600: Everyone Ends Up at Crab

39:35First of all, there's apparently, I didn't even realize this until I saw it in the show notes. There's a Lake Vrangla environment. This is reading off of Mac rumors. Apple has released a new environment for Apple Vision Pro called Lake Vrangla, which is close to Oslo in Norway. This release follows Apple's announcement that the Bora Bora environment will be included in Vision OS 2 later this year. Its arrival will complete the current environment's menu, making all 13 listed options fulfilled and usable. i have downloaded both or i i'm on the vision os beta and i have downloaded the wrangler uh environment as well as the borobor one they're both really great i like them a lot moving along uh there is there will slash r slash are going to be new apple immersive video series films concerts and more uh so reading from apple newsroom apple's releasing all new series and films captured in apple immersive video that will debut exclusively in the apple vision pro surprise surprise apple immersive video is a remarkable storytelling format that leverages 3d video recorded in 8k with 180 degree field of view and spatial audio to transport viewers to the center of the action uh boundless a new series that invites viewers to experience once in a lifetime trips from wherever they are premieres july 18 with hot air balloons i have watched that it was good it's like 10 minutes i was good it was interesting and it's cool to see you know the perspective of a hot air balloon i've never ridden in one now i sort of kind of have it's only 10 minutes i think i think that's right i watched that one a couple of weeks ago and my memory is garbage so i might have that wrong but i think anything i've seen is about 10 minutes um the next installment of wildlife the nature documentary series that brings viewers up close to some of the most charismatic creatures creatures on the planet premieres in august i actually just about an hour or two ago watched episode number two uh which was about elephants elephants are adorable man they're so cute and there's some baby elephants they're so weensy it's so cute oh my word um I'd like to come back to that in a couple minutes.

41:29Let me go through the rest of this list. Elevated, an aerial travel series that whisks viewers around iconic vistas from Staggering Heights will launch in September. This sounds a lot to me like, almost said Frozen, goodness, like Soarin' from Disney World and Disney's California Adventure, I think, or maybe it's Disneyland. Anyways, it's a ride where you kind of fly around through various landmarks. And if it's like that, I'm here for it because I love Frozen. I said Frozen again. I love Soarin'. And then later this year, special performances featuring the world's biggest artists, starting with an immersive experience from the weekend.

41:59That sounds very cool. The first scripted Apple immersive short film, Submerged, a behind the scenes and on the court view of the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend and Big Wave Surfing, the first installment of a new sports series with Red Bull. Sports series with Red Bull, you say? Even though Max Verstappen is evil, I would love to see some F1 stuff. So I'd like to briefly go back to the wildlife thing. So like I said, I watched the elephant thing, which was, you know, or video, which was about 10 minutes, give or take a little bit. Watched it a couple hours ago. The Vision Pro, it's still something that doesn't have a strong place in my life.

42:38I find that more often than not, when I pick it up, the battery's dead because I haven't used it in a while and it's eventually discharged itself. but over the last week or so I've had a few occasions to use it and this wildlife video is one of them and I got to tell you I don't know if I could justify$3 ,500 to just watch these 10-minute videos but if you happen to have one or if you got one secondhand on eBay because I saw a report like a week or two ago where they're selling for like half price on eBay right now you know something like$1 ,500 which is still a staggering amount of money but more understandable for the sorts of things that you probably would do with a Vision Pro.

43:13But these immersive videos, they are unlike anything I have seen before. And I know that, John, you and I particularly went around and around the axle trying to discuss the difference between an immersive video and just a 3D video. To briefly recap, a 3D video is when you're looking at something that doesn't move, but it has depth to it. By that, I mean, if you move your head, you're still looking at a rectangle, right? The rectangle is where the motion is. But there's depth within that rectangle. An immersive video is where as you pan your head left and right or tilt it up and down, your perspective changes because it's like watching an IMAX movie or something like that.

43:51So you're looking around and changing the things that you can see. And this elephant video is one of the many examples that we just talked about, but it is really, really good. And part of what makes it so great is that they let you linger on each shot. If you recall, we complained about the soccer highlight reel because it was like, new, new, new, new. It was constantly, cameras constantly moving. And so you're always trying to get yourself situated where you are on the pitch field, whatever. It was very frustrating. Well, these are not like that. These are very well done. And the immersive, the spatial audio was also very well done.

44:23So, you know, if one of the, they're not zookeepers, but one of the wildlife people is, you know, say directly in front of you and talking, but if you tilt your head to the left, then you hear the audio move to be entirely in your right ear because that's the ear that's closest to the person talking. It's really, really well done. And I had such an eerie, funny moment when I was watching the elephant thing. It was roughly halfway through the video. So it's like five minutes in and you're in a field or in an elephant habitat where they're trying to, you know, like care for baby elephants and whatnot.

45:02And of course, this is in somewhere in Africa, I think Ghana, if I'm not mistaken. And, and at one point, a bug like a mosquito or a fly or something like that flew at the camera such that it was just above the camera. And it was one of those things where it would, if it was real, it would have like hit you right in the forehead. And so it flies at the camera and I think it might have like pinged off, you know, just above the camera. So you can see that kind of like bounces. And I noticed that I shook my head left and right a little bit to flick it off my skin. The fly that was in the video, I just naturally didn't even think twice about it and kind of shook my head a little bit.

45:42So it would fly away and get off of me. And that's such a silly kind of dumb thing, but that's how real this stuff can feel in just in the span of a few minutes. And as much as it's kind of funny and silly to slag on the Vision Pro, that is such a good illustration of how real it can feel. And I'd like to briefly bring up one other thing. I know I haven't given you guys a chance to talk about any of this, but earlier this week, just on a lark, myself, James Thompson, Jason Snell, and Mike Hurley all got on an immersive or spatial FaceTime call. That's what it is. So So there was four of us and we were basically arranged such that I was sitting across from Jason, Mike was to my right, and then James was to my left.

46:31And we had like a half an hour, 45 minute or something like that FaceTime call. And it is not the same as hanging out with your friends. I mean, I still smile from ear to ear when I think about when the three of us were back together in San Jose and got to see each other for the first time in five years. It's not the same as that. But golly, if it didn't feel pretty close. Like it is, it really does elevate the experience and make you feel not like you're with your friends, but it feels really close. And I think also part of that is because the personas have gotten way better in the beta. They're not perfect, but they're way better.

47:06And so all of that is to say the Vision Pro is still kind of goofy and it's still just hilariously expensive. And it's still not something that I reach for all the time. but I do feel like the locomotive is starting to you know pick up some speed it's slowly picking up speed but it's picking up speed and we're starting to see Apple really start to care and I'm starting to get excited about where where this platform is going in the future I hope you're right I really really do I don't think this is enough evidence yet that Apple really is like you know putting them like getting the machine going like I what what this is is more promises and samples of future things that might be good but here we are like almost seven months into this product and we have so little content for it still if apple wants to make this take off they have to step on the gas in a substantially bigger way than what we've seen so far what we have from them now from this from these new promises is is just that promises and and teasers, and things that might be good.

48:12I don't think this is evidence of enough yet. When next January rolls around, and the Vision Pro will have been out for one whole year, we're going to look back and say, what did Apple do in this entire year of this new platform? And I think it's still going to be a pretty short list. And then we're going to be able to look back and say, oh, what about other people? What did other people do with the Vision Pro? What apps exist for it? What streaming services exist for it? Who else has made content for it? And I think that's going to be an even shorter list. and I know you're going to talk about apps in a second but we're just not seeing like if you if you extrapolate out the lines of like here's how much is available for this here's how much traction this is getting here's how many customers are buying it those lines even if you extrapolate them out you know a year or two down the road they're still very very low we need to see this this is great we need to see a lot more than this yeah and it's funny you bring all this up because the other thing we wanted to talk about with regard to Vision Pro is that apparently according to 9to5Mac, there are more than 2 ,500 native apps for the Apple Vision Pro.

