want to imagine that competition when there was no competition they could just say nope not allowed and you can't get it apps from any place else so no problem and now suddenly you can get apps from somewhere else and it's like oh well what what do those other people have that we don't have that we can add to your point like they're probably not going to add porn and stuff but like i
John:
guess we'll add retro games someone says no don't allow that we can't get in app purchases from space invaders and like but we have to do it because competition and so i like this development we should but let's let's read uh the the details of this because the devil is in the details as always
Casey:
The app review guidelines read as follows.
Casey:
or excuse me, apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically HTML5 mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plugins.
Casey:
Additionally, retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games.
Casey:
Now, of course, James Thompson, friend of the show, immediately quipped, well, I'm looking forward to an official Apple definition of the word retro.
John:
This is where the devil starts in the details.
John:
Because remember, this is the App Store.
John:
And your apps go through AppReview.
John:
And AppReview is capricious.
John:
All right.
John:
what is a retro game console emulator app?
John:
What does it mean to, quote, comply with all applicable laws?
John:
App review will tell you.
John:
You'll find out, I guess.
John:
Right?
John:
And that was the question when this story first came out.
John:
People were like, but, like, what does this mean?
John:
Can I put up a Nintendo emulator?
John:
Or will Apple, like, so, what I immediately thought of was Casey's trying to send screenshots for Call Sheet.
John:
And Apple's like, hey, before we approve this app, can you tell us that you have the rights to use this movie poster?
John:
And it's like, all right, well, so is Apple, if you send it a Nintendo emulator, is Apple going to go, hey, before we post your Nintendo emulator, can you tell me that you have the rights to ship a Nintendo emulator?
John:
Because we've heard of Nintendo.
Casey:
Yes.
John:
The same way that they're asking Casey if he has the rights to these known Hollywood movies.
John:
Like, this is the thing with App Review.
Yeah.
John:
You can send up an app sometimes called like, you know, I think someone did like a Mario app or something like that.
John:
Sail through AppReview and they're like, hey, AppReview doesn't deal with copyright.
John:
We just wait for someone to complain.
John:
But, you know, it's not our job to vet all your copyrighted material.
John:
But apparently with Casey's app, that reviewer was like, you know what?
John:
It's my job to vet copyrighted material.
John:
So how is it going to work when they send a game emulator?
John:
They're going to say the disclaimer is Apple are basically saying,
John:
hey you just have to follow all the laws someone complains to us we're gonna say hey we told them they have to follow the laws don't look at us just to directly sue the developer don't sue us we said they have to comply with all laws and they didn't do it so they violated the agreement or whatever but when your app goes to app review is the app reviewer we're gonna say hey everything in your app are you allowed to do all that stuff are you allowed to have a nintendo emulator are you allowed to like i see you have like an icon that looks like an n64 are you allowed to have that icon do you have the rights to this like
John:
Or are they just going to be like, fine, go on through.
John:
I don't care.
John:
And we didn't know the answer to that question.
John:
And I think we continue to not know the answer to that question because we just have one or two data points.
John:
But even just in the guidelines, retro game console emulator apps, that's multiple words in there.
John:
It's not just retro games, retro PC games.
John:
That's not a console.
John:
So I think if you're doing PC games, you can't do this.
John:
And what does retro mean?
John:
Last generation?
John:
The generation before that?
John:
Is it a number of years?
John:
Is the Switch retro because it's so damn old?
Yeah.
John:
Who knows?
John:
You'll find out.
John:
Submit your app and find out.
Marco:
I mean, I think it's probably fairly clear.
Marco:
First of all, yes, they will absolutely make you assert that you own things or prove that you own things that are shown in your screenshots and that come with the app.
John:
Well, hey, look at the IGBA emulator that we're going to get to in a second.
John:
I don't think they did that in that app at all.
Marco:
I'm sure scrutiny will change and be inconsistently applied like all other apps.
John:
Who knows?
John:
Because we just have the one data point, IGBA, which is a Game Boy Advance emulator.
John:
If you look at it, it's filled with like Nintendo proprietary looking stuff right down to like, you know, the UI looks like the Game Boy Advance or whatever.
John:
Did someone have to assert that they own all that stuff or did the reviewer just be like, yeah, it's fine?
Casey:
Yeah, they wasn't my reviewer, so it's cool.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, I think, you know, if I was making an emulator for the App Store, I would assume that I can't use trademarks.
Marco:
So, you know, stay away from, like, especially stay away from the word Nintendo.
Marco:
Like, just stay away from it.
Marco:
Or the word Game Boy.
Marco:
What about GBA?
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
Yeah, I think acronyms might be easier to get away with, but certainly I would stay away from as many trademark names as possible.
Marco:
I would obviously not include any ROMs with it, or I would include only open source enthusiast ROMs, which probably exists for most of these systems.
Marco:
For almost all these old systems, there are enthusiast communities who make new ROMs that were never actually made on cartridges.
John:
um so like you could ship this with like only freely available roms like they exist um so you could do that or ship it empty and have people bring their own well you should if you ship it empty and you get that one reviewer who's like your app does nothing rejected then you've got a problem because you know those reviewers exist right like if your app doesn't do anything you know when you launch it you're like oh well people have to supply their own roms like sorry rejected your app does nothing
Marco:
Anyway, so I think the path is fairly clear there.
