612: Somebody Else's Problem Field

It's time for episode 612 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that almost certainly invented drone-based fireworks displays. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I am joined across the internet by my dear friend, my good pal, it is Dan the Man Morin. How you doing, Dan? I'm doing well today, Micah. I'm ramping up for our national holiday.

I could sound less enthused about that, I guess. Okay. I realized halfway through my sentence was like, yeah, I'm not that excited. It's fine. I'm looking forward to some barbecue. How about that? Some cookout food. Neat. Anyway, let's meet our wonderful guests. We planned that. To my left, producer, reporter, the Texas Standard, host of the Lions Towers and Shields podcast and the.

author of the fabulous iOS Access for All. It's Shelley Brisbane. Hello, Shelley. Hello. I'm hoping there are beef ribs in my future on the 4th. Yum. That sounds good. And to my left this week, it is a podcaster at... find shows such as analog right here on relay and other shows elsewhere, as well as the developer of the fabulous call sheet. It's the one and only Casey lists. Welcome back, Casey. Hello. I'm so very thankful and glad to be here with all three of y'all.

You all know how this works. We've got four topics in just 30 minutes. Mine for you is this. Do you have, there was this brother.

printer vulnerability that also is a vulnerability for a few other printer models i was curious do you have one of these brother printers because it seems like everybody does and have you changed the default password yet and i kind of want this to be conversation about how often we as techie people change our default passwords and kind of stay aware of the vulnerabilities that are going on and how we feel about it when they happen. Shelly, we'll start with you. You

Well, I don't have one of these printers, although this topic did make me think, oh, does my old Canon fax scanner printer monster even have a password? And I probably should find out. My guess is it does not. But the fact that I don't know kind of proves. your point. I've also found out this morning that my anchor power bank is not going to explode. Yay. I'm very happy for you now. Well, not yet. Anyways. Okay.

Actually, I'm so glad you asked this, Micah, because this story came up this past week. And I do, in fact, have one of those brother printers like everybody. I laughed because the other day I had come to print something and run into a problem where AirPrint from my phone wasn't working. And I've had some issues with my UniFi wireless access point and the AirPrint.

There seems to be some incompatibilities there sometimes. And so I was like playing around with it. I finally got it to work. And I was like, oh, there's a firmware update. I should figure that out. In order to do that, I needed to enter the password.

So I went to the little default password that's taped on that label on the back, and I put it in, and it's like, that's not the password. I went and searched my multiple password managers and could not find the password, checking my notes, everything. And I was like, this is so annoying. So I eventually reset the entire thing. I had to like laboriously enter my, you know, Wi-Fi password by hand on the thing, which is a nightmare. And I get the whole thing set up.

I get the update running. I open the iOS app to update it. And it's like, hey, do you want to use this password we saved for your iOS app for this? I was like... Are you kidding me? Oh, wow. Because I did not realize it was attached to the wrong... It's attached to a URL and it was attached to the app somehow, but that didn't register that it was anything. All the terms... I'm searching printer. I'm searching brother. None of those things are popping up.

And I got so mad about that. And so, but in order to do that and install the firmware update, it forces you to change the password. So the answer to your question is, yes, I have changed the password multiple times. I'm really hoping that this time all the... notes I put in. Let me remember that it's there instead of having to go through that entire process again, because it just made me extremely angry. Casey, I hope your story is better than mine.

Yeah, my story, it's going to take a minute. Buckle up. I don't have one of these, so it doesn't affect me. No, I do have an HP printer that I apparently purchased in late August of 2018, which is very unremarkable, but works. And that's basically all I got for you. And you changed the password? I don't think there is one, as far as I know. There's no embedded web server?

It does have an embedded web server, but there's no port forwarding from outside my firewall or anything. I'm worried that Mike is trying to open us all up to some sort of spyware, malware scheme by letting us know which of us haven't changed our passwords. It feels like fishing. What's funny is I already know which of you have not changed your default password. So to talk about this briefly, essentially.

I think this isn't only brother that does this, but sometimes manufacturers will use the device's serial number to generate a pseudo random password as the default password. The problem is. bad actors are able to, without authentication, get the printer. to spit out its serial number. And then they figured out how Brother generates the password based off of the serial number. So with the serial number and this generation method, they now have access to.

the printer. And yes, if you have some sort of connection externally, then they're able to go about it. So I went in to double check. And the good news is I had set a different password. And then because I have a laser printer and an inkjet printer for reasons. And I double checked that also my inkjet printer, which is an HP and has nothing to do with Brother, was also not set to the default. So, yeah.

you know, just go, go make sure and always change your password from the default password. That is what you should be doing, even if you think you don't have a connection to the internet. Thank you all for your answers on that and for listening to me sermonize. Shelley, it's your turn.

