700: A Wet Dishrag Full of Lies
16 Jul 2026Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI, the state of the 27 OSes heading into the public betas, what FileMaker was (or is?), and looking for a new home for Maestral.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Anniversary Corner!
- catatp (see also Statistics)
- Bootleg visualization
- Follow-up:
- Public beta check-in
- Casey’s iMessage notification issue
- Cache in front of CloudFlare Workers!
- Apple keeps futzing with rendering of
.iconfiles - Mac-assed Mac Apps
- Globe key on Apple’s extended keyboards (via Philip Hofstetter)
LaunchAgent~/Library/LaunchAgents
- Casey’s former keyboard
- Tina’s keyboard:
MMMR3LL/A
- Tina’s keyboard:
- Shouldn’t the Studio Display get a price bump? (via Brian Nehring)
- Regarding skipping M6 Pro/Max/Ultra (via Anonymous)
- Gurman on M𝓍 Ultra servers
- Follow-out to Upgrade #627: What
wasis FileMaker - Goodbye, Maestral 🫡
- Apple Sues OpenAI
- Post-show: Casey vacation results: nerd edition
- Unifi Travel Router
- Formerly, GL.iNet KVM
- GL Comet Q
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Sony announces the end of PlayStation discs
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code atp.
- Claude: Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today.
- Quince: Elevated essentials and staples that last.
Chapters
- 🎉 700! 🎉 🖼️
- OS 27 public betas
- Spouse-notification follow-up
- Cacheable Cloudflare workers
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- OS 27 icon-rendering tweaks
- Mac-assed follow-up
- Apple desktop keyboards
- Studio Display price?
- Ultra/M6/M7 rumors
- Sponsor: Claude
- What is/was FileMaker?
- Maestral needs a new home
- Sponsor: Quince
- Apple v. OpenAI
- Ending theme
- Vacation-tech results
🎉 700! 🎉
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, it's your favorite time.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey corner? It's anniversary corner, baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It's anniversary corner, baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John This occurred to
⏹️ ▶️ John me last week and I forgot about it, but now it's all coming back to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is ATP episode 700.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 700 that you two and me have sat here, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one prisoner exchange episode. It's been all three of us for 700
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episodes, which is absolutely bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ John 700 regular episodes. When I realized last week that this was happening, I did a small bit of math so I could
⏹️ ▶️ John do it on this week when you booby-trapped me with this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John we have our member specials and we've done one-off things like interview shows and stuff like that. So it's actually obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John more than 700, but for the regular episodes, the not interview, not member special, not blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah, we've done 52 regular episodes per year for 13.4615
⏹️ ▶️ John years, which is not quite as round. I know it's episode 700, but it's not as exciting as the
⏹️ ▶️ John year round number. So anyway, we've been doing this for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don't have the author's name in front of me, and I'm deeply sorry about that. But there is a listener who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been working on for like a year or two now, catatp.fm, C-A-T-A-T-P.F-M.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is an absolutely incredible resource. This is taking the spirit of what underscore had done years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about running shows through a transcription service and trying to make the best of what comes out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it. And obviously with today's AI stuff, it's it's quite a bit more impressive than it was years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, There's a handful of these like underscores like cat ATP um, that exist. And this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one I happened to look at recently and there are statistics. So if you go to cat, ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dot FM slash statistics, you can see that as of, I think, this most recent episode, not the one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we're actually recording now, obviously, but as of 699, total length of all the episodes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 1,421 hours, six minutes, and 13 seconds. Just astonishing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, And Cat ATP, by the way, like what a, what a level up that is from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like everything that's come before because the author is using AI heavily and cleverly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And wow, it's advanced. It's really something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, at some point, I'd probably like to talk a little more about Cat ATP because there's some interesting stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. in the author, who, again, I don't have the email in front of me, I'm so, so, so sorry. But they had emailed us and among
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other things, they had come up with a visualization of what sections
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the last couple of episodes were cut from the bootleg to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the released version, which I thought was a really interesting visualization of what you're missing out on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you don't listen to the bootleg. Now, what you're getting if you don't listen to the bootleg is Marco's genuinely, not sarcasm,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely exquisite edits. You're getting much better audio quality, but you're missing some of the nonsense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and shenanigans that you would hear only in the bootleg. And if I remember, I will post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one such example image and link it in the show notes. I don't have it handy as we speak, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really good stuff. And you can see as an example, what makes the bootleg kind of fun. Now, I'm not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying the bootleg is like the canonical version. In fact, I'm pretty actively saying that's not the canonical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version, but there is something to be said for some of the shenanigans. So like I said, I'll try to dig up one of those images
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and put it in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the author's name is Justin. And by the way, this is a fun uh thing from the website. It is the word
⏹️ ▶️ John cloud of word frequencies. And I'm pretty happy with this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is because there are there is Mac Pro, extremely large, phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost as large, and then a bunch of other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's basically Mac Pro phone. I can't wait for the Mac Pro phone. It's going to be awesome. It will be pretty work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Yes, this is Justin, Justin K, who has done incredible work here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And like I said, I will try to find one of these images where you can see what the bootleg gets you. And I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey post that in the show notes. But happy 700, everyone. And I'm not going to go on for two hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I normally do, but I will just say very briefly, thank you to anyone who listens, whether or not you're a member. Thank you for sticking with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us for, what did you say, John, 13 years or whatever it's been. It's really a genuine privilege
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we get to do this together, that the three of us get to do this together, that you give us your time, which is your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most valuable resource. So thank you, everyone, for sticking with us. We really appreciate you.
OS 27 public betas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Public betas are out, and I'm curious. What do we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey betas installed on? And I ask this because I don't have I have the betas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my Vision Pro and I have the beta on my iPad. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now that the public betas are out, and now that all the travel that I know I'm doing for the summer is done,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I might do public beta on my phone soon. So let me start with Marco. I believe you said you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have already gone in all in on betas on your phone. Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I've been on the main phone beta situation since beta 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has been mostly fine. Beta 2 was a little shaky with messages, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the messages app, sometimes like losing a whole thread and having to be rebooted or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That seems to have been fixed after beta 2. And the only major issues I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it now are some behavioral differences that are making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my app behave weirdly and other apps occasionally behave weirdly. They did a lot of under the hood changes with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 27 and some of them are showing. So there's going to be a little bit of a bumpy period
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as apps get updated for that. And then finally, the biggest problem I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is CarPlay has gotten a lot of updates and it's a little rough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if your car has a hardware play pause button of some kind, like you click the volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knob in and it turns it off or on, or there's an actual play pause somewhere on your car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that if that maps to CarPlay's playing and pausing, the previous treatment of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was that iOS would forward that to the audio app as a remote play-pause command, the same way as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you tapped, if you like click the stem on an AirPod, same thing. For some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in CarPlay and iOS 27, they're instead treating those as audio interruptions, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means, which is the same kind of event as if you're playing a podcast and you get a phone call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Siri comes on to speak a direction to you or something, that's an audio interruption. And then, you know, so it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pauses your audio kind of forcefully, and then it unpauses it whenever the interruption ends.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, in CarPlay on iOS 27, it has moved those from play pause events to audio interruptions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when they end, my AV audio engine totally errors out, fails, and crashes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that's fun. So that's a big problem. I haven't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had time to file a feedback. Actually, you know what? I should have sponsored this episode Claude. I wonder if, can I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI write better feedbacks so that I don't have to? Because like I'm sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is not putting in any more effort than that to go through our feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reports. So finally, maybe AI can be the great equalizer to to finally equalize the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of effort it takes to file a feedback versus the amount of effort Apple will spend looking at it.
⏹️ ▶️ John your beta story? I've been resisting on the phone. I've thought about it a few times, So every time I look at my phone, I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I don't want this to not work in any minor way. And also, this is my phone year. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I'm going to get both new hardware and new software, assuming it doesn't cost a million dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John when it comes out. So, I mean, I probably will update this before my actual new phone arrives,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I've been resisting on the phone. I haven't even done my iPad. Normally, I do my iPad by this point, but I don't know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whenever I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John watching TV on my iPad, I'm like, I don't want this to be messed up. I know these betas are really stable and everything, which is why I'm even considering
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But yeah, so none of my iPads or iPhones have been updated. I've
⏹️ ▶️ John got my development Mac that is running the latest Golden Gate beta, and I keep that updated. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep that with the latest version of Xcode and all that stuff. And I'm fixing bugs over there and doing all that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that's it. Actually, what might happen? Well, what will happen
⏹️ ▶️ John is that I'll end up updating my wife's Mac to Golden Gate and my children's Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John to Golden Gate because they all skip Tahoe. Obviously, I won't be updating my Mac to Golden Gate.
⏹️ ▶️ John that's my beta situation. I'll, you know, I'll be running Mac OS 15 until this rate
⏹️ ▶️ John December or something or whatever. The new Macs come out and I can actually get one of them, which is fine by me. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I'm not jumping on the beta train early.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, one more thing about these betas. So Siri, there's a couple of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be aware of with Siri and iOS 27. Obviously, it's the whole new Siri AI thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In daily use, what that means is when you pull down on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home screen to type in an app name into Spotlight, it is slower because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pulls down all of Siri and Siri is like, let me do the world for you. And I'm just trying to launch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one password. It's like, let me do everything for you. So there are some common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco operations that now that Siri is everywhere, they're actually much slower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. So one of them is typing app names into Spotlight, what used to be Spotlight, to launch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. The other one, which is kind of annoying to me in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is creating reminders with the new Siri is actually significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower, which is not great news for somebody trying to launch a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new app that uses reminders. Um, And this is also just annoying because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is how it, this is by far the the way that I create the vast majority of my reminders. um, Creating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reminder now, you know, you, you still say, you know, hey, remind me you know, later today to do this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It now thinks a lot more about that because it's it's invoking the AI LM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco layers. And it asks more follow-up questions where I think it shouldn't. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it seems like it hears me worse now, like Siri has upgraded to worse ears. um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it'll ask for clarification. Like, did you say this or this? And like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before, I, it never asked me that. It would just dictate it pretty accurately almost every time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before. And, And usually one of the things that it thinks I said is just way off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they're still ironing some stuff out, but I think it is probably pretty safe to conclude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point that the move to new Siri just is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make a lot of common things slower because it is now applying a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much higher level of complex intelligence to even simple things like searching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for apps and creating reminders. So that's a little bit of a bummer, but that will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably be at least partially made up for by the fact that new Siri is actually really good so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Earlier today, I was driving and I was cutting it close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with making the ferry. And I like I was just I was on the highway, you know, a couple miles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the ferry terminal. And I simply, I'm like, I wonder if this works. I asked Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what time is the nearest ferry to from here to here, you know, the places I'm going.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I didn't tell it what ferry company. I don't have an app for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ferry. It's one of those things where like you just go to their website and there's basically like a JPEG or something, like making a table
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like like just like a schedule table. And I don't know how Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco found this information, but it did find it and it told me what time the next ferry was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I said, how about the one after that? And it successfully told me the one after that. I checked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was right. That's incredible. It has never been able to do that before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I do think it is like any other modern AI tool in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sense that this is a significant step up from what we had before. I think one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the biggest challenges that we're all going to have is just remembering to try something or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking to try something instead of just assuming that something won't work and never even trying it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is by far what holds me back the most with AI. And that is by far what will hold me back using new Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time. We're all so accustomed to Siri sucking for over a decade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we're not even going to think to try it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try it because you might be surprised how what it can do as long as you're patient because it's slow.
Spouse-notification follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like it's probably worth briefly following up on my weird, I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not getting tap taps from Erin on my watch. If you recall, it was working when Erin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sent messages and other conversations like in group chats. And I was just constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey missing notifications from her. And let me tell you, of all the people I want to miss notifications from, both selfishly and unselfishly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she was the last on the list. And somebody at some point had suggested, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you somehow have her conversation muted? And that wasn't it. But what it was, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in the settings in her contact, the text tone somehow got set to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none. Maybe I did that, maybe I didn't. And it's worth following up that I believe that was the fix that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, moving her text tone from none to anything else seems to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done it. And it's not, I don't think it's 100%, but I think it's good enough that the remaining
⏹️ ▶️ Casey percentage, whatever that may be, is me genuinely not feeling my wrist get tapped. So I am calling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this one officially solved as far as I'm concerned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Congratulations. I hope you're right. Have you fixed yours? I have just worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around it successfully because I had the text tone set for Tiff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can turn it off, but the reason I set it in the first place was because I was missing her messages.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco causing the problem. My workaround remains that I just keep messages, notifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as persistent notifications instead of, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like momentary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever the other kind is called. So they stay on my screen on my Mac until I dismiss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. And that so far seems to have fixed the problem because I am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not missing them anymore on my Mac. And it's specifically on the Mac that I would usually miss them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we'll see. I haven't done the same thing. Well, I think the phone already basically does that, but yeah, we'll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there were a bunch of other stuff that people were suggesting. You mentioned one of them already that you can mute notifications for individual
⏹️ ▶️ John conversations. So that would have also fit
⏹️ ▶️ John had been the case, which it wasn't, it would also fit your symptoms, which is like, hey, in the group conversation, I get a notification, but in my private
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I don't. If you had somehow muted the private one, but not the other one. Were there other things that people suggested that didn't
⏹️ ▶️ John apply to you, but were good ideas to check?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Muting the conversation was definitely a good one. I'm trying to think if there was anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, there were a lot of offers. There's nothing I can think of that seemed even remotely reasonable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest. But conversations can be muted, which I do use from time to time, particularly on group chats. And her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey conversation was not. The text tone was the only thing that I saw that really seemed to make a difference. I'm really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey struggling to remember anything else that I thought was plausible.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Well, there's a bunch of, we said this, we're saying this again because I know we talked about it last week too, just because so many other people
⏹️ ▶️ John said I have this problem too. But apparently it is a common problem. Yeah.