Marco:
When they first made this rule, we all thought they're not going to allow arbitrary ROMs to be loaded into apps.
Marco:
They would allow somebody like Nintendo themselves to make an app that includes their own emulated old games.
Marco:
But it turns out they've given a couple of press comments here and there, including there was one in MacRumorse today, I believe.
John:
um that basically where apple has given statements basically saying like it will be okay for you to like bring roms to it from the web so that that's allowed yeah we've got that quote down on the show in the notes here's here's what mac rumor said apple confirmed to us that emulators on the app store are permitted to load roms download from the downloaded from the web so long as the app is emulating retro console games only again what is a retro console game let your uh let your heart guide you yeah
Marco:
So I think ultimately this is... We're going to hear about occasional pain-in-the-butt stories about AppReview where somebody's going to have to say, no, I don't own Mario, so I can't show it in the screenshots.
Marco:
Fine.
Marco:
And the whole thing's going to be very wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
Marco:
Yes, of course you're going to load it up with Mario games.
Marco:
That's what we're going to do in practice, and it will be fine.
Marco:
But it will be just like any other app, like CallSheet, like Overcast, like Instapaper.
Marco:
It'll be like any other app that has the ability to show third-party content,
Marco:
Some of which somebody might have rights over and some of which somebody might not care.
Marco:
It's going to have that same kind of trade-off of risk versus reward and possible occasional app store snags mostly involving metadata and screenshots.
Marco:
And I think it'll be fine.
Casey:
So speaking of app review problems, our friend Ben McCarthy, they're about to release a Pokedex app, like a Pokemon database sort of thing.
Casey:
And I don't think there's any marketing site for this, but I'll put something in the show notes that you can look at at least briefly.
Casey:
Nevertheless, I bet you anything that when we look at the App Store screenshots for Ketchup, which is the
Casey:
I think it'll end up being little to no Pokemon in the app, or it'll be like, I don't know, outlines or something like that.
Casey:
Because if you get too close to the actual Pokemon, then you'll end up running a foul of app review.
Casey:
And I bet you...
Casey:
any amount of money that Ben has had to do some really heavy lifting to try to show this app in the App Store without using any of Nintendo's copyrightable assets.
Casey:
And I'm sure it's going to be a real pain.
John:
So we've had one example of emulators first, and it's been an unfortunate one.
John:
So this is the Verge story.
John:
The first approved Apple emulators for the iPhone have arrived, and one of them was the aforementioned IGBA, which is a Game Boy Advance emulator.
John:
Unfortunately, it was essentially a...
John:
clone of rally tested its first uh retro game emulator which was open source and it was essentially forked and someone forked it and made a ios game out of it and uploaded it to the app store and apparently didn't follow the open source license uh and shortly after that story was posted the thing arrived uh there was another story that says here's why apple removed the first game boy emulator from the app store
John:
And according to 925Mac, Apple said that it removed IGBA from the App Store for violating two App Store guidelines, copyright section 5.2 and spam section 4.3.
John:
IGBA's functionality was originally approved in compliance with the App Store's guidelines.
John:
The app was then removed, however, when Apple learned that it was a clone of GBA for iOS, a violation of copyright and spam App Store guidelines.
John:
So this...
John:
explanation is we proved it first and they realized we made a mistake and the mistake was not that this retro game thing is not allowed but two things one there's the copyright thing and i think that's just like failure to comply with an open source license uh and two is that it was a clone of a previously existing but rejected app a gba for ios and i don't i guess the spam guidelines are like hey you can't just like if we reject an app you can't just upload another version of it or something so i don't actually understand this rejection at all but the bottom line is
John:
uh retro game emulator appeared and then was quickly pulled down and uh for what it's worth riley said that uh and attitude uh he said i just want to reiterate that i'm not mad at the developer everyone makes mistakes and they even reached out to me via email to personally apologize for the mess so no hard feelings so it's not a big deal that the person uploaded a thing that was a clone and not compliant or whatever
John:
But the fact is, it appeared and disappeared.
John:
And it was rejected by Apple, but not for using Nintendo's copyrighted material or loading ROMs from the web or anything like that for other App Store guideline-related reasons.
John:
And as I said before, Nintendo says you are allowed to download ROMs from the web.
John:
On this topic, though, there are other parties that are able to stop the retro...
John:
dream from happening on all our phones and ipads and so on and so forth i guess just phones no ipads too because it's global for the app store um nintendo recently uh nuked from orbit the yuzu switch emulator uh and that's something that hadn't been happening too often like it was like a game console developers were like uh
John:
turned a blind eye to emulators of their old platforms, which always seemed weird to me because in the olden days, it's like, well, fine, they don't care.
John:
They just care about their latest console.
John:
They don't care that you're emulating an NES and some open source thing that nobody cares about.
John:
But over the past decade or so, all the big console makers have been making money off their own old games, often using emulators and hiring emulator developers into their own companies so that you can pay for and play NES games on your Switch or whatever, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
So it's not like these companies no longer care about retro consoles.
John:
They do care.
John:
Every person who downloads for free an NES emulator and downloads an illegal NES ROM of Mario and plays it is a customer that is less likely to pay whatever it costs to get that in Nintendo's own official store where you can buy old NES games.
John:
But this Nintendo thing with Yuzu, I was asking before if the Switch was retro.
John:
The Switch is a really old console.
John:
It hasn't been updated in a while.
John:
The OLED one came out.
