653 Warning Stories - CourtneyR.dev's 2nd Brain

653: Warning Stories ![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: 653: Warning Stories - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/3a314eb9-ca36-49f0-82ed-0b343650990f ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **AI Content Primes Belief In Falsehoods** - AI-generated social media content can erode trust by training people to accept sensational but false things as true. - Repeated exposure to convincing fakes primes audiences to lower skepticism and distort worldview. Transcript: Marco Arment OK, that is it. We're in this kind of hellscape of, you know, all this ai generated stuff being fed to us on social apps to keep us engaged but also like is it that different from them algorithmically Feeding us stuff that humans made that you know we're gonna breeze through and never see again and it's just you know tickling our fancy for a split second as we waste time like it's a little John Siracusa Bit different is it you you yeah because because if you believe that it's real you know what i mean i suppose but like because because then like you get the sort of the the excuse me if everyone Holds your ears because i don't know it'll be upset people it's the fox news effect where if you're fed a constant diet of things that are not true and accept them as true even if each one Individually is harmless you essentially acclimate to the idea that uh you know you're you're filling your brains with untruths but following them under truths and so your whole worldview Gets really distorted because you're like look at all these things these are all things that happened and you're like actually no all 8 000 of those were bs and you're like that can't Marco Arment Be true well but like i wonder you know what are we comparing it to like how accurate was the pool of slop that was being fed to us before ai like if it was just you know once you finish the handful Of posts from your friends and instagram and you know between all the thousand ads that you're seeing you're mostly just seeing like you know memes and screenshots of funny things from Twitter or you know copies of tiktok videos you know whatever like you're just seeing mostly low trust low you know low nutritional value content anyway so now that if a bunch of that's Going to be ai generated like i don't actually think it's that much worse than it already was the ([Time 0:00:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/111061d0-cbb7-4a85-a7b9-98e737a7ae6a)) - **Firsthand iOS 26 Carry-Phone Experience** - Casey installed iOS 26 on his daily phone and found it whimsical but often illegible in places like Notification Center. - He liked animations and glass effects but complained about legibility and the compact Safari toolbar. Transcript: Casey Liss Only way out is through uh so yeah so i've only i did this yesterday late morning i it was. So it's only been a little over 24 hours that I've had iOS 26 on my phone and I've downgraded. No, I'm just kidding. It's so weird. I have a fairly visceral love-hate relationship with it so far. I really like that there is some modicum of whimsy to it. So like in messages, when you tap in the text field that you type into, it kind of like flashes and like dances a little bit. And I could see how somebody else would find that very frustrating, but I think it's kind of cute and neat. And generally speaking, I think it looks pretty good. And I think that, again, the animations are fun. I do think they've done an incredibly good job of modeling what glass looks like. And so, like, when you pull down Control Center, Notification Center, rather, Notification Center, and you're watching the edge of Notification Center come down, like, that looks Really cool. I really dig it. I really think at the surface level, a lot of this is very cool, and I enjoy it, and I like it. With that said, holy God, sometimes the legibility is zero. And I know this is old news, but now I'm experiencing it on my carry device. Notification Center in particular is so bad. It is so bad on beta seven. And it's, if I turn off, um, or if I do reduce transparency, it basically looks like the iOS 18, which on the one side is good because it's readable on the other side. I don't like it because it's feels old and boring and whatever. Um, but man, is that bad? Additionally, Safari with the compact toolbar at the bottom, absolutely not. I only have like, I have like maybe eight tabs on eight to 10 tabs on a general basis. Meanwhile, Aaron has like 450. It drives me nuts, but, um, that's her phone, her, her, that's what makes her happy. But I only have like right now I have eight tabs as it turns out. And that's probably too many by my own admission. But my point is it's not a ton, but I do flip between them somewhat often. And the compact tab bar where I turned it off already, but I think it's like something, the button on the left, the search slash URL field in the middle, and then basically everything Bucket on the right. And I hated it. I tried to stick with it for the better part of a day and then realized, no, I can't, I can't, I can't do it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. But those are the only initial things that jump out at me that really, really struck me one way or the other. Overall, I actually, despite my complaining just a moment ago, I actually do like it for the most part. And again, I think it's whimsical. I think it's fun. I think it looks good as long as we're in relatively decent legibility zone, which is a zone that we dive in and out of with regularity. But so far, ([Time 0:06:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a3080a7c-88cd-448b-9439-dca272c9e3a2)) - **Be Gentle With Developers This Fall** - Give app developers time and leniency when iOS 26 ships because adapting to Liquid Glass is nontrivial. - Avoid hasty 1-star reviews and allow developers months to fix subtle layout and behavior issues. Transcript: Marco Arment Those of you out there, we have a lot of opinionated app users in our audience. And I would urge you, please, give the developers of iOS apps a lot of leeway and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of time as we adopt Liquid Glass because it's not a small job. Even to just, like, what I decided to do with Overcast is, like, I'm not radically changing the interface. I'm just updating it to, you know, use the native toolbars and stuff. You know, new design for the mini player. Like, you know, it's just stuff to make it fit in a little bit better, but it's still going to look effectively the same. Like basically, you know, the, the, in broad strokes, it is not a complete redesign, but even just that, even just adopting little things, like for instance, when you have a menu that Has like, say a delete item in the menu. And you tap that and before it deletes, it confirms. Are you sure you want to delete? Those confirmations used to be on the iPhone, the sheet that comes up from the bottom. Or, you know, maybe like an alert dialog in the middle. Now, it's like an iPad. Now, those pop out of a source view. So ideally, they pop out of, you know, maybe the button or the menu that spawned this whole process in the first place. But if you have an iPhone app, you've never had to deal with that. So now you have to go and move these around and make