Cacheable Cloudflare workers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, John, you have a gift from Cloudflare. Can you tell me about this, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm very excited about this. Uh, when I talked about making my move from my old shared hosting provider
⏹️ ▶️ John to Cloudflare and my process there, I talked about how the different ways they have for you to host websites
⏹️ ▶️ John at Cloudflare. Um, one of them is kind of like the old style, like either Dropbox or S3 bucket,
⏹️ ▶️ John where you just chuck a bunch of files into essentially an S3 bucket and you can put a host
⏹️ ▶️ John name that you own in front of it, and voila, instant website. Um, but I'm way more picky about my URLs
⏹️ ▶️ John than that would allow, so I needed to have you know, my old static site, it was just running Apache
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was just using like a HD access to write rewrite rules and crap. You know, uh, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John I needed something like that. Uh, so the other system they have uh at Cloudflare, they have an old system called pages, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John deprecated and I didn't use. They have a worker system, which is just basically um when someone hits this URL,
⏹️ ▶️ John we will run a little bit of code that you provide us. And I provided this little they have they have an API
⏹️ ▶️ John for Node.js where you can provide um what they call a worker uh that runs code
⏹️ ▶️ John written in Node against their API that it gets an HTTP request and it sends a response. So, as I was describing,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wrote my own little dinky, like if you get a request, respond in this way. It's like the world's simplest web
⏹️ ▶️ John server, right? Um, and it does all my URLs and my redirects and all the stuff that I need to do for my various
⏹️ ▶️ John websites. But it annoyed me that Cloudflare has this amazing caching system that you can put in
⏹️ ▶️ John front of another website. Like, if you have a website hosted somewhere else, you can put Cloudflare in front of it to handle DDoS and caching
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff, but you can't just take that cache and throw it in front of one of your workers. So, then inside my worker
⏹️ ▶️ John code, I had to be like, oh, there's an API for the cache. So, when you get the request, first check the cache if the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is there and honor the various headers and blah, blah, blah. It's just like, why am I doing this? You have a product that already does
⏹️ ▶️ John caching. Can't I just have a worker and then take the cache and put it in front of the worker? And they were like, no, caching is only
⏹️ ▶️ John for putting in front of websites that aren't hosted at Cloudflare. It's for other websites that are hosted at other places.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that annoyed me. Well, here we are. I don't know how long it is, maybe a year later or less than a year later. And they have,
⏹️ ▶️ John in fact, changed their system to allow you to put their cache in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of workers. And it was glorious. So, first of all, it ripped out all the caching code. And there
⏹️ ▶️ John was a lot of it. And it was annoying. And I actually had a bunch of bugs in it that had to fix. Ripped it all out. Nope, nope,
⏹️ ▶️ John no caching. Destroy, destroy. Just love deleting lines of code, right? And then it's like one configuration
⏹️ ▶️ John setting in your worker. It's like, do you want cache to be in front of this? And I said yes. And everything else was already go because all my content
⏹️ ▶️ John already had cache headers in it and everything, right? It's all I needed to do. And then I looked at my dashboard for my workers,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think it was like an 80 to 90% drop in CPU time for my workers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because most everything
⏹️ ▶️ John is cache. Like the thing is, when you know the worker would get activated, even though it was returning a cache thing, it would run
⏹️ ▶️ John your worker and your worker would run the cache code that would check the cache and find the cache and set like, but you're that's still
⏹️ ▶️ John CPU time. Your worker still run Now my worker doesn't even run like 80 to 90%
⏹️ ▶️ John because the request hits the cache. That's what caching is supposed to do. It's glorious. I tried to take good screenshots of it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think I lost all those things in a big desktop cleanup I did. But yeah, all my charts were like, not that
⏹️ ▶️ John I was paying, I was paying like whatever the minimum is for workers, it's like $5 a month or something, piddling like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John now I'm using like no CPU. It's great. So anyway, I want to thank Cloudflare
⏹️ ▶️ John for implementing that obvious feature. It has made my life and the life of my workers a lot better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the blog post is very long where they discuss this, but it's very, very interesting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things they walk through is how they landed here, which is basically like, oh, when we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey originally devised the whole caching infrastructure and whatnot, it was to serve this need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over here at A, but to put a cache in front of workers, that's basically starting from Z.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so now we need to like reconcile these two things. It was very, very good and very interesting. And really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a great example of documentation, Apple. So it's worth checking out if you have even a passing
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said, setting it up was like literally like in my worker config. You just do cache colon enabled or true
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Like it was, that's it. That's the whole, that's the whole thing because the caching system already has a big web UI
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And again, if you're doing, if you have a decent little web server thing, you're already sending the expiration headers. It was like no
⏹️ ▶️ John work. It was just deleting code. Loved it.
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OS 27 icon-rendering tweaks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple continues to change how icon files are rendered. This is largely coming off our conversation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with or about the incredible work that Parakeet did from last episode or the episode before.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me what are they doing? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the double-edged sword of the system where the .icon files are a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John layers and ingredients in a recipe. And the recipes say stuff like specular highlight, amount
⏹️ ▶️ John five, angle 22. And that doesn't really say, okay, but what should the specular
⏹️ ▶️ John highlight look like? And so that leaves Apple free to change how it renders the
⏹️ ▶️ John same recipe. Like, what does amount five mean? What does specular highlight mean or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John And they have been changing it. We mentioned last time that they have changed it between 26 and 27,
⏹️ ▶️ John but even within 27, as each beta of Golden Gate comes out, and presumably also the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, although I haven't been looking at those, they change how the icons render. The same icon renders differently in beta
⏹️ ▶️ John two and beta three. And as Louie was pointing out when he was complaining about this, it makes it difficult to be
⏹️ ▶️ John an icon designer because you think, like, I've done this icon for a client and it's all done and it looks like this. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the next beta comes out and it's like, well, now all your icons look different. And you didn't change a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, I know the 27s are still in beta. So, you know, if you're making an icon against a beta OS, it's
⏹️ ▶️ John always going to be a moving target. But it does make me a little bit concerned. I think I mentioned last show that I was hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John that 27 was just a big correction in icon rendering from 26 and that 28 wouldn't continue
⏹️ ▶️ John the trend of essentially changing how icons are rendered over and over again because that makes it very
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult to sort of have any kind of stable identity. I give them some leeway to tweak stuff mostly because
⏹️ ▶️ John I hated how 26 rendered stuff, but here's hoping this doesn't continue indefinitely because,
⏹️ ▶️ John or at the very least, like if you want to change it, or add new effects, but don't change how the
⏹️ ▶️ John existing effects render because it's just going to change how everyone's icons look. So anyway, still a little bit concerned
Mac-assed follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, with regard to our member special about Mac Ass Mac apps, on July 9th, a friend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the show, Steve Trouton Smith, said, LOL at OpenAI replacing the native AppKit Chat GPT app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the Electron Codex app after Gruber's recent post praising it as a good Mac app. Whoopsie-dipsies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gus Mueller, another friend of the show, said, oh, and it went from 158 megs to one and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half gigabytes. Great. Stupendous. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of course, our good friend Gruber wrote, today is the day OpenAI effed up the ChatGPT Mac app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I'm glad he got in. He has all these podcasts where he was praising it. What a great native Mac app it is, how much I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it's a Mac Ass Mac app, all these other apps aren't. He got in all that, all those
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasts, all those posts and all that praise just before they screwed it up. Incredible. Incredible work, everyone.
Apple desktop keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to the globe key on Apple's extended keyboards, if you recall, I think it was Marco and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly, or maybe it was John, one of you and me, was lamenting that the globe key had moved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between the original Touch ID Lightning keyboard and my new hotness USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Touch ID keyboard. And the globe key used to be in the bottom left, or excuse me, used to be in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area above the inverted T arrows, but now it is up and it is all the way down in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the bottom left-hand corner and screwing me up all the time. Well, Philip Hofstetter wrote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The globe key was moved next to control with the USB-C revisions when the OSS started to use the globe key as a modifier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key. In the Touch ID versions, the key was still at the old place, just renamed from FN or the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco FN key. There you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There we go. All right. So Philip writes and continues: Here's a launch agent you can put in Tilde Library
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Launch Agents without the show notes to map the globe key next to control back to control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the new menu key to globe, restoring the old functionality, which is very clever. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm trying to convince myself not to do this because I try very hard to stick with like the vanilla
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of Mac OS. Like I try not to tweak the ever-living snot out of it, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite possible I will fail in this regard because this is very appealing. Then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to the good or lightning versions, that model for reference is A2520
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magic keyboard with touch ID and numeric keypad, which does come in both white and black, although it only came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in white when I bought it. And we will put a link in the show notes that John has provided me to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It comes in several colors, not just white and black. You're talking about the keycap color. Yes, it does come in with
⏹️ ▶️ John black and white keycaps, but it also comes in actual colors, as in, I guess, like dyed to match
⏹️ ▶️ John the iMacs or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac keyboards, right? You can find lots of varieties of these. But anyway, the
⏹️ ▶️ John version that I have or that my wife has in front of her M1 Mac Studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll put the model number in the show notes, but it's MMM R3L slash
⏹️ ▶️ John A. Again, this is the A2520 keyboard, but there's specific model numbers. That's
⏹️ ▶️ John the one that is silver aluminum with black keys. And I,
⏹️ ▶️ John based on last show where we were talking about the globe key, that I had, I think I had seen the globe key over there, but not
⏹️ ▶️ John on the, I just assumed they hadn't messed with the extended one, but they did. And now I knew about it or my memory
⏹️ ▶️ John is refreshed. So I immediately went on eBay and bought one of these. So now I have a new inbox,
⏹️ ▶️ John silver with black keys, touch ID extended keyboard with a full-size complete control key
⏹️ ▶️ John in the lower left corner. And I will use that with my new Mac if and when I get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But Lightning, absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not. Well, here's
⏹️ ▶️ John about Lightning. It's Lightning where it plugs into the keyboard. It's USB-C on the other end. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don't care what it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like that plugs into the keyboard. It's a USB-C keyboard. It's just the end that plugs in is Lightning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don't care about that at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, yeah. And otherwise, it has all the same features. It has Touch ID, blah, blah, blah. I don't care about the globe key.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't care about the menu key. I was very happy to find this, especially finding a new in box one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn't open it because it is sealed, but I do wonder if someone resealed it. So if I open it up and it's filled with a bunch of rocks,
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll find out when I get my Mac Studio, hopefully, sometime later this year.
Studio Display price?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is our continuing and depressing price increase corner where Brian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nering writes, You guys haven't mentioned the studio display. If the Vision Pro gets a price increase, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shouldn't the display with RAM and storage in it get one too?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the margins are higher on the studio display percentage-wise than they are on the Vision Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John I honestly do, because the stuff in the Vision Pro Vision Pro costs a lot of money, but it's filled with super expensive stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John The studio display costs a ton of money and it's filled with not quite that expensive stuff. So I think the studio
⏹️ ▶️ John display could just absorb them. But hey, don't give them any ideas. Just because they haven't increased the price yet doesn't mean
⏹️ ▶️ John they're not going to. So shh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. I have been reflecting on my decision not to purchase a studio display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey XDR or even three of them. And I stand by it, but I really want one.