John:
People thought that might have been a revised Switch, but it was just a better screen.
John:
Anyway, it's been out for a long time, and it was slow when it came out.
John:
From hardware perspective, it is retro.
John:
But from Nintendo's perspective, it is their current console.
John:
And Nintendo didn't like many things about the Yuzu emulator, one of which, obviously, that it runs Switch games that people illegally download.
John:
But the second one is, I think, supposedly, the people involved with the Yuzu emulator might have somehow been involved with leaking the Tears of the Kingdom game before it was actually officially released.
John:
So people were playing it on their Steam decks before it was even out on the Switch.
John:
And Nintendo was just like, enough.
John:
And so lawyers descended.
John:
And as you can imagine, Nintendo has a pretty slam dunk case against an emulator whose entire purpose and community and website and tutorials and everything is so clearly aimed at letting you figure out how to essentially play your illegally acquired ROMs.
John:
And they had a court case.
John:
And I believe the court case was settled.
John:
And the settlement was Yuzu loses everything.
John:
Nintendo gets everything.
John:
Bye-bye, Yuzu.
John:
and yuzu had to pay 2.4 million dollars and you know shuttered its entire company and nintendo continues to wander the web finding people and things who are doing things it doesn't like like it's getting a bunch of discord server shut down because yuzu's open source there's like forks of yuzu and nintendo's getting their discords shut down so they no longer have a place to uh hang out with each other and work on their emulators so nintendo is awake and angry and
John:
And I'm kind of not surprised, like I said, because Nintendo, like many other console makers, is making money off, quote unquote, retro game consoles.
John:
So yes, Apple may allow your retro thing up on the App Store.
John:
But if Apple sees that, not Apple, Nintendo sees that that thing is essentially being used for piracy, I can imagine Nintendo will ask Apple, hey, we think this app violates our intellectual property, yada, yada, yada.
John:
And then Apple will take it down or Apple will direct them to you and you'll take it down yourself because you don't have a bazillion dollars to pay for lawyers to fight Nintendo.
John:
So, and the same is true, by the way, of alternative app stores.
John:
If you have an emulator, you put it up on alternative app store and Nintendo comes a knocking either at the alternative app store or comes knocking on your door.
John:
Guess what?
John:
You're going to fold like a house of cards just like Yuzu did.
John:
And you're not going to have $2.4 million to pay them to settle a lawsuit.
John:
So, yeah.
John:
It's a dangerous world out there for console emulation, especially since like in the case of the Switch, it's so retro that the Switch emulations like in Yuzu play Switch games better than the Switch because any reasonably powerful PC or probably even iPad or whatever can play Switch games at a higher frame rate and higher resolution than the Switch itself can because the Switch hardware is so anemic and old and
John:
uh and so not only is it not retro or you know the switch is their current console but it's it's so retro that you can play it faster in emulation than you can on the actual switch so it actually gives you a superior game experience superior fidelity than an actual switch and partially nintendo is to blame for that but really nintendo is not nintendo is angry and they are awake and i think it's going to really put a damper on everyone's fun with this whole retro game thing
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
I mean, I'm sure something will show up.
Casey:
And I'm glad that Apple's finally doing, I was going to say what's right.
Casey:
I think that's a bit dramatic.
Casey:
I think it's good that they're finally embracing things that aren't cut and dry, perfect fits for Apple.
Casey:
And again, I think it's competition that's caused it.
Casey:
And I'm here for it.
Casey:
Like, I want more of this.
Casey:
So I don't know what specifically, but I just want more of this.
Casey:
So please and thank you.
John:
Yeah, and this is an example, just to reiterate, where there was the EU DMA thing that's forcing Apple to do a thing, and Apple's response was to change the rules for the whole world in the App Store.
John:
So we actually benefit from it in this case.
John:
We don't get the alternative App Stores like the EU folks do, but the retro game rule is not just for the EU.
John:
So I think that is what Apple should be doing.
John:
You would think that it annoys Apple to have a fragmented ecosystem where the rules are different in the EU in significant ways that, like, impact the OS and the user experience.
John:
And I'm sure Apple doesn't like that.
John:
But in every case where Apple can bring itself to make a decision for the whole world, they should because it's just you don't want to fragment it even further.
John:
And I'm glad they managed to convince themselves that this would not be the end of the world to allow retro game console emulators.
John:
But not retro PC emulators.
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Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And Jan Wedekind writes, how does John manage where new tabs spawn in Safari with so many open browser windows?
Casey:
It drives me bananas in that it always opens in the last active window and it's cumbersome having to manually move them around.
Casey:
Any tips?
John:
Well, it is cumbersome.
John:
Two ways I manage this.
John:
One is the not great way, but practically speaking, this happens sometimes.
John:
You click on a link, it opens, you know, where it's going to open.
John:
Safari has a bunch of rules about where it's going to open new windows and new tabs based on your settings, based on what the front row's window was, yada, yada, yada.
John:
Whatever Safari picks.
John:
it's not that big a deal that if it picked the wrong place just yank out that tab put it where you want it put it in the window you want it put it in its own separate window that's the thing you can do the second thing which i do a surprising amount is don't click links right click them copy link location switch to safari make new window paste in the url you can do most of this from the keyboard um and then you can decide where it goes you can put the tab where you want it to appear and put paste the url into the location bar and hit return and i know this probably sounds cumbersome but like
John:
As a career web developer, I've spent a lot of time in the address bar, let's say, and other people never even touch it.
