600: Everyone Ends Up at Crab

This is our 600th episode. Oh crap. I didn't even realize I cannot believe Casey didn't know this I completely forgot you really didn't know No, well I knew like the few days ago when I just hadn't thought about it since then. Oh man Mr. anniversary jeez I know I have fallen down on the job It genuinely I am gobsmacked because I completely forgot that that was today holy crap 600 episodes how I mean

It's it's not our 600th. It's our 600 and something because we have like you know We did the special interview episode and of course there's all the member specials and so on and so forth

Even just in the main feed because we did that interview special separately. We already passed a hundred but anyway It is the 600th numbered episode of ATP John's gonna John I just say it like it's it Well, we're celebrating is the roundness of the number that's in front of the title and not necessarily the number of things that we have made All right, well, I will just say in my typical fashion I know I say this a lot but I really mean it and I think it's worth saying again since Ron 600

We are so very thankful for anyone who's listening to our voices right now I won't belabor it because I it may be too much but anyone who is listening to us anyone who's a member anyone who's ever Listen to us in the past we thank you so very much for being here for 600 episodes because it was something like the 13th of March there about some 2013 that this all officially got started

I forget the date off the top my head and here we are 11 years later and change and we are 600 episodes in and it has Genuinely been and hopefully will continue to be for a very long time One of the coolest things I've done in my whole life is is getting to spend a bunch of time with you two and all of our wonderful listeners And thank you for being here. It really means a lot to all of us. It's a perfect place to start if you're a new listener episode 600

Jump right in. Yeah, it's a nice round number. Why not? Works for me. I do it is I don't want to you know Sap on this too long, but it is really remarkable that like we make a living talking to our friends about computers Like that's that's incredible like I never would have guessed that as a young person You know, I always I always wanted to be a radio DJ when I was like a young teen and pre-teen

Like that was like my dream job and now you can do it. It's only you just play fish Right me basically which I mean you know if you would have told me that in a number of years ago That would have been pretty hard to believe but yeah, you know and like you know to be a DJ is actually apparently not a very good job It's it's apparently a brutal business and not not a great career to pursue nor a very particularly achievable one

Especially these days as there's basically no radio left and and I would never have made it as a DJ because I don't have the right voice I don't know enough about music. I'm not cool enough There's so many reasons I would never have made it as a DJ. I don't speak well enough But to be able to literally make a living talking to my friends in radio form and B. S.ing about computers

That's really that's very special to me. So thank you everybody. Yep couldn't agree more We are incredibly lucky and incredibly thankful and you know as a part of the relay 10 festivities that were Last month, you know a lot was said from Mike and Steven about

How it's really impressive to have a creative endeavor that has lasted as long as relay has and We are a touch older than relay actually a little bit more than a year older than relay and And it's really incredible that the three of us don't hate each other So I'm very proud of that fact and I'm very very thankful for both of you and again for all of our listeners John Any sappy moments that you would like to contribute or shall I move right along to follow?

No, I for people who don't know I want to go back if you listened to episode 400 which was a weird anniversary But still a round number in front of the title I gave my pitch of what I thought we were doing here at ATP and I feel like I still feel the same way So if you want to hear me say what what is ATP? What do you think it is? What do you think you're doing here?

My description is in episode 400 if you want to go back and check it out standard Syracuse of response to sentimentality is a citation and follow up It's a reference. Yeah, I don't you know, you know dry. Don't repeat yourself. It's good programming practice

All right enough naval gazing. Let's do some follow up. That's what the people are here for so we have a series of Several pieces of feedback with regard to the macOS permissions alerts To set the stage here it became public clear Whatever in the last week or two that Starting with what is it Sequoia? I can never keep the version number straight as we learned in a past episode With Sequoia it will nag you every single week to let you know

Oh something could be recording your screen a week later. Oh something could be recording your screen week Cool, we good so Nathaniel Cohen writes with regard to that. I think by far the bigger problem than the alert rate is the alert UI the alerts pop up in the rather crappy notification UI there's no history and there's no centralized view over the alerts

Over the alert decision making that's required a stream of randomly arriving requirements for user decisions can simply never meet the needed security and privacy Objectives of the permission system also regarding migration of permission grants to new system

I personally hope there's an option to turn this off. I want to revisit these prior decisions But are still I'd like a nice UI to centralize the decision making with as much information as possible about what the thing is that needs permission And so I would probably say well

We've already got a centralized thing if you go to system settings and you go to like security and privacy whatever look there's all the permissions and as like many things in system settings I think that that Presentation of this information is inadequate and not particularly well organized, right?

This this is something that always annoys me about notifications I always wish on on all Apple devices The any notification that ever came in and that I dismissed and did something with Ended up in a log somewhere where I can go through the history

Oh, you got this notification at this time and then at this time you took this action on it right not forever Don't keep a log forever, but keep a log for 24 hours or something because it kind of annoys me that there's no one place I can go to see show me all the notifications

The ones that are pending and the ones that I've dealt with within the last and hours, right just so I can get an overview permissions is the same deal What I think and this will be related to the next question So I'll just say it here instead of waiting till then what I think is

Missing is a essentially something that Google provides and it's web your interface in some fashion or another Like a security checkup where you go to this place and say tell me what the deal is with security in my system and it shouldn't be organized by Permission the way things are now like show me all the things with full disk access so middle things with that should be sort of organized with an acknowledgement of which things are

More troublesome, right? So screen recording would be near the top and something I don't know I can't think of another permission after open thing but something is less severe would be towards the bottom, right? Things everything wouldn't be exactly as you know equal like they wouldn't all be equally important to you

Like I don't know. Let's see Scrolling scrolling see they're not in the prior to order so I can't find it the one that's like a you know not particularly like Media and Apple music maybe would be towards the bottom, right? Our motion is fitness whereas like hammer microphone and screen recording would be near the top, right?

Or reminders would be lower than contacts may be in calendar anyway Some sort of like centralized report in a nice UI that is organized the information for you and said just so you know Here are the seven applications that can record your screen or have microphone access or cameras or whatever that have been installed The last whatever months or the permissions have changed the last like like a report screen like some hey I use some kind of way of organizing the information

Like someone like a human would do to give you a one page report that says here's what you need to know about your system Here's what's going on on it and it's not like it would be asking you to do anything at this point It's just saying I just want you know here's the summary, right? And what would show up on the summary is applications that you just installed that you gave screen permission to Some kind of time next to everything this has had screen recording permission for this amount of time

Three new things have gone into the microphone category. It would be great if you could pick the things that you cared about more like Again, it's not just a historical list not just a thing subdivided by app or subdivided by a permission but like a report and

Then people could go to that report whenever they felt like I Worryed something is off on my system or I just want to check in now Maybe people would never check in and they'd be like I made these decisions once and I'm fine with all the decisions I made and I'm sure everything's great

But if you're not sure or you can't remember or in this you know in this in slate something that people when they set up a new system They want to wipe all the permissions and do them all over again or even if they do migrate them

They want to say it was a good time. I'm setting up my new computer I want to go get a security checkup security report and Things you can put in that report like Apple has a lot of information they could leverage in the report something that they're so hesitant to do We've talked to us for years for the App Store is any kind of acknowledgement of like

Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. I know they're not all Apple in the Mac App Store or whatever right are Our applications that have more eyes on them more users and a better reputation Then some random application that just came out last month from a developer that has never made another application for the Mac you know what I mean and As far as systems concerned that's never communicated so any kind of security report could take that into effect

What is the average rating of this thing on the App Store? How long has it been out when when what version number is it on is this a bundle? Well, I did that Apple knows about maybe Apple could have an internal ranking of bundle IDs based on trustworthiness, right? And I'm so as a security people are flipping out and saying no That's the worst thing you could possibly do everything has to be exactly equally untrusted everywhere

But that's not a human's work. You're the goal of this screen would be to say we want a human to look at this and Have it be like the front page news of their security system with ways to drill down and see all this stuff

Obviously don't get rid of the full report or whatever and you know tell them you're not seeing everything here We're just trying to give you you know at a top level of you, but without that you're left with people saying well That dialogue came and went and I don't remember what I put on it

And either you're gonna nag me every single week or a different age roles We'll see in a bit about every application that I ever said yes to or you were lying on me to go into system settings and click Into these 50 categories one after the other and scroll through the list and say yes

No, no yes, that's looking over every single item that you've ever approved and really what you care about are the ones that are You know recent or suspicious or have severe provisions or that you didn't ever say allow this forever and ever right?

That's that's what I think the system needs and I know I'm asking for a lot here It's like well, we barely just got the new system settings now you want this whole new giant thing like we're getting a new separate password Zap which is presumably a nicer place to look at passwords than system settings I think we need the same thing for privacy and security Yeah, I mean it all adds up to me and certainly the way it is right now

It I can understand how they got there, you know, oh, let's look at all the things that relate to location

Let's look at all the things that relate to screen recording, but I don't know. It's just it's not necessarily what I want or really in a perfect world You know you could say give me all the stuff for this app which I actually can't you do that now that I say that out loud Can't you yeah, they have a bunch of different ways to slice and dice it But like again what they present to people is one particular view that is totally flat and is organized by permission

Which is a valid way to organize them. It's not a bad way right but there are other ways to organize it But like something we really need for actually humans to have a fighting chance is something that's organized more like a front page of a newspaper I can't think of a better analogy I'm old sorry

In any case we got a lot of feedback and I'm slightly embarrassed and a little frustrated myself But I didn't think about this but we got a lot of feedback about well why why are we getting nagged constantly and

Several people wrote in in this case an anonymous person writes. I'm a friend who has survived horrible domestic abuse Her spouse controlled every aspect of her life including installing software on her computer without her knowledge Keeping track of her passwords through key loggers and spyware and so forth She was able to escape and then survived several Attempts at her life Perhaps these are the scenarios that Apple is trying to bring to light

This is a really great point that again. I wish I thought of and I'm embarrassed that I didn't I don't have a great answer for this because on the one side I feel like we should be able to say no never never talked to me about this ever again But on the other side then that means other people could and I feel like I Jason was talking about this somewhere

I might have been the six colors podcast. I don't recall exactly where it was and you know at some point His his Jason's point was you know at some point you can't protect everyone from everything but still

I mean I I don't know what I think about this. Yeah, I don't why don't I certainly don't want People in this scenario to be put in harm's way, but I don't know what the right balances I mean what you wanted to do in this situation So this is kind of like trying to you know use the Copy protection to stop people from copying a DVD that they have to be able to watch the movie on like and these domestic abuse scenarios Very often the abuser has access as the person, you know what I mean?

So you're basically trying to make it so the person you want to empower is not empowered because it's not actually them logged into their account You know what I mean right and that's a very difficult situation and that type of situation I think what you have to do is I mean what I suggested maybe is insufficient or whatever, but you have to give The user tools to empower them and you would say well, okay But if you give them those tools the abuser also has those tools

But you have to make tools that are not useful to the abuser so that for example that front page sort of summary of what you should know That's significant and recent about so the security of your account the that's not useful to the abuser It like viewing that doesn't help them right, but it does help the part the victim

Or you know what I mean? It does help the person who is being abused every time they feel Unsafed or unsure about what's going on they can go I need to go do a security check-in right?

I need to check what has changed since last time I did a check and I need to see what's important that I need to be notified about Because even the weekly thing like this is the problem when someone has control of like your account even like the weekly check-in An abuser will just turn off that permission turn it back on get the weekly get the immediately get re get get reprompted and say allow and know that They have a week before they have to do that dance again, right?

That's it's in nature of abuse is insidious like when you're in a situation where someone has that kind of control over your life You're computing life or your life or otherwise. It's very difficult to Make the system to lock down the system sufficiently because they always find a way in because in the end the person who's being You abuse has to have a way in to use the computer right?

So you have to give that person tools and I think a check-in type thing is a tool a lockdown mode is a tool like Apple has a couple lockdown modes and like the iOS where it's like certain features are just essentially disabled entirely Right and again the user could reenable them and do they have that special password for lock down mode or whatever But you have to give tools you have to give tools that are not useful to an abuser and I think

Reports or surfacing information that's important or reviewing information that has already gone by here The things you did approve and when right with dates and everything on them

That is useful to someone who's worried about an abuse situation. It is not useful to an abuser Yeah, I mean it's just it's a tough balance to strike and you know, I'm not sure what the right answer is to be honest with you We hinted at this earlier apparently Sequoia will now prompt you monthly not weekly first-screen recording permissions This was reported 959 to 5 Mac among other places and macOS Sequoia beta 6 you can choose to quote allow for one month quote

Yeah, it's kind of hard to tell from the beta is because people Yeah, I guess they could set the date forward or whatever and this is not in 15.1 by the way I was I would have tested it because that's the beta that I have installed because I wanted to see the Apple intelligence stuff Even though I still can't because I wait list things games to do nothing anyway If you click allow for one month After the one month is up what happens does it give you one last chance?

