570: The Local Mooching Situation

37:49A big heavy thing on your face. You're laying down anyway, who cares? I don't know, maybe I won't care, maybe I will. I've never had one on my face. All I can tell you is that one of the things that I enjoy about watching my iPad in my bed is that I get to take off my glasses and so I don't have my glasses frames on my face. Like it's nice at the end of the day just to not have glasses on your face anymore, right? Or not have contacts in your eyes. and wearing a Vision Pro is essentially the opposite. Not having glasses on your face. That's fair. So I don't know. Maybe it won't bother me. Maybe I'll think it's amazing.

38:18Maybe it will be less comfortable, but it'll be so compelling. But I won't know until I try it. Again, that is one of the more attractive things to me about this. But the iPad is a proven solution to me. So that is definitely going to be my first stop. Actually, so briefly, before we get to the next follow-up item, I think it's been established, Marco, you were going to try to buy one on Friday. Sitting here now, the family CFO was not in love with this idea, but I think it's happening anyway. I think I'm ordering this coming Friday. And then, John, you said you're not going to order, but out of curiosity, and I think you don't sign up until a couple of weeks from now, but are you going to attempt to get a demo at one of your local Apple stores?

39:01I might. I mean, we'll see. I don't relish the idea of having it demoed in that environment, but you know i'll also check around to see like uh the uh what the local mooching situation is like like do i know someone who has one who will let me try it obviously again that won't be ideal they won't have the same prescription you know uh it won't fit my face or whatever but you know we'll see i'll consider it like it depends on how everything goes i i don't again i don't relish waiting in a long line and going through a big demo thing but if that's my only chance it's my only chance no fair enough all right justin yost writes a note on the high index lenses apple notes that not all prescriptions are covered.

39:39Mine certainly isn't for the meta headsets, and Justin provides a link to the MetaQuest 2 inserts, which I looked at this earlier, and I want to say it went from negative 8 to positive 8 or something like that, which is a typical... That's a big range. Which is a big range. The SPH prescription range is 0 to negative 8. Total power 0 to negative 8 in CIL, cylinder perhaps, prescription range, obviously I don't know what I'm talking about, is 0 to negative 2. And you couldn't say that. That would be out of your range if not for your contacts, right? uh i forget i think i'm flirting with eight ish i don't remember exactly and but yes i think your point is certainly fair that it would probably be outside what i could do if i didn't have my contacts in yeah i mean this is so this is you know this is the difficulty in all things like again iphones are not made in sizes that are readable by a lot of people with poor vision which my mother is currently experiencing and she hates voiceover so there's that it's difficult to make something that is largely a visual output device work for all people with bad vision, but that is part of the challenge to be able to expand the range.

40:41Like, what does accessibility look like in Vision Pro? It's just making things inside the lenses bigger? That doesn't help if you can't see the things inside the lenses because your prescription is too thick or whatever. We are sponsored this episode by notion now look there is no shortage of helpful ai tools out there these days but using a lot of them means switching back and forth between yet another digital tool or putting your data in other people's systems so instead of doing on that why don't you simplify your workflow with notion notion combines your notes docs and projects into one space that's simple and beautifully designed and you can leverage the power of ai right inside notion across all your notes and docs right there without jumping between your work and a separate AI-powered tool or letting your data go into someone else's system.

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42:44breaking news uh apparently well as we record this which is the evening of the 17th apple is going to be denied to uh apple watch sales tomorrow i believe is accurate but certainly uh it seems as of a couple of days ago as we record they were planning to drop the the software portions of the blood oxygen sensor uh in order to avoid the ban that seems to be coming on the 18th regardless and by the time you listen to this the story will probably be different again yeah i think there was a new story that just came out at this we didn't quite get into the notes but like basically the apple watch ban is in effect again and the only way they're going to get past the ban is by disabling this feature in software right or licensing the patent which they apparently just refused to maybe that's not going to happen by tomorrow but like that and we talked about this before that they had a soft they had a software fix i mean they've had some warning yeah and the theory was that the software fix was not going to be simply disabling the feature but rather working around the patent somehow but apparently they either that was not true or they could not figure out how to do it so the easy solution is disable it in software uh and that's not great for a product that was you know partially sold based on this feature i wonder how they're gonna handle that in terms of advertising and you know like the text on apple.com buy the apple watch because it does blood oxygen this is only in the u.s by the way it is not in other countries so that's another complication so this is a uh tricky situation for apple to be in and as usual they are exhausting every possible avenue uh but it seems like this watch is going back uh to being not for sale but then coming back immediately because they disabled the problematic feature and then the negotiation that we assume is happening will continue this is such a mess like they should never have let it get to this point again we all know we're not fans of the patent system on this show but the reality is it's still the law it's still a system apple has to work with apple takes full advantage of it themselves and has lots of their own patents that they wield against other companies so the fact is this is a system that they have to work in and they gladly participate in this company got them on one and it's too bad like but here's the reality like apple is so stubborn about this that they are going to actually remove a feature of the watch that they've had for a number of years now.

45:06Now, you know, the details of this, I mean, who knows how this is going to end up because it's changing minute by minute. But, you know, what appears to be the case is like, I guess they're going to somehow know, I guess by serial number, like which ones are sold from tomorrow forward. Because I would sure as heck hope they wouldn't have a software that disabled all of the existing ones. So I assume it's like only the watches that are sold in the US in this date range would have this disabled and i guess they're going to try to work it out and then hopefully be able to re-enable it later but i thought they were going to disable it on all watches that was my assumption too but i i don't remember having read that that was just my assumption i mean i would certainly be pretty upset and i think a lot of people would because this is part of the reason that i have the watch and and when i purchased it this was not a problem yeah these are all problems that apple should have kept in mind when considering the negotiation but i i would assume that's not what i i would be very surprised if they disabled everyone well i mean to keep an eye on your watch i guess i know maybe don't run the update no like yeah i would be very surprised if they disabled all existing ones but i'm guessing they have some kind of like you know registration database of like which serial numbers are sold by their stores or manufactured after this date in the u.s market and whatever else but that's just such a mess like i mean they can't deactivate it on existing watches unless people run it off software update of course Yeah, but just like, I mean, look, Apple, you tried.

46:29I admire the fight. You tried to not have to license this patent or work with this company. You put up a really good fight. Good job. Here's a pat on the back. Now just do what you have to do. Like, just freaking buy the patent. You tried your best. Just throw money at this problem and make it go away. Not that I should tell Apple how to negotiate things, but your negotiating leverage is higher when the outcome of the legal situation is still in question, right? Because if you exhaust every possible avenue and Mossimo knows that nothing is left and they've won in every legal forum that exists, they're going to name a higher price than if Apple said, well, we can go to courts with this, but we don't know how it's going to turn out.

47:09How certain are you that you're going to win, Mossimo? That gives you more negotiating power for the price. And I feel like their price negotiating power is rapidly disappearing. Yeah, like just buy the patent or license. Just throw money at the problem. Make this go away. again you fought the good fight good job pat on the back it's over you lost keep this from affecting your customers that's it like you tried your best it is now going to affect your customers stop already i mean it's i think the the precedence i was thinking about this with this was the uh i'm probably vaguely remember this forgive me for mangling it but like the uh the lawsuit over rumble and console controllers you remember that vaguely i think i forget who had the patent some company had it but anyway the upshot was that i think rumble was like removed from a popular consoles controller until the patent situation if we brought back and the next gen had it back i'm sorry i don't remember the details but it's another patent customer impact thing that it was like look rumble has been around long enough that it's obvious to everybody and patents are stupid and but they literally took it out of the controller and it was like now this for this generation of controller for this you know people who bought this thing they don't have rumble why because patents.

48:19But yes, I agree. Apple, you've got the money. Fix it. All right. So where does Apple get the money from? Well, thank you, John. That's a perfect segue. Where does Apple get their money from? Us. Well, they get it from Google, that search deal. Well, yeah. The 25 % of it anyway. They get it from Google and they get it from the Apple tax. And it's not the one you're thinking of. It's the Apple tax that all developers are paying, whether we want to or not. So we were talking before we started recording, even before the bootleg, about how we were going to handle this subject. And I'm torn because John very rightly pointed out when we were talking privately that we've tread this water before.

49:00We've been through this before. Most of this is not new, and I'll explain in a moment. But I don't know. I'm real frigging fired up again about it because it makes me so angry. So what's going on? And we'll see how much of a tear the three of us get on. So what's going on? If you recall, Epic Games, who are the makers of Fortnite, among many other games, have a very powerful CEO because it's a private company, Tim Sweeney. And Tim Sweeney has gotten to be in his bonnet, to take on Apple and take on their regulations and rules and developer licensing agreement with regard to the App Store. So like a year ago, maybe two years ago, So Epic just decided to up and add payments into Fortnite.

49:41That is their own system that did not go through an app purchase, which is clearly and unequivocally against Apple's rules. Whether or not you think that's right, it is clearly against the rules. They did this and Apple booted them from the store, which is exactly what we all expected. So then this became a legal thing. Epic sued Apple or something like that. It doesn't really matter the details. And that got run all the way up the flagpole as high as it could go. And apparently in the last few days, the U.S. Supreme Court has said, yes, we hear you, we see this is a thing, and we don't care, it's already been settled, buzz off.

50:12So, what does that mean? That means that the one thing that Apple was told they really had to do was loosen up on their anti-steering thing. And what that means is, as developers, you know, Marco and I cannot, or John even, I forget that, you know, John, you are a developer as well, in your apps, John, you cannot say, hey, go to hypercritical.co slash, you know, pay me directly and pay me directly and I will give you the same apps for less money. Same thing with Overcast, with Callsheet, etc. You cannot point people to your own payment system, even if it's on the web. There are exceptions for what they call reader apps.

