Can’t Render, Fog It
John:
Have you have either of you ever had an SD card go bad?
John:
Hmm.
John:
Don't think so.
John:
I think what happens you either the either the capacity becomes so low that they become useless to you or you lose them.
John:
I think those are the two failure modes for me.
Marco:
fair i actually had one go bad for i think the first time and it's it's a good one it's like a sandisk extreme pro you know it's like one of the really good fairly expensive ones and it it is it actually went bad like it's just producing write errors in any camera that tries to write to it like my i'm like shaken to my core like i always heard this was a possibility but like i've never seen it happen like i'm questioning everything now is the sky blue
John:
I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often because they are, you know, so inexpensive in the grand scheme of things in terms of how many bits they hold.
John:
Right.
John:
And they're small and flimsy and have those exposed contacts.
John:
But, you know, I guess.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
You know, I think the only failure I've had, which JJ in the chat has said the same thing, one where the plastic around the contacts broke and then that made it like super dodgy to continue to use because it was super duper like structurally compromised.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I've had that happen.
Casey:
I don't think in terms of what you're talking about, Marco, where it's just read or write errors, I can't recall that ever happening.
Casey:
Although I will say that there is a special place in hell for both the USB-A designers and the person who designed the write-protect switch on SD cards.
Casey:
Because I have only ever found one device in my entire life that I think can actually, into which I can insert an SD card without tripping that switch, and that is my MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Actually, so the M1 was the same way.
Casey:
So the M1 and the M3 MacBook Pros, I can successfully insert an SD card into that without tripping the switch.
John:
That's because it sticks out when you stick it in those, right?
John:
It doesn't actually go... No, not the... The Switch doesn't, though, because the Switch is near the front of the card.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
The card absolutely does, but the Switch does not, like Marco said.
Casey:
But I tell you what, every other freaking device I've ever... Well, that's not fair, like not the cameras in my life, but like the readers in my life, like my beloved Caldigit TS4, that every single freaking time I put one in, it trips the thing...
Casey:
Oh, it's awful.
John:
I've never tripped that Switch.
John:
I even thought it was where the floppy disk was.
John:
It just goes to show.
John:
That's why I said it sticks out.
John:
I thought the Switch was the other part.
John:
I've never tripped it.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't think I ever have either.
Marco:
No, you are a unicorn.
Marco:
I do have a problem, though, with SD cards where it's kind of like micro-USB ports where I have to put it in three different times to figure out which direction it goes.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I have a mnemonic for my cameras to remember which way the little notch goes.
John:
You know, like this one side at the end.
John:
Because at least it is...
John:
visually asymmetrical, even though slot wise, you can put it in both ways, but yeah, that's annoying.
Casey:
We have some excellent news.
Casey:
It is that time of year.
Casey:
The ATP store is back, baby.
Casey:
It's WWDC time and it is back.
Casey:
We've got all sorts of stuff.
Casey:
We got old stuff.
Casey:
We got new stuff.
Casey:
We got yellow stuff.
Casey:
We got blue stuff, all sorts of different stuff that we can talk about.
Casey:
Now, John, I'm happy to do a nickel tour, but would you rather do it or you want to just interject?
John:
Let me go through the store products.
John:
So yeah, as he said, this is the WWDC sale, which you may be thinking it's April.
John:
WWDC is not until June.
John:
Well, you know, it takes a long time to have the sale and then to take the orders and then to make the shirts.
John:
And as always, we try to get products to people in time to go to WWDC.
John:
Now, so very few people get to go to WWDC in person these days.
John:
As it stands right now, none of us are going to be there.
John:
But we love to see photos of people from WWDC.
John:
And if there's someone in that photo wearing one of our shirts, that's just wonderful.
John:
So if you order now, you may, may get your merchandise in time to attend WWDC.
John:
So we get it earlier and earlier every year.
John:
Maybe we'll start doing it in January sometime.
John:
Anyway, here are the products we have.
John:
So our first new shirt is called ATP Windows.
John:
No, not the Microsoft kind.
John:
The me kind.
John:
If you watched our recent member special that had a video version where you got to see me try to explain how I use Windows on my Mac, we thought we'd have a shirt sort of in that theme.
John:
i'm not sure the design entirely captures the uh the the uh profound beauty that is my window management technique all right i think you're looking for a different word there yeah yeah i did i did my best uh it's it's got windows on it anyway um so we have this shirt in two different uh versions one has the full color atp logo on it and it also has color window widgets and
John:
And the other one, I guess, is the graphite mode, where it is monochrome and a little bit cheaper, and everything is a single color, I think.
John:
So we've got ATP Windows and ATP Windows monochrome.
Marco:
And it is, by the way, it's amazing.
Marco:
When we do shirts with colors, when you make shirts, when they're being screen printed, you generally pay per color.
Marco:
And so every additional color you have on a shirt, either the price goes up or your profit goes down, or both.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
But we don't want to make, you know, a crappy shirt and our logo happens to be a rainbow.
John:
Not great planning on our part.
Marco:
We get killed on shirt costs.
Marco:
Yeah, we do.
Marco:
And the funny thing about the Windows shirt is like, yeah, even if we gave it a monochrome logo, you have to have those traffic light colors in the window widget to make it look right.
Marco:
So, yes, we do have a monochrome version of the shirt, but the color version looks so much better.
Marco:
And there's a reason why it's going to be more expensive.
Marco:
Yep.
John:
So same as it ever was.
John:
Although for both of these shirts, something is true that's true of the other products as well.
John:
We are trying to offer a large variety of things.
John:
We keep saying shirts and yes, you can buy a T-shirt, but now you can buy a long sleeve T-shirt if you don't want a short sleeve one and a sweatshirt and in some cases a tank top.
John:
So just because you're thinking, oh, I don't want a t-shirt or I already have a bunch of t-shirts, maybe you want a long sleeve one.
John:
Maybe you want a sweatshirt for the warmer weather.
John:
Maybe you want a tank top for the hot summer weather.
John:
So take a look.
John:
So the ATP Windows one comes in mostly dark colors to fit with the multicolor logo because the multicolor logo clashes with lots of different shirt colors.
John:
And then the monochrome one comes in a huge variety of colors because it's just white ink and then it has all sorts of different shirt colors.
John:
The second new shirt we have this year
John:
is inspired by Marco's nostalgic eBay hunting for Palm devices.
John:
And it is the ATP graffiti shirt.
John:
It is the ATP logo written in Palm's graffiti handwriting system.
John:
In particular, the little instruction sheet they would give you to teach you how to use graffiti.
John:
For younger people who don't know, it was a way of writing with a stylus on a little writing area.
John:
And you would draw characters that look mostly like the Roman alphabet.
Marco:
but a little bit modified so that the computer had an easier time telling what the characters are yeah in particular every character was exactly one stroke so like every time the pen went down and then moved around and then went up that was one character so that made it with the hardware at the time that made it much much easier for the you know basic computers of that time to recognize individual letters as opposed to what the newton tried to do which was write however you want to write and we'll try to figure it out and we won't be able to
Marco:
Uh, so that's, that's one of the reasons why Palm like really succeeded and took off is that they, they forced the user to adopt a different style of writing, uh, in exchange for it working really well.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the way they would tell you in the little instruction guide thing is they would have like a little dot where you're supposed to put your pen down or put your stylus down and then you'd see where the stroke goes.
John:
So in the shirt, you'll see lines with a little like lollipop circle.
John:
That's where you're supposed to start the line and then you ended where the line ends because they're all one stroke.
John:
One of the most fun characters I always thought was the way they had you do a T. You can imagine if you try to do a T without lifting your stylus, how are you going to do that?
John:
It was basically like a rotated L and that's great.
John:
It's in our logo.
John:
So we've got our little slashes representing the rainbow stripes and we've got ATP.
John:
So it's the ATP graffiti shirt slash long sleeve shirt slash sweatshirt slash tank top.
Marco:
By the way, so excluding symbols, what are your favorite graffiti characters?
Marco:
For me, it's got to be probably a tie between the four and the K.
Casey:
Oh, golly.
Casey:
I don't even remember.
Casey:
The K was very good.
Casey:
I'm looking at the alphabet now.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So the four, you just do like, you know, like the way little kids write a four where it has an open top, you like the, you know, like the little like down to the right and then a big line down, you just skip the big line down.
Marco:
So it's just like, it looks almost like the opposite of the enter character on a keyboard.
Marco:
It's just like an arrow going down to the right and that's it.
Marco:
And then the K is, it's as if you're drawing a capital letter K without the big straight stick down.
Marco:
So you skip the straight stick down and you just do a big whoop-loopy thing on the other side.
John:
Yeah, my two favorites are right.
John:
Well, I would pick A and T, surprisingly.
John:
I like the upside on V for the A. I like that the T is like a rotated L. And I would probably also pick K because that's a fun one.
Marco:
When Palm Devices came out, before I had one, and I was just learning about them and researching them, I thought this was the coolest thing in the world.
Marco:
I would write handwritten notes in graffiti just because I thought it looked like the future.
Marco:
It looked so cool.
John:
No, the Newton was the future.
John:
I remember the first time I think I've told a story.
Marco:
I don't think that played out, John.
John:
Yeah, I don't think that was the future.
John:
The company that made it actually did pretty well in handhelds.
Casey:
Yeah, but it had nothing to do with the Newton.
John:
Pretty sure they killed it pretty quickly once the new leader came in who made the company succeed.
John:
The spirit of the Newton lives on.
John:
When I first saw Newton in like a computer store for the first time.
John:
And I picked it up because I'd seen like what I'd seen.
John:
I'd read in Apple magazines about the Newton.
John:
I saw it in real life and probably in a college computer store when I was going on college tours for my sister.
John:
And so I immediately picked it up, took the pen, and I wrote like, I don't know what I wrote.
John:
It might have been Hello World, but probably not.
John:
I wrote something, but I wrote it in cursive.
John:
Like, you know, because I knew how to write cursive then.
John:
And it translated it perfectly.
John:
I'm like, this machine is magic.
John:
and then you know and more or less never did that again but the first impression was like how i mean think of this like in the pre palm days you had this device that was in your hand and you could write cursive and it would figure out what you wrote in my cursive handwriting was amazing i still have a couple of old ones in the attic but yeah before it's time of course you do all right uh next product is uh we have these are all blasts from the past now uh the atp performance shirt which we had on sale ages ago it is well casey you described this one because this is your baby
Casey:
Yeah, so it's in the spirit of Under Armour.
Casey:
If memory serves, it's the Nike equivalent of Under Armour.
Casey:
But this is the sort of thing where if you have it on, first of all, it's fairly lightweight.
Marco:
It's Adidas, by the way.
Casey:
Oh, sorry.
Casey:
I thought it was Nike, but you're probably right.
Casey:
No, you know, the Polos are Nike.
Casey:
That's what I'm thinking of.
Casey:
It is Adidas.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
Anyways, one way or another, when you get super duper sweaty, if you're working out or whatever...
Casey:
Or you're just listening to our dulcet tones.
Casey:
One way or another, if you get super sweaty, if you try to yank this shirt off of you, unlike, you know, a cotton shirt or whatever, it won't just stay suction cup to your body.
Casey:
It will actually come off of you, which is really nice.
Casey:
And so it is 100% my preferred workout shirt.
Casey:
I actually am wearing one right now because I worked out this afternoon and I should have looked at my left side.
Casey:
left sleeve where there is an adidas logo plain as day thank you marco uh anyway so i really really really like these as a workout shirt uh again it's not literally under armor as stated but it's spiritually the same idea so really enjoy these and i believe these are fairly or several different colors but t-shirt only yep t-shirt only but the new colors this year i think are uh navy gray and blue i think or maybe it was just in red before anyway a bunch of new colors red and blue were previous i don't think we had anything but those
John:
Yep.
John:
So the next returning shirt, I like to have my classic shirts come back.
John:
This time it's coming back so I can buy some for my children because they like the shirt and they're annoyed that we haven't sold it in like four years.
John:
Actually can't be four years really, but they have the older version of the shirt.
John:
So this is ATP Monochrome Pro Max 2019.
John:
So we sold a shirt that had the side profile of a bunch of Pro Max shirts.
John:
uh many many years ago and then we updated it after the 2019 mac pro came out to stick the 2019 mac pro at the end of the line next to the trash can and that is this shirt it's not the one with wheels in general when we do something with wheels that's like a one-time only thing so treasure your wheels shirts because those probably aren't coming back but it is a bunch of pro max it is a monochrome shirt it comes in black and white uh short sleeve and long sleeve and i will be buying this for my kids and hopefully enough other people will buy it that they will print the order and my kids will get replacements for their shirt
John:
They like it because it's not so, like, rainbow-y colored and, like, I don't know.
John:
I think it's less embarrassing for them.
John:
It does say Accidental Tech Podcast, like, spelled out underneath it.
Casey:
It has a bunch of computers on it.
John:
Well, people don't know that they're computers.
John:
They just think it's an interesting design.
Marco:
I think people recognize those as computers.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, if it only had like the trash can, you know, maybe they wouldn't recognize that.
Marco:
But I think the rest look identifiably enough like computer towers that they figure it out.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Well, I mean, I think maybe the classic Mac, but the ones that are towers in the side view, you had to be a pretty big nerd to even pick out that those are supposed to be side views of tower computers, I think.
John:
yeah either way it has six tower computers and the word podcast on it so i think it's a pretty nerdy shirt and a little trash can all right uh next one is our uh usual atp six color shirts once again the colors there's more than six of them refer to the color of the shirt it's just a monochrome atp logo on lots of different colorful shirts uh these are good and cheaper than the other ones because it's just one color of ink and you can get them in long sleeve and tank and sweater and all that good stuff
John:
all right and then we have our classic atp logo shirt with way too many colors on it and even that one has changes here now you can get a long sleeve version of that shirt and i think also a tank top version of that shirt um so that's the our classic shirt we've got the hoodie no different versions of this the hoodie is the hoodie the hoodie is great my kids also both have the hoodie uh thankfully they haven't lost or destroyed them yet so i don't need to buy them another one but if they did lose or destroy them i would get them another one it's a really good hoodie
John:
uh this is another casey special we're nearing the end here uh the atp polo which casey loves um this is a nike shirt and even the polo comes in new colors this year i think where we have like gray and navy and black not very exciting new colors but remember it's got the full color embroidered atp logo on it so again the rainbow colors and logo tend to clash if you have a shirt that's a different color so they're kind of sticking to neutral colors it works with navy and black and gray um
John:
Uh, and then the final blast from the past, the ATP hat, a baseball hat, uh, in, in new colors because everything's in new colors and the new color is I think Navy to go along with the gray.
John:
Uh, we haven't sold this in years.
John:
Uh, so if you want a baseball hat with a full color embroidered ATP logo on top of it, now you can get one.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And then bringing up the rear, the very final product.
John:
Would you believe we still have like a dozen pint glasses left over from our last sale last year?
John:
Please, somebody buy this dozen.
John:
I have to bother myself just to get them out of inventory.
John:
Well, 12 pint glasses.
John:
We can do it.
John:
ah i guess maybe i'll just buy a handful and then we'll be down to single digits but yeah a few pint glasses are left so there you have it full line of stuff again uh even if we're not at wwc we would love to see pictures of people who are lucky enough to attend maybe wearing one of these shirts or an older atp shirt whatever
John:
um and of course if you are an atp member uh don't forget to use your promo code it is available on your member page you go to atp.fm slash member and right at the top of that page you will see a section that says atp store discount and we'll have a little code and you can copy it and paste it into the thing but this year we're trying something new if you are logged in to atp.fm like if you can go to your member page and see your membership account in your email that means you're logged in we know who you are if you are logged into atp.fm or if you log in to atp.fm to see your member page
John:
and then you go to the store page and click through on any of these products we will attempt to stick your discount code into your this is new cart for yes into your cart for you if it doesn't work just copy and paste it like the old ways always work but we are trying because what we're trying to avoid is a situation where people oh i forgot to copy and paste my discount code uh and then we have to give them the discount retroactively and it's a big hassle and everything right so
John:
try to remember to copy and paste the code.
John:
But if you don't, it should auto-populate.
John:
You'll be able to tell.
John:
It'll show when you're in the cart, when you do the checkout.
John:
If you see the promo code area, if there's something already filled in for you, that's because we got it by you being logged in.
John:
So again, you can go to atp.fm, log into your thing, go to the store page, and then click through on any of the products, and we will try to put the discount code in your thing.
John:
And I guess, bearing the lead here, how do you get all this stuff?
John:
ATP.FM slash store.
John:
That's where all this stuff is.
John:
That's our landing page.
John:
ATP.FM slash store.
John:
If you go there and you are logged into your member account and click through on any product, your discount code will be used.
John:
And if you aren't a member and want to join for one month to get a 15% discount, you can do so at ATP.FM slash join.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Just a couple of quick notes.
Casey:
First of all, this is still Cotton Bureau behind the scenes.
Casey:
So for Europeans, we genuinely are very sorry, but it is expensive.
Casey:
If it's not for you, if you don't want to buy this time, that's totally fine.
Casey:
It would also make us feel a little better if you did join at atp.fm.
Casey:
We don't have to do that either, but we get it.
Casey:
It's expensive.
Casey:
I understand.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
We've been laying into Cotton Bureau constantly to ask them to open up a European office, and they've told us
Casey:
maybe one day.
Casey:
So today is not that day.