49:13Let's not focus on the fact that there's probably millions for iOS, but there's certainly many, many, many, many, many thousands. But hey, there's at least 2 ,500 for Vision Pro, and that's better than none. You should look at what the App Store curve was for a number of apps over time. Obviously, I think the App Store went better than this, but 2 ,500 is more than I would have guessed, right and obviously every app is not created equal it'd be better if they had a netflix app or whatever but uh you know like there's since this is a chicken egg situation and apple controls both the chickens and the eggs because they make the vision pro and also they are making content they can kind of decide how to resolve that um you could argue that it might be better for them to plan for content uh release first party content release for the vision pro to accelerate around the time they released the lower cost one because that's solving one side of this equation oh people you know third parties don't want to make content until we sell a lot of vision pros and obviously we're not able to sell a lot of these 3500 ones so let's release the cheaper one hope that sells better hope that will spur third parties from going like if apple went all in and spent gobs spent like apple tv plus kind of money to make content for the relatively tiny number of people who bought the 3500 headset that may not be the best use of their time unless all that content is evergreen right so no live sports or no you know uh olympics coverage or anything like that because there's just not a big enough audience for that so they may be holding back and say if we're going to be spending money for vision pro stuff let's let's plan to spend it so that the content comes out after the low-cost headset which who knows when that could be but anyway uh if we if the vision pro had launched in the u.s and all the things that we just read had launched at the same time as the vision probably like okay you know good start for a new platform but given it's been in a seven month wait it's a problem and as people pointed out in the chat room it's been seven months for us uh but it just came out in other places in the world so it's a little bit of a sort of staggered launch here i continue to think that the if apple is committed to this platform uh that the slow and steady approach is a reasonable one even though it is as i keep repeating very frustrating for the people who spent 30 100 on this thing and also like apple is not like intentionally slow playing this they're pushing it hard like i've i have gotten three different calls from app store from apple store business reps trying to sell me a vision pro by the way i already own a vision pro which i bought from the apple store but hey i i have i like the business reps are pushing it hard the developer relations staff is pushing it very very hard like they are pushing hard for people to adopt it with their apps and for customers to buy it they're pushing very hard so they're not intentionally holding back this is what they have this is all they have there's not going to be i don't think some you know future where all of a sudden a flood of a bunch of stuff comes out they were just holding back artificially no not holding it back but they didn't budget for it right like so they're trying to sell you a$3 ,500 headset that you already bought right but that's different than essentially putting money you know like like an apple tv plus content right putting money to produce video content paying someone to produce these you know record the weekend singing paying the nba to do the all star things you know like that's production budget right and you can choose how much of that you want to make when they launch apple tv plus they spent millions and millions of dollars to make tv shows and movies and all that stuff and get tom hanks to be in a movie and get jennifer aniston to be in the tv show and and you know right now they're cutting those budgets on all those things because a lot of people are right but they can choose when and how to spend money on content for this thing and they are spending money for content but they're not spending you know tom hanks movie money right which by the way that movie didn't do it well with apple tv like you never know quite what's going to hit especially with the creative content but that's what they could be not holding back but saying when we have our schedule for how much money we're going to spend on content and when that content will be available let's plan for the best biggest amount of content to come at a point after we think we have a chance of selling more of these now maybe in the beginning like i said before maybe they thought they would sell way more than this than they have but they couldn't have thought they were going to sell more than the screens they could get and that was capped at like a million and so that's like a half a million uh vision pros worldwide and it seems like they might not even reach that so the plan for year one of this thing couldn't possibly have been for content that would not make sense when the total possible viewership is half a million people right and what you're seeing i think is content that makes sense for a maximum possible viewership of half a million people that's what everything we've read off here that makes sense to me right and again if they wanted to they could have done something evergreen uh you know an immersive movie with tom hanks in it because that movie you know you can watch it next year and it'll still be good It doesn't age out, right?

53:48But live sports ages out. Concerts, debatable. Little demo reels probably age out because there'll be more impressive stuff. I don't know. We're not inside Apple. I don't know what the strategies are. But I look at this from the outside and I think, well, this is not great for people who bought one. And it's not great that Apple couldn't sell them at$3 ,500. But the strategy makes sense to me given what we know about what they released, how it sold, and the rumors of what's in the pipeline. Again, frustrating, but it makes sense to me. Yeah, I guess that's true. I just I feel like for a company with effectively infinite money, you would think that they would want to just throw a big old pile of money at this problem and fix it and have people say, oh, my gosh, you would not believe how cool it is to see, I don't know, say the weekend's concert or, you know, whatever the case may be.

54:34And I'm just a little disappointed that they haven't done more. But you're right. I mean, the numbers do bear that maybe this is the right amount of content. And I hope they, I bet they do think maybe one of these hits and will give us a hint about where to really put that money for like the one that, you know, the content that's going to come out timed with the cheaper one, right? Is it going to be concerts? Is it going to be sports? Is it going to be that short film? Like the things you let off, they're covering a lot of different bases. They're not all just, let's take you in a hot air balloon.

54:59They've got music, they've got sports, they've got narrative movie, which is the first thing I've seen, you know, announced, right? Like, and of course, they have the whole app story, right? I don't think they know which of those things is going to be the most compelling to people. What's going to make them spend$1 ,500 on the next headset? Which one of these things will appeal to them? And where should we put our money? Should we just do tons and tons of concerts and ignore everything else? Or should we do all live sports? I think this will help them figure it out, presuming they have viewership numbers on these things.

55:30Again, timing's important here. You said they have music, they have sports. No, they don't. They are promising to maybe sometime in the future have like one music concert have one sports weekend like we need this all makes sense for them if they didn't need to convince people to buy this and if they didn't need to keep people happy who did buy it well i mean they don't need to keep you happy if you did buy it because they already got your money um but uh yeah like this is stuff that's you know i mean first of all this announcement this announcement was from july and already some of the things that they announced did come out on the dates they said they would so i believe that they're actually going to release all this stuff when they say they will because it's not that much stuff it's it's a small amount of stuff but i think what you are basically a test audience anyone who has these things and is still actually using it in any way you are the test audience to see how engaged are you with these things that they release uh and even though it's a tiny test audience uh they should be able to tell from that which of these things is more appealing and you know which of these things do they do people tell their friends about to their friends go i don't suggest you buy the$3 ,500 thing, but man, you should check out this concert.

56:35It was really cool or whatever. You should check out the sporting events, right? We'll see. I still think this is a slow burn here. In terms of like, oh, it'd be great if they just spent tons of money. Well, a company's not going to spend tons of money on a thing that it's not even sure is worth spending a ton of money on. It's up to the hardware to sell and then to motivate them to make the content, and it's up for the content to... It's a give and take, right? You can't just say, okay, well, when I'm budgeting all the money we have yes granted apple has you know effectively infinite money what you can do with that money you can do a lot of different things right uh for example getting out of china takes a huge amount of money and time and maybe a better use of your time than spending 300 million dollars on content for 150 000 people who use their vision pros every day right so you know baby steps we'll see again frustrating to the people who own them but so far it makes me think apple is just being patient with this now the fear is always the home pod thing are they being patient with the home pod or they just not care about it several years ago we're like okay well they don't really care about it right well we'll see how it works out for vision pro right now i think they're just being patient how many people right now do you think use vision pro regularly total in the entire market my 150 000 was my guess 100 you think 150 000 people use a vision regularly yeah that's my guess out of uh out of like maybe 300 000 sold so half of them right I would estimate more like maybe 20 ,000.

58:00Only Apple knows. I'm just guessing. I don't even own one myself, so I could not tell you. I don't know. The thing is, for me, I do turn to it from time to time. And there are very specific times that I think it's extremely useful to have. Because I have no self-respect, I'm happy to use it on a plane or a train. We've talked about that many times. And it is phenomenal. It is utterly phenomenal to just be immersed in a movie and the plane or the train that you're on effectively doesn't exist. Like it is amazing. This spatial FaceTime I was talking about was super cool. I do really enjoy watching the immersive video.

58:39Unfortunately, you know, once you see it, you've mostly seen it. And there's a sum total of what, like an hour of immersive video on the entire platform. But it's cool. um so and then uh what what if the marvel app slash interactive storytelling thing i actually have only done the first like 10 or 20 minutes of it because then i got busy and then forgot about it but the 10 or 20 minutes despite me sounding blase about it was actually extremely cool um so there are times when i i turn to the vision pro in and there are times when i'm glad i have one i wouldn't say i'm always glad i have one though and that's the tough thing but i i don't I don't want to count it out quite yet, even though it's definitely, it's definitely, I was going to say an ailing platform.

59:25I think that's a little dramatic. It's, it's not a platform that's really, you know, that's really hit its stride yet, but I can squint and I can see several different ways in which it could. So I hope it does. Honestly, I really hope it does because they do have some great engineering in it. There are some really cool ideas. There's a lot of potential. There's also a huge number of big mistakes they made, and I think they have botched the launch in really sad and impressive fashion. And so there is something to save here, but they have to save it in order to save it. Like, we need to see action and, you know, potential changes here and there and in both the product and in the ecosystem that they need to jumpstart.

1:00:12and so until we start seeing like significant moves in those areas it's hard to see it as anything other than a flop and honestly really i i honestly genuinely think like john said 150 000 people he thinks regularly the user i honestly think that might be off by a factor of 10 like that's how it seems like like i mean granted this is not like a platform that you see people using you know outside very much because it's not made for that but like i've seen more cyber trucks in real life than I've seen Vision Pros. Like, that's saying something. Well, Cybertricks, you do use outdoors. True. And by the way, you said they were pushing this thing hard.