Well, readability or visual accessibility for some of us has been the biggest knock on Apple's liquid glass. A lot of people who don't use accessibility every day have been saying on podcasts and in written blogs, hey, it's going to be...

fine because Apple cares about accessibility. Everything's going to be great. And I'm wondering if you wear those kind of rose-colored glasses, whether it's about accessibility or some other feature, when you go through beta cycles, are you confident that all of the big issues that matter to you you personally are going to be fixed by the end of the cycle. No.

No, I think this is a great question. The beta process is always interesting because stuff does get changed. We have seen Apple take feedback into account for a variety of issues over the course. Not always. It doesn't do everything. you know, that you might hope it will do. Sometimes things come in subsequent updates, right? We might see in iOS 27 further tweaks or whatever.

they have to prioritize i imagine because they are dealing with a lot of different features and a lot of new stuff rolled out across a bunch of different platforms so they have to kind of pick their battles In terms of readability in particular, I think this is one that broadly affects people. I mean, I think there are obviously people who need visual accessibility for one, but for another...

This is a thing, the primary thing we all do with our devices is look at them and re-text off them. So to a certain extent. That affects everybody. And some people just might be more affected by it than others. There is a spectrum there. And so I think it certainly behooves Apple to make the right decision there and to alter things and use a...

like the beta opportunity to have a broader pool of people looking at it, trying to figure out whether these fixes are actually the kind of things that will make it work for everybody or whether they need to do more, you know, go back to the drawing board here. So I don't... Always feel optimistic, but I do think that this is the time where you can have the most sort of patience and willingness to see whether they'll change things, because that is the nature of the beta, as opposed to...

say you know when uh the final version comes out you know and in september or what have you and you're like well they might change it in point one or point two or whatever that i'm generally less you know inclined to believe like it's got to be pretty egregious at that point but the beta period

we've already seen tweaks in the first and second betas, and there are several betas to come, I'm sure. So I have more, if not optimism, than at least expectation that some of these things will get adjusted. Casey, you know a thing or two about... beta testing and working with software what do you think yeah i mean i think shelly's question is completely reasonable um but for what it's worth during wwdc a couple of weeks back

Apple this year, and I believe they did it last year. I can't recall now, but certainly this year they did, I believe what they called group labs. And so what this was, was you got on. I think it was like a Cisco call. It was effectively a Zoom for all intents and purposes. And they would talk at you, but they would solicit questions from the audience via like messages within the call. and answer the audience's questions. And this came up in one or two of the sessions that I participated in.

And maybe they were just paying it lip service, but it sounded to me like they genuinely know it's not great right now. They genuinely know they need to fix it and they genuinely plan to do so. Again, who really knows? Maybe they were just, you know, trying to say the right thing to get us off their back. But it really, truly sounded like they know it and they intend to fix it. I love this question because when I think about my interactions on betas, yeah, I think I do often go.

Oh, that'll probably be fixed by the time things come around when something happens. Of course, if I run into a complete crash, then I'm going, OK, that's the bug. And we'll figure that out. And that'll come out in the wash. But yeah, I think that a lot of my frustrations about technology, and in particular iOS and other platforms, centers around this idea that, oh, that'll eventually be fixed. And it makes me think of...

Douglas Adams is it's like someone else's problem field and how, you know, you see something happening and you, along with other people, are all going, oh, that's somebody else's problem. They'll get to that. They'll figure that out. But it's made me, in some cases, a little desensitized to the frustrations of technology because I'm always in this mindset of...

Oh, it's probably something I have done and it's something that will be fixed in the end. And the next time I update this app, that's probably not going to be an issue. Or in the case of the software, obviously, next time I upload, update the software, everything will be fixed. So.

You really kind of shined a light on something that I think is really important, Shelley. And I thank you for that. How about you round us out here? So I think, Micah, you're getting it. What I was finding is that a lot of people who don't... view these issues with liquid glass as deal breakers, because for them, it's hard to read, not impossible to read. Somebody with a particular accessibility issue might not be able to read this at all.