Ultra/M6/M7 rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have a little bit of anonymous feedback with regard to the decision to skip M6 Pro, Max,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Ultra. This anonymous individual writes: Roadmaps for chips are decided anywhere between three to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five years in advance. So, any rumors suggesting roadmap changes a year before release is just not true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They were decided way before the rumor mill knew about it. Some last minute changes and delays do happen, but the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Silicon team still has the most aggressive and reliable execution timeline when compared to the rest of the industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the decision to skip all of those processor chips was based on multiple factors, including the use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of new packaging technology to build separate CPU and GPU chiplets, available resources,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design complexity, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that's the problem with all these rumors is they will very often get the news whenever they get it
⏹️ ▶️ John and decide some, I guess they'll just decide either this just happened or it happened recently. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as we've discussed many times with these
⏹️ ▶️ John roadmaps, they're usually made very far in advance just because it takes so long to design chips. That's why I was
⏹️ ▶️ John asking last episode, like, do you think they designed these chips and had to discard them? Or did they just, they were never going to make these and we were just
⏹️ ▶️ John finding out about it now? So this anonymous person says, no, this was decided a long time ago. There are no M6
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro Max Ultra chips that they had to throw away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, also with regard to Ultra chips, Mark Gurman wrote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when was this? This was a few days ago as we record. Apple plans to soon deploy a more powerful server
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on the M5 Ultra under the internal code name J246. But engineers are already developing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another new server chip for launch by 2029 that's built around the N7 Ultra's capabilities. The new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ultra is designed to support as much as one and a half terabytes of memory, roughly double
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the capacity plan for the M5 Ultra, though whether Apple ultimately offers that configuration will depend on the state of the industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That, I think a chip with one and a half terabytes of memory on it might cost as much as a small
⏹️ ▶️ Casey country at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, for server stuff, these things, you know, the NVIDIA chips already cost like 50 grand or whatever, even more. So it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John makes sense in that context. But this is relevant to the earlier discussions we had about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple using NVIDIA GPUs in Google data centers. And it was like, do you think they'll still keep
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to develop their own servers using M chips? German says yes. German says they are not abandoning
⏹️ ▶️ John this effort. In fact, they have new models with newer chips that are coming out and a roadmap that
⏹️ ▶️ John includes not just the M five ultra base servers, but also eventually the M seven ultra base servers in 2028
⏹️ ▶️ John with tons and tons of RAM. So, I mean, assuming these plans haven't changed,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like Apple is still dedicated to the idea that they are going to run their
⏹️ ▶️ John own servers with their own chips running their own models and not entirely rely on Google's
⏹️ ▶️ John data centers and NVIDIA GPUs. There's another story that just came out today that didn't quite get in here. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it'll be in a future show if there's more details other than what I'm about to say, which is that Apple is supposedly looking at AI
⏹️ ▶️ John chip companies for acquisition targets. I don't know if it named any individual company, but the fact that they're looking out there,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, someone, is there some kind of chip team? I think the article described it as like, is there the AI chip equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ John of PA Semi, like some team that has some really good people and really good ideas and some innovative
⏹️ ▶️ John technology specifically for AI chips in data centers? The fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that they're looking, you know, again, if that rumor and this rumor to be believed, seems like all systems go on Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John silicon powered servers. And it seems like Apple is expressing in these rumors, again, if they are true,
⏹️ ▶️ John they do not want to be beholden to uh, NVIDIA or Google to
⏹️ ▶️ John run any of their models. I mean, and I think looking at that, again, the various reports of
⏹️ ▶️ John that tech talk they gave at WWDC, I think the only things that are running the Google data centers are like
⏹️ ▶️ John the the really big, beefy models. I think the dinky ones are still running on those M2 Ultra servers, the Apple Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. So yeah, I'm kind of surprised by this. I figured they had just given up on this and this was like
⏹️ ▶️ John a uh, a vestige of the old regime of the uh, uh, pre, uh, you know, JG
⏹️ ▶️ John departure regime. And it was like those, that whole Apple Silicon servers and the M2 Ultra and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John those were all under the JG era. And I thought, well, he's out and maybe that's out as well. But it seems no. So keep an eye
⏹️ ▶️ John on this for the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think, though, that like this, this one bit from Gurman, I don't think it necessarily says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much as it kind of seems like it says, because what this actually sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like is Apple is developing an M5 Ultra and also a couple years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco later, an M7 Ultra. Okay, well, that is good news in the sense that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they put those in a product. It's called the Mac Studio, and it's their highest end desktop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they're pushing it as like a great solution for local AI inference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Awesome. Okay, so it's good that they're developing Ultra chips because that way they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can keep that product going and they can have high memory ceilings and high IO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ceilings that those really big chips allow. That's great. Now, whether that will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go into servers that they will use, I think that's actually a separate question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And whether the servers will be running a different chip or a different you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco variety of the chip compared to what ships in the Mac Studio, that's also a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question. And it doesn't sound like German has a lot of information on that part of the question. He's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got a code name for it. Yeah, but that's just that could that could just be the M5 Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that's the it says Apple plans to soon deploy a more powerful server based on the M5
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco internal code
⏹️ ▶️ John name J246. That's the server codename. It doesn't mean they're going to ship it or that this rumor is right, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that's the info in this. Not just that the M5 Ultra exists and they're going to stick it in Mac Studio, but they're also planning
⏹️ ▶️ John on sticking it a server and here's the codename of the server. Maybe it'll never happen again. It's rumors. We'll see how it goes. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple tends not to be particularly forthcoming with this, setting aside the Wall Street Journal video that we saw where
⏹️ ▶️ John they're like, hey, here's all our servers. I'm not sure when we'll see that again. If and when this does happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm not sure Apple will even announce it. But this rumor is the first positive sign I've seen in the post-JG
⏹️ ▶️ John era that anyone has said, oh yeah, Apple's still doing that whole Apple silicon server thing, which is surprising
⏹️ ▶️ John to me, but we'll say, oh, and as for the 1.5 terabytes of memory, everyone's making a big deal about like M7 in
⏹️ ▶️ John 2028, they'll finally reach parity with the 2019 Mac Pro in terms of RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, assuming you can even get 1.5 terabytes of RAM. That is interesting, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is also the case that giant gobs of memory in servers has been a thing for ages.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the realm of servers, 1.5 terabytes of memory is not that unusual and hasn't been for decades.
⏹️ ▶️ John And AI loves tons of memory. So good on Apple for apparently setting
⏹️ ▶️ John up a roadmap where at least if you have infinite money, you can have enough RAM to run some big models.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And do you think it would actually cost more when they release this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2029 than it cost for the 2019 Mac Pro? So the 2019 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, if you configure it to 1.5 terabytes of RAM, was something like $25,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it's got to be more.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann Yeah, right? It has
⏹️ ▶️ John By 2028, first of all, this RAM is going to be so much faster than the 2019 Mac Pro. It's not the same RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's way faster RAM. And second, the RAM crisis will probably not be over by 2028.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. Or, you know, well, what this rumor said is 2029 for…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, which new Ultra does he say supports 1.5 terabytes, the M5 or the
⏹️ ▶️ John Trying to say the M7 one does. His writing is so unclear, but if you parse it out, it's roughly double the capacity of the planned M5.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that means it's the M7. If he just wrote wrote clearly, this would be a lot easier to parse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if if he's right, then the 2029 release of the M7 Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and presumably a Mac Studio around that um would have 1.5 terabytes. So in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2029, will 1.5 terabytes of RAM cost more than inflation-adjusted $25,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from 2019? I'm saying at least like it's probably going to be triple that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that That really could be like you know a 75 000 option.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And as for your question about whether these will be different than the ones they ship in the max Studio, I say no.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey think It's hard enough to
⏹️ ▶️ John make a single one of these chips. I don't think there's going to be a special server variant. They've never made one before, a special server
⏹️ ▶️ John variant. That isn't rumored here. And I just don't think it's going to be the case. The only thing I could possibly imagine is that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Studio won't support 1.5 terabytes of RAM and that would be a server-only thing, but the chip will be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, honestly, it would be really weird if they would limit the Mac Studio that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. Like, I i think they're they're going to design the chip to have certain resource limits,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that's going to be a chip design limit, not a you know you know logic board limit, I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure. uh And it's going to be you know be dependent on components that are available at that time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can they get whatever the memory chips of those sizes are?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can they get them in volume? Can they get them for less than $75,000? There is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of uncertainty around that. But the chip will be designed and probably already is being designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a certain target in mind. I hope that whatever the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Studio or whatever the theoretical servers can do with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M7 Ultra alleged chip here, I really hope and I expect that the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Studio will probably have the same resource limits. And this actually, this bodes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well for the future of the Mac Studio. I am a little curious if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can do all that without redesigning the Mac Studio case.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the rumor is that they weren't going to redesign the case, but they were going to totally redesign the cooling
⏹️ ▶️ John on the inside. And so I'm not sure how that will work. I mean, they're already using, I think, copper in the Ultra ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John So maybe they go to that special metal that is even better than copper. But there was a rumor that, oh, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John there's no Mac Studio redesign in the next three years or whatever, but they are going to change all the internals
⏹️ ▶️ John for heating and cooling. So we'll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the next three years just means the M5 Ultra generation. That could be true. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could, three years from now, when the M7 Ultra generation comes out, they could have a redesign
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, we'll see. We'll be able to tell when the M5 Ultra one comes out, when someone cracks it open, does it have the same cooling
⏹️ ▶️ John or not? Which generation that rumor is supposedly about. The other thing about 1.5 terabytes of RAM is that
⏹️ ▶️ John when you get up to that amount, it does start to physically take up more room because it's just more
⏹️ ▶️ John chips, right? So, and like, obviously they generate heat, although it's not that much heat, so I don't think it's that big. But
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I guess you'd have to squint at the Mac Studio logic board and say, if you had to put 1.5
⏹️ ▶️ John terabytes of RAM, could you squeeze it in there? I mean, they probably can. We'll see. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right, bear with me. If they redesign the case in three years to be a little bit bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to be able to have 1.5 terabytes of RAM and a really fast chip,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann why don't they just call it the Mac Pro at
⏹️ ▶️ John that point? They've just recreated the Mac Pro. Well, I mean, the thing about the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is that it would need to dissipate significantly more heat as we went through that last time. I think they're like 3x, the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is dissipating three X the heat. And I think there's a limit to how much you can redesign
⏹️ ▶️ John to move three X more heat. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don't have to make it as big as the current, like the 2019 Mac Pro, but you'd have to make it significantly bigger. And at that point,
⏹️ ▶️ John you got to start rethinking it, you know, because you can't just take that and like extrude it outwards or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what they could do? So what if what if they had they shot the heat straight up? Now, bear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann So what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the whole thing was basically a tube of fan and there was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big heat sink in the middle of it? And maybe the whole thing could just be a circle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That would be brilliant.
⏹️ ▶️ John They did that without a fan in the G4 Cube. I know you're referring to the trash can, but the G4 Cube is their first chimney computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they're like, well, we've got this vertical thing because it's great because heat rises. We don't even need a fan. Turns out they
⏹️ ▶️ John should have had a fan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Turns out having any fan moves a heck of a lot more heat than having no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Even the slowest, most slight fan has a pretty big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference in how much heat that moves. But yes, like, honestly, if they actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went went to something that looked a little bit more like the trash can, who knows? I mean, I'm sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wouldn't actually recreate that shape.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have thermal corner PTSD from that design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, but like, but actually, like in like, with what we are seeing now, you know, who knows how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the internals would be laid out, but like the Mac Studio, okay, if you want it to dissipate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more heat from that, what if you made it taller? Like, you can start to see how they would
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Well, the Mac Studio has such a convoluted airflow. Like, it's, I think it's
⏹️ ▶️ John in the bottom and out the back. Yeah, it makes no sense. Right? From bottom to top makes
⏹️ ▶️ John sense like the trash can. From front to back makes sense like the 2019 Mac Pro and the earlier Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pros. But from like from bottom vents out the bottom of the back is
⏹️ ▶️ John not, it's like, why are you making your life more difficult? So I really do hope they revisit that at some point.
Sponsor: Claude
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco took the most tricky bugs, bugs people have reported for months or years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that I could not figure out why they were happening. And each one I gave to Claude. And I said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users report this. These are components you might want to look at within the app. Try to figure out why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it fixed each one. It found them and it fixed them. And now that fixes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the App Store. And I didn't have to find those bugs. I mean, honestly, I never would have. I've been looking for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year at some of them and I still wasn't able to find them. It found them. I was blown away by how good it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was. And I can tell things like earlier today, I was writing a class for an experimental project
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm doing. And I had Claude write a bunch of the API for me. And then I looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at how it wrote, and there was some part of it I wanted to change. So I just rewrote the first function.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It totally broke the build. It wouldn't compile. And I went to Claude and I said, I want you to do it this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. I broke it. Finish the job. So I would never tell a human to do that. It did it.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to Claude for fixing my code and for sponsoring our show.
