625: Time and Smoke

33:00Starting today, users can download Apple invites from the app store, access it through the web at iCloud.com slash invites. iCloud plus subscribers can create invitations and anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple account or Apple device. Participants can easily contribute photos and videos to a dedicated shared album within each invite to help preserve memories and relive the event And collaborative playlists allow Apple Music subscribers to create curated event soundtracks that guests can access right from Apple Invites First we just have to acknowledge that it really annoys some people That invite, which is a verb, has been nouned Instead of saying invitations, because invitations is too long They say invites that's the name of the app it's not apple invitations is apple invites uh as language changes uh just got to deal with it as much as it pains me in some other instances this one i can tolerate but it does look better on underneath an app icon uh the second thing is why is apple doing this i i feel like there's like two interns at apple who get to build an app like every three or four years.

34:07And that's how you get stuff like clips or music memos and now invites. And it's like, these are all like apps that could serve a purpose and could take off in the market, but they never put any follow through behind these apps. They always get like one or two updates and then die forever and just never, they just get memory hold. They never get mentioned again. No one ends up using them. They get no traction. So, you know, like I think Apple's record with apps like this is even worse than like google's record of killing all their web service experiments it's like this is i'm sure this is a wonderful app maybe but why would anyone assume this would still be here in six months based on apple's traffic i have no idea yeah this is some some anonymous snark that we got regarding this is can't wait for this to wither on the vine just like journal and clips right yeah exactly yeah so setting that aside i've actually used the app uh and it doesn't look like it was made by interns it is fairly fancy and sophisticated it looks a lot like if you watch a lot of wwc videos where they do demo apps imagine the type of app that would be an apple demo app at wwc but like completed and polished right very much in the same kind of style and vibe where they would describe like let's do this and let's make this here and show this and let's have a nice background backyard birds right everything is a rounded rectangle and everything has pretty backgrounds on it or whatever and i have to say like as an example of i mean it's hard to pin this all on that but like apple makes so few new apps as as an example of like this is what apple thinks a good ios app should look like kind of like with system settings in the mac i'm not sure i agree with them it is pretty and polished but having used it to try for its intended purpose i'm you know made a fake super ball party and invited people to it and then that's exactly what i did you know it's the time of year it's why it's a good time right to try the app out i feel like just the the information architecture and visual hierarchy makes it more difficult than it needs to be to use the app in a utilitarian way like when it comes to stuff like this you just want it to work and you want just the facts and you don't want anything getting in the way and it's as cute as it is to have a nice background and a playlist and all these shading and rounded rectangles i found it to be visually noisy in something that i want to be straightforward like consider the difference between an app like this and something like apple's calendar or google calendar or something like that calendars are don't really go whole hog into this because like i want to see the days i want to see the events i want to see like i don't need everything to be shaded or floating or have borders around it or be in set on a rounded rectangle or have fancy backgrounds or anything like that i just i don't think this app i functionally i think people would find it harder to both use this app to set up a thing and make invitations and also more difficult to accept or reject an invitation or look at it to figure out when the invitation is like just the basic functionality of it like i think this app works way better in screenshots and wwdc demos than it does in real life for its intended purpose and it's not bad there's nothing like bad or wrong with it i just feel like sometimes it's i don't know too much too much uh missing the forest for the trees like i want the info it's too cute by half yeah i mean it's not even that cute it's not like they're shredding papers like the wallet thing or whatever it's just i'm not sure they've it's just it's kind of like a it's kind of like visually like really busy wallpaper like on a house right it's just too too much right i just need to know the event who's coming who's not how do i reply how do i set like and i felt like the app was kind of visually and interface wise fighting me i found a spot a lot of times searching for stuff that was just like beautifully inset and like text on a colored background or whatever.

38:15It's too much for me. Yeah, I agree with you. It is very pretty to look at. I think it's a very good showy example of what an iOS app can be. But the thing of it is, is that I feel like a lot of the conventions and maybe affordances, but the way it works is so dissimilar from standard iOS apps that I feel it's almost off-putting. Maybe that's because I'm getting older. I don't know. But I feel like a really good iOS app, to my eyes, is one that has the same conventions as most other apps on the platform, but does it in a very unique style. And I think, Marco, your work over your entire iOS career has been a really good example of this, where I think, generally speaking, you take the kind of gist of what an iOS app is, but put something or several somethings on top.

39:13A simple example of this may be a custom font. And I actually don't think that that's particularly necessary these days. And you've said the same in years past. But as a silly example, take a standard table view, but put a custom font on it or something along those lines. So you can still look and you don't have to squint to say, oh yeah, this is a table just like I'm used to. You immediately say, oh, this is a table, but it's a pretty table. And I feel like this app, while unquestionably very pretty, it's cumbersome on account of it breaking the conventions that you're used to. The other thing I didn't love about it is, so I set up a Super Bowl party for myself.

39:50That's a euphemism for something. It's going to be a real exciting party, y 'all. I copied the link to it, which I did approve. I approve of the fact that you don't need to send it to an email or phone number or what have you. And then I opened up a Chrome incognito window to go to that link. and see what happens. And it was very off-putting, not because it required me to create an account or anything like that, which would have been a non-starter immediately, but it wanted to do the, like, let's verify this email dance. And, you know, so let's verify the email by sending you a six-digit code, then you got to type it in.

40:27And I'd set my invite to require permission to say, you know, you're attending or what have you, or I guess it was maybe even to answer the question, you know, at all. And so once I went through with this anonymous user and said, okay, I would like to be a part of this, please. Then the, then the me, that's the invite owner, you know, I put that hat on again. So back on my iPhone, I guess you could say, I then need to approve the fact that this person even wants to see what's happening, which I get why they do that because, you know, my, my home address was on this invite, you know, as an example, but it's a little bit cumbersome.

41:01And then once the anonymous user back and Chrome goes to accept, you know, the invitation or decline or say maybe or what have you, it's got to do that whole login dance again or not login, but like, okay, I'd like to do this now. Okay. What's the six digit code? Okay. It's one, two, three, four, five, six, you know, and it's just a little bit off-putting. And I approve generally of the fact that they're trying to do this in such a way that, you know, you don't have to full on create an account, but it's, it's kind of a lot of work. And if you are not in the Apple ecosystem, it's certainly workable.

41:36I'm not saying it's impossible. And to be honest with you, in my experience with Evite, oh my word, this is so much nicer. So much nicer. But I saw somewhere, unfortunately I didn't think to write it down, but I saw somewhere that somebody had offered an alternative app that does this. I think it started with a P, but the name is escaping me. Yeah, the app that's complaining that Apple essentially copied that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. They cited the part of like the App Store guidelines that said don't upload copycat apps don't just take someone else's app and modify the interface a little so they're real bitter that their app this apparently looks and works a lot like their app but i think evite is a good example because i mean maybe there's no avoiding this but like if you are not apple if you do not own a platform and you are trying to make an app for people to make invitations to events you're going to make sure that it is platform agnostic because you don't want anyone not to use your app because someone in their family doesn't use the same platform or some friend doesn't use the same platform.

42:35You're like, look, it doesn't matter what you use. If you want to invite people to a thing, use Evite. We don't care what computer you're on, what device you're on, what OS you're on. We need to make it good and the same everywhere for everybody. Apple does not work that way because they are a platform owner and I think it hurts the app. So this is from, you should read this next thing from The Verge about Apple's ecosystem integration. Sure. So from The Verge, the experience has some hiccups for those not fully in the Apple ecosystem, which isn't surprising. For starters, where an iPhone user can go straight to the invitation using your link, assuming they're already signed into iCloud, Android users have to enter their email address and then get a verification code to get in.

43:15This is what I was talking about a minute ago. They'll also need to sign up for an Apple account to look at a photo album if you had one. And Android user or not, your friends need an Apple Music subscription to hear your playlist. Otherwise, they'll only get a preview of it. I mean, that I do kind of get, but it's all, I get both sides of that. Like, it's kind of crummy, but what is Apple really supposed to do there? Anyway, coming back to The Verge, none of that will keep Android users from seeing key details about your event or RSVPing to it, but it'll be obvious that they aren't getting the whole experience.