1:00:47If they were really pushing this thing hard, they'd be giving it to developers that they want to make apps. They'd be giving it no strings attached. They'd be saying, you don't have to make an app, but here, we'll just give you one and think about it. That's how you actually push things hard. The fact that they're not doing that shows that, A, they're Apple, because they don't ever give things away, and B, that they're still kind of like, no, we'll just take it slow and steady because i mean honestly they should have been giving them away that's one good way like give it away to the good developers again using apple's knowledge of which developers you think make quality applications and you know entrust them with free essentially dev kits right but that's hasn't been the apple way for a variety of cultural reasons that don't make a lot of sense and so if you ever see apple do you ever see apple free just even if they just had like a developer purchase program which they've done before like in very small ways but they if they had a developer purchase program where like a developer of like a reasonably established app could buy one for like half price or you know something like that like get them in the hands of developers who would appreciate the discount and therefore overlook some of the math behind the market and actually get apps out there but ultimately even that i I think that would help a lot, but what would help even more is content and not only making a ton of content themselves for it, but also maybe making moves to repair relationships with third-party content providers that would be important for it, like the big streaming services like YouTube, Netflix.

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1:05:02Let's do some topics. And first thing we have to talk about is that apparently the Mac 4 Mini will be really mini. So this is from Bloomberg. Apple is planning a new version of the Mac Mini that will be its smallest desktop computer yet. This is the first major change in the Mac Mini's form factor in 14 years. So a mere three years before we started this program. That's when it was changed last. The device will be far smaller than its predecessor, approaching the size of an Apple TV set-top box. Despite the smaller overall design, the new Mac Mini may be taller than the current version. Today's model is about 1.4 inches high.

1:05:35The updated edition will still feature an aluminum shell, though. Apple has tested models with at least three USB-C ports on the back of the Mini, in addition to an area for plugging in the power cable and an HDMI port for connecting the device to TV sets and monitors. People involved in the development of the new Mac Mini say it's essentially an iPad Pro in a small box. That's cool. so i wish we had a little bit more information about this my first question is obviously internal power supply or not because you can make it real small if you put the power supply in a brick but that hasn't been apple's way the apple tv is really small and it has an internal power supply and it's pretty cool i think there's no reason they can't keep up with an internal power supply and i like the idea of the mini being redone but my question for this is for a desktop computer this is not a portable as far as i know there's no rumors of this having a battery or anything like that for a desktop computer uh what is the smaller size buy you i agree that the current mini is too big like we've all made fun of it when the m1 mac mini came out and people cracked it open and half the box was empty because they just use the same box from the intel one and this giant monster overpowered like ridiculous power supply there was like two or three times as much power as it needed but you know they're just saving money you have the existing case but they did it with all the m1s the you know devices they just use the existing cases make sense and it makes sense that they would shrink it but apple tv size it's getting to the point now where i feel like the cords are going to pull it off the desk because they weigh too much you know what i mean with like i'm all for a smaller mac mini but i hope i don't think the size of apple tv is necessary right just you know half the size of the current one i guess that sounds about right but when i picture an apple tv size thing and that's my mac mini i know it seems weird at that point like maybe make it magnetically attached to the back of the studio display or something like a little moray whatever like the little sucker fish things i don't know what they're called but hey you know once every decade and a half it's time to change the mac mini i think it's on the same schedule as the mac pro in that regard i hope they don't lose too many of the ports like you know the rumor is you know possibly three usbcs i hope it's at least that because the mac mini is really good for ports for its size so i hope they don't lose too many ports because again like you know what so to make it smaller that i think it serves multiple angles one is smaller will have less stuff in it it will have fewer ports it will be a cost savings for them like to just making it smaller will probably be a lot cheaper and they will make a higher margin on it so you know good for them they need more money um so you can fit more of them on a shipping in a shipping container you know what i mean like all the shipping costs the packaging costs like everything that's that's in and it's called the mac mini like it's in the name this is the one they make small i'm you know i don't begrudge them making smaller they should of course right so you know number one reason to make it smaller they will save money whether they will pass it along to us well they won't but they will save money okay but also when you look at the apple silicon series imax you know the the new slim colorful ones those were desktops that got people excited about a desktop for the first time in a pretty long time because they were interesting and cool and they they took it in a different direction that like that kind of got people's attention again and it didn't revolutionize the world desktops but it took this one desktop that already existed and made it cooler and made people like it again and made it get into the news and kind of capture people's attention again that will happen if they make a very tiny mac mini that will happen to a smaller degree but that will happen for the mac mini so that's a reason as well and and then i think finally i think a lot of mac minis end up being used in places where space is at a premium things like data centers like if you have like a server rack where you have a bunch of mac minis and some kind of custom mount or something like that that will actually be you know a substantial upgrade for for you to be able to fit more of them in a rack especially presumably as they're continuing to be very power efficient and everything like that um that also would be a lot better with internal power supply as john said so i hope it does keep that and i think it probably will um so when you look at how the mac mini is used like it's used in a bunch of different ways and most of those ways would either benefit or be neutral if it got smaller the only way that would really kill it i think would be if it starts needing dongles for everything that it wouldn't i I mean, it's not going to kill the product, but that would start reducing the utility of it in certain ways.

1:10:05And if it thermothrottled a lot, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If it thermothrottles, that will, too. So what I'm hoping they don't compromise on is thermothrottling. Good one. I hope it's still internal power supply. And again, looking at how many of them are being used in like kind of utility or data center roles. I hope it still has an Ethernet port. That's that would be a big one. And the Apple TV does offer that. apple tv has got got an hdmi port internal power supply ethernet port like there's no reason it couldn't have all these things not well before we get a bunch of feedback not all of them have an hd or excuse me an ethernet not not the cheap one at the cheap apple tv yes right exactly yeah anyway so if they can retain as many ports as they can and ethernet and internal power then it is then it still retains its utility for most of the ways that they are actually used so i hope that's what this is and if they can make it smaller while retaining that utility that's great if they cut too much from it to make it smaller i think that's the wrong move but we'll see so far again so far there the recent history of the mac mini has been you know it doesn't get frequent updates it never has it never will but when they have updated it recently it has been pretty good so i hope they continue that that pattern uh yeah i i don't think that there's a need for the mac mini to get particularly smaller but i love the idea of it again as both of you said assuming we don't lose ethernet assuming we don't lose at least a decent number of ports like for me i could totally lose the usba ports i know not everyone would agree but for me i'd be fine um i would also not want an external power supply i concur with both of you that i think an internal power supply is part of what makes it so wonderful.

1:11:51But that would be great. I wouldn't necessarily upgrade specifically because it's so small, but I would at least be enticed to do it because why wouldn't you? Oh, and thermal throttling. I agree with you, John, that if it has to aggressively thermal throttle, that would not be great either. But the Mac Mini, I would never want that to be my only computer for various reasons about the way I work with computers. But I really love the Mac Mini because it is so darn flexible. It can be like a little server. It can be, it could be your only computer if you want it to be. It could be a server that's co-located somewhere.

1:12:26You know, there's any number of things it can do. It can kind of be all things to all people. And if it can get physically smaller, sure, man, why not? I think that sounds really great. So I'm here for this. I don't know if I would buy one, but I certainly love the idea, assuming it's not Compromise City. It's by the way, the Apple TV also has Gigabit Ethernet. Anyway, I feel like there's a interesting convergence happening between the mac mini hardware and the apple tv hardware right like at a certain point especially if the mac mini is apple tv sized the mac mini is like an apple tv with a better soc essentially and ethernet port and uh usb ports rather like two rounded rectangles one's aluminum one's plastic uh with the power plug ethernet hdmi and then some usbcs on the mini like they both have apple silicon in them like is it just is the mac mini of that size just like the world's most powerful apple tv that doesn't run tv os and is the apple tv 4k slowly becoming kind of like the dtk was like a a slow mac mini that doesn't have expansion other than hdmi and ethernet remember the days when the apple tv was a thing that ran mac os right before it ran tv os or whatever there is like we talk about the platform convergence or lack thereof between ipad and mac but what is it about tv os that couldn't just be an app that ran on a mac mini because once it gets to be that small marco was saying like people put their mac minis in weird places it used to be that people would put their mac minis on their next to their tvs before streaming boxes existed before the apple tv existed because you could you know run a plex server on it connected to your tv so on and so forth and you'd want it to be small because it'd have to be with your tv junk right that's why the apple tv is very small and unobtrusive and you know like i don't i'm not saying these things are going to converge like the apple tv has a thread radio and you know the presumably the mac mini won't or will it we'll see but at a certain point apple making two puck size things with apple silicon socs in them at two different prices just starts to look like a wider range of apple tv powers if it wasn't for the os difference well i mean i mean first of all the os difference is substantial uh and second of all what's what part of the os couldn't just be an app like you launched the tv os app and it just runs everything you see there it's a full screen app it takes over everything it answers to the remote you know you know what i mean like there's i don't think there's any maybe i'm wrong maybe there's some part of tv os that's specifically tailored to have some sort of like real-time feeding but i feel like everything that it's doing is so within the power of the soc like it's so not a big deal to the soc this could all just be an app i mean it's not it's not that different uh in terms of you know technical grunt it's more about like massive differences in the kind of you know like the the the realities of hooking it up managing it the capabilities it has so like you know for instance try to try to configure a mac never connecting a keyboard to it uh it's it can be difficult uh there's all sorts of like just little details like if it was a mac it would have complexities x y and z and and anybody who's ever tried to use a mac as a tv computer you've run into these complexities before you know this like you know that it's fairly different also i would say like you know the apple tv costs 150 bucks the mac mini costs like six to eight hundred for a basic one and has way more ram and way more ssd space yet i'm like it's just it's it's a super it's a super high end but all the thing is they're both apple silicon they both have ram they both around the same base OS, right?