50:51So like Netflix, for example, and other things like that. But generally speaking, you cannot say, hey, you can get this cheaper on my website. Here's the URL. And the courts have said, no, you should be able to do that. You should be able to, as a developer, point your users to your website and you should be able to take money through that website. And that was about all the legal jargon said, as far as I understand. Yeah, it was surprisingly and probably intentionally limited in what the decision was actually stating. It didn't seem to place a lot of specifics about like how this should be allowed whether apple is you know whether and how much apple is allowed to charge as a commission or what kind of restrictions are to place on it like it was pretty pretty light on the wording uh presumably to you know leave further interpretation down to you know the future indeed so that was what was stated and so it had run up the flagpole the u.s supreme court said it's already been solved in lower courts so that means the decision in the lower courts is the decision.

51:57And I think Apple has until like the end of the week or something like that in order to make this happen. So Apple today, I believe it was, as we record, announced what they're going to do. And what they're going to do is, to be clear, exactly what we all expected. We are going to go on a tear about this in all likelihood. That doesn't mean that the three of us didn't expect this. Anyone who has been paying attention to Apple, who has been paying attention to Apple, even the littlest bit, knew exactly what was coming. And yet, I'll speak for myself, because I'm a frigging idiot, I hoped maybe it would be a little better than this.

52:30But oh no. Oh no, it's not. So here's the deal. So Apple has basically said, we will do the bare minimum that we can possibly do in order to make us legally compliant with United States law. And to be clear, all of this— I would even say, maybe legally compliant. Fair, fair. And this is only applicable in the U.S. This is not applicable anywhere else except kind of sort of the Netherlands for dating apps. And this is where this all started. And Japan, right? Wasn't the Japan rule similar to this? Yeah, I think they might have done something similar in multiple jurisdictions to make the lives easier.

53:05But I'm going to say that when you said they're doing the bare minimum, what you mean is the bare minimum of nice things for developers. But what Apple actually did is a ton of extra work to ensure that the aperture through which developers must travel is as narrow as possible. Yes, and as treacherous. Yeah, it's a treacherous and narrow aperture through which we must pass if we so choose. So what they've said is, all right, fine. You want to do your payments on your own? Fine. Here's what we'll do. We're going to say that you can do payments on your own. you can put in one and only one link and it may not be in your purchase flow it can only happen on one screen can't be the iap purchase flow oh you forgot the first part which is you have to apply to get an entitlement sorry it's a special entitlement for people who aren't developers if you want your app to do certain things you have to sort of register for an entitlement like i want to use the camera i want to access the file system which sounds ridiculous but anyway like so that's an entitlement so they have they have a technical mechanism through which you must pass before you get to the point where you're linking anywhere just say yeah i want this entitlement so i can do this and i'm i'm not sure of the details but i think they also have an api around this as well is that true yes because because they are they are going to track the clicks because like look there anybody from like from very very early ios sdk i think maybe even the first ios sdk it's been very easy to open urls from your app to external things like the browser it's one api call it's like ui application open url and you give it url and it kicks you out of the app and goes to that url so this is not a technical um you know that they had to build an api to launch url no they've had that for over a decade um what they had to build was this special entitlement that will basically tell Apple, take a look at this app.

54:56And it is, so Apple is requiring only by policy that if you're going to do this type of link from your app where you're linking out to an actual purchase, you must get this entitlement for your app, which kind of marks it for us to know that it's looking at this. And then you must follow all these different rules about it. But again, there is no technical need for this. It does seem like from what people have reported, it does seem like apple is basically going to track clicks through the link and that way they they probably that will probably inform what we'll get to in a little bit which is their auditing arm indeed so let's hold on so let's get there so apple has said that yes as as you two have pointed out you need to apply for an entitlement i presume getting that entitlement will not be terribly difficult but you need to apply for the entitlement you need to set up your project but applying for entitlements is the same black box as everything else is you're like well there's no approval process right i just apply for it and get it yeah pretty much that always happens except when you apply for entitlement and never hear back for months well that's that's true now in in that being said i actually have a special entitlement for call sheet because i need to do a local network requests over broadcast and that is something you know for udp broadcast that's something that requires an entitlement and that did turn around in the span of just a few days i don't remember how long it was no they usually do like we're saying it's not but but because of things like after review you always hear about the one developer who's like yeah i applied for this routine entitlement i just haven't heard back and they don't know how to escalate it because they don't have a podcast it's just like the system is not great no you're exactly right so yeah so you apply for this entitlement hopefully you get it then you have to put a bunch of stuff in your project which fine whatever and then yes actually you are right john that you need to be able to call a new api that puts up a scary scary warning when when the person clicks on the link and says oh my gosh this this developer is probably going to steal all your money and all your data but you do you.

56:44If this is how you want to pay for this, have at it. And that interstitial, by the way, that's Apple's code running. Apple's code knows where you want to send them, but before it sends them there, it shows this dialogue, and that means Apple has the ability to track how many times people clicked on a thing and where they're going. And to try to scare them away before they get there. You're about to go to an external website. Apple's not responsible for the privacy or security of purchases made on the web. That is in like a 40-point font. The rest is in a normal font. Any accounts or purchases made outside of this app will be managed by the developer, you know, what developer name, your app store account, stored payment method and related features such as subscription management, refund requests will not be available.

57:21Apple can't verify any pricing or promotions offered by the developer. Learn more, continue or cancel. That is the scare sheet that they use in the example on their documentation. I love the term scare sheet, by the way. That's perfect. So, yeah, so you can go through this, you click continue, and then you get to the vendor's website and you can do what you want to do. So Apple said, fine, you want to do this? here's the deal. You can do this, but whatever purchases that your users make on your own website, well, baby, we get a cut. And how much of a cut do you ask? Well, we get 27 % because f*** you.

57:58You can save on the payment processing fee, which is 3%, but you're using our intellectual property, baby. So if you think you're getting away scot-free, uh-uh. and not only that double you because any purchase that this person makes in the next week we get a cut of that too baby 27 which by the way means what you have to track them for a week too it's like that's my favorite part is like app apple is so like anti-tracking but oh by the way if you do this you are required to track the person so that if they follow this link you gotta track them for a week afterwards and any purchases they make from you for that entire week apple gets 30 like that's a great parallel with the like app tracking transparency thing because it was actually like almost exactly the same thing that facebook was doing is facebook had links where facebook would provide a link to an app and if you follow that link and bought the app because facebook had all this tracking stuff facebook would know hey i know this user click this link and i know this user then bought the thing at the end of that link because i have tracking and i could see that chain of events so i'm going to charge you for that per click and purchase or whatever some larger rate than i could otherwise because i can prove that someone clicked this link and bought it and apple's like we don't like you tracking users like that because they started out in an app and then they clicked and then they went to the web and facebook is so invasive that they track you no matter where you go and they can connect those dots we don't like that so we gotta uh change uh you know change the rules about tracking but when it comes time to track that exact same thing did this person click this link and then buy it if you have apple's like well when you when you have to track it for the purposes of paying us 27 of the purchase yeah that's fine so so you You've got to track all these people.

59:36Then you've got to report into Apple every month what people have bought what and pay them, pay Apple, 27 % of anyone who's made a purchase. And to be clear, even if nobody makes a purchase, well, you know what? I want to see your report anyway, says Apple. I want to see you say none of your users made a purchase because I might want to come and audit your ass and I might want to come and see and make sure that you're paying us the money you're supposed to pay us. It is completely expected. I'm going to say this again because I bet you some of you already fired off email saying, how did you not expect this?

1:00:09We did. We 100 % did. But nevertheless, it is so gross and so unnecessary. It's so gross that this is the approach Apple is taking. So much, to your point, John, so much extra work has been done just to say, f*** you. And it's so unnecessary. it's just so unnecessary why can't apple just compete if your product is so good be that the app store be that the iphone whatever then friggin compete then compete why i i understand i do get it oh well because because they won't they don't have to i mean it this apple uh i hate to make light of something as serious as like addiction and in real life and outside of corporate discussion But it's hard to not make that analogy of like Apple is addicted to this revenue in such a way that it damages their goals and strategic priorities and the health of the company in other areas.

1:01:13But when you look at Apple as a company, as the corporation, the finance, the growth, the stock, all that stuff, it's very clear that Apple is very dependent on that services category of their revenue to basically keep themselves looking like they have a lot of growth potential ahead of them. You know, we've seen over the last many years, the devices, while they sell well, you know, there's decreasing amounts of growth available because they're just mature product categories and mature markets. And, you know, it's hard to get hardware growth forever when you're that big and that successful. So they've been beefing off services.

1:01:50And services is this wonderful euphemism for what the revenue actually comes from. You know, because Apple has a bunch of services that face the public. And so when Apple says we're growing our services revenue, I think what most people would assume that means is things like iCloud and Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade and, you know, the public facing services. And so when Apple says every quarter, we got services revenue, it's going great. That sounds like Apple is really building these amazing things that are just going like gangbusters. And the sad truth is that Apple services are actually pretty good on the whole and actually do pretty well.

1:02:30But that's not what most of that money is. Most of that money is from two things Apple really doesn't want to talk about because it doesn't look very good for them. One is that Google search deal that makes Google the default search engine, which Apple makes a huge chunk of that services revenue from. I think it's 25 % of the service revenue is that search deal, I believe. that's just google paying apple to be you know that's just one one big fat deal that just comes in the form of cash apple does nothing for it except for not change a string somewhere and the other part of services revenue that's not what people think of as services it's another huge part of it i don't know if we have good numbers on how huge of a part this is but it's the app store cut well it's games because games are 85 of that so it's games essentially app game games in the app store yeah so like that apple's services revenue the one of the biggest and most important public facing drivers of growth for this company when people analyze their finances and look for you know stock growth and stuff like that it's a huge a huge chunk of that is the google search deal and the 30 cut mostly from games in the app store that's where Apple's making very large amounts of money in a category that is very important for them to appear to keep growing.