What is/was FileMaker?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let's do a little bit of follow-out, if we can, please. In episode 627
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Upgrade, which, as we record this, it's not this week, but last week, there was a discussion about FileMaker.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was aware of FileMaker as a thing. And I was aware that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was part, was, or perhaps is part of Claris, which is itself part of Apple now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember Claris works very fondly from when I was a kid and using Macs briefly in school.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I was hoping that probably John could explain to me what the heck is FileMaker. Like, I don't feel like anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has actually sat down and explained what the heck it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you wrote in the notes here, what was FileMaker? And I put a link into it. It exists now. It is not a past tense
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. But yes, it did exist in the past as well. I have used FileMaker back in the classic
⏹️ ▶️ John macOS days. The best way I would describe it is I think it was described as like a database
⏹️ ▶️ John app. And when you think about database, you're thinking about like, you know, Oracle database or MySQL or SQLite
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that. Not that kind of database. Not a SQL database with tables and rows
⏹️ ▶️ John and columns and all that stuff. But instead, a program that would
⏹️ ▶️ John provide a database back end and you could write front ends. They would write to your database. So it was the same type of stuff. You would
⏹️ ▶️ John define a schema and here's where your data is. And you would get things into it and out of it. And you'd make like a GUI front
⏹️ ▶️ John end for it. And it was used by like businesses to sort of, this is days before
⏹️ ▶️ John the web, right? So you had like an inventory system for your small business. You had to keep track of how much, whatever stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John you have, or you wanted to like roll your own system for keeping track of people's hours or something. Uh, You
⏹️ ▶️ John can think of a kind of like HyperCard because HyperCard also had a you know, similar type of like, you can make GUI apps, but without
⏹️ ▶️ John being a developer, but very database focused. Like, I don't know, like maybe like
⏹️ ▶️ John a cross between HyperCard and Excel uh, with more of a data
⏹️ ▶️ John focus. So lots of businesses had FileMaker databases that they ran their businesses off
⏹️ ▶️ John of. I never used it in like in anger, like in a real actual scenario.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was just i was just playing with it as a kid. So I never worked at a business that used it or wrote it for a business.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don't know how it actually performed and why people still might use it in the modern age. But in the days before the web
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the days when you couldn't do all of this from a spreadsheet, it was like a little bit more than that. And the days before,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, because a spreadsheet's not a good UI to like have employees using stuff or whatever, although plenty of businesses
⏹️ ▶️ John still do it these days. um But yeah, that's my impression of what FileMaker was like
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who actually used it. And I guess it still exists because, hey, if you're if your business runs on FileMaker
⏹️ ▶️ John and they keep making new versions of it, why would you ever change if it's still working for you? Like there's all these stories about someone
⏹️ ▶️ John wandering around in like 2010 and they see like a Mac SE in the back of some business running some FileMaker
⏹️ ▶️ John database that their whole business runs on. Like, how is that computer even still running? It's like, well, we need it because it runs FileMaker.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I'm glad it still exists for the people who like it. But these days, you'd be like, why don't you make a web app?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don't you, you know, there's a million other things that you could do other than a FileMaker database, but it's still out there for people who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was glancing at the marketing website, which is Apple. Like it's very Apple-y, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not, which is very unusual. This is claris.com slash FileMaker, which is very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don't have it in exact, I'm looking at it, but I can't find exactly what it was I was seeing, but it was, they had some discussions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how you can do like agentic coding with FileMaker, which is so mind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bending to me because I perceive FileMaker seemingly unfairly as something from like the early to mid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eighties. And they're talking about stuff that's relevant in the last like 80 days, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And and it's just astonishing to me that this is still a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I see the thing It's like FileMaker Cloud. I'm like, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is FileMaker cloud? It's I just, they've met, I don't know if you remember there was a, some diversion. I don't remember the details,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like the company was like, hey, FileMaker is old and creaky. We're coming out with a new thing called Bento. Do you remember that? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like a a consumer focused, friendlier revision of FileMaker. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that just didn't take off. And they're like, oh, never mind. Our customers just want FileMaker. I have no idea what FileMaker is
⏹️ ▶️ John today. And the website really obscures what it might be. But it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Agentic stuff. It kind of reminds me of like, we haven't talked about this in the show, but a lot of other people have been talking about it. The feature
⏹️ ▶️ John in the 27 OSs where you can describe a shortcut. You open the shortcuts app and you just like click a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and you say, I want a shortcut that does X, Y, and Z, and it just makes it for you. I imagine that it's possible
⏹️ ▶️ John to do something similar with FileMaker because it is like shortcuts, kind of like a high level,
⏹️ ▶️ John higher level abstraction for data with certain number of operations that you can do that the FileMaker knows
⏹️ ▶️ John about. Again, it's not a SQL database. It's not anything as low level as that. It's its own thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So for all I know, there is a SQL interface to FileMaker these days. It wouldn't surprise me. And a web interface and a cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. I don't know what they're doing, but the point is they're still in business somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Claris.com slash FileMaker slash agentic hyphen development. We'll put it in the show notes. AI is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reshaping software. FileMaker is meeting the moment. Claris is investing so you can build with the leading AI coding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tools and deploy straight into FileMaker securely, permissioned, and ready to run. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern. This is now. It's incredible to me that this is a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, I appreciate the short trip down memory lane. I would love it. I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see screenshots of this. I haven't gone spelunking through the internet trying to find them myself, but I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey curious what this looks like both on the development side and on the production side. Because presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the production side, for whatever these apps are that this makes, presumably they can look like almost anything. But I'd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doubly love to see what it looks like on the development side. So reach out if you're a FileMaker person.
Maestral needs a new home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I have to ask our editor to insert taps here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because apparently, Maestral is no more or soon to be no more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is too bad. This is the app that we kind of found around our circles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of maybe, I don't know, three, four years ago, that was a replacement Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco client for Mac and Linux. And I don't know if it worked on Windows, but it works on Mac and Linux.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the idea was basically like, you know, the Dropbox app keeps getting bloated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and crappy and just has a million things in it. And it's Electron and it takes a ton of resources. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the Dropbox app was really resource intensive and bloated.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I wanted accessibility access.
⏹️ ▶️ John you to know if you wanted to save your screenshots into Dropbox. And it was just like, uh it was, I think there was some kind of like notes
⏹️ ▶️ John feature in it at some point. It was just, they were just chucking. Was there a mail feature in there? I forget. It was, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And they were playing tricks. Like they were trying to get you to enter your root password um by like faking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an admin permission dialogue. Like Dropbox at many times of its history
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has acted like malware on your Mac. Like it's really, it's, it's rough. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maestro is a client that it's open source and it uses the Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco API to basically provide what Dropbox used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be, like a basic sync client. So you'd have a folder at home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco U Dropbox and it would sync the content of that folder to Dropbox, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is exactly what Dropbox used to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that's another factor we didn't mention, which is that Dropbox was sort of forced to move to the file provider
⏹️ ▶️ John thing because Apple made that API for them and the file provider API was worse than the old one, that
⏹️ ▶️ John is another reason people preferred Maestro. Like, I don't want the I don't want the thing where my Dropbox files are like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it actually there? Or is it just like a little zero content thing that when I double click on it, has to download from the, I just want the old
⏹️ ▶️ John thing where it was just local files and they just happened to be in sync with files somewhere in the cloud. And that's what Maestro
⏹️ ▶️ John would give you. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And anyway, unfortunately, the creator of Maestro has moved on, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from life, fortunately, but from all these terms sound the same. When people leave jobs, it sounds like they're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dying. OK, The creator of Maestro no longer no longer uses Dropbox. And so they've decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to stop working on it and just kind of abandon it. And it is open source. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope someone else picks it up. If not, eventually like certificates will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expire and stuff and it will stop working. I've thought like, should I pick it up? But I haven't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used it in a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey of years either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey also should not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of made that same that same decision. But like, I don't know. Should Claude pick it up? Should somebody pick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dropbox should pick it up, honestly.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you don't want them ruining it. No, that would be terrible. No, no, they should pick it up and say, why does everybody love
⏹️ ▶️ John this? Can we just make a native client that just does what this thing does? And the answer is, yes, you could, and everyone would love it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I guess it wouldn't make them any more money. So, oh well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that's not going to work. They're just going to mess it up. We don't want that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think let's take this opportunity to do a quick ATP member special. ATP Diamond Dogs,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should Marco take up the maestral development? And I'm going to vote no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John john thinks no Everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John says no. I say no. Marco says no. Everyone knows that that's not the thing he should do. No, I'm not going to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thank you for joining us on our July member special. We hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next month. You know who should do it? John Gruber.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco he likes it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because he's so good at maintaining software projects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But he can use it as an AI vibe coding excuse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be pretty great, actually. I should probably float this by him first. But yeah, everybody email John Gruber
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and tell him you should do it. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want to have to update his site for mobile first. We're
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey working, the
⏹️ ▶️ John on Gruber things that he has to do with technology is quite long. Get in line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You're way at the back, my friend.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, I mean, look, it is open source, so it is possible for someone to pick it up. So I hope somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does who has more time than than we do. But, um, Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it's just a bunch of Python scripts, right? Kind of like the original Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably. Uh, yeah. And, and that would, and the, the only reason I stopped using it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was a little bit slower to see changes in the original than the, than the actual Dropbox client.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I had issues with it with in multi-user mode on the Mac. Uh, but I, it still runs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my server. Like it is my, I use Dropbox for the market.org CMS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um, for, you know, for all the very high volume of blog posts that I still write. um
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and you know so I needed a Dropbox client on the server. Dropbox themselves used to make a Linux client. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't know if they still do. And it was horrendous. And so I replaced that with Maestro years ago, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's been perfect since then.
⏹️ ▶️ John At least they still support an API that Maestro is using. And also, like I was reminded of this when I was messing with uh my synology
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know the Synology also has a Dropbox syncing thing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. I don't know if it's official Dropbox or they just wrote it themselves, but the bottom line is you can just enable a thing that will sync your
⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox to your Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And the only thing is, though, what you mentioned in a second ago is important. We don't know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long the API that powers this will continue to exist and be supported
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be allowed. So I would caution anybody from building a business on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But certainly, as long as that API continues to exist, this could be a really great open source project for someone
⏹️ ▶️ John I know about the Synology thing also because Dropbox recently made a change to their API backend that broke
⏹️ ▶️ John the Synology client, where the Synology client keeps losing its authentication every like two hours or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Synology has said they know what's happening and they're going to fix their client,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is a little bit of a moving target.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's weird because I do not have that problem with Cloud Sync, which is what I use to share files with you folks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you're not using Cloud Sync with Dropbox, are you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John absolutely. Check to
⏹️ ▶️ John see whether you've lost authentication.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do I check that?
⏹️ ▶️ John go to Synology, go to the Cloud Sync app and then look at your thing. And if it has a little red badge that says need to re-authenticate,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you've lost authentication.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I'll take a look as we speak. But I don't think that's the case because, I mean, I sent Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the file for the member special we recorded Monday, which is not available quite yet, everyone. Don't worry, but soon. I sent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that file two days ago, and that was via Dropbox via Cloud Sync. So I think everything's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working. I'm trying to log in.
⏹️ ▶️ John loading mine right now to see if mine has. No, mine's still good. Maybe they already fixed it. Maybe Synology already
⏹️ ▶️ John fixed it. But yeah, there was a big community thread on the Synology thing of everyone having the same problem that I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it was, I think it's still working because I didn't touch this since yesterday and it's still authenticated for me. So
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it just cured itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Lear. No, I've got a green check mark. It says everything's up to date. So I think I'm good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm just a CloudSync unicorn. I say as I knock on wood because, God bless, I cannot lose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. It would ruin me.
