0:00

So are we all returning our vision pros

0:02

as the as the news

0:04

stories seemed to indicate is the big wave This

0:06

is what you decide to do to start the

0:09

show I was I was saving this and

0:11

now you're just gonna drop this bomb right and put right up front

0:14

Yeah, you are you already turned yours. No,

0:16

of course But I was

0:18

trying very hard to make it sound believable. I'm a terrible

0:20

liar So I don't think I don't think I succeeded but

0:22

I was trying very hard No,

0:26

I didn't return mine I mean truth be told that now we

0:28

are getting into a topic that I don't think you intended but

0:30

I It is

0:32

exceedingly overpriced. It is exceedingly

0:34

heavy I don't think

0:36

my particular nose construction is terribly

0:38

compatible with it and I'm stubborn

0:40

stubborn and obstinately Refusing to

0:43

use the probably more comfortable to

0:46

two-sided strap. I'm still on the crank

0:48

strap I feel like my particular

0:50

nose construction is that all of the weight really

0:52

wants to rest on my nose and part of

0:54

the problem is I've heard other people not

0:57

complain as much about the nose thing but But

0:59

complain about the fact that the

1:01

vision Pro really wants to sit lower on your

1:04

face Then I think I would choose to naturally

1:06

put it And so if I put it where

1:08

I think is most comfortable and not on like

1:10

I don't know my nose Ridge or whatever I'm

1:13

sure there's an anatomical term for it But um,

1:16

if I said it where I want to sit it then

1:18

it's like please move the headset down It's too high or

1:20

I forgot the messages But if you if you have a

1:22

vision Pro you've seen it and if you've seen any of

1:24

the videos you've probably seen it That's the vision Pro equivalent

1:26

of your hand is covering up the face ID camera on

1:28

your iPad Pro. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly it Exactly it

1:30

I could not think of a better analogy and so So

1:33

I have to have it ride a

1:35

little bit lower than I want And

1:37

so for me all of the weight

1:39

tends to sit on my nose unless

1:41

I really crank the crank strap Really

1:43

tight in which case then I can

1:45

transition some of that weight onto my

1:47

forehead or sometimes my cheekbones and And

1:50

that's better. But yeah, I was I

1:52

was at I was in a room at the library again today

1:55

And yeah after like an hour and a half two

1:57

hours it it was it was hurting my schnoz a

1:59

little bit And comically, Erin

2:01

hadn't had a chance to try it until this past

2:04

weekend. We've just been so very busy. And

2:07

for her, all of the weight

2:09

was on her cheekbones. And immediately I

2:12

knew I should have put the dual strap or whatever it's

2:14

called on there for her. But we just

2:16

wanted to go plow ahead with what I was trying to show

2:18

her. And it was so uncomfortable

2:21

for her that she

2:23

ended up having her

2:25

pointers as load-bearing fingers under the

2:27

Vision Pro to keep it from

2:29

slamming into her cheekbones. I

2:32

don't think Erin has exceedingly

2:34

prominent cheekbones. I think they're

2:37

regular-ish cheekbones. Well, this is part of what

2:39

the difference... Did you see people link around

2:41

that there was a thread on Reddit where

2:43

the people were compiling basically what the light

2:45

seal sizes mean? Oh, I did not see

2:47

that. So there's the two digits and then

2:49

the N or the W at the end.

2:52

They've figured out through various sleuthing and trial

2:54

and error and stuff that it basically encodes...

2:56

Like, each digit is separate. It's not like

2:58

23 millimeter versus 33 millimeter. Like

3:01

it's... The two and the one or whatever, like

3:03

those are two different indicators. They can both change

3:06

up or down. And one

3:08

of the factors... I forgot the specifics, but

3:10

one of the factors is like whether it

3:12

like sits high or low on your cheekbones

3:14

or something like that. And so chances are

3:16

this is just, you know, for Erin to

3:18

comfortably wear it, she would most likely need

3:20

a different light seal. Which I would totally

3:22

buy. That being said, the scan that

3:25

she did said the same as me. That doesn't

3:27

mean that that's, you know, the right answer. Just

3:29

the automated scan says she and I have the

3:31

same one. But it very well could be that

3:33

if we had all of them arrayed out in

3:35

front of us, I mean, hell, maybe even not

3:37

mine would be different. But I concur

3:39

that, you know, it's very likely that maybe a

3:41

different light seal would work better for her. But

3:43

certainly if she were to buy her own based

3:45

only on the, you know, experience she had by

3:47

scanning her face, she would end up with the

3:49

same one I've got. I think one of the

3:52

things that's hurting Division Pro, you know,

3:54

initial sales and reactions is

3:56

they've made this system so clever.

3:59

complicated of how to fit it

4:01

and it seems like the whatever the app

4:03

is saying should fit you it maybe

4:06

is not always accurate or Maybe they just

4:08

are not good at presenting alternatives to people

4:10

or whatever it is. It's a highly You

4:12

know fit dependent device and

4:15

I was thinking like why do we

4:17

not hear about this so much with the

4:20

Quest headsets? I mean obviously part

4:22

of it is I think we are applying Strictor

4:24

standards to Apple because everyone does and their stuff always

4:27

gets more scrutiny But I think part of it might

4:29

also just be like There's

4:31

such a weight difference like Apple chose

4:33

to make a very high-end headset it's

4:35

a very heavy headset compared to its

4:37

competitors and maybe therefore it is

4:40

more sensitive to Like

4:42

different fit adjustments and I was thinking like is

4:44

it a mistake To have

4:47

made the vision Pro in such

4:49

a way that the light seal or whatever whatever

4:51

the fit mechanics of it are Are

4:54

not adjustable on the device now

4:56

obviously that would introduce more Mechanical complexity probably a little

4:58

bit more weight as a result of that, but like

5:01

would it have been a better choice? I know

5:03

Apple would never do this But would it have

5:06

been a better choice to have like some adjustment

5:08

knobs or whatever like on the actual Light

5:10

seal to have it be someone adjustable. I don't

5:12

I don't know, but it seems like there there's

5:15

a lot of areas where Apple's

5:17

approach to this is you find your

5:19

perfect fit or more often we automatically

5:21

find it for you here It is

5:23

period and it like if your

5:25

perfect fit is a little bit different They're just like

5:28

no this is your perfect fit period like and there's

5:30

just no we already there's no alternative I

5:32

wonder if that's something that they'll tweak over time so

5:35

a third-party opportunity though It's kind of like how

5:37

third-party sell tips for the AirPods Pro Right like

5:39

all the ink by foamy tips or plastic tips

5:41

or tips or you may take a multiple of

5:43

your ear Because as far as I

5:46

know there is no weird DRM or parts pairing with

5:48

the light shield It's just fabric

5:50

and plastic and a couple little magnets.

5:52

I Would imagine that if this product

5:54

ever becomes popular enough that it can

5:56

sustain the third-party ecosystem for light shields

5:58

like it is. Going to lot

6:01

of people they'll be third party thing for

6:03

you can snap in there that are very

6:05

differently shaped may be are adjustable you know

6:07

like I. I think the the rigidity of

6:10

the main screen part is tough to tough

6:12

to change at this point in the technology

6:14

curve because there's a lot of stuff going

6:16

on in there that really come out to

6:19

be carefully aligned. but the replaceable light shield

6:21

is actually a good designed for. Our

6:23

if not Apple doing this for third party say

6:26

I will will sell you a thing for less

6:28

than two hundred dollars that goes between you and

6:30

the main unit and maybe you can find money

6:32

that fits better. I. Mean certainly

6:34

like the quest line does have many third

6:37

party like you know head gaskets or would

6:39

expect have said gasket sounds had spezza it's

6:41

it's a new car engine, Amazon Euro Vr

6:43

headset and that much easier to replace with

6:45

the our heads. That one's the. Very.

6:48

True but I know it's I do think

6:50

that I don't know how I got him

6:52

stance in but I believe I did myself

6:54

but I'm I eat. I do really like

6:57

this device. I wish it was cheaper I

6:59

was it was lighter but it is really

7:01

cool and since I do feel like it

7:03

is a compulsory purchase for this for my

7:06

job both in terms of Atp and call

7:08

seats I feel like I kind of had

7:10

spend money and I will whine about the

7:12

money I spent until the end of time

7:15

It as high have we met hi this

7:17

is his and. I will allow half of

7:19

it until the end of the Us. the

7:21

her successor A but I do really love

7:23

the device and you know it is incredible

7:25

for media consumption. I think you and I

7:27

will never see I'd ions as to whether

7:29

or not it's good. As a secondary manager

7:31

for your sir replacement wander for your magnum

7:34

revolver that more later but it is extremely

7:36

extremely cool and know I'd I don't I

7:38

don't play I'm in my time as run

7:40

out. At this point her I think is

7:42

running other has run out but on I

7:44

don't plan to return it and I do

7:46

really like it. It is not. A perfect

7:48

product by any stretch, and I don't know if

7:50

I go so far as to say I love

7:53

it quite yet, but I do really, really like

7:55

it and and I'm enjoying having it at at

7:57

hand and using it. as yeah i think

7:59

it's cool, but I'm

8:01

treating mine, I'm ending up using it

8:04

more like a dev kit than

8:06

like a product that's going to really have a

8:08

huge place in my life so far because I

8:10

mean first of all, look, Apple

8:12

reaped what it sowed. There

8:15

are no apps. There's no

8:17

games. There's very little content. Apple

8:20

did this 100% to themselves. The

8:23

developers are just largely not

8:25

there, so there's not

8:27

much for me to do with it besides watch

8:30

movies and the reality is

8:32

I don't watch that many movies and when

8:34

I do watch movies, I'm rarely watching them

8:36

alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not

8:38

sure I'm going to have all use for it. That's not to say

8:41

that no one else has use for this product. Just me, I don't

8:43

have a ton of use for it. I was

8:45

really hoping the Mac screen angle of

8:47

it would be very useful

8:49

to me, especially now as I'm in this weird

8:51

housing transitional period where I really want a big

8:53

monitor but I can't really fit one in this

8:55

rental house and there's all sorts of uses

8:58

that I thought I might be able to squeeze out of

9:00

it that ended up not really working that

9:02

well for me. So for me, it's

9:04

really just a dev kit and it's a dev kit for a

9:07

branch of my app that I'm not really working

9:09

on yet because I don't have time because I'm

9:11

working on the iPhone version. And I

9:14

think this is going to be kind of a story we keep hearing, something

9:16

like that where it's going to be

9:18

difficult again over time. It's going to

9:21

be difficult for developers to justify investing

9:23

time into the Vision OS

9:26

platform if there's no customer base

9:28

for it and it's a chicken and egg problem. And

9:30

if there's not a lot of apps and content on

9:32

it, it's going to be difficult for a lot of

9:35

people to justify buying one, especially with the other hard

9:37

to justify factors like the price and the

9:39

single person experience and some of the version

9:41

one challenges and limitations. Maybe

9:44

I'm totally wrong and maybe this is selling

9:46

like gangbusters way above Apple's expectations and maybe

9:48

they can keep thinking that they don't need

9:50

developers. But the reality is what

9:53

Apple has shown in their actions around

9:55

app for policy over and over again

9:57

is They believe that... They

10:00

grace us with a platform full of users

10:02

and we should kiss their feet and thanked

10:04

them and give them a third of our

10:06

money or whatever hill on because these are

10:08

their customers they're bringing to us. Effectively

10:11

therefore we are not really bring us on

10:13

a value to the platform that they are

10:15

bringing the platform for users and which with

10:18

her thanks for that. And I think what

10:20

we're seeing here is maybe this is demonstrating

10:22

the value of developers to the platform. If

10:25

not, a lot of people are finding much to

10:27

do with it. That's.

10:30

Because there's not a lot of apps and

10:32

content for it and that's because there's not

10:34

a lot of third party development for it

10:36

and so I may be a means. I

10:39

know Apple will not change their after policies,

10:41

but. Maybe at

10:43

least this helps show them a little

10:45

bit like kind of where it hurts

10:47

because they just did a huge long

10:49

as he's platform minutes I i think

10:51

it it might be may a little

10:53

below expectations are is just from Troy

10:56

say but John Cake Jonah feeling like

10:58

I think they thought they were be

11:00

a lot more apps than there are.

11:02

And I think they thought their be a lot

11:04

more developer interest in there has been. Maybe they

11:06

thought their be a lot more content deals from

11:08

the big Clinton publishers sevens and that's not really

11:10

happening as as quickly or yet either. This

11:13

platform is starving for apps and

11:15

content. It's just it's it's it's

11:18

just not there yet. And.

11:20

I hope it's coming. But. What if

11:22

it's not? Like. Apple's gonna have

11:24

to just make this work largely on

11:26

their own because they've done such an

11:28

effective job of alienating everyone else in

11:31

the industry. Others in broad

11:33

this changes to app store policy like he

11:35

else. like sea level changes. I'm not sure

11:37

what I would have done differently, but I

11:39

do think and I can't help but wonder.

11:42

If seeding dev kits to a

11:44

handful of indies would have gone

11:46

a long way, especially if it

11:49

was in concert with. Talk.

11:51

about you know because i think the problem

11:53

is if they'd seated let's say underscore for

11:55

the sake of discussion the in the surely

11:57

would have said well here's a dev kit

11:59

you tell no one.

12:03

And then that's not really accomplishing much. Yes,

12:05

then that gets an even more polished version

12:08

of Widget Smith in the store on day

12:10

one than was already there, which is good.

12:13

But I think the better approach would have been to

12:15

hand underscore one and say, go to town, man.

12:17

Talk about it. Get people excited if

12:19

you can. Not in edict. You know what I mean?