1:03:50So that's the stakes on the line here. What that makes Apple do is bend over backwards and twist themselves in these ridiculous contortions to justify keeping that money flowing at any cost. And I do mean any cost. The App Store, which is largely like abusive casino games preying on children and dumb people. It's like making money off of casinos. Yeah, you can make a lot of money, but there's a lot of asterisks on that that you probably don't feel good about. That's where Apple's making so much of their money. And watching them do these ridiculous things, I see exactly why they're doing it. And the company just keeps bending over backwards to defend that and try to rationalize the continuation of it.

1:04:39because to even examine it for a second, they would get pretty uncomfortable. So they just don't. There are a couple other angles to it. That is definitely one of them, especially the growth one, because there are people in high positions in the company that are motivated to show growth that's kind of part of their job. Like, you know, you run a public company, you don't want to stagnate, you know, like you have to look for the next growth opportunity. Like that is definitely in there. And if you want to call that greed, you can. But back when Apple was selling the iPhone and that was the growth thing, they were funneling all their energy into making sure the iphone grew right right so like they're always going to do that just now that they're using to grow something that we find distasteful um but when i look at this i think the there's two other big motivators in addition to that one of them is one you just alluded to which is like the pride thing we deserve this money we made this amazing platform you should be grateful to be on it which sounds like such a petty and such a human thing you're like well that's something an individual human might say on the stand at a trial for instance um but individual humans aren't the company yeah but there are a small number of individuals who do run the company and that is in their heads it's not so much that they think uh you know greed money at all costs we need growth but there are people again who have testified in court basically like that this we deserve this money because we made this platform right and that that sense of pride and that sense of who are you to tell us how to run our business it's our thing we can charge for access to it all right there's there's that pride angle and the other one is again related to the small number of people who are tend to be older who run the company is the recollection of what has happened to other companies that have lost essentially a linchpin of control and having control over the iphone platform this platform they sold billions and billions of iphones it's a huge platform they control it giving up any part of that control letting someone else make anything close to as much money as you make on that platform, they've seen technology companies make that mistake.

1:06:37Think of IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. If you don't know the history of those three companies and how power shifted among them at the dawn of the personal computing age and how it progressed, there's a lot of power ships mostly having to do with one company not realizing or realizing but thinking it wasn't a big deal that they were giving up control, giving up a particular linchpin of control over their own future not realizing they just opened the door for their competitor to come and suck all the value out of the platform that quote unquote they made right and i think a lot of people in the position of power apple think uh not so much you know like that you know those other factors are there but another thing in their mind is if we ever open the store or even a crack and essentially in their mind lose control of our platform in other words now anyone can accept payments from anything and now people can load apps from places other than our app store we are giving up a huge amount of this value we created because we created this platform we sold billions of phones we want to leverage that to our benefit we don't want to distribute billions of phones and let some other company make a higher profit per iphone sold than we make because again they those people who are running the company have seen that happen to companies in our industry who have not been careful about retaining control and they've seen the success when people do retain control The person who ends up having the control in the end makes most of the profit while everyone else kills themselves for smaller and smaller margins, right?

1:08:00And I have to think that is also one of the factors. And so this is a stew. Pride, wise, history-informed, strategic attitude of like we need to retain this control and we have to show growth and this is the area that's growing because we're the different part of the S-curve and all our other product lines. and those all combine to make them downgrade the severity of the things that are happening negatively i don't think they are totally like oblivious to them i think they do see the strategy tax the cost i think they don't like the scammy games they see all that but they they feel like they can mitigate those if we just have a better app store policies if we try to keep the worst of the games out of there if we pursue other avenues if we make new products like the vision pro like we just have to kind of hold the line mitigate the bad stuff and deal with any of the fallout oh epic's not our thing that's not such a big deal we'll just have unity be the 3d engine of choice for vision pro what did you say about unity how are they doing what did they do what maybe we should talk to oh we can't really talk to epic uh and see nvd the gps anyway like like they there are lots of things that they did that sort of were strategically like in service of maintaining their control over the platform and the negatives that happen, like, that's not that big a deal.

1:09:19They see the negative. They don't see that it's, you know, they know it's there. Like they would rather have Fortnite on their platform than not. But they're not willing to pay that price. So like we can weather that storm. After all, how big a deal could it be if we anger Epic? And it could be that 10 years from now, someone looks back and says, oh, in hindsight, them severing their relationship with Epic was an incredible strategic mistake because of x y and z right or not maybe it'll be fine but like we're out here seeing that they're making mistakes and justifying them to themselves and i don't think it's entirely clear who will end up being right but i'm once again you know since this is the same situation as when i when i wrote this originally it's the same situation again um a hypercritical post about the art of the possible um we're out here saying you know developers users everybody saying we find certain aspects of this arrangement not to our liking right there is dissatisfaction there's dissatisfaction in apple's customer base there's dissatisfaction in apple's developer base uh even as we said before even customers who don't know you know why they can't buy kindle books inside the kindle app i don't even know that's still a deal actually always uses my go-to example but things change so much maybe that's possible now but anyway people who don't realize that something that is needlessly frustrating and obtuse in an app is that way because of an apple rule they are dissatisfied with Apple devices, even though they don't know why.

1:10:43Right. And that is one of the most difficult things to measure. Right. Because they don't know why the app is more annoying than it has to be. They don't know why they have some scary payment screen or they don't know what to do when they see a sign in post and they don't know where they're supposed to sign in because this is before they're allowed to link out to the things. Right. All those negatives are taking place. And it's it's this game of chicken. There's dissatisfaction. But Apple thinks net net we're still going to come out ahead and it's better to retain that control and so we've just been gliding along in this state of apple assuming that the world will bend itself to the rules they make because they sell billions of phones and thus far the world has tried to bend itself to fit into that mold but they're annoyed about it so it is sowing dissent and displeasure like it is it is making people grumbly and annoyed a little bit at a time and casey gets all upset about it because it's like it's it's you know it's not death by a thousand cuts it's it's a it's you know it's a thousand cuts and you're still alive right like we we keep we keep going we keep using this platform the good outweighs the bad but there's this constant low-level annoyance about this stuff and does it build up is it cumulative or does it just essentially make an environment that is like not as friendly as it used to be there's the the part in uh jason snell's like annual like apple report card um that i think will be coming out soon and every year when i fill it out there's a section about like how do you feel apple's developer relations are going and for the past few years i always look at what i wrote last year and i'm like yep it's the same as that and what i what i wrote i have like the snippet that basically says like that apple and developers don't feel good about each other and don't trust each other and it's an adversarial relationship and there's bad blood and uh you know it's just it's not healthy and every year that's the same i'm not sure if it's getting worse or better or staying the same but it's just not it just doesn't seem tenable to be long term there's this all you know sort of it becomes culturally accepted that there's this there's this upset between in particular developers and apple that both parties are willing to tolerate but the developers feel like they're getting the short end of the stick on and it's not so much that they're fleeing the platform but it's enough that they're mildly annoyed and that just doesn't seem sustainable to me and i feel like those chickens are eventually going to come home to roost.

1:12:56Well, that's exactly the thing. And I think part of the reason I'm so worked up about this, I don't have any desire to take payments outside the app store. Like, selfishly for me, do not care. But it's the principle of it. And it's so striking to me that here it is, the landscape I feel like from where I'm sitting has changed fairly considerably in the last couple of years. I think legislation is coming from many different angles. I mean, And that's literally why we're talking about this in the first place. It's happening locally. It's happening in the EU. It's happened in Japan. It's happening in lots of different places.

1:13:33And so I feel like the specter of more legislation is right around the corner. And yet Apple is saying, eh, we don't care. We're too big to be pushed around, even by governments. Well, thus far, they've been able to, in their opinion, comply with it in such a way that it is a moot point. Because why would anyone – there's no one who would want to do this. You end up paying the same amount and it's more a hassle for you. And Apple's like, see, don't you just want to use our payment method? It's like, yeah, you have essentially not allowed any form of competition because you've you get to control the terms of the competition.

1:14:02And you set those terms such that there is no reason for anyone to use a third party payment. It's just like the Dutch dating app, which is the exact analogy you used the last time we talked about this. Yeah. And, you know, Gruber handled this really well in a post, I think, from earlier today. So Gruber writes, Apple should have been looking for ways to lessen regulatory and legislative pressure over the past few years. And in today's climate, that's more true than ever. But instead, their stance has seemingly been, bring it on. Confrontational, not conciliatory. Conceding, not an inch. Rather than take a sure win with most of what they could want, Apple is seemingly hell-bent on trying to keep everything.

1:14:39To win in chess, all you need is to capture your opponent's king. Apple seemingly wants to capture every last piece on the board, even while playing in a tournament where the referees, in this case regulators, are known to look askance, give side eye, at blatant poor sportsmanship, which in this case is greed. I think he absolutely nailed it. This whole piece is very good. But that one paragraph absolutely nails it. It's so true. And it's just, it leaves such a gross feeling in my mouth. So here it is, they've got this legislative and regulatory pressure from all different angles. And they're saying, you know, we don't care.

