515: "Endpoints"

From Relay, this is connected, episode 515. Today's show is brought to you by our Exxon sponsors, NetSuit, Battle-ly, ExpressVVN and KRCS. One of your three co-hosts for the RicoVT-Chun is my pleasure to introduce our keynote chairman, Stephen Hackett, Hello, Stephen. Hello, Federico. How are you? Doing great. Yeah, I'm happy to be here and I think it's going to be a fun episode. I think it is too. And I'd like to introduce our annual chairman,

Mr. Mike Hurley. Hello. It's interesting to think that keynote chairmanships are probably going to go back up. What's not probably? It is going to go back up in a couple of weeks. I wonder if you're going to retain. We'll see. The iPhone event, I mean, it could happen anytime. Yeah, it could be tomorrow. I mean, maybe. I mean, these days, do you know something we done? Okay, but it could be though, right? Because I just put out a video. Remember, remember when they did that weird Mac event for

Halloween last year. Sometimes I feel like I don't know why they did it. I think in my brain, in my brain, I think about that event with the same energy, sort of like the same brain energy and brain vibe as the iPhone 5c. You know, like, you know, it's got that sort of giving that. I hate it, that event. I hate it that it was so late. I hated that it messed up my week and that they didn't

even bother to lean into it, right? Like they had like one werewolf joke and that was it. Like every single person should have been in should have been in a fancy dress for that, like in costume. Yeah. What was it even about? M3 max. And they didn't really seem to be an actual reason for what they did. And the M3, the M3, nobody cares about the M3, right? Because like people really love the M2 and people are looking forward to the M4, but like nobody cares about the M3. Yeah, the M3

is kind of lost. It's the chip that was kind of the track, right? Like the process that the M3 is on will never be used again, but here's some see. I think that's the case. So it's just like, they did it because they wanted it, but like never going to go back on. They're still going to jump on the M4 train at some point. Anyway, yeah. We have some excellent follow-up about something we said last week about plastic and coming from front of the show, Dr. Drang. Just listen to another

episode of Michael's right. Digi. Okay. The generic term for plastics that Federica was searching for is Polymer. Polycarbonate is a type of polymer. How do you say this? I don't know. Polystyrane polyethylene and polypropylene. Those are the three worst Pokemon names I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. This is like, oh, you know, no, you're thinking of Polywag. What's the? Polywag? Polywag. Polywag. The great thing is Steven didn't know that. He's a great joke,

but they're actually a great unintended joke. Well done. Polywag. Polywag. Polywag. Polywag. Polywrap. You know I hang with leketon. Leketon. It's also polytode. Remember polytode? Yeah. The green one. Yeah. Anyway, Dr. was saying not all polymers start with poly, but many do. Sadly, I don't know offhand what type of polymer was used in the performance cases, but I feel certain that the information floating around, but I feel certain that information is floating around the

internet. And in the thread, Alex Padilla said the original Macintosh had an ABS plastic case according to a website. And if I had to make an an educated guess, I'd say the performance were probably ABS as well, to which the doctor replied makes sense, a well-established material with good mechanical properties. So yeah, ABS. That's a type of plastic. And ABS is very popular in mechanical key caps, little ABS. There you go. Glad we got to the bottom. Thank you, Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

The next one. So I was looking at this item in our notes last night as I was preparing for the show. This app that I don't know who put it in the document. I did. This app is changing my life. Yeah. In a way that like, it's making me feel like it's one of those rare moments these days when I am genuinely surprised by a new application on my phone. So Steven, what is it about? Yeah, so we were

talking about the how do I watch YouTube without getting sucked into the algorithm, right? And so listen to Michael sent in an app that they wrote called unwatched and it uses RSS feeds because each of your channel has an RSS feed. You do make it kind of difficult to find. But a lot of apps, if you like plug in the channel name, it'll just automatically kind of build, you know, get the feed URL for you. So he combined RSS, an embedded video player and a triaging system. And so you

subscribe to play lists or channels and they come in and it cut. I mean, honestly playing with it, it kind of reminds you of a full feature podcast client, right? This is sick. Yeah. This is incredible. So I spent like an hour using this app last night. This app. So basically, I'm just gonna say these two magic words. It's Castro for YouTube. Exactly. This is what this app does. You follow your channels. There's a bunch of ways to there's even like an import tool that uses the

Google takeout export to automatically. Yeah, you can do that. You can use your takeout file from google.com and importing to the app and it's gonna, you know, sift through and get all your channels or you can search for those manually, which is what I did. And this app, like it really is a game changer in the sense that it just uses the same three-odged base mentality of Castro. Like everything goes

in the inbox and then from the inbox, you can put them in your queue. And it lets you watch. This was very important for me. It lets you watch those episodes in full screen. It like it opens like a YouTube web player at the top of the screen. But that web player somehow, unlike other apps, it lets you switch to even 4K quality. So you can do that. And the bottom half of the screen kind of looks like the now playing design of a podcast client. In the sense that it's got the same

Castro inspired playback speed control. It lets you navigate chapters of a video. It lets you manage your queue from there. There's a sleep timer at the bottom. You can reopen the menu at any point. So if you want to jump to something else in your queue, you can do that without having to go to a separate page. And it even keeps track. I don't know how this developer did it. But it even keeps track of your progress while watching a video. So I'm watching this interview with Mark Zuckerberg

and it's like 20 minutes. And I only watched seven minutes last night before falling asleep. And the app remembers this. The app knows that I got a resume from there. And when I hit play on that player, it resumes from those seven minutes. The only thing about this app is there's a couple of things that I would like to see. I think it's very gesture-based. Everything, every video you manage via swipe gestures. And I think there should probably also be context

menus instead of just the swiping left and right. The other thing is that I just cannot explain to myself. I mean, it's pretty cool. But so this app is open source, totally free, without a way to give Michael money. Michael, listen to me. This app is incredible. Please put a donation thing in the app to let us give you money for this because this like, I'm not exaggerating. This app is going to be a game changer for me. It's on the iPhone. It's on the iPad. It syncs with iCloud.

I have been looking for years for this sort of experience. Please let us give you money for your effort. This truly at the moment, one of my favorite app debuts of the year. And I'm assuming that if on the like, if I sign into YouTube in the app, I'm not going to get ads because I'm YouTube premium, right? I have not seen. I signed into the YouTube web view. I have not seen any ad.

And also if you sign in, that means when you go to a channel page, like if you sign in, it's very easy to refollow the same channels in unwatched because you can just go through your subscriptions, click through the ones you want to add to the app. And something else at the app that's that is very cool. It sort of overlays a plus button on top of those channel pages that allows you to add that channel back into the app. And of course, you can also view those channels, those videos by channel.

