616: I Have No Grippers  ## Metadata - Author: [[Accidental Tech Podcast]] - Full Title: 616: I Have No Grippers - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/b625a8ec-e005-4576-ae4e-b01935f0f87a ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Progressive Lens Struggles** - Marco Arment struggles with progressive lenses, finding the world looks like "jello". - He dislikes the blurry zones and distance perception issues, especially when walking. Transcript: Marco Arment I've been having a bit of a confusing couple of weeks with my eyes. Casey Liss Oh, no. Oh, no. Marco Arment So it's nothing bad. This is like, you know, compared to, you know, the reality that most people live with, with any kind of, you know, eye correction, this is nothing. John Siracusa Are we going to find some way to blame this on the Vision Pro? Marco Arment No. Casey Liss Give him time, John. Give him time. Marco Arment Took it out of the drawer for one day now look what happens no i just you know so i as i've as i discussed i think like a year ago i said i was trying different reading glasses and and i tried Like some progressives from the internet my lack of close distance focus now with my you know 40sbyopia, whatever that is called, is annoying enough in my life now that whenever I am Wearing reading glasses and I see like my phone or my watch, I'm like, oh man, that's so good. Why can't it look like that all the time? So I've tried, you know, progressives, which, you know, for those that don't know, it's kind of doing what bifocals used to do, but where you don't see the line that differentiates between Like the bottom part that magnifies and the top part that doesn't where it's just kind of a smooth transition uh which results in lots of oddities and so anyway i decided like about a month Ago i decided let me actually like since it's annoying enough now my life not to be able to see sharp things very, you know, up close. Let me try to actually give progressives a real shot. Not get, like, internet ones where I measured my face with an app and hope for the best, but actually go to a real eyeglasses place that sells the best progressives, which I gathered through Research are the Zeiss individual whatever-whatever ones. So i was like the like a nice optician in in the city that was like you know on zeiss's like best recommended list and you know got some really nice frames and talked to the experts there They work with this stuff all the time like yeah this is what you want so anyway i've been trying to wear progressives for long spans like not just while sitting at my desk but like while Walking around doing stuff around the house walking around the city, like doing stuff. Like, you know, I'm not wearing them while driving or using a computer because I don't need them for those distances. But kind of, you know, while doing like general purpose stuff, you know, while eating dinner. It's so nice to be able to see my food really sharply. Or like at restaurants, be able to read the menus really sharply in low light. Like that's all really nice. And so I've been trying and you know what you know what's great about progressives they let you see far and close in one you don't say you know what's not great about progressives everything Casey Liss Else everything else oh my god like you like seeing the world look like jello progressives may be for you well tell me more about this because i my eyes are such crap that i have to wear hard Contacts. We've talked about this many times. John Siracusa Have you ever looked in a funhouse mirror? Casey Liss Is that what it's like? Marco Arment No, it's not. Well, okay. The problem with progressives is that in order to have magnification at the bottom and in my case, no correction at the top, but whatever your correction is at the top, in order to have A transition between two different optical characteristics, there has to be some transitional zones where there is some degree of warping of the image. Now, the really good progressives, I can tell between my internet ones and my fancy Zeiss ones now, the Zeiss ones are better. Their blurry zones are much smaller. There is much less distortion. It is the best type of progressives I've seen so far. However, there is still some warping, especially like what they warned me was don't like run upstairs really quickly. And I'm like, what does that mean? And I found that immediately. Why? Because, you know, the problem with reading glasses and any kind of magnifier is when you look at something through the magnification part, you can see close things really sharply. But anything that's not close, it looks not only blurry, but it's also you're altering your perception of distance slightly because it's just magnifying. So things that are far away appear at the wrong distance compared to where they actually are. And so the result of this is with progressives since the bottom of the magnify stuff and you look down at your own feet, they're in the magnification zone, not the nothing zone. So you look down at your own feet and your feet are both blurry and they appear like further away than they really are. So the result is it's really easy to trip on stuff because you don't know where your feet are. So anyway, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing to solve this problem. If listeners, in order to solve needing a very, I have a plus one reading prescription and no other optical correction needed. Is there a better solution than progressive glasses? John Siracusa Just why don't you just use reading glasses? Marco Arment I have them everywhere. They're fine. But like, the problem with reading glasses is