1:15:15Come at us. Catch me outside. Yeah, they're literally like inflaming the fight. I mean, and honestly, like if I was working at any department in Apple except AppReview or I guess the app, whoever, whatever department is like App Store Revenue Collection. If I was literally in any other part of the company, I would be pissed at that part of the company for this. Because here is Apple on the eve of launching a massive, hugely influential product. Now, I mean, yes, it's going to have limited market, etc., etc., but like the Vision Pro, it has been so much effort over so many years bringing it together.

1:15:59All of the other parts of the company in so many ways, they have poured so much into this. And here we are on the eve of the launch of this revolutionary product, and we're talking about the App Store's BS again. Yep. Again, I'm not saying that Apple shouldn't make money. I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to keep some of this money or most of this money. And like Casey, I also, as a developer, have zero plans to try to use my own payment processing, even if they removed all of these restrictions. And even if I could literally just link out and not pay them anything and not have any restrictions, I still wouldn't do it just because that doesn't make sense for my app.

1:16:41But it's kind of like I will defend to the death. You're right to say it. Like, I don't want to do this. I don't have any need for this in my current app with its current business model. But maybe someday I'll need it. And I certainly would want it to be allowed and available for all developers. And so let me jump in right here because I think what you're saying is important. you personally who now at this point in your career have written against the stripe api which is the thing that probably most of us would turn to in order to collect money you have done this you have enough knowledge you have already been down this road if there was any indie app developer that i can think of that would be best equipped to start to not compete with but you know what i mean like go on your own and take money on your own for overcast i feel like name me someone at at this level, you know, I'm not talking about a huge corporation.

1:17:30I'm saying name me an indie that's better equipped to do this than Marco Armand. And you're saying, and I agree with you for the record, you're saying, I don't think I would bother, at least not for overcast. And that's the thing, like compete, Apple, just compete and you'll be fine. And speaking of competition though, like what Apple's, I mean, the, the thing that would make both of you switch if Apple actually did open up payments to third party payments in a non-dickish way, is that third parties would pop up and say, Hey, we have an in-app purchase flow that looks just like Apple's. There's an SDK for it.

1:18:00We have a website. We'll run it all. And we just take less of a cut than Apple. That's called competition because it's not Apple's. Making Marco write his own thing himself. Yeah, that's onerous. And then on top of all these restrictions. But if it was actually open, it was actually a competitive marketplace. And Apple wasn't maintaining control over the linchpin of its future. Which, by the way, control over this platform is not just for this stuff, but it's for the stuff you haven't even thought of. Like maintaining control over platforms is like, we don't even know what's going to be the big thing 20 years now so we better maintain that control but anyway if it was open third parties would pop up and they would be third party payment processors with an sdk for ios apps that have an in-app purchase flow and features like they'd have to compete on features all the features that you use in an app purchase like free trials and upgrade pricing you know like third parties would make something like that and then you'd be like huh i don't want to do this but insert name of third party here has a way for me to do it that is actually easier than Apple's and a better experience for my users and I don't have to do anything and they take a slightly smaller cut.

1:18:59That's competition and that's what Apple doesn't want to happen. Well, and I think we can see it already if you look at purchases on like in web browsers using Apple Pay. You know what's a better experience than Apple Pay for me most of the time? Shop Pay. And I bet Apple doesn't like that, that that's a thing that can exist. But like, It's much harder to control in the web browser. But the reality is Apple Pay is less reliable and slower and generally a little bit worse for me when making web purchases than ShopPay. And has fewer features. Fewer features in their UI, for example. That's another thing that ShopPay has.

1:19:35It's not a complicated form, but it has more buttons and knobs and multiple shipping addresses and this and that. Apple makes that a little bit more difficult. Right. And so I think, John, you're right. Like if this was allowed to just happen in app and, you know, not kick out to a browser or whatever, like absolutely. They were because somebody would come along and make like the SDK drop in replacement that could be big enough theoretically to to actually compete with the convenience and speed and everything about Apple payments. I think it would be pretty easy to compete because you just have to beat 30 percent.

1:20:05Right. It's not like there's the 15 percent and so on. but like but the percentages are big right and the the infrastructure that you need is not that much more than the infrastructure than let's say stripe already runs right there's the sda component or whatever but i mean that's part of apple's point is like hey we had to pay to develop ios these people didn't have to pay to develop ios they're just mooching off our platform with their payment processing that's that's their view of it but i think the competition on percentage cut would be more than enough to fund a bunch of good competitors oh yeah and and also and to be clear going back to what we're doing, our plans with our apps, Apple's developer relations department is not this department.

1:20:43The developer relations team is not the team that decides the cut and is making these decisions. This is happening, I think, above their heads. The developer relations team cares about developers like the three of us. The people making these decisions above the developer relations team, I don't even think developers like us even enter the conversation. They are deciding this for people like Amazon, Netflix, Google. They're deciding this for big companies, Facebook. That's what they're focused on because there's so much more money there than there is from developers like us. And so when they're deciding, is Casey's List's app going to have a different payment sheet or whatever, that's never in the conversation.

1:21:28They're trying to figure out, how can we get 30 % of HBO Max or whatever the hell it's called now? um that's what they're that's that's the scale they're operating at like we don't even we don't even register with this decision and so but the reality of that too is like all those big companies they either never adopted in at purchase or adopted it a long time ago and then have since dropped it or they're powerful enough like netflix to essentially wait it out and force apple to allow them to do something that no other apps are allowed to do which is to tell you to go sign up on their website or whatever.

1:22:03There's a bunch of companies that have just opted out of the entire system, but they're so big and important that Apple had to make concessions to them with weird provisions like the reader app clause and all that other stuff. And it's still not great. It's still worse than it could be. It's still not satisfactory for users. It's still not satisfactory for Netflix. And Apple is probably annoyed too, so great. Yeah, but again, and this is, it's so hard for me to try to balance my feelings about what this company does and makes. Because again, it's a big company. There's lots of different people, lots of different departments.

1:22:37And again, I have to imagine many people who work there either are really pissed or I honestly think should be really pissed that the people making these decisions keep dragging the company through so much mud, generating so much negativity in press, in the eyes of regulators and lawmakers, certainly among developers and it has a pretty substantial strategy tax on the rest of the company. Yes, they are making good money on this growth area of services slash taxes. They're making good money with that. Great. Okay, everyone's stock options will be a little bit healthier. Okay. But how do the effects of that negatively impact the rest of the company and its products and the other things they care about and are trying to do?

1:23:27I think the executives making these decisions are not fully considering that long-term and short-term costs of that. So, for instance, right now, they are launching a brand new platform. That's exactly what I was going to say, Marco. You took the words right out of my mouth. They're literally launching it in two weeks. It's coming out. And I think the developer story on that platform is pretty shaky. So what they really need is a lot of enthusiasm. What they need right at this moment is for developers to be really happy with Apple, both small and large. Now, Apple's actions over the past decades, especially decade, have really alienated lots of the big companies to the point where the big companies are basically saying, F you.

1:24:17Why should I develop for you? And it's kind of hard to make an argument against that. And small developers already, like this is already a tough sell for us because the thing is pretty expensive and it's going to have a small market and all the reasons we talked about. But if you have enthusiasm among that crowd, you know, the reason we all developed for the iPhone up front was a mix of sheer numbers. Yes, there were a lot of iPhones when it first started. But also, we all just were so enthusiastic. We loved the platform. We loved the idea of developing for it. there was a huge enthusiastic and highly qualified mac developer community before that that kind of helped jumpstart the iphone developer community it was a huge like enthusiasm effort that's why even still to this day android apps even though android has massive volume of like the number of devices out there android apps tend not to see the level of you know awesome apps that iphones get and also like the early adopter apps like the early adopter apps usually are iphone first and they come to Android later or not at all.

1:25:20And there's a reason for that. Developers, yeah, we need numbers of an install base to make it work for us, but enthusiasm for the platform and making things for platforms that we want to use ourselves is really important. And that actually really drives the market. That drives what kind of apps come out. That drives where new cutting edge work is being done. It's a huge important factor. And there's all sorts of factors like that that apple is just throwing away and you know violating in many disgusting ways um by their actions in this one area and again yes like that's why this is a hard thing when you look at how much money they make and how important that money is for their financial performance you can see okay that's there's a reason why this is you know kind of a tense debate but i don't know how the rest of the company is not rebelling against this and like you know you know in back channel just like why are these people at the top shitting all over everyone else's work to save this one factor and by the way if they gave a little on this rule they wouldn't lose all of their app store money, they would just potentially make a little bit less and even that I think is unlikely and by the way, my personal opinion is that the control part is the most important aspect of it but that apparently is not Apple's opinion because if it was, they can maintain that control by giving concessions, right?

1:26:48Because what you don't want is to lose control. You don't want to lose this, you know, this linchpin, this lever that you have, especially, as I said, because you don't know how important it's going to be in the future. Right now, it's about, you know, 85 % of it is selling games. Who knows what it will be 20 years from now? Or just like making it sort of accepted that, hey, we control all our app stores. So like they'll control the Vision Pro app store or whatever. Like that control is what's important. it's not so much important that they get this exact percent and allow this to happen so like giving concessions that don't give up control like essentially you know doing things on your own terms that seem like they're favorable to developers but really you don't give up a bit of your control and one way to do is that if you make voluntary changes you can always change them back later but if a court tells you that you have to do x you can't just later and say oh we changed our mind we're not going to do that anymore right so if apple really believed that control was the most important aspect and not the growth stuff right uh and not just like the the money right if they not the pride aspect if they really believed as i do that the control over the app store is the most important thing to maintain they should be bending over backwards to maintain that control by doing anything they can to prevent things like governments and lawsuits from making them do anything and that's where i think they're really losing on this is i don't even think they would lose any money in fact i think they'd be making more money because of more developer enthusiasm in the medium to long term they should be is like saying what do we have to do to avoid essentially being told what to do with the app store and they should they should give concessions like crazy they should give they should give too many concessions give till it hurts but the whole time you'd be like but we voluntarily gave that and that means we can take it back right especially with new platforms like we you know we keep talking about uh the iphone is such a big platform it's helping people like giving scare stories like they can do the same thing on the mac it's like no they can't because there just aren't enough Macs, right?

