689: The Positive Effect of Enthusiasm

37:28And Aura frames have in particular. So what makes Aura frames so great? Well, not only do you have a really well done iOS app that you can use to search through your photo library and upload to one or more frames. But beyond that, you can even use, say, the share sheet. So if you're in the Photos app, you can hit the Share Sheet and then share the photo in question to the Aura app. And then it will go ahead and beam it to whatever photo frame or frames you so desire. Additionally, one of the other great things about Aura frames is that you get free unlimited storage. You can add as many photos and videos as you want.

38:00Furthermore, if you are getting one as a gift, which honestly, you might want one for yourself. We have one and they're great. We've gifted them. And that also is usually an absolute home run. But let's say you're getting a gift. You can personalize it in advance. And so you can add a message that will appear when it's powered on for the very first time. You can do this without taking it out of the box. You can even get the Wi-Fi credentials of the person's house that it will live in programmed into the AuraFrame without removing it from the box. It's really good stuff. So you should really, really check it out.

38:30AuraFrames were named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get$25 off their best-selling Carver Matt frame with code ATP. That's A-U-R-A-F-R-A-M-E-S.com, promo code ATP. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Thank you so much to Aura Frames for sponsoring the show.

38:56All right. I think about an hour ago we were in follow-up. So let's continue. The ability to be hotter. What was the context for this, please, John? This is Apple making computers that can cool CPUs that have more transistors and that dissipate more energy in exchange for doing more computation. As of now, their biggest computer is the Mac Studio. It can only dissipate under 300 watts of power, or it is only dissipating under 300 watts of power with the current most power-hungry chip. What if you could dissipate twice that heat? Could you put a chip that had twice as many transistors and was maybe 1.5 times as fast?

39:33I think you could, but Apple hasn't done it. So on that topic of the ability for Max to be hotter in exchange for doing more computation. Yeah, so Rachel Neuer in Scientific American writes, as reported in Science, a metallic material called Theta Phase tantalum nitrate. Tantalum. That too. Tantalum nitrate achieved a thermal conductivity of about 1110 watts per meter Kelvin, about three times higher than copper's 400 watts per meter Kelvin. And it works in a way scientists have never seen before. Quote, our result breaks the historic ceiling for heat transport metallic materials, says senior author Yongji Hu, physicist and engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles.

40:14Given this conductor's superior performance, it has the potential to complement or even replace copper. So Apple, even if you want to keep the Mac Studio the same size, boy, do I have a way you can get more heat out of it. Maybe three times as much heat. I don't know how much this alloy costs or how difficult it is to manufacture. And it's probably actually much more relevant for things like phones, where a tiny amount of this exotic material could dissipate heat even better. But I'm excited about material advances. So Apple, just make a bigger Mac case to dissipate more heat. But on the phones, put one of these suckers in there because it sounds cool.

40:45Yeah, it literally sounds cool, John. Yeah. Wow. All right, let's do some topics. And this is one of those topics that we've had on the docket for a couple of weeks, but we just haven't had a chance to talk about it. We're going to talk about Backblaze and how they're no longer backing up everything that we thought they were. Before I go any further, I wanted to remind everyone, Backblaze is a former sponsor. They are not currently a future sponsor. In fact, they last sponsored us, I believe, the summer of 2023, as far as my records indicated. But I just want to make that plain for everyone. With that in mind, Robert Anton Reese wrote, sometime semi-recently, despite claiming to back up all of your data, Backblaze quietly stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders, along with potentially many other things.

41:31And later in the same piece, which we'll link in the show notes, of course, he said the following, which I thought was very, at first I thought it was a bit dramatic. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, no, actually, I think he's onto something here. Anyway, Robert Anton Reese wrote, by deciding not to back up everything, Backblaze has made it as if they are backing up nothing. His point here is that it always used to be that you could just assume that Backblaze was backing up everything. And over the years, they seem to be chipping away at that in bits and pieces and fits and spurts.

42:05And so now there's some amount of question, are they backing up X? Are they backing up Y? Are they backing up Z? And at that point, it's like, well, what am I even doing here in the first place? Now, to be fair, I am a Backblaze person. I still like it. I still use it. I am, unaware of a better solution for my needs. We're going to talk about other options toward the end of this topic, but that's where I stand. And maybe once you guys start chiming in, you can tell me your situation. But one way or another, John, it looks like you did some spelunking and discovered in Mac version 9.2.2.878, which was released roundabouts of the end of August, 2025.

42:46There's the following in the release notes. Recent macOS versions can mount cloud storage. For example, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox in local paths, causing the backup client to mistakenly back them up. These cloud-mounted folders are now detected and excluded to avoid performance issues, excessive data usage, and restore complications. Meanwhile, in version 9.2.2.8.77, and this is for Windows now, the backup client now excludes popular cloud storage providers from backup, including both mount points and cache directories. This prevents performance issues, excessive data usage, and unintended uploads from services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, iDrive, and others.

43:28This change aligns with Backblaze's policy to backup only local and directly connected storage. People were not happy about this, and people got very unhappy about this in a lot of places, including on Backblaze's Reddit, or subreddit, excuse me. And by the way, just to reiterate the date for those versions that I just pulled out here, and I was guessing based on like Archive. org pages and some random web page i found that listed the date as being around end of august early september 2025 because backplace does not put dates in their own release notes on their website that's why i had to do the spelunking to figure it out anyway that's summer 2025 when this when these releases came out that started excluding these things so it's taken people to casey's earlier point it's taken people like almost a year to go hey wait a second you mean it's not backing up my stuff in my dropbox and that's one of the worst things about this is like you just assume it's doing a thing and backing up your stuff.

44:20And if you don't have occasion to check, you know, maybe you won't know that suddenly a thing that was being previously backed up is not being backed up. So yes, people have discovered it almost a year later and are making lots of noise about it, which is why it's in the news now. Right. So on their subreddit, Natasha, who is an employee at Backblaze wrote the following, this decision was driven by a consistent set of technical issues we were seeing at scale. Most of them driven by updates created by third party sync tools, including unreliable backups and incomplete restores. when backing up files managed by third-party sync providers.

44:49These cloud storage providers now rely heavily on OS-level frameworks to manage sync state. On Windows, for example, files are often represented as reparse points, which is an NTFS thing, via the Cloud Files API. When they can appear local, they are still system-managed placeholders, which makes it difficult to reliably back them up as standard on-disk files. Additionally, Jim, another Backblaze employee, chimed in, Once a reparse point is added, Backblaze is unable to backup the file even if it physically resides on the computer. Not great, Bob. Continuing from Natasha, we built our product in a way to not backup reparse points for two reasons.

45:26One, we wanted the backup client to be light on the system and only backup needed user-generated files. Two, we wanted the service to be unlimited. So following reparse points would lead us to backing up tons of data in the cloud. We've made targeted investments where we can, for example, adding support for iCloud Drive by working within Apple's model and supporting Google Drive. But extending that same level of support to third-party providers like Dropbox or OneDrive is more complex and not included in the current version. We are currently exploring an add-on that either follows reparse points or backs up the tag data in another way.

45:58We also hear you clearly about the communication gap. Both the sync providers and backblaze should have been more proactive in notifying customers about a change with this level of impact. Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. So here's the thing. I've read into this some. And I think two things are simultaneously true. It seems to me that by way of the OS-level affordances for this stuff becoming more of a thing and arguably somewhat more opaque for anything that isn't like Dropbox itself or, you know, whatever your file provider is itself, it does legitimately make it harder for backblaze to the point that it seemed so unreliable if you took if you are to believe backblaze so unreliable that it's it's it's almost worse for them to try to back this stuff up because then some parts will get there some you know some files won't get there some files will be in a weird state and it's just it's inconsistent and that's arguably worse it's better off to just say screw it we're not going to back any of this stuff up i genuinely have no reason to believe maybe john will correct me here in a minute but i i have no reason to believe that's untrue.