sure they're popping out of the correct view. You have to go through every confirmation and every alert in your entire app and every way you could possibly reach confirmation or an alert. You have to go through all of them to make sure it's popping out from the right place now. There's so many of those types of things where you think it's as simple as, oh, I'll just replace my custom button with the system button. And it's like, okay, yes, but then you have all these behaviors you have to you have to consider and then if you want to maintain compatibility with ios 18 and earlier you probably have To do everything twice because not only do you are you like you know okay now i'm gonna i'm gonna use this the system x instead of my custom x well you're gonna probably have to keep your Custom x for iOS 18 or figure out how to make the system one work acceptably on iOS 18 when it doesn't have the 26 behaviors. So it's a lot of work, even doing what seems to the user like a pretty light adoption of the new design. It's still a ton of work and a ton of QA, a ton of testing, a ton of little subtle bugs. So, you know, be gentle with your App Store Star reviews this fall to everybody's apps. You know, we're all doing the best we can. It's going to be a lot. It's not going to be great on day one. You're going to have apps that are not ready on day one and maybe aren't even ready this calendar year. You're going to have apps that are ready but are limited interpretations of the design or that have weird edge case bugs because apple is shipping a beta as a final version like what they Are going to achieve quality wise for ios 26 is beta quality at best 26.0 is going to be a little rough. It's going to have animation bugs. It's going to have little behavioral things. This entire design is a beta. And all of our apps using it will basically also be betas. And that's kind of, you know, Apple has kind of, you know, brought us here to this point that we don't really have much of a choice in the matter. ([Time 0:23:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/43d9e1ab-437c-44e7-8d5e-ca6f18754c94)) - **HomePod Repaired Live On YouTube** - John had a first-generation HomePod repaired by a specialist who livestreams repairs and replaced failing components for about $80. - The HomePod returned to full function and John recommends the repair service for returning dead units to life. Transcript: John Siracusa HomePod is back. I had one original HomePod from back in the day, and then Marco gave me two of his also original HomePods, the very first generation. They were all in various states of disrepair and dying, some of them totally dead. I was like, okay, now that none of them work, because they got to the point where none of them, I couldn't use any of them for any purpose. Some of them turned on, but I couldn't use them to do things i couldn't get signed in it couldn't connect to my iCloud thing i couldn't do my home automations i could ask what time it was And maybe the weather but that's about it but one of them just totally didn't turn on so i was looking for someone who i know people repair home pods i found somebody online uh nixfix.com N-i com uh that he repairs home pods um and i i figured i'll send him the dead one the one that like you plug into the wallet nothing happens it doesn't light up doesn't make any noise it's Just dead dead dead which is the thing that happens to uh first gen home pods for a fairly explicable reason because some component burns out or something anyway um and it's real easy You go to the website uh you know sign up to do it he'll send you a box a packing box for the thing uh and then and a return like a shipping label so i got the box wrapped up the home pod and the Packing material shoved on the prepaid shipping label that he had sent uh and arrives uh at nick he streams his repairs live on youtube and we will put a time stamp link in the show notes To his stream where he fixed my home pod. Incredible. My repair starts at one hour and 54 minutes and 11 seconds in this video. He spends a long time repairing a lot of home pods. He's so fast. Like he repairs them very quickly. Casey Liss Let me jump in right there. So I will concede that I was watching this at 2X, but I watch a lot of things at 2X and you get a pretty solid vibe as to how quick or how slowly something is happening quickly or how slowly Something's happening holy freaking crap this dude was flying doing this repair like it is clear he has you know disassembled and reassembled thousands of home pods it is incredible John Siracusa He does like he does dozens in this video just in this that's just a per day like The backlog of HomePods is incredible. And the other fun thing, if you watch it at 1x, is to see exactly how painful it is to open a first-gen HomePod. Because he knows how to do it. He's like, this is the best case scenario. An expert doing it has done this so many times, and it still looks incredibly painful. Like, are you breaking it? Is that how you're supposed to do it? Is that the only way and it's like yep um anyway so uh his workstation is extremely dingy and scary looking considering that his dozens of home pods are going through it per day and there's Like you know burn marks and solder drips everywhere but you know he gets the job done um and the care with which he uh you know uh desodders and replaces surface mount components is maybe Not up to the sort of micro electronic precision that you see from like the some of the other youtubers but it's all about turnaround you know you just got to go go go bottom line is he replaced A bunch of components that he knew would be he doesn't even need to diagnose this he knows okay this i know what the problem this one is take these out take these out he also replaced some Other stuff of like the the woofer cone that always fails he replaced that with a better one he just and and the other thing he has like in a checkbox in the form is like do you want me to update Your os i'm like yes please do that because one of the problems with my other home pods is i can't get something to do an os update so he did everything he replaced a bunch of parts uh including Ones that weren't they probably still worked but they were probably going to eventually fail he just replaced those two uh and sent it back to me and it works now so it was like 80 something Dollars and i basically paid like the maximum amount which is i'll pay for you to send me a shipping box so you know because you could pay less if you want to ship it yourself and yada yada But i don't want to deal with any of that the whole point is i will give you 80 something dollars you take care of this for me and he did so my home pod is back i'm debating sending the other Two or just waiting to see if this one ever dies because i only really need one of them but yeah uh the repair economy is real uh even if apple doesn't want it to be 80 something bucks to get Casey Liss A first gen home pod back to working order that is really incredible and about how long did it take from the time that you said i would like it done to the time you unboxed the repaired home John Siracusa Pod i didn't uh time at all that well because first of all he had a little bit of backlog and second when he was ready to repair it i was about to leave on vacation so i said oh don't