12:22

If he's going bananas,

12:25

doing all of this work and having all this

12:27

fun, and underscore would talk about it

12:29

and underscore would be effusive about it, not because

12:31

he's full of garbage. He's not at all, but

12:33

because he's just a person who finds the good

12:35

in things. And so I think, you

12:38

know, you see it in underscore, you see it at

12:40

James Thompson or whatever, and

12:42

you start to build a little more enthusiasm

12:44

in the indie community. And I think, and

12:46

I mean, admittedly, as I'm saying this, I'm

12:48

like, well, of course you think that because you're in

12:51

the indie community. And maybe that's true. But I don't

12:53

know, I feel like it would have done a lot

12:55

to build enthusiasm amongst anyone other than Disney and like

12:57

unity or whoever it was. I don't even know if

12:59

they got dev kits. I just have to assume. But

13:01

you know, whoever it is that got the dev kits,

13:03

it certainly didn't seem to be indie from what I

13:05

can tell. And I, I feel like that

13:08

was a missed opportunity. And it could have been that

13:10

they wanted to and they just couldn't produce them in

13:12

time or something held it up. I don't know. But

13:14

it sure seems like if you were doing these

13:17

labs, which admittedly were pretty controlled, by

13:19

the way, I went to a lab, but I can't say anything else.

13:21

You know, even despite these

13:23

controlled labs, I feel like if

13:25

you had those labs, you must have had the

13:27

quantity of devices at a stage

13:29

in which they were complete enough that you could

13:32

have seated a handful of like trusted indies

13:34

as well as the Disney for the world.

13:36

And, and I wish they did and they

13:38

didn't. And so like you said, they're reaping

13:40

what they sold and there isn't a lot

13:42

on there. There's there's really not. And I

13:45

think part of this is exacerbated by

13:47

your average iPad app is really not great

13:50

on the vision pro in part because all

13:52

the iPad apps are shown in light mode

13:54

and all the vision pro apps, all

13:57

the native apps are not literally in dark mode,

13:59

but effectively in dark mode. And part of

14:01

it is because these iPad apps are designed

14:03

for touch targets that are much smaller than

14:05

eye targets. And I found

14:08

that with almost every iPad app,

14:11

it's often prohibitively difficult

14:13

to grab the right target without

14:15

using a cursor of some sort.

14:18

And Slack is to me the epitome of this,

14:20

and I think I've already brought this up several

14:22

times, but like changing between different slacks, which is

14:25

something I do constantly in that app is very,

14:27

very difficult. And I don't necessarily fault Slack for

14:29

this, but it's just that the targets are too

14:31

small, and then it becomes difficult to use Slack,

14:33

and then it's like, well, I'm just going to

14:35

get my work done on my computer then. And

14:39

so all of these iPad apps are kind of eh,

14:41

and there's not many Vision Pro apps because none of

14:44

us had them. And so now what? And it's like,

14:46

it's exactly what you said, Marko, like, where do you

14:48

go from here, Apple? What are you going to do?

14:51

What we've seen is like, I think the launch

14:53

of the Vision Pro kind of

14:55

is that DevKit program. Obviously,

14:57

a lot of people are buying them for

15:00

their own uses, their entertainment use,

15:02

a lot of it just kind of status

15:04

or YouTubers playing with it, but whatever it

15:06

is, a lot of people buying them as

15:08

early adopters. But I

15:10

also think a lot of the early purchases

15:12

are companies and developers who are wanting to

15:14

start experimenting with their get on board with

15:16

it or try to look at porting their

15:18

apps or whatever, and this

15:21

is just – I think this is their

15:23

DevKit program largely, and it just so happens

15:25

that you'll also see them like people

15:27

watching movies in first class on airplanes as well.

15:30

The way it is now with there being almost

15:32

no software and almost no content, it's

15:35

not like a failure per se. It just

15:37

really hurts the argument to buy it, and

15:39

it really hurts the experience of owning it

15:41

when – I think

15:43

people are predisposed to assume

15:47

any new tech product is a fad that

15:50

will fail and then laugh at it. That's

15:52

a very common thing in media

15:54

and tech commentary culture. I

15:57

think if everyone who buys the Vision Pro at first

15:59

class, it's just a lot of people first ends up

16:01

not using it very much a few weeks later

16:03

because they kind of ran out of stuff to

16:05

do on it. That's not

16:07

great for the reputation

16:09

of that product and its launch. None

16:12

of this should come as a surprise to Apple. They

16:15

saw coming up to the launch,

16:17

they knew how many apps there

16:19

weren't. They knew which apps

16:21

were being built native and which ones weren't.

16:23

They knew Netflix didn't have their native app

16:25

submitted to them or whatever. All

16:27

the things that are missing, they knew that going into

16:30

it. So it isn't like this is a

16:32

surprise to Apple. Again, I

16:34

hope that they are stepping on

16:36

the gas behind the scenes in terms of their

16:38

own content efforts. They're gonna have

16:40

to do most of this on their own. They're

16:42

not gonna get a lot of help from third

16:45

party developers or third party content makers on this.

16:47

They have to be making a ton

16:49

of the 3D content. They have to

16:51

be making a ton of the environment

16:53

content, any kind of experiential, virtual

16:56

travel stuff. They have to be

16:58

the ones to kickstart that themselves

17:01

because no one else is gonna do it with

17:03

these numbers and with Apple having really

17:06

alienated so many people over the last decade.

17:09

And it's funny too, we should

17:11

probably move on from this, but I think

17:13

what's kind of unfortunate about it is even

17:15

though I'm fetching a little bit

17:17

about everything, this is an amazing device. Leaving

17:19

aside the physical comfort, which is a big deal, leaving

17:21

aside the cost, which is a big deal, if you can

17:24

get past that or just forget it for a minute,

17:26

this is a truly incredible device. And

17:29

the 3D stuff, like consuming a 3D movie

17:31

in it is very cool, but the immersive

17:33

content of which there is very little, but

17:35

we're hearing more and more rumblings that there's

17:38

more coming. In fact, statements even that there's

17:40

more coming. The immersive

17:42

content is, what is

17:44

the Tim phrase, it's blow away. It

17:46

really just knocks your socks off. Was that a forced-all-ism? I think

17:48

it was a forced-all-ism. Maybe it was. I think you might be

17:50

right, actually, now that you say that, I think you're right. It

17:53

has caught on since then, it has spread. I

17:55

think you might be right. But anyways, the immersive

17:57

stuff is just, it's unlike anything I've ever

17:59

seen. experienced. It's tremendous.

18:02

And for me, and I'm not saying it's true

18:04

for you, Marco, or anyone else, but for me,

18:06

I really like the Mac Virtual Display thing and

18:08

Universal Control. It works pretty darn well. It's not

18:11

perfect, but it works pretty darn well. And

18:13

so, and briefly using this on

18:15

a train a few weeks ago

18:17

was amazing. And so this is

18:19

a truly incredible, incredible device. And

18:23

even though we've kind of accidentally enumerated

18:25

some of the crappy parts of it,

18:27

it is incredible. And whether or not

18:30

it's the future, it is a

18:32

future that I am on board with and is super

18:34

neat. And I don't want to lose sight of that

18:36

because I think we're coming across as two grumpy old

18:39

men, which is accurate. But there's a good side to

18:41

this as well that we're not giving out. We're not

18:43

shining enough light on. Like it is incredible. And if

18:45

you are lucky enough to be able

18:47

to have one, it is very, very

18:50

cool. And I really think that there's a lot of potential

18:52

here. It's just a question whether or not we'll realize it.

18:54

And I think it's going to have a slower start

18:57

than anyone thought. Like, you know, because we were just

18:59

saying a few weeks ago, like this is going to

19:01

be, they're going to sell as many as they can

19:03

make. It's going to be back ordered for we, you

19:05

know, for, you know, the whole year it's going to

19:07

be back ordered, like, you know, it's going to be

19:09

supply constrained or whatever. I just looked and I can

19:11

pick one of these up tomorrow or I can

19:13

have it shipped to me next week. That's

19:16

not good for the

19:18

sales figures, I think. Speaking

19:21

of things with a lot of potential

19:23

that may or may not have been

19:25

realized, two different things. First of all,

19:27

the 2015 movie, Steve Jobs. And second

19:29

of all, our new member special about

19:31

that movie. We recorded this month's members

19:33

only special about Steve Jobs, the 2015

19:36

movie with Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet and a

19:38

bunch of other people. This is

19:41

a movie about Steve Jobs, and of what, four years after

19:43

he passed away. And so we, like I said, we did

19:45

a member special on it. If you are not a member,

19:47

John, what do you need to do in order to become

19:49

a member? You're making me up

19:51

for my slumber to pitch the membership program? Yeah, man. Hey, you

19:54

could have bought a Vision Pro. You could have been a part

19:56

of this. You opted out of the conversation, sir. Well, you just

19:58

got through telling me why I shouldn't go. get one. I

20:00

was trying to bring it back around. That was the

20:02

whole point. But if you want to get one, it's

20:04

really easy. It sounds like there's no apps for it.

20:06

I also want to watch Major League

20:08

Soccer, games that have already taken place because Apple just

20:11

announced they're providing that content. Anyway. Yeah, I put you

20:13

to sleep before I talked about the good parts apparently

20:15

because there are good parts for sure. ATB.FM slash join

20:17

if you'd like to become a member. Not all of

20:19

our member specials are about movies, but some of them

20:21

are and this one is. Great

20:24

sales pitch. What are you going to

20:26

get for me? Accurate. It is accurate. It is accurate.

20:28

No, it was a lot of fun watching this and

20:30

talking about it and I don't want to give anything

20:32

away. But yeah, remember that if you go to ATP.FM

20:35

slash join, you can join on a

20:38

monthly or yearly basis. You can also

20:40

go to ATP.FM slash, did I

20:43

say common a minute ago? Whoops. Anyway,

20:45

ATP.FM slash gift, if I'm not mistaken,

20:47

to gift yourself or someone else a

20:49

membership. Tint, tint, tint. But

20:51

yeah, we had a lot of fun recording this one. And

20:53

if you become a member for any amount of

20:56

time, you can go back in the history books

20:58

and listen to any of our member specials. And

21:00

you can do that as long as you are

21:02

a member. So you can check that out. We've

21:04

done one a month for almost a

21:06

year now, I think, or something like that. I don't

21:08

have a count in front of me, but we have

21:10

a fair bit of member specials in the can at

21:13

this point. So check it out. HP Movie Club Steve

21:15

Jobs. And we'll put links in the show notes, the

21:17

relevant information atp.fm slash

21:19

join. Let's start

21:21

some follow up at 30 minutes and

21:24

chase rights regarding the blur in the

21:26

vision pro when you turn your head.

21:28

I'm pretty sure that this is just

21:30

typical sample and hold display blur. This

21:33

also affects televisions and where the idea

21:35

of motion resolution comes from impulse displays

21:37

like CLTs and plasma have

21:39

much higher motion resolution to combat.

21:42

To combat this LCDs can

21:44

use backlight strobing and OLEDs

21:46

can use black frame insertion

21:49

and blur busters, which apparently is a

21:51

website I learned today, has a really

21:53

good resource where you can read about

21:56

blur of all kinds, a

21:58

lot of headsets like the vision. excuse

22:00

me, the Quest 3, use very low persistence

22:03

to get much better motion resolution. The downside

22:05

is in brightness. The upside of the micro

22:07

LED displays in pancake lenses is that it

22:09

allows the displays to be very close to

22:11

the eyes and having the weight closer to

22:13

the head is better for comfort. The downside

22:15

of pancake lenses is that they swallow much

22:17

more light of the light coming off the

22:19

displays than Fresno. I think it's Fresnel. Fresnel,

22:21

yeah. It's those lenses that are flat but

22:23

they look like they have a bunch of

22:25

concentric circle ridges on them. Okay,

22:27

so our other aspheric lenses will. So

22:29

even if the displays are 5000 nits, once you have

22:32

color filters, polarizers, and the pancake lenses, the

22:34

brightness we see can still end up very

22:36

low. The other consumer headset using pancake lenses

22:38

and micro OLED displays is the big screen

22:40

beyond 3, which I had never heard of.

22:43

It is very dim, especially if you turn

22:45

down the brightness to get acceptable persistence. Chase

22:47

continues, I believe Apple is pushing persistence further

22:50

than they should in order to get more

22:52

brightness back because they want to push HDR

22:54

as a thing on the Vision Pro. On

22:57

this topic, for the

22:59

motion blur in motion, I wish I had known to look for

23:01

that when I had my demo because I would have. I didn't

23:04

notice it, but clearly Marco has and I've heard

23:06

it from other people as well. I

23:09

do wonder if, I still wonder if this

23:11

is what they're talking about. So the

23:14

sample and hold thing, this happens on OLED

23:16

TVs as well. The deal with OLEDs is

23:18

you light up a pixel and it stays

23:21

whatever color you made it until you change

23:23

it and it changes color really, really fast.