43:42It's kind of like with Apple and like Apple TV Plus or whatever. They just have to get over the idea that like, imagine if Apple TV Plus was only available if you had an Apple TV hardware puck. Like, that would be ridiculous, right? And I feel like they're in the same spot. It's like, well, what else can we do? of course the playlist is going to be in apple music and if you want to see the photo album everyone knows there's no way to share photos without having an icloud account so of course we have to make them have an icloud account like if you were evite or something you'd be like share a spotify playlist share a title playlist share all the youtube music you'd support them all because you don't want any reasons for someone to not use your thing you want to make like the best experience for everybody involved right and apple is kind of trying to do that but it's so heavily weighted jason at one point jason snell thought that you had to have an icloud account to do it simply because if you try to use an email account on an apple device that it knows you how that it knows is belongs to an iCloud account it forces you to sign into iCloud so he thought it was just impossible not to do it like they're just so heavily hurting you towards things and it's like in the end sending an invitation to an event and accepting an invitation does not require any kind of apple thing you can do it without it companies do it without it but of course apple integrates with it and makes that the happy path and i feel like it's going to have to make people feel like left out and then i feel like this whole experience doesn't pass the the very difficult i was gonna call it a sniff test but more like the very difficult trial that is using any technology product with people who are not technology enthusiasts like say you're planning like your parents 50th wedding anniversary and you being a tech nerd is like i know i'll set up an apple invitation for it and everyone's like what what is this what do i have to is this a thing like like what benefit like maybe they would humor you but they're like is this helping at all or is this just like now another thing we have to deal with and oh aunt sue has an android phone how is she gonna like and in the end they'd be like what benefit are we getting why don't we just use in evite everyone knows how to use evite we use that for timmy's birthday party last month like just this sort of the the disappointment and sigh you get from trying to foist any kind of sort like new shiny proprietary apple but look and you say but look how beautiful look how beautiful this invitation looks on my phone see how the background is color themed to the transparent buttons with a with a bright out and they're like i don't care just people need to know in like very high contrast bold simple text that's easy to find where and when the event is who's going whether they've already rsvp'd it like and that's where stuff like this falls down like i don't i don't fault the people making the app i think it's a beautiful app i think it makes for great demos but like this approach to making apps is a poor fit for what this app does maybe it's a good fit for food trucks or backyard birds but it's a poor fit for inviting people to an event because that activity has nothing to do with apple platforms nothing yeah uh party full by the way real-time follow-up part party full which we'll put a link in the show notes is the app that i was thinking of, which was mentioned actually in this Verge article.

46:44Yeah, I mean, I respect the idea. I think it's a good idea. I think that certainly by Apple standards, they have far more affordances for other platforms than they typically would. I feel like Apple forgets that Android exists a lot of the time. Oh, they don't forget. They just don't care. Well, okay, fair. But yeah, I mean, this, It is visually very impressive from a usability standpoint. I didn't love it. It wasn't actively bad, but it was just a little bit too different for my taste. If you haven't actually participated in it, seen it, what have you, a friend of the show, Steven Robles, has a good video on it that we'll put a link in the show notes for that.

47:25It's good. It's worth trying. And certainly if I had a situation where I knew everyone involved was in the Apple ecosystem, this is where I would probably turn. But I think perhaps for me, the best thing to come from this is I learned about Partyful, which is a alternative to Evite, which I freaking hate. And thankfully, I almost never have to do that. But still, I don't like Evite at all. And to contrast this, like when can the like all the same kind of philosophy, when can that when is that a good fit? An example would be something like maybe this is not a great example. It's an example that for my life is a good example.

47:59Flight tracking. Flighty on the iPhone is amazing. and its amazingness can be isolated to the iphone and still benefit you because yes there's like oh what if i want to share the flight with other people blah blah but in the in the use case where like because parties are always sharing with everybody unless you're having a party by yourself like casey right events events always involve multiple people but flight tracking sometimes in fact i would say frequently just involves one person right or maybe two people but not like a huge number of people and so the goodness of flighty being confined to the iphone i'm assuming it doesn't exist in other platforms being totally confined to the iphone does not hurt that application when you're using it solo to deal with your flights or a flight of one of your loved ones and you're picking them up at the airport you know what i mean like then you can go whole hog do whatever you want require whatever proprietary platform stuff or whatever because just me and my iphone and there i'm not like i'm not foisting this on other people if i was taking a family vacation and it was people an extended 25 of us were going to europe or something i would not say everyone buy an iphone and get flighty because we're all going to share our flights together and it's like that's it's too much i mean like for technology stuff if you're trying to make other people do something so they can use the technology thing that you like because you think somehow this is going to benefit everybody i can tell you most people do not agree that that is going to benefit them and to the extent they humor you you should be thankful but in general it's not a benefit.

49:28So yeah, I just, I think this is just the wrong approach. So it's a good thing this app will wither and die at some point. Brutal. I mean, you're not wrong, but brutal. Speaking of brutal, did you try it on the iPad yet? Yeah, I just saw I use it with Instagram. It's great. Yeah, exactly. Zero for three on new apps on iPad. No iPad app for sports journal or invites as we record this in February of 2025. Yeah, I'm so annoyed. Continue to be annoyed that Instagram has no iPad app. Maybe I should just stop using Instagram, but that hasn't happened yet. But anyway, it's been how many years? But then you look at Apple and Apple not putting its own small apps like they push so hard.

50:07It's like, make your app with this. Use Swift UI. You can deploy it on every platform and use the same same code base for Mac, for iOS, for iPadOS, for Apple TV. It's great. And then they come out with three apps in a row, sports journal and invites that are like small apps. And it's like, no, of course, forget about an Apple TV version. of it forget about a mac version of there's not even an ipad version of it not a good advertisement for the amazing cross-platform ability of their ui frameworks when they just like yeah no these are just on the iphone that's it yeah it's not great it's not great bob if apple can't be bothered to make its own apps be on the ipad what kind of leg do they have to stand on to say well you're not the second or third biggest company in the world but you independent developers working by yourself make sure you have a version of this for all of our platforms i mean that see also vision pro i mean most a large uh subset of vision pro apps that are pre-installed you know that that come with the os are just ipad apps rather than vision pro apps you know it's the same problem it's it's it's i don't know snakes all the way down at least vision pro like you know if you make an iphone app making a vision pro a good vision pro version of that is much harder than making a good ipad version of the app like yeah yes just i mean like even if it's even if you don't make a good ipad version just make a version that doesn't require you to run the phone version and then zoom it to 2x it was like like just minimal bait like again maybe it is two interns doing this i don't know again the app is well implemented it is a nice app it is a good app they should release the source code as a wdc demo i was just thinking that you stole it from me it's probably way more complicated than we think it is because all real even better all real apps are way more complicated and do weird stuff and they're not going to release it.

51:48They won't, but I think it would be an interesting case study. Well, we got the MacPaint source code now. So, you know, fast forward that number of years and we'll have the Sports Journal Invites source code on archive.org. Anything you feel like is missing from it, John? Yeah, so even just within the world of Apple stuff. So forget about this. It's you and your Apple using family. No worry about cross-platform stuff. You love the interface. You don't care that it's hard to find stuff or that it looks or whatever you just love it it's great even then this app doesn't do everything that it should because one of the most frequently requested things that people want when there's some event is a place to talk about that event in real time ish a slack channel or like a message group or whatever and guess what apple has a messaging platform it's called messages there could be a group message thread that would auto add everybody who accepts the invitation and you could discuss hey who's bringing potato chips who's bringing this but nope the app doesn't do that now granted it's just 1.0 whatever i like i understand but it's just like you have to go one direction the other either this is an app for apple users for who use all apple stuff and love apple things and everyone's all apple integrated or it's cross-platform and this is like half apple integrated but doesn't even integrate with all the apple stuff and doesn't even have a way to do one of the most frequently uh requested things like i think more people want to discuss who's bringing potato chips in a message thread than want to make a playlist for your party.

53:15We are brought to you this episode by Delete Me. You ever wonder how much your personal data is out there on the internet for anybody to see and find with a quick web search? It's way more than you think, and it takes way less time and effort than you think. You can see for yourself. Search for your own information out there and see what you can find. Your name, your contact info, your social security number, your phone number, your home address, and I think the creepiest thing to me, even that same info about your family members, that's all really easy to find out there. And one of the biggest reasons it's easy to find is it's being compiled by data brokers and sold online.