That makes it a deal breaker. And there's an assumption by people who aren't in that situation. Sometimes that because Apple cares, that's what bothers me a great deal, that it's all about Apple's emotional investment in accessibility. This is about whether software gets fixed and whether the complaints or the feedbacks that people file are understood and carried forward.

And my cynicism doesn't come from failures of the past, except for iOS 7. We won't talk about that right now. But it comes from the idea that the fix is often... a setting in accessibility settings so that either you don't get the experience as a person who has a visual impairment of liquid glass as it was intended because, oh, we could just turn it off because that'll solve your problem. Or...

It is so convoluted in terms of how to fix a thing that we have to, you know, have Macedon posts and blog posts and podcasts and say, OK, well, if you don't like this or if you can't use this at all. This is how you have to fix it. And the message that Apple gives to developers so often is, design your products with accessibility built in. Don't bolt it on. And it feels often like when Apple...

makes a mistake like this, and the readability issues with Liquid Glass from an accessibility point of view so far are a mistake. It feels like the answer is, okay, let's add another accessibility settings. Accessibility settings, just like all of the Settings app,

is completely bloated and crowded with stuff that has been put there. There's a whole screen of things that were put in iOS 7.1 to fix what was broken. And I know that's a long time ago. Trying not to hold a grudge, hard to do. But my point is simply... that we're not modeling the kind of behavior we'd like developers to apply when they're creating apps and asking them to do accessibility before.

they are at the end beta stage. And so those are my concern. The ultimate answer to the question is, I think for most people, this issue will be fixed because it affects so many people in the mainstream, even if it doesn't affect them. to the degree it affects people with visual impairments, but there still might be, as there often are, some issues around the edges with accessibility, and that's what my concern is.

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halftime and back to the show. Dan, it's time for your topic. All right. The latest rumor du jour is that there will be a MacBook powered by an iPhone processor. Would you be willing to use an iPhone chip-powered Mac? Would the trade-offs that would potentially be involved be something that you'd be okay with? Or would this be a computer that you would recommend to others?

Is this a good decision by Apple to sort of potentially find a lower cost version that might fit under a certain price? Or is this going to dilute the brand by making it kind of a cheaper, cruddier laptop? What do we think, Casey?

All right. So earlier with the printer thing, I was making a joke like I was going to talk for an hour. Let me tell you the good word about the original MacBook or what I consider to be the original MacBook, the one port MacBook, the MacBook one or the MacBook adorable. I had one of these. It was. Like my 1994 Saturn that I drove in high school, it was a piece of trash when it was brand new, but I loved it. This thing was, it had one port and a headphone jack.

It ran on USB or used USB-C. It did not support Thunderbolt. It had the world's slowest processor. It had an anemic amount or just a preposterously small SSD and RAM, if I recall correctly. And it had the butterfly keyboard. It might've been the originator of the butterfly keyboard. Everything about this computer was wrong. And I loved it. It was so thin and so light and so great. And even though it was utterly crippled top to bottom inside and out, I loved it and I missed it so badly.

I would absolutely rock this as like a secondary computer. I would buy this immediately if it came out, assuming it was affordable because the problems with the MacBook one, as I like to call it, is that leaving aside the one port thing. It was incredibly slow. It ran on some weird bespoke Intel processor that was a piece of trash. And it was so slow.

I wish so desperately that Apple would go back to a form factor similar to that, but with a modern processor. And I think a reasonably modern iPhone processor would probably be just fine. I mean, wasn't it like an iPad processor that was in the... mac mini case as the dev kit the dtk or whatever it was um for for apple silicon so i think it could be done i i

I think that, you know, David Schaub in the chat is right, that this is probably not what they're going to do, but this is what I want them to do. However, if it's just a cheap MacBook Air, meh. Literally, whenever I saw the news of this, I almost texted Dan because I know we're going to come back around to Dan.

But I'm pretty sure you and I have both talked about our love for that eeny weeny beeny little machine that was just so great. And that's what I want, would want from this is to be this just. It's for a particular person, but that particular person could be in any of the typical groups or buckets that we sort of picture, because you might have someone who...

just needs a little machine for email, but then you might have somebody who's more of an enthusiast or more of a pro user who also needs something like this. I just think it's all over the place. And I absolutely love, love, love the idea of that. So yeah, I don't think that it being an iPhone processor is going to have an impact on the people who want this thing.