that you can't always have them on. John Siracusa You get one of those things that puts a little chain around your neck so they're always on you. Marco Arment I still have two McDinney to wear one of those. I can't do that. I just can't. John Siracusa You can do what I do. So I hate progressives so much that I'm fighting against them until I can't anymore. And right now I still can. And I have two pairs of glasses. I have what I call my driving glasses, which are for distance. Yeah, we've talked about this. Even I remember. Yeah. And then I have my around the house glasses, which I use for using the computer. I'm lucky enough that I don't need any glasses to use my phone because my up close vision is good. But the point is I have two pairs of glasses. And how do I handle it? I just just wear my non-driving glasses all the time around the house and anytime i leave the house i wear my driving glasses and that's my solution they're literally always on my face Marco Arment Something is always on my face i don't mind like if there if that's why i try to progress like if there is one kind of eyeglasses that i could just wear all the time and correct close and far I'm willing to do that the problem is that's not apparently it's not really possible without them being progressives which has a bunch of other trade-offs but that's what that's not John Siracusa What i'm doing when i'm in the house and wearing my in the house glasses i cannot see distance well right i'm sat i'm making that sacrifice because most things aren't too far away from Me in the house right i i my and i wear my driving glasses when i watch tv the tv is too far away for me to see although if it's a show that i don't care about maybe i'll just sit closer or whatever But yeah um you you're basically what you're deciding is what distances do i really need to see stuff at and for me uh i need to see my computer and when i walk around my house i need to see Stuff that's you know a few feet in front of me but i know what's's in my house. It's fine, right? So you should just get whatever glasses that you feel comfortable using your phone and your computer with. Get a pair of glasses that does that and just wear them all day in the house. And yeah, that means that stuff that's far away from you in your house will be blurry, but so what? I don't think that's possible. Marco Arment I mean, so the problem with reading glasses is that the depth of field, so to speak, like how much distance from you is in focus is not that much. It's only maybe a few feet that's actually really in focus. John Siracusa Your eyes aren't fixed focal length. They squish and stretch to let you focus on things at different distances. So it's just a question of as ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/37085e4e-965e-4bdd-8092-c701361b6a8e)) - **TV Everywhere Success** - Casey Liss successfully set up TV Everywhere using Channels DVR. - He received help from John Fischetti, who reminded him of a crucial checkbox. Transcript: Casey Liss But this coming Sunday, I believe they play on Fox at one o'clock, if I'm not mistaken. And so hopefully I will put my apparatus to use, which the reason I'm bringing all this up is because I was reminded by John Fischetti about a checkbox, a very important checkbox in the Channels DVR server app that I completely forgot So I told you where we left our hero last week was that I attempted to get TV Everywhere logged in through my friend's Spectrum account. I don't have his credentials. He just logged into it on my server, and I didn't get any of the local channels. I was really bummed about that because that was the whole point of this was, you know, that we started with an antenna specifically because all I want is local channels. I don't want, I don't think he gets HBO or anything like that. I'm not looking to get HBO or anything like that. I just want the local channels. And tried to suck it in via TV everywhere and it didn't work and I was very sad. And then John wrote to say, wait a second, did you check the following checkbox? Local networks via TV everywhere. Some major metropolitan areas offer access to ABC, CBS, and Fox stations via TV Everywhere. And it was unchecked. And then I checked it. And guess what came in? Local networks via TV Everywhere. So I now have hypothetical and theoretical access to all of these via channels, via TV Everywhere. So I'm very much looking forward to giving this a shot on Sunday. I will report in, which with what will hopefully be the final bit of football-related follow-up next week. Is ([Time 0:11:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d15971ad-47f2-4e9c-8928-9f089027db6a)) - **Bundled App Features** - App sizes are often large because companies bundle features for various products into one app. - Tesla's app includes functionality for cars, batteries, and solar, increasing its size. Transcript: Casey Liss Alex wrote in with regard to app sizes. I think another big contributor to app sizes that companies don't split out their apps based on their offerings either. It's quote one app per company. Tesla has a whole suite of functionality for their battery and solar offerings that somebody with just the car will never see. Software as a service companies with business to consumer and business to business offerings also frequently use the same app for both. The B2C customers get a lot less functionality, but both groups have to download the same app. Marco Arment This does contribute to the app size in the sense that you think about all the different screens, like in the example here, in the Tesla app, you have all the different graphics that represent The