John:
Although one option, since we are on WWDC season, I know this is very rare, but it has happened in the past.
John:
Sometimes if you are going to be attending, if you are living outside the US and you're going to be attending WWDC in person, lucky you, and you know somebody else who lives in the US who's also going to be at WWDC, have them order it and then just meet up at WWDC.
John:
Like have them order it and ship it to themselves in the US with US shipping and then just meet up at WWDC and have them give you your order and then just take it back with you when you fly home.
Marco:
Well, and we wouldn't want to encourage our listeners to commit tax fraud, so check your local laws.
Marco:
But everyone does that.
John:
I don't think they're going to be prosecuted for bringing her on one T-shirt.
Marco:
Hey, Europe's been pretty aggressive recently.
Casey:
Either way, definitely do what you think is best and what you think is right.
Casey:
But one way or another, this is my favorite part.
Casey:
You have until the 28th of April, Sunday, the 28th of April, ATP time.
Casey:
Here's the moment where you're driving or you're walking or you're somehow listening to us.
Casey:
And what you're going to do is you're going to use your turn signal because you're not an animal if you're driving.
Casey:
Or you're just going to move yourself to the right-hand side or whatever of the walkway that you're on.
Casey:
Pull over, if you will, and you'll go to atp.fm.store, and you'll place that order right now.
Casey:
Why are you placing that order right now?
Casey:
Because every time, every single flippin' time, the store is closed for literally minutes or at most hours, and somebody says, oh, my God, I missed it.
Casey:
I'm that one.
Casey:
Casey has said this to me all these years, and now it's me.
Casey:
I'm that person.
Casey:
It happens.
Casey:
Don't do that.
Casey:
Don't be that person.
Casey:
Stop what you're doing right now.
Casey:
Signal.
Casey:
Get to the side of the road.
Casey:
Use your turn signals, please.
Casey:
If you're walking in Manhattan or something like that, be aggressive as you get over to the right-hand side because that's what you're supposed to do, but then get out of the damn way and go to atp.fm store, place your order.
Casey:
Make sure you use your member's discount if applicable.
Casey:
Thank you so much.
Casey:
We will remind you of this next couple of weeks, but again, until Sunday the 28th.
Casey:
John, as always, thank you for all your work on this.
Casey:
I am very excited for this lineup.
Casey:
This is, I think, far and away the most different options we've had, both in terms of different items and in terms of flavors of each item.
Casey:
We're trying to do our best here to give you whatever options you want.
John:
Try to diversify people's wardrobes.
John:
You won't just have podcast t-shirts.
John:
Now you'll have podcast long-sleeve t-shirts.
Marco:
Podcast tank tops, podcast baseball hats.
Marco:
We got you covered.
Casey:
Podcast the flamethrower.
Casey:
There we go.
Casey:
Thank you, John.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
The unpatchable M-series exploit explanatory video.
Casey:
I don't know if this made the edit or not, but there was a link in the show notes where there was an explanatory video.
Casey:
And in between the time that John had put it in the show notes and when I started getting the released version of the show notes ready, that video went private.
Casey:
And I don't know, John, is this the same one that you would watch or a different one?
Casey:
But one way or another, we've got a video for you.
John:
It is the same video.
John:
So I was so disappointed that it went private because I thought the video was great.
John:
And sure enough, I clicked on it the last time we were recording.
John:
I'm like, oh, I don't know, maybe they took it down or something.
John:
But after the show, I'm like, I need to find that video.
John:
Because why would they have taken it down?
John:
And sure enough, it exists.
John:
It's on the same channel.
John:
It's the same exact video I was trying to link to.
John:
Maybe it was just something wrong with the video.
John:
YouTube doesn't let you update videos.
John:
You just have to delete it and make a new one.
John:
So anyway, we will have a link in the show notes.
John:
It is from the Molly rocket channel.
John:
It describes what is known as the go fetch attack on the M series, uh, of, uh, system on the chips.
John:
And it is a great video.
John:
If you actually want to know what is happening inside the chip is, it is explained well enough that if you actually care, anybody can watch it and understand, uh, and, uh,
John:
Like I said, this is a specific instance of a common pattern of attacking chips, but this particular one is pretty weird.
Casey:
Yeah, it is a very good video.
Casey:
It is an hour long, so buckle up.
Casey:
But it does a very good job.
Casey:
If you have even a passing knowledge of how computers and computer science works, I think it'll be very palatable and understandable.
Casey:
I know nothing about security-related things.
Casey:
And the person who hosts the video is coming at it from a micro-architecture perspective, not from a security perspective.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
They do a really good job of kind of distilling it down to the brass tacks, and it is very good.
Casey:
Hector Martin found the chicken bit.
Casey:
I've never even heard of a chicken bit before.
Casey:
This was news to me.
Casey:
So, John, tell me about this.
John:
The DMP disabled chicken bit.
John:
So DMP is, I have that in here.
John:
What is it called?
Casey:
Data memory dependent prefetcher.
Casey:
You have it like 10 lines down from where you're looking.
John:
DMP is the feature that this security exploit is exploiting.
John:
And chicken bits are bits in a silicon chip that allow you to disable some feature if you're not sure about it, right?
John:
So if you're designing a chip, you're like, well, we think this feature is a good idea.
John:
But if there's ever any problem with it, like it has a performance problem or there's a bug or there's a security flaw, if you just flip this bit, the chip will just disable that entire feature.
John:
So apparently there is a chicken bit for DMP.
John:
Hector Martin found it.
John:
This is from a post to Mastodon, I think.
John:
He says, one interesting finding is that the DMP is already disabled in EL2 and presumably EL1.
John:
It only works in EL0.
John:
So the EL things are...
John:
exception levels in the arm microarchitecture uh this is from a page that will link the arm v8 architecture defines four exception levels el0 to el3 where el3 is the highest exception level with the most execution privilege and here's the common usage el0 is where applications run el1 is for os kernels and associated functions that are typically described as privileged el2 is the hypervisor and el3 is secure monitor i don't even know what that is
John:
But I'm just, that's what the webpage said.
John:
So apparently DMP, this data memory dependent prefetcher is disabled for the kernel.
John:
So what Hector says is the CPU, it looks like the CPU designers already had some idea that it is a security liability and chose to hard disable it in kernel mode.
John:
That means kernel mode crypto on Linux is already intrinsically safe.
John:
um and this data memory dependent prefetcher is a cache prefetcher that looks at cache memory content for possible pointer values and prefetches data at those locations in the cache if it sees memory access patterns that suggest that would be useful so it looks at a number and says no
John:
looks like it might be a pointer i should go treat it as a pointer and grab the data that's at that location and if you watch the video you'll see how that's exploited to detect what another process is doing on the cpu there's some more stuff that other people turned up about dmp like there's a there's a little aside from the chicken bit for disabling it there's like a command i think on the m3 where you can just turn it off
John:
Like you would imagine on the M3 you could turn off the MP, do your encryption stuff, and then turn it back on to like avoid this issue.
John:
But I think the M1 and M2 don't have that command.
John:
They just have this chicken bit which disables it entirely in particular mode.
John:
So anyway, CPU designers are fairly conservative and cautious, and that's why things that are quote-unquote unpatchable
John:
usually have some kind of workaround.
John:
Sometimes the workarounds have performance problems.
John:
Sometimes the workarounds are painful and annoying and require software changes.
John:
But usually there's something that can be done.
John:
And I'm assuming Apple is Apple.
John:
I don't think Apple's commented on this at all.
John:
But since it is better in the M3 than it was in the M2 and M1, maybe they already knew about it and they have these bits to deal with.
John:
So hopefully OS updates will help with this in the future.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
You know, a lot of people wrote in last episode, and they did so because they were trying to help.
Casey:
And there's a charitable read on this, which is that they are all members who have gone to, in the past, atp.fm slash join, and they were listening to the bootleg podcast.
Casey:
which does not have robust show notes.
Casey:
But one way or another, a lot of people wrote in to say, and Alan Pope was one of the first, last episode, you guys briefly mentioned weird square monitors.
Casey:
I wonder if the LG dual up 28 inch 16 by 18 ratio display may be the one you were thinking of.
Casey:
It is.
Casey:
And I said verbally on the show, oh, there's that one weird squarish monitor that, you know, people have been talking about recently.
Casey:
And then I kind of let it go.
Casey:
But during the course of the recording of that episode, I think somebody in the chat room found it and I put the link in the show notes.
Casey:
So
Casey:
The uncharitable read is none of you, pain to my butt, clicked on the, looked at the show notes to see that it was already there.
Casey:
But the charitable read is you're just all bootleg listeners.
Casey:
So anyways, we will put it in this episode show notes as well.
Casey:
But it was indeed the LG Dual Up 28 inch that I was thinking of.
John:
You know, it's an audio podcast.
John:
People aren't looking at the show notes.
John:
Although, I have to say, I don't know why I continue to be fooled by this, but did I complain about this show already?
John:
I don't think I did.
John:
I was listening to a famous podcast, who shall remain nameless, mostly because I can't remember what it was.
John:
And they were talking...
John:
They were talking at – but it's a really popular podcast.
John:
And they were talking at length about – Security through forgetfulness.
John:
Yeah, about an image that they were looking at.
John:
And they're like, don't worry.
John:
This image will be – you'll be able to see it.
John:
And there was actually two versions of this image.
John:
It says, don't worry.
John:
We'll put the more detailed versions of this image if you just go to our web page.
John:
And they gave a URL.
John:
And they're like –
John:
Yeah.
John:
Right?
John:
Like you see sometimes in YouTube videos where every single YouTube video in a channel will have the same garbage tech pasted into the description that has nothing to do with the video.
John:
They spent so long talking about this image.
John:
No chapter images.
John:
No show notes.
John:
Website had nothing on it.
John:
No URL I could go to.
John:
Go to the top level of the website.
John:
Try to find the thing.
John:
Google, whatever.
John:
I don't know what it is with podcasts.
John:
Like they have 60 people, a person, staff making their podcast and they can't put an image in show notes.
John:
So anyway, this link will be in the show notes.
Marco:
There are two different worlds of podcasting.
Marco:
Like there's probably more than that, honestly, but like there's at least two different worlds of podcasting.
Marco:
The first world of podcasting
Marco:
is these high production, high staff, high budget shows.
Marco:
They're all hosted on megaphone.
Marco:
They're all using DAI.
Marco:
They're all using the same backend tools.
Marco:
They're out.
Marco:
They all have these big productions.
Marco:
And so they put huge amounts of money into the usually writing and editing and production of the podcast.
Marco:
Um, but then all of these basics of the podcasting format, um,
Marco:
they don't ever participate in they've never used good show notes which are very easy to do they've their their tools don't even support them they don't care they certainly have never used chapters back at back in the day it's because they didn't know they existed now they probably still don't know they exist but uh now their dai tools like megaphone don't support like on the verge cast which is actually a pretty good show i enjoy it but on the verge cast the
Marco:
They were just complaining this week how Megaphone doesn't support chapters, and they keep getting requests from listeners to add chapters, and it must be hard to add chapters.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
DAI tools splice ads into the file.
Marco:
So what they were saying was, oh, it must be hard to add them because you don't know how long the ads are, which is true.
Marco:
One of the ways DAI makes everything worse for everybody...
Marco:
is that timestamps are no longer consistent between downloads because the ads that are injected into each download could be different durations.
Marco:
So if you are trying to, say, share a clip of a podcast at a certain timestamp, you don't really have a way to know whether someone else's future download of that episode will have the timestamp lining up with the content that you want because it might have had a different length ad inserted before it than what you have.
But
Marco:
But the thing is, they know this at download time.
Marco:
You know where chapters are?
Marco:
In the MP3.
Marco:
In the header.
Marco:
You know what you have to modify when you use DAI to splice an MP3?
Marco:
The header.
Marco:
So they're already... Well, they don't always modify the header, but you're supposed to.
Marco:
It makes certain things work better.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
The early DAI platforms did a very bad job because MP3s are so easy.
Marco:
You can just kind of stick them together and they work.
Marco:
But anyway, so the point is at serving time, they know what they're putting into the MP3.
Marco:
So they can just offset the timestamps of the chapter markers in the file to account for the ads they're inserting at that time as they write the header of the file.
Marco:
That sounds like it might involve addition, though.
Marco:
Yeah, or maybe subtraction.
Marco:
It depends on how you're doing it.
John:
Yeah, I don't know if computers can do that.
Marco:
Yeah, either way, it's so easy.
Marco:
The only reason they don't do it is that the people who write these tools don't even know chapters exist.
Marco:
And I understand, from the point of view of a big podcast publisher...
Marco:
regular people don't want this.
Marco:
We don't need this.
Marco:
But I cannot tell you, first of all, how many regular people do find it useful.
Marco:
That's why things like YouTube support chapters.
Marco:
There's a reason they added chapters because people find useful.
Marco:
Second of all,
Marco:
Everybody always comes up with some crazy idea for some new podcast spec that we should all implement for something that can be solved already with chapters we've had for like 20 years.
Marco:
You wouldn't believe how many pitches I've heard for some new standard.
Marco:
We're going to make this new standard.
Marco:
It's going to be great.
Marco:
We're going to have the ability to show timed metadata during playback.
Marco:
of a podcast amazing guess what we can do that already we can show timed images timed links time text all of that with specs that already exist and are supported by pretty much every podcast app out there including apple podcasts so that already but but no one knows and then third of all it blows my mind they don't why don't they do this for their own commercial gain when they insert an ad why don't they insert the image of the sponsor with a link right there as a chapter i don't understand like
Marco:
There's reasons they would benefit directly from it.
Marco:
But I think ultimately the cause of all of this is that there has always been this kind of underlying problem in big podcasting.
Marco:
It started out as kind of a disrespect of the medium that for a long time podcasts were so looked down upon, similar to how blogs were looked down upon by old media.
Marco:
Podcasts were so looked down upon that people would put podcasts out there
Marco:
And then make a point of saying, I don't listen to podcasts.
Marco:
As if that was some kind of bragging thing.
Marco:
Imagine if you wrote books for a living and you said, oh, I don't read.
Marco:
That's ridiculous, but podcasting was looked down upon.
Marco:
So there was this kind of attitude from early on among big companies and big publishers and even big media people of like, oh, I don't listen to podcasts.
Marco:
I'll put a podcast out there because I want to take everyone's time and money, but I don't listen to podcasts.
Marco:
And what that resulted in over time is a lot of that kind of big podcasting industry stuff
Marco:
A lot of those people and the tech stacks and all the stuff that we've built upon comes from people who don't really listen to podcasts.
Marco:
First, there was a disrespect to the medium.
Marco:
Now, I think the disrespect is gone now, but now it's just like more of an unfamiliarity with the medium.
Marco:
And so the people who make these tools have no clue that any of these options exist.
Marco:
So then that's one world of podcasting.
Marco:
That world of podcasting thinks it is the only world of podcasting.
Marco:
This is a separate problem.
Marco:
It shows up in a lot of different ways.
Marco:
But those people who make and listen to those kind of shows typically think that's all of podcasting.
Marco:
And the wonderful thing about this medium is that it's such a bigger medium than that.
Marco:
And there's all these other shows out there like what we make and what a bunch of people we know make and what millions of people we don't know make.
Marco:
It is a huge, wonderful world.
Marco:
And the rest of us can have things like show notes.
Marco:
and links, and chapters, and artwork, and we can enjoy these technologies and the rest of the podcast world will never know about them and they are doing their listeners and themselves a great disservice, but we will never convince them to use them because they don't even think we exist.
John:
It makes me wonder what the people on the show, like all the hosts of the show, seem sure that they knew not only that this image would be linked, but that they knew the URL to it, and they were wrong.
John:
They were entirely wrong.
John:
So maybe they've never looked at their own podcast and don't realize that the people who produce their show stop as soon as the audio is done and never do another thing after that.
John:
Anyway, frustrating.
John:
I never, I never did find the image.
John:
The end of the story is I never did find it.
John:
If it's on the internet, I could not, I literally could not find it.
John:
And because like so much of the show was like looking at this image and making jokes about it or whatever, couldn't find it.
Casey:
You know what I would have done in your shoes, which is ridiculous that this is how I would have solved the problem, but I probably would have found the subreddit for that particular podcast because you said it was popular.
Casey:
And I guarantee... I mean, rolling your eyes about Reddit, I'm here for it.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
But I bet you anything that would have come up with the image.
Casey:
The people, the Redditors, what have you, in that subreddit would have come up with the image and made a thread about it and put a link up.
Casey:
All of this work to do something that should be table stakes.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's...
Casey:
And occasionally I'll get asked, I can't think of a way to phrase this without sounding like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I'll get asked, how did you become successful at podcasting?
Casey:
Or how did you become successful at this or that?
Casey:
And not to say I'm always successful, by any means, let's talk about fast text and my icon design.
Casey:
But occasionally I've gotten lucky and I've come up with something decent.
Casey:
And the consistent thing that I think
Casey:
the three of us share in both this show and in our other endeavors is just giving a crap.
Casey:
Like you'd be surprised that just by giving a crap, you're going to be better than almost everyone around you.
Casey:
I feel like Marco, you've made the speech in the past, but just give a crap, just care.
Casey:
And you're already better than almost anyone around you.
Casey:
It's not table stakes.
Casey:
My friends just care, just give a crap and you'll be so much better than almost everyone around you.
Marco:
Yeah, job interviews, competition, any place where you are competing with other people for professional success in some way.
