652: You Have 24 Hours to Comply ![rw-book-cover](https://wsrv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.atp.fm%2Fartwork&w=512&h=512) ## Metadata - Author: [[Accidental Tech Podcast]] - Full Title: 652: You Have 24 Hours to Comply - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/a6050568-9597-420d-bfb1-8232963ecec1 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Losing A Longtime Pet** - Marco Arment shared the personal story of saying goodbye to his dog Hopps after 14 years. - The hosts expressed sympathy and noted how deeply a pet's loss affects a household. Transcript: Marco Arment It's a sad week in the Armin household. We had to say goodbye to our dog this week. Casey Liss I'm so sorry. Obviously, John and I knew this already. I'm not going to feign ignorance right now. But I know I speak for John, and John will probably speak for himself. But I speak for John in saying, you know, we're very sorry. Having met Hopps many times, he was the goodest dog. He was a great, great, great dog. And I know that John and I will miss him to the degree that we can miss somebody else's dog. And I'm sure that you guys are going to miss him for quite a long time. So I'm, I'm very sorry. Yeah. John Siracusa He was such a fixture in your family, like just seemed to fit in so well. It's hard to imagine everyone without him, but you know, dogs don't live forever. Yeah. Marco Arment He, you know, he lived over 14 years. Like he, that's incredible. And he, we were, we were very fortunate that he was really very healthy the vast majority of that time. And it ended in a very reasonable and fortunate way for all of us. He had a very good life. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/96e654c0-faf1-458b-8232-236ab108d0d2)) - **Remodel Triggered A Hidden Leak** - Casey Liss recounted a bathroom remodel that led to a major water leak and mold discovery. - The sudden damage forced emergency fixes and expanded repair scope, adding time and cost. Transcript: Casey Liss We got home. We actually took a trip to Manhattan over the last few days. Got home yesterday. And then the demolition on the primary bathroom, which here in America we called master bathroom for the longest time. And I'm really trying to get rid of that vocabulary from me. But apologies in advance if I slip up. So the primary bathroom, the one that's on the suite with, you know, Aaron and my room, my and Aaron's room, whatever. My English is terrible. It's been a day, y'all. Marco Arment It's Aaron and my. Go ahead. Casey Liss Anyway, that room. So the demolition started today. The contractor, the broader contracting company that we're using, we, at this point, are pretty friendly with the gentleman who owns it. He did the screened-in porch. He did the front porch. He did the window. Or his company did the windows in the house. So the house is becoming a ship of Theseus. And so we started the process today with the demolition. That was going really well. In about 2.15, Erin sends me a text because I was upstairs working. She was downstairs and says, I hear water running. And then within seconds, all of a sudden, it escalated quickly. And she starts to really get loud, loud enough that I can hear her. And I know this is not good. And then the two people who are doing the demolition are screaming about, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. I don't even know what they're talking about. I go sprinting out of the house to the crawl space underneath the house to turn off the master water feed for the house. And then I come into the kitchen, which is below the primary bathroom and water is flowing from the ceiling to the floor, which is not something you want to see inside of your house. So we, the, the, the fix, the temporary fix was to basically make Swiss cheese of the ceiling in order to make sure that the ceiling didn't actually collapse. It will obviously need to be replaced at some point, but, uh, we, you know, there were a bunch of holes drilled into the ceiling. Meanwhile, the primary light fixture in the kitchen is just gushing water. Uh, there's water, there's like a quarter inch of, which is what, like a half a centimeter to a centimeter of water. I think like a half a centimeter of water. Marco Arment It's one. Okay, whatever. 2.54 centimeters to an inch. Casey Liss Okay, so a centimeter of water is standing on the kitchen floor. Marco Arment I love that even in the midst of this story, you feel the need to offer both units to our listeners. I know. Casey Liss Well, because, hey, Fahrenheit is the one true temperature measure, and I will freaking block you if you argue with me this week. But every other measure that we have is stupid. Inches are stupid. Feet are stupid. They're all dumb. Let me have Fahrenheit. John Siracusa Thank you. You had at least one knuckle of water. Right. What is that in fathoms? Casey Liss Yeah, not too many fathoms of water, thankfully. But anyways, so it turns out that this bathroom remodel is now also going to include new floors in the downstairs. So I said to my dear friends here on the show, I might be a little bit late because we're going to be running to the floor and decor store to figure out what flooring we would like to replace The downstairs flooring with. There had been other minor issues over the last 15, almost 18 years since we moved in, something like that. There have been minor issues over the last several years where a little bit of water has come in for some reason or another. And it didn't seem that bad at the time, but as they're ripping up the kitchen floorboards, they're seeing, oh, there's a bunch of mold there. That's not good. So yeah, all sorts of remediation will be happening. ([Time 0:01:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/92382c99-6b88-4811-a9cb-6896b285717a)) - **Read Express Replacement Fine Print** - Read the fine print before choosing Apple's Express Replacement to avoid unexpected fees. - If price matters, compare in-store repair versus mail/express options before committing. Transcript: Casey Liss Uh, it turns out I didn't read the fine print. Uh, I was all excited with myself that I was getting my express replacement done for the low, low price of $30. And although I have not seen the bill come through yet, enough people have told me that this is the case that I presume it's the case. Apparently, express replacement is not $30, my friends, but $100. And so it did expressly replace my phone, which was great. And it did only cost $100. But that was not what I had signed up for. And I feel real dumb and guilty about that. Life goes on now, I know. But I guess express replacement is treated in the quote unquote other damage category, which I was not aware of. And I guess, again, I did not read the fine print appropriately. So that's a bummer. ATP.FM slash join. That's just a public service announcement. I mean, all things being equal, like if you have the money, it does work really well. It was great. I got to do the transfer. I think John pointed this out last episode. I got to do the transfer in my own timetable, in my own house, which was lovely. I got a new battery and new everything. I presume refurbished, but you know what I'm saying. Like a new to me battery and so on and so forth. And so it did work out really well. ([Time 0:10:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/851331fb-a63a-4582-9e6a-3d0782b6971d)) - **Mouse Obsession And EOL Parts** - John Siracusa described repeatedly needing the discontinued Microsoft Surface Precision Mouse and chasing backups on eBay. - The mouse degrades gradually with tracking issues rather than sudden failure, forcing replacements. Transcript: Casey Liss And hopefully we're not talking about a rodent. John Siracusa No, this is, uh, it seems to be my lot in life to, uh, be in this situation where I find a product that I like, uh, that product stops being manufactured. Uh, and that product has a fatal flaw that causes it to break after a short period of time and so I have to troll the internet looking for backup copies of this product that I like that is No longer made and I just wanted to note as a milestone and for myself when I let Google later try to figure it out that yes the mouse that I like has once again died just like all my cheese Graters that I like always die. And I have to get new ones. I have been building up a back backlog of backup mice, but it just the way we've talked about this mouse before. We'll put a link in the show. It says the Microsoft Surface Precision Mouse. There are a lot of similar sounding products that are not this product. In particular, there's a Microsoft ergonomic Bluetooth mouse, which is not wired, which which i can't use because bluetooth signal to my computer is not satisfactory as far as i'm Concerned from my distance and yes you can get extenders blah blah blah anyway um this one connects with wire that's how i use it even though it does have bluetooth i have it connected To an actual wire that plugs into my computer um and i like it and i like how the mouse uh the shape of the mouse the size of the mouse i like how the scroll wheel feels it's a microsoft mouse I thought i was making a safe bet then microsoft stopped making it then when they sold their stuff to incase incase does not make this mouse they only make the one that's only wireless Yada yada anyway here's what happens to the mouse as discussed on past episodes it doesn't just stop working like it starts working worse you move the mouse you're like is it is it losing Marco Arment Tracking this is by the way this is exactly how the sculpt ergonomic keyboard fails too like it it doesn't just stop working it just you start getting lag or repeat keystrokes or missing Keystrokes and changing the batteries doesn't fix it that's