power walls or the different things versus all the different cars. Yes, that is true. However, the problem is still that they don't really care to minimize such things. There are ways to have an app that has images and various assets and has lots of different functionality that is not 400 megabytes. The thing is, they really, again, like we were saying last time, there really is not much of a culture in modern software development around minimizing the you know size or even frankly Resource usage of apps like that's why you have apps that are ram hogs too like because you know modern computer hardware is so you know vast and fast that for the most part no one's really Picking apps based on their efficiency. And then when it comes to something like a company app, like the Tesla example here, if you have a Tesla vehicle or Powerwall or multiple things, you don't have any choice but to use their App. That's how you get the function. It isn't like you have five different apps you can use and you might pick one that takes up less space on your computer like no you don't have the choice when you're dealing with these corporate Apps usually it's their app or you don't use the product so that's yet another reason why they have no incentive to use resources efficiently because where else are you going to go you're John Siracusa Going to make all the tesla people send you links to third-party apps they use to control their cars thanks fun fact underscore and I almost wrote one back back a long time ago you should Know that they exist I mean you have to preempt this yes we know third-party apps exist by the way I just looked at the app that I used the the app for my uh washing machine 500 megabytes oh ([Time 0:18:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b9b8f8e8-1388-4a72-97bf-778ab3cfc37d)) - **Apple SSD Architecture** - Jonathan Dietz Jr. explains Apple SSDs use proprietary memory signal processors (MSP). - These MSPs, acquired via AnoBit, make third-party upgrades difficult due to limited availability. Transcript: John Siracusa They're in the news, and we'll talk more about them in a little bit, but here we go. Jonathan Deets Jr. Always lots of technical info for us. He says, Apple SSDs utilize multi-chip packages, each of which contains a single MSP or memory signal processing die, along with two to sixteen NAND flash memory dies. And while the NAND dies Apple uses are bog standard, the MSP is a proprietary special sauce. Apple developed their proprietary MSP in-house using IP and engineering talent gained through the acquisition of AnoBit in 2011. Apple's MSP technology delivers what AnoBit claimed prior to the acquisition is a 20x increase in NAND meaning like how long it takes before it wears out. The NAND packages for some Apple M-series SSDs found in desktop Macs are located on proprietary removable modules. We talked about them in the last episode. These modules are not SSDs. They're merely part of an SSD. It is trivial for third parties to reproduce the printed circuit boards for these modules, which again, we talked about a company that did that last episode, and populate them with The necessary passive components. However, the NAND modules with Apple's proprietary MSPs are not available through any legitimate channels, making third-party upgrades a non-starter. That's what I was wondering about, because all these videos are like, look, we made the printed circuit board for the little module, and you just take these NAND chips and you put them There. And it's like, okay, where get those nan chips from jonathan is saying there is no way to get them because those those individual like those nan dies on there is nan but also apple's memory Signal processor which needs to be on there it's on a single die it's not a separate thing or it's not a single little rectangle i don't know if it's single die inside there um anyway continuing The videos of people upgrading the storage on m series max are using nan packages pulled from other devices which is often why they include a reballing step. There will always be a small supply of legitimate parts available to the repair community that are pulled from non-functioning devices or new machines that have been parted out. Then again, there will also be parts illegally diverted from the supply chain or coming from chop shops that break down stolen devices. NAND modules or packages with pulls from other M-series Macs will only work if the NAND configuration you present to the controller is one that Apple has implemented and provides firmware For. If you have one of the packages with extra NAND die, it needs to be an MSP0 position. That means even when swapping two modules of a 4TB SSD in an M1 generation Mac Studio won't work. So like the Mac Studio had two modules in it, it was like saying, if you just take those two modules that came from Apple, and you swap their positions, you know, in the different slots, Even that won't work because one of them with MSP position zero has to, you know, the one with the extra NAN die has to be in position zero. If you try to plug a module that supports four PCIe lanes into a two slot or vice versa, it's not going to work. Example the modules from the m4 and m4 pro mac minis are neither electrically nor mechanically compatible i mean mechanically they can go in the slots i know what he's saying like that They're you can't swap these things because the the number of pci lanes on the m4 versus the m4 pro socs are different um there's also a good chance that swapping ssd components between M series max of different generations won't work if you move the man to an and to another mac the data will not