Then you say allow forever or does it just prompt you for a month again, right?

And we don't know the answer to this and I think the thing that everyone is railing against is repeatedly asking I don't think makes anybody any safer does induce alert fatigue right And it's just plain annoying and insulting to the user that they can never be trusted to say allow forever a better system Would be to ask them a few times to be are you sure you sure you sure and then eventually say allow forever and have the allow for other apps

Be extreme allow forever screen recording microphone and camera apps be extremely highlighted in the front page Newspaper of like security check-in like that never go away and just say like these ones are gonna prompt monthly hourly weekly daily Right and these ones you've said allow forever and you know like this But I guess I mean apple hasn't really documented this yet And I suppose you could say allow for one month and set your clock for one month

But I'm always wary of doing that because I'm worried that the system is too clever and it knows that I did that and it's not going to behave the way it would Normally, but we'll see one month is definitely better than one week as I said in the last episode It's not that I object to even repeated prompting for things that are important because I think that is good but Repeated too frequently is bad and I even think repeated on on a regular interval is also bad

It would be better to to prompt two or three times and space them out a little bit and then give the final allow forever And I think there should be a power years away to say allow forever immediately for people who don't want to be annoyed Because that will show up prominently in the

Security check-up report that does not exist yet. Anyway, these are my suggestions. I'm not a security expert the current version of this dialogue they're they're trying to Keep the decision they've made which is these permissions will no longer be available forever and

And they're they're trying to say okay well a week everyone complained how about a month and that makes it a little less annoying Maybe about 4.3 times less annoying, but it's still Extremely annoying because what this is saying is no matter what we're not going to give you forever permission and Everything you've said about you know the possibility for you know for various malware uses for like domestic abuse and surveillance uses

Those are all true. Those are all real risks, but this is Apple kind of being being merely mouthed out This is them saying well we don't actually want any apps to be doing that anymore But we're not going to have the courage to remove those APIs completely So we're going to allow apps to do this but basically create a massive support burden for them that kind of makes it impossible to really get anybody any traction on this

You know any any app is going to rely on these APIs to capture the screen. It's now just going to have a lot of problems You know getting new customers retaining customers retaining usage over time like they're just creating problems kind of halfway I say if you're going to actually

Have this strong of an opinion on whether apps should be allowed to capture the full screen Just remove the APIs completely just go all out either do that or have it work for power users like I think if they've decided These APIs are so dangerous and are being abused so much out in the wild that they aren't even aren't even going to allow a permanent permission to be granted Those APIs maybe shouldn't exist anymore

I mean a lot of these things have to exist like being able to use the camera the microphone like they advertise things They put things in their ads that show people with the Mac, you know singing into it and recording stuff in Garageband And I know Garageband is first party app, but I don't think I can get rid of all these things

No, no, I'm not saying all these things. I'm saying this particular thing Yeah, well screen recording is like that's what we keep calling the permission, but it basically means can An application see anything on the screen that is not one of its own windows and lots of applications need to do that to perform their

functionality. I mean screen-shotting applications are an obvious one, right? Well, but what is so so you I'm sure you know this shot So what is so this this dialogue which is terribly written says app is requesting to bypass the system private window picker and directly access your screen and Now I am a I consider myself a Mac expert. I have no idea what that means Is there an API that something like zoom or teams could use to say like share this window from this app to my call?

Yeah, and I believe zoom actually doesn't use the system one I mean so that's this this this particular dialogue is trying to get people to use a new API So this one you if you use the new API you wouldn't see this particular dialogue But you'd still see a different one you'd see the one that says this app is screen recording permission Do you want to read it like so there's two different versions of this dialogue one is they're using an older API that lets them capture the whole screen

And we wish they would use our new like you know quote unquote safe system mediated one kind of like the the power box thing that does the open save dialogue Right you invoke an open save dialogue on the Mac and then there's like an apple framework that kicks in and an apple framework

Is allowed to like see the whole disk even when your disk doesn't have full disk access and stuff like that right there's a system picker for like Pick the window that you want to record with your recording application and then we let you do that and during the picking you can see all the windows

But your app can't see all the windows because you delegated to the picker right and that works for like zoom Sharing your screen or whatever, but it doesn't work as well for like a Freeform sort of like select a region of the screen to do like a screencast like you know, I don't forget if a

Screen flow x or whatever can do this lots of screen-shotting applications work like the apple one where you can pick any arbitrary Region of the screen and record that region of the screen and the system picker For windows won't work that way. I think the system picker might also let you pick regions But anyway, there are other applications. Just want to see things that are on screen like I think um

Applications that want to do something graphically. I think bartender does this a lot of controversy behind it But even like a window manager that wants to know where the borders of the windows are and draw things around them And know what the content of the window is so they can blur over and stuff like that There's lots of situations or even like a color picker if you don't use a system color picker and you just want to

You know pick a pick a color that's on the screen somewhere. I think Maya the big fancy 3D application Doesn't use the system color picker and you'd be like well They should just use a system color picker But Maya is this massive cross-proper form application that is not going to convert to Appkit or convert to the system color picker right?

So I think there are legitimate reasons To not use the frameworks they want you to use and also even if you use those frameworks You just get a different wording in the style box So that's fun maybe you get a different icon, but you're still subject to the same

Alerting type thing like as far as again as far as I know in a far as every single story I have read there was even a story unlike 95 max says oh this is just telling people in news you use new Or APIs, but then there was an update to that thing that said correction

There is no new set of APIs that you can use the only hope we have is what we said in the last show Which is there is an entitlement that some people think will stop you from getting this if you were ever granted this entitlement by Apple But we don't know if that's true or not because Apple has not said anything one way or the other so I mean, maybe this is nothing not a big deal and Apple will come up with a big communication and release notes and say here's a deal

Everybody chits, but you know APIs and this will motivate them to do so or maybe they'll just say nothing Developers will just figure it out when the OS ships and when they request that entitlement from Apple and see if they get a response Oh, I want one more thing on this by the way though with the one month like how annoying that is versus one week

This is another situation where centralization would come in handy. How about proud to me once a month One time and saying these eight applications have the ability to screenshot and they have like you know Togel switches or checkboxes and X and whatever instead of being prompted eight individual times once a month Like how many applications do you have on your system that have camera access that have microphone access to have screen recording like

If every one of those things had some kind of check-in interval Some kind of decaying check-in interval with the possibility of giving permanent permission if you do it enough times or whatever Summary put it all in one window in one dialogue box It doesn't interrupt your other work or maybe on on boot or whatever as opposed to every single individual application having to ask once per Whatever number of days forever and ever because that is even more annoying

Moving along David writes in with regard to what's the story with gas stations anyways?

Oh David writes a word for a time on the point of sale software for gas stations And the sales data says that they're basically in the business of selling just three things Alcohol nicotine and soda Everything else is just there to fill out the store and it doesn't amount to much of their before their bottom line Some of the higher-end stores like Wawa or quick trip make a lot of money on their food So there are exceptions

But your typical gas station only cares about those three things next time you're at a gas station

Take a look at what they're advertising out front. I guarantee you it's beer cigarettes for soda I mean this is I have no reason to believe why this wouldn't be true But this is also true of lots of businesses like for instance most restaurants the margins on food are very low And the margins on drinks are very high and so this is just this is kind of just true of lots of things We are brought to you this episode by one password extended access management

All right, here's a quick question to your end users always and I mean always with no exceptions work on company own devices and IT approved apps Yeah, I didn't think so so my next question is how do you keep your companies data safe when it's sitting on all those unmanaged apps and devices

One password has an answer to this question extended access management One password extended access management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device Because it solves the problems traditional I am an MDM can't touch check it out today at one password dot com slash xam for extended access management once again one password dot com slash xam Our thanks to one password extended access management for sponsoring our show All right, we had a bit of a news dump from Mark Gurman

I guess Sunday whatever day was a few days ago and we're gonna pick it apart a little bit It starts with the iPhone 16 alleged camera buttons so we've heard rumors for a while that there's going to be a physical button I guess similar in spirit to the action button, but

The way it's been described is that if you hold the phone in landscape such that the lock button is high You know in up top then There'll be a button basically where your right index finger would be where you would expect it to be on a camera So Mark Gurman writes the new camera control on the right side of the phone on the iPhone 16 pro models will operate like a button on a DSLR camera

Right, okay, allowing you to press in slightly trigger auto focus. Oh, okay. A harder press will take the picture right? You can also swipe along the button to zoom in and out while shooting photos and videos

Well now you have my attention, Mr. Gurman. That sounds super cool Yeah, this at I'm surprised this wasn't in the earlier reports because all the other reports showed this the capture button that we've discussed on many past episodes As being pretty long pretty like wide and like almost kind of like the the old like 5G uh millimeter wave like window thing that on the side of the thing just kind of

Much longer than a regular button and that length is like huh. I guess it'll be real proud And it'll be easy to find for you to take your pictures But this makes perfect sense if it's also like a touch sensitive button you can slide back and forth the zoom

That will be cool now. I'd that's a little bit of an interface Test there to do that well because people's fingers move around and you don't want it Accidentally zooming like bumping out of exactly one x to be like 1.1 x or something Bees your finger moved or whatever so I hope it's implemented well

But that makes a lot of sense because you know on regular cameras you have So many physical controls for controlling so many aspects of the camera process And the shutter button usually only performs you know the half press to Maybe initiate initiate focus if you don't do back button focusing or whatever and then sometimes If a certain camera is there's a thing or the other thing you can do to zoom or obviously you twist the lens to zoom Uh, and on the phone

We just don't have the many buttons exciting to get the action button and I think it will be cool to get this capture button But we really are popular in size pretty quickly here So you better make sure the button You know earns its keep and I think taking pictures one of the most important physical things everybody does with their phone Is exactly the reason you want to have a big button

So the zooming sounds cool. I just hope it works without accidental input I actually have pretty high faith on Apple to do this well You know so far Every time there's been rumors of the iPhone either adding a button or changing the way a button works or things like that

We always kind of freak out. I don't know if that's gonna be all right And then like they always release it and it's always fine and or even good So I have a thing this will be this will be probably very nice I wonder if oh so if this thing says a Swiping will do it I wonder if it will be like press on the left and right edge to go plus and minus because I'm thinking about how this button one

Dracked with cases. I like if it really is a kind of a flat button and you have a big cut out for it Will you be able to shove your finger into that cut out enough to feel like you're swiping it? Well, you know, I'm saying it may actually add a prominence to those cases that They don't cut out a hole in the side for the buttons, but rather have like a Uh Like the the case doesn't come up to the screen, you know what I mean like they have a cut out that extends all the way to the top of the phone

So there's just a thing on the back. Maybe those cases become more prominent It definitely throws a monkey wrench into all of the cases I'm supposed to kind of like the action button where people were guessing Should we double this button, you know like my case has its own volume buttons that press the real volume buttons Right should we try to do that with this or is that not possible because it's capacitive should we make a cut out if we make a cut out How big is big enough?

Uh, can we make it just a hole in the side? Do we have to remove the side in that area entirely for the button to work and it will that you know not protect that part of the phone It's gonna be tricky Maybe this will be this is like a part of a grand scheme by Apple to reduce the amount of times people use cases thereby Increasing the amount of time people break their phones to now boost Apple care services revenue

No, my words. That was in the design for a longevity thing Do you add buttons to the phone to make people not work cases so they break more often answer no That was a joke people that wasn't in there. Yeah I just want to make sure some listeners says that wasn't a document. Yeah It continuing uh from our german there's talk of the apple watch sc Uh, german writes i'm told that the move to plastic for the apple watch sc will cut will lower production costs the aluminum case for the sc

Cost Apple about five dollars a unit the plastic shell likely will be about half that i'm told another advantage of plastic The material allows for bolder colors imagine that then aluminum and is probably more kid friendly I'm not sure if it does allow for bolder college you can make a little and pretty bold as advanced by the iMacs The back of the iMacs are incredibly bold

Apple doesn't allow for bold colors. That's true But like you can do the but anyway, uh, I like the numbers on this we talked about the plastic uh Watch a while ago like how can you remove costs from the watch what what can you do how much of those cases cost?