23:25

That sounds great. This is a great

23:27

display technology. What's the problem? The

23:30

problem is if you watch something like a 24

23:32

frames per second

23:34

movie, it will show a

23:36

frame and the whole TV will show that frame,

23:39

just the exact frame, exactly the

23:41

way it is, until the next frame comes. And

23:43

again, you might be thinking, that sounds like what

23:45

it's supposed to do, right? Well, not

23:47

really, because if you think about what a

23:49

movie projector does or what a CRT television

23:52

does is both of those things will show

23:54

the frame and then there'll

23:56

be, it will basically like blast it onto the

23:58

screen like boom, here's the frame. frame and

24:00

then the frame will either fade away or quickly

24:02

be replaced by black like this plasma if you

24:04

watch it in slow motion it blasts color at

24:07

the screen and then it just fades away sometimes

24:09

plasmas would blast some of the color

24:11

then the second part of the color and both of

24:13

those will fade until the next frame appears and a

24:15

movie projector would show one frame

24:17

of film but then there'll be nothing

24:19

as the next frame slides into view and

24:21

then it will blast that frame on so

24:24

what it's really showing you is bright light, bright

24:27

light, bright light, bright light and

24:29

in between the bright light there's either total

24:31

blackness or a fade to black and

24:34

I think what our brain does during these intervals

24:36

is say okay well there's like a train going

24:38

across the screen bright light

24:40

oh there's the train and then

24:42

there's nothing or blackness and then

24:44

a second picture of the train appears and now it's moved a

24:46

little bit to the right and our brain goes oh in between

24:49

when I saw that first picture of the train and then there

24:51

was blackness and then I saw the second picture of the train

24:53

I guess it must have moved between those two parts with

24:56

sample and hold on an OLED where it just shows

24:58

the train in the first position and just holds it

25:00

there for 1 24th of a second and

25:02

then immediately shows the train in the new position what

25:04

it looks like to us and you will see this

25:06

on an OLED television if you have it set up

25:08

quote unquote correctly is it stuttery it looks like it's

25:11

moving in segments looks like chunk chunk chunk chunk it's

25:13

like why doesn't it look smooth I watch the same

25:15

movie that moves you to the train smoothly moves from

25:17

moves from left to right but suddenly when I watch

25:19

it on my OLED TV it's stuttering or something and

25:21

it's not stuttering it is carefully

25:24

if you have it set up correctly it's showing 1 24th of a second

25:27

and then 1 24th then one but the thing

25:29

is it never goes black between the frames it

25:31

instantly changes from frame number one to frame number

25:33

two instead of showing frame number one for a

25:35

you're a tiny fraction of a second and then

25:37

showing blackness and then showing the next frame so

25:40

this is this is a thing but a thing

25:42

for headsets since they've been rolled out and one

25:44

of the innovations of oculus you can see john

25:46

karmack talking about this and everything is like we

25:48

need displays that can blast that frame really brightly

25:51

for a tiny tiny fraction of a second and

25:53

then fade the black and

25:55

do nothing until the next frame is ready because we

25:58

want the brain to essentially fit in the frame. fill

26:00

in the blanks. Because if we show the frame

26:02

the whole time until the next one is ready,

26:04

even though we can do that with OLED screens,

26:06

it looks jerky. Because your brain doesn't

26:08

get a chance to fill in any of the intermediary spots.

26:10

Like if you think about the train moving, you see the

26:13

train in position one and train in position two. But if

26:15

you blank out in between them, your brain will fill in

26:17

train in position 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4. Your

26:21

brain will fill those in for you. Those frames don't

26:23

exist, but your brain will fill you them in. But

26:25

if you never do that, your brain will say, train

26:27

is in position one, still in position one, still in

26:29

position one. Oh my god, it's in position two. What

26:31

happened to between? It is still in position two. And

26:34

that appears jerky. This is a big thing with OLED

26:36

televisions, which is why some people say, I have

26:38

to turn on motion smoothing. I can't have

26:40

it set up, quote unquote, correctly. Because it

26:42

looks wrong to me. Because when there's a

26:44

slow panning shot, I see every

26:47

one of the 1.24 frames and it looks jerky to

26:49

me. So that's

26:51

what I would expect you would see in the

26:53

headset if that was a problem. Marco would be

26:56

saying, I turned my head and everything looks jerky.

26:58

But that's not what people are saying. They're saying

27:00

it looks blurry. Maybe it's the same thing. Maybe

27:02

it's a misinterpretation. Again, I wish I had known

27:04

to look for this. I didn't notice either jerkiness

27:07

or blurriness, but my eyes aren't grayed

27:09

and it was just a half an hour demo. So I'm

27:12

interested to see how this develops. But

27:14

this story about Apple pushing brightness rings

27:17

true to me because things are very bright in there. And

27:19

obviously, you can get more brightness by

27:21

holding that image longer and not fading to

27:23

black between, or not fading to black as

27:26

long. I'm curious, John. Because

27:28

when I went from plasma to

27:30

OLED, I noticed this too where

27:32

I remember watching The Office,

27:35

this regular TV show shot, I

27:37

assume on film or whatever. But

27:39

I remember panning shots. I'd noticed

27:41

immediately the difference. Oh, wait, motion

27:43

looks bad on OLED. Everything else

27:45

looked great, but motion looked worse.

27:48

And my OLED, it's probably now

27:50

seven or eight years old, so

27:52

it's nowhere near cutting edge

27:54

now. But I'm wondering, do modern OLEDs

27:56

today, are they better with things

27:58

like black frame and charging? mine was

28:00

one of the first ones that supported it, but

28:02

it just is not fast enough of a TV.

28:04

Like I tried it and it just looked terrible.

28:06

I could almost see the black frames. It was

28:09

not smooth enough. Is it

28:11

better now? So modern TVs are

28:13

better at black frame insertion than your old

28:15

one was, but still not good enough that I

28:17

think you would ever want to use it. Because

28:20

here's the nature

28:22

of OLEDs is they change really fast. And

28:24

I think that makes it harder to

28:26

do black frame insertion. The way they do it

28:29

now to try to make it better is they're

28:31

like double or triple the frame rate so that

28:33

the black frames are like faster. But OLEDs quote

28:35

unquote problem is they change so fast. Like LCDs,

28:38

there's all these tricks we have to play to

28:40

make the pixels change from one color to another

28:42

really fast. OLEDs you don't need to play any

28:44

tricks. They change really fast. So that means they're

28:46

changing really fast to blackness, which means you have

28:49

only a brief time that the light exists and

28:52

then immediately it's completely 100% black. And that's why

28:54

you felt like you could see the blackness because

28:56

it's not like it smoothly fades

28:58

like a CRT, like a dying star. That's

29:00

not how it works. So if we crank

29:02

the frame rate up enough, can it fade

29:04

to black between each frame? Yeah, it's really

29:06

fast. But anyway, like I'm saying, like can

29:08

you just insert like, you know, a faded

29:10

frame and then another faded frame and like

29:12

yeah, I mean there'd be a heck of

29:14

a frame rate. But yeah, so what you're

29:16

getting at there is alternate solutions, which is

29:18

basically what they do. But just to finish

29:20

the black frame insertion, there are ones now

29:22

that are fast enough that you can't see it

29:24

flickering, but they do hit the brightness. And for

29:27

the most part, you don't want to make your

29:29

TV dimmer, especially OLEDs, right? Because up

29:31

until recently, OLEDs have not been, you

29:34

know, people will consider them not bright enough for a very

29:36

bright room. Now they are very

29:38

bright, but then their competition is brighter still.

29:40

Anyway, what they actually do, the actual solution

29:42

to the stuttering problem is the

29:44

good televisions have essentially added a

29:47

form of motion smoothing that is

29:49

like the most delicate form. Like

29:51

you don't detect it as a soap

29:53

opera effect, but it smooths

29:55

that out just enough for it

29:57

to not look jumpy to you. So it's basically

29:59

like. motion smoothing but turned down

30:01

to the lowest possible setting, lower

30:04

than you would ever imagine

30:06

and that basically cures the problem. What that

30:08

is doing is instead of making faded frames

30:11

that is essentially interpolating between frames but just

30:13

barely enough to make it. It

30:16

doesn't take much. 24 is close. If

30:18

the motion picture or even 30 frames which is

30:20

probably what the office was, you don't

30:22

need much more frame rate above that so they don't need to

30:24

fill in a lot for it to just smooth

30:27

out. I still watch mine in straight

30:29

up 24 frames per second mode. I

30:31

can still see it on slow panning shots in movies sometimes

30:33

but it doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some

30:35

people but yeah that's one of the reasons you want a

30:37

fancy TV because they will have a setting that says motion

30:40

smoothing for people who hate motion smoothing and

30:43

it's like the turn it up to one

30:45

or low or super low or whatever and sometimes

30:47

they also separate the different aspects of motion smoothing

30:49

so you don't have to apply both of them

30:51

at the same time or you can set some

30:54

different values. That is

30:56

essentially the solution to dealing with

30:58

24 frames per second content if you are sensitive to it

31:00

or 30 frames per second in the case of the office

31:02

I imagine. Speaking

31:04

of display technology and screens and trade-offs

31:06

and Division Pro, as we were speaking

31:08

about a minute ago, there's been this

31:10

great series ever since

31:12

Division Pro was announced and everything. There's

31:15

a blog called KG on Tech by

31:17

somebody named Carl Gutag and Carl

31:20

goes through and is very knowledgeable

31:22

about VR and displays and

31:24

hardware and optics and how this stuff

31:26

works. This kind of helps

31:28

show the various trade-offs

31:31

involved in the Vision Pro's screens

31:33

and optics and what

31:35

it does, why it is limited

31:37

in certain ways, what the other

31:39

headsets like the Quest and other things

31:41

like what they do sometimes the same way

31:44

or certain choices they make differently and why

31:46

they choose differently and what the trade-offs are

31:48

there. It's very, very interesting. So Carl had

31:50

this article the other day about some of

31:52

the trade-offs about the resolution inside the Vision

31:55

Pro. There was a shot

31:57

in the iFixit teardown video, the second iFixit teardown

31:59

where they actually show that like

32:01

the raw image on

32:03

the actual little tiny screen panel and

32:06

the image looks like it's being

32:08

viewed through a fisheye lens. It's

32:11

like you know very it's curved, it's warped

32:13

with a whole bunch of you know resolution

32:15

spent on the middle of it and towards

32:17

the edges it warps out. The screens have

32:19

to kind of warp the image to make

32:21

up for what the lenses in front of

32:23

them are going to do as they you

32:25

know project the image around so it looks

32:28

like a giant little view around your eye

32:30

to give you that whole immersive effect. Since

32:32

the image on the screens has

32:35

that fisheye warping effect, whatever

32:38

is in the center of the

32:40

screen has way more resolution

32:43

than what is in the periphery

32:45

of each eye. So

32:47

I think this kind of helps explain first

32:49

of all some of the you know optical

32:51

effects that you see when you're using a

32:53

Vision Pro but also I think this

32:56

might be part of my problem with the Mac

32:58

screen mode. Whatever you're looking at

33:00

in the Vision Pro when you are looking

33:02

straight ahead that it has

33:04

way more pixels like per degree than whatever

33:06

is on the edge of the screen. Now

33:08

if you turn your head obviously you're going

33:11

to turn the high-resolution part of the screen

33:13

towards what you're looking at but if you

33:15

are looking towards the corners of the screen

33:17

only by moving your eyes and

33:20

not by turning your head then what you

33:22

are looking at has way less resolution than what's

33:24

in the middle of the screen and

33:27

also other you know there's other kind of optical

33:29

trade-offs that you get when you're looking near the

33:31

edges. So for instance when you're looking towards the

33:33

middle both eyes can see

33:35

what you're looking at in their respective

33:38

screens. Their screens

33:40

don't overlap perfectly. The

33:42

left eye screen can see a little bit further

33:45

on the left and the right eye screen

33:47

can see a little bit further on the right than

33:49

their opposite screens can. If

33:51

you're looking past like the overlap area

33:53

where like if you're looking you know far to

33:55

the left only your left eye

33:57

might be seeing that in its screen so that's

33:59

even less information it's getting. And it's

34:02

in the lower-res, you know,

34:04

warped edge of the screen optic

34:06

trade-off, you know, pipeline. So

34:09

I think maybe my problem with

34:11

the Mac screen mode is

34:13

that you don't have to think about

34:16

that kind of stuff when you're using a physical monitor. A

34:18

physical monitor has the same resolution across the

34:20

whole thing. And you can just move your

34:22

eyes and not move your whole head, and

34:25

you will see pretty much

34:27

the full resolution. I mean, yeah, your eyes aren't super

34:29

perfect in all ways either, but they're, you know, I

34:31

think they have fewer trade-offs than Division Pro screens do.

34:33

That's what I said last week, I was saying about

34:35

like, when you move your eyes, your field of view

34:38

moves with your eyes. So even though your eyes only

34:40

see things that are in focus that are directly in

34:42

the center, you can move that center. But when you're

34:44

in the headset and you move that center by moving

34:46

your eyes, the screens don't care. They

34:48

don't. They don't. Imagine if

34:50

that high-res center of the screen followed

34:53

your eyes as you move them around, like

34:55

maybe the screens are motorized, they're staying in front

34:58

of your pupils or something. That's what happens in reality.

35:00

In reality, you move your eyes. And

35:02

you know, your field of view is just as

35:04

janky, even probably jankier than this screen, which is

35:06

why foveated rendering works as well as it does.

35:08

But you get to move it wherever you want.

35:10

And so you can take the dead center, highest

35:13

resolution part of your eyes and point it at

35:15

the Apple menu. But if you keep your head

35:17

dead straight, and you point your eyes at the

35:19

Apple menu inside the Division Pro, yeah, that Apple

35:21

menu is probably going to look pretty janky because

35:23

it's on the corner of the screens and the

35:25

screens didn't move when your eyes did. I've

35:28

been trying to figure out, you know, ever since I

35:30

got the Division Pro, why is it that everyone else

35:32

says the Mac screen is sharp and it's not that

35:34

sharp for me? And I think this

35:37

might be one of the reasons that like, I think

35:39

that people for whom it's working well for, maybe

35:42

they are just moving their head more.

35:44

Because they're multi-monitor people like Casey. Right.