So you can browse, it's not just the inbox and the queue. You can also browse all videos from a channel with a dedicated UI. And you can even set defaults for each channel. So for example, if there's a chat, if typically you listen, you watch videos at 1.3x, which is what I do, but there's a particular creator that talks very fast. And so I don't know, 1.3x is, you know, you cannot do it. You can set

a default speed per channel. You can also set a default placement, sort of like Castro. So you can do like, oh, every single video from, I don't know, upgrade on YouTube. I want to immediately put it at the top of my queue. You can do that like an apothec client. It's seriously incredible. All the things this app does and the fact that it's free on open source. And I just was like, oh, I did some stuff and I was like, I don't want to see shorts, but you can hide shorts too. Like you can't

just, I don't need shorts in this list, right? This is going to be long fun. This is so good. This is so good. Yeah. Wow. Look at that. Yeah. It's good. It's already on the iPad. This is good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, truly, truly wild. I was so surprised. I saw this in the Nonsense Center. I was like, wait a second. Because I've seen these YouTube RSS tools before. Like I'm most of them to be

fair, they're kind of terrible. This one is the real deal. And it's based on the RSS feeds. So it's not using like any private API for YouTube, but like YouTube shouldn't be upset that they're doing this because the RSS feeds for the channels are a documented thing. So yeah, it's immediately went to my home screen. And finally, I was looking for a way to see videos from my favorite subscriptions without the, you know, without all the clutter of the YouTube homepage. And this

is perfect. That's cool. Good luck. Ben wrote in with a similar app for Reddit called Winston. And so it is a, another open source app. It's a developer tool for developers to test their own Reddit API keys, but really what it is is a Reddit client. So yeah, I wanted to use this. The problem is that the beta is full on test flight. So you cannot join. I tried and test beta is full. 10,000 test flight, test flight users. It says it's the maximum number of slots. Yeah. So this is the

like this is the Delta kind of idea, right? Is what they're doing here. I think like here's a thing that kind of shouldn't exist, but we're doing it. And people will use it on test flight forever. Yeah, it looks nice. It looks very nicely made. It looks really nicely made. Yeah, it looks very like a US native sort of inspired by reminders with that obligation at the top of the page. Yeah, it looks very nice, but sadly, I cannot join the beta. I also saw this recommendation by

listener link. Also a few people are mastered on running to say the same thing. If you disable your YouTube watch history, it also disables the front page algorithm that feeds your videos. Use the subscriptions page to view only those channels you've subscribed to. But I'm not sure I want to disable my watch history. That's the thing. Like the watch history is convenient for me. Like if I'm I want to continue watching a video, it's a feature that I use all the time, especially on

we had the YouTube app on my TV. It's very convenient to just go to the history and pick up what you left off with a video that I was watching on the phone. So I don't want to give that up, but I feel like with unwatched and the official YouTube app still installed for search. And the occasional browsing of the homepage, I think I'm pretty much set. So yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I find the history stuff useful. And you know, yes, the algorithm can be a pain, but and I didn't even say this on the episode, but like I basically just go to my subscription box on YouTube. I don't I very rarely will go to see what it suggests. Very rarely will follow the things in the side. But I am I have installed and set up unwatched. And my only feedback for Michael too is like I would love for you to officially bless the Mac because it I had up runs,

but it basically crashes no matter what I tried to do. So Matt, client, please. Yeah, I mean, if we're making feature requests, obviously, you know, iOS 18 support for icon colors, icon tinting. Yes, maybe a control center control to out of now open a specific channel or open a random video from your queue or something like that. You know, iOS 18 support, but also, but but really Michael, let me give you money. Let us give you money for this. It's really well done.

So in my weekly celebration of performance, where I go through students' articles, well, I'm really looking forward to what I found today, which is it appears like you bought another one. So last one, I think I think four total. You bought four. So you have bought one a week, which I think is what I said you would do. Well, it's one a week as the articles come out. The purchases are all very close together. But yeah, but yeah, they're mathematics. Like just

get you bought them all in one week. I said, maybe it works. Anybody want a weekable four and one week. Who's laughing now? Yep. Performing months marches on. It marches on. We got a power PC transition. We got all in ones. I was sort of stuff. We got one week left. Well, yeah, it will end. The last post will go up on the 27th because Wednesday the 28th, we have something else exciting to do. Okay. So then the long national nightmar is over.

The month long holiday. Well, unfortunately, wind down. Right. You created your own spending event like a black Friday. Bees August. Yeah, I guess. It does have the same same ring to it really. I hate it. Relay has turned 10. We did it. We are now over 10 years old as a company. Congratulations, everyone, which also means this podcast is now over 10 years old. Don't forget that. Which is a wild thing to consider. We spoke a bit a month ago about our 10th anniversary show.

During that week, a friend of the show Ian was in town and he was making a video about the live show. But what ended up kind of happening is the video turned into a celebration of relay and by the people involved. So Ian spent some time talking to all of the hosts that were there. He also interviewed me and Steve and he is the second video coming out the end of this week, which is like a two hour interview that we did with him. But this video, it's called 10.

And it is just beautiful. It's 15 minutes long. I've watched it three times. I've cried every time. I love it so much. It's so perfect and is so incredible to see all of the people that we work with. All give very similar answers about how about like what relay means to them. It's so beautiful. And I really hope that you take some time to watch it because I don't think you regret it. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah, it really is. And it made it, I didn't send it, but it made

it into like a family text thread. So like I had people talking about it. Yeah, really awesome. It's funny. I sent it directly to my family chat. I'm not this suckers. So yeah, there's that. And then you and I did our traditional annual Q&A. That's in the departure's feed as well as the crossover feed, if you're a member. So go check that out. Yeah. Go check it out and happy anniversary birthday. Yeah. His name I get struggled with an anniversary. Is it an anniversary or is it a birthday?

I think it's an anniversary because we have matching tattoos, but wouldn't the 10th anniversary be? Well, isn't a birthday just for like people like would you say, like would you say to a person happy 36th anniversary on the day of the okay, but like our anniversaries and birthdays the same thing. So like, yeah, it is right. Like because it's all plus one. Yeah. Okay. So you celebrate your first anniversary 12 months into your thing, just like your birthday. Which is the same as a birthday.

All right. Cool. I get confused that that's some things. It's just some things. It's like inaugural and I don't know like annual first annual first annual first annual. Yeah. Totally fine to use all the time, Jason. Totally fine. First and well, it's fine when you commit, which I did. Right. So like you can say first annual if you know you're doing another one, but that's the only time that you can ever do it. And I did it and we've done like 10

upgrades now. So I was right to call it the first annual. All right. So I like anniversary because yeah, but they would imply that it was a living thing, which is interesting to consider. And we're now done talking about the anniversary. We'll be back next year. I don't really want focus on it so much. I feel like we've got to focus on them less now. Oh yeah. Agreed. This episode of Connected is brought to you by NetSweep. Quick math, the less money you spend on

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You know what? I'm committing to it now. If this brown iPhone is real, it will be the phone I buy this year. Okay. I'm looking to do it. Yes. Here's the thing. It's not going to look like that image. I said, is an image. I really hope not. I need to reopen this image. I need to look at it again. SunnyDixon has a very good track record of this stuff. And so that's why you would post their

images. But these images, they are, they are indications of color. And I actually think there is a macroom as article where they're, they have kind of rendered what this color could look like with a name that I also don't think is correct, which is called desert titanium, which doesn't like any sense to me. I think that is Jason made the joke quickly and upgrade. But do you remember upgrade? No, iPhone math. Yeah. So I think that the desert titanium, I can only assume is an error because

that just doesn't make any sense. Like there isn't like titanium in the desert. Right. Like anyway. Can you know for sure though? You don't want to do it. I should be content for sure. It's a really good point. That's a really good point. The render that macroom is put together, I expect is more what this color is going to look like, where it is kind of like a bronzy gold. And maybe that would be what I would go for even I really like natural. But yes, this looks brown. I would be very

surprised if this was brown. And also don't forget this is this has happened before like brown iPhone has been a rumor before. But it didn't obviously didn't didn't come to fruition. Mike, do you think this is an honor of the 20th anniversary of the day of Matthew's band bus incident? Yeah. Possibly. I'll put a link in the show. No, synergy, baby. That's good. That's good. That's good. My, yeah, I mean, the color is weird. And I think it'll be less weird than these render show.