Well apparently it doesn't cost Apple that much Five dollars a unit and i know granted that's their their cost or whatever after spending busy-in-dollars on those machining Things that machine the aluminum but still and i guess that doesn't also involve like the the finishing steps or whatever

But half that so you've saved two dollars and fifty cents which probably translates into like ten dollars of price or whatever Depending on how they but the margins are in each individual piece That's not a lot of money I have to think that the advantages of plastic are yes

I guess it costs a little bit less and every little bit counts if you're trying to make a low price phone Uh, but I just think it's more sort of lightweight Being the main thing and maybe more durable and resilient to damage for a phone that might be used for a watch that might be used by a kid But I don't think this is necessarily a

Kid-focused device. I think adults who want a lightweight watch will also find this a feeling especially if it that uh comes in bold colors It might end up being kind of a segmentation strategy also though like I think it maybe Maybe Apple is selling too many s's and they want to sell more of the higher models to like adults who actually wants something that looks nice And maybe this is a way to say

This is this is the the kind of you know kid or less mature version of the watch. I don't know I think it I think plastic in general Has a lot of advantages like jom's mentioned like weight is a huge advantage of plastic You know certainly be able to bang it around without too much damage is also a pretty good advantage So there are lots of other reasons why I would I would actually like to see more

Plastic options in general for you know for just like devices being lighter and you know more durable and nicer in certain ways But I think this is probably going to make this Look like a lower end product than it actually is which might be an intentional segmentation move

Will see uh the iPhone 17 slim will not fold uh german writes that the slimmer entry will be just a step towards something better Eventually Apple will want to squeeze the power of a pro model into this smaller design that feet will likely take until at least 2027 to achieve I also expect apples to produce a foldable iPhone but all signs internally point to a foldable iPad being just as big of a priority That means we may still see a tablet version come sooner

So if you didn't make this as clear last time we talked about the iPhone slim and the fold and everything that the idea that the slim is the fold Was a combination of rumors by a bunch of people essentially speculating there was no room behind that What we have rumors for is apples working on a folding phone apples working on a slim phone vague timelines and increasing details about both of them and so combining them is a fun thing to do

But it wasn't based on someone saying we know this for a fact the slim is the fold and as mark said when we talked about That's the most likely thing is this is just a slim iPhone which is fine right This is german not flat out saying the slim is not foldable

But he basically says this is the slim and by the way there's also a foldable phone and by saying there's also a foldable phone After telling us about the slim it's basically saying to me the slim is not folding which was the most likely scenario anyway

So if you hate folding phones and didn't want slim to be folding I think you're good good deal And then the foldable iPad type thing is you know Apple rumors about working on foldable things has been In multiple years long right and even the foldable iPad one

It's the type of thing where you're like okay It's foldable and it's iPad size but is it an iPad or is it a foldable MacBook or is it neither one of those things That's the type of thing you can't find out from like leaks in you know the screen manufacturers

You know supply chain or is that just the foldable iPhone that when unfolded is you know kind of iPad like in its capabilities That I think is probably more likely because you know if you look at like what folding phones are you know We talked about a little bit before

There's the flip up kind that looks like an old flip phone that I don't think is Super compelling long term or here to stay for very long then there's the kind of book opening kind And I think that kind you know Google just released a new one you know and they're in their event that

Every other tech thing we'll talk about this week and we almost certainly will not but That seems to have some legs in that Those are still pretty specialized very high-end very high-priced phones But the people who have them love them and we were kind of saying similar things about like big phones

You know quote fablets back before iPhones got bigger that like the people who bought really big phones back before all phones were really big You know we thought they look kind of ridiculous and they were big and expensive but the people who bought them love them

And I'm kind of getting similar feelings from people now who actually use folding book style folding Android phones They like them a lot and that's some real capability there So I think there is some traction behind that idea enough that apple Should probably be looking very seriously at it and it's good to hear that by all accounts that they are You know we'll see where it goes and there's still a lot of challenges to be solved But it seems like the market is buying them anyway and you know

Even if things don't have perfect solutions it seems like the market doesn't care because the utility is so high Well the prices are also so hard to kind of like if you want the super expensive I think one of some of these phones go for like $2,400 I think there was one that was looking at today

Because the most expensive thing on the phone is the screen and this has the the fancy ones have two screens one That you can see when it's folded and one that you can see when it's unfolded And the one you see when it's all well is twice as big as the one you see when it's folded

And so if you're gonna increase if we talk about using plastic to decrease the cost of the apple watch I see well if you want to increase the cost of a phone add more screens and add more bigger screens That's an easy way to do it And remember because these things fold they tried to be as thin as possible And so you're losing some battery space because you have case you know you have like

Case battery case case battery case instead of case battery case. I don't know That's I know this is a more audio wise visualize it in your head It's you're losing space for the for a battery with a foldable phone I definitely think feel like if you fast forward many years as screen technology and battery technology advance Especially if there's a battery technology breakthrough like solid state batteries become affordable or whatever

And as screens presumably become less expensive when we sort of start maxing out human perception with screen technology And you just start making it cheaper which we haven't quite done yet, but we're getting there um Then at that point you could get a phone that's like a 15 pro

But also folds so it's the exact same thing same size same weight same battery life maybe even better battery life with solid state batteries You know better quality screen that you're looking at oh, but by the way if you pry it open inside is screen this twice as big Technology will eventually exist to do that economically doesn't exist today today Today they're thicker and they have worse battery life and they cost $2,400 or $2,000 or whatever

But yeah, if Apple wants to get there eventually they should start experimenting with holding on and figuring out which form factor to people like You know they have they have all the market research of all the folding Android phones that have been out for years and years to look at and to decide

Which one they think has shown that there is a form factor that Makes the most sense for Apple and I'm sure that's what they're experimenting with and all the stars we keep reading about it Like Apple's obsessed with making the crease not noticeable because when you do have a folding screen You know, oh, legs are flexible But the substrate they're on can crease and even when it's open you can kind of both see and kind of feel where the crease is and Apple doesn't like that

So they're working on that problem. How can we minimize or eliminate the crease? Good luck Apple. It's a tough problem But yeah, they're definitely late to the game of folding phones and it sounds like they're not going to have anything And for a few years yet, but I look forward to seeing what they have to offer because I think like I said

I think eventually not in two or three years, but in 10 15 20 years the tech will advance to the point where Foldable phones don't have most of the downsides that they have today Honestly, I hope Apple gets to that game sooner rather than later because again like the market is It's not that everyone's going to convert to folding phones But if Apple doesn't offer one in the next few years They will start to lose power users because the like again like talk to people who actually use these things

Not gadget reviewers talk to actual people who actually own foldable phones if you can find one they're not that common, but They love them. They will never go back. That's how good they are when you have that kind of product I really do think it Apple really should be taking it very seriously

And again by all accounts it sounds rumor wise. It sounds like they are taking it seriously But I hope they don't wait until You know, they can do the perfect thing if it means waiting too long and while in when in the meantime everyone else is shipping things that are

Decent enough and getting tons and tons of you know user goodwill and building habits and you know losing power users to a different operating system That's what they do with the vision pro though, so maybe we get to that in a little bit is it Yeah, cuz they use like don't wait until you got the perfect thing everyone else's heads as you ship one too and they did and yeah well anyway

Anyway, we have some vision pro updates. First of all There's apparently I didn't even realize this until I showed in the saw it in the show notes

There's a lake vrangla environment. This is reading off of record Mac rumors Apple has released a new environment for Apple vision pro called lake vrangla, which is close to Oslo in Norway This release follows apples announcements that the borabora environment will be included in vision OS 2 later this year It's arrival will complete the current environments menu making all 13 listed options fulfilled and usable

I have downloaded both or I'm on the vision OS beta and I have downloaded the vrangla uh

As well as the borabora one they're both really great. I like them a lot Moving along There is there will slash r slash are going to be new apple immersive video series films concerts and more So reading from apple newsroom Apple's releasing all new series and films capture an apple immersive video that will debut exclusively in the apple vision pro Surprise prize apple immersive videos are a remarkable storytelling format that leverages 3d video recorded in 8k with 180 degree

Field-of-view in spatial audio to transport viewers to the center of the action boundless a new series that invites viewers to experience once in a lifetime trips from wherever they are premieres july 18 with hot air balloons. I have watched that. It was good. It's like 10 minutes That was good. It was interesting and it's cool to see you know the perspective of hot air balloon. I've never ridden in one Now I sort of kind of have it's only 10 minutes

I've I think I think that's right. I watched that one a couple of weeks ago in my memories garbage So I might have that wrong but I think all anything I've seen is about 10 minutes um The next installment of wildlife the nature documentary series that brings viewers up close to some of the most charismatic creatures Creatures on the planet premieres in august. I actually just about an hour or two ago Watched episode number two, which was about elephants

Elephants are a adorable man. They're so cute and there's some baby elephants. They're so weed see it's so cute on my word

um, I'd like to come back to that in a couple minutes. Let me go through the rest of this list elevated an aerial travel series that whisks viewers around iconic vistas from staggering heights will launch in september This sounds a lot to me like almost a frozen goodness like soren from disney world and disney's california adventure or I think or maybe it's disney land anyways It's a ride where you kind of fly around through various landmarks

And if it's like that, I'm here for it because I love frozen earth. I said frozen again. I love so long um, and then later this year special performances featuring the world's biggest artist starting with an immersive experience from the weekend That sounds very cool. Uh, the first scripted apple immersive short film submerged a behind the scenes and on the court view of the 2024 NBA all star weekend and big waves big wave surfing the first installment of a new sports series with red ball

Sports series with red ball you say even though max for staff and is evil. I would love to see some f1 stuff So I'd like to briefly go back to the wildlife thing. So like I said, I watched the elephant thing which was you know Video which is about 10 minutes give it take a little bit watch it a couple hours ago The vision pro It's still something that doesn't have a strong Place in my life

I find that more often than not when I pick it up the batteries dead Because I haven't used it in a while and it's eventually discharged itself um But over the last week or so I've had a few occasions to use it and this wildlife video is one of them And I got to tell you I don't know if I could justify 35 hundred dollars to just watch these 10 minute videos But if you happen to have one or if you got one secondhand on eBay because I saw a report like a week or two ago

Where they're selling for like half price on eBay right now, you know something like a thousand fifteen hundred bucks Which is still a staggering amounts of money but more Understandable for the sorts of things that you probably would do with a vision probe But these immersive videos They are unlike anything I have seen before and I know that John you and I particularly went around and around the axle trying to discuss the difference between an immersive video and just a 3d video

To briefly recap a 3d videos when you're looking at something that doesn't move but it has depth to or by that I mean if you move your head you're still looking at a rectangle right that the rectangles where the motion is but there's depth within that rectangle Um an immersive video is where as you pan you pan your head left and right or tilted up and down Your perspective changes because it's like watching an iMacs movie or something like that

So you're looking around and changing the things that you can see and this elephant video is one of the many examples That we just talked about but it is really really good and what makes part of what makes it so great is that they let you linger on each shot

You know if you recall we complained about the soccer highlight reel because it was like New new new new it was constantly cameras constantly moving and so you're always trying to get yourself situated where you are on the pitch field whatever

It was very frustrating what these are not like these are very well done and the in the immersive or the spatial audio was also very well done So you know if one of the they're not zookeepers, but one of the wildlife people is you know say directly in front of you and talking But if you tilt your head to the left then you you hear the audio move to be entirely in your right ear because that's the ear that's closest to the person talking It's really really well done and I had such an eerie

Funny moment when I was watching the elephant thing it was roughly halfway through the video. So it's like five minutes in And we you're in a field or you know in a elephant habitat, you know where they're trying to You know like care for baby elephants and whatnot and of course this is in somewhere in Africa I think I don't know if I'm not mistaken and and at one point a bug like a mosquito or a fly or something like that flew at the camera such that it was just above the camera and

It was one of those things where it would if it was real it would have like hit you right in the forehead And so it flies at the camera and I think it might like pinged off, you know just above the camera so you can see that kind of like bounces

And I noticed that I shook my head left and right a little bit to flick it off my skin The fly that was in the video I just naturally didn't even think twice about it and kind of shook my head a little bit So it would fly away and get off of me and that's such a silly kind of dumb thing

But that's how real this stuff can feel in just in the span of a few minutes and as much as it's kind of Funny and silly to just slag on on the vision pro that Is such a good illustration of how real it can feel and I've been I'd like to briefly bring up one other thing I know I haven't given you guys a chance to talk about any of this but earlier this week I'm just on a lark uh myself James Thompson Jason smell and Mike Hurley all got on an immersive or one you know

The spatial FaceTime call that's what it is so what there was four of us and we were basically arranged such that I was sitting across from Jason Mike was to my right and then James was to my left and we had like a half an hour 45 minute or something like that FaceTime call

And it is not the same as hanging out with your friends. I mean I still smile from year to year when I think about when the three of us were back together In San Jose and got to see each other for the first time in five years It's not the same as that

But golly if it didn't feel pretty close like it is and it really does elevate the Experience and make you feel not like you're with your friends But it feels really close and I think also part of that is because the personas have gotten way better in the beta

They're not perfect, but they're way better And so all of that is to say the vision pro is still kind of goofy and it's still just hilariously expensive And it's still not something that I reach for all the time But I do feel like the locomotive is starting to you know pick up some speed It's slowly picking up speed but it's picking up speed and we're starting to see Apple really start to care

And I'm starting to get excited about where where this platform is going in the future. I hope you're right

I really really do. I don't think this is enough evidence yet that Apple really is like you know Putting them like getting the machine going like I what what this is is more promises and samples Of future things that might be good But here we are like almost seven months into this product and we have so little content for it still If Apple wants to make this take off They have to step on the gas in a substantially bigger way than what we've seen so far

What we have from them now from this from these new promises is is just that promises and teasers and things that might be good I don't think this is evidence of enough yet when next January rolls around and the vision pro will have been out for one whole year We're gonna look back and say what did Apple do in this entire year of this new platform? And I think it's still going to be a pretty short list And then we're going to be able to look back and say oh what about other people?

