Upgrade - 366: The Node Legacy

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

This week Jason and Myke ponder what it means to be a native Mac app in the era of SwiftUI, Catalyst, and Electron. They also consider the fallout and further disclosures from Apple's child-protection announcements, celebrate Ted Lasso Christmas, and talk about how they're traveling with iPads and Macs today.

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 366. Today's show is brought to you by Instabug, Calm, and Memberful. You may have forgotten, but it's still the summer of fun and i am one of your hosts mike hurley and i am joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley did you know that on a leap year you can now listen to every single episode an episode of upgrade every day every day i do you know i thought last week i was surprised you didn't mention anything about the fact that it was 365 i was thinking thinking about child abuse media instead, so I missed it. Less fun.

So I mentioned it today with the leap year wrinkle there, 366. This will be, if there was a February 29, then you would listen to this on December 31st, and you would have completed your daily upgrade pilgrimage. And if it's not a leap year, then this would be the January 1st of the next year. Happy you've been listening to an upgrade episode a day for a year. Yeah, exactly. I have a hashtag snow talk question that comes from Ryan,

and this one feels like one of those questions that's going to start a war. Ryan asks, and this one feels like one of those questions that's going to start a war. Ryan asks, when writing in Markdown, do you use asterisks or underscores for italic and bold characters? All right.

So Markdown fans, people who don't know about Markdown, let me, let me, so Markdown, the idea is you just write it with plain text and the styles are implied and I use Markdown for all my writing. I thought about this.

This is one of those things where, like, they say, how do you tie your shoes? And you have to actually do it. Yes. In order to be like, oh, that's how I do it. Because you've internalized it. Mm-hmm. The answer is I use underscores around italics. So the rule, by the way, in Markdown is if you use one of underscores or asterisks

it's italic and if you use two of underscores or asterisks it's bold so what i do and i've done this for years my italics is one underscore around the italicized phrase and my bold is two asterisks around the bolded phrase so that's my answer is i i differentiate them not just by their number but by which one i use and to me two asterisks around something absolutely represents bold and one underscore around something absolutely represents italics. So wait, it's one underscore on each side to make something italicized. Yes. Two asterisks around each side to make it bold.

Yes. Hmm. Again, this is one of those things where I know I have a system. I don't know what it is. Uh, and also as well, cause some apps interpret it differently anyway,

which is just a whole other annoying thing. I do think that it's a strange decision. Like to me, I think it would make more sense to have like one asterisk makes it bold, one underscore makes it underline. I feel like that would be my perfect. I mean, only John Gruber knows for sure,

but I think that's the question. I think what he's doing is, when he built Markdown, is he was recognizing recognizing that people some people do asterisks and some people do underscores. And so he decided to sort of punt on that and instead just say it's one for italic and two for bold. But the way I do it is, you know, I don't I don't italicize things with asterisks, right? Like it doesn't feel right to me to do it that way. So I do it the other way. And Markdown is a thing that came out of plain text message board and use net group like posting standards, right? When all you had was plain text,

people would use markup like asterisks to emphasize things. So that's where it comes from. And in fact, I'm using it very much like I used it on message boards in plain text before. It just feels comfortable to me, but that's how I do it. So I do differentiate because I don't like the idea of having it just be the number of them. I'm also differentiating by using asterisks and underscores. This is like, apologies to people who don't care about Markdown, this is like asking somebody what their favorite font is. Well, but only if there was two choices of fonts. Right, Arial and Helvetica, right?

They're the only two. That's my understanding. And if you use all of those things at the same time, it's Comic Sans. Thank you so much for sending in this question, Ryan. If you would like to be like Ryan, just send in a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark SnowTalk

in the RelayFM members Discord. I have some Apple TV Plus content follow-up for you. Well, one thing, Merry Christmas to you, Jason. Oh, yes, Merry Christmas to all. Merry Christmas. It's Ted. Oh, yes. Merry Christmas to all. Merry Christmas. It's Ted Lasso-mas. Yeah. Interesting that they threw a Christmas episode of Ted Lasso in August.

It's weird. I don't know why they did this. My assumption is there's just something about time has been messed up and production was maybe stalled and maybe this was supposed to be at this point in the timeline. I don't know. So what I know is that they ordered 10 episodes this is the first i had heard of this they ordered 10 episodes and then apple came back to them and said how about 12 here's some more money make more ted lasso also they were under the assumption that they were going to premiere three episodes yeah like

they did last time and so they built sort of a three episode arc that they that they planned out and they were released uh in one week installment so very clearly apple they they assumed that they planned out and they were released in one week installment. So very clearly, Apple, they assumed that they would be on for seven weeks again with ten episodes. And Apple came to them and said, you're going to be on for twelve weeks. Here's some more money. Make more

episodes. We're going to extend Ted Lasso in the time that it's airing so that we can get the most out of it. And they added two standalone episodes that weren't connected to their story arc this is one and there's another one um later on i don't know about the timing i don't know if they just decided they didn't care and they would release a christmas episode i didn't know if they built the christmas episode to sort of be loosely connected so that it could get pulled out and run at Christmas time, or if they didn't care,

or if they thought that there was going to be some other schedule where they were going to be premiering in December. I honestly don't know. But instead, in August, we got the Christmas episode of Ted Lasso, which does not push forward any of the plot lines from the season. I'll say I loved this episode in the way that I have continued to love season two of Ted Lasso I think some people are falling off now which is a shame to me I personally don't really understand why you would not like this

when we'd like the first season but nevertheless people have different tastes but I will say that this episode I do have an idea okay I don't think that this episode hit as well as it would have for me if it was in December. I really enjoyed it.

Sure. I would have preferred to watch it at Christmas, though. Yeah, you can now. I mean, that's the beauty of streaming. But yeah, I actually was thinking, why not make this even more standalone and just have it be a little surprise that there's a Christmas special on Ted Lasso? British television type of thing that they're going for anyway. Because that's what it is right they're doing a christmas i've watched enough doctor who christmas specials that i

understand what a christmas special is supposed to be and so people who are like oh it's so sentimental and it's like yeah it's a christmas special that's what they are so here i think the reason that some people are reacting badly to season two of ted lasso in part is because they're trying to tell a story over the course of the season. And probably most of the people who watch Ted Lasso did not watch it week by week. They've discovered it since it was on. I think the challenge with anything like Ted Lasso is that they need to create new conflict and then kind of go through it. And the beginning of season one is sort of like set up for that.

So we'll see. I mean, season two may end up being a disappointment. I think it's unclear, but I think judging it based on the first part of it when they're trying to tell a complete season of a story is not ideal. But I get it. I think also there's a lot of scrutiny put to it.

I had that moment myself in the first episode where I was watching it and i had put so much on to ted lasso because i was so uh you know enthralled with the first season and you know i'd watched all those episodes multiple times and now there's a new episode it's like the pressure has really risen on it um i'm not going to have the same experience watching something for the first time as something that I've sort of poured over the last year. And it's a sitcom. That's the other part of it that I think people like. I've seen people are like, oh, all these, you know, jokey kind of things. Like it's a sitcom.

It's not a holy work of art. It is a sitcom and it's got heart but it's also kind of a a joke factory with lots of dumb jokes and that's part of it and i i do wonder if maybe it got canonized a little bit too much and in some people's minds and i was able to kind of like accept that and and that i was i needed to view it as what it is and not as a thing that maybe i built it up to be a little bit in the intervening time where I was going over it a second and third time and studying it and all of that.