The thing that worries me about the iPhone colors this year is the part of the report that the side rails are going to be shiny again. Yeah. I really like the matte look of the titanium. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't I'm not excited about it. I don't want to go back to shiny. No, I'm not excited about that. I mean, the phone might get grippier, which is that I mean, that is like from a tactile perspective, good. But also, Steven, why does it bother you? You put your phone in the case.

But I know it's in there. Okay. I've also realized listening to upgrade when you're talking about how you've dropped your phone a couple of times that for years, I was the person on the podcast, not using a case. And then finally, my mini broken phones caught up with me and I have been using a case for a while now. But that aside, that reminds me, there was something I wanted to talk to you guys about about my iPhone. So something I something I realized is that there's a thing that I need to

change in how I use my iPhone. So the display of my iPhone 15 Pro Max is really, really scratched. There's a lot of scratches. And I think this is happening now because I keep my phone in the same pocket as my keys, I don't do that. What happened is that over the past year, I have really made an effort to turn my phone face down when we are like with friends and restaurants. I've really made an effort to do it more often. And in doing that, I have scratched the screen more than before.

So on one hand, these are like good scratches, because it means that what I wanted to do, I've done it. But it's just a boner, you could say. Yeah, exactly. But I'm looking at like, man, though, like, it's really scratched. And so this is problem number one, problem number two, I really want Apple to make a nanotexture iPhone. And I don't think they're going to do it. This is something that also I also noticed this year because I've spent a lot more time with my

iPhone either at the beach or at the pool. And using an iPhone under direct, really hot sun in the summer, basically impossible. So I think the time has come for me to accept that I need to put a screen protector on my iPhone. And ideally, a matte one. I know, I know. But I think I got to do it. I think I got to do it. I've never done before. I don't know, which is why I'm mentioning it on the show. Is there a way for me to, you know, have it. I can't wait for the iPhone 13. Is that helpful?

No, it's that it's that helpful. What are you doing? Backing. Come on. A slap in the middle of your phone, you know, has it close enough? I can't imagine. Be so good. It's like you don't want to be there from 13. Many of you just have one very small part of your screen. No, actually, I actually do it. I do have a 13 minute that I keep around. It's like, you remember guys, when I surprised you surprised you last year with the small iPhone,

yes, that I use as an iPod. It was the boost, Palma of music. So I don't know. Yeah, I think I got to use the screen protector for the next phone. I got to do it. If you do this, you have to get a glass one, right? Oh, yeah. And you should get it put on at the Apple store. Oh, yeah, I will not do it myself. What are you doing? Every single time I try to put any sort of film or like protector on any device, it ended up with air bubbles underneath. And with me removing it after 40 minutes.

So yeah, I put, I will not do it. I put a screen protector on the over the like gauge cluster in my truck because it was pretty scratched up and trying to hide it and keep it from getting any worse. And there's a bubble about the size of a dime in that thing. And like, I might have taken off. I can't live this way. Because the Apple stores have these like machines. Even, you know, even machines. In Italy, I don't know if it's the same elsewhere. You can even get one applied at GameStop

for some reason. Yeah, I think like you can look at it in the mall kiosks and stuff like that. Like people do. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to find you. I'm not, I'm not having a lot of luck finding you. There's a good. There's this this TikTok personality in Italy. Okay. This young woman, she became ultra popular here. Just for, well, just. So she, her thing on TikTok. And I don't remember the name. She was on even on the national TV news. Like a couple of weeks ago.

She applies screen protectors on phones in the videos. This is all she does. Wow. How do you get? How do you get? How do you get? She eventually, she, well, people watch those videos. She talks while applying the screen protector. She says, you know, a bunch of funny things and whatnot. She eventually came out with her own line of cases and screen protectors. Yeah. And, and she does these meetups in like malls and, I don't know, this is incredible. And thousands of people go there. It's wild.

I'll find the link. Huh. Yeah. It looks like people on Reddit like the banks B E N K S Matt Glass screen protector. B E N K S. So that may be a brand looking to. Why would you say banks? Banks. It's not banks. Banks. I mean, she's like, it's banks, right? Bank banks. I can't, well, how does that work out with an E in it? Banks banks. I can't know how that's weird. It just, this is one of those ones where if you said

banks and banks, they both sound the same. Yeah. I've thought it's like Brad with with pen and pin. Yeah. We've made this joke in the last 10 years. I'm sure. P N. You go, I found a, you can't, you gotta have to translate this. She has eight million followers on TikTok. I mean, the cosmopolitan cosmopolitan article that you can translate. Incredible. I'm gonna put it in the show notes. Where are you sending this? I need to see it. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. It's in his course. Yeah.

The show notes. That's, I mean, I don't understand TikTok, you know, I catch it. Neither, neither, obviously, but I'm happy for this. A lot of people do. Yeah. Who is New Martina? The TikTok star. That's a name. Smartphone movies. That's what's that. Yeah. Smartphone movies. Because it's, so is this Apple translate? Yeah. However, when this is really weird, so that's how it's translated. When I added it to

our CMS, it grabs the title from somewhere, I don't know. But in that, it says Smartphone covers. Yeah. I'll tell you why it translated movies. It's because we call the screen protector Pelicola. And which means film. So it translated Pelicola as films. Therefore, that's funny. Yeah. We would probably call it a film here too. Yeah. Because it's like a, okay. So she now has her own brand, huh? Yep. Yeah. I respect. Yeah. All creators eventually make products, you know, it is the trend.

Because that's like, so it looks keep paying your bills. Apple podcasts have migrated to the web. So this is from John Voorhees on Mac stories. Apple podcasts got the full Apple Music treatment with its own web app today. You can find this at podcasts plural dot apple dot com. Although if you're on a Mac like I am, you click that link, it opens the podcast app. So I have not been able to, oh, there we go. I finally got to it. I've been trying for days to just to look at this on any

of my devices. And it's almost impossible. Yeah. But I'm looking at it now. And yeah, this just looks like Apple podcast on the web. It is the most typical Apple web experience that they've done since dot Mac and mobile me. Like, let's make this look like an app. So this looks like iTunes in the browser. You know what? It doesn't need to. There's no reason that it should, but it does.

And you get your library and top charts and channels and all that stuff there. I think one thing that's interesting about this is that it seems like not all of the, like if you have like our like connected pro like that feed, I've heard from people that that doesn't show up for them in the web view. And I didn't have any luck either. And so I don't know if like those private feeds, they're not exposing to the web player or that's like a temporary bug. I don't know. Huh. I can

imagine they wouldn't do that because then it's like might make it visible on the web. I don't know. This is interesting. I think it seems pretty clear to me why they've done this. And it's not free. You use it in your web browser. It's so they can like make Apple podcasts available in other places. So cause right. Like get it in your rev yet or whatever. Stuff like that I would expect. Like they just want to make sure they have like a more complete web experience because

what is this for the PC like what is this for you know like an hour full time. And I just feel like it's it's got to be tying into something because otherwise I don't know what they've done. I mean it's like they put maps on the web too. I think those reasons could be similar. That was like what a week or two ago. Yeah. They're up to something. But maybe just somebody who works on the web team at Apple just become really powerful. They don't just do anything they want.