John:
In fact, Apple, I think correctly, de-emphasized it many, many years ago to the point where they don't even show the full URL anymore.
John:
I think people just think of that as the Google search box and ignore it when it has any other text in it.
John:
But as a web developer, I spend a lot of time in there.
John:
And so copying and pasting things into the address bar of browsers is how I spend half of my day.
John:
And that's a weird way to work for most people.
John:
Practically speaking, that is one way that I essentially determine where things are going to open.
John:
It's because I'm inverting the process.
John:
I am not...
John:
Clicking in URL now in the OS to dispatch and the app to choose or whatever I'm grabbing a URL as a text string and I'm that I'm going to the browser that I want to go and just remember running two of them all the time and Finding the window or tab where I want it to be or making a new window or whatever and paste in the URL and hitting return So that is the very unsatisfying answer, but that's how I do it
Casey:
Pedro Fernandez writes, what's your take on using case-sensitive file system formatting for macOS?
Casey:
I had a bug that was driving me crazy because it was working perfectly in macOS but failing in Linux.
Casey:
A folder was named Dataset with capital D, capital S. What is that, Pascal case?
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
That's Pascal, right?
John:
Sure.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
And I was accessing it with the string Dataset with capital D and lowercase s. It worked on macOS but not on Linux.
Casey:
I recall once formatting macOS using case-sensitive and having many problems.
Casey:
I honestly don't even remember what I do.
Casey:
I...
Casey:
feel like I do case sensitive?
Casey:
You do not.
Casey:
Okay, I guess I don't.
Marco:
Yeah, because the case sensitive is not the default.
Marco:
And before we let John tell us the right answer, I will butt in and say case sensitive is wrong in most cases.
Marco:
That is a poor choice in most cases.
Marco:
I mean, obviously there's a lot of complexity once you get into various other types of Unicode normalization and things like that.
Marco:
There's a lot of complexity there.
Marco:
And
Marco:
I think it creates better outcomes for users and it avoids more problems and potential bugs and even sometimes security problems if the file system normalizes names as much as possible when doing duplicate detection.
Marco:
So let you enter whatever case you want –
Marco:
and then display whatever you entered back to the user, but prevent the creation of another file in the same folder with a name that matches it in any kind of normalized form.
Marco:
So, for instance, capital A versus lowercase a in the name.
Marco:
Don't allow that to exist in the same directory.
Marco:
But even other things, like there's this whole mechanism in place for character normalization of letters that are beyond just the English Roman alphabet.
Marco:
So, for instance, an E with an accent over it.
Marco:
Should a word with an accent at E be unique from a file system perspective from that same word with the English E with no accent?
Marco:
They're both E's, but they have different forms, sort of.
Marco:
Or certain letters are normalized in different ways.
Marco:
There's that big capital B-looking symbol in German that kind of translates to SS, I think.
Marco:
so there's all sorts of like different in different alphabets in different languages there's different characters that kind of can normalize down to other characters and there's a question of like how should file systems handle that should they treat those as two separate spellings and therefore allow two files to exist with you know one each of those variants or not and I think in general
Marco:
it is better to coalesce those down for duplicate detection so that no similarly translating characters are allowed to coexist as two different file names.
Casey:
All right, John, what's the right answer?
John:
So if you are listening to this and you don't recall what you picked, you took the defaults, and the default is not case-sensitive.
John:
So that's the answer to what most people are doing.
John:
There's a long history behind this, a long, mostly sad history.
John:
In the HFS Plus slash HFS days, maybe this was just HFS Plus, but anyway, in the classic macOS days,
John:
um what the file system would do was it would perform unicode normalization so you'd you'd give it a file name and it would be like that's great and all but i'm going to normalize that and unicode normalization is essentially picking there's a bunch of different normalized forms you can look up in the wikipedia page well in case you can find a link for it um
John:
But to give an example, like I was just the word cafe with the E with a little accent over it, right?
John:
That little E with the accent can be written at least two different ways.
John:
One of them is there is a Unicode code point for E with a little accent over it.
John:
But another way is you can write the Unicode code point for E and then the one for little accent combining character and
John:
And they both make an E with an accent over it.
John:
One of them is a single thing.
John:
One of them is E plus accent.
John:
They combine, right?
John:
There's these combining characters in Unicode.
John:
So they look exactly the same.
John:
They are the same comparison size, but the bytes on disk are different for both of those things.
John:
So if you did a blind byte comparison, they're both UTF-8.
John:
Like, they're not different in codings.
John:
They're both UTF-8.
John:
But if you went byte by byte and you compared cafe to cafe, they look the same.
John:
They are the same character.
John:
They're, like...
John:
they're the same but bite by bite like nope these are different right and uh what hfs plus did i believe it did uh one of the normalized forms why it normalized everything so whatever you fed it it would do maybe it's like normal form d or something i forget what the names are um
John:
And that, you know, and setting aside the case sensitivity, that Unicode normalization made some computer nerds angry, like Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux.
John:
He was very angry about the fact that HFS Plus did that because he's like, how dare the file system change the bytes that I gave it for the file name?
John:
Because it violated what he thought was the contract, which is, hey, file system, here's a bunch of bytes that is the file name.
John:
And then later, the code would go...