1:15:58You could have a macOS, you know, boot into essentially like Addy's or whatever, you know, thing that works through remotes. Anyway, I'm just, the hardware at the very least is converging, if not the software. And the software is close enough to each other that they could really have one thing that did both of them. I'm not saying they should combine them. I think they should probably remain separate, but it's very interesting that they are, what is it, carcinogenation? I probably pronounced it wrong, where so many different animals on earth have essentially evolved into crab shapes independently along different lines.

1:16:29Like they're not actually related to each other evolutionarily, but everyone ends up at crab. Well, maybe everyone ends up at Apple TV or Mac Mini, whichever one you decide is the standard bearer for the rounded rectangle puck shape. Well, we'll see what happens, but like I said, I'm excited for this. So there's been some big news this week. I'm in a good mood. I really don't want to be in a bad mood, but we got to talk about it we don't we don't have to listen we don't have to actually talk about this that much if we don't want to because i'm also in a good mood we talk about the mac mini it's fun we like do we really have to talk about apple being a jerk again like i i say this as somebody who i love you know my career that i've made in part by calling on apple when they've been jerks apple's being a jerk to patreon again more app store bs again apple is doing horrible things again with the app store commissions again like do we actually have to really drill it in again how just terrible this whole thing is and how much they're ruining the reputation especially among creators like my god what a terrible move like apple's apple's modern business model is to shake everyone down as much as possible they make half their profit is coming from making great products and the other half of their profit is about to come from shaking everyone down i hope we can continue to celebrate the former and i hope the latter is not forever well it sounds like you already did talk about it but uh i have a slightly different take on this like well just let's just say what the story is first i was gonna say let's let's set the stage here all right so uh patreon put up a blog post i think it was yesterday as we record it was early in the week but anyways uh reading bits and pieces from the blog post as we first announced last year and we'll link to their original blog post about this.

1:18:14Apple's requiring that Patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024. Again, this is Patreon's own blog post. This has two major consequences for creators. Number one, Apple will be applying their 30 % app store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop. Number two, any creator currently on first of the month or per creation billing plans will have to switch over to subscription billing to continue to earning in the iOS app. Because that's the only billing type Apple's in-app purchase system supports.

1:18:48So Patreon, just in case you're not aware, I presume all of you are, but just in case, Patreon is a way that you can say, hey, let's say ATP was on Patreon. We're not, but let's say we were. We could say, hey, every time we release an episode, you can pledge to give us$1,$10,$100, whatever the case may be. Or you could say every month on the first of the month, you're going to give us, you know, eight bucks or whatever the case may be. And you can do all this through the Patreon's website. And that isn't a possible in iOS, in the iOS app store. So now going back to the blog post, Apple's fee will not impact your existing members.

1:19:25It will only affect new memberships purchased in the iOS app from November onward. We've been working closely with creators to figure out the best way to help you avoid earnings disruption stemming from Apple's 30 % app store fee. Based on creator feedback, we've built an optional tool that can automatically increase your prices only in the ios app to offset the cost of apple's fee this way you'll continue to earn at least the same amount per membership as you do on all other platforms apple's in-app purchase system on the other hand only supports patreon subscription billing model uh so there's a thread about this on uh on maston which i'd like to come back to if that's okay uh but we'll continue on with the blog post apple's also made it clear that if creators on patreon continue to use unsupported billing methods or disable transactions in their iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their app store.

1:20:14Are you kidding? Are we surprised? Is any part of this surprising? I don't know. Probably not. The surprising thing is that it lasted this long. Apple's entire business model is, again, selling products, and then secondarily, which is soon to be matching them in revenue, or in profit, rather, shaking down as many people as possible. Apple makes a lot of money from hardware, and a lot of money from rents. That's what this is. And so they are going, like this is a pattern they've been doing for a long time. They're basically scrounging around the couch cushions of every possible app that's in the App Store.

1:20:51Apple has made a consistent effort to go and see where can we squeeze more money that we haven't been able to squeeze or that we haven't squeezed before, they haven't tried to squeeze before. And they are basically hunting around the App Store looking around saying, hey, looks like you're making some money. We need a piece of that. And they built a big stick. So this is a pattern they've been doing for a long time. And it's not necessarily like that somebody was breaking the rules and they go catch them. Usually it's – which is I think the case here. Usually it's like kind of a vague edge of the rules where like something has been okay for a while and Apple suddenly decides that's not okay anymore.

1:21:28And you have some money and we need the money. So therefore, we're going to reinterpret or change this rule to now include you. So please, business that we had really no role in creating, you need to now give us your money because we need it more than you do, obviously. All right. So there's this thread on Mastodon from Siderea. And Siderea writes, It's not clear to me why I would allow Patreon to take 5 % above and beyond payment processing when I can just get subscription service from PayPal for the price of payment processing. Oh, God, let me tell you, you do not want to use PayPal for subscriptions.

1:22:06Trust me. I did that before. Look, I'm not a huge fan of Patreon. It's fine. But I wouldn't use it myself. But my God, you do not want to use PayPal for this. If those are your two choices, pick Patreon. Trust me. So continuing from Cideria, what I am here for is the buy creation model. If you don't offer me that, then I can get what you're selling for much cheaper elsewhere. Yeah, so my take on this, Marco's already covered a little bit, is that like the rules in the App Store for what Apple wants a percentage of are arbitrary, kind of. Apple has changed them over the years. If there has ever been any kind of thing that they've stated to try to tell you what they're going to charge for, they've said we want to charge for digital things.

1:22:53We don't charge for physical things. There's lots of edge cases in gray areas. during the pandemic people were given like yoga sessions and they were doing them over the computer instead of in person and apple's like is that a digital good is that a physical one maybe we need money from those yoga people right patreon is kind of i mean it's not so much in a gray area except that like apple didn't charge them originally and they're really big and important and apple's like just let them be because it's kind of a physical thing like oh people are trying to fund a cooler and the cooler gets made well that's kickstarter patreon is like you're gonna you're gonna make a new painting every month and they're gonna pay you to do it because they're like your patrons patron of the arts or whatever like patreon you could have people pay you for anything literally anything right some of that stuff happens in the physical world some of it happens in digital some of it's like neither is that a digital thing i don't know but if you squint you could say okay I can see how Apple's somewhat consistent rule of digital things we want to cut of would eventually come for Patreon and say, well, you're kind of like a digital thing or you're more towards a little thing.

1:23:59So you want to cut of your stuff. Right. But that's just how Apple frames it. And I really think that's kind of like a back solving. Like, well, what are we already getting money from that we care about? Let's just say that's our rule. Right. what actually makes sense and what a lot of the feedback about patreon has been discussing is i'm gonna link it for the 17th time in the show my art of the possible post on hypercritical where it's like apple acts as if applying business terms to people will make them reshape their businesses to fit the cut that apple wants so if apple says we want 30 of this business and the business says there's not a 30 % for you.

1:24:39Like this is a low margin business that every cent has already accounted for by various people in the value chain. There's not another 30 cents, 30 % for you or 15 % or 5 % or any percent, right? Like we pay these percentages and everyone gets these percentages for doing the jobs they're doing. And there's just no money left for you. And Apple's like, we'll just change the shape of your entire industry and our business to make it so that this percentage is available to us because that's the way it should be. And what I wrote in this blog post is like, look, Apple, you can try that. But if it turns out that those businesses cannot or will not reshape themselves to provide your fee, then you just miss out on those.

