Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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This Mac(/“personal ‘computer’”) vs. iPad debate drives me up the wall, no less so than the same dynamics did for years on the Mac side as OS X’s best features like Spaces were knee-capped for absolutely no good reason!!! In their counter-arguments are the dumbed-down advocates’ Achilles heel: because the feature-set they insist stay accessible IS SO SIMPLE, it can CO-EXIST WITHIN A MAXIMALLY FEATUREFUL ENVIRONMENT. It really is that simple. Arguing for simplicity BY DEFINITION CANNOT BE an argument AGAINST ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY, when designed properly. And it is that design finesse that requires hard work in cognitive science and that apparently Jonny Ive nuked and salted the Earth against when he took the software design helm just at the time the dunder-heads from the neophyte mobile camp were coming into their own on Apple’s damned balance sheet! 
I am incensed that Rene is parroting the same B.S. from Apple’s numb-nut factions instead of, as a consumer advocate the way he claims to want to be, scolding them for their myopia and demanding that they hold themselves to the higher standard that has always been Apple’s true ethos that led to the Mac as a computer intended to be “for the rest of us”, for “mere mortals”. Suddenly the iPad comes along with a touchscreen and steals those mantras while kicking the Mac in the teeth and attempting to tar its entire edifice while offering a user PRISON controlled not by users but by app developers and Apple itself through the App Store. The execs’ latest interview about iPad vs. Mac talks about what’s best feature-wise, NOT what’s best in practice, for users, and the mental Chinese-handcuffs asphyxiating those considered “edge-cases” are quite telling: everything is handled mentally in isolation because it’s how Apple thinks about and talks to itself about the problem-set’s in their different groups, apparently, lacking the cohesive perspective of cross-functional and intersectional impacts that the cracks in their “user personae” cohorting or whatever seems to account for. End this false-dichotomy madness, and stop acting like simplicity precludes complexity!!! Most of all, not for the Pro!
I’m all for Rene’s scenario of an OS that supercedes the Mac/iPad dichotomy, to be clear (and I know he knows the cogsci/UX angle well enough from his many lengthy podcast conversations with Don Melton). They need to do it well, obviously, on and for each device, and that CANNOT EVER be defined as paring AWAY functionality, only occluding it cleverly enough for the uninitiated, but I disagree with his facile “cloud” idea in favor rather of PERSONAL computing under private individual end-user control be that a FreedomBox, Plex server, a Mac, or what have you. The sloppiness with which Apple treats local storage in iPad OS right now is UNFORGIVABLE and they had BETTER not treat local options so cavalierly if they’re making an “Apple OS”—and how dare they refuse to support optical drives on iPad OS even when we have the correct adapters?! Just because they’re a services company CANNOT ALLOW their excising the “personal” from “personal computing” in favor of off-site, 3rd-party services like iCloud (watch them try to act, effectively, like “impersonal” keeps the “personal” despite its opposite meaning😝)!!!
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TL;DR (you need an editor)
It’s pretty simple really. Some people like Coke, and some people like Pepsi. Just because you like something someone else dislikes or is disinterested in doesn’t mean either is right or wrong. Let the sales decide what people really want… if Apple screws one or the other up then sales will tank and they’ll figure out how to right the ship lickety-split.
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Rich, coming from the same person who within the past week dismissed Apple’s ideas as “dumb”—surprise-surprise, you see no nuance to care about in anything I said! You hate thinking about Apple, that much you’ve made obvious, and so obviously you’ll consider detailed opinion about it as rambling.
Like they did on the MacBook keyboards! Sure thing, Polyanna!
We’ll never know the truth since we don’t have detailed sales information from Apple. Outwardly it appears that it took a while for them to see the fall off on sales (where people stopped buying while waiting for new gear with the hoped for fix.) Guess what, it apparently eventually worked, because, by all accounts, it got fixed. This is exactly how a market should work–vote with your [lack of] dollars.
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I literally said it was too long that I never read what you wrote. I literally only read the first sentence, and assumed you would yammer on for hours about how you felt Apple did you wrong by not making things exactly the way you would want them. My response was to say that people are not forced to buy Apple products, and to imply that perhaps Apple is best suited to know, based on sales data we don’t get to see, what their market wants. They’re basically testing on their own customer’s wallets to see what lifts the dollars out the fastest… and apparently it was purple iPhones.
Need I say more? Or that’s right, I already said too much.
Your condescension cake can’t be eaten with your market-led mouth: because I advocate for more than myself in detailing the impacts of their sometimes ill-conceived/ham-fisted (in its impact on users like me) and often contradictory/conflicting design decisions, you who seek to tar them with a condescending brush erase both their aesthetic interests and the legitimacy of such advocacy. Not a great look.
P.S. Quoting can be done from multiple messages into the same reply.
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LOL, I bought my wife one for Mother’s Day cuz she loved the purple!! Out goes her iPhone XS Max just cuz, purple 
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Yes, I intentionally split my interests into two posts to keep each one to the correct length. You should try that some time… oh wait… you’re pathologically addicted to using 700 words where 10 would do.