even bother Like you can just push mine to the back of the queue because i don't want him because he repairs as you saw he repairs one home pod in like three and a half minutes right so he's not like he's Gonna take all day to do whatever and it's like if you repair it and ship it back to me no one is home to get it so you can just wait until x date when i come home from my vacation and then send It back then and so there was some artificial delay for me being away but uh yeah it was basically like uh how long did it take me to get to the front of his extremely long repair queue uh but Once i got there it's like done ship back the same day like it's, you know, it's very straightforward. So I would recommend this or any other service that's like this. Because look, I sent him a dead piece of electronics that would otherwise just go to like the electronics recycling center. And I got by a working HomePod. ([Time 0:29:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc33e45c-062a-4478-93ae-4ab970df3487)) - **AppleCare One Misbehaves On Multi‑User Macs** - John described repeated problems with AppleCare+ One removing devices erroneously for multi-user Macs. - He must sign out and back in to stop removal warnings and fears Apple will yank coverage despite compliance with terms. Transcript: John Siracusa Know when i put this item in here it's just gonna be a little bit of follow-up on something that i said last week but it just escalated since then so the little bit of thought from last week Is i was i was saying that they had uh pulled off my wife's phone i said you know because people would ask him questions like why is your wife's phone on there that's clearly not your device You're not signed into it or whatever i'm like apple recommended that i add it but then they threatened to remove it and i said well i tried one thing which is i'll sign into the app store On her phone with my apple id which i did and that seemed to solve the problem but not for long because eventually they just they just yanked her phone off the plan and i'm like fair enough Like i don't i don't think it should ever have been on the plan and yes it is a problem that they promoted the plan to me by saying here you should use these devices and i just i just took their Word for it silly me but clearly my wife's phone shouldn't be on the plan because the whole deal with the plan is it has to be devices that are all on a single Apple ID or Apple account and Her phone's not on mine so and the store login thing maybe warned it off for a little bit but not for long so I'm like all right I'm I'm resigned to that her phone should never have been on That's fine but of course after I was resigned and they removed the phone immediately I got a red dot on my phone under the AppleCare and warranty thing and settings like a little red badge Saying, hey, you should add this phone to AppleCare one. Of course, like get your get your stuff together, Apple. Like you like I can tell you that you should not be recommending that I am like it's I've never been signed into that anyway. That was my that would have been my fault but when her phone was removed from Apple Care One I had to hers was one of the original three devices you see three devices for $19.99 a month or Whatever so fine hers gets kicked out because it never should have been on there but I needed to replace it otherwise I'm paying the full three device costs per month for two devices that Doesn't save me any money so I replaced it with the mac studio i have so it's my phone my ipad and the mac studio which yes the mac studio is technically my wife's computer but i bought it On my apple id i have an account on it so does everyone in my family and as i said in the past when i complained about this i'm logged into that computer with my apple id on my account 24 7 that Computer is set not even to go to sleep it is on 24 7 i'm logged into it 24-7. And recently, I'm actively using it every single day by sitting in front of it and using the mouse because that's essentially my Sequoia test machine while my Mac Pro is in Tahoe when I'm doing like dev work on my stuff, which is happening, you know, every single day. Anyway, after recording a podcast at 10.46 PM the other day, I get an email from Apple that says, hey, we're about to yank your Mac Studio off AppleCare 1, which I had gotten before. And I'm just at the end of my rope. I'm like, stop threatening me for moving my Mac from the thing because the stupid email is like, a new account is signed into your Mac Studio avoid losing Apple care. But like, what are you talking about? I did I receive this email when I was logged into that Mac studio with my account? Yes, I absolutely did. Like all the other times that this email has come and I was so angry about it. And I threw a big tantrum about it. You did. It was incredible. It was just it was like late at night. Like, I feel like it's like, like, that's the type of email that could like get lost in the shuffle. Because like if it comes in late at night and the next day's email when i wake up in the morning there's a new batch of the next day's email i don't see that one or whatever like like here's The thing warranty plans are the type of thing you don't have to be vigilant about like at any at any time a 24-hour timer should start could start without your knowledge and you have to Do some nonsensical bs within that 24 hour window otherwise they'll take away your warranty and many people said sounds like apple care one sucks why don't you just cancel the whole Plan well the problem with apple care one is when you sign up for it they cancel all the warranties of the devices you put on it and AppleCare one can be applied to any device that's four Years older or less. But regular AppleCare plans, I believe you still can't take like a three year old device and say, Oh, by the way, I don't have AppleCare on this. But now I want to add it now there may be a grace period like I may actually figure this out and try it and say, fine, cancel AppleCare one. Can I get can I go back to getting plain old AppleCare for devices that are, you know, two or three years old? Or can I only re-add AppleCare one to them, right? But, you know, my, my complaint about this is like, this, this Mac Studio is compliant with all of their rules. I actually went to their website and looked up their terms and conditions PDF, like not the little like footnote on the webpage, but let's see, let's see the legalese on this, right? It's not that much different than the footnote. So here's what it says. We'll link to the, uh, the AppleCare one terms and conditions. You have to pick your state if you're in the United States. So I picked Massachusetts, because I guess it varies by state, but directly from the Massachusetts PDF of the terms and conditions, it says, here's some of the relevant passages. All your covered equipment must be remained signed in and associated with that Apple account during the plan term i'm doing that it's signed in with my account with the one that purchased The plan like that's and then some later it says if you sign out of your apple account connected with this plan on a covered device except for airpods beats and studio display and sign In with a different apple account on that covered device you will have 24 hours to sign back into your apple