1:28:39They can do it on the iPhone because the upside is big enough that developers aren't fleeing, right? Billions of iPhone users, they spend a lot of money. It's irresistible. Not true on the Mac. So they, I think they literally can't do what they did on the iPhone on the Mac and say, okay, well, you can't buy a Mac Apple Essence through the Mac App Store, blah, blah. Like they would destroy their platform. They don't have that leverage. They don't have that power. Vision Pro has no users yet because it hasn't shipped. When you have a brand new platform, I don't think you can start with the set of rules that's on the ios app store because you've sold zero of them yeah right yeah wait until you get a few billion then turn the screws look at amazon you give it all away in the beginning and then you turn the knobs and start making the money after 20 or 30 years right i mean maybe don't do like amazon did but you know like that type of view like but but instead they launch everything with default with the same restrictions as ios like maintain the control of the vision os app store make sure everything that's in there is because you decided and not because somebody made you but start off with better terms than the platform that has a billion users right but they don't do that they're just like vision west it's just like the ios app store everybody knows and loves it it's great it's like yeah but you haven't sold a billion of them yet or 10 billion i don't know how many iphones like you can't you can't start from that right and you know we talk about game consoles all the time but like and people like don't understand what the difference is like game consoles do exactly the same thing the difference as i said in the art of the possible thing is like game consoles the people who run those and the people who buy them they figured out an arrangement between the consoles the developers and the customers such that if you were asked the average console user like what their opinion is of their console maker or whatever it's like they they accept the way it works they accept the way maybe the apple's like we just got to hold out for this generation to die or just accept that how the app stores work but like wow you know developers you know console developers and console makers are incredibly contentious acrimonious with each other and often sue each other and do terrible things or whatever but users are out there going like oh i wish the game was available for my platform oh well well this is cross-platform but i like this and game people buy two consoles sometimes and it's like gamers in general don't feel like there's so little competition in the game console market or that like one particular console owner is keeping you know is doing anything uh unjust as what's apple's doing but they are they're doing exactly the same thing and it's apple must be looking at that and saying but why are their customers and developers able to tolerate this in a way that ours aren't why does it why does the ecosystem of game consoles look overall happier than our ecosystem and it's not fair i i feel for apple it's not fair it's exactly the same thing game console developers are worse right but you have you know like okay apple do you want if you want it to be like the consoles figure out a way to make it like that and they've been trying but they've been failing is it because apple's platforms are based on like you know came from the pc market where the where the culture was different maybe is it because phones are less like game consoles than apple likes to think they are maybe but whatever the reason apple hasn't been able to turn it around and they just feel like if we just keep doing this eventually everyone will be convinced and eventually our customers and our developers and everybody will have will have the type of harmony that we have in the game console market and it seems like that's just never going to happen.

1:31:50So I just, I wish they would try something different. Indeed. It's just, you know, Marco, you had said this a few minutes ago, but I just want to reiterate what you said. You know, here it is. Apple is in a position that they could really use developers and probably not the indies, although obviously I'm going to think about indies as well, because that's where we are, but they need developers to be enthusiastic about the Vision Pro. And, you know, I got to tell you, it's been super easy for me to build a version of CallSheet for the Vision Pro because I definitely got a dev kit just like you did, right, Marco?

1:32:25I didn't hear of any. I heard that they went out to big companies. I didn't hear of any indie developers getting one. Yeah, same. I mean, to be fair, that's probably mostly a wise allocation of limited resources. Yes. Like maybe they should have given one of the dev kits to Netflix. Yes. There's that as well. But I don't know. It still strikes me that, I guess I'm probably, if I'm trying to take the emotion out of it and trying to be more logical now, I'm probably overselling the influence of indies. I'm not just talking about me, because I mean, whatever, I have little to no influence. But like indies broadly, I feel like the way I reflect on the iOS App Store, particularly early on, was that it was the indies that really bootstrapped it.

1:33:10And it was the people, like, I think it was Marco that said it, but one of you said, you know, it was the Mac developers that were enthusiastic about this new platform. That already knew Objective-C. And that already knew Objective-C. Yep. That bootstrapped the App Store way back in 2008 or whatever it was. And I feel like there's not a lot of that for the Vision Pro. So Apple is saying, well, you can't have a dev kit. And whether or not that's reasonable, I'm not really saying it's unreasonable. but it's a fact that it makes it more challenging for someone like Marco or me or underscore to build these apps.

1:33:42So you can't have a dev kit. You can at considerable expense, go to a lab once or twice, which is good that that is good. And I will say that my lab experience was very good. And I'm probably not even supposed to say that, but here we are. Um, that's it. You're out of the program. Yeah, I'm out of the program now, but, um, like, so that was good, but you can't have a dev kit. You can go at considerable expense and oftentimes considerable distance to a lab. you know you you're gonna get your radars filed and fixed immediately right oh never mind we can't talk about radar uh and don't worry the app store is your friend right because look at all the nice things we do for you like this is just in it's such an unbelievable amount of hubris to be thumbing your nose at all of these third-party developers that you really need right now and then also the regulators and also you know all the legislators like it's just i cannot believe that they are thumbing their nose at all of these people.

1:34:35So there was a really good, very short post by Tyler Hall called Modern Day Apple. Tyler concluded it. And yet, as I move on to reading, this was about two posts from Gruber back to back. And yet, as I move on to reading John's post about the new App Store guidelines, all I can think of is how modern day Apple is one giant corporate contradiction. The same company that builds the technology to watch a movie in front of a Tatooine sunset is the same company removing all the joy and fun out of the process of building that sunset. Modern day Apple is its own binary star, one fueled by creativity and another fueled by arrogance.

1:35:10So that's another one person. Everyone likes to attach those three things I listed. Everyone latches onto one of them. Marco seems to mostly attach to the greed angle of the addiction. This is attaching to the pride angle, arrogance, right? It's like, what do you see? What's the Rorschach test of Apple? You see them making decisions that you think are not good for you personally, not good for the devil's community. and many people think they're not good for the future of Apple. If you care about the platform, they should be making smarter moves. Why are they doing that? And you personify the company and you say it's because they agree.

1:35:39It's because they're arrogant. It's because they have this need for control, right? I think it's all three of them. But depending on which one annoys you more, that is the one you will listen to. This person is clearly more annoyed by the pride slash arrogance angle. And then finally, Brenton Simmons writes, just like the sixth finger in an AI rendered hand, Apple's policies for distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link are startlingly graceless and jarring, but not surprising. A reminder that Apple is not a real person and not worthy of your love. Yeah, again, like, you know, and I think the, you know, the indie developer angle that you were talking about a second ago is particularly relevant here because, like, when you're looking at, you know, what Division Pro is heading into here with the market, the big companies i think are going to be the hardest to convince to develop for it you can't even get them to make an ipad app ipads are not 3 500 yeah and a way bigger install base has been around for a very long time and way less custom work compared to your iphone app well they're not 3 500 yet we gotta wait for the old one yeah but yeah like you know you look at again that's a great market you look at that market for example the big companies are gonna instantly uncheck Check that box that says make my app available on Vision Pro and they're not going to make it because it's going to be not worth it because they don't want to have something custom just for this with a small install base or anything.

1:36:59You know who doesn't care about all that stuff? Indie enthusiast developers. We are the ones that Apple needs to make apps for this platform. Now, granted, yes, it would be more impactful to them if they could get somebody like Netflix to work with them because the Vision Pro, I think, is going to definitely start out as mostly an entertainment device like movie watching and experience based device. And I think it's very wise. We're kind of seeing Apple's initial PR at launch for Vision Pro is really focusing on entertainment. I think that is very wise because the productivity story is just not going to be there for a while, if ever.

1:37:38even apple it's not like apple even ported all of its apps so they have keynote and that's it right and freehand i believe or no what's the free form free form yeah it's not going to be really adopted like you're not going to see like you know google porting over google docs and and their google sheets to it like that's not going to happen all the big companies are going like imagine the ipad again a great example all all the you know hoopla around trying to get big companies to try to port their apps to the ipad for god's sake take away the entire install base how how hard is that argument now like it's indies who are going to be the only ones making apps for this for a while and indies are willing to put in more work than the numbers justify because they have a the upside to them is potentially it's not large upside for netflix this means it's a rounding error to Netflix, but to an indie developer or a small developer group, that number that Netflix doesn't care about is life-changing to them.

1:38:35Yeah, like if your entire install base is 500 people and you're trying to get it to be a thousand people, hey, this could be your path there. Because you know people, again, people are going to buy these things. The first year allocation will definitely be sold out, but there will come a time when Apple has to try a little bit to get people to buy this thing. and maybe that time isn't this year because of just you know shortages but like there will come a time and i think it will be pretty soon after these shortages get a little bit lifted because again it's kind of a hard sell to a lot of people so there will be a time when apple has to actually attempt to get sales and at that point they're going to want a software ecosystem to have been built to try to give people more justifications to buy it no big company is going to be there so you might as well try to embrace the enthusiast developer community that is there to try to build a library of good software and again everyone else in the company besides the very small handful of people deciding this you know app store tax bs everyone else in the company probably wants this kind of thing too because it benefits them like obviously of course developer relations wants indie developers to have you know a healthy relationship with the company and to be building great software for their platforms the hardware makers at apple who have made these great platforms they want great software to take advantage of the hardware they want people to be buying the hardware like they want this too the software organization like do you think Craig Federighi really wants to be making the software to that dumb link scare box like do you think like is that a good use of his time he was also the one who said that they shouldn't port i message to uh android because it might be uh no longer be a motivating factor for iphone sales so i think when you reach that level of the corporate hierarchy you're kind of thinking at the c level i mean yeah maybe that was a bad example but like there's all these people putting all this work into making what is almost entirely really great stuff.