be readable even if file vault isn't enabled for any of the volumes on the disk The disk itself is encrypted with aes xts and the encryption keys are stored in this by the secure enclave integrated into the m series soc this is why swapping ssd components even the Official apple ssd upgrades for the mac pro requires performing a dfu reset from another Mac connected via USB type C cable. I'm curious why DOSDUDE1, that was the person who did the upgrade in the video we talked about. I'm curious why DOSDUDE1 thought you needed to use blank NAND modules because it should matter in the slightest. That's the whole point of the DFU restore. So, yeah, the important bits of information are those little nand modules that they always say oh you just take these and you solder them right on you can't get those that was my question Where do those come from right like i know this company we're going to talk about in a second this french company is making the printed circuit boards but you need the actual flash memory Chips to go on them and those chips have an apple proprietary thing inside them apparently there are sources from them i mean jonathan deets talks about a whole bunch here you know sometimes You can get them from old macs you can get stuff that's been illegally diverted from the supply chain you can get used things right there's ways to get them but they're not readily available And the other thing is that because these are just part of an ssd you really have to match the board and the chips with the Mac and the SoC that know how to read them, because it's not like An interface standard, like the M2 things or whatever, where there's NVMe standard, where it's like, oh, if you just comply to the standard, this will work in any machine that can understand This thing. ([Time 0:26:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e37eec90-4be2-4b96-a4a9-7aacdb1156ae)) - **Third-Party SSD Competition** - Polysoft reverse-engineered Mac Studio SSD modules, offering cheaper upgrades. - This could pressure Apple to lower their prices if Polysoft succeeds. Transcript: Casey Liss And speaking of third-party storage upgrades, reported on MacRumors, French company Polysoft has successfully reverse-engineered Apple's proprietary storage modules for the Mac Studio and plans to offer more affordable upgrade options starting in January 2025, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It raised a little under $100,000 from 144 backers. They plan to offer two terabytes for $420, which is about 30% less than Apple's $600. They plan to offer four terabytes for about $850, which is again about 30% less than Apple's $1,200, and 8 terabytes for a little less than $1,200, which is over 50% less than Apple's $2,400. John Siracusa And remember, those prices for Apple are not the price that they will sell you that module for because they won't sell you those modules. That's the price for upgrading from 512 to that amount. So when going from 512 to 2 terabytes, you're paying for 1.5 terabytes for $600. So if they were to sell you these individually like they do on the Mac Pro, the 8-terabyte one would probably be $2,800 or something like that, right? But yeah, for the 8-terabyte one, they're undercutting Apple. They're saying, well, for half price, you can get 8 terabytes in your Mac Studio for half price. And note that what they're selling here is third party ssd upgrades for the mac studio you can't just buy these and stick them in your mac pro or in another computer like they're just it's Very specific because they have to be matched to the soc and the whole motherboard and all that other stuff right but i see this and i think wow look storage competition it kind of opens My like if they're successful and marco listed many reasons why they might not be and we'll get to some more in a little bit but if they are successful this would actually put some competitive Pressure on apple and it might bring us back to the days where we say oh if you're going to get a mac get it with the smallest amount of storage available and then just chuck that out and buy One of these upgrades from a third party because it's the exact same part in fact it might even be better uh but it can be uh as cheap as half price uh so apparently luke miani miani miani Casey Liss I'm sorry uh tried it i didn't get a chance to watch this video before we recorded so what's going on here yeah it just is he bought one of these things and installed it in his uh mac studio John Siracusa And in fact he installed it backwards for the first time he didn't realize that what that one's got to go in one slot and one's got to go in the other slot and it didn't work right right but He eventually figured it out um but yeah it's a lot easier than soldering you just buy this thing from somebody it comes in the mail you open up your mac studio which is annoying because There's this stupid circular foam thing you have to cut off with adhesive anyway apple could really make these macs easier to open but anyway you open it up and stick the things in and Uh you got eight terabytes in his mac studio for half the price that he would have if he bought it from apple uh and you can check out the video but mostly i put it in there to show that this Is i mean i guess he's kind of an apple centric type thing but this seeing videos about upgrading mac storage this is the topic of the day for these desktop macs i mean obviously this is About the mac studio but also the mac mini like if apple's going to put these in modules people are going to look at that and say i should be able to upgrade that and apple will say but you Shouldn't but you know but yeah i