when you know it's dead and it's so weird because i've been using optical mice since they've been invented. John Siracusa And I've never seen an optical mouse fail this way. Honestly, I've never seen an optical mouse fail at all. I don't know if it's the optical sensor or some circuitry. But at first you think, maybe it's just me. And maybe it's always been like this. Or was there something high CBU for a moment that caused a blip or whatever? But then I pull out a backup mouse, plug it in. You're like, oh, it's perfect. So another one bites the dust i cycled it in for another ebay special precision mouse anyway uh time marches on but i really wish i could find another mouse that i like see past episodes When i tried a whole bunch of different mice that were probably a lot more reliable than this one including like the one that uh my wife has been using on her computer for so many years uh It just does not die it's a logitech mouse uh these microsoft mice kind of suck but uh i'm doomed to keep doing this i'm just like i'm doomed to troll ebay for my particular eyeglass lenses Which i've actually had some luck with uh my cheese breaks uh i mean my actual thing that grates actual dairy cheese uh and now my microsoft mouse your eyeglass lenses you get from ebay Eyeglass frames oh like i thought you said lenses he did say that's all right i probably did i probably said liquid metal um yeah for many years like every time i get like a new prescription I was like let's try some new frames and i would pick out some frames and i get you know sometimes i pick ones that i didn't really like but the family approved sometimes i would pick ones That I like, but the family hated. But in the end, they just didn't feel better than my, I have two frames that I use. I have my smaller frames, which are for distance and my bigger frames, which are for computer just for historical reasons. And that's what I'm buying backups of now, my computer glasses frames and my driving glasses frames. So I do have backups of them. And plus a bunch of other frames that I spent way too much money on that I don't really use anymore. ([Time 0:13:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/80fd2eee-b992-4a9f-8627-bb2a5884cc0f)) - **Be Cautious With AppleCare One** - Avoid AppleCare One until its enrollment and device-management bugs are resolved. - If you already have multiple plans on installments, contact support and verify how cancellations and refunds affect monthly payments before switching. Transcript: Casey Liss Let's talk AppleCare One battles. Everyone's battling something this week. What's going on here? Do you have any preamble or do you want me to start going through the list? John Siracusa We're battling AppleCare One. Dive in. Casey Liss All right. Clark Griswold writes, here's another weird detail about AppleCare One. If you have a device on a payment plan and you added AppleCare to it, then it won't be eligible for AppleCare One until you take a few extra steps. When trying to add it to AppleCare One, you will get a warning that says the device is on another plan and can't be added. You will have to cancel the existing plan. But of course, the settings page won't let you do that. You have to open the Apple Support app and search for Cancel AppleCare. A couple hours after cancel the existing apple care plan the device will now be eligible to move into the apple care one plan yeah so this is specifically for devices that uh you you chose John Siracusa To pay for with a payment plan and i think that what you mean is like instead of paying the whole sum up front how about you pay x number of dollars a month or whatever apple gives that option Marco Arment During like the checkout process yeah you don't want to mess with cl Griswold. He, uh, he's a loose cannon, that guy. Casey Liss Anonymous writes, my iPad was marked as ineligible for AppleCare one, despite having gotten the prompt from Apple to convert on that device. When I called Apple support, they did some research and determined that since I had a two year AppleCare plus plan that I bought when I purchased the iPad and I chose to pay in monthly installments, The iPad is not eligible for AppleCare one. The representative made it seem like I'd done something abnormal when I'd simply accepted an option offered by Apple at the time of purchase. Canceling the existing AppleCare Plus plan would create a refund, but the monthly installments would continue. John Siracusa Yeah, so this sounds like the same situation, but this person actually called Apple and Apple said, oh yeah, no, you can't do that. But they've determined, I don't know if experimentally or by talking to the support person, that if they were to cancel the AppleCare Plus plane, they would get a refund, but then they'd Still have to keep paying the monthly installments with the refund that they received. That's what this message sounds like to me. But anyway, edge cases. Edge cases exist, and Apple, as always, does not seem to be handling them very well. And speaking of edge cases and other cases with AppleCareOne is an update on my AppleCareOne situation. When I talked about it in the last episode, I was saying how it was complaining about my son's computer, you know, and that it made me log into it with my Apple ID, which I did. And it was satisfied, but then he yanked it off the plan again and I was going back and forth. Eventually, I just gave up trying to add my son's laptop because even though it will let you add it and it will give you a warning and you'll satisfy that warning, it will still yank it away From you eventually. So I'm like, I don't know what its problem is, but whatever, fine. And then I also mentioned, you know, people had questions because isn't it weird that when Apple's thing prompted me, hey, you should use AppleCare One. You can put these three devices on it and you'll save this number of dollars per month and the three devices it gave me were my phone my wife's phone and like one of my ipads or something And people were asking how can how can your wife's phone be on there it has to be on it has to be devices on your apple id do you share an apple id with your wife and no i don't well the other shoe Dropped this week and i got an email that said hey uh we're yanking your wife's phone off of apple care1 unless you sign in with your uh Apple ID I don't know I waited so long I don't know why It prompted me to add that phone if it thought there was going to be a problem so I thought what's going on now because that was part of my like three devices you get for $19.99 a month now Now the jig is up now it's like well you just gotta gotta remove that phone and now does that invalidate the entire plan but I figured I would try one last thing which was to sign into the App store with my apple id which normally i'm signed in with my apple id to the app store on all my devices this is before the family plan that's how you sort of share family purchases and Everything anyway i did that on my wife's phone and it seemed to satisfy it like i didn't log her out of her apple id or anything all i did was uh log her out of the app store in the app store App, and then sign into the App Store app with my Apple ID, which is the family organizer Apple ID. And that satisfied it for now. But now it's just like a real problem with this. If Apple's come on as saying, you should put these three devices on it and save this amount of money, and then they tell you, oh, one of those devices, you know, you have to sign it. Anyway, it's because again, I've never been signed into any of my wife's homes with my Apple ID, like actual signed in like the iCloud. So super weird to me. But then also the Mac Studio that is, it's technically my wife's Mac Studio, but I set that computer up. I created my account on it before I created hers. I have always had an account on that Mac studio. It is always signed in as me. And in particular, this week, I've been using it a ton, signed into my account with my Apple ID, going back and forth between my Tahoe Mac, which is I'm booting my Mac Pro into Tahoe to do Dev work and going over there to do Sequoia stuff, because again, no Mac simulators. And I got an email in the middle of doing that saying oh yeah well first of all the wording on this email is great they all say the same thing right they all say a new Apple account has signed Into your Mac studio to avoid losing Apple Care One coverage you must sign into the Mac studio with the Apple account associated with your Apple Care One plan it's like dude I'm signed Into the Apple Apple account as I see what my Apple Care one plan right now I'm like I got this email on the computer while signed into this account and a new Apple account has signed into Your Mac studios as a reminder that Apple account is what Apple ideas are called. Now, what new Apple account? Certainly they're not going to tell you in the email because they don't have that information. And then the kicker, all these emails end the same way you have 24 hours for when this email was sent to sign in or your Mac Studio will be removed from your AppleCare one plan. So I just restarted the Mac Studio, logged into my account and again, and it satisfied it. I'm here to declare AppleCare one. I no longer recommend this service. I've, I've been roped into it. If it worked as advertised, great. I don't think if you haven't signed up for AppleCare one, even if it tells you you can save money, don't do it. Because right now, you are always 24 hours away from some device being yanked off of AppleCare. And what if your device has an accident during that time, right? Or what if you don't notice that email or gets filed as spam? 24 hours from when this email was sent to do a thing that you think shouldn't be necessary. There's