People don't like it and think it's bad. That's fine. I think that that's a legitimate read if you want to have that. I'm not willing to put it that way. I actually think that they're going somewhere and I think that the way they handle their characters is really interesting. I could use with a few fewer ted lasso isms i think they're maybe overdoing it

on that a little bit that was never the appeal to me was corny ted lasso sayings but i guess it was for some people so i don't know i'm enjoying it i thought the christmas episode was a lot of fun i also have friends who thought it was terrible so you know i don't know i thought it was i thought it was fun i think it's going to be a christmas classic more to the point is people are going to watch that episode at christmas time we will forever yeah i loved it like uh also is there anything hannah waddington cannot do oh my word yeah clearly they've decided they're going to have her sing and once a season yeah but of course of course like that yeah incredible um i want to give another full hearty recommendation for shmigadoon it's done now there

was six episodes um so i i really recommend it it was satisfying to me the whole way through so i've seen the first four and despite me not liking the title, I think it's great. I think it's great. I think it's especially great if you know mid 20th century musicals because a lot of the references are to those things. Knowing the format and knowing some of the jokes and references that they're making can help as somebody who was brought up on especially The King and I. And I have some literacy of some of these other musicals uh it is not only is it uh very clever in that way but because it's modern humans from our time being thrown into the universe of

the 50s musical there are a lot of amazing uh commentaries about the divergence between the present day and the mores of the period and the conventions of the period. And, you know, in episode four, there's a whole musical number that's basically the sound of music, but about biology. I'll put it that way. Super good. It's amazing. Cecily strong does a great job i have to tell you episode five it's so good there is like a a scene and that for me makes the entire show worth watching so like i i cannot wait for you to see the next episode uh this rich schmigadoon for me feels like another uh example of this like new hbo that i think of yeah because this show is like why who why did they make this i root but i really love it and also it was very clearly an expensive television show to make and because of like and they are doing things in a way to me that feel like just for the art of it

that i really appreciate so like it is a musical and the majority of the singing is recorded live in the show so it's you know typically the way that especially television shows is you get a clean recording in a studio and you clean it up and then you mime it but they do that in case they need to patch anything in but the majority of the singing in the show is done by the characters in the scenes in that moment and i think that that is a really great thing and i think adds to the overall show itself but that is not it is going to be an expensive thing to do to get right so i really appreciate the show i really love it it's a little one of those like i don't know i i

feel like for me shmigadoon just hasn't hit yet and i think that if when it does it's gonna people are like really going to be talking about this i think it's fantastic yeah i thought it was really uh what i've seen of it so far it's very good it got over my preconceptions of it as a kind of hacky title but um it i think it actually that title hits the tone the tone which is it is a level of the main characters are at a level of removed from it it's almost like disbelief that this could actually be a thing because they kind of they kind of know they're in a in a tv show or really they're in a musical musical musical right it's kind of like it's very very meta and there is a moment in episode four that i really liked where music starts and one of the main characters basically is like nope nope and they leave

that's pretty good i like it i like that too i refuse your musical number i'm not gonna do it i recommend it i have some bad follow-up for you too is bad news matter the uh interoperable smart home standard has been delayed to 2022 this is i think the second delay of the project now at this point um apparently the standards group have yet to complete their sdk and certification process which i don't know it feels like all of it it feels like you haven't completed anything yet which is you know um but apparently first half of 2022 you know i was i read an article about this on the verge by khan gartenberg and i kind of agree that with something that he said, which is this is surely a difficult thing to do with all of these huge tech companies trying to come together.

Yeah, and on one level, it would be nice for them to get there. But the point is that they're going there and that this is going to happen. And they're building a thing for the future so that we have a standard for smart home stuff. And that's the most important thing. So what I'm saying is, Mike, it doesn't really matter. Oh, that took a second to. Yeah. Okay.

Thanks for that. Does it matter? Does it not matter? It will matter eventually, but not now. What's the matter, Mike? So I have a rumor roundup for you. Okay, I'm ready. My body is ready.

Let's do this. In his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reported that Apple is planning to once again have multiple events this fall. Once again, I would like to thank Mark Gurman for mailing out his newsletter at the end of the week so that we get to tackle it on Monday morning. Very good. Thank you, friend of the podcast morning. Very good. Thank you. Friend of the podcast, Mark Gurman. Thank you very much. This makes him an actually even more friend of the show.

Yes, benefactor of the podcast. September for the iPhone 13, a new iPad mini, which we haven't spoken about yet, but we'll eventually. New AirPods. This is like the standard AirPod. An Apple Watch for September. And then the MacBook Pro refresh

in a separate event in October or November. It makes sense, right? We haven't asked a question later on about this, so I won't spoil it, but it makes sense that they would probably have a very similar hey, we're going to do these things online potentially. We will just roll them all out one time just like they did last year and make our

lives exciting and incredibly busy for a multiple month period and well this is this is very much the model they've been using for a while now right which is that they they if they've got max to introduce they don't introduce them in September. They introduce them in October or November. And if they had an iPad Pro, which they don't because they just released one, they would do that at that same time. That doesn't need to be in the iPhone event. But they very much want to have the Apple Watch and the iPhone in that September event. That's their big launch event for those products. And then they will occasionally sweep something new in there.

Having the iPad Mini in there having the ipad mini in there i think is interesting um it seems unnecessary they could probably do it later but it is more of a you know it's not really a pro product so having it be then and having new airpods then sure that sounds fine but this is this is how they've been handling it for a while pre-pandemic is is like this so it sounds it's almost refreshingly back to business as usual for apple product rollouts at least time wise right that it's going to be yeah september which yeah and then yes for those of us who cover this and talk about it it's rolling thunder from the beginning of september through the holiday basically uh and digitimes similarly reported that the macbook pro the new ones the 14 and 16 inch macbook pros they've entered mass production now um which would again seem to indicate that we're looking at kind of like october november for shipping right and while we're talking about laptops bing qi kuo reported reported that the next MacBook Air is still set for mid

2022 it will feature a similar industrial design to the upcoming MacBook Pro and will be available in a range of colors I think what that tells me about the laptops though is like that the MacBook Pro is going to look like the iMac and then the MacBook Air

is going to look like the MacBook Pro which also looks like the iMac you know like and it's like physical shapes and lines and all that kind of stuff right which all looks like the iPad Pro so it's all just going to look very similar and then there'll be some different colors and stuff I guess but that's cool because I love the way this iMac looks yeah yeah I'm looking forward to it. That sounds, it's all happening later than we thought, and that may just be because of production issues. Legacy nodes, baby. Yep, sure, right?

They're just out there doing their noting. They're just noting. They're not noting as much as they used to. The legacy of the nodes is that we have to wait for some new products, and that's part of their legacy from now on. That sounds like the next Lord of the Rings or something like Harry Potter and the legacy of now on. The next Lord of the Rings or something like Harry Potter

and the legacy of the nodes. And the legacy of the nodes. Sure. Sure. The node. No, it's like the Bourne identity. It's the node legacy.

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quality apps. Go to try.instabug.com slash upgradefm. That's T-R-Y try.instabug.com slash upgradefm. Our thanks to Instabug for their support of this show and relay fm more on apple and c sam this was never going to be a one-week conversation uh because there was just too much in the air after last week's episode and there's still a lot going on about this uh but we're going to focus on just a couple of things today because apple continue releases clarifying documents and statements yeah uh and you know there's there's all kinds of reports about this right obviously as you would expect there are people inside of apple that are upset about it um there are lines being drawn from things like

people leaving apple to this whether it's true or not there's a lot going on but there's two things with one uh specifically that i figured figured probably required the most analysis today. The first being Joanna Stern's interview of Craig Federighi. There's been a few interviews. This was the highest profile one. And for me, the best. Yeah. You know what?

Very good point. Yeah. I was talking to Dan Morin about this on the Six Colors podcast. And he said said you know you know who will tim cook have to talk to next week maybe i could imagine one of those morning show like abc news or cnbc or whatever yeah yeah yeah but craig i understand why they ruled out craig here because what they really wanted to do is get into the technical detail of how it works with joanna and craig's their point person for that he's their technical explanation guy he's What they really wanted to do is get into the technical detail of how it works with Joanna.

And Craig's their point person for that. He's their technical explanation guy. He's really likable. He is. Right. So if you, I personally, I want to see Craig talk about this to Tim, right? For those reasons. One, I like the guy. And two, he knows.

And also, as Craig does, gives a little bit more information than Apple have given otherwise. Like, for example, Craig stated that the threshold for alerting Apple, like the threshold of images or hashes found, is around 30 currently, which is not a thing that has been published or written anywhere. But Craig just said it during the interview. I've got some quotes that i will read and we can talk about them and it starts off with uh we wish this had come out a little bit more clearly it was widely misunderstood introducing these two features at the same time was a recipe for confusion i'm happy they said it because we all knew it uh so i'm happy he said it because really ultimately this whole thing was a was a pr failure

that's what this ultimately was because apple were trying to show something good that they were doing but instead undermined the entire thing so i'm happy they admit yeah the conflation of those two things was a huge part in the misconception. So I'm glad they admitted it. And again, Craig drops that number of how many things cross the threshold. And then they later put out a white paper that goes into detail about it, which is what I was saying earlier, that they keep explaining themselves. As we said last week, when you have to answer the frequently asked questions. Yeah, when they're actually frequently asked. Something went wrong and they continually are frequently answering them.