should be like i can i can physically remove it it's here in my hand can i get another one of these but not buy it from you it's kind of like the app store stuff Where it's like everyone's like yeah we want to sell things to customers but we don't want to give Apple 30%. Is there a way we can do that? Once you, you know, if you conceive of the possibility, can you imagine selling software without Apple getting 30% Well, anyway, people have that conception in their mind because It's the thing that used to happen all the time. And people don't forget. Or even the people who weren't alive then, the old people can say, kids, we used to sell software through the web and Apple wouldn't get any percentage of it. Can you imagine that? How do things work then? We used to be able to upgrade storage. How did Apple not go bankrupt? Casey Liss Right, right. ([Time 0:34:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/680038e8-53e5-4fec-bf06-73a8e5e06571)) - **Social Media Usage** - Marco Arment primarily uses Mastodon, finding it sufficient for business and technical discussions. - He's less engaged with Threads and Blue Sky, preferring direct interaction with friends. Transcript: Casey Liss Let's do some topics. Let's start with threads. Maybe we should, before we get into the topic, can we do a quick temperature check on how much all of us are using threads? For me, I feel like I started using it a fair bit three-ish months ago, something like that. And I was starting to really like it. And then I don't know if I was feeding the algorithm poorly or if the algorithm changed or something like that. But I started falling kind of out of love with it maybe a month or two ago. So it was only like a month or two that I was really kind of into it. And then Blue Sky kind of found the juice after the election. And I've been paying more attention to Blue Sky than Threads recently and generally enjoying it more. But that's where I am. Marco, where are you on Threads and Blue Sky? Marco Arment I'm really not there. I have accounts on both of those services for both me and Overcast. And we maintain ATP accounts. That's a separate thing. John does that, I think, entirely. But anyway, so for my stuff, I have my personal account and I have Overcast accounts on Threads and Blue Sky and Mastodon. I only use Mastodon regularly of those three. As I pulled away from Twitter over the years, I learned that I didn't really need Twitter for my business. It was really just a place I enjoyed hanging out personally, sometimes. Sometimes it was not enjoyable. And it was a huge time sink for me. The whole reason I made an app called Quitter was that I was having trouble not spending all day on Twitter when I was supposed to be working. But I was spending all that time on Twitter because I thought it was necessary for me to reach customers and my audience and things. So it was necessary for business reasons. And what I have found out when I left Twitter and only really started spending time on Mastodon, Mastodon, I have a way smaller audience there. Not even close to the size that Twitter was. And yet my business metrics didn't go down at all. In fact, nothing went down. And what's interesting too is that, you know, over the last year or so, I've also really pulled back a lot from just social media in general. I pulled back a lot. I hardly ever post on Instagram anymore. I don't post that much on Mastodon. And it's mostly just dropping in here and there. And also, my numbers didn't really go down. With Overcast stuff, building an announcement mechanism in the app to reach my customers in the app was way more effective and benefited way more people than using the social media Channels for that purpose. And so what I'm finding is I don't really have much of a business need to maintain a strong presence socially. So it's really just, what do I like to do personally? And what I like to do personally is more and more as I get older, I want to just hang out with my friends. And that's different from broadcasting publicly into a room full of strangers, most of whom want to yell at me that I didn't broadcast publicly correctly. Social media has gotten so much less fun over the years as everyone's gotten angrier. The recent election did not help at all um but you know even before the election everyone has been getting angrier for so long that what's left on social media is a bunch of stuff to make Me angry about things i mostly can't control that are going on in the world and a bunch of people who have been made angry. So when I come and try to post about programming, I'm mostly posting in front of all those people who are angry about other stuff. And then sometimes that blows back on me. And I'm just like, what am I doing this for? I just want to hang out with my friends. I'm no longer interested in sharing what's going on in my life just for the sake of sharing. Like that's part, that's a big reason why I pulled back so much on Instagram. You know, if I take some picture of, you know, like me and my new glasses, who cares? You know, the people close to me care about it. People have to see me every day. They care about it. No one else needs to care about that. What about like when I take a trip somewhere? You know, I find this new restaurant in the city. It's really cool. Who cares? No one's following me for that. So what I'm learning is like, I don't, I don't want to just be like performing my life on social media for like to try to, I don't know, gain followers like that. That's not really what I'm, what I'm there for. Don't mind sharing my life, but I'd rather do it with people I actually know, like my actual friends