account on that cover device to avoid loading coverage blah blah blah so here's My new theory my new theory is whoever made this plan doesn't know that you can be signed into a mac in multiple accounts definitely which boggles my mind because that's not a new feature Of mac it's a thing that right and like the feature is so broken because yeah all four members of my family are currently signed and signed into the mac studio all four of us right we're Always all signed in it's kind of like the communal computer for like doing stuff because we do things on behalf of our children my wife is always signed into i'm always signed into it Right but you know so i i don't know how they couldn't understand this but that's my new theory i will eventually call apple sport and dedicate an entire day to essentially saying i don't I do have a problem i don't expect you to solve it i just want you to convey like pass up the chain max can have more than one person signed in um and so that was yesterday that was like last Night when i ranted about this i'm like at the end of my rope a warranty is exactly the type of thing that should be like secure and you don't have to worry about you should just pay and it Should be ready to go it shouldn't be something you have to be ever vigilant about right and their thing is just broken it just doesn't work right uh and then today just before the show I got the same freaking email again and people are asking like will they yank it off your plan yes they absolutely will i've tested this they if you don't do anything they will yank it off And give you a little refund and then tell you to put it back on which i have done right um so they will yank it off and how do i fix it so they don't what i do is i just go to my account that's already Like i unlock the computer and see bef... ([Time 0:36:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/641ba3c7-ed92-4c93-bfa0-80f295f9f4cf)) - **Edge Configurations Attract Bitrotted Bugs** - Off‑the‑beaten‑path configurations (like multi‑user Macs) attract more bugs because they receive less QA and dogfooding. - Products aimed at niche use cases can degrade over time as support attention wanes. Transcript: Marco Arment That like, you know, it's when you are off the beaten path, again, problems like this can arise. And over time, you know, things that maybe could have worked at one time or worked okay start to work worse as they get, you know, further into the, you know, the lesser used options or Configuration. So one example is like, if you relocate your home directory on the Mac, like you can do that. You can even, I think you can even put on an external drive. This is not a good idea. And a lot of things break if you do, but you can, you know, like, or you can start playing Simlink tricks and stuff like that. Or like, you know, hey, if you want Dropbox to sync some other folder, like you can play a Simlink trick and kind of like it kind of works or it might work briefly but you know you're kind Of signing up for bugs and problems now multi-user mac configurations are now that class of risk i don't know again we're going to push back pretty hard against using multiple user support John Siracusa In macOS versus changing where your home directory is with SimLinks. Those are two very – one is 100% supported, used by millions of people every day. And the other one is a thing that might work if you figure out how to hack it. Casey Liss I take your point, Marco, but I think John's right that this is a false equivalence. It's certainly, as we've said many times in this program, I think there's something to the theory that if this is something Apple people do, then it will work. See, for the, you know, the classic example of, oh, Maps has always been great in Silicon Valley. What are you talking about? It's always been great. Whereas Maps, you know, on the East Coast was not great for a long time. And I think this is another example, or I think this very well could be another example where who at Apple doesn't have a Mac per person in their lives, much less their households? And one of you said this earlier, you know, it's not a concern that they have, and thus it's not something that they tested. I mean, this is still a piss poor experience for you, John, and I feel awful for you. John Siracusa But ultimately, I think this is, this very well could be a lack of dog food yeah i mean it is it is a less commonly used feature than the other case which is not to do this but i it's just so supported And has been for so long and as like there's there's really no excuse for this and really the other pushback i have on this whole feature is what i want to tell the people like talking about Product sense and product design. Don't design a warranty system called, you know, AppleCare One that is confined to a single Apple account. Like it doesn't make any sense except for as like they've decided they couldn't afford. It's right there in the name, John. Marco Arment It only supports Macs with one user account on them. John Siracusa They couldn't afford to do it because like if families were allowed to, they would lose too much money. But again, that's one of the reasons, even though I'm sometimes an early adopter sometimes not one of the reasons i jumped on board with this is that the come on was very compelling which Is like hey save 18 a month i'm like yes please like it was going to save me money uh and technically it still is saving me some amount of money although no longer 18 um although it might be Close because the mac studio is a pretty expensive computer putting expensive uh hardware on apple care one saves you more money than putting cheap hardware on and putting really cheap Hardware loses you money but anyway um it's just a no it's an ill-conceived thing it's a poorly conceived product this is the wrong product offering that by the way also doesn't work But you know even if it did work it would still be the wrong design choice for this they should adjust it so they still make money uh allow it to be used across families. Like that's the no-brainer thing. And it should never, like save yourself from Mark Apple, don't have any mechanism whatsoever to try to figure out if a device should be yanked off. Just don't do it. You don't have that for regular Apple care. It's tied to the serial number. As long as someone pays the bills, that serial number is covered. That's all you should care about, Apple. ([Time 0:51:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10f931ff-7160-4419-af4b-5eda23cfaa42)) - **Patent Workaround Restores Blood‑Oxygen** - Apple pursued a workaround to restore Blood Oxygen for US watches by moving processing/display to the paired iPhone due to a patent ruling. - The fix applies only to watches sold after a specific cutoff and is a constrained workaround until patents expire. Transcript: Casey Liss And there's some breaking news from, I think it was last week, that the blood oxygen sensor for Apple Watches sold in the U.S. Recently is sort of back. So reading from Apple's newsroom post, Apple will introduce a redesigned blood oxygen feature for some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and apple watch ultra 2 users through an iphone And apple watch software update coming what was later today which was august 14th this update was enabled by a recent u.s