53:48Delete.me is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of these data brokers. So you sign up and provide Delete.me with exactly what information you want deleted from these data brokers and their experts then take it from there. They will send you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where, and what they were able to remove. And this is always working for you. It's not just a one-time pass. Delete.me constantly monitors and removes the information that you don't want from these data brokers. So they do all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from these brokers.

54:20So this helps reduce the amount of it that's out there. It makes it harder to find. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeliteme.com slash ATP and use promo code ATP at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash ATP and enter code ATP at checkout. That's joindeliteme.com slash ATP, code ATP. Thank you so much to Delete Me for sponsoring our show.

54:58all right uh hey parents if you are listening with young ones nearby uh we're going to talk about that news that's been going around the apple world recently so maybe uh pause the program if you have little ears i mean it's not we're gonna be talking about an app that shows people in it that just happen to not be wearing anything i don't think we need to get more hardcore than that i agree but you know in case you have a sensitive and young very young years nearby just be aware so So what am I talking about? Yes. So according to AltStore, Apple has approved their first porn app for the iPhone.

55:32And so reading from The Verge, the first, quote, Apple-approved, quote, porn app for iPhone is rolling out in Europe via AltStore's PAL alternative to the iOS app marketplace. AltStore PAL developer Riley Testit says that Hot Tub, which describes itself as an ad-free adult content browser, has made it through Apple's notarization review for fraud, security threats, and functionality. and will be available for AltStore Pal users in the EU to download starting a couple of days ago. So AltStore had a post on Threads, which we will link in the show notes. And there's an image on there that says, Introducing HotDub, the first Apple-approved porn app.

56:08Download now on AltStore Pal. Apple was not happy about this at all. So Apple issued a statement to several different outlets. We are deeply concerned about the safety risks that hardcore porn apps of this type create for EU users, especially kids. This app and others like it will undermine consumer trust and confidence in our ecosystem that we have worked for more than a decade to make the best in the world. Contrary to the false statements made by the marketplace developer, we certainly do not approve of this app and would never offer it in our app store. The truth is that we are required by the European Commission to allow it to be distributed by marketplace operators like AltStore and Epic, who may not share our concerns for user safety.

56:43Sick burn. Riley tested again, reacted with a toot of his own. It reads as follows. My response to Apple's statement on Hot Tub. There are two screenshots, the first of which is a post from 9to5Mac. Riley has highlighted the following passage. Contrary to the false statements made by the Marketplace developer, we certainly do not approve of this app. The second screenshot is App Store Connect saying, and I am quoting, the following app has been approved for distribution. App name, Hot Tub, video player. Riley, or Alt Store broadly, then had a later on response. That response reads, Apple is claiming we made false statements about the approval of Hot Tub.

57:27This is not true. All apps distributed with Alt Store Pal must be submitted to Apple for notarization. Unlike Mac OS, iOS notarization involves a human review process where Apple employees manually review apps before they are either, quote, approved or, quote, rejected. for distribution, in Apple's own words. Unfortunately, Apple has rejected several apps from our store in the past for dubious reasons. So the phrase Apple approved in our marketing is a reference to the fact that Hot Tub was approved, not rejected, by Apple for notarization. To be perfectly clear, Apple has not endorsed Hot Tub in any way.

57:56However, they did approve it. Yeah, I mean, this is the stupid situation that Apple has gotten themselves in. Let me just repeat what you just said, because it's important that Apple has gotten themselves in. Right, because they are the ones who made notarization editorial for the EU. Again, we've gone over this before, so I'll be quick. What the notarization process has been for years before this was a process on the Mac that software was run through only automated checks. And it was mainly to look for known malware signatures. And then the main thing about notarization is that if an app was found to contain malware, to be malware, that was notarized.

58:43Apple could then revoke that signature server-side, and then all Macs would eventually, I guess, get that revocation and not allow that binary to run. So that was an automated process that did not involve Apple having human reviewers look at each app. they used the same word to describe a very different process with the alternative app stores in the eu they use that same word to ostensibly do the same thing of like we're just going to give it a cursory check to make sure it doesn't it isn't literal malware for security reasons but then they started rejecting apps that were not malware like the vmac emulator because they rejected on trademark grounds.

59:27Now, I actually understand why they did that because trademarks need to be defended. And if you don't defend your trademark and if there's evidence that you're not defending your trademark, somebody could try to get it invalidated. Well, when they say defending your trademark, they mean like suing people, which they still could have done while still allowing it through. You know what I mean? Oh, yes, of course. But if they decided that this is going to be a human review process on iOS, because here's the thing. Apple hates that they have to allow the EU ad. They hate it so much. And Apple is not a good loser.

1:00:01They're a very sore loser when they lose an argument about something. They hate it. They cannot deal. And so they decided to be Apple about it and have no flexibility and try to be as weaselly and prickly as possible to try to make the alternative app stores fail as much as possible. And so they put themselves in it. They injected themselves into this process that is ostensibly only for automated security checks everywhere else, but they made it a human review. So now, anything that actually gets, quote, approved through notarization on the EU alternative app stores, yes, a human at Apple definitely did look at that and definitely did decide this is okay.

1:00:48And then it is approved. That is very different from passing a scan or being digitally signed. Those are very different things. That's what notification was. This is approval. Now, fewer of the rules are being enforced compared to the Apple official app store. But it's still a human approval. It didn't need to be. Apple injected themselves into that role because they couldn't deal. So they put themselves there and now they have to bear the consequences of that. And those consequences include if they let something through that infringes their trademarks, they could be held liable for that in a bad way.

1:01:23Or in the case of approving a porn app, yeah, Apple did approve a porn app. They could have set up the system differently. They still can. It's not too late to change it. But they could have set the system up differently in a way that was more straightforward. But they refused to. They created this problem 100 % themselves. And they deserve all of the press that it generates. Yeah, they don't have to defend their trademark in this thing. as they say in their statement here the truth is we are required by european commission to allow it to be distributed by marketplace operators like old star right so there's like first of all it's rich for apple saying suddenly now they care about what the european commission allows that requires them to do by law they just ignore it where they feel like it right yeah if that's if that's required by law then what happened to vmac yeah exactly like what what when it's when it's something they want to do oh we just have to follow the law but something you don't want to do is like law schmaw but anyway um court court wise they could absolutely allow things that infringe their copyright through and then deal with it the way you deal with all copyright, which is you sue the people out of existence, you send them a cease and desist, you bring them to court.

1:02:22Like that's defending your trademark. You don't need to, even if you have introduced yourself as a human element, allowing that thing to go through, you can say, well, but we have to do this because the European commission, as we read many shows ago, says, here's what you can stop apps for. And intellectual property is not one of the things. So they're saying, look, this is the law in the EU. We are following the EU law. No court is going to say, well, well, now you didn't defend your trademark, so you don't own Mac anymore. Like, they're fine. That is not an excuse for them doing this. They could have 100 % human review of every single thing that goes to the EU app store, let sail through a bunch of stuff that infringes their own copyright, and no court is going to say, oh, you didn't defend your copyright, because the law is clear on this.

1:03:00But anyway, yeah, they're just trying to have it both ways. And this argument is so ridiculous, because anybody who is a speaker of the English language understands the difference between we approve of this as in philosophically, we think this is the right thing to do versus we have approved this, which means there is a process and we can reject or approve. Those are two different things. Apple knows there are different things. Alt-Star knows there are different things. They're just talking past each other and it's very silly. And, you know, maybe, you know, I think the Alt-Star people might get sued because of like the laws where you can't make it in an advertisement.

1:03:33You can't make it look like some company endorses something when they don't, because despite the silly difference, saying the first Apple approved porn app that is probably going to not win in court if apple decides to fight them on that because uh in those two definitions of approved a casual person looking at this ad would absolutely think that they're using the other definition which is apple philosophically thinks this is appropriate they would not say oh it's so clear that this is part of a process that apple had to do for the eu like so this ad by alt store is probably extremely ill-advised doing anything to anger apple uh around this is ill-advised because apple has a lot of money and they're mean um as jason wrote in a good uh story that we'll link in the show it's alt store pokes the bear doing anything to antagonize apple seems like not a great idea unless you're trying to pull an epic epic and go like we're gonna antagonize them because we know they will crush us and then when we when they crush us we'll be like see look apple's crushing us uh it's i don't know they're picking they're picking a silly fight here but if they want to be the standard bearer for apple's hypocrisy when it comes to the following eu laws and dealing with the old star you know more power to them but and this is not even getting to the whole thing of like apple's apple statement makes it seem like uh any kind of like sex-based thing we would never allow that on the app store in fact apple humans don't have sex we don't even know about sex right versus versus the harmful the actual harms involved in pornography and it is a complicated issue but like it it's kind of as a given and all these things sort of the disney vacation of like of course apple would never do or say such a thing and knowing that apple has ever had sex or seen anyone else have sex or anything like that.