47:00However, to just kind of quietly slide this into release notes and not say anything about it, and also to say that it's on the sync providers, let me reread what Natasha said. We also hear you clearly on the communication gap. Both the sync providers and Backblaze should have been more proactive in notifying customers. I don't think this is on Dropbox or whatever, or whoever else, to notify Backblaze customers that this is the case. This is a Backblaze problem. Well, I mean, so it's, I see what they're saying in that. You remember when Dropbox went to, like that rolled out their file provider version the one that works with apple's framework for doing cloud files as opposed to using like the custom system the back that dropbox did when they rolled that out uh dropbox first of all it was like i think it was like optional or opt-in and like within the little dropbox app on mac os it would be like you know there's a thing you could click it would be like what is this what are you talking about file provider which would lead you to a web page on dropbox.com which would say hey here's the deal with the file provider version we're doing this because apple's making us they basically said which is true because apple's trying to make them use their framework uh and if you go to this version here are the limitations and those limitations were like other other programs that were previously accessing files in your dropbox might have problems because of the way file provider works and so i feel like dropbox actually did do a better job of saying if you choose to go to the file provider version of dropbox it won't work the same as the old one in ways that affect other apps like we we are changing the way our stuff in dropbox looks to the rest of the system and that will have an effect on those other apps and i think that's what backblaze is getting at in terms of like you know they would like because like they didn't backblaze didn't decide to make dropbox files harder to back up dropbox decided to do that and dropbox i feel like did communicate that to the best of their ability much better than backblaze communicated that's for sure because no i i know that when this happened in dropbox and dropbox made it up in fact i still have not opted into file provider on dropbox i'm still right now running the non-file provider version of dropbox because it's better because it just they're just regular files and they are backed up by backblaze and all that backblaze probably excluding it by path or whatever but like they could in theory be be excluded be backed up by backblaze so they're just plain files it's not using file provider at all um so that's the other half of that but i get what you're saying it's like well in the end you're the backup provider regardless of the reason it is that you can no longer back up these files that's on you to communicate like so dropbox says hey we might affect other apps because we're changing the way we're doing things and apple's making us and then the other people who are affected have to say hey dropbox just released a new version if you're using the file provider version our backup app can no longer back up your files so seek an alternative method and they just didn't say anything like they put it in their release notes you know in a door in a basement behind a sign that says beware of tiger and then and they did it a year ago in the summer and then didn't say anything and by the way i would like to return to the what they said in their release notes um it says like uh recent versions of mac os can mount cloud storage which is a weird way of describing it in local pass causing the backup client to mistakenly back them up these cloud mounted folders are now detected and excluded to avoid performance issues excessive data usage and restore complications restore complications is the only one that is later referenced no one references performance issues or excessive date excessive data uses like that's what we're paying you for to take our excessive data like the whole using backblaze is excessive data usage exactly it's like oh if we backed up those files we would have more files in the backup yeah that's the whole thing we watch so so their release notes characterize it as like oh this is a bug we shouldn't have ever been backing up those files anyway and we're doing it because there are performance issues and blah blah blah restore complications the only legit one because it's like if we can't back them up and you go to restore them and we have like half of the files then you're going to be mad about that so we're just excluding the whole thing so they're they're release notes which are you know release notes are not the official communication mechanism for a nuanced discussion of this thing it's like a paragraph but the release notes compare the release notes to what natasha says on reddit totally different reasoning now all of a sudden it's like oh well here's why we're doing it and we can't back them up and restore things and blah blah blah it's it's like they weren't speaking with one voice in this and they were definitely not trying to advertise the fact that they were doing it which is like that's the communication gap and that is the the biggest easiest slam dunk against backblaze is like you failed to communicate this to your customers and it's an important thing that your customers needed to know and so now they're doing damage control um but for the technical aspects of it having having dealt with cloud files in hyperspace i have some experience with this um i get where they're coming from because like in hyperspace i've got it easy and even though i had it easy recall that version 1.0 wouldn't touch cloud files at all because i knew there were going to be complications and i'm like it's a 1.0 let's not over complicate it but when i did tackle cloud files in whatever version that was 1.3 or whatever i have it easy because given the apis in mac os i can tell when the file is cloud synced and i can tell when like all right you know there's apis where i can say hey is this file cloud synced or not and the os will tell me yes or no most of the time it's right although sometimes it's not um and then i can also say all right so if it is cloud synced is the file actually on this disk or is this just like you know a stub for the file and if and if i were to read it i would get the file contents but it's not actually here and if it tells me oh that's just like a stub that the file isn't there i don't have to touch it because my app saves disk space and if the file's not there i'm done hey it's not even there right because like what the hell am i I'm not going to force the file to be downloaded so I can see if I can see if I can dedupe it.

52:38It saves the most space by not being on the disk. So that's I have it easy. And even doing that, there are lots of nuances and blah, blah, blah. Right. But a backup client can't do that. A backup client can ask those questions. And if the answer is, yeah, that file is not even on the disk, the backup client now has a difficult choice. It's like, well, I could skip it and be like, well, how am I going to back up a file that's not on the disk? or i could cause it to be downloaded which takes disk space and also by the way i can tell you that asking mac os's file provider thing to cause a non-downloaded file to be downloaded you might as well put a letter in the mail like it's it's like on ios where you make a suggestion about a thing that might happen in the future and then you go away for a month and come back and see if it's happened it's not as if like you can sit there with your arms crossed and being like so is the file going to be downloaded is that gonna it's gonna happen it's like well there's a whole other demon that does that and it's busy right now and it's a low priority thread and you're like tapping your fingers and it's like okay and how many of those can you wait on at the same time and then how long do your backups take and then what if you just what if hours pass and that one file doesn't download is there a big button you can push to make that one file downloaded hell no otherwise there'd be that button in photos too where you could say just download the photos now Sync now, now.

53:54You don't do low priority threads. Do everything. There's no do it now. Like you're at the mercy of the system. And so if you're a backup app, you're like, I can't tell you that I will successfully ever reliably get all these files to the point where they download. And by the way, what you'd want to do is get them to download, back them with the backblades, but then evict them again because you don't want to take up the disk base. The whole point is like the cloud storage, it's like, oh, they're not even all on your disk. Maybe they don't even all fit on your disk. So you can't ask them all to be downloaded because you'll fill the disk.

54:22So you got to ask a small number to be downloaded, then wait for them to be downloaded, then upload them, then re-evict them. Oh, by the way, what if they were editing the file during that hour long process? It, I understand why a backup client is going to be like, we just can't, like, even if we tried to do this, we will not be able to give you a coherent, internally consistent backup of this because they can't even use things like, like APFS snapshots, right? Because you snapshot a directory filled with a bunch of stub files. that doesn't like you have a point in time image of a directory with half the files that aren't there right if the files were all there you could snapshot it and then read the snapshot and back up like time machine but if they're stub files that are in cloud storage what the hell are you going to do you can't cause them to be downloaded into the snapshot so i am totally on board with back blazing we can't actually back up these files in a reliable fashion i know everyone in all the threads is like but what if they're all downloaded backblaze can't know that they're all downloaded do you want it to iterate over the whole thing confirm that they're all downloaded then start backing them up guess what in between the time that it confirmed they're all downloaded and started backing them up some of them got evicted now what do you do like there's no there's no 100 solution to this and it's just the nature of the like the pros of the system is oh so you can have a dropbox that that's that's four terabytes and you can mount that on your one terabyte mac how does that work well half the files aren't there they're just stubs and it's all transparent to you and if you just double click them they all work as long as you're internet connected and blah, blah.