And so there's an admission here that they know that they kind of blew the roll out here. And that's separate from what the details are of the system. It could be a good system or a bad system, but I think we could probably agree that the level of confusion that this generated and bad PR this generated suggests that they made a mistake in how they rolled this stuff out. And I think clearly the iMessage stuff should have not been rolled out

at the same time as the CSAM detection. And then they threw in the Siri stuff too. Also, Siri, you can talk to Siri about this stuff now. Like stuff now like really why are you really we'd all forgotten about that and again like for right now we are mostly just talking about the c-sam stuff because the iMessage detection thing whilst not perfect i think is still just like less open to this kind of wide criticism about right fundamentals of everybody's privacy. And I stated last week, like children have privacy, et cetera, et cetera. But we're not talking about that today

because this is the thing which is still causing the most issue. So one of the things that Craig really doubles down on and keeps coming back to is this idea that Apple was saying that they are trying to find photos in iCloud without looking in iCloud. This only makes it worse for me.

This makes it worse for me. And I know that people... We were talking about it and saying the iPhone is... They're using the iPhone to look, but they're saying, oh, it's only on upload as if, again, you make that choice somehow, which you don't. They're saying, we look on your phone for something in the cloud,

but it's only for the cloud and only at upload point. But it's still happening on the phone. I don't think this line, and I know why they're hammering on this line now, I don't think it helps really make things any clearer. So I found this interview and this part of this interview incredibly clarifying for me, not maybe the way that they wanted, but in understanding Apple's approach, which is I feel like Apple. OK, a few things. One is Apple takes pride in being more concerned about privacy than most of Silicon Valley. Yes.

And most companies, period. And I think Apple has also got a lot of pride in their tech prowess. prowess. So it seems to me that at some point, and there are a lot of theories still flying out there that they're going to encrypt iCloud photos at some point, and they have to do this as a prelude to that. I'm not sure that that's actually true. There's no evidence to suggest that they're actually going to do that, but people are trying to understand why they did this this way. And that's an answer that answers that question. Well, if I can just say something on that exact point, and then we can not have to talk about it again.

If that was the case, then they should be talking about that right now. Right. But they're not. So here, I would like to argue an alternative explanation. They may yet encrypt iCloud photos. I don't know. But I'm going to give you an alternative explanation,

yet encrypt iCloud photos. I don't know, but I'm going to give you an alternative explanation, which is Apple looked at how all of their colleagues, competitors, whatever you want to call it in Silicon Valley, who have cloud storage handle CSAM media, which is that they just build an algorithm that scans it all in the cloud. And then if they find ones, they forward those to NCMEC or whatever at some point and the authorities. And that's what happens. Right. And I think Apple said, we can do better than this. We're Apple.

We're the privacy company. to build a more pure, more privacy-protecting algorithm and system and whole cryptographic approach that will, when we put it out, will show that we're not like the other guys and we care more. And so they built this. And I got to say, I think that's true regardless of whether it's the thing that pushed it over the edge or not. I think that's clearly what they did. You can see it in the way Craig Federighi describes this is they decided to solve the problem of scanning your photos in the cloud on their servers by building this thing. And I think it's worth at least pausing for a moment and saying, is that a problem? I get that Apple thinks it's a problem or at least a place where Apple can kind of put it over on the other competitors by doing them one better and showing off how they're doing it better.

Apple's argument is once you're scanning photos in the cloud, you can just scan for anything. And we didn't want to build that tool that way. And I can appreciate that. That does have some legitimate privacy benefits. But I do wonder if it really was more motivated by the fact that, you know, well, we're Apple. We can build something better than this. And I think, again, all that is true, but I think it leads them to a point where they've caused their own problem here. And the reason that I say that is one of the things that Craig says in this interview that I think is very instructive about how Apple feels about this feature and felt about it when they built it.

Is he has to explain to Joanna, who's a very smart person, but still you get a moment, you get the sense from the whole interview where you can see that she basically has to pause Craig and then explain what he just said to the audience because he kind of zips through it um what they're doing is in their mind okay because it's a part of the software flow that is the pipeline i believe he calls it for iCloud uploads so for from Apple's perspective there isn't a spy on your phone that's looking at all your photos. There's a scanner in your iCloud upload pipeline. So from Apple's perspective, it's still fundamentally an iCloud feature because it only is touching images that are headed for iCloud. And if you get to that level of detail, it actually makes a lot of sense and you understand why they feel that way. I think the problem

and where this is sort of like their hubris at building this brilliant privacy protecting feature is that the way it gets boiled down in public perception is Apple, the iPhone is scanning all your photos, which is not what's happening, but it is an on-device thing. And once you cross the on-device threshold, I think it makes everybody really nervous. But I get it from his perspective, which is literally the argument is, but it's in the pipeline. It's in the pipeline. It's not on your phone. And I think if you extend that out, if somebody came to us and wanted to do an all images on your phone scanning thing, we can't do that because we didn't build that feature. We built this feature that's sequestered in the cloud upload pipeline. Again, like technically valid, but I also think maybe they missed or ignored the how that would get simplified into something that would upset people it's this is too

much of a like nerd on a forum argument for me right it is scanning all my photos it's just doing them at a different point because i use icloud photo like i use icloud photos like i'm supposed to because if i want to back up my photos automatically it's the only way i can do that with my iphone because apple does not provide a tool to allow anybody else to do it in the background whenever photos are just taken i have to open applications on a system to have them upload, right? So I'm supposed to do that. It's like this is too much of a technicality for me. It's like we're not scanning all your photos. We're just scanning all your photos that upload to iCloud, which I also cannot choose, right? So if I take a photo and have iCloud photos enabled, it does scan all my photos it's just

scanning them when they upload which is also on a on a uh timeline that apple defines i don't ever say scan now all i can do is stop it from scanning right or i can like what put it my phone in low power mode which is like i don't like it it frustrates me uh i don't like it. It frustrates me. I don't like these very particular arguments. I don't like what I consider to be a straw man argument of like, we'll just turn off iCloud photo backup. So that's not a solution to this problem, if people consider it a problem. Because like, what? Now what?

I can't back up my photos anymore. And also, it's a thing I pay for. I can't back up my photos anymore. And also, it's a thing I pay for. So what you're saying is, practically, essentially, it's an all-photos scanner because it's wedged in the place where you back up your photos. Yeah, which is automatic and outside of my control. Right? So, like, I also just don't like the, you know, I think a lot of people that are defending Apple's stance on this are saying like oh we just turn off icloud like but as i said last week i actually don't even like

that as a thing because it's allowing people that want to hide this info this stuff from apple and from authorities giving them an easy way to do that right and i'm sure you'd still catch you still can and i've seen lots of reports i've seen the reports that you know you will catch people anyway right but you can do it uh it actually also makes it feel for me that apple cares more about the them having to store the images and actually find them right there's that argument too which i don't like which is they only don't want them on iCloud. Right. So. Yeah. But so if you turn off iCloud, they're not even going to look anymore. It's like, well, what is this for then? Because it just because you don't want to store the images as opposed to like actually trying to like save the children.

Well, again, I think that their idea here is that they want they do bear responsibility for what gets uploaded onto their cloud. And also they want to balance. And this has been the story we talked about last week, too. They want to balance the we're going to look at everything on our customers' phones with we're going to ignore everything on our customers' phones and our cloud service and allow this sort of stuff to happen. And they're trying to strike a balance here, which honestly, I think is part of the problem with how it's perceived is they're trying to hit a very particular balance. And that gives you a lot of people an opportunity to attack them from either side about this. Yeah. And that gives you people can probably say i'm a little bit all over the place i'm very conflicted about this right i

think it's both good and bad and i hold those uh two things equally for me like i just have lots of issues with the honestly more the way it is being described than what they are doing right because like this other other, this thing that they're now kind of pivoting to, right? Which we've been talking about of like where the scanning is occurring. It's still on my phone. Like it's not being scanned in the air, right? Like it's not like it's scanned in the, like on the way to the cloud. It's still occurring on my device. And so I still have to have an intrinsic belief that the system is okay. I still have to believe that the hashing is correct. And we're going to get to that in a minute,

because I was reading another document that they published, and it still doesn't make any sense to me. So Craig says, well, Joanna says something which I like, like, what's on my device is mine, it's private. And you've taught us to believe that. You've had ads that believe that. Right. Craig says that it's a misunderstanding as it's only being applied to, as you said, the pipeline. But I want it together because I like that she said it because it was a good challenge. And I still don't think that it's being accurately met by Apple no matter where they say it's happening.