35:47

All coming together. Or maybe they are they

35:49

are making the virtual window smaller in the

35:51

Vision Pro field of you. No,

35:54

that's not what I'm doing. But maybe, are you turning

35:56

your head because you're used to having like your 3,

35:58

5K monitors, turning

36:00

your head in real life so you're used to it? I

36:02

guess, I mean I haven't really thought about it that much

36:04

but yeah, I mean it stands to reason that's true. But

36:06

I mean again, I was using this earlier today and I

36:08

thought to myself like, what is

36:11

Marco talking about? I really don't. Supposedly

36:13

improved this in the 1.1 beta like

36:16

the Mac screen sharing is a little bit

36:18

sharper for people so when that update comes.

36:21

And just to be clear, I'm not trying

36:23

to imply that Marco, you're full of it

36:25

or lying or anything. It's just, it's so

36:27

funny to me that this device is so

36:29

personal and based in a way

36:32

that I don't think that any of us have ever

36:34

really dealt with. It's based on your own like, bodies,

36:36

abilities and physiology, is that what I'm looking for? You

36:38

know what I mean? Yeah, and habits and like habits

36:40

like turning your head or not. Right, and so I

36:42

think I made a big stink about this last episode

36:44

and I'll just briefly say again, like I'm not trying

36:47

to imply Marco that you're wrong or you're lying or

36:49

anything like that. It's just so weird to me that

36:51

your experience does not match mine on

36:53

what is effectively identical hardware and it's

36:56

just a funny quirk of

36:58

this brave new world we're entering. It

37:00

turns out our eyes and brains are not identical hardware. Maybe

37:03

that's the problem. It

37:05

can all be solved by screens that are four times

37:07

as big with eight times the resolution. No

37:09

problem, I'm sure we'll be right there. Hey, you know, we

37:12

got retina, Mac monitors eventually. It's just gotta be patient. I

37:14

think there's always gonna be certain trade-offs. There

37:16

are, for example, like certain principles of optics.

37:18

They're gonna make some of this stuff more

37:20

difficult but certainly the higher resolution they

37:22

can get those screens, you can

37:25

paper over a lot of those problems or you

37:27

can dramatically minimize them. Kinda like on the iPhone

37:29

screens where, you know, I think most modern iPhone

37:31

screens essentially they use the Pentile sub-pixel pattern where

37:33

you don't even get an R, a G and

37:35

a B sub-pixel for every quote unquote pixel on

37:37

the screen, right? Like if you zoom in on

37:39

the screens that they use this pattern where, like

37:41

I forget which one it is but one of

37:43

the sub-pixels is shared with neighboring pixels and you're

37:45

like, how can that look good? What a garbage

37:47

screen. They couldn't even give every pixel an RGB?

37:49

That must look terrible. And the answer is no,

37:51

you can't tell they're so small. And like,

37:53

nobody notices, nobody cares, right? Because

37:56

they're so small. Yeah, even like, I mean, please

37:59

designers. out there, cover your ears for

38:01

just this moment. When

38:03

I draw icons and

38:05

think about font weights and icon stroke

38:07

widths for my app, you

38:10

used to have to think about, all right,

38:12

you gotta make everything exactly, like

38:14

1.5 points or three points or whatever it

38:16

was, so it would perfectly line up on

38:18

pixel boundaries. It's in your multiples. Yeah, and

38:20

so it would look good on retina screens

38:23

and non-retina screens and it would perfectly align

38:25

with everything. And these days,

38:27

I don't think about that anymore.

38:29

Once we went to 3x density

38:31

iOS screens, which I believe happened at

38:33

the same time, I believe that was all with the iPhone

38:35

X and forward, I have yet to

38:37

find any stroke width that I choose

38:39

to use that looks blurry or bad

38:41

compared to other ones. So now I just do this

38:44

manually. I'm like, all right, I want

38:46

this icon to be semi-bold. I want this one to

38:48

be medium. I just do that

38:50

and kind of let the system do what it wants

38:52

with thicknesses and they are not always perfect integer multiples

38:55

and it turns out it's totally fine because we

38:57

have such incredibly high density on those screens now.

38:59

So I think with Vision Pro, I think you're

39:01

right. Once down, way

39:03

down the road, I don't think this

39:05

is coming soon, but way down

39:07

the road, maybe 10 years from now, when

39:09

they can double the resolution of the screens or

39:11

more, I think a lot of these

39:13

problems will get a lot less noticeable. But

39:16

until then, this is gonna be trade-offs that we live with and

39:18

that's just the reality of the technology we have so far. Tony

39:21

DiTaranto writes, adding to the categories

39:23

of ATP listeners with jobs in

39:26

every profession, I am a

39:28

professional choral conductor and long-time listener to the

39:30

show. This is my favorite corner,

39:32

it really is. I had a funny thought

39:34

while listening to John describe Window Management, Vision

39:36

OS, in episode 574, specifically about

39:38

how our eyes normally function as input devices

39:41

and not output devices. In

39:43

the course of my work and in my

39:45

professional training at music school, I've learned an

39:47

important thing that most people who aren't conductors

39:49

don't think about. When giving cues, conveying information,

39:51

it's important what you do with your arms and

39:53

hands, but it's arguably more important what you do

39:56

with your eyes. Eye contact and directing

39:58

your gaze is an even stronger form of action. of

40:00

communication and control than arm and hand

40:02

gestures. From when I first started conducting

40:04

technique in college, when I first studied

40:06

conducting technique in college, I had to

40:08

train my gaze as much if not

40:10

more than my gesture to achieve the

40:13

desired result from the group. I

40:15

just wanted to provide this as an example of how, although I'm

40:17

no Superman, I feel like I use my eyes as an output

40:19

device for my work. I was

40:21

conductor as they just see all the people in

40:23

the chorus or the orchestra

40:26

as tiny instruments to be controlled by

40:28

their eyes. Well,

40:30

there was a line from the movie, wasn't it? They

40:32

play the music, I play the orchestra or

40:35

something like that. No, spoilers for Steve Jobs.

40:37

Come on. ATP.offense.join. David Shob

40:39

writes, what frustrated me is that, oh,

40:41

this is with regard to Fitt's law,

40:43

I'm sorry. Whoever put this in, not

40:46

enough context, John. Well, you know, you

40:48

got to read ahead at some times. Anyway,

40:50

David Shob writes with regard to Fitt's law,

40:53

what frustrated me is that dropping files on the

40:55

Mac OS dock breaks Fitt's law. If you drag

40:57

a file to the dock, you can drag it

40:59

past the icons, which according to David Shob is

41:01

ridiculous. It is ridiculous. So it's a long standing

41:04

thing. It's kind of like when you put a

41:06

folder alias in the dock, you can't drag things

41:08

into it. It's one of those things that could

41:10

be fixed in numerous ways. For example, you could

41:12

just disallow dragging folder aliases into the dock if

41:14

you're not going to support it. But

41:17

hasn't been because apparently nobody cares. But yeah, dragging things

41:19

to the dock. We get away with it because in

41:21

the grand scheme it thinks the dock is pretty big

41:23

on most people's monitor. I bet most people don't have

41:25

their dock smaller than the menu bar. But

41:28

yeah, try it. Take something if you

41:30

have a folder in the dock, take a file and try

41:32

to drag it into the folder and go past the folder

41:34

go all the way to the screen edge and you'll notice

41:36

the folders like, nope, nothing's on top of me anymore. It's

41:39

crappy. I might have even filed

41:41

a feedback on it years ago. Maybe

41:43

I'll file one again. I'm sure other people have, but

41:45

I don't think Apple cares. But it's sad. They should.

41:48

Apple this is wildly unrelated. Apple

41:51

extends their modem licensing deal with

41:53

Qualcomm through March of 2027. So

41:56

to recap, Apple bought, what was it? Intel's

41:58

modem business a few years back. And

42:00

so sell modem business. Right.

42:02

And they said, without saying, oh,

42:04

we're going to make our own modem so we

42:06

don't have to continue to pay Qualcomm. And

42:09

then they realized, oh, this is harder than we thought. And

42:11

they continued to pay Qualcomm. And now they've apparently realized, no,

42:14

it's still harder than we thought. And

42:16

so they are extending their deal even

42:18

further, reading from MacRumors, Apple has extended

42:20

its modem chip licensing agreement with Qualcomm

42:22

through March 2027. Qualcomm said today,

42:24

during its first earnings call of 2024, Apple's existing agreement

42:27

has now been extended for two years. So we

42:29

can expect to see Qualcomm modems the next several

42:31

iPhone generations. Yeah. I'm great for Apple.

42:34

I still think they really should make that

42:36

modem and maybe think about integrating it into

42:38

the SOC or near the SOC. But first,

42:40

they got to make one that works. Good

42:43

luck. I keep in mind also, like, you know, just

42:45

because they have a license to deal with Qualcomm through

42:48

2027 doesn't necessarily mean that Apple

42:50

is not going to ship its own modems before

42:52

then. It probably means

42:54

that. But this could be like

42:57

Apple is going to need Qualcomm's

42:59

chips until, you know, through March

43:01

2027 for some parts

43:03

of their lineup. So it's possible

43:06

that, you know, next year, one

43:08

of the iPhones gets it or some variant of it, whether

43:10

it's the iPhone SE or – Yeah, but they're going to

43:12

want to start this slow, I think. It's not going to

43:14

debut in the pro phone probably. I think they're probably going

43:17

to be wary and like, you know, put

43:19

it out in the SE first or something. Like, just –

43:21

I don't know what they're going to do, but like, given

43:23

how hard it's been, I don't think this

43:25

is a bet your flagship product on it. I don't think

43:27

they can make enough of them at that. I don't know.

43:29

I guess the TSMC would do it for them or whatever.

43:31

But yeah, I think given how

43:34

this has gone, a

43:36

gradual rollout of Apple's modems is a good

43:38

idea. Remember, last time they used Intel modems

43:40

in their phones and – what was it?

43:42

You could either get the Intel modem or

43:44

the Qualcomm one and nobody wanted the Intel

43:46

one because it wasn't great. And that was

43:48

kind of on their flagship phone. Yep. I

43:50

had the Intel one. That was the AT&T

43:52

iPhone 7. Yeah. So

43:54

– Not a good one. It's tough.

43:57

So I hope Apple does take this slow. Keep

43:59

extending. that deal, lock-in, whatever deal you have to

44:01

get with Qualcomm. I know these two companies hate

44:03

each other, but you kind of need cell modems

44:05

for cell phones. Indeed.

44:08

Going back many episodes now, probably five or ten

44:10

episodes, we were talking a lot about patents, and

44:12

an anonymous person wrote in to say, Apple

44:14

employees are heavily incentivized to file patents. It's

44:16

one of the few ways to make additional

44:19

income at Apple outside of your normal job

44:21

responsibilities. Apple has an entire department, an online

44:23

portal to streamline the process. I can't find

44:25

the exact numbers right now, but I believe

44:27

employees receive at least $1,000 if

44:29

a patent is accepted and approved. The caveat, of

44:31

course, is that Apple owns all of the intellectual

44:33

rights to the invention. I don't mean

44:36

to sneeze at $1,000. $1,000 is a lot of money, but like... That

44:40

seems chintzy, right? Yeah. Yeah. For Apple, for it's

44:42

like that does seem like a little... It seems

44:44

lower than I would have guessed. Well, that's Apple's

44:46

M.O. The whole rep is that they don't pay

44:48

as much as their competitors, because everyone should just

44:50

be happy to be working there because of Apple.

44:52

But yeah, $1,000 is like, why bother? Give me

44:55

one share of stock. We

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are sponsored this episode by Celtrios. This

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is a shmup, a shoot-em-up game. They

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to it so far and the entire thing was

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made by an independent developer so of course this

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46:12

supports one or two players at a time on

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the Mac you can do various input methods with

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iOS the second player is a game controller but

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hey it works so it's just a great shoot-em-up

46:21

or shmup kind of game. I love this genre

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or head over to the Apple App Store

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to get Celtrios for iOS and tvOS. Thank

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you so much to Celtrios for sponsoring our

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show once again. Harvey

46:55

Simon writes in regards

46:57

to the magnetically attached Apple

46:59

Watch bands that are rumors magnets

47:01

screw with compasses. Apple

47:03

watches have compasses ergo Apple is unlikely

47:06

to add magnetic attachments for Apple Watch

47:08

bands so I mean

47:10

I'm not an expert in magnets but that makes

47:12

sense to me. If

47:15

you're waiting for extremely powerful magnets

47:17

to be connecting your Apple Watch

47:19

band maybe that won't

47:21

work well with the compass feature of

47:23

the watch. Time will tell. I think

47:26

working around magnetic strength limitations is

47:28

not that hard because again I'm

47:30

not a scientist but I'm pretty

47:33

sure magnetic strength falls off dramatically

47:35

with distance and if

47:37

you have fixed magnets inside the Apple Watch

47:39

that are always in the same position I

47:42

would expect it would not be super

47:44

hard to just calibrate that out from

47:47

the sensor. Third-party watch bands might throw a

47:49

monkey wrench into that. Well it depends like where are

47:51

the magnets? Are the magnets in the body or are

47:53

they in the band? I would imagine that they're in

47:55

both places kind of like the MagSafe cases you know

47:58

like the ones that work well the cases also have

48:00

magnets in them and third party ones tend to be stronger

48:02

than Apple's in my experience. Maybe. But

48:05

I think if they're in the watch body,

48:07

which I mean, actually, does the

48:09

charging disc on the bottom, are there

48:11

any magnets on the watch side of

48:13

that? There probably are I would imagine.