John:
look for that file in the file system based on those bytes and it wouldn't find it because the file system had changed the byte sequence to do whatever normalized form like one normalized form is combine everything the other normalized form is like uh have everything decomposed and you wouldn't get back the same bytes that you put in he's like this is a violation of the contract when i read the file name back from that directory i better see the bytes that i put in there otherwise it's insanity and he was super angry about that you can find his email on the internet where he was angry about that
John:
So when APFS came along, APFS made a different choice.
John:
Maybe not because Linus was angry about it, but whatever.
John:
APFS, the original version of APFS said, you give me some bytes, I'll store some bytes, whatever.
John:
I'll just, whatever bytes you give me, I'm going to store.
John:
That's that.
John:
And when you read the directory and you look at the list of file names, I'm giving you back the bytes that you gave me.
John:
And as soon as APFS came out, in fact, before it was released, at least on the Mac anyway, I filed a bug against Apple that said, hey, I can make two files named cafe in the same directory in the finder.
John:
One of them is the E with the accent as one little thing.
John:
And one of them is the E with the combining accent character.
John:
But in the file system, they literally look the same.
John:
And here they are side by side with each other in the same directory.
John:
To Marco's point, there's not a capitalization difference or whatever.
John:
They literally look the same.
John:
And it's because the file system was totally hands off.
John:
And it was like, I am not.
John:
You give me bytes.
John:
I store bytes.
John:
I'm not involved in this at all.
John:
I just I just put the bytes in.
John:
And when you read the directory, I give you the bytes back out.
John:
Kind of like what Linus wanted.
John:
But of course, from user interface perspective, that's not great.
John:
Eventually, future versions of APFS changed to do, I think this is current.
John:
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the current strategy is this.
John:
APFS still takes the bytes that you gave it and gives them back to you just the way you gave it to it.
John:
But the thing that looks in the directory to see if a file by that name already exists, that mechanism normalizes everything.
John:
So the comparison is normalized.
John:
They normalize before they do the comparison of both sides.
John:
But it will always give you the bytes out that you put in.
John:
So if you try to make a second file called CAFE with a different normalization, it won't let you because it'll say, sorry, file exists, right?
John:
It will clash.
John:
That seems like the best approach.
John:
Yeah, well, it is certainly better than the previous two that we said.
John:
But I believe this is what everything currently does.
John:
And case sensitivity, I assume, I don't know how case sensitivity is implemented, but I assume it's in the same type of thing where the...
John:
The case insensitivity comes in the checking whether that file already exists or not.
John:
But when you put the file in the file system, the case is there.
John:
So it is case preserving.
John:
It is encoding preserving, but it is not encoding sensitive.
John:
And if you choose case insensitive, it is not case sensitive.
John:
Here's my take on this.
John:
I think that the file system should be case sensitive.
John:
on comparisons and i think that higher levels of the os should implement case insensitivity for places where it matters but it doesn't matter what i think because we have decades of mac os history where the file system by default has not been case sensitive and the plain fact is that the mac apps sometimes will misbehave on a case sensitive file system shouldn't be that way people shouldn't be careless in their right their programs but
John:
reality is what it is i would say the answer there's a long-winded answer this is do not format your file system as case sensitive uh especially your boot disk on the on mac os and expect to have a problem-free experience don't do it it's it's not it's the legacy of software for the mac that is going to thwart you and as much as you may want to have a case sensitive file system for your own purposes don't do it now if you want one
John:
Make an external disk with an external file system.
John:
Make a disk image.
John:
I have this on every Mac for my entire existence.
John:
I've had a case-sensitive file system disk image that I would launch and, you know, mount and CD into to do stuff.
John:
And why?
John:
Well, you may be angered slash surprised to learn that one of the file name extensions for C++ source files in Unix, the file name extension is capital C. How do you feel about that?
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
Lowercase C is a C file.
John:
Capital C is a C++ file.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
That's not true.
John:
It's CPP.
John:
It's C with two plus characters.
John:
I will tell you, as an old school Unix person, 1MT5.
John:
extensions for Z++ files was in the past capital C. And why might that come up?
John:
Well, you download some open source thing and you untar it and you try to build it and it doesn't work.
John:
You're like, why the hell doesn't it work?
John:
And it's because when it untarred, either a foo dot capital C overrode a foo dot lowercase C or vice versa.
John:
And now you're missing one of the files.
John:
That's why you need a case sensitive.
John:
So the Unix, the culture of Unix and all Unix software is to have case sensitive file systems by default.
John:
But the culture of Mac OS is not.
John:
So there's tons of Mac software out there where in the source code, someone copy and pasted like a folder name or a file name that's part of their application.
John:
that has the wrong case and it's been working for 30 years because mac file systems are case insensitive by default so the sad fact is we are essentially all stuck with case insensitive file systems which i agree that that should be the policy i just kind of wish the file system at the lowest level was case sensitive and then just the higher levels implemented that but that's not the world we live in so pedro case insensitive and keep around a second disk or a disk image that is case sensitive for when you need it
Casey:
Matt McCurdy writes, in the style of throw money at the problem for the best product, I'm curious to know what brand of ceiling fan Marco landed on.
Casey:
Where does one shop for fans?
Casey:
I'm trying to avoid the big box store generic brands for fear of a low quality and noisy product.
Casey:
And then I can only seem to find styles that are stuck in the 70s or hyper modern like they belong in space.
Casey:
So what'd you do, Marco?