They have those billboards that they had at, like, the, was it at the CES? Whatever happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone, like, you know, Vegas. have those billboards and that they had it like the was it at the at ces whatever whatever happens on your iphone stays on your iphone like you know vegas and um you know their argument would be that's still true because what's happening here is that literally these images are being scanned on their way out the door and And so I guess they would argue that it's not happening on your iPhone anymore once they're in the pipeline. Like what happens on the airplane

that's flying from Vegas to somewhere else doesn't stay in Vegas. But it is happening on device though, isn't it? It is happening on device. Yes, this is my point about how Apple, I see, and we can have a whole conversation that's happening in the Discord as we record, about whether saying it, misunderstanding what Apple is doing is Apple's problem or not, or fault or not. And I would say that it is their problem. their problem. And the way that they built this feature, I think they built it.

Again, some of these Apple statements about this seem kind of self-congratulatory, like look at this brilliant thing we devised here, without thinking about the fact that other people might view the border between their phone and the outside world differently. Clearly, Craig Federighi believes that once it's in the upload pipeline, it's not really on your device anymore. It's the stuff that's exiting your device. And you have said right now, but it's still on your device. It's still literally on your device. And I think that, again, we can debate whether this is the right way to build this.

We can debate all of that. But I think it's instructive to see that this is how Apple has defined this and how Apple built this feature. for CSAM on iCloud, just like every other online provider does, and didn't say anything about it, or made it a footnote somewhere, that there would not be a hubbub like this about it, because it would be just like everybody else. And Apple decided to build a better mousetrap, and decided to build it in a privacy-en privacy enhancing way. I completely agree with that. They absolutely made a huge effort to have this thing do right by its customers. And yet you can see a little bit of a disconnect between Apple saying,

well, it's in the pipeline. Don't worry about it. And other people saying, yeah, but it's still on my device. Like you guys don't think of this as belonging to me because it's headed out the door into iCloud. But you know, so they may have they may have miscalibrated in their enthusiasm for this technology, I guess is what I'm saying. And now they're feeling the blowback for that. times and i'll continue to say it if you talk so strongly about things like privacy you create a huge magnifying glass for yourself you open yourself up to scrutiny if you want to

try and sell your products based on this then whenever you do anything this is what you get like so you get to sell products like that but you will also get more heavily scrutinized. That's just the way it goes. I'm sorry but this is like you make this for yourself. So one of the things that Craig Federighi says is that there will be multiple levels of auditability

which is not a thing we've heard about before. Then Apple published another document. They continue to publish these documents. This one is called Security Threat Model Review of Apple's Child Safety Features. So a couple of things from this. One is that Apple will publish a root hash

of the encrypted database in a knowledge base article, which can be matched against what's on your device. So you will be able to, on your device, bring up the hashes that are stored on devices doing the matching and compare it to, or somebody can, you wouldn't, but somebody can, compare it to what Apple says they are searching for. So you can research, anybody can look at these two. I'm just going to say, I bet this wasn't in the original plan, right?

They would have said this, this has got to have been a change, right? Or it would have appeared later or, you know, whatever. But yeah, you're right. I think this seems like a thing that they have done. I think so. I mean, I like the idea. Again, what you're trying to do is provide, it's almost like a canary in a coal mine, right?

It's the public post of what the hashes are so if they were forced to change the hash uh somewhere for some reason and not say anything about it you would be able to compare and somebody would be able to write it up and say oh they changed the hash but um so yes sure i don't think part of the original plan that's all right and this is a thing that's going to be tricky look we make it follow up for this and i'll welcome it i read this document this part of the document five times email mike right i read it five times today to try and to get my head around this so they stated apple stated that they will work with two organizations in separate sovereign jurisdictions to match the

hashes together so they get two databases and they match them together if an image does not appear in both hash lists, they won't scan for it, right? So that's another way of what they're saying here is if some government tries to sneak something in, if it doesn't appear somewhere else, they're not going to search for it. I don't want to get into the wheeze on that, but earlier they say in it, basically in the paragraph before, they say in this report that NCMEC is the only US source so the system is supposed to work with two but in the US they're only going to use one

so if they're talking about adding future databases right let's imagine here that what they're saying is this is for future databases that if they get something say from the United Kingdom it has to somehow I don't know how match knickknacks right i think i think this is a bigger deal or not as big a deal as you're

thinking knickknack my understanding is like there is a whole international community of groups that are fighting this stuff and that i think apple has decided and experts can write in and tell us if they want to but like i think apple has has decided that this is a canonical list and that this organization has generated a canonical list. It's been part of the larger international discussion about CSAM and that they're going to use this as the canonical list and then they can start doing comparisons. And basically what they're saying is if the global international anti-CSAM community doesn't agree that an image is CSAM content, then it doesn't go in the hash. That's sort of what they're saying, is that this is their database and we think it's pretty canonical

and that if some other organization wants you to use their list, what they're really going to take is the ones that are agreed to. So I think that's what they're getting at here in a simplified way is essentially if one country adds a bunch of things surreptitiously and the other organizations don't add those, they're not going to count them. Because that means there isn't a consensus that those images need to be flagged. I think that's what they're going for. Yeah. I understand that. It still just is this thing of like, I'm

not American, right? And there's just like American companies blindly trusting American organizations. Every other country has to match the American companies blindly trusting American organizations. Every other country has to match the American organization. I get it. I mean, Apple is an American company, so I get that this is where they would start. But like I said, my impression is that this is an international process and that the database is worked on with different groups around the world and if that's not true and there's a great disagreement about what c-sam content is between the u.s and

the uk i guess somebody let us know but i don't think that's the case i think that i think that all sorts of global governments are united in trying to identify this material and stop it and share information and i think what apple's really trying to do here is not some sort of US centric thing where, where it could be subverted by NCMEC. In fact, I guess you could argue that if NCMEC were to add images that weren't in another nation's database at that point,

they'd be like, Hmm, maybe not. But I don't think that practically that's the case. So anyway, that's it. Yeah. Well,

but like right now they're only using NCMEC. There's no secondary source. But if they bring other countries in, then they will do that, which I guess is like, I suppose is maybe like a thinly veiled argument to the China issue that was being raised, right? I guess that's kind of what they're saying here more of like if we have a country that you know people don't trust it will be run against this one which we have decided to trust and and and nick mech actually is also connected to the international center for

missing and exploited children they are sister organizations so you know what you're basically saying is you may view nick mech as an American enterprise, but it sounds to me like the NCMEC database is an internationally agreed upon database. It was just really confusing to me when I was reading it. Some country decides we're going to put all of these images that are, let's say, LGBTQ plus imagery. And they consider that illegal media that the you compare that to the international database and say, nope. Yeah. And it doesn't go in. And that's what they're trying to protect is some other country classifying things that aren't c-sam media mc answer media c-sam as c-sam for their own political purposes yes indeed that's right so so usa america so anyway that i think that's what's going on here which is they're reassuring

is what they're doing they're saying no no and this is visible you'll be able to see it uh it's in the OS image, which is the other thing about this. It's like, it's not a file that can get like surreptitiously updated later. It's literally part of the OS image. So, which they ship everywhere in the world. So again, they're frequently answering

a lot of frequently asked questions here, but you can see, this is what I said last week. You can see that they took a lot of care to build this feature the way it is, which is why it's kind of a shame that they rolled it out in such a way that they, I mean, it was going to be controversial regardless,

but they definitely brought more controversial takes on themselves by the way they did it. I hope this is the last time we need to talk about this. I hope so. It probably won't be, but I hope so. At least I hope that last time we need to talk about this. I hope so. It probably won't be, but I hope so. At least I hope that we don't have to talk about it again next week. Okay.