customs ruling uh so jumping to gruber's reaction what this Workaround does is process and display the blood oxygen sensor data on your watch's paired iphone rather than on the watch itself that apparently is what the new u.s customs ruling Holds does not violate massimo's patent no processing of the sensor data on the watch and no display of the results on the watch then reading from victoria's song of the verge this redesign Only covers apple watches sold after january 17 2024 once the itc import ban took full effect it doesn't impact models sold before that date or watches sold outside the us all of which Still have the original blood oxygen feature you can tell if you have a covered model by checking if the serial number ends with a lw slash a to get the redesign feature people with the Series 9 10 and ultra 2 watches will have to update their devices to watch us 11.6 and their iphones to ios 18.6 coming back to gruber after the ios 18.6 and watchOS 11.6 software updates, The iPhone and Apple Watch need to download an over-the asset to enable the redesigned blood oxygen feature. This apparently may take up to 24 hours. Until the asset download happens, the blood oxygen app on your Apple Watch will say, the blood oxygen app is no longer available. Jumpstart the download users can open the health app on their phone and the ecg app on their apple watch just opening the ecg app is enough to trigger the asset download needed by the blood John Siracusa Oxygen app what a weird way this has gone like we've been talking about this patent fight and then we say like well looks like they can't get around and apple should just settle but uh somehow Quote oh they're they've been giving this out of like well if you do this thing in this way technically it won't violate the patents and i think the patents expire in like 2028 or something So now it just seems like apple's gonna wait it out because yeah the way of doing it like okay well you can do stuff on your watch but you can't look at the results except on your phone and The phone is technically the thing doing the analyzing i mean that's the reason number a million my patents are dumb uh like it's it's this is all a an unfortunate situation but it's an Unfortunate situation that apple has been very typically uh very typical of them stubborn about by saying we're just we're just gonna not not remove the feature like what we will we You think we won't remove a feature from the apple watch for people in the u.s we'll do it but we're not paying you any money mossimos we hate you so much and so now they found a way around It possibly because of their bribery of our terrible government who knows uh either way this is i guess it's better for people who bought the watch and hadn't had the feature now they Have the feature in a not so great version and by 2028 this will all be behind us but this is a strange ending to uh a long-running saga with apple and their watches yeah apple is very cheap Marco Arment And very patient so i am not surprised to see this this kind thing. And very stubborn. Oh, God, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting fix or workaround, I guess. John Siracusa Yeah, I mean, honestly, if Apple had never gotten this fix and just had not been able to do the future, I think they still would have waited it out. Like, it seems like just at this point they were resigned. Like, we're just going to wait until 2028. And the fact that they got this out, however they got it it's like oh bonus actually we can give it back to our customers but even if they didn't they had shown that like we're just never Casey Liss Gonna pay you we're never gonna settle like we're just gonna wait yeah it's weird but i mean i guess i guess at least apple got what they wanted i feel bad for the massimo people assuming That there's more to this like like gruber's post at one point basically all but said that he thinks they're patent trolls and i i don't know one way or the other but i feel bad for them if John Siracusa They're more than patent trolls but if they are patent trolls then screw them well i mean like here's the thing like i i disagree with the entire concept of patents as we've discussed In the past um but but apple has to operate within the system which has patents uh and so that's the choice before them massimo is not entitled to the money from Apple to license this patent If Apple doesn't want to license it. They sued, they won. Massimo's reward is Apple's not allowed to do this in the US. You won. And what did Massimo do with that? Did they take advantage of it by deploying their own products that they made money from? Like, that's not Apple's problem to do, right? So like, I think it's terrible, but it is the system that we have and so this is one way that can turn out where uh there's no there's no licensing there's no like it's just one party waits Out the other and yeah sometimes people sometimes these companies just don't get along and i don't i don't think like whether or not massimo is a patent troll they certainly didn't uh Reap any massive reward from winning this case against apple i think i saw some report about how much money massimo has spent on this lawsuit and it's like hundreds of millions of dollars I do wonder if that was the correct choice for them there's another terrible thing about our system that even if you have a patent in our stupid system and it's valid and you successfully Deploy it against a big company like apple doing so will cost you hundreds of million dollars and you may get nothing out of it anyway except for the satisfaction of defeating Apple in Court. Marco Arment I will say, too, I don't think they're a patent troll at all. The idea of a patent troll is not a company that sues over patent infringement. Patent trolls do that, but not all companies that do that are patent trolls. A patent troll is a company that doesn't actually really make anything that basically buys up patents for the sole purpose of suing and usually it's like historically the way that term Has been used it's like really obvious usually software patents um because software patents are even more dysfunctional than other kinds of patents which is really impressive because I think like john i think the entire patent system is incredibly dysfunctional. And it is my opinion that no patents should exist. Yes, I'm also even including prescription drug patents. I don't think any patent should exist because I think the net harm they do to the world is much greater than the net benefit they bring to the world. And the entire patent system is based upon a fallacy that ignores things like principles of simultaneous invention. Or, you know, it's kind of based on this fantasy that we have these, like, individual inventors in a garage somewhere. Like, and that's not really the truth at all for almost any patents. But anyway, Massimo's a product company. Like, they're really big in healthcare. Like, they have a lot of presence in healthcare stuff. And so this was not a patent troll. This was a legitimate patent lawsuit. And I think if the patent system is deemed to need to exist, this was probably a valid case to bring. Apple was bullying them around and saying, no, we're just not going to pay you. And Apple is ultimately going to come out ahead because it doesn't, ([Time 