Marco:
If you just care, you will be ahead of the vast majority by a surprising and sad amount.
Casey:
Yeah, just don't phone it in and you'll be toward the top of the pack.
Casey:
You may not be number one, but you'll be toward the top of the pack.
Casey:
Yes, I'm sure there's exceptions and the things that would prove that this isn't true, but by and large, just
Casey:
Give a crap.
Casey:
That's all you need to do is just give a crap.
Casey:
Anyway, how did that happen?
Casey:
We got off on a tangent there.
Casey:
That's okay, though.
Casey:
It's accidental.
Marco:
That's what happens when John doesn't find an image in show notes.
Marco:
We are brought to you this episode by SwiftCraft.
Marco:
SwiftCraft is a brand new conference for Swift and iOS developers in the UK, Europe, and beyond.
Marco:
Running in May, that's next month, and it's set right by the sea with fantastic views across the English Channel and
Marco:
This event has the feel of a code retreat.
Marco:
If you like the windows of Syracuse County, I love an in-joke for our show, you're going to love the windows at their venue.
Marco:
With 28 sessions and two keynotes over the two main conference days, a full-day workshops day with three workshops, and tutorials day with eight half-day workshops,
Marco:
There's plenty of content to keep you engaged, educated, and entertained.
Marco:
What better time to focus on the craft of writing Swift than just before WBDC has us all chasing new APIs again?
Marco:
I love this focus, by the way.
Marco:
This is such a great idea, such great timing, and I love a conference at a beautiful venue.
Marco:
That to me is fantastic.
Marco:
If I'm going to go to a conference, it has to have a nice view or some other nice venue because it's so much nicer that way.
Marco:
Also, some of the community's best speakers are on their schedule, led by keynotes from Daniel Steinberg and Jessica Kerr, better known as Jessitron.
Marco:
Daniel's running a workshop, too, along with Paul Hudson and John Reed.
Marco:
So check out the full program at swiftcraft.uk.
Marco:
And use code ATP when you come to register for 10% off.
Marco:
So once again, swiftcraft.uk.
Marco:
Use code ATP for registration for 10% off.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Swiftcraft for, first of all, hosting a beautiful conference and a beautiful venue.
Marco:
Again, love that.
Marco:
And also for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Matthias Woolard writes, regarding the rumor of an M3 family chip with no efficiency cores, having some efficiency cores makes sense, since for highly threaded, multi-threaded tasks, an efficiency core can do more compute per transistor than a power core.
Casey:
Tell me about this, John.
John:
Yeah, that was one point that we didn't bring up the last time.
John:
Like, oh, well, why do you need efficiency cores?
John:
You don't need to save energy.
John:
Well, if your job is massively multithreaded, more cores are better.
John:
And as this person points out, if you just have something that's a simple job that doesn't require a power core, that power core is wasted doing that job.
John:
But you can do more compute per transistor with an efficiency core than a power core.
John:
so there's that i mean historically especially for the mac pro apple has always offered like their top end thing their top end chip in the mac pro in the past decade or so has always been the one with the most cores and that one usually actually is slower in single core especially in the old days uh but it makes up for it for being massively multi-core so that that is a role efficiency cores could play in a uh
John:
hypothetical, bigger than two M3 Max's stuck-together chip in the Mac Studio or the Mac Pro.
John:
And on that topic, the Max Tech channel on YouTube had a bunch of rumors about the upcoming chips, and the idea was that this new chip, they're still on the idea that it's not going to be two M3 Max's stuck-together, it'll be an entirely new chip, and they're saying they think this new chip will be built on N3E, which if you've heard our show in past months, you know is the
John:
Three nanometer fabbing process after the n3b process that are the current m3 series chips are made with and it will supposedly have higher yields So if you if you have a process that has higher yields that's good If you're gonna make a bigger chip because the bigger the chip you make the more chance you have to have errors in the chip and this was presented as a possibility to avoid the situation where
John:
Apple rolls out new M chips like the M3 and the M3 Pro and the M3 Max.
John:
But the quote-unquote high-end chips are still last year's model.
John:
So right now, if you buy a Mac Studio, it doesn't have an M3 anything in it.
John:
It's got an M2 something in it.
John:
And same thing with the Mac Pro.
John:
It has M2 something in it.
John:
And when the M3 Max is so powerful, in some tests it can best the supposedly better Pro Max because...
John:
the lower end computers have the M3 chip, but the higher end ones don't.
John:
Now, one way to solve that would be release the chips closer to each other.
John:
So yeah, you release the M3, then the M3 Plo, then the Max, then the Ultra, then the Extreme.
John:
If you do that in fairly short succession within the course of a few months, nobody really cares.
John:
But if you leave the studio and the Mac Pro languishing with the M2 chips for a long period of time, makes them look kind of crappy and makes them look less attractive.
John:
I don't know if Apple cares about that.
John:
That was just a theory presented here.
John:
And that theory was presented in the context of saying, and maybe at WWC, presumably, when Apple comes out with the new Mac Studio and Mac Pro, the chip that's in them will, you know, will be a brand new chip that we haven't seen before, not two M3 Macs that stuck together, right?
John:
And they'll actually call it M4 because it'll be made with the N3E process.
John:
And the N3E process is not compatible with the N3B designs, right?
John:
So if they're going to fab something in N3E, they have to redesign anyway.
John:
Names like M3 and M3 are marketing decisions have nothing to do with technology, really.
John:
It's just up to Apple what they do, so I'm not putting much stake in that.
John:
It would seem pretty weird for me to skip the M3 generation for the high-end chips and go to M4, but maybe it would be a marketing coup and say, hey, they're leaping ahead because they're such great high-end chips for our high-end Pro Max or whatever.
John:
Setting that aside, another topic that came up related to this and these discussions that we're having online since last week's episode...
John:
was the reticle limit which is how big a thing can you make on a silicon wafer at three nanometers with tsmc's process you can't make something like you know 12 inches by 12 inches or whatever like there is there is a limit to how big a thing that you can make you can make a bunch of them on a wafer but each one of those things has a certain size and it can't be any bigger than that size due to the way they do the lithography with the extreme ultraviolet blah blah right and
John:
I don't know what the reticle limit is for TSMC's three nanometer process.
John:
The best I could find was somewhere online.
John:
Somebody said 858 square milliliters.
John:
That's the best I could do.
John:
I couldn't find any authoritative.
John:
Maybe it's secret proprietary information.
John:
Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong websites.
John:
But anyway, 850 millimeters squared, probably in that ballpark.
John:
And to give a comparison, the plain old M3 is 146 millimeters squared.
John:
I think that's the that is a official figure or at least a measured figure or whatever.
John:
What I wanted to know is how big is the M3 Max?
John:
How close is the M3 Max to the reticle limit?
John:
Because if this rumor is they're going to make a chip that's not two M3 Maxes stuck together, but is itself a single bigger chip, how much bigger can it be?
John:
And again, this is just extrapolated from die shots I found on the internet, as in me measuring pixels and saying, okay, well, if the M3 is 146 millimeters squared, and this is how big, if this is pictures to scale, and this is a Max next to an M3 next to a Pro, how big are they?
John:
Here are my extrapolated values.
John:
I could not find official figures for this.
John:
If anyone knows, please tell me.
John:
M3 Pro, 238 millimeters squared.
John:
M3 Max, 522 millimeters squared.
John:
And then again, the theoretical, uh, reticle limit, 858 millimeters squared.
John:
So the M3 Max is not at the reticle limit, but it's not too far away, 500 to 800.
John:
Like there's room to be bigger, but not a huge amount more room.
John:
And I did find an NVIDIA GH100 GPU that TSMC fabs on their 4n process, which is not the same as 3 nanometer, but anyway, their 4n process.
John:
And that is 814 millimeter squared.
John:
so um by the way the transistor sizes here is m3 25 billion m3 pro 37 billion m3 max 92 billion and the big nvidia thing is only 80 billion because it's on the 4n process not on the 3 nanometer so can apple make a bigger single chip on uh
John:
tsmc's three nanometer process i think yes how much bigger well the m3 max is 500 ish and they could probably push up into the 800s and after that they can't make any single bit any single chip any bigger than that we've talked in the past about chiplets and combining multiple ones and of course there's the ultra ultra fusion sticking things end to end and they could make like a six or seven or 800 millimeter square chip called the ultra and stick two of those together for the extreme or it could just be
John:
two and three maxes stuck together and they call it the ultra and it's in the pro in the studio but that's boring so i hope it doesn't happen and i spent so long looking like you know remember we talked last week like oh did they just crop out the the ultra fusion thing i don't know it's really easy crop something out of apple itself cropped it out remember when when the m1 you know the m1 m1 pro and max came out apple itself cropped out the little interposer part so when the ultra came out they're like look we have the secret thing here and blah blah right
John:
I just don't know if it's been cropped out of every picture I'm finding.
John:
It's really easy to crop things.
John:
So I'm sure this information has to be out there because people are cutting the tops off these chips and taking pictures, and it's all written in Chinese, and I can't read it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
There are upcoming Apple layoffs affecting 700 or more workers, including Apple Car and MicroLED teams.
Casey:
From 9to5Mac...
Casey:
Apple's laying off more than 700 employees as the company has just canceled its Apple car project and is also reconsidering the project to develop in-house micro LED displays.
Casey:
The layoffs became known after the company filed Warn notices in the state of California.
Casey:
MacRumors adds under California law, employers must give employees and state representatives a 60 day notice before a mass layoff event.
Casey:
So here we are.
John:
Yeah, we didn't talk about the micro LED thing recently.
John:
I think we talked about it ages ago with Apple looking into micro LED displays for the Apple Watch to begin with.
John:
And to recap, micro LEDs are like very, very, very tiny LEDs, like the little LED lights that are annoying in your electronics that you cover up with little black pieces of tape.
John:
Those like a little colored LED.
John:
Imagine those, but very, very, very tiny.
John:
uh that's what these are and it would be really cool display technology because unlike organic oleds or organic leds or oleds uh they don't wear out as fast uh so there would be less problems with image retention and potentially could get brighter yada yada it's also really hard to make because everything on it is really tiny and apple was apparently trying to make these displays itself rather than like buying them from samsung or sony or whoever else they buy display stuff from and
John:
rumor was that uh a little while ago they said yeah we're giving up on that for now which is sad i really want to see a micro led based apple watch but maybe apple just found a supplier that can do it but that's a small team the car people i would imagine is the majority of this you cancel the project a lot of those people whose expertise has to do with car stuff are probably don't have anything else they can do at apple at this point
Casey:
except maybe robotics who knows one way or another apple has struck a deal with shutterstock to license millions of images for ai training uh from nine to five mac reuters reports that apple struck a deal to license millions of images owned by shutterstock a stock image site the value of the deal is likely in the 25 to 50 million dollar range
Casey:
and was said to have been signed in the months following the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Casey:
Apparently, multiple other big tech firms have made similar deals with Shutterstock, including Meta, Google, and Amazon.
John:
We talked about this when the New York Times did something similar.
John:
This is just a smart thing to do if you are a big company with a lot to lose and you have a lot of money, and you're not sure about the legal landscape in terms of training your AI models on YouTube videos that you scraped from Google or images that you downloaded from the internet.
John:
You can just pay somebody and say, you have the rights to these images.
John:
Will you sell us the rights to train our AI models on them?
John:
And they apparently gladly will for a handful of million dollars, which is pocket change to Apple.
John:
But it is priceless when it comes time to justify the legality of your AI model.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And then finally, for follow up this week, here's our first look at Apple's in the box iPhone updating machine.
Casey:
So for context, it's really crummy when you pick up an iPhone and you get it home or maybe you're in the store and you want to set it up and do a transfer and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And the iPhone comes out of the box and says, ah, nope, you're gonna have to update me first.
Casey:
No fun.
Casey:
And so we had heard a while ago that they were working on a mechanism by which they could update an iPhone in a sealed box.
Casey:
Well, apparently this thing is real.
Casey:
And so according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Presto, which is the name of it, uses MagSafe and other wireless technologies.
Casey:
Do you turn the phone on, apply the update, and turn it off again?
Casey:
An earlier report from iGeneration also mentions that the machines are connected to specific servers that can access software updates 24 hours ahead of their general release.
Casey:
Gurman says that Presto machines are in limited testing in the U.S.
Casey:
with a wide deployment planned for April.
Casey:
So if you buy a new iPhone from Apple after April and it comes with the latest OS version installed in the box, you'll know you have Presto to thank.
Casey:
Marco, there is a very important image associated with this.
Casey:
Where will users or listeners be able to find this image?
Marco:
directly on your podcast app right now as chapter art and also in the show notes imagine that i'm so proud of us you know you just gotta give a crap that's all it takes it's so easy we are brought to you this week by trade coffee
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Thank you so much to Trade Coffee for keeping me caffeinated and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
I had a very interesting week over the last week.
Casey:
Everything's fine.
Marco:
That's a great way to start.
Casey:
Nobody's in trouble.
Casey:
Everybody's fine.
Casey:
Everything's fine.
Casey:
Last week, all three of us, to varying degrees, were very blasé at best and kind of really grumpy at worst about the state of Vision Pro and Vision OS.
Casey:
And I stand by everything, at least that I said last week.
Casey:
And yet I kind of want to take it all back because over the last week, I have had three different experiences.
Casey:
One is kind of related that I wouldn't say have changed my mind about the Vision Pro, but have really shaped or changed, I guess, changed my mind and certainly my opinions to a degree about what the Vision Pro is and what it's all about.
Casey:
So I...
Casey:
Shortly after recording, I spent some time with our friend Mike Hurley of Upgrade and Connected and many other shows, including Analog for that matter.
Casey:
I spent some time with Mike doing a spatial persona FaceTime call, which was a little bit frustrating at first because I connected via FaceTime and I hadn't yet updated my persona for Vision OS 1.1 or whatever it is.
Casey:
And I couldn't do a FaceTime call with personas.
Casey:
And I don't recall the specifics, but it was like it wouldn't... It really...
Casey:
The vision OS took away my old persona.
Casey:
Like it's not that they just let it hang out.
Casey:
It just erased my original one, one Oh persona.
Casey:
And I needed to create a new one.
Casey:
But as with so many things, the error messaging about that was very vague and not very actionable, but eventually I figured it out.
Casey:
So I did spatial personas with Mike.
Casey:
As it turns out, this past Monday, I was on Upgrade because Jason was chasing waterfalls, eclipses.
Casey:
And so I stood in for Jason and we talked, Mike and I, about this.
Casey:
And so I'll refer you to that show if you want to hear the long, long version of this story.
Casey:
But the short, short version is, it's unreal.
Casey:
Leaving aside the fact that Mike's spatial persona or Mike's persona, his mouth doesn't move when he talks because his mustache apparently is too bushy for the cameras to see when his mouth is moving.
John:
Has he ever considered the fact that maybe people can't see his mouth move because his mustache is too bushy?
John:
Like it's an accurate representation.
John:
He should look in the mirror and talk and see if he can see his mouth.
Casey:
Yeah, that's something I'm sure he'll try and take that on as homework.
Casey:
But one way or another, that is extremely disconcerting and you never really get used to that.
Casey:
But leaving that aside, his persona visually, when he's not talking, is pretty darn good.
Casey:
And he said mine was looking pretty good as well.
Casey:
But the spatial persona thing is incredibly cool and incredibly well done.
Casey:
When I did FaceTime calls in the past, just straight up regular FaceTime calls,
Casey:
It didn't take very long for me to think that I was talking to, you know, Mike or James Thompson or whoever.
Casey:
But it was still, it was never like really, really right.
Casey:
You know, I felt like, oh yeah, that's James.
Casey:
But it was never like, that's frickin' James.
Casey:
And of course...
Casey:
Of course, it's never going to be like a hundred percent, but the spatial personas got us so much closer because there's a presence there that just isn't there when you're looking at a rectangle.
Casey:
And, you know, Mike was facing me and then she
Casey:
decided to share a freeform board and next thing you know we're on either side of the freeform board and he can point to things on the freeform board like oh look at this red rectangle over here and I see his kind of ghostly kind of weird hand but nevertheless it looks like a hand
Casey:
I see his hand with his pointer finger extended pointing at a red rectangle.
Casey:
And then I could do the same thing and he sees what I'm doing.
Casey:
It's like we were standing in front of a whiteboard.
Casey:
Now, doing anything with Freeform was not a lot of fun because, you know, gaze-based manipulation and pinching and whatnot.
Casey:
Maybe it's just user error, but I did not find it fun to try to manipulate the board.
Casey:
But in terms of...
Casey:
looking at the board and talking about what was on the board it was very very cool and with spatial audio mike sounded you know i was on the left side of the board he was on the right side of the board and it sure is sure enough when i was looking at the board it sounds like he's over to my right if i turn my head to look at him then it sounds like he's right in front of me it was very well done then at one point i forget exactly what the circumstance was i believe we were facing each other i don't remember for sure but one way or another there was a situation in which he said watch this
Casey:
and i'm just you're looking at his spatial persona and all of a sudden i could tell that he stood up not only because his persona like got higher and above my head but just the way in which it moved you could tell holy s**t mike just stood up that's what just happened that's incredible like it's so silly and as with so many things in the vision pro
Casey:
You kind of have to experience it to truly and properly understand it.
Casey:
But it was so cool.
Casey:
And there was a presence there that I had not experienced with a regular FaceTime call that I really hadn't experienced in a lot of other ways.