55:46Like that's the benefit. The downside is you can't back it up in a reasonable manner. It's just not possible. So I think this is a case where Backblaze did a really poor job communicating a real technical issue. And they continued, by the way, I think to do a really poor job of communicating both the technical issue and what they're going to do about it. But I do think they're not just like, oh, they're just being lazy and trying to save money. Like, i don't actually think there's a easy way for them to do this successfully as they noted like we're looking into this that and the other thing and we've worked with apple directly to do iCloud drive backups like how are they doing iCloud drive backups well if you can work directly with apple they can figure something out like i'm sure this has taken a long time where you know they're talking to apple apple does actually control the you know whatever it is the i forget what it's called cloud d or the ubiquitous storage back like this demons on mac os that do this apple writes those right and so they can work something out with backblaze here's how you can actually back up icloud files in a somewhat safe and consistent manner but i bet even there there are situations in which a particular backblaze run will fail to back up a file because it couldn't get the stupid cloud demon to download the thing locally but whatever they're doing that and the same thing with google drive but dropbox is a little bit more exotic and same one drive and then on windows i have no freaking idea what a reparse point is and i don't even want to know um but apparently there are additional complications that i do not understand there so i can't i can't chime in on what that situation is but yeah i'm kind of the same situation as casey i again again backblaze has been a past sponsor i would gladly have them as a future sponsor because i think backblaze is the best cloud-based backup product for the mac it's just that in this world we live in the number of limitations on that product are just increasing with the use of the file provider and various cloud storage things um there are other alternatives that we'll talk about in a little bit but i still use and pay for backblaze and i think it is the best software that does what it does but i think they did a terrible job communicating this limitation communicating this limitation and you know like any backup strategy you got to have multiple ones right so even if backblaze is totally ignoring my dropbox i have other things that are like my super duper clone that are ignoring dropbox because super duper doesn't care about dropbox and because i don't use the file provider version of dropbox all my dropbox files are plain normal files on my disk and super duper backs them up fine and by the way so does time machine so you know backing up is difficult and the price of good backups is eternal vigilance and in this case our vigilance was someone thwarted that our vigilance was thwarted by backblaze doing a really bad job of communicating this change we'll put a couple other links in the show notes um there's a blog blog post from Backblaze that's kind of, we're victims too, which again, like I think there's truth to that, but I just don't love the way in which it was communicated.

58:31There's also some other reports and roundup from MJ Psy as always. And then there's some alternatives here that we can at least have you look at. I don't know if we necessarily recommend them, but we can point them or point you in their directions. Yeah. This first one is not a piece of software, but it is a strategy that i saw mentioned many many times and i do want to address it because it um it can work but only in certain circumstances so here's the suggestion number one you're if you're a dropbox user don't use the file provider version of dropbox that there is an option for that buried in the app you can even opt out of it once you've opted back in it's the same piece of software for a while i thought it was like a different version but like right now it's like the same it's just the dropbox client for the mac and the same piece of software can run in two different modes apparently if you can find your way to the option you can disable it i don't know what the limitations on that on i maybe maybe some people were opted in permanently but anyway i have the option turned on and off and i know this because to test hyperspace with both the non-file provider non-file provider version i have the non-file provider version on this mac and on the other mac i have the file provider version so i can you know see the different behaviors and it's the same account and it's the same client software um so the idea is don't use the file provider version so then every file in your dropbox is on your disk taking up space there's no weird file stubs there's no ubiquitous files they're just plain boring files that are just 100 there once they're synced okay but backblaze will probably still skip them because they're in a folder called dropbox and you know a well-known location they'll just say oh well i'm not going to check whether these are cloud backed i'm just going to say anything in a folder called dropbox anything under there we won't back up or whatever heuristics they use to figure out is this a dropbox folder maybe there's even a way they can just look it up in dropbox prefs where your dropbox folder is they might still be skipped right so and people complain about that like look backblaze don't skip it based on the path i'm telling you i'm not using the file period version just back them up it's pissing me off so the solution the suggestion very much in the hyperspace style is how about you do an apfs clone of the entire dropbox tree which will take up essentially zero extra space not really zero because it's a tiny directory entry for every single file right so but effectively zero space in the grand scheme of things do a complete complete clone of your dropbox tree to a location that does not have dropbox in the path and then backblaze will back that up because backblaze has no idea where those files came from but it also won't take up any additional space on your disk the problem is doing a giant recursive clone of your dropbox tree a it's the painting the golden gate bridge thing where when you start that recursive clone things could have changed by the time it finishes so it's not really a point in time snapshot although you could do it you could do it from a time machine snapshot if you wanted um but b that's time consuming like just creating that directory trees and all the directory entries and entering all the metadata and all that stuff uh that is time consuming and if you have like a terabyte of dropbox stuff just doing that operation on a periodic basis like and what tool you if you use rsync rsync won't copy all the metadata you use r clone you might get more data if you use apple's like ditto tool you'll get even like you're starting to become like you're starting to deal with like file system apis and stuff that you don't want to deal with because like uh faithfully reproducing every aspect of files is difficult and setting aside that backblaze doesn't even back up all that metadata anyway metadata on mac os's It's terrifyingly complicated these days, as I've had to find out with hyperspace.

1:01:51And so doing something as simple as, oh, I'm just going to make a copy of the directory. I'm sure, you know, it will take up effectively zero space. But will the metadata and every one of those files be identical to the source files? No, it absolutely won't. It'll differ in ways that probably don't matter, but it will differ. And so there's now you have that in the mix. So it's another complication. But I just want to throw that out there. If you do this, you have to have the non-file provider version and you have to find some way to carefully and efficiently periodically make a full apfs clone and by the way don't just make a plain copy you got to make sure those copies are clones which they probably will be but depending on the tool you use they might not be and anyway back point black blaze is that you know backblaze will back up that directory because it's not excluded because it has no idea this was came from dropbox so that is the zero cost as long as your time has no value solution to this problem there are also some not free solutions to the problem uh this is software first is arc arq is it marco that's used this i feel like one of you sees this yeah i used it a long time years ago i used it all right do you have anything you'd like to add about that or just gonna no i mean

1:02:53Marco Arment:it's been a long time so anything i say would be very outdated this is this is i think just an independent developer making a piece of software that backs up files and the person obviously has a passion for it and has developed this program over years and it is tries to be very careful and reliable um it is not big corporate bloatware uh but it is also very clearly an idiosyncratic indie style app that does one very specific thing and a lot of people like it and have success with it and it doesn't have the same limitations now how does it handle the the difficulties that i just described with dropbox i don't know uh one thing i can imagine is that if you have the non-file provider version that it will just back them up because it's like well they're just plain files i don't i don't i'm not going to exclude them based on the directory name containing dropbox it's not going to do any of that so thumbs up for arc in that respect but if you use the file provider version of one drive or you know the dropbox or any of these other things that backblaze is skipping i'm not sure how arc will handle that you could ask the arc developer but that is a third-party alternative to a piece of software like an app that you run that will periodically back stuff up that is entirely divorced from the Backblaze code base and technique.

1:04:01Yeah, and to be clear, my limited, very limited understanding of this is that it's mostly a bring-your-own-backup-destination kind of thing, where you use Arc to manage sending data somewhere else, but the somewhere else is also your problem. I also just realized as I'm loading arcbackup.com, again, A-R-Q, there's some quotes on here, quote, I honestly love this app, quote Marco Arment, which is funny. But anyways, I did say that. But I think they do. It appears they do dabble in providing the the destination as well. But I think the bread and butter of Arc from my limited understanding is you have a place like a Synology or is one of like Backblaze B2 or the AWS equivalent.