1:05:18And it's very kind of like prudish and silly. On the flip side, though, do you want your store to be filled with hardcore porn apps? And every time you open up the App Store app on your phone, it's just, you know, hardcore pornography blinking in your face. No, you don't want that either, right? So there actually is some nuances issue that neither side of this is really willing to tackle. They're not even willing to deal with the thing they both understand, which is the two different contexts for the word approved in here. uh but anyway i don't see this ending well for anybody it's already not ending well for apple because they're just making themselves look stupid and even more hypocritical and i'm not sure it's going to end well for alt star either i know they have epic backing them with the big big uh big uh money bags epic helping them not have to pay the core technology fee or whatever but just this is this is another mess it's entertaining to see people poking at each other like this but like jason says don't poke the bear like i wish i could come up with an animal analogy that was more appropriate maybe if you were um a cheese mite i don't know people don't know what cheese might suck cheese might's are right maybe you're one of those mites that lives in your eyelashes no people don't want to think about that there might these are terrible examples this is getting worse stop like a microscopic thing like a you know a tiny thing that's so small you can't see with the naked eye versus versus the sun that is all-star versus apple in terms of how much money they both have to wage punitive lawsuits.

1:06:45Yeah, it's not a stellar look for anyone involved, but I really think that this would have been so much more cut and dry if, as Marco had said when we first started talking about it, if Apple didn't use notarization for editorializing and just wielding it as a weapon. When we saw that notarization was going to be involved with the DMA, or not the DMA, whatever this stuff is called, when we saw that they were going to use notarization, all of us thought, okay, yeah, that should be fine. It may not be fine, but it should be fine. It's been fine on the Mac. It shouldn't be a big deal. They're just going to make sure it's not actively hurting your device, and then everything should go straight on through, right?

1:07:31Right? Right. And it quickly became obvious that no, since Apple didn't have any other weapons to use, they use notarization. And it's just, I didn't like it then, I don't like it now. And honestly, they are reaping what they sowed. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for Apple on this one. They've made this bed, now they get to sleep in it. Yeah, they deserve no sympathy because there were so many easily avoidable problems here and they chose not to avoid them. So this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of messiness that their approach is going to keep creating. Yeah. I'm not sure Apple even sees this as messiness because this is an opportunity for them to, as Gerber was pointing out, to gloat and say, see, this is what we told you would happen.

1:08:12See, if you let other people sell things, someone's going to sell a porn app. I told you what happened. Look, it's happening, a porn app. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Getting into all the things like, well, how many different ways you can get porn on your phone through web apps or through like the Reddit app or whatever. And it's just, the world is a complicated place. But the hypocrisy is clear to anyone looking. But I feel like Apple feels like this is a PR win for them because they're like, surely everyone hates porn just like we do. Now we're saying, see, now you see the violence inherent in the system, right?

1:08:36like these people we let the european union let them do things and now they're putting out porn apps now the world's gonna end because prior to this no one could get porn but now they'll be able to um that's correct this is a yeah i want to read from jason's article because this is a good little bit um apple claims that their hands are tied by the european commission and yet the company has used its lever before to protect users from checking my notes here emulators are very old max models seems dangerous so which is it is notarization a tool that apple can use to bypass all European regulations of whatever Apple feels like it's preventing users from running Mac paint on an iPad?

1:09:09Or is it something out of Apple's hands? If Apple chose to exercise notarization powers to kill the UTM and mini VMac emulators, well then let Hot Tub through. Doesn't Alt-Star have a point? It's hard for Apple to argue its hands are tied if it's used those hands in the recent past. And then he says, parenthetically, I've contacted Apple's PR representatives and asked if they can explain the disparity in policies to me, and I'll update the stories if they reply. Last time I checked, they hadn't replied, but not sure what their response is. But yeah, he gets right to the heart of it. Like, I think Apple thinks that this is like a triumph for them.

1:09:41And really just anyone who cares about this issue at all looks at it and says, this is not a good look for you, Apple. We are brought to you this episode by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from your products to your content to your time, all in one place and all on your terms. Quite simply, I have recommended and used Squarespace myself and recommended it for so many other people over the years because it is a great website builder no matter what you're building, whether it's a simple site or a full-blown e-commerce site where you're selling stuff or have a membership area or a private podcast or a newsletter or maybe you're selling physical goods or digital goods.

1:10:28All of that is supported and easy on Squarespace. They now have a system called Design Intelligence, combining their two decades of industry-leading design expertise with a cutting-edge AI to unlock your strongest creative potential. This empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website than ever, tailored to your unique needs so it won't look like everybody else's website, so you can craft a bespoke digital identity that you can use across your entire online presence. For your customers, when they're ready to buy and check out, they have all the support you might want for various payment options.

1:10:59Onboarding is super fast and easy. You can just get started with a few clicks, and your customers have more ways to pay than ever with popular methods like Klarna, ACH Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Afterpay, ClearPay, and whatever other pays that launch. They'll support it pretty soon because they've been really good about that over time. So see for yourself how Squarespace works for your website. Whether you're technical or not, you can figure it out. It's easy to use. Everything is visual. If there's someone else in your life who needs a site and you're the nerd, they won't have to come to you for help.

1:11:27You can empower them to do it themselves. Go to squarespace.com slash ATP for a free trial and build the site yourself. See how it works for you in trial mode. When you're ready to launch, once again, squarespace.com slash ATP will save you 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

1:11:51All right, let's do some Ask ATP. Matthew Fenslau writes, I recently got an ATP membership. Thank you. HP.fm slash join. And have been going back through past episodes to listen to the bonus content. One recurring theme is that Marco and Casey's number one wish for Mac is cellular. I'm really surprised by this. I travel for work both domestically and internationally frequently and work outside my office several days a week. These days, I rarely find it hard to access decent Wi-Fi. And on the rare occasion I do, I just fall back to phone tethering, which works much better than a few years ago. Most of my fellow road warriors do the same.

1:12:23My understanding is that cellular Windows laptops are not super popular. I would love to know what are the use cases that make the guys so desirous of cellular Macs, especially since they don't seem to be big travelers. Is there something specific for being a software developer? This is one of those things that John rightfully brings up. Oh, we need to answer this question every year. And I say that I probably sound like I'm complaining. I'm not trying to. It seems that we're getting enough new listeners that people either forget like me or have never heard the answer before. And so let's cover it again.

1:12:53And for me, I want to have a Mac that I know can, you know, asterisk, dagger, double dagger, can always get on the internet. It doesn't need anything else. Don't need to wait for tethering. Don't need to worry about tethering. Don't need to destroy the battery of two devices simultaneously, only the one. It can always get online. Again, if you're in a plane or whatever, it doesn't. You know what I'm saying. and a great example of this is I would love to be able to use my Mac in the car easily and whenever I want and I can do that. Yes, I certainly could do that and I could tether but it's so nice with my cellular iPad if I have it in the car and I'm talking about it as a passenger in case I wasn't clear.

1:13:35If I'm a passenger in the car, you know what I do to get on the internet on my iPad? I open my iPad. That's what I do because it's already on the internet because it has a cellular connection. Yes, 100%, there are ways around this. And to be fair, they've gotten far less egregious over the years. You can have your Mac connect to your phone and it will magically just start personal hotspot on your phone, usually. Often, but not always. And yes, Wi-Fi does exist in a lot of places. But A, I don't particularly trust most Wi-Fi that isn't my own. And that's why I have some sort of VPN, in my case, past Pons or Tailscale.