Casey:
So if you are one of the people who has a Vision Pro...
Casey:
you need to find somebody else with a vision pro that you can FaceTime.
Casey:
Maybe I should offer this as like a cameo or something, but find somebody else that you can do a FaceTime call with and do the spatial persona thing.
Casey:
It's extremely cool.
Casey:
But then it got better.
Casey:
Mike says to me, go to the app store, go to Apple arcade and download, download the game room app.
Casey:
And I will put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
I believe it is only available in the vision pro.
Marco:
By the way, I believe it's actually available on other VR platforms as well.
Casey:
Oh, sorry.
Casey:
Yes, I was just thinking Apple platforms.
Casey:
That very well could be true.
Casey:
So it's only available on Apple platforms on Vision Pro.
Casey:
And it's genericized versions of, I think, Yahtzee, Solitaire, one or two other things, and Battleship.
Casey:
And so Mike said, we're going to play around a battleship.
Casey:
And I'm like, okay, Mike, I really got, I'm really hungry.
Casey:
It's right before lunchtime.
Casey:
I want to go make my lunch.
Casey:
I'll play like a couple of shots or what have you.
Casey:
And then I'm going to go and I'm going to eat my lunch.
Casey:
Fast forward 15 minutes later and I couldn't resist playing the whole damn game because it was so freaking cool.
Casey:
So not only is the game board like 3D rendered and the art looks really, really good, but
Casey:
But beyond all that, it was incredibly cool.
Casey:
The idea of Battleship is you have a board in between you and your opponent, and you place pretend ships in a square grid, and you call out, oh, C5, and the person on the other side of the board either says hit or miss, and you have to deduce where their ships are based on this experience, and based on hits or misses or whatnot, and you try to sink all of their ships.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
We're doing this, and the way this particular app works is that it's all 3D rendered.
Casey:
And so when I fire, a missile launches from a little missile launcher adjacent to my game board over the game board between us and flies into Mike's view and either hits or misses his thing.
Casey:
And if it lands in the water, the dead missile just kind of bobs around in the water where I had launched it to.
Casey:
And then he launches a missile and flies over the game board toward me and hits one of my ships.
Casey:
And you can see the damage in the ship.
Casey:
You can see the 3D water flow into the damage within the ship.
Casey:
And then when he finally sank one of my ships, the ship sank into the 3D water.
Casey:
This sounds crazy.
Casey:
So bananas, the way I'm describing it, I am quite confident.
Casey:
I probably sound like I am Looney Tunes.
Casey:
I cannot begin to tell you how freaking cool this experience was.
Casey:
And the other thing is, he could lean over to the side, like away from the game board, and then I could see his face again.
Casey:
And if I held up my hand above the game board, he could see my hand above the game board.
Casey:
The presence here was so unbelievably cool.
Casey:
Again, it's one of those things that for better and for worse, you really just kind of have to experience.
Casey:
And if you don't own a Vision Pro and you can't do the Spatial Persona thing or FaceTime thing,
Casey:
I don't know what to tell you.
Casey:
And I don't mean that to be flippant.
Casey:
I don't know what to tell you.
Casey:
You can't just go to an Apple store and try this.
Casey:
There's nothing you can do.
Casey:
And it is incredibly cool.
Casey:
It was a transformative moment for me to play freaking Battleship on the Fishing Pro.
Casey:
I know that sounds nuts, but it really was incredible.
John:
I think one of the things you left out for people who don't play Battleship is the reason such a good example of this, a good game example of this, is that the Battleship board is a vertical, there's a horizontal portion, but there's also a vertical portion.
John:
And the vertical portion has two sides to it.
John:
And the whole point of the game when you play in person in real life is that you can't see what's on the other side of that board.
John:
So the side that's facing you, you can see, and the side that's facing them, they can see, right?
Yeah.
John:
And so they render this in 3D space.
John:
So I would imagine, I don't know if you tried this, Casey, but I imagine what the game would let you do is could you peek around and cheat just like real life by looking at his board on his side?
Casey:
I could try, but it wouldn't let me because it clears his game board from my perspective.
John:
Oh, that's stinky.
John:
Anyway.
John:
Anyway, so the whole point is they're modeling a game that, like, when you play it in real life, your physical presence is part of the game.
John:
Like, it forms a blind between you.
John:
It blocks, you know, your view is private to you and their view.
John:
And that's trivially easy to do in computer games.
John:
Oh, I'm seeing my screen here.
John:
You're seeing your screen, you know, over in the UK, right?
John:
Of course, we're not looking at each other's screens.
John:
But when you're in the same virtual place with the whole presence thing is now we're back to, like, just like the real life thing where...
John:
Well, there are two sides of this board, and the reason I can see my side is because I'm sitting on this side of it, and the reason you can see your side is because you're sitting on that side, but we're all in the same shared space.
John:
It's kind of annoying that it doesn't let you cheat, but at least it knows that you're trying to cheat and blanks it out.
Casey:
Right, right, right.
Casey:
It is so cool.
Casey:
I am making no promises, but I did record a little bit of this from my perspective, and I recorded a video of it.
Casey:
Gentlemen, for you, it's in Slack right now.
Casey:
I'll see if I can cut it down and I'll have to ask Mike if he's okay with this because I didn't ask permission for me to make this public.
Casey:
If it's cool with Mike and if I can figure out a way to cut it down so it's a little bit slimmer and post it somewhere, then I'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
No promises.
Casey:
You don't have to tell me if it's not there.
Casey:
Again, I don't know if I'll be able to work it out or not, but I'll see what I can do.
Casey:
but it is incredibly cool it's such a silly thing to play battleship with somebody but he is across a freaking ocean and we're it feels like we're there together playing battleship it was unreal i cannot begin to tell you how cool it was then the final thing in vision pro corner i hope you two are sitting down because i gotta tell you
Casey:
Marco, whenever you get your Vision Pro back, if you ever take it back, you have to download the Gucci app.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
What did I just say?
Marco:
Like the fashion brand?
Casey:
You need to download the Gucci app, the fashion brand.
Casey:
I am not kidding.
Casey:
Somebody wrote to me and said, hey, why is nobody talking about this?
Casey:
Gentlemen, why is nobody talking about the Gucci app?
Casey:
I am not kidding.
Casey:
So what this is, and I know nothing.
Marco:
Can I guess that maybe a lot of tech podcasters in the Apple space aren't necessarily Gucci shoppers?
Casey:
It turns out that that seems to be accurate.
Casey:
And so what this is, is apparently, and I'm sure I'm going to get the details wrong, but the broad strokes are all that really matter.
Casey:
Apparently what this is, is that they have a new creative director.
Casey:
The Gucci company has a new creative director, Sabato DeSarno.
Casey:
And they do this 20 minute video of who is, I think the title is literally, who is Sabato DeSarno.
Casey:
And it starts as just a regular old video.
Casey:
I'm not talking 3D video, just a regular old video.
Casey:
But then, during the course of this 20-minute video, the app is free, the video is 20-ish minutes long.
Casey:
Try it.
Casey:
During the 20-minute video, and I'm going to spoil a little bit here, there are different things that happen, and it suddenly becomes immersive in a way that is so well done and so freaking cool and such a great example of, look at what is possible with this device.
Casey:
So, silly example.
Casey:
At one point, I forget the exact context, but...
Casey:
At some point, they talk about being on a tram or something like that.
Casey:
And so they're talking about this in the video.
Casey:
And again, this is a rectangle that you're seeing in your space.
Casey:
It is not 3D.
Casey:
I know John and I were going back and forth about this last week.
Casey:
It's just a regular 2D rectangle in your space.
Casey:
But then, outside of this rectangle, suddenly you see, like...
Casey:
the tram tracks, like just silvery gray tracks, extend out from this rectangle.
Casey:
And then a tram, a 3D tram rendered, but a 3D tram comes in along the tracks.
Casey:
And I think you can interact with it.
Casey:
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe you can.
Casey:
And it's just so cool and so different.
Casey:
Later on,
Casey:
They show that there was a... Sabato walks into a room that there's a bunch of, like, Gucci red balloons inflated in it.
Casey:
And what they did during that moment is they have a gazillion rendered balloons.
Casey:
Again, it's not real.
Casey:
It's just renders.
Casey:
But there's a zillion rendered balloons between you and the video.
Casey:
Not in a way that's like, yeah, I guess you're obscuring the video a little bit, which is weird.
Casey:
But, like, in a complimentary way.
Casey:
Not in a way that takes away from your viewing experience.
Casey:
And there's a lot of this.
Casey:
It is...
Casey:
So cool.
Casey:
It's 20 minutes.
Casey:
It is so freaking cool.
Casey:
And if you have a Vision Pro, there is a link in the show notes to this app.
Casey:
I cannot tell you how cool this is.
Casey:
I love that this is what we're starting to get now.
Casey:
Again, I stand by just a week ago.
Casey:
I hadn't seen anything like this.
Casey:
Doesn't mean it didn't exist because I'm pretty sure it did, but I hadn't seen any anyway.
Casey:
But now at least people are starting to let me know of cool and interesting takes and different things that people are doing now with the Vision Pro.
Casey:
Does the Gucci app justify a $3,500 Vision Pro?
Casey:
Hell no, it doesn't.
Marco:
Do Gucci shoppers care?
Casey:
Well, yeah, Gucci shoppers probably don't care.
Casey:
But we're getting a glimpse now with Game Room, with the Gucci app.
Casey:
And I'm sure some of you who have used the Oculus in the past are telling me, are thinking to yourselves, of course, you moron, but this is where we've been for years.
Casey:
And that very well may be true, but this is not where I've been for years.
Casey:
And some of this stuff, the special personas, the presence there, the Game Room app, the Freeform thing, this Gucci app...
Casey:
They are so incredibly cool and has made me so much more... What's the good one?
Casey:
Bullish?
Casey:
Bearish is bad.
Casey:
Bullish is good.
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
So much more bullish about the Vision Pro because I'm starting to see an inkling that people...
Casey:
are starting to experiment.
Casey:
Now, it bums me out that Apple doesn't seem to be doing much as we talked ad nauseum last week, but at least people are starting to do it.
Casey:
And this stuff is so cool.
Casey:
And Marco, whenever you get this thing back, we've got to do a spatial persona call.
Casey:
And maybe you'll say to me, I hate this and it's awful, but you know what?
Casey:
It's worth trying.
Casey:
So whenever you get that thing back, let me know.
Casey:
We'll get on FaceTime together.
John:
Something I had to mention last week about the spatial personas, comparing them to other virtual representations of people, both VR and non-VR.
John:
So, for example, the Miis and Nintendo's Wii, right, where you can make a little, you know, avatar, 3D avatar of yourself and the meta ones where you're in a meeting with people and you got these little rendered versions of yourselves.
John:
All of those have...
John:
made a different choice than apple has with the spatial personas both the current ones and the previous one that were inside the little rectangle and that the like the me's and the meta ones modeled you in 3d and yeah they mapped your face on there and you had your little cartoon hands and sometimes you didn't have legs or whatever but they model you entirely from all directions and the apple ones the original ones and the current quote-unquote spatial ones
John:
basically just do your front and some of your sides.
John:
And as you go towards the back, they kind of go, it's blurry.
John:
Like I just, just blur that out.
John:
And you can see a lot in a lot of the spatial persona videos, like the, the verge article that we linked in last week's episode, where when somebody turns in profile, you can see their profile and it looks like them.
John:
Like it's clear that their persona has mapped that.
John:
So it's not just like, you know, generic, but as you get back past, like the ear, the back half of the head, the head, the,
John:
doesn't exist right and they blur it artistically like before when you were in the little rectangle they had all sorts of artsy blurring around the edges there and now that you're out of the rectangle still the back half of you half of you doesn't exist which makes sense because you didn't scan the back half of you you just scanned the front half of you when you did the persona setup and it could like the me's or the meta things extrapolate and sort of close off your head shape there and try to make it whatever but so far apple is doing the sort of
John:
i guess the nintendo 64 school of like can't render it fog it right just the wall of fog that's like we can't render past this distance but we need something that looks you know realistic in context so like everything is always foggy in the land of torok for some reason and the personas are doing that with you they're like oh your head kind of fades into a mist
John:
you go back on your way and it's fine because mostly you're looking at people from the front but like what casey was saying when if two people are collaborating on like a free forum board or whatever like uh you do have an occasion especially if it's like three people you might have an occasion to see them from the side and it is a little bit weird so i am wondering if eventually that the next step in this is that apple will be brave enough to try to do the back of your head of course the other thing that's the problem with the back of your head is there's even more hair back there for most people uh and not me these days
John:
yeah rendering hair is just tricky like they kind of get like your hairline is kind of fuzzed out anyway with the current personas like like oh you have hair and whatever we scanned but then it just fades into blurriness right but like i don't know ponytails would have to be rendered with physics or whatever and and the reason i'm drawing a distinction between the me's and the meta ones is those were all cartoonish like to varying degrees i know meta has ones that are not cartoonish and we've talked about those in past episodes as well but
John:
The cartoonish ones, it's like kind of like Memoji.
John:
It's like, well, we can just render that because the back of your head is just like the front.
John:
You're all made of plastic, right?
John:
But they're trying to make them realistic.
John:
And I think they're like, we're not ready to do hair yet.
John:
So hair equals blur and back of your head does not exist.
John:
And I'll definitely be watching for that to see how far back they can push the fog.
John:
Already, I think it feels like it's farther.
John:
Obviously, there's not the rectangle anymore that had all that weird fog in it.
John:
But now the personas themselves have fog on the back of them.
John:
And we'll see how far back that goes.
John:
But that's going to be quite a challenge.
John:
But as Casey said, most of the time you're facing the people and like it goes a long way.
John:
Having you feel like you're there in a physical space with a with a physical thing like the battleship board between you that you can interact with or whatever goes a long way towards making you feel like you're in a place, even if the back half of your body doesn't exist.
Casey:
it's just it's so funny because again I stand by last week's episode and that was my perspective at the time and I stand by it but I feel so differently now after this one well two experiences if you include the Gucci thing it's just it's so cool could you play patty cake with Mike
Casey:
Kind of.
Casey:
We did high five once and obviously you kind of float through each other.
Casey:
Your hands float through each other because what's going to stop you?
John:
You know, it's not like you're... I just meant like the alignment.
John:
I think we could.
John:
Was the spatialness good enough where you felt like it was pretty easy to high five, right?
John:
Although what's going to stop you reminds me of my window management thing where I was talking about how...
John:
It fits law like the top of the screen stops your cursor, but nothing stops it in the 3D world.
John:
But a choice that Apple could have made and I think some other VR people have made is that virtual hand that you're waving around.
John:
There's no reason that the Vision Pro OS can't
John:
choose to stop your virtual hand when it encounters another virtual hand or a piece of scenery.
John:
Your actual hand will keep going.
John:
Just like when you jam the mouse cursor against the top of the screen, your mouse hand keeps going, but the cursor stops, right?
John:
And that disconnected, like, wait a second, my hand is still moving, but the cursor is not.
John:
we're familiar with that as like oh my cursor has hit the edge of a thing so it apple could in the future choose to have you interact for example for window management interacting with window management with a virtual hand where you jam your hands turn to window and you don't have to get the depth exactly right because when your virtual hand hits the virtual window it will stop just like your cursor stops when it hits the top edge of the screen and then you'll grip and grab and move and i think that type of advice could be good because it would essentially be
John:
the equivalent of fits law in 3d space i will jam my hand cursor towards this window because i know just like you would in real life i know eventually it will hit it so i don't have to be exactly precise and when it does hit it the cursor will stop and then i'll grip um that would be cool so you could actually you know high five with mike and your hand actually stop and they'd have a little high five sound and it would sound spatially correct maybe in version two
Casey:
Oh, that was the other thing that reminds me.
Casey:
The other thing that we did during this time is I don't, I actually don't recall how you enable it, but one way or another, you can have, you can share play your perspective in your actual physical space.
Casey:
And so I, he took me on a tour of his studio office, whatever he calls it.
Casey:
I think studio, uh, he talked, he took me on a tour of mega studio and, uh,
Casey:
I could see this studio.
Casey:
I've seen photos of it, but it's different when you can see.
Casey:
And if memory serves, it wasn't 3D.
Casey:
It was like, I don't think it was rendered in 3D.
Casey:
I'll have to try it again at some point.
Casey:
But it was very, you have this presence when you're getting whipped around a space from somebody's perspective.
Casey:
It was very, very, very cool.
Casey:
And
Casey:
And I really enjoyed that as well.
Casey:
So again, if you have two people, you know, if you know another person with a Vision Pro, you got to try this.
Casey:
It's all so very impressive.
Casey:
And it really gives me hope that even if Apple is dropping the ball on immersive stuff, people are trying.
Casey:
People are trying and people are doing cool stuff.
Casey:
And we just got to give it time.
Marco:
Yeah, and I wanted to clarify what I actually said last episode about the Vision Pro.
Marco:
I feel like I need to defend myself a little bit against what sounded like Mike subtweeting me in the beginning of the podcast, sub-potting me.
Marco:
I didn't say the Vision Pro has already failed or is a failure.
Marco:
My concern is that the Vision Pro will fail if it continues on the path it appears to be on so far in terms of support from developers and Apple.
Marco:
What I stand by is that they have a pretty significant challenge on their hands of there being a massive chicken and egg problem here, that there are not many users, there are not many apps, there is not almost any content.