48:15

There's electricity, so there's also magnetism that's

48:17

complicated. Yeah. Anyway, so

48:20

I think they could design around this. I don't think it

48:22

would be that big of a deal. We'll

48:25

see. This is still just a rumor. I

48:27

haven't seen anything concrete on the watch,

48:29

strap thing since we talked about it

48:31

except for vague notions of watch, strap

48:33

magnets. Okay. Well, so give me a drawing. Give

48:36

me something. We don't have anything yet. Fair

48:38

enough. All right. And then finally, for follow

48:40

up this week, more on the line or letter

48:42

of credit from Brian coffee. As

48:44

someone who also works in commercial banking, specifically problem

48:47

commercial loans, I need to clarify the comments on

48:49

the requirements to get a letter of credit. Drawing

48:52

a letter of credit. Yes, Apple could draw on the

48:54

letter of credit, but in the agreement, they must have

48:56

a good and valid reason. The typical use for a

48:58

letter of credit is for international shipping where you ship

49:01

the goods before getting paid. The letter of credit ensures

49:03

the overseas recipient won't stiff you. The shipper who got

49:05

stiffed must go to their bank to work with the

49:07

ship ease bank to claim that the shipper never

49:10

got paid. And with regard to getting

49:12

a letter of credit, a letter of credit is a credit product

49:14

of the bank. Once the letter

49:16

of credit is drawn upon, it instantly becomes a loan.

49:18

A company can get an unsecured letter of credit if

49:20

they're producing enough cash flow to show their quote unquote

49:23

good for the money. If the letter

49:25

of credit ever gets drawn upon, if a potential

49:27

borrower doesn't have strong enough cash flows to support

49:29

this, there are alternatives. Smallish businesses could put up

49:31

their homes or retirement accounts as collateral. You could

49:33

also be 50% secured or really any percent secured

49:36

depending on the strength of your cash flows. All

49:38

this is to say, you don't absolutely have to

49:40

put a million in cash in the bank, but

49:42

you do have to show a bank that you

49:44

could reasonably come up with a million if

49:46

you had to and prove it. So

49:49

it's not exactly handing a bank a million bucks

49:51

or a million euros, but it's not that far

49:53

away either. Yeah, I mean, like any bank

49:56

thing, if you can convince some bank to do something for

49:58

you, then fine. But yeah, I feel like the. bank

50:00

basically wants to know if you have

50:02

something that we can get a million dollars from

50:05

even if we need to like repossess your home

50:07

or whatever. So it's

50:09

not as bad as you must have a million dollars in

50:11

cash but I feel like you still kind of have to

50:13

have some way to get a million dollars for a bank

50:15

to agree to this because that's kind of the whole deal.

50:17

Unless you have a really friendly bank and it's like we

50:19

like your face. We think it's fine.

50:21

Yeah, we'll front you a million bucks because

50:24

we like your face. That sounds reasonable. Yeah.

50:26

All right, let's move on to some topics

50:28

and of course we have a little bit more

50:30

vision pro to talk about and John, you seem to be

50:33

very enthusiastic to talk

50:35

about personas, baby. So what you got?

50:37

It's kind of like when we talked

50:39

about eyesight last week. The

50:41

reason this feature exists is obvious and I

50:44

think is not really going to go away.

50:46

So personas are the little fake computer people

50:48

that you use to represent yourself when you're

50:50

on a FaceTime call and the reason for

50:52

them is obvious. Being on

50:54

a video call in a Zoom meeting for

50:56

your work in a FaceTime or whatever, it's

50:59

so common today. It's a very common

51:01

part of using computers. But if you got weird ski goggles

51:03

strapped to your face, how

51:05

do you get yourself into a video

51:07

call? Do you let your max webcam

51:09

show your weird ski goggly face? I

51:12

think people would find that off-putting even

51:14

with the creepy eyesight things on it.

51:16

So Apple's solution is, hey, we'll

51:19

make a little computer version of you and when

51:21

you're in your FaceTime call or your Zoom meeting,

51:23

the little computer puppet of you will talk. And

51:26

that problem is not going

51:28

to go away until we're actually wearing

51:31

glasses that just look like regular glasses, which

51:33

is many, many, many years in the future

51:36

if it ever comes in any form. So

51:40

you're going to need some way to show

51:42

your face in these meetings. I guess the

51:44

other solution is, oh, we're having a Zoom

51:46

meeting. Why isn't your video turned on? Oh,

51:48

I'm wearing a headset so you can't see

51:50

me. I'm not sure

51:52

that's necessarily going to fly. And you wouldn't

51:54

want it to because there's a lot of bandwidth, a

51:56

lot of communication that happens from your

51:58

facial expressions. solution

52:00

to this is these weird creepy computer

52:04

models and as

52:07

weird as they are I think

52:10

they're gonna Apple is gonna keep plugging away at

52:12

this as you know they've taken a lot of

52:14

flack for this during the rollout because they do

52:16

look kind of creepy and scary I

52:20

don't think the Apple is going to be

52:22

scared away nor should they because I think

52:25

you know video conferencing is not going away

52:27

and it's going to

52:29

be a long time before these things on our face

52:31

don't look like sea goggles and kind of hide everything

52:34

about our most things about our face so I

52:36

think they just need to keep plugging away at it is embarrassing

52:38

it is now and as for how

52:41

embarrassing it is like we like last episode

52:43

I think we when we tooted about it

52:45

we showed Casey's persona and like the the

52:47

graphic for that episode they

52:49

look silly but only if you you

52:52

have a more I think

52:54

you have a more appreciation for them if you have

52:56

any experience with this type of thing before and most

52:58

of my experience with this type of thing comes

53:01

from video games and similar tech where they

53:03

would you know put your face in

53:05

the game make a skin for your player character or

53:07

whatever and the things that have

53:10

been built into games have been so much worse

53:12

than what Apple did they really

53:14

are one of the best instances I've

53:16

ever seen of this particular technology and

53:19

we'll put a link in the show notes

53:21

to someone demonstrating this the thing I think

53:23

that's most impressive about Apple stuff all two

53:25

things one that they're able to make something that looks

53:27

as good as it does I know you hearing

53:29

that you're like what do you mean they look terrible look like a

53:31

death mask it

53:35

could be so much worse right and yes they all

53:37

blur the edges to hide their sins or whatever but

53:39

they do an amazing job with just a with a

53:41

face scan that you can do not a professional scan

53:44

like go look at things where they have like a

53:46

famous Hollywood actor in a video game and they have

53:48

that person go into a full motion

53:50

capture studio and have them stand there with like

53:52

balls on their shoulders and and lasers shooting them

53:55

for a million angers like incredibly controlled

53:57

environment they spend the entire day getting

53:59

their face skin and they put them in the

54:01

game and they look awful. And this is, oh just

54:03

hold the ski goggles in front of your face for

54:05

two seconds turn to the side and the Apple's doing

54:07

a better job. So yeah that's impressive but the second

54:09

thing is it's demoed in this video how

54:12

well it tracks the

54:14

expressions you're making with your face.

54:17

So you're wearing ski goggles and you're raising

54:19

your eyebrows and you're blinking and you're twisting

54:21

your mouth and you're sticking out your tongue

54:23

and you're smiling and you're frowning and you're

54:25

furrowing your brow and somehow

54:28

Apple's able to detect all those things. Some

54:30

of those things are happening inside the headset,

54:32

some of those things are happening outside the

54:34

headset. It is phenomenal what they do.

54:36

Now does the little puppet look like you when

54:39

it's doing that? You

54:41

know it's got fake, everything's got the same perfect

54:43

fake teeth and everyone's got the same weird artificial

54:45

tongue and it's not you know

54:47

if you can make the W shape with your tongue the

54:49

avatar is not going to right but like it

54:52

does a really good I think it does

54:54

a good enough job kind of like a

54:56

really well articulated puppet would do of

54:59

letting the people who are on the zoom

55:01

call with you or whatever know what expression

55:03

you're making. Are you you know are you

55:06

happy about that? Are you skeptical? Are you

55:08

angry? Are you not paying attention? Like I

55:10

feel like they do an amazing job of

55:12

matching the movements

55:15

of the various parts of your face and reflecting

55:17

those. No it's not perfect it's not capturing all

55:19

the subtleties of your acting performance it might not

55:21

even really look like you but kind

55:24

of like I was you know talking about the cartoon eyes

55:26

sometimes just sort of a not

55:30

a cartoon eyes but like a decomposed

55:33

less granular version of you captures a lot

55:35

of it. It's the reason animation can look

55:38

so good. Animation doesn't look photorealistic but the

55:40

right lines in the right places can be

55:42

very expressive in animation and I feel like

55:44

that's what Apple's going for. This isn't exactly

55:47

you but if they catch

55:49

enough that they put the right lines in

55:51

the right places they can convey most of

55:53

the information your face is expressing and again

55:55

I'm really impressed that some of that expression

55:58

is underneath these the the the guy and

56:00

some of it is outside and they put it

56:02

back together into a cohesive whole. So I'm

56:05

not, I don't relish seeing these personas talking

56:07

to me, but I think this

56:10

is just one of those hard problems that Apple and

56:12

anybody who wants to do what Apple is doing has

56:14

to be resigned to tackling over the next several decades

56:17

because it's not going to go away again until we

56:19

just get plain old glasses. Until then, people are going

56:21

to want to be meanings and people are going to

56:23

want to see their faces and they're going to want

56:25

to be able to use their faces again, but talk

56:27

about our choral conductor as an output

56:29

device because that's part of the way we communicate

56:31

with other people. We want to be able to

56:33

scowl at someone meaningfully and have that, have an

56:35

effect on them in the meeting. Yeah.

56:38

And I want to build on what

56:40

you were saying earlier, like as a

56:42

technical achievement, it is

56:44

stunning how good these

56:46

are at, at expressing

56:49

what your face is expressing. Cause remember, you've

56:51

got cameras on the inside that are figuring

56:53

out when you're blinking because the persona reflects

56:55

that, that figure out when you're raising your

56:57

eyebrows because the persona reflects that. I

57:00

don't recall if it reflects where your eyes are

57:02

looking, but I think it does. Yeah, it does

57:04

pretty sure. And it's certainly, you can turn your

57:06

face left and right and up and down. And

57:09

then your smile, like that's happening outside the

57:11

device and granted there are cameras, you know,

57:13

pretty much everywhere on this thing, but still

57:15

there's, you know, it's outside the device that

57:18

you're smiling or sticking your tongue out like you had said.

57:20

And whether or not like leaving

57:23

aside the creepiness factor, the uncanny Valley, which again, just

57:25

like I was saying in the beginning of the show,

57:28

like that's a big thing to

57:30

just push under the carpet. But leaving

57:32

that aside, the technical achievement is really

57:34

just phenomenal and stunning how good, how

57:36

good it is. And, you know, I

57:38

had a, I do a

57:41

monthly face time call with James Thompson. We had one

57:43

this morning and because we're both idiots, we jumped on

57:45

the call, unbeknownst to either of us, but we, I

57:47

think we both kind of assumed it. You know, we

57:49

jumped on the call, you know, started off the calls

57:51

and in our vision pros with

57:53

our personas and so on and so forth

57:55

and had a good laugh about it.

57:57

And, you know, it chuckles about how ridiculous we both look.

58:00

And then we hung up and got on the computer

58:02

like we usually do. But I mean, I think if

58:04

we had stuck with the personas, it would have been

58:06

awkward for a few minutes and this is a very

58:08

common refrain from people who've done it. Um, you know,

58:10

it would have been awkward for a few minutes and

58:12

then it would have felt pretty normal all in all.

58:14

And, and I think that's how

58:16

it typically ends up. Like I'm not saying

58:18

it's not weird. I'm not even necessarily saying

58:21

it's not creepy, but I

58:23

don't know. It, it, you settle into

58:25

it. And again, as a technical exercise,

58:27

it is beyond compare. Did

58:29

you look at the Charlie Chapman video, by the way, the

58:32

one I was referring to, did you have a chance to

58:34

look at it? I think I skimmed through

58:36

it super quickly if memory serves. Some, some of

58:38

the things he does, for example, are like puffing

58:40

air, uh, underneath his,

58:42

like, uh, into his, uh, behind his

58:44

lips and into his cheeks. And

58:47

also talking out of like the side of his mouth. Like

58:49

that's what I'm talking about. Where it's not just like

58:51

a puppet where it's like, I can tell when you're

58:53

opening your mouth and you said a T sound, so

58:56

I'll make it look like you're making a T sound

58:58

with your tongue. Like you can do weird stuff with

59:00

your face that is not normal. Like, like, you know,

59:02

puffing your lips up and, and, you know, talking weird,

59:04

like, and it's, I mean, is it tracking it exactly?

59:06

No, but they're accounting for the fact that you might

59:08

do that and they're mapping it to whatever their little

59:11

puppet model is of your face going

59:13

far beyond just simply making it so that your mouth

59:15

moves when you talk, please. Everyone should definitely look at

59:17

this video. I mean, you know, and again, ignore the

59:19

fact that his whole head is all thuzzed out and

59:21

he looks like a weird death mask

59:23

of himself. I

59:26

mean, I think you are

59:28

correct at how incredibly impressive

59:30

this accomplishment is, but it's

59:33

still not good enough. And I think this is

59:35

kind of, this is largely the story of Vision

59:37

Pro in general right now, most

59:39

products, like most new groundbreaking

59:41

products, you tend to have

59:44

mostly like routine, you know, stuff

59:46

that has been done before plus

59:49

like one or two big new challenges.