no rhyme or reason for how it works. It's like screen time all over again, any of the other features that apple introduce but that never works right and there's no recourse and no one can help you and you can call support And try to do things i have i got so many stories i didn't put them all in and follow up here people saying i had this problem with apple care one i talked to support and they couldn't figure It out either and they said because it's a new product or whatever it just doesn't work right I don't know what it wants us to do. Here's the thing, Apple, either let ... ([Time 0:16:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a0d004d3-c41f-4c44-b5b8-41929396163f)) - **Beta Tweaks Won't Fix Major Issues** - Tahoe and iOS 26 betas show legibility regressions despite visual refinement efforts. - Beta changes now are unlikely to be major before release, so current issues likely reflect shipping behavior. Transcript: Casey Liss All right, let's talk better news. Tahoe Beta 5 apparently has improved the checkbox contrast. So if you recall last episode, I think it was last episode, we talked about the dialogue that says write folder and trash. The folder trash is currently in the trash. And then there's a checkbox. Do not show this message again, except you couldn't see the checkbox. I'm looking at it again, knowing full well where it is, and I can barely make it out. John Siracusa Well, now uh beta five looks a lot better yeah we know beta six is out now this is a screenshot from beta five i think it has retained its uh contrast in beta six but yes they have they have Fixed the completely invisible checkbox to being the a little bit too low contrast checkbox that we all dreamed it could be well said all right with regard to the ios betas and specifically Casey Liss Beta 6 uh reading from mac rumors the lock screen clock has been updated with additional transparency allowing more of the background to peek through the clock also has more of a 3d floating John Siracusa Look which is in line with the rest of the liquid glass design i think this is notable link to the mac rumor story where you can see these screenshots it's notable because i feel like the You know like oh you know they'll roll something out and they'll tweak it during the betas the tweaking the the let's say the attempt to make things legible seems to have peaked depending On which part of which os you're looking at sometime in the past because now a lot of the tweaks have been going in the other direction so here's ios beta 6 making for example the gigantic Clock on the lock screen less legible i don't think it's illegible it's really big you can still kind of read it but it is less legible so you're thinking oh they'll during the course of The beta they'll fix things and it will just get better and better no sometimes because there was like the backlash of like now it's not liquid enough now it's not glass enough right and So we are you know regardless of what changes before release people say oh this is it it's not going to change for release i think it will change but i think now the changes the average of All the positive and negative changes this is going to average out to be like this is like we're just going you know we're pushing and shoving a little bit to the left a little bit to the Right a little bit to the left a little bit to the right without any clear direction of like let's improve legibility everywhere so yeah it is what it is maybe we'll have to wait for like This is this is the big wild card i've heard lots of discussions about this online um how will people who don't listen to tech podcasts react to this again i you know everyone is citing Rightly so i think the ios uh 18 photos thing everybody in the tech nerd circles knew about the photos app and ios 18 and we discussed it along with the rest of the features on ios 18 and it Wasn't any more or less notable than any of the other changes but boy when it hit the the like the general public that was the thing that they cared about and noticed and so it's very difficult To predict how, you know, I don't want to say regular people, how non-tech nerds, how non-tech enthusiasts are going to react when this starts appearing on their devices, especially If they're buying a new iPhone this fall and it comes with this OS and there's no option. I'm going through this right now with my daughter because she's going to get a new phone for college. But like, oh, you should wait until the 17s come out. Like it's so close. Just you know, we'll get a 17 when they come out. I have to have the discussion with, I have to have the talk, which is like, you know, if you get an iPhone 17, you'll have no choice but to use iOS 26. You can't put the older OS. Let's just know what iOS 26 is, right? You can't put the OS that you're used to on it. So do you want to get a 16 now or do you want to get a 17 later knowing that you have to use this? Keeping in mind that there's no going back. Like, you know, eventually you're going to have to get a phone that probably, unless you use that phone for seven or 10 years or however long this, uh, uh, liquid glass hangover lasts. Like you're going to, gonna have to do it someday but yeah i'm i'm just this is like the the the thing that i am paying the most attention to with this os release is not so much like me using The os's or whatever but it is seeing what the public reaction partially because yes i'm having this this wonderful sliver of hope like maybe the the general public will hate it so much They'll actually fix it uh because obviously the feedback from developers and stuff has caused them to uh for the first few betas make things more legible and then say we did enough let's Just you know and yeah i feel like this is the extent of you know how much can feedback from developers and podcasters and tech websites and people inside apple how much can that influence What apple's going to launch and we're at the limit of that now because and somewhat rightfully so because at a certain point you're like look this is a the audience that is currently Using the betas is not representative of the public we're committed to this design let's not let's not pre-declare it a failure and lose our courage. Let's ship what we have and see how it goes. Like, I understand that ethos that's wrong. Like, I disagree with it, but like, you can't, you can't be in the mindset of like, oh no, a couple of developers don't like it. We need to really backpedal. No, ship your 1.0 and, uh, you know, reap what you sell. Marco Arment I have a bit of a different takeoff. So first of all you know the difference in legibility on the lock screen clock in betas five and six i can't use my clock anymore on my phone like so i have the always on screen but that when The always on screen is in like dim mode it just has a black background not just a dim version of the wallpaper in betas five and six you that you get a very translucent clock placed upon A black background so you basically have like almost total darkness and the clock so you like the widgets are way brighter you know you can see all your widget content just fine and the Clock is barely visible um i hope they change this but that being said we are at the point now, this OS is very likely to ship in a month or less. Like we are at the finish line. It is probably going to ship within the first two weeks of September. It is mid-August. Like we are less than a month probably away from this OS shipping. We are probably, I would say, at most two or three betas away from the GM release. So what we have now, like they're not going to be making major changes to this. You know, John's right. You know, the feedback from us, like we had our time. We had a very narrow window to influence minor changes. They were never going to make major changes. That's not how Apple works. John Siracusa When they put out a design they say this is the direction we're going period as well they should like i said like that's the right attitude you can't like do something then get real scared Marco Arment And just reverse it all before the public sees it well i mean that does presume i think a higher level of of care and craft that we've that we're seeing with this but i mean it presumes the John Siracusa Design is good which i disagree with but you know like the as a general philosophy i, I would say that if you come up with a design, take your feedback, make your tweaks, but let the public See it. Like because, again, we are not a representative audience. Correct. Marco Arment You know, there was no chance that after they showed this off in June, there was no chance of them saying, oh, never mind. We're not going to do liquid glass. ([Time 0:31:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b1e2e27f-e8c2-4570-b7b1-5f03ab8e77ec)) - **Design For Liquid Glass, Reduce Its Flaws** - Developers should plan to adopt Liquid Glass while mitigating its legibility pitfalls. - Marco describes redesign choices in Overcast to avoid bright artwork behind critical text on glass surfaces. Transcript: Marco Arment Have a bit of a different takeoff. So first of all you know the difference in legibility on the lock screen clock in betas five and six i can't use my clock anymore on my phone like so i have the always on screen but that when The always on screen is in like dim mode it just has a black background not just a dim version of the wallpaper in betas five and six you that you get a very translucent clock placed upon A black background so you basically have like almost total darkness and the clock so you like the widgets are way brighter you know you can see all your widget content just fine and the Clock is barely visible um i hope they change this but that being said we are at the point now, this OS is