1:25:14And the example that I've seen coming up during this whole kerfuffle is the one that has been coming up for years and came up when it was actually relevant was ebooks, right? You've got authors, publishers, resellers like Amazon, established royalty and fee structure from publishers to resellers and retailers and everything. I was in that business. I know where all the percentages go they're all accounted for right and yes the author kind of gets screwed they don't get as much money as you think they should there's a lot of businesses that are like that like the music industry but anyway setting that aside there's not another 30 or 15 percent hanging around for the maker of the phone that you bought the song right that's not part of the value chain and apple's like we think we should be and amazon was like okay well then you just can't buy ebooks on the kindle app on ios because there's not like if you let us do it without giving you a cut we'll put it in the app it'll be great for your users everyone will love it apple's like no you can't put it in the app unless you give us x percent right and that percent is not available and how many decades or years has it been that percentage is not becoming available that business has not reshaped itself to fit apple's desire to get that fee patreon is a similar model patreon you know connects people who want to pay for a thing with someone who wants to get paid for doing it whatever that thing is you know whether they want you want to pay them per painting they make or on a monthly basis or whatever it is and whatever they're going to do that's between you that's between the patrons and the person who has the patreon and patreon is the platform that enables that to happen and patreon takes a cut for being the platform that makes that happen and if you look at we'll put a link into patreon's like fees their fees have a range like if you if you got into patreon like really early like you know when patreon first launched uh patreon would take five percent uh and then the current ones anywhere anywhere from eight to twelve percent and those are the fees and they charge for payment processing and currency conversion and you know there's fees fees, fees, right?

1:27:02But the point is, if you add up all of Patreon's fees in the worst case scenario, like, you know, for the privilege of me doing this thing, for letting people sign up to give you money, for collecting the money from them, for then paying you out for the money that they gave you, for me doing all of that, Patreon takes this percent. And that percent, I think universally, is less than 30. So Apple wants a bigger cut of Patreon's business than Patreon takes. patreon is the business that connects people and people who do things and people who want to pay them for it right apple says yeah but we make the phone and the os where the app is that people use your service through and so we want a bigger cut sometimes substantially like three times bigger cut than you get because we think we provide three times the value that you the actual platform does I can understand Patreon saying there's not really room in our business for someone to make three times as much as we do on every transaction, right?

1:28:05A lot of people are mad at Patreon right now because, you know, some people are like, well, Patreon, rather than saying, okay, we're going to give Apple, it's 30%. And by the way, it's 30 % because Patreon is a huge company. Each individual person who has a thing on Patreon, they may be making pennies, right? They're making not a lot of money. Don't they qualify for the small business, blah, blah, blah. Well, Patreon does not qualify for the small business, blah, blah, blah, because they make more than whatever million dollars or whatever. So Patreon has to pay the big amount, not the small business program amount, which kind of sucks, whatever.

1:28:35Anyway, a lot of people are saying, Patreon, how about you just get your app out of the app store? You have a website. That's how a lot of people use Patreon is the app so important that you're going to give Apple 30 % and then basically give an automated way to pass that 30 % cost on to the customers who pay on Patreon, right? So that's what they're saying. Like, hey, people who are on Patreon, you can just basically raise the rates of all of your subscribers by 30 % if they use the iOS app, and then you'll get the same amount. It's like, yeah, but every single person who plays for Patreon is going to be paying 30 % more, and that 30 % is going to be going to Apple.

1:29:10And if you told them, hey, we're going to, I know you subscribe to this Patreon for this person, we're going to raise your prices 30%, but if you don't want that to happen, don't use the ios app i bet they would go fine i won't use the ios app i can go to patreon.com i know where the website is this website does not require the phone to exist it works fine on the web the web is the platform nobody owns i don't think i want to give 30 of my money to apple like if you told someone i'm paying five dollars a month and it's okay you know eight percent is going to patreon and the whole rest is going to no sorry 30 is going to apple wait what eight percent goes to patreon 30 goes to apple and the rest goes to the person i'm paying why is 30 going to apple it's like well if you do it through the web they don't get anything which by the way you probably can't even tell them unless you're in the eu but anyway people are mad at patreon saying patreon why are you doing this especially the people like that thing you read from the thread ms on it's like the reason i use patreon is because i can let people pay me for every sculpture that i make if i don't make a sculpture i don't get paid every sculpture i make this person pledged to pay me one dollar right so i put out a new sculpture i say here's the new sculpture and i get one dollar right in-app purchase doesn't support that right or paying even something as simple as paying on the first of the month you're like oh monthly subscriptions exist but they don't all start in the first of the month so some people have patrons who say on the first of every month i will collect one dollar from you because that's what you pledge for whatever it is that i do but apple doesn't support that within that purchase so patreon saying not only will we pass along the 30 cost if you want us to or not if you and then you can just pay the 30 we don't care who pays it or whatever um but we're eliminating those other two things where you get paid for every sculpture you make and you get paid on the first of the month because ios and that person doesn't support that we're just going to eliminate that for anyone who uses the ios app only people who use the web can do that and then furthermore we won't even provide an option in the app that says i don't want to use the app to do this stuff i'll do it all on the web i still want to have the app so i can look at stuff but i don't want to use it to pay because if we did that apple said apparently they'll take the app off the app store so i think there's plenty of blame to go around but this is i think just another example of a business that Apple wants to insert themselves into that just doesn't have that much money laying around for them.

1:31:14The users don't want to supply it. Patreon doesn't want to supply it. It's not as if they're taking 30 % of Patreon's cut. They're taking 30 % of the whole price. If you pledge$1 a month, 30 cents of that goes to Apple, right? And whatever percent goes to Patreon and then the rest, you know, goes to the person you're actually trying to pay. Apple simply can insert itself into certain businesses because they're already established and the cut is already, you know, everyone has decided that the distribution of money on that is acceptable to all involved. And when Apple power shoots in and say, we want a fairly large percentage, sometimes we want the second largest percentage because the person who's who owns the Patreon is getting the largest amount still.

1:31:53And then Apple second and then Patreon a distant third. That just doesn't make sense to people. It doesn't make sense to the people who have business on Patreon. It doesn't make sense to the people paying for it. And honestly, I don't even know how it makes sense to Apple because I don't feel like Patreon is going to be making them as much money as like in-app purchases on subway surfers or whatever so it's yet another you know it's kind of like wish casting wouldn't it be great if 30 of this existing business could go to us yeah we all have that feeling about lots of business i can look at all sorts of businesses and say wouldn't it be great if like how much of a percentage of patreon's business should the internet service providers have how much should the cellular companies have all those facilitate the transactions that are taking place arguably the internet service providers patreon couldn't exist without them shouldn't they get like 15 and when you if you start doing that and saying everybody along the chain is going to get some big percent that they're going to you know boost their uh stock price and their earnings reports or whatever it does it doesn't work it's not sustainable there's not enough money to go around to have like okay we're connecting we're connecting people who make things and people who want to pay for it uh unfortunately kind of like the music business uh you pay one dollar and three cents of that dollar gets to the person you wanted to pay and the rest goes to millions of different middle parties that have somehow found their way into this business and that you have to pay because they're monopolies to do opelies.

1:33:10And that I think is the real story here is how much room is there in a given, especially established business for new parties to come in, even if they're part of the value chain and Apple is part of the value chain, even if they're part of the value chain, how much place is there for them to come in and to demand money for the things that take place there? It's, I mean, at this point, I'm kind of surprised that Apple doesn't say, well, if you use Safari, when you go to patreon.com, we get 30%. If you use Chrome, we don't get it. But if you use Safari, we get 30 % because we're facilitating that transaction by having a web browser that we make.

1:33:42And they are facilitating it. But most people have decided that the web browser maker doesn't deserve 30%. But I guess the phone maker does because of in-app purchase. It's frustrating. It's frustrating on all sides here people are mad at patreon people are mad at apple people who are on patreon are mad that they have to figure out some other alternative a lot of these shenanigans this is not the reason we do this but because we're just a bunch of programming nerds but people were asking the chat room don't you guys use patreon don't you use memberful um we are in the privileged position not to have to do that because we're software developers so marco wrote the system that we use we do use a third party thing we use stripe which is a payment processor which is an extremely difficult thing to do but guess what stripe doesn't charge 30 yet yeah it shows like three percent yeah they charge what payment processors charge you know and patreon probably uses stripe behind the scenes and patreon charges for payment processing and i get they'd probably have make a little profit and the rest of that money goes to their actual payment processor which honestly is probably stripe right but not everyone is going to write their own membership program i would not recommend it in fact i don't think marco recommended no we can do it because we're a bunch of nerd programmers in a nerd podcast and no we're not going to start a competing business with patreon because that's not what we want to do but it's when businesses like patreon end up taking more and more of the money and at this point at this point like not taking more of it but like you know apple takes more of the money and patreon allows you to pass it on to your customers or to pay it yourself it just makes the people who are stranded there people who can't and don't want to write their own membership systems like that's that's why i use patreon i can't write my own membership system that's why patreon exists and all of a sudden prices are going up 30 and i'm getting none of that that's not a good feeling for anybody and honestly i really you know guru wrote about this today like people are saying hey patreon just pull yourself out of the app store that's the what's what it's come to right now is that people are so against apple-ness that they're saying look uh these companies should just not be in the app store it's not worth it develop like that's what people always say well if you just think if you don't think apple's cut is worth it take your app out of the app store and now finally we're getting a concrete scenario and an app that people are familiar with saying yeah pull the patreon app it is not an essential part of the patreon process and maybe patreon knows something that we don't maybe they know that that is their biggest sales funnel if they pulled the app they would go out of business right in which case maybe apple does deserve some percentage of or whatever but honestly we're never going to find out until someone uh tests that theory because i feel like the web is a perfectly reasonable like we don't have an app we don't have an ios app within that purchase we just have a website atp.ifm slash join every single one of our members went through that website to join.