1:14:17But even still, oftentimes, Wi-Fi is not stellar. In fact, I go to places where the Wi-Fi is actually not as robust as my Verizon cellular connection. And that's kind of an indictment of the places that I sometimes go. But it is what it is. And so for me, I want to be able to open my laptop and immediately be on the internet. And if I can't be on the internet immediately, then it's an annoyance. And it's not so much of an annoyance that, you know, I can't get my work done or whatever. But if I had my druthers, I would 1000 % spend the extra 130 or in all likelihood, because it's a Mac,$260 in order to get a cellular modem in it.

1:14:59I don't know, Marco, tell me where I'm wrong or what did I leave out? Zero parts of what you just said are wrong. Go team. So here's some other considerations that I have. So I think what matters a lot is like when you open your laptop, if you're almost always using it in places that have known Wi-Fi networks, you've got no problem. Yeah. If you're taking your laptop from home and you put it in a bag and you go to work and you open it up and in both cases you're on the Wi-Fi, then I understand why you don't think cellular is that necessary. and for most people that is their use pattern so i get it you know you go to your coffee shop you open it up you're on their wi-fi already because you've been there before fine for most people that is a totally fine use case and so they wouldn't want to spend you know 50 60 bucks a month on a data plan for their laptop or whatever it would be because they don't need it that often but some people need it a lot i take the train a lot trains don't usually have wi-fi at least new york trains don't or if they do at least here in the states they are so overloaded because it's you know hundreds of people on like a single cellular modem and it's just garbage yeah also your beloved park bench that you like to work at there's probably no wi-fi there right because it's outdoors um correct and so there are there are places where if you if you frequently want to use a laptop in a place that is away from good wi-fi coverage or any wi-fi coverage then this need comes up a lot more i think one of the reasons that came up a lot for like business laptops in the early aughts and mid aughts like that's you see that you see like as an option on thinkpads and stuff is because business people who use laptops are often business travelers and business travelers might be going to all different, you know, they might be going to a new hotel every week or a new city or a new airport or whatever.

1:16:56And sometimes you don't want to, like every one of those wifi networks that you join by going through their dumb captive portal where you got to like type in your room number and your last name, you are exfiltrating personal data. Every time you do that, you are granting yet another company access to whatever, you know, whatever data they can figure out about you by, you know, your internet traffic and everything else. and yeah vpns can help with some of that but it's it's just it's an annoyance it's a privacy exfiltration and then the biggest thing to me is when i open my laptop everything's out of date all the data is out of date oh good point and when you when you're opening a laptop and you're connecting to wi-fi both wi-fi itself is very fast typically or can be and also the laptop instantly connects to the like you don't even if you when you open up your laptop after going from your home to your work or your coffee shop, you don't even notice it connecting most of the time.

1:17:48It's just on. It's so fast to reconnect to Wi-Fi and everything loads so quickly that when things like pop in here and there, you barely even have a chance to notice it. That is not the experience using tethering for cellular. Using tethering for cellular, you have to open the laptop up. The laptop has to realize that it can't find any Wi-Fi networks. Then if you're lucky, it will prompt you with a notification thing in the corner saying, do you want to connect to Marco's iPhone? and there is, as far as I can tell, no way to make it automatically always connect to your tethering on your phone when you can't find Wi-Fi.

1:18:22As far as I can tell, there is no setting. And I looked, when we last talked about this a couple of weeks ago, I looked, I dug through the support articles. There doesn't seem to, there's a setting that kind of sounds like it does this, but it doesn't. I don't know what is going on, but as far as I can tell, there is no such setting to say, always connect to my phone for tethering when you don't see a known Wi-Fi network. So the result is, when you're in these situations and you have a laptop and you open it up, the result is you're just looking at out-of-date data and you'll be looking at it for probably at least 20 to 30 seconds.

1:18:51At least. And that's when you have good coverage and good speeds and everything. So it's this huge paper cut. Every time you open your laptop on a train or whatever, you want to get work done and you just have to wait and wait and wait. Do you want a user connection? Yes. Tap join. Wait. Wait. Maybe it'll join. Maybe it'll work. sometimes it'll say refuse connection sorry and then you gotta try it again and then once it does connect you gotta wait and you gotta wait and then stuff might then start coming in and that whole time you're looking at outdated data and maybe you like accidentally hit something hit a keystroke in a note or move an email and then you create a merge conflict when it does finally load there's so many paper cuts about that experience so if you are somebody who that doesn't happen to very often because you're almost always using your laptop on known wifi networks then fine you don't need this and that's why most people don't need this but some of us do and for the few of us that would use this frequently the experience of having a connection built in like you have on your phone and every ipad ever the experience of having that option versus having to tether to your phone is night and day tethering to your phone feels like dial-up it feels like okay i've opened the computer up but it's not it's not on the internet of course i have to tell the computer go to the internet connect to the internet log on you have to say and then you wait and you wait and then maybe if you're lucky welcome you've got mail like it takes a while and it's just it's just it's it's such a like back in time experience and with all of our amazing technology that we have these days it feels ridiculous to have that experience with like the latest Apple laptops, the latest iPhones.

1:20:40We have tethering. It's a service that we pay for. Like we're allowed to do it. We're not doing a trick. We're allowed. This is a built-in feature. It just is really half-assed and the experience of using it is not amazing. What would be much more amazing, oh, I know you're also draining your phone battery doing this by the way. So like usually when I'm on the train doing this, if I'm taking the train to the city, usually I will have to then plug my phone in to a battery pack or the laptop or the cable just to keep the phone topped up so I don't arrive at the city with a phone at 60%. Everything about it is a compromise and that compromise is fine for people who hardly ever need it.

1:21:20It's just an occasional need. But when it's a regular need, it sucks. And there are so many better ways to do this. So what would be great? I hope we get this someday. Pray to the spirit of Mark Gurman or whatever, hopefully we can have built-in cell modems in laptops. How would this work? The same way it works on your iPhone and your iPad. It would just always be connected. And every so often in the background, it could wake itself up while keeping the screen off and download data. There have been features to do this on macOS for a very long time, just not over cellular. So that's what has to happen.

1:21:59There are downsides to this. The laptop would be more expensive. You'd have to buy a data plan. If you leave cellular on and you leave the laptop unplugged for a week, it will probably drain itself. That's all a trade-off that many of us would make because the utility of opening that laptop and having it just be on the same way your phone is just on. Your phone is online. When you pull it out of your pocket and wake it up, it's online already. You don't have to tell it, go online and update your data. It's already online. and a few minutes ago it did update its data. So it's already there. Such a different experience.

1:22:35Why can't the Mac do that? And there are no good reasons left. So please, hopefully, Apple, if you can forgive me for all my comments earlier about your stupid notarization thing, please, to the love of God, please give me a cellular laptop. Yeah, I don't even travel that much, but having used a cellular iPad while traveling, that's all it takes to convince you. Like, it sounds academic. it sounds like oh whatever i'm sure it's better but does it really make a difference if you just use your cellular ipad when you're on the go once you get used to that it's hard to go back to the other way because it's just and it's the phone doesn't convince people it's like well of course phones are always like that but computer things like but a cellular ipad is such a great like well it's not really a phone it's big and you're doing maybe you have a keyboard connected to or whatever and you look at it and you're like oh i see why tethering sucks now because i don't have to think about it at all with my ipad it's just like my phone it's always on and you know once you once you experience that or i mean maybe it's worse on pc laptops some people say that hey if pc laptops are cellular it's not good but i can tell you cellular on the ipad works as well as it does on the phone and if you have if you use a cellular ipad where you're actually using the cellular part of it it is a pretty strong convincer that you would want this on a mac yeah and by the way like the argument that it's not very good on pc laptops nothing is very good on PC laptops.

1:23:54So that's not a valid argument. No argument here. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I would love it. I would absolutely love it. I would order one, you know, immediately if possible. I would, you know, if I had just bought a MacBook Pro, which I did, what, two years ago? It's an Ivan M3. So I think it was two years ago. It doesn't matter. Even if I've just bought one, I would immediately, you know, sell that to somebody or trade it in and buy another if I could suddenly get a cellular on it. But that's just me. Also, like, they already have a computer named MacBook Air. The air prefix used to mean cellular in lots of different products, like, because you're using waves over the air for your connectivity.