0:54:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d87af47e-bfa5-4a21-988d-0104b43c8a91)) - **Cellular Mac Rumors Reflect Internal Testing** - Apple is testing MacBooks with M5 Pro and a built‑in 5G modem in code, but that may only indicate internal engineering tests rather than imminent shipping products. - Improved tethering in macOS Tahoe reduces urgency for built‑in cellular, yet built-in remains desirable. Transcript: Casey Liss So Felipe Esposito at Macworldworld writes internal apple code seen by macworld now reveals that the company has indeed been testing an unreleased macbook pro model with an m5 pro Chip and apple's first 5g modem the code which also revealed the existence of a new mac pro with m4 ultra chip which nobody cares about right john now confirms that the company is at least Experimenting with the idea of a macbook cellular connectivity. This Mac laptop found in the code is powered by the M5 Pro chip, codenamed T6050, which indicates the upcoming generation of MacBook Pro. The same code suggests that this could be the first Mac ever to include a Centauri chip, which is the codename for Apple's 5G modem, also known as the C1, which was introduced earlier This year with the iPhone 16e. Oh, my gracious. Please make this so I can give you all of my money. Marco Arment All right, so let's just set expectations accordingly. I don't know if this kind of indication is a sign that Apple is preparing this as a launchable product or that this is just like something that they had to build in software support so that They could start engineering testing to have cellular support in a macbook at all earlier rumors from i believe about six months ago had suggested that they weren't going to consider Cellular until the second generation cellular modem and the i believe the oled redesign of the macbook pro which i don't think is slated for another like year and a half or two that's The that's the m6 is the oled one correct so i don't think this necessarily contradicts that uh i so this could just be like they made this this configuration supportable by the software So that they could test it internally um so that that's kind of like i'm trying to get my hopes up too much because i've i've wanted this for so long um but it is either way it is very promising That like this seems to be something they are they are starting to work on uh like there there is a lot more smoke behind this fire than uh than i think we had originally seen so that's great I cannot wait for this and even though i just bought this m4 14x macbook pro i would gladly replace it with another one if it had cellular because it is just such a difference like in in terms Of practicality usefulness although that being said i the timing of this is fantastic ever since i updated to the tahoe betas on that laptop it's a lot better at automatically connecting To tethering than it ever has been oh interesting i like for the last like few weeks i've noticed i don't need to go to the menu and select my phone anymore and it doesn't prompt me anymore It just connects to my phone when it can't find wi-fi which is pretty awesome now my phone is still draining its battery the whole time and heating up like crazy and you know like it's i Would still rather it be built into the macbook but they made tethering it's at least it's working now like the somebody pointed out months ago when we last talked about this there was Like there was that setting somewhere network settings of like automatically connect to tethering and i remember i tried it and it just didn't work like it just kept prompting me anyway And it just never actually worked and i talked about it on the show but in tahoe it seems to be working and so maybe this is like a hdmi cec unicorn kind of thing like maybe i'm just like lucky And you know knock on all the wood i can find like hopefully this stays this way because it is a lot nicer and it again it's not the same as having a built-in but it gives you a glimpse of what It is like to have it built in because it is closer to that than than it not auto connecting uh and it's glorious so i really i hope i hope that it continues to work well on my existing laptop Until they make one with it built in but when they do make one with a built in it will be better so that's what i was about to ask if you if you could guarantee you know if i could wave a magic Casey Liss Wand and I could guarantee that tethering would connect every single time without fail, do you think you would still want a MacBook Pro with a cellular chip in it? Marco Arment It makes it a lot less urgent. So, like, another thing I've noticed, back, again, six months ago, whenever it was we talked about this last, one thing I complained about on the show was that if, say, you were on a train And it went through a tunnel, you lose your signal. If the tethered phone lost its cell connection and was offline, previously it would cancel the tethering session on the Mac, and it would never reconnect automatically. So you would go through your tunnel, phone would drop the connection, the Mac would drop the connection to the phone, and then it wouldn't tell you this, and it wouldn't reconnect. So five minutes later, you'd be back out in the world, your phone would have a connection, but your Mac would still be disconnected from the phone. That seems to have also been fixed. When the phone loses the cell connection to the network, it no longer drops the tethering session with the mac so they've done something they've changed something and they've made It a lot less crappy maybe they've been in there doing a lot of code related to cellular on mac os yeah maybe i will say tethering in the lat like tethering in the tahoe beta has worked better For me than it ever has uh so it does actually remove some of that urgent, oh, gotta have it, you know, nature of my desire for MacBooks with tethering. However, or with cellular rather. However, again, like once I can buy one with it built in, I'm going to. That's not a question. ([Time 1:04:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5830501-56f1-4ab4-8946-382b2611b53c)) - **Studio Display Could Get A19 Pro And Mini‑LED** - Rumors suggest next Studio Display may use an A19 Pro and mini‑LED, creating a smart monitor with substantial on‑board compute. - The idea of monitors containing SoCs and storage blurs lines between displays and computers. Transcript: Casey Liss Reading now from MacRumors. Yesterday, signs of the second-generation studio display with the codename J427 were spotted in Apple code. Now it has emerged that the device will contain the as-yet A19 Pro chip. Rumors suggest that the next generation studio display will come out in early 2026, when we're also expecting new Macs. Little is known about the new studio display, but it could feature mini-LED backlighting for improved brightness, contrast, and color. John Siracusa If it didn't, I would be disappointed because it would just be the same as the current one but this is a hilarious rumor because the rumor for the low-cost apple laptop that we talked about All those shows ago is that it would have an a18 pro so the monitor the monitor would have a more powerful soc than the low-cost laptop that you connect to now granted the the monitor presumably Wouldn't have like a 512 gig ssd in it and it doesn't have all the ports or whatever like