What are other people do with the vision pro? What what apps exist for it? What streaming services exist for it? Who else has made content for it?

And I think that's going to be an even shorter list And I know you're going to talk about apps in a second, but we're just not seeing like if you If you extrapolate out the lines of like here's how much is available for this here's how much traction this is getting Here's how many customers are buying it those lines even if you extrapolate them out You know a year or two down the road

They're still very very low. We need to see this. This is great. We need to see a lot more than this Yeah, and it's funny bringing all this up because the other thing we wanted to talk about with regard to vision pro Is that apparently according to 9 to 5 Mac there are more than

2500 native apps for the Apple vision pro Let's not focus on the fact that there's probably millions for the iOS, but There's or it's certainly many many many many many many thousands, but But hey, there's at least 2500 for vision pro and that's better than none

You should look what the the App Store curve was for a number of apps over time Obviously, I think the the App Store went better than this, but 2500 is more than I would have guessed right and obviously every app is not created equal Be better if they had an Netflix app or whatever but You know like there's Since this is a chicken egg situation and an Apple controls both the chickens and the eggs

Because they make the vision pro and also they are making content. They can kind of decide how to resolve that Um You could argue that it might be better for them to plan for Content release first party content release for the vision pro to accelerate around the time they release the lower cost one because that's solving

One side of this equation. Oh people, you know third parties don't want to make content till we sell a lot of vision pros And obviously we're not able to sell a lot of these 30 to 100 dollar ones

So let's release the cheaper one. Hope that sells better. Hope that will spur third parties from going like if Apple went all in and spent To gobs to spend like Apple TV plus kind of money To make content for the relatively tiny number of people who bought 3500 dollar headset that may not be the best usage of their time unless all that content is evergreen Right, so no live sports or no, you know

Olympic coverage or anything like that because it's just not a big enough audience for that so they may be holding back and say if we're going to be spending money for vision pro stuff Let's let's plan to spend it so that the content comes out after the low cost headset which you know is what that could be But anyway, if we if the vision pro had launched in the US and all the things that we just read had launched at the same time as the vision pro

Be like, okay, you know good start for a new platform But given it's been in a seven month wait, it's a problem and as people are on the chat room It's been seven months for us But it just came out in other places in the world So it's a little bit of a sort of staggered launcher

I continue to think that the if Apple is committed to this platform That the slow and steady approach is a reasonable one even though it is as I keep repeating very frustrating for the people who spent $3,800 on this thing

Yeah, and also like Apple is not like intentionally slow playing this they're pushing it hard like I have gotten Three different calls from App Store from Apple store business reps trying to sell me a vision pro By the way, I already own a vision pro which I bought from the Apple store, but hey

I have like the business reps are pushing it hard the developer relations staff is pushing it very very hard Like they are pushing hard for people to adopt it with their apps and for customers to buy it They're pushing very hard so they're not intentionally holding back This is what they have this is all they have there is not going to be I don't think Some you know future where all of a sudden a flood of a bunch of stuff comes out that they were just holding back artificially

No, not holding that holding it back with a different budget for right like so you they're trying to sell you a $3,500 All heads of the you already bought right, but that's different than essentially putting money, you know like like an Apple TV plus content right putting money to

produce video content paying someone to produce these you know record the weekend singing paying the NBA to do the all-star things you know like that's production budget right and you can choose how much of that you want to make when they launch Apple TV

Plus they spent millions and millions of dollars to make TV shows and movies and all that stuff and get Tom Hanks to be in a movie and get Jennifer Assent to be in the TV show and and you know right now they're cutting those by just all those things because a lot of people are right

But they can choose when and how to spend money on content for this thing and they are spending money for content But if they're not spending you know Tom Hanks movie money right which by the way that movie didn't do it well Well that will TV like you never know quite what's gonna head especially with the creative content But that's what they could be not holding back but saying when we have our schedule over how much money We're gonna spend on content and when that content will be available

Let's plan for the best biggest amount of content to come at a point after we think we have a chance of selling more of these now Maybe in the beginning like I said before maybe they thought they would sell way more than this than they have but they couldn't have thought They were gonna sell more than the screens they could get and that was capped at like a million and so that's like a half a million Vision pros worldwide and it seems like they might not even reach that so

The plan for year one of this thing couldn't possibly have been for content that would not make sense When the total possible viewership is half a million people right and what you're seeing

I think it's content that makes sense for a maximum possible viewership. I have a million people That's what everything we read off here that makes sense to me right and again if they wanted to they could have done something evergreen You know in a immersive movie with Tom Hanks in it because that movie you know you can watch it next year

And it'll still be good. It's it doesn't age out right but live sports ages out concerts debatable Little demo reels probably age out because they'll be more impressive stuff I don't know like we're not inside Apple I don't know what the strategies are but I look at this from the outside

I think well this is not great for people who bought one and it's not great that Apple couldn't sell them at $3500 But the strategy makes sense to me given what we know about what they released how it sold and the rumors of what's in the pipeline again

Frustrating but it makes sense to me. Yeah, I guess that's true. I just I feel like For a company with effectively infinite money You would think that they would want to just throw a big ol' pile of money at this problem and fix it and have people say Oh my gosh, you would not believe how cool it is to see I don't know say the weekends concert or you know Whatever the case may be and I'm just a little disappointed that they haven't done more

But you're right. I mean the numbers do but bear that maybe this is the right amount of content And I both I hope they I bet they do think maybe one of these hits and we'll give us a hint about where to really put that money for like the one That you know the content is gonna come out timed with the cheaper one right? Is it gonna be concerts? Is it gonna be sports? Is it gonna be that short film like the things you're light off that they're covering a lot of different

Basis they're not all just let's take you in a hot air balloon. They've got music. They've got sports They've got narrative movie, which is the first thing I've seen you know announced right like and of course they have the whole app story, right? I don't think they know which of those things is going to be The most compelling to people what's gonna make them spend $1500 on the next headset

Which one of these things will appeal to them and where should we put our money? Should we just do tons and tons of concerts and ignore everything else? I should we do all live sports like I think this will help them figure it out presuming they have you know viewership numbers and these things well

But again, timing is important here. You said they have music they have sports. No, they don't they are promising to maybe sometime in the future have like one music concert Have one sports weekend like we need like This all makes sense for them if they didn't need to convince people to buy this

And if they didn't need to keep people happy who did buy it Well, I mean they don't need to keep you happy if you divide because they already got your money But yeah, like this is stuff that's you know, I mean first of all this announcement this announcement was from July and already

Some of the things that they announced did come out on the dates. They said they would so I believe that they're Actually going to release all this stuff when they say they will because it's not that much stuff It's it's a small amount of stuff, but I think what you were basically a test audience anyone who has these things and is still actually using it in any way You are the test audience to see how engaged are you with these things that they release?

And even though it's a tiny test audience They should be able to tell from that Which of these things is more appealing and you know, which of these things do they do people tell their friends about to their friends go I don't suggest you buy the 30 go hundred dollar thing, but man you should check out this concert It was really cool or whatever you check out the sporting events right Well, see like it's I still think this is a slow burn here and in terms of like oh be great

They just spent tons of money. Well, you know a company's not going to spend tons of money on a thing that it's not even sure is Worth spending a ton of money on like like It's up to the hardware to sell and then to motivate them to make the content and it's up for the content to you know

Like it's it's a give and take right you can't just say okay Well when I'm budgeting all the money we have yes granted apple has you know effectively infinite money What you can do with that money you can do a lot of different things right Uh, for example getting out of China takes a huge amount of money in time and maybe a better use of your time than spending 300 million dollars on content for 150,000 people who use their version pros every day

Right, so you know, baby steps. We'll see again frustrating to the people who own them, but so far It makes me think apple is just Being patient with this now the fear is always the home pod thing. Are they being patient with the home pod? Or they just not care about it several years and we're like okay, well they don't really care about it right

Well, yeah, it works out for vision pro right now. I think they're just being patient How many people right now do you think use vision pro regularly total in the entire market? My 150,000 was my guess I don't you think 150,000 people use it in pro regularly Yeah, that's my guess out of like maybe 300,000 sold so half of them right I would estimate more like maybe

20,000 I don't know. Oh only apple knows. I'm just guessing like I don't even know myself. So I could not tell you I don't know I the thing is for me I do turn to it from time to time and there are very specific times that I think it's extremely useful to have because I Have no self-respect. I'm happy to use it on a plane or train. We've talked about that many times And it is phenomenal. It is utterly phenomenal to just be immersed in a movie and the plane or the train that you're on

Effectively doesn't exist like it is amazing this spatial facetime. I was talking about was super cool I do really enjoy watching the immersive video unfortunately, you know once you see it You've mostly seen it and there's a some total of what like an hour of immersive video on the entire platform, but it's cool So and then what what if the marvel app slash interactive storytelling thing?

I actually have only done the first like 10 or 20 minutes of it because then I got busy and then forgot about it But the 10 or 20 minutes despite me sounding blas a about it was actually extremely cool So there are times when I turn to the vision pro in and there are times when I'm glad I have one I wouldn't say I'm always glad I have one though and that's the tough thing But I don't I don't want to count it out quite yet even though it's definitely

It's definitely I was gonna say an ailing platform. I think that's a little dramatic It's it's not a platform that's really you know that that's really hit its stride yet But I can squint and I can see several different ways in which it could So I hope it does honestly. I really hope it does because they do have some great engineering in it

There are some really cool ideas. There's a lot of potential It's also a huge number of big mistakes they made and I think they have Bought the launch in in really sad and impressive fashion And so there is something to save here But they have to save it To in order to save it like this we need to see action and and you know potential changes here and there and in both the Product and in the ecosystem that they need to jumpstart and so until we start seeing like

Significant moves in those areas. It's hard to see as anything other than a flop and honestly really I honestly genuinely think like Johnson 150,000 people he thinks where to use it I honestly think that might be off by a factor of 10 like that's how

It seems like like I mean granted this is not like a platform that you see people using you know outside very much Because it's not made for that but like I've seen more cyber trucks in real life than I've seen vision pros Like that's saying something cyber trucks you do use outdoors so true And by the way you said you said they were pushing this thing hard if they're really pushing this thing hard They'd be giving it to developers that they want to make apps

They'd be giving it no strings attached. They'd be saying you don't have to make an app But here we'll just give you one and think about it That's how you actually push things hard the fact that they're not doing that shows that a their apple because they don't

Never give things away and be that they're still kind of like We'll just take it slow and steady because I mean honestly they should have been giving them away That's one good way like give it away to the good developers again using apples knowledge of which developers

You think make quality applications and You know entrust them with free essentially dev kits right but that hasn't been the apple way for a variety of Cultural reasons that don't make a lot of sense and so if you ever see apple doing that for apple I would say it's a sign of desperation for any other company that says just good business, but apple is so

Culturally against that type of thing. It's like we'll make it so good. You'll pay you'll pay for it to yourself You'll want to make apps or it's like okay well if you can pull that off great thumbs up But if you can't pull that off think about giving them away well like it wouldn't even have to be for free Just even if they just had like a developer purchase program Which they've done before like in very small ways

But they if they had a developer purchase program where like a developer of like a reasonably established app Could buy one for like half price or you know something like that like get them in the hands of developers who

Would appreciate the discount and therefore overlook some of the math behind the market and actually get apps out there But ultimately even that I think that would help a lot But what would help even more is content and not only making a ton of content themselves for it, but also

Maybe making moves to repair relationships with third-party content providers That would be important for it like the like the big streaming services like YouTube Netflix I get those apps on there, but doing that is going to require Relationship work that I think apple is

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They will not ask you for a credit card. It's so good and it's free. Why not give it a shot? Thanks to tail scale for sponsoring ATP Let's do some topics and First thing we have to talk about is that apparently the Mac for many will be really many So this is from Bloomberg Apple is planning a new version of the Mac mini that will be its smallest desktop computer yet This is the first major change in the Mac mini's form factor in

14 years so a mere three years before we started this program. That's when it was changed last Uh, the device will be far smaller than its predecessor approaching the size of an Apple TV set top box Despite the smaller overall design the new Mac mini will maybe taller than the current version today's models about 1.4 inches high the updated edition will still feature in aluminum shell though

Apple's tested models with at least three USB-C ports on the back of the mini in addition to an area for plugging in the power cable And in each of you my port for connecting the device to TV sets and monitors People involved in the development of the new Mac mini say it's essentially an iPad pro in a small box

That's cool. So I wish we had a little bit more information about this my first question is obviously internal power supply or not Because you can make it real small if you put the power supply in a brick But that hasn't been Apple's way the Apple TV is really small and it has an internal power supply And it's pretty cool. I think there's no reason they can't keep it with internal power supply And I like the idea of the mini being redone

But my question for this is for a desktop computer. This is not a portable This far as I know there's no rumors of this having a battery or anything like that for a desktop computer What is the smaller size by you? I agree that the current mini is too big like we all made fun of it when the M1 Mac mini came out That people cracked it open and half the box was empty because they just use the same box when they intel one and this jot monster overpower

Like ridiculous power supply. There was like two or three times as much power as it needed But you know, they're just saving money. You have the existing case but they did it with all the M ones The you know devices they just use the existing cases make sense and it makes sense that they would shrink it But Apple TV size it's getting to the point now where I feel like the cords are gonna pull it off the desk because they weigh too much You know what I mean?