1:04:46What is that? I'm thinking of the drawing a blank. S3. S3. S3. Thank you. Something along those lines that you are using Arc to manage backing up and restoring from there yeah it's very funny like you look on their page like here's here's the storage locations amazon drive aws b2 dropbox file base google cloud google drive one drive polycloud sharepoint sfdp wasabi attach disk or network share s3 compatible server like it is back end not back end agnostic but it's pluggable back end so if you just want to copy things from one hard drive to another arc will do it if you want to copy things from a hard drive s3 arc will do it if you want to copy things from a hard drive to you know wasabi which is another like s3 type server like that's that's what this app does and so people like the flexibility of like i just want to copy things from a to b and let me pick what a is and let me pick what b is and let me use an app that is you know seemingly uh been developed over many many years by a development team or an individual that are really enthusiastic about this problem space and so there you have it arc is that comes up a lot in these discussions and then there's a i don't remember if this is a newcomer which is what I was about to say, or if it's just been purchased by another group.

1:05:53But the same folks that do Kaleidoscope, which is my diffing tool of choice, they now own or run or whatever Parachute Backup, which is, again, just software. But what this is about is specifically with regard to iCloud, so iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive. This is a way to slurp up the stuff that's in iCloud and put it somewhere else as a backup. So if your use is limited to iCloud stuff, you might want to check out parachute as well we'll put a link in the show yeah this is another one of the problems i talk about this a lot with my photos backup thing you know um apple's photos app on the mac has options in its settings it says hey do you want me to download what they call like download originals to this mac which is i'm going to get the original full resolution version of all your images and i will download them on this mac or do you want me to quote optimize storage which basically means some of these photos aren't going to be on your mac we'll put the thumbnails on your mac or whatever so you can scroll through them but like when you when you double click on one to see the big version we might not have downloaded that so we'll download it and that's to save disk space because if your photo library is terabyte and you have a 500 gig laptop how can you ever have your whole photo library in there well if you do optimize storage it will make it look like your whole photo library is on there but obviously there's a demon behind the scenes that is downloading and evicting the full resolution photos periodically so what if you're trying to back up your mac you're like oh i'm backing up my mac so i have my mac has my whole photo drive library on it and i'm backing up my mac therefore i have a backup of my photo library it's like well if you have optimized storage on in your iCloud photo library and you make a backup you're not backing up your whole photo library you're backing up whatever portion of your photo library is on your mac at that moment um and so i always advocate having at least one mac that you say download originals on right but what if you don't have any mac that has enough space to download all your originals on because your photo library is huge your mac ssds are small parachute what it will do is it will essentially go through your photo library and say is this photo on the mac if it is i'll back it up if it's not on the mac it will say okay photo thing download it wait for it to download back it up and then evict it again that's my impression of what parachute is doing for you it will labor laboriously piecemeal download your whole photo library a few photos at a time so it can back them up to wherever you're backing them up to and then it will chuck them back off again and obviously if if your whole photo library is on your mac you could use arc to back it up or parachute backup will have less work to do it's like hey look all the files were there i backed them all up um but that's it's trying to capture a niche which is like well lots of things in the apple ecosystem won't even bother backing up your your photos library is like hey it's in the cloud and the cloud is the backup and that's something we should mention here like people think uh all my files are in google drive so they're backed up all my files in dropbox so they're backed up a backup is not the same as having your files on a server somewhere in the cloud having your files on a server somewhere in the cloud is great if your laptop falls into the ocean but if you accidentally delete all your files or accidentally delete a file and don't notice until it's 30 days later and it's been removed from the trash that's where backups come in handy because backup is not the main location where your file is it's a second location that is not affected by changes to the origin so if you have a backup of a file and you delete that file you can get it from the backup if you have your file in google drive and you delete it from google drive you can't get it anymore because you deleted it again setting aside it'll be in the trash of 30 days yada yada the whole point is like if it's really gone from where it was it should still be in your backup but if something is really gone from your photo library you don't have any backups it's really gone so that's why apps like parachute help for people who uh you know are paranoid about this type of thing i mean i i'm paranoid about photos to the point where i have my photos library upgrade uploading to google photos so my originals are also in google photos and google photos there's no connection to apple photos like if apple burns down and my whole iphone photo library dies and i lose all my time machine backups and i lose all my m disk optical discs and you're like this like my my fifth level backup it's like in the end And Google Photos also has all the originals from my photo library.

1:10:02And it doesn't know they came from my photo library. It just knows it has a bunch of images in it. And so, yeah, the more more diverse your backup environment can be, the more protected you are. And that's what apps like Parachute and Arc are there for. They're not made by Apple. They're not made by Backblaze. They're not made by Google. They're made by another company. And so you're trying to like Marco's point earlier about security bugs and stuff like that. try to spread the risk around across multiple companies multiple things some of them are uh you know in your house some of them are off-site some of them are clouds some of them are big companies some of them are small companies i know it seems like it seems to me often that the main job of me and my computer is to back up my computer like it seems like what does your computer do other than back itself up but if you want if you have digital data that you care about to the degree that I care about my photos, for example, it is a considerable amount of effort to make sure that that data is protected in some way.

1:10:56Or otherwise you're just rolling the dice and hoping a disaster never strikes. And even I am not fully protected. I am absolutely sure there are many failure modes in which I will lose all my data, but I'm just trying to minimize them to the best of my ability. And diversity in your backup strategies is a great way to do that.

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1:13:06All right, let's do some Ask ATP. And Brian Ash writes, Hey, John, what year or generation is your Honda? Any plans when you'll replace it? If you don't have plans, but if you had to replace it, what would you get? Brian, John does not believe in hypotheticals. I am right there with you with this question, Brian Ash. We did a whole member special on this hypothetical. How are you saying I don't believe in it? Uh-huh. Well, you're going to poke a hole in it. I guarantee it. Anyway, I looked at Honda's website, writes Brian Ash, and unless I missed it, it looks like they don't offer anything with a manual anymore.

1:13:35Are you driving less now that you're independent and or because of what your kids are doing now? all right so let's take this uh one piece of time here what your generation is my honda it's 2014 so i hope it's uh over a decade old now it's hanging in there uh any plans on when you replace it my current plan is to replace it when it dies what does dies mean well you know it's a certain point cars get so old that repairing them is no longer worth money i i will say that i'm probably willing to put a surprising amount of money into this to keep it on the road but at a certain point you know it becomes untenable the car gets sold or whatever so i'll tell you what that point is But right now I have no plans to replace it because I like it and it fulfills my needs and it's paid for.

1:14:15So, yeah, it's hanging in there. It's low mileage. It's very low mileage. About how many miles are on it just off the top of your head? Forty five. Less than forty five, I think. Forty three. So twenty fourteen car with forty three thousand miles on it. So this is low mileage. Low mileage example, as they would say. My my what is it? A twenty eighteen. I'm pretty sure I had that right. My twenty eighteen Golf R has like thirty two thirty three thousand miles on it. So similar situation, you know, when you don't drive, if you don't have a commute and you're not driving long distance to offset that commute on a regular basis, you know, for whatever reason, you end up putting not too many miles.

1:14:49And for probably, I don't know, almost a decade, like my last job that I had for like 12 or 13 years, I commuted to it, but the commute was not long. Like having a short commute, like my commute was like three miles or so or something like that. I mean, it took forever because traffic, but, you know, distance wise, it wasn't long. Time wise, it was very often long. And so even when I was commuting, I wasn't racking up the miles. I know some people will commute, you know, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 miles to their job. And that will really rack up the mileage. So that's another reason this is low mileage.