1:36:17None of them went through an iOS app. There is no iOS app you can use to join our membership program. It's only on the web. And yet somehow people find it and join. It's a miracle. I hope the government steps in and breaks Apple of its addiction to extortion. That's what this is. Apple's business model is hardware and extortion. And it's a terrible place to be they are clearly uh incredibly shameless about it and and incredibly addicted to this revenue they this is exactly the role that government regulation plays when a when when a large monopolist uh which apple you know i know we can argue about the definition of that um but uh the the role they take here is the role of a monopolist and when a monopolist starts having undue influence over large areas of commerce that become damaging to an entire market, that's when government regulation steps in to regulate that monopolist and to force them to behave differently in certain ways to protect the health of the entire market.

1:37:23There is no question that Apple has reached that status, that Apple is abusing that monopoly power to extract things via extortion, to extract more money from lots of businesses out there. It is incredibly damaging to everyone, including Apple's long-term strategy. Again, I question Tim Cook's long-term strategy here. I do not think he is a good CEO anymore. I think his role in the company has run its course. I think he has done all the good he's going to do, and it's time for a different strategy. It really is. There we go. Aaron, mark your bingo cards. I know. Yes, of course. I need my own sound effect for this.

1:38:00Yeah, we need a sound effect. Marco calls for Apple executives to be fired. But where does this end? What is the strategy here exactly? The strategy here is begging for regulation. I don't think it's extortion, but if you want to see what Apple's model was, like I mentioned the music labels. The music labels have established a business where essentially this is the case, that the middle party gets most of the money and the artist gets the smallest amount. And to some degree, the movie industry has done that a little bit. At least they have some unions there to push back against or whatever. there are existing businesses that are shaped like that and i bet apple looks at the music industry and says wow this is amazing the music industry takes most of the money and whatever pennies are left go to the artist and the most successful artists are still millionaires but the but the the you know the music labels are billionaires and obviously digital music and streaming and all other stuff has sort of put a dent in that business but that's a business model that a business person could look at and say wow that's great we should have that for us but I don't think you can retroactively make that happen.

1:38:59Like Patreon is not a new website or concept. It's been around for a long time and the percentages are what they are and they have competition in this area and the money is distributed the way it's distributed. And part of the way these services work is they try to tell creators, come to us, to our site. We have the best features. People like to use our site and we won't take as much of your money as the competitor. But Apple's not competing on that ground. They're just saying there's an existing business and if you squint it looks like a digital thing and we say we get a part of all digital stuff that goes through our phone and we've been able to do that because a lot of the things on our phone started from zero and they arrived on our phone and then that purchase made them tons of money or whatever right but existing businesses aren't already shaped like that and they're coming in saying make room for us make room for us and even though there are businesses that are worse like the record labels apple can't butt their way into that either and say by the way we want 30 % of every single thing that we're like obviously they already sell digital music and do streaming and do all this stuff or whatever but like so maybe it's not a great i was gonna say i think they've already butted their way into that well but but they did that they they innovated their way into that by saying we'll find a way to sell your music in a way that people will buy it and they did it with the itunes store and then streaming in most cases streaming the labels are still getting most of the money it's not apple taking the large chunk of the money there right although i think spotify would have some dispute with uh the term competing any way into that because there was also a little bit of unfair competition with that but admittedly like yes they did largely get into that via competition that was partially fair and and also the artists were already getting screwed there right seriously getting screwed right and so they continue to get screwed it's it's terrible right but here arguably the people who use patreon were like they're okay with this deal they're like i give patreon eight percent and it's well worth it because i can't i'm not a programmer i can't write my own patreon website right i want the people who give me money to have the least friction possible and people know how to use patreon or whatever similar website you're using and for that i give them eight percent and it's well worth it to me 38 going and not going to me starts to be a different deal right and again you say well that's just through the ios app they can continue doing it through the web right i don't know what the funnels look like maybe apple is calculating that they are such an important funnel and i keep using that term but it's like basically where do users come from to pay you money do most of them come through the ios app do most of them come through the website what is the split right if ios is such an important platform for making patreon money that they feel like they can't leave then maybe apple is calculating that they can take this cut and apparently patreon is is not pulling their app and they're gonna they're saying yes we are gonna do this and prices are just gonna go up from everybody and what this should make people think is getting back to what marco was saying do we want to live in a world where the you know android ios duopoly has a stranglehold on the distribution of any service that uses your phone and is and they are able to take that percentage because they are the funnel because they are a duopoly right it's like oh apple is the funnel the apple gives you all your customers you should pay them percentage yeah apple gives us all our customers because there is no other way to get your app on the iPhone in front of people's faces other than progressive web apps, which Apple continues to fight against a little bit.

1:42:16And that's why. It's not like they're the funnel because they do such a great job. Except for in the EU, they are the exclusive way to put apps on people's phones, right? And Android and the Google Play Store, they're not exclusive, but they are the vast majority, right? The root of this is that they have, you know, they can command those prices because they are the funnel, because they are essentially a duopoly. and striking at the heart of that is not saying apple can't charge patreon money it's saying why should apple be the exclusive distributory of apps and it gets back to the whole eu dma thing or whatever so that's this is the period of turmoil that we are in right in the eu anyway governments are trying to break the exclusivity of distribution that is the root of all this stuff over here in the u.s we're mostly just being sad that patreon is going to be charging a lot more money and none of that money is going to be going to occur to the creators.

1:43:08But, you know, Patreon pulling the app or making Patreon competitors that don't use the app store or whatever, all of those are just kind of like hacking away at the leaves. The root of this whole problem is the Android iOS duopoly and maybe the Department of Justice is going to help with that, but we'll see. I mean, honestly, like, I mean, why stop at Patreon? Like, you know, how about what if a church has an app? You want to take, why don't you take 30 % of a church's donations? what about different uh charities and non-profits um can you just take 30 of all their income too if they happen to have apps i mean again why why stop here well you're talking about like uh you know the apple does make judgments about you know we choose not to take this money even though we technically could we choose not to because it's a nice thing to do like with non-profits and stuff like that kind of them but that is still the root of that problem there is still apple gets to decide no one no there's no there are no other influences on that no no competitor that can make different decisions to put pressure on apple other than android so apple and android kind of do the similar things uh which we'll talk about probably next week there's some another fun example of apple and android doing very similar things because they're essentially a duopoly uh and they there's no other way to get on phones and phones are used by everybody and it's you know i mean every time this happens people bring up the web and just go you know just uh so throw salt over their shoulder or whatever and say like, thank God the web exists because if it didn't exist, Apple would never allow it to exist.

1:44:37You know, the web, the platform nobody owns, not even Google, even most of the times it seems like they do, is the one sort of side door to this whole process for now, right? But the duopoly is so strong that they could say, hey, anything you buy using Safari, we get 30%. They haven't tried that yet because you buy so many things through there, but Apple likes to pretend you live in a world where it's only possible to ever give anyone money using a native app. It's not true. You can go to AP.FM on your phone and buy a membership from us. And Apple does not get a cut of that, even though you used your phone to do it.

1:45:09Isn't that wild? It's not wild. You used to be able to do it with computers that Apple would make and you could buy things through them. Apple got no cut of it. And somehow the world didn't collapse and Apple didn't go out of business. Let's suppose we're in an alternate universe where the anti-steering rule doesn't exist. And yes, I know the EU is basically that alternate universe, but just bear with me here. Let's say that Patreon could worldwide just say, hey, these are the prices if you would like to use Apple's in-app purchase system. But if you'd like to see other pricing, go to the web.

1:45:43Here's a link. Or see other pricing. You'd tell them the other price. Or get it for 30 % less by clicking on this web link. Yeah, this is the price on our website. Here's a link to get there. No argument. But my point is, even if you weren't allowed to show the price, I still feel like we would say, man, this is kind of dumb, but whatever. If people want to save a little money, they'll go to the web. The link's right there. And even better, you know, if Apple actually had to, what's the word I'm looking for? Compete. There it is. If Apple had to compete for the business, and then in that case, you could say, you know, oh, you can pay a 30 % premium to use an app purchase, or you can, you know, not pay that and go to the web.