59:52

That's not the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro

59:54

is a very small number of

59:56

things that have been done before. Like here's an

59:58

M2 based, you know. iPad-based OS in

1:00:00

a computing environment with Windows and stuff and

1:00:04

then they tackled ten different

1:00:06

massive Challenges at least and

1:00:09

they have achieved Remarkable things

1:00:11

they're way ahead of the industry

1:00:14

in so many ways with the vision Pro But

1:00:17

the problem is they're not

1:00:19

selling the vision Pro and pitching the

1:00:21

vision Pro to people in the VR

1:00:23

industry They're not selling and

1:00:25

pitching the use of personas to

1:00:28

only gamers They've

1:00:30

tackled these massive problems and

1:00:32

they've done very respectable jobs

1:00:34

in their solutions to them

1:00:37

but the problem is they're still

1:00:39

not where Most

1:00:41

people want them to be and they probably have

1:00:43

some kind of like resentment whenever people

1:00:45

criticize it on some level Like I bet there's

1:00:48

people in Apple who were like How

1:00:50

can you criticize the personas because look at how

1:00:52

amazing they are compared to the state of the

1:00:54

art and that's true

1:00:57

But when you're presenting them as an

1:00:59

alternative to people Then

1:01:01

people are gonna hold them to a much

1:01:03

higher standard. That's why they made this the

1:01:05

studio display camera. So cruddy yeah,

1:01:08

like like, you know the

1:01:10

vision Pro in in many ways it's pitching

1:01:12

itself as like an

1:01:14

alternative to various aspects

1:01:17

of reality that people are

1:01:19

very good at noticing the differences between the real

1:01:21

stuff and the fake stuff and They

1:01:24

have achieved remarkable stuff and yet it is

1:01:26

still not good enough for what most people

1:01:28

expect as like the basics Oh, you're gonna

1:01:31

show a virtual version of me. Okay, it

1:01:33

needs to look like me like it needs to be a stand-in

1:01:36

replacement and it's It's sort

1:01:38

of you know It's in the ballpark for a lot of

1:01:40

people but it's not you know a stand-in replacement and in

1:01:42

many cases it looks creepy and weird and you know still

1:01:45

even with 1.1 and So

1:01:47

I think this is gonna be you

1:01:49

know, just part of the vision pros uphill battle over

1:01:51

the over the coming years is like Even

1:01:54

though they have achieved remarkable things. They still

1:01:56

need to push it even further than what

1:01:58

they've already done to

1:02:01

match what most people's expectations are

1:02:03

who are not VR

1:02:05

industry pros? Yeah, I

1:02:07

think they picked mostly the right challenges because there are so

1:02:09

many different challenges they could have chosen and you might look

1:02:11

at this, I think a lot of people have been outside,

1:02:14

why did Apple even try to do this? And the answer

1:02:16

is because this is one of the problems they eventually need

1:02:18

to solve. And if you don't start working at it now,

1:02:20

don't expect you're just gonna snap your fingers sometime 10 years

1:02:22

from now, it'll be perfect. You gotta make the janky version

1:02:24

first, right? So they do it, but

1:02:27

they can't ignore this problem. Like they can't

1:02:29

ignore it unless they see a time horizon

1:02:31

of just wearing like clear glasses instead of

1:02:33

these goggle things. Otherwise, this is just gonna

1:02:35

be out there as an issue and so

1:02:37

they better start plugging away at it.

1:02:39

And I bet this was like a big time sink

1:02:41

and a big, you know, like a lot of technology

1:02:43

went into this and to your point, Margot, a lot

1:02:45

of technology and time went into it, into a feature

1:02:47

that we know regular people are gonna look at and

1:02:49

go, ugh. I

1:02:52

look at it and go, ugh. But it's like, you

1:02:54

just got it, like this is a problem that has

1:02:56

to be solved. If you wanna make this product, there

1:02:59

are a small number of problems that you basically just have to

1:03:01

solve and you're not gonna be able to do a great job

1:03:03

on them, even if you do better than anyone else has ever

1:03:05

done before, but you better start cracking on it because next

1:03:07

year you make a better version, next year, like they

1:03:09

can't ignore this one. They can't, like even more so

1:03:11

than eyesight. Eyesight where you can say, okay, we'll make

1:03:14

the cheaper one without eyesight or we'll use cartoon eyes

1:03:16

or whatever. Like you could maybe sweep that one under

1:03:18

the covers, but people are on video

1:03:21

calls all the time and I don't think it's

1:03:23

acceptable to them to say either

1:03:25

you just can't show your face or

1:03:27

your face is gonna have these giant ski goggles on

1:03:29

it. And all of those are less acceptable than even

1:03:31

this janky thing. So they just have to be like,

1:03:33

okay, we're gonna put ourselves out there

1:03:35

and we're gonna say we gave it our best shot because

1:03:37

we recognize this is a problem that we need

1:03:40

to solve and next year we hope we'll do

1:03:42

better. And it's gonna be a while, but like

1:03:44

I said, it is impressive

1:03:46

from a technical perspective what they've achieved and I

1:03:48

think they struck a reasonable balance in the beginning.

1:03:50

People are like, why did you just use meemojis? I think

1:03:53

meemojis would be worse. I know they

1:03:55

have meemojis, I know this whole scene kit versus

1:03:57

reality kit, political internal API thing that they have

1:03:59

going on there. But setting that aside, mimogis

1:04:01

are not as expressive as personas are. Again,

1:04:03

watch the video we'll link in the show.

1:04:05

It's of Charlie Chapman showing you different facial

1:04:07

expressions. Mimogis are cartoons that

1:04:10

are not, what I was

1:04:12

using for the example of animation where you draw just

1:04:14

the right lines to be expressive. Mimogis are not that.

1:04:16

Mimogis are bad, rigid headed,

1:04:18

chucky cheese, pizza time band,

1:04:21

whatever things. Not the, you know, slack in the

1:04:23

mimogis team. What they did is amazing too. Mimogis

1:04:25

had to walk so personas could walk

1:04:28

a little faster. But personas are

1:04:30

better able to communicate you across

1:04:37

a computer while you're wearing that goggles

1:04:39

than mimogis would be. And what

1:04:43

people want is personas, but not bad. Right?

1:04:46

And so you got, I guess you have to start, you know, you

1:04:48

could either just never ship or you

1:04:50

could ship what you have, which is personas, which

1:04:53

are, you know, better than mimogis, but still not

1:04:55

good enough. So I give Apple

1:04:57

an E for effort here. And

1:04:59

if they have to choose where to add the

1:05:02

resources to pursue better things, I

1:05:04

would say, put more resources

1:05:06

into personas than eyesight for

1:05:09

going forward. Yeah,

1:05:12

I don't know. I stand by eyesight

1:05:14

as well, and we don't need to

1:05:16

belabor this, but I get why people

1:05:19

are turned off by both personas and

1:05:21

eyesight. But I genuinely think this

1:05:23

would be a far worse

1:05:25

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sponsoring our show. There's

1:07:34

news today that Apple

1:07:37

is already defending iMessage

1:07:39

against tomorrow's quantum computing

1:07:41

attacks. I'm sorry, what?

1:07:44

So Apple and security professionals that

1:07:46

have probably known about this for a long time,

1:07:48

but I don't often have to think about this,

1:07:50

but one of the things that security professionals are

1:07:52

thinking about is, Hey, there

1:07:55

will one day be a quantum computer

1:07:57

and what happens if you, you know,

1:08:00

somehow, probably, nefariously capture a bunch

1:08:02

of encrypted traffic today, but

1:08:04

what if you save it off for years

1:08:06

and years and years? And

1:08:09

eventually, you finally get

1:08:11

your hands or build that quantum

1:08:13

computer, and you can go back

1:08:15

to all of that years and

1:08:17

years and years of data that

1:08:19

you captured with our comparatively weak

1:08:22

encryption that we use here in 2024. But,

1:08:25

well, suddenly your quantum computer can

1:08:27

just decrypt all of that, right?

1:08:29

That's how it's going to work. And nobody really

1:08:31

knows if that's true or not. It certainly stands

1:08:33

to reason that it's true. And

1:08:36

Apple is already starting the process

1:08:38

of defending iMessage against tomorrow's quantum

1:08:40

computing attacks. So they had a

1:08:42

blog post about this, which I'll link in the show notes,

1:08:44

and The Verge covered it, and I will read from The

1:08:46

Verge a little bit. Apple's security team

1:08:49

claims to have achieved a breakthrough that, quote,

1:08:51

advances the state of the art of end-to-end

1:08:53

messaging, quote. With the upcoming

1:08:55

release of iOS 17.4 and macOS 14.4 and the

1:08:57

equivalent iPad WatchOS, the

1:09:01

company is bringing a new cryptographic

1:09:04

protocol called PQ3 to iMessage that

1:09:06

purports to offer even more robust

1:09:08

encryption in defenses against sophisticated quantum

1:09:10

computing attacks. So now from

1:09:12

Apple's blog post, today we are announcing

1:09:14

the most significant cryptographic security upgrade in

1:09:16

iMessage history with the induction of PQ3,

1:09:18

a groundbreaking post-quantum cryptographic protocol that advances

1:09:20

the state of the art of end-to-end

1:09:22

secure messaging. PQ3 is the first messaging

1:09:25

protocol to reach what we like to

1:09:27

call Level 3 security, which I'll explain in

1:09:29

a second, providing protocol protections that surpass those

1:09:31

in all the other widely deployed messaging apps.

1:09:33

To our knowledge, PQ3 is the strongest security

1:09:36

properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the

1:09:38

world. PQ3 employs a

1:09:40

hybrid design that combines elliptic

1:09:42

curve cryptography with post-quantum encryption,

1:09:44

both during the initial key

1:09:47

establishment and during rekeying. Thus,

1:09:49

the new cryptography is purely additive,

1:09:52

and defeating PQ3 security requires defeating

1:09:54

both the existing classical ECC

1:09:56

cryptography and the new post-quantum

1:09:58

primitives. That bit

1:10:00

was interesting because basically

1:10:03

they're covering their butts to say, look, what if

1:10:05

we screwed this up? What if we came up

1:10:07

with this new, uh, you know, quantum, uh, you

1:10:09

know, post quantum encryption, but we are, we have

1:10:11

a bug in the implementation. We're just rolling this

1:10:13

out and oops, we got something wrong and there's

1:10:15

some kind of bug or buffer overflow or whatever,

1:10:18

uh, making this additive to the

1:10:20

existing encryption, hopefully makes it

1:10:22

so that if they really screwed this up

1:10:25

and oh, it's trivially easy to crack this post quantum

1:10:27

encryption because of a bug and Apple software. Well, once

1:10:29

you crack it, what you're left with is

1:10:32

the stuff that was encrypted the way it's currently

1:10:34

encrypted now. Like that's that it's layered on top

1:10:36

of it is my understanding, which I think is

1:10:38

really smart thing to do to sort of,

1:10:40

you know, we all kind of wish we could do

1:10:42

this. Like you kind of want to, I want to have

1:10:45

the old way there as a fallback, even if you totally

1:10:47

screw up the new way. I'm not entirely sure if that's,

1:10:49

that's true, but my reading this paragraph makes me think that

1:10:51

it might be, and it's a clever idea, which is like

1:10:54

belt and suspenders. Uh, we're not getting rid

1:10:56

of the old encryption. We're just encrypting it

1:10:58

one more time, even better. Yep.

1:11:01

Yep. And so Apple as mentioned has

1:11:03

come up with its own, uh, four

1:11:06

plus stage, I guess five plus stage

1:11:09

level system. Uh, they've

1:11:11

defined classic classical cryptography, which is not quantum

1:11:13

secure. There's level zero, which is no end-end

1:11:15

encryption by default. And by the way, you

1:11:17

can kind of tell it, it's kind of

1:11:19

weird that like Apple's marketing department really doesn't

1:11:21

ever really like to name competitors

1:11:24

at all ever. Like even though we know who

1:11:26

they're talking about when they alluded to something, but

1:11:28

whoever's doing the security blog has no problem

1:11:31

naming names. So you got to get the

1:11:33

level zero thing, level zero, no end-to-end encryption.

1:11:35

They just named names, Skype, Telegram,

1:11:37

WeChat, whatever that QQ is. Level

1:11:40

one end-to-end encryption by default, which

1:11:42

includes line Viber WhatsApp signal previously

1:11:45

and I message previously level

1:11:47

two. Now that now we're in the

1:11:49

post quantum cryptography or PQC, this is,

1:11:51

and also has an encryption by default.

1:11:54

So level two is PQC key establishment

1:11:56

only, which is signal with PQXDH, whatever

1:11:58

the hell you're talking about. That means

1:12:01

and then level three, which is PQC key

1:12:03

establishment and ongoing PQC rekeying, which is the

1:12:05

new I message with PQ three. And then

1:12:07

in the future, not given a level, but

1:12:09

I guess would be level four, PQC

1:12:12

establishment plus ongoing PQC rekeying

1:12:14

plus PQC authentication. And then

1:12:16

there's potentially even more after

1:12:18

that. So this is really

1:12:20

cool. I'm happy that Apple is working on this,

1:12:23

even though I don't think anyone gives a crap

1:12:25

about what I say in high message, but I

1:12:27

do think that that's really cool that this is

1:12:29

something that they're actively working on hopefully and

1:12:32

presumably so long before it's ever going to

1:12:34

be necessary. Interesting. And the, the, the fact

1:12:36

that they have like the level four written

1:12:38

there, if you read the big document to

1:12:40

the blog post, they explain like that they

1:12:42

essentially chose not to do the

1:12:46

thing that makes this level four, because it's

1:12:48

just like level three, except for they add

1:12:50

the PQC authentication. And they explained

1:12:52

why they chose not to do that. They said like,

1:12:54

look, we don't we

1:12:57

don't want to do that right now. And we don't

1:12:59

think it's necessary right now because it happens, it happens

1:13:01

in the moment, so it's not one of those things.

1:13:04

The authentication is like, you know, establishing authenticity

1:13:06

of who you're communicating with before you start

1:13:08

communicating and that has to happen each time.