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Apple v. OpenAI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Big topic for today is a couple of days ago as we record this. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decided to sue OpenAI. So we'll put many, many, many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey links in the show notes. There's a zillion different ones, but we're going to read a little bit, starting with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our dear friend Jason Snell over at Six Colors. Back in May, OpenAI was rattling its saber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about thinking about talking to lawyers, about possibly considering a lawsuit against Apple for not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey treating it right when it came to chat GPT integration. What a misdirection. Indeed, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has sued OpenAI, and it's alleging that the hardware program it's building with Johnny Ive and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and company is being fueled by the theft of trade secrets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here's the statement Apple supplied to various news outlets on Friday. Quote, at Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously. Recently, significant evidence
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple's secret and confidential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our team's hard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can I just pause at this moment? Please. These companies, to be at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this size and scale, almost everyone at and near the top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a company like this is going to be a huge a**hole in some form.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it's just what is necessary to rise to those kinds of levels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? And these companies pathologically, like, you know, just the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco personality of the company based on its behavior, its actual behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These companies are both just tremendous apples in different ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this this statement this this starts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out as Apple throwing such like manipulative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bullshit language. So let's, okay. Our teams are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developing technologies protecting their work. it's Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not doing it for Apple. They're protecting their team's work. We will always defend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our team's hard work. This is such like support the troops kind of language. We are forced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this because we have to defend our team's work. It's all about our teams. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep in mind, Apple, which they're about to, we're going to get into this later on in this discussion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What the work is that they're defending, Apple sees as 100% Apple's work, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they own that work. So they put on a great language slant here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as they tend to do. But let's be very, very clear about what Apple is defending here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple's defending what it believes is its property, not the property
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or work of the troops. It is Apple's, and Apple owns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those troops, and Apple owns what it is trying to defend here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, let me continue reading, but there's a lot here, and I have extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mixed feelings about it all. But continuing on, there's a lot more in the court filing, as summarized by Chance Miller at 9to5Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The complaint alleges that former Apple designer Tang Tan used insider knowledge of Apple's confidential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey projects to grill job candidates in interviews. Additionally, Tan directed job candidates still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working at Apple to bring actual Apple hardware components and samples
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, quote, show and tell sessions. Furthermore, Apple says a candidate began, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screenshotting and downloading files related to a highly confidential Apple product, or excuse me, project, hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before interviewing with Tan, who then solicited more information about the same Apple project once
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the interview started. This became an established pattern, Apple says.
⏹️ ▶️ John So on this topic, I'm not a lawyer and I don't know about the legalities of this,
⏹️ ▶️ John but again, assuming what Apple says is true, I do wonder, and we'll get more into this as we go on,
⏹️ ▶️ John where the line is between what I think is a fairly clear line. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't even know Cause again, I'm not a lawyer of like whatever your um,
⏹️ ▶️ John legal responsibilities are as an Apple employee, presumably you sign stuff when you become an employee
⏹️ ▶️ John and by you violating your employment contract or whatever, like I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John sure there's there's civil legal things there. So, hey, you're an Apple employee. You're not supposed to, let's
⏹️ ▶️ John say, take hardware devices and bring them to a job interview with a competitor. That's, I'm pretty sure the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John employment agreement probably has language saying that you shouldn't do that. But that feels like
⏹️ ▶️ John it would be on the person going on the job interview. They have broken their employment agreement with
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple by doing a thing that is against that agreement. I don't know where the line is, because I'm not a lawyer,
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, say you're at the competitor company, say you're Tang Tan and OpenAI. Can you just tell people, oh, totally,
⏹️ ▶️ John go like do bring all that stuff. Like, can you, if you tell someone, hey, you should do a bunch of stuff that will probably break
⏹️ ▶️ John your employment agreement, are you liable for that? If I say, oh, you should totally go out and rob a bank and
⏹️ ▶️ John you go out and rob a bank, am I liable in any way? You're the one who robbed the bank. I didn't do it. So I don't know where that line
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I don't know what the what the, the civil legal penalties are for like encouraging
⏹️ ▶️ John someone to break their employment agreement or whatever, which makes it hard for me to understand what the chances
⏹️ ▶️ John are of this thing. Even if you take everything Apple says at face value, it's like, okay, well, but where does the responsibility
⏹️ ▶️ John lie? Like, I read this and we're going to read more of it. And it totally seems like a bunch of people who either are current or
⏹️ ▶️ John former Apple employees did things that were clear violations of their employment agreement.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they're going to get destroyed for it. Because like, if it's true in any way whatsoever,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's so clear that you've done something bad as an Apple employee. I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John know where OpenAI's responsibility appears in this because I'm not an employment lawyer I don't know anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about how that works. But people reading it, you're like, oh, OpenAI is a villain. And I'm like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John are they just telling people to break the law and then people are doing it or break? Again, break their contracts
⏹️ ▶️ John and they're doing it. And then they're blameless. But we'll see if this actually ever goes to court.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And honestly, I hope it does because that would be really popcorn kind of levels of interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's why they'll settle it because they don't want that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. But yeah, it's certainly like, again, none of us are lawyers of any sort, let alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a relevant sort. But you could probably make the case that like inducing somebody to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do this or possibly compensating someone. And you can say like, well, is a job offer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe a compensation for doing this? like
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah i I can imagine scenarios where there is a liability there. I just don't know
⏹️ ▶️ John what the what the parameters are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm sure what Apple is hoping for is a whole bunch of document discovery from like open AI emails
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff. Like I'm sure that's that's what they're probably hoping for.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they seem to have tons already. You should continue, Casey, with the with more of the fun tidbits.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so this this gets really astonishing. And it's worth noting, again, that these are accusations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They have not been proven as far as we know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Apple's side of the story. It's only Apple's side of the story. But let me tell you, it sure sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Apple has some of these folks dead to rights. But anyways, two more allegations from Emma
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Roth of The Verge in her article listing the six wildest claims in Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chang Liu, a former Apple employee who worked as the systems electrical engineer on the iPhone for over eight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, allegedly kept an Apple-owned computer allowing him to download dozens of confidential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey files. Liu also allegedly accessed Apple's cloud-based network storage weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after he left the company using an authentication vulnerability that Apple didn't know about.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I'm pretty sure Apple's employment agreement says you can't keep your Apple-issued computer after you leave the company,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you certainly can't use it to access our network after you're no longer employed. That's like basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm sure there's like criminal like
⏹️ ▶️ John laws they passed in the 90s to criminalize hackers, that's criminal liability of like you broke into a
⏹️ ▶️ John foreign network. Like you, you unauthorized access to a blah, blah, blah. Like we have so many laws in the U.S. about
⏹️ ▶️ John that because back, you know, back in the 90s when they made these laws, it was like to punish, you know, mitnick or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John his name was. Like, uh he's, so there's, if, again, if this is true, there's criminal
⏹️ ▶️ John liability and just really, really poor thinking. Like the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John industrial espionage you can ever imagine. Don't use your Apple-issued computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do you think they're not trapping your Apple-issued
⏹️ ▶️ John computer? Like, really? These are technology people. It's not like just, if this is true,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's just mind-bendingly poorly thought out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, this is like, yeah, like this, again, not lawyers, but Cheng Liu sounds like he has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some significant legal problems if this, if any of this is true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, possibly criminal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. Yeah. Like that, I i think odds are either Either he has to make a heck of a deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or he's going to literally be in jail for that. Like that's that's going to be a big problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, although Apple would be probably be very willing for him to make a deal and turn on OpenAI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure everyone's talking about stuff like that. Yeah, this is… You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can argue about some of the other things, like what does Apple own in terms of the people, their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expertise, things like that. But Apple does own their documents,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their hardware prototypes. Like they… That's pretty clear cut. Exfiltrating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those and bringing them to a competitor is generally a crime.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing from the verge, OpenAI allegedly coached Apple employees on how to bypass security measures.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple claims Tan kept an internal document that outlines employee offboarding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey procedures. OpenAI allegedly used this information to warn employees coming from Apple about the company's security checks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and coach them on how to avoid it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They did a poor job of coaching, I feel like. They said, hey, don't use your Apple laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John to don't refuse to give back your Apple laptop and then use that same laptop, which you know Apple is tracking
⏹️ ▶️ John to infiltrate their network and get stuff out. So maybe they updated their coaching, but this gets to what Marco was saying. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, at the point you're coaching, again, presuming Apple is to be believed here, at the point where you're coaching applicants
⏹️ ▶️ John on how to avoid detection while performing industrial espionage, that
⏹️ ▶️ John feels like, again, not a lawyer, but that feels like a place where OpenAI suddenly has a bunch of liability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there's a version of this that's okay. Like, it's kind of like, you know, when we tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our kids, like, don't talk to the police. Like, never, ever talk to the police. If the police, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come and try to stop you, if you're not under arrest, you could, like, you can say, am I free to go? And you can go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, we tell people that. That's okay. So if OpenAI is saying, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here's what's going to happen. Apple's going to demand your laptop back. They're going to ask you for all these things. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of those things are like legally not required and you can just say, no, thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I don't want to do your security interview. I don't see anything wrong with them telling people that sort of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there is a fine line between telling people what their rights are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and telling people what's going to happen when they quit or get fired or whatever versus saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, you can keep your laptop for three extra days and copy all the files off if you do this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there is a line and there's a bunch of stuff on the okay side of that line. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sounds like Apple thinks there's some stuff on the other side too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also from the complaint, as quoted by Gruber, OpenAI has used confidential Apple information in approaching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple's trusted partners, even having one carry out a specific trade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey secret metal finishing technique for OpenAI, misleading the partner to believe they had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple's permission to do so. Holy God, if this is true,
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I don't know about the legalities here Cause like, oh, isn't that just fraud? But it's like, I, there are so many situations
⏹️ ▶️ John where things seem like they should be against the law, but aren't. For example, police can lie to you about this stuff all the time. Speaking of police,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can they can just lie and say, oh, yeah, no, Apple gave me permission. And you just, I know it's the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can and do. Right. So so let's
⏹️ ▶️ John say open AI lies and says, Apple totally gave me permission to do this. Uh, Is that on
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI? Yes, they're telling a lie, but isn't it kind of on the manufacturer to say, like, I'm sure the manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John has an agreement with Apple that says, here's our metal finishing technique. And our agreement says you can only use it for us. You can't tell anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else about it. And you can't use it for anyone else. And if someone says, oh, just ignore that agreement with Apple. Apple said we could do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Shouldn't the manufacturer say, well, we actually can't because the contract says we can't and we can't take your word for
⏹️ ▶️ John it that like is there liability for opening it? There sure is liability for the manufacturer. I can guarantee that
⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple's not making contracts that say that don't have a clause in it that says you cannot use this, this metal finishing
⏹️ ▶️ John technique for anyone else. Like that's surely in the contract. I feel like the manufacturer has violated the contract.
⏹️ ▶️ John Has open AI done anything? Again, I'm not familiar with law. I'm sure there's something in there that says, as Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John said, there's some line that you cross when you induce a partner or you You provide false information to a partner as
⏹️ ▶️ John part of your contract with them that says, no, no, Apple said it's fine. But the thing you're doing for them, they said, yeah, we love
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI so much, you can do it for them too. It's fine. You don't need to check. Don't call them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing from Gruber, footnote 13 on page 15 states, Apple and OpenAI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a commercial relationship involving the integration of OpenAI's chat GPT into Apple intelligence. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey companies have entered into a written agreement governing that integration. That agreement is not at issue here. OpenAI's act
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of trade secret misappropriation alleged herein do not arise from and have no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connection to that agreement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is the big picture on this is uh why is Apple mad at OpenAI?
⏹️ ▶️ John The answer is obvious. uh Apple was not mad at OpenAI when they were making AI chatbots.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though Apple was trying to do that, Apple was so incredibly bad at it that they needed OpenAI to bail them out
⏹️ ▶️ John to the extent that they could back in 2024 with ChatGPT integration and iOS when they couldn't get their own act together.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple just felt like, well, we don't have this and we're not competitive with this and we have this deal with OpenAI.