1:15:18And then obviously quitting my job and working from home is just reduce it further. If I did have to replace it, what would I get? Like with big TVs, I'm always, always looking for what would I get? That's my main activity, right? And in the car space, did you find the member special that we did about that? it no i'm looking as we speak i haven't gotten there yet yeah in the car space it's tricky because i want my next car to be electric but i don't like any of the electric cars that are available right like i like them but like you know when i rank i don't like any of them better than my current car you know what i mean like they all have something that annoys me about them makes me think i'll i'll just wait until they figure that out and fix it and they just keep always messing up one even my beloved lucid air like i hate that interior i don't like what they did with the the controls and i'm like i'll fix it with the next revision of the air it's like no we're never revising that car all right so i i don't know there are other cars that i like if i i think the member special hypothetical was more like if you had to like if your car broke you know you got totaled or whatever and you had to get a new car what would you get this right now the answer would be i would get a stick shift honda civic without a sunroof on it um because my wife has that car with the sunroof um and i really like her car except the stupid sunroof hits my head so she insisted on the one with the sunroof because i think we talked about before because She wants the heated seats and all the blah, blah, blah.

1:16:32And you can't get that car without a sunroof with the trim oval she wants. And it's her car and she's way shorter than me. So it's fine for her. And she likes it. She likes her car. I like her car too. I just don't like the sunroof. I would get a stick shift Honda Civic without a sunroof. I like the current generation. I like the current generation. It's a really nice car. I recommend it to anybody. It's excellent. Even the hybrid is excellent, which I wouldn't buy because it doesn't come with a stick shift. But the hybrid is also excellent in the current model year, current generation of Honda Civic.

1:16:59um and then are you driving less now that you're independent um yes because i don't have to commute to work um so even though it was only three miles it was three miles there and three miles back every single day whereas now you know run errands a couple times a week but it's not every single day um and because of what my kids are doing it's probably more because of what my kids are doing because my kids are doing is going to schools that are far away and i'm driving back and forth to either pick them up or drop them off or bring them stuff or whatever so my son was like 45 minutes to an hour away depending on traffic and my daughter is like an hour and a half to two hours away and i've gone back and forth to the both of those schools a lot uh so what my kids are doing is actually driving up my mileage fair enough uh hp neutral car shopping from the 14th may 2024 we will put a link in the show notes jason writes mac hardware represents just under eight percent of apple's revenue it will probably be overtaken by airpods soon woof uh my question is this which apple ceo will remove the mac from their lineup will it be john turn i don't think i want to keep reading this even i don't want to keep reading i think this is the answer to this one will it be john turnus he could be ceo until 2040 do we think the mac will exist in hardware form then will it be the next ceo after turnus if if the best-selling mac of all time is basically an iphone and a bigger chassis why not sell mac os as an app for iphone users and save on manufacturing costs.

1:18:20Everybody wants everything to be in their iPhone. My whole computer could be in my iPhone. Then I would just connect my phone to a keyboard and a mouse and a big monitor and it would become a Mac. The files are in the computer. You just described a Mac Mini with a screen on it. Yeah, that's just a Mac. Yeah, exactly. So the easy answer to this, and the one that everybody says because it is the easy answer, is as long as the Mac is the platform you use to develop for all of Apple's other platforms, you can't get rid of the Mac. Because then there would be no apps for the phone there would be no apps for the ipad there would be no apps for apple tv there would be no apps for vision pro well you know anyway wow like it and that's out that's on apple apple did make you know a way to develop ipad apps on the ipad but it's extremely limited but like they never went whole hog is that here's xcode for the ipad here's xcode for vision pro here's xcode for the phone for crying out a lot full-fledged 100 can do everything xcode like and apple could have done that there's nothing stopping them from porting xcode to the ipad and getting rid of the mac and you know like like like that's but until they do that they can they can't they literally can't get rid of the mac now setting that aside say they aside to that oh the new ceo comes in and says we want to get rid of the mac so of course we have to port xcode to the ipad and then we'll be done uh i think especially in the current age of uh excitement over ailm stuff where is all that action happening on apple's platforms it's not happening on the phone it's not happening on the ipad it's not happening to the vision pro it's happening on the mac because the Mac is the more technically capable and more open platform.

1:19:51And whether Apple recognizes it or not, I would encourage them to recognize the openness and power of the Mac is what is allowing Apple to participate in this stuff at all. Because if Apple didn't have the Mac, nobody would be trying to do this stuff on the phone or on the iPad because they're just too closed and make it too difficult. Whereas you can let command line stuff run wild on your Mac and screw everything up. And that's what people are currently excited about and doing. And so I think Apple should not get rid of the Mac. I think Apple should not close down the Mac any further. And I think they won't.

1:20:26I don't think Ternus is going to do that. He seems like he's a big Mac guy and he's a nerdy person and those people tend to like it. So don't look at the percentage revenue. Look at how important this platform is to the company. It is immensely important and like necessary for the company to continue to exist now. And if Apple removes that necessity by allowing you to develop software for their other platforms not on the Mac, it would still be dumb because the openness of the Mac is super important to Apple being even in the conversation for future innovations like AI stuff.

1:20:56Marco Arment:Yeah, I would go a little further. Like, first of all, like, what is a Mac? It's a computer running Mac OS. And that has shifted a little bit over time and all the different form factors and technical implementation details of what exactly that means. But for the most part, in broad strokes, a Mac is a computer that runs macOS. If you have an iPhone and you can plug it into other hardware and it becomes a keyboard pointing device and a screen running macOS, that's a Mac. and you know maybe it's an iphone when you remove it from all that stuff but like the combination of all those things that's a mac and as we've discussed in the past putting two os's on the ssd on the iphone and having to deal with this but like it's a probably a bad compromised mac and a bad compromised phone but if it is truly a mac it will be running mac os and you don't want your phone to be running mac os so it's also got to be running ios and now you got a device that's running two os's and virtualization and blah blah blah and there's so many compromises that have to that, which is why Apple has never actually shipped that product.

1:21:59Could you do it? Absolutely. 100%. You could do it. But I don't think anyone would want that product. It's just easier to make phones and Mac separately, and so Apple does.

1:22:06Marco Arment:And as for the software differences between them, I don't think it's possible to open up enough pathways in the iOS software architecture for apps to make it able to do the kinds of apps people love the Mac for. People love the Mac. You know, software development is a big one. But what is it about software development that makes people want to and be able to do it on a Mac and either not want to or literally not be able to do it on iOS? It's a bunch of characteristics of what tools software developers use. Part of it is, yeah, command line stuff is often involved or scripting. A lot of it is multiple applications operating on the same data, different tools integrating with other tools and lots of different things fast switching multitasking like a lot of that stuff either is impossible on ios or is just such a pain in the butt that nobody wants to do it when a mac is available um and to actually change that about ios you're just making a mac at that like if if you have all those yeah like they wouldn't the way they would do that on ios like it's totally technically possible you know how you run a virtual machine that essentially has mac os inside it and everything that runs in that environment is running in a big shared mac inside your phone but like you can't break the sandboxing and security of the iphone because like why would you you destroy the security model of the iphone but hey i want to do all this stuff where everybody can see everybody else's data i want to run full x code no problem or run you in a little vm inside the phone now you've got a little tiny world that's kind of like a mac uh inside there where everything can see each other and you can run command line stuff it's like it's like the linux virtual environment and windows or whatever totally technically possible by essentially creating a new separate little world inside your phone where that stuff is allowed to happen so even though you have technically modified ios to do all the stuff that xcode needs to do you've done it by basically boring a little hole in ios and saying here's this little playpen where xcode gets to live and it's essentially a environment that's more like the mac inside the iphone environment yeah and and it isn't just software development that works this way.

1:24:17Marco Arment:There's lots of tools and applications and needs that people have on computers that just don't fit well with the iOS super isolated software model. And I don't think iOS will ever get there because that's not what makes iOS good. If anything, what we've seen in recent years with trying to make the iPad more Mac-like in some of its windowing and multitasking features, what we've seen is that it often is kind of a sidestep and a lot of iPad users actually don't like it and want to disable it or switch it back because it's a little clunkier or it's a little bit different and it's kind of a mixed bag it's hard it's very difficult to advance iOS especially like once you're at the iPad scale you're trying to make it closer to Mac it's very hard to advance iOS towards the Mac in a way that doesn't make it worse at being what people loved about iOS before or what has worked very well for iOS before.