i get it it's not quite the same thing but like the current studio display has what an a13 in it or something And we always thought that was weird but it's like well apple's got a bunch of those chips laying around might as well use it and then that thing was buggy and had all sorts of problems so But maybe they work that out um but that's what a world we live in where the monitor, which God, I hope that, I mean, the rumors like, oh, it might be mini LED. Like if it's not, why even bother? Like if it's like if you don't improve, like they're always so cautious, it might actually be better than the current one. Oh, you think after six years or whatever it's been, it would be better than the one it replaced? I would hope so. There's like a million things they could do to make it better. But anyway, having an A19 pro like can you offload stuff that like maybe that'll mean it'll be like a smart monitor where like the samsung ones like with no mac attached to it it can still Do stuff like like with the addition of an ssd how is that not like an imac like it's a19 pro in it you're just like can i just can i just stick some storage here with a thunderbolt i know it's Not it's quite the same because again of all the security in the boot up process like i get it but it's just what a world that we live in and obviously this would probably be way more expensive Than a low-cost laptop so it's not although the screen would be substantially larger as well but this is just one of the most absurd situations i have ever heard and it's you know because We talk so much about the apple silicon chips but as we occasionally note when we talk about these things they are pretty much never the most expensive component in any of these systems Mac pro possibly accepted depending on what apple does like the screen is the most expensive component i imagine in the the studio display the screen is often one of the most expensive Components and these socs as amazing as they are they're fairly small and they're not they're not that expensive in the grand scheme of things like retail price if they were selling Like the mac pro chip maybe it would be thousands and thousands of dollars but like to manufacture it you can kind of know like how much does this cost it's like well uh here's what tsmc's Cost for its highest uh you know for their highest process the whatever whatever process apple is using here's how much it costs per like you know area of the die and here's how much their Weird assembly thing is where they fuse the parts together and put the ram on it or whatever like you can calculate it like what the cost is plus tsmc's margin and it doesn't come out to Be more expensive than the screen in many cases um but it's so central to the device like it makes it what it is it's how fast it can do the stuff you want it to do it determines the capabilities And yeah look at this monitor uh with a more powerful soc than apple's low-cost laptop again both rumored but i'm watching for that that's bananas uh i don't know i'm curious to see what Casey Liss They do with monitor story because obviously y'all's xdrs are positively ancient i mean what was that like 2020 or something like that 2019 was 2019 so i have a 2019 mac pro that i bought John Siracusa With the xdr when it was new that's why they're the why that's why i can't put apple care one of them because they're all too old but i'll tell you what the xdr it is incredibly solid. Marco Arment I know, I know. Again, everyone's problems they have with studio displays up front. Like, I haven't heard about them recently. I assume they maybe fixed. John Siracusa They got most of the stuff worked out, but it is still weird that you have to do basically a software update on your monitor. I mean, I guess there's firmware updates for the XDR, too, but it's just like, yeah. It's a different world where you're running a full Apple OS versus whatever weird firmware that the XDR is running. Marco Arment Yeah, like, the XDR is great. I mean, it is a little long in the tooth, and, like, there are certain parts of it that I would love to see updated. Obviously, like, number one... The screen? Well, yeah, like, number one would be, like, you know, maybe get rid of those dim edges on the outside, and maybe more dimming zones, and maybe 120 hertz. Like, I think those would be, like, my top three um but those are the ones you got them yeah but like the and of course you know can it not be five thousand dollars plus a sanford and a thousand Like nope sorry yeah now you're asking too much yeah like it's it is a great monitor in all other respects and for it being six years old and still being amazing and still having almost No peer like we talked a little bit about like there's some recent ones just coming out now from other companies that that you know match the resolution and some of the specs but but not John Siracusa Apple's design sense obviously because no and certainly not matching apple's hardware but yeah it is it is unique in that way and you pay for it but but like being a thing that has a pretty Okay screen in it, even all things considered, and with an exquisitely designed, horrendously expensive Apple matching case. Marco Arment Yeah, like it is a very good product. It doesn't leave me wanting much. And in fact, selfishly, I'm kind of waiting. I'm like, well, I kind of want to get my $6,000 worth out of this. I don't want it to be replaced too soon yeah ([Time 1:11:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38359589-34d8-4fe0-9b60-bb5f6cfb3584)) - **Notch Causes Blurry Mac Game Rendering** - Many Mac games render to the full screen resolution returned by CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes and end up squashed under the notch. - This causes blurry output unless developers filter for safe‑area resolutions or Apple provides clearer API guidance. Transcript: Casey Liss And apparently, if you're gaming on your MacBook Pro, your game is probably rendering blurry. John, do you want me to read this? Do you want to talk about this? How do you want to proceed? John Siracusa You can go through it. All right. Casey Liss So from Colin Cornaby, they write, if you game on a MacBook Pro display, your game is probably rendering wrong unless you've adjusted your settings. If you're a developer building a full-screen game in AppKit or Catalyst, Apple's APIs have some issues you need to be aware of. When most games start, they ask the system what resolutions are available for the current display and pick the best one. A Mac app can get a list of suggested output resolutions through the CG Display Copy All Display Modes function. This worked well for decades on Macs with regular displays, but modern Apple laptops have a notch at the top of the display. The full screen area your game runs in is not the same resolution as the screen. Most games do not account for this problem. They output frames sized for the entire screen instead of the region they can draw to. This output is height compressed and blurry. The problem is that the resolutions returned from the CG display copy all display modes function are mixed in a single list with no built-in way to filter. Worse yet, most games default to the first resolution on the list. That happens to be the resolution of the entire display instead of the area under the notch. Out of