⏹️ ▶️ John But where Apple has always felt like this is our area, don't step on our toes
⏹️ ▶️ John is hardware. So as soon as OpenAI said, hey, we're going to do hardware we're hiring Johnny Ive
⏹️ ▶️ John and we're buying his company and we're doing this and we're doing that. And Johnny Ive is pulling all the Apple designers out of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John into OpenAI. And Apple's looking at that and say, no, no, no, you don't make hardware We make hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John devices. You can make that AI stuff that we don't understand. Maybe we'll figure it out. But hardware is us. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so they feel very competitive in that area. And this entire lawsuit seems entirely about metal
⏹️ ▶️ John finishing techniques and hardware designers and eggs and all like hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John devices. So Thus far, OpenAI has not introduced a hardware device. And we've talked about it a lot. We'll talk about it more probably
⏹️ ▶️ John next episode. But that is the place where Apple's like, no, that's too far. We hate
⏹️ ▶️ John you now. It's kind of like when Google started doing Android and they're like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just were supposed to provide us maps and search. What the hell? What is this? What is a
⏹️ ▶️ John smartphone? We do smartphone. You don't do that. You just do maps and search. So this is totally
⏹️ ▶️ John that moment where they're like, oh, so you're going to take all our designers and Johnny Ive and you're going to make a hardware product
⏹️ ▶️ John that competes with us. We hate you now. What can we do about that? You're hiring away all of our employees.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is it? something like 400 people, they said, left
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Apple's hardware team to go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OpenAI? Like, think about the soap opera going on about this. Like, okay, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, yes, it is important to bring up Johnny Ive because Johnny Ive's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company that he created, not Love From, his main company, but he created this subcompany
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called IO or EO, however
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you- They had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to rename it because of a trademark. I think it's called like, it's called like IO colon podcast player. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don't know what it is, but it's
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco got like the App Store name because of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But, you know, so Johnny created this like subcompany for his hardware efforts, sold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to OpenAI. This is obviously like a bunch of like, you know, moving cups around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to somehow legally and financially work out the fact that Johnny Ive is working for OpenAI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not exclusively for OpenAI, but seems like mainly for OpenAI. And Johnny Ive had a whole,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he hired a whole bunch of people out of Apple, seemingly a lot of the people who used to
⏹️ ▶️ John Like his whole team, everybody, including all the people who succeeded him, like Evans Hankey was in charge of, like his whole team is
⏹️ ▶️ John over there with him, including Tang Tan, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Think about the relationship already that had to have gone on between Apple and Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive. Now, the last thing Apple wants to do is point this out or draw attention to it, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Johnny Ive is mentioned nowhere in this lawsuit, even though it obviously involves the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco division of OpenAI that is basically his team. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be really out there and far-fetched if it didn't involve any of him or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his core people. So it probably does, but Apple does not want the PR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be that they are suing Johnny Ive in any context or any of Johnny Ive's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco properties, but they sort of are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially since at this point, as far as the public can see they're like, there is no Johnny Ive
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI product. If they had done this after, like Johnny, the open AI egg comes out and Johnny Ive is there on
⏹️ ▶️ John stage telling everyone how great it is. And then they sue, then that's a big scandal story. But if they sued and mentioned Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ John Ive now, people would be like, what are they suing him for? He hasn't even done anything. And they're like, but he is doing stuff. It's like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't see any, where's the egg? I don't see anything like it. It's all behind the scenes now. So the timing of this is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good and allows them to not name him and to avoid this story because there is no focal
⏹️ ▶️ John point for it. There is no egg for us to look at and say, OpenAI came out with hardware and now Apple hates them. OpenAI
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to come out with hardware. That's why Apple hates them, but they haven't done it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. Yeah. Anyway, so imagine the feelings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between Johnny Ive and his former and now current again team,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whoever moved over, and it sounds like it's a lot. There must be some pretty bad blood between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and Apple because, first of all, they all left. So you know, so they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably weren't super happy with Apple. Second of all, Apple's probably not super happy with them for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for leaving and then pulling so many people with them. So obviously something has gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down. in, you know, Over the last few years, there has been some kind of significant turmoil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in these relationships between these factions that used to be all within Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And look, now we have a new CEO. So probably there was something related to those
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, according to the most recent dithering, Tang Tan and Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ John hate each other from back in the Apple days because basically they were, it seems like they perhaps were up for the same type of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John ahead of hardware and Ternus got it and Tang Tan didn't. So yeah, if you are Tang Tan and
⏹️ ▶️ John you're over at OpenAI and Apple already hates you and the new CEO personally hates you, lawsuit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And so there's obviously there's all this drama going on between these other all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco factions that used to be all at Apple. Now they've split up. It probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explains a lot of the different directions Apple has gone with hardware over the last few years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think are universally better. But it probably helps explain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of those machinations that we've seen over the last few years. um, that like, obviously there's,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are these factions and they and they don't they don't like each other. And so Apple also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super hates losing people to competitors. I mean, there was that famous Steve Jobs you know, uh, collusion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Um, They really don't like that. And so yeah, Apple's going to feel really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attacked. And I'm sure Apple was just looking for something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could that they could like, bring up in in some kind of legal threat to try to, you know, try to stop some of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. And it looks like OpenAI was totally happy to give them lots of things to this.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, again, again, transferring it to OpenAI might be tricky, but I'm sure the security team had all these people, as
⏹️ ▶️ John Katie said, dead to rights on if this, all this is true for a long time. It's just a question of, can we turn this into
⏹️ ▶️ John an OpenAI thing? The other angle in that discussion that uh, has come up in our little
⏹️ ▶️ John circles is uh, the broader discussion about when you leave a company, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, do you have to empty your brain of everything that you know or can you leave? Like, what do you get to leave with?
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, Marco mentioned that obviously when, when you do work for a company, it is work for hire. The company owns the work
⏹️ ▶️ John you don't in most companies. Um, But California in particular has
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly uh, strict rules as compared to the other states in the United States
⏹️ ▶️ John about not allowing employers to unduly restrain
⏹️ ▶️ John their employees because part of the Silicon Valley culture is you work for one company, you learn something,
⏹️ ▶️ John you work for another, you go to another company, you do a startup or whatever. They don't want to allow things like draconian non-competes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think non-competes in general are not even legal in California where they say, oh, if you leave this company, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can't work in this industry for two years. Stuff non-competes like that are legal in some states of the United States,
⏹️ ▶️ John but not in California because it is against their culture of like, we started this company, then we leave to do a startup,
⏹️ ▶️ John then we compete. Like, they want to see more competition. Similarly, I would imagine the laws about like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what do you get to take with you in your brain when you leave a company? Like if you you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John learn a bunch of stuff at one company about like machining and metal finishing, obviously there's
⏹️ ▶️ John the the various legal constructs like patents and trade secrets that
⏹️ ▶️ John you've signed an agreement that you're not going to reveal. But what about just your experience? Like you
⏹️ ▶️ John know good ways to do things and how to organize people. And like you take those with you, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can't, you know, Apple doesn't own the things that you learned when you were there. And I'm sure there's a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John complex realm of law about, OK, well, you learned like best practices and how to organize things and what makes
⏹️ ▶️ John a good deal and a bad deal or whatever. But what about this one very specific thing that you're doing at OpenAI
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a quote unquote trade secret and is not just like a thing that you learned when you were there? And it's
⏹️ ▶️ John the same for programmers. Like I can say in all, like in all my past jobs, I don't know how many web
⏹️ ▶️ John frameworks I wrote, starting with my very first web development job out of school. I think at various jobs, I've written
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple web frameworks. And each time I went to a new job, I didn't take my old web framework with me because I
⏹️ ▶️ John didn't want it because I had learned so much since then.
⏹️ ▶️ John when I wrote my next web framework, it built on all the knowledge of my previous web frameworks. And I kept
⏹️ ▶️ John doing that and making better and better and better ones. I was taking my knowledge and experience with me. I was not
⏹️ ▶️ John taking the code with me, but I was definitely taking like, oh, last time I did it, I did it this way. And I learned that this
⏹️ ▶️ John is good and this is bad. And if you squint at one of my web frameworks, you're like, that looks kind of like the one you did at your last job. Only
⏹️ ▶️ John I see this change, this change, and this change. It's all new code, but I'm taking my experience with me. That's what makes you a more valuable employee
⏹️ ▶️ John as you gain experience is that you learn things. And that's why someone hires you for more money at
⏹️ ▶️ John another job. And again, I feel like California is one of the best states. I said strict to before,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like strict in terms of defending employees' rights to compete, to leave one company and to
⏹️ ▶️ John go to another or to leave one company and start their own company. And we can't say, oh, that's not fair. You learned
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of stuff at Apple and that's the only reason your startup is successful. like, yeah, I learned stuff and now I'm smarter and I'm making
⏹️ ▶️ John my own company. Right. So that also is kind of against
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple on the broader issue of like, you took things that you learned and went to another company to compete with us. Like, yeah, that's
⏹️ ▶️ John how it's supposed to work. Is OpenAI a California company? I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John actually know. I'm assuming they're all incorporated in Delaware, but I'm assuming these lawsuits are going to be in California.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, presumably. And yeah, and I agree. Like, I think the it's a very clear in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in broad strokes, Apple can own the work that you did at Apple. Again, documents,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, hardware, like they can own that. Source code. Yeah, so exactly. But they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can't own your expertise. Now, i we're not lawyers again. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the definition of what consider what is considered a trade secret, that is probably going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be possibly argued here. That's going to be pretty important because that that sounds like it's a somewhat squishy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concept. um but yeah like i think like if you if you are really good at metal finishing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and OpenAI hires you and they say, hey, we want you to uh give us some really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good metal finishing expertise, unless certain things are patented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by Apple, I think you can probably bring them your metal finishing knowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John most cases. And if they're patented, the whole point is the patent allows that to be shared, but then there's perhaps a licensing
⏹️ ▶️ John fee. The whole point of patents is we tell the world, but you don't get to use it for free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The idea of hiring away Apple's people with competitive salaries and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco offers of freedom or excitement that they might not have at Apple, that's fair game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple, they are a big, established company with mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big, established, mature product lines. So yeah, people are going to get the itch and want to go do something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new. And Apple historically is somewhat stingy with salaries from what we've heard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, OpenAI is able to throw around some cash or Meta, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Meta famously throws around big salaries. Like, of course, they're going to be able to hire away some of Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. And every time somebody at Apple gets promoted, there's going to be someone who didn't,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they're going to be upset, and maybe they'll be easy to hire away as well. And people are going to move around.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does the same thing. Like I saw somebody saying at Breeze Buy earlier that like this is kind of what Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accused of doing to Massimo, where like they kind of just hired away their people and had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them recreate blood oxygen sensing technology in the Apple Watch. This is what happens in companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is fair game. As long as you don't cross certain lines of things like stealing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco documents and stuff like that, that is obviously a line that they should not cross. And it sounds like they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just walk right past it and stomp all over it. But the idea of restricting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a company from hiring away your people with compelling offers and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having those people do similar work for them, Apple doesn't own those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. And if Apple does not want to lose those people, they should pay them better if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to or work with them in whatever other things that they want if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can. And recognize that that's not going to always be the case. Again, like, you know, the promotion situation of like somebody gets promoted,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while someone else didn't, you know, there's not that much Apple can do about that. And so if those people want to leave,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they're going to leave. Or if somebody wants to leave the giant mothership of Apple and go work for some, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast-moving, exciting startup, like Apple probably can't do much to keep those people either. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that happens
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think People
⏹️ ▶️ John end up returning to Apple a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time. That's just part of working in this business and many businesses. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to happen. And Apple is going to put out a whole bunch of bravado
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how they own all their stuff. And I'm sure Apple believes, I'm sure some people in Apple believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they own a lot more of these employees' talents than they really should. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the end of the day, it does sound like a lot of really clear lines have definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been crossed by OpenAI. And I'm not surprised to hear that. Like going back to my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier comments, like a lot of these people have very strong personalities,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let's say. Amateur psychologists would have a field day with a lot of these people trying to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what exactly their their issue is um these are some some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really strong personalities at these levels. And so many of them have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no problem lying. I mean, geez, Sam Altman has basically made a career out of it. Like many of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these people are you know really showing like significant sociopathic kind of behaviors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just like totally disregarding morality effects on people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rules, laws, fraud. So yeah, you're going to see a lot of this kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior at these levels. I'm not surprised. Honestly, like all of these allegations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assuming that even any of them are true, like none of them actually surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. They're kind of galling in terms of like, wow, I can't believe they actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought they would get away with that. But think about who you're dealing with here. Yeah, of course these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are going to try stuff like this. Again, not a lawyer. Apple probably has a pretty good case. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't I don't think Apple would do this if they didn't. And I don't know if they're going to get all of what they want, but I bet they're going to get some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what they want.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, when Apple initiates a lawsuit, there's usually a pretty good chance that they're, they think they're going to win. it. When they're
⏹️ ▶️ John the victim of a lawsuit, you never know how it's going to go Cause you don't know what Apple did. But when they initiate a lawsuit, they're probably,
⏹️ ▶️ John they're so conservative about this. Um, and in, in this particular case, you would imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John if you were to remove most of these personalities, you were like, oh, OpenAI will just settle this because they've got tons of money.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what you do in the cases like this is you throw money at it and you make the problem go away because the last thing OpenAI needs is some like long
⏹️ ▶️ John legal battle and bad press and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, just settle. But then we get to the personalities
⏹️ ▶️ John involved. And I'm of two minds about that. One, if there's like personal animosity, like
⏹️ ▶️ John again, between Ternus and Tang Tan and and maybe Johnny Ive and Apple and Sam Altman and Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John because again, but we started the Snell's thing with, uh, open AI was putting out these little
⏹️ ▶️ John leaks that like, we're thinking about suing Apple like a long time ago. So there was already bad blood, probably
⏹️ ▶️ John because they knew they were going to be sued at that point or whatever. So that bad blood exists. And you're like, okay, well, when you have these big
⏹️ ▶️ John personalities and bad blood, on the one hand, you're like, oh, that means OpenAI is not going to do the smart thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And instead of settling like they could with their giant pile of VC money right now when they're rolling in it, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John they're going to, you know, dig in and say, no, we're going to fight this, right? Which which I think would be dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, why fight it? Settle, right? Just settle and make this go away. But maybe they'll fight it. But then I look at the specific
⏹️ ▶️ John personality of Sam Altman, who seems like so incredibly feckless and just
⏹️ ▶️ John just not, he's, he's more like, you know, a pathological liar and untrustworthy
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but also not particularly like brave or like he's not Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine like digging in and be like, they're going to fight this. Or Steve Jobs, for example, of course, would dig in his heels and fight
⏹️ ▶️ John this way past the edge of logic. But I don't know what Turnus is like in that regard, although
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like he's OK with this lawsuit. But Sam Altman, like even though he has a strong personality
⏹️ ▶️ John and has no problem lying, I would imagine he's not like, he doesn't seem like a fighter to me. Like in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Elon Musk lawsuit and everything, I mean, Elon, it's not hard to look better than Elon when you're on the stand or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think Sam Altman did, but he just seems so like just like a wet dish rag
⏹️ ▶️ John full of lies. Like it's just not like not like I don't see him going like, we will,
⏹️ ▶️ John we will fight Apple to the bitter end about this lawsuit. So I think he'll settle. Assuming Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ John willing to settle. And I think Apple would be willing to settle. They just want to stop this from happening. I don't know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey we'll see how this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it that Apple just wants to stop this from happening, which I think is true? And by this, I mean both the exodus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of employees and the hardware fantasies of open AI. Oh, this lawsuit is not going to stop either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of those. Well, that's true. But the other thing, and I don't remember if I heard this on Dithering or somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else, but somebody pointed out, maybe on Upgrade, that this is a really great opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do a whole lot of discovery. And I think that that's very appealing to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But that's why
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI was settled to avoid that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I agree. I agree. But if OpenAI really wants to go for broke, that's not going to end well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for OpenAI, I don't think. And coming back to something that I think Marco said earlier, might have been, it was either one of you, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but somebody said earlier, you know, if you don't want to have an exodus, here's an idea. Pay your people better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I know that Apple employees make a butt ton of money, but I also know it costs a butt ton
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of money to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. And everything I've understood from many, many, many different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people inside and outside of Apple is that amongst Silicon Valley and amongst
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the like Facebooks and Googles and Apples and Netflixes of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world, Apple's like really cheap from everything I've ever understood when it comes to salary.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, granted, they have stock programs for their employees and non-salary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compensation and so on and so forth. But here's a novel idea, which was said earlier and I would like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to agree with. Maybe pay your people a little more. And I think that might solve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a portion of these problems. Now, it's still not the new shiny over at OpenAI.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The iPhone is new-ish and shiny-ish, but it's not new shiny like whatever they're doing in OpenAI. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think some of this could be solved by having more competitive salaries. And I'm pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure Apple could afford it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the flip side of that is something we've discussed in the past, which is, first of all, you're never
⏹️ ▶️ John going to compete with the giant bucket of investment money that is sprinkling down on OpenAI,
⏹️ ▶️ John nor will you compete with the apparent huge pile of money that Facebook is willing to throw into
⏹️ ▶️ John these efforts. And it probably would be foolish for Apple to pursue that. Apple has chosen
⏹️ ▶️ John not to pursue the creation of a frontier model, which costs billions and billions of dollars. So they're not doing that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I like how much would you have to pay to compete with like the Facebook salaries? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to do that? Is that a good idea? And the second aspect is the thing we talked about back in the JG days, where
⏹️ ▶️ John they were hiring AI people to JG's team to do Siri or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and paying those people way more than other Apple employees. And that makes the other Apple employees
⏹️ ▶️ John working on iOS. You know, the thing that makes actual money. Why are all these new employees getting paid more than me?