1:25:14Marco Arment:So I don't think, I think the whole idea of iPhones and iPads replacing Macs, that idea is probably not going to happen. You know, what happens in computing, usually when we have a new platform come out, usually, or a new form factor, usually it doesn't replace anything. It just adds. People might choose to have multiple ones or, you know, like when the watch came out, the watch didn't replace the phone. Some people said it would, it didn't, and it won't. And I don't think it's an inevitability that our phones or iPads are going to replace Macs or PCs. What we've seen in the computing industry is that there are certain form factors and ways of interacting and ways that the devices work that just hit a real sweet spot for people.

1:26:04Marco Arment:And they tend to last, even though all the people who love talking about tech in the future are saying, oh, this thing is going to die. like certain things never die. I think the most obvious thing in what we know today that probably has the longest lifespan is the smartphone. The phone is just so ideal for people in so many ways, in so many like basic physical ways. The phone is great and very compelling and such a great balance of lots of things. I think the phone is going to be with us for the rest of our lives and probably significantly after that. And not just existing, I think being like the central computing device for most people.

1:26:40Marco Arment:I think it's the phone for a long time. But also, the computer, the way we know it as like the Mac and Windows PC today, like that style of computer, I think is another one of those sweet spots. People have tried over the years to replace it and to make it obsolete and or to phase it out and doesn't work because people love it. And it keeps working really well. And lots of other things like and look, you can part of what you can say against the Tim Cook era at Apple is that Tim Cook clearly had the idea for whatever reason that the iPad was going to replace the Mac and that the iPad was the modern platform and the Mac was the legacy platform.

1:27:20Marco Arment:And eventually he seems to have changed his mind on that. But for the first, I don't know, five to ten years maybe of his leadership at Apple, that seemed like that was the plan. And customers didn't go for it. The iPad was not the future of all computing. It was the future of the iPad. And it has a market, it has uses, but it didn't replace the Mac or the PC for that many people. And Apple sure did try. They tried really hard to push it that direction. And it just didn't go that way. I think people have shown over and over again, they love their phones and they love their laptops. And they don't necessarily want those things to merge.

1:27:59Marco Arment:And no one's asking for those things to merge. And finally, one other thing to consider is that the computing industry for a long time has kind of been it keeps pushing this this this command and this assumption and this goal of like computers are too hard to use we need to make computers easier for everyone everyone else all the non-nerds easier to use and there's a lot of truth in that there's also a lot of like kind of you know false like advocating for for groups that don't exist anymore or that exist a lot smaller than you think or speaking for people or making decisions for like theoretical people that you're not really talking to real people and i think what's also happening is all the people who don't know how to use computers are aging out most people today are fine operating a computer to the degree they need to operate it and so the the whole push of like let's get rid of the mac it's too complicated we're gonna make everything simple not only is Has that failed over the years?

1:29:05Marco Arment:And not only is iOS getting more and more complicated over the years to basically match the complexity of a Mac or PC in many ways, but also the demand for that, the need for that is just a lot lower than it used to be because way more people have basic proficiency at using computers now. I don't think that's why the demand has gotten lower. I think the demand has gotten lower because Macs have actually gotten less intimidating. Like the Apple has done a lot of work on the Mac over many, many years to take those things that were the most difficult and confusing and make them less so. There's still a gap, obviously.

1:29:43A Mac is easier to screw up than a phone by a million miles or whatever. But compare how difficult it is to wrangle a Mac today. Like compare like a MacBook Neo to like a PowerBook running classic Mac OS. Night and day level of expertise required. So I think people haven't changed. I think Apple has successfully over many decades made the Mac easier to use. Not as easy as an iPad, not as easy as an iPhone. But like to your point, I think they're reaching a point where they're they're getting to a threshold where it's like. you can no longer argue for the elimination of this platform due for it due to its intractable difficulty because now we've made it reliable and easy enough that to the average person it is not impossibly difficult and that wasn't true in the early days of the pc the pc was essentially impossibly difficult to wait for way too many people if you weren't a computer nerd today you don't have to be a computer nerd you can throw a macbook neo to anybody it's more complicated than a phone it's more complicated than an ipad they can screw it up more easily but they will be successful in using it to a degree that you could not say for a mac or any pc 20 or 30 years ago yeah but but i think you know both things have happened like the mac

1:30:54Marco Arment:is easier to use today but also people like way more of the population is proficient at using mac and pc style computers today as they used to be but and also efficient no they they get they can i think you're right when it was your case you said they can do what they need to do with them but uh it's the it's the joke about gen x being the only generation that knows how to use computers because we have to we had to help our parents with it when we were kids and now i have to help my kids with it when i'm an old person yeah but but it's because proficiency does not mean power user it means you you're able to use the computer to do what you need to do with it i know but even that like still it's like i can't print i mean the eternal one i can't why can't i printing is not a power user feature it's a thing that you have to do every once in a while why can't i print my kids can't figure out why they can't print my parents can't figure out why they can't print I can figure out why we can't print and my son has it now has a computer science degree so like what's his excuse right well but also and keep in mind also like having the smartphone take over the world has also affected this greatly so like first of all way more people are able to use smartphones because they are simpler and in a lot of ways um and so many people's needs are perfectly satisfied with their smartphones they many people yeah they don't they don't even have a mac or pc because they don't need one right like many people who don't who don't want a computer or can't use a computer get their needs solved with a phone just fine because having it and to refer to that point having a personal computer or a mac is not a requirement to live in today's society having a smartphone essentially is right and and that also like i feel like you know many people who never learned how to use mac and pc computers they didn't need to like they weren't really ever forced to whereas today phones are pretty important for lots of society and also because people tend to like them more than they used to like old computers people are people who are who are not into computers are are more motivated to use their phones more often and therefore actually become more proficient just by experience with them whereas that motivation like wasn't there for them for computer necessarily so the need to wedge all the simplicity into macOS and ruin what the Mac is or get rid of the Mac over time, that need is gone.

1:33:07Marco Arment:Meanwhile, the MacBook Neo just came out. It's a Mac for the price of an iPad and everyone is loving this. People are so much more excited about the MacBook Neo than I have heard about any iPad model released in probably the last eight years like i can't i can't imagine i can't remember the last time anybody was this is about an ipad the macbook neo is a hit why because people who want an ipad mostly that's like you know more basic needs like watching tv and stuff like that and and that needs been solved for a long time by the ipad that's nothing new but people love having the mac in a lower price point and it doesn't need to be a super powerful macbook pro it like it wasn't about computing power it's And that's how we know.

1:33:57Marco Arment:You take an iPhone chip and you put it in a Mac and you have a pretty limited Mac in terms of sheer hardware capability. But people love working that way. They love using a computer like that. The great reception of the MacBook Neo, I think, proves this point. What people have wanted all this time that Apple is trying to make the iPad the future of computing, what most people want for their computing is a computer. And what most people like about the Mac is not replaced by an iPad with a keyboard that ends up costing$1 ,300 for the combo or whatever. People like a Mac. And making just a cheaper Mac with lower hardware specs, people love that.