1:40:40Like, that's why we're all here. We love this company's product so much. They're so good most of the time. Like, the hit rate's pretty damn high. And then you have this one tiny little asterisk of the company doing all of this damage. Why? Is it worth it? Is it worth it for the entire rest of the company's efforts to constantly have crap rained down upon them from legislators and the press and users and developers for whatever tiny amount that you're keeping by doing things exactly the way you're doing them. Again, this is not great long-term thinking. And it really does a disservice to all the people in the company who are doing really great work on stuff that's really good.

1:41:29Yep, couldn't agree more. You mentioned leveraging the Mac developers to bootstrap the iPhone app ecosystem. I know people probably have already written in this feedback, so I'll just add it in now, and you can hear it later when you unpause the show. Obviously, Apple is leveraging, trying to leverage, its entire developer user base, the entire developer community who make apps for iOS and the iPad, and to a lesser extent, the Mac, to bootstrap the Vision Pro, because it uses similar APIs, uses SwiftUI, uses the same language like we've got this ready-made developer base of literally millions of developers who already have apps and we've made it pretty easy to port them over or as easy as possible and they already know the language they're familiar with the tools familiar with the platform right so they should have a massive advantage over trying to bootstrap the ios app store uh but that's not how it feels to you know you know even again even big companies are like yeah i don't know not not into it like you know netflix not making an app they can use the web browser it'll be fine and why not like what what what's changed what's different now is there was huge enthusiasm for the iphone among developers because it was a platform they'd never been able to develop for they were excited about it and the iphone in the beginning i mean first didn't have an app store at all but once it did have an app store the app store did not start off uh having a reputation for being developer unfriendly it was restrictive but in the beginning those restrictions were like well these are limitations it's a very young platform it's a very new api so people are just excited to have their apps on the platform right uh and that changed over time that it was it's the same app store it's ever been but the attitude about it changed and again that may seem unfair to apple it's like everyone's so excited about the app store in the beginning and the app store now is not that different than it was so what changed and it's like you know if the relationships evolve right you just you have to constantly maintain them and see you know it's not just all about the the the exertion of power right um and maybe after many years and the iPhone getting bigger and bigger.

1:43:31You know, maybe Apple thinks it's unfair that developers feel more entitled to more value out of that platform, just as Apple thinks it's unfair. They say Apple thinks we made the platform, you should, you know, be grateful we're allowing you on it. And developers are saying, well, you should be grateful to make apps to your platform. And obviously, the truth is somewhere in the middle. And where that balance is may be unsatisfactory to everybody involved. But you have to find a meeting place, you have to find somewhere in the middle where you get a win-win and everybody's happy and apple is getting farther and farther away from that and on vision pro like despite so many advantages they didn't have with the phone these you know the unity of their apis and their languages and their tools is so much better now than it was then like the developer story for vision pro like that's people aren't not making things to vision aren't you know saying i'm not gonna make it for vision pro because it's a weird new language or they can't figure out the api or just they don't have the skills or though that's all you know ready waiting for them but what's you know the reason they're not doing is a apple hasn't sold a lot of them which okay fine that's a chicken egg thing apple has to deal with that and b they're like we've been on other apples apples other platforms we know what it's like and we're you know maybe we have a contentious relationship with apple and we just feel like we have to be on ios because they sold billions of them but they haven't sold billions of the vision pro and i mean this is it gets to the point where you know like uh amazon making deals with music companies and everything at a certain point the bigger the company is the more they think is do we want to give apple another platform like ios do we want to help them we want to help apple make another platform that would give them as much power as i as they have for the iphone platform like no because we see what they do with that power and we don't like it so why would i help you apple get get another one over on us in a new platform We already have to deal with you with the iPhone.

1:45:20Like we can't, we have to do it. It's just, we have to be on the iPhone. You won that one. You sold billions of them. Fine. But I'm not really enthusiastic about helping you do that again, especially if there's some other competitor, some other alternative that I think would be better. And whether who's right, who's wrong, will Apple be successful? Will the company be successful? That's like when I look at Netflix, not having an app at launch, like honestly, if you had asked me when the vision pro was introduced, do you think there's a possibility there won't be a Netflix app for that at launch?

1:45:45I would say no, Apple would never let that happen. They have. Apple has let it happen. And I put this at Apple because like, look, Apple, if you can't convince Netflix to make an app for Vision Pro, like what hope is there for you? Like throw money at them. Like I'm not, you know, I'm not saying you have to give Casey and Marco dev kits, but like talk to Netflix and get them to. It's just a video player. It's so easy for them to pour. They've already got it. if you can't get netflix to do it man like what must be going wrong in these you know the big back rooms between these corporate it's not like netflix's relationship with apple is bad but netflix is like yeah wake me up when you sold a few hundred million yeah it's and like ultimately what what this runs the the very high risk of is this brand new platform that's super has a massive potential for coolness and amazing new things, the software ecosystem is probably going to end up being like the Apple TV, which is not...

1:46:48It wouldn't do this platform justice. No, it wouldn't. They've done such amazing work. It can do some really cool stuff. And because of all of this that they've done over the years with these terrible developer relations and the relationship with big companies especially, like as john said like they don't they don't the big companies don't want to enable apple to push them around even more on a new platform so they're like you know f it i'm out and the small developers like you know we've just been squeezed so many times like there's a lot of us who are also you know having a similar attitude the result is really very it's very um risky that like it runs the risk of this ending up just like the apple tv which the apple tv is a great product i use mine almost every day i love mine yeah but it's hardly um you know a software success story no sure isn't and if that's all this ends up being that's going to be a tough sell for such a high-end product and it certainly does not do justice to its capabilities apple tv has a netflix app though it's true john uh you know the good news though is marco if you're right and i don't i don't know if you're right but i think there's definitely a universe in which you're right but if you're right when and the the third party software ecosystem is lacking the good news is i'm sure apple will come back to all of us with hat in hand humble and with incredible humility and say hey what can we do to make this experience better for you surely that's what apple will do there's no question no there's not a chance of that but i just i i hope that like the thing is like as much as all these people writing these blog posts are correct that we that we shouldn't care about this corporation the fact is i do care about this corporation and so i want them to succeed i'm rooting for them i like i want you know the reason why we complain about when they do stuff that we think is is bad or harmful to them is because we like this company and we like their products and we care and we you know it hurts to see something you care about making mistakes or failing or or being harmful to itself and that's how a lot of this stuff looks that if they would just give a little on some of these things you could avoid 90 of these problems and they won't even give a little and it's it's much to their detriment whether they see it or not and it's it's a shame because it really does do a lot of harm to them that uh that i think they'd be better off without we are sponsored this episode by our longest running sponsor squarespace we love squarespace They are the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

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1:51:27All right, so let's try to turn that frown upside down. Let's do some Ask ATP. And Seppy Rutten writes, my parents are using iPads and iPhones. I do struggle sometimes to make their devices as easy to use and safe as in prevent phishing as I possibly can. How would you set up a device for elderly people so that it is safe for them to use it? I'm not talking about the standard accessibility features. I need them to use the devices in the most simple or easy ways and prevent them from getting scammed? I don't have a good answer for this. I know, Marco, you've done this from time to time. And John, you just recently mentioned talking to your mom about voiceover.

1:51:59So maybe let's start with Marco and end with John. I don't have a lot here because what I found over the years, like trying to set up, you know, iPads for my grandparents. It's been a while. They're no longer with us. But earlier in the iPad's life, I tried it for a while. And it was always a bit of a struggle because what happened is that they just got more complicated over time. And I would set it up. It would work for a while. Then some weird problem would happen. And I didn't live nearby. So it was a little hard to troubleshoot. And it was complicated. But I'm hardly an expert in this area.

1:52:34But I found that there really weren't many good options. Like whether you're looking at like different software toggles or restrictions on the iPad itself to different products entirely. Like, you know, like as like in particular as my grandfather got dementia, we tried to get him like a phone that was simpler that he could just use to call the handful of us. And there have been a couple of these products over the years that are targeted at, you know, elderly people who need like limited controls and everything to help use things. And even I mean, this was only I think like five or six years ago.

1:53:05It was not that long ago. And even then there was almost nothing on the market left. So it seems like a fairly underserved market. The products that are there tend to be not good in a lot of ways. I don't really have a great answer for this. I mean, you could do some of the screen time restrictions. Some of that stuff could help a little bit. But ultimately, if you're worried about elderly people trying to keep them from being scammed, you're going to have to be a lot more vigilant than software settings on iPads and iPhones because there are so many scams targeting elderly people. it's disgusting and they come in through every possible venue the mail phone calls like they come in through everywhere um and so that that's going to take more vigilance than any software setting you can do yeah my advice is to first try to make a clear-eyed call as to whether this is a thing that everyone involved is up for uh does you know does the person actually want this or do you just wish that they wanted it uh are they capable uh is is it going to be successful because at a certain point it's not whether the person's you know the older person is just not into technology or they're not as with it as they used to be or they just don't play that's just they could do it but they just don't want to uh you won't be successful if you don't meet that minimum bar if you think you've met that minimum bar everyone involved is willing and able to do it you're still worried about them being scanned worry about the complexity uh my best advice of what to do with a device is to just remove everything like i kind of wish you could just leave like three icons on the home screen of an ipad and make them huge unfortunately you can't but you can get rid of everything else like pare it down to almost nothing uh rehearse with them but the most important thing that you can do again if you have a person who's willing and able to do this is to make sure that you have some way to help them or somebody has some way to help them right so because i feel like anybody who's dealing with a weird technology thing uh if they know that there's someone who they are very comfortable with who they can contact whenever they have a problem who will help them out of it it removes a huge amount of stress right because they're like uh something's not working or it's broken or i can't figure it out i'll just call timmy tomorrow and we'll get it sorted out and you need to have somebody i mean and i would say a telephone call is not probably going to be that because if you've ever tried to coach someone through fixing a problem on their ipad when you can't see the screen and you're doing over telephone it is not good right so So...