very likely to ship in a month or less. Like we are at the finish line. It is probably going to ship within the first two weeks of September. It is mid-August. Like we are less than a month probably away from this OS shipping. We are probably, I would say, at most two or three betas away from the GM release. So what we have now, like they're not going to be making major changes to this. You know, John's right. You know, the feedback from us, like we had our time. We had a very narrow window to influence minor changes. They were never going to make major changes. That's not how Apple works. John Siracusa When they put out a design they say this is the direction we're going period as well they should like i said like that's the right attitude you can't like do something then get real scared Marco Arment And just reverse it all before the public sees it well i mean that does presume i think a higher level of of care and craft that we've that we're seeing with this but i mean it presumes the John Siracusa Design is good which i disagree with but you know like the as a general philosophy i, I would say that if you come up with a design, take your feedback, make your tweaks, but let the public See it. Like because, again, we are not a representative audience. Correct. Marco Arment You know, there was no chance that after they showed this off in June, there was no chance of them saying, oh, never mind. We're not going to do liquid glass. Like that wasn't going to happen. And there was no chance of major changes. They did do a few minor ones here we are in beta 6 and there are still a large number of animation bugs which are concerning to me there are still like there's still like you know designs And components and animations and apis that i try to use and when i use them there's animation bugs and i'm like well if it ships like this i can't ship this yeah and you can't assume it's John Siracusa Going to be fixed like you just can't that's the thing that if you're not a software developer you don't understand like you think like oh i'm working in a beta sdk and there's a bug but It'll be fine by release you can never make that assumption it's just not safe because what's going to happen if it's not you just wait until the last beta and it's not fixed now you got To rewrite your app in a scramble. Marco Arment Exactly. So what we have, like whatever we have today in beta six, like chances are most of what you see is shipping. Like there's very little time to fix much else. And the only things that will be likely to be fixed between now and shipping are like very small things or critical bugs. Like that's the stage we're at in this secondly i hate to tell you all out there who are you know like us old um but i think people are going to like this just fine i don't think there's going To be a big backlash against it the only thing that i suspected there'd be a big big backlash against is its performance it is much slower especially on older phones but even on like modern Phones like the frame rates the animations are still not great they're still dropped frames they're still again they're still animation bugs but like it was very illuminating when My son installed the beta on his phone without asking me first whether he should do it when he installed the beta he likes it and young people tend to look at this and say that's really cool I like it's all clear it looks cool i think we're gonna see that approach that reaction from most people i think most people are gonna think it looks fresh and new and cool i don't think We're gonna see a big backlash about the design itself again performance probably or maybe but the design itself i think this is just going to be people are going to say this is cool on The mac i think it might go a little bit worse than that um just because i think it's a significantly worse design on the mac um but on the iphone people are going to be fine and or they're Even going to like it and i think we as nerds who feel a little bit more ambivalent about it, I think we need to prepare ourselves that we're going to, we are already and we're going to be In the minority in our opinions of this OS compared to everyone else who's going to think it's cool. And I think that's, you know, what I'm trying to do as a developer here is just try to embrace the design and try to do a good job of adopting it for my app. So, you know, one of the ways I'm doing that is like my mini player redesign. You know, if you look at the Overcast app on iOS 18 now, like the part that looks the most out of place, in my opinion, the part that looks the oldest when you're used to 26 is those solid top And bottom bars and the navigation screens and you know the bottom bar being the mini player so of course i'm redesigning the mini player to be a liquid glass you know blob design but i Can do things you know it's within my control to adjust that blob and to figure out what i'm going to put on the blob and what i'm going to put behind the blob so one thing i'm doing is i am not Setting up the design in such a way that will scroll you know brightly colored artwork behind text in the blob so in in the mini player you know the album artwork is on the left now you know What else is on the left in the content behind it all the other album artwork in the list so when you're scrolling the list making a bunch of images show behind the glass it's only showing Those images behind what's on top of the glass an image so the issues of having brightly colored images behind text on glass won't usually come up in overcast so there's ways that i can Design i can embrace this design like i'm not going to deny this design exists. I'm not going to pretend like I'm never going to use it because that will just set me behind. Because, again, I think people are overall going to like the design. So I'm embracing the design as best as I can while trying to do a good job to avoid its flaws and to minimize the impact of its flaws. That's the path that we need to take as developers and designers. And, you know, like this is what we're stuck with. ([Time 0:36:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e0a56b2b-a525-4b0e-ab2e-9dfef0a1c884)) - **Smart TV Interfaces Got Worse** - Modern smart TV UIs have added features but regressed in speed and simplicity. - Using an Apple TV or reliable HDMI-CEC can avoid many slow, messy TV vendor interfaces. Transcript: Casey Liss Damian Shaw writes, I'm an LG G4 owner. So G is the line and four implies 2024. Is that right? It helped. Thank you. That's right. Yeah, there you go. All right. So Marco is now resolved. Marco, if you need to buzz off, we can take it. We can take it from here. Your work here is done. No, anyway. So Damien Shaw writes, I'm an LG G4 owner, which means the G line from 2024. I love this TV, but your pain points about notifications and input switching are probably its two weakest points and the the G five gets a little worse. You can turn off most notifications in the LG interface, but certainly not all. The best solution is to run all firmware updates and then disconnected from the internet. Assuming you're going to use an Apple TV as a primary way to consume streaming services on the LG G four quote unquote magic remote, which by the way is what they call it there is a single Input switch button but it does not switch input immediately there may be a setting to do this but i haven't investigated instead it brings up a lower third menu that previews all the Outputs on all the inputs and you have to hit select on the one you want pressing the switch input will scroll your selection or you can use the arrow keys on the LG G five. They have a new magic remote that has removed that button entirely. I believe you can switch your remote to use the old magic remote, but I couldn't quickly find confirmation that the old remotes work with the G five. Yeah. John Siracusa They, the Sony, even the Sony button that I described, there's an input button. And when you first hit it, it brings up the menu. But if you just keep hitting that same button, it just rotates through the input. So the days are gone when you could hit the button and the one hit of the button would change the input which honestly is probably a good thing because how many people accidentally hit The input button and then like their parents can't figure out how the tv works because they switched inputs accidentally bringing up the menu first i think is the right move but you should Just be able to bounce on that same button to cycle through the inputs and just stop on the one that you want which is how the sony one works but anyway it seems like there's been backsliding Marco Arment Since the c7 which is 2017 not 2027 yeah and like and part of why this this frustrates me is that whenever the like when when i use like the the ones i was originally complaining about the Samsung tvs that have like their whole menu to switch inputs that you have to go through everything. It's just so much slower than it used to be. Like old TVs, old, you know, five-year TVs, you just put the push this input button and it switches within a few seconds. John Siracusa Smart stuff was a big downgrade in speed, as you noted. But I do think that given that they used webOS on your C7 and they're still using webOS with much faster processors, should actually be more responsive than your C7. And I don't know what the hell Samsung's doing, but I agree their interfaces are both ugly and slow. Marco Arment It's an area of technology where they're adding so much functionality, even though we don't always want it, but the basics are just getting so much more annoying and worse and slower And less reliable, harder to use. I don't know. I feel like that's a tragedy of the industry. John Siracusa Yeah, I mean, at