and family. And so I have found relatively little place in my life now for social media besides casual browsing and sharing for professional or business reasons. So if I want to talk about Swift or some kind of app technical thing, Mastodon's great for that. I go there for that. If I want to ask a question about code, yeah, Mastodon, perfect for that. If I want to read, just catch up on what my friends are up to, Instagram is good for that, but I consume mostly and don't post much. So that's like a read. It's becoming a primarily a read only medium for me. So what am I going to use threads and blue sky for? Well, it seems like threads and blue sky are mostly successful for people who want to be like jacked in to social media. This is like journalists, people who were like information junkies, people in certain verticals that those are maybe strong in. Like I know sports is kind of gaining traction over on Blue Sky from all the Twitter refugees and stuff. And politics are obviously a huge part of all that. And so when I when I dip into these services, what I mostly see is a bunch of people who are probably just going to make me upset or angry based on what they're talking about or what's going On that day. What are we all mad about today? Join the pile on. I don't want that anymore. I don't have a place in my life for that anymore. I have other things that I want to spend my time and attention on. So all that is to answer your question in the longest way possible. No, I don't really use Threads or Blue Sky very much. Fair enough. ([Time 0:43:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c293de6e-460a-481f-86b7-fac938f15690)) - **Threads' Feed Selection** - Threads tests letting users choose default feeds, but Marco Arment criticizes its implementation. - He highlights its user-hostile design, changed only after Blue Sky gained popularity. Transcript: Casey Liss The option to choose your own default feed. Reading from The Verge, Threads will now let users decide what feed they want as their default when opening the app. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news in a post saying you'll be able to choose between the for you, following, or any custom feed you've set up. Zuckerberg's post notes that Threads is quote-unquote testing this option and will also offer different feeds more visibly within the app. John Siracusa So speaking of threads uh one of the things that has been true the threads app from day one uh is that when you launch the app it puts you into the algorithmic timeline which is the right Default for most people because most people don't do what i do which is carefully follow a list of people and then read everything that they post no they chuck you into an algorithmic Timeline and you can have your complaints about the threads algorithm it is what it is but that's where it chucks you when you launch the app. But if you like pull down on the screen and go up to the top or whatever, you'll see that there's the like whatever it's called for you. And there's the following one. Like there's another tab at the top of the screen that brings you to essentially a chronological timeline of the people you follow. And remember when threads launch, you're like, oh, there'll be an algorithmic timeline and there'll also be a chronological one. So it's whatever you want. If you want the algorithmic one, you got it. The threads will try to show you post that it thinks you're interested in and mix them with the people you follow. But do you want it to be like old school for the weird fuddy-duddies like me who want to read a chronological timeline of the post from the people they follow? It's right next to it. You just tap that, and now you're reading a chronological timeline. Well, guess what? From day one, the threads app lets you do that and click on the following tab and get a chronological timeline but every single time you relaunch the app it says oh uh here's here's the Algorithmic timeline you can go to the chronological one if you want it never remembers intentionally it always wants you to go to the algorithm. It could remember. It's just a simple preference. They could save the fact that I went there. They could save the fact that I always wanted to go to the chronological one. They could save the fact that literally the first thing I do every single time I launch the app is go to that one. But no, they won't save it. It's one of the most user hostile things a piece of software can ever do is intentionally ignore what they know you want, because it's not what they want. They want you to see the algorithmic timeline because they think they know better. They think we get more engagement when we force people to see our algorithmic timeline. It doesn't matter what they want, because our testing has shown if we let people make that preference sticky, if we remember that they went to the chronological timeline and we keep It there, we get less engagement from that person. And it doesn't matter what they want. It only matters what we want, what metrics that we care about. So from day zero, the Threads app has been doing this and I've hated them for it. And it's like, well, it's Facebook. What do you expect? But here's this story from this is from November 25th. This story. Oh, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, the big CEO says, hey, guess what? And this was around the time Blue Sky was getting popular because of the election or whatever. So, oh, competition threads us feel in the heat. People are going to Blue Sky. They got to do something. Even just the slightest bit of competition, the slightest idea that anyone might know Blue Sky