With like I'm all for a smaller Mac mini, but I hope I don't think the size of Apple TV is Necessary right just you know half the size of the current one I guess that sounds about right But when I picture an Apple TV size thing and that's my Mac mini I know it seems weird at that point like maybe make it magnetically attached to the back of the studio to play or something Like a little

More a whatever like the little sucker fish things. I don't know what they're called But hey, you know Once every decade and a half it's time to change the Mac mini I think it's on the same schedule as the Mac pro in that regard

I hope they don't lose too many of the ports like you know the rumor is you know possibly three usb-c's I hope it's at least that because the Mac mini is really good for ports for its size So I hope they don't lose too many ports because again like you know what so To make it smaller that I think it serves multiple angles one is

Smaller will have less stuff in it. It will have fewer ports. It will be a cost savings for them Like to just making it smaller will probably be a lot cheaper and they will make a higher margin on it So you know good for them they need more money So that's more than money shipping in a shipping container, you know to mean like all the shipping cost the packaging cost like everything That's that's in and it's called the Mac mini like it's in the name. This is the one they make small

I'm you know, I don't be grudging to making smaller. They should of course right So you know number one reason to make it smaller they will save money whether they will pass it along to us Well, they won't but they will save money. Okay, but also When you look at the Apple Silicon series iMacs You know the the the new slim colorful ones Those were desktops that got people excited about a desktop for the first time in a pretty long time Because they were

Interesting and cool and they they took it in a different direction that like they kind of got people's attention again and It didn't revolutionize the world desktops But it took this one desktop that it already existed and made it cooler and and made people like it again

And made it get into the news and kind of capture people's attention again That will happen if they make a very tiny Mac mini that will happen to a smaller degree But that will happen for the Mac mini so that's a reason as well and then I think finally

I think a lot of Mac minis end up being used in places where space is at a premium things like Data centers like if you have like a server rack where you have a bunch of Mac minis and some kind of custom mount or something like that That will actually be you know a substantial

Upgrade for for you to be able to fit more of them in a rack Um, especially at presumably as they're continuing to be very power efficient and everything like that Um, that also would be a lot better with internal power supply as John said

So I hope it does keep that and I think it probably will um, so When you look at how the Mac mini is used like it's used in a bunch of different ways and most of those ways Would either benefit or be neutral if it got smaller The only way that would really kill it I think would be if it Starts needing dongles for everything that it wouldn't I mean it's not gonna kill it but that would start reducing the At the utility of it in certain ways

If a thermal throttle a lot too. Yeah. Oh, yeah, if a thermal throttle is it that will too So what I'm hoping they don't compromise on is thermal throttling good one I hope it's still in a real power supply and again looking at how many of them are being used in like kind of utility or data center rolls I hope it still has an ethernet port that's that would be a big one and with the apple TV does offer that

Yeah, apple TV has got got an HDMI port internal power supply ethernet port like there's no reason It couldn't have all these things and not well before we get a bunch of feedback not all them have an hd Or excuse me an ethernet not not the cheap when not the cheap apple TV. Yeah, right exactly. Yeah, anyway So if they can retain as many ports as they can and ethernet and internal power Then it is then it still retains its utility for most of the ways that they are actually used

So I hope that's what this is and if they can make it smaller while retaining that utility That's great if they cut too much from it to make it smaller I think that's the wrong move, but we'll see so far again so far there the recent history of the Mac mini has been You know it doesn't get frequent updates. It never has it never will

But when they have updated it recently it has been pretty good. So I hope they continue that that pattern Yeah, I don't think that there's a Need for the Mac mini to get particularly smaller, but I love the idea of it again as both of you said Assuming we don't lose ethernet assume we don't lose at least a decent number of ports like for me

I could totally lose the usb a ports. I know not everyone would agree, but for me, I'd be fine I would also not want an external power supply I concur with both of you that I think an internal power supply is part of what makes it so wonderful But I that would be great I wouldn't necessarily upgrade specifically because it's so small, but I would at least be enticed to do it because

Why wouldn't you oh in thermal throttling? I agree with you John that if it has to aggressively thermal throttle That would not be great either, but you know the Mac mini I would never want that to be my only computer for various reasons about the way I work with computers, but

I really love the Mac mini because it is so darn flexible. It can be like a little server It can be it could be your only computer if you wanted to be it could be a server that's co-located somewhere You know, there's any number of things that can do it can kind of be all things to all people and if it can get physically smaller

Sure, man. Why not? I think that sounds really great. So I'm here for this. I don't know if I would buy one But I certainly love the idea assuming it's not compromise city It's by the way the Apple TV also has to agree with you. Anyway, I feel like there's a interesting convergence happening between the Mac mini hardware and the Apple TV hardware Right like at a certain point especially if the Mac mini is Apple TV sized

The Mac mini is like an Apple TV with a better SOC essentially and Ethernet port and a USB ports rather like Two rounded rectangles one's aluminum one's plastic Uh, with the power plug Ethernet HDMI and then some USB-C's on the mini like they both have Apple silicon in them like

Is it just is the Mac mini of that size just like the world's most powerful Apple TV that doesn't run TV OS And is the Apple TV 4K slowly becoming kind of like the DTK was like a a slow Mac mini that doesn't have expansion other than Then HDMI and Ethernet Remember the days when the Apple TV was a thing that ran macOS right before it ran TV OS or whatever There is like we're talking about the platform convergence and or lack thereof between iPad and Mac but

What is it about TV OS that couldn't just be an app that ran on a Mac mini because once it gets to be that small Marko was saying like people put their Mac minis in weird places Used to be that people would put their Mac minis on their next to their TVs before streaming boxes existed before the Apple TV Is it because you could do no real flex server on it connected to your TV so on and so forth

And you'd want it to be small because it have to be with your TV junk right that's why the Apple TV is very small and unobtrusive and you know like I'm not saying these things are going to converge like the Apple TV has a thread radio and you know

The presumably the Mac mini won't or will it will see but at a certain point Apple making two Puck size things with Apple silicon SOC's in them at two different prices just starts to look like A wider range of Apple TV powers if it wasn't for the OS difference Well, I mean first of all the OS difference is substantial Uh, it's so good. What's what part of the OS couldn't just be an app?

Like you've launched the TV OS app and it just runs everything you see there It's a full screen app it takes over everything it answers to the remote, you know You know, I mean like there's I don't think there's any maybe I'm wrong Maybe there's some part of TV OS that's specifically tailored to have some sort of like real-time feeding of it But I feel like everything that's doing is so within the power of the SOC like it's so not a big deal to the SOC that this call just be an app

I mean, it's not it's not that different uh in terms of you know technical grunt It's more about like massive differences in the kind of you know like the the realities of hooking it up managing it the capabilities it has so like you know

For instance try to try to configure a Mac never connecting a keyboard to it. Uh, it's it can be difficult Uh, there's all sorts of like just little details like if it was a Mac it would have complexities x-wines the and and anybody Who's ever tried to use a Mac as a TV computer?

You've run into these complexities before you know this like you you know that it's fairly different Also, I would say like you know the Apple TV costs 150 bucks the Mac mini costs like six to eight hundred for a basic one and it has way more RAM and way more SSD space yet

I'm like it's just it's a super It's a super high-end but all I'm all saying is they're both Apple so they both have a RAM They both run the same boat based OS right you could have a macOS You know boot into essentially like addies or whatever you know thing that works the remote anyway I'm just the the hardware is the very least is converging if not the software and the software is close enough to each other

That they could really have one thing that did both of them. I'm not saying they should combine them I think they should probably remain separate, but it's very interesting that they are there. What is it? A car synogenation I probably pronounced it wrong where so many different animals on earth have essentially evolved into crab shapes Independently along different lines like they're not actually related to each other evolutionary

But everyone's on ends up at crab. Well, maybe everyone ends up at Apple TV Or Mac mini whichever one you decide is the standard bearer for the rounded rectangle puck shape Well, we'll see what happens, but like I said, I'm excited for this So there's been some big news this week

I mean, I'm in a good mood. I really don't want to be in a bad mood, but we gotta talk about it We don't we don't have to listen We don't have to actually talk about this that much if we don't want to because I'm also in a good mood We talk about the Mac mini. It's fun. We like do we really have to talk about Apple being a jerk again like it I say this as somebody who I love You know my career that I've made in part by calling on Apple when they've been jerks apples being a jerk to patreon again

More app store BS again Apple is doing horrible things again with the app store commissions again like Do we actually have to really drill it and again how Just terrible this whole thing is and how much they're ruining the reputation especially among creators like my god What a terrible move like yeah apples apples modern business model is to

Shake everyone down as much as possible. They make half their profit is coming from making great products And the other half of their profit is about to come from shaking everyone down I hope we can continue to celebrate the former and I hope the latter Is not forever well as I was like you already did talk about it I was slightly different taken on this like well, just let's just say what the story is first

I was gonna say let's let's set the stage here. All right So uh patreon put up a blog post and he was yesterday as we record it was early in the week But anyways reading bits and pieces from the blog post as we first announced last year and we'll link to their original blog post about this Apple's requiring that patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from patreon ios app by

November 2024 again. This is patreon patreon's own blog post This is two major consequences for creators number one apple will be applying their 30% app store fee to all new Memberships purchased in the patreon ios app in addition anything bought in your patreon shop

Number two any creator currently on first of the month or per creation billing plans We'll have to switch over to subscription billing to continue to earning in the ios app Because that's the only billing type apples in-app purchase system supports So patreon just in case you're not aware i presume all of you are but just in case patreon is a way that you can say

Hey, like let's say ATP was on patreon. We're not but let's say we were we could say you know Hey every time we release an episode you can pledge to give us a dollar $10 a hundred dollars Whatever the case may be or you could say Every month on the first of the month you're going to give us you know eight bucks or whatever the case may be and You can do all this through patreon's website and that isn't

A possible in ios in in the ios app store. So now going back to the blog post Apple's fee will not impact your existing members will only affect new memberships purchased in the ios app from November onward We've been working closely with creators to figure out the best way to help you avoid earnings disruption stemming from apples

30% app store fee based on creator feedback. We've built an optional tool that can automatically increase your prices Only in the ios app to offset the cost of apples fee This way you'll continue to earn at least the same amount per membership as you do on all other platforms

apples in that purchase system on the other hand only supports patreon subscription billing model So there's a thread about this on On a mess on which i'd like to come back to if that's okay, but we'll continue on with the blog post Apple's also made it clear that if creators on patreon continue to use unsupported billing methods or disabled transactions in their ios app We will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their app store Are you kidding?