least that makes me thankful for the Apple TV because it does let you never have to look at your smart TV's interface, except for the input switching. ([Time 0:45:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62120408-7759-43de-b923-e536244da8a0)) - **iCloud Domain Mail Is Hosted By Apple** - Hosting iCloud mail on your domain simply points MX records at Apple while Apple runs the mail servers. - John avoids it due to lack of visibility and control over mail handling and spam filtering. Transcript: Casey Liss I, in particular, was quite snarky about this last episode. And the user potato.zip writes, on episode 651, you mentioned that you should never run your own mail server. Apple offers running iCloud mail on a domain you own so you can have a customer address. How does this work? Does it require maintenance? Would you recommend it? This is pretty different and I haven't done this myself, but this is just pointing like MX records for your domain at Apple, right? It's a little more than that, is it? John Siracusa Yeah, it goes through some Apple interface, basically you my understanding because i haven't actually done this myself is that you buy a domain whatever you know your your your cool Domain name.com whatever but then you tell apple apple i want you to have to receive email for this thing and have an email account for me so i'll you know hook up to with my mail apps or whatever But my understanding is that apple runs the mail server for you apple receives the mail you send your mail through apple the only thing you bring to the party is the domain that you previously Purchased and paid for that's my understanding of how it works um again haven't used it does it require maintenance i don't think so and the reason i haven't used it is the answer to the Question would you recommend it absolutely not um i don't like how apple does mail. I've had an iTools account, a MobileMe account, a Mac.com account, an iCloud. I've had Apple email for as long as they've offered Apple email. And they just offer no visibility or control into what they're doing with your email. And very often I've gotten supposedly gotten emails that Apple has disappeared, probably through some well meaning spam filtering that I have no way to know, I don't know that that Happened. I don't have a way to get them back. I basically don't consider Apple to be a reliable place for me personally to receive email given the volume of email I received and how important it is to what I do. ([Time 0:49:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29868bbd-e5fc-42ad-ae1b-b2848468118b)) - **Use Hide My Email To Limit Spam** - Use Hide My Email to reduce long-term spam by generating per-site forwarding addresses. - Kill or disable leaked addresses after breaches to stop further spam forwarding to your real inbox. Transcript: John Siracusa The whole point like basically if there's a data breach and your email gets leaked, your email is not your email. It's some random number at Apple, whatever, like it's gobbledygook. Like it's obfuscation. They will auto-generate you. It's like those one-time use credit card numbers from back in the day. Remember those? They will auto-generate you an email address that you don't need to know or remember, but that Apple keeps track of. And if there's data breach at, know pets.com or whatever and they leak all your email addresses you just kill that email address you just say like okay well i'm going to delete that account And i'm going to turn off that email address so now that email address no longer even forwards to my regular one so spammers who got it from the data dump they can spam it all they want because It doesn't deliver to me anymore i don't like surprise i don't like this feature either because of the lack of visibility and because I don't like not knowing the account name, like the Email address associated with all these accounts. I know Apple takes care of it for you. When you log in, you have to do it, but like what I have to log in from a non Apple device. I have to go through through iCloud website to find like, I don't like that disconnection. ([Time 0:53:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c170f435-8ee9-442d-8a49-e45a864483d8)) - **Two-Decade DIY Mail Server** - Jason Diller shared he has run his own mail server for 20 years and manages deliverability by relaying outbound through AWS. - He acknowledges extra work but enjoys control and accepts occasional blocks as trade-offs. Transcript: Casey Liss I would never dream of yelling at someone who didn't want to do it. But I do think the downsides and quote unquote horror show aspects get blown out of proportion sometimes. The worst thing about it nowadays is that you're suspicious by default if you're on any kind of cloud server or consumer ISP IP address. Deliverability can be a challenge even if you do all the right things with DKIM and SPF. My outbound has been relayed through AWS for a few years now so I can ride on their reputation. I got blocked by Microsoft with no recourse before I made that change. All in all, it's not a huge amount of work day to day, but I've sunk a lot of hours in over those 20 years. I only do it because I get some enjoyment out of it. Perfectly reasonable to not want the hassle. John Siracusa So this was the mildest of the people telling us that actually running your own mail server is easy. Lots of people say, I do it and it's fine. Stop scaring people away from it. It's not that bad. It's all we just want to give you the other side of it. People who have been doing this for a while say that it is definitely a thing that you can do and they're fine with it. I do have to say that the volume of email we've gotten and the volume of things I've read online still heavily lean in favor of do not run your own mail server, but I just want to let you know The other side does exist. ([Time 0:54:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bdfeb553-5c5a-4473-9e53-8bd9aefb7c10)) - **Harvest-Now Threat Drives PQC Urgency** - 'Harvest now, decrypt later' motivates urgent PQC adoption because attackers may record today and decrypt later. - Apple already began PQC adoption for iMessage, highlighting practical rollout steps. Transcript: Casey Liss So Lisa Oogre writes, in last episodes over time, you discussed post-quantum cryptography and noted that quantum computers capable of breaking today's cryptography don't currently Exist. This is true, but that doesn't mean transitioning to PQC isn't urgent. It's widely believed that there are actors currently recording encrypted traffic with the intention of decrypting it once such quantum computers exist. I tried to go for the acronym and realized I couldn't. Using algorithms that have already been written, despite not yet having hardware on which to run them and so john what do we call this it's called harvest now decrypt later and i meant John Siracusa To mention it last week and i didn't and i was punished for it it's also called store now decrypt later we'll link to the wikipedia page this is a well-known concept the idea is we got to Save all this garbage data because it's garbage to us now but in the future we might be able to trivially decrypt it all so let's save it now this is kind of an interesting wager here because Um it kind of assumes that quantum computers will be around in time that will make it valuable to decrypt it so let's say just for sake of argument if a quantum computer capable of breaking Today's encryption uh didn't exist until 500 years from now that stored data if it still exists will most be of interest to historians but if quantum computers come out two years from Now it's of interest to a lot of people so yeah the many people are in today all the all the assumptions that like you know world governments are storing data other bad actors are storing Data the tricky bit is which data do we store and how much of it for how long because you can't like i don't even want to say this you can't record all the internet's traffic and save it forever Right nsa um anyway we hope someone's not doing that uh but yeah they're definitely saving this data because you know it could end up being a gold mine if those quantum computers come Online in a reasonable time frame. Casey Liss Yep. Saul Sutherland writes, PQ3 was actually first brought to iOS 17.4 to improve encryption of iMessage chats. I think we talked about this way back then. John Siracusa We did. Casey Liss Okay. February 21 of 2024, iMessage with PQ3, the new state of the art in quantum secure messaging at scale. ([Time 0:55:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c6434875-5661-4885-855d-a5a5ea38f254)) - **Policy And Big Players Will Drive PQC** - Government procurement and standards (NIST, NSA) will compel PQC rollout across vendors to win contracts. - Large providers like Cloudflare can rapidly increase PQC share by enabling it at scale. Transcript: John Siracusa Doing the same thing. It's kind of the same reason that network hardware everywhere supports IPv6. Like, we've been successful at making sure that the hardware stack supports it. And we did get some feedback I didn't put in here of, like, mobile networks in particular, since they have more control over the network. And since most people don't care, like, your phone, when using cellular data is probably using ipv6 to communicate instead of ipv4 it's just the more of the existing infrastructure Sort of terrestrial intranet access still has a lot of ipv4 stuff in it so anyway um what we're talking about is like let's make sure this hardware can work with pqc because of the things We talked about in overtime that the packet sizes change and some hardware manufacturers made assumptions that will no longer be true that would cause their hardware to fail. And