1:24:32Like, it's a perfect name for a cellular laptop. Come on! That's alright. Stephen Swift writes, on Episode 620, he mentioned issues when users do iPhone mirroring on corporate computers, which made me wonder, how are people doing that? Are they signing in with their personal iCloud accounts and their corporate Macs? I've long wanted to take advantage of iPad sidecar or iPhone mirroring, but my Mac is a corporate machine. Is it safe to log in with my personal iCloud account on my work Mac if I don't want my employer to have access to my personal data? My employer doesn't want their IP on my personal devices?

1:25:03Do you know of any workarounds to use iPad sidecar, universal controller, iPhone mirror across iCloud accounts? I wish Apple would set up some authorization mechanism that didn't rely on devices signed into the same account. I do agree with Stephen there. Some sort of alternative auth would be nice, although I understand why Apple does it the way they do. For me, my last couple of jobby jobs, they were small firms that I trusted, which yes, everyone's starting to fire up their email clients and tell me why I should never trust my employer. And that's true. In the most recent one, the IT guy was a really good friend of mine.

1:25:37So I really, really trusted him. But if I was working at traditional corporate America, where I'm one cog in a machine that's 30 ,000 cogs big or whatever, I would definitely feel very differently about it. Another thing to consider is that, and I don't know how long this has been true, and it's definitely true on the iPhone, and I think it's true on the Mac, if your device is employer-owned, they can absolutely, without your permission, if they set it up to allow this, they can wipe that machine, and you have nothing you can do about it. All your data is just gone. And I get why that is. Again, I don't really think that that's necessarily unreasonable.

1:26:20But again, that would give me pause to log into anything personal on it. So I don't know what I would say. And I'm curious, John, as the one with the most recent corporate experience and corporate experience with a much bigger corporation than I was used to, how did you handle this? Was I nuts to do this when I was in my little baby jobs? Well, to answer your master's question, are people signing in with their personal Apple IDs at work? Yes, they are. People do that all the time. It's not a good idea. You shouldn't do it. But people do it because it's convenient. It's not a good idea for so many reasons.

1:26:52Casey just outlined some of them. There are many more reasons. It's probably even against your company's policy if you're at a big company. But people want their stuff and they want access to their stuff. And so they do this and it's not a good idea. They might do it to get access to universal control or sidecar or whatever. And it is kind of annoying that Apple's handling of, I keep saying Apple IDs, it's Apple account now. Apple's handling of Apple accounts is so primitive. Like Apple accounts slash Apple IDs are not new. They've been around for, I believe, decades at this point, multiple decades probably.

1:27:29And yet the ability to deal with them in any reasonable fashion is just so limited. Can you merge two Apple accounts? Can you transfer things from one Apple account to another? Can you be signed into multiple Apple accounts at a time? And you would be saying, well, these are complications. They should never do that. It's too complicated. No, you don't do that the first year or the fifth year or the 10th year. But the 25th year, maybe you should have the ability to merge Apple IDs, right? Or maybe you should have the ability to authenticate with some of your services without an Apple ID. Like in some respects, they do.

1:28:03like i believe they still support vpn with password instead of like screen sharing through apple id stuff but they they love the simplifying assumption of everything's on the same apple id it drives me bananas here just within this room within this physical room i've complained about this before trying to airdrop things i walk over to my wife's computer and i want to airdrop something it's like oh i can't airdrop it from my phone because she's on her account in her computer and i'm on my account my thing and i try to airdrop it and for some reason it doesn't see her or whatever and it's just like i've got to be logged into this my account to get the thing it's just that's why apps like i saw this go by recently i forget who originally suggested this somebody but gruber posted about it like essentially an app that does what airdrop does it was underscore that brought it up then gruber picked it up there you go but but it's not apple it is a thing that says we don't care what your apple id is we have our own system for doing it airdrop is like oh isn't airdrop great it's like yeah sure if you live in a world where every one of your devices is signed into your Apple ID.

1:28:58It's great, but I don't live in that world. And so it sucks. And I know you shouldn't be, you don't have to be in the sample Apple ID to, to airdrop, but you, you should just, they're in your contacts and it should work. Oh, should. Yeah, it should work, but it doesn't. I don't know why it doesn't. It just doesn't. And it drives me insane. So this is another example of that. I want to use this cool feature that, you know, universal control or sidecar, these features that you think of these as like the Mac has this feature. The ipad has this feature it's like no this is all threaded through apple ids and if you're not on the same apple id and all these devices it's like nope sorry you don't get to use this and i understand it's a simplifying assumption for their implementation but i feel like apple should set the bar a little bit higher for itself and say in version 2 in version 3 in version 17 maybe think about the complication of you know people having different accounts even so simple as like a feedback that i filed i think a couple years ago like my complication of my difficulty trying to do simple file sharing in the finder between two computers that are you know seven feet from each other but oh no i want to sign into my wife's computer where i do have an account but i want to sign in with her account and i want to have like an alias that will correctly pull the the password for her account that's in my keychain from the nope nope nope nope nope nope you're going to type in that password every time it will not remember it there's a checkbox that says put this into the keychain but that checkbox does nothing because every time you want to open that alias or double click that thing or mount that thing or whatever it's going to reprompt you and i filed the bug out they're like oh you should just leave the username out of the uh the smb url you're connecting to and then it will pull from the keychain it's like yeah it'll pull my password on my account from the keychain but i want to log into her account like they can't get it through their idea of like how why in the world would you log into someone else's account on their mac when you mount that share it's like because i want to i want to go to a good video store i want to put my 1099s into her tax folder that's what i want to do right it's in her account it's in her documents folder oh my god like and like these are complications these are things you don't do when you first roll stuff out but you should eventually get to them and apple just never gets to them and so for the situation i don't specifically know i think what's what's the sidecar one there is some app that like sidecar was inspired by that i can no longer remember the name of that you might be able to try that i think is not tied to apple id oh yeah they sold little dongles well i forget the name oh god bless chat room will tell us what it is luma fusion something like that yeah maybe that's right and universal control i there are there before universal control there were a bunch of things from like the linux world that also worked on mac that did something similar to let you like move your pointer from one machine to the other none of those things with the exception of maybe the the that uh sidecar alternative like none of those old things especially like the cursor control stuff or the kvm things or whatever they don't have in theory the polish that the apple stuff supposedly has when everything is perfect and just right in a demo but luna display thank you long form in the chat sorry yeah luna display there we go we'll try to find a link for that um they they don't have the polish that apple stuff does in the best case but a lot of times as people as undersword was discovering and gruber was discovering with like the thing that does airdrop but does it in a way that actually always works reliably you realize how finicky airdrop is when you get a third-party app with no specific integration that you have to manually launch but you know what it just works every time that kind of reliability has been absent from a lot of these services so we were just someone was just talking in another one of my slacks about the ongoing inability of screen time to track the time that you spend on your devices the thing that it's supposed to do as steve jobs would say well why the f doesn't it do that right like i know what it's supposed to do but in practice if you look at your screen time stats on all your different devices a they never agree with each other and b they never none of them match anything having to do with reality like they might as well just be random numbers and bar charts like and forget about like across like oh well let me see what my screen times my kids have been using i can tell you that never matched reality or across multiple devices either like i think screen time is just a random number generator it's just a bunch of random numbers and a bunch of bar charts based on those random numbers because anybody who has ever tried to look at it and glean information and match it up with their experience of what they actually did with their device says wait a second a these numbers don't match what i did and b they don't even add up it doesn't make any sense i wouldn't be surprised if it would say you had like 36 hours of screen time during a single day like stuff like that like you can roll out the feature and advertise it and put a name on it and have a screen on it but like if it doesn't actually work people just start ignoring and then it just becomes noise this is what i think about the invite apps too it's like it's good for apple to have a first party app in its ecosystem to let people do invitations it's bad for them to roll one out and then lose interest in it so anyway uh sorry steven we couldn't help you more other than the chat room remembering lunar display there are third party things that you can probably do some of this stuff in uh i do not suggest signing up with your apple id on your work computer i know you want to everybody wants to, don't do it.

1:34:02Oh, actually, the chat room, who's Chris Vanazzo, also brings up Synergy, which I used to use ages ago. There you go. That's the one I was thinking of. That predates Universal Control. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is, you know, using the same keyboard and mouse across multiple different devices. And they can be different platforms, the whole word in the world. It works pretty well the last time I tried it, which, again, hasn't been for years. But that's another option if you wanted to do something that isn't quite as built-in and seamless as universal control. That doesn't go to an iPad though, right?