⏹️ ▶️ John I've been here for eight years. And you're like, you can't just like, okay, we'll just, we'll raise
⏹️ ▶️ John all Apple employees to the bubble and Zuckerberg inflated prices of 2023,
⏹️ ▶️ John 2024 for AI things. That's also a bad decision. So in some respects, as Marco pointed
⏹️ ▶️ John out, you just have to take it. You just have to, man I'm not saying they shouldn't raise their salaries to be more competitive across the board,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, but to the, to the sane baseline, not to the $100 million
⏹️ ▶️ John MBA star AI researcher line, because that line is not sustainable. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you just raise it for one group of people, all that does is make your other employees even more disgruntled. It is not feasible
⏹️ ▶️ John to say every Apple employee needs to have AI bubble salaries. So you just say,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, we know people are going to leave. And, you know, we're, we can't, like, we shouldn't try
⏹️ ▶️ John to stop them with salary and perks because we won't be able to. And even trying would distort
⏹️ ▶️ John things so much in Apple that when the bubble pops, what are you going to tell everybody? Oh, now the bubble popped, all your salaries are going back down to sane levels.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you're not going to do that either. So it's just a fact of life. I mean, it's the same reason people have always left Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to do something else. Like Apple is there to be steady and reliable
⏹️ ▶️ John and a place people can circle back to after their startup fails or after they get sick of working for Zuckerberg or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they're fulfilling that role. I do agree with you that they probably should be less stingy than they are, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John since a lot of their stinginess relied on the fact that Apple stock was just always going up and up and up. And by the way, it still kind of is going
⏹️ ▶️ John up and up and up, but not to the levels it used to be. And also the whole like, don't you want to work in the games
⏹️ ▶️ John industry? Don't you want to work for Hollywood? People's willingness to take less in exchange for being
⏹️ ▶️ John what they consider in a really high profile place. Like it's the reason the game industry exploits workers.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's the reason Hollywood exploits them because they're like, oh, I just, I've always wanted to work on games. I always wanted to be in Hollywood.
⏹️ ▶️ John I've always wanted to work for Apple. So Apple takes advantage of that. And to the degree that Apple does that, they should stop
⏹️ ▶️ John because the shine is a little bit off that Apple. Haha, see what I did? Wow. Um, But yeah, they can't,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's it's unwise to pursue the unsustainable salaries that everyone else is getting. And, uh, you know, we'll see,
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll see how it works out for those companies. I bet speaking of Facebook, the people who went over there and got those huge salaries,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then realized that they're going to have like uh, that, that Facebook is going to be uh, uh, looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at the key loggers that are installed on other computers to make sure they're all working hard enough or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if they're reconsidering their life choices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, seriously. Uh, Before we move on, though, we should say that OpenAI's AI's response was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as follows. On the 10th of July, Drew Pussiteri, who is apparently head of comms
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at OpenAI, said, our statement in response to this suit, Colin, we have no interest in other companies'
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nothing. It says nothing. It was probably written with ChatGPT. We have no
⏹️ ▶️ John interest. Why would we care about other people's trade secrets? That sounds boring. I don't know. I'm not interested. Are you interested? I'm not interested in
⏹️ ▶️ John other people's trade secrets. If you gave them to me, I wouldn't even look at them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then on the 14th, four days later, OpenAI's statement is reported by Bloomberg. While we take these allegations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seriously, we're not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit. We believe in fair competition and allowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people the freedom to work wherever they choose. And we're focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe Apple will soon make you aware of evidence.
⏹️ ▶️ John aware of any evidence of
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they haven't seen any yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They've just seen allegations. I'm sure the person who wrote that statement maybe has not, can say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are not aware of any evidence of that. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn't mean that they aren't that they aren't aware of the event happening, but they but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just need evidence.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, prove it. Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's like, you know, if I don't pay my taxes, like, I'm not aware of any evidence that I didn't pay my
⏹️ ▶️ John say I paid them. You know, like, there's, there's a lot of ways, there's a lot of holes in these words.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that's why the supposed comms person, I don't know if he's the head of comms, but his bio on Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John was comms at OpenAI. I love the fact that he's on Twitter. Says, you know, we have
⏹️ ▶️ John no interest in other companies. Just like, if you can't put out a denial as your first response,
⏹️ ▶️ John why, like, don't say anything. Don't say, we're not denying it, but I'm just saying, we
⏹️ ▶️ John don't even like that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Why would we have that? We don't even like it. We don't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even like trade secrets. We would
⏹️ ▶️ John have no interest in that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. What an incredible defense.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say that the comms department at Apple has a little bit more experience and maturity when it comes to dealing with these stuffs than a very young
⏹️ ▶️ John company like OpenAI. And we'll see how this goes. But my advice to OpenAI is just settle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that's even an… Like Apple, like, look, Apple has lost hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people to OpenAI. How do you know they would they would even be willing to settle?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, Apple probably, like, if Apple thinks they have no real risks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, like in discovery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, how do you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple will be willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco settle. Maybe, but for what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they want to declare victory. They want to say we've reached a settlement and OpenAI paid us this amount of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here's here's the thing. Apple, in in this particular context, Apple probably, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably wouldn't have brought this suit if they thought that discovery would be a big risk for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. So they probably think, look, if you dump a bunch of Apple emails out into court that you know around this this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco particular area, we have nothing to hide. We're fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it going to be worse than the App Store emails?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right whereas like if open ai gets their stuff dragged into court, who knows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that's going to be? And by the way, OpenAI is trying to IPO pretty soon, probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like this is bad for them, like timing wise like Apple did not do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this without care. Like, Apple knows exactly what they're doing and when they're doing it. This is a pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move on Apple's side. We'll see what happens. But if I were Apple, I don't think I'd want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to rush to a settlement. Because like, OpenAI, like, they're going to keep getting more and more desperate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their IPO dreams get closer. And you know, if things start looking very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad for them, and if a bunch of discovery stuff starts coming out, like that, Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably in a pretty strong position on that. And who knows if this actually goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to court and goes to trial and goes all the way to the end of a trial, those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are very big ifs. But if this actually gets that far, who knows if Apple would actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote, win or not. But they can inflict a lot of pain on OpenAI in the meantime with dragging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them out into all of this, dragging all this into the public, all the discovery coming out and casting doubts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe on some of that IPO. So Apple's in a pretty good position here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would imagine that the ChatGPT and iOS deal is probably going to lapse and not be renewed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. And also, like, once you use iOS 27, you're like, yeah, there's no need for that anymore. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri has taken most of the need for that away. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OpenAI deal of having it be integrated, but if you ask Siri to, hey, also, please ask
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ChatGPT to tell me this, like that's so clunky and less necessary now. No one's going to really be doing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. It honestly, it never worked that well to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully that'll be replaced next year by the thing that was rumored this year's WWDC, which is like a third-party pluggable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, if you want to use something, you want to use a different chatbot because the EU is making us, you can plug in
⏹️ ▶️ John some other company's chatbot besides Siri in there. And then OpenAI would just do that
⏹️ ▶️ John just because they have to, because Anthropic would do it and all the other stuff. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that goes. But yeah, the specific, very, very particular deal that Apple referenced,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't know what the expiration date on that is, but I feel like neither one of the parties is going to be excited about renewing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I think you're right. And by the way, if you're an Apple employee and you want to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work somewhere else, go for it. If you can get a higher pay somewhere else and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that you're really excited about, do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Except unless it's at Facebook, don't do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, don't do that. That's just a step down. But like, feel free to take your expertise wherever you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You are valuable without committing crimes on the way out. Like you have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a ton of value. If they're if they're going to hire you, this is like counseling. If they're going to hire you, they're going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you for you. You know, Don't put yourself in hot water by bringing out documents and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crap. Like you don't need to do that. You're just, you are so screwing yourself on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you're that valuable, you're going to get the job no matter what.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, I just, I can't understand the math that these OpenAI employees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did in order to make this thing seem like a good idea. And they, they're going to be screwed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for getting any sort of job in any of these fields anytime in the future because clearly they're not trustworthy if assuming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this all is proven in some way, shape, or form. But I mean, it sure would make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me think twice if I saw one of these names on a resume that crossed my desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like Or even just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if you're hiring somebody and you're like, hey, can you bring a bunch of internal stuff from your old company? Don't you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a second, think ahead, like, well, when they leave my company,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey are they going to do the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not to mention, huh? That's a really skeevy thing to ask me to do. Maybe I don't want to work here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yeah. Other people do it. Yeah, please commit some crimes on your way out of your old company,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but your first day here, please sign our employee handbook policy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Squarespace, Claude, and Quince.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at ATP.FM slash join. One of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many, many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topic. This week in Overtime, we're going to be talking about Sony having announced the end of PlayStation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Game Discs, end of an era, covering that and more in Overtime. ATP.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join to hear it. Thank you so much for listening, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss. M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Auntie Marco Arment. S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Syracuse. It's accidental. They
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann didn't mean to accidental, accidental. Check the
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann podcast so long.