Marco:
That's a big problem.
Marco:
In order to get more users, somebody has to be making the content or the apps or both to get them there.
Marco:
And right now, it seems like the biggest chance of that support coming from somewhere is from Apple.
Marco:
Because the other content makers and publishers out there are going to have a hard time justifying making content for Vision Pro if it's going to be for such a small number of people.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
There's also obviously other VR platforms, but even they, like the MetaQuest series has been very popular, relatively speaking, for a VR platform for a number of years now.
Marco:
But even that has not been enough to get tons of custom content made for it.
Marco:
So really, Apple needs to seed this ecosystem with a whole bunch of content that they are making, even though it appears as though it's probably not going to be, like, quote, worth it yet for a while.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And what you're saying, Casey, is not wrong.
Marco:
I haven't tried the 3D personas yet, but I've heard everyone else's takes that they're amazing and everything.
Marco:
And you're describing experiences that I've had on the Vision Pro of just being blown away, really feeling something different, feeling like you're having an experience or being able to do something that you cannot do on any of Apple's other platforms or any other platforms sometimes in the world.
Marco:
And that is...
Marco:
Correct, and also not enough.
Marco:
Those are amazing experiences.
Marco:
Those are amazing possibilities.
Marco:
That's amazing potential.
Marco:
What it is right now, so far, for most of these things, is more like a tech demo than a long-lasting product.
Marco:
We've seen other VR headsets do this for years.
Marco:
Look back to when Meta's Horizon Workroom, is that what it was called?
Marco:
When that launched, what was it, about a year or two ago?
Marco:
We heard from people who tried that, especially Ben Thompson was a huge champion of it, of just how amazing it was to do basically these kind of like virtual meetings with 3D avatars in a virtual room.
Marco:
And it was all everything you were saying about how great the spatial personas were of like spatial audio being, you know, coming from the person and like a 3D representation of that person in the room.
Marco:
Ben Thompson was saying for, you know, when that came out, and I believe when Mike and Gray did it on Cortex a couple years back, I believe they came to a similar conclusion of like, it really is way better than like a Zoom or FaceTime meeting for, you know, virtually meeting with people.
Marco:
And we know this already.
Marco:
But yet, that product never really took off.
Marco:
Like, Horizon Workrooms doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
Marco:
The coolness of the meeting is not enough.
Marco:
The coolness of these experiences of, wow, I played Battleship with my friend once.
Marco:
That's not enough.
Marco:
That's a great experience.
Marco:
It's a cool demo.
Marco:
It's more like going to a theme park, though.
Marco:
How do we get people to integrate this into more everyday life or work types of uses?
Marco:
And that really comes down to kind of more fundamental things.
Marco:
How do you get the hardware to be more mass market friendly, whether that's through cost or change it to the hardware itself?
Marco:
Probably both.
Marco:
And then how do you get people to buy it and to use it regularly, not just use it once, have a cool experience, and then put it back in the drawer and not use it for another six months?
Marco:
That's really hard.
Marco:
My concern is that we're not yet seeing Apple really ramp up the content story or the app story.
Marco:
That's concerning because if not enough people buy this or the people who do buy it end up not using it very often, then all those cool experiences that you're describing won't happen.
Marco:
People will do them once and then never do them again.
Marco:
It's only so useful if you and a handful of your podcaster friends have this but no one else in the world does.
Marco:
They have to get the product from where it is now.
Marco:
to more people being willing and happy to buy it and use it more often.
Marco:
That's the chasm they have to cross.
Marco:
And they might do it.
Marco:
They might really blow us away and get there.
Marco:
Or maybe it'll be a really slow boil, like John was saying last week.
Marco:
And maybe three years from now, we might say, hey, you know what?
Marco:
It's slowly gaining steam.
Marco:
That may happen.
Marco:
I hope that happens.
Marco:
I'm not pessimistic about the product being able to be good.
Marco:
I'm scared that Apple won't do what it takes to get it there because they're not investing enough in the content ecosystem.
Marco:
That's my main concern here is first for any of these experiences to be compelling, to be used more than once, you have to get a bunch of people to buy this thing.
Marco:
How are they going to do that?
Marco:
Well, the easiest way to do that, I think, is with really compelling content because the apps aren't going to be there.
Marco:
So next best thing, really compelling content.
Marco:
Get a bunch of like music and movies and sports videos and concerts and like get like all this different types of content that people will be like, yes, I want to watch my basketball or my fish concert in 3D.
Marco:
I will get it just for that.
Marco:
Yes, do that.
Marco:
Somehow get people to buy it.
Marco:
That would be step one.
Marco:
And then once you have people accepting this device into their lives and using it more than once, then you can start having these amazing experiences with people where you're playing Battleship in 3D together or something.
Marco:
But it's not going to get beyond, this is a fun demo we did twice, until you have a lot of people buying it.
Marco:
And
Marco:
How are you going to get a lot of people to buy it without this whole ecosystem existing already?
Marco:
That's a very tough thing.
Marco:
And I still don't think we've seen enough from Apple yet.
Marco:
But again, it is very early days.
Marco:
It's been out for two months.
Marco:
WWDC is another two months from now.
Marco:
So we still could see great things here, but it seems like we should have seen more of it already being two months post-launch.
Marco:
I would have expected to see more of a push from Apple, more of a content push, more of a press push, just something like to keep reminding people, hey, this cool thing that we did, it's out there, and here's a new thing this week that we've released on it or something.
Marco:
We're not really getting that yet.
John:
Yeah, I think a lot of the reason people talk about content so much for it, and particularly content that is either entirely made by Apple or essentially paid for or sponsored or subsidized by Apple, is because...
John:
That is the one realm where nobody can test that headsets can do something other platforms can't.
John:
You can use a web browser on a Mac, on your phone, on your iPad, or whatever.
John:
You can't watch 3D video on any of those devices, right?
John:
You need a headset to get the headset experience.
John:
And why should Apple help fund that?
John:
Well, if Apple either produces or helps fund content...
John:
A, they can make sure it is optimized for their headset, which happens to be very expensive and has high resolution, right?
John:
So they're not going to make the lowest common denominator content.
John:
And B, they can essentially say this is exclusively for people with Vision Pro, right?
John:
Because if they help pay for it, it doesn't need to be for everybody.
John:
It can just be for people who have the Vision Pro.
John:
And content is the most compelling use for the product that Apple has put out, despite the fact they say it's spatial computing, this, that, the other thing.
John:
Everything you can do in spatial computing in terms of I can use applications and scroll windows and type text.
John:
You can do all those things on other platforms.
John:
There are advantages and disadvantages, but it's not a slam dunk.
John:
Well, you can't do any 3D video on any other thing that Apple makes.
John:
this is the only one so there's no you don't need to make some sophisticated argument about how it's better to manipulate windows in 3d space and how you like looking up at the ceiling to see your web browser you don't have to make a nuanced argument like that it's like literally you cannot do this on anything else that apple sells and also by the way people who see the 3d video find it impressive and compelling right so yes apps and make the os better and so on and so forth or like
John:
Apple, just make more content.
John:
It's the easiest thing because first of all, it doesn't require anything of the user.
John:
You just have to like launch it and look at it and be amazed, right?
John:
And look around, right?
John:
It's very natural.
John:
You don't need to learn any weird pinch gestures.
John:
You don't have to, you know, there's the learning curve is low.
John:
It's incredibly impressive.
John:
I feel like it is the thing that is most impressive to people when they do the in-store demo is seeing the 3D video.
John:
It has no competition in Apple's entire line, and if Apple pays for it, they can essentially make it optimized for and exclusive for this device.
John:
That is a short-term thing.
John:
Eventually, if watching NBA games with a courtside perspective in 3D becomes a thing, presumably the NBA would want that to be available on every headset platform, not just Apple's.
John:
But if Apple foots the bill in the beginning, yeah, you can make that stuff Apple exclusive.
John:
Only on Vision Pro.
John:
Not because Vision Pro is the only headset, but because Apple paid literally millions of dollars to make this happen.
John:
Or because it's MLB and Apple owns the rights to it.
John:
That's part of the frustration is we see how you can make this product more compelling simply by producing content.
John:
And that's not the story Apple wants to tell about this device.
John:
They want to call it a spatial computing device, and it is, right?
John:
But the easiest sale is...
Casey:
you can see 3d video like you've never seen it before and how about you make some of that apple i do i concur it's the easiest i'm not sure it's the most striking for lack of a better word like it unquestionably it's easiest ways to do this immersive or even 3d video but i don't know some of the most compelling experiences i've had were you know like the spatial persona persona thing and these facetime calls and
John:
Yeah, that's quite a learning curve.
John:
You got to know somebody else with one.
John:
You got to be computery.
John:
Like, yeah, like that's I'm kind of of the mindset of like, you know, kickstart this.
John:
And then once people get accustomed because just getting them used to the idea of you put this on your head and you somehow navigate to a thing where you can see the game.
John:
eventually they'll be like you know what i'm feeling comfortable in this world and then hey i can i watch a game with my friend gruber and ben talked about this recently you can be sitting in the stands of a baseball stadium next to each other it started out as you're just watching a baseball game but now you're doing what you're talking about casey where now you're sitting next to your friend watching the same game together and you can turn and talk to them it's like i feel like that's the way in because starting with the thing doesn't require almost anything of the user is a good way to get them
John:
used to all of the stuff that comes with it you know get them to shell out for it in the first place get them used to putting it on their head get them to figure out how it fits into their life whether they're going to feel comfortable using the library or in the Wegmans or whatever then eventually you ease them into like oh now my friend is sitting next to me and we're watching the same movie screen together but now we're watching a baseball game together and now we're both courtside but now we're talking to each other and playing battleship that I feel like that is a a long road to to drive down and Apple has not even like really set out on it yet
Casey:
Yeah, and I mean, I think this, by virtue of this Game Room app being in Apple Arcade, it would imply to me anyway that it was funded at least in part by Apple.
Casey:
Now, to Marco's point earlier, perhaps it was already written for other platforms and the funding was just the porting onto Vision Pro.
Casey:
But still, this is the kind of thing that all three of us are talking about.
Casey:
Like, do more of this, please, Apple.
Casey:
Give us immersive video, give us 3D video, give us all this stuff.
Casey:
And I really want there to be more of it
Casey:
And I think that there is a world in which the Vision Pro can take off to the degree that a $3,500 frivolous device can take off.
Casey:
But it's going to be a long road.
Casey:
I mean, Marco, you're not wrong about that.
Casey:
So we'll see.
Marco:
Yeah, and it will be a long road, but they have to start driving down it.
Marco:
You can make it down a long road.
Marco:
Just wait over time.
Marco:
Be patient.
Marco:
If you continue driving down a long road, you will get there.
Marco:
For me to have more confidence in the products, I need to see that they're actually driving down the road.
Marco:
And Apple Arcade is a great tool they can use.
Marco:
We don't really see a lot of ways that Apple funds development of third-party software.
Marco:
They don't really do that.
Marco:
Obviously, they'll let you put it in the store, asterisk, asterisk.
Marco:
But you don't see Apple behaving like a studio very often where they will front the money to fund some third-party making something.
Marco:
Apple Arcade is, I think, sort of one of those things.
Marco:
I don't know the details, and I know it's kind of shifted and changed a little bit over time, but from what we understand, Apple Arcade is a way they could do that.
Marco:
So if they wanted to fund some games and interactive-type entertainment experiences, that's a great place to do it, like a great tool they already have.
Marco:
Use Apple Arcade.
Marco:
Use the relationships you have there.
Marco:
But everything we keep hearing is that the relationships there aren't that good, maybe.
Marco:
So I worry that it's going to take...
Marco:
Types of relationships and types of skills and attitudes that Apple historically has not really shown that they have in order to make good software happen for the Vision Pro.
Marco:
Because honestly, like you guys were saying a few minutes ago about the computing aspects.
Marco:
I know John was saying that the computing aspects kind of were less important or less doable maybe than the video aspects.
Marco:
But longer term, I think there is more promise in some of the computing aspects than we think now.
Marco:
For instance, I'm currently trying to furnish some rooms in a house and figure out certain decor choices and stuff.
Marco:
It would be great to have some of the 3D house remodeling kind of apps or room envisioning.
Marco:
What does it look like if I paint this room green?
Marco:
That kind of stuff.
Marco:
How does this chair look in my room?
Marco:
Some of that stuff is there now.
Marco:
Very, very little.
Marco:
Mostly through Safari and the support for the AR model stuff.
Marco:
Some of that stuff exists, sort of, but it's very, very minimal.
Marco:
Division Pro would be amazing for stuff like that.
Marco:
What about virtual tourism?
Marco:
Take me to a balcony in a villa in Spain or whatever.
Marco:
You can do amazing stuff with 3D worlds and virtual tourism, mindfulness kind of exercises and environments.
Marco:
Apple's own environments, they can broaden that.
Marco:
There is a lot of value to a lot of that stuff, but for most of that to happen, you first need enough users on the platform that it's worth those developers making those things.
Marco:
So that's hopefully where content can kind of jumpstart the install base.
Marco:
Make must-have, must-see content.
Marco:
And, you know, again, I'm not a sports person, but sports seem like a really obvious good way to do that.
Marco:
I see Apple is, you know, kind of sort of dipping their toe into that so far.
Marco:
that that could be very compelling for a lot of people i think also yeah concerts live events stuff like that that's that could get a lot of people as well i just hope they're doing that but i'm scared because what they have launched with is basically nothing and two months in and it's still basically nothing so how are they going to get from here to there
Marco:
I, you know, if the answer is just that we don't know about their production pipeline and it turns out maybe like over the course of the rest of this year, maybe they have a bunch of cool stuff coming.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
Then we can look back at this and look how wrong I was.
Marco:
That'll be awesome because I want this to succeed.
Marco:
But so far we have no sign of that.
Marco:
So I hope I'm wrong.
Marco:
Again, just like I said last week, I hope I'm wrong.
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
It's just funny how I wasn't, or I don't think I was deeply pessimistic about the Vision Pro.
Casey:
I just wasn't deeply optimistic about it.
Casey:
And now I'm not sure if I would go so far as to say I'm deeply optimistic about it, but my goodness, I feel like I'm much closer to that than I was ever before.
Casey:
And so, yeah, I mean, there's, with time, I'm finding more and more ways that this thing has impressed me.
Casey:
And I think that's cool.
Marco:
We are sponsored this episode by Computex 2024, one of the world's largest AIoT and startup shows happening in Taipei from June 4th through 7th.
Marco:
Whether you're a seasoned industry pro or a passionate entrepreneur, Computex has something for everyone.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So if you're ready to grow your career and expand your network, check out Computex 2024.
Marco:
The URL is computextaipay.com.tw slash en slash index.html slash ATP.
Marco:
And yeah, that'll also be in our show notes.
Marco:
So go to that URL to register now and secure your spot at Computex 2024 from June 4th through 7th.
Marco:
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to be at the forefront of the tech revolution.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Computex 2024 for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Chandler Kent wrote probably six months ago, but here we are.
Casey:
Lesson learned.
Casey:
Don't ever use Ask ATP for timely related things because we probably won't get to it in time.
John:
Sometimes that happens, though.
John:
Sometimes someone writes an Ask ATP and it goes in the next day's recording.
John:
So you never know.
Casey:
You never know, but I wouldn't rely on it.
Casey:
But Chandler wrote 18 years ago, I need to buy a car, but I don't know how.
Marco:
I was thinking about buying a Power Mac G5.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
I'm a tech nerd with no experience buying cars.
Casey:
I fear having the feeling of getting screwed by a sleazy car salesman.
Casey:
As tech nerds who are also into cars, what are your best tips for first-time car buyers to make the process less stressful and hopefully get a fair price?
Casey:
I'm based in the U.S., and we are buying our first family car since we have two kids and are thinking about expanding our family.
Casey:
Currently I own a Volkswagen Jetta that my wife bought in 2011.
Casey:
So my two cents, and I will try to make this quick because this could go on for another 90 minutes if we let it.
Casey:
My two cents are twofold.
Casey:
Number one, if you really want a stress-free experience, I haven't bought from this company, but I have sold to this company.
Casey:
And there are other equivalents, I think, similar to it.
Casey:
And full disclosure, they're based out of Richmond.
Casey:
But CarMax, they sell used cars, and their whole thing is no haggling.
Casey:
Like, the price is the price.
Casey:
Granted, you probably will not get the world's best deal by going to CarMax, but you will have an easy transaction.
Casey:
Carvana, I've heard very mixed things about, but this is sort of similar, but it's all internet-based.
Casey:
But I would consider CarMax, if you're not trying to buy new, go to CarMax and just find something on their lot or find something nearby, and it'll be fairly straightforward.
Casey:
You won't get the best price, but it'll be easy.
Casey:
But for me, when we've bought cars, in the last couple of cars we've bought, we've bought new, mostly to get CarPlay.
Casey:
Um...
Casey:
And what we did was I emailed or reached out to the salespeople for all the dealers within like two to three hours of my house and said, what is your best out the door price for the following car?
Casey:
An XC90 with this, that, this, that, this, that, this, that.
Casey:
What's your best price?
Casey:
And by the way, I'm emailing a bunch of other dealers to ask the same thing.
Casey:
So what ends up happening is one or two of the dealers will come up with a decent price and you can via email, you can just say, oh, well, you know, the dealer down the road said, you know,
Casey:
$50,000.