And that it's only those of us who are very mindful of the fact that we go, well, it has an iPhone processor. They're going to be bothered by it. Shelly, what are your thoughts on this little thing? I love the idea, and I love the idea that it might give Apple an opportunity to price some products lower, because I think that keeps people out of the Mac, whether they're education or whether they're young people who have cost-sensitive parents or older folks.

don't need a very complicated computer and would like a better-priced option. Now, I bought one of the M1 MacBook Airs from Walmart for a really good price because I needed a new machine to just record podcasts. sit in my podcast studio and I hit record and it records and it makes files. I would absolutely do this, do that with one of these machines. That's me. That's the power user who has the flexibility of two or three Macs in my life. But there are a lot of people for whom...

You choose between an education, a Chromebook. or a small PC, or there are a lot of young people who don't even have computers these days who just have phones. And if you tell them, you know, you can have a bigger phone with a keyboard and a screen, I think that's a pretty easy sell, especially if you can put it under $500, say. Yeah, I mean, these are all great points. Apple has not historically competed on price very much, but...

That doesn't mean that they don't see that as an opportunity. There could be an opportunity for growth there. And the biggest question, as always, is are they going to still make a profit on it? And that's why we're looking at an iPhone processor and not some version of an M processor. I think that there is probably plenty of power in there.

that the things that are trade-offs, no support for Thunderbolt, for example, are probably fine for a lot of people because a lot of people are not plugging in Thunderbolt peripherals. They will be fine with USB-C. They just don't. use them. And similarly, to Casey's point about the old MacBook, I mean, that had a single port and that bugged some people, but other people were probably fine with it. So I think there is room in that lineup for something that is, you know, a little...

little bit maybe more compact or a little less powered than a MacBook Air, but comes in, I'd like to say, more under the price. I think, Shelly, unfortunately, your sub $500 is unlikely, but I agree. I'd love to see it. Apple's also, you mentioned education briefly, and I think that that is a big market that Apple is kind of...

It used to be a big deal for Apple. And these days, I feel like the company pays it kind of lip service. And I think their answer for a lot of them is, oh, they should just buy that base level iPad. But once you add a keyboard and peripherals and all those, they really start to add up.

I am not sure that that is the most cost-effective, and there's a reason they've lost a lot of ground to Google in that regard. So I think there is an opportunity there for them to produce something that might be more viable for the education market, especially if that's something they...

claim to care about. I loved the 11-inch Air. I had one of those. That was the machine I think Mike was alluding to. I would definitely consider a very light, very portable laptop because I think that there's still a lot of capability. those even with an iPhone processor and being able to throw something super light and small in my bag to take on a trip on the plane or whatever, I think has a lot to offer it. So I don't know if I would buy one. I still have an M1 Air.

I have not upgraded. I think I would end up looking pretty hard depending on what the trade-offs were, but I think it is easily a computer I would recommend to lots of other people. Thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Casey.

All right. So summer vacations are upon us for those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere. Are there any books that you're looking forward to reading or perhaps staples that you enjoy rereading every summer? And let me just put it out there that if you haven't already, you need to have read not only All Souls Lost, but the Galactic Cold War series, which are both written by our dear friend and panelist here and host, I should say, Dan Morin. But leaving those.

incredible works of fiction aside, what do you, what do you like to read over the summer? Yeah. So I'm actually in the midst of, okay, sorry. I'm laughing. You don't know why I'm laughing yet. I'm in the midst, M-I-D-S-T, of rereading the Mistborn. trilogy, although it becomes a saga by Brandon Sanderson. I have forgotten so much that it has become a delight to go back through.

And honestly, I'll probably reread the Wheel of Time series again before, I don't know, before winter hits for sure. This will be, I think, my. either my third or my fourth, because there's always something new to find because there are so many books and so many words. Uh, so yeah, those are kind of two. I'm, I'm very much a high fantasy epic kind of guy. Uh, not, not as much a sci-fi kind of guy. Uh, Shelly, what about you?

So I've already had my summer vacation. So apparently I've done all the reading for the summer. No, actually. But I'll tell you about something I did just read both on a long plane flight and since. It's a reread. I've read this before and it's been probably three or four years since I've... last read it, and it's 12 books. It's the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer. It's marketed as a young adult series, and I guess it is. It's basically about a girl who, in pre-Victorian era London...

is impoverished and her family is, she is orphaned and she goes to sea dressed as a boy. And so she is a ship's boy. And the whole 12 book adventure series is her rise from ship's boy to officer improbably. in the British Navy, to spy for England, to Bostonian. All these things happen to her that are really amazing. And I love this series. And the narrator, I've read it in audiobook form. The narrator, Catherine Kelburn, is just amazing. the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer.