1:55:28do you live close to them? can you go over there uh are they willing and able to do some kind of facetime or screen sharing thing this is one of the one of the legs up that the mac has is if you have a relative for example somehow they have a mac and they want to use it and but they are having problems being able to use screen sharing through iMessage is a godsend i don't think there's a great equivalent for that for ipad i know from helping my own parents with their ipad and very often they're trying to have them holding their phone and doing facetime to the ipad let me tell you that does not work well no goodness been there done that they live many states away from me so i can't be that in person but i would say making things safe for them is essentially the most important thing is make sure they know someone they can contact uh and i guess the secondary thing is and make sure they know when they should so you have to basically rehearse with them if you see an email and you think it's weird call me if you you know or you know call me and i'll come over if you something's broken call me and i'll come over if you can't figure out how to do something call me and i'll come over.

1:56:26And if this is sounding like a lot of work to you, yeah, but this is the most important thing. Having a human being who they trust accessible to them at all times so that if they have any question, any doubt, any frustration, they can call on you and you can come help them. And that is really the only way to make this work. Because if you think there's a software setting that's going to prevent phishing, I'm sure IT departments all over the world would love to know what it is. You know, I was thinking about it when I think it was Marco said, you know, you can't have, or one of you said, you can't have a huge phone icon on the home screen.

1:56:55Maybe it was John. I'm sorry, John. But anyways, I was thinking, wait a second. That is possible now. What the hell was that called? And thank you to Abelops20 in the chat who pointed out it's assistive, what is it, assistive access, I believe that's called, something along those lines. And so there is a mode you can choose to turn on. I think it's already out where you can do a lot of this stuff and just remove other apps and make the home screen basically like a table view of different apps. Yeah, it's no longer Springboard, and it is a separate thing. So it's kind of like at ease for the old Mac users.

1:57:28I was thinking like when Springboard only has three icons, that you should be able to just like make them bigger, but you can't. Oh, man, this would have been great. Yep, this would be super helpful. So check that out. Moving right along, Wilson Martinez writes, Could you explain why some apps that have no audio or video stop a playing podcast or music when opened? For example, the Levi's Denim Shop app, or maybe that's not the right name, but we'll put a link in the show notes. um i i don't know other than maybe it's i think can't you marco can't you ask it to be ducked yeah okay so here's here's the reason so the way ios apps work with audio you have to tell the audio framework like all right here's the kind of audio i'm going to play and you can say all right i'm playing long form talk or i'm playing brief sounds or i'm playing sound for a video like you you can you can give it like there's a few different categories and each of those categories has different behavior and you can set certain flags you can say for instance like what you were just about to touch on casey you can say like hey if some other app plays a sound while i'm playing my music you can duck my music down like reduce the volume let that sound play over it and then bring my volume back up that's called that's what ducking is or you can say like in the case of a podcast app you don't want to be ducked because you don't want like you know your ways direction to be like turn left ahead talking over a podcast you want the podcast to pause let it say turn left ahead, then resume the podcast.

1:58:49There's all these different options you set, but the reason why certain apps will stop background audio dead on their tracks is if they just use these APIs wrong. So when you are about to play audio, you can set all those flags on the audio session whenever you want. You can say, alright, the types of audio I play are this, this, and this. Here's how I want to be treated. But then, when you're about to play audio, you have to activate the session. Activating the session can occasionally block the main thread. It can occasionally fail in weird ways, depending on conditions. It can occasionally cause weird little snags.

1:59:23So some lazily written apps and frameworks, and especially ad frameworks, some of them will, upon launch, just activate the session, which the system doesn't know yet that you're not playing audio. All the system knows is you activated the session. And therefore, anything else that was playing audio that said, don't duck me or don't mix with other apps, those all get paused. The answer to the question is why certain apps that don't appear replaying audio will stop other playing audio in their tracks is they program their audio session calls wrong and they're activating their session before they're actually needing to play audio.

1:59:59Are you telling me the Levi's app isn't well written? It's shocking. And then finally, Syfe Khan writes, Apple is so close to making a HomePod mini Wi-Fi router, why don't they just make HomePod mini into a mesh router network? I mean, I get you, but they're just out of the router game, unfortunately. Yeah, this is the problem with the router business and the idea of combining it with either HomePods or Apple TVs. This is always what people are saying. Why don't they turn the Apple TV into a router or turn the HomePods into meshes? There's two big problems with this. Number one is that to make good routers these days, it's kind of a bigger play now.

2:00:34To make good mesh, you need the whole meshing technology. That's a whole thing. Routers now have all these services you can add on for ad blocking and stuff, and it's kind of a big deal. So to be competitive in that market, they would have to spin up a decent amount of a business unit to really do that. And I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't, but it would be kind of a big deal to do anything that would matter in the market. And then the second big problem is where people place HomePods or Apple TVs often is not where you would place a router. Now, the idea of a mesh network is better than the original ideas that people would come up with, like turn your Apple TV into a router, because like at least then you can kind of place them everywhere and they can kind of act as a big network of repeaters.

2:01:17But like most people would not be so lucky that the ideal placement of their Wi-Fi access points happens to be where they would also want the HomePod. um so finally the home pods are already expensive enough compared to their peers and adding more hardware into them for apple to keep their same margins and we know they're going to do that um to add more hardware into it to do another function would probably bring that cost up even further and that would not be good for that market and it would be way bigger like people don't realize that like oh why don't you just add make it a router like you've already got a little computer in there that's enough right like no you need first of all you need all the analog electronics antenna stuff or whatever but then the whole the whole rest of the thing like if you look at the size of like an e-roll router and they're among the smaller ones that are good mesh things they're already bigger than a homepod mini and there's no homepod in there there's no speaker and that you would think like most of the homepod mini is taken up with the speaker and it is but now you have to take you start you got the speaker and the magnets and everything and now you need wi-fi antennas and all the other stats it'll make it bigger and more expensive i think apple should make a mesh router system, period.

2:02:21No need to combine it with your Apple TV or your HomePod or whatever. And if they wanted to incorporate it into the big HomePod, they could. But honestly, that's really kind of like a, you know, turducken situation where it's like, but like, why are you making, like, what if someone just wants a big HomePod? Are you making them pay for in space and cost the Wi-Fi router, right? Like you have to, it narrows your market. So you now need someone, now you need someone who's willing to pay the extra money and the exercise for this thing that they might not want so it seems like it's a good idea but it's not like you're gonna oh we just get it for free and all these home home pod minis that we sell like how many home pod minis do you think people are buying anyway like they're not scattering them throughout their house and if they were it's probably because they're small and cute and they wouldn't be if they had a wi-fi router in there so uh it's sad that apple no longer makes wi-fi routers for youngsters who don't remember apple used to do that and they were pretty good but that was way before the mesh network time it was a simpler time right and they did combine uh you know the the time capsule thing and throw a whole hard drive in there yeah exactly right Right.

2:03:18But and even that, I think, was probably not a great selling product for the reason that I stated, because one of you didn't want both of those things. But they sold one without it. They sold a separate one as well. Like, so it is harder now. I think it's something Apple should do, especially with their focus on security. I think ceding that entire market to companies like Euro was foolish, especially now that they've been purchased by Amazon. But instead, Apple's trying to make a car. Yeah. Are they still doing that? I can't imagine. I mean, it's not. Believe me, if they cancel Project Titan and lay off all those people, we'll hear about it.

2:03:46i mean but didn't they cancel it like every two months like it just it seemed like they were always reorganizing it it's just it's changing kind of like the the vision pro project like oh apple's making ar glasses right that was like the rumor you know eight years ago or whatever and if they're still making them this is not glasses but like what does the product actually become what is the original idea hey we should do something with ar vr xr whatever what actually ships this uh the the car project titan who knows what it's been in the past but it's i don't think it's currently dead because again when you lay off that many people it's kind of hard not to notice but anyway they've invested a lot of time and money in that and in the meantime i'm using euros exactly thanks to our sponsors this week notion and squarespace and thanks to our members who support us directly you can join us atp.fm join and we'll talk to you next week Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-I-M-K-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.

2:05:28It's accidental. Accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Accidental. Tech podcast. So long. So last week, I think it was, I don't know when it was. It was sometime we were talking about trucks. So it was about your Rivian, Marco. And we were talking about trucks. And you had said, oh, I think you at some point had made mention that your Rivian is a truck. And I did not blink an eye. Now, to be clear, your Rivian is not the R1T, which has a bed like a pickup truck. Yours is the R1S. It is an SUV. Right. Strictly speaking, it is an SUV. and my local friend Brad who is born and raised in Virginia and I think Erin would have said the same thing if she listened to the program but nonetheless he was getting all worked up about how wrong John was I think it was John was saying oh you know or one of you was saying oh if you put gas in Marco's truck it's gonna it's gonna stink up the truck and Brad drives a pickup truck and was like what are you talking about you absolutely will not stink up the truck if you put gas in the bed.