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That's memberful.com slash upgrade. Go there right now, check it out. It could be the start of something exciting. Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. Agile Bits have produced a beta program for their upcoming version 8 of 1Password, and they have chosen to build it using Electron.

In case you are unaware, Electron is an open-source framework that allows for developers to more easily create apps for multiple platforms because it utilizes web technologies. This means that developers need to do less, in theory, to make their apps compatible with various operating systems, right? Because you can build it using web technologies. All platforms understand web technologies. And you need to do less to kind of make it settle into the operating system itself

rather than building a dedicated Windows app, a dedicated Mac app, a dedicated Linux app, and so on. However, Electron apps are heavily criticized for RAM and storage usage issues. They use too much of both. And because they're web-based, not feeling as native or responsive as other apps that run on the platforms that are built with the standard tools. When AgileBits announced this last week, they were pretty quickly faced with a wave of criticism from Mac customers, especially who have been previously big supporters

of what has been for some time a very well-made and good-feeling Mac app. A bit more context for you. Over the last few years, AgileBits has started to change as a company. So they moved from a kind of, hey, buy our software to subscribe to a service that we provide model,

and they offer multiple subscription options for individuals and businesses and teams, etc. And it seems like, I don't know if this has been completely confirmed yet, but it seems like that the new version of 1Password will only work with one of their subscriptions. Yes, that's true. That's definitely true. Version 8 drops local vaults. So if you don't pay, you can't upgrade. Right. The writing on the wall was sort of the last version where they introduced their service.

And although local vaults remained a feature, it was very clearly something that was going to go away. So you need to subscribe and you need to sync your stuff with their online service that they've built for syncing. Agile bits have also been more focused on cross-platform over the last few years, which makes sense. If you're a software company and you're just working on the Mac and iOS, what is all of Android and Windows for you as well

if you want to get out there or build a web version too. And the last thing is they've also taken large amounts of venture capital funding to expand their business and focus on enterprise as a future for the company. So you wrote a great article, which was a very interesting article in its framing because it was different to what a lot of people were talking about because you actually also as well focused on kind of Apple's role in all of this in an interesting way. So I want to kind of talk about this a little bit with you. What does it mean for 1Password to go to Electron, do you think? What does that mean? What does it say? Well, there's a lot going on here.

We should also mention the Windows version is going to be Electron. And in their blog post about their engineering decisions, they gave it very little time. They were like, well, yeah, we're going to use Electron for Windows. And the idea here is, you know, they're going to use, that's a big computing platform. And they're like, it's fine. For me, the big issue is that this is a company that was sort of a Mac-focused company and that has expanded. And they were one of the good ones in the sense of supporting the Mac and building a Mac-native app. And my piece is very much about their development priorities. And a lot of people wanted

me to be like rageful at, at, uh, agile bits for doing this and for daring to do a subscription model and all of those things. And that's not what I wrote. What I wrote is that this is really instructive about where we are right now in computing platforms that a company that was previously very pro-Mac and Mac focused has essentially decided to dump the same cross-platform app that they built for Windows and Linux on the Mac rather than building something using the tools that Apple provides, whether it's the old tool of AppKit, which is what we think of as sort of standard Mac app of the past anyway. Or something like UIKit and Catalyst, which would be sort of taking their iOS app and moving it to the Mac. Or something very forward-looking where Apple wants to go, which would be SwiftUI, where you could take it across all of Apple's platforms.

So it's sad, first off, and that was sort of a point I wanted to make. It's sad to see a major developer who we think of as a Mac-friendly developer basically throw their Mac app in the trash and replace it with Electron, which is essentially the same thing on Windows and Linux. I think it says something about the state of desktop versus

mobile, that they are building native interfaces for iOS and Android, and the desktop OSs are just getting Electron. I think that shows you what the priority is. Also, though, Apple has a role to play here. AgileBits has a role to play here. AgileBits made a very interesting engineering decision. They decided to write a brand new version of 1Password 8 for Apple platforms. code base for uh for one password using the rust language and all of their uh all of their versions are based on that with a ui layer on top of it and the idea there is they're writing for a lot of platforms and they don't you know they don't have the money maybe they do they have chosen not to have money now i think they do right but they've chosen not to spend the money to engineer a bunch of different platforms with different code bases because it causes inconsistencies and because it costs a lot of money. You know, they're a company, I'm sure, that's very focused, because it's their business, on security.

And you take that level of funding, too, and I think there's an implication there that you want to grow. Oh, you have to grow. You can grow and build features a lot faster when you're not maintaining five different apps. Okay. So I get it. I get it. What happened is, and I think, I think I'm not a developer here, but just looking at this as an observer of this stuff, I think they made a huge mistake, which was they decided to build their next generation iOS platform app on SwiftUI. I can't believe they made that decision. Well, this is the thing. In hindsight, they should have stuck with UIKit,

built a Catalyst version for the Mac, and waited SwiftUI out a little bit. A couple more years, I think. But instead they decided they were going to just go into it. There are issues with going into it with SwiftUI on the Mac anyway, because it's not supported on older versions of macOS. So they were going to have to do the Electron app or keep their Mac app alive, which they never even considered, which is one of the things that I said was sad, is they never considered it. If you read the blog post, it's implicit in the blog post that they're not going to update their Mac app as it was. The old one, version 7 prior. The native Mac app. And when I mentioned this on Twitter, one of their engineers, one of their lead engineers said, yes, we're not going to maintain

the extra Mac-only code base, code base right which again i understand why they make that decision but let's be clear it was never even considered just like uh electron was always going to be the answer for windows it was never really considered well i imagine one of the reasons it was never considered and they've moved to electron is they didn't want to keep doing it right like it wasn't it was not a consideration because it started from a point of like, we don't want to keep dragging the little thing. Yes, that's it. Yes, exactly.

So what they wanted to do was, and I think this is a case where they really did value Apple platforms and they wanted to do the right thing. They wanted to build a new version using Apple's cross-platform interface language, interface system, so that they could deploy one interface with some modifications across all of Apple's cross-platform interface language, interface system, so that they could deploy one interface with some modifications across all of Apple's platforms, so that they would have Electron for Windows and Linux, and they would do an Android thing for Android, and then they would use SwiftUI, and it would solve everything. And what they said was, we did this for a while, and we realized we were going to have

to repeat a lot of work to get it to work on the Mac, because it's not really all there on the Mac, plus it's not backward compatible, so we'd have to do Electron on the Mac anyway. And we decided we were just going to do Electron on the Mac and have that be the Mac product. Now, a couple of things here. One is, if we take them at their word, they made a mistake because they thought that SwiftUI was further along on the Mac than it was. And I think that that does say something, what they went through, because they did press ahead with SwiftUI was further along on the Mac than it was. And I think that that does say something, what they went through, because they did press ahead with SwiftUI for a while on the Mac too, along with iOS.

And they said, they imply anyway, that it's just not far enough and that maybe Apple has oversold it a little bit and it's more of a future technology. I've heard from several developers who said that this is kind of unbelievable that they would make a decision like this because Apple stuff is never as good as Apple claims it is. And that SwiftUI is just

not there yet for a lot of things. And that to take your whole app and put it in SwiftUI right now and expect it to work and expect it to work on the Mac is not really realistic. So what they didn't do, again, is just decide to keep their iOS app and update that and use Catalyst on the Mac. And I think maybe that was a, you know, I would be interested to hear why they chose that decision because it seems like they really were shooting for the future and it wasn't a realistic decision for the present

can i give a a conspiracy like i just completely found it on nothing but i i stab in the dark i take on this uh there were people within the development organization that love their apple products because that's kind of the company that they came from. They were told, you cannot have a standalone Mac app anymore. We will not support it. It's financially not going to work for us. So they jumped to SwiftUI because then in theory, they could develop for the iOS platform, and hopefully they'll be able to make a good Mac app out of it.

Except they could have used Catalyst. Catalyst, although it has i agree with you would allow them to build on top of their their ipad and iphone app with a mac version and they chose not to do that and instead kind of bought into that may have just been a wrong choice they might well that's the thing is i think they made they made a mistake there yeah um they do say though and again i want to just call this out because we should be clear. They're soft peddling it because it's PR. But let's be clear here.