Casey:
And the dealer up the road said $55,000.
Casey:
Can you come down, dealer up the road?
Casey:
And you can kind of create a bidding war.
Casey:
Now, granted, you have to be the intermediary to do this, and it's a pain in the butt, and it takes forever.
Casey:
But we've gotten some pretty darn good deals on our last couple of cars by doing something like that.
Casey:
So it takes a lot of work, but you can get a pretty decent deal.
Casey:
And pretty much all the haggling is done up front, which is really, really nice.
Casey:
So by the time you go in, it's mostly about just signing a few papers and getting the car.
Casey:
Um, the other thing I would also advocate, and then I'll stop talking is if you can provide your own financing, I would at least be prepared to.
Casey:
Now there's catches and caveats with that because oftentimes you may get a better deal if you use the dealer's financing, but sometimes the dealer likes an easy transaction.
Casey:
And when you just hand them a check, uh, or pay cash, uh, that can go a lot easier.
Casey:
So I think John has some links he's going to talk about.
Casey:
So before we get there, Marco, what would you like to add to this or anything else you'd like to contribute?
Yeah.
Marco:
Some brands, notably like Tesla and also Rivian and many of the new brands, the ones that sell direct where you're not going through dealers, usually they don't even have negotiable prices.
Marco:
Usually it's just here's the price.
Marco:
It's like buying something on Amazon.
Marco:
This is the price.
Marco:
You can order it or not.
Marco:
And in some ways, that kind of takes some of the, quote, fun out of it for some people.
Marco:
For me, that took a lot of stress out of it because I didn't have to worry, am I getting screwed?
Marco:
Everyone's getting screwed equally.
Marco:
So you don't have to feel bad about it or put any thought or time into it.
Marco:
So that's wonderful when there's a brand that just – there is no negotiation.
Marco:
When you're dealing with most other brands where you're going through dealers and having all these markups, it's like any other negotiation –
Marco:
The more information you have about their situation, the better.
Marco:
It helps to know things like, for instance, if you can use online nerdery to find out what does this car cost the dealer?
Marco:
I believe this is called the invoice price in some circles or whatever else, but you can usually use some kind of online research to figure out what does the dealer cost for this car?
Marco:
Now, it's a little more complicated.
Marco:
Sometimes there's like certain incentives and everything the dealer gets to kind of cut into it a little bit.
Marco:
But for the most part, you should have some idea of what you can reasonably even ask for.
Marco:
Because if you're asking to buy a $35,000 car and it costs the dealer $32,000 and you go in there and say, I'll give you $20,000.
Marco:
They're going to laugh at you like because what you're asking for is totally impossible and unreasonable.
Marco:
And that just shows you don't know what you're talking about.
Marco:
If you go in there with some idea of what you're talking about and you know that their cost is, you know, 32 and you say, I'll give you 32 five right now.
Marco:
Walk out the door like you're giving them a profit margin.
Marco:
You know, they're like because, you know, they're not going to give you give it to you for their cost.
Marco:
They're going to want some profit.
Marco:
So you give them $500 or $1,000 in profit, and usually they'll be fine with that, and they'll be happy to have the deal done quickly.
Marco:
Now, Casey's method is better, and you should probably combine these two.
Marco:
So you should probably, if you have multiple dealers in the region who will compete with each other, who you can just email and deal with it that way, that's better.
Marco:
But you should also know what to ask for in the first place, and you should know what kind of pricing is reasonable to expect, right?
Marco:
You should also know about other factors.
Marco:
So for instance, oftentimes, depending on how you want to finance it, oftentimes some of the best values in the car business are lease specials.
Marco:
Because if you want to and can lease the vehicle, leasing is usually backed by some financial arm of the car company who you're buying the car from.
Marco:
And so if the car company is, say, kind of is maybe looking to miss some of their sales targets for the quarter and the end of the quarter is coming up soon, they might borrow against their future selves by offering a lease special to give you a pretty good deal on a car to get you to please, for the love of God, start this lease now in this quarter.
Marco:
So you can take advantage of factors like that, you know, end of month, end of quarter things.
Marco:
There's some wiggle room there.
Marco:
Ultimately, though, all of this comes down to basic negotiation.
Marco:
Which of you needs it more?
Marco:
Do you want this certain car a lot?
Marco:
Do a lot of other people want that same car?
Marco:
So, for instance, if what you're going for is a very in-demand car that maybe is in a bit of a short supply...
Marco:
You're going to pay through the nose and they know it and there's nothing you can do about it.
Marco:
Because if you don't buy it, someone will come in later that day and they'll buy it.
Marco:
But whereas if the flip side is true, if what you are trying to buy is a car that is pretty plentiful and the dealer is going to miss their sales target or the manufacturer is going to miss their quarterly earnings target, you can take advantage of that and you can get a good price.
Marco:
So the more information you have, the better, because you want to know where you stand and
Marco:
How much leverage you have depends on how much they want to sell you that car.
Marco:
And you need to know how far down you can even go in the price while still being reasonable and within what they can accept.
Casey:
What's the John answer to this question?
John:
So my suggestion is, so there's lots of online tools to help you with this stuff.
John:
And there's a YouTube channel that I found interesting.
John:
And it's a good example.
John:
I'm not a good example of a genre of YouTube channel.
John:
type channel where the channel is essentially a come on for you to sign up for a service, right?
John:
But they have lots of free videos on YouTube, all of which are telling you to go to the website and sign up for the service and pay the money, right?
John:
The channel is called Car Edge and they have a website and they do have a thing they want you to pay for, right?
John:
But there's a lot of free value that you can extract from something like CarEdge without ever paying them any money.
John:
I've never paid CarEdge any money, but I've watched a bunch of their videos, right?
John:
And the thing I like about CarEdge is
John:
If you watch enough of the videos, the free videos that are on YouTube, you will eventually start to get a feel for what the dealership experience is like, the bad old negotiated price dealership experience.
John:
One of the people who runs the channel used to be a car dealer, so he knows what it's like on the other side, right?
John:
And they do lots of role-playing in the channel, which I think is the other important part of negotiating for car dealers, just like any other salespeople, will leverage social norms, essentially, to get you to do something you otherwise wouldn't, right?
John:
So social norms of not wanting to disagree with somebody or not wanting to be rude to them
John:
Those sound like things that wouldn't cause you to pay thousands of dollars more for a car, but they absolutely will.
John:
Right.
John:
And I'm not saying you have to be obnoxious and rude, but there are many things that you will feel uncomfortable doing if you haven't either rehearsed them yourself or at least seen other people role playing and rehearsing them.
John:
uh because it's very easy to sort of get caught up and also frankly but if you find yourself in a car dealer one of the things they do is keep you there for a long time because you're like i don't want to go through this all again on another day i just wasted one of my weekend days doing this and i basically decided that i don't want to buy this car at this price but if i leave now all i'm doing is signing myself up to have to do this again next weekend uh and how soon do i need the car i needed asap because my old car was totaled or whatever like you don't ever want to be in that situation
John:
right sometimes you can't help it but it's just a thing to keep in mind like they're relying on you not wanting to feel like you're rude uh and you not want to be feeling exhausted and not wanting to go through this whole ordeal again to just be like fine whatever resist that so i would
John:
suggest going to something like the courage youtube channel or their website or anything similar and sucking all the value out of that for free if you want to sign up for it fine i wouldn't give them any money but there's so much good knowledge on youtube of like here's what it's going to be like when you go in the dealer here's what the dealer is going to say to you
John:
Here's why this is not true.
John:
Here's why that's not true.
John:
And yes, there are tons of websites where you can look up what the dealer prices for this car and incentives and all that stuff.
John:
What Marco said about rare cars is true.
John:
If you want a Civic Type R, bad news for you.
John:
You're lucky if you can even find one, let alone get one that's not $10,000 over MSRP.
John:
Try to buy a car that is not very rare, right?
John:
Try to not be in a hurry for it.
John:
Do your research ahead of time and practice.
John:
And if you're in a partnership and your partner is more comfortable doing this type of negotiation, if you do role playing and one of you just can't bring themselves to just walk out the door and say no or no, I can't do that, have the other person to negotiate.
John:
because you have to end up doing that and I will say finally in the end before you even start this process if you have in mind I think I want a Honda Civic-ish car and I have this amount of money for it and if I paid this amount of money and I got a brand new Honda Civic-ish car I would be happy in the end if you do get exhausted and someone says hey I'll give you a Honda Civic for a number that is within the range that you want it to pay
John:
Even if you're essentially, oh, I'm overpaying.
John:
I got screwed.
John:
So you paid an extra $1,000 for a Civic.
John:
The world will not end.
John:
Make sure you get the car you want for a price that you're okay with.
John:
And then maybe you've done minimal sanity checking on that price to make sure it's not completely outrageous.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And you'll be fine.
John:
Like, there's no one who's going to come to your house and say, I heard you paid $500 more than your neighbor for your car.
John:
Don't you feel bad?
John:
Don't feel bad.
John:
Just get a car that you're happy with, that hopefully you'll like for a reasonable price.
John:
There's no award for shaving down that last $100 off the price.
John:
It's, you know, you're going to spend that much filling up the tank twice.
John:
Or if you get an EV, you're spending so much money anyway, so who cares?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
No, I think just to reiterate what John just said, it is important to know that no matter how nice or not sleazy the dealer is, their profession is to manipulate you into paying them as much money as you are possibly capable of paying.
Casey:
And so there will be moments where you have to say, nope, I'm out and walk away.
Casey:
And there are moments where you probably will have to be kind of rude.
Casey:
When I bought the Volkswagen, I negotiated in advance.
Casey:
We came to a price.
Casey:
I said, okay, I'm going to come up at such and such a time.
Casey:
Everything's good to go.
Casey:
I'll have all the paperwork I need.
Casey:
I'll have a check for you, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
And this was at a Volkswagen dealer, the Volkswagen dealer nearest the Volkswagen of America headquarters up in the D.C.
Casey:
area.
Casey:
and I was trying to get this car bought.
Casey:
Everything was squared away.
Casey:
I just had to sign the paperwork, and they wouldn't put me in front of the finance people, which was silly because I didn't even need to finance anything, but nevertheless, they wouldn't put me in front of the finance people for like an hour, and eventually I sent a text to the child that was my dealer, and I said, look, I am going to leave if I'm not in front of somebody in five minutes.
Casey:
Like, I was a...
Casey:
total chad about it because i've been saying like what's the story what's the story what's the story and he'd run off to go ask such and such and such who's a mob and eventually i sent a text i was like i will leave in five minutes if i'm not in front of somebody and do you know what fellas do you know what happened in about three minutes i was sitting in front of the finance person who was then giving me the rigmarole about oh you need the underbody protection oh you need the wheel protection oh you need the tire protection and you have to say no no no no but
Casey:
But eventually, I sure enough got out of there with the car I wanted at the price I wanted, and it all worked out.
Casey:
But it took me being a Chad to get there, and that was no fun.
John:
On the topic of – this is another thing to watch the Car Edge videos about.
John:
It's complicated, but like should I tell them that I'm paying in cash?
John:
Should I tell them I have a trade-in?
John:
When should I tell them these things?
John:
Should I not say anything about it until we've agreed on a number?
John:
Like it's more complicated than you think, which is why I think you should watch these free videos and get an idea of like –
John:
the things you should and shouldn't say until you get an agreed upon price.
John:
And then you pull out, oh, and by the way, I have a trade-in.
John:
Oh, and by the way, I'm paying cash.
John:
Or by the way, I'll do your finance thing as long as there's no early penalty thing because they often have incentives to get you to sign up for the finance thing.
John:
They're like, look, we know you're going to pay cash for it.
John:
But if you will just sign up for this loan and then immediately pay it off, you'll never pay a penny in interest or whatever.
John:
That's not always a scam.
John:
Sometimes that's a real thing.
John:
I've done it with my own cars where we get a quote-unquote car loan and then just immediately pay it off with no prepayment penalty whatsoever to get a lower price on the car.
John:
But that usually, by the time you're negotiating that, it's after you've essentially got agreed upon price and maybe you're trying to get it to go even lower as well.
John:
anyway watch his courage videos i found them very educational it may make you think i never want to buy a car again or i want to buy something with no haggle price do you guys remember when saturn did that it was one of the first yeah yeah we had a saturn that was my first car was a saturn and that was a dealership thing like it was gm it's not it wasn't like it wasn't like rivian or tesla it was a uh car from a big car company with a dealership chain where it was still no haggle pricing so yeah no haggle pricing like marco said everyone gets screwed equally um yeah but
John:
It is possible to find a good deal on a new car, and if not, then on a used car as well.
John:
Obviously, Marco has the most experience buying cars out of many of us.
Casey:
Actually, is that true?
Casey:
I don't know if he has the most experience buying cars.
Casey:
He has a lot of experience leasing cars, but buying cars?
John:
I don't know.
John:
You're in a dealership.
John:
You're dealing with those people.
John:
You're giving them money.
Marco:
It's all the same.
Marco:
You know leases are also negotiable, right?
Marco:
Everyone knows that?
Marco:
You can negotiate the price on which they're basing the lease.
Casey:
fair enough all right we should move on and anonymous writes when apple hewlett packard and john deere sells physical products we don't actually own the product john deere uses software to prevent farmers from repairing their tractors hp uses software to prevent users from using non-hp ink in their printers apple uses software to prevent users from installing fortnite on their phones with all this discussion of the dma and apple's treatment of developers there's little mention of apple's taking of iphone device ownership from consumers
Casey:
I understand the premise here.
Casey:
Granted, I give Apple a pass on a lot of things that maybe I shouldn't, but I don't really get vibes that it's Apple's device.
Casey:
And in fact...
Casey:
What was the kerfuffle about photo scanning or something like that?
Casey:
There was something recently that all of us were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Casey:
That's not for you to be doing without my permission.
Marco:
Yeah, that was the CSAM analysis from last year.
Casey:
Yeah, it's not that I have a problem with CSAM analysis, but just telling me that you're doing this on my phone and sucking up my battery to do it and stuff like that.
Casey:
I don't love that.
Casey:
And they reverse course.
Casey:
But the broader point I don't think is unreasonable.
Casey:
And I certainly don't love that ownership is a lot squishier now than it was before.
Casey:
But with Apple particularly, I don't really feel that squeeze quite yet.
Casey:
I think I started with Marco last time.
Casey:
So, John, what are your thoughts here?
John:
I put this question in here just to give myself an opportunity to say something that I kept meaning to say that it basically goes unsaid in all of our discussions of the iPhone and the App Store and developers being ignored or whatever, but I figured we should say it in case people don't just assume it.
John:
Whenever we talk about developers being annoyed that they're not getting – they don't feel like they're getting their money's worth from Apple.
John:
Apple is running the App Store in a way they disagree with.
John:
It's taking too much of their profits, whatever their cut is.
John:
And people will say, why are people mad about that?
John:
They shouldn't be mad.
John:
Here is another situation where another company takes an even bigger cut and people aren't mad.
John:
It's unfair that people are mad at Apple, right?
John:
And this is – I'll get to it.
John:
This is actually related to the whole John Deere HB printering thing, right?
Yeah.
John:
One of the explanations of why people might be mad at Apple for doing something that they're not mad at other companies for doing an even worse thing is because those people who are mad view the phone the same way they view Apple's other earlier platforms, personal computers.
John:
Personal computers have existed for a really long time.
John:
Some of the people who have sold software for personal computers are still alive and selling software or trying to sell software for things like iPhones.
John:
And on personal computers, for the whole history of that product, companies would make a computer and there'd be an operating system, sometimes made by the same company, sometimes made by the other, and then you'd buy applications for them and you'd run them, right?
John:
And the applications used to be sold through Agit Software.
John:
Agit Software would take 55% of every single box of software they sold, which is way more than 30%.
John:
And then the rest would go to the software developer or the publisher or whatever in any way.
John:
And you'd put it on your computer.
John:
And then with the advent of the internet, people said, I don't need Agit Software.
John:
I can sell you my software directly.
John:
You buy it from my website, download it to your computer, you install it, and you run it.
John:
And Apple isn't involved at all in that transaction.
John:
Apple sold you the computer.
John:
Maybe Apple sold you the operating system.
John:
Apple has its own applications that you can buy, but when you buy the application from me, you go to my website, you give me money, maybe I pay a credit card processor, maybe I pay some other payment processor or whatever, but that's all my business.
John:
And if you own a computer, you can buy from me and put that software on your computer.
John:
And people look at the phone and they think that's how the phone should work because we have literal decades of precedent, maybe not decades with the Internet buying on websites, but decades of precedent of like, hey, I buy a computer from a company and maybe they make an operating system.
John:
But after that, I can do whatever I want.
John:
And yeah, maybe egghead software gets 55 percent of every box of software, but that's not my problem.
John:
I don't have to deal with that.
John:
And.
John:
In some respects, people are more okay with retailers taking stuff.
John:
It's like, look, they have to make a physical box, and we ship it to them, and they have warehouses and inventory, and they pay employees, and they rent a building, and they heat, and they cool it.
John:
There's obvious costs involved there, and retail is a long-established thing.
John:
But still, the computer is sort of like, it's my computer, I own it, I can run whatever software I want.
John:
It's not like Microsoft can reach out or Dell or whatever and say, no, I'm sorry, you're not allowed to play Fortnite anymore because Dell says you can't.