Cause it's an interesting prospect. Right. That like oh we have maps on the web. We have podcasts on the web. Like it's weird now really to do these to just do these things out of nowhere. Like I feel like I don't understand the full thinking behind it. Like I can make my theories but I don't actually know. Well what are your theories? Well that's it. That like it's to tie into other things. It's like how they it's like how really like this is leaning to Apple TV right that you can get

Apple TV on connected TV sets. Yeah. And so you would build a web view so you can more easily integrate into stuff like that. You know you have all the URLs and I'm going to say a word that I don't fully understand what I'm going to say at the end points so that you're able to tie into different things maybe different interfaces that you don't control. And so I could imagine them having these things to integrate more but like are they actually going to do that?

Like I have no idea. But you know if you have all of the URLs and endpoints for maps and for podcasts you could integrate into Tesla into Rivian and stuff like that more easily. I would assume maybe I don't know. Yeah I don't know. I mean Tesla I know has Apple podcast support.

They've had that a while now and I think Apple music both. Yeah I mean maybe that is a conversation that is happening for sure right like the the continued dominance of car play versus new car manufacturers or existing car manufacturers who want to do it themselves and then downgrade from car play to just experiences in their own software. Downgrade is my own word. You may disagree with that. That's fine. But Apple is pretty late to the podcast on the web game

but they're here and if you use Apple podcasting now you got it in one more place. So that's good. This episode of Connected is brought to you by our friends at Vitaly. Vitaly is bringing a new era of customer service productivity with their all in one platform. It's collaborative workspace combines your customer data with all the capabilities you expect from today's project management and work platforms. With Vitaly you can measure the effectiveness of OCRs and operational strategies

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three is on its way. I will admit when I saw this headline I was like oh Apple arcade is that it again but no it's not Apple arcade. It's Netflix. So Netflix games will be the home of monument valley three as well as the first two apps they will also be on Netflix. They have a trailer out and this man this trailer took me right back like I loved monument valley one and two I played them a lot and when I saw this this trailer I was like I want to go back to that time. I want to

be playing this on my iPad you know first iPad air or whatever it was. So yeah and the protagonist is going to sell a boat according to John's blog post which is exciting. Yeah yeah on a boat is the song says on a boat. We have talked about this before I think there was also a polygon

article about this like we need to we need to take Netflix games seriously. I feel like they sure they have their own catalog of like really silly mobile games based on their ip that are meant to keep you using Netflix and thinking about their tv shows and movies while you're waiting

for the next season to start whatever but at the same time it feels like there is a group within Netflix that has been supporting English developers and and they've been making incredible progress in licensing games that are the sort of games you hear being talked about for like game of the year nominations right games that typically come out on steam indie games the whole sort of indie PC gaming scene Netflix has been signing those games in addition to you know the mobile spin-off

of I don't know the bachelor I don't even know what is on Netflix. It's like too hot to handle I'm not too hot to handle yeah that type of stuff. They also yesterday announced that they're making a squid games game right so like they make games based on their properties and that's what people think Netflix games is but Netflix games is like the Apple arcade they told you to worry about. Yes this is like this is you know Apple arcade this Netflix and mom we have Apple arcade at

all it is actually Apple arcade what you have at home. The thing is like this is what Apple arcade should have been in many ways it's a place for both the commercially popular game that maybe it's not gonna revolutionize mobile gaming it's not gonna win any award but it makes

easy money and it's also the place for the more I'm gonna say this please don't take it the wrong way the more refined gamer wants to play those indie titles from a particular artist from you know those like more author based games like the old games like they have immortality which was a

yes yes a few years ago it was very very popular and at the same so the reason why I think is interesting is that Netflix has been doing this while at the same time just in 2024 alone two reports have come out one at the beginning of the of the year and another just a couple of weeks ago

again of the developer game developers speaking to I believe it was game industry.biz if I'm not mistaken mobile gamer.biz claiming that Apple arcade is is directionless that payouts are not going out to developers that Apple is not returning emails from developers part of the program and that it's

unclear exactly what Apple wants to do with Apple arcade and now I feel like Netflix has recognized this lost opportunity for Apple arcade especially in the past couple of years because I truly believe that Apple arcade started on the right foot what was it five six years ago at this point

I truly believe they had the right idea and I don't know what is it that well I have like Mike I have my theories and Stephen you're supposed to say what are your theories and what are your theories yes so thank you for asking yeah thank you for asking great question I feel like and we've

said this on the show before Apple never really understood gaming and likely never will because they only see it as an accessory to their subscription sales and I don't think at a high level use the problem at a high level I don't think they see gaming as really an art form or something that you

need to to nurture over time and I'm sure there are people working at the gaming division at Apple listening to this and being upset because they do care but what I'm saying is that maybe your managers don't and maybe your managers managers don't and so you end up in this situation where

Netflix is maybe you know I'm sure this isn't you know also Netflix is in this to make money but in making money they're also actually building a lineup of all types of games that can cater to the kind of person who just cares about too hard to handle the kind of person who wants to play GTA

on their phone and also the kind of person who listens to beta game podcasts and wants to play I don't know into the breach or layers rise or monument valley three like the more niche more indie you know experience it's an it's it's something that if you asked me two years ago I would have never

said this would have done it happen and Netflix is running with it I think it's very fascinating to observe I have a question I've never experienced Netflix gaming like it's what is it in an app is it on the well it's okay everybody doesn't understand this is this is this is at this game problem

yeah so these games are individually available on the app store oh come on it's like separate yes yes they are branded with Netflix gaming no and you need realistic this is the only way you could do it because otherwise the Netflix app would be 17 terabytes yeah I guess that's true

oh or or and then I'm never gonna do this but like or the Netflix in Europe could release a game store but this is all gonna be I mean I think on your phone though in the Netflix app you can see a list of the games so it's a thing that you can you can do but like is the thing Netflix do

not do a good job telling about the stuff like no so I got I have a couple of I agree with most of the stuff you're saying is Farik I have a couple of different things I want to throw out there right one I still think Apple has their waves about blockade where they showed they know what they're

doing because they sign new games and interesting games I think they just put vampires survivors right on on Apple arcade which is also a game which is like a couple of years ago game of the year contender so like I think there are people that still understand it and I think Apple arcade

goes in waves like can you remember like there was nothing for a while and then there were like we're remastering a bunch we're working with developers to remaster a bunch of classic iPhone games and we were like yeah you know like it was like great right and that was only a little while ago

I think they go in these like waves of of their focus I think that also Apple treat game developers the same as the tree all developers like they're not interested in creating commercial partnerships and Netflix is maybe more right like to go to what you're saying about like they don't make art

also Netflix clearly have a push to do this because there is a when they started this they believe that this would be good for this is Grisham revenue a couple of months ago it was brought up on an earnings call that Netflix games is doing nothing for them right now and it is purely losing money

that is a concern point where like Netflix is going hard on this but at some point that probably just gonna stop same as Apple but as the catalogs Netflix is catalog is in my opinion superior and it is what Apple arcade should be Apple arcade should have all of these games the fact

that a new monument value game is coming out and it's not an Apple arcade is a significant failure in Apple's part like significant failure on the part they they should have this game it's wild to mean that monument value one and two are going to be on Netflix when they're also an Apple arcade

so I think that shows that the the deals that were done for the remasters were different to the deals we'd heard about from the original yes originally with Apple arcade you couldn't be on any other subscription service right on mobile yeah they were exclusive so clearly the whatever plus

games that they came out with they have different terms they must have different terms my other thing is these reports that come out are interesting but I always have this thing of like at these as people that Apple don't want like I don't know if this is like indicative of all Apple arcade

experiences you know because like we've heard this type of thing before and it's you know people get upset maybe that Apple doesn't want their game anymore or is that game didn't do well for Apple because there was a report a long time ago that like Apple was moving to games that grab your attention