What they discovered was that it would take more work to make the Mac version work. So they gave up. And again, like, fair enough. They weren't allowed to. The idea here is that you've got to reduce the number of platforms you're supporting. That was the idea. And they were going to have to do Electron on Mac. And so I can hear the conversation, which is, why are we spending, like, we are not

going to spend these extra cycles making the SwiftUI version work on the Mac when we're already having to deploy an Electron version for old versions of macOS. So just do the Electron version and not worry about it. I suspect keeping in mind that maybe down the road when SwiftUI is a little bit better, that they might bring the Mac version for SwiftUI back down the road, but not yet. So these are decisions that they made. The net result is they're taking native Mac app, tossing it in the trash, replacing it with Electron. A lot of people are up in arms because Electron uses lots of RAM and stuff like that. It's not very efficient. There are a lot of Electron apps out there now. Slack, Discord, Skype, there are lots of them.

I think, though, that the really important thing about this is it is what apple's developer tool strategy is and i actually think despite what happened here that this paints a really clear picture of what apple's trying to do with the mac especially right so apple has leverage because apple has mobile apple has the iphone people want to develop apps for the iPhone. And they do develop apps for the iPhone. Then Apple's got the Mac. Desktop is not a priority. Look at this.

This is a company that has enterprise aspirations and they're fine sticking their Windows version in an electron wrapper. Like they're fine with it. It doesn't matter. It's good enough. It works. It's consistent. It's fine.

And Apple wants the Mac to be able to take the advantage of the fact that there is all this great iPhone and iPad software. And that's why they built Catalyst. And that's why the ultimate goal for Apple is SwiftUI. Because in a world where a lot of companies are not going to build custom versions of apps for Windows and Mac and Android and iOS and the web. They're going to make tough decisions. The Mac is never going to come out on top, right? Because first off, it's a desktop and not mobile. And secondly, it's the Mac and not Windows. So it's never going to win there. So Apple's playing a different game. The game Apple is playing is, oh, what you do is you go from iPad and iPhone to Mac. You go from your iOS app to the Mac. And we built Catalyst to have you do that. And we're building

Swift UI so that you can do that. And that's Apple's whole game here, which when you look at what 1Password went through, it actually makes a lot of sense, right? This is Apple's gambit to get Mac software to be relevant is essentially it's part of the iPhone, iPad universe. So what they want is people to develop for, you know, we can only develop two apps. What are we going to do? It's going to be Android and Apple platforms and the web, let's say. Throw that in as a third platform. That's what they want, is they want people to start developing for Apple platforms, which means, well, as long as you're doing your iPhone app, you should get that on the Mac too. And we've got the tools that let you do it. And so you're just building another instance. It's a little bit extra work, but it's not a lot. And you pick up what we're now defining as a native Mac

app, which by the way, what's a native Mac app? Is it AppKit? Is it Catalyst? Is it UIKit? I think Apple's saying yes and yes and yeah, pretty soon. But that's what Apple's trying to do is Apple wants to make it so a developer like AgileBits looks at Apple's platforms and doesn't throw something in an electron wrapper on the Mac, but instead, because they had to build that iPhone app, also deploys that on the iPad and the Mac. And the problem right now is that Agile bits jumped a little bit too soon to the next generation tools when they probably, if they had, I mean, in the end, it may work out for them because in the end, a year or two down the road, they may actually have a native, you know, SwiftUI Mac app and iPhone and iPad app,

and they're all working together and it's great. But it's a little too early for that. And if they wanted to be like solid out the door this fall, they probably would have been better off updating their iOS app and choosing Catalyst. Now, it may also be that there's some legacy stuff in the code of the iOS app that they look at and they say, why are we gonna put money

into updating this thing when we should be looking at it? We're gonna need to rebuild it. in the code of the iOS app that they look at and they say, why are we going to put money into updating this thing when we should be looking at it? We're going to need to rebuild it. And then Apple is going to be going to Swift UI. So maybe we just need to go there now. Like that may be going on in the background too. Anyway, it's a difficult situation for everybody. And I think that there's blame to go around, but it's also just about reality, which is if you're a developer who is not super focused on the Mac as a platform and you need to make some decisions, you're going to say, well, I can build one thing and deploy it everywhere. And so they do. And you get a cross-platform app using Electron. And is it an efficient app? No. Does it have a lot of overhead?

Yes. Did you have to spend extra money to make it work on other platforms? No. And you know what? It's always been the case that the Mac has been a platform that is, a lot of the apps on it are not the best effort of the developers because it's an afterthought. developers because it's an afterthought. However, the challenge is, like, you don't have much of a platform if everything is an afterthought. And when you have a developer who used to treat the Mac as a priority and now has treated it as an afterthought, and it's part of a trend,

as a Mac user, it troubles me. As an Apple observer, I think it's part of a trend, as a Mac user, it troubles me. As an Apple observer, I think it's interesting because it's a case where SwiftUI is supposed to be Apple's answer here. And at least in this case, for whatever one password's reasons are, it failed because they tried to use it as their Apple platform's approach.

And in the end, they pulled the plug on the mac version and that's not great what is a mac app you know what is a good mac app today we said this behind door number one behind door number two behind door number three but what what if i reveal that a mac app i mean and we can throw in the other, what's not behind a door, like Electron. But there's also UIKit and AppKit and SwiftUI, right? So like, and I think the answer is, because a lot of people on Twitter, I've seen people saying like, there's no such thing as a native Mac app anymore. It's all a mess. And it's like, I would say what is a native Mac app is in transition.

And Apple is trying to take it from point A to point B or C, maybe. But they're not there and we're not there. So we're in this weird transition. I think ultimately Apple thinks a native Mac app is not a thing. And it's mostly a native Apple platforms app written with Swift UI. Swift stuff. Yeah. That's their plan.

Yeah. We're just still, I think, a couple of years away from it. I mean, one password have proven it. Right, and there'll always be stuff that was written for AppKit that's still going to run for years and will be fine, right? These apps that are only written on the Mac, like BBEdit, right? They're only written on the Mac. They're only going to be on the Mac. It's fine. But, like, what

Apple wants to do is lead everybody down the path, and Catalyst is actually great for today. And I think Catalyst gets a lot of, it's not perfect, but like if you were to do it today, if you wanted to make a Mac app today and you had an iOS app, you should use Catalyst, right? You shouldn't throw it away and use SwiftUI.

You should use Catalyst. But SwiftUI is where it's going. And they said, AgileBits said they're trying to skate where the puck is going to be. And I get it. Like that's what Apple wants, everybody. That's Apple's dream is that instead of ignoring the Mac or only shipping like an Electron app or some other kind of lowest common denominator app,

what you're going to do is you're going to spiff up your SwiftUI app that you're also writing for iPhone and you'll put it on the iPad and the Mac too. That's the whole plan. Me personally, I haven't run, and nor will I run, a beta version of 1Password. That's an application that I would never run a beta of because I don't want anything going wrong in there. So I haven't used it. I've seen a lot of people using it. I've seen a lot of people complaining about it, et cetera, et cetera. It's a beta.

Yeah, exactly. it i've seen a lot of people complaining about it etc etc it's a beta yeah they make it it may get better i i have run it uh just really to take a screenshot of it from my article on my on my uh 24 inch imac running at monterey and it's a beta it doesn't really work right uh it's got a lot of a lot of work to do um and and if i had a prediction i really do think that in the end and they haven't said this but i would be surprised if agile bits doesn't at some point here commit to bringing the swift ui version from ios to mac at some point in the future when they can their blog post stops just short of saying that but i feel like that would that would probably uh reduce the amount of anger here i wouldn't make that bet myself even if i wanted to do it i wouldn't say it because you've got to assume you'll be able to

like and well that's that's true it's like how long could it possibly be could it be six months could it be 10 years okay so the other thing that I wonder in the background, a lot of conspiracy theories that we don't know the details of is, I wonder if in part, this is also a prod to Apple. And I wonder if there's been a conversation now between AgileBits and Apple about SwiftUI, right? Where Apple, where somebody who's in charge of SwiftUI

comes to AgileBits and says, why? They must have. How did we fail you that you abandoned your SwiftUI app for the Mac? Similarly to the people that left the Mac App Store, right? And then Apple kind of walked with them, tried to get them back in. Like, what I'll say, like, for me personally, as a 1Password user, like, I already use tons of apps on the Mac that aren't, like, quote-unquote, good Mac apps.