so this is motivating them to say, at least make sure your hardware can do this. And so in that respect, IPv6, again, see last episode's overtime comparing this to the IPv6 transition. IPv6 has essentially completely rolled out to pretty much everywhere in terms of does the hardware and software stack support it it doesn't mean that everyone's computer is now communicating Over ipv6 on the internet doesn't mean that web servers still only exist on ipv4 including by the way as many people pointed out many of our own web servers atp.fm my personal website Might not even be listening on an ipv6 address mostly because it's a complexity that i'm not a networking guru and it's a complexity that i don't want to uh take on unless i have to but sometimes If you're hosting your website elsewhere it's pretty easy to add support for it so maybe i'll get around to it eventually you need an ah record on your dns you do i i do think that's very Casey Liss Clever if like multiplying it out by the number of bits but yeah it is an a record uh saver writes chrome has been shipping pqc and tls for a long time it's true that some tls specific hardware Uh broke but these are not that common for consume for the consumer internet this is mostly done in software for big sites here's a post about pqc from cloudflare in 2024 called the state Of post post-quantum internet. And in there, they write, today, nearly 2% of all TLS 1.3 connections established with Cloudflare are secured with post-quantum cryptography. We expect to see double-digit adoption by the end of 2024. Now back to Saber. They now say one-third of Cloudflare traffic is using PQC, and we'll put a link to a different blog post in the show notes. John Siracusa So there's some upside of a huge amount of traffic going through Cloudflare. When they decide to adopt PQC, they can have a large effect on the percentage of traffic that is using it. ([Time 0:58:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3ee0fc2c-f485-4b03-92ec-8801a7aff707)) - **Developer Struggle With New Icon Format** - John Siracusa described developer pain adopting Apple's new icon composer and Tahoe icon format. - He chronicled regressions, undocumented flags, 'squircle jail', and community workarounds to keep old icons on older macOS versions. Transcript: John Siracusa I think this is something that every developer is doing for the 26 OSs because Apple changed, you know, the new design everywhere. But also they changed their recommended icon style across all the OSs, including adding, supporting a clear variant in addition to the dark and light ones and tinted ones and yada yada Um i've been battling this with my apps um when they do something like change the icon style you start realizing hey i don't have three apps like i have three apps in the app store i actually Have five because i have two little dinky things that are not in the app store but they have icons so i'm messing with five icons at once i wanted to give a little bit of background on that And explain why it is difficult so um we'll put a link in the show notes to apple's wwc video and their documentation on their website about what app icons are supposed to look like and The wwc video is called create icons with icon composer icon composer is a new version of an icon creation app i think it existed or at least there were icon apps creation apps that existed Before this from apple but here is the latest iteration and here's the thing about icon composer so it is an app that lets you make icons in the style that apple wants you to make icons but It doesn't it's not just like a bitmap editor it has you make the icons out of vector shapes and attributes on them it's very limited what you end up getting out of it is it's like i don't Know like a property list it's like kind of like an svg or whatever it's just like you get a text file from this and the text file says draw a circle here draw an oval there it should have this Highlight from this thing and it should be this the effects are on this this should have a gradient. This is the starting color. This is the ending color. I don't know. I haven't looked into the details of what language is or whatever. It's not SVG directly. It is very limited. It's like you can have shapes. You can apply styles to them. If you open the Icon Composer app, you will see like a layers palette essentially. And then for each layer, you can pick from a handful of properties. And it just writes those properties in there. You put a value for this property. What's the exposition? What's the Y position? What's the scale? Is this on off, whatever? It just writes all those numbers, all those booleans, all those things into a structured text file. And that describes your icon. It describes all your icons. You make one of those things icon composer, and you can tweak it to say, here's what I want the dark one to look like. Here's what I want the light one to look like. Here's what I want the clear one to look like. But it's all from the same base text file this is very different than in the past where they would ask for differently sized bitmaps for their icons of you know it started off there was Like 128 pixel icons in mac os 10 that's huge now we have like 10 24 because it's like 512 at 2x maybe we wouldn't have 512 at 3x i forget but anyway the days of bitmap according to apple are Over instead here's how we want icons to look and if you've seen the icons in any of the 26 os's you know what they look like it's kind of like a fuzzy liquidy glass kind of thing where it's Like colored layers on top of each other and you can put regular graphics in there too you don't have to do everything as a bunch of vector things you can import bitmaps into the icon composer And put them in there but they want you to make everything out of vectors and outlines if you look at apple's own terrible icons especially on the mac in tahoe they're all made like this So this this is what this is what icons are going to look like when you you know i'm mostly spending my time on tahoe but the same is true on the phone on the ipad all the apps you know and love From apple the mail app safari system settings those are all made with this app in this style, or if not with this app, with an app that puts output that's like this. And again, they are described as a text file, and then on the fly generates the bitmaps that are displayed on the screen. This presents a bit of a problem, maybe for all apps, but certainly for me on the Mac, because as much as I despise this new icon style, and as much as I love my current icons, I do want my Mac Apps to fit in on Tahoe. So I want them to have, quote unquote, Tahoe native icons. I could just draw different icons on Tahoe with bitmaps or whatever, but I'm going to use Icon Composer like they say, you know, whatever. But I think the Tahoe icons are hideous. I don't want them to be on macOS versions before Tahoe. And in fact, they wouldn't fit in in that context because in Tahoe, all the icons look like that. In Sequoia and earlier, none of the icons look like that. So i want to keep my old icons before tahoe and the new icon after tahoe and it kind of boggles my mind that one of the main points of apple's documentation or their videos wasn't here's How you can do this thing that we know people are going to want to do i don't know if they just assume that people are leaving behind every old os as soon as they do a tahoe icon or they're going To release a new version of the app that only runs on tahoe or something. But it's like, guys, people support more than the latest version of OSes sometimes with their apps. Nobody wants their Tahoe icon showing up on earlier OSes because everybody knows they're hideous. And even if they weren't hideous, even if they look awesome and we love them, they just don't fit in on the old OS. Like they fit in when all the icons around them look like this. So anyway, Apple didn't explain how to do that, but people quickly figured out if you just give the icon composer file the same file name minus the file name extension as your existing App icon, it does what you want. When you're on Tahoe, you get the icon composer thing. And on pre-Tahoe, it doesn't know anything about the icon composer thing and you get the old icon but then of course they broke that in beta 5 i believe and all of a sudden all my apps started Showing the tahoe icon everywhere and i'd burned basically an entire week going back and forth a mastodon with a bunch of people smarter than me figuring out how to restore that functionality Turns out after much gnashing of teeth and custom build phases and other things like that, eventually, um, who was it? I think it was, uh, Václav Slavik figured out how to do it first, a very complicated way and then a simpler way. All of it hinged on an undocumented flag that I guess they found by running strings on Apple's binary of like the, uh, the AC tool, uh, asset catalog compiler that, that compiles your Asset catalog in your app. Apparently there's an option in there that will tell it, don't like leave the icons alone for pre-Tahoe OSs. But anyway, this was very frustrating. I filed a bunch of feedbacks on it. So I filed a feedback that said, hey, there should be a way to do this. Like there should be like a documented actual, like Apple should say, if you want to do this very common thing, here's how we recommend doing it. Instead of all of us just trying to figure it out on our own, right? So that was one of my feedbacks. The second feedback was it used to work in betas one, two, three, and four. It stopped working beta five, so it's a regression. So I did a second feedback, depending on which might be more appealing if anyone ever looks at these, which they probably won't. And then the final feedback I