1:46:24Here's the link. I feel like if that escape hatch was there, I would be a tenth as grumpy as I am right now. But because Patreon isn't allowed that escape hatch because of Apple's bullshit rules that are one of their many, then there's no escape hatch. And so now Patreon's screwed. And Patreon being screwed, like, that sucks because, you know, I feel for them. but the people I really feel for, which is what you two have also been saying, is the creators. These are people who are just trying to eke out a living, not different than us. They're just trying to eke out a living doing something creative, and they're trying to get rewarded for their efforts, which, again, is not unreasonable.

1:47:08And yet, because of Apple, all these creators are potentially going to get screwed, and that's just not fair. and I don't grasp what Apple's going for here. Intellectually, and maybe, I guess this is probably where it stops and I just need to shut up, but intellectually I get they just want more money. They're a corporation that just wants more money and it's as simple as that. And I get that, but I can't help but feel like especially in the last year or so, Apple has been trying to get as many own goals as they did during the aforementioned butterfly keyboard era. And actually, I would say it's worse now because if you didn't want a butterfly keyboard, you just don't buy a laptop.

1:47:53But here, what are you going to do? Not use an iPhone? Like, yes, I guess you could go to Android, but so many people are not going to do that. And honestly, in Android land, it's basically the same thing. Yeah. So I just, why, why? Is it worth it to you for everyone to hate you? Is this money from Patreon worth it to you for all these creators to say, you know what, f*** Apple, because they're a bunch of a**holes anyway. like is this really worth it apple is this worth it and it's easy for me to say but i don't think it is i don't think it's worth it and i think what apple isn't realizing is they're doing damage possibly irreparable damage to their brand and as much as i hate you brand i i hate kind of referring to them that way but it's true people are looking at apple and unequivocally saying they're the baddies now and that's just too bad and i don't know i i don't want to be that person that's wishing for the glory days of the years of you know years past uh but i can't help but wonder if that's how who i've become when it comes to apple and i think marco it was you that said earlier this very episode you know their hardware is incredible and you know what a lot of their software is too, but their policies are just awful and getting worse with every day.

1:49:12And I don't really care whose fault it is, to be honest. I don't care if it's Phil's. I don't care if it's Tim's. I don't care if it's Eddie's. I don't care whose it is. It's just gross and it's unnecessary and I hate it. And I guess I should do a little introspection about why I'm so worked up about what a corporation does, but it just stinks. And I really wish they would choose different options, But anyway, now that my rant is over, again, I come back to if the anti-steering rule wasn't there, if Patreon was allowed to say, go look at the website, or again, if Apple had to compete, if the App Store had to compete with the web, then I feel like this would be not a nothing burger, but it would be much less of a big deal.

1:49:57But because of Apple's absolutely absurd rules, here we are. And it just sucks. That's part of like, it's part of a sort of, we always think like, what is Apple thinking? Like, do they have a different view on the inside? Part of what lets you know what you can charge for the things that you make is competition, right? So like, if you make a thing and you think it's worth X and you set the price way too high, you'll find that out because people will buy competing products instead of yours. You know what I mean? Or if you have an array of services and boy, this one isn't selling well, but this one's selling like gangbusters.

1:50:28And in fact, we raised the price on the popular one and people are still buying it. People must really want that, right? there has to be competition for you to learn what part of the value that I'm providing do people want to pay for, right? And what part do they think is not worth paying for? And I think Apple, for whatever reason, inside the company, doesn't, like, they don't, not for whatever reason, but because they don't have that feedback, they don't realize what part of the things they're providing are valuable and what aren't. They just think, like, we make the platform, and because they can make any rules they want, the only feedback they get is like the most extreme of like someone pulls patreon pulls their app from the store like that's literally like the grumbling they get or whatever like ah they'll still pay it obviously the the the you know the ip that we're providing is worth the percent we're getting and they grumble or whatever they keep paying in and it's like your feedback mechanism can't be if they don't literally stop doing business with us entirely it must be fine and so they think like our role in that patreon transaction is worth 30 percent And no one from the customers to Patreon says, Apple, are you kidding me?

1:51:30Patreon's percentage isn't even 30 % from using Patreon, right? There's no way yours is, right? And again, you can argue how much of that is the ISP, how much of that is the company that assembled the phone, how much of that is the cellular network. And they don't get cuts of all that stuff, right? But Apple says, well, we charge this amount and people pay it, so we must be worth it. It's like, no, you're not in a market that lets you know if what you're doing is worth it because you don't actually have competition partially because of rules that you made that says people can't even show that hey you could get you could get this for 30 less on the web suddenly if people saw that option like wow people are choosing in-app partners way less than they used to when they see they can get it for 30 off somewhere else because people buy things on the web all the time i swear to you on your own phone it happens and so in the absence of that of competition it makes it so they can't tell they can't they i find it hard to believe it's like surely they know right but it's increasingly become my theory that they're they're able to maintain the fiction that these percentages are appropriate because they think that's how much value they're providing and they don't realize that or they don't they haven't internalized that it's because you know they have captives that it's not a competitive market that it's duopoly and that they set these incredibly anti-competitive rules and you know maybe they'll figure that out from the eu but in our long discussion of eu stuff and there'll be more of it i'm sorry everyone not Not in this episode, but in the future, because it continues to roll on.

1:52:54Even then, they're like, we will comply in a way to make sure that we get all the money that we were getting before. And it's just more complicated. And that also prevents true competition. And that also prevents them from realizing what part of how valuable is what we're providing. I bet tons of people would pay more than payment processing fees to use in that purchase. But more than payment processing fees and 30 percent or even 15 percent. There's still a gap there. What is the gap? We'll never know unless Apple exposes its services to competition. And you can see this company is offering these terms.

1:53:25Apple is offering these terms. And they're all on the same phone. And they all have the same access. And let's see which business, you know, compete. Have some competition. Then the water will find its level. And everyone will figure out how much we can charge for which services and which services people want and which services people don't want. Do you think people would be, including me, would be so worked up if there were no anti-steering clause? like if they could just link out to patreon.com do you think people would be so upset no because like patreon probably wouldn't have used in that purchase to begin with because their business is so sensitive to the cut that anyone takes to be clear patreon doesn't use an app purchase they literally like patreon already has their own user base they've already gotten from their own efforts and the and the efforts of the creators that use it mostly but they use the native app yeah but like so they already aren't using an app purchase apple is saying you have to start using an app purchase and of course then pay us by using it but when we chose stripe for our payment processing for our membership system the reason why stripe only charges three percent is because there is competition in that market and we could have chosen any payment processor and in the future if stripe says hey you know what we're going to actually start charging you 30 instead of three percent we can say okay see you later and we would switch because it's a competitive market we can do that and you that you the atp member hopefully would not notice that because you don't care what a payment processor is yeah well they would notice they have to like re-enter their credit card details but like anyway the whole point is you'd still you'd still go to atp.fm slash join you wouldn't go to a different place you'd still have the same membership account you would have to make a new membership account like yeah you wouldn't have started listening to a different podcast entirely like you wouldn't have to use an android phone like right like there'll be many, many differences, but, you know, because that's a competitive market.

1:55:09And ultimately, again, like this is the role of government. I know why Apple is not going to do this because Apple does not show concern for long-term strategy right now. Whether you agree with me that that's Tim Cook's problem and he should maybe go, that's up to you. But right now, look at where the company is. They currently make their biggest revenue driver from deals that are very likely to and probably very easy to strike down by government regulation. So, you know, There's significant risk there, plus risk in China, hello. There's a lot of risk in Apple's current financial situation. Whether you think that's good or not, from their point of view, it is the role of government to protect markets and the health of markets.