do you remember that like that that they were moving to like attention games and we were like oh no but then they remastered monument value in ridiculous fishing so it's like this maybe it wasn't the full story but I have a lot of thoughts and that was all of them Federico I heard you're moving

yeah moving back to Italy congratulations yeah yeah I know I am I've made a decision and been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks but I am slowly gonna move from my App Store is just people get confused when I say Apple ID just my App Store account from US to Italy

really for a bunch of administrative reasons it was becoming a problem I've been using this US App Store account it's not my iCloud my iCloud has always been in there but this App Store account I've been using since 2008 I believe it's got 60 years of history yeah the first

app I downloaded on the iPhone 3g as I think were or 3g were with that account but there's over the past couple of years especially as I started using family sharing with the family we have run into so many situations where the problem was not anymore US App Store exclusivity

for certain apps but Italian specific apps I started using the US App Store back in the day for the opposite reason when I started my stories it used to be a pretty common practice for certain apps to only be available in the US you remember like mailbox for example I believe for a while

initially it was like US only with the queue like it was very common back in the day back in the early App Store days to see US only releases over time or the past I mean it's been a long time 16 years and things have changed to the point where now apps are usually global and there's

because Italy is a small country it's much more common for me to running to an app that is only available on the Italian App Store like so many times over the past few years I've gone to a restaurant and the restaurant at an app or like a beach resort at an app and I clicked on the link and it was

not available on the US App Store and so I really got tired of having this problem over the years and it's not just me but also Sylvia my mom we're all part of the same family sharing group and every single time I would have to do the whole dance of like switch out of the US App Store

login with the secondary Italian Apple ID download the app you need and then switch back out again so yeah that was the primary motivation for like doing this but I want to clarify I am not migrating the App Store account I am keeping the US App Store account for historical reasons and also for

the occasional app that I still need from the US App Store like I don't know some TV networks app that I need that is not available in Italy this means of course a couple of things that I had to cancel all of my App Store subscriptions to sign up again for the apps that I want to use using

the Italian App Store account it means that I had to re-sign up and ask developers over the past week to re-ad me to their test flight betas with the Italian email that I'm using while the Italian not email well like different email for the Italian App Store account that I'm using it also means

that now my iPhone is officially European and so I had to buy apps again too right like any other Oh yeah yeah yeah I was just checking I was I wasn't sure if you'd found some kind of a developer so I'm just out here supporting you twice I was getting 60 percent you know yeah you know you know

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the iPhone is now always European so because now I I'm not in that weird scenario where I'm in Italy but also using a US App Store account therefore I cannot install third-party marketplaces now I can do whatever I want the Epic Game Store came out Fortnite came out I could

just install it because now my phone is always European at this by the same token the phone is always European so even if I'm on 18.1 with the phone set to US English I cannot use Apple Intelligence anymore not that I particularly care about it because I was basically never using it but that's

something that happened yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there's still stuff to come and like there's gonna be different things are gonna add but like so far you didn't really find it interesting yeah so yeah it's gonna take a while yeah and the way I've

been doing this very simple strategy really once a day or every couple of days I check for updates we are the on the App Store I I've always had automatic updates disabled on my phone I mean they don't really work anyways they don't really work anyways and this is something that I

used to do back in the day you know check for updates see if there's anything new something that I still do on a regular basis and so whenever I see an update what I do is if I know that that app is still coming from the old App Store account I delete the app from the update screen and I

immediately read downloaded from the search page so like I'm doing this like batches or I don't know three or four apps and it's much more manageable you can still you can still like that is said that the us apps that you want to keep you would just like when you do the update you just have

to put your old password in right and then you can update those yeah I think you got to do the first time and then I us actually remembers that so it's not even a huge problem okay so you just still keep the stuff that you want to keep but you're just you're moving yeah yeah yeah like

Paramount Plus for example which I'm paying for at the moment via the us account yeah that's the sort of thing that that I'm keeping what was that Paramount Plus and something else that I'm keeping yeah it's it's easy enough to do and as a matter of a while I obviously in the process

I you know you also lose your Apple music library but yeah I there's tools to migrate that you know using the Mac so I get to it eventually yeah good luck thank you yeah I think it really highlights how complicated the Apple account system is like I'm in the I'm in the boat of a lot

of people like I have sort of a classic Apple ID for purchasing right and it's now in my shared family thing but a bunch of account a bunch of purchases are tied to that and it's like I don't know what to do about that like it's just going to be that way forever right I still sign in for

media and purchases as that old Apple ID and maybe I could do it another way but I'm so afraid of breaking everything and it's like I just leave it alone and maybe one day it'll make more sense it's just like they should just let you like once every two years just move it because people

that move country this is something that they have to do and then they just lose everything and it's like well no you can switch the country from one to another no but if you like the switch banks and stuff right like you're like all right I've moved now so I don't want a bet an American

bank account anymore I want a British bank account we what you have to do is create a new Apple ID which is like wild to me like this is just that you do a little transfer and just like move all the licenses over they own it all right like especially the apps like I understand tv and music

fine whatever right like that's more complicated but like the app stuff just that just that people move it you know let's not move it I don't know a lot of why I know this episode of Connected is brought to you by ExpressVPN using the internet without ExpressVPN is a bit like forgetting to

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for free that's express VPN dot com slash connected our thanks to express VPN for the support of the show it seems like iOS 18 beta 7 could be the final beta or getting close to release candidate maybe it is the release candidate nobody knows but it seemed like a good time to do maybe for the last time iOS 18 beta vibe check so we've all been running it for a while and

Federico how's it going? I'm actually sorry writing my iS 18 review so that's you know this has been on my mind sort of like collecting all my thoughts finally I briefly tried Apple Intelligence before switching app store accounts I continue to be I my notes I had repulsed as a word maybe

that's too strong I really did not like the writing tools feature I know and this is not like it's it is a principle thing but it's not even just a principle thing I am never ever going to use writing tools or the image stuff whenever it comes out it really just it really it does repulse me I guess yeah just the idea of like letting this thing change my output or make images for me well um control center is great possibly my favorite feature of iOS 18 really really like the fact

it's pretty good however rearranging those tiles those buttons is like somehow somehow they have managed to make that dragging around worse than the home screen yes like they have had six 17 years to get the home screen to a semi functional state and it's like they didn't learn anything

with rearranging control center good luck rearranging control center in iOS 18 um maybe they're like oh well we gave you free placement on the home screen so we're gonna make it tough somewhere but I walk past we can't we can't make it like easy ever yeah we get it

there you gotta you gotta work for it somewhere there's a fun thing where sometimes the control you're moving just disappears and sometimes it spawned onto a new control center page but sometimes it just disappears and then when you exit the editing it just appears somewhere

and it's like pushed everything else out of the way it's super weird and I'm on 18.1 on my carry phone so I haven't played with 18.0 beta 7 that much yet but it's uh it's weird but I agree with you like the control center stuff is surprisingly interesting and uh we'll have a link

to a screenshot in the show notes I built a home kit page with like my most used scenes and accessories and I love it it is like my favorite way and the fastest way to interact with home kit stuff now and you know it took a while I think I texted you all I was like 22 hours later this is finished

because things kept moving around but it's really compelling and I'm excited to see what third-party developers will do with it and I love that when you create like you're basically your home kit page you know you can just like put what many single widgets or big widget or like what you can have Apple Chius for you or you can set out menu or whatever the iOS kind of denotes that as the little home kit icon and the little selector on the side I think it's a really nice touch