Marco:
I get space fans.
Marco:
So the short version of this is it doesn't matter in my experience that much in terms of like quality.
Marco:
I've had good fans.
Marco:
I've had crap fans.
Marco:
I've had fans that I picked out myself and put in new.
Marco:
I've had fans that came with a place that I was renting or an old house that I bought or whatever.
Marco:
It's not that different because fans aren't that hard to make, it turns out.
Marco:
So buy fans that you like the look and other specs of, fans that fit your rooms, that fit your style.
Marco:
For the most part, it's probably better off fashion-wise for you not to notice your fan very much because they're not that attractive, even the nice ones.
Marco:
So all that being said, I suggest get whatever fits fans
Marco:
The ones I get are, I think, the nice ones.
Marco:
I get the Fanimation brand.
Marco:
It is fine.
Marco:
I've occasionally had some that got loose and rattled and it had to be tightened, just like any other brand.
Marco:
Most of them have been fine for years, just like any other brand.
Marco:
The only weird thing that I don't like about their fans is that they seem to mostly or all now come with those dumb custom remotes to control them instead of just having three wires.
Marco:
Now, they can be adapted and converted to the three-wire system, but that requires you to have three-wire wiring that goes from the switch to the fan.
Marco:
um and so in some ways it's better that they have an option to not do that like if you use their their little smart remotes you can just have regular two wire wiring that was never planning for a fan on a certain circuit or switch and you can make it work and it'll be fine um but uh so i currently in the new house we got a bunch of fanimation fans and they all have these dumb little remotes so i gotta deal with that now it's
Marco:
fanimation the name of an anime animation oh that's funimation sorry i don't know i feel like there's a trade possible trade bar conflict can you explain the three wire thing i don't quite understand what you're getting out there many fans have built-in lights and so the idea is um if you have a switch on the wall for the fan um if you only have one set of wires that runs from the switch to the fan fan and the light on the same time
Marco:
Yeah, if it has the fan and the light.
Marco:
So you have multiple options there.
Marco:
Sometimes the light switch is kind of like the main switch, but then the fan will have two pull chains, one for the light, one for the fan speed.
Marco:
That's one option to do it.
Marco:
Or the nicer fans, you can control them without pulling chains, but then you need basically a third wire, one that goes from the switch to the fan and one that goes from the switch to the fan's light.
Marco:
And that way you can control them separately.
John:
Do you have lights on your fans?
Marco:
I do, only because most good fans come with lights.
Marco:
I find the actual light on the fan usually to be really harsh and terrible.
Marco:
They also usually now these days are custom LED fixtures, as in you cannot replace the bulb.
Marco:
And they say, oh, they'll last forever, and they don't.
Casey:
Yep.
And so...
Marco:
So eventually the LED in it will start going bad and will start flickering or will just outright die.
Marco:
And then you just don't have a light in your fan anymore unless you go through the hassle of replacing the custom LED thing in there.
Marco:
So for the most part, no is the answer.
John:
As a non-fan person, I would think that what I would want is a fan without a light because it would be lower profile and sleek.
John:
But that's just me thinking about headroom, I guess.
Marco:
in practice the like the led lights only add like one inch of height it's because because they're not bulbs and they're the stupid custom things right that's why there's all yeah like if you you're right like if you want to minimize uh you know the the protrusion from the ceiling yeah don't get one with a light but yeah with with these modern terrible custom led things the difference is pretty small
Casey:
As a final note, and I think I've told this story before, I don't recall the specifics.
Casey:
Please, please, please, please, please talk to an electrician or do your own research.
Casey:
But we bought space looking fans.
Casey:
I couldn't tell you what brand they were for the screened in porch.
Casey:
And they came with like the RF boxes, just like you described.
Casey:
But certain kinds of fans, I want to say it's AC fans, and then there's others that have a conversion into DC.
Casey:
Again, double check my math on this.
Casey:
I'm probably getting this all wrong.
Casey:
But certain kinds of fans will work with, say, the former sponsor, but one of my favorite things in the world, the Lutron Caseta fan switches.
Casey:
And so what we did was, or what the electricians did was they wired it up to the RF receiver, whatever.
Casey:
And then I took one of them and was like, well, let me see what happens.
Casey:
And sure enough, it's been this way for two, three years now.
Casey:
We can use them with the Caseta things, and it's working just fine.
Casey:
And I vastly prefer that, even though the Caseta, especially the early Caseta stuff, wasn't the most beautiful stuff in the world, but it's extraordinarily reliable, as Marco and I have talked about many times.
Casey:
And it's so much better looking than the RF boxes that were mammoth and stuck out of the wall and so on and so forth.
Casey:
So do your own research.
Casey:
But it is possible in certain circumstances, especially if you have a fan that does not have a light in it like those are.
Casey:
You might be able to use Caseta Switches in a pretty straightforward way.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Fastmail.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Members get a bunch of perks, including ATP Overtime, a bonus segment every week.
Marco:
This week on Overtime, we're catching up with some old friends.
Marco:
We are talking about the reviews of the Humane AI pin and also that Automatic has acquired Beeper.
Marco:
So this will be interesting.
Marco:
Thank you so much to everyone for listening and we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Mastodon, 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:
They did it.
Marco:
So, Casey, you just brought up Lutron Caseta and the switches.
Marco:
In the new house, I've had the electricians put in Lutron's new Diva smart switches.