1:13:11

And so what they say is like, this is not

1:13:13

like you could save this for later and then decrypt

1:13:16

it later because you're not, there's no useful information exchanged

1:13:18

yet. So saving that,

1:13:20

saving that, you know, that exchange is useless to

1:13:22

you because that exchange has already happened. So even

1:13:24

if you crack the encryption out, whether you're on

1:13:26

a computer 10 years from now, it's pointless. There's

1:13:28

no data there. And that conversation happened long ago

1:13:30

and those keys are all useless. Right. And

1:13:33

so they said, well, until someone can get a quantum

1:13:35

computer that can intercept your traffic and then in real

1:13:37

time crack it, we don't have to worry about that.

1:13:39

So that's why they push it off to the future.

1:13:42

And the other thing they talk about in implementation tradeoffs

1:13:44

is the post quantum

1:13:46

cryptography stuff. The data is bigger, like the

1:13:48

keys are bigger and whatever, whatever other info

1:13:50

they have to exchange is significantly bigger than

1:13:53

their old encryption scheme and their

1:13:55

old encryption screen scheme sends new keys

1:13:57

like every single message, but

1:13:59

to like basically tamp down on the

1:14:01

bandwidth use of, you know, if you're

1:14:03

going to tack something onto every iMessage that's sent, that

1:14:06

adds up real fast because a lot of iMessages are

1:14:08

sent per hour, per day, per minute, per second, right?

1:14:11

So they say with the post-quantum stuff,

1:14:14

they only are going to do like the re-keying

1:14:16

periodically, and they do it based on an algorithm

1:14:18

of like if you're on a crappy connection, we

1:14:20

won't try to shove these new keys down as

1:14:22

fast as we normally do. If

1:14:24

you're on a faster connection, we'll send them

1:14:27

more frequently. And what they basically said is

1:14:29

we're trying to narrow the window that an

1:14:31

attacker could do something. So if

1:14:33

an attacker someday cracks this, the only thing that they'll

1:14:35

be able to see is the

1:14:38

brief period before we re-keyed. They

1:14:40

cracked just that little segment. So I don't know how big

1:14:42

that is. They didn't actually say whether it's like two lines

1:14:45

of text or five minutes or whatever, but

1:14:47

that's another trade-off they made. And that's another

1:14:50

fun thing of like seeing security people write

1:14:52

something instead of marketing people, because

1:14:54

they'll tell you, here were the engineering trade-offs and

1:14:56

here's why we made them. Instead

1:14:59

of just saying, this is the best and no one

1:15:01

else has anything like this and it's super secure, or

1:15:03

they let engineers write it and they'll tell you about

1:15:05

the trade-offs. So I thought this was super interesting. I

1:15:07

highly recommend everybody read the blog post we link, because

1:15:09

it might seem like it's kind

1:15:11

of got a little bit of technical jargon, but they do a

1:15:14

really good job of explaining it well enough

1:15:16

for you to follow what they're saying, and it's pretty

1:15:18

cool stuff. All right,

1:15:20

it's been a little while, so let's do some Ask ATP.

1:15:23

And let's start tonight with Ian Malkuszewski, who

1:15:25

writes, what is your advice on how to

1:15:28

best communicate to non-tech people the value and

1:15:30

benefits of native Mac-ass Mac apps? I work

1:15:32

at a small under-10 people company where everyone

1:15:34

works on a Mac, but some are new

1:15:36

to the platform and most of their software

1:15:39

experience is using electron apps and other apps

1:15:41

that are at best, so-so citizens of the

1:15:43

platform. We're constantly hiring a developer to make

1:15:45

an app to help us with an internal project. I want to

1:15:47

be able to make the case to hire someone who knows how

1:15:49

to make good Mac software. If I put

1:15:52

an app like Fantastical next to Outlook, most

1:15:54

of my teammates just see two calendar apps

1:15:56

with cosmetic differences and shrug off the idea

1:15:58

that there's anything notably between them. I'd love

1:16:01

any advice on how to make the case

1:16:03

to non-technical people that Mac-Ass Mac Apps have

1:16:05

a real user-facing benefit beyond just feeling better.

1:16:08

Hot take, I don't know that you really want

1:16:10

a Mac-Ass Mac App in this context. Like if

1:16:12

you're just writing stuff for your own team of

1:16:14

10 people, I wouldn't spend the time

1:16:16

personally. And I know that's probably going to make everyone

1:16:19

shudder and hate me, but there are

1:16:21

bigger problems and more important problems to solve than

1:16:23

making a Mac-Ass Mac App. But that's my opinion,

1:16:26

wrong as it may be. Marco, correct

1:16:28

me. I don't think I'm going

1:16:30

to disagree with you on this. So it

1:16:33

depends so much on the nature of the app that

1:16:35

you're going to build. So

1:16:38

Ian said this is an internal app. I

1:16:40

think it will be challenging for

1:16:43

the higher-ups to justify what it

1:16:45

would take to make a really

1:16:47

good, quote, Mac-Ass Mac

1:16:49

App. And what that means is basically

1:16:52

native Mac code,

1:16:55

native Mac controls, kind of the

1:16:57

standard Mac UI design paradigm, things

1:16:59

like that as opposed

1:17:02

to things like Electron. And

1:17:04

I think for most software,

1:17:07

let alone most internal use

1:17:09

software, it's very difficult to

1:17:11

justify that kind of investment on the Mac because

1:17:14

first of all, Ian

1:17:16

mentioned wanting to hire someone who could do that. That's

1:17:19

difficult. There's not a lot of

1:17:21

programmers out there who are qualified

1:17:23

to make this style

1:17:25

of high-quality, native, kind

1:17:27

of traditional style

1:17:30

Mac App. It's a very small talent pool.

1:17:32

Including inside Apple. Yeah, Apple can't even make

1:17:34

them anymore. Sorry, but it's true. It is.

1:17:36

So that's problem number one is could you

1:17:38

even find someone to do this? Problem number

1:17:40

two is would you be able to pay

1:17:42

them what they are probably worth? And

1:17:45

then problem number three is can you convince

1:17:47

the higher-ups in your company that that's

1:17:49

worth doing? And I think

1:17:51

the only way that is

1:17:54

really easily done is if

1:17:56

the higher-ups in your company are Mac

1:17:58

nerds and also... and not good business

1:18:00

people. Because what you're ultimately looking,

1:18:03

and by the way, and I'm both of those

1:18:05

things. So if

1:18:07

it was my internal app, I would absolutely

1:18:09

do this. But the problem

1:18:11

is when you're talking about having

1:18:14

that style of app with

1:18:16

the realities of today and

1:18:18

the markets and the tech needs around it today,

1:18:22

it's more of an indulgence

1:18:24

than something that you can make a good business case

1:18:26

for. So

1:18:29

if you're able to convince them,

1:18:31

hey, indulge me in having

1:18:33

this thing that we're gonna build be very

1:18:35

nice in these ways that you don't care about, but

1:18:38

I do, then good for you,

1:18:40

that's great. I think you're in for an

1:18:42

uphill battle. And then also, even

1:18:44

if you can get someone to build it, and

1:18:47

you can get the higher ups to agree

1:18:49

to indulge you in this, what

1:18:51

happens down the road when you have to change

1:18:53

it or update it? How

1:18:56

hard is it going to be to get someone

1:18:58

in to do that down the road?

1:19:00

Because it's already hard enough now. So

1:19:04

I think it's gonna be a tough sell. If

1:19:06

they just don't have enough experience dealing with giant corporate

1:19:08

bureaucracies, let me tell you how to do this. So

1:19:10

the first thing you need to do is establish things

1:19:16

that are not in this question that I don't

1:19:18

know the answer to. For example, this seems to

1:19:20

imply that you're gonna hire a developer to make

1:19:22

an app for an internal project and that you

1:19:25

only need a Mac app. If

1:19:27

that's really true, confirm that and say,

1:19:30

just so we're clear, we're not planning

1:19:32

on making a Windows version of this app later. It's

1:19:35

an internal app, are we ever gonna need a Windows version,

1:19:37

do we need a Linux version? And

1:19:39

if you can get past that hurdle of clarifying

1:19:41

the requirements and they say, no, no, no, we're

1:19:43

never gonna make a Windows version, never gonna need

1:19:45

a web version, this is gonna be a Mac

1:19:47

app, it's an internal thing, which is only ever

1:19:49

gonna run on Macs, there's never gonna be another

1:19:51

version, then you're set, because then

1:19:54

what you can do is not say

1:19:56

what Marco just said, because that will discourage them. What you

1:19:58

have to say then is... Okay, if it's gonna

1:20:00

be a Mac app, the

1:20:03

reason we want to hire some, you

1:20:05

know, an experienced Mac developer is because

1:20:08

the straightest path to make a

1:20:10

Mac app is to use Apple's

1:20:13

frameworks in a straightforward way. No

1:20:15

weird custom stuff. No I've come up with

1:20:17

a framework of my own for doing GUIs.

1:20:20

Just use and you'll have to like hash this out, whatever

1:20:22

they want you to use, SwiftUI do they want you to

1:20:25

use AppKit, whatever it is they pick. Whatever path you go

1:20:27

down. Don't pick SwiftUI on the Mac. Find

1:20:30

someone who will do that in the

1:20:32

most straightforward way possible. And the pitch

1:20:34

is, when this person

1:20:36

disappears, I want anybody to be able

1:20:38

to look at this and say, oh

1:20:40

this is a straightforward SwiftUI app, straightforward

1:20:42

AppKit app that doesn't do any weird

1:20:45

custom stuff that has no custom controls,

1:20:47

that Apple's documentation explains how to do

1:20:49

it, that it's really easy to find

1:20:51

example code documentation, you know, anything like

1:20:53

that it is straightforward and they're going

1:20:55

to be done faster. This was the

1:20:57

old pitch with like the next stuff

1:20:59

when it was, you know, next and

1:21:01

object to see and everything. You

1:21:04

can make a highly functional

1:21:06

app with fewer lines of code and

1:21:08

in less time because the frameworks do

1:21:10

so much for you. That's

1:21:12

the pitch you make. Your goal

1:21:15

is I want a good to get an

1:21:17

experienced Mac developer in and the pitch is

1:21:19

we need someone who, we can't

1:21:21

get someone who's like, I don't even know what API is

1:21:23

Mac software. I'm just going to use like the, you know,

1:21:25

Quartz 2D drawing API and draw my own GUI because I

1:21:28

don't know what this whole AppKit thing is. It's confusing to

1:21:30

me, but I'm a good programmer so I'm going to make

1:21:32

my own UI framework like Lauren Brick there out of OpenGL

1:21:34

or whatever. You know what I mean? Like that is not

1:21:36

what you want. And so that's how I would pitch it,

1:21:39

I would say. And you never get sort of

1:21:41

like to know the culture and the idioms, but at

1:21:43

the very least you should get someone in there. For example, you decide

1:21:45

it's going to be AppKit. Get someone

1:21:47

who knows AppKit. I know it sounds dumb, but

1:21:50

like I've seen corporate hiring and it's like, I

1:21:52

can figure it out. And then, right, and you

1:21:54

know, if someone comes in, you're like, oh, I've made a Mac

1:21:57

app and they show you an Electron app. And it's like, did

1:21:59

you make an app? app though, are you really

1:22:01

a web developer? Are you using like React Native

1:22:03

and Electron and all these other things? That's not

1:22:05

what we're looking for. And that I

1:22:07

feel like will be harder to wrangle because

1:22:09

if you're making some kind of

1:22:11

internal tool app and someone uses Electron and it

1:22:13

takes 500 megs of RAM when you just launch

1:22:16

the thing, like that's another case against it, right?

1:22:18

Just find a Mac developer

1:22:20

who can make a straightforward simple thing that

1:22:22

will be done quickly, have lots of functionality,

1:22:24

and be easy for any future Mac

1:22:27

developer to understand. I'm not saying it's a slam

1:22:29

dunk case, but that's your best shot. All

1:22:32

right, sorted. Julian Gamble

1:22:34

writes, if you could ask Apple for one

1:22:36

new API to help your apps this year,

1:22:38

what would it be? Julian's guesses are Marco

1:22:40

for Overcast, WatchOS, an API to make syncing

1:22:42

files like podcast files work on demand and

1:22:45

reliably on schedule and in general much easier.

1:22:47

We can stop there. I don't even write

1:22:49

a watch app in a minute. I'm ready.

1:22:52

I don't think an API can change physics in the size

1:22:55

of the watch's battery. And I know Marco says they should

1:22:57

loosen up a little bit, but in the end, an

1:22:59

API that did that would burn your battery

1:23:01

pretty badly. Okay, first of all, this would

1:23:04

not be my pick for this question. But

1:23:06

just for the sake of argument, what I

1:23:08

would want in this area would be if

1:23:11

a user has initiated a download

1:23:14

while the app is in

1:23:16

the foreground, let me start

1:23:18

a background double download that

1:23:20

begins immediately and

1:23:22

uses Wi-Fi if it has to. Because

1:23:25

right now it will, you know, wait for a

1:23:27

while and maybe do it later when I saw

1:23:29

the charger or it'll use the Bluetooth connection to

1:23:32

the phones. It's lower power. And

1:23:34

if a user while using the

1:23:36

app in the foreground initiates a

1:23:38

download that signifies pretty clear

1:23:40

user intent. I want this to happen

1:23:43

like kind of now. I

1:23:45

make a pretty strong argument for that, but

1:23:47

honestly, that is not my biggest problem on

1:23:49

WatchOS. My biggest problem on WatchOS

1:23:51

is every few days when I get an

1:23:53

email from a customer saying, why don't I

1:23:55

support the double tap gesture on the Series

1:23:57

9 and Ultra 2? Yes. The

1:24:00

answer is there is no API to do

1:24:02

that. Apple released the Double Tap feature in

1:24:04

the fall, and they said,

1:24:06

hey, third-party apps, you can just

1:24:08

let this do the default response

1:24:10

on notifications, and that's

1:24:13

it. So literally,

1:24:15

there is no API to respond

1:24:17

to Double Tap, and it's

1:24:19

such a glaring omission that my customers

1:24:21

assume that I'm the one being negligent,

1:24:23

not Apple. So that would

1:24:25

be my number one request on WatchOS.