This is the end of our interaction on this thread…
P.S. I’m going to have last word because Zyzzyva
The AirTags are a great iteration on the locator space. I was stunned that apple not only made the battery replaceable, but with a standardized CR2032 coin cell! I was just disappointed that they aren’t really practical for wallet use.
As for Tile’s beefs, its such an odd complaint since apple made FindMy an open platform. I guess the devil’s in the details on what the policies are for signing up. Apple always leaves space for a competitor to beat them on price, and if Tile can integrate into that network, then they might find themselves with a very compelling product.
Its clear that Apple likes to play gatekeeper, but I have to say im impressed on how well they play both sides of the fence. They do just enough to keep antitrust scrutiny from really stomping on them while still creating artificial barriers to entry that end up generating profit for the company.
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Oh and I just got 14.5 installed. That much heralded (or derided) “Ask App Not to Track” dialog box? Looks like the default setting is to disallow apps to even ask, i.e. the OS wont even show the dialog. It just declines the app’s request automagically.
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Not really both sides of the fence though? More like others allowed to play their side of the fence if you accept their terms?
If you look at the Chipolo they now have two product ranges - their own network that is Android/iOS, and the FindMe network one that is a separate ‘special edition’. As an Android customer, I wonder if any of my data now makes its way to Apple, but I don’t get any benefit from the Apple network?
I’m just hoping Tile are keeping its options open as they are already integrated into the FitBit Inspire (now Google).
Meanwhile Google are adding UWB to Android system apps…
In a commit merged late last week, Google marked Android’s ultra-wideband APIs as SystemAPIs. SystemAPIs are not accessible to third-party apps linking against the Android SDK. Thus, these APIs will be inaccessible to third-party apps. It’s unclear why these APIs are being limited to system applications, but it’s possible that Google doesn’t feel the APIs are ready for public use just yet. Google did something similar with RCS APIs, which are still not available for third-party messaging apps.
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Not really both sides of the fence though? More like others allowed to play their side of the fence if you accept their terms?
I guess its hard to describe. Ive been an apple user for a long time, and Ive noticed a definite strategy in how they build their products. Everything they sell has a killer app in mind, and everything they sell tends to promote the killer apps of their other products. Fitness/Health apps for example - WAY more useful if you have an Apple Watch. Macs are great, but gosh wouldn’t you like to just double click your watch to unlock your Mac?
Its a classic strategy that Apple has really mastered! The really (evil?) part of it is that its a win win scenario - you win with more functionality while Apple wins by helping themselves to more of your Dollarydoos. Again, not a new plan, its just that Apple is exceptional at that game.
So for AirTags? Yea, you can use a Chipolo with FindMy, but if you want that nifty homing feature you gotta get the AirTags. Apple’s genius is their ability to set something like that up which achieves the customer lock in they want while maintaining plausible deniability vis a vis antitrust issues.
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Yes, their USP - but that useful? I bet I could find one quicker just by getting it to chirp. Boring I know!
I think of the other side of the fence as Android BTW, rather than an AirTag Chipola. There’s still a lot of Android people out there wanting a tracking solution I think.
Maybe! I had Tiles a while back and frequently use the echolocation feature on my watch to find my phone. Works great to figure out what room its in. As for exactly where it is? Not so much - especially if its buried under something.
YMMV though - I may just suck at echolocation.
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Yup, both locating options are good. Accessibility for the hard of hearing too.
It is more, some people only need a Mercedes A Class and other need a Mercedes Actros.
Coke and Pepsi is Android vs. iOS, Windows vs. Linux vs. macOS. @philodygmn is talking about the difference, to use Steve Jobs’ epithet about needing a car or a truck to achieve certain tasks.
I agree with him, over the years Apple has been paring back what it means to have an Apple truck to make it more and more like an Apple car, even though it should be bigger, stronger and have more carrying capacity. To go back to my analogy, we’ve come from the Mercedes A Class and Actros to a Mercedes GLA compact SUV and a Mercedes X-Class truck.
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The bit that I don’t get is why, if you’re going to spend £3,000 on the iPad and a stand, why you wouldn’t just buy a Mac or a Windows computer. Surely, if you’re in the market for a machine with that amount of performance, you;d want the bigger screen and mouse that a computer offers you.
One arguement against the idea that Clubhouse should have just taken the money would be Dropbox. Not sure what shape their financials are in Dropbox’s unique selling point is something that pretty much every email provider copies.
One problem I have with the idea of the sovreign writer or podcaster would be if your audience don’t follow you. To give you an example: I enjoy the Harry Potter videos put out by SuperCalinBrothers but I’m not sure I’d follow if they decided to use a platform other than YouTube because there isn’t enough there for me. Even the creators who have left YouTube have, at least in my experience, have not been able to leave entirely and still use it for marketting their other stuff
If you really wanted to go independant then you would create your own platform because, otherwise, I would question how “independant” you really are
Because you want to use an iPad, and not deal with the overhead of Mac and Windows or the lack of touch on Mac or the lack of touch-optimized apps on Windows?
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You don’t have to leave YouTube, but you might stop counting on it as your primary revenue source. Instead, you try to monetize through some other means (e.g. Patreon) but use YouTube as a means of getting people into the funnel. If you don’t have a sizeable audience that is willing to pay you through something other than attention, then the problem is not your platform but your content.
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