Casey:
Oh, those are the ones that are way prettier, right?
Marco:
Oh, my God, they're great.
Marco:
So, okay, huge caveat.
Marco:
First of all, yes, they were a former sponsor.
Marco:
I don't know if they're going to sponsor again.
Marco:
Second of all, I've had them in my house for like two weeks.
Marco:
But, oh, my God, they look so nice.
Marco:
So one of the challenges of Lutron's dimmers before is that it was kind of like BMW's controls.
Marco:
They were fine once you learned them, but when you had a guest over, like, how do I turn on the lights?
Marco:
The Lutron switch controls in the past were a little bit unintuitive.
Marco:
The Diva switch looks just like a big Decora-style, like the big square paddle switch, you know, the up and down.
Marco:
And then it happens to have one of those little slidey dimming things on the side.
Marco:
But the up and down is not stateful.
Marco:
So it's always rocked in the middle.
Marco:
And you tap it up and it rocks for a second.
Marco:
You tap it, but then you release your hand and it just goes back to the center.
Marco:
So they can be smart controlled, but still have the look and feel of regular light switches.
Marco:
And then other huge benefit of that...
Marco:
I know, nerd out there, I bet many of you, like me, when you have a three-way switch in your house, there is a certain alignment that you consider correct.
Marco:
Correct.
Casey:
Preach, brother.
John:
This is my life in my house.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Oh, my gosh.
Casey:
Preach.
Casey:
And this is going to cause a marital issue between Aaron and me.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
John:
Welcome to New England, where every switch is three-way.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Well, this is the problem, because our main kitchen light has a switch at the entryway from the garage and a switch where the telephone would have been when the house was built, you know, like the main area of the kitchen, like halfway through the kitchen, or well, like on the other end of the kitchen, really, but right next to the main hallway downstairs.
Casey:
And Aaron loves to use
Casey:
the switch by the garage door and i prefer to use the switch that's on the other side and we basically just fight each other constantly cannot stand oh it drives me bananas you need to have like a a summit a switch summit where you can come to some kind of a joint resolution yep yep yep no and i would actually listeners i'm so sorry i railroaded you marco but this is triggered me
Casey:
But listeners, it does not have to be a smart switch.
Casey:
It does not have to be a smart switch.
Casey:
If you have a paddle style or whatever this is called, I think Decora is what you had said earlier, Marco.
Casey:
I think that's the right name for it.
Marco:
Yeah, Decora is the large shape, like where it's like a big rectangular cutout instead of like a little tiny stick in the middle.
Marco:
It's a seesaw.
Marco:
It's a big seesaw.
Marco:
It's an 80s seesaw.
Casey:
Yeah, a big, big, big seesaw.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
If you have a state-free Decora switch, and I don't need this to be a smart switch, but based on what you just told me about the Diva, I might be spending a lot of money because these are not cheap.
Casey:
I might be spending money on these just so I never have to see these stupid rockers upside down ever again.
Casey:
so but if you know of a dumb equivalent you know a non home kit just a freaking switch please please find a way write me tweet me send me a letter shoot a carrier pigeon my way do something and let me know because i would i would love to have one of these well and i think it has to be somewhat smart to make this work yeah if it's not smart you're just you're just making yourself angry like the switches won't appear to be wrong but you'll never know whether you need to hit up or down to make the light go on or
John:
That's fair, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Whereas the way the smart divas work is they sell a smart regular switch and then they sell accessory switches that if you put them on a three-way circuit with it, you can just tap either one of them up or down and it will turn the light on or off.
Marco:
exactly the way it should be so both switches are visually always centered and whichever one you're near you can tap it up to turn it on and tap it down and turn it off so there is no wrong configuration of a three-way circuit it is glory is life-changing like that's how much like because i've always hated that
Marco:
With all three?
Casey:
Could not agree more.
John:
I'm pretty good about forcing things to be the correct way in our house.
Casey:
You?
John:
No.
John:
Let me say, we've been living in this house for over 20 years now, 23, 24.
John:
We've been living in this house a long time, okay?
John:
And still, like when my parents come to visit or something, they find like a switch that I didn't even I forgot existed.
John:
And they will flip that one.
John:
It will reverse all the switches in the kitchen.
John:
Right.
John:
Because that was the three woman that we never touch.
John:
It's like, what the hell happened in here?
John:
And I have to go and fix them all.
John:
Like, you'll know you're I think we should.
John:
Let me just explain this briefly so people know what we're talking about.
John:
A three way switch is let's just give a simple example.
John:
There's one light in the middle of the room and the room has two switches on the wall.
John:
right i know this is sounds silly because they're in the same room but maybe there's two entrances to the room yeah two entrances to the room and each entrance has a switch on the wall right and a three-way switch means that if you want that light uh one of the lights one of the switches is going to be when you push the switch up the light goes on push the switch goes down down light goes on the other switch is going to be reversed when the switch is down the light is on and when the switch is up the light is off right and what we're saying is if you live in a house for a while you come to decide look
John:
The switch by this door is the one that's going to work as you expect.
John:
The switch by this door means when you push it up, the light goes on and push it down, the light goes off.
John:
And that means you never touch ever the switch by the other door.
John:
And often people employ something like a piece of tape over that switch to indicate this switch is not a switch.
John:
Never touch it.