2:06:40And we were going back and forth via text message about this for a minute. And I was like, why are you so worked up about this, Brad? And then it occurred to me, oh, Brad heard truck. And he heard pickup truck. Now, maybe it was me that said it. Maybe it was Marco. But I thought it was Marco that said it. And I didn't blink an eye. Because to me, a truck is anything that rides higher than a sedan, right? It's anything that rides up in the sky, you know. And I understand that, strictly speaking, There's a difference between a pickup truck and Aaron's, you know, Volvo SUV. I get that. But colloquially, I just think of a truck as anything that's taller than my Volkswagen Golf.

2:07:18So is an El Camino not a truck? Oh, that's a very good question that I was not prepared for. But I don't think it is, actually. El Camino is not a truck. Neither is a Subaru brat. Deep cotton. I'm here for it. I would also bet the El Camino is definitely not a car, though. Like what? I mean, no one ever knows what it is. It's an ugly, dumb car. Isn't it a ute? Isn't that what the Aussies call it? But anyways, but yeah, it got me thinking, and I was curious what you're, you know, channel Robot or Not here. I was wondering, what is a truck anyway? And I'd like to start with Marco and then John as the official, you know, Robot or Not historian slash participant slash host, you can give us the actual answer.

2:07:59But Marco, do you agree with me that a truck is just anything tall or where do you sit on this? where what i agree with is different from how i use it and i'll tell you why okay okay fair i am with the truck purists that suvs are not trucks okay to in my opinion you know what the modern suv including the r1s that i drive that is an suv that is a different thing and if you say like oh i got a truck i think most people would reasonably assume that you got a pickup truck the problem is i don't know how universal this is across the country but where i live first of all where i live on the beach everyone drives either suvs or trucks because you have to because regular cars can't make it out here so there it's like it is the vehicle that everyone has is one of these two things but also everyone here calls them both trucks okay so i'm glad you said that because my theory which i don't have anything but anecdotal to prove my theory is that it's a Northeastern thing.

2:08:59And I'm sure John is bursting. So I'll give you a chance here in a second, John. But my theory is that it's a Northeastern thing, that anything that rides tall is a truck. Now, I've already gotten some feedback on Mastodon because I put a poll up on Mastodon asking this very question. And some people said, you know, maybe not so much like Zach Katz said that they're from Vermont and they think it's exclusively a pickup. But then again, I mean, Vermont is basically Canada. So who knows? But, um, but no, and, and, and, and so maybe my theory is wrong, but I feel like anyone that I talked to around here vehemently says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

2:09:34A truck has a bed or, you know, there's semi trucks and things like that. But, you know, amongst a civilian, regular people, cars, it, a truck has a bed and SUV is not a truck. And I get that like from the strictest definition that is accurate, but I use truck colloquially to mean anything that's tall yeah and and the problem is like i agree with those people but no one around me does and so like you know when like and everyone is here everyone here is always talking about each other's vehicles it's always news when someone on the beach gets a new vehicle and everyone wants to talk about it and they will constantly hey how's the new truck like that's that's how they refer to it so like there's only so many times that i can try to steer it like oh the yeah the the rivian it's great you know yeah it's a it's a great new suv like you know There's only so hard you can steer that conversation when everyone around you is using this word this one way.

2:10:21It's out of your control, really. So if I – I don't even remember if I actually said that because I don't think I do that by default. But if I did, that's why because I've had to start talking that way so people around here – so they know – I fit in with the language here. That is the language that people speak here. They call them all trucks. And I disagree with it, too. I think it's wrong. But that I've had to start speaking that way around here because everyone does. All right. So, John, is it is it a truck or is it not? So as with a lot of these things, a lot of these robot or not style things, context really matters.

2:10:57The context of discussing a neighbor's purchase is very different from the context of if I give you like, you know, a card sorting thing, like here's a bunch of vehicles, sort them and decide what headings you want. Like, for example, in a car magazine, a car and driver, they might divide things up into cars, trucks and SUVs, like sections of like a review or talking about things. And the SUVs are going to go SUVs and the trucks are going to go under trucks. Right. So you may look at that and say, well, you know, that's problem solved. Like we have our answer. The trucks are under trucks and the SUVs are not under there.

2:11:28They're under the SUV section. But the context of a car magazine is very different from the context of just talking about things. so that's what you're talking about colloquially which i don't think is the correct use of that term but maybe it is but anyway um the context marco's talking about where neighbors are talking about their cars i think a lot of the truck stuff comes out there i was trying to think of like is this a northeast thing i don't think it is because i didn't i would have called these things suvs for my whole life growing up uh in new york right but i do know that oh first of all when i said in this program i'm using it saying usually saying it dry in a derogatory way to talk about marco's big truck or you know it's like a big pocket truck thing or whatever but i think i think about things like uh extremely truck-like suvs let's say um so things with very um flat uh upright fronts on them like you think of like older toyota forerunners that's an suv right but if you saw a toyota forerunner pull up or whatever you might uh casually refer to it as a truck right uh or you might not right but it might be just like a truck-like car but like in those contexts people aren't in the same mindset is sort these things into categories make a hierarchy make a taxonomy right when you're in that mindset i think even the people marco's neighbors would if they were given especially if they were given categories that said car truck suv they would sort out most of their neighbor's stuff under suv and think about jeep for example are jeeps trucks well they're not cars they're jeeps do i need to put a new heading that says jeep well if you sort them under cars trucks or SUVs maybe there'd be some debate but it's it's not clear cut right and I'm kind of surprised to hear that I referred to the R1S as a truck but when I think about it I probably did it either a in the derogatory way or b in the kind of if that's not a truck like SUV I don't know what it's got straight sides it's a front you know it's just like it is a big rectangle and it's it's it's very truck like right yeah and and the differences between the R1T and the R1S are not like they're not massive differences yeah they're the same car under the cover it's not like oh it has to be body on frame to be a truck it's like no way which by the way that's what greg pierce said and i thought that that was a very interesting uh distinction but but very outdated yeah i mean aren't there a lot of pickup trucks that are not body on frame anymore they all like a huge amount of them are right so speaking of pickup trucks that's the big factor here i don't think this is a northeast thing necessarily but here's the thing in the parts of the country where the pickup truck reigns which is not the northeast although it's more than it was when i was a kid but it's still not the northeast it is long island no not like think about like you know the midwest long island is the south of the north oh man shots fired i reject this entirely we still have way too many mustangs and uh and really old old mobiles to account for that anyway no that that proves marco's point for goodness sake no no that's a northeast thing it's totally different no it is not in the parts of the country where the pickup truck reigns it is very important for the people who buy pickup trucks for the world to know that they have a truck they refer to it as their truck i'm going to get my truck they're never going to get in their car they're going to get in their truck have you seen they buy trucks and they own trucks and they are truck people and that's a pickup truck and it is and i've seen this because my wife's family is from the west the truck car distinction in land in the land where the pickup truck is like seemingly more than half the vehicles on their own is extremely important and extremely specific that's why i think your friend in virginia is probably part of that culture of like truck means a truck manly men buy trucks even though they're stupid and they don't need them and they're most idiotic vehicles on the on the world they they buy them uh and the bed shrinks and shrinks and the rest of the car gets it's just it's the world it's it's like before suvs became less convenient cars trucks were the less convenient cars and they still are right i'm gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars on the world's worst four-door sedan with a tiny little bed in the back right but it is so important that you know that they have a truck and you will hear them use the word truck exclusively when referring to their vehicle whereas i feel like marco will interchangeably say he's never gonna say suv but he might say i left i left my iphone in the car yeah and go get it out of his r1s it does and for the record it does feel weird whenever i refer to it as my car because um it's not what i think of as a car but you do because you're like it's not important for you to say to somebody oh i left it out in the truck yeah but i'm not going to say i left it in the review because it makes me sound like a douche if you were if you were in the land of the pickup truck it would be really important for you and the world to know that you have a truck and not a car because that would be part of your identity and by the way there is a lot of that on long island a lot more than i think you realize, John.

2:16:02Well, it's probably worse than it was when I was there, but yeah. And in Brad's defense, I don't think he's one of those people that defines his existence around his pickup, which is, what is it, a Ford Ranger? I don't know pickups for nothing, but it's the biggest Ford that is not the F-150, which I think it's a Ranger. And by the way, lest you think that, I mean, I think trucks are dumb, but lest you think that I'm being derogatory towards people who have part of their identity wrapped in the truck, when I refer to my computer, you can be sure that i say it's on my mac i'd never say it's on my pc i never say it's on my personal computer i always say it's on my mac it is important to me to make that distinction in the same way that it is important to pickup truck people to say that they own a truck and it's and something is on their truck i always say my mac so like it's not i'm not saying that's you know everyone has parts of their identity wrapped up in different things mine is a lot wrapped up in the fact that i have a mac and not a pc and not a personal computer and not just a plain computer it's a Mac.

2:16:56So, you know, we all have our thing. Pickup trucks are not mine. In retrospect, I should have gone back and listened to the segment to see if either one of you actually did refer to the R1S this way. And maybe it was only me and maybe I'm the one. I can totally see myself doing it because I mean, it does. It looks like a Tonka truck. It's a big yellow, you know, like it looks very much like a Tonka truck if Tonka trucks were SUV-ish. And it is very trucky SUV. Really, it's a failure of language that suv is this like clumsy three syllable thing like also fair like we there we don't really have a good word for them like that's is it australia that says you i mean we should just be calling them cars at this point because of the majority of vehicles sold and have been for so long discounting pickup trucks sorry because i just exclude them from the entire category like for things that aren't pickup trucks uh they're all suvs