Like, they are just, this is a web version, right? Like I could just list them, right? Or a bunch of applications that they're not web versions, but they don't look like Mac apps either. They're like, they're built with native stuff, but they're like, or quote unquote, they're like built to the technology, but the UI is designed in such a way

that it's meant to be like our UI, you know? Like it doesn't look like an apple app all i want is what an app can give me rather than caring so much about how it's made right so like i use slack because i like what slack does even if it frustrates me sometimes the the tool itself is good uh you know like and so i'm gonna it's really the same for me one password right like i'm gonna keep using it because i really like what one password does for me like i'm not gonna abandon it now so something i want to say here too is this fall apple's new password stuff is is so so good in the new versions of the OSs that I think for a lot of

regular people who only use Apple platforms and don't need to share passwords and stuff, there's no reason to keep using something like 1Password. I feel like Apple's password management stuff is going to elevate to a point where it's going to be irrelevant to use something like 1Password for a whole class of people. By the way, I think this is why 1Password is doing what it's doing, right? In terms of it's pivoting to sharing and online services and enterprise and things like that is because they know, I think at least one person who works there has actually tweeted about this. It's like, they know where this is going. They know where the puck is going, right? And they know that basic password management, which for years has been a niche for

them to fill, is becoming an OS feature, and they got to go somewhere else. So for me, I do use it for other stuff, and we do have some shared vaults, so I will probably stick with it. But I have to be honest, I am seriously considering moving most of my stuff into Apple's password managers this fall and using it instead, because quite frankly, Apple does a shocker, does a better job of integrating its own stuff than third parties do with integrating or how third parties are allowed to integrate their stuff. And so Apple's password manager has some advantages over one password. I have some like issues with Apple's, right? Like for example, with credit cards, like it doesn't save the numbers on the back of the card, right? Oh yeah.

You know, that's a great issue. Also, it's't save the numbers on the back of the card, right? Oh, yeah. You know? No, that's a great issue. Also, it's in a totally separate place. It's in wallet, which is also kind of annoying. So stuff like that. OnePassword is really good at what it does because that's what they do, right? Like, they think about all of that stuff.

And Apple and the Passwords team, who I think are kind of part of the Safari team, I think, or like it's, anyway, like they're doing a great job. Like that, the two-factor autofill thing is one of the greatest things added to iOS and macOS in years, like years. It is superbly good.

I love it. But hey-ho. Yeah. So I think there are going to be people who say the era of native apps on Mac and even Windows are at an end. I don't believe that, but I believe that technology like Electron is going to do even more than what Java did back in the day, which is allow the

Mac to be supported when it wouldn't be before, but not by apps that are great. And this is already the case. And as a Mac user, I feel like you learn to be grateful when a tool that you really want to use comes to the Mac, even if it's bad, because at least it's there and you can use it while still being a little bit offended by how bad it is so like uh obs uh is a is a web app and that's that's a an uh a streaming app right that i do have a level extra level of offense for apps that aren't interfaces to online services like slack and discord and skype like they're web apps but they're like tied to an online service. And I guess one password is now too. Right. But like, there's something about like, why is this, why is this an electron app when it's just sitting here on my desktop that, that extra offends me. But the point is I would

rather have that than they not be present on my, on my computer. And for people who didn't live through the nineties, when being a Mac user meant that there was just huge numbers of apps that you couldn't run on the Mac at all, it's better that they're there, even if they're bad. That said, I hope there continues to be a thriving set of apps that run better and work better because they are really adopting the native, like, like Electron, Electron, you can just be a purist and say, I don't like Electron because it uses a lot of RAM. And it's like, well, but your computer has a lot of RAM and maybe it doesn't matter. And your computer has a lot of disk space, so it doesn't matter that it takes up a lot of disk space. I am more sympathetic to the people who

say things like, it doesn't do accessibility right. Or when I open the preferences window, it doesn't open a window. It opens this fake pane that I can't move around and that I have to dismiss. And it doesn't follow any of these keyboard shortcut conventions, or I can't automate it in some ways because it's very weird because it's really all fake and it's just loading a webpage. Those I'm more sympathetic for because those are ways where it's actually worse to use. And I think there are better Electron apps and there are worse Electron apps. And in the end, if somebody could build an Electron app that felt absolutely like a native app in the sense that it sort of does all the things and isn't ignoring platform conventions,

I would be okay with it. And I hope there's still a market for apps that do that going forward. And that's why I'm at least encouraged by the fact that Apple has made such an effort to get the Mac involved in the strength of the iPhone as an app platform by building Catalyst and now by building SwiftUI as a cross-platform framework. Because Apple is making a great effort to make it that, you know, real Mac apps that only run on the Mac are probably not going to be very common. But if you can get a real Apple platform app that's optimized for the Mac and the iPhone and that the OS knows what to

do on those different platforms, that's better than the alternative. As we were recording, platforms that's better than the alternative as we were recording uh apple have released iCloud for windows version 12.5 and it includes a new password manager app of course it does of course it does this episode is brought to you by calm business leaders know that healthy happy employees can create successful companies no matter what industry and calm for business can help your employees be their best selves at work. At Calm, they want to help you kickstart your mental well-being initiatives, empowering employees to stress less, rest better, and build resilience. It should be a year-round priority. And with Calm for Business, companies can partner with the number one mental fitness application to provide support and tools for their employees. When I'm having a busy, stressful day, I know how helpful it can be to take just a

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at calm.com upgrade go there right now thanks to calm for their support of this show and relay fm let's finish up with some hashtag ask upgrade questions stitch asks is following on from our conversation earlier do you expect the fall will say iPhone, event to be fully virtual? I'd say it's a greater than 50% chance that it will be. That said, at some point, Apple's going to want to do an in-person event again. Now, the iPhone event is very important, but it's also a packed event. Traditionally, it's got lots of overseas media that come to it that won't be able to probably

get in a lot of them to the US. There's that other event that may or may not happen in October or November if it's an event, but a product launch. So at some point here, I feel like we're going to have our return to in-person. It could be this fall. My guess is that it probably won't be, but if Apple wanted to do it, they could. What they would need to do is they do it at the Steve Jobs Theater. They'd have everybody wear masks and they'd probably do it outside. They have a stage outside. They could do it. Well, they could, but my guess is they probably just require vaccination, proof of vaccination from everybody who they invite and that, you know, they could do that, right? They could set up a thing where you have to upload your vaccine status or have your barcode

scanned or whatever it is, and that they verify you and then they let you come. Like, cause it's a controlled event. They can, they can completely control who goes in that building. So at some point they're going to do that. I don't know about an outside event. I mean, that would be fun. But I think the problem with the fall in the Bay Area, the reality of it is we have smoke days now. We have periods where there's a wildfire somewhere and the wind shifts and it blows over the Bay Area. And then you don't want to be outside.

So anyway, I think it's going to happen. It may not be till next year. So do I expect the fall event to be virtually or fully virtually? Yes. But at some point they're going to surprise us and they're going to go back and they're going to have some other system because again, this is a very controlled guest list. They can put lots of requirements on it and verify everything and do all of that if they want to let members of the media back into their facility again. It may be too soon, but it's going to happen at some point. So we may be a

little surprised whenever that happens. I thought this would be. I don't think it will be now, right? Yeah, things have slid backward to a point where it seems a lot less likely now. There are more indoor mask mandates and things like that in California. And so it would be a harder sell. They delayed their own return to work, right? This is going to be my next point. I don't think they have an event until they've had own return to work right and this is what this is going to be my next point i don't think they have an event until they've had their return to work i think that's

probably i don't think that those things can match up in my mind how do you let people from the outside in when you don't even let your people back yeah exactly it's like we're not going to let our employees come back but we'll let you rando in right it seems like thanks everybody where is everybody yeah i don't know there's? It just seems like, I don't know. Hey, everybody. Where is everybody? Yeah, I don't know. There's something about it that I don't know if it fits. Because as well,

it's like, how will they staff the place if there's nobody there? Yeah. I do wonder what conditions will apply when they open the doors, right? Are they going to

not open the doors until everybody can come in? Or are they going to do like positive tests within 72 hours or negative tests within 72 hours or a or a vaccine or whatever well positive tests are a challenge right because it sounds good but it's bad negative tests sound bad but it's good it's very confusing terrible thing mike asks not me what are your must bring devices when you start traveling again i actually have twisted this question,

and you can choose which one of them you want to answer. We've also both started traveling again, so... Yeah, a little bit. Right, but that was like, you know, I can now say, like, what were, but I have a secondary question based on my trip, right? Which was inspired by Mike's question. At this point, which device are we more likely to take out of either the iPad Pro or a MacBook Air or a Pro and why? And are there any shifts that we would like to see in either product to make this an easier choice to pick just one? So I am not going to answer your question the way you want because, and you already know this about me, my iPad Pro

is coming with me 100% of the time. The reason that I have written and talked so much about traveling with just an iPad is because I started out thinking, can I leave my MacBook behind? Because the iPad is always going to come with me. I am never traveling without an iPad ever, ever, ever. It's the one that I would feel lost if I didn't have it with me. I love it and I use it all the time and it is my primary computing device when I'm not sitting at my desk. That said, when I was traveling a lot before the pandemic, That said, when I was traveling a lot before the pandemic, the laptop I had was my laptop from Macworld. So it was a 2014 MacBook Air.