John:
Because by preserving the state of this switch, like tape it into the up or down position or whatever it needs to be, that makes the one true switch work in a sane manner.
John:
And that's what we're all trying to preserve in our house.
Casey:
That's actually slightly different than my situation.
Casey:
With the kitchen switch, it is...
Casey:
I forget the terminology.
Casey:
I did all the switches in the house during COVID.
Casey:
It was one of my COVID projects, and I've lost all the terminology.
Casey:
But with the kitchen switch, I'm pretty sure there's only two physical switches.
Casey:
I think it is still considered a three-way switch, you know, in terms of the wiring and all that.
Marco:
If there is more than one physical switch, it's like a plus one situation.
Marco:
That's what I was saying.
Marco:
It's two wall switches, one line.
Marco:
Yeah, if there's three switches, it's a four-way.
Casey:
But the thing of it is, maybe I somehow screwed up the wiring, but it's worked in our favor because you can have it such that both of them are off,
Casey:
And the light is off.
Casey:
Then you turn either one of them on and the light goes on.
Casey:
But the problem is if one of them is on and you want to turn the light off from the other switch, that's when it gets all backwards.
Casey:
But my point is there is a good state when only one is up and the light is on like that.
Casey:
That is the standard state.
Casey:
The problem comes where Aaron will turn on the one that I don't want her to turn on and I want to turn on the one that she doesn't want to turn on.
John:
yeah you but you don't want them to be in essentially what you consider to be invalid states like it basically comes down to the point of like you say if i could just erase one of these switches and simplify it i would but instead i just prefer you not to use everyone else in the house not to use them in our weird new england house it's convenient because a lot of those switches that i don't know exist like they're behind appliances or like they're just never used by anyone who lives here until someone visits and somehow is looking for a light switch and they find it behind the toaster and they flip it and then like every light is reversed and it's it's madness
Marco:
Yeah, and modern electrical codes, not even that recently, I find three-way switches are much, much, much more common than they used to be because the intent of modern electrical codes is basically like you should be able to find a light switch when you're entering a dark room.
Marco:
So, okay, what if you have a big hallway?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
There's certain conventions or some of them might even be coded rules of like within a certain amount of distance of a bedroom door, you want to be able to come out your bedroom door and hit a switch to turn on the hall light.
Marco:
Well, if it's a long hallway, you might have multiple bedroom doors that need their own switches near them somewhere.
Marco:
So you might have two, maybe even three switches down this long hallway.
Casey:
Or four.
Casey:
Four.
Casey:
On two different floors.
Casey:
Because our upstairs is like a big L. I'm a little oversimplifying slightly.
Casey:
But our upstairs is a big L. There's one bedroom that's the office where I'm sitting right now that's kind of off by its lonesome.
Casey:
And there's a hall switch by that bedroom.
Casey:
Then there's a hall switch outside Declan's bedroom, which is on one extreme end of the vertical bar, if you will.
Casey:
There's one outside of our bedroom.
Casey:
And then at the bottom of the stairs, there's number four, baby.
Casey:
And oh my gosh, if anyone even breathes on any of these switches, the whole thing is ruined.
Casey:
Everything is upside down.
Marco:
Yeah, because again, because you want switches on the outside of every bedroom for the hallway.
Marco:
You want switches on top and bottom of staircases.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Any kind of common room, like a living room or kitchen, you want a switch at every entrance.
Marco:
So if it's like a long room with like a door on each side to go to other rooms, you got to have one on both sides.
Marco:
So modern construction has tons of multi-way switches.
Marco:
And yeah, let me just tell you, the Lutron Diva smart switch with the accessory switch, life changing.
Casey:
That is good to know.
John:
One of the benefits of living in New England is my house is so old that it predates all these things.
John:
I said that like my dining room has one power outlet in it, not one double socket power outlet, literally one power outlet in the entire room.
John:
And the actual modern code is like you need to have a power outlet every like four and a half feet or whatever.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
one one power outlet it's a single so you know one pig nose like that's it yeah yeah and i believe it was not grounded until i fixed oh of course oh my great googly moogly oh my word like yeah so i don't have this problem and you got the new england thing if people have been in new england house where like the switches are on the outside of room so someone goes in a bathroom closes the door and realize they're in darkness and they can't find the switch guess what it's not in there it's outside the bathroom
John:
That's the worst.
John:
So the good thing is we didn't have all these codes, but the one place that apparently in the 20s, whenever my house was made or whatever, that they did decide to do is what Mark just said, top and bottom of the stairs.
John:
We have top and the bottom of the stairs lights, which is someone, maybe it was done later in the 80s, but either way, we have top and bottom three-way switch for this stairs light, which makes sense from a safety perspective.
John:
And that is the only one that my family uses consistently.
John:
And I don't know if they realize this, but I fix it every single day.
John:
because he's the last one to come upstairs last one I put it to the known good position at the end of every single day it does eventually get messed up but I essentially throughout the day try to preserve the one true position which in case you're wondering the switch on the bottom is the real one when the switch on the bottom is up the light should be on on the switch on the bottom of the stairs is down light should be off
John:
No one else in my family respects that, and it is the one switch that I must fight with.
John:
But every other switch in the house, there is peace, and there is one good configuration.
John:
Top and bottom of the stairs, there's nothing I can do.
John:
I don't even mention it to anyone in my family because I know they're not going to do it.
John:
I just fix it every day.
John:
That's the service I provide.