1:34:31Because I'm assuming you can't even run Synergy on an iPad. That might be true, actually. I think I only had used it with full-on computers. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Wildgrain, and DeleteMe. And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership besides our exclusive content and other fun stuff is ATP Overtime. This is a bonus topic every week. this week on overtime we're going to be doing some more sonos discussion um there was a article that came out i think this morning or yesterday about sonos uh and their their code named pinewood uh video player which sounds like it might be a high-end competitor to the apple tv so that sounds really interesting so we're going to talk about that in overtime this week you can join us atv.fm slash join to hear that and everything else membership gives you thank you so much and We'll talk to you next week.

1:35:24Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Because it was accidental. Accidental. Oh, it was accidental. 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 K-C-L-L-L-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-K-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-S-I-R-Q-U-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech Podcast. So long. I am happy for more than one reason tonight. In part, I am happy because I had the barbecue brisket earlier and it was delicious.

1:36:31In part, because you're here talking to your two best friends. Yes, definitely that. Yes. That's true. Thank you. So three reasons. Okay. The third reason is that I spent this past weekend wiring the restaurant. Oh, this is our first restaurant update, if I'm not mistaken. It is. And more importantly, unwiring the restaurant. this is you know it's a small bar restaurant that that is you know on fire island everything on fire island is kind of you know slapdash you know because you can't always get supplies and it's you kind of just got to deal with what you have and everything is like small and old the environment is highly corrosive like the air is salty from being near the ocean and so like nothing lasts you know there and it's it's a very it's a very hostile environment for electronics and wires and things like that.

1:37:23This restaurant also, sometimes on weekend nights, will have DJs come in and plug into the sound system and really get it bumping for late night bar business. I got in there, and the DJ system, the music system in general, there's regular speakers for playing music during regular dining hours, like small speakers, and then there's the big DJ speakers, and I get in there, and I'm looking at this mess of wires. Oh, and of course, over time, the restaurant has had various point of sale systems. And so there's like, you know, various network wires running around. Every single network wire I see is like the thinnest of thin Cat 5e cable where and the ends are like a little bit pulling out of the connectors and like a little bit fraying.

1:38:10And I'm like, that's that's not amazing. and then the audio cables are just a massive, like there's a thick bundle of cables running throughout the entire, like running along the ceiling for half the restaurant because like that's where the DJ cables plug in from across the way. But then, you know, over time, some cable would flake out or get static or, you know, just the connectors would rust or whatever or it would get crushed. And so the cable would kind of stop working. So they would just run another one. But because of the rule of audio systems, like when once it works, don't touch it. Nobody ever removed the old wires.

1:38:47So what I have inherited here is just an absolute mess of tons of wires everywhere. Almost all of them, what I would consider legacy wires. And there is a security camera system. There are 16 cameras. It's an old coax system, which means there are 16 wires. Oh my. There's one for each camera and they all go to like the main box, like the DVR thing that records them. And so there are these huge wire bundles, like just over time, this has been there for like 40 years. And over time, you know, when stuff breaks in a restaurant, you don't have a ton of time to like, let me look at Amazon and find the best option and order it and wait for it to arrive on the island, which could be a few days.

1:39:37He's like, no, if something breaks in the middle of service, you kind of slapdash fix it however you possibly can because you don't have time. So I get here. I had the DJ who's been there. He's a friend of mine. He's been DJing there for like 20 years. I had him come and explain the system to me. It's a rack. There's fortunately a standard equipment rack, but it was full of DJ gear. There's like a little mixer and some compressor and a limiter and a bunch of big DJ speaker amps. And the DJ comes, explains the system to me, and he's like, well, that doesn't work. That doesn't work. He's like, but you got to be careful because this is your business, not your home.

1:40:14And if it's your home, you'd be tempted to buy all new stuff. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds like me. He's like, but here, you got to be careful with the business. You can't just do that because you'll eat into all your profit and you won't make any money. And I was like, that's good. Thank you. I'll try to have that self-control. Thank you. And he's like, all right. So you're going to be tempted to tear all this stuff out. but don't do it. I'm like, all right, all right. So over the next half hour, he's walking me through the system. He's like, all right, here's what these speakers do. I would suggest replacing this subwoofer here.

1:40:43You should move this if you can. This wire, I strung this up 15 years ago for a temporary thing. We don't need it anymore. That one doesn't work anymore. That one doesn't work anymore. Within a half hour, he was saying, you know what? Replace it all. Got it. Just tear it all new stuff, replace it all. So anyway, some of the process of replacing some of it, not all of it. This past weekend was when I decided, let me tackle network wiring and any wires that are currently not in use. And I wanted to rewire, I wanted to run all new Cat 6A and Cat 6 wiring, you know, all new throughout the place, get rid of all of the many old wires that are not in use.

1:41:27there's like old phone wires that aren't that aren't in use anymore there's old coaxial cable wires aren't used anymore like so many i i filled a garbage can like a restaurant i filled a restaurant garbage can with wires that i had pulled out of the walls and down from the zip ties and i must i must have cut 200 zip ties to you know to take their wires down and like replace them over the course of the weekend oh my word let me tell you as a nerd this was the most satisfying thing I think I've ever done because it's like deleting code but in real life like just being able to take down like old crappy or obsolete or unused cables and replace huge wire bundles with like one new wire that's the right length and high quality and have it just work oh what a pleasure this has been I'm having so much fun like and I even this is so there there's this one there's a huge cable run that runs from where the TV system starts, like behind the bar.

1:42:28And then the whole bunch of stuff runs like around the side of the restaurant to where the DJs plug in and where there's another TV on the other side. And there's this big, thick bundle of like nine cables that goes across that. And I think I have a way to convert those nine cables to zero cables. Like everywhere else, I'm getting reductions. But this, I think I'm going to remove this entire thing. I've known for a while, and this is going to get everybody writing in, I've known for a while there's a system called Dante for audio that basically routes audio signals over your network. So Dante adapters have XLR plugs on one end and a network hole in the other, and then you run this software that's like Dante controller software on a computer somewhere, and that you can route things across the network.

1:43:15In all this time, I thought, like I had heard about Dante audio systems, And I thought it was just for like big, like professional mixers installed in venues and stuff. But it turns out, I think, I mean, I'm going to find out in a couple of days. It turns out that like you can just get like a$200 adapter and run the apparently free software on a computer and that's it. So that means I can run the audio signals from the DJ area over the network to the speaker amps and the mixer that are like on the side of the restaurant. so right now there are like seven xlr cables that are that are snaked all over the restaurant and i think i can run that over the network which will mean there will be zero cables in a huge area where there used to be a lot because i can just like have a network drop down from the ceiling for that so i am having so much fun with like deleting wires and deleting old brackets and mounts and running, of course, POE powered as much as possible.

1:44:20So I'm getting rid of power adapters in a lot of places too. This is glorious. I know running a restaurant is going to be really hard, but this is like, I can do this part. This is my comfort zone. The rest of it, yeah. But also the rest of it, I have... There are four people running this restaurant. There's me, Tiff, manager, and assistant manager. So there's four people who can do the day-to-day operations but i can do the wiring and i'm really good at wires so i'm just i'm so happy doing this stuff so far and it's like like i just figured out the dante thing like yesterday so i'm like oh my god now i can go back there and like delete five more wires and especially like the five of the biggest wires and so i'm gonna play with this stuff and see how it goes but as as like a an area of tech like i play with a lot of tech for myself and some of it i i have to like use for quote my work you know like when i when i get a microphone or sound gear to do podcasting like that's i'm doing that for my work right but for the most part i i mostly don't apply tech to many applications besides tech for its own sake or or recording podcasts or programming.

1:45:34So when I have this opportunity now that I have an opportunity to apply tech and actually use it for like useful work that is not one of those areas that I've always been doing, it's actually, it's very fulfilling. It's like, oh, I can fix this. Like they've always complained that the Wi-Fi coverage in the restaurant was terrible because the way it's arranged, there's like the kitchen on one side, the dining room on the other, and between the kitchen and dining room are giant walk-in freezers and fridges, which are giant metal boxes. So there's almost no way to cover the entire area with one or even two access points.