All right, are we surprised is any part of the surprising? The surprising thing is that it lasted this long apples entire business model is again Okay, selling products and then secondarily which is assumed to be match them in revenue or in profit rather Shaking down as many people as possible they apple makes a lot of money from hardware and a lot of money from rents That's what this is and so they are going like this is a pattern they've been doing for a long time

They're basically scrounging around the couch cushions of every possible app that's in the app store Apple has made a consistent effort to go and see where can we squeeze more money that we haven't been able to squeeze Or that we haven't squeezed before they haven't tried to squeeze before and they are basically hunting around the app store looking around saying

Hey looks like you're making some money. We uh, we need a piece of that and you know, they build a big stick like so That's this is a pattern they've been doing for a long time and it's not necessarily like that somebody was breaking the rules and they go catch them

Usually it's in which is i think the case here usually it's like kind of a vague edge of the rules where like Something has been okay for a while and apple suddenly decides that's not okay anymore And you have some money and we need the money so therefore

We're gonna reinterpret or change this rule to now include you so please Business that we hadn't really no, you know rolling creating You need to not give us your money because we we need it more than you do obviously Right, so there's this thread on master master on from cideria Yeah, and cideria writes it's not clear to me Why would allow patreon to take 5% above and beyond payment processing when i can just get subscription service from paypal for the price of payment processing

Oh god, let me tell you you do not want to use paypal for subscriptions trust me. I did that before let me Look, I'm not a huge fan of patreon. It's fine, but like i would i wouldn't use it myself But my god, you do not want to use paypal for this if those are your two choices pick patreon trust me So continuing from cideria

What i am here for is the buy creation model if you don't offer me that then I can get what you're selling for much cheaper elsewhere And so My take on this that marco's already covered a little bit is that like The rules in the app store for what apple wants a percentage of our arbitrary kind of uh apple has changed them over the years If there has ever been any kind of Thing that they've stated to try to tell you what they're going to charge or they've said we want to charge for digital things

We don't charge for physical things. There's lots of edge cases in gray areas During the pandemic people are giving like yoga sessions And they were doing them over the computer instead of in person and apples like, is that a digital good?

Is that a physical one? Maybe we need money from those yoga people right patreon is kind of i mean It's not so much in a gray area except that like Apple didn't charge them originally and they're really big and important in apples like that Just let them be because it's kind of a physical thing like oh people are trying to fund a cooler and the cooler gets made Was kickstarter patreon is like you're gonna you're gonna make a new painting every month and they're gonna pay you to do it

Is there like your patrons patron of the arts or whatever like patreon you could have you'll pay for anything literally anything right some of that Stuff happens in the physical world some of it happens in digital some of it. It's like neither is that a digital thing?

I don't know but if you squint you could say okay. I can see how apples Somewhat consistent rule of digital things we want to cut off Would eventually come for patreon and say well you're kind of like a digital thing or you're more torches A little thing so you want to cut of your stuff right but that's just how apple frames it and I really think that's kind of like a backsolving I'll like well what are we already getting money from and that we care about let's just say that's our rule right

What actually makes sense and what a lot of the feedback about patreon has been discussing Is going to link it for the 17th time in the show my art of the possible post on hypercritical where it's like Apple acts as if Applying business terms to people will make them reshape their businesses to fit the cut that apple once So if apple says we want 30% of this business and the business says there's not a 30% for you

Like this is a low-march in business that every cent is already accounted for by various people in the value chain There's not another 30 cents for a 30% for you or 15% or 5% or any percent right Like we pay these percentages and everyone gets these percentages For doing the jobs they're doing and there's just no money left for you And apples like we'll just change the shape of your entire industry and our business to make it so that this percentage is available to us

Because that's the way it should be and whatever on this blog post like look apple you can try that But if it turns out that those businesses cannot or will not reshape themselves to provide your fee Then you just miss out on those and the example that I've seen coming up during this whole kerfuffle is the one that has been coming For years and came up when it was actually relevant was ebooks right you've got authors publishers resellers like amazon

Establish royalty and fee structure from publishers to resellers and retailers and everything I was in that business. I know where all the percentages go They're all accounted for right and yes the author kind of gets screwed They don't get as much money to think they should a lot of businesses that are like that like the music industry But anyway setting that aside

There's not another 30 or 15% hanging around It's for the maker of the phone that you bought the song right that's not part of the value chain And apples like we think we should be and Amazon was like okay Well, then you just can't buy ebooks on a candle apple and i was Because there's not like if you let us do it without giving you a cut

We'll put it in the app. It'll be great for users everywhere Love what I was like no you can't put it in the app unless you give us x percent right and that's percent is not available And how many decades or years has it been that percentage is not becoming available that business has not reshape

Itself to fit apples desire to get that fee patreon is a similar model patreon You know connects people who want to pay for a thing with someone who wants to get paid for doing it Whatever that thing is you know whether they want it you want to pay them per painting they make or on a monthly basis

Or whatever it is and whatever they're going to do that's between you that's between the the patrons And the person who has the patreon and patreon is the platform that enables that to happen and patreon takes a cut For being the platform that makes that happen And if you look at we'll put a link into the patreon's like fees their fees have a range like if you if you got into patreon Like really early like you know when when patreon first launched patreon would take 5%

And then the current ones anywhere ready for eight to 12% and those are the fees and they charge for payment processing and currency conversion And then you know there's fees fees fees right but the point is if you add up all of patreon's fees in the worst-case scenario like

You know for the privilege of me doing this thing for letting people sign up to give you money for collecting the money from them For them paying you out for the money that they gave you for me doing all that patreon takes this percent And that percent I think universally is less than 30

So apple wants a bigger cut of patreon's business than patreon takes patreon is the business that connects people and people who do things and people who want to pay them for it right Apple says yeah, but we make the phone and the OS Where the app is that people use your service through and so we want a bigger cut sometimes substantially like three times bigger cut than you get because We think we provide three times the value that you the actual platform does

I can understand patreon saying there's not really room in our business for someone to make three times as much as we do On every transaction right A lot of people are mad at patreon right now because you know some people like well patreon rather than saying okay We're going to give apples 30 percent and by the way it's 30 percent because patreon is a huge company Each individual person who has a thing on patreon They may be making pennies right they're making well out not a lot of money

Don't they qualify for the small business blah blah? Well patreon does not qualify for the small business blah blah Is they make more than whatever million dollars or whatever? So patreon has to pay the big amount not the small business program amount Which kind of sucks whatever anyway All the people are saying patreon how about you just get your app out of the app store

You have a website. That's how a lot of people use patreon is the app so important That you're going to give apple 30 percent and then basically give an automated way to pass that 30 percent cost on to The customers who pay on patreon right?

Is that what they're saying like hey people who are on patreon you can just basically raise the rates of all of your subscribers by 30 percent If they use the iOS app and then you'll get the same amount it's like yeah But every single person who plays for a patreon is gonna be paying 30 percent more and that 30 percent is going to be going to apple and if you told them Hey, we're going to yeah, no you subscribe to this patreon for this person We're gonna raise your prices 30 percent

But if you don't want that to happen don't use the iOS app. I bet they would go fine I want you to see iOS app I can go to patreon.com I know where the website is this website does not require the phone to exist

It works fine on the web the web is the platform nobody owns. I don't think I want to give 30 percent of my money to apple Like if you told someone I'm paying five dollars a month and it's okay, okay, you know 8% is going to patreon and the whole rest is going to know sorry 30 percent is going to apple wait What 8% goes to patreon 30% goes to apple and the rest goes to the person I'm paying Why is 30 percent going to apples like well if you do it through the web

They don't get anything which by the way you probably can't even tell them unless you're in the EU but anyway People are mad at patreon saying patreon why are you doing this especially the people like that thing you read from the thread And mess down it's like the reason I use patreon is because I can let people pay me for every sculpture that I make If I don't make a sculpture, I don't get paid every sculpture. I make this person pledge to pay me one dollar, right?

So I put out a new sculpture. I say here's the new sculpture and I get one dollar right In that person doesn't support that All right, or paying even something as simple as paying on the first of the month You're like oh monkeys description is exists, but they don't all start in the first of the month So some people have patrons who say on the first of every month I will collect one dollar from you because that's what you pledge for whatever it is that I do

But apple doesn't support that within that purchase so patreon saying not only will we pass along the 30% cost if you want us to or not If you and then you can just pay the 30% we don't care who pays it or whatever But we're eliminating those other two things where you get paid for every sculpture you make and you get paid in the first of the month because iOS and that person doesn't support that we're just going to eliminate that for anyone who uses the iOS app only people

Use the web can do that and then furthermore we won't even provide an option in the app that says I don't want to use the app to do this

Stuff I'll do it all in the web. I still want to have the app so I can look at stuff But I don't want to use it to pay because if we did that apple said apparently they'll take the app off the app store So I think there's plenty of blame to go around but this is I think just another example of a business that apple wants to insert Themself into that just doesn't have that much of money laying around for them The users don't want to supply it patreon doesn't want to supply it

It's not as if they're taking 30% of patreon's cut They're taking 30% of the whole price if you pledge one dollar a month 30 cents of that goes to apple right and whatever percent goes to Patreon And then the rest you know goes through the person you're actually trying to pay Apple simply can insert itself into certain businesses because they're already established and the cut is already you know Everyone has decided that the distribution of money on that is

Is acceptable to all involved and when apple power treats in and say we want a fairly large percentage sometimes we want The second largest percentage because the person who's who owns the patreon is getting the largest amount still and then apple second and then Patreon a distant third that just doesn't make sense to people

It doesn't make sense to the people who have businesses on patreon. It doesn't make sense to the people paying for it and Honestly, I don't even know how it makes sense to apple because I don't feel like patreon is gonna be make them as much money as like in that Purchases on subway surfers or whatever so it's yet another you know, it's kind of like wish casting wouldn't it be great if

30% of this existing business could go to us. Yeah, we all have that feeling about lots of business I can look at all sorts of businesses and say wouldn't it be great if like how much a percentage of patreon's business should the Internet service providers have how much should the cellular companies have all those Facilitate the transactions that are taking place arguably the internet service providers patreon couldn't exist without them

Shouldn't they get like 15% and when you if you start doing that and saying everybody along the chain is gonna get some big percent that they're gonna

You know boost their stock price and their earnings reports or whatever it doesn't work. It's not sustainable There's not enough money to go around to have like okay We're connecting we're connecting people who make things and people who want to pay for it Unfortunately, I'll kind of like the music business You pay one dollar and three cents of that dollar guess of the person you wanted to pay and the rest goes to

Millions of different middle parties that have somehow found their way to into this business and that you have to pay because they're monopolies to do op please and that I think is the real story here is How much room is there in a given especially established business for new parties to come in even if they're part of the value chain And Apple is part of the value chain even if they're part of the value chain

How much place is there for them to come in and to demand money for the things that take place there? It's I mean at this point I'm kind of surprised that Apple didn't say well if you use safari when you go to patreon.com We get 30% if you use Chrome We don't get it, but if you use safari we get 30% because we're facilitating that transaction by having a web browser that we make and they are

facilitating it but Most people have decided that the web browser maker doesn't deserve 30% But I guess the phone maker does because in that purchase it's It's frustrating is frustrating on all sides here people are mad at patreon people are mad at apple

People who are on patreon are mad that they have to figure out some other alternative a Lot of the shenanigans are this is not the reason we do this But because we're just a bunch of burrowing nerds, but people are asking the chat room don't you guys use patreon don't you use memberful

We are in the privileged position not to have to do that because we're software developers So Marco wrote the system that we use we do use a third party thing We use stripe which is a payment process or which is an extremely difficult thing to do But guess what stripe doesn't charge 30% yet

They charge like three percent. Yeah, they charge what payment process is charge You know and patreon probably uses stripe behind the scenes and patreon charges for payment processing and I get they probably have Make a little profit and the rest of that money goes to their actual payment process Which honestly is probably stripe right But not everyone is gonna write their own

Bembership program. I would not recommend it in fact I don't think Marco recommended no we can do it because we're a bunch of nerd programmers in a nerd podcast and no We're not gonna start a competing business with patreon because that's not what we want to do but it's When businesses like patreon end up taking more and more of the money and at this point like not taking more of it But like you know apple takes more of the money and patreon allows you to pass it on to your customers

Or to pay it yourself it just makes the people who are stranded there people who can't and don't want to write their own

Membership systems like that's that's why I use patreon. I can't write my own membership system That's why patreon exists and all of a sudden prices are growing up 30% and I'm getting none of that that's not a good feeling for anybody And honestly, I really you know guru wrote about this today like people are saying hey patreon just pull yourself out of the app store That's what it's come to right now is that people are so against the apple and this that they're saying look

These companies should just not be in the app store. It's not worth it the vet like that's what people always say Well, if you think if you don't think apples cut is worth it take your app out of the app store and now finally We're getting a concrete scenario in an app that people are familiar with saying yeah pull the patreon app It is not an essential part of the patreon process and maybe patreon knows something that we don't maybe they know that that is their