put in was another aspect of the icon system in Tahoe is that, we've mentioned this before, but if you have a non-Tahoe icon on Tahoe and that icon is not a Big Sur style squircle, as in a rounded rectangle where if nothing breaks the frame of the rounded rectangle ([Time 1:02:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bd0a3146-5166-4e59-9d63-e9304ef9f039)) - **Test Icons Across OSs And App Store** - If you must adopt Tahoe icons, test full archive builds across macOS versions and App Store Connect upload paths. - Verify resulting icons on both Tahoe and pre-Tahoe machines to avoid App Store rejections and user-facing regressions. Transcript: John Siracusa Apple has kind of dropped the ball on this. And I want to say, I think the icon composer format and idea is actually kind of a good one. Maintaining 700 different icon resolutions in bitmaps is not efficient and it's kind of annoying. I know iOS or I think iOS changed recently to be able to let you say, let me just make one really big high res icon. It'll make all the other ones. Is that true? Yes. Yeah, they didn't do it on the Mac because who cares about the Mac? Um, but even that, like, you know, having a sort of a definition file for icons, if you plan to have, I want to be able to make a clear one, a light one, a dark one, like you want to be able to Programmatically do that with a specific icon style that to be clear, I do not like, but I do respect that this format is a clever solution to that problem. ([Time 1:13:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e6d963f-1cee-4537-9702-2ccb6e274b06)) - **Apple Moves On, Developers Mend Bridges** - Apple prioritizes shipping its new design language and usually won't fully accommodate developers supporting older OS versions. - That mismatch creates tooling gaps that developers must workaround or accept degraded compatibility. Transcript: Marco Arment You know this is the direction apple is going with their new os's and you know when apple tries to maintain compatibility with old OSs, they don't face the same issues that we do with their Apps because most Apple apps are built into the operating system. So they don't need, like, the same code that's running on iOS 18 to be running at, like, as the same bundle in the App Store as what's going to run on iOS 26. And same thing with, you know, the Mac OS equivalents all the other like they don't they don't need to worry about that like the team that writes apple mail they have their you know before 26 builds and they have their 26 builds and those are basically different apps um or at least probably a different branch or whatever yeah the closest they get is safari on the mac because John Siracusa They do ship a version of the new safari on the old os but I imagine that's just an entirely separate build. Probably. Marco Arment And so, you know, in areas that Apple does not face the same challenges or face them in the same way as developers, they generally really don't care how hard it is for us. Like, they really honestly – and it's not like in a cynical or snobby way. Just kind of institutionally apple has never been amazing at dogfooding the developer experience like they don't really know like they don't really people in apple don't usually Fully appreciate what developers need to do in certain ways or you know around certain problems because they just don't face those problems themselves and they don't care or they are Not important enough to them for them to care more. And also, once Apple goes in a new direction, whether that's a software update or a redesign or whatever else, that's a one-way transition for Apple. And this has been Apple forever, even back to Steve Jobs. As soon as they are on the new thing, they don't care about the old thing at all. And so for us to be like, well, we kind of do need to still care about the old OS for a while. They're like, we've moved on. That's it. So this is the kind of area that tends to be underserved in Apple's tools and solutions and everything, because they just don't care the way, the way we have to. So this is an area where like, yeah, like, you know, when, when I build my app, like the iOS app, when I build it with the new icon and it runs on iOS 18, it shows like a flattened rendering Of the glass icon as the new app icon on iOS 18. Like, and that's, maybe I could hack around that the same way you're trying to here, but I'm just, I'm not going to because it's just not worth it. ([Time 1:14:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/479e4d49-c8e2-4a96-a265-2b6bf73a4dcd)) - **Liquid Glass Accidentally Eases Touch Path** - Liquid Glass's lower information density and larger controls marginally enable touch transitions but not by design. - The design changes incidentally make the Mac slightly closer to touch UIs, though Apple likely didn't intend that. Transcript: Casey Liss Daniel Liu writes, do you think the decreased information and interface density in Liquid Glass in macOS might make the interface potentially more touch friendly? Setting aside the myriad of problems with legibility, consistency, and the Liquid Glass's brittleness, to use Snell's term, what do you think of the new macOS as being a step toward Touch Macs? I have not used any of this on macOS, so I have nothing to contribute. John, what do you think? John Siracusa Well, first, I just want to defend Daniel's honor and say that even though you read a myriad of, he wrote correctly the myriad of problems without an of in there, because that's the way You should use that word. And Casey just inserted the of, because that's the way a lot of people say it. And anyway, setting aside the myriad problems, I believe that is correct. And that is what Daniel wrote. Anyway, I see where they're going with this we all kind of had similar thoughts when they made the menu bar taller turns out that was just for the notch but here's the thing the notch making The menu bar taller the setting that's in accessibility that does nothing in tahoe but anyway there's a setting in accessibility i believe that says do you want me to show the regular Menu bar in mac os or do you want me to show the large menu bar again i think it does nothing in tahoe but that doesn't mean it's always going to do nothing or do nothing in sequoia um the the Lower information density and the larger controls and wicked liquid glass and mac os and on ios and an ipad os even though pretty clearly none of that was designed uh the intention of Making it easier to make touch Macs, in the end, it does put them one micro step farther down that road. Now, here's the thing. In a world of thoughtful interface design that acknowledges that there is a science to it and that things can be known and tested an actual mac interface designed for touch would do a Lot more than liquid glass is doing right um but i do think that every every step they take to sort of puff up the interface on the mac specifically sets them up for a future where they could Enable touch without making too many changes and honestly like setting aside the retina transition apple has tried to hold the line on the mac in terms of like dpi and how big things are On the screen not for touch reasons not for like over the size of the tip of your finger because you know macs don't have touch but they've tried to make things kind of sort of stay the same Size but if you there's lots of people posting historical uh images like here's how this graphic looked in mac os for the past 20 years or something online these days because of the liquid Glass stuff if you look at some of those you even when they account for retina and like don't do the 1x 2x thing older versions of mac os especially when you go back to classic things were Smaller because screens were smaller like physically like they had fewer inches like people had 13 inch crts not 32 inch lcds people were smaller the world was smaller yeah everything Right so things have been getting bigger and i think i mean i think that's a good thing just because when you have so much screen real estate there's not as much reason to make everything As small as you possibly can. You don't need a lot of nine and 10 point text everywhere in the UI because you're on a nine inch monochrome screen. You know what I mean? Um, so even though I think, you know, liquid glasses probably set us backwards from touch in many other areas. Things getting a little bit bigger. Assuming it stays that way until, you know, if touch the Mac's ever common, assuming the liquid glass stuff stays and someone doesn't come in and undo all that. It does bring us a tiny little bit closer, but only accidentally. ([Time 1:22:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/296f1d86-f81d-4773-af63-417a15307035)) - **Handle Photo Duplicates Manually When Needed** - Use Photos' 'merge' default only if you trust its automatic choice; otherwise audit duplicates carefully. - Manual resolution is slow but necessary when metadata conflicts or favorites matter. Transcript: Casey Liss One is two megabytes. The other three are one megabyte one is favorited the other three are not one is added to an album the other three are not one has the camera exif data and accurate creation date the other Three do not how the heck do i audit these properly and pick and choose which attributes become the new singular master photo my library currently reports over 10 000 duplicates yes John Siracusa This duplicate processing in apple photos i think i talked about when it first rolled out it tries to save you some of this pain by giving you a button that says just merge these and it tries To essentially choose the quote-unquote best one but then combine all the metadata from all the other ones so by best it usually means the highest resolution or the largest or both but