John:
And when Apple says that you can't have Fortnite on your phone anymore, a lot of times it feels like Dell is telling them that they can't play Doom on their PC.
John:
It's absurd to them.
John:
I'm not saying they're right or wrong.
John:
I'm just saying that this is a thing that happened in history.
John:
People remember that history.
John:
In fact, that history continues to this day on platforms that Apple sells like the Mac, where they can't stop me from downloading a piece of software off the internet and using it on my Mac.
John:
And so far, Apple has not.
John:
I mean, they could.
John:
But so far, Apple has said they won't and they haven't, right?
John:
So there is this other thing that looks a lot like a computer or a lot like the phone, if you squint, that makes people feel like the phone should work that way.
John:
And I feel like this person's question is similar.
John:
They say they remember a world or know about currently a world where...
John:
The situation is different.
John:
And they say, what's different between the phone and the iPad and a Mac and a PC?
John:
They're all computers with screens and RAM and communication devices.
John:
Like, what's so different?
John:
And I'm sure you can come up with the reasons why it's different.
John:
Certainly Apple has tried over the years.
John:
I remember when the iPhone first came out, a lot of the reasons that Apple said it was different was because it's the cell phone network and you don't want arbitrary software running on here because that could destroy the cell phone.
John:
Remember the whole like scaremongering about it?
John:
Yeah, wasn't that Steve Jobs himself who gave that excuse?
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
It's like before the App Store existed, like why they have to be web apps and can't be regular apps, obviously.
John:
But like...
John:
I'm not explaining this to say this is why Apple is wrong.
John:
I'm just putting this out there so people know this is one of the things that contributes to people's dissatisfaction because they know it has been, can be, and is different on other platforms that people think are close enough to the iPhone that it shouldn't be that different.
John:
And we don't really mention that.
John:
We don't talk about that because we're always like, oh, everyone knows on PCs it's not like it is on the iPhone.
John:
But I just want to reiterate, on PCs it is not like it is on the iPhone.
John:
And that contributes greatly to certain, maybe just old people's, but certain people's attitude towards the iPhone and iOS and the Mac App Store and stuff like that is because maybe they're old and they remember the olden times.
John:
But even if they're young people, if you buy a Mac today, you can run any software you want on it.
John:
And Apple can't stop you.
John:
And that's a platform that Apple sells today.
John:
So I don't think when all us old people die, I don't think everyone will just accept Apple's cut and their total control over the App Store.
John:
I think as long as the Mac continues to exist, as long as the PC continues to exist, as long as those platforms like that exist, as long as the web exists and people are born every day and see those things, they will ask that same question.
John:
And the question is, why is this phone different than this PC?
John:
Or, you know, the John Deere tractor people.
John:
I've been buying John Deere tractors for 50 years.
John:
Why is this tractor something I can't fix it myself?
John:
Right.
John:
Why can't I take my cracked phone screen and get it fixed at the mall kiosk if I'm willing to do that for less money?
John:
Parts pairing.
John:
Like, I hope that we don't lose sight of the way things used to be because the way things are today on the iPhone are not necessarily the way they always have to be.
John:
Same deal with John Deere tractors or whatever.
John:
And in particular, when it comes to Apple's platforms, the fact that they were founded as a personal computer company and have all those decades of experience with personal computers, and we did have that time when personal computers existed and the internet existed and you could buy software directly from software developers without the platform vendor being involved at all, that contributes greatly to people's dissatisfaction.
Casey:
Things used to be simple and now they're not.
Casey:
And before we even started recording the bootleg, I was whining and moaning to the boys about doing some Minecraft-related things for Declan this evening.
Casey:
And I couldn't help but think to myself as this was going on, like, what's the canceled comic when he was talking about Wi-Fi on a plane?
Casey:
Like, everything's awesome and nobody's happy.
Casey:
This is kind of like everything's awful and nobody's happy.
Casey:
because there were like so many layers I had to jump through and so many hoops I had to jump through in order to get something working where it used to be that you installed a piece of software and then it ran.
Casey:
And I get why things are not that way today.
Casey:
And for the most part, I prefer it the way it is today.
Casey:
But golly, when it goes bad, it goes real bad.
Marco:
Well, but also, you know, there's kind of an Overton window effect here of, you know, the sliding window of what we accept as normal slash acceptable slash palatable in computers.
Marco:
And that changes over time, you know.
Marco:
And, you know, to kind of build on what John was saying, back in the day when many of our listeners were probably not even born yet,
Marco:
We had – there was a huge ripple throughout the computer enthusiast community when hardware started including DRM in hardware.
Marco:
I remember there was – was it the Intel TPM?
Marco:
There was like the – Microsoft and Intel were working together on like a trusted platform.
Marco:
This was when they were first adding basically security in the hardware for DRM, for DRM media playback to PC hardware for the first time.
Marco:
This was, I believe, in the late 90s.
Marco:
It was around the time DVDs had come out and all of the DRM arguments over the DVD CSS horribleness and the DCSS lawsuits and all this other stuff was going on.
Marco:
It was really the rise of mainstream DRM in PC hardware.
Marco:
And, you know, before that, you had formats like the CD, which had absolutely no protection whatsoever.
Marco:
I mean, people tried to add it later, kind of sort of worked sometimes, but for the most part, it was, you know, no protection whatsoever.
Casey:
My guy, we had protection before CDs.
Casey:
Do you not remember trying to photocopy the SimCity black on red?
Marco:
Oh, the red, yeah.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
I mean, come on!
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Anyway, so there were all these... In the olden days, before basically the late 90s, there was really no good way to do DRM for most PC media, or most media at all.
Marco:
And so it was kind of just unprotected and left to, well, most people probably won't copy it.
Marco:
Or copying it's a little bit hard, or a little bit expensive, maybe people won't do it a lot.
Marco:
And then we started adding DRM to PC hardware, and it was...
Marco:
like all the enthusiast forums and the media and everybody like exploded when people started adding these things i'm never gonna buy a pc with a drm chip in it it's my pc i can do whatever i want now every pc has drm chips in it every phone of the modern you know phone type has always had drm type support in it now drm is everywhere and
Marco:
Everything we play, everything we stream, everything we download.
Marco:
Remember Steve Jobs' thoughts on DRM, thoughts on music, where, you know, he gave this big thing about, oh, DRM basically shouldn't exist.
Marco:
Now it's all back.
Marco:
Every streaming service that you play music from or that you watch video from, if it's a streaming service, everything's DRM'd.
Marco:
There's DRM in web browsers now.
Marco:
There's all these wonderful web streaming media things that you can view in a web browser with various web standards like HLS.
Marco:
But then you have DRM in those.
Marco:
I believe Widevine is the one that keeps getting up my butt when I try to download Phish concerts.
Marco:
There's DRM in your web browser in the open world of the web running on your open world of your PC.
Marco:
It's full of DRM now.
Marco:
And that's just considered normal.
Marco:
No one even blinks an eye.
Marco:
So the window of what's acceptable to consumers does shift over time.
Marco:
You know, it's you know, it's it's kind of a frog boiling thing and that like this is not necessarily a good thing for us in many ways.
Marco:
But over time, people stop caring that, you know, you fight a little bit.
Marco:
And then you give up and you move on or something compelling is on the other side.
Marco:
Like you really want to use one of those streaming services or you really want to use the iPod or whatever it is that has some kind of DRM in it or some other form of restriction of you as an owner.
Marco:
And you go to it for other factors.
Marco:
It's hard to service your own car these days in many ways because cars have all these different electronically bonded parts and everything's complicated and requires special computers and everything.
Marco:
And, yeah, it is hard to do a lot of that stuff yourself now, but most people are not driving big blocky cars from the 1970s that are death traps today but are easy to service because we have other alternatives or other advantages to modern vehicles now that, okay, fine, we'll accept that we can't do all of our own work on our car anymore.
Marco:
Not that I ever could, but other people could.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You know, there's technology moves forward and it gives us certain advantages that convince people to move forward with it.
Marco:
And we generally accept some of the restrictions that didn't exist in the old world.
Marco:
So as we move from PCs to phones, largely for a lot of people...
Marco:
Phones have always been incredibly locked down.
Marco:
The result of all of that is we do, as consumers, have less control than we used to over a lot of these devices in our lives.
Marco:
But the result also is that because it's so locked down...
Marco:
We have Netflix and HBO and stuff willing to bring their content to these devices and not have to worry that it's all going to get ripped off super easily off of somebody's hacked up phone.
Marco:
It's at least more difficult to do that.
Marco:
Not that stuff doesn't get pirated, but it's more difficult to pirate it directly that way.
Marco:
And this is not a defensive DRM by any means or of these various control mechanisms that these companies use.
Marco:
It's just the reality of how this works.
Marco:
Over time, more of these control systems are added because it benefits the companies and in some cases it benefits the product.
Marco:
And people accept them over time.
Marco:
That's just how it goes.
Marco:
People accept it because there's some trade-off that they decide, you know what?
Marco:
Yes, I wish I could copy the songs the opposite direction off my iPod, but I can't, and I'm just going to buy the iPod anyway because I like everything else about it.
Marco:
That's what happens, and that's what has happened with our phones and with John Deere tractors.
Marco:
The only thing that won't happen to is HP printers because they're terrible no matter what.
John:
It's not always just in one direction.
John:
There is a moment when you have an amazing advantage that you can essentially force people to take these other things that are not advantageous for them but that are advantageous for you.
John:
But that moment does eventually pass.
John:
That's why you have the pushback of these right-to-repair laws, even pushback against the John Deere stuff or whatever.
John:
We try to come to an arrangement that is –
John:
Yeah.
John:
But eventually that does shift.
John:
I mean, you saw the shift of people going away from DRM music downloads because it became commoditized and DRM was more annoying.
John:
And even Apple eventually went DRM free.
John:
But then streaming came and you want the streaming because now you don't have to worry about syncing and downloading.
John:
And by the way, with the streaming, you're getting DRM because I know you want the streaming.
John:
And so I feel like it's more of a seesaw.
John:
We get the advantage.
John:
The big companies take advantage of it, but then we push back.
John:
We push back as things become commodified.
John:
We push back with regulation, push back with things like right-to-repair laws.
John:
Even the things like the TPUs and the DRMs, stuff like that,
John:
That's essentially the same technology that gives us like the secure boot on modern Apple hardware that lets us know that the OS that it's booting is really the OS that it's booting.
John:
So there are advantages to some of that technology as well.
John:
The people are like, no, I've never won any cryptographic stuff.
John:
No secure enclaves.
John:
No, we want that stuff.
John:
It can be used to work for us as well because we want our things to, we want to know that the OS that our phone is running is the one that we expect it to run and it hasn't been modified in some way.
John:
Like all that cryptographic stuff can work for us as well.
John:
And that's what we want in the end.
John:
And in terms of the marketplace things with platform orders controlling things, like I said, it's like it is the institutional memory and the actual present of the Mac and the PC that lets people know that like this isn't the only way a software marketplace has to be.
John:
we either they remember how it used to be or they can see hey over there that's a software marketplace and it doesn't work like this software marketplace so explain to me again why this software marketplace has to be so different in the beginning was like be quiet we're selling a billion iphones and now it's like well you know it's been a decade or two and or having some doubts about this arrangement between us and apple governments have doubts about it and people have doubts about and software developers have doubts so i feel like this
John:
an ongoing negotiation but there is definitely an ebb and flow of amazing thing comes out and we will accept a lot of compromises but that does fade over time as we push back so hopefully and you know hb printers who cares i'm with marco on that one but hopefully on john deere tractors and right to repair and apple's complete control of the ios marketplace hopefully we're starting to push back in the other direction now
Casey:
Jonathan Sibley writes, the recent episode where you, gosh, he only knows how recent it was, where you discussed native versus electron style apps on the Mac made me wonder what you think about Catalyst as a development platform.
Casey:
I recently came across an article, which we will link in the show notes, which is complaining about it.
Casey:
Does it feel abandoned, neglected, as this author seems to think it is?
Casey:
I don't really have a lot of constructive things to say about this because I've never really done that much Catalyst.
Casey:
I mean, I'm doing the thing with Call Sheet where I have the iPad app allowed to be run on macOS, but that Catalyst is the thing where you're using UIKit on macOS, right?
Casey:
Do I have that distinction correct?
John:
Yeah, I think when we did the first episode, but I think this was the episode title.
John:
I think it was something that I said on the show.
John:
So putting UIKit as a way for you to write Mac applications.
John:
I described it as an extinction level event for AppKit because there are so many developers who are familiar with UIKit.
John:
And once you're able to use UIKit to make Mac applications, if Apple actually continues to support that and make it a thing, why would Apple itself even continue to develop AppKit?
John:
Of course, I believe at that time we didn't know about SwiftUI.
John:
So as it turns out, the story is a little bit different because Apple eventually decided after several years of kind of just implying, they came out and said, Swift UI is the way you make applications for our platforms.
John:
Yes, we have AppKit.
John:
Yes, we have UIKit.
John:
Yes, we have UIKit on the Mac that we call Catalyst or whatever.
John:
But just so you know, Swift UI, and we all said, Swift UI is not yet ready.
John:
But Apple said, doesn't matter.
John:
It's what we're doing.
John:
And so it's not like Apple has stopped developing AppKit and Catalyst entirely.
John:
But that's not where the action is.
John:
So as it turns out, Catalyst didn't have a long life in the sun, but it did effectively make AppKit on the Mac, which is Cocoa.
John:
It's complicated API history on the Mac, but setting aside Carbon for now, which let's not go back too far in history.
John:
AppKit was the approved native way to make Mac apps because there was no other approved native way to make Mac apps.
John:
But then came Catalyst.
John:
And once Catalyst arrived with all the UIKit, iPhone developers was like, all right, well, then what is AppKit now?
John:
Are you going to keep making AppKit better?
John:
Are you just going to concentrate entirely on UIKit and Catalyst?
John:
And Apple just said, never mind all that SwiftUI.
John:
But either way, you look at AppKit and UIKit and Catalyst and you think...
John:
How much more work is Apple going to put into these things?
John:
And year after year at WWDC, when you go to the what's new in UI kit, what's new in AppKit sessions, how much big new stuff do you see versus the what's new in SwiftUI session, right?
John:
That is the thing that you have to gauge.
John:
And it's not like there's not new stuff happening in AppKit.
John:
There still is and will be this year, I predict, a what's new in AppKit session, a what's new in UIKit session, a session about Catalyst, and there'll be stuff in them and there'll be exciting things and there'll be cool.
John:
Uh, but that's, Apple has told us that's not the future.
John:
The future is Swift UI and the future is not quite ready yet, but the future is Swift UI.
John:
And if you're trying to look at like, how's Catalyst doing, uh, if Swift UI hadn't arrived, I think Catalyst would be doing a lot better.
John:
Apple has made a lot of the, the apps that come with the Mac with Catalyst, uh,
John:
Now, very, very slowly, Apple is starting to make apps or parts of apps with SwiftUI on the Mac.
John:
So I think the story about Catalyst is kind of the same story as AppKit, which is there is a new star in town and it's SwiftUI and it's not ready yet, but Apple says it's the future.
John:
So all those other frameworks are essentially...
John:
legacy app kit is the most full featured i think it makes the best looking best working mac apps it's had literal decades of development it came from next and then apple took it on and it's just had so much incredibly full featured but apple has not said the future of mac development is app kit so don't keep looking at that you same deal with ui kit it grew on the iphone has so many things added to it it's amazing but apple has not said that ui kit is the future of phone and ios and vision os development
John:
So that's the answer.
John:
Catalyst is in the same sad little car with AppKit and UIKit on iOS and iPadOS and VisionOS for that matter.
John:
Apple says it's Swift and SwiftUI.
John:
And even though we all agree that SwiftUI is not ready to replace any of those things yet, someday Apple thinks it will be.
Marco:
A huge part of the value of Catalyst is, hey, you can take your UIKit code that you wrote for your iPhone app and you can make a Mac app with most of that same code running pretty much the same way with not too many changes.
Marco:
That's the appeal.
Marco:
But then when the Apple Silicon Mac transition happened, they allowed iPad apps to just run unmodified.
Marco:
When you compare the, as a developer, you compare the amount of work it takes to make a catalyst version of your app.
Marco:
It is way more custom work.
Marco:
It's not a ton of custom work, but it is way more custom work than just letting your iPad app run.
Marco:
You need to have a separate App Store entry so that you can upload to the Mac App Store, and that can't be the same upload that you use for the iOS App Store.
Marco:
You need Mac screenshots.
Marco:
You need to submit updates separately for your Mac version and deal with app reviews separately for your Mac version.
Casey:
This is all applicable, by the way, if you make a Vision OS native app, which this bit me because I don't know why I didn't realize this, but I assumed that even once I flipped the no, no, no, go from iPad compatibility mode to Vision OS native, I just assumed I would still be uploading a single binary, so on and so forth.
Casey:
And then I realized, oh, oh, oh, no.
Marco:
Yeah, that adds a whole bunch of just overhead and potential for problems for developers.
Marco:
So it is pretty compelling for developers if we can get 80% of the way there just letting our iPad app run and not have to take on any of that overhead.
Marco:
It's pretty compelling to say, okay, yeah, we'll just do that.
Marco:
So what really ultimately I think made Catalyst a lot less appealing for third-party developers was that iPad apps running on the Mac with Apple Silicon transition.