Biggest sales funnel if they pulled the app they would go out of business right in which case maybe apple does deserve some percentage of Whatever but honestly, we're never gonna find out until someone Test that theory because I feel like the web is a perfectly reasonable We don't have an app. We don't have an iOS app within that purchase. We just have a website ATP. I have them slash join Every single one of our members went through that at website to join

None of them went through an iOS app. There is no iOS app You can use to join our membership program. It's only on the web and yet somehow people find it and join. It's a miracle I hope the government steps in and breaks apple of its addiction to extortion Like that's what this is apples business model is hardware and extortion and

It's a terrible place to be they are Clearly incredibly shameless about it and incredibly to this revenue They this is exactly the role that government regulation plays when a When when a large monopolist which apple, you know I know we can argue about the definition of that but the the the role they take here is the role of a monopolist and When a monopolist starts having Undo influence over large areas of commerce that become damaging to an entire market

That's when government regulation steps in to to regulate that monopolist and to do to you know Force them to behave differently in certain ways to protect the health of the entire market There is no question that apple has reached that status that apple is abusing that monopoly power to extract things via extortion to extract more money from lots of businesses out there It is incredibly damaging to everyone including apples long-term strategy again. I

Question Tim cooks long-term strategy here. I do not think he is a good CEO anymore I think his his role in the company has has has run its course I think he has done all the good he's going to do and it's time for it's time for a different strategy It really is there we go there on market bingo cards. I know yes Of course, I need my own sound effect We know we know that's not a fact we're on it. Mark calls for Apple executives to be fired

But where where does this end? What is the strategy here exactly that the strategy here is begging for regulation? I don't think it's extortion, but like if you want to see what apples model was like I mentioned the music labels The music labels have established a established a business where essentially this is the case that the middle party gets most of the money and

The artist gets like the smallest amount and to some degree the the movie industry has done that a little bit They have some unions there to push back against or whatever there are existing bibles businesses that are shaped like that and I bet Apple looks at the music industry

And says wow, this is amazing music usually takes most of the money and whatever pennies or left go to the artist and the most successful Artist are still millionaires, but the but the you know the music labels are billionaires and obviously digital music and

Streaming and all other stuff is sort of put a dent in that business But that's a business model that a business person could look at and say wow that's great We should have that for us, but I don't think you can retroactively make that happen like patreon is not a new website or concept

It's been around for a long time and the percentages are what they are and they have competition in this area and The money is distributed the way it's distributed and part of the way these Services work as they try to tell creators come to us to our site We have the best features people like to use our site and we won't take as much of your money as the competitor

But Apple's not competing on that ground. They're just saying there's an existing business and if you squint It looks like a digital thing and we say we get a part of all digital stuff that goes through our phone And we've been able to do that because a lot of the things on our phone started from zero and they arrived on our phone And then that purchase made them tons of money or whatever right

But existing businesses aren't already shaped like that and they're coming in saying make room for us make room for us and Even though there are businesses that are worse like the record labels Apple can't but their way into that either and say by the way we want 30% of every single thing They were like obviously already sell digital music and do streaming and do all this stuff or whatever but like

So maybe it's not a great idea. I think they've already butted their way into that Well, but they did that they they innovated their way into that by saying we'll find a way to sell your music in a way The people will buy it and they did it with the iTunes store and then streaming in most cases streaming the labels are still getting Most of the money is not Apple taking the large chunk of the money there, right?

Although I think Spotify would have some dispute with the term competing it way into that Because there was also a little bit of unfair competition with that but Admittedly like yes, they did largely get into that via Competition that was partially fair and also the artists were already getting screwed there right seriously getting screwed right and so they continued to get screwed It's terrible right but here arguably the people who use patreon were like they're okay with this deal

They're like I give patreon 8% and it's well worth it because I can't I'm not a programmer I can't write my own patreon website right I want the people who give me money to have the least friction possible and people know how to use patreon or whatever

Similar I was out you're using and for that I give them 8% and it's well worth it to me 38% going and not going to me starts to be a Different deal right and again you say well, that's just through the I was happy continue doing it through the web right I don't know what the funnels look like Maybe Apple is calculating that they're such an important funnel and I keep using that term But it's like basically where do users come from to pay you money? Do most of them come through the iOS app?

Do most of them come through the website? What is the split right if iOS is such an important platform for making patreon money that they feel like they can't leave Then maybe Apple is calculating that they can take this cut and apparently patreon is not pulling their app

And they're gonna they're saying yes We are gonna do this and prices are just gonna go out from everybody and what this should make people think is getting back about Marco was saying Do we want to live in a world where the you know Android iOS doopoly? Has a stranglehold on the distribution of any service that uses your phone and is and they are able to take that percentage Because they are the funnel because they are a doopoly right?

It's like well Apple is the funnel that Apple gives you all your customers. You should pay them percentage. Yeah Apple gives us all our customers because there is no other way to get your app on the iPhone in front of people's faces other than progressive web apps which Apple continues to fight against a little bit And that's why like it's not like they're they're the funnel because they do such a great job They're except for in the EU they're the exclusive way to

Put apps on people's phones right and Android and the Google Play Store They're not exclusive, but they are the vast majority right? That's that's the root of this is that they have you know They can command those prices because they are the funnel because they are essentially a doopoly and

Striking at the heart of that is not saying Apple can't charge patreon money. It's saying Why should Apple be the exclusive distributor of apps and it gets back to the whole EU DMA thing or whatever So that's this is the period of terminal that we are in right in the EU anyway

Governments are trying to break the exclusivity of distribution that is the root of all this stuff over here in the US we're mostly just Being sad that patreon's going to be charging a lot more money and none of that money is going to be going to occur to the creators

but you know patreon pulling the app or Making patreon competitors that don't use the app store or whatever all of those are just kind of like hacking away at the leaves The root of this whole problem is the android iwis doopoly and maybe the department of justice is going to help with that

But we'll see I mean honestly like what I mean why stop a patreon like you know how about what if a church has an app You want to take one to one to take 30% of a church's donations What about different charities and nonprofits? Can you say 30% of all their income to if they happen to have apps? I mean again why why stop here?

Well, you're talking about like a you know the Apple does make judgments about you know We choose not to take this money even though we technically could we choose not to because it's a nice thing to do Like with nonprofits and stuff like that kind of them

But that that is still the root of that problem there is still Apple gets to decide No, no there's no there are no other influences on that no no competitor They can make different decisions to put pressure on apple other than android so apple and android kind of do the similar things

Which we'll talk about probably next week is some another fun example of apple and android doing very similar things Because they're essentially doopoly And they there's no other way to get on phones and phones are used by everybody and it's You know, I mean every time it happens people bring up the web and just go you know just So throw salt over the shoulder whatever and say like thank god the web exists because if it didn't exist apple would never allow it to exist

You know web the web the platform nobody owns not even google leave most of times it seems like they do Uh Is the one sort of side door to this whole process for now right but the doopoly is so strong that they could say hey Anything you buy using safari we get 30% they haven't tried that yet because you buy so many things through there But apple likes to pretend you live in a world where it's only possible to ever give anyone money using a native app

It's not true. You can go to any of your phone and buy a membership from us and apple does not get a cut of that even though

You used your phone to do it isn't that wild? It's not wild you used to be able to do it with computers that apple would make And you could buy things through them apple got no cut of it and somehow the world didn't collapse and apple didn't go out of business Let's suppose we're in an alternate universe where Steering the anti-steering rule doesn't exist and yes, I know the EU is basically that alternate universe

But just bear with me here. Let's say that patreon could worldwide Just say hey these are the prices if you would like to use apples in a purchase system But if you'd like to see other pricing go to the web here's a link What's the other pricing you tell them the other price or yeah, we'll get it for 30% less by clicking on this web link

Yeah, this this is the price on our website. Here's a link to get there It's no argument, but my point is even if you weren't allowed to show the price I still feel like we would say Man, this is kind of dumb, but whatever if people want to save a little money They'll go to the web the links right there and even better, you know if apple actually had to Uh, what's the word I'm looking for compete compete there it is if apple had to compete for the business

And then in that case you could say, you know, oh you can pay 30% premium to use an app purchase or you can You know not pay that and go to the web here's the link I feel like if that escape hatch was there I would be a tenth as grumpy as I am right now

But because their the patreon isn't allowed that escape hatch because of apples bulls Rules that are one of their many Then there's no escape hatch and so now patreon screwed and in patreon being screwed like that sucks because you know I feel for them

But the the people I really feel far before which is what you two have also been saying is the creators These are people who are just trying to eat out a living not different than us You know, they're just trying to eat out a look at eat out a living doing something creative

And they're trying to get rewarded for their efforts which again is not unreasonable and yet because of apple They're all these creators are potentially going to get screwed and that's just That's not fair and I don't grasp what apples going for here like intellectually And and maybe I guess this is probably where it stops. I just need to shut up

But intellectually I get they just want more money. They're a corporation that just wants more money And it's as simple as that and I get that but I can't help but feel Like especially in the last year or so Apple has been You know trying to do a get as many own goals as they did during the aforementioned butterfly keyboard era And actually it's I would say it's worse now because if you didn't want a butterfly keyboard you just don't buy a laptop

But here what are you gonna do not use an iPhone like yes, I guess you could go to Android But so many people are not gonna do that and honestly an android land is basically the same thing. Yeah, so I just why why why is is it worth it to you for everyone to hate you is this money from patreon worth it to you for all these creators to say You know what? Apple because there are bunch of apples anyway

Like is this really worth it? Apple is this worth it and It's easy for me to say but I don't think it is I don't think it's worth it And I think what Apple isn't realizing is they're doing damage Possibly irreparable damage to their brand and as much as I hate you brand

I hate kind of referring to them that way, but it's true people are looking at Apple and unequivocally saying They're the baddies now and That's just too bad and I don't know I don't want to be that person that's wishing for the glory days of the years of you know years past

But I can't help but wonder if that's how who I've become when it comes to Apple and I think Mark What was you that said earlier this very episode you know their hardware is incredible and you know what a lot of their software is too

But their policies are just awful and getting worse with every day and I don't really care who's fault it is to be honest I don't care if it's fills I don't care if it's Tim's I don't care if it's Eddie's I don't care who's it is It's just gross and it's unnecessary and I hate it and

I guess I should do a little introspection about why I'm so worked up about what a corporation does But it just stinks and I really wish they would choose different options But anyway now that my rant is over I again I come back to If the if the anti-steering rule

Wasn't there if patreon was allowed to say We'll go look at the website or you know or again if Apple will had to compete if the App Store had to compete with the web Then I feel like this would be a not a nothing burger, but it would be much less of a big deal

But because of apples absolutely absurd rules here we are and it just sucks And that's part of like it's part of a sort of we always think like what does Apple thinking like do they have a different view on the inside part of what Let's you know What you can charge for the things that you make is competition right So like if you make a thing and you think it's worth X and you set the price way too high You'll find that out because people will buy competing products instead of yours

You know what I mean or if you have an array of services and boy this one isn't selling well But this one's selling like gangbusters and in fact we raised the price on the popular one and people are still buying it But people must really want that right there has to be competition for you to learn

What part of the value that I'm providing to people want to pay for right and what part do they think is not worth paying for And I think Apple for whatever reason inside the company Doesn't like they don't not for whatever reason but because they don't have that feedback

They don't realize what part of the things they're providing are valuable and what aren't They just think like we make the platform And because they can make any rules they want the only feedback they get is like the most extreme of like someone pulls Patron pulls their app from the store like that's literally like

The grumbling they get or whatever like. Ah, they'll still pay it obviously the the you know The IP that we're providing is worth the percent we're getting and they grumble whatever they keep paying in it It's like your feedback mechanism can't be

If they don't literally stop doing business with us entirely it must be fine And so they think like our role in that patreon transaction is worth 30% And no one from the from the customers to patreon says apple you kidding me patreon's percent easy And even 30% from using patreon right

There's no way yours is right and again you can argue how much of that is the ISP how much of that is the The you know the company that assembled the phone how much of that is the cellular network and like they don't get cuts of all that stuff right But apple says well

We charge this amount of people pay it so we must be worth it It's like no you're not in it you're not in a market that lets you know If what you're doing is worth it because you don't actually have competition partially because of rules that you made that says

People can't even show that hey you could get you could get this for 30% less on the web Suddenly if people saw that option like wow people choosing in that part is way less than they used to when they see they can get it for 30% Off somewhere else because people buy things on the web all the time I swear to you on your own phone it happens and so in the absence of that of competition It makes it so they can't tell they can't they like I find it's hard to believe it's like surely they know right

But it's increasingly become my theory that they're they're able to maintain the fiction that these percentages are appropriate Because they think that's how much value they're providing and they don't realize that Or they don't they haven't internalized that it's because

You know they have captives that it's not a competitive market that is duopoly and that they set these incredibly anti-impetitive rules And you know, maybe they'll figure that out from the EU but in our long discussion of EU stuff

And that'll be more of it. I'm sorry everyone not in this episode but in the future because it continues to roll on Even then they're like we will comply in a way to make sure that we get all the money that we were getting before and it's just more complicated And that also prevents true competition and that also prevents them from realizing What part of how valuable is what we're providing? I bet tons of people would pay more than payment processing fees to use in that purchase

But more than payment processing fees and 30% or even 15% they're still a gap there. What is the gap?