1:55:47And in this case, Apple is literally extorting an entire market that they keep expanding the extortion into. and it has grown to a size now that governments should and are stepping in to regulate and it's just a matter of time and I can't wait for that time and again, and I say this as an Apple developer who will continue to use in-app purchase and pay the percent in my app because it is worth it to me to continue paying that percentage for my app but that should not be the only option and I certainly would not suggest that every business out there that happens to be used on a phone sometimes you know needs to give apple 30 and had it be the only option like that's that's nuts if you were patreon and you launched your app with your own payment processing and apple just let you do it and you have that established for a number of years then they offered you in-app purchase you'd probably be like no i'm good because you because you already implemented and it's a much lower percentage right that's that kind of the situation patreon is in where like well apple finally came for patreon it seems like it should have come for them earlier it makes perfect sense but they didn't and so they've had years of doing this all themselves they already wrote that code they already maybe their code isn't as good as an app purchase maybe it isn't as smooth maybe they don't get to use like i mean hell they could use apple pay if they wanted i don't know if they do but either way if you had already done that in your app you like you're saying okay i'll just keep using an app purchase because it's worth it to me because without it you'd have to write your own version of that and that would be a pain but what if you already wrote that what if you already use stripe on your back end and wrote your own in-app purchase loan you've been using it for 10 years then apple comes how about paying us 30 for a better version of what you wrote yourself and you'd be like is it better though and i've already written it myself and 30 no thanks and then apple would say how about if we don't give you an option or kick you off the store now do you like it you'd be like okay well well and we actually have there actually is a parallel to this apple podcasts and premium podcast support so apple podcast in you know a couple years ago long support for paid podcasts that you could like you could you could You could have people, as a podcaster, you could have your listeners buy your premium podcast directly in Apple Podcasts.

1:57:54Apple, of course, takes 30%. And as a podcaster, you could choose to do that. However, you are not currently required to do that. Now, what if Apple made a new policy to say, hey, now that since we have such a large percentage of the podcast player market, if your podcast offers a paid membership program, you now have to offer it through our service, or we will kick your podcast off of Apple Podcasts.

1:58:47that's where this is going. that and that's why we have regulation so i hope our regulation begins to work thank you to our sponsors this week tailscale and one password extended access management thanks to our members who support us directly you can join us atp.fm slash join where you can use our payment processor and and we only get charged something like three percent and you can join and you can hear our exclusive content and our other membership perks one of the member perks is atp overtime this is a bonus topic that we do every week and it's exclusive for members atp overtime this week is going to be about the breakdown of max sales by family that was recently published by carp research we're going to see kind of talk about the you know what percentage of max are you know different product lines and what that means that's going to be in atp overtime this week join at atp.fm slash join thank you very much very much and we'll talk to you next week Now the show is over.

1:59:47They 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 Mastodon 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 Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S It's accidental Accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Accidental Tech Podcast So long We were talking about headsets and VR stuff and even though I did the 30-minute Apple Vision Pro demo, that is basically the extent of my VR headset experience.

2:00:55Until now, on my summer vacation this year, my brother brought along the headset that he and his kids use. It was Quest. What is the most-written Quest? I think it was the Quest 3. I don't know. It was one of the MetaQuest headsets, right? and I got to use it for a little while and it was honestly a much more it was exactly what I expected I mean maybe it's because I use Vision Pro right and you know it's not like I don't know what VR headsets are but I felt like Vision Pro I had all the wow factor I go back to that episode where I was talking about my experience it was extremely impressive and really affecting in a way that the quest wasn't uh again maybe because I've already used the Vision Pro but uh what was i doing on the quest well honestly i was mostly playing games i was playing beat saber it's what everybody does with with these things i was playing whatever those other demo type things are uh and it really just reinforced things that it would have told you intellectually with actual experience hand controllers guess what they're really good for games everybody knew this i've said this many times now i've used one yep hand controllers they're really good for games beat saber pretty fun motion sickness is a thing like much profound to tell you obviously i'm personally very susceptible to motion sickness and honestly i'm surprised i did as well as i did in the quest i didn't feel like the lower resolution and lesser frame rate in the quest compared to vision pro affected my motion sickness i think it would get just as motion sick if i was playing beat saber in vision pro uh i don't does beat saber available for vision pro without the hand controllers no there is there's a there's like a different rhythm game that is i forget the name of it but it's not beat saber anyway beat saber is a cool game there's a reason people like it uh i thought it was cool i thought it was fun i enjoyed how responsive the hand controllers were they've got buttons on them it seems to know where my hands are i could do really fast motions i felt like it was mostly fair on the other hand i played uh forgive me i don't remember the names of all these things but there was table tennis essentially in there some kind of table tennis type game and that was not good i felt like the table jason likes i like it the 11 table tennis where you're like in like a like a loft it's like somebody's bedroom playing yeah i mean i'm sure all table tennis games look the same but i'm sure it was that one because i'm sure it's like comes with some game pack or comes with the headset or something right i felt so i do have some experience playing motion control table tennis right and i have experience playing real table tennis and i felt like the quest table tennis did not accurately represent how i was swimming like i was swinging like i would i would miss the ball entirely and i'm like there's just no way i wish that ball entirely and it was only for certain motions at certain higher speeds blame the controller john that was totally controller's fault i didn't miss no no the computer's cheating it was it was motion it was losing motion tracking essentially right and i say this because my the best experience that i've had playing table tennis with motion controllers is the uh i don't remember what it's called the playstation what was it called motion maybe you know the playstation controllers that have like a pink light up ping pong ball on top of them they're like a black stick with a light up ping pong ball whatever that was called for i believe the playstation 3 um anyway they had like a i think rockstar made it or maybe maybe i'm thinking of xbox one anyway someone made a uh a table tennis game with those motion controllers and those motion controllers are very primitive they were essentially gyros accelerometers and a light-up ball that a camera that was sitting on your tv the camera would see the light-up ball and that was way more fair in terms of look if you miss the ball you miss the ball but if you hit it it will register the hit and the quest one it got flummoxed too easily it got flummoxed in a way that i thought beat saber would get flummoxed but beat saber never did and i don't know what the difference is maybe it's beat saber like they're more like larger motions and less like less space critical because the blocks are so big and beat saber or whatever or maybe beat saber just like has a sort of client side prediction thing where it'll be like oh we'll just say you hit it it's fine but yeah i was missing stuff in table tennis that I was like, there's no way that I missed that.

2:04:52It felt disconnected. Whereas the only comparison I have for Vision Pro is people have said that they have successfully played real table tennis with pass-through on, and they were impressed at that work. As a demo of like, look how good pass-through is. I can play real physical table tennis with someone who's across from me, and I'm wearing Vision Pro and I'm using pass-through to do it. That was a great demo of how good, how low latency, how non-distorted pass-through is, that they wouldn't miss the ball because it was all warped or whatever. uh but i have to say uh table tennis really did show the limitations of uh the quest but beat saber on the quest it's like apple you could have this you've got the technology for this what you don't have are what can't be too expensive you know hand controller things uh and uh you know just get the beat saber send the beat table people a bunch of free dev kits and pay them 100 million dollars and have them a beat saber and vision pro it's ridiculous anyway i enjoyed it uh it was it was not the same as division pro but it definitely showed me something again that we all already knew people buy these things they play games on them because they don't cost 3 500 right i mean marco's son has one not a lot of people have them the psvr2 has not caught on that great either on a gaming platform but that is a use case that is proven in the market for some amount of people.

2:06:09And I came away from it saying, Quest, pretty good way to play Beat Saber. I don't know. It's not profound. I just want to say that, like, I'm dipping my toe more into the VR waters and it just reinforced everything I already thought about what VR headsets can be good for and the money that Apple's leaving on the table by stubbornly refusing to do certain things. Yeah, like, when you use the Quest 3, like, you really see, like, wow, this thing, like, For, you know, quote, only 500 bucks, that's a really good product compared to the Vision Pro. Like, it doesn't do everything the same way, of course.

2:06:47It doesn't have as high-resolution screens. It doesn't have, you know, certain specs don't match. But for like a seventh the price, it's a surprisingly good product overall. Another great compromise is setting aside, obviously, that it's plastic instead of aluminum and it felt fairly lightweight or whatever. I wore my glasses inside it. Oh. Why? Because it's not mine. it's not this is not fitted to me i didn't have the right headset size this is the one that like my nephews and my brother use a very wide range from like you know six years old to essentially my age right different head sizes or whatever it doesn't have special lenses i don't have to get anything measured i put my glasses on and i put it over my head and was it comfortable and awesome no but it was fine you know what i mean like this is the kind of sort of utilitarian uh you just like you just do what it takes to get the job done make the thing big enough for people to wear their glasses inside it it's not as good as the vision pro it doesn't look as good it's not as comfortable but boy is it so much easier for me to just pick up put my glasses on put the thing on my head and then go to town yeah and it worked right like it was fine yeah i mean you could see how low resolution the screen was but anyway i'm just saying like it's just it was so much lower friction than if he had brought a vision pro with him which he doesn't have by the way and i'm pretty good at beat saver like i bet everyone thinks they're good at beat saver because i think the game is tuned to make you feel like you're good at it because it's actually pretty easy yeah when you ramp up the difficulty you're like oh no i'm not good at beat saver yeah i guess like it was like rock band but no like i was never good at rock band i'm pretty good at beat saver like once you start adding in like the different motions where okay you can poke it and twist it and pop it and it's like it gets really complicated very quickly and you're like oh no this i thought i was good at this i was just playing on easy mode Beep beep beep.