exists, makes the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, come out and say, oh yeah, now we're Working on the secret technology that will allow you to see the chronological timeline. We finally figured out how to save a Boolean and a preference. We did it. We finally figured it out. And how did they figure it out? Nothing to do with blue sky. We just thought this would be a cool feature that you might like. So we decided to roll this out for no reason. And it's being announced by the CEO of the company. So incredibly user hostile feature that only, you know, gets reversed when there's even the hint of competition. But here's the thing. As they say, they are testing this option. I still don't have it. Every day I go to threads and every day I check, do I have it? Am I being AB tested? Have they done the update? No, they haven't. That was November 25th. And I'm still waiting to be able to get this stupid app to remember that I always want the chronological timeline every single time. Instead, it's kind of like the you know what you know crop uh you know format original or whatever a crop aspect original thing that for every time i went to photos and resized an image 65 000 times or whatever it was i came up with that was just an oversight this is them legitimately doing a thing that i don't want them to do because it's better for them and they finally Say that they're not going to do it in november and here we are december 5th still not out so i'll keep you updated on this but like i want this option because i never want to see the timeline Ever ever please just it almost like they got the pr uh boost of saying hey the ceo said we're going to stop doing this incredibly evil thing we've been doing because of the the slight hint Of competition with blue sky but then they don't actually do it like did they just take the pr window announcing that they're thinking about doing it yes so i know it might take them a while To figure out how to implement that you know they really have to test this feature really really test them i don't want to screw up the whole application but saving this preference off This is driving me nuts but if if you're out there and you have this feature and by the way the way they implement it is insane you have to go to let me let's just pull up the app to figure out What you have to do. You have to go to, well, again, you have to go to following. Just hold down on following and say edit feeds. And then you have create new feed and then you see for you and following. If you have the feature, there will be little reorder grippers in for you and following. And you change it so that following is on the top. And whatever is on the top will be the default. That how they implemented it i had to look this up to say do i have this feature what is it's just yeah i don't have it yet i have no grippers i can't reorder them uh i'll keep you posted but Anyway mark zuckerberg is terrible facebook is terrible i don't like threads wait ([Time 1:02:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dfa15dc0-0b73-4eee-ab69-ff61a61665d2)) - **CallSheet Feature Request** - Casey Liss wants to add notification for movie availability in CallSheet, but background tasks are restricted. - He considers workarounds but prefers a server-based solution. Transcript: Casey Liss All right, let's do some Ask ATP. We probably only have time for one of them. And John CG writes, after Jason Snell's, the Mac is the model piece, which, and aside from me, if you haven't read that, I recommend it. It's really good. Anyways, after Jason Snell's, the Mac is the model piece, what are some features you'd love to add to your apps but deliberately don't ship because you don't think Apple would approve? This is a really good question. And I was thinking about this earlier today. And off the top of my head, I can't really think of anything. Teacher's bad. No, no, no. I'm sure there are some things. The only thing I could come up with, which is I think I could work around it today, but I don't have any particular interest in running a server for CallSheet. And we'll talk about this in the future. I think I'm going to end up doing so a little bit in the near future. But if I can avoid it, I'd like to. And one of the most frequently requested features that I haven't even begun to think about is, let me know when a movie is available. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly reasonable thing to do. And the easiest way to do that is to have some sort of like background daemon that will every great once in a while look and see, all right, of all the things you have like pinned or favorited Or what have you, are any of them available yet? And if so, send a notification. And there are ways that you can work around this within the context of what Apple allows today. But the easiest way one could argue for me to handle this is just to have some process that's running in the background always. And once every hour, once every day, whatever the case may be, it wakes up and does a little research and processing and then goes back to sleep. And that's not allowed. And honestly, I think it's for the best, but that's the only thing that I can think of off the top of my head that I would potentially ship. But again, that's kind of a weak answer because I can work around that in other ways. In fact, Marco, you and I talked about this. I can't remember if it was privately or on the show. John Siracusa Marco's telling you to make a server. That's what he's going to tell you. Casey Liss No, you and I had talked about this, I think, privately. And there were ways to handle this outside of running a server