1:46:11And, you know, they've been struggling because they weren't nerds like me. And they would just get whatever the POS vendor would give them, like some weird Cisco Meraki thing. And, you know, it was never well placed because they're not experts in placing them. And they would never had enough of them. So I get in there and I install a Ubiquiti system. Thank God. thank thank ubiquity like it is so nice and so easy and relatively inexpensive compared to other professional quality gear like and i can put an ap wherever i want and i can run these network drops and i can i can have like you know these these poe switches to power everything with like the one ups and the rack that's powering all my ap's and keeping them up and it's it's so much fun doing this part i know the rest of it's going to be less fun in different ways but this part is really freaking fun and i'm really enjoying it that's awesome no i'm very excited and uh i would love to see photos even if you can't share them publicly sorry everyone i would love to see photos of everything when it's all installed um how what's your timetable when when does the restaurant open for the summer um we basically we have like about a month before like a soft open it's a soft open for san patrick's day and then a full open in late april oh i didn't realize it for my birthday.

1:47:24That's very kind of you. I didn't, am I coming up for that? Are you? I don't think so, but, uh, thank you for offering. Uh, please make sure you have plenty of green beer. Um, no, that, that's super fun and super awesome. And you know, it is, you said it just a moment ago and it's so true. So much of what I do with my computer and with my home assistant tinkering is just to scratch an itch and just to give my, you know, give myself an outlet for my nervous energy, but it is just deeply satisfying when you can use your skills, which you've either honed professionally or because of, you know, your own hobbies or what have you, to actually improve something or someone's life.

1:48:03And it is such a satisfying thing. And we nerds, I would argue we don't get it as often as we should. And it's so great to be able to have that moment. So I'm having a lot of fun living vicariously through you, at least for this part. Once the summer rolls around i'm not so sure i want to live vicariously through you anymore but for now it's very fun even i'm even finding other areas like i mean you know it turns out i have opinions about restaurants because i go to restaurants so i'm finding other areas that i'm able to like you know provide some useful feedback or a good idea here and there you know like like earlier today i had i have to replace um two coffee machines i have like a little espresso like a nespresso kind of pod maker for because some some of the cocktails like you know espresso martinis some cocktails use espresso so i had to replace that and i had to get a new one of those like big bun commercial you know coffee brewers for the back for the mostly for staff and like i knew because the old one's broken the manager quote wants to throw it in the bay so i said all right you can throw the old one in the bay because the old one the old coffee maker is one of those that you've seen in every diner it has like you know the the bun machine with the round hot plates that you put the coffee pots on after they're brewed and they have you have this big glass coffee carafe so you know the orange ones for decaf and you know those things and i know from being a coffee nerd that when you have a hot plate keeping the coffee warm it makes it taste horrific and so i'm like if we're replacing that they make ones that have thermal carafe which they it just brews into like an insulated carafe that keeps the coffee warm by insulation not by continuous heat and so i asked asked the managers like hey you know would this work for our needs and they said yes i'm like great i'll get a better coffee machine like because i know about coffee like this is and you know and you know we're still gonna have to get like food service pouches like to go into it like it's not gonna be amazing beans but it'll taste a lot less crappy than the ones that are sitting on the burners all night so yeah there's like i'm finding little areas that i can actually use my skills and expertise.

1:50:11Even though I don't know how to run a restaurant, I do know a lot about certain components of what it's going to take to run this. And because I am not doing this by myself, I'm part of a team of people doing this. I don't need to do everything for the restaurant. I can actually mostly just do the stuff I'm good at. And even a lot of the stuff that we're doing now is setup work. It's permits. It's paperwork. I'm about to be certified by the county health department to be a food manager. And I had to learn all sorts of stuff about food safety. A lot of that stuff I already knew because I'm a nerd.

1:50:48I listen to food safety podcasts sometimes, thanks to Dr. Don. And a lot of the setup stuff, I know how to set up companies. I already had because I have my own businesses. I knew how to get a sales tax certificate because my wife sells physical objects in New York State. And so we had to figure out the sales tax thing a couple years ago. There's all these different components of my life that I've done bits and pieces of this here and there. So I am able to bring some skill into this. I know how to do paperwork. I know how to set up things electronically. I know how to wire the place to have good Wi-Fi.

1:51:23I know how to wire the POS terminals so that they're reliable. I know how to have a backup internet connection. There's all these different things that this is actually all useful information. And so I'm finding this surprisingly interesting and surprisingly engaging. And it's fun to have a project that like, I'm going to make this better in a way that not everybody will spot, but that will benefit a lot of people. And some people will appreciate it. And that is very fulfilling to me in a way that like, I get that fulfillment with making software and making podcasts, but on a different level and in different ways.

1:52:00And this is a very new way to me to get that kind of fulfillment to have like an in-person physical thing that like I am I'm helping to make this place even better and I'm helping to keep this place going to for what people like about it and so it's it's a very interesting and fulfilling project and I'm very happy to be working on it realize you more or less described the phenomenon of having a regular job where you're working with other people in person where your skills contribute to the the overall success and the things that you know how to do are valued and come in handy because that's why you were hired to do the thing and you know it's and it's novel for somebody who spent most of their career like self-employed doing computer stuff by by themselves at home uh but i think a lot of people listening to this would be like yeah you've got a job you go to it and you do stuff and you use your skills and the other people who work there the other people work that use their skills and granted you're the owner and it's different and so on and so forth but like this is actually novel if you've spent your entire career as a self-employed software developer yes in your house making apps yeah well even you know simple stuff like like i had to i had to ask around like to our friends like what do i use to coordinate tasks with people just yell really loud and point right like you know i know how to use like to-do apps for myself and i know there's this entire universe of like collaboration platforms and collaboration apps but like how what should i use and so i like i spent a few days trying out uh notion and uh base camp and a couple other like you know i looked at a couple other things but like and and we ended up just so far on google docs because our needs are pretty simple but like that was a whole thing that used some of my tech experience and tech skills like i actually know some names to look at here um so you know i think it's big punch clocks things you put a card into it goes chink yeah get one of those no now now the pos is all have built-in uh payroll tracking and stuff yeah yeah it's it's and i'm and like there are certain things like when i was you know i replaced so oh i forgot to end the dj story so dj friend he showed me the whole system tells me at the end yeah you probably replaced it all he leaves i'm like you know let me at least like turn it on and see like what it sounds like and see how it works now based on what he told me so i turn it on and And he had pointed to the main mixer thing in the rack.

1:54:24That's how you set all the volume levels and pick the inputs. And he's like, that thing is full of short circuits. It's like 40 years old. You should probably replace that. I'm like, all right. So I go turn the system on. I connected. Actually, I had brought my old iPod that I have for my blimp speaker dock. I brought the iPod because I needed something that had a headphone output. And I didn't have the adapter for my phone. So I just grabbed that on the way out the door. forgetting for the moment that like my laptop had one but i i figure that later anyway so i plugged this ipod in and i i played some music and i i adjusted the volume and the second i adjusted the volume i heard a pop and i never got to work again no matter what it's like i i literally moved one volume slider on the mixer and then you know cracked out and i could never get the sound anything else I touched I just I'm like well I guess I'm replacing that um and because I know sound you know I don't know DJ sound but I do know sound and so I because I I you know the rack had contained like this this 2u tall amp or a mixer thing with a bunch of slider or no I think It was 4U, this 4U mixer thing.

1:55:38And then it had a limiter, a compressor. That's two more rack units there. And there was one other thing. And I'm like, I looked around and I found there are these QSC zone mixers that do all of that stuff digitally and have all the inputs in the back. And so I just bought one of those. And now I have in one rack unit what was previously taking up like six or seven rack units. and it's even more full-featured and even better and can be remotely controlled from an iPad that we already have there for playing music anyway so like i'm finding ways that my expertise is actually really coming in handy and i know i still don't know anything about like how do we order food how much food do we order what food do we order like that those are hard questions uh and i don't know anything about that but you know what i don't need to because they do the other staff members, they know how much food to order.

1:56:31You know who orders the food? The chef. He knows how much food to order. I don't need to know those things yet. I will eventually pick up some of that, I assume. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm delegating to them for that stuff forever. But the Wi-Fi will be rock solid. And there will be way fewer wires.