1:34:41Marco Arment:Meanwhile, the idea of making the iPad the future of computing, it seems like that is increasingly not the case. The iPad is another platform that many people use and love, but it is not going to replace the Mac. All right. And then finally, Paul Franz writes,

1:35:22or macOS kernel like phones, watches, TV, or cars. To be fair, I looked at my macOS uptime going back to November on my laptop and the longest uptime was 40 days. My Linux server's longest uptime was seven months. Its W temp goes back to 2022. I believe in all these cases, there were OS updates or needing to physically move my server. Rebooting for updates seems less annoying than things breaking and requiring an immediate restart. Yes, I don't think the expectations are out of whack, but as it was kind of alluded to here, um if you don't shut down your mac every day like jason snell because you're a weirdo if you have a mac and you're conscientious as uh margot suggested at the beginning of the show your uptime is going to be determined by apple's os release of the cycle because you have to reboot when they update when they do a point release so 15.7.7 comes out you do the update you reboot that is for me for someone who leaves my mac on all the time and you know i just put it to sleep when i'm not using it and then i wake it up when i'm using it but i never ever ever shut down my uptime is 100 determined by when apple releases software updates um i tend not to do a software update right before i record a podcast so maybe it'll be delayed by a couple days but that's it but if i didn't do that how long would my uptime be i mean essentially forever like i you know my i have had kernel panics on this mac at various times especially with all my video card swapping and stuff but it doesn't happen very frequently so i i'm sure i could have had like multiple years where i just had an uptime of multiple years um but like i'm all here's the problem here's the other problem you reboot for all sorts of reasons uh if when i go on a long vacation i like to shut down and unplug my computer when i reboot into windows i there's where there goes my uptime but like theoretically if you have a stable system running mac os 10 or mac os or whatever there's no reason why you should ever need to reboot a distort of software bugs um and software bugs requiring a reboot are very rare even bugs that require like everything is frozen and dead if you just kill login window for sshn and kill login window your uptime will be maintained even though you just you just booted yourself back to the login screen but that doesn't affect your uptime because hey the machine is still up so now obviously linux servers that are just doing one thing over and over again and don't have any software updates that are running on them although i think that is also rare and it should be rare because you should be patching your you should be updating to again to marco's point you should update everything even your servers every once in a while but in theory people have these linux servers they never update them they run the same software you're like the only thing that's going to take them down is a hardware problem or whatever and i think that is also true of any modern device like an apple tv or a phone or a mac or whatever but the world we live in is a world where there are software updates and you should apply them a lot of the times because a lot of times they are security related and also software does have bugs so yeah i don't think it's uh that if someone just says hey your mac has been up for a long time and you should reboot that's maybe not great advice but the the one of the things that i tell my kids every time they tell me their computer is doing something flaky like you know it's the whole turn off and turn on again rebooting is one of the first best easiest diagnostic steps did you have to reboot it's like no but like it takes two seconds macs boot really fast these days and if it solves the problem like then try that first before you come to me like x isn't working y isn't working and very often it's like some app isn't working it's like i don't know log out and back in which is the software should never reboot which is like maybe that app has a bug and it's screwed up in some way and if you log out and back in it will fix it uh but if nothing fixes it you can reboot but if there's nothing wrong with your computer and you're like oh you have up time of a month you should just reboot just to be safe no if it's working fine you don't need to reboot?

1:39:02I remember when I was first on my own, I ran some flavor, if I want to say Ubuntu, on like a ThinkPad or something like that. This was 20 years ago, so I can barely remember now. But I remember being very impressed by the uptime of that machine. And I remember being so impressed by it that when I at one point needed to either shut it down or reboot it or whatever the case may be, I actually captured a PDF of a little like diagnostic page that I'd written. And the record server uptime which was recorded uh actually a month after me being married to aaron so this was 27 it's 2007 excuse me server uptime 299 days six hours 28 minutes and i was very proud of that at the time yeah if you search the internet you'll find people with like this linux server has been running for 37 years like not joking 37 years like literally well i don't know if that fits with linux but there are unix servers they're like i'm sure there are some of those like you know very fancy mainframes with redundant cpu and power supplies that are doing like visa transactions for all of our lives like that's a little bit fudge where it's like well it has the same thing been up because they swapped out the cpu a few times but anyway um yeah there are lots of long-running things out there and linux linux is one of the first ones you start to see people brag about it because like regular tech nerds would just like set up a linux server in their house somewhere and then they'd wake up 25 years later and they'd realize they'd never rebooted it and they'd post a cool screenshot or whatever but uh yeah as with all things again i always find it hilarious when uh people post screenshots as proof of anything it's like you know you can make any pixel in any arrangement and a bitmap you know you can just like like i can turn on and off any pixel and i can make any pixel any color screenshots are not proof of anything but uh yeah you can just edit wtep directly uh and then and then type uptime and be like wow wow, uptime of five millennia.

1:40:55But no, I'm assuming people are being honest because, yeah, computer systems can be made reliable in the right circumstances. Who knew?

1:41:03Marco Arment:All right, thanks to our sponsors this episode, Aura Frames and Delete Me. 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 is ATP Overtime. This is our weekly bonus topic. Every single episode, there is more content that non-members, sorry, you're missing out, members, you get it. It's great. This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about basically, should Apple make Neo versions of more products, more affordable iPhones, Macs, etc.? We're going to talk about that in Overtime this week. You can join to listen atv.fm slash join.

1:41:37Marco Arment:Thanks, everyone, and we'll talk to you next week.

1:41:42Marco Arment:Now 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 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-N-G, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S. So it's accidental, accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental, accidental. Tech Podcast, so long. I did want to call out the update to Pedometer++. This is our friend David Smith's, underscore David Smith's app, Pedometer++.

1:42:50Marco Arment:I've mentioned a little bit here and there as I prepare for my giant walk around Manhattan, which is actually this weekend, my big 32-mile walk. It's in a couple of days. As I've been testing out different watch options for that, the app I've been using on the Apple Watch Ultra has been the beta of Pedometer++ 8. And that just came out, I think, yesterday or the day before. it's brand new and underscore has a couple of great blog posts about it our friend Stephen Hackett over at 512pixels also did a great post about it it is such an amazing app because what I love about Panometer++ and I made a little Macedon post about it earlier but I'll repeat myself here in the app store in the kind of Apple developer ecosystem sometimes you get an app that somebody has just poured so much love into even if there might not necessarily be like an roi that that justifies that level of investment this is something that like this is exemplary like this is what people love about the apple indie developer scene this is what made a lot of us fall in love with the mac and certainly the software scene around it that you know just people who put in a huge amount of care.

1:44:11Marco Arment:And whether that's design, engineering, polish, some combination of all three, a huge amount of care going into a fairly specialized app. More care than that app necessarily, quote, needs in terms of what would the market pay for or support or whatever. But mostly because that person or company just cares so much about making something great in that area. Usually it's something they personally love and they just want it to be great. You want to hear the great phrase from the gaming industry for the phenomenon you're describing? It's called over-delivery. I like that. It's said in a pejorative way in various contexts, but yeah, over-delivery.

1:44:51You are delivering too much.

1:44:52Marco Arment:Right. And we hear, you know, I think another term for this is a labor of love, which is also sometimes used pejoratively. I think there is a lot of truth to that. Like there are certain apps that you look at and you're like, oh, this was a labor of love. And I personally take that as a compliment when somebody calls something that I've made, you know, something like that. The way it is pejoratively is like, wow, this idiot wasted their time doing this thing that's not worth it. But the way I see it is much more generous. It's more like, wow, like this person put so much love into a thing, not because they needed to, but because they wanted to.

1:45:25Marco Arment:And that's, you know, as long as, you know, the bills are getting paid, it's fine. And so Pedometer++, you know, underscore makes widgets myth. and by all accounts Widgetsmith is so ridiculously popular that numbers wise he probably shouldn't spend any time ever working on anything else like if you just calculate like you know what where does it make sense to devote your time like you have this one massive mega hit product like it doesn't make a lot of sense you know like Tim Cook wasn't having like a side gig you know making making little apps for himself like he had enough to deal with you know and you know so So underscore doesn't need to make Pedometer++.