like I could have imagined scenario where it's like if you use the one we made for you it will be like this but if you make your own one it's just going to get the little dot or whatever I think it's really good I like it a lot so someone in the discord said apparently the screen mirroring button

just keeps how multiplying I didn't have it now then there were one and now there are two I had four I had four it is morning yes it's mirroring it's still it's supposed to do it's yeah yeah I was thinking I was thinking with this multi-page control center this is something that I

will explore in my review like it's not the first time Apple has tried the multi-page control center last time I was biking the days of iOS 10 this is obviously different I was thinking because it's you know you you move vertically between pages right and and it's nice in that if you swipe down

from the top right and if you keep swiping you can immediately go to one of the secondary pages wouldn't it be nice if that's probably never going to happen right but that new physical button that they're adding to the iPhone this year wouldn't it be nice if you could also like swipe

on that button to quickly open like like it's always a good thing on Android phones that have the yes like the fingerprint sensor in the button you can swipe it up and down yeah yeah yeah something that's weird to me I would love that sometimes it means you can't rearrange the pages

right but you can no you can but you can delete them and recreate them in any order that you want to yeah which is really I got really weird detail it's like you just like no you can't drag the home kit one above the telecommunications one but what you can do is delete the telecommunications

one and then just make another one and so it's like if you're in like five pages deep you'd decide you want to change them around well stop again son yeah yeah have a good time I do wish I cannot believe I'm gonna say this do you remember the feature I don't think I ever went

anywhere where you could like share your Apple watch face with somebody oh yeah so I kind of want that for control center no I mean so I could like hey look what I built and you know here the apps I'm using but also like I would like to just descend Mary my home kit control center page

because it's all the stuff in our house and I think she would find it useful and also I mean if you have more than one device exactly yeah I need to redo the whole thing exactly yeah exactly so I will probably build her one you know what she's an IOS 18 some point this fall but syncing or

sharing or something feels like a good next step in this area yeah so whenever I see stuff like this I'm reminded about how the Apple TV syncs all your apps I know she's like why is that only on the Apple TV I don't know let me do it in other places I don't know I still don't like the tinted

icons and it's not just that I dislike the tinting although like it seems very difficult to come up with something that looks good maybe I'm not enough of an artist to do it or what it is like is that you cannot do the tinting on a per icon basis yeah like it's the whole affair all at once

and I would have preferred to do like oh in this corner of the screen I'm gonna do my pink icons and in this other corner I'm gonna do my green ones like it's all or nothing and that I don't like I don't know what happened with the safari menu the new it's weird

so they have so the on the iPhone I believe it's the same on the iPad and possibly even worse on the Mac John was telling me so they have this new menu button that now contains both like some top level options like content blockers and translations and some extensions but then if

you like there's multiple layers of like there's another sub menu called the page menu that has a lot more options and it's like I get what they're doing like they have a single menu with like the most frequently used options and then everything else in a secondary screen but I don't know

it looks confusing and I think what's not helping is that especially the page menu everything looks the same because it's like a giant list view like a plain table view of like dozens of options on the same page with these monochrome icons it feels like I can never find what I'm looking for

in this safari menu now it's very difficult to visually parse sort of like the share sheet like the bottom of the share sheet everything is black and white and it feels like I'm reading these labels for several seconds before finding what I'm looking for I love the photos app

the I think as we've spoken about this before the new design is really working for me even though they have sort of walked back some of their initial changes I keep saying like I still think the carousel was a good idea that they have removed it's the thing the separation of recent days and the people and pets the you know the pin collections the customization everything is really working for me here and I think it's a at least for me personally in the way I use photos it's a very successful

redesign in terms of like I can still browse my library but also I can tweak it to my own liking and I can browse by days and I can can get highlights from like trips and memories more easily than before it's I think to done a good job

and lastly in a list of thoughts much love to notes and reminders I feel like those teams at Apple keep like notes or reminders are like the kind of apple that I like to see you know instead of Apple intelligence if I could I would put these people in charge you know like notes is getting

a bunch of really good features this year like collapsible sections text highlights a way to to turn plain URLs into reach links math notes voice recordings call transcriptions like it's an incredible tool and obviously reminders you know it's getting like the smart the sub tasks

that you can see in every list and just the ease of capture of reminders and the and the real-time single reminders on every Apple device it's still unmatched by other task managers and so yeah just much love in general to not the reminders every year they keep getting better and so yeah

weren't you just using things like which we got to remind so no so it was three months ago in June and things broke in the first iOS 18 beta like all my shortcuts were not working um and so I was like well I need a task manager I'm gonna use reminders and I'm gonna switch back

to things eventually and then I started using reminders again I was like well you know actually this is not yeah this is pretty good uh so the transition happened because of a bug and then I stayed because I liked it there yeah but I basically set it up like things like all my shortcuts

I swapped the things actions with the reminders once and I'm still using the same setup just in a different app that has a much better steering integration and because you know first party advantage and whatever the use gonna come for your task manager look out eventually what about you Mike

uh I mean I a lot of my thoughts don't massively diverge from Federico you know like the the eye content thing is it's just not for me and that's fine but it's just not for me uh I think it's great that the home screen placement thing exists but you know is it the moment as I thought I

don't have out my phone I'm only I'm only using some my iPad um and I you know I think it's gonna be the same thing on my phone though I don't currently have a desire to move like to have space on my home screens but like maybe that will change in the future and it will be great when I

want to do that um and control center I like photos are really like the only thing that I wanted to add is just like I think that emoji tap back so great and the text effects are good fun yeah that it is a lot of fun to have just one word in your message you know be bubbly or zoom in and out

I think those are all nicely done it it doesn't even wish Apple would revisit the full screen effects because those have been unchanged for about a hundred years now maybe maybe next year uh I talked about control center digging that I have embraced light mode in the day dark mode at night lifestyle

hmm wow I was I've been basically all dark mode on my iPhone since it came out and I don't like dark mode anywhere else just on the phone but I've switched to this at some point and really like it and I've embraced automatic icons so light mode icons during the day dark mode icons and widgets

at night not all apps support this yet right so like some of my apps like blindly bright but they'll get there right still in beta and I'm not on test flights for everything I use so one day that that will happen I'm using the small mode I really tried large mode for several weeks and I like

that it doesn't show the text labels but the size is just too big for me and they're too close together something about it just feels a bit cramped for my liking on the phone I will say on the iPad I like the icons bigger I think I think that makes sense there but um I agree with you on the

tinting the tinting is weird I think it's really hard to get something that looks nice but the thing that turns me off is exactly the same as you federico is I can't find anything like everything looks the same and uh and so it is uh no tinting over here hmm do we generally think this is ready for

release I mean uh these are right this is about done yeah yeah I think it is ready I think it's gonna be uh how do you explain I guess I guess how do you sum up I USA team to people in your uh real life you content the homescreen and put apps wherever you want

tinted homescreen put apps where you want control center you can customize yeah this is how I would sum it up which is perfectly fine have an overly ambitious uh animation when you turn the flashlight on on your phone that's the thing most people notice is that oh that is so unnecessary

but it's sad I haven't seen it yeah I haven't seen it yeah oh like on my own phone it's wild you need to solve the bayonets for that yeah it's just it's it's it's simulating in this cone of light into dynamic items like this is so unnecessary but like oh now I feel like I'm I'm an explorer

you know into a dark cave with my iPhone flashlight I feel so fancy and it's just yeah yeah yeah I think it generally feels ready I mean I think there are still some some bugs to work out here and there but 18.0 is not it's not the one right it's it's not the feature release that 18.1