That's good. The timing on this is great, Casey, because literally yesterday I was looking, I saw somebody mention, oh, this book is coming out in this series that I like. And I was like, you know what? I've seen several notices about books coming out and I don't want to forget. So I actually for the...

first time in like years, went to Goodreads and put in like five books as like, don't forget these books are coming out. So I'll run those off really quick. Royal Gambit is the next one in the Checky Files by Daniel O'Malley. The first book in that series was The Rook, which is... a fantastic book that is sort of a modern day fantasy with spies. Great stuff. The latest, Ben Aronovich, his Rivers of London series, which is also sort of a supernatural police story.

set in london is also fantastic stone in sky book 10 comes out like Today? I don't know. Yesterday? Nick Harkaway, a writer I love, who recently took up his father's mantle in writing the latest John le Carré novel, has a second in his sci-fi detective series called Sleeper Beach, which I don't think...

Has a publication date for the US yet? It's only in the UK, which is frustrating me. And then the latest in a long-running series called the Mary Russell series, which is a Sherlock Holmes continuation, which is called... of diamonds by laurie king comes out uh this month as well i think uh and it's like i there's 19 books in that series you know i've been reading those for 20 years or whatever uh and enjoying the heck out of them and then uh our pal

Anthony Johnson has a new book out called Can You Solve the Murder, which I've been looking forward to checking out. So I guess a lot of... detective-ish stories. I think that's a good summer use of my time, perhaps. So I'm looking forward to checking all of those out, potentially. on a beach or a lake or what have you. I'll have some quality time with my e-reader. But thanks for the plug, too. I appreciate it, Casey.

Least I can do. For me, over the last several years, I typically reread Ready Player One. It's not that I love that book that much. I just really enjoy it as like a fun, easy, quick summertime read. I know there's some problems with it, but by and large, I enjoy it. I take it at face value. Similarly, there are two authors that I really enjoy that tend to release a novel a year and tend to do it around now. And coincidentally, the first one, Brad Thor, just released his newest one.

Shoot, whose name is slipping my mind now. But these are spy thrillers. They're a little heavy on the specifics about. The firearms and things like that, and they're maybe a little too American for international people in that it's very, very, you know, bang, bang, shoot them up.

I don't really care about guns at all, but I find that the stories are very fun. And additionally, another author, same general stuff, same caveats, but Jack Carr, C-A-R-R. Both of their novels, they're basically from... page two you cannot put them down until the very end not unlike the galactic cold war series uh but nevertheless i i love love love a page turner like that and so i'll i may or may not reread ready player one but

I always look forward to the new Brad Thor or Jack Carr. All right. We have just about reached the end of this episode of Clockwise, but we have just enough time for a bonus topic. Before we do that, though, remember, head to clockwise.social.

because they're swag. All right. My question for you, and these are your only two options. Would you rather be a bird or a fish? Shelly, we'll start with you. I'll be a bird. I can fly all over the place. I'm not limited by whatever body of water I'm in, and nobody's got a hook out for me. Yeah, I think Shelly's totally correct. Bird, who doesn't want to take to the skies? Yeah, you've got to be a bird. I mean, I think... I love the water. I love being in lakes and rivers and oceans and whatnot.

Fish to strike me is generally not very smart and I don't want to be any more of an idiot than I already am. So, uh, and plus flying. So yeah, definitely a bird. Yeah. It's bird for me as well. Sorry fish. Uh, yeah. And I guess. Mm. That's kind of sad. We've hunted the fish so much that none of us want to be them. Thank you all for your answers on that bonus topic. Hey, if you were listening and you would like to get ad free episodes with an extra unwound episode.

You can become a member of Clockwise. Go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $70. a year and you will help support the show. With that, we have reached the end of this episode of Clockwise. All that's left is to thank our wonderful guests, Shelley Brisbane. Thank you so much for being here today. A pleasure as always, Micah. And Casey List. Always a pleasure to have you here, too.

Oh, likewise. Thank you so much. And can I take my can I stop watching the clock now? Am I good? Yeah, that's fine. You're good. All right. We'll be back next week. But until then, we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say and keep watching the clock. Unless you're Casey. He's fine. Except me. Bye, everybody.