I have an M1 MacBook Air now. So really powerful, great battery life. And it's small so my story is that i'm more likely to also bring the macbook air than i used to be when i was traveling before and that's mostly because it's just easier to do some stuff on the macbook air honestly right now what i have the line i've drawn is am i expected to record a podcast? Because I went to Denver last weekend, weekend before last now, with just an iPad. And people sent me files and I posted.

I edited two podcasts from the hotel room in Denver on my iPad. Not a problem. Using Ferrite, right? Using Ferrite, right? Using Ferrite. And I used a separate app to do some denoising on the one podcast that I posted from there where people sent me the files. I got them in my Dropbox, moved them to Ferrite. It's all fine. Recording is a lot harder because there's no...

You know, audio hijack makes things so much easier and you get backup files. And it's just, you know, I have to bring like other hardware with me if I travel with the iPad. So I have to bring extra boxes anyway. So for me, that's what the line is. It's like, if I'm really expecting to do a podcast while I'm traveling somewhere, I'll just bring the laptop. So I didn't bring it to Hawaii. I didn't bring it to Denver. But when I visited my mom in Phoenix and had several podcasts to record from there I brought the MacBook Air so for me that's that's basically the dividing line now but the iPad it's 100% of the time see I've already struggled too right so I'm like I if I'm I always want to have

both of them if I'm going to be working or if there's like a possibility of work, I need a laptop. I need a Mac. It's how I know how to record and edit. I'm not going to learn a whole new system for a trip, right? Or like on the trip. I want reliability because if I'm traveling, if I'm on vacation or I'm traveling, seeing family, what I don't want to do is like spend hours and hours trying to fix an issue that's come up because I've tried to record with an iPad or whatever. So like, I think like what would the Mac have to do for me to not want to take my iPad?

And I don't know. So this is a question I had. I don't really have an answer for myself. I know I don't want to be taking both of them because it's a lot of weight and a lot of bulk and you know you're just taking all this stuff but I don't really know what exactly I would want to happen to one or the other to make like what honestly what I want is an iPad that can boot into macOS that's what I want right it would be awfully convenient if I could reboot my M1 iPad

running with the smart keyboard into macOS for podcast purposes. That's what I want. And then reboot it back into the iPad. That would be nice. I've just worked it out. That's what I want. I'm never going to get it,

but that's what I want. And the reason is because like, I know I could, in theory, just take the Mac, but like if I'm going to watch like a movie on a plane, I don't want to get a Mac for that, right? Like I got the keyboard and it's like big and it's not his whole thing.

Right. And so I don't want to do it. And plus it's like, it's, it's way harder to preload the video. Like, Oh yeah. For me anyway. Nobody wants to let you save video on my daughter. Um, when we went to Hawaii, she borrowed one of my iPads to preload movies on to watch on the plane because she just has her MacBook Air and they don't want to let you download stuff on videos on a Mac. They only want to because it's less secure or something, even though it's probably not actually less secure. So yes, I agree. For me, I draw the line at recording a podcast because I can edit podcasts and prefer it. And in fact, I prefer writing articles on my iPad too, honestly. If I was going, I could generate my financial charts and stuff on an iPad. I have built the automation to do that. And I did that at your bachelor party, actually. I had to do that there. That was the one time that I've used those scripts, actually.

But at this point, again, I would just bring the MacBook Air. Because I'm not trying to pull a stunt here, right? I'm trying to just get work done. And the iPad is my preferred tool for most of what I do when I'm out and about. But that M1 Air changes the equation a little because it's so good that it's just kind of... And also I've been broken down by the fact that apple's never going to provide apparently proper audio access support in ipad os and so i've just sort of given up and it's like if i need to record something i'll bring the the macbook air and it's

good and it's good enough and a last question comes from brantz it seems that every year brings a new report about how the latest iphone will have limited availability at launch do you think that this production that this prediction will actually come true as apple and many other manufacturers are still dealing with global chip component shortages i think one one key difference here right is this report came from tim which is not who usually reports this. I think Apple will do what it does to disguise availability issues.

I think it does that by staggering release time sometimes. It also has you pre-order, but it ships it later. It allows them to open the pre-order period where you'll get it on release day. And then it's all just a function of how few they have, how quickly that slips into the past. And then they often get up to speed and those dates move back forward again. And you think you're not getting it for two months and you get it in a month.

But like Apple will disguise it. Apple's not going to be like, oh, you can't get it. Apple will disguise it. Apple's not going to be like, oh, you can't get it. Instead, Apple's just going to open it for pre-orders. And, you know, will it be a month out after five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes? That's going to be the thing. But I think Apple tries very hard to disguise it so that you don't think about it that way. This is also a way that I think Apple's approach is superior to, like, the games console people,

for example. And forgive me for going there again, but it just drives me crazy. With Apple, you give them your credit card and stuff, and you say, I want an iPhone. And they say, great, it's going to come in a month. It's going to come in six weeks. Whatever the wait is, you will get it then, and we'll let you know if you'll get it earlier. Or just like, it will come. You give me the money, and it will come. Right.

Yeah, or just like, it will come, right? Like, you give me the money and it will come. Right. Whereas some of these, especially like the game consoles, it's like, sorry, we're out. Come back later and get your bots ready and try to order it. And it's like, Apple just doesn't play that game. Apple wants to take your money.

They want to take as much of your money as possible and they'll get you a phone when they can. Also, I'm just going to say it again because we say it here. People need to listen. Also, they ship a bunch to the Apple stores. And if you've got an Apple store near you, you can almost certainly get one faster if your thing is really ordered a month back ordered or something. You got to try to do that order that gets you one that's in your store supply because the stores get supply they don't just put them all toward the back order so that's something to look for but anyway i think uh will it be slower maybe uh but when tim cook says they're not going

to have as many available some of that is also about when they right the the announcement happens right before the end of their fiscal quarter so some some of it may be, well, yeah, immediately three months back ordered. This is ridiculous. But my guess is that Apple plays its when do I announce it? When do I announce pre-orders are available? And what is the actual release date after that? They set those dates and they can change those dates and they try to play it so that it plays out the way they want. And so they push those dates back. Because that's what they did last time right like if they felt like it was going to be immediately like nobody's going to get until

late october well they won't announce it until october yeah i agree with you there'll be some available in september but most in october but that means they think that that's fine if it was going to be as you say like a three-month wait well they would just wait like they've already done you know they they could just wait. It's fine. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or you can send

one in with question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com and you can sign up. $5 a month, $50 a year. You can add free episodes with extra content. Every episode of Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up. $5 a month, $50 a year. You can add free episodes with extra content. Every episode of Upgrade Plus is longer

than Upgrade and you get bonus content that is only heard by the Upgradians who subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to everybody who does. Also, thanks to Calm, Memberful, and Instabug for their support of this show.

Before we go, let me tell you about another show here on RelayFM, Make Do. You don't have to monetize your hobbies, but hey, if you want to, Make Do is ready to be your cheerleader. Listen as you hobby at relay.fm.com or search for Make Do wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com or you can go to at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Early.