1:46:03Marco Arment:He makes it because he loves it and he makes it for himself. And this update to this app, like you think it's just a step counter. And it is a pretty good step counter. But then behind the step counter is this like world-class hiking and walking tracker, especially in the Apple Watch. Like if you are walking or hiking, and it actually supports other types too, but I think those are the big ones. Walking, hiking, anything where you could use a map on your wrist or distance measurements on your wrist or step counts or whatever. Actually, it probably would be good for cycling too. But anyway, if you are doing like, you know, walking, hiking, running, cycling, things where you are outside following trails or maps or whatever, the experience of using Pedometer++ on the watch, it was always good.

1:46:50Marco Arment:But now it is even better. He brought in a designer to help him make these amazing, he brought in a cartographer to help him make the maps look better. how many people do you know who have hired a cartographer for anything but he brought in a cartographer he brought in a designer it looks incredible it works great the engineering behind it is great it destroys the like you know in terms of like how nice it looks it destroys all the other fitness watches and apple's built-in apps and any other app I've ever seen third party or first party in terms of niceness of this this experience uh and one of my favorite things too is that it has this um this expedition mode where to extend the apple watch battery life there's a few tricks you can do but he if you want your apple watch to last like multiple days of a hike you can turn an expedition mode and that's a special workout mode that doesn't use the heart rate at all like if you know if you're just walking if you're hiking the heart rate might not be that relevant to you um so you can turn off the heart rate and get 40 % more battery life, which is massive.

1:47:59Marco Arment:So all this is to say, this is an amount of coolness and niceness and effort into an app that this one guy has, I think, embarrassed the rest of the industry with how good his app is for these purposes compared to the built-in Apple workouts app, the Suunto, the Garmins, all those watches of the world. like this app is awesome so if you go outside and walk or run or bike or hike which is just walking i think but in the woods or something like if you do those things check out pedometer plus plus especially on the watch where it really shines there's a great phone app as well but the watch and like no one else is doing apple watch development worth a damn except underscore like he he blows everyone else away in the term in terms of like how much he how much effort he puts into the Apple Watch as a platform because the platform fights you at every turn.

1:48:54Marco Arment:It's very developer hostile for lots of good reasons and some bad reasons. He gets through it and he does great work on the watch. It has made me re-fall in love with the Apple Watch as a fitness device for that particular purpose, for the walks. Even though I also like the Suunto for other reasons, man, Pedamira++ is so good. Check it out. When we went on spring break, a couple of weeks back or a month back, we did some hikes, including one that was, I think I described it on the show, two miles out, two miles back. And what I did was I found on like all trails or something like that, I found a GPX, which is, you know, a series of waypoints.

1:49:32I think it's XML, but it doesn't really matter. It is. It's really ugly. Yeah, there you go. I found that and sent it to Pedometer++ and then it would show me, am I on or off the track that was provided via the website, the all trails website, which was really, really slick. It's really good stuff. And that was the old version. That was version 7 or whatever of Pedometer++. This is really good stuff. Underscore has put in an astonishing amount of engineering work. And like Marco said, I mean, who says I hired a cartographer? How do you even do that?

1:50:03Marco Arment:Yeah, do you go on LinkedIn? Right. How do you find your friendly neighborhood cartographer? I mean, just ridiculous. He's next to the cobbler. Right. And the blockbuster. I've said many times throughout the course of this show. So one of the main reasons I think that we are successful, the three of us, at doing this show is really two, actually. Number one, I think the three of us have a pretty good chemistry. And even though sometimes we want to murder each other, by and large, we're really dear, close friends. And I think that comes through in shows. But number two, and what's relevant here, is that we really and truly give a crap.

1:50:35We don't always succeed and execute perfectly, but we really and truly give a crap. And that is something that is extremely true of underscore broadly and of Pedometer++ specifically. And like Marco said, I mean, I don't know anything about underscores, you know, business finances or anything like that. But I have to assume that just an astonishing, overwhelming share of the money that his business earns is from Widgetsmith, which he also gives a crap about. but nevertheless because this is a labor of love complimentary uh because this is something that is scratching an itch that that underscore very much has uh he still spends a lot of time on pedometer plus plus and it shows and i haven't had yet had the chance to read um he also put up a blog post about how he spent this is literally the title of his blog post six years perfecting maps on watch os and that's both a testament to underscores tenacity and and perseverance and also how shitty watch os development is but anyway you get the point so uh yeah you should check it out it's it's good stuff i have one uh more unrelated tidbit on this um back in the classic mac os days uh when it was the wild west and there was no memory protection and there was cool little system extensions to change the way everything looked in the operating system there were various engines that could do cool things like uh make it look like your windows are transparent it's uh you know something that is trivial now everything has it but before the age of compositing window managers when your app drew a window it didn't know what was like it like the the system when you're dragging a window around didn't know what was behind it it was just like telling the things to draw the new dirty areas of the screen there was no compositing window manager which meant that like in a compositing window manager some part of the operating system says okay give me all your windows you want a white window here you want a yellow window here you want this window here and by the way the windows can also have transparency values like i got all the windows i know where they all are you've told me what's in the bitmaps for them and you've also told me for every single pixel how transparent it should be now i will combine all those windows into a final image that you will see on the screen by compositing them together i'll take the back thing and then i'll put the next layer over then i'll put the next layer then i'll put the next layer and as i'm layering them on hey if i'm layering a window on top of some other stuff and that window has some pixels that have some transparency i will blend them with the stuff that i know is behind them that's what a compositing window manager does that was introduced with mac os 10 before that that was not how it worked before that application just drew directly into like a backing buffer for the entire screen and they just drew opaque pixels um but if you were clever you could say hey i'm about to draw my window onto the screen and there is stuff already on the screen so before i draw what's on the screen i'll look to see what's in the area that i'm about to draw the window and i will blend those pixels with my pixels in a transparent kind of way and so what they were doing is drawing an opaque window that contains contents that look like it's showing what's behind it now the tricky part of that is if you then move something if something behind it changed your app had no idea that it happened you know it's not like mac os 10 with the operating system would be like i'm constantly every frame i'm compositing i'm compositing composite this would be like well when i drew this window like if you have you have like a clock behind you when i drew this window here's what was behind me but then a second passes and the clock ticks over and your window has no idea that that happened because it has no awareness of what's going on behind it right so what i'm saying is you could get fake transparency which only became apparent when like you either move something in the background something changed in the background you're like oh i see you're not really compositing and like you could fudge it by saying okay every every few seconds you know look at what's behind you and then redraw it yourself and every window could do that like that fake transparency here's why this is relevant to your underscore discussion i feel like casey with this long long way to to all right and speaking of like you know underscore cares about this app and everything and casey said and widdysmith too he cares about i recall seeing a thread go by i think on mastodon where underscore was describing what he wanted to do was make essentially transparent widgets but there is no good way to do that so he's like well if i just know what's behind them and i draw them exactly how they would be appear if they were transparent they'll look transparent but oh to do that i have to know down to the not just down to the pixel but down to the like the you know but yeah down down to the the screen pixel not just the point but down to the screen pixel where everything is in the screen because i have to draw my widgets as if you can see through them so i need to know where every single other element is on the screen so the illusion is perfect but oh there are so many different sizes of iphones and also by the way people can have that magnifying mode on the iphone so he wrote this program i forget it was vibe code or not that would automate the process of figuring out every single apple device every possible set of display settings every possible widget arrangement and every possible screen so he would know so he could exactly fake with widget smith widgets that appeared in a way that seemed impossible because he's faking it down to the pixel for any iphone and any display resolution and any zoom factor and like he cares a lot about everything he does not just phenomena plus plus and that's our feature which i think by the way is stupid but he didn't think it was stupid he thought it was cool and so he went like talk about going the extra mile it's like anybody would have looked at that and said yeah you can do it but i mean it would be ridiculous and underscore is like but you can do it right and he did it he i believe this is shipping so all this is to say that underscore doesn't just care about uh widget smith he cares about uh or doesn't just care about uh padara plus he cares about widget smith and all his other apps as well so check him out