will be at least in places that have Apple intelligence and so I don't know how long 18.0 will be in the world as it is all right we've talked a lot about this how we we're not clear how long this will be around before 18.1 is ready uh so we don't know but it it's the biggest

example I think we've had yet of not everything is available on day one and that does put a bit of a a damp around things like you said talking about your review like there's not a lot here but I think what is there in terms of customization people are really gonna dig and they'll you know

find the other stuff over time I mean like just stuff like like the male sorting is not there's so much stuff that is not there that is not Apple intelligence just like stuff this the sorting is is Apple intelligence no it isn't priority note priority is and yeah but that's just machine learning

it's not well they well I mean this term they tied it in the keynote I think to Apple intelligence it's not in the 18.1 beta either so it's it's down the road yeah but I don't think it is like I know I know what you're saying I'm gonna check it right now

but I don't believe it also doesn't matter because all Apple intelligence is just a brand name of very much of features that aren't really related uh and I can tell you that when in particular I will never enable like I never want a mail message a mail application to sort my messages for me

but I got same box for that mail is not but the mail sorting is not part of Appalain's okay well it's not even in point one so who knows and I'll show up exactly this episode of connected is made possible by krcs one of the oldest Apple premium resellers and you're a one

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last week we spoke about Apple and patreon i thought we had a good discussion i was very happy with it on reflection i think we did a good job of expressing our thoughts and feelings uh friend of the show Matt birch the wrote an article uh asking if we're in the slow decline of

the apple cult now for people who've not been around as long as the three of us you may say cult that's a bit strong um the idea of the cult of mac which is a website but first it was a book i think was a book first anyway but it's around the same sort of time um but yeah you know that

back in the day was very much that like people who really love the mac were almost cult like with Steve jobs as our leader um where it was just an essence of like this is a machine that had a smaller audience and especially at some points didn't even look like it was going to survive

but the people that love the mac they really love the mac and they wanted to let you know about it you know like and the book the cult of mac features like an entire section about the tattoos that people have you know this is just the term that was used at the time but i think is an

interesting framing what Matt is talking about um the idea that like we're in this scenario now where the people that love apple the most us and the people listen to this show and people on that we know we're all interacting with and following online are struggling to deal with

their problematic faith which is apple now i'll read a couple of quotes from Matt's article over the past 20 years apple has grown immensely at first it was fun and exciting to see the company that have been struggling finally showing everyone that they will legit but somewhere

along the way it stopped being as fun record revenues and profits felt like a form of validation for us all for a while but today they feel less like something to cheer about and will continue to make decisions that puts it at odds with the community that used to tirelessly advocate for them

and federico linked to this on mac stories and referenced what we were talking about in the last episode and the kind of phrase that you were using was the two apples um and it was what we were saying about like you have this company you know make these great products and we love to use them

and they're really good and like the best in class and we could never imagine using something else like when we were talking about the pixel followed for example but then at the same time there also this increasingly corporate company who are seem to be incredibly difficult to work with and

want the money money money all the time like that and that can become complicated money yeah money um yeah i i feel like um so this idea of it used to be fun to root for apple root for the underdog it's not as fun anymore when it's a multi trillion dollar company i think a pretty easy way to understand it is ask yourself this question do you see as many cars with an apple sticker on them these days this article draws a line between that and how much money apple makes and that's the wrong line

to draw i think oh i disagree with that i disagree with that i i think i think there's rightfully a natural distaste for billionaires let alone trillionaires well sure i mean yeah i mean i'm not not saying that but this is what when i read this article this is what i thought of again just

my opinion yeah you don't see stickers on apple on car you don't see stickers on apple cars because they never made the apple car you don't see apple stickers on car you know you don't see the t-shirts like there was a time right where being a mac user because it was before the ipod and iphone

was weird and you were like in a weird little group and then Steve jobs came back and people were fans and we saw the rise of apple with the ipod and then the iphone and well i don't disagree with what you said and i don't necessarily agree completely with what he wrote i think the bigger issue

is not how much money apple makes but it's how some of that money was made and how they behave because they have that money on their side that i think is the more interesting conclusion like the chart of they make this much more money and like he labeled this up at the turn like

that's only part of it and when i think about like the feelings that apple fans used to have or is what they have now i don't think that many people are actually upset that they've got you know whatever it is a hundred fifty trillion dollars in cash it's the how that that that money was

scraped from thirty percent of all patreon users and that they use it to crush smaller companies i i think he's saying that and i'm sure if he was here right now he would make that argument because i can't he make like references specifically like developers and i'm pretty sure

like on a new article like i see what you mean like you could press so what the thing of like the issue isn't that they have the money but i think that he draws the same conclusion that that you've gotten to steve and which is that like it's the way in which the money

is made which is the problem that a lot of people have because it is the problem that we increasingly have i think matt is saying that and and i think i agree with steve and like that is that is the more interesting story for sure and i mean if you if you ask me and this is going to sound

totally uncool for all those you know i think yeah yeah you run a company it's all profit based like if we were up to me a company that makes this much money for hardware like they should run the app store for free if you ask me what i think like it should totally be free and open because you

make so much money out of your services and your hardware like just run the app store for free yeah like that this is what i think and probably is my more socialist european point of view i mean your phone moved to europe you know you're just you're just you're all there yeah um so i i think

it's not just a money is the fact that you are now the biggest tech company in the world or one of the biggest um and how you behave with the money you know uh and and and it's the thing is it feels like these days with some of these decisions you know taking the money out of patreon i just saw

you know um twitch is also raising their subscription prices likely to you know also deal with this 30% that they're still getting out of all these companies and developers like it almost feel like at what point does it feel like you're punching down mm-hmm i think a lot of people just

stop at the money like oh they have all this cash so they're not the underdog and the irony of that is that apple learned lessons for when they were on the ropes right now you days away from bankruptcy like the whole the whole legend right and the problem is they haven't

unlearned those lessons or they haven't learned new ones in the year since and apple like what's so gross about it is that apple still behaves like it's got a scramble for every last dollar the way that they did have to do back in the day you know 30 years ago and there's something about that

that it's particularly unsettling as someone who has followed them for a long time but the other part is unsettling about this is that there are people who get really wrapped around the axle trying to defend the apple of today like they are the apple of 30 years ago right like well

it's of course there uh should take this money or that money because of x or y reason and if everybody like you said it perfectly and i don't disagree like you know there's a case to be made that they should not take any money from the app store um you know take credit card processing fees

and then move on take three percent and move on right totally fair totally fine and it's that's the part that kind of weirds me out and again like the cult term it is what it is it's a weird word lots of baggage i understand that but when i see folks who are like trying to defend really the

indefensible that's where i struggle to to keep up and follow along and like yeah my feelings about this company have changed greatly over the you know 16 years i've been covering them and if you find yourself in the position where you instinctively defend any company or you know

any brand then like maybe it is time to take a step back and and look around and see if if where things are today match where they were the last time you looked up and looked around yeah at the same time here's the thing that i think makes this um this discussion fascinating

and interesting at the same time i still really almost fundamentally really like well this company makes yeah it was a thing like they make the best computer and phones in the world you know they really do they make the best earbuds they they make the best tablet like the software