or having a daemon or what have you. And I'm not interested in exploring that right now. We will surely explore that sometime eventually in the future. But that's the only answer i have john let's go to you next because i have a feeling your answer will also be pretty simple and then marco i think you're gonna have a little bit more to say John Siracusa Well i mean there's uh things that i don't ship not because i think apple want to prove them i know they want to prove some of them i've tried to submit just to see that they want to prove um On the mac the things my app does are not that complicated, but I would like to do some other things that just aren't APIs for. To give just one example, my switch class thing is like little pallets on the side of the screen. And of course, the doc exists too, and you can't get rid of it because there's things only the doc can do. So I guess that's one category of like things that only the doc can do, like get notification badges and stuff. There at various times in history have been ways to sneakily get at those private apis and use them but of course if you figure out how to do that uh you will not get into the app store so if I want to be in the app store i can't do any of that but let's talk about something much more basic uh my little switch glass palette thing can be on any edge of the screen right uh but i also Want to know when the dock is on the same edge so i can implement things of like hiding when the dock like if you're on the same edge as the dock and you make the dock appear i want my thing to Hide itself so they don't conflict with each other you know that type of thing right i've got a preference that says like hide on dock conflict in my settings screen or whatever uh but To implement that well what i have to know is something that I'm sure everybody who thinks about this for two seconds thinks surely there's an API for this. Which edge of the screen is the dock on? Simple question. You can only have it in three places, bottom, left, and right. That's it. I just want to know, where's the dock? Not only is there no API for that, but in some situations, there's no way for you to figure it out the way you can figure it out sometimes is by comparing the available height of the screen Versus the full height of the screen because there's an api that will tell you here's the pixels you're able to draw in and it subtracts like the menu bar in the dock and you can figure out You can basically i know the menu bar is roughly this height uh and if the height if the remaining height is not what i think it should be it probably because the dock is down there taking Up some part of it so you can figure out where the dock is based on those apis which is a real roundabout way to do it that makes you have to try to figure out how you're going to estimate the Menu bar height which is not also a really good api for and it's like look i just want an answer with three possible you know API, where doc, where is the doc? Tell me left, right bottom, just tell me that's all I need to know. But no, you're doing a bunch of math. But if they have the doc set to hide, then you can't even do that. Because then it says available pixels, all of them. You're like, yeah, but the doc is hiding down there. I have no way to know it's hiding down there. Because now the math doesn't work anymore, because it's taking up zero space unless it's visible. So at any given point, if you try to do that math, you don't know where the dock is. But guess what? There is an API for this. It's just private and you can get at it. And I figured out how to get at it. And it's an API that says, where's the dock? And it tells you whether it's left, right or right or right. I know exactly what I wanted. But no, Apple rejected my app because i used that api uh and you know obviously i filed feedbacks i said please give me an api that lets me know where the dock is and they're never going to Do it uh simple stuff like that is maddening because back in the pre-app store days uh you could just do it you if you could figure out how to do it just ship it and if they break that private Api well you'll have to fix it in your app and test it on betas and so on and so forth. Tons of apps do that. I was thinking about the Christmas lights app. What is the name of that one that has been going around lately? Casey Liss Oh, I know exactly what you're thinking of. I can't think of the name of it. Festivus or festival or something like that? I think it's like Festivus. John Siracusa One of the things it does is it puts Christmas lights on your dock. And when you're like mousing over the dock if you have magnification enabled the Christmas lights move up along with the magnification I looked at that and I said how are they figuring Out what level of magnification it's set to I know you can find a way to get that on the Mac but is that an API that would be acceptable in the Mac App Store I don't know for a fact that they're Using private APIs to implement that but I think that app is not available in the Mac App Store which makes me think hey they're doing something it's a christmas lights app who cares but Apple would be like no you can't have it on the mac app store you've figured out how to tell what the magnification is set to on the dock because you can set the magnification at different Levels still right so you don't know like you can track where the cursor is but you have to know a that magnification is enabled and b how high is the magnification enabled so they know How high to move the christmas lights up as the cursor moves around... 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