We'll never know unless Apple exposes its services to competition and you can see This company is offering these terms apples offering these terms and they're all on the same phone And they all have the same access and let's see which business you know compete have some competition Then the water will find its level and everyone will figure out how much we can share charge for which services and which services people want and which services people don't want

Now do you think people would be including me would be so worked up if there were no steering anti-steering clause like if they could just link out to patreon.com

Do you think people would be so upset? No because that like a patreon probably wouldn't have used in that purchase to begin with because their business is so sensitive to the cut that anyone takes to be clear patreon doesn't use in that purchase They literally like patreon already has their own user base They've already gotten from their own efforts and the efforts of the creators that use it mostly for the use the native app

Yeah, but like so they already aren't using in that purchase Apple is saying you have to start using in that purchase And of course then pay us by using it But when we chose Stripe for our payment processing for our membership system The reason why Stripe only charges 3% is because there is competition in that market and we could have chosen any payment processor And in the future if Stripe says hey, you know what we're gonna actually start charging you

30% instead of 3% we can say okay see you later and we would switch because it's a competitive market we can do that And you that you the ATP member hopefully would not notice that because you don't care what a payment processor is Yeah, well they would notice that's like re into their credit card details But like anyway, the whole point is you'd still you'd still go to ATP.fm slash join You wouldn't go to a different place you'd solve the same membership account

You would have to make a new membership account like yeah, you wouldn't have started to do a different podcast entirely Like You would have to use an Android phone like right Like there will be many many differences, but you know that because that's a competitive market and ultimately again like this is This is the role of government I know why Apple is not going to do this because Apple does not show Concern for long term strategy right now

Whether you agree with me that that's Tim Cook's problem and he should maybe go that's up to you But right now look at look at where the company is they currently make their biggest revenue driver from deals that are very likely to and probably very easy to strike down by government regulation

So that you know there's there's significant risk there plus you know risk in China. Hello If there's there's a lot of risk in Apple's current financial situation You know whether you think that's good or not for from from their point of view It is the role of government to protect markets and and the health of markets and in this case Apple is literally Extorting an entire market that they keep expanding the extortion into and it is it is grown to a size now that a government

That governments should and are you know stepping in to regulate and it's just a matter of time and I can't wait for that time And again and I say this as an Apple developer who will continue to use in our purchase and pay the percent in my app Because it is worth it to me to continue paying that percentage for my app But that should not be the only option and I certainly would not Suggest that every business out there that happens to be used on a phone sometimes

You know needs to give Apple 30% and how to be the only option like that's that's nuts If you were patreon and you launched your app with your own payment processing an apple just let you do it And you have that established for and number of years Then they offered you in that purchase you'd probably be like now I'm good Because you because you already implemented and it's a much lower percentage right

That's that kind of the situation patreon is in where like well apple finally came for patreon seems like this should have come for them earlier It makes perfect sense But they didn't and so they've had years of doing this all themselves. They already wrote that code there Maybe their code isn't as good as an app purchase maybe it is in a smooth Maybe they don't get to use like I mean how they could use apple pay if they wanted or not they do

But either way if you had already done that in your app You like you're saying okay, I'll just keep using that purchase because it's worth it to me because without it You'd have to write your own version of that and that would be a pain But what if you already wrote that what if you already used stripe on your back end and wrote your own in that purchase alone you'd been using it for 10 years Then apple comes how about paying us 30% for a better version of what you wrote yourself

Can you be like is it better though? And I've already written it myself and 30% no thanks And then apple would say how about if we don't give you an option Or you kick you off the store now do you like it and you'd be like okay?

Well, and we actually have there actually is a parallel to this apple podcasts and premium podcast support So apple podcasts and you know a couple years ago long support for paid podcasts that you could like you could you could You could have people you could as a podcast or you could have your listeners buy your premium podcast directly an apple podcasts Apple of course takes 30% and as a podcaster you couldn't you could choose to do that

However, you are not currently required to do that now what if apple made a new policy to say hey Now that since we have such a large percentage of the podcast player market Um, if your podcast offers a paid membership program you now have to offer it through our service or you will kick your podcast off of apple podcasts That's where this is going like if you follow the company and its ridiculous, you know entitlements and extortion pattern

You know to its next conclusion like that's the kind of thing they will keep doing and again like it and they have Very strong power in the podcast market. They have you know by most measurements well over 50% of the of the client base And so they could do stuff like that. That's that is what monopolies can do And it is not in the interests of the market overall

Um that monopolies be allowed to do that and that's why we have regulation. So I hope our regulation begins to work Thank you to our sponsors this week tailscale and one pastor or center access management Thanks to our members who support us directly You can join us at fm slash join where you can use our payment processor and and we only get charged Something like 3% and you can join and you can hear our exclusive content and our other membership perks

One of the member perks is ATP over time. This is a bonus topic that we do every week and exclusive for members ATP over time this week is going to be About the breakdown of max sales by family that was recently published by CIRP research Um, we're going to see kind of talk about it the you know what percentage of max are you know different product lines and what that means That's going to be in ATP over time this week join at at fm slash join

Thank you very much. We'll talk to you next week Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Because it was accidental Oh it was accidental So done John didn't do any research Mark go and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental And he was accidental

You can find the show notes at ATP dot FM And if you're into master You can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's Casey list ma r c o a r m And T Marko are men s i r a c u s s e r q It's accidental Me I Car We're talking about VR stuff and even though I did the 30-minute apple

A vision pro demo that is basically the extent of my VR headset experience Until now I'm my summer vacation this year my brother brought along the headset that he and his kids use it was Quests what is the most reading quest I think it was the quest 3 I don't know it was one of the one of the meta quest headsets right And I got to use it for a little while and it was honestly a much more It was exactly what I expected I mean maybe it's because I use vision pro right and you know

It's not like I don't know what VR headsets are but I felt like vision pro I had all the wow factor I go back to that episode where I was talking about my experience It was extremely impressive and really affecting in a way that the quest wasn't Again, maybe because I've already used the vision pro but What was I doing on the quest? Well, honestly, I was mostly playing games. I was playing beat sape

It's what everybody does with these things. I was playing whatever those other demo type things are Uh, and it really just Re-enforced things that I would have told you Intellectually with actual experience hand controllers. Guess what they're really good for games everybody knew this

I've said this many times now. I've used one yep hand controllers. They're really good for games Beat saber pretty fun motion sickness is a thing like Much profound to tell you obviously I'm personally very susceptible to motion sickness

And honestly, I'm surprised. I did as well as I did in the quest I didn't feel like the lower resolution and lesser frame rate in the quest compared to vision pro affected my motion sickness I think I would get justice motion sick if I was playing beat saber in vision pro Uh, I don't this beat saber available to vision pro without the hand controllers. No, there is there's a there's like a different rhythm game

That is I forget the name of it, but it's not beat saber. Yeah, anyway beat saber is cool game. Does it reason people like it? I thought it was cool. I thought it was fun. I enjoyed how responsive the hand controllers were they've got Buttons on them. It seems to know where my hands are. I could do really fast motions I felt like it was mostly fair on the other hand. I played uh, I

Forget me. I don't remember the names of all these things, but there was table tennis essentially in there some kind of table tennis type game And that was not good I felt like the table tennis I like it cut the 11 table tennis where you're like in like a like a loft And it's like somebody's bedroom playing to yeah I mean, I'm sure all table tennis games look the same but I'm sure it was that one because I'm sure it's like comes with some game pack

Or comes with the headset or something right. I felt so I do have some experience playing motion control table tennis Right and I have experience playing real table tennis and I felt like the quest table tennis Did not accurately represent how I was swimming like I was swinging like I would with I would miss the ball entirely And I'm like there's just no way I was that ball entirely and it was only for a certain motions at certain higher speeds play the controller

John that was totally controllers. I didn't miss no no the computer's cheating It was it was motion it was losing motion tracking essentially right Say this because my the best experience that I've had playing table tennis with motion controllers is the I don't remember what was called the PlayStation. What was it called motion? Maybe you know the PlayStation controllers that have like a pink light up ping pong ball on top of them

They're like a black stick with a light up ping pong ball. Whatever that was called for I believe the PlayStation Three Um, anyway, they had like a I think rock star or made it or maybe maybe a thing of Xbox when anyway someone made a A table tennis game with those motion controllers and those motion controllers are very primitive They were essentially gyros accelerometers and a light up ball that a camera That was sitting on your TV the camera would see the light up ball

And that was way more fair in terms of look if you missed the ball you missed the ball But if you hit it it will register the hit and the quest one It got flammoxed too easily Yeah, I got flammoxed in a way that I thought beat saber would get flammox But beat saber never did and I don't know what the difference is maybe it's could beat saber Like they're more like larger motions and less like less space critical

Who is the block? You're so big in beat saber or whatever or maybe beat saber just like

Has a sort of client side prediction thing where it'll be like oh, just say you hit it. It's fine But yeah, I was missing stuff in table tennis that I was like there's no way that I missed that it felt disconnected Whereas the only comparison I have for vision pro is people have said that they have successfully played Real table tennis with pass through on and they were impressed at that work as a demo of like look how good pass through is

I can play real physical table tennis with someone who's across from me and I'm wearing vision pro And I'm using pass through to do it. That was a great demo of how good how low latency How non-distorted pass through is that they wouldn't miss the ball because it was all warped or whatever But I have to say table tennis really did show the limitations of the quest, but

Beat saber on the quest. It's like apple you could have this you've got the technology for this But you don't have are what can't be too expensive, you know hand controller things And you know just get the beat saber send the beat saber people a bunch of free dev kits and pay them $100 million and have the beat saber and vision pro ridiculous anyway

I enjoyed it. It was it was not the same as division pro, but it definitely showed me something again That we already knew people buy these things and they play games in them because they don't cost $3500

Right, I mean Marco Sun has one not a lot of people have them the the PSVR too has not caught on that great either You know on a gaming platform, but That is at a use case that is proven in the market for Some amount of people and I came away from it saying quest pretty good way to play beat saber

I don't know. It's not profound. I just want to say the like uh I this is I'm dipping my toe more into the VR waters and it just reinforced everything I already thought about What VR headsets can be good for and the money that apples leaving on the table by stubbornly refusing to do certain things Yeah, like the when you when you use the quest 3 like you really see like wow this thing like For you know quote only 500 bucks. That's a really good product compared to

Division pro like it doesn't do everything the same way of course. It doesn't have as high resolution screens It doesn't have you know certain specs don't match, but For like a seventh the price it's a surprisingly good product overall another great compromise Is setting aside obviously that it's plastic instead of aluminum and it felt fairly lightweight or whatever I wore my glasses inside it. Oh, why because it's not mine. It's uh this is not fitted to me

I didn't have the right headsets. I this is the one that like my nephews and my brother use a very wide range from like you know six years old to Essentially my age right different head sizes or whatever. It doesn't have special lenses. I don't have to get everything measured

I put my glasses on and I put it over my head and was it comfortable and awesome? No, but it was fine You know what I mean like this is the kind of sort of utilitarian uh You just like just do what it takes to get the job done make the thing big enough for people to wear their glasses inside It's not as good as the vision pro. It doesn't look as good as not as comfortable

But boys it's so much easier for me to just pick up my glasses. I'm putting the thing on my head and then go to town Yeah, and it worked right like it was fine Yeah, I mean you could see how low resolution screen was but anyway I'm saying like it's just it was so much lower friction than if he had brought a vision pro with him which he doesn't have by the way And I'm pretty good at beat saber like I bet everyone thinks they're good at beat saber because I think the game is

Too and to make you feel like you're good at it because it's actually pretty easy Yeah, when you remember with the difficulty you're like oh no, I'm not good at beat saber Yeah, I guess like it was like rock band, but no, I like I was never good at rock band. I'm pretty good Beats it like once you start adding in like the different motions where okay

You can poke it and twist it and pop it. It's like it gets really complicated very quickly and you're like oh no This I thought I was good at this I was just playing on easy mode