Vacation-tech results
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, my intention is to do kind of a twofer after show because I think I have two things to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. Both should be pretty quick. Famous last words. First of all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week we were on vacation. We had our second beach trip of the year with some dear friends
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ours. And I wanted to talk about vacation results specifically around nerd stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you recall, when we went to Cape Charles a few weeks ago, I was using the Unify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Travel Router in the car and was not sure how that would work out in the house because the travel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey router, while I adore it, it's not the strongest thing in the world. And in the Cape
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Charles house, what's nice is the internet happens to come in, unfortunately, it's like crappy cable internet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it happens to come in in roughly the center of the house. And so the travel router actually mostly did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great, both in terms of performance and distance and everything else. But this particular vacation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it's a bigger house. It's a two-story house instead of a one-story house. And the internet comes in in the corner.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I will say that the internet went from crappy cable internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to fiber. They apparently, since last year, it's the same house we were in last year, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they've added fiber to this section of North Carolina that we visited, which was incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I loved it. And astonishingly, the actual fiber optic line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was in like a jack on the wall. You know, like with Verizon, the fiber optics is generally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking terminated outside and then Ethernet runs into your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In this case, in one extreme corner of the home, that's where a fiber optic line was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming out of the wall and going into like a combination ONT router situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I figured, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with the UTR, the Unified Travel Router,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I'm going to see if it works at all and gets anywhere near the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey distance I need it to get. And this is not a gigantic house by any means, but it's like I said, it's two stories, et cetera,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey et cetera. And I have to tell you, in the primary bedroom, which was in the opposite corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the house, unsurprisingly, it was a very spotty reception from the Unified Travel Router. But basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everywhere else, it was really good. So this little, little travel router that's roughly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the size of, I don't know, like 10 credit cards stacked on top of each other worked astonishingly well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was very, very proud of that little feller and I thought it was really cool. And so I don't know if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would, I would be happy to take questions if you have any, but I just thought I'd share that the $100,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is also an incredibly good deal, especially for Unify, the $100 Unify travel router
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did great. I was very proud of it. That's awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I just, I love how, like, you know, we obviously we're in this weird situation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now with RAM and SSDs being super expensive, but like in general, most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technology these days is is so unbelievably cheap and capable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, I, like, we are in such an embarrassment of riches in terms of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall technology just being so good and so affordable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to, you know, where it was 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. It just, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn't, it's a bit of a roller coaster sometimes. Like it doesn't always go in this direction and not exclusively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this direction, but the overall trend is very, very clear. Things are so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, what you can do now with a hundred bucks worth of hardware is so amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John On that front, that brings up, that brings up the one question I have about your travel router obsession. Yeah. Since technology
⏹️ ▶️ John is advancing, as you noted, this place is like oh they have upgraded to fiber. doesn't doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ John also mean that like all the crappy vacation houses that we rent should be getting better and better Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ John and therefore making it so that we don't need travel routers because the home Wi-Fi actually spans the whole house and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that's actually a very, very reasonable question. And a couple of things about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, First of all, I find that generally speaking, Wi-Fi is an afterthought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at these places. Like obviously they know they need to provide some form of Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some way, somehow. But it seems to me that generally speaking, they, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don't really think about it at all. They just use whatever the ISP provides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they walk away. So in the Cape Charles vacation house, it happens to be like, it's not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Comcast. I forget who it is off the top of my head, but it's effectively like a Comcast cable modem square in the center of the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's your Wi-Fi. I hope you like it. But those things have been getting better
⏹️ ▶️ John too. That's my point. Like those suck and they're lagging behind. Obviously, they're not on the cutting edge of technology,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they do change over the course of decades. And I would imagine that the current ones aren't as awful as they used to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be. I think you're right. And broadly, that is true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It's a low bar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is a low bar. In the vacation house from last week, they had this odd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking, and I think I took a picture of it because I was trying to identify it. I didn't know what it was, but they had this odd-looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gray orb, for lack of a better word. I'll see if I can find a picture and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put it in the show notes or put a link to the device. Again, I don't have it handy, but it had Ethernet going into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. It was plugged into the wall and had Ethernet going into it. I had no idea what it was. I didn't know if that was like some sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ONT, but it didn't have fiber going into it. Long story short, I eventually figured out it was effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like one Eero mesh. It's not literally Eero, but it was like an Eero mesh base station. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so there was one of those downstairs in this particular home in the upstairs. It was like a loft situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And almost line of sight from the one downstairs was one upstairs. So they have some sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of mesh wifi, which honestly I didn't even touch. I never tried it, not once. But to your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, they're, they're, they're at least trying, which is good. But the other thing that's important about the UniFi travel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey router, and I also brought with me a GLI-NET router because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those tend to be far more powerful. They're also quite a bit bigger, but they're far more powerful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I love about the UTR in part, we spoke about this last time we spoke about the UTR,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was that it has support for Teleport, which is Unify's no config
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wire guard. If you're squint, it looks kind of like Tailscale, but it's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also very different than Tailscale. But the point is, once I got the travel router
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up and running, it connects to my house and every bit of our internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goes through my house here in Richmond. And although I don't think anyone is doing like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey data logging or anything like that, it just gives me peace of mind to know that whatever is happening in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this house with my devices, they can't touch it because it's encrypted and going through Richmond. Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that a little bit bananas? No, it's a lot bananas, but that's how I am. This is the way I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am. And I'm sorry. Also, Marco, I owe you an apology. It was not $100 for the Unify Travel Router.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $80. $80 for this thing. And if you are in the UniFi ecosystem, if you don't have one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you're cheating yourself. It's delightful. I absolutely love this thing. I was astonished that it worked as well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it did. For events like this, I'll probably travel with a GLINet because, again, I'm me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I enjoy doing this stuff. This is kind of a hobby for me. It is not necessary. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand that. It's totally overkill, but here I am. However, speaking about GLINet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to bring up something else. It turns out that I didn't know this until we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the KVM. I think it was a couple of weeks back or maybe a month ago now. But we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a couple of listeners that work at GLINet, and they were kind enough, not a sponsorship or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. They never said I had to talk about anything. This is completely of my own accord. They sent me a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of devices and said, hey, you know, you might like these. That was all that was said. There was no guarantee of anything, not sponsored content
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or anything like that. But they sent me, among other things, a Comet Q, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I kind of know GLINet's product line, and I had no idea this was the thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we talked several weeks ago about the KVM. This is the thing that has native tail scale support. You plug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB into a device, like into a computer, and you can control that computer remotely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it's as though it's physical hardware. As far as the computer's concerned, it's an actual keyboard, and actual mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey et cetera. This is largely the same thing. It is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a remote control device, a KVM kind of device for a computer. But what's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fascinating about this is it works with anything that uses, I think it's DisplayPort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over USB-C. I forget, shoot, I should have looked it up beforehand. I didn't. I apologize. But basically, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, there it is. ComicQ works with any device whose USB-C port supports display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port Alt mode for video output. This includes, but is not limited to, laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and mini PCs, Android phones, iPhones and iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 15 and newer. Yes. iPhone 15 and newer or all iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, iPad Pros 2018 and newer, iPad Air, fourth generation and newer, iPad mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sixth generation and newer, and iPad 10th generation and newer. What this means is you can get one of these little dinguses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is like a little circle. It has an on-screen display, which is very neat. You can plug this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into basically any modern iPhone, excluding the 16e and 17e
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the air. Sorry, Air folks. But any modern iPhone, so 15 or newer, 15 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and newer, et cetera. And you can control that device remotely. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you're going to do is ask me, why would you want to do that? And I have no f ⁇ ing idea. But the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, I can tell you a couple ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, well, I would love to hear some ideas because I think this is the coolest device I've seen in a long time that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have no idea why I would use it. So talk to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Two things. Number one, I can have two times when I would have needed this recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One, it wouldn't have solved the problem, but one, it would have. So when dealing with audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues at the restaurant, if I am like on the mainland, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moment when like, you know, the subwoofer, like, you know, like the subwoofer volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is off for some reason. Like the app to configure the mixer and like electronic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controller and everything that we use is an iPad app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, this is for you, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And so I already have one of my Mac minis is in the restaurant. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, if I need access to the network there, I have it through Tailscale. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can be on the network, but I can't control an iPad remotely. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn't work running an iPad mode on the Mac. Like the app doesn't work that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I could theoretically have an iPad there with this and be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like running that app and could control it remotely. That's number one. Number two, Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broke her iPhone a couple of weeks ago. We were outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we were walking and she tripped, took a moderately bad fall. Don't worry, she's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. But she landed on her iPhone and it totally destroyed the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the point where the screen would not turn on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we had to, okay, crap, you know, go make an appointment at the Apple Store. It's just Apple Care, so you know, we'll go get it fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. But the question we had was like, is it backed up? Like, is it like, what is the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent iCloud backup? And how do we figure this out? It's like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can try to restore it onto another phone. That's going to take a few hours. The Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store closes in, you know, two hours or whatever. So it's like, that won't be done in time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let's, you know, we went back to the house and we could tell like by, if you like, you know, would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you like squeeze the button, it would vibrate. So we could tell, okay, it's still on. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we just have to like plug it in. I'm like, I know iPhones support monitors and keyboards and mice externally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'll just plug it in. Okay. Well, the problem is it was on but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco locked and it had never been connected before to a monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a keyboard or mouse. And they have like, you know, this similar to modern Macs, they have some kind of protection of like they're not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just allow a USB device to just connect without authorization. How do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you authorize it without a screen to type in your passcode? So I thought, great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voiceover. So I held down the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Siri button to try to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say turn on voiceover, um but that didn't work because the phone was locked and she had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it set to not allow Siri while locked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right, can't do that. Like, oh, what about um iPhone mirroring on her Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, she had never done it. So that wasn't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either. So that didn't work. Siri didn't work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was a point where I could plug in a USB-C little like foldy portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitors. I could plug one of those in and get the screen to show up. But the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I couldn't unlock the screen because the touch screen wasn't working. Now, I could plug in a keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there's only one port. And if you unplug the monitor to plug the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, it somehow relocks itself. So even if you Even if you get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco passcode screen to display on the screen and then unplug the screen and plug the keyboard in and type in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco passcode on the keyboard, it doesn't work for whatever. I guess it relocks or something. So I thought, oh, what about a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB hub? A USB-C hub. So I plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a USB-C hub
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the monitor at the same time. And that doesn't work because apparently in this pre-unlock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state, hubs don't work. Only a display will work because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hub is like a USB device you have to authorize. So like there's all, I was running into all these different security barriers. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, maybe, just maybe, in this context, this dumb
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing might have given me like one more option, maybe. Probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what if I could like preauthorize us on all of our iPhones? Because what ended up happening was like, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couldn't get into the phone. Like if the iPhone screen is broken and to the point where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like touch also does not work on it, you have no way into that phone like unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have authorized one of these things ahead of time. And even then, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these methods that you use to authorize remote control things on iPhones, they all have, they all time out after a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like if I, if I use iPhone mirroring on my Mac, you know, that's that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to stay authorized for what, three days? And it's gonna make me log in with my passcode again. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I don't know. This probably wouldn't have saved me there, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it could have been one more option. So anyway, that, I might have used it there, but I definitely would use it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the restaurant iPad situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So I've tried plugging it into my iPhone, which I had not plugged it into before. I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try it with my iPad, but I'm just now trying it with the iPhone. And I'm definitely, oh, I can see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the screen. Oh, you know what? I face ID'd. I was going to say, I was about to say that it said, you know, you must unlock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to authorize this accessory. And I didn't unlock the phone, but I looked at it with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen active. You know what I'm saying? And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidentally face ID'd.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it would have been the same problem here, but you, uh, maybe, maybe you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would have been able to see, but not interact. But yeah, I mean, what this does is it puts the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a web browser. How about this? If you live in the EU and you want iPhone near it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could get one of these bad boys. Um, I'm sorry. I'm so mean.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But yeah, I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't think they have a sense of humor about that yet, but they probably should.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They probably should. But truly, for your iPad in the restaurant,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I would say is next time you're in the restaurant, like do the dance of authorizing this once. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even if what you did was put it in a drawer somewhere and said to somebody, if there's an issue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first thing you do is plug this in. And the second thing you do is you call me. You know what I mean? And that might
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really set you up really nicely. And i I genuinely don't know how much this costs. I don't think it's terribly expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh it's It's on sale right now for $110, but unfortunately, it is back ordered until late August.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey no there you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go. So at least late August.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey um And apparently, if I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a VIP customer, I don't get it i don't get priority access. So this will not be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here for this restaurant season, maybe next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Unfortunately not. But again, like i I think this is just one of those devices that I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy that it exists, even though I have no idea why I would need it. Well, that's not entirely fair,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually. If I didn't already have the POE-powered KVM that we talked about a few weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, then I could potentially use this. But I think this is an incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool device, and I had no idea that something like this existed for iOS devices, which I thought was neat.