Then it will try to do a union of the metadata from all the other ones but then if there are conflicts i'm not sure how it resolves them um you can manually choose to resolve this yourself By deleting the ones that you think are not duplicates the interface for this is not great in photos it tries to be simple and the second you don't want to just trust it, it gets way more Complicated to the point where, as I've complained about in the past, when it sometimes identifies photos that are not actually duplicates, like you took a burst photo and you can see These are two different photos. Like they're half smiling in this one and one eye is closed in this one. These are not the same photo, but they're close enough that that Apple Photos thinks they're duplicates. There's no way to convince it that they're not duplicates. You can't say these are not duplicates. You're wrong. Apple Photos. No, instead, you have to forever see that in the duplicate list and just remember to never merge those because they're two separate pictures or you just get frustrated and delete one Of them that you like less. But anyway, unfortunately for Keith, the root problem here is that if you have 10,000 duplicates and a lot of them are like this, like that a human description of them all is like, it's Difficult for a human to even figure out how to combine these, like what should be done? What is the right thing to do? How long does it take a human to figure out what the right thing to do is and then do it? ([Time 1:52:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/909dc384-6a47-4087-bed3-f2b5b5ad1beb)) - **Air Conditioning Repair Nightmare** - Marco Arment described an ongoing months-long AC repair saga involving thermostat swaps and refrigerant concerns. - New thermostats didn't fix the problem and changing refrigerants and major replacements could cost tens of thousands. Transcript: Marco Arment Updates are I spent a lot of money getting them to finally just install the stupid thermostats. They did not fix the problem. Surprise, surprise. They gave diagnostic codes. Surprise, surprise. John Siracusa Did you talk about that on the show already? I'm not sure. I think I did. Casey Liss You definitely talked about it privately. I don't know if you spoke about it on the show or not. John Siracusa You might want to give some background on the thermostats. I think you complained that they told you that I think your problem is these fancy thermostats you got and you didn't like that. But then what happened since then? Marco Arment So I had at various times three or four different AC repair companies out here over the course of this spring and summer trying to get them to just fix my stupid air conditioners already. And every single time somebody came out here, they would make a big sneak. Oh, they'd point to my Echo Bee thermostats. Oh, it's the thermostats. It's these smart thermostats. They die all the time. It's always them. And I'm like, okay, I assure you, you know. And I would go through and I'd show them my phone. Look, there is no energy saving setting on right now. Like, you know, because and you can see, you can understand why like they probably get a lot of service calls from people who install a nest or something and it goes into energy saving Mode and the people say my air conditioning is broken and they call them out so like i understand why they would be sensitive to that but literally every like no everyone gave me so much Crap about these thermostats no it must be those and then like they would call the manufacturer tech support like as they're looking at stuff and the manufacturer tech support would Be like it's the thermostats oh my god they worked for five years i guarantee you it's not the thermostats but okay and eventually i said you know what eff it i'm so tired of these people You know being like this just put in the mitsubishi thermostats. Like, I don't care. Like, it's fine. Give me a Wi-Fi thermostat from some other brand. I'll bridge it to home whatever if I have to. Fine. If that'll make you guys shut up and just work on my air conditioning ever, fine. So they did. So I got a repair person to finally put in the Mitsubishi thermostats. They've been in for a couple of weeks. We still don't have air conditioning. I'm sitting here in my office. It is thanks to the Yoling sensor on the wall. I can tell you it's 82 degrees in here. My forehead is wet. I think I've got that beat. Probably. But yeah, it is very hot in here. And we still don't have air conditioning. Now, it has been a pretty mild last couple of weeks, like temperature-wise here. It's been, you know, we haven't really needed it most days. So that's been fine. But it is August. There are still hot times. And August isn't over yet. And September is also pretty hot. So also, this is our heat in the winter for this house. They're heat pumps. John Siracusa And also, you paid a lot of money for air conditioning. Marco Arment Your house is supposed to work. Yes and it's only five years old and also um you know we have it's okay so there's also all this drama now that the refrigerant that our system uses are 410a there's you know every heat pump System has a refrigerant in it. And over time, they find out like refrigerants tend to be pretty bad for the environment if they're vented into the atmosphere. And over time, we develop new ones that are less terrible for the environment. And then what happens eventually is usually states or the federal government will start restricting the old refrigerants from being used. And so if you have a system that uses the old refrigerant, you oftentimes after a while can't get it anymore or can't get parts or can't get it serviced anymore or can't get it recharged If there's any slow leaks over time. So that has now happened in New York for the refrigerant I use for tonight. John Siracusa In your five-year system? Marco Arment Yes. My five-year system, could you can no longer buy new ones i think as of around now or this year um and they're going to phase out their refrigerant over the next x years and it's going to Be harder and harder to get and harder and harder to get parts and replace replacements it's true refrigerators too by the way i know it's right in the name but just fyi it's definitely Yeah so you know the repair he's like you know if you want you can like get some extra there's two big outside condensers he's like you can get or compressors whatever you can get two replacement Ones and just like store them somewhere right now like they're about to go out of stock forever put them with your keyboards right they're huge and i'm like okay you know tell me a price John Siracusa We'll talk about it well they're telling you to buy the entire unit the whole big thing with the fan yeah to to buy two extra ones to replace the hell but thing to store in the salt air maybe Marco Arment You've got a hermetically sealed box right and well he he recommended that i keep them like on long islands though like yeah do not keep them by the seashore because when you need them You open it up and it'll just be a chunk of rust yeah but i'm like okay what are we talking here numbers wise and what we are talking about if i wanted to keep a spare set of condensers twenty John Siracusa Seven thousand dollars oh that's not surprising but what you do if these things ever go and you need to replace them is you buy the newer more efficient ones that are available on the market Marco Arment Now and well so the problem is when you when you change the refrigerant on the outside units chances are you probably also have to change the inside air handlers and if you're really unlucky You might even have to run new refrigerant pipelines from the outside thing to the inside things and so i asked him i'm, in that scenario, what does that look like? And I don't even want to tell you the number he said. It was substantially higher. So I'm like, oh my God, what? John Siracusa Did he get an explanation of why you would need new lines and inside units for refrigerant change? Marco Arment Well, know pair of compressor and air handler they have their own specs like okay well you need you know this diameter of pipe and you need that you know it's like there's all they're all John Siracusa Designed for each other they're designed to match each other i believe they're designed for i just it surprises me that the refrigerant changes would be so such a radical change that You can't use the existing lines and inside units because like the diameter is wrong or they can't handle the pressure or something but you know presumably they know but then again they Marco Arment Also said it was your thermostats i know yeah so now i'm like i'm out literally thousands of dollars in thermostats and thermostat labor and now i'm being asked to spend another 27 grand Maybe i still don't have working air conditioning i am not happy about the situation at all. John Siracusa Did you enjoy at least a moment of smugness when they put in the new thermostats and it didn't help? Yeah, seriously. Marco Arment I will enjoy that smugness once the system works. John Siracusa Right now you're saving it? Marco Arment Right now I've just spent thousands of dollars for uglier thermostats that don't work in HomeKit. John Siracusa Well, no, because once it works, they're going to say, see, it was a thermostats. Marco Arment I would have loved if it was a thermostats because that's a lot simpler and cheaper than everything else we now have to look at. But I'm just, you know, the next step is they're going to like, you know, flush out the whole system and put in all new refrigerant of my apparently about to be illegal refrigerant. ([Time 1:57:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/23742f19-a9c5-4b8e-8815-d451a844c3b5))