Marco:
And as time goes on, that's only going to increase because at least three years ago when this transition began or four years ago, whenever that was, at least then the argument was, well, you can let your iPad app run on the M1 Macs, but if you do Catalyst, it will run on the entire install base of Intel Macs also.
Marco:
But over time, the install base of Intel Mac is going to get smaller and the install base of the Apple Silicon Mac is going to get larger.
Marco:
And so that keeps shifting the balance even more towards
Marco:
I'm just going to let my iPad app run.
Marco:
Now, with Catalyst, you can make a better app by far.
Marco:
You can take advantage of very Mac-specialized things with Catalyst.
Marco:
Catalyst gives you a lot of good abilities where you're still using mostly UIKit code, but you have certain kind of custom hooks into Mac-specific things to a larger degree than you have when running your iPad app.
Marco:
But from a developer point of view, that comes with some pretty large costs.
Marco:
And so I don't see it really being compelling for most developers.
Marco:
But it is useful just as kind of a middleware layer for Apple.
Marco:
And I think that, like what John was saying earlier, many Mac OS Apple-provided apps are now written in Catalyst.
Marco:
And I think that is for the best because we saw in the era before that was really a thing...
Marco:
Apple had a lot more trouble keeping up feature parity between their platforms.
Marco:
The Mac really got low priority work, and it showed.
Marco:
And Mac versions of apps that were also on iOS or that were supposed to be on other platforms, the Mac versions were lagging way behind before Catalyst.
Marco:
Since Catalyst...
Marco:
The Mac is still not the first priority, and it probably never will be, but it's way closer now, and they keep up way better ever since then.
Marco:
So the greatest value to the platform of Catalyst is that it made it easier for Apple to keep up their own software between the platforms better than they were before.
Marco:
That's a good point.
Marco:
And it's going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
John:
I don't think the iPad apps are really the nail in Catalyst coffin.
John:
It was SwiftUI, right?
John:
Because like you said, you can get your iPad app on the Mac.
John:
And yes, they're all going to be armed.
John:
So you don't have to worry about Intel or whatever.
John:
And that's great.
John:
But you're like, oh, it's so much easier than all the work I'd have to do with rewriting with Catalyst.
John:
Not that you need to write entirely, but you got to do more work.
John:
Well, now, if you're going to take that step to do more work, you're not going to use Catalyst.
John:
You're going to say, oh, Apple has another way.
John:
that if i'm willing to do some rewriting i can get the same app running on all their platforms and it's called swift ui like that's that's the thing that's killing catalyst isn't like hey uh if you're gonna write an application if you write it in ui kit you can get make it get a mac version pretty easy like do a little small amount of work you know and you'll have like a quote-unquote native mac version with catalyst and you'll have an ios and an ipad version
John:
And that's not Apple's answer anymore.
John:
Apple's answer is do it in SwiftUI.
John:
That's how you get a Mac version and a tvOS version and a Vision Pro version and an iOS version.
John:
Like, that's their answer.
John:
And so it's like, what place does Catalyst have anymore?
John:
If you don't want to do any work, run your iPad app.
John:
If you want to do some work, use SwiftUI.
John:
If you're Apple and already did some work, use Catalyst.
John:
That's basically the answer.
Marco:
Yeah, it's legacy code bases.
Marco:
Look, there's a ton of UIKit and AppKit code out there.
Marco:
Believe me, I know I'm trying right now.
Marco:
I'm trying to replace.
John:
It's easy.
John:
Just rewrite it in SwiftUI, Mark.
John:
How hard could it be?
John:
How hard could it be?
John:
It's taken me like two years to do this.
John:
like for new development apple's obviously pushing people to switch you out but yeah but apple is one of the biggest holders of legacy you like and code in the entire world so that's obviously really important for them but that's why i think it feels like if you're like a new developer and you're like what should i use if you're starting from nothing and you have no legacy code base catalyst is not screaming to you to for you to be your choice for making a mac app like under no circumstance it's only like i've already got a ui kit the app and
John:
And I have a Mac app and it's written in AppKit, but I don't want to maintain it.
John:
Is there a way I can just leverage the work I had to already do for the phone and the iPad?
John:
And the answer for Apple is yes, you can make a catalyst version of messages.
John:
And finally, the Mac can have freaking laser beams.
John:
that did actually happen yeah we didn't have the lasers feature it was very annoying and then we got the catalyst version and now we have it and still the catalyst version of messages is not great but you know i mean anyway like apple's got tons of app kit code too so app kit's not going away catalyst is not going away and swift ui is still still i think not as good especially not as good as app kit but probably not even as good as catalyst uh at making native mag apps but apple wants it to be so presumably it eventually will be
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Trade Coffee, Swiftcraft, and Computex 2024.
Marco:
And thank you very much to our member supporters directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
We're now doing a member special extra topic every week called ATP Overtime.
Marco:
This week's overtime for members only, it is Apple's work on robots.
Marco:
The new rumors and what we know so far with Apple possibly working on robots.
Marco:
robots which i think could be really cool anyway you can hear that as members atv.fm slash join as this week's overtime thank you so much 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.
John:
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-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-
Casey:
Accidental Tech Podcast.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
So I went on an eclipse trip.
Casey:
As everyone but me did.
Casey:
And I'm assuming John, because John never leaves his house.
Casey:
But as everyone but John and I did.
John:
The eclipse came to me, more or less.
Casey:
I mean, yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, it was a wonderful trip.
Marco:
I'm very, very glad I did it.
Marco:
And as part of this trip, I got to drive all the way up to Lake Placid.
Marco:
Now, what's interesting about this trip is that I actually made the same trip for a different vacation in the fall last year.
Marco:
And I've seen over the course of that time... This is like a seven-hour drive for me.
Marco:
It's a lot of driving from here.
Marco:
It involves a good amount of distance and a good amount of car charging.
Marco:
And this is now a trip I've done twice with the Rivian.
Marco:
And I kind of want to give an update on...
Marco:
Some things that have changed with Rivian and kind of CCS versus Tesla slash NACS charging and fast charging.
Marco:
There have been substantial changes in the charging environment in the last, whatever it's been, seven months.
Marco:
And as we stand here right now, Rivian has just done a deal with Tesla.
Marco:
And the latest software update to Rivian's allows you to plug directly into a supercharger with the right adapters.
Marco:
and have them just bill you.
Marco:
Somehow Tesla and Rivian worked it out behind the scenes.
Marco:
So it's basically the same experience you get as a Rivian as Tesla owners get.
Marco:
You just walk up to it and plug it in, and if you have a payment method on a file in your Rivian app, it just works, and you get charged.
Marco:
So that's awesome.
Marco:
And they're going to start sending out adapters soon.
Marco:
There's a couple of third-party ones I might take a risk on in the meantime because they're talking about later this year.
Marco:
The other thing about that, though, is that
Marco:
um tesla before everyone was talking about adapters um tesla actually built adapters into some of their superchargers they call them magic docks and i actually used that in september for the first time on on the last time i went up this trip because they're they have some of those upstate new york um so i used that already and it worked great then i went to the same one this time and it worked great again here's what's interesting now that rivian and tesla have this deal going
Marco:
Rivian's infotainment system now shows Tesla charging stops on the map along with everyone else's.
Marco:
You can say like only show me charging stops from brand X, Y, or Z because they have different reliability, let's say.
Marco:
And so what I've been doing most of the time before all this is only show me Electrify America chargers because they were the most reliable last fall when I was first using the car.
Marco:
Tesla got added by default.
Marco:
It's on by default.
Marco:
And so every Rivian nav system is now recommending Tesla charging stops as like, you should stop here, you know, for in the middle of this trip at this point.
Marco:
So one thing I noticed, first of all, is that over the last seven months, the quality and reliability of the Electrify America chargers has gone down, noticeably so.
Casey:
I didn't think that was possible.
Marco:
I assure you it is possible because it has been noticeable.
Marco:
The number of times I approach an EA charger and it's broken or it's offline or it tries to connect and then somehow something times out and you can just never get it to begin the charge, that has gone up significantly.
Marco:
Also, the crowding at them has gone way up.
Marco:
The entire time that I owned my two Model S's and the entire time I've owned a Rivian until about two months ago, I've never had to wait for a charger.
Marco:
Two months ago, I had to wait for the very first time.
Marco:
I had to wait like a half hour.
Marco:
It sucked.
Marco:
And I know this has been different on the West Coast.
Marco:
They've had more crowding over there because they've had more people using Teslas and stuff like that.
Marco:
But that's never been a problem over here.
Marco:
What has happened noticeably over the last seven months?
Marco:
I know everybody keeps saying that apparently EVs aren't selling that well because high-end cars aren't selling that well right now.
Marco:
You wouldn't know it by looking at the chargers because what I've seen really just like in the last like three to four months –
Marco:
is a huge increase of not only other vehicles with the chargers, but a huge increase in the variety of different models of vehicles with the chargers.
Marco:
There are tons of them, and you're seeing them from all different brands.
Marco:
And what's interesting is that the other vehicles tend to not have deals with Tesla superchargers so much.
Marco:
So what you're seeing is at the CCS chargers like Electrify America,
Marco:
They are just being crammed full of all the other cars.
Marco:
In the meantime also, Tesla has sold more Teslas.
Marco:
So the superchargers, the Tesla superchargers, are also really getting much more full than they were before.
Marco:
Now granted, the trip I just took...
Marco:
It was a high travel trip because it was for the Eclipse.
Marco:
A lot of people are traveling, especially a lot of the kind of people who would have EVs.
Marco:
So this was more than usual.
Marco:
But I've been seeing this just recently with any trip I've taken.
Marco:
The charging situation is getting way worse for both for CCS because the chargers are getting worse and no one seems to be working on them.
Marco:
And for Tesla because they're getting more crowded.
Marco:
What's interesting, though, is that now that I have a Rivian that has a deal with Tesla and some adapters here and there, I can go to some chargers.
Marco:
And a lot of times now, Tesla superchargers and Electrify America superchargers or other CCS chargers, a lot of times they share a parking lot.
Marco:
Now that Rivian has this deal, I can use either of them.
Marco:
I can go to wherever the open space is.
Marco:
Now, there's a bunch of other problems like the fact that Tesla superchargers have really short cables that are optimized to fit only where a Tesla's charging port is.
Marco:
And the Rivian's charging port on their vehicle so far is in the total wrong spot to do that.
Marco:
So you have to kind of take up two bays or take like the one on the end.
Marco:
So it messes up the whole parking arrangement at superchargers.
Marco:
But I see a future in which things get really good because you can just go to Tesla chargers.
Marco:
And Tesla is going to keep building more of them because they have to for their cars.
Marco:
Because Tesla has the best chargers.
Marco:
It is simple as that.
Marco:
They are the best chargers.
Marco:
Actually, sorry, with one exception.
Marco:
for the very first time i got to try a rivian adventure network charger on this trip oh nice it's amazing because i think only rivians can use it so no one's there it's it was i went to the one in newberg it was empty but i went there why is there an adventure charger in newberg because there's a huge hole in the new york state through way that there were not enough chargers so they just put that one there recently like it was not there in the winter and it's there now
Casey:
That's bananas.
Casey:
My mom grew up in Newburgh.
Casey:
I've been to Newburgh many times.
Casey:
That's wild.
Marco:
Yeah, and it's right across the parking lot from a Tesla supercharger that's been there forever.
Marco:
So anyway, that was an amazing charger.
Marco:
Everything's brand new.
Marco:
It overlooks this river in the back of the parking lot, so it's an adventure.
Marco:
It was nice and there was no one using it.
Marco:
So and it was amazingly fast.
Marco:
I got like 218 kilowatts.
Marco:
It's the fastest charge I've seen so far.
Marco:
So that was that was wonderful.
Marco:
But anyway, other than that, Tesla otherwise has the best chargers, generally speaking, because they're reliable and there's a bunch of them and they're in good spots.
Marco:
The problem that I see here, so we were saying back when Tesla gave this standard to whatever the standard body was and kind of opened it up and made all these deals to make everyone convert all their ports over and all this other stuff.
Marco:
We were saying, what a great move from Tesla.
Marco:
This will be great because then they can become the great charging network of the country.
Marco:
That's true, and they are, and they will keep doing that.
Marco:
But the more I see how incredibly bad the CCS ecosystem has gotten just in the last six months, the more I think Tesla gave away the farm.
Marco:
Now, already, at Tesla chargers, you're starting to see Rivians move in.
Marco:
You're going to start to see other brands move in.
Marco:
Tesla owners are now having a worse experience because their chargers are now going to get crowded up with people like me who are not Tesla owners.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So it's making it worse for Tesla customers.
Marco:
Meanwhile, CCS chargers have gotten so bad.
Marco:
If Tesla would have kept their chargers proprietary, that would be a really strong selling point for people to say, you know what, I'm just going to get a Tesla next time because their network is just better and I'm tired of dealing with all the CCS crap.
Marco:
So I think, honestly, they might have done a big disservice to themselves here.
Marco:
I mean, maybe regulation would have forced it in the end anyway.
Marco:
And so maybe they kind of got ahead of it from that angle.
Marco:
But things are different now.
Marco:
And I think they might have given away the farm.
Marco:
I'm happy they did as a non-Tesla owner because they are making my life a lot easier on long highway trips now.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
I think if I was a Tesla owner, I'd be a little upset about it.
John:
i think i think you're right that they got ahead of the regulation like because it's if if they if the government had mandated something other than the tesla connector or some other market force that tesla would have to change all of its charging stations so at least now tesla doesn't need to change it so other than making like longer cords maybe um yeah and also to keep in mind those crappy ccs ones setting aside the compliance network which is like a volkswagen force because of the diesel gate thing to make uh
John:
you know, whatever, Electrify America charger things that it doesn't actually want to do, but whatever.
John:
All those CCS chargers presumably eventually will not be CCS chargers anymore because I think pretty much at this point, pretty much everybody has pledged to go NACS in North America.
John:
I think, is there anybody left?
John:
I don't remember if Stellantis went.
John:
I think they did, right?
John:
I think they did.
John:
Yeah, I think it's everyone.
John:
Anyway, all those CCS chargers, like, this is an opportunity.
Yeah.
John:
to get eventually greatly diminished the number of CCS chargers, which means either just simply by building massively more NACS ones, so the CCS ones become a smaller percentage, or literally removing the really old cranky CCS ones and leaving one or two for legacy connections as more NACS cars are sold in the U.S.
John:
But yeah, there is still an opportunity for either Tesla or anyone else who wants it to become NACS,
John:
a good NACS-based electric charging infrastructure in the U.S.
John:
And Tesla's got the biggest head start.
John:
I feel like it's possible to make money doing this well.
John:
And with a single standard for all of North America, it should simplify the landscape.
John:
But we are definitely in a very uncomfortable transition period, as you're noting, where...
John:
There's the CCS ones and there's tons of CCS cars out there and they're still going to need to charge.
John:
But the charging network, nobody cares about it.
John:
And they care even less now because those connectors aren't even the future anymore.
John:
And there's the Tesla one that's getting overcrowded.
John:
And I feel like there's an opportunity for either one of these existing companies or a new one to come in and start building out an ACS thing.
John:
There's something, speaking of overtime.
John:
There's something way down in the show notes from like the latest US government plan involving a bunch of car companies and a bunch of money to start building an NACS powered charging network that is not Tesla.
John:
You know, that is an effort through a cooperative effort through a bunch of companies that are not Tesla to basically make a bunch of NACS chargers that plug in and charge and all the other stuff or whatever.
John:
So maybe eventually we'll get to that because like all government thinks it's probably years and years in the future.
John:
But yeah.
John:
I feel like the future is still bright.
John:
I feel like Tesla still made a smart move because now at the very least, Tesla does not need to overhaul all of its charging stations and change all of its connectors on its cars and all of its connectors on its charging.
John:
It's good.
John:
Like, I think it was a smart move.
John:
It's just, you know.
John:
I think they held the advantage that you were talking about.
John:
Oh, I'll buy a Tesla because they have the best charge.
John:
They held that advantage for essentially as long as they could.
John:
And now, as you noted, the floodgates are open.
John:
Everybody has EVs.
John:
They all are going to need somewhere to charge.
John:
So hopefully they'll just build more of them and better.
John:
You know how good we are at building infrastructure in this country, so I'm sure it'll be fine.
Marco:
Well, honestly, I think for Tesla to have this be a big – to be a growing part of their business, obviously I don't know about stock financing and expectations and everything.
Marco:
So I'm sure this is less exciting to Tesla's investors than like they might replace taxis everywhere or whatever all their crazy self-driving promises were.
John:
Well, if they want it to be a big part of their business, they need to sell snacks because as we all know, gas stations make all their money on a convenience store.
Yeah.
Marco:
But yeah, honestly, I think Tesla has a giant head start in just being the default high-speed EV chargers for the US highway system.
Marco:
I don't know how it is in other places, like how competitive it is, but here it's very competitive, extremely so.
Marco:
They have a huge head start.
Marco:
This could be a huge part of their business, but I think it's an unsexy part of the business for investors.
Marco:
This is the kind of thing that it'll just throw off...
Marco:
you know regular dependable amounts of cash forever uh but it's not going to you know be a hockey stick kind of situation and so you know it's it's not very exciting but i think it's a really really good kind of just baseline cash generator for them and i want them to keep expanding it and doing well with it because they really the tesla chargers are they do a very good job with them a very very good job with them and again everyone else is nowhere close