I mean it's a iOS and I mean for all its problems i pair us it's still so they're both still so pleasant to use and they're tasteful and they they have taste they have visual and functional taste so how i guess the question becomes how do you reconcile for the same company feeling about certain

things a certain way and for other things being a fan okay can you can you separate those two should you um and i feel like i feel like it's fine as long as you're mindful of what's happening and as long as you're making an informed decision like for example this whole story and this all

and it's been a process right it's been ongoing for years and even if you even if you just start counting at the d when the dma stuff began like for several months this has been ongoing but one of the consequences for me personally for me specifically has been that this all saga

has put a bad taste in my mouth for apple services just their services so my informed decision will be that whenever i can i'm gonna prefer using something like Spotify or using you know signing up for apple tv plus only when i really just want to watch something you know that's for me

has been one of the consequences but at the same time i'm gonna use those services from other companies on an iPhone because i still prefer it because i like i us and and this has been like for me i've been covering this stuff for more than 15 years this is a massive change like

treating the iPhone as like just the platform instead of like the whole package you know like oh it's just all apple stuff all in all the way it's like no it's the best phone for me it's it's a great phone but it doesn't mean that i am necessarily locked into the whole apple ecosystem

for services because i don't like what these companies doing for services and i dislike this idea of giving even giving them even more of my money while they're also taking money out of developers and creators like i'd really dislike that and i think that's a healthy approach right we can like

what we like from this company and understand that other parts of it are less likeable right or hey these three products from them are great and class leading and really exciting and these other products not so much right there's there's new wants to be had in all those conversations and

i think that's i think that's an important point yeah and i don't know i also want to believe that i feel like there are people at apple that that have the same feelings toward their employer these days and and i feel like there are people at apple who are generally obviously passionate

and they think they're doing the right thing um and so i don't know it seems like a very difficult conversation to have about this topic right now um but i don't know it i feel like it's it's tricky to recognize that the same company can do something that you fundamentally hate

well at the same time making products that you fundamentally love and i don't know if there's i don't know if there's a not here's how i would wrap it up for me i don't know if there's any other community on the internet that feels the same way and has this kind of problem it feels like a pretty

unique problem to have right now in 2024 um you know with the public perception and the and the missteps that they have had in public over the past few months it seems so very i don't i don't think this is happening in google and i don't think this is happening in microsoft land i mean

microsoft doesn't even make a phone you know my microsoft sure has its moments yeah a lot of the open a i stuff yeah but like this whole thing of like super fans of the company that used to be the underdog now it's not the underdog anymore now sort of you know having this epiphany or having

like this wake up moment of of sorts the closest thing to prescribe it to is like as a content creator like this happened this kind of thing happens more in the communities of content creators right where it's like oh no we don't like the content creator anymore yes it's closer to that right like

because i mean i think that most of us have a paraso for relationship with apple the entity uh at least if you know you're upset about what's going on like it's that you you care about them and feel like that they should like not the people the the brand right that like you care about

the brand and believe that the brand shouldn't be doing these things and one of the reasons i think it's easy to have that kind of relationship with apples because they operate as an entity they don't operate as individuals like you don't know who they are yeah and they won't they won't tell you

right and so like it's it's this but i want to come back something you said a minute ago for very kind of and i don't want to i'm not like picking a part what you're saying because i think you came to a very good conclusion but like i want to jump back to a word that you used as a way

for other people to think about this kind of stuff and kind of where i'm starting to like land on it you said like how do i reconcile this and i'm just not sure that we have to like it's a company that companies are big and complicated and messy and they're made of people

that are complicated and messy and it's just like a lot of them like i don't i think it is too difficult to only i think it's too difficult to ask of yourself to only engage with content or companies that are good because it is inherently like really hard to get to that because you

like what are you judging that on i think it's too complicated right like and it's even hard to talk about because it makes it sound like i'm like cancel culture am i right which is not what i'm saying but it sounds similar i just think it's like you just gotta be like

i like my computer my computer's real good and i like my phone and my phone's real good and i don't have to feel like i need to judge every decision on about my phone because apples take them you know when it like you can do different different things like you don't have to reconcile them you can

like one thing you cannot like another thing just by liking one thing does not mean you can don't another the other thing right like we all have a movie that we like that feature someone who's cancelled everybody has one yeah if you say you don't i don't believe you right because like

you know there are because there are bad people all over the place people that you would team have done things that are not good right like there is there is types of content that you might you have like really strong emotional feelings we all know what one i'm talking about you have really

strong emotional feelings to be don't like the person who made it anymore this can even go back to one as less problematic like star wars right everyone loves star wars growing up and then star wars got changed and wasn't so good anymore but people still love the star wars stuff even though

like not really sure there's been anything good star wars since like 1970 but like we're still trying you know like we're still just going for it you know although i do actually really love them at lorian but you know it's just like it's just it's you know i'm trying to get myself to this

point now where it's like just trying to talk about things that i like and i just got to find my balance where i feel like i'm doing the right thing talking about the things that are important but like we're really getting bogged down in the legal documents aren't we right like we're really like

we're in them you know i've read more press releases from regulatory bodies in the last year than i had in my previous 35 and i'm not really sure i want to do that but like i feel like there's there's got to be a balance i think that i personally have tipped too far right and and i want to

try and rebalance that based on like how i actually feels a person like in that i love my iPhone more than i care about the dma or at least for me to sort of remix what you just said for me i think the healthy approach will be i love my iPhone more than i should care for the ethics of Apple

as a company yeah exactly right and like because it's full of other stuff right like what now every app developer's got a suffer even even more because like apples taken money from patreon like that now like i will go to abandon our iPhones like no like we don't have to do that that you just you

just got to find our balance here and i think that like where we are like right right now i feel like it's an inflection point like we're coming to it and and we can all make our decisions and all going whatever direction if we want and i think that's happening i think federico's hit his

inflection point like two months ago and you're making new decisions right yeah and like and i think i'm hitting mine now and i'm going to make different ones like not like different to federico but like different to anybody it like it would do to my their my decisions yeah and like and i

think we've all i think we're at a point now where like got us maybe do we start an over again and i think that that's actually like a real good point of just like where technology is today like it's all changing but we are at a point where technology is changing and it's going to change

significantly and it's going to change fast so it's it's a good time to be like let's think about this so that's where i am if you want to find links to the stories that we spoke about look at some pictures of some brown iPhones uh go check them out in your podcast player they're also on

the web at relay.fm slash connected slash by 15 there you can submit feedback or follow up and you can also become a member and get connected pro which is the longer ad free version of the show each and every week this week we gave a listener some tattoo advice so that's that's uh

what you're getting this week members also get access to our discord newsletter some extra shows each month for members it's a lot of great stuff so go check that out if you want more of us we're out hanging out on the web uh mic hosts a bunch of other shows here on relay and of course

works uh some excellent news and excellent work at cortex brand you want to announce like a cool secret new product just right here nope okay i want to make sure i don't want it to pass pass by you know i appreciate i appreciate you awesome okay you know okay you can find federiko uh ever at

macstories.net where he's the editor in chief i know everyone's heads are down working on iris reviews for it could be very soon it could be in a month uh looking forward to that yeah no it's ooh uh you can find my writing which is mostly about performance this day i'll admit over at 512

pixels dot net and that i mean there's they want problematic you know performance you know they're just out there i mean some of them were pretty bad some of them were pretty bad computers well you know just taking people's money not being worth it it's pretty bad some of them uh at

least you got a lot of bundled software so you had that going for you um uh you can uh you can finance on social media federiko is at vatichi you can find a mic is i m y k e and i am i smh 86 and we're all on you know threads instagram masadon not not the other place not anymore i'd like to thank our sponsors this week net sweet vitally express vpn and krcs and until next time guys say goodbye i'll be there to you cheerio bye all