the box, most games draw using this squished down output. I've submitted the issue described in this post as a blah, blah, blah, feedback number, which will be in the show notes. The issue has been open since September of 2023, which means it's a wee little baby feedback. It's barely alive at this point. Yeah. John Siracusa So just to clarify what they're talking about here is like the game thinks it's going to draw on the whole screen, like basically drawing behind the notch, like the whole resolution Of the screen. But then when it actually does display, it displays in the region below the notch because you don't want your notch interfering with things so they're taking the full screen's worth Of pixels and just squishing it down a tiny little bit to get under the notch which is terrible like it's it's not like non-native or whatever but you would you would hope that the game Spends the time rendering the pixels at a certain resolution that it would display it at that resolution instead like squishing it making things look i mean it'll make things look wrong And blurrier and just it's it's bad this reminds me of when i think i had a rant about this on one of my old arse technical blogs or something like mac games would um you'd launch a mac game A mac os 10 game back in the day uh and it would go full screen but it wouldn't use the mac os apis for essentially locking the screen like there's an api that said hey i'm a game i'm about to Go full screen give me exclusive control over the screen and then change to whatever res the game is going to be running at and then play the game and then when you quit unlock it and the Reason you'd want to do that the reason it was important to me you'll be shocked to learn is that if a game didn't do that, it would say, I'm going full screen and my settings are set to, you Know, 1024 by 768. So please go full screen, 1024 by 768. And every other Mac app that you had running when you launched that game would get a notification that says, fyi the screen resolution just changed to 1024 by 768 and mac os itself would Say oh all you other apps uh you just changed to 1024 or 768 and it would gather all the windows so they fit on screen in 1024 by 768 so when you quit the game and it turned back to like whatever Your you know apple cinema display resolution was all your windows have been moved and squished into a 1024. And it drove me bonkers because Apple had an API said, Hey, game developers, before you go full screen, call this API. So we won't tell the whole rest of the system that the resolution has changed because we trust that you're going to change it back before you quit. Like there'll be, there'll be none the wiser, right? You're going full screen. You've blacked out the whole screen.'ve locked the screen don't tell all the other apps that you've squished you know what i mean and they made a specific api for this and this is one of The frustrations with mac gaming is that to properly port a game to the mac or write a game on the mac you have to actually understand the platform enough to get basic stuff right, like How do I display full screen in a game on macOS? And the right way to do it was back then to lock the screen so you don't destroy the placement of everybody's windows. Even if you're not like a picky window person like me, people notice when suddenly all their windows that used to be arrayed across their screen are squishing to a little central. Like imagine if you went to 640 by 480 in the game to get higher frame rates and all your windows are now squishing to 640 by 480 this is just like that where it's like apple's doing all the Stuff about the game porting toolkit and look at all these triple a games that are coming to the mac and we're getting all these game developers and these games can't be bothered even With apple's presumably direct support to make sure they're correctly drawing their you know correctly sizing and drawing their display to account for the notch. Again, the notch is not a new thing. All these games have basically come out on the Mac in the post-notch era. And so does Apple not care enough to say, hey, we looked at your game and it looks like you're squishing your output to fit under the notch because you're picking the wrong resolution From this thing? And in this case, it seems like Apple doesn't even have an API that says, or I guess they do. You can still find essentially the safe area instead or whatever, but it's just so disappointing with all this press and all this technology about gaming on the Mac. They can't be bothered. No one in this situation can be bothered to make sure something basic about the games is correct, which is that they are drawing into the size and area that they think they should be drawing Into on Apple's most popular Macs. ([Time 1:20:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/940e84f8-8d05-4f15-b2d1-b1d3e280e206)) - **Use Thumb Hold For Reliable Dragging** - When using a click‑anywhere trackpad, consider holding the thumb down and dragging with the index finger to avoid running out of surface while dragging. - Consciously change technique if you frequently hit edge limits during drags to preserve smoother control. Transcript: Casey Liss I've realized at some point since the introduction of Click Anywhere trackpads, I've switched from old style to clicking with my index finger, but I don't know when that happened. I'm an old, and I'm the only one who regularly, or well, pretty much always uses a trackpad of the three of us. And while I will occasionally click anywhere, 99% of the time I am doing my thumb on the bottom of the trackpad click. And that will probably never stop happening because I'm an old. Marco, you occasionally use laptops, so what do you do? Marco Arment Sometimes I will do the old style like you know like what you're saying like where the button used to be yeah i will you know sometimes i'll do that um usually i'll just click the finger Casey Liss I'm using to move as around around which is almost always my index finger fair enough john uh i know you hate trackpads and avoid them at all costs do you have any thoughts on this so uh i John Siracusa Avoid them but they still exist and I have to use them, especially when I'm fixing my kids' laptops and stuff. Or, you know, my laptop is another one of my Tahoe test machines. So I have an Intel Tahoe machine, an ARM Tahoe machine. Anyway, so I do have to use trackpads. I hate trackpads. They're not my friend. But when I read this question, like, I thought about it for a little bit. I'm like, oh, we'll put that in next to whatever. But then the next time I was using the laptop, I started to pay attention to what I do because I was like, what do I do? Because, you know, I started using track pads when they had the physical button at the bottom part of the thing. Right. So I'm like, that must be what I do. Right. But no, it seems like most of the time I do the clicking anywhere with my with my pointer finger. And once I realized that that's what I was doing, I don't know when that transition happened, but like, you know, some, at some point after they introduced the, you know, the track pads Where you can click anywhere, I started doing it because it is convenient. ([Time 1:39:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a3abb864-4b82-4a0f-9e8a-f5c05294b616))