1:24:28

But that isn't even my number one

1:24:30

request overall. My number one

1:24:32

request at this moment is

1:24:36

for SwiftUI's

1:24:38

list to

1:24:40

have feature parity with UI

1:24:42

table view. Now,

1:24:44

that is not a small thing. No,

1:24:47

it is not. However, that would

1:24:49

be a huge improvement to the

1:24:52

most coding that I'm doing this

1:24:54

year. Julian said this year.

1:24:57

That's what would help me is make SwiftUI

1:24:59

list have more capabilities. For instance,

1:25:01

one that I ran into most recently is

1:25:05

the drag-to-reorder mechanic in it

1:25:07

does not support multiple items.

1:25:10

In UI table view, you can pick up multiple items

1:25:12

as you drag your finger around with the second finger

1:25:14

and then drop them all in one spot. The

1:25:18

equivalent in SwiftUI does

1:25:20

not support that. The API appears to be

1:25:22

written to support it, because when it tells

1:25:25

you drop here, it

1:25:28

passes you a set of

1:25:30

indexes to drop there. So

1:25:32

the API seems to be

1:25:34

built to support multiple things

1:25:36

being dropped. But there is

1:25:38

no physical implementation of that.

1:25:41

It's just one case of many where

1:25:43

I keep running into areas where SwiftUI

1:25:45

list is oddly limited

1:25:48

in ways that UI table view

1:25:50

is not. And UI table

1:25:52

view is a super important API

1:25:55

for iOS. Almost every app uses

1:25:57

table views in some way. UITableView

1:26:00

has been added to over time like crazy

1:26:02

because it's such a huge

1:26:04

part of interaction in iOS, there's tons of

1:26:06

features that UITableView supports. So if UIList kind

1:26:09

of started from scratch and kind of did

1:26:11

the basics and has been very slowly

1:26:14

and carefully adding little

1:26:16

bits and pieces, oh you want to customize this

1:26:18

inset? Okay here's one way to

1:26:20

do that. You want to customize whether this border shows

1:26:22

up over here? Okay fine we'll give you another small

1:26:24

way to do that. But there's

1:26:27

some big areas like the multi-select drag

1:26:29

and drop that it just has not

1:26:31

enough feature parity and that is making

1:26:33

my life difficult as I'm trying to

1:26:36

work on the SwiftUI rewrite for the

1:26:38

biggest part of my

1:26:40

user base, like the iOS app and

1:26:42

the table views within it. Those

1:26:44

are major areas and I just keep hitting walls

1:26:47

that just aren't there yet in SwiftUI. It

1:26:50

rocked my world when I

1:26:52

want to say it was like four or five years ago,

1:26:54

it was maybe more than that. But

1:26:56

somebody described all

1:26:59

of professional iOS development as turning

1:27:01

JSON into table views. And

1:27:03

I was like mother of god,

1:27:05

that is exactly right. So if that doesn't mean

1:27:08

anything to you, so JSON is a plain text

1:27:10

way of transmitting data. Typically when you

1:27:12

get something from a web server, not as a

1:27:14

person but as an app, you're going

1:27:18

to get data back in JSON format,

1:27:20

JSON. And like Marco

1:27:22

said, table views run the majority

1:27:24

of all iOS apps. So you

1:27:26

could summarize iOS development as turning

1:27:28

JSON into table views for money. Web development too

1:27:31

these days. Not table views I guess

1:27:33

but same thing. Yeah exactly. You hit a JSON API,

1:27:35

you get the result, you lay it out in an HTML page. Yep

1:27:37

exactly. So anyway, that rocked my

1:27:39

world even though it was five years ago. I still

1:27:41

think it's hilarious and accurate. John,

1:27:44

continuing with Julian, John for front

1:27:46

and center for macOS,

1:27:48

an API to enable preserving icon

1:27:50

arrangement in folders as per classic

1:27:52

macOS pre-Mac OS X. That's

1:27:55

Julian's guess. That's a misunderstanding. What would be

1:27:57

required to get that? It's not an API

1:27:59

that's missing. It's the Mac Finder application

1:28:01

would have to be behaved differently. There's no

1:28:03

API that could roll out that would make

1:28:06

that work, unfortunately. Back to what Marco

1:28:08

was saying about List, I was telling him before, when

1:28:10

we were talking about this in Slack, they

1:28:12

should count as blessings because a List was

1:28:14

so under-featured and buggy for me in SwiftUI

1:28:17

and macOS that I can't even use List

1:28:19

in my thing that has a List of

1:28:21

things that are reorderable, and I had to

1:28:23

basically roll my own List. It's like having

1:28:25

to roll your own UI table view because

1:28:27

table view is too janky for you. It

1:28:29

could be worse, but yeah, it could definitely

1:28:31

be better. What I actually want for

1:28:33

an API to help make my app better

1:28:36

this year, I actually filed feedbacks on this

1:28:38

in the fall of last year, a whole bunch

1:28:41

of them. I'll

1:28:43

just read off the titles of them because I tried to separate

1:28:45

it into, I don't know why I bother, but I tried

1:28:48

to separate it into things that I hope would be, like

1:28:50

if I put them all in one feedback, they'd say, oh,

1:28:52

we're not doing all this crap. I tried to break it

1:28:54

down, like maybe they'll pick one of them. The first is

1:28:57

add a modern window list API. An

1:28:59

API in macOS that lets me list all the windows

1:29:01

on the system. There are existing APIs

1:29:03

that do that, but they're super old. Most of

1:29:05

them are deprecated and they're just horrible. Well, in

1:29:07

your computer, they would just crash. When

1:29:10

I say list the windows, I don't mean get

1:29:12

the windows content like screen

1:29:14

capture kit. I don't mean control them like

1:29:16

accessibility APIs, which are all kind of old

1:29:18

and cruddy. I mean just literally list them.

1:29:21

List them, which apps own them, what are their

1:29:23

sizes, what are their positions. It's so simple, you

1:29:25

can do it with existing APIs, but

1:29:27

Apple really doesn't want you to, and there are a bunch

1:29:30

of caveats and a bunch of stuff that's deprecated. Second

1:29:33

one was add a system-wide window layering and

1:29:35

visibility API. So you can list

1:29:38

all those windows and you know where they are and

1:29:40

how big they are and which app owns them. Wouldn't

1:29:42

it be great if you could tell them to come

1:29:44

forward, to go to the back, go behind some other

1:29:46

window? Again, still, I have no idea. These APIs have

1:29:48

no idea what's in the windows. They can't see the

1:29:50

window contents at all. They don't want the window contents.

1:29:52

They want a bunch of anonymous rectangles that are owned

1:29:55

by processes, right? An API where you could

1:29:57

tell them what to do. And the

1:29:59

Mac window layering, or APIs are extremely limited.

1:30:01

People are shocked to hear that you can't

1:30:03

do something as simple as take one window

1:30:05

and change its layering because those

1:30:07

windows belong to other applications and my application

1:30:09

has a very limited ability to screw with

1:30:11

the windows in other applications. Again,

1:30:14

modularly accessibility APIs, which are all other can of worms

1:30:16

that I found other bugs with. And

1:30:20

let's see, once I get

1:30:22

even more ambitious, add support for window manipulation

1:30:24

extensions. So the idea,

1:30:27

this is more of kind of more ambitious, but the

1:30:29

idea that when you're

1:30:31

doing operations with the Windows Server, like moving windows

1:30:33

around or clicking on them to bring them to

1:30:35

the front or whatever, that there

1:30:37

would be a plugin system where you could affect

1:30:39

that interaction. Once again, still having no idea what's

1:30:41

in any of these windows. All you know is,

1:30:43

hey, a window is being moved. It's owned by

1:30:45

this application. It's in this size, it's in this

1:30:47

position. I'm about to

1:30:49

move it to here. Is there anything you'd like

1:30:52

to do to modify that operation? Like say snapping

1:30:54

to a grid or giving you a chance to

1:30:56

draw a bunch of guides like you're in a

1:30:58

graphics application, you could do so

1:31:00

many cool things with this. Apple is currently not

1:31:02

doing them. Third party applications try to do them,

1:31:04

but it's so hard because macOS fights you at

1:31:06

every step. So anyway, my answer to this is

1:31:08

basically like a modern, swift,

1:31:12

savvy, not

1:31:14

something that's in core foundation, not something

1:31:17

that's an ancient carbon API, but like

1:31:19

a modern API that lets you

1:31:22

participate in the window management

1:31:24

system in macOS. Changing window

1:31:26

layers, knowing where they all

1:31:28

are and being able to do

1:31:30

things as they're moved around. That would be a

1:31:32

dream, not just for me and for my apps,

1:31:34

but I think if Apple provided those APIs, all

1:31:37

those apps that are out there now that try

1:31:39

to do this with like the accessibility APIs and

1:31:41

the giant ones that we have now would become

1:31:43

so much better, so much

1:31:45

more full featured. I've said this in past programs,

1:31:48

stage manager. If Apple

1:31:50

did my wish list of

1:31:52

APIs here, stage manager should have

1:31:54

been something that a third party could have implemented.

1:31:56

Like if you have all the APIs, that a

1:31:58

third party had the idea. Like I think

1:32:00

it would be cool if Windows work like

1:32:02

this. A third party should have been able to

1:32:05

implement stage manager. As we know, third party

1:32:07

could absolutely not implement stage manager. Only Apple could

1:32:09

do it. And now only Apple can ever

1:32:11

make it better. And only Apple, we have

1:32:13

to wait for the next idea that Apple has

1:32:15

in five years. Third parties are out there

1:32:17

with lots of cool ideas about window management on

1:32:19

the Mac. They can't implement them because Apple

1:32:21

does not provide robust enough APIs. And like I

1:32:24

said, you can do pretty much all of

1:32:26

these with zero access to the contents of any

1:32:28

of these windows. So it is privacy preserving,

1:32:30

but it is annoying for Apple to implement

1:32:32

because they may think this is not important. But I'm

1:32:34

like, Apple, your heart doesn't seem into

1:32:36

this window manager thing. Every once in a while, some team

1:32:38

manages to sweep something out and it gets added to a

1:32:41

giant pile of Mac window management stuff. Let

1:32:43

third parties do it. We'll figure out what works.

1:32:45

Just copy whatever the most popular app is in

1:32:47

five years. That's what I want.

1:32:50

Fair enough. Julian continues. Casey, this is a tough

1:32:52

one. Has to be Apple and not another

1:32:54

company. For Vision OS, an API in Apple

1:32:56

TV for call sheet to pull out the

1:32:59

current movie or show name and be able

1:33:01

to prompt with the movie show info required.

1:33:04

Yeah, kind of. But really, the one thing I

1:33:06

would kill for right now is I want to

1:33:08

have a way to ask any of the Apple

1:33:11

TVs on the same network, what are you playing

1:33:13

right now? And I get

1:33:15

why that isn't a thing because somebody like

1:33:17

Facebook would use it for nefarious purposes. But

1:33:20

maybe you could have. I mean,

1:33:22

there's so many other freaking user prompts,

1:33:25

like Windows Vista style. Why not prompt

1:33:27

some security prompt that says, hey, is

1:33:29

it cool if call sheet looks at

1:33:31

what you're watching? And I would love

1:33:33

that. And it'll never happen, but that

1:33:35

would be what I would want. Please

1:33:37

and thank you. Why don't you

1:33:39

just do what everybody else does, which is

1:33:41

just have microphones or visuals. Yeah, right, exactly.

1:33:43

Just detect what's playing and look it up

1:33:46

Shazam style to figure it out. Yeah, that's

1:33:48

what I should do. Winnie

1:33:50

Lewis writes, could Marco please best

1:33:52

first favorite fish concerts? I wasn't aware

1:33:55

fish had a lore. And

1:33:57

I'm curious where to start. Do you need me to explain best first favorite Marco?

1:34:00

We should explain to the listener anyway. Yeah, please. So

1:34:02

Best First Favorite is a thing from one of my

1:34:04

other podcasts, Reconcile All the Differences. My co-host Merlin came

1:34:06

up with it. It is

1:34:08

the idea that when you're trying

1:34:10

to discuss a thing, like

1:34:13

the band Fish or a television show or

1:34:16

a set of movies or whatever, you

1:34:18

are challenged to come up with which one

1:34:21

of these things you think is the best, the

1:34:23

best Beatles album, for example. Which one you think

1:34:25

a someone who is new to the Beatles should

1:34:27

listen to first. So what Beatles album should

1:34:29

I start with? And what is your favorite

1:34:31

Beatles album? And they may all be the same thing,

1:34:33

or they may all be different. So Best First Favorite

1:34:35

fish concert is what's the best fish concert, what's your

1:34:37

favorite fish concert. And if someone is new to fish

1:34:39

and you had to tell them this is the concert

1:34:41

you should start with, which one is it? And

1:34:44

I don't really have a good answer. So

1:34:46

the reason Winnie Lewis asked this question is

1:34:49

shortly after New Year's

1:34:51

this year, because Fish did a really fan

1:34:55

service amazing thing for

1:34:57

their New Year's Eve concert that if

1:35:00

you've been a fish fan for a very long time, this

1:35:03

was an especially big one that played upon a whole

1:35:05

bunch of stuff in

1:35:07

Fish lore from forever ago that fans

1:35:09

really enjoyed. And I don't really

1:35:11

know how to tell you to get started in

1:35:13

Fish in a way that you would appreciate that.

1:35:15

That's kind of like